In the Hour Before Midnight (5 page)

At that point the cliffs merged into hillside sparsely covered with grass, and wild flowers grew in profusion. I climbed half-way up and lay on my back, the sun warm on my naked flesh, staring through narrowed eyelids at a white cloud no bigger than my hand, allowing my whole body to relax, making my mind a blank, another trick hard-won from those months in prison.

The world was a blue bowl and I floated in it, drowsing in the scented grass and slept.

 

Waking was a return to a heavy stillness. I was aware of flowers, the grass at eye-level like a jungle, the woman watching me from a few yards away. Was it an accidental encounter or had she been sent by Burke? I wasn't angry, but strangely calculating considering the circumstances. I
watched her through slitted eyes, apparently still asleep, making no move. She stayed perhaps two or three minutes, her face quite expressionless, then went away carefully.

When she had gone, I sat up, dressed and went down to the beach again feeling rather excited. In a way, the whole thing had become a kind of game with Burke making a new move as I countered the old one.

The cards were where I had left them together with my box of ammunition and when I moved to the firing line, I had never known such power, such certainty. I drew, fired and was reloading within the second, my old self again, the Stacey from before the Hole . . . and yet not the same.

This time I fired left-handed, drawing on the cross from my waistband and knew before I checked what I would find.

Five hits . . . five hits on each card tightly grouped
. I tore them into very small pieces, scattered them into the sea and went back up to the villa.

 

I slept during the afternoon waking just before night fell and yet I lay there without moving when Burke entered the room to check on me and softly departed.

When it was quite dark I got up, pulled on a pair of pants and ventured on to the terrace. I could hear voices near at hand, followed the sound and paused at the window of what was obviously his bedroom. He was sitting at a desk in one corner and Piet was standing beside him, his fair hair golden in the lamplight.

Burke glanced up at him and smiled—a new kind of smile, one I'd never seen before—patted his arm and said something. Piet went out like some faithful hound about his master's business.

Burke opened a drawer, produced what looked suspiciously like a bottle of whisky, uncorked it and swallowed, which for a man who didn't drink was quite a trick. He put the bottle back in the drawer when the door opened and the woman entered.

I got ready to leave, mainly because whatever else I am I'm no voyeur, but there was no need. He simply sat there looking very much the colonel and talked, presumably in Greek which I knew he spoke well after a couple of years in Cyprus during the Emergency.

I eased back into the shadows as she left and moved back to my room. The whole thing was certainly packed full of human interest and drama and I lit a cigarette, lay on the bed and thought about it all.

The story—that was the really weak link. The story about the Honourable Joanna and the rampant Serafino. Oh, it was possible, but strangely incomplete like a Bach fugue with page three missing.

Somewhere thunder rumbled menacingly. The gods were angry perhaps?
Oh, might Zeus forgive us
. The old Greek tag drifted up from some dusty schoolroom to haunt me along with wine-dark seas, Achilles and his heel and cunning Odysseus.

I didn't hear her come in, but when lightning crackled out to sea, it picked her from the night standing just inside the French window. I made no sound. When it flared again, she had come closer, the dress on the floor behind her, the ripe body a thing of light and mystery, dark hair brushing the full breasts.

In the darkness following, her hands were on me, her mouth, her flesh against mine. In one single savage movement I had her by the hair, my hand tightening cruelly.

“What did he tell you to do?” I demanded. “Anything I wanted, anything to keep me happy?”

Her body arched in pain and yet she did not struggle and when the lightning flickered again, highlighting the heavy breasts, I saw that her eyes were turned towards me and there was no fear there.

My fingers slackened in her hair and she subsided. I gently patted her face, her lips turned into the palm of my hand. So, it had come to this? Stacey the satyr—fill one half of his bed for him and keep him happy. The rest was easy. Just like my English breakfast—Burke thought of everything. Only the piano was missing and he'd probably tried hard enough to get hold of one.

I went to the French window and stood looking out at the flickering sky. Suddenly, and for no accountable reason, the whole thing struck me as really being very funny—a monstrous game for children with motive laid bare to such a degree that it was ridiculous.

