The Seven Sisters (28 page)

So now they head for Hades. Easy it is to enter her realms.
Facilis descensus Averno
, and easy indeed they find it, even though they are not armed with a golden bough. It is even nearer than Valeria had thought it would be. As she drives along a ravine of pink-barked umbrella conifers, she readjusts her sense of the scale of her map. There are ramshackle rabbit-hutch houses and barking dogs on one side of the steep ravine, and grander mansions on the other. She drives past a bespectacled red-haired Harry Potter-type boy punctiliously throwing plastic bags full of rubbish into a green-mantled ditch, and a man tinkering with a motorbike, and a large hand-written cardboard sign saying
Attenti al Cane
. There are no tourist coaches to be seen, but the signposts assure them that they are approaching the lake, and that must surely be Lake Avernus itself, lying before them and glinting blue and yellow in the sunlight at the end of the gauntlet. A crying of birds, a great flapping and mewing and screaming, announces their arrival.

This lake is by no means birdless. That is the first thing they notice. The accepted etymology of the word Avernus must be utterly false, or climactic conditions have changed beyond recognition since Virgil last came this way. They also notice, even before Valeria has parked their minibus on the shore, that it is very small. It is far smaller than any respectable English lake. It is more of a pond, really. And it is not dark, or gloomy, or in any other way sinister. It is a small and smiling lake, bright blue beneath a cloudless azure sky, and bordered by rich beds of tall tawny-gold and blanched feathery reeds. Green tree-fringed slopes protectively enclose it. A charming and modest
ristorante
juts out over the water: it is a little green wooden shed, of great simplicity. It calls itself
Calcetto del Lago
. It is a timeless little hostelry.

They are all hungry, but Mrs Jerrold insists that, before they embark on their lunch, they must seek the standing stone with the Virgilian inscription. This does not take very long, for it is conveniently placed on the lakeshore, less than two minutes’ walk away from the restaurant. They stand there, solemnly, and read the message on the oblong plinth.

The message does not make any sense to them at all, on this late spring day at the beginning of the third millennium. Virgil’s description no longer holds true. This is not a black lake surrounded by a gloomy forest, where the air breathes forth death, as he claimed. It is a blue lake, surrounded by green trees and yellow reeds, and birds are flocking everywhere about them. It breathes forth life, not death. They do not feel the need to stand aside. They feel at liberty to go in and order some lunch.

Their floral paper tablecloth wishes them a Good Appetite in many living languages, though not in Latin. They settle themselves in happy and hungry anticipation. The waters of the lake slop gently beneath their table. They can see it gleaming through the cracks
between the rough wooden floorboards. Grey and white gulls swoop above them and little black coots and small pink-breasted ducks bob about below them. Sparrows perch and sway in the reed stalks, and cormorants on the distant stumps of drowned trees spread their wings to dry. It is an enchanted spot, but not in the ways they had expected. They order water, and red wine, which arrives in bottles of black glass, bearing the simple label
Vino Rosso
. They raise their glasses to one another, to Valeria, to the success of their expedition. This is a charmed and blessed place.

Most of them order the fish soup, for they have seen others at other tables enjoying the piled plates of mussels and tomatoes and parsley. Fat cloves of garlic lurk in the thick brew, and from the generous mounds of shellfish rear great pink mottled and suckered arms of octopus, as thick as the snakes that wrestled with Laocoon before the fall of Troy. Valeria reminds them of the urchin boys of Tunisia, and describes their octopus-catching technique, which is of a classical ferocity: they dive, spear, then plunge their teeth into the poor beast and bite out its brain. This is the best way to kill an octopus, the boys swear. In such a manner, centuries ago, died the squids and octopus grilled on the seashore and devoured by Aeneas and his wanderers. And so they die still upon the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Anaïs and Sally shudder delicately and avert their eyes from these creatures of the deep, and plunge their forks into their chaste mushroom risotto.

Valeria is relieved to have brought her flock to this safe landing stage, and is happy for them to linger over their luncheon. It is nearly closing time for the Sibyl’s Cave, but they can go to see her in the morning. She has been there a long time, and she will wait.

