ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
A Biography of Dorothy Eden
THE HOUSE WAS ON the outskirts of Rome, in a rather mean street which turned off the via Appia. There was a group of dusty cypresses on the corner, and then the row of shabby houses with their peeling paint and faded colours. Some children were playing in the dust. A woman flung open a shutter and leaned out to call something shrilly to them, and they scattered like disturbed sparrows.
In the other direction, towards the via Appia, the Street of the Dead, with its crumbling tombs and catacombs, there was a stream of traffic, fast cars, buses laden with sightseers, and noisy, impatient motor-scooters. It was no longer a way of peace for the sleepers in the tombs on the roadside, but then it never had been. Long ago it had rung to the marching feet of legions, or the shouts of the persecutors, and the weak cries of the crucified. In comparison, the screech of klaxons and the ear-splitting roar of the motor-scooters seemed harmless and innocent.
Perhaps the taxicab that was drawn up outside the house in this shabby street was also going about perfectly innocent business. The man watching in the shade of the cypresses would not have paid any especial attention to it if it had not seemed an unusual thing for a taxi to come to this kind of street. And to that particular house. So instead of strolling past casually he had drawn back to the slight cover of the cypresses and, with his hat pulled well down over his eyes, watched.
It was only a few minutes before the door of the house opened and a young woman came out. Tall, slim and attractive, she was the most unexpected sight of all, so far. For what would a fashionable young woman whose camel-hair coat might have been bought in one of the better Paris or London stores, and whose dark hair had a casual, expensive cut, be doing in this locality?
She was talking to someone out of sight. Presently a rather stout little girl dressed in a white frock, with a large blue bow in her hair, appeared and climbed into the waiting taxi. Behind her darted a thin, dark woman with a suitcase. The suitcase was placed in the taxi, the girl held out her hand to shake hands with the thin, dark woman, who, dressed in a faded cotton dress and scuffed-looking slippers, was the only person in this small scene who appeared to be in character, the only one who could have been expected to emerge from the shabby house in the rather furtive little street.
Then the tall girl climbed into the taxi, too, and the door banged. The watcher made an involuntary step forward, but he was too far off to hear the instructions given to the driver. He swore under his breath, then strolled studiously and casually in the other direction as the taxi whirled around and proceeded towards the city. As it passed him he caught only a glimpse of its two occupants, the fluttering butterfly bow in the child’s hair, and the girl’s dark head turned towards her young companion. But he heard the child’s voice, shrill with excitement, “Arrivederci, Gianetta!”
So there was no more time to investigate the shabby house. Now perhaps there was no need to. Fingering the worn covers of the notebook in his pocket, remembering the scribbled address of this house in this street, and the cryptic added note “might be using a child,” he hurried to the busy highway and impatiently waited for a taxi.
It was impossible to be certain where the previous taxi had gone, but by the child’s luggage, and the girl’s air of haste, one assumption could be made.
When at last he was able to secure a car, he gave the driver his destination, “La stazione, pronto!”
The driver nodded his head, grinning with wicked pleasure at being given a free hand to mow down as much of the traffic as possible. At his destination the man cursed again, this time at Mussolini and his grandiose schemes for building such a superb railway station that made one cross acres of floor-space before reaching the train.
As he had expected, it was the Milan train just due to depart. Indeed, it was at that moment pulling out. He had to elbow people out of his way, and run for his life to get on the last carriage.
“Bravo! Bravo!” called a porter, white teeth gleaming, dark eyes ashine.
But the man was not amused. Did the Italians consider all contests with speed and danger, so long as they themselves remained onlookers, a pleasant diversion? Did that explain a great deal of their mentality?
Perhaps it did. Perhaps that was why he was here.
A good-looking young woman, probably English, and a child… And that other face that it was not possible to forget, for a drowned face, even had it been that of a stranger, was not an easily forgettable sight. And this had not been a stranger’s face…
THAT MORNING TWO DAYS ago in London, Kate did not see Miss Squires, as usual. The girl at the desk of the little employment office with its provocative title “Job-a-Day,” and in smaller letters “Also Objets d’Art procured,” said in a slightly awed voice that Mrs. Dix herself had asked for Kate when she came in. Would Kate wait while she found out whether she could go up now?
