The Takeover (28 page)

Hubert, meantime, had decided to take his last look at beautiful Nemi, where from every point appeared a different view, every view a picture postcard except that it was real. Down the old Roman road he went, past the old town-council building and into the village. All during July and August Nemi had been crowded with holidaymakers; even a few foreign tourists and some of the pilgrim crowds of Holy Year, lately coveted by Hubert, had brimmed over from nearby Castelgandolfo where the Pope held court in his summer residence. But now, as the road grew darker, there were few newcomers to be seen; most of them had returned to the lodgings which had been provided with great efficiency by the neighbouring convents. After dark, a few local people grouped around the bars and various courting couples leaned over the wall beside the castle, looking at the moon.

Outside the church a mosaic plaque had been put up to commemorate the Pope’s visit to Nemi in 1969. Hubert paused on his way to look at it and saw by the road lamp how it bore on the left the crest of Nemi, blue, white, yellow, rich red and gold, surrounded by the motto
Diane Nemus:
the Woods of Diana; on the right was a gleaming emblem of a local Christian order of monks, and above them the Montini papal coat of arms, that of Paul VI, crossed by the gold and silver keys of St Peter. Hubert’s walks in Nemi had been few. ‘Nemi is mine,’ he murmured, ‘but I must move on to Rome.’ In fact, he felt carefree and rather glad to be leaving, seeing that he was now in funds and how his future prospects, in collaboration with the Jesuits, seemed full of hope and drama, the two things Hubert valued most in life, all things being equal on the material side.

Down he went to the garden walk on the steep cliffs by the lake, across the bridge, towards Diana’s temple. The moon was almost three-quarters full and on the wane. ‘Always cut wood when the moon is on the wane,’ an old countryman had told him during his first year at Nemi when he had gone out to gather firewood. He smiled at the moon, with no one to see him, and felt very deeply that he was descended from Diana the moon goddess.

The spot where Diana’s temple had been located was not accessible to the public, and even the local people never went to the thickly overgrown alcoves that remained of her cult. But Hubert knew the way to that area which had been named, in more historic times, the Devil’s Grottoes. Not only were the relics of antiquity to be found there, but also numerous caves leading deep into the heart of the cliff under the castle, where vagrants, in the days of lesser prosperity, could take refuge. These caves were now abandoned and overgrown, some of them totally concealed by dense greenery. He plodded through the thick undergrowth, over uneven ground, stopping to hack off a stout branch to help him to beat his path. ‘Always cut wood when the moon is on the wane.’ The branch broke easily from the low tree.

Suddenly Hubert saw a shape approaching, an old woman, it seemed, probably a gypsy, picking her way towards him. She lit her steps with the aid of a flashlamp. Behind her, but much further into the dark thickness of the wooded cliff, he thought he heard an exchange of voices, but then, stopping still, he heard nothing. The crone, dressed drably with a scarf round her head, came closer and was about to pass him with the usual ‘Buona sera’ of the countryside. ‘Maggie!’ said Hubert. She stopped and shone the torch on him, and started to laugh.

They sat together looking at the lake and the bashed-in circle of the moon for only a little space. Maggie, of course, had taken up almost from where she had left off, and, without any explanation for her appearance or her presence in that deserted spot, said first that she was fine thank you, how was he? ‘Fine,’ said Hubert.

So they found a place to sit and Maggie said, ‘You would never believe it, Hubert, but my daughter-in-law, Mary, has fallen desperately in love with Berto and he’s awfully embarrassed because he loves me exclusively, as you can imagine. He’s trying to pass her off to a journalist friend of his, rather elderly, as he feels that Mary really wants an older man, a sort of father figure. It’s rather pathetic, but it’s all Michael’s fault; although he’s my own son I know he’s neglected Mary and is altogether inadequate, between you and me.’

‘It will sort itself out,’ Hubert said. ‘You look wonderful, Maggie, in spite of all these clothes and things.’

‘Hubert, you’re always so charming! My clothes are a symbol of my new poverty, of course. And then, dressed like this, one hopes to avoid being kidnapped. It’s such a danger, these days. One is in peril.’

‘Oh, I know. You told me in your letter about poor Coco de Renault. Any news of him?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say
poor
Coco. But maybe he’s going to be poor after he pays the ransom. What about you, Hubert? Are you prospering?’

‘Mildly,’ said Hubert.

‘Of course,’ said Maggie, ‘I happen to know that you’ve sold all my furniture and pictures. My letter was just to satisfy Berto, and be above-board, you know. Where is Massimo de Vita?’

‘Honestly I don’t know, Maggie. There isn’t a thing you can do about it.’

‘I know,’ she said, cheerfully.

‘I’m sorry to hear that de Renault made off with all your fortune,’ Hubert said.

