Love, Let Me Not Hunger (34 page)

Don Francisco merely regarded him sombrely and made no comment.

Drawn by curiosity, Mr. Albert wandered down the side of the patio and glanced into the drawing room. It was furnished in Victorian style rather than Spanish, with overstuffed furniture, heavy silken drapes, a grand piano in walnut, and a marble fireplace. On the piano and table tops were dozens of signed photographs of men in uniform and women in ermine and tiaras. Some of them looked familiar to Mr. Albert, as though he ought to know them, and indeed, at some time or other in his own life span he had seen pictures of one or the other of these people, though he did not recognise them now, for they were members of all the royal families of Europe, kings and queens, princes, princelings, princesses and dukes, rulers, ex-rulers, and pretenders.

Over the mantle of the fireplace there was a life-size painting of an obese, teen-age girl in a white court dress. She wore a tiara and necklace of diamonds and pearls. There were diamond bracelets encircling her arms. Her face was repulsive, her eyes almost lost in folds of fat, the nose short and retroussé with huge nostrils, the mouth small and pursed above a ripple of chins. There had been no attempt by the artist to prettify or to present his subject other than she had been. Even the glossy, dark hair contrasting with the pallor of the face and plastered smooth upon the enormous head had the feeling of a peruke. And yet he had caught the youthfulness too. She looked like a bloated, overgrown, overdressed, overjewelled baby.

“Gaw!” Mr. Albert half-whispered to himself. “Then she was always like that!” For in his mind he had made up a story about the Marquesa, the kind of thing one read about or saw on the films: that in her youth she had been a famous and ravishing beauty. Then she had been stricken with a mysterious illness which had robbed her of her looks and turned her into a vengeful monster.

A voice said, “It is the greater tragedy.”

Mr. Albert looked up in alarm and saw that Don Francisco was standing next to him, his arms folded, his chin resting upon one hand as he contemplated the painting and had read his mind. The major-domo added, “If she had been beautiful once at least she would have had something to lose and therefore something to remember.”

“Gaw,” Mr. Albert repeated. “Why was she like that?”

Don Francisco shrugged and said, “Glands, I think. Some of them have the power to make monsters of us. In another room there is a painting of her when she was nine. She was the same then. She was eighteen here. Hers is one of the great families and connected with the royal houses of Spain and Portugal.”

Mr. Albert experienced a flash of insight which coincided with a pang of sympathy so powerful that it was almost like a physical pain. For he seemed to see the four Marquesas that he knew—the redhaired one from the circus, the bald monster of the boudoir with the golden eyelids, the black-haired creature of the bedchamber and the pathetic girl of the portrait covering her ugliness with diamonds and pearls—blending into one sister in loneliness, trying to escape from what she was.

“No doctors have ever been able to help her,” the major-domo was saying. “She travels from one place to another. She has permanent suites in Claridge’s in London, the Ritz in Paris, and the Plaza in New York, and she owns a palace in Madrid, another in Seville, and a third in Buenos Aires.”

And
, thought Mr. Albert to himself,
with it all she was just one of God’s jokes.
To add to the comedy, wealth had been bestowed upon her, and she bought herself laughter to join in the celestial fun. Wherever she went, whatever she did, in whichever silken bed she slept, she was alone except by purchase. He saw the truth that this was indeed the greater tragedy, that she had never known any other guise than that in which she was imprisoned and from which she could escape only like a mummer by changing her externals and living behind a mask.

The works of the French Boule clock on the mantelpiece—it was signed by Henri Martinot, clockmaker to Louis XIV—rattled preliminary to the striking of three.

“Come,” said Don Francisco, “she will be waiting for us.”

But in this he erred. Something had gone wrong momentarily with the strict schedule the Marquesa maintained, for just when after the great hall clock had finished chiming and the major-domo pushed open the door to the dining room and entered, an extraordinary sight awaited them. The Marquesa sat alone at the end of the long refectory table, whose dark Spanish wood was covered by a cream tablecloth of lace that fell to within an inch of the floor upon all sides. There was a coffee service before her with an emptied coffee cup, but no servant of any kind in evidence. And what surprised Mr. Albert so at first glance was that Janos was nowhere to be seen either, for he was known to take every meal with the Marquesa.