It had been William who had first suggested Kate going to Mrs. Dix. William, who was as practical as Kate was impractical, said that if Kate planned going on living in London (as she certainly did) she would have to supplement her very precarious employment as a commercial artist. So why not do the odd jobs, such as taking out old ladies, or poodles, meeting trains at melancholy stations like Liverpool Street, doing Christmas shopping for the bedridden, or even baby-sitting, providing the brat wasn’t too spoilt and loathsome.
This suggestion of William’s had turned out excellently. It provided Kate with three or four days’ employment a week, which, added to the earnings she made from her drawings, enabled her to keep the basement flat in West Kensington. She was attached to this flat chiefly because of her landlady, Mrs. Peebles, who was as endearing as a poised tomahawk and just as stimulating. With Mrs. Peebles lurking about the house, life was as full of surprises as Kate liked it to be. In addition to the satisfaction of earning extra money, she found the work with Mrs. Dix interesting and enjoyably unpredictable. Also, she had got several excellent sketches of strange old-lady faces, Rembrandt style, and had some rather enchanting drawings of dogs skipping about Kensington Gardens, among the blowing autumn leaves and the chrysanthemums. These she hoped to sell.
Apart from the money angle, she found it made life pleasantly interesting, not knowing, each time she visited Miss Squires, solid and placid in her little dark office under the stairs which led up to the so far unseen apartments of Mrs. Dix, what strange task awaited her, whether it were catching a train to Southampton to meet an elderly American couple, or to go to the Portobello Road market to search for a specified piece of junk required by a client.
Mrs. Dix, until this morning, had remained a mystery. Miss Squires hinted at a Tragedy. Fifteen years ago Mrs. Dix’s husband had been missing on a secret mission, some hush-hush task that could only be mentioned in the sacred precincts of M.I.5, and the poor lady still refused to believe that he was dead. She got up every morning with the renewed optimistic conviction that this would be the day he returned home. She kept his bed aired, a plentiful supply of food and drink, and contrived, Miss Squires said pityingly, to infuse into her cluttered rooms an air of excited expectancy. It was very sad, because after fifteen years there was really no hope. There had been that body washed up on the coast of Portugal that had never been positively identified, but there was little doubt that it had been that of Major Dix. If it hadn’t, then there was the Iron Curtain, and no one was likely to survive fifteen years of that. Anyway, there had been not a word, not even a rumour of an unidentified Englishman in some Siberian prison. Not even a question in the House. So it seemed that Mrs. Dix, poor soul, would go on living in her fool’s paradise.
But until this day, Mrs. Dix, who had infused her special brand of eagerness and eccentricity that was almost genius into her business, had remained as invisible as her husband. At least, to Kate, one of her minor employees. No doubt she gave audience to the important people, the ones entrusted with special jobs such as shopping for the Prime Minister’s wife, or the ones who requested, not a warming-pan to be turned into some kind of barbecue business, or an umbrella stand that would adequately hold flower arrangements, but the Faberge chess set last heard of in Alexandria, or the late duchess’ diamond and ruby tiara which one had heard was being sold…
Admittedly, these last were rare requests. Miss Squires, who liked Kate, sometimes became a little less reserved and imparted a breathless rush of information, about acquiring skeletons for medical students, and other macabre objects. It was tragic that although Mrs. Dix could acquire white camels from Arabia, or pearls from the Great Barrier Reef, she could not find her missing husband. But she still refused to admit that he lay in an unnamed grave somewhere along the banks of the River Tagus.
Reflecting on all this, Kate was a little nervous about at last meeting the fabulous lady. Passing Miss Squires’ room on her way to the narrow stairway, she heard Miss Squires call, “Is that you, Kate? Special mission for you today. It’ll be a nice jaunt.”
Kate stuck her head around the door of the dark little office, “Where am I to go?”
“None of my business, dear. But you’ll enjoy it. Lucky girl.”
The room in which Mrs. Dix sat was a quite ordinary living-room, a little over-furnished and with an extravagant number of bowls of flowers. It did not in any way resemble an office. Mrs. Dix sat on a faded, green velvet couch.
She was a very plump lady with prematurely white or bleached hair, in, perhaps, her early fifties, though her extreme plumpness and her white hair may have added an unnecessary ten years to her age.
