The Matchmaker (4 page)

There had been no rain for some weeks and the rusty fern, the few large curled leaves lingering on the chestnut trees, the withered grass underfoot, and the twisted copper leaves of the oaks were dry; there were even primrose clusters with green shoots in their hearts along the bank where Emilio lay in the cavern made by roots of an ancient holly bush, his body curved round the dark hole of a rabbit burrow and his hand waiting, relaxed yet ready, above the burrow’s mouth. He kept so still that he did not seem to breathe or to be alive; his very eyes were half-closed, and all he could see between his eyelids as he looked steadily downwards was the break in the bank where the burrow began. His brown uniform was the same colour as the autumn leaves.

Fabrio knew what his friend was after, and every now and then he turned on his side and gave a glance in his direction, but it was too much trouble to go rabbit-hunting; though he liked eating rabbits when they were cooked.

Presently there was a flicker, so quick that it might have been
a
shimmer of air, at the burrow’s mouth. Emilio relaxed his hands and body and waited. Suddenly a young rabbit was sitting upright in the burrow’s mouth against the sunlight. Its ears looked as if they were made of transparent pink satin edged by a tiny silver fringe. Emilio did nothing; he hardly breathed. The rabbit suddenly flicked back into the burrow. In less than a minute it came back again and took a few steps forward. It was not uneasy; this was the way it always came out from the darkness into the fresh scented air. It was so young that its bones and fur seemed liquid; mere fragility and silverness blent into warm, moving life.

For an instant it sat there sniffing, with delicate paws pressing the freshly turned soil, and then Emilio flung himself on it and gripped it between his small hands. It made one convulsive plunge and then a few weaker ones and at last lay limp. He had not pressed very hard.

Then he got up, brushed the leaves from himself, and walked slowly up the slope towards Fabrio, putting the rabbit in his pocket as he went.

“I got one,” he said in Italian.

“I know; I saw you.” Fabrio rolled over on his side and sat up, linking arms round his knees and looking up into his friend’s face. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“Shall we stew it? I’ve got the can down there,” jerking his head towards the ditch.

“What’s the time?” Fabrio glanced at the sun. “Not quite noon. All right, only we must be quick.
He
was telling
her
this morning that he was coming up here some time to look at our work. What about water?”

Emilio showed his yellow teeth in a laugh. “I’ve got that, too. I took a bottle from their cellar and filled it at the rainwater butt.”

“Your lighter wasn’t working last night.”

“It is now;
he
gave me a drop of juice.”

He held up a little metal object no bigger than a matchbox,
carved
with a dragon’s head in a vigorous primitive style and hinged and polished. He pressed it open and a tiny flame burned thinly in the sunlight.

“All right!” exclaimed Fabrio, jumping up, all his melancholy vanishing. “We’ll put it on to stew and do a bit of work while it’s cooking.”

“Ah-h-h! No, wait a minute,” said Emilio softly, in a changed tone. He glanced under his eyelids, towards the north face of the wood and Fabrio, following the direction of his stealthy movement, saw a woman, a little girl and a pram straying along by the edge of the trees. They were talking to one another and their clear voices in the unfamiliar language came down to the two men through the sunny stillness.

“She’s come to live at the villa near our farm. She wouldn’t say anything if she did see us,” said Fabrio, putting his hands in his pockets and beginning to stroll away towards the ditch where their spades and mattocks had been left.

“How do you know? Do you like her looks?” jeered Emilio, following him, and added something frank.

Fabrio laughed but did not answer, and they would have reached the ditch without seeming to notice the two intruders, had not the child run as fast as she could towards them, ignoring a command from her mother, and planted herself in their path.

“Hul-lo!” she exclaimed with such smiling and delighted surprise that both men paused, smiling too.

“’Ul-lo,” they said, looking down at her.

“Bambina,” added Emilio, turning to Alda, who now drew near. His eyes moved boldly yet wistfully over her shape, which had the roundness natural to a woman in the early thirties who has borne several children, but Fabrio, after a glance at her face, turned away his head. Alda noticed his chestnut hair and blue eyes with interest, for she had supposed all Italians to be dark.