Burke wanted me—needed me. In exchange I got twenty-five thousand dollars and all my more carnal needs supplied. Now what well-bred satyr could complain at that?

I nodded slowly. Right. Let it be so. I would play his game through as I had done before, but this time perhaps a rule or two of my own might be in order.

Behind me was the softest of movements and I sensed her presence there in the darkness. I reached out and pulled her close. She was still naked and shivered slightly. I could smell the mimosa, heavy and clinging on the damp air. The whole electric
world waited for a sign. It came and the heavens opened, rain falling straight from sky to earth.

The freshness filled my nostrils, drowning the womanly scent of her. I left her there, moved out on the terrace and stood, face turned up to the rain, mouth half-open, laughing as I hadn't laughed in a long, long time, ready to take on the world again and beat it at its own dark game.

I
T WAS
H
OLY
Week when we arrived in Palermo, something which I'd completely forgotten about. We drove in the thirty-five kilometres from the aerodrome at Punta Raisi and the black Mercedes saloon which had met us bogged down in the crowded streets. It finally came to a halt in deference to a religious procession which wound its way through the crowds, an ornate Madonna rising on a catafalque high above our heads.

During the whole of the run from Crete, Burke had been moody and irritable and now he lowered the window and looked out with ill-concealed impatience.

“What's all this?”

“A procession of the mysteries,” I told him.
“This kind of thing goes on during Holy Week all over Sicily. Everything else grinds to a halt. They're a very religious people.”

“It doesn't seem to have rubbed off much on you,” he commented sourly.

Piet Jaeger glanced at me anxiously. How much he knew of what had been said between Burke and myself, of the hardness of the bargaining, I wasn't sure, but the change in our relationship had been plain enough during the past three days.

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “Didn't you notice the Virgin had a knife through her heart? That's Sicily for you—the cult of death everywhere. I'd have thought I fitted in rather nicely.”

He smiled reluctantly. “You could be right at that.”

I turned to Piet. “You'll love it. It's one hell of a place. On All Saints' Day the children are given presents from the dead. The graves are probably the best kept in the world.”

Piet grinned, obviously relieved, but Legrande who was sitting beside the driver was hot and tired, his eyes tinged with yellow which didn't look too good. Maybe one of the several fevers he'd picked up in that Viet prison camp after Dien Bien Phu was about to plague him.

“What is this, a conducted tour?” he demanded.

I ignored him and leaned out of the window as the Mercedes pushed its way through the crowd. The girls were a little more fashionably dressed than when I had last been here and so were the younger men, but I could smell incense and candle grease, hear voices chanting beyond the square. The crowd parted and the penitents appeared looking remarkably like the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in pointed hoods and long white robes.

No, nothing had changed—not down there beneath the surface where it counted.

 

About seven miles out of Palermo on the coast road to Messina you come to the beaches of Romagnolo, a favourite spot for city-dwellers at weekends. Hoffer's villa was a couple of miles further on. It didn't look more than a year or two old and had obviously been specially designed to fit into the hillside site, rising above us on three different levels with what looked like a Moorish garden crowning the highest roof.

The whole was surrounded by a high wall and we had to wait to be identified at the gates by a guard who carried an automatic rifle slung from one shoulder.

“Why the private army?” I asked Burke.

“Hoffer's a rich man. Since this business with
the girl he's been getting worried. Maybe they'll have a go at him next.”

Which seemed reasonable enough. Kidnapping was, after all, one of Sicily's oldest industries and in any case, I'd been to parties at houses in Bel Air where the gatekeeper was armed. Sicily wasn't the only society where the rich got neurotic about the prospect of someone trying to take it away from them.

On the other hand, Hoffer certainly seemed to cover all his bets. Even our driver, a burly Norman-Sicilian with ginger hair, was wearing a shoulder holster, a fact which his tight-fitting chauffeur's uniform made rather too obvious.

