LITMIR.BIZ

      3

      ‘William, come to Mother, darling, and let me give you a kiss.’ Champion’s failed marriage was all there in that imperious command. An elegant French wife who persisted in calling their small son Billy ‘William’, and who gave him kisses, instead of asking for them.

      She gave Billy the promised kiss, pulled a dead leaf off the front of his sweater and then waited until he’d left the room. She turned to me. ‘All I ask is that you don’t remind me how keen I was to marry him.’ She poured fresh hot water into the teapot, and then put the copper kettle back on the hob. It hummed gently with the heat from the blazing logs. There was a stainless-steel kitchen only a few steps along the carpeted corridor, but she had made the tea and toasted the bread on the open fire in the lounge. From here we could look out of the window and watch the wind ruffling the river and whipping the bare trees into a mad dance. The black Welsh hills wore a halo of gold that promised respite from the dark daylight.

      ‘I didn’t come down here to talk about Steve, or about the divorce,’ I protested.

      She poured tea for me and gave me the last slice of toast. She spiked a fresh piece of bread on to the toasting fork. ‘Then it’s surprising how many times we seem to find ourselves talking about it.’ She turned to the hearth and busied herself with finding a hot place in the fire. ‘Steve has this wonderful knack,’ she continued bitterly, ‘this wonderful knack of falling on his feet … like a kitten.’

      It was an affectionate analogy. The rejection had hurt, I could see that. I buttered my toast and put some of Caterina’s homemade jam on it. It was delicious and I ate it without speaking.

      ‘This damned house,’ she continued. ‘My sister wrote to tell me how much it would be worth if it was in France. But it’s not in France, it’s in Wales! And it costs a fortune to keep the slates on, and mend the boiler, and cut the lawn … and heating oil has nearly doubled in price just since the last delivery.’ The bread started to smoke. She cursed softly, broke the scorched piece off and threw it away into the flames before toasting the other side. Caterina could cope with things. That was her misfortune in a way. She wanted to be cosseted and looked after but she was ten times more efficient than any of the men who wanted to do it. ‘So Steve gets rid of the house, burdens me with all its problems and expenses, and everyone tells me to be grateful.’

      ‘You’re not exactly poor, Caty,’ I said.

      She looked at me for a moment, deciding if I knew her well enough to make such a personal remark. But I did know her well enough.

      ‘You know what the arrangement was … If he’s going down to the river, I’ll kill the little devil.’

      I followed her gaze to where her small son was dragging a toy cart across the lawn. As if sensing that he was being watched, he changed direction and started back up towards the smart new sauna again. Caterina went back to her tea and toast. ‘He’s changed a lot, you know … I swore to my father that Steve had come through the war unmarred, but it took ten years to take effect. And then the last few years have been hell … hell for both of us, and little William, too!’

      ‘He had a lousy war, Caty,’ I said.

      ‘So did a lot of other people.’

      I remembered the day in 1944 when I went into Nice prison just a few hours after the Gestapo had moved out. I was with the forward elements of the American Army. There was another Englishman with me. We asked each other no personal questions. He was wearing Intelligence Corps badges, but he knew Steve Champion all right, and he was probably sent directly from London, as I had been. The Germans had destroyed all the documents. I suppose London were sure they would have done, or they would have sent someone more important than me to chase it.

      ‘Look at that,’ said this other officer, when we were kicking the cupboards of the interrogation room apart. It was a shabby room, with a smell of ether and carbolic, a framed engraving of Salzburg and some broken wine bottles in the fireplace. He pointed to a bottle on the shelf. ‘Steve Champion’s fingertips,’ said my companion. He took the bottle and swirled the brine around so that through the mottled glass I saw four shrunken pieces of dark brown organic matter that jostled together as they were pushed to the centre of the whirling fluid. I looked again and found that they were four olives, just as the label said, but for a moment I had shivered. And each time I remembered it I shivered again. ‘You’re right, Caty,’ I said. ‘A lot of people had it much worse.’

      Overhead the clouds were low and puffy, like a dirty quilt pulled over the face of the countryside.

      ‘There was all that “we Celts” nonsense. I began to believe that Wales was little different from Brittany. Little did I know … My God!’ said Caterina. She was still watching Billy in the garden. ‘The banks of the river are so muddy this last week … the rain … one of the village boys was drowned there this time last year.’ She looked up at the carved wooden crucifix on the wall above the TV set.

      ‘He’ll be all right.’ I said it to calm her.

      ‘He never dares to go down as far as the paddock when Steve visits. But he just defies me!’

      ‘Do you want me to get him?’

      She gave a despairing smile. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She tugged at her hair. I was a ‘friend of Steve’s’: she didn’t want me to get any kind of response from Billy that she had failed to get. ‘We’ll watch from here,’ she said.

      ‘That’s probably best,’ I agreed.

      ‘You English!’ she said. I got the full blast of her anxiety. ‘You’re probably a fully paid-up subscriber to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.’

      ‘That wouldn’t necessarily make me a child-beater,’ I said. ‘And it’s the Royal Society.’

      ‘No one can live with a man who is racked with guilt. And Steve is racked with guilt.’

      ‘You’re

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