The Dividing Stream (25 page)

‘‘Anyway we couldn’t all three have hung on to that one bar,’’ Pamela said.

‘‘The next bus doesn’t come for twenty minutes. That’s why I ran.’’

‘‘Twenty minutes!’’ Colin exclaimed. ‘‘But I’m soaked already.’’

‘‘We can shelter,’’ Pamela sail.

‘‘And get pneumonia. I’m going to walk.’’

Rodolfo laughed: ‘‘ Walk! It’ll take you half an hour.’’ His usually smooth black hair had tumbled over his forehead and he now put out a tongue to catch the raindrops which trickled from it down his nose. He was wearing shorts and a waterproof U. S. army jacket which reached no further than his thighs. His thin, muscular legs were splashed with mud.

‘‘Oh, what are we to do,’’ Pamela exclaimed, for once at a loss how to deal with a situation. ‘‘We’ll have to wait, that’s all. Or go home. Wouldn’t it be better if we went home?’’ The hair which straggled from her green oilskin cap now looked black. ‘‘ Colin, I think we’d better go home.’’

‘‘You can, if you like. I’m going on.’’ But his spirit, so inflexible till this moment, now began to droop. He could feel a cold, clammy chill move from his shoulders slowly down his spine. He looked desperately about him and then: ‘‘I know,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll take a cab.’’

‘‘A cab?’’

‘‘Yes, one of those
fiacres
.’’

‘‘And how are we going to pay for it?’’ Pamela asked sarcastically. ‘‘Oh, don’t let’s stand here and argue!’’ she exclaimed before any answer came, and retreated into a doorway.

‘‘I’ll pay him,’’ Colin said, joining her. ‘‘Don’t worry.’’

‘‘
Mille lire
,’’ Rodolfo said, haying guessed what they were discussing. ‘‘Let’s go another day.’’

‘‘But don’t you see, there won’t be another day,’’ Colin exclaimed in renewed exasperation. ‘‘Hi!’’ He beckoned with one arm from the gleaming oilskin sleeve off which drops of rain cascaded downwards. ‘‘Hi, there!’’

Rodolfo put both fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.

The hood of the cab which trundled towards them looked like an inverted antique coal-scuttle, and in spite of its protection, the rain had made the seats so damp that their worn green leather might have been moss. An old man, huddled under an umbrella which he had fixed in a bracket beside the front seat, leant forward to hear the address, his trilby hat emptying a noisy stream of water on to the floor of the carriage.

‘‘
Quanta costa
?’’ Rodolfo asked.

The man rattled some phlegm in the inmost recesses of his being, hawked for it without success, and then at a second attempt, succeeded in voiding it on to the pavement where it lay like a blue piece of gristle.

‘‘
Mille cinquecento
.’’

‘‘
Troppo
,’’ Rodolfo said, and the two began to haggle. Meanwhile Colin and Pamela had already climbed in.

‘‘Oh, do leave it,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘ Let’s get moving.’’

‘‘As you wish,’’ Rodolfo said huffily, with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘‘It’s all the same to me.
I’m
not paying.’’

Pamela laughed. ‘‘I still don’t know who is going to pay. Colin, how
are
you going to do it?’’

Colin unpinned the tie-pin which held together the two flaps of his collar, running under the tie: ‘‘I’ll give him this.’’

‘‘But you can’t!’’ Pamela exclaimed. ‘‘Mother gave it to you for your birthday.’’

‘‘I don’t care.’’

‘‘She’s sure to notice that you’ve lost it. She always notices that sort of thing.’’

‘‘Let her. It’s not my fault if the tie-pin she gives me falls off.’’

‘‘Perhaps he won’t take it,’’ Pamela said.

‘‘He won’t get anything else.’’

‘‘I still think it’s wrong.’’

For the rest of the drive they sat in a silence broken only by Rodolfo whistling ‘‘Auld Lang Syne’’ in desolatingly slow tempo. Colin still clutched the pin. From time to time one or other of them would peer either out of the small back-window or round the vast extinguishing hood to see if the rain slackened: but the sky remained livid, the water fell vertically out of it with a destroying malevolence. Stones rattled down the hill-road up which they were now driving; water-courses appeared, fissuring the surface, as if there had been an earthquake; combined with the swish of rain and the click of stones there was the roar of water pressing through the gutters. A flash of lightning lit up Rodolfo’s face, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s, and then the whole carriage seemed to rock from side to side in the reverberation that followed.

Suddenly Pamela began to cry.

‘‘What’s the matter?’’ Colin asked irritably.

‘‘I don’t know. I can’t help it.’’