The travellers are in expansive, storytelling mode. Ida Jerrold, who does not often speak of Eugene, is moved to describe the time he had his wallet stolen in Barcelona. He is present to her eyes as she speaks, and she makes her friends see him too – the affable, generous, friendly old buffer, wiping the pink ice cream from his jacket, telling the jostling pressing girls not to worry, it wasn’t their fault, it didn’t matter, it was only an old jacket, apologizing to them for their
having spilled the ice cream on him, as though it had been his fault, not theirs – then discovering, twenty minutes later, that in their bumbling efforts to dab at him with paper tissues they had neatly extracted his wallet, his money, his passport, his driving licence … And he had continued to apologize for them, even after the event: they must have needed the money badly, he shouldn’t have exposed them to temptation, he shouldn’t have been such a fool as to encourage them to steal from him, there were too many tourists in Spain, it wasn’t like that in the days of George Orwell, it was all the fault of General Franco … Oh innocent Eugene!

Nor should he have trusted that French philosopher at the wheel. French intellectuals have a bad driving record. They drive too fast, too showily, in powerful cars that they cannot control. Eugene should never have accepted that lift to Nîmes. He should have known better. They had careered into a poplar tree at ninety miles an hour and both had died instantly. Or so it was said in the police report.

Mrs Jerrold’s eyes are sharp and bright but their lids are red and wrinkled. Sometimes she looks more like a tortoise than a bird.

Cynthia Barclay confesses that Mr Barclay has also on several occasions trusted those who were not trustworthy, but he tended to do this not because he was gullible, but because he liked the sense of danger. He had a penchant for bad boys and the thrills of the gutter. And so far, says Cynthia, nothing very terrible has happened to him. I think he doesn’t take very
big
risks, says Cynthia, a little anxiously, and with her fingers crossed upon the tomato-spattered paper tablecloth.

Anaïs is moved to tell her own tale of trust and risk. She says she has not thought of this small incident for some years, but suddenly realizes, as she speaks, that it had done much to shape her life. For, says Anaïs, I have been a risk-taker. And this was one of the first risks of my life.

‘I was on a train,’ says Anaïs Al-Sayyab. ‘A night train, between Paris and Milan. I was eighteen years old. Don’t ask me how or why I got to be on this train. I can’t remember. It must have been my first time in Europe. My Grand Tour. I was travelling alone. God knows how I got my parents to let me loose and finance this trip, but they
did. They can’t have known how risky it could be. Or could have been. I was in this first-class compartment – not a couchette or a wagon-lit, just an ordinary compartment, but I think it was first-class. I think it must have been first-class because I remember that the seats were quite large and plush. That was the cheaper option, in those days – you took a first-class seat for the night journey. It was cheaper than a couchette but not quite as squalid as third-class. It was romantic. And there was this young woman in my compartment. She was crying. She said her purse had been stolen and all her money was gone. She said she was an opera singer and that she was on her way to sing at La Scala. And how would she get from the station? What was she to do? So I said I would lend her some money. I think it was 10,000 francs I offered. I don’t know why, but that’s the sum that sticks in my mind. Of course francs were different then. Different-size notes, different value, altogether different. Anyway, the point of this story, darlings, is that I didn’t know this woman from Eve, and had no reason to believe her, and had hardly any money left myself. But I did believe her. I
chose
to believe her. And she brightened up no end, and took my money, and gave me her name and address, and I gave her the name of the cheap little hotel where I was to stay in Milan.

‘I’d never been to Milan in my life. The hotel had been booked for me by a student friend in Paris who swore by it. I remember its name. It was called the
Hotel Commercio e Speranza
. The Hotel of Commerce and of Hope. And this woman said she would bring me back the 10,000 francs as soon as she could. I think she said she had a rehearsal that morning and would lose her job if she was late. The other people in the compartment were pretending this wasn’t happening. They hated it. They disapproved of me even more than they disapproved of her. They muttered and frowned and were of little faith. And I remember thinking, I don’t want to be like them, I want to be like me, even if I’m wrong and lose my last penny to a stranger.’

Anaïs pauses, for effect. Mrs Jerrold murmurs that Eugene would have backed her, had he been there.

‘So what happened?’ asks Julia, as the pause lengthens.

