“I know that you were about to offer me another sherry,”
Antonia said about fifteen minutes later. “But I really mustn’t stay. I have so much to do, you know. The days seem to fly past now, and I find that I have to struggle to fit everything in.”
Domenica felt slightly embarrassed. After all, Antonia had shown no signs of living in her pocket, and perhaps it was rather unfriendly to make one’s concerns quite so obvious at this stage.
“You don’t have to dash,” she said. “I could rustle something up for dinner . . .”
“Very kind,” said Antonia. “But I’ve made my own arrangements. You must come and have a meal with me some time soon.
Next month perhaps.”
There was an awkward silence. Next week would have been courteous; next month made her meaning crystal clear. And perhaps had added the belt to the braces.
“That would be very nice,” said Domenica. “No doubt we shall see one another before then. On the stairs maybe.”
“Yes,” said Antonia. “On the stairs.”
50
A Small Sherry and a Hint of Synaesthesia Over the next few days, they did not see one another at all.
It had been an awkward way of establishing the rules of good neighbourliness, but it had worked, and after a while Antonia found herself able to knock on Domenica’s door and invite her in for coffee. The invitation had been accepted – after only a moment’s reflection on what the diary for that day might contain. That content was nonexistent, of course, but one should only accept an invitation immediately if one is happy for the person issuing the invitation to conclude that one had nothing better, or indeed nothing at all, to do. And Domenica certainly did not want Antonia to reach that conclusion. She was sensitive to the fact that Antonia was writing a book, and therefore had a major project, while she did not. There was a very significant division, Domenica believed, between those who were writing a book at any time, and those who were not; a division just as significant as that between those actors who were currently on the stage and those, the majority, who were resting. For this reason, there were many people who claimed to be writing a book, even if this was not really the case. Indeed, somewhere at the back of her mind she remembered reading of a literary prize for such unwritten books, and of how the merits of those works on the shortlist for this prize were hotly debated by those who claimed to know what these unwritten books were all about.
“What are you going to do with this flat?” asked Domenica as she watched Antonia pour boiling water into the cafetière. It was the wrong question to ask somebody who had just moved into a new flat, but Domenica realised that only after she had asked it. It implied that the new place needed alteration, which, of course, may not have been the view of the new owner.
But Antonia was not offended. “A great deal,” she said, stirring the coffee grounds into the water. She sniffed at the aroma.
“What a lovely smell. Coffee. Certain new clothes. Lavender tucked under the pillowcase. All those smells.”
Domenica nodded. “Do you see smells as colours?” she asked.
“Or sounds as colours?”
Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft 51
“Synaesthesia,” said Antonia. “My father’s one, actually. A synaesthetic.”
16. Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft Antonia poured coffee into a blue-and-white Spode cup and passed it to Domenica. Her guest thanked her and carefully put it down on the kitchen table. The cup seemed familiar – in fact, she remembered that she had one exactly like it in her own flat, one which unfortunately had acquired a chip to the rim, more or less above the handle, just as this cup . . . She stopped herself.
The cup which Antonia had handed her had a chip to the rim at exactly the same place.
She reached out and lifted the cup to her lips, taking the opportunity to examine the rim more closely as she did so.
Yes, there it was, right above the handle, a small chip in the glazing, penetrating as far as the first layer of china, not enough to retire a well-loved cup, but clearly noticeable. She cradled the cup in her hands, feeling the warmth of the liquid within.
Antonia had stolen her china! And if this cup had been removed, then what else had she pilfered during her occupancy of Domenica’s flat?
She looked up at Antonia. It took a particularly blatant attitude, surely, to serve the dispossessed coffee in their own china.
That was either the carelessness of the casual thief, or shamelessness of a high order. It was more likely, she decided, that 52
Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft Antonia had simply forgotten that she had stolen the cup, and had therefore inadvertently used it for Domenica’s coffee.
Presumably there were many thieves who did just that; who were so used to ill-gotten goods that they became blasé about them.
And even worse criminals – murderers indeed – had been known to talk about their crimes in a casual way, as if nobody would sit up and take notice and report them. In a shameless age, when people readily revealed their most intimate secrets for the world to see, perhaps it was easy to imagine how the need for conceal-ment might be forgotten.
Domenica remembered how, some years previously, she had been invited for a picnic by some people who had quite casually mentioned that the rug upon which they were sitting had been lifted from an airline. It had astonished her to think that these people imagined that she would not be shocked, or at least disapproving. She had wanted to say: “But that’s theft!” but had lacked the courage to do that and had simply said: “Please pass me another sandwich.”
Later, when she had thought about it further, it occurred to her that the reason why they had been so open about their act of thievery was simply this: they did not consider it dishonest to steal from a large organisation. She remembered reading that people were only too willing to make false or exaggerated claims on insurance companies, on the grounds that they were big and would never notice it, nor were they slow to massage the figures of their expenses claims. All of this was simply theft, or its moral equivalent, and yet many of those who did it would probably never dream of stealing a wallet from somebody’s pocket, or slipping their hand into a shopkeeper’s till. What weighed with such people, it seemed to Domenica, was the extent to which the taking was personal.
Well, if that was the case – and it appeared to be so, in spite of the indefensibility of making such a distinction – then one would have thought that stealing one’s friend’s blue-and-white Spode cup was a supremely personal taking, especially when one’s friend had let one stay in her flat for virtually nothing.
Domenica Is Left to Puzzle a Petty Theft 53
That was the act of a true psychopath – one with no conscience whatsoever.
“Yes, synaesthesia,” said Antonia, pouring herself a cup of coffee into a plain white mug. “You know Edvard Munch’s famous picture The Scream? That’s a good example of the condition.
Munch said that he was taking a walk one evening and saw a very intense bloodred sky. He then had an overpowering feeling that all of nature was screaming – one great, big, natural howl of pain.