Mimi's Ghost (14 page)

The nurse was petite and dark and might have done well to have oxygenated the hair on her upper lip. Sardinian probably. Her small quick hands reattached the chain on the door behind him, surely unnecessarily. In a crumpled green uniform she looked exhausted and attractively fragile, a fragility wonderfully set off by improbably large breasts.

' . . . Towards seven o'clock,' she was saying. ‘Or that's when I found her. I must have dozed off for an hour or so. It was a difficult night.'

‘I'm sure it was.' Morris respected nurses, their practicality and busy modesty. ‘Perhaps you should have phoned earlier.'

‘I didn't wish to disturb.'

Crossing the hall to the stair, Morris drank in the fusty smell of polished wood and stone, the splendidly straight-backed provincial conservatism that had so thrilled him on that first visit two years ago: lace doilies, coffin-quality furniture, silver-framed photographs, a great pietra serena fireplace, and then, between drape curtains, the view of a travertine balustrade festooned in dark ivy. Yes, it thrilled him precisely because of its archaisms, its theatricality, as if this was a place for acting in, for being melodramatic, in an entirely conventional, predictable way, and with no more responsibility than a melodramatic actor had. His hands ran up a mahogany rail. They were the sort of carved banisters ghosts laid a white finger on as they walked down stone stairs, or lovers hanged themselves from. The gazebo glimpsed through a small window as they turned the corner of the stairs was a set for a romantic rendezvous, the little writing desk in Paola's old bedroom to the left would have the kind of secret drawers where Signora or Signorina kept an elegant gun, or a will. And it suddenly occurred to Morris that if the more yuppie-minded Bobo was happy in his
Casa bella-
inspired duplex, then he and Paola would move in here themselves! With Kwame as a servant perhaps. There was an idea! It was just the kind of tradition-oozing place he would love his children to grow up in.

The small nurse pushed the door. Morris stepped by her, saw the corpse and drew an audibly sharp breath that must have impressed the girl behind. Again it was the marvellous theatricality of the scene that so pleased him: the waxen, open-mouthed face in the four-poster bed, the knotty, thickly ringed fingers at the end of white sleeves resting quietly on a linen sheet. ‘I have to wait for the doctor to come before I can tie up the jaw,' the nurse was explaining by way of apology, but Morris was thinking how Mimi had used to sleep here in the same bed with Signora Trevisan, all her life, right up to the day when she had run away with him. In fact, aside from himself, this dreadfully hook-nosed, sunken-eyed, heavy-fleshed corpse was the only other person on this living earth Massimina had ever slept with. ‘Mimi,' he breathed. For a moment he had a vivid mental image of her laid out there, dead on the bed beside her dead mother, but in the rich gowns Lippo Lippi had painted her in, deep blue and red. Not Giotto's
Death of the Madonna
at all. ‘Mimi, I shall never forget you,' he said.

‘Mi scusi?”
the nurse asked.

‘Er, yes, I have to go downstairs and make a phone call,' Morris said. ‘Could you please wait here with her until I come back. I wouldn't like for her to be alone, so, er' - he hesitated -'so soon.'

‘Sì,
signore, anche se
. . .'

‘What?'

‘Really I should have been off duty half an hour ago.'

‘Then where's the other nurse? The day nurse.'

The dark little girl shrugged her shoulders. Her replacement hadn't come. Morris realised with a faint sense of weariness that on hearing the news of Signora Trevisan's death, the first thing one of his well-to-do in-laws must have done was to decide what economies could be made. Reaching his hand in his jacket, the more magnanimous Morris pulled out his wallet, found a hundred-thousand-lire note and pushed it into the girl's hand.

‘With my gratitude,' he said gallantly, ‘for all you have done for the family,' and he hurried off downstairs. Already he could imagine Kwame in a tight white jacket, crossing the
salotto
with a bottle of champagne on a silver tray held high.

