William Trevor - Two Lives

The others were by now out of sight. We found them waiting for us on the cathedral steps, and with Dr Innocenti’s guide-book open the General led the way into the wasp-like building, reading aloud about the floor and the carved pulpit. When we had exhausted the marvels of this most impressive place and had visited the little museum near by, we made for the picture gallery proper. To my considerable relief, Quinty and Rosa Crevelli had disappeared.

In the quiet of the gallery I would have liked to pursue my conversation with Mr Riversmith, but as we made the rounds of the pictures he fell into step with Otmar and the General, leaving me for the moment on my own. Aimée had wandered on ahead.

‘Look at this!’ I heard her cry in another room, and a moment later we were all congregated around the painting that excited her.

It was called Annuncio at pastori , and depicted two shepherds and a rat-like dog crouched by a fire that had been kindled beside carefully penned sheep. The hills around about were the hills of Italy turned into a brown desert, the sky an Italian sky, and the buildings in the background and the foreground were of Italian architecture. But an angel, holding out a sprig of something, was floating in a glow of yellow light, and didn’t, to my untutored eye, seem quite to belong.

‘I’ve never seen a picture as beautiful,’ Aimée said.

It occurred to me, as she spoke, that had the outrage not happened, she would probably have come to this city with her parents and her brother. They would probably have stood in front of this very picture. I looked at her, but her face was radiant. I edged closer to Mr Riversmith, hoping to share this thought with him in a quiet whisper, but unfortunately just as I did so he moved away.

‘Look at how the sheep are fenced,’ she said. ‘Like with a net.’

‘ Sano di Pietro was born in Siena in 1406 and died in 1481 ,’ the General read from Dr Innocenti’s guide-book, and then explained that this was the person who had painted the picture.

‘More than five hundred years ago,’ I pointed out to Aimée, thinking that would interest her.

‘Eight trees,’ she counted. ‘Eight and a half you could say. Nineteen sheep maybe. Or twenty, I guess. It’s hard to make them out.’

‘More like twenty,’ the General estimated.

It was difficult to count them because the shapes ran into one another when two sheep of the same colour were close together. The guide-book, so the General said, suggested that the dog had noticed the angel before the shepherds had. To me that seemed somewhat fanciful, but I didn’t say so.

‘I love the dog,’ Aimée said. ‘I love it.’

Otmar, who had wandered off to examine other pictures, rejoined us now. Aimée took his hand and pointed out all the features she’d enthused over already. ‘ Especially the dog,’ she added.

I was quite glad when eventually we descended the stairs again. Pictures of angels and saints, and the Virgin with the baby Jesus, are very pretty and are of course to be delighted in, but one after another can be too much of a good thing. I wondered if Mr Riversmith’s wife would have agreed and, since I very much wanted to establish what this woman was like, I raised the subject with him. I said I had counted more than thirty Virgins.

‘The cathedral would perhaps be more Francine’s kind of thing?’

But Mr Riversmith was buying a postcard at the time and didn’t hear. It was interesting that he’d been married twice. I wondered about that, too.

‘Otmar says you can climb up the town-hall tower,’ Aimée said in the postcards place. ‘We’re going to.’

On the way back to the Piazza del Campo I noticed Quinty and Rosa Crevelli loitering in a doorway. They were smoking and leafing through a photographic magazine, giggling as Quinty turned the pages. I was glad they didn’t see us and that no one happened to be looking in their direction as we went by. You could tell by the cover the kind of magazine it was.

‘Why didn’t I ever see you?’ I heard Aimée ask her uncle. ‘I didn’t even know I had an uncle.’

I didn’t catch his reply, something about the distance between Virginsville, Pennsylvania, and wherever it was she and her family had lived. Clearly he didn’t want to go into it all, but as we turned into the piazza she still persisted, appearing to know something of the truth.

‘Didn’t you like her?’

‘I liked her very much.’

‘Did you have a fight?’

He hesitated. Then he said:

‘A silly disagreement.’

The old man remarked that he would not ascend the tower but instead would search for his gardening manuals. We made an arrangement to meet in an hour’s time at the restaurant next to the café where we’d had breakfast, II Campo. I went off on my own, to look in the shoe shops.

I was after a pair of tan mid-heels, but I wasn’t successful in my search so I slipped into a bar near that square with all the banks in it. ‘ Ecco, signora! ’ the waiter jollily exclaimed, bringing me what I ordered. It was pleasant sitting there, watching the people. A smartly dressed couple sat near me, the woman subtly made up, her companion elegant in a linen suit, with a blue silk tie. A lone man, bearded, read La Stampa . Two pretty girls, like twins, gossiped. ‘ Ecco, signora! ’ the waiter said again. It was extraordinary, the dream I’d had about Mr Riversmith, and I kept wondering how on earth I could have come to have such knowledge of anything as private as that, and in such telling detail. I kept hearing his voice telling me about the family dispute, and I rejoiced that we had at last conversed.

‘ Bellissima! ’ a salesgirl enthused a little later. I held between my hands a brightly coloured hen. I had noticed it in a window full of paper goods, side by side with a strikingly coiled serpent and a crocodile. Each was a mass of swirling, jagged colours on what from a distance I took to be papier mâché. But when I handled the animals I discovered they were of carved wood, with paper pressed over the surface instead of paint.

I bought the hen because it was the most amusing. It was wrapped for me in black tissue paper and placed in a carrier-bag with a design of footprints on it. Did he love Francine? I wondered, and again I tried to visualize her – inspecting insects through a microscope, driving her Toyota. But I did not succeed.

Instead, as I left the shop, I saw Mr Riversmith himself. He was turning a corner and disappeared from view while I watched. I paused for a moment, but in the end I hurried after him.

‘Mr Riversmith!’

He turned and, when he saw who it was, waited. The street we were in was no more than an alley, sunless and dank. If we turned left at the end of it, Mr Riversmith said, we would soon find ourselves in the Campo again.

‘Let’s not,’ I suggested, perhaps a little daringly.

I had noticed, through a courtyard, a small, pretty hotel with creeper growing all over it. I drew Mr Riversmith towards it.

‘This is what we’re after.’ I guided him through the entrance and into a pleasant bar.

‘Are the others coming here? I thought we arranged –‘

‘Let’s just sit down, shall we?’

Imagine a faintly gloomy interior, light obscured by the creeper that trails around the windows. The table-tops are green, chairs and wall-coverings red. The two barmen look like brothers, young and slight, with dark moustaches. Only a sprinkling of other customers occupy tables. There are flowers in vases.

‘Are they coming here?’ Mr Riversmith asked again.

‘A little peace for you,’ I replied, smiling friendlily. ‘I think you’d welcome a bit of peace and quiet, eh? Now, I insist on standing you a cocktail.’