‘We said goodbye to one another at dawn on Milan station, and
she disappeared into the crowd. And I wondered if I would ever see her again. For two days, I heard nothing, and I began to realize how unlikely her whole story had been. I mean, the Scala, darlings? It was about the only building in Milan I’d ever heard of! An obvious lie! So I began to think I’d been a complete idiot, and to wonder if I’d ever believe anyone again. Oddly enough, I wasn’t very worried, though I suppose I should have been. And then she turned up. With 10,000 francs in a brown envelope, and a ticket for
Tosca
. And do you know what, darlings? I never even bothered to go to
Tosca
. I didn’t like opera, in those days. Well, I don’t go for it much now, but I ought to have gone to see the show. I suppose she was in the chorus. If
Tosca
has a chorus. Does
Tosca
have a chorus? I’ve forgotten her name. I can remember the name of the hotel, but I can’t remember hers. I don’t suppose she became a great star, or her name would have come back to me, wouldn’t it? Perhaps she was an understudy. She was wearing a dark green velvet coat and had a hat with a feather in it. Perhaps it was the feather that did it. I had faith in that feather.’

‘You should have gone to
Tosca
,’ says Mrs Jerrold. ‘It would have been correct.’

‘Yes, I know that now,’ says Anaïs. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t bother. But when you’re young, you don’t bother, do you? You don’t do the obvious, do you? Or the correct? You think there’s plenty of time for more adventures, and you don’t bother.’

It is Julia’s turn next. She tells of a man she met on a train on the East Coast line from London to Scotland, and the wild night she spent with him in strait-laced Pitlochry. He had been a manufacturer of egg boxes, and very sexy. Before going into action he had tied her up with hotel towels and read to her from an exciting naughty book he had bought in Paris about twin sisters in a convent and a visiting friar. Julia says she has been looking for this book for years, but has never found a copy. She thinks it was published by the Olympia Press. She should have made a note of the title, but she was too excited at the time. Do any of them recognize the story line? No? Well, she will just have to keep searching. She’s forgotten the man’s name too. She thinks he said he was called Arnold, but if he had any sense he was lying, so that’s not much to go on.

Sally the Virgin, not to be outdone, introduces an anecdote about a meeting with a drunken BBC newscaster in a snowstorm in the station buffet at Manningtree. He had told her the secrets of the great. She has never told anybody this before, but according to this old roué the actress who plays Katie Kettlewell in
The Merry Widows
is the daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh – and when you think about it, when you look at them both, it might be true. What a resemblance!

Their stories intertwine and wreathe and weave themselves together.

Candida listens, and thinks she has not taken enough risks in her life. She has been too cautious, always. Even Sally has at times been braver than she. Is it too late, now? Yes, it is probably too late.

More coffee is ordered, and Candida boldly agrees to try one of Anaïs’s little cheroots. Only Valeria notices that a small cloud the size of a large umbrella is now floating on the horizon. She also spots a dead fish, lying belly-up in the lake beneath them. The wind is changing. Perhaps it is time to think of moving. She feels she could do with a siesta, and hopes they may all fancy one too. As she is summoning her forces to rouse them, her mobile phone bleeps and warns her that she has a message. She does not wish to disturb the gathering with it so she goes out to the little hut by the lake that serves as a lavatory, and discovers that the head office of Parnassus Tours in Milan is asking her to contact it. Valeria does not like this: such messages are usually bad news. But she obeys, and is even less happy to find that no less than three of her clients seem to have received messages from home. She is given numbers that they are requested to ring. Valeria is surprised: who can want to contact her charges? At their age, they are so thinly connected to life. That is why they are here, with her. Who can be recalling them, and to what? They are past the age for good news.

She combs her flourishing black curls in front of the tiny cracked silver sliver of mirror, and salves her dark lips, then steps out of the shack to take stock. She stands for a while by the lakeshore, irresolute, listening to the whispering of the reeds. The summonses are for Mrs Barclay, for Julia Jordan, and for Candida Wilton. Out there, somebody is asking for them. The harmony of the little group will
be shattered. Shall she suppress the messages for a while? They have bonded so well. She does not want to disrupt them.