There was a scent of wistaria in the air and I could see the purple blooms in profusion on the other side of the drive. It was all very lush, very Mediterranean with palm trees carefully placed to make every vista please and yet its very harmony was vaguely unsettling. Things were a little too perfect, a design on paper, product of some expert mind, planned to produce results in the shortest possible time. An instant garden.

The Mercedes braked in a gravelled circle in front of the entrance and a couple of houseboys came down in a hurry to get the bags. As they went back up the steps a woman appeared in the porch and looked down at us languidly.

She was small, dark haired and with the kind of body that can only be described as ripe. She was Sicilian to the backbone, twenty-two or three by my judgement, although she looked older as southern women often do. She was wearing black leather riding pants, a white silk knotted at her waist and a Cordoban hat.

“And who might that be?” Piet demanded.

“Hoffer's girl friend. I'll see what the situation is.”

Burke went up the steps and they held a brief, whispered conversation that died as I joined them.

“Hoffer isn't here at the moment,” Burke told me. “Had to go to Gela on business last night, but he's due back later on this afternoon. I'd like you to meet Signoria Rosa Solazzo. Rosa, my good friend Stacey Wyatt.”

Her English was excellent. She held my hand briefly, but didn't remove her sunglasses. “A pleasure, Mr. Wyatt. I've heard a great deal about you.”

Which might have been true or could have been merely conventional politeness. Hoffer didn't sound like the sort who needed any confidante and from the look of her, it seemed more likely that he kept her around solely to help him through those long night watches.

She turned to Burke. “Rooms are arranged for you. The servants will take you up. I suppose you'd like to shower and change so I'll order the meal for an hour from now.”

She left and we followed the houseboys through a large cool hall where everything seemed to swim in green and gold and up a short flight of stairs to the second tier of the building.

Piet and Legrande shared, but Burke and I were honoured with separate rooms. Mine was long and narrow, one wall consisting of sliding glass doors opening to a balcony overlooking the garden. The furniture was English and in excellent taste, the carpet so thick that it deadened all sound and when I tried the other door I found my own bathroom.

The houseboy put my bag on the bed and left and I went and turned on the shower. When I came back into the bedroom, Burke was standing by the window.

He managed a smile. “The rich full life, eh?”

“Something like that. I don't know about you, but I'm going to have a shower.”

He was obviously eager to please and moved to the door at once. “A good idea. I'll see you downstairs in an hour.”

But I had other plans
. I gave myself about a minute and a half under an ice-cold needlespray
and changed, pulling on a clean shirt and a lightweight suit in blue tropical worsted. A pair of gold-framed sunglasses completed the outfit.

I hesitated over the Smith and Wesson, but this was Sicily after all. I clipped the holster to my belt on the right-hand side, left the room quickly and went downstairs.

There seemed to be no one about and I paused on top of the steps outside the front door. The Mercedes was still there, the driver going over the windscreen with a wash leather.

Rosa Solazzo said from behind, “You are going somewhere, Mr. Wyatt?”

I turned and said cheerfully, “Yes, into Palermo if that's all right with you.”

“But of course, I'll tell Ciccio to take you wherever you want.”

It was nicely done and without the slightest hint of hesitation. The local dialect in Sicily is similar to the Italian spoken in the rest of Italy except for one or two different vowel sounds and an accent you could cut with a knife. She switched over to it as we went down the steps.

“The American wants to go into Palermo,” she told Ciccio. “Take him wherever he wishes and watch him closely.”

“You do that, Ciccio,” I said as he held open
the door for me, “and I'll slice your ears off.”

Or at least that was the gist of what I told him in the kind of Sicilian you hear on the Palermo waterfront and nowhere else.

His mouth sagged in surprise and the Solazzo woman's head snapped round. I ignored her frown, got in the back of the Mercedes. Ciccio slammed the door and slid behind the wheel. He glanced at her enquiringly, she nodded and we moved away.

