Mother of Pearl (16 page)

Mel watched bleakly as Rita's hysteria turned to penitential resolve. It had been one of her saving graces that she was not a religious girl. In fact, he would never have got his way with her if she had been. At some stage in the tussle she would have called a halt, reclipped her rolled down stockings, tucked in her crumpled blouse and with a hand through her messed hair she would have got up and stumbled away. Mel had not believed his luck when she had not resisted. He remembered the intoxication of schoolgirl flesh, and Rita's ardent but tremulous submission. He ruminated nostalgically on these things in the months after the baby was taken. He had plenty of opportunity. It wasn't that Rita wouldn't let him touch her. He got plenty of hard little kisses. In bed at night, she would stroke the hair at his temples and croon at him endearments she had never used before: ‘My pet', ‘Pet lamb'. Pet lamb indeed. That's exactly what he felt like. Something soft and woolly that could be babied. But if he tried to hold her, lodge his tongue inside her mouth, she would wriggle free saying ‘No Mel, not yet!' He did not know that she was practising for a time when he would be taken away from her.

He had reckoned on a period of mourning, three months he estimated at the outside. But as time passed and Rita's scruples became more, not less pronounced, it began to dawn on Mel that perhaps this wouldn't pass. He would climb in next to her after a late show at the La Scala and find her curled like a warm, downy baby in the hollow of the bed, nightdressed to the neck. He would knead the skin he could only imagine beneath the rubbed cotton she wore, seeking out the curve of breast or hip, smuggling touches that now seemed forbidden to him. But his urgency would always give him away (he wanted to take her not to finger her) and she would wake finding his hand trying to worm its way in between her legs. He always took it away smartly as if he had been caught grave-robbing, as if his desire was unseemly. But she was his wife, after all.

He sought consolation in the dingy vulgarity of the La Scala and bouts of hot, furtive sex in the projection room with Greta, one of the usherettes. Romantic hostilities broke out between them from time to time; he never knew when he was going to get the go-ahead. Her indifference excited him. Weeks would pass and she would barely glance at him, sashaying about in her stained brinylon sweaters and too tight skirts, cradling her torch idly in her lap. She had a fringe and long black hair – out of a bottle, Mel suspected – and a dishevelled kind of glamour. She was older than him by several years; pushing thirty, the other girls said. He would feign disinterest too but felt he was less successful at it. He had the feeling that she knew what she was doing, whereas he felt the victim of her whims. After weeks when they would barely have exchanged a word, she would smile at him, all teasing invitation, and he would know that it was on. Her hunger outdid his own; there were times with Greta when he felt he was being devoured. She would suck and scratch and bray; sometimes he would have to clasp his hand over her mouth in case they would be heard above the rumble and boom of other love stories which shimmered bluely over their heads. Afterwards he would feel that he had been in a scuffle with someone, the fright of it still pounding in his veins mixed with relief that he had had another lucky escape. Never again, he would vow, but there always was another time. Until Greta left. Inexplicably. Captain Prunty said it was for personal reasons, a bereavement of some kind. The girls said otherwise. Mel pumped them slyly for information.

‘Love life,' Celia Shortall said knowingly. ‘Imagine,
she
had a love life!' Celia warmed to her subject. ‘Someone broke her heart. That's what she said. Mind you, she was a bit tipsy at the time.'

‘And who was it? Anyone we know.'

‘Nah,' Celia said. ‘Some married fella. I suppose when you get to her age that's all you can get.'

Mel was relieved. It was somebody else then, nothing to do with him.

The sacristan at St Xavier's was waiting for a miracle. In the dead hours of the afternoon he watched the young woman in the lace mantilla sitting in the front pew. Like most people on Mecklenburgh Street, he knew Rita's history, though with the passing of time the details became obscured so that the missing baby became reduced to some vague trouble of Rita's that she should be over now. Was she the girl whose baby was taken, they would muse, or was it a miscarriage? As he hurried about his business, the sacristan noted her stricken, imploring expression, the piety of her prayer. He would sneak glances at her, eager to witness the consuming light of beatification. She had the kind of face that might see visions. The gift came to those who were young; it was through them the Lord spoke. He polished the candlesticks, brassed up the altar rails, he bore in fresh flowers, readying his church (he regarded God as merely a joint owner) for a major spectacle.

