Mimi's Ghost (10 page)

Then in the evening the Trevisan delivery van came to pick them up and take them to work in the long shed attached to the office that housed a primitive bottling line. Having seen the size of the contract and appreciated how much Morris knew and was willing to tell Antonella, and presumably Signora Trevisan as well, about the way he had been running the company, Bobo had reluctantly agreed to the purchase of a thousand hectolitres of assorted plonk, from the south, from Algeria, from the Valpantena itself (he had his contacts after all), to cut with their own mediocre produce, plus a fair sprinkling of sugar, and then sell on to the poor English.

‘Doorways Trevisan Superiore,' the label said. ‘A full-blooded table wine from the sun-baked slopes of northern Italy.' It was priced a good forty pence cheaper than anything else available in the store and apparently sold fast. The immigrants were paid 150,000 lire under the table every Friday night. The van in which they arrived and left the factory had no windows. Anyway the weather was still predominantly foggy. Cleaning up as splendidly as they were, Morris just couldn't understand why Bobo wasn't more cheerful about it all. The whole thing had been a stroke of genius.

‘Happy customers!' he said this morning, showing Bobo a fax announcing a further order. The boy sucked in his cheeks, then shook his head. The situation could not be protracted over the long term, he said sourly. It would become
contmproducente.

They were in the main office with the plastic Crucifixion and a Marilyn Monroe look-alike straddling a Fratelli Ruffoli bottle as it zoomed through a Christmas snowstorm. Bobo sat forward in his leather chair and held a yellow pencil so that one end was between his teeth (also yellowish). His hair was limp on his forehead and thinning dangerously - at what? twenty-six, twenty-seven? Morris, full of the kind of blond bounce and enthusiasm he paid so dearly for at nights, felt younger somehow. Also his cheerfulness was morally superior. The divinities surely would have no truck with truculence. Especially from those born with a silver spoon. He sat on the desk beside the computer and actually swung a leg.

Bobo took the fax from him and scowled. There was something theatrical about his head-shaking, Morris thought, as if he had prepared himself for this eventuality and was simply following his script. He had been planning some kind of showdown. For the moment the Englishman just waited, enjoying the feeling of firm flesh tensing and relaxing under good wool trousers as his leg went back and forth. There were moments when being handsome was just an immense plus. And
if he
had found acne lurking around
his
jawline like that, then he would most certainly have done something about it. As he was presently treating the fungus that made the top of his right foot so ugly and itchy. Surely there was a way in which those with money had a duty to make themselves attractive. He would write an essay one day exploring the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Something Aristotelian.

‘You need me to translate?' he asked Bobo, still poring over the fax.

‘I need you to send a polite fax back explaining that this year's supplies are now exhausted and that any further communication will have to wait until next year's harvest,' Bobo said.

Morris had no difficulty being friendly: ‘Look, Bobo, we've made more money in six weeks than in the rest of the year. Why don't you relax?' And he used one of his favourite Italian expressions: ‘Don't be such an owl' - meaning a misery. But then this reminded him of Massimina that night in Rome when he had refused to dance.
‘Non fare il gufo, Mo, balliamo.'
Her winsome smile, her flashing eyes. ‘Don't be an owl. Mo.' So that while savouring the forthcoming tussle with his brother-in-law he was also finding time to reflect on the way that for the sensitive person like himself each and every word -
gufo, genio, artista, vittima -
will tend to acquire its own personal history, its own special echoes, depths, associations. How could other people ever know why you chose the words you did? And Massimina wasn't dead at all. It came to him as a sudden and entirely convincing intuition. She had become part of himself: her voice, her essence, absorbed inside him. As Mother had been too. And Father never could.

Meanwhile his brother-in-law had said something.

‘Scusami,
no, sorry, I was thinking of something else.' Again he smiled brightly. The fact that he was so relaxed as to indulge in a little absent-mindedness must be unnerving for Bobo.

‘I said' - the boy's voice had a whiny petulance that somehow went with the hints of acne - ‘I said that if the National Insurance catch up with us on one of any number of counts, not to mention the Guardia di Finanza, they'll close us down.'

Still swinging his leg, Morris asked: ‘Why should they catch up with us?'