She wore brown velvet, with a little ruching of lace at the throat. She was, Kate thought, like a chocolate meringue.
Her smile was winning. She waved a dimpled hand towards a chair. “Sit down, my dear. Forgive my not getting up. My heart, you know. The doctor forbids any exertion. You’re Kate Tempest, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Dix.” Kate obediently sat down and refused the proffered box of chocolates.
“Oh, not just a little one, dear?” Mrs. Dix cried, disappointed. “Try this knobbly one. It’ll have a nut. Not so bad for the figure. Though really, I do assure you, you have no need to worry. You’re a sylph, positively. Now me, I’m past redemption. But I do so adore chocolates.”
She beamed at Kate. Her cheeks were delicately pink, her eyes a faded blue, benign, a little far-off, as if her visitor were not quite real to her, but that instead she was looking beyond, to the door, which might open at any moment to the one she wanted to see above all.
“Now, you’re wondering why I’ve sent for you, of course. Miss Squires has told me about you. She says you’re reliable, sensible, sophisticated, not likely to lose your head in a crisis.”
“Thank you,” Kate murmured bewilderedly. William had always said exasperatedly that reliability was her least obvious quality, but neither Mrs. Dix nor Miss Squires knew her as William did, and it was her business to see that they never completely achieved this knowledge.
“Most important, those qualities,” Mrs. Dix emphasized. “Now tell me a little more about yourself. You live alone?”
“Yes.” Though one could hardly call it living alone, with Mrs. Peebles’ watchful eye and attentive ear, overhead.
“Family?”
“Only a stepmother who lives in the country.”
“How do you get on with her?”
“She’s perfectly sweet, but I only acquired her when I was eighteen, so naturally she’s not deeply interested in me. Since my father died she has taken up growing flowers for the market. Even when I visit her she forgets I’m there. She’s cutting roses, or transplanting polyanthus, or something.”
“Marriage plans?” Mrs. Dix asked in her friendly, inoffensive voice.
Kate thought of William and said definitely, “Not at present. None at all.”
“Well, that all seems very satisfactory. It leaves you completely free to do these things for me. I like to know my employees are without urgent family ties, when I send them on jobs abroad. Shall I tell you what I have in mind for you? It’s a very important mission, but actually very simple, and only requires travel sense and, of course, responsibility. You’ve been on holidays abroad, Miss Squires tells me.”
“Yes, several times.” On a shoe string, of course, staying at pensions or youth hostels, walking blisters on to one’s heels, living on rolls and spaghetti.
“Splendid. Have you been to Rome?”
“Once only, for two days.”
“You don’t speak Italian?”
“Almost none at all.”
“Well, that won’t matter greatly.”
“But what am I to do, Mrs. Dix?”
“Oh, a very simple little mission indeed. You won’t have a chocolate? I shall, I’m afraid. My husband is to blame, you know. He indulged this passion of mine. I shall tell him, when he comes home, how he is to pay for it, with all these pounds of flesh.” Mrs. Dix chuckled, squeezing at her plump waist. “My dear, you have beautiful blue eyes. With that black hair. Quite arresting.”
Kate sighed. “Yes, but my nose is wrong.” William’s healthy outspokenness never allowed her to become conceited.
“Not seriously wrong. I’m wondering if Miss Squires is right, after all. Are you the right person to send? But if you’re used to travelling, and you promise to behave with discretion—” Mrs. Dix’s pale blue eyes suddenly flew up, looking directly at Kate instead of at the distant door. “Rather a pity, isn’t it? Well, never mind. It’s a very simple thing we want you to do. Merely to bring a child, a little girl, to London. You are to be her courier, in fact, or her nannie, if you prefer to look at it that way.” Mrs. Dix’s plump fingers dipped into the box of chocolates again. She leaned back on the couch smiling benignly. “Well, my dear, how do you like the idea of that?”
Kate privately liked it very well indeed. Her one brief trip to Rome had filled her with a passion for that ancient and fabulous city, and the chance to go back, with all travelling expenses paid, seemed too good to be true. Instinctively, she began to look for the flaw in the plan.
“May I ask you some questions, Mrs. Dix?”
“Indeed. Go ahead.”
“Who is this child? An Italian?”
“Yes; of divorced parents, unfortunately.”
“Does she speak English?”
