Another garden of rockets began to blossom. Laughing, triumphant, Pamela laid her hand on his head.
‘I feel so superior up here,’ she said.
‘On a pedestal, what?’ He laughed. ‘ “Guardami ben; ben son, ben son Beatrice!” ’
‘Such a comfort you’re not bald,’ she said, her fingers in his hair. ‘That must be a great disadvantage of pedestals—I mean, seeing the baldness of the men down below.’
‘But the great advantage of pedestals, as I now suddenly see for the first time . . .’ Another explosion covered his voice ‘. . . make it possible . . .’ Bang!
‘Oh, look!’ A bluish light was brightening, brightening.
‘. . . possible for even the baldest . . .’ There was a continuous uninterrupted rattle of detonations. Fanning gave it up. What he had meant to say was that pedestals gave even the baldest men unrivalled opportunities for pinching the idol’s legs.
‘What were you saying?’ she shouted through the battle.
‘Nothing,’ he yelled back. He had meant, of course, to suit the action to the word, playfully. But the fates had decided otherwise and he wasn’t really sorry. For he was tired; he had realized it almost suddenly. All this standing. He was no good at standing nowadays.
A cataract of silver fire was pouring down the slopes of the Pincian Hill, and the shining smoke-clouds rolled away from it like the spray from a tumbling river. And suddenly, above it, the eagle of Savoy emerged from the darkness, enormous, perched on the lictor’s axe and rods. There was applause and patriotic music. Then, gradually, the brightness of the cataract grew dim; the sources of its silver streaming were one by one dried up. The eagle moulted its shining plumage, the axe and rods faded, faded and at last were gone. Lit faintly by only the common lamplight, the smoke drifted slowly away towards the north. A spasm of motion ran through the huge crowd in the square below them. The show was over.
‘But I feel,’ said Pamela, as they shoved their way back towards the open streets, ‘I feel as though the rockets were still popping off inside me.’ And she began to sing to herself as she walked.
Fanning made no comment. He was thinking of that Girandola he’d seen with Alice and Tony and Laurina Frescobaldi—was it in 1907 or 1908? Tony was an ambassador now, and Alice was dead, and one of Laurina’s sons (he recalled the expression of despair on that worn, but still handsome face, when she had told him yesterday, at Tivoli) was already old enough to be getting housemaids into trouble.
‘Not only rockets,’ Pamela went on, interrupting her singing, ‘but even catherine-wheels. I feel all catherine-wheely. You know, like when one’s a little drunk.’ And she went on again with ‘Old Man River,’ tipsily happy and excited.
The crowd grew thinner around them and at last they were almost alone. Pamela’s singing abruptly ceased. Here, in the open, in the cool of the dark night it had suddenly become inappropriate, a little shameful. She glanced anxiously at her companion; had he too remarked that inappropriateness, been shocked by it? But Fanning had noticed nothing; she wished he had. Head bent, his hands behind his back, he was walking at her side, but in another universe. When had his spirit gone away from her, and why? She didn’t know, hadn’t noticed. Those inward fireworks, that private festival of exultation had occupied her whole attention.
She had been too excitedly happy with being in love to be able to think of the object of that love. But now, abruptly sobered, she had become aware of him again, repentantly at first, and then, as she realized his new remoteness, with a sinking of the heart. What had happened in these few moments? She was on the point of addressing him, then checked herself. Her apprehension grew and grew till it became a kind of terrified certainty that he’d never loved her at all, that he’d suddenly begun to hate her. But why, but why? They walked on.
‘How lovely it is here!’ she said at last. Her voice was timid and unnatural. ‘And so deliciously cool.’ They had emerged on to the embankment of the Tiber. Above the river, a second invisible river of air flowed softly through the hot night. ‘Shall we stop for a moment?’ He nodded without speaking. ‘I mean, only if you want to,’ she added. He nodded again.
They stood, leaning on the parapet, looking down at the black water. There was a long, long silence. Pamela waited for him to say something, to make a gesture; but he did not stir, the word never came. It was as though he were at the other end of the world. She felt almost sick with unhappiness. Heart-beat after heart-beat, the silence prolonged itself.