‘Some of the day workers are not happy with the situation. They think it is bad that we are exploiting the immigrants. They think there could be more overtime for themselves. It would only take an anonymous letter. . . .We are vulnerable on a wide range of issues.'

Morris did what the last few years had taught him to do in these kinds of conversations: sit tight a moment, pace it. Never blurt. Smile. Let the other betray himself. Though he did object to the word ‘exploiting'.

‘And some of them don't like blacks in general. They want them out.'

Here Morris suspected that Bobo was referring to himself. ‘That's hardly Christian,' he remarked. Without changing tone at all, he added: ‘Still, if we do get a visit from the INPS or the Finanza I imagine you can always do with them what you did with the VAT people back in June.'

As he said this he deliberately looked away so as not to capture whatever expression of anger or surprise might be crossing Bobo's face. Or rather, so as not to give Bobo the chance to feel that in not showing anger and surprise he had scored a point. Though it was only in the very moment that he looked away that Morris appreciated why he was doing so. This was extremely interesting. The fact was, Morris was becoming a natural, becoming entirely himself. Instinct and design were somehow one. He couldn't go wrong.

Bobo was trying for an unconvincing imperturbability: ‘And what did I do,
prego,
with the VAT people back in June?'

Morris laughed. ‘Don't tell me the computer has a better memory than you do.' Then, determined to be friendly to the bitter end, because this really was such a far cry from his hangdog, poor-boy-out-in-the-cold, chip-on-the-shoulder days of some years ago, he protested: ‘Really, Bobo, what's the matter? Is it just because ,' thought of it that you don't like the scheme? Think of something better yourself and I promise I'll go along. But you've got to admit, this is a money-spinner. We're building up the kind of capital that will allow us to expand, diversify.'

But Bobo's stare was fierce. There was a distinct redness about the glassy bead-brown eyes. Almost hatred. Morris realised that rather than it being a question of the boy's not liking the blacks, or the risks, such as they were in a country where to pay tax was to offer oneself up as a laughing-stock, it was simply that his brother-in-law didn't like Morris Duckworth. Indeed he loathed him.

But why? Why? What had Morris actually done not to be liked? He was handsome, affable, charitable, clever. What did these provincial plutocrats want in the end? Hadn't he bent over backwards? Changing tone to something more plaintive, because it was time to show he was hurt, he said: ‘And then we are helping these people, you know, Bobo. Those poor young men would be freezing in the cemetery if we weren't looking after them. They were complete outcasts and we've given them a place, however humble, in society. Kwame tells me he is actually sending money home. I mean, it's not just us getting richer, but families in the Third World who really need it. That's why I feel we must continue.' He smiled at Bobo's incredulity. ‘Which reminds me, please do thank Antonella for the bundle of clothes she sent.'

Bobo stood up as if suddenly, brusquely coming to a decision. ‘
Va bene,'
he said. ‘OK, two thousand more cases it is.' Then pushing lank hair from his forehead he suggested they go out for a cup of coffee. Morris experienced that sudden twinge of disorientation that came with getting what one wanted. Perhaps the boy didn't hate him after all.

The two put on their coats, left the office, walked past the dog, now thankfully chained, and drove a kilometre or so to a small bar in Quinto where Bobo made a resigned sort of small-talk, spooning the froth off his cappuccino. Never one to crow, Morris was more avuncular than triumphant over a brioche with custard cream. Even in the dowdiest out-of-town bars, he remarked, the Italians knew how to make a coffee and pastry such as you wouldn't find anywhere in the UK. Not to mention the courtesy of the service, ‘an innate sense of the
signorile,
he added warmly, ‘of what
civiltà
really means.' Somewhat overdoing it, he said: ‘I really envy you Italians your culture and background, you know. I really do. The English are so inelegant.'

There was a slight pause in which Morris savoured this generous humility. Then Bobo said: ‘Speaking of English, did you know that Antonella wants to learn?'

‘Oh, I'd be delighted to give her lessons,' Morris immediately came back. ‘Delighted.' Clearly it would be churlish of him not to show that he was more than willing to make himself useful. As long as they were decent to him. Give and take.

Bobo smiled, but there was a twist to his pale lips.

