Those Who Walk Away (5 page)

“If you leave tomorrow, would you give me a ring at the hotel first? If I’m not in, leave a message. ‘Everything’s all right.’ Just that. Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Or whenever you leave, ring me first.” Inez drank the last of her coffee.

“What do you like about Ed?” Ray asked, feeling naive, but unable to keep the question back.

Inez smiled and looked suddenly younger. “A certain courage that he has. He doesn’t give a damn about the world, what the world thinks. He has conviction.”

“And you like that? Just that?”

“He has a certain strength, and women like strength. I don’t suppose you understand that. Or not yet.”

Ray could understand it, if the man looked like Errol Flynn, flaunting convention, even flaunting the law, but not someone as ugly as Coleman; so this comment left him as baffled as Inez thought he was. “He doesn’t look a bit like Peggy, do you think? Or Peggy didn’t look at all like him—Not even the colouring.”

“No, not from the pictures I’ve seen. She is like her mother.”

Ray had seen a photograph of her mother. Her mother had died at thirty, and the picture of her in Coleman’s apartment in Rome—Peggy had had none in Mallorca—had shown a striking brunette with a faintly smiling mouth like Peggy’s, intense eyes, like Peggy but more arrogant than Peggy’s dreaming face.

“I must go now,” Inez said, getting up. “I told Edward I was going out to buy shoes. I shall just tell him I couldn’t find any.”

Ray, not finding a waiter, left the money on the table, “I’ll walk with you.”

“Not all the way. I don’t want Edward to see you.”

They walked towards the end of the square.

“Not that I will be with Edward for ever,” Inez said, lifting her head higher. She had a light and graceful step. “But he is very nice when one is lonely, and I was lonely—six months ago. Edward is a man without complications for a woman. He doesn’t say, ‘Stay for ever,’ and when he says, ‘I love you,’ which is almost never, I don’t believe it anyway. But he is a nice companion—”

She broke off, and Ray felt she had been going to say, “in bed.” It was beyond him.

“—and a nice escort,” she finished, the wind carrying away the words so Ray barely heard them.

Yes, he was an escort, Ray supposed. Women liked escorts.

“You mustn’t come any farther,” Inez said, stopping.

They were now in the street of the Bauer-Gruenwald. Ray would have walked into the hotel with her, but he realized she would bear the brunt if Coleman saw them. “How long are you staying?”

“I really don’t know. Five days?” She shrugged. “You must promise me you will leave tomorrow. Edward is angry that you are in Venice and staying here will accomplish nothing, believe me.”

“Then I’d like to see him today.”

Inez shook her head. “This afternoon we go to the Ca’ Rezzonica, and tonight all of us go to the Lido for dinner. I am quite sure Edward would not see you anyway today. Don’t let him humiliate you like this.” The sunlight made her eyes a fiery yellow-green.

“All right. I’ll think about it.” Because he was keeping her, Ray raised a hand and turned away abruptly.

He would lunch at the pensione, he thought, but before lunch, whether Inez was present or not in Coleman’s hotel room, he would try to arrange a meeting with him. And after lunch, he would write to Bruce, tell him about Guardini in Rome, and give Bruce a date when he would be in Paris at the Hôtel Pont Royal.

The girl at the desk in the Seguso handed Ray a message with his key. It said:

Mr Coleman telephoned at 11.00. Would you dine at Lido tonight. Telephone Hotel Bauer-Gruenwald.

Coleman proposing another bullying evening. Ray approached the desk for the Bauer-Gruenwald number, as there was a booth downstairs, but two elderly English ladies were ahead of him, inquiring about the best way to go to the Ca’ d’Oro. The girl told them, then one said:

“We thought of going by gondola. Can you tell us where to find a gondola? Or can you have one fetch us here?”

“Oh, yes, madame, we can arrange for a gondola to come here. At what time?”

Ray stared at a tall ticking clock in the hall, at its brass pendulum behind the etched glass. He should take his coat today and find a place that did reweaving, he thought. At last, he put in his request to the girl, and she dialled the Bauer-Gruenwald number.

Ray took it in one of the two booths. Coleman answered.

“Ah, Ray. We’re having dinner tonight at the Excelsior on the Lido. Would you like to join us?”

“I’d be glad to come over, if I can see you alone for a while after dinner,” he said, as politely as ever.