Benediction came on an evening in December; the sky was a bowl of grey, the wind dank and chill. A sudden squall of rain had just started as Rita stepped into the church porch. She looked out at the greasy street and the spitting of the heavens, and felt the stirrings of defiance. It was two years now. Only the reporters kept the anniversary.

‘Any news of Baby Spain?'

There would be some mumbling at the doorstep – they always asked for Mel – and they would leave dejectedly. Mel treated it as an inconvenience, a minor irritation as if he were being asked a technical question he didn't know the answer to.

Walter Golden would scowl and return to his accounts. ‘Why don't they just let us be?'

Business was bad. After years of brooding calm, the city had erupted unble to contain its differences. Several bombs had exploded in power stations and factories along the river which marked the boundary between north and south. It made people wary and nervous of travelling into the city centre. And money was tight; his customers were saving their shoe leather.

There was an uneasy truce in the house on Mecklenburgh Street. Walter, Rita and Mel had the air of survivors, a small group with a shared ordeal in common. They never mentioned the baby. At the start it was incredulity that prevented them. There was no need since she would soon be back with them. It was only a matter of time. This deference had hardened over the years into superstition. Each of them buried her in their own way. Walter regarded the whole episode as an illness, as if Rita had suffered a breakdown or had been sent to a sanatorium. His memory of it was feverish, all blur and haze, a series of alarms and relapses.

Mel fuelled his rejection by blaming Rita. In some obscure way, he believed this was all her fault. She had trapped him with the threat of a baby, a baby that had vanished almost as soon as it had appeared, like a clever conjuring trick. Now you see it, now you don't. He did not wish to be reminded of how badly he'd been duped.

And Rita, Rita wanted it to be over. She hungered for and feared a final verdict. Any sense of imminence bothered her. A knock on the door, her name called out. She would watch anxiously as her father sliced envelopes open with his thumb and forefinger and drew out the letter inside. She could no longer answer the phone. Even the minutest silence before callers identified themselves made her quake. This, she would tell herself, this is it. Out on the street, the sound of scurrying footsteps behind her brought her to a shocked halt. She would turn around very slowly, bracing herself. A boy with a telegram. A man in uniform. In shops she expected to be paged, to be called away with news. But it was worst at home since either Mel or her father could judge at any moment that it was time to confirm what she already knew. That her baby was dead. She shook the rain from her scarf as she entered the church. Canon Power was reading from the lesson.

‘
Pharoah's daughter came down to bathe in the river, while her maid-servants walked along the bank. She caught sight of the basket among the rushes, and sent one of her attendants to fetch it; and when she opened it, and saw the baby crying, her heart was touched
…'

The high altar was ablaze, a red carpet was rolled out in the aisle, there were garlands on the pews.

‘…
Take this boy, Pharoah's daughter said, and nurse him for me; I will reward thee for it. So the woman took the boy and nursed him till he was grown; then she handed him over to Pharoah's daughter who adopted him as her son, and gave him the name of Moses, the Rescuer
…'

And lo, there were angels. They nestled in twos near the vaulted ceilings, cherubs with sculpted curls and tiny wings. One, stonily sightless, genuflected by the door beneath the weight of a scallop shell containing a low tide of gritty holy water. Another pair stood at each side of the altar on pedestals, one with a flaming sword, the other holding aloft the ruby glow of the sanctuary lamp. They wound into the bark of the pulpit; they trumpeted at the baptismal font, a well of grey stone. They trooped across the altar steps, small creatures gowned in red and white, marching down the aisle in formation towards her. A sweet, smoky, scent filled the air. A thurible chimed plan-gently. A golden sun was rising at their heads, its jagged, encrusted rays glittering. The litanies sang in in her head.
Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Mystical Rose, Morning Star, Tower of Ivory, Mother of Christ, Mother of Divine Grace, Mother Most Pure, Mother of Pearl.
…

As the procession passed before her, Rita inhaled its intoxicating smell and felt blessed and released.

 

SHE TOOK UP
ballroom dancing. She went to Giuseppe Forte's Academy on Pitt Street. The studios (as Mr Forte described his tatty rooms above a draper's shop) were a large, neglected premises. Paint peeled off the walls, the stairs hosted a faint smell of mouse droppings, the lavatories stank of rot. But when Mr Forte whipped the faded blue velvet curtains across the studio windows (with his own name appliqued on to them in a crescent except for the two Ps which had fallen off), the squalor of the surroundings retreated into the dark corners and Rita found herself in a bright, new, perilous world. Mr Forte had escaped after the war in Europe, they said. Escaped what, Rita wondered, looking at his fat, pampered body, his receding hairline, his oily skin. He had an unfortunate squint which made most of the girls in the beginners' class think he was winking at them. They regarded him as faintly ridiculous. His courtly use of language, his thin, reedy voice, his very profession.

