“That’s what all cat fanciers say,” said Frank. “But it’s hard for someone like me to understand. That isn’t the way you feel about people, is it? Do you like people who just take what you can give them and go off?”
Angelo came out of the house with a shopping basket over one arm and a straw sun hat on his head. He took all his orders from Eve now. There had never been a discussion about it; she was the woman of the house, the mother.
“It would be interesting to see what role the cat fancier is trying on,” said Walter, looking at Angelo. “He says he likes cats because they don’t like anyone. I suppose he is proving he is so tough he can exist without affection.”
“I couldn’t,” said Frank, “and I wouldn’t want to try. Without Eve and the children and …”
The children jumped to their feet and begged to go to market with Angelo. They snatched at his basket, arguing whose turn it was to carry it. How Angelo strutted; how he grew tall! All this affection, this admiration, Walter thought — it was as bad as overtipping.
The family stayed two weeks, and then a fortnight more. They were brown, drowsy, and seemed reluctant to face England and the poultry farm. They were enjoying their holiday, no doubt about that. On the beach they met a professor of history who spoke a little English, and a retired consul who asked them to tea. They saw, without knowing what to make of it, a monument to Queen Victoria. They heard people being comic and noisy, they bought rice-and-spinach pies to eat on the beach, and ice cream that melted down to powder and water. They ate melons and peaches nearly as good as the fruit back in Africa, and they buried the peach stones and the melon skins and the ice-cream sticks and the greasy piecrusts in the sand. They drove along the coast as far as Cannes, in the Parma-violet Citroën Frank had hired, sight unseen, from South Africa. He had bought his new farm in the same way. Walter was glad his friends were away, for he was ashamed to be seen in the Citroën. It was a vulgar automobile. He told Frank that the DS was considered exclusively the property of concierges’ sons and successful grocers.
“I’m not even that,” said Frank.
The seats were covered with plastic leopard skin. At every stop, the car gave a great sigh and sank down like a tired dog. The children loved this. They sat behind, with Eve between them, telling riddles, singing songs. They quarreled across their mother as if she were a hedge. “Silly old sow,” Walter heard his nephew saying. He realized the boy was saying it to Eve. His back stiffened. Eve saw.
“Why shouldn’t he say it, if he wants to?” she said. “He doesn’t know what it means. Do you want me to treat them the way we were treated? Would you like to see some of that?”
“No,” said Walter, after a moment.
“Well, then. I’m trying another way.”
Walter said, “I don’t believe one person should call another a silly old sow.” He spoke without turning his head. The children were still as mice; then the little boy began to cry.
They drove home in the dark. The children slept, and the three adults looked at neon lights and floodlit palm trees without saying much. Suddenly Eve said, “Oh, I like that.” Walter looked at a casino; at the sea; at the Anglican church, which was thirty years old, Riviera Gothic. “That church,” she said. “It’s like home.”
“Alas,” said Walter.
“Terrible, is it?” said his brother-in-law, who had not bothered to look.
“I think I’ll make up my own mind,” said Eve. So she had sat, with her face set, when Walter tried to introduce her to some of his friends and his ideas, fifteen years before. She had never wanted to be anything except a mother, and she would protect anyone who wanted protection — Walter as well. But nothing would persuade her that a church was ugly if it was familiar and reminded her of home.
Walter did not desire Eve’s protection. He did not think he could use anything Eve had to give. Sometimes she persuaded him to come to the beach with the family, and then she fussed over him, seeing that the parasol was fixed so that he had full shade. She knew he did not expose his arms and legs to the sun, because of his scars. She made him sit on an arrangement of damp, sandy towels and said, “There. Isn’t that nice?” In an odd way, she still admired him; he saw it, and was pleased. He answered her remarks (about Riviera people, French politics, the Mediterranean climate, and the cost of things) with his habitual social fluency, but it was the children who took his attention. He marveled at their singleness of purpose, the energy they could release just in tearing off their clothes. They flung into the water and had to be bullied out. Mauve-lipped, chattering, they said, “What’s there to do now?”
“Have you ever wanted to be a ballet dancer?” Walter asked his niece.
“No,” she said, with scorn.
One day Angelo spent the morning with them. Frank had taken the car to the Citroën garage and looked forward to half a day with the mechanics there. In a curious way Angelo seemed to replace the children’s father. He organized a series of canals and waterways and kept the children digging for more than an hour. Walter noticed that Angelo was doing none of the work himself. He stood over them with his hand on one hip — peacock lad, cock of the walk. When an Italian marries, you see this change, Walter thought. He treats his servants that way, and then his wife. He said, “Angelo, put your clothes on and run up to the bar and bring us all some cold drinks.”
“Oh, Uncle Walter,” his niece complained.
“I’ll go, Uncle Walter,” said the little boy.
“Angelo will go,” Walter said. “It’s his job.”
Angelo pulled his shorts over his bathing suit and stood, waiting for Walter to drop money in his hand.
“Don’t walk about naked,” Walter said. “Put on your shirt.”
Eve was knitting furiously. She sat with her cotton skirt hitched up above her knees and a cotton bolero thrown over her head to keep off the sun. From this shelter her sunglasses gleamed at him, and she said in her plain, loud voice, “I don’t like this, Walter, and I haven’t been liking it for some time. It’s not the kind of world I want my children to see.” “I’m not responsible for the Riviera,” said Walter.
“I mean that I don’t like your bullying Angelo in front of them. They admire him so. I don’t like any of it. I mean to say, the master-servant idea. I think it’s bad taste, if you want my opinion.”
“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t have a servant in South Africa?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Walter, what are you up to? That sad, crumbling house. Nothing has been changed or painted or made pretty in it for years. You don’t seem to have any friends here. Your telephone never rings. It hasn’t rung once since I’ve been here. And that poor boy.”
“Poor?” said Walter. “Is that what he’s been telling you? You should have seen the house I rescued him from. You should just see what he’s left behind him. Twelve starving sisters and brothers, an old harridan of a mother — and a grandmother. He’s so frightened of her even at this distance that he sends her every penny I give him. Twelve sisters and brothers …”
“He must miss them,” said Eve.
“I’ve sent him home,” Walter said. “I sent him for a visit with a first-class ticket. He sold the first-class ticket and traveled third. If I hadn’t been certain he wanted to give the difference to his people, I should never have had him back. I hate deceit. If he didn’t get home that time it was because the cat was worrying him. I’ve told you the story. You said it was sad. But it was his idea, taking the cat.”
“He eyes the girls in the market,” said Eve. “But he never speaks.”