‘I’m getting it back. In fact it has already been arranged,’ Maggie said. ‘Less thirty per cent.’

‘That would be the kidnappers’ share,’ Hubert said.

‘That’s right,’ said Maggie.

‘Where have they got him?’ Hubert said. ‘The papers seem to have dropped the story, so I suppose he isn’t in Italy.’

‘Well, some say California and some say Brazil,’ Maggie said. ‘But in fact he’s right here in a cave in this cliff, well guarded. I’ve just been to visit. Hubert, I simply had to go and gloat.’

‘I can well understand that,’ said Hubert. ‘Is he to be released soon?’

‘Some time tonight or early tomorrow morning. The wife delayed a lot and that made Coco very angry. But in the end she had to make over everything to me in Switzerland, all of it, I wouldn’t settle for less.’

‘Can he be trusted not to report you?’ Hubert said.

‘Well, naturally, he couldn’t indict me. He’s too indictable himself. There are times when one can trust a crook.’

‘There’s something in that,’ Hubert said.

She said goodnight very sweetly and, lifting her dingy skirts, picked her way along the leafy path, hardly needing her flashlamp, so bright was the moon, three-quarters full, illuminating the lush lakeside and, in the fields beyond, the kindly fruits of the earth.

Dame Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was an acclaimed Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose rhythmic prose and penchant for dark comedy made her one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive writers.

Spark was born Muriel Sarah Camberg on February 1, 1918, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her engineer father, Bernard, was Scottish, while her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Maud, was English family. Their mixed-faith background would fuel many of the moral concerns of Spark’s later novels. Spark was raised in Edinburgh and from an early age attended James Gillespie’s High School. There her education was closely guided by an idiosyncratic teacher named Christina Kay, the inspiration for the title character in her best-known novel,
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

After school, Spark worked as a department store secretary, taught English, and took college courses before meeting Sydney Oswald Spark, whom she married in 1937. Sydney Spark had a teaching job in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Spark followed him there to get married in 1937. In 1938 she gave birth to a son, Robin. However, Sydney suffered from mental illness and was physically and verbally abusive. Spark left her husband, taking her son and his nanny with her in 1940, but because of World War II’s travel restrictions, she was unable to return to Britain until 1944.

Once arrived, she settled in London, where she worked for the Foreign Office; after the war, she took on a series of writing and editing jobs, mostly for literary and trade magazines. She was the editor of
Poetry Review
for a few contentious years, until her insistence on searching out unknown poets and paying them for their work caused discord. It was while editing a collection of letters by Cardinal Newman that Spark began to explore Catholicism, eventually joining the Roman Catholic Church in 1954.

After nearly collapsing under the pressures of poverty, loneliness, and an addiction to Dexedrine, Spark sought help for her drug use and began to work seriously on a first novel,
The Comforters
(1957), partly with the financial and emotional support of the novelist Graham Greene. Though a late fiction writer, Spark began producing novels and stories at a rapid pace. In 1961 she wrote
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
, widely considered her masterpiece. The novel follows a teacher at a girls’ school who carefully and manipulatively cultivates the minds and morals of a select handful of promising pupils. In 1969, it was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film starring Maggie Smith and was a Royal Command Performance.

Many of Spark’s novels were brisk, black comedies with vivid characters and subtle moral underpinnings, partly influenced by Spark’s interest in religion.
The Mandelbaum Gate
(1965), for instance, is set in Jerusalem during the Adolph Eichmann trials, which she covered for the observer newspaper.
The Only Problem
(1984) draws from the Book of Job, while
The Takeover
(1976) skewers shallow religious conviction. Aside from questions of faith, novels such as
Territorial Rights
(1979) and
Reality and Dreams
(1996) center on protagonists that search for a moral center.

Spark lived for a time in New York City, where she was given an office at the
New Yorker
. The city was the setting for her novel
The Hothouse by the East River
(1973). She lived in Rome for many years writing short and more experimental novels until she moved to Tuscany, where she would live for the final thirty years of her life with her assistant and friend, the painter and sculptor Penelope Jardine. Spark regularly published throughout these decades, garnering many honorary degrees and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1993, a Commandeur des Artes et des Lettres in 1996, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1978. She died in Tuscany in 2006.

Spark as a child. She began attending James Gillespie's High School for Girls at the age of five.

A 1930 school photograph of the junior class of James Gillespie’s High School for Girls. Spark is seated in the middle row, second from the right. Also pictured, in the middle, is the teacher who was the inspiration for Spark’s Miss Jean Brodie, Miss Christina Kay.

A 1932 newspaper clipping of Spark being crowned the “Queen of Poetry” for winning first prize in a poetry competition. She was crowned by Esther Ralston, a popular silent film actress of the day.