‘I am a dancing master,' he would declare with untoward pride.

He dressed with meticulous care. A creased white shirt, a dickie bow, a brocade waistcoat. Rita was not used to a man who took such care with his appearance. His unprepossessing looks did not warrant such vain and cautious attention. He would set the stylus down on the gramophone records he used for practice with a plump hand and would move about the dance floor, his arm frozen in mid-air about an imaginary partner. It was not difficult to believe watching him that he was holding a slender beauty with a rose between her teeth.

‘Watch my feet,' he would command as if guessing her thoughts, ‘and one and two and three and four …'

The record crackled at his back. Duly, she watched. She marvelled at how delicate he was on his feet. He turned and wheeled, like a falling feather caressing the air, lost in some distant dream behind his closed eyes. Then the record would end and he would come to in the silence, a plain, fat, balding man called Juicy behind his back because his pupils couldn't master his foreign name.

In her first year, Rita got partnered with Mona Dodd, a tall, graceless woman with buck teeth. There weren't enough men to go around.

‘Story of my life,' Mona Dodd muttered as she and Rita laboured across the floor.

Mona played the man but refused to lead.

‘No, no, no,' Mr Forte would complain petulantly, breaking them up as if they were boxers locked in hostile embrace. ‘Like so …' And he would sweep Rita away, the room a blue haze, his hand lightly settled in the small of her back as he steered her deftly round the room. Up close he smelt of cooking but it was not unpleasant. She loved the sensation of grace and control. And the discipline. She had never worked so hard at anything in her life. It was the closest Rita Spain would ever come to a vocation.

‘You're a natural, my dear,' he breathed once in her ear.

She treasured the compliment. Here, at last, was someone who saw
her
, not what had happened to her. He knew nothing of her history – the shotgun wedding, the baby, the kidnapping. He didn't read the newspapers except when they were thrust at him in the barber's shop. The name Spain meant nothing to him, except as a place on the map. Rita felt utterly safe with him. Partly because of his age. He must be forty, she reckoned, his name sounding like a clue. (He was, in fact, thirty-eight.) But also because he was soft and round, his placid brown eyes, the daintiness of his gestures, the sureness of his small feet. And she was consumed with mastering the steps – the wide arc of waltzes, the choppy pertness of the foxtrot, the violent glide of tango.

‘You should try the competitions,' he said to her one night as she was gathering up her belongings.

‘But Mr Forte, I have no partner …'

Mona Dodd had given up after the first term.

‘I could be your partner,' he offered.

‘Oh no, I wouldn't be good enough …'

‘On the contrary, carina, it is I who would not be good enough …'

Giuseppe Forte had walked into trouble. His two talented feet had danced him into it. He was captivated by a twenty-one-year-old girl, the wife of another man. He knew the dangers and yet he had capitulated. He had not run a dancing academy for ten years without learning where to draw the line. There were women who believed that because he was a foreigner his classes were a front for some furtive kind of lechery. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a painfully shy man, a man who had never made sense of his adopted country. There had been the problem of language, of course, but he had mastered that. What he had never learned was the easy sociability that was expected of him, the loud heartiness of male company, and the brooding imminence of violence in a divided city. The wet winters depressed him, the rocky isolation of island living. He missed the embrace of a land mass, the comfort of mountains at his back. He had grown up in the town from which Michelangelo had ordered his stone. Carved out of the mountainside, the quarries glistened white in the bleached sunlight, rising like snowcapped peaks above the town square. He remembered fondly the ochre and russet houses, their shutters vainly closed in an attempt to fend off the fine dust that settled everywhere. And the boy that was him sitting on a bag of onions in the Piazza Alberica and hearing through an open window his first two-step on a wind-up gramophone that belonged to the Countess. He never knew why she was called the Countess; the only trace of nobility was her benign madness. A small, bird-like creature, she stood, vacant-eyed and abandoned-looking on her balcony and threw crumbs for the birds and her music flooded out into the chill morning air.