“Nice day—good,” she said, with her friendly smile, pointing at the sun.

“Yes. Good-a. You-a bambina?” said Emilio, and began to feel in his pocket.

“Yes. Meg,” said Alda, pointing this time at her daughter.

“Ah-ha. Meg-g.” Emilio nodded. “I show-a Meg a little—a pret-ty——” and before Alda’s gradually widening eyes he was beginning to withdraw a bundle of limp fur from his pocket when Fabrio, saying something quickly in Italian, pushed it back into its hiding-place.

“Oh—thank you so much, I’m afraid we must be going now,” said Alda hastily, taking Meg’s hand and beginning to retreat, “Good-bye,” and she directed a special smile at the other Italian, the “nice” one, as she now thought of him, who did not return it; she just caught a glimpse of a sullen face as he walked away.

“You live-a at villa?” said Emilio, moving a few steps after her. “We, him and me, Fabrio Caetano, Emilio Rossi, at Naylor Farm.”

“I expect we shall see you again, then,” said Alda.

“You give-a cigarette,” said Emilio coaxingly, still following her. “We have no cig-arette; we only——” he rapidly opened and shut his ten fingers three times in front of her face, leaving five fingers extended in the air. “For a week. No good. You give-a cigarette?”

Here Fabrio, who was half-way towards the ditch where the spades were, turned back, as though waiting, and called out something. Emilio laughed and shrugged his shoulders, then, exclaiming “Buon’giorno, signora,” he followed his friend.

“Was it a dead bunny in that man’s possick?” demanded Meg, the instant she and her mother were alone.

“I’m afraid so, darling.”

“Oh, poor little thing. Why wouldn’t you let it see me, Mudder?”

“You didn’t
want
to see it, did you, Meg?”

“Yes, Meg did want.”

“You shall next time, dear,” soothed Alda, reflecting with
complacence
upon the advantages of having three children; the variety of response was in itself an endless entertainment. Louise would have shuddered for the rest of the morning over that glimpse of fur, while Jenny would only have inquired whether the Italians were going to cook it for their dinner.

Then they turned their steps homeward, for there was still much packing and arranging to do on this, their last day at Pagets. Jenny and Louise were there now, fitting their especial treasures into the large old suitcases in which they had travelled for the past three years, but Alda was always conscious of a desire, sometimes subdued and sometimes imperative, to wander out into the open air and to-day, which promised to be one of the last fine days of the month, she had not even attempted to resist it.

As they were lost to sight along the rutted track through the woods, Fabrio said angrily to Emilio:

“Why must you beg from her?”

Emilio sat down and pulled the rabbit out of his pocket and began to skin it deftly with a razor blade set in a wooden holder.

“She has a pretty face, and she’s as good for a cigarette as any other bit of skirt. Why shouldn’t I?”

“I won’t beg from anyone.”

“Oh yes! You won’t beg! Who let me pay for his beer yesterday?”

“I had no money, as you well know.” Fabrio’s voice rose and there was colour on his high cheekbones.

“All right, all right.” Emilio pushed some billets of wood across with his foot. “Get the fire going, will you. Here’s the water,” and he pulled out an orangeade bottle from the rolled bundle of his coat.

Presently, when the smoke was going straight up into the still air, while the flames darted below it and the water in the petrol can was beginning to steam, Emilio broke the long silence by saying:

“Anyway, I did it to get cigarettes for you too,” and dropping his arm for an instant over his friend’s shoulders.

“All right, all right!” mocked Fabrio, shaking the arm off, but after a moment he began to sing.

“What’s that?” asked Emilio lazily, lying back amidst the skeleton leaves and the bronze fern with arms behind his head.

“The fishermen sing it at San Angelo.” Fabrio broke off to say this, then resumed, sitting by the fire with arms linked round his knees and head thrown back. His voice was a tenor; no phenomenon, but behind it, lightly and easily floating the words out through his throat and into the air, was the desire to sing that makes a bird sing and—in spite of his captivity and the consequent martyrdom of all his young instincts—the bird’s joy in living.