‘Actually, she's already found a teacher.'

‘Fine.' Morris shrugged. ‘Fine.' After all, the last thing he wanted was to bore himself stupid again teaching a language he was only too glad to have stopped thinking in. There had always been something constraining about English, as if he couldn't really be himself in it. Then it was hardly likely that the moonish Antonella would be a star student, was it? Let somebody who needed the money have the work.

‘A funny sort of person,' Bobo said thoughtfully.

‘Oh yes? Good.' Morris just couldn't be affable enough.' I've always said, a bit of humour's a great help when you're teaching.' The only thing that saved one from death by tedium more often than not.

‘And he knows you very well,' Bobo added. In fact I think you told us a story about him that night when you came to see us all, with Massimina.'

‘Oh really?' But Morris's mind was suddenly racing. Who could it be? What unhappy coincidence was working against him? The planets, the stars, always against him.

‘His name's Stan,' Bobo said.

‘Oh, Stan!' Morris laughed, but almost choked. ‘Yes, Stan Albertini!' God, of course. That was why the dumb American had been toiling up the hill on his stupid bicycle, to see Antonella, who no doubt must have photos of Massimina all over the living-room. He racked his brains to remember. The same Massimina Stan had seen calling Morris from across the platform when he picked up the ransom money at Roma Termini. For a moment Morris felt desperately sick, as if he might just throw up the much-praised cappuccino and brioche all over the marble-topped table. At the same time some automatic pilot managed to get out most amiably: ‘Still wearing his kaftan and beads, is he? Not a very good teacher, I'm afraid.'

Bobo got up to pay the bill. ‘Maybe not, but he does have some good stories to tell.'

Morris, however, was beginning to get a hold on himself by now and simply let that one pass. If anybody had really known anything he would have been serving a life sentence already.

In gaol rather than out, that is.

Like any philanthropist, Morris liked to visit the beneficiaries of his charity, muck in, have lunch with the boys, ask them if all was well, here in the hostel, over at the factory: conditions of work, pay, food. He particularly liked to perch on one of the window-sills at the villa near Marzana, frugally spooning up a
brodo di ver dura
he himself had indirectly provided. He would listen to Farouk's pidgin English, encourage the brave young Ramiz, who had lost parents and sister when their boat capsized off Bari, discuss the disgraceful behaviour of the Serbs with Croatian Ante.

Then if he had time on his hands he might sit patiently through Forbes's presentation of the perfection of Raphael, the decadence of Tintoretto. Raphael had died at thirty-seven.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
Tintoretto at seventy-six. Somehow that was always the way with the great and the not quite so great. Shelley and Browning, for example. In his late sixties himself and never without his flowery ties, Forbes projected slides onto the powdery plasterwork of the sitting-room, where the immigrants lit wood fires using sticks they collected on the hillside above. Still unrepaired, the chimney refused to draw, the hearth smoked. Farouk dozed off, his head on Azedine's shoulder. One of the Ghanaians was whittling something. And as Forbes's plummy voice plodded learnedly on and flame-light flickered over the rich colour of St George slaying the dragon or a Last Judgement, Morris could feel himself quite marvellously part of it all, this curious world he had invented: the underprivileged, art, Italy. His family, almost.

This morning, steering the Mercedes up the foggy track to the house, he told Mimi that, given the mistakes he had made in the past, she could hardly deny he was doing his best to atone. Could she? Which surely was all anybody could ever ask of anybody. Constant atonement for the mistakes one was constantly making. Wasn't that the essence of Catholicism? ‘Until the mistakes become the atonement,' he surprised himself by inventing, ‘and the atonement the mistakes,' Certainly that was the case with Paola. He made his voice more intimate, more sad: ‘Every time I have sex with her it reminds me of you. It's the perfect
fioretto,
a constant mortification, I'm betraying you and atoning at the same time,'

Beyond the windscreen, cypresses and palms in milky whiteness traced out a satisfying otherworldliness, perfect backdrop to this bizarre line of thought. Morris put the phone down as he drew to a halt. A figure loomed suddenly from the fog and leant forward to open the door for him. Kwame, his favourite. Perhaps he should have had the black with him when he went to see Bobo.