She pressed her damp cheek against the dry, creaking interior of the hood so hard that when she at last removed it one of the struts had made a red, diagonal furrow. She continued to cry softly until they reached the wrought-iron gates of the villa.

‘‘Tell him not to go up the drive,’’ Colin said to Rodolfo. ‘‘We’d better walk from here, just in case. And quickly! Quickly!’’ he repeated as Rodolfo began to argue with the old man about the tie-pin.

At first they argued whether it was gold, and then they argued about the propriety of a tie-pin being accepted instead of lire; finally they argued because Rodolfo maintained that the tie-pin was worth more than the agreed thousand lire and that the old man should therefore give them some change. Perhaps he would have gained even this last point, if Colin and Pamela had not been impatient.

As the cab creaked, rattled and swayed from their sight, all three of them felt suddenly and overwhelmingly forlorn. Even Rodolfo was subdued as he said: ‘‘That pin was worth five thousand. You were a couple of fools.’’

‘‘Let’s get moving.’’ Colin began to limp up the steep path, picking his way over the zigzag streams of water, and slowly the two others followed. A single light burned in the house, and glancing up when they paused for breath, Rodolfo and Pamela exclaimed together: ‘‘Enzo!’’ They pointed to the window. Oblivious of his visitors, since from where he stood they were all three in darkness, he peered at the storm; one hand held the curtain while the other grasped a duster.

Pamela laughed and the boys joined in. The spectacle of Enzo at the window, staring out and not realizing that they were staring at him, filled each of them with a hidden rush of power. Rodolfo tapped on the window; and Enzo who by then had seen them, motioned them, finger on lips, not to made a noise. He had been warned that they would come that day but had decided, with a mingling of relief and disappointment, that the storm would keep them away. Now he did not know whether to be pleased or angry.

‘‘Wipe your shoes,’’ he said as he opened the garden-room door. ‘‘On this mat. Oh, take care!’’ Rodolfo had stumbled into a heap of garden-pots, most of them cracked or broken, and they were now rolling noisily about the marble floor. All of them, even Enzo, sniggered: but it was more from nerves than amusement.

‘‘Is she out?’’ Pamela whispered.

Rodolfo repeated the girl’s halting Italian phrase in a louder voice and Enzo said, ‘‘Sh!’’ Then he said: ‘‘Yes, she’s gone out. She only left about ten minutes ago. The car wouldn’t start, because the garage leaks and there was water in the engine.’’ Again they all sniggered. ‘‘But Maria is here. So you must be careful.’’

‘‘You said she was deaf and blind,’’ Rodolfo reminded him.

‘‘She notices things, in spite of that.’’

‘‘Oh, it is cold,’’ Pamela said, shuddering. She stared down at the alternate black-and-white lozenges of the hall which seemed to carry their burden of potted umbrellas and orange, trailing plants into a damp infinity. ‘‘How big,’’ she sighed. She touched one of the plants and pulled a face: ‘‘It’s dead. It’s all mildewed. They ought to be cleared out.’’

In a small room, piled with back numbers of the
Manchester Guardian, Time and Tide
and Staffordshire local papers, all yellowing under dust, Rodolfo had found a bag of golf-clubs, and was now swinging a mashie back and forth.

‘‘Mind!’’ Colin warned. But it was too late and a bulb tinkled downwards.

‘‘You fool, you bloody fool!’’ Enzo exclaimed.

It took them many minutes to clear up the glass and to decide from where they could take a bulb without it being noticed. At last they picked on one of the many lavatories which could not be used because they were out of order, and Rodolfo did not fail to make his inevitable joke about the stench, holding his nose between his fingers.

‘‘Show us the house,’’ Colin said.

It was vast and depressing, full of dust, old photographs, horses’ hooves mounted in silver, Tauchnitz novels, typewriters, gramophones and clocks which no longer worked, and stacks of old papers. In short it was just as Maisie had described it. Yet Colin felt disappointed. He had expected something more, though he could not have said what, and as he went round the house with the others, it was as if, with a growing despair, he were seeking for something which he now guessed he would never find.

‘‘I’m not allowed in there,’’ Enzo said, pointing to a door. ‘‘That’s her bedroom. Maria always cleans it.’’

‘‘Can’t we go in?’’ Pamela asked.

‘‘It’s locked.’’

‘‘Another key would fit it,’’ Rodolfo said.

‘‘But no one’s allowed in,’’ Enzo objected.

‘‘Oh, come on! Try this key.’’

‘‘No.’’ The Florentine stood with legs astride as if to bar the way.

‘‘Try this key,’’ Colin said, pulling one from a hideous mahogany armoire.