“Sure we can,” Coleman said affably. “Okay then, eight-thirty or nine at the Excelsior?”

“I’ll join you after dinner, thanks very much. Good-bye,” And he hung up.

5

R
ay thought that eleven would be early enough to arrive at the Excelsior. At ten, he had a toasted cheese sandwich with a glass of wine, standing at a counter, then walked to the pier on the Riva degli Schiavoni from which the boats to the Lido departed. There was a quarter of an hour wait. Grey-blue clouds passed slowly over the stars, and Ray thought it might rain. A middle-aged couple also waiting for the boat were having a depressing quarrel about rent money which the husband had lent or given to the wife’s brother. The wife was saying that her brother was worthless. The husband shrugged miserably, looked into space, and answered his wife in the terse language of ancient matrimonial warfare:

“He paid it back before.”

“Half of it. Don’t you remember?” she asked.

“It’s done now.”

“It’s gone now. We’ll never see it again.”

The husband lifted a string-tied cardboard box and shuffled to the gate as the boat pulled in, as if he would love to creep away from his wife, on to the boat, anywhere, but the wife was right behind him.

He and Peggy had never quarrelled, Ray thought. Perhaps that had been part of what was wrong. Ray considered himself—because he had been told it often enough by other people—easy-going, which was on the helpful side in a marriage, he supposed. On the other hand, Peggy had never been demanding, had never held out for anything he thought unreasonable, so there had simply been no occasion for quarrelling. He hadn’t particularly wanted to spend a whole year in Mallorca, but Peggy had (
some place very primitive and simple, simpler even than southern Italy
), so Ray had decided to look on it as a long honeymoon, and had decided he could spend the time well by painting and reading, especially reading art history books, so he had agreed. And the first four months, she had been amused and happy. Ray could even say the first eight months. The novelty of the rather barefoot life had worn off by then, but by then she had been painting, fewer hours a day but more constructively, he had thought. His thoughts trailed off, and he was as lost as ever for a reason for her dying. Coleman now had her paintings, had corralled every one, and also all her drawings, and had shipped them to Rome, not asking Ray if he might like one. Ray reproached himself for having let it happen. For this, Ray felt extremely bitter against Coleman, so bitter he tried to forget it whenever he recalled it.

He looked now at the Lido lights, a long low streak ahead. He thought of Mann’s
Death in Venice
, of the hot, festering sun beating on that strip of land. Passion and disease. Well, this was not at all the weather, there was no disease, and the passion was only in Coleman.

Ray followed the now silent couple on to what seemed a colder dock at Piazza Santa Maria Elisabetta, set his teeth against the wind, and went to ask the man in the ticket-booth in which direction the Excelsior lay. It was a ten-minute walk across the island on the wide Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta, then a right turn at the Lungomare Marconi. The dark, glass-fronted houses to right and left, built for summer residence, looked desolate. A few bar-caffés were open. The Excelsior was a large, lighted place, and one could tell at a glance that it would be well heated. Ray turned the collar of his trench-coat down, smoothed his hair, and went into the dining-room.

“Thank you, I’m looking for some people,” he said to the head waiter who had come up to him. There were not many people in the dining-room, and Ray saw Coleman’s table almost at once. He grimaced slightly when he saw that the Smith-Peters were here, too. Ray was glad to see that they had been served coffee.

Inez lifted a hand to him and smiled.

“Hello, Ray!” said Coleman.

“Good evening,” Ray said to everyone. Antonio was also present, and tonight his smile looked more genuine.

“How nice of you to come all the way out here,” said Mrs Smith-Peters to Ray.

Ray sat down. “It’s a pleasant trip.”

“That’s why we came,” Coleman said, a little pink in the face. “I can’t say the food would bring anybody. I’ve had better in lots of trattorias.”

“Sh-h! After all, Mrs Perry is inviting us,” Inez said to Coleman, frowning.

A slender, sixtyish woman in a blue evening dress, neck and wrists glittering with jewellery, an Edith Sitwell type, was approaching, and Ray then noticed that there was an extra setting, a full cup of coffee, where she had been. Ray got to his feet.

“Mrs Perry,” Inez said to her, “this is Mr Garrett, Mr Coleman’s son-in-law.”

“Former son-in-law,” Coleman corrected. He had not stood.

Mrs Perry shot him a worried look, but the expression on her face was permanently worried, Ray saw.