The sewing box was an elaborate varnished wicker basket standing beside rubber plants and heavy antiques in the
soggiorno.
Inside , amazingly, amongst cotton-reels and an armoury of needles - some long and suggestively curved, others thin and brightly fragile - was a wodge of threadbare underclothes that needed patching and darning. Morris marvelled. This interminable thriftiness of the provincial prosperous! He would never get over it. Searching for the locket, he pulled out a girdle on its very last legs (as it were), elastic parting company with cotton, then a pair of dull pink panties sad with years of service and irretrievably crotch-stained, a hole half sewn up with needle stowed sideways where the material doubled to absorb what it must, as if she'd been doing just this when the first stroke struck.

Non fortuna sed labor
indeed! But for what? He shook his head over an ample bra, the strap almost worn through, and was aware now of a curious sense of arousal. His hands lingered for amoment on the lifeless fabric - surely it couldn't be less sexy. But it had to do with Mimi again, with the fact of her having slept so smooth and fragrantly young beside the sagging flesh of that elderly woman. He pushed a fist into one of the cups, knuckle for nipple, and stared, remembering how Mimi too had been dreadfully parsimonious those first days of their flight, until he had taught her how to spend. Then the first thing she had wanted to buy was new underwear, because her own was grey almost, and rough. Could it have been simply the luxury of new underwear that had finally made her decide to make love to him?

Certainly Paola never skimped in that department.

And now he was remembering the moment when he had packed up her clothes in the pensione in Rome, on the way to pick up the money, how he had wished he had time to try them on, at least her pants and bra, so as to savour somehow the difference between them, himself and Mimi, man and woman, what it must feel like to have a girl's young body, the breasts, the crotch space . . .

But he mustn't let his mind wander like this, pleasurable as it might very well be. Morris rummaged. There was the locket: a small puff of gold on a broken chain. Good! He fiddled with the clasp, then drew a sharp breath. Paola hadn't told him that along with the key there was a photograph of Massimina inside, tinily girlish, poignantly creased in a frame that was too small. ‘Mimi!' Would it never end! Oh, for Christ's sake! Banish these thoughts! Morris shivered, grabbed the key, then the underwear too, and thrust the both of them in his pocket.

Yet the sense of her presence here in this house, this room, was overwhelming now. Her perfume too, the perfume she used to use. No! That was impossible! All at once his senses seemed to flood toward fullness, an alertness rising under such surprised pressure it bubbled over into confusion. The room was full of her perfume. His body knotted in tension, but trembling.

Then her voice said: ‘Morrees?'

He closed his eyes. His knees almost gave as he rose to his feet, ready to embrace her in any form. In any form. For he had always known this moment must come some day. When they would see each other again, when they would look each other in the eye and know each other in some new and deeper way. Turning slowly round, he found Antonella standing by the sofa behind him, a puzzled look on her face.

How the hell had she got in with the door chained?

For a moment he was a rabbit trapped in torchlight, frozen and desperately disappointed.

‘Morrees,' his sister-in-law repeated. She was dressed in black, which oddly made her look rather smarter and younger than she usually managed. Morris pulled something of himself together.

‘Paola, er, she phoned me in the car. You know, I came to pay my respects. The nurse is upstairs. Oh, and she asked me to get this key. She, er, thought we should open the safety deposit box in case there were any papers that needed dealing with in a hurry.'

He felt desperately squalid saying this. Certainly it was not part of the elegant, tasteful life he had meant to lead. Not to mention the discomfort of sweat trickling down the small of his back, between his buttocks. And could this really be the same perfume Mimi had used? Baruffa. Sweet and dirt cheap in a trite red box. Paola used Givenchy.

Antonella stood there, perhaps two yards away, a stern puckering about her mouth, as though to show a child she was more sad than angry.

Morris faltered: ‘We, we, er . . .' How had the woman got in? Through garden gate and back door? This was unfair.

Quite unexpectedly, Antonella took two steps, opened her arms, burst into tears, and embraced him. She sobbed and sobbed, so that for the first time Morris now had the third and eldest sister's body pressed tight and trembling against his own.

‘Terribile, terribile!'
she was weeping. ‘It's so awful.
Povera
Mamma, povera povera Mamma, I'
11 feel so alone without her, so alone.'

