The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom (7 page)

“Oh, lord,” said Filomena. “Here, take my hand. Breathe, Danila. Deeply now.”

“It's the baby,” wailed Danila, “it's the baby, and Antonio is not here. It's the baby, and I'm all alone.”

“You're not alone, you're with me. Let's go upstairs. You will be comfortable upstairs, I'll make you comfortable.” Gently Filomena raised Danila to her feet. “And then I will send Renata to run for the midwife, as quick as she can.”

The midwife was
a bossy woman from Tuscany. From the moment she arrived she took over the Trombetta house, demanding hot water, clean towels, cups of strong sugary coffee to keep her alert.

“Of course you can't see her,” she said to Antonio, who had hurried all the way from the Casa d'Italia, his heart banging like a piston. “Don't be absurd. Men! What will they think of next?”

“But she wants me there. She'll be crying for me, I know she will.”

“She'll be crying for her mother and half the blessed saints before the night is out, but we're hardly going to fetch them, are we? Now sit down like a good fellow, and let me get on with my work. Filomena, bring that basin of warm water, if you please.”

Filomena gave him a gleaming smile as she followed the midwife upstairs. “Don't worry, Antonino,” she whispered. “I will tell you what is happening.”

His father and Valentino came home at midnight. Antonio heard them making their way along Frith Street, singing the “Giovinezza,” the anthem of the National Fascist Party. Enrico sang softly but well, Valentino extremely badly. Their eyes glittered with grappa and with excitement.

“I told you there would be nothing for you to do.” Enrico blinked at his son. Antonio was playing patience over and over, the cards bright and meaningless upon the kitchen table. “You should have stayed to hear the ambassador. He is such an inspiring orator, you can hear the
duce
himself speak through his lips.”

“Who knows? Perhaps Antonio would have been moved to join the party too.” Valentino clapped his father about the shoulders. “Today is a great day, Papa. I am proud of you.”

A sheepish expression crossed Enrico's face. “Ah, well. Better to be on the winning side, eh, Valentino?” With persnickety care he took off his hat and coat and hung them on the peg. “And now we should go to bed. Someone will have to open the kiosk in the morning.”

In the room above them Danila let out a shriek, instantly hushed by the midwife. Valentino glanced warily at the ceiling.

“Is she doing a lot of that?”

“It will be all right,” said Enrico in a philosophical voice. “I slept through your birth, Valentino, I see no reason why I should not sleep through the birth of my grandson. Or granddaughter, if the child is destined to be a girl. As for you, Antonio, you would do well to get some rest. The midwife will call you soon enough if you're needed.”

Antonio's son was
born at four o'clock the next morning, in the dark still winter hours when it seems that day will never break. He was a small baby, but healthy, according to the midwife. It was Filomena who brought the news to her brother. She was wearing the coarse white apron she used for cooking, only now there was a watery streak of scarlet across the stains left by flour and egg and brown
ragù
.

“And Danila? Is she all right?”

Filomena nodded. They were waiting in the kitchen while the midwife prepared Danila to greet her husband. “Oh, yes. She is all right.”

“You must be exhausted, Mena. And you have to go to work in a couple of hours.”

Filomena pulled a face, half rueful, half satisfied. “I thought it would be useful knowledge: how a baby is born. You can never tell when you will need such knowledge.”

Antonio felt a surge of respect for her. While their mother was dying Filomena had stayed at her bedside hour after hour, stroking her hair, spooning broth into her slack mouth, not minding the smell or the terrible, bone-aching boredom of it. He clasped his sister's hand.

“Well, it will be your turn before long. When Bruno returns you will soon have children of your own.”

Filomena withdrew her hand. “Oh, yes,” she said, “of course.”

The midwife returned. Danila was ready to show her husband his firstborn son. As he climbed the stairs Antonio thought how odd this conspiracy of women was, to keep from him the pain and the disarray of childbirth. And yet if there is a war I will be expected to fight, as Bruno has been fighting in Africa. There will be more pain, worse disarray, only this time it is we men who will try to keep it from our womenfolk.

In the bedroom there was a smell of lavender, not quite masking the sweetish scent of blood. Danila sat upright against the pillows wearing a clean nightdress, her dark fine hair combed into a knot. There were shadows like bruises beneath her eyes, but on her face was an expression of triumph. The baby in her arms was wrapped in a white shawl, fine as lace, sent from Lazio by Danila's mother. He had the walnut face of an old, old man.

“Be careful,” said Danila, as Antonio bent to lift his son, his fingers probing for warmth beneath the layers of wool. At once the baby began to cry. His crying was thin and high-pitched, like the tearing of cloth.

