Читать книгу Exile - Warwick Deeping - Страница 30

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Billy took her job so seriously that it stayed with her every morning from a quarter to nine till twelve. She began by being busy in the kitchen and tearoom, issuing the days stores and inspecting the spoons and the china, and making sure that glass and dishcloths were sweet and clean. Then there were the flowers to arrange in the tearoom vases, for the Italian women had not the flower touch, and would cram a clump of blossoms like a wad of coloured wool into a pot that contained no water. At five minutes to nine either Billy or Julia Lord had unlocked the library, and whisked about with a feather duster, and run a soft broom over the tiled floor. Miss Lord dealt with the flowers that were for sale. She possessed her own small nursery, and every morning at nine an old fellow with a bald head the size of a pumpkin and trousers of a heavenly blueness would arrive with a huge basket.

But Julia Lord had some understanding of Billy’s youth, and of the urge such youthfulness has to be out of doors, and often at half-past eleven when the library had emptied itself, she would send Billy out.

“I can manage now. Go for a run.”

Not that Billy ran; no one ran in Tindaro. But she would set out to explore the many winding lanes and paths that slid downwards to the blue of the sea, or climbed towards the more sombre colours of the hills, and Billy came to know that there was a Tindaro other than the Tindaro of the Hotel Elyseo, and of the Tennis Club and of the English Tea Rooms. The red-carpeted, white-walled corridors of Miss Lord’s establishment were points of light apparent upon a darker surface. There was the Tindaro which the ordinary visitor did not see, for the well-washed world kept to the Corso and the neighbouring streets, and did not penetrate into native alleys. Billy, in her explorations, discovered other matters. There were smells; there were indescribable messes. Following some fascinating path you would arrive suddenly upon a heap of garbage. Certain precautions were necessary, for in some of these alleys the housewives of Tindaro still slung their slops out of upper windows. Tindaro was casual as to rubbish. A few old men with barrows and brooms did tidy up the Corso, but elsewhere empty tins, cabbage stalks, derelict boots, rags, discarded bedding, broken crockery, bottles, dead dogs, were shot over walls and into odd and convenient corners.

Billy grew wise. Certain vicolos were to be avoided, for most obviously Tindaro had its own methods. It was southern, and casual. It appeared to regard sanitation as the product of the Americans and the English, busybodies with hypersensitive noses. It had to respect in places the fastidious nostrils of the forestieri, but it cared not a jot for Doulton, and baths, and rubbish destructors, and drain-traps. It preferred sitting in the sun and indulging in ecstasies of scratching to the serious business of exterminating pulex vulgaris.

Such was back street Tindaro, like a handsome slut careless about changing her linen. It adored children and did not wash them; it could be incredibly callous to its beasts: its morals were vague. Occasionally it fought with knives. But Billy, having no mission for the cleansing of Tindaro, passed swiftly down to the sea or up to the hills. There was a delicious little blue bay with rocks running into the sea, and pockets of yellow sand, and she would sit on the sand with her knees drawn up, and bask, and listen to the little chattering waves. Or she would climb up into the maquis, and watch the first yellow butterfly afloat.

For in the main, Tindaro was beauty, though occasionally frowzy and smelling of garlic. The Hotel Elyseo was a shining white temple of hygiene. The Tennis Club exhorted you to exercise. Also, there was the Café Ceres with its odd people and its mandolins and its smeary cakes and its flies. Sitting in the maquis Billy would question the Café Ceres and its humanities.

And Slade! He was a rather attractive person. He perplexed her. She was continuing to wonder why he consorted with those human oddments. Poor devils like Frevick. She was sorry for Frevick, but he had a dog. And the Shone woman with her cropped head, and her mouth, and her straddling legs!

Billy had a feeling that she would like to explore those people. She did not shrink from them as Winnie Haycroft did.

Walking up the Corso at a quarter to twelve one morning, and thinking of something else, she was suddenly confronted with the Café Ceres and its little crowd. Slade was there at his usual table, well to the front, with Frevick brooding over something in a glass. The Shone woman was listening to old Ponsonby. Mirleess sat blue-eyed, glaring at everything and nothing. It was like a stage set with people, and Billy suddenly and vividly aware of it, felt it becoming a setting that was personal.

She met Slade’s eyes. He was on his feet. That big, black hat of his was raised.

“Good morning. Come and join those—who sit and stare.”

In an instant she was involved. She was being introduced to the Shone woman, who smiled like a bronze boy. “Pleased to know you. Say, sit right down here.” Old Ponsonby, grinning under the shadow of his hat, was removed to another chair. Frevick was standing, looking at her with a kind of sombre doubtfulness, as though she did not belong.

Slade had the air of an ironic, glib showman.

“Well, here we are, the people who sit and stare. How are books to-day, Miss Brown?”

She looked at him with her young dignity.

“Much as usual.”

A glass was set before her. The Shone woman had made signs and grimaces to the little fat waiter.

“Say, my dear, what will you take?”

“O, nothing, thank you,” said Billy.

“But, my dear, you must.”

“Well, an orangeade.”

Slade slapped a leg with his little stick.

“Splendid! An orangeade. I’ll have one, too.”

Frevick looked hard at him. Frevick could hate.