“Ah, that old stuff! That’s dead. You want to sing——” and he burst into
Giovinezza
, but after a few bars stopped again and shook his head, muttering, “I never did like that much, I like this better,” and he swung into a tuneful little song consisting of an American scaffolding and an Italian façade recently broadcast from Rome and exactly like all the other tuneful little songs with American scaffoldings and German, French or English façades recently broadcast from Berlin, Paris and London.

“That’s good, too,” and Fabrio joined in joyfully and the rabbit in the petrol can began to bubble. It was now nearly two hours since Fabrio Caetano and Emilio Rossi, of
ITALY
, had done any work.

Mr. Hoadley, a giant of a man, coming down through the fern in the direction of the singing with a hound-puppy, which he was “walking,” at his heels, did not know exactly how long this had been going on but he did know when a fire had been burning for some time and the fire was the first thing he looked at. A cavern of red heat and frail oak-ashes had gathered beneath the penthouse of charred logs.

He walked so swiftly down the slope that he was on them
before
they knew it, and they had only time to scramble up before, with a vigorous thrust of his stout stick, he had sent the petrol tin sideways into the fire. There was a hissing, and a cloud of rabbit-steam and wood smoke rolled out as the broth poured over the logs and dripped down to sink into the ground. The hound-puppy, who had been eagerly advancing towards the smell, yelped and leapt back from the boiling steam with tail between his legs.

“You pair of lazy bastards,” said Mr. Hoadley, scattering the fire with his boot. “Get on, I don’t want to hear anything about it, I’m sick of the two of you,” and whistling to the dog he turned and marched away, with his cap pulled over his eyes and his usually good-natured lower lip thrust out. He had, when he thought about such matters at all, a low opinion of every race except the English, and since his employment of Italian prisoners his opinion had sunk lower still.

Emilio had made a hasty movement towards his abandoned spade and mattock as the farmer loomed over them, but Fabrio had stood his ground, and now thrust his trembling hands into his pockets and stared down at what was to have been their feast; the blackened, steaming wood, the joints of rabbit, cooked to a turn and looking very pink amongst ashes and brown leaves, and the moisture, the delicious broth, dripping from the overturned can. He swore, and his blue eyes glittered.

“Ah, come on—it’s still good to eat!” cried Emilio impudently, down on his knees in the moist ground and rubbing a rabbit-leg clean against his sleeve. There was a scurry at his side and the beautiful head of the hound-puppy suddenly appeared under his arm, with such mingled pleading and aristocratic confidence in his eyes that Emilio unhesitatingly gave him a piece of the meat. An angry shout from the distance, however, sent him bounding off, and the watching Italians saw his treasure snatched from him and tossed into the bushes.

It was now after two o’clock and the light was brightening and the shadows lengthening. Fabrio pulled a packet of food
from
his pocket and ate, sullenly ignoring Emilio’s offer of rabbit, and presently both were at work again, clearing and reshaping the ancient ditch overgrown with brambles and broken down by rabbits and foxes, and did not cease until it was time to stop for the day. Emilio straightened the last breadth of ditch-wall with a downward stroke of his spade; Fabrio was already cleaning his, with his heel and a piece of wood. The air was very cold and the primrose sunset looked down on them from behind the oaks; sharp scents of bracken and holly leaves, beaded with moisture that would later freeze, assailed their nostrils. They were hungry, and they longed with passion, as at this hour exiled Sussex men in Italy were longing, for home. The sea below San Angelo would be growing dark, the evening wind blowing the boats home, lights shining out from the windows of the
Leone d
’
Oro
. The keels make a soft crunch-ch-ch as they come up through the sand. A girl’s dress glows richly through the dusk as she loiters on the shore. Yellow light and the smell of frying food come out through an open window. The. stone-pine that is a landmark on the
Capo
stands out black against the violet sky, and inland rolls the wooded country, ancient and beautiful, with wheat and hill-perched villages. Mother of God, thought Fabrio, it is like that
now
, as I stand here in these cursed wet leaves and must take such care to clean my spade. It is like that
now
at home, at San Angelo, and I am here.