But there was something strange and disturbing in the attitude of the Marquesa herself, who seemed totally unaware that they had come into the room. Her wig upon this occasion was snow-white and piled high in the style seen in the portraits of the Pompadour, and it was slightly askew. Her eyelids had been coloured lilac and the contour of her eyes heavily marked in black, but the eyes themselves were turned upwards so that the whites beneath them showed. Her face was flushed and she seemed to have difficulty breathing.

“Oh Gaw, she’s sick!” said Mr. Albert, and would have started forward had not the major-domo put a hand upon his arm and restrained him.

“Be quiet,” he said, yet Mr. Albert was aware that he was staring aghast at the Marquesa and that a look of fear had come into his face.

The Marquesa ejected a long, harsh sigh; the eyes returned to their normal position, the flush faded from her face, and she became aware of the major-domo and Mr. Albert in the room. Every speck of blood then drained from her countenance and across her face passed a look of such rage and ferocity that it caused Mr. Albert’s knees to quake, and he looked to Don Francisco for courage and support, only to find that the major-domo’s pallor matched that of his mistress and that he himself was in the grip of an appalling fear; and Mr. Albert saw that it was not for the Marquesa but for himself. The dreadful moment seemed to spin on endlessly, tautening towards a climax that Mr. Albert felt would be catastrophic, cataclysmic, unbearable.

And yet it did not take place. Instead, with a movement that was an agony of apprehension, the miserable eyes of the major-domo turned to the face of a clock in one corner of the room. Mr. Albert saw that the minute hand had unmistakably passed the ornate figure of twelve and indeed indicated that the time was four and a half minutes past three.

How the Marquesa would have vented the anger collected within her Mr. Albert never discovered, for even as the two men were staring at the clock her eyes were drawn thither also and astonishingly her anger was dispelled. Her features recomposed themselves and colour once more supplanted the pallor of her fury.

Some of the terror left the eyes of the major-domo though his face remained damp with perspiration. Mr. Albert gathered that the black finger of the clock, which now read a full five minutes past three, had interceded for Don Francisco and he remembered that the major-domo had refused to enter the room until he heard an outside clock strike the hour.

And even as he wondered what had gone wrong, Mr. Albert marvelled at the strong streak of justice in this cruel and domineering woman. During another minute of silence the Marquesa composed herself further; her breathing returned to normal.

Then from under the table came a scrabbling noise. One side of the cloth was lifted and from beneath it emerged Janos. He was clad in his clown’s suit but without clown white or make-up. What was strange about his face was that it was purple in colour as though he were about to have a stroke or had come close to suffocating, and Mr. Albert saw that he was weeping. But there was no telling whether they were tears of terror, humiliation, sadness, or rage. He did not appear to see either of them and, having emerged from under the table, went trotting out through the open door and vanished.

Mr. Albert, filled with an overwhelming apprehension, looked to the major-domo once more, but there was not the slightest change of expression upon the grave face of Don Francisco, who had heard nothing and seen nothing.

“In the matter of the bear—” began the Marquesa.

C H A P T E R
2 3

L
eft to himself and with a wealth of food which now arrived promptly every third day, Toby looked after the animals, fed them, watered them, cleaned, groomed, and exercised the horses with a kind of work fury to try to keep his mind from the bitterness engendered by Rose.

There was occupation from sun-up to sun-down, hard, muscle-wearying labour, and when it was done he could work off surplus energies by practising with the Arab horses or doing ground tumbling. He made no friends with the animals, gave them no affection, and did not even resume his exuberant relationship with Judy. He tended her properly, fed her, altered the chaining of her feet so that sores would not develop, examined her hide, but never caressed her with either hand or voice, or even put her through her routine, for something had gone out of him. He was not aware that it was his youth.

Yet none of these furious activities put off the coming of night, the bitterness, the brooding and the loneliness.

