A Pigeon Among the Cats (2 page)

“No, it's all right,” Mrs. Chilton assured her. She put away the handkerchief, smiled once or twice and said, “You see it was hearing you were a widow and had — well — managed so well. You see —” she began to fumble again.

“You aren't going to tell me you've lost your husband, too?”

Mrs. Lawler was aghast. She could not stop what was coming. It was already dropping into Mrs. Chilton's lap, so to speak, but it was not, most surely not what she had expected. Get over the boredom of idleness with a lot of silly people on their annual holiday. She had doubted the travel agent's word. She had been right. There was nothing she could say now that would not make matters worse. So she turned her head away from the weeping girl beside her and tried to enjoy the countryside that flowed past the coach and spread itself in front of them, while Mrs. Chilton jerked out her misery in small parcels of words.

“I haven't lost him … I mean he's alive all right … but we don't get on … he has other girls at the office and that. I stood it a long time … fool I was, I think. They don't alter if they're made that way, do they? … So I made up my mind to end it … There weren't any children … It was more than flesh and blood could stand.”

In one of the longer pauses in this dreary recital Mrs. Lawler thought with sickening disgust it might be a radio play. She's got every last cliché and trite complaint, poor bitch! And then felt ashamed of herself, but still lacking in true feeling.

“So I've run out on him,” Mrs. Chilton was saying. “I couldn't stand it. I took every penny I could find in the house and my summer things and booked at the last minute.”

“But didn't leave word where you had gone?”

“No. I didn't leave word of any kind.”

“But someone knows where you are? I mean you have telephoned once or twice, haven't you?”

Mrs. Chilton did not seem to have heard this question but when Mrs. Lawler repeated it she said grudgingly, “Well yes, I did phone my best friend. But no one in my family — or his.”

Confusion had improved Mrs. Chilton. When the coach stopped for morning coffee at a wayside cafeteria near a petrol station Mrs. Lawler saw to it that her companion had a large cappuccino and a packet of biscuits, which she ate steadily and completely.

Thereafter the conversation took a brighter turn. Mrs. Lawler explained why she was a retired school mistress. She had begun to teach just before the start of the Second World War, then had been called up and went into the W.A.A.F. She married into the Air Force, her husband was brought down over the Channel, badly wounded, he died later, she went back into teaching when she was demobilised.

“You never married again?” Mrs. Chilton asked in an astonished voice.

“No, I never married again.”

“And no children, either?”

“One son, born after his father's death. He went to Canada six years ago.”

Mrs. Chilton glanced sideways at her companion, but finding a closed expression there, did not ask any more questions.

The coach stopped for that day at an hotel in Siena. It was by then a little after four o'clock with the shops coming to life again after the universal siesta break. When the rooms at the hotel had been allocated and the luggage delivered to them most of the tourists hurried out to look at the shops, buy postcards, cigarettes and stamps in the last available minutes of the commercial day. Or to see the sights.

Mrs. Lawler stood at the foot of the hotel steps, an open map in her hand, trying to orientate herself. Various other fellow travellers hovered near her, murmuring their ignorance and pleading indirectly for enlightenment.

“I'm trying to locate the duomo, the cathedral,” said Mrs. Lawler firmly, aloud. “The Donatello statue of John the Baptist is there. And the big square, the Campo, at any rate.”

A polite voice just behind her said, “I can help you if I may.”

She looked over her shoulder. A man stood on the pavement. His face was on a level with hers, until she stepped down to the pavement when he proved to be a little taller. He was smiling, which made his crooked face look comic, rather than grotesque. He seemed to have been walking past the hotel and must have heard her complaint just as he reached her.

“Can you really?” Mrs. Lawler said, smiling back. “I'd be very grateful.”

“Come on, then,” the man said, still smiling. “I'm going in that direction, myself.”

They moved away together. Before long Mrs. Lawler realised that she had Mrs. Chilton on her other side and behind them a young couple whose name she had gathered was Woodruff. But her guide was explaining some of the history of Siena and pointing out various buildings, so she bent her mind towards understanding him, deciding she had no obligation towards the others. It just crossed her mind that the kind man with his scarred face — was it old war-time burns — and his cultured English accent and his extensive local knowledge might presently demand a guide's fee, but she put the unworthy thought from her and continued to concentrate on her sightseeing.