“A little. Very little, I believe.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s seven, only a baby, poor pet, and her name is Francesca. I can visualize her, can’t you, dark-haired, shy, unhappy.”
“Why unhappy?”
“Because her parents are fighting over her. That’s the story, you see. The court granted the mother, who now lives in London, custody, but the father wasn’t having any of that, so what does he do but nip over to London and kidnap the child. Quite illegally, of course. So there has been more action about that, and now he has agreed to give her up. But someone has to come and get her and travel back to England with her. Naturally, a child of seven can’t travel alone.”
“Why doesn’t the mother go?”
“She’s just recovering from an illness, brought on by all this worry. She won’t completely recover until she has her child again. So see what a good deed you will be doing, besides seeing your beloved Eternal City again.”
Kate hadn’t said that it was her beloved Eternal City, but refrained from pointing this out. Indeed, she was beginning to feel pleasantly excited and stimulated. Perhaps she could arrange with Mrs. Dix to go a day earlier than planned, and have one free day in Rome, to wander about sketching the wild flowers growing tenaciously in the centuries-weathered walls of the Colosseum, the gargoyles, with their noses rubbed flat, on old cathedrals, and the hurrying people along the pavements, silhouetted against the ancient splendour.
“Well?” said Mrs. Dix, with her comfortable smile.
“I’d love to go,” Kate said enthusiastically. “But—”
“You’re wondering about your fee? I think you will be quite happy about that. Francesca’s mother is prepared to be generous. Considering the exertion and responsibility, we thought twenty guineas, and expenses paid. You’ll travel first-class both ways, and there’ll be a night in Rome when, of course, you must be comfortable. Comfort’s such a necessity, isn’t it?” Mrs. Dix’s fingers hovered over the chocolate box.
“But, Mrs. Dix—”
“Aren’t you happy about the fee, my dear?”
“Yes, indeed. I think it’s very generous. It makes me feel Francesca must be a very important child.” Or a very difficult one, she thought to herself.
“A bone between two dogs, a poor little creature. Then I take it you agree to go?”
“I’d absolutely love to. But can I see Francesca’s mother first?”
“Rosita? Whatever for?”
“I’d like to talk to her. If the child can’t speak English we may have trouble about the sort of food she likes, and so on.” She refrained from adding that she wanted dearly to see Francesca’s background, to get a complete picture of the situation. Was her mother really ill—or just lazy?
Mrs. Dix hesitated. She said doubtfully, “I shall have to see. I shall have to ring Rosita. But yes, of course, I think it is a very good idea. She would like to see you, too. After all, it is her child whom all this fuss is about. Yes, I think that can be arranged. I’ll let you know.”
But was it Kate’s imagination that now, all at once, Mrs. Dix’s pale blue eyes did not quite meet hers?
Kate didn’t know why she had this curiosity to see Rosita. Was it because the child, Francesca, the unknown little Italian, a bone between two dogs, as Mrs. Dix had called her, wouldn’t seem real until she had talked to her mother? Or was it because she imagined Rosita to be a spoilt, olive-skinned beauty with hypochondriac tendencies, and wanted to see for herself who most needed sympathy, the bereft mother, or the father, obviously emotional and affectionate, who had come to England to swoop up his daughter and fly with her.
It was probably foolish of her to risk getting emotionally involved in the problem of two strangers, but all her life she had never found it possible to stand aside as a spectator of other people’s happiness or unhappiness. She had always plunged in, to share or sympathize. It had not always been rewarding, and William constantly warned her that her quixotic tendencies would finally lead her into some inextricable and insoluble problem. Kate didn’t worry much about that. It made life exciting and unpredictable, and one owed it to people to be interested in them.
As she went down the stairs from Mrs. Dix’s room, Miss Squires poked her head out from her small dark office.
She was a little rotund person with shortsighted brown eyes and an anxious forehead. She had taken a fancy to Kate, and twice had invited her to her prim little cottage on the Sussex downs, where she lived alone, except for a large black and white cat called, unimaginatively, Tom.
“Are you going to do it?” she whispered, as if, all at once, she was nervous of the plump, chocolate meringue woman in the room upstairs.
“Oh, yes. It’s wonderful. Perfectly wonderful.”