When darkness fell and he had cooked and eaten his supper and washed the dishes, lit the lanterns, and made his final round of the cages to be certain that they were all securely locked and barred, and then returned to the living wagon, there awaiting him would be the phantom of Rose. He tried to eject her with the same violence and intolerance with which he had thrown her and her belongings physically out of the camp, but it was impossible. The real Rose had picked up her clothes and articles strewn in the dirt and left. This other, the one he always conjured up whilst lying in his bunk at nightfall, refused to go but smiled at him, her odd wry little smile that merely tilted the corners of her mouth, pressed her body close to his and whispered, as she always did when her climax approached, “Oh, Toby, I love you.”

“Whore! Whore! Whore! Get out! Get back to your brothel!”

What brothel? Where? What was it like? What did she do? What did they do, the faceless men who lay with her and upon her, and used her?

But they were not all faceless, for he had seen Garcia, the fat little wine merchant who had been so attracted by the sample that he had wanted the package.

This was the most fearful agony of all, imagining the white, soft, pudgy, slug-like body of Mr. Garcia crushed against Rose, and she looking upwards at the ceiling past his bald head with the misty and faraway look that he knew came into her eyes. For Mr. Garcia would have bought everything, the looks, the sighs, the smile, the movements of her body, and no doubt the whispers, for was not all this a part of “loving it up?”

Then Toby would try to justify what he had done to her, and he would call in his family to aid him: those good women, his mother and his sisters, and that wise old fellow, his father; and they would all join him in shouting Rose down.
“Slut! Whore! Harlot! Fallen woman! Strumpet, jade, and baggage! Gutter girl, bitch, and hussy!”
And they gave him the comfort of their experience and their opinion.
“What could you expect from a piece up out of the slums? Stick to your own class, boy. Once a tart, always a tart! You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. She’s a dirty little tramp. She’ll pull you down into the gutter with her.”

Solidly he gathered his family about him like a bulwark against her, but Rose would not go away. She was leaning over the sink in the little galley burnishing a pot until it shone like the copper of her hair, singing softly to herself. She was sitting in front of the tigers cage with her arm through the bars caressing the huge savage head with gentle strokes, and upon her face the sweet, half-introspective look of the mother contemplating her sleeping child. She was at the side of the ring while he leaped, twisted, turned, and somersaulted, and her eyes and mouth were wide with admiration for him. And she was standing in the doorway with her nightdress drawn together about her gentle throat whispering, “Toby, aren’t you going to come?” And concealed beneath the fabric was Rose, Rose, Rose! Rose who gave pleasure and pain in ecstasy; Rose with her crooked, tender, wondering smile. Where was she now? Where was she selling it? In whose arms was she lying? Oh God, oh God, what had he done to her?

For he would not let himself think of what Mr. Albert had said to him upon parting, “She’s a good girl.” And also, “She was only doing it for them and for you. A minute ago you were shaking my hand for doing the same thing.” He annulled it, obliterated it, denied it, and shut it out of his head so that it could never even so much as echo faintly within him. Or at least so he thought. And he would brood himself to sleep with the memory of how he had bloody well paid her out for what she had done to him. And always the last picture was of her back as, holding her suitcase, she had disappeared into the dark.

Late in August Sam Marvel had gone home to Chippenham, his insurance claim unsettled, still fobbed off with promises of early action now that criminal proceedings had been dropped against him by the Spanish authorities. He had warded off the questions of his wife and had spent some days going over the equipment remaining in his winter quarters, as well as taking another look at the inventory of animals on loan or rent to other circuses. But by early September he was back in Birmingham, knocking at the gates of the insurance company with a log-sized chip on his shoulder.

This time, however, he was met with a different reception when he stormed into the office of the assistant chief of claims, his Schimmelpenninck jiggling between his lips. The man looked up from his sheaf of papers and said, “Ah, Mr. Marvel. Glad to see you. I’ve just written to you. Mr. Gryder, our general manager upstairs, would like to have a word with you. I think you will find he has some very good news.”