Fanning was thinking of tomorrow’s journey. How he hated the train! And in this heat . . . But it was necessary. The wicked flee, and in this case the fleeing would be an act of virtue-painful. Was it love? Or just an itch of desire, of the rather crazy, dirty desire of an ageing man? ‘A cinquant’ anni si diventa un po’ pazzo.’ He heard his own voice speaking, laughingly, mournfully, to Laurina. ‘Pazzo e porco. Si, anch’ io diventò un porco. Le minorenni—a cinquant’ anni, sa, sono un ossessione. Proprio un’ ossessione.’ Was that all—just an obsession of crazy desire? Or was it love?
Or wasn’t there any difference, was it just a question of names and approving or disapproving tones of voice? What was certain was that you could be as desperately unhappy when you were robbed of your crazy desire as when you were robbed of your love. A porco suffers as much as Dante. And perhaps Beatrice too was lovely, in Dante’s memory, with the perversity of youth, the shamelessness of innocence, the vice of freshness. Still, the wicked flee, the wicked flee. If only he’d had the strength of mind to flee before! A touch made him start. Pamela had taken his hand.
‘Miles!’ Her voice was strained and abnormal. Fanning turned towards her and was almost frightened by the look of determined despair he saw on her face. The Eiffel Tower . . . ‘Miles!’
‘What is it?’
‘Why don’t you speak to me?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I didn’t happen to be feeling very loquacious. For a change,’ he added, self-mockingly, in the hope (he knew it for a vain one) of being able to turn away her desperate attack with a counter-attack of laughter.
She ignored his counter-attack. ‘Why do you shut yourself away from me like this?’ she asked. ‘Why do you hate me?’
‘But, my sweet child . . .’
‘Yes, you hate me. You shut me away. Why are you so cruel, Miles?’ Her voice broke; she was crying. Lifting his hand, she kissed it, passionately, despairingly. ‘I love you so much, Miles. I love you.’ His hand was wet with her tears when, almost by force, he managed to draw it away from her.
He put his arm round her, comfortingly. But he was annoyed as well as touched, annoyed by her despairing determination, by the way she had made up her mind to jump off the Eiffel Tower, screwed up her courage turn by turn. And now she was jumping—but how gracelessly! The way he had positively had to struggle for his hand! There was something forced and unnatural about the whole scene. She was being a character in fiction. But characters in fiction suffer. He patted her shoulder, he made consolatory murmurs. Consoling her for being in love with him! But the idea of explaining and protesting and being lucidly reasonable was appalling to him at the moment, absolutely appalling. He hoped that she’d just permit herself to be consoled and ask no further questions, just leave the whole situation comfortably inarticulate. But his hope was again disappointed.
‘Why do you hate me, Miles?’ she insisted.
‘But, Pamela . . .’
‘Because you did care a little, you did. I mean, I could see you cared. And now, suddenly . . . What have I done, Miles?’
‘But nothing, my child, nothing.’ He could not keep a note of exasperation out of his voice. If only she’d allow him to be silent!
‘Nothing? But I can hear from the way you speak that there’s something.’ She returned to her old refrain. ‘Because you did care, Miles; a little, you did.’ She looked up at him, but he had moved away from her, he had averted his eyes towards the street. ‘You did, Miles.’
Oh God! he was groaning to himself, God! And aloud (for she had made his silence untenable, she had driven him out into articulateness), ‘I cared too much,’ he said. ‘It would be so easy to do something stupid and irreparable, something mad, yes and bad, bad. I like you too much in other ways to want to run that risk. Perhaps, if I were twenty years younger . . . But I’m too old. It wouldn’t do. And you’re too young, you can’t really understand, you . . . Oh, thank God, there’s a taxi.’ And he darted forward, waving and shouting. Saved! But when they had shut themselves into the cab, he found that the new situation was even more perilous than the old.
‘Miles!’ A flash of lamplight through the window of the cab revealed her face to him.
