This Rough Magic (8 page)

‘
People?
’

‘That was a joke,’ explained Adoni. ‘Here we are. Thank you very much for bringing us. I’ll take Miranda to her mother now, then I’ve promised to go back to the Castello. Max wants to go out this afternoon. Perhaps I shall see you there soon?’

‘Thank you, but I – no, I doubt if you will.’

‘That would be a pity. While you are here, you should see the orange orchards; they are something quite special. You have heard of the
koùm koyàts
– the miniature trees? They are very attractive.’ That quick, enchanting smile. ‘I should like to show them to you.’

‘Perhaps some time.’

‘I hope so. Come, Miranda.’

As I put the car into gear, I saw him usher the silent girl through her mother’s door as if he already owned the place. Suppressing a sharp – and surely primitive – envy for a woman who could have her problems simply taken out of her hands and solved for her, willy-nilly, I put down my own independent and emancipated foot, and sent the little Fiat bucketing over the ruts of the drive, and down the turning to the Villa Forli.

At least, if Max Gale was to be out, I could have my afternoon swim in peace.

* * *

I went down after tea, when the heat was slackening off, and the cliff cast a crescent of shade at the edge of the sand.

Afterwards I dressed, picked up my towel, and began slowly to climb the path back to the villa.

When I reached the little clearing where the pool lay, I paused to get my breath. The trickle of the falling stream was cool and lovely, and light spangled down golden through the young oak leaves. A bird sang somewhere, but only one. The woods were silent, stretching away dim-shadowed in the heat of the late afternoon. Bee orchises swarmed by the water, over a bank of daisies. A blue tit flew across the clearing, obviously in a great hurry, its beak stuffed with insects for the waiting family.

A moment later the shriek came, a bird’s cry of terror, then the rapid, machine-gun swearing of the parent tit. Some other small birds joined the clamour. The shrieks of terror jagged through the peaceful wood. I dropped my towel on the grass, and ran towards the noise.

The blue tits met me, the two parent birds, fluttering and shrieking, their wings almost brushing me as I ran up a twisting path, and out into the open stretch of thin grass and irises where the tragedy was taking place.

This couldn’t have been easier to locate. The first thing I saw as I burst from the bushes was a magnificent white Persian cat, crouched picturesquely to spring, tail jerking to and fro in the scanty grass. Two yards from his nose, crying wildly, and unable to move an inch, was the baby blue tit. The parents,
with anguished cries, darted repeatedly and ineffectually at the cat, which took not the slightest notice.

I did the only possible thing. I dived on the cat in a flying tackle, took him gently by the body, and held him fast. The tits swept past me, their wings brushing my hands. The little one sat corpse-still now, not even squeaking.

I suppose I could have been badly scratched, but the white cat had strong nerves, and excellent manners. He spat furiously, which was only to be expected, and wriggled to be free, but he neither scratched nor bit. I held him down, talking soothingly till he was quiet, then lifted him and turned away, while behind me the parent birds swooped down to chivvy their baby out of sight.

I hurried my captive out of the clearing before he got a chance to see where the birds were making for, and away at random through the bushes. Far from objecting to this, the cat seemed now rather pleased at the attention than otherwise; having had to surrender to
force majeure
he managed – in the way of his species – to let me know that he did in fact prefer to be carried … And when, presently, I found myself toiling up a ferny bank which grew steeper, and steeper yet, he even began to purr.

This was too much. I stopped.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ I said to him, ‘you weigh a ton. You can darned well walk, Butch, as from now! And I hope you know your way home from here, because I’m not letting you go back to those birds!’

I put him down. Still purring, he stropped himself
against me a couple of times, then strolled ahead of me up the bank, tail high, to where at the top the bushes thinned to show bright sunlight. There he paused, glancing back and down at me, before stalking forward out of view.

He knew his way, no doubt of that. Hoping there was a path there that would take me back clear of the tangled bushes, I clambered up in his wake, to find myself in a big clearing, full of sunshine, the hum of bees, and a blaze of flowers that pulled me up short, gaping.