The corrugations in Miss Squires’ forehead deepened. “I thought you’d think that. Actually, it was I who suggested giving you the job. You’re reliable, and I thought the poor kid would like someone young and gay.”
“How nice you are!” Kate said sincerely.
Miss Squires, middle-aged and plain, and obviously unused to compliments, flushed.
“I said nothing but the truth. But I hope it will be all right. This trip,” she added.
“Why shouldn’t it be? Oh, you mean Francesca might be unmanageable?”
“That, and her father. We don’t know about him, you see.”
“But if he’s promised to let the child go.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And I’m going to see the mother this afternoon.”
“Oh, well, then—”
As Miss Squires hesitated, Kate laughed. “I do believe you’re one of those old-fashioned people who don’t trust foreigners!”
Miss Squires flushed again and said gruffly, “Not always without reason. Well, take care of yourself. Come down to the cottage for a weekend when you get back.”
Rosita lay on a couch in a high-ceilinged, luxurious room in a house in Egerton Gardens. She was small and dark-haired, with a pointed, sallow face, and eyes that made Kate think fleetingly of Raphael’s “Portrait of a Woman.” It was not so much that they were full of secrets, as that they would like to seem so. No doubt this pose was quite successful with men.
She did not look particularly ill, Kate thought. Her languid hand-shake seemed to be a pose, too.
It was true that she was merely spoilt, probably disliking the thought of the long journey to Rome, or not wanting to risk another encounter with her ex-husband.
There seemed little doubt that he would not be the only man in her life.
Kate looked around the room, noting the couch with its pale green brocade covering, the curtains of rich crimson Italian damask, the gilt-framed mirrors, the cushions and small tables. Was this a good environment for a child of seven—a tense, unhappy and probably maladjusted child? With a hypochondriacal mother lying on a couch extending a languid hand to callers?
She spoke in English that had only the slightest accent.
“Miss Tempest, it is so good of you to come to see me. Mrs. Dix told me how thorough you are. That you want to find out about Francesca before the journey.”
“It’s a long journey,” Kate said.
“You are so right. That’s why I can’t possibly go myself, much as I would like to. But I really can’t stand it. All this upset has made me ill. Antonio behaving like this—”
Her face puckered as if she were going to cry. She hastily controlled herself. If she were not ill, she was extremely nervous, Kate thought, and wondered why. Although the reason seemed obvious enough. A kidnapped daughter, and all the entailed fuss.
“You’ll find Francesca a very good child, Miss Tempest. Even a little—how do you say it—solemn? She won’t give you any trouble. She doesn’t speak much English, but enough to get by. She’s well-grown for her age. Oh, and don’t forget her doll. She must always have her doll or there are fireworks at bedtime. Miss Tempest, you will take good care of her, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“Mrs. Dix said you could be trusted. I wish I could go myself. I might have flown, but Francesca’s crazy, but crazy, about trains and boats, the Channel ferry—ugh!—and the Eiffel Tower.”
“The Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes, she adores going up it. To the very top. I hope you have a head for heights. I haven’t.”
Rosita shuddered, and Kate suddenly wanted to laugh. This was going to be a light-hearted odyssey after all, with a child who adored continental trains, and Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Now she had become a person, and a person of definite character. Suddenly Kate was looking forward to meeting her.
“Why are you smiling?” Rosita asked suspiciously.
“I like the Eiffel Tower, too.”
“Good heavens! How very extraordinary! Then the two of you should get on very well.”
“Indeed we will,” Kate said cheerfully.
She got up to go. The limp hand came out again. But this time, to her surprise, it clung to hers with surprising strength. It was cold and a little damp. It was, strangely enough, like the hand of a person who was afraid…
Mrs. Peebles had to be told, of course. Apart from her grudging but fairly accurate delivery of telephone messages, she liked to know what Kate was up to. Since all Kate’s visitors had to come through the front door and negotiate the stairs to the basement they had to endure the sharp surveillance of Mrs. Peebles, and this was another source of interest for that lady who was frank and uninhibited in her comments.
“That young man last night, Miss Tempest. Bit of a weed, wasn’t he? You can do better than that,” or, “She’d be a flighty piece, that Miss Edwards. Pity the man who gets her.”