Bernard Rodway had never had much in common with his older brother. Lionel was healthy, hearty, good at games; Bernard was a frail, dreamy boy, haunted by those desperate nights when he struggled for every breath. Both brothers were sent to Rugby, where predictably Lionel flourished, and Bernard—equally predictably—was bullied. Their mother, Penelope, wanted to withdraw Bernard from the school and send him somewhere more liberal, but Ernest, Bernard's father, shook his head. A self-made man, he did not want to cosset his children. Bernard needs toughening up, he said; if the bullying gets out of hand, well, his brother will defend him. Bernard, who knew that Lionel would rather be skinned alive than intervene on his behalf, went white-faced to weep in the lavatory beside the boot room. It had a high black cistern and a clanking chain. The bitter luxury of tears calmed him. I am not like other people, he thought, and the knowledge filled him with angry, consoling power.

After Rugby the brothers went to Cambridge, where again their paths diverged. Lionel took up rowing; he narrowly missed selection as a Cambridge blue, or so he claimed. Then he returned to Macclesfield, where he joined the family firm and married a wealthy, red-cheeked girl named Caroline whom he met at a hunt ball. As for Bernard, he fell in with an arty set who called one another “comrade.” He bought a sheaf of jazz records and joined the Labour Party; he also played Laertes in a modern-dress production of
Hamlet,
wearing suede shoes and a Fair Isle sweater. His uncle Dickie Belvoir came to the show with a couple of London actors, and Bernard experienced the heady joy of reflected glory, watching all eyes turn as he led the glamorous newcomers into the pub.

At home in Cheshire there was an assumption, hardly discussed, that once he left Cambridge Bernard would follow his brother into the family firm, and all this socialist nonsense would be knocked out of him. The summer after his exams Bernard went to Europe: a last hurrah before the serious business of life claimed him. As he crossed the Alps he had the vague notion that he might write a travel book: the adventures of a clever young Englishman, living on his wits in Mussolini's Italy. He kept detailed notes of his journeys, the higgledy-piggledy beauty of the Ponte Vecchio, the serene purplish sunsets over the Tuscan hills, the hunchback in the Arezzo square whom everyone touched for luck. The pleasure of writing intoxicated him. On a thundery day in Rome, confined to his room by the weather, he realized that he could not possibly join the family business: it would eat up his soul from the inside. The following morning he went to Termini station and booked his ticket home to England.

His interview with his father took place not at the silk factory but in Ernest's den, a manly, leather-scented room that looked toward the sandstone ridge of Alderley Edge. Bernard thought it would be more tactful to break the news there, so that his father would not be obliged to put on a brave face afterward among his workers. He had rehearsed what he would say several times. I realize that you are disappointed, Father, but I have thought hard about this, and my decision is final. All the same, his throat was dry as he began to speak. There was an eagerness in his father's face that pained him, knowing that he was about to blight Ernest's hopes.

He had barely got through his first sentence when his father interrupted. “So, Bernard, you are saying that you do not wish to join the family firm?”

For an instant Bernard wavered. “No, Father. I mean, yes. That is what I am saying.”

Ernest lifted his eyebrows; then he smiled. “Well, Bernard, you are twenty-two. Old enough to know your own mind. I do not believe that a man should be forced to work against his natural grain. Of course, I would have made a place for you in the firm. You know that. And I am sure that Lionel will do the same, if at some point in the future your circumstances change.” He picked up the brass paper knife on his table and then set it down once more. “If that is all, Bernard, perhaps you will excuse me? I have this quarter's accounts to check.”

Bernard's head was ringing with astonishment as he left the room. All the things he had not said weighed him down like obsolete currency. It was only the next day as he was traveling back to London, the perfume of Penelope's farewell kiss still upon his collar, that he realized his father had not been disappointed at all: he had been relieved.

This realization, which ought to have made Bernard happy, made him furious. It was one thing for him to reject the hidebound values of his father and his brother, quite another for them to reject him. He saw them as the sleek faces of the enemy, quietly closing ranks to shut him out, like Ishmael, like Cain, the slighted son cast into the wilderness. His sense of exclusion was compounded when, three years later, Ernest died from a heart attack. Under the provisions of his will, Lionel inherited the Macclesfield house and the family firm, while Bernard received a substantial income for life, or at least, for as long as the silk business thrived. It's a bribe, thought Bernard, listening to the stone-filled earth thrum upon his father's coffin, to prevent me encroaching on Lionel's domain; and then, No, it's not a bribe, it's worse than that. It's compensation. My father thought me a failure, who'd never fend for himself. Well, I'll prove him wrong, the bugger. You see if I don't.