No bill was presented, no fee was remotely suggested. With the cathedral in sight the man halted, took leave, accepted verbal gratitude and then turned to go back the way they had come.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Lawler, “you have come right out of your way.”

“Not really.” The smile was in place, broader, more comical than ever. “I'm just wandering over well-remembered tracks.”

They said goodbye; Mrs Lawler walked on into the church, where Mrs. Chilton drew level and the Woodruffs passed with a nod of recognition as if they had only just noticed who she was.

“That was a pretty cool customer, I must say,” Mrs. Chilton remarked. “Or did you know him?”

“Never seen him from Adam,” Mrs. Lawler answered. “He very kindly directed me here. He knows Siena and was just strolling round the place.”

She was aware that her companion became rather more than rather less curious as a result of this speech and also that all her own vague misgivings had entered Mrs. Chilton's mind already. But she had no intention of sharing them with the girl. With her own friends at home she would have enjoyed inventing scurrilous tales to account for her brief acquaintance with a fellow countryman, but not with Gwen Chilton, whose mind ran on rather different lines, apparently.

However, they left the cathedral together and when they came to a broad flight of steps that led down into the wide square and Mrs. Lawler stopped to take a photograph of it, she heard a familiar voice say to Gwen, “A wonderful square, isn't it? They still have the old mediaeval horse race here every summer. We've missed it, I'm afraid. Last month.”

Gwen answered, “Oh, really!” and Mrs. Lawler swung round, fastening up her camera in time to see the stranger's back as he moved away again. Gwen said, sourly, “Worse than a guide book, isn't he?”

When Mrs. Lawler made no answer to this Gwen went on, “What's the matter with his face, anyhow?”

At this Mrs. Lawler could not help saying, “Burns, I think. He may have been in the Air Force in the war. I've seen a lot of that sort of thing.”

Mrs. Chilton thought, Burns, my foot! Car crash, more likely. She's got the Air Force on the brain, poor old cow. Pathetic. Teaching all her life except that one break!

Neither of them gave any more thought to the strange friendly man as they wandered down the steps to the square, sat in the shade at one side to eat a delicious ice-cream and wandered back to the hotel, where Mrs. Lawler unpacked a few things for the night, undressed, showered and dressed again in a thinner summer frock. She went down to the bar in good time to meet some more of her group before dinner. It was time to get to know a few more of them. A diet of Gwen Chilton, however sorry she felt for the girl, was not to be taken without relief.

She drank an apéritif with the Woodruffs. Conversation was simple; it consisted of a long account from Mr. Woodruff of his growing success in electronics. He spoke a type of Midlands cockney that mirrored this process exactly, so mat when she asked Mrs. Woodruff where they lived in England the answer was Harrogate and she congratulated herself for a good guess.

At the meal she was joined by the woman and niece of breakfast that morning; the one too stout and the other too thin, as in a cartoon, but dressed alike, though not actually “twin” in flowered nylon, knee length, sleeveless. Mrs. Franks was a midwife, attached to a rare private maternity home in a London suburb. Miss Hurry was a state-registered nurse, taking a holiday abroad with her aunt before going to a new post in a provincial hospital. They had visited Spain twice, they explained, and wanted a change. Sunbathing was all very well in its way, but …

“I'm here to see Florence and Venice,” Mrs. Lawler said gently.

“Not Rome?” Miss Hurry was surprised.

“I spent a week in Rome some years ago,” Mrs. Lawler explained. “But Florence and Venice never yet. Time slips away so.”

She sighed for all the plans made and never brought off, for one reason or another.

Gwen Chilton waylaid her on the way from the dining room.

“Going to have coffee?” she asked.

“Yes, that would be nice.” Mrs. Lawler turned to invite her eating companions to join them but they had already disappeared.

“They make it at the bar,” Gwen said, leading off in that direction.