Morris held her, recovering a little of his confidence. And it
was
Baruffa! When Bobo could perfectly well have bought his wife a gallon of Chanel every day had he only had the class! Suddenly he felt deeply endeared to this woman, his sister-in-law, to the quality of her grief. He squeezed her shoulders reassuringly and his soft voice told her that perhaps this was all for the best. It was a miserable existence Mamma had been leading the last year or so.

Antonella only wept the harder. Morris could see no way he might in all decency go and check the writing desk in the next room. However, what mattered was that he was here in case anybody else tried to check it.

‘It reminds me,' he said, tucking her face into his neck, ‘of when I lost my own mother.' Rather unwisely he added: ‘I felt so angry with the world.'

Antonella was calming down. She detached herself, fumbling for a handkerchief in her sleeve.

‘Why angry?' she asked.

Of course it wasn't a real request for information, more part of the process of moving from tears to snuffles, from outburst to self-control. There was no need for him to answer. All the same, and perhaps to recover some of the dignity he felt he had lost in being caught rummaging for safety-deposit-box keys the moment the head of the household expired, Morris responded truthfully: ‘Because it seemed so unfair to take away the person who mattered most to me and brought out the best in me.'

Even more unwisely, he added, and there was a catch in his voice now: ‘Like when Massimina died.'

Antonella looked up. There was a soft spark of recognition in her eyes, of appreciation. ‘
Sei molto dolce, Morrees,
she said quietly. ‘Very sweet. I'm so glad you are here. Bobo said he couldn't come for a while. He says he has a problem at the office, but it's so mean of him, I think. I was just dreading having to see her on my own.' She wiped her tears. ‘Will you come up with me?'

Taking her arm as they crossed to the stairs and getting another wave of her perfume, Morris once again sensed his old lover's presence. It was almost as if the girl were breathing lightly on his neck from behind as they walked. He felt full of emotion and tenderness, yet it was precisely this intensity which gave him the presence in another part of his mind to remark: ‘I suppose Bobo is responsible for getting in touch with the lawyer about the will and so on.'

‘The will?' Antonella asked.

‘I'm thinking of the company,' Morris lied. And invented: ‘I think we're legally obliged to register change of ownership within a certain time.'

‘The will?' Antonella repeated. She was clutching his arm very tightly as they turned the corner of the stairs and approached the bedroom. ‘Don't worry, Bobo's got it in the safe at home. He'll sort it out.'

‘Bene,'
Morris said. And was furious. Why hadn't Paola known this? How careless! How ingenuous! And how could this charitable, right-feeling, sensitive woman be so incredibly blinkered as not to see through the machinations of her uncharitable, insensitve, wrong-feeling husband! It was unforgivable! As it was unforgivable in the end that his own mother had married his father. How could it have led to anything but disaster? Himself. His useless, pitiable, beaten self! He could have smashed the plaster Madonna on the window-ledge at the turn of the stairs to smithereens. These stupid, inappropriate images of piety! When the truth was that Bobo had no doubt walked off with everything!

‘Grazie,'
Antonella whispered. She had interpreted the involuntary tightening of his arm around her as his caring response to her trepidation.
‘Grazie, Motrees.'

Leaving all self-respect behind (and they were right by the door now) he asked bluntly: ‘I presume everything was left equally to both daughters.'

But Antonella, at the thought of what she was about to have come home to her, was beginning to cry. Morris reached out for the handle, pushed the door and repeated quite brutally: ‘I presume she left everything equally to both daughters.
Vero?'

Antonella looked at him through-tears with alarm in her eyes. She seemed to be having difficulty even focusing on his face, never mind understanding what his lips had uttered.

‘Equally?
Ma sì!'
she finally said.
Si, certo.
Mamma never showed any favouritism to any of us.' Turning away, she burst into tears again. For the door had swung open, revealing, as they walked in, the old woman's now ghoulish profile, nose unnaturally prominent as if thrust upwards from the fast-sinking pallor of the cheeks, mouth still agape. The effect was of something at once malign and pathetic.
‘Mamma!'
Antonella wailed, and covered her face with her hands.
‘O Mamma, cara!'
The nurse turned respectfully away. Morris soothed his sister-in-law with gentle arms and soft voice, elated.