Of William, surprisingly enough, she approved, which was rather boring. Kate felt that a few waspish comments from Mrs. Peebles would have made her fly hotly to William’s defence, and perhaps have made her fall in love with him. As it was, they disagreed about almost everything, from the latest play to the colour of William’s tie. William was slow in his movements, and untidy and forgetful, and appallingly frank about either Kate’s work, her appearance, or her behaviour. He treated her, she complained bitterly, as if they had been married for years. But somehow they stuck together. Or rubbed along. And the odd, weedy or more flamboyant types of whom Mrs. Peebles disapproved did not take her out a second time. Perhaps it was this quality of outspokenness that drew Mrs. Peebles and William together. Whatever it was, Kate suddenly felt enormously relieved at the thought of escaping, for a brief time, from both of them.
Mrs. Peebles was sharp, small and spry. At the sound of the front door closing she appeared, like a mouse from the wainscoting, ready to dart back into her hole the moment she had seen all that was necessary.
“Oh, it’s you, Miss Tempest. Only one message. From Mr. Howard. He said to tell you to keep tomorrow night free because he had tickets for the Old Vic.”
“He’ll have to take someone else,” Kate said pleasantly. “I’ll be halfway to Rome.”
“Rome! Whatever do you want to go there for?”
“Just a job. I’ll be away about three days, so if anyone rings—”
“Oh, yes, scribbling away at that telephone when I should be doing my work. Then you’d better ring Mr. Howard.”
“Later,” said Kate, going towards the stairs.
“He’ll be around.”
“Not if I know it. I have to pack and have an early night.”
“Rome!” muttered Mrs. Peebles. “What are they sending you there for? Turning you into a spy?”
“Something like that,” Kate said cheerfully. “Just my cup of tea, don’t you agree?”
The early night was not possible, for, as predicted by Mrs. Peebles, William did come around. He was a tall young man and heavily built. Kate’s one armchair sagged perilously beneath his weight, and although she had a reasonable amount of floor space, his comfortably sprawled legs formed a constant hurdle as she tried to do her packing and cope with his barrage of questions.
“It’s fishy,” he said.
“Don’t be absurd. What’s fishy about bringing a seven-year-old child to England?”
“Why don’t they let you fly?”
“I’ve told you. Because Francesca loves trains and wants to go up the Eiffel Tower. It’s a special treat.”
“She sounds like a spoilt brat.”
“She probably is, but for twenty guineas pin-money I’d travel third-class to Greece and back. And they’re giving me time in Rome to rest. I’ll be dashing madly about, of course. I want to get a good face for my new illustration.”
“For the hero? An Italian?” William said sceptically. William edited a small, highly literary, topical magazine himself, and was often irritatingly facetious about Kate’s endeavours in the romantic field.
“No, for the villain. Someone madly wicked and irresistible. I’ll probably fall in love with him.”
“Don’t do that,” said William mildly, tapping out his pipe and scattering ash indiscriminately.
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t be happy.”
“I suppose you think I’m more likely to be happy with someone like you, cluttering up my flat, criticizing me, wearing foul ties, needing a haircut—my God, you do need a haircut!”
“I’ll go out and get some beer,” said William.
“You won’t come back here with it. Honestly, I haven’t time. Please go so that I can concentrate on what I’m doing.”
“All right. I can see when I’m not wanted. Want me to come to Victoria in the morning?”
“For heaven’s sake, no!”
“Then I’ll meet you when you come back. Send me a postcard or something.”
“I’ll have the child then, and goodness knows what.”
“If the ‘what’ is an Italian count, I can always punch him in the jaw.”
“Don’t be absurd! Only three days and travelling all the time. And with my face—”
“Even with your face. Snub nose, crooked mouth. You’re an ugly, adorable little devil.”
He didn’t take her in his arms in a civilized way, he swooped over her like a great tree whose branches suddenly engulfed her. Tweedy, redolent of stale pipe smoke, strong…
Kate struggled impatiently and ineffectually, then submitted. Really, it was too boring. Why did William have to be so masterly?
FRANCESCA. THE NAME CONJURED up the picture of some dark, thin, flashing-eyed temperamental child, full of charm and animation.
Kate was frankly taken aback when she met the real Francesca. Just as she had been taken aback at the sight of the street and the house where she had been instructed to pick up the child.