 

I made him drop me in the Piazza Pretoria because it seemed as good a place as any and I'd always been fond of that amazing baroque fountain and the beautifully vulgar figures of river nymphs, tritons and lesser gods. At the northern end of the bay, Monte Pellegrino towered in the late afternoon sun and I went on past the beautiful old church of Santa Caterina, turned into the Via Roma and walked towards the central station.

In a side street, I came across a small crowd waiting to go into a marionette theatre. They were mainly tourists—German from the sound of them. They were certainly in for a shock. Even in decline, the old puppet masters refuse to change their ways and the speeches are delivered in the kind of Sicilian dialect that even a mainland Italian can't follow.

On the way in from the airport, I'd noticed one or two of the old hand-painted carts with brass scroll-work, drawn by feather-tufted horses, but on the whole, most of the farmers seemed to be running around on three-wheeler Vespas and Lambrettas. So much for tradition, but just before I reached the Via Lincoln, I saw a carriage for hire standing at the kerbside just ahead of me.

It was past its prime, the woodwork cracking, the leather harness splitting with age and yet it had been lovingly cared for, the brasswork glinting in the sunlight and I could smell the wax polish of the upholstery.

The driver looked about eighty years old with a face like a walnut and a long white moustache curling up around each cheek. From the moment I spoke he quite obviously took me for a Sicilian.

In Palermo it is necessary to make a bargain with a horse cab driver for any journey, however short, which can be rough on the tourist, but I had no trouble—no trouble at all. When I told him where I wanted to go, his eyebrows went up, a look of genuine respect settled on his face which was hardly surprising. After all, no one visits a cemetery for fun and to a Sicilian, death is a serious business. Ever-present and always interesting.

• • •

Our destination was an old Benedictine monastery about a mile out of town towards Monte Pellegrino and the cab took its time getting there which suited me perfectly because I wanted to think.

Did I really wish to go through with this? Was it necessary? To that, there could be no answer for when I considered the matter seriously, I discovered with some surprise that I could do so with a complete lack of any kind of passion, which certainly hadn't been the case at one time. Once, my mind had been like an open wound, each thought a constant and painful probe, but now . . .

The sun had gone down and clouds moved in from the sea, pushed by a cold wind. When we reached the monastery I told him to wait for me and got down.

“Excuse me, signor,” he said. “You have someone laid to rest here? Someone close?”

“My mother.”

Strange, but it was only then, at that moment, that pain moved inside me, rising like floodwater threatening to overwhelm me so that I turned and stumbled away as he crossed himself.

A side entrance took me through a large cloister with arcades on each side. In a small courtyard, a delightful Arabic fountain sprang into the air like a spray of silver flowers and beyond, through an archway, was the cemetery.

On a fine day, the view over the valley to the sea was quite spectacular, but now the lines of cypress trees bowed to the wind and a few cold drops of rain splashed on the stonework. The cemetery was large and very well kept, used mainly by the cream of Palermo's bourgeois society.

I followed the path slowly, gravel crunching beneath my feet and for some reason, everything assumed a dream-like quality. Blank marble faces drifted by as I passed through a forest of ornate ornaments.

I had no difficulty in finding it and it was exactly as I had remembered. A white marble tomb with bronze doors, a life-size statue of Santa Rosalia of Pellegrino on top, the whole surrounded by six-foot iron railings painted black and gold.

I pressed my face against them and read the inscription.
Rosalia Barbaccia Wyatt—mother and daughter—taken cruelly before her time. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord
.

I remembered that other morning when I had stood here with everyone who mattered in Palermo society standing behind me as the priest spoke over the coffin, my grandfather at my side, as cold and as dangerously quiet as those marble statues.

At the right moment, I had turned and walked away through the crowd, broken into a run when
he called, had kept on running till that famous meeting at the “Lights of Lisbon” in Mozambique.

There was a little more rain on the wind now, I could feel it on my face, I took a couple of breaths to steady myself, turned from the railings and found him standing watching me. Marco Gagini, my grandfather's strong right arm, his bullet-proof waistcoat, his rock. I read somewhere once that Wyatt Earp survived Tombstone only because he had Doc Holliday to cover his back. My grandfather had Marco.