After the dappled dimness of the wood, it took some moments before one could do more than blink at the dazzle of colour. Straight ahead of me an arras of wistaria hung fully fifteen feet, and below it there were roses. Somewhere to one side was a thicket of purple judas-trees, and apple blossom glinting with the wings of working bees. Arum lilies grew in a damp corner, and some other lily with petals like gold parchment, transparent in the light. And everywhere, roses. Great bushes of them rampaged up the trees; a blue spruce was half smothered with sprays of vivid Persian pink, and one dense bush of frilled white roses must have been ten feet high. There were moss roses, musk roses, damask roses, roses pied and streaked, and one old pink rose straight from a mediæval manuscript, hemispherical, as if a knife had sliced it across, its hundred petals as tightly whorled and packed as the layers of an onion. There must have been twenty or thirty varieties there, all in full bloom; old roses, planted years ago and left to run
wild, as if in some secret garden whose key is lost. The place seemed hardly real.

I must have stood stock still for some minutes, looking about me, dizzied with the scent and the sunlight. I had forgotten roses could smell like that. A spray of speckled carmine brushed my hand, and I broke it off and held it to my face. Deep among the leaves, in the gap I had made, I saw the edge of an old metal label, and reached gingerly for it among the thorns. It was thick with lichen, but the stamped name showed clearly: Belle de Crécy.

I knew where I was now. Roses: they had been another hobby of Leo’s grandfather’s. Phyl had some of his books up at the Villa, and I had turned them over idly the other night, enjoying the plates and the old names which evoked, like poetry, the old gardens of France, of Persia, of Provence … Belle de Crécy, Belle Isis, Deuil du Roi de Rome, Rosamunde, Camäieux, Ispahan …

The names were all there, hidden deep in the rampant leaves where some predecessor of Adoni’s had lovingly attached them a century ago. The white cat, posing in front of an elegant background of dark fern, watched benevolently as I hunted for them, my hands filling with plundered roses. The scent was heavy as a drug. The air zoomed with bees. The general effect was of having strayed out of the dark wood into some fairy-tale. One almost expected the cat to speak.

When the voice did come, suddenly, from somewhere above, it nearly startled me out of my wits. It was a beautiful voice, and it enhanced, rather than broke,
the spell. It spoke, moreover, in poetry, as deliberately elegant as the white cat:

‘
Most sure, the goddess
On whom these airs attend: vouchsafe my prayer
May know if you remain upon his Island?
’

I peered upwards, at first seeing no one. Then a man’s head appeared at the top of the wistaria – and only then did I realise that the curtain of blossom hung in fact down some kind of high retaining wall, which it had hidden. I saw, between the thick trusses of flowers, sections of the stone balustrading. The terrace of the Castello. The rose garden had been planted right up beside it.

I wanted to turn and run, but the voice held me. Needless to say it was not Max Gale’s; this was a voice I had heard many times before, spinning just such a toil of grace as this in the stuffy darkness of London theatres.

‘
My prime request
,’ added Sir Julian Gale, ‘
Which I do last pronounce
, and which in fact you may think impertinent,
Is, O you wonder, If you be maid, or no?
’

I suppose if I had met him normally, on our common ground of the theatre, I might have been too overawed to do more than stutter. But here at least the answer was laid down in the text, and had, besides, the advantage of being the truth. I narrowed my eyes against the sun, and smiled up at the head.

‘
No wonder, sir,
But certainly a maid
.’

‘
My language! Heavens!
’ The actor abruptly abandoned the Bard, and looked delighted. ‘I was right! You’re Max’s trespasser!’

I felt myself flushing. ‘I’m afraid I am, and I seem to be trespassing again. I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t realise the terrace was quite so near. I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming so far up, but I was rescuing a bird from Butch there.’

‘From whom?’

‘The cat. Is he yours? I suppose he’s called something terribly aristocratic, like Florizel, or Cosimo dei Fiori?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Julian Gale, ‘I call him Nit. I’m sorry, but it’s short for Nitwit, and when you get to know him, you’ll see why. He’s a gentleman, but he has very little brain. Now you’re here, won’t you come up?’

‘Oh, no!’ I spoke hastily, backing a little. ‘Thanks all the same, but I’ve got to get back.’

‘I can’t believe there’s all that hurry. Won’t you please take pity on me and break the deadly Sabbath peace up a little? Ah!’ He leaned further over. ‘Not only trespass, I see, but theft as well! You’ve been stealing my roses!’