After their dinner
at Quaglino's Olivia had not expected to hear from Bernard again, and she was startled when a thick expensive card arrived, intimately signed with the letter B. Bernard also sent more flowers, white lilies this time, which made the bedsit in Pimlico look like the scene of an elaborate society funeral. They had another dinner, at the Café Royal; then they went to the ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre in Islington. Olivia had never been to the ballet before—it was Arthur Bliss's
Checkmate,
simple but striking—and although she tried to look blasé she could not hide her rapture. Bernard was charmed. That night as he put her into her taxi he kissed her for the first time. His mustache was silky and unexpected against her mouth.

A week later he took her to meet his uncle Dickie. Dickie Belvoir lived in Chelsea, in a red mansion flat overlooking the Thames; they were going for a drink before dinner. As they waited on the doorstep, Olivia caught Bernard glancing across at her, at her black sheath dress, her evening bag beaded with poppies. It was an appraising look, rather like the one his brother, Lionel, had given her. She guessed that the visit was some kind of test.

Uncle Dickie was rotund and immaculate. He had perfectly groomed white hair, and he smoked Turkish cigarettes, extravagantly, from a long jade holder. His drawing room had heavy silk curtains and a great many of what he called
objects:
a word Olivia had always considered to mean something mundane, but which on Dickie's lips implied all that was rare and precious, a mother-of-pearl card case, a Japanese vase. Some of Dickie's stage designs were hung upon the walls, riotous as Léon Bakst paintings. There was a gallery of silver-framed photographs too, resembling the pages of a glossy magazine.

“Dickie knows everyone,” said Bernard, as Olivia paused before a picture of his uncle with Noël Coward.

“Well, I used to,” said Dickie in a self-deprecating voice. “It's harder to keep up these days. That's my sister Penelope, my dear. You can see the resemblance to Bernard, can't you?”

Like Bernard, the woman in the photograph was fair, with peachlike cheeks. She had an arch look about her, though, as if she kept one of her plucked eyebrows perpetually raised, like a character in a French farce. This artificiality made Olivia warm toward Bernard, with his simplicity, his enthusiasms.

“Yes and no,” she said, glancing at the next picture, of an older woman, long nosed, who wore her dark hair severely parted in the center. “Who is that? She's very handsome.”

Dickie's eyes grew filmy. “Oh, that's Katya. My late wife. She danced with Pavlova, you know.”

“Oh,” said Olivia, who had assumed that Uncle Dickie must be a bachelor, “I'm so sorry.” The moment she said it she realized how foolish she sounded, and she blushed. Dickie patted her hand.

“Thank you, my dear. That is very sweet of you.” Still grasping her hand he turned to Bernard. “I like her, Bernard. She has promise. Keep hold of this one, eh?”

“Oh, I intend to, Dickie,” said Bernard lightly, as though this was a conversation they had had a dozen times, in a dozen places. He sat down, propping one expensively shod foot upon the opposite knee. “Well, and what do you think of the news from Rome? Do you still believe that Mussolini's fascists are no threat to democracy?”

Dickie crossed to his cocktail cabinet, a beautiful Art Deco affair lined with mirrors. Mussolini had just announced that Italy was withdrawing from the League of Nations, that hopeful blundering body intended to keep the peace in fractious Europe. There were fears that soon he would announce an alliance with Nazi Germany.

“You know I don't mind old Musso, Bernard,” Dickie said, as he refilled Olivia's glass. He was giving them Negronis, which he mixed himself, fragrant with juniper and very strong. “He has fresh ideas, he understands that Italy must increase its efficiency, it cannot go on forever being picturesque. He has found a third way between the extremes of right and left. And you have to admire his handling of the newspapers. All those pictures of him sledging and driving tractors and looking heroic. He is not a desiccated snob like Baldwin or Chamberlain, he knows how to make himself popular.” He passed her drink to Olivia. “What do you think of him, Miss Johnson?”

“I think he has mad eyes,” said Olivia. At once the two men laughed—how like a woman, to make such a remark—then they both fell silent as they realized that she was right: Mussolini did have the eyes of a fanatic, wide and staring.

“He's an emotional fellow, I grant you,” Dickie said, “but I believe that he will be a force for good. If nothing more, he's well placed to negotiate with Germany. And I agree with you there, Bernard: Hitler's a monster. Someone ought to shoot him.” He took a decisive mouthful of gin and vermouth. “But enough of such gloomy things. My nephew tells me that you dance the tango quite wonderfully, Miss Johnson. I hope that one day I'll have the privilege of seeing you.”

Bernard was smiling as they left, and Olivia knew that whatever the test might have been she had passed it. The taxi he hailed took them not to dinner but to Pimlico. Bernard had never been in a bedsit before, and to him it was exotic as a foreign country. They went at once to bed, among the rinsed-out tins of flowers. The Negronis she had drunk had gone to Olivia's head. As she embraced Bernard she felt, as if from a great distance, the dangerous flicker of hope.