“How do you do, Mrs Perry?” Ray said.

“How do you do?” Mrs Perry sat down. She smiled and lifted her head, like someone under strain, and said, “Well! Shall we all have a brandy? What kind does everyone prefer? Or does anyone care for something else?” Tendons stood out under her chin, slack under delicately wrinkled skin. She wore mauve shadow on her thin eyelids.

“I would like a brandy, thank you,” said Antonio.

“Courvoisier, please,” said Ray, seeing that orders from her guests would please her.

When the brandy arrived, Mrs Perry engaged Ray in conversation about his art gallery. She had been told by Inez, she said, that he was starting one in New York. She asked Ray its name.

“That’s not decided yet. Just the Garrett Gallery, unless we think of something better. I’m hoping to get space on Third Avenue.”

Mrs Perry said she loved paintings, and had two Gauguins and one Soutine at home. Her home was in Washington. She seemed very sad, and Ray felt automatically sorry for her, perhaps because he did not know what had made her sad, and if he had known, could have done nothing about it. He also realized he would never know, because he would not ever know Mrs Perry long enough to find out. Ray watched Coleman for signs of departure. Inez had finished her brandy. The Smith-Peters were gathering themselves.

“We were told there was a boat back at midnight, and I think Francis and I ought to catch it,” Mrs Smith-Peters said. “It’s been so lovely, Ethel.”

“Must you go? We can always hire a motoscafo,” said Mrs Perry.

But they were determined, and Inez too was saying to Antonio in Italian that they should go back with the Smith-Peters, because Edward wanted to talk with Signor Garrett. Antonio obligingly stood up.

“Edward, we can leave the
Marianna
for you, and you can bring Ray back with Corrado,” Inez said to Coleman.

Coleman started to protest at this arrangement, then said, “Oh, well, if the twelve is the last vaporetto—”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Ray said, but he wasn’t really sure.

“It might be.” Inez turned to Ray and smiled. “We engaged a motor-boat for four days. Maybe you will take some rides with us if you are here.”

Ray nodded and smiled at her. He supposed Corrado was the pilot.

Inez, Antonio, and the Smith-Peters left. Mrs Perry lit another cigarette—she smoked only half before putting her cigarettes out—then said that since they wanted to talk, she she would say good night. Coleman stood up now, as Ray did, and they both thanked her, and Coleman said carelessly, as if he did not mean it, that he would give her a ring tomorrow. Coleman walked with her across the dining-room, a clumsy and reluctant escort of the woman who was taller than he. He turned back. Coleman was going to talk to him. Or at least they were alone now.

“Another brandy? Coffee?” Coleman sat down.

“No, thanks.”

“Well, I will.” Coleman signalled to the waiter, and ordered another brandy.

Ray picked up the water pitcher and poured some into a clean glass. Neither said anything until the waiter had brought the brandy and departed.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Ray began, “because I feel you don’t quite understand still that—” He hesitated only a second, but Coleman interrupted quickly.

“Don’t understand what? I understand you weren’t the right man for my daughter.”

Ray’s cheeks grew warm. “That may be. Perhaps he exists somewhere.”

“Don’t get fancy with me, Ray. I’m talking plain American.”

“So am I, I think.”

“All this ‘perhaps,’ ‘I think.’ You didn’t know how to handle her. You didn’t know, until it was too late, that she was at the very end.” Coleman looked directly into Ray’s eyes, his round, bald head tilted.

“I knew she was painting less. She didn’t act depressed. We still saw people quite often and Peggy enjoyed seeing them. We’d given a dinner party two nights before.”

“And what kind of people?” Coleman asked rhetorically.

“You met a few. They aren’t scum. The point is, she wasn’t depressed. She was dreamy, yes, and she talked a lot about orchards full of fruit, birds with coloured feathers.” Ray moistened his lips. He felt he was talking badly, that it sounded as if he were trying to describe a film he had seen by starting the story in the middle. “The point I want to make is that she never mentioned suicide and never talked as if she were depressed. How was a person to know? She actually looked happy. And I told you in Xanuanx that I went to see a psychiatrist in Palma. He could have seen her a few times—in fact for as long as Peggy wanted. She didn’t care to see him.”

“You must’ve suspected something was very much the matter or you wouldn’t’ve looked up a psychiatrist.”