But Mrs. Lawler had stopped at the middle of the hall. Their chance acquaintance, their guide, their odd pick-up, was standing there with his back to them, lighting a cigarette.

Gwen had stopped too. She came back to say in a low voice. “He's stopping in the hotel. He was at a table near the door. Very fluent in Italian.” She moved away again and the man turned slowly.

“So you're staying here, too?” Mrs. Lawler said, calmly. “Can we give you some coffee as a reward for your help in the town?”

She implied, without exactly meaning it, that she and Mrs. Chilton were together.

“Thank you, but they brought me some at my table,” he answered. “I'll watch you drinking yours, though.”

And he walked off to where Gwen Chilton was waiting at the bar and presently came back with the girl, carrying both their cups to the small table in the lounge where Mrs. Lawler had established herself.

He was quite ready now to explain his own movements. A short stay on the French Riviera with some English friends, a long drive round the Corniche road to Genoa. Another long drive that day to Siena. Wonderful new roads, they all agreed.

“And where do you go now?” Mrs. Lawler asked. Mrs. Chilton did not seem particularly interested, but rather to have retired from the conversation into her usual self-pitying privacy.

“South,” he answered. “Rome tomorrow and straight through to Naples.”

“Not in one day?”

“Possibly. The autostradas are wonderful. I can rest when I get there: I'm going to friends. I'd rather not dawdle on the way.”

“You must have a super car,” Gwen said. She spoke suddenly, forcefully. Mrs. Lawler was startled, spilling her coffee spoon from the saucer to the floor. She noticed, as their unknown acquaintance dived politely after it that his hands, too, were shaking. Why? Or did they always shake? What did it matter, anyway?

The little, pointless episode did break up the party, though, Mrs. Chilton leaving first, as if disturbed by it. The man, who had only just regained his seat, rose once more when the girl got up and remained standing to take his own leave.

“You will be off before us in the morning,” Mrs. Lawler said, looking up at him. “Though we are again due to start most uncomfortably early. So thank you again for your help over our sight-seeing, Mr. — er — ”

“Owen Strong,” he answered at once. “Thank you, Mrs.…”

“Rose Lawler.”

“Mrs. Lawler.”

They shook hands and as she was clearly about to leave herself, he helped her to her feet. Surprisingly strong in the wrist, she decided and no longer shaking. Not that it mattered, she told herself.

They exchanged a final good night and parted, Mrs. Lawler making for the lifts, Mr. Strong for the front door.

Again she told herself, a little more regretfully than before, she had now seen the last of him.

Again she was wrong. Having undressed and turned out her top light, she pulled back her curtains and opened her window, deciding to risk the mosquitoes rather than suffocate. The lights of the town were still brilliant, stars shone in the sky, though there was no moon. Her window was three floors up at the back of the hotel. Directly below she looked down on a terrace with small tables and one or two figures seated at them with glasses or cups.

Owen Strong and Gwen Chilton were most noticeable. Also the courier, Billie and Mario, the coach driver. They sat at a table on the opposite side of the terrace to that of the other two.

“Well, well, well,” Mrs. Lawler told herself, fastening up the window and pulling across half the curtain.

To shut out the mosquitoes? Certainly. And an unwelcome sight? A sad reminder? What nonsense!

Mrs. Lawler read a book for five minutes until the print began to swim, then put out her table lamp and slept.

The coach ‘Roseanna' drew up outside the Siena hotel just after eight o'clock the next morning and three-quarters of an hour later the tour climbed sleepily on board, Billie counted them, Mario prepared to drive them away.

Mrs. Lawler, one of the first to leave the hotel, took her former place near the window, behind the driver: the Banks family did the same on the other side of the central aisle.

For a little while Mrs. Lawler hoped to see Mrs. Chilton arrive and take a seat farther back in the coach, but there was no sign of her.

“Did you see Mrs. Chilton at breakfast?” Billie asked her, tapping her biro against her front teeth.

No one had seen Mrs. Chilton at breakfast that morning, but Mario on being consulted, agreed that all the luggage belonging to this tour was on board. Every piece was there.