This statement, uttered in the voice whose least whisper was clearly audible in the back row of the gallery, had all the force of an accusation made before the High Praesidium. I started guiltily, glanced down at the forgotten blooms in my hands, and stammered:

‘Well, yes, I – I have. Oh, murder … I never thought … I mean, I took it they were sort of wild. You know, planted ages ago and just left…’ My voice
faltered, as I looked round me and saw what I hadn’t noticed before, that the bushes, in spite of their riotous appearance, were well shaped, and that the edges of the mossed paths were tidily clipped. ‘I – I suppose this is your garden now, or something? I’m most terribly sorry!’

‘“Or something?” By heaven, she picks an armful of my beloved Gallicas, and then thinks they come out of my garden “or something”! That settles it, young woman! By all the rules you have to pay a forfeit. If Beauty strays into the Beast’s garden, literally loaded with his roses, she’s asking for trouble, isn’t she? Come along, now, and no arguments! There are the steps. Nit’ll bring you up. Nitwit! Show the lady the way!’

The white cat rose, blinked at me, then swarmed in an elaborately careless manner up the wistaria, straight into Julian Gale’s arms. The latter straightened, smiling.

‘Did I say he hadn’t much brain? I traduced him. Do you think you could manage something similar?’

His charm, the charm that had made Phyllida fall for him ‘like a ton of bricks’, was having its effect. I believe I had completely forgotten what else she had told me about him.

I laughed. ‘In my own plodding way, I might.’

‘Then come along.’

The way up was a flight of shallow steps, half hidden by a bush of York and Lancaster. It curved round the base of some moss-green statue, and brought me out between two enormous cypresses, on to the terrace.

Julian Gale had set the cat down, and now advanced on me.

‘Come in, Miss Lucy Waring. You see, I’ve heard all about you. And here’s my son. But of course, you’ve already met …’

You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort,
As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir
.

IV
. 1.

M
AX
G
ALE
was sitting there under the stone pine, at a big table covered with papers. As he got to his feet, I stopped in my tracks.

‘But I thought you weren’t here!’ I hadn’t thought I could have blurted out anything quite so naïve. I finished the performance by blushing furiously and adding, in confusion: ‘Adoni said … I thought … I’m sure he said you’d be out!’

‘I was, but only till teatime. How do you do?’ His eyes, indifferent rather than hostile, touched mine briefly, and dropped to the roses in my hands. It was possibly only to fill the sizzling pause of embarrassment that he asked: ‘Was Adoni down in the garden?’

I saw Sir Julian’s glance flick from one to the other of us. ‘He was not, or he might have stopped her pillaging the place! She’s made a good selection, hasn’t she? I thought she should be made to pay a forfeit,
à la
Beauty and the Beast. We’ll let her off the kiss on such short
acquaintance, but she’ll have to stay and have a drink with us, at least!’

I thought I saw the younger man hesitate, and his glance went down to the littered table as if looking there for a quick excuse. There wasn’t far to look; the table was spread with scribbled manuscript scores, notebooks, and papers galore, and on a chair beside it stood a tape recorder with a long flex that trailed over the flags and in through an open french window.

I said quickly: ‘Thank you, but I really can’t—’

‘You’re in no position to refuse, young lady!’ Sir Julian’s eyes held a gleam of amusement, whether at my reluctance or his son’s it was impossible to guess. ‘Come now, half an hour spent entertaining a recluse is a small price to pay for your loot. Have we some sherry, Max?’

‘Yes, of course.’ The colourlessness of his voice might after all only be in comparison with his father’s. ‘I’m afraid we’ve no choice, Miss Waring. Do you like it dry?’

‘Well …’ I hesitated. I would have to stay now. I could hardly snub Sir Julian, who was after all my host, and besides, I had no wish to pass up the chance to talk to a man who was at the head of my own profession, and whom I had admired and loved for as long as I could remember. ‘Actually, if there is one, I’d love a long drink, long and cold …? I’ve just been swimming, and I’m genuinely thirsty. Would there be any orange juice, or something like that?’

‘You ask that here? Of course.’ Max Gale smiled at
me suddenly, and with unexpected charm, and went into the house.