Pamela gave a high-pitched laugh which reverberated strangely down the corridor. ‘‘It’s like the story of Bluebeard.… Try the key, Enzo.’’ She covered her ears: ‘‘Oh, this thunder! I do wish it would stop.’’

‘‘Yes, try the key,’’ Colin said.

Reluctantly the Florentine pushed the key into the lock and turned it from side to side. ‘‘ No good,’’ he said.

‘‘Let me try.’’ Rodolfo began to rattle the key so violently that Pamela had to grasp him by the arm in order to make him stop:

‘‘There’s no point. You’ll only break the lock. It obviously doesn’t fit.’’

Meanwhile Colin had fetched another key from the door of the bathroom, and inserting it, discovered that it turned without difficulty. ‘‘It works, it works!’’ he exclaimed excitedly. He opened the door only a few inches, as if afraid to take advantage of this success, and it was Rodolfo who in the end pushed it wide and swaggered his way in.

‘‘What’s that?’’ Pamela said, clutching Colin’s hand.

‘‘What’s what?’’

‘‘That sound.’’

‘‘What sound?’’

‘‘A sort of whining.’’

They both listened in the doorway, the colour seeping away from their faces, until Pamela called:

‘‘Enzo?’’

The Florentine now joined them: ‘‘Yes?’’

‘‘Listen.’’

For a moment he, too, seemed to share their alarm as he stood listening with his head slightly on one side. Then he laughed: ‘‘Mister,’’ he said.

‘‘Mister?’’ Colin repeated.

Enzo went to a door at the far end of the room, and opening it, whistled to Lady Newton’s spaniel; the dog at once creaked slowly out of its basket and, cringing so much that its tail scraped the floor, came up to each of them in turn, its ears laid back, and rubbed a sand-paper tongue over their hands and bare legs. The two American children began to laugh hilariously in their relief, until Enzo silenced them with a repeated ‘‘Sh, sh, sh!’’

Meanwhile Rodolfo was going round the room, opening cupboards, pulling out drawers, and peering at the innumerable photographs, mostly of the same eton-cropped woman with, the face of an intelligent dray-horse. One by one the others joined him in this exploration.

‘‘That must be Amberson Lane,’’ Colin said, pointing to the dray-horse.

Pamela examined the photograph in the Edwardian silver frame: ‘‘She’s everywhere,’’ she said.

In one drawer Rodolfo had found a box of musty cigars and in another a depilatory; but there was little else to excite their interest. He made them laugh by lying on the mahogany four-poster bed, a cigar in his mouth, though Enzo was too much afraid that the coverlet would be muddied fully to appreciate the joke. Jumping off the bed, Rodolfo went to the dressing-table and began to dab his cheeks with rouge and smear his lips with lipstick: then, putting one hand on his hip, he minced and grimaced about the room and spoke in a falsetto voice. Again the two English children laughed, while the Florentine tried to restrain them. The dog had meanwhile taken Rodolfo’s place on the bed, and was scratching its tattered ear; but whenever the lightning flashed it lowered its greying muzzle on to its paws and began a whining like the noise of telegraph-wires in a high wind.

‘‘This drawer is locked,’’ Colin suddenly announced. He still felt that he had been somehow cheated by what he had found in the house, though everything was exactly as Maisie had described it to him. ‘‘I can’t open it. Let me have that key.’’

It was a marble-topped console table, as elaborately ugly as the rest of the furniture, with a single deep drawer. Key after key was tried; and with each failure their desire to see inside became the more importunate. Even Enzo, who had at first tried to get them away, now ran down the corridor fetching keys from rooms that lay under dust-sheets, from cupboards that filled the landings on the disused upper storeys, and even from Lady Newton’s desk in her study below. But not one would fit. Rodolfo fetched a hairpin from the silver tray, covered with mythical Indian monsters, that lay on the dressing-table, but even that failed.

Such was their excitement that they did not notice that the electric light was shuddering like a candle in a high wind. ‘‘I know,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘Couldn’t we take off the top. This marble unscrews.’’

‘‘No, no,’’ Enzo protested in alarm.

‘‘But why not?’’ Colin urged. ‘‘We can screw it on again. We won’t do any harm.’’

Now, with its alternations of bright and dark, the lamp made it appear as if the room were a railway-carriage rushing at speed through one brief tunnel after another: an illusion which the incessant roar of the storm served only to fortify. Enzo was still protesting:

‘‘It’s better to leave it. There won’t be anything there. What’s the point?’’

But without heeding him Rodolfo produced a penknife and began to loosen one after another of the large, brass screws. He was working on the last when, with a tremendous crack of thunder, overhead as it seemed, the light for the last time shuddered, and then went out. Pamela gave a small wail: ‘‘What are we to do? There must have been a fuse.’’