Her mind flashed back to Francesca’s mother, lying languidly on a couch in a luxurious room, and to the excellent arrangements made for her own trip to Rome, the good hotel at which she had spent the night, and the ample money she had been allowed.
Francesca, obviously, was a valued and much-desired child, and her parents not lacking in means. Why, therefore, was she living in such a squalid house? Even temporarily.
And why was she in the charge of such a dirty, down-at-the-heel woman as the one who came to the door in response to Kate’s knock?
It was late autumn, but still hot in Rome. Kate had undone her travelling coat, and her hair was ruffled from her nervous gesture of pushing it back when she was agitated. She thought the taxi-driver had brought her to the wrong street. She looked at the row of shabby, paint-peeling houses in astonishment, and hesitated to get out and knock on the door of Number 16.
When the woman, whose quick smile seemed to hide uneasiness, opened the door, she was even more sure she had made a mistake. Yesterday, exhausted by her long journey, and yet determined to make the most of this brief visit to one of her favourite cities, she had rushed from the Colosseum to Hadrian’s Arch, and then to the Borghese Gardens, and late in the evening had done a tour of the fountains. Tiredness and excitement had given her a queer feeling of being transported to the past, to the days of hungry lions turned on living human flesh, the crack of the slave-driver’s whip, and the cries of a rabble demanding a victim. This morning, when her journey to get Francesca had taken her so near to the Appian Way, the mood had persisted, and she was temporarily haunted by a heavy sense of decay beneath the splendour, and of death.
But the woman in the shabby little house, strangely enough, was expecting her. Apparently she had come to the right place.
She called in a shrill high voice, “Frances-s-ca!” and took Kate inside, although she said in halting English that the child was ready, and had been for the last hour.
The dark little room in which Kate stood smelt strongly of garlic. She wondered hazily, with yesterday’s tiredness still hanging over her, whether this woman was now married to Francesca’s father—but surely the elegant and expensive Rosita had never come from surroundings like this.
The woman was explaining something in a gabble of Italian when the little girl came slowly in.
Kate had another surprise, for this stout, heavy child with the heavy-lidded sullen eyes, was utterly unlike the Francesca she had imagined. It seemed, however, that within the fat little chest of the sulky and silent child there must dwell the phantom of Kate’s imagined Francesca, for she had chosen to wear, of all things, a white organdie dress, elaborately starched and ironed, and in her straight dark hair was a huge stiff bow.
She was a little girl going to a party where, despite all her parents’ attempts to make her decorative and appealing, she would remain clumsy, silent and hurt.
She was pathetic.
Kate realized it at once, and went quickly towards her.
“Francesca! Hullo!” Her voice was warm and gay. “My name is Kate, and I’m taking you to your mother. But first, of course, we have the train journey, and a visit to the Eiffel Tower, and lots of good things to eat.”
The child surveyed her stolidly and mutely. The woman shook her head. “She does not understand. She speaks very little English. And you, signorina?”
“No Italian,” said Kate, laughing. “Never mind, we’ll get along. Is she ready? Does she have to say goodbye to anyone?”
“No, no. That is all done. Her papa yesterday when he brought her here. I was her nurse, you understand? He did not wish the last farewells.”
She made the motion of wiping her eyes, and Kate had a moment of sympathy for the absent emotional father who perhaps was the more deserving parent. For it was a little difficult to imagine this child fitting into the London drawing-room of her attractive mother.
She felt uneasy and a little sad, and had to remind herself that none of this was her business before she could take the child’s soft broad hand and say, “Then we’re all ready, Francesca. Your bags?”
“Just this small one,” said the woman, handing Kate a rather battered and cheap-looking suitcase. Then she swooped over the child to give her a hug. The child stiffened, and backed away. The woman hugged her, nevertheless, then had to straighten the preposterous blue bow and the unsuitable dress.
She shrugged her shoulders. “She would wear that dress, signorina. I know it is foolish, but when Francesca insists…” She shrugged her shoulders again.
Looking at the stubborn, unmoved face, Kate could very well understand what she meant. There might, she feared, be more than one silent battle before the two of them reached London. This probably explained the generous fee she was to receive. Well, never mind, she would earn it…
“The taxi’s waiting,” she said. “We’d better go. Thank you, signora…”
The child walked quite placidly beside her. She hadn’t spoken a word.