But the third young man leaned back in his chair and laughed. ‘Vai, caro, vai,’ he said, and then, shaking his finger at Tonino knowingly, ‘Ma fatti pagare per il tuo lavoro,’ he added. ‘Get yourself paid for your trouble.’ Berto was notoriously the lady-killer, the tried specialist in amorous strategy, the acknowledged expert. ‘Take the opportunity.’ The others joined in his rather unpleasant laughter. Tonino also grinned and nodded.
The taxi rushed splashing through the wet deserted streets like a travelling fountain. Tonino sat in the darkness of the cab ruminating Berto’s advice. She was pretty, certainly. But somehow—why was it?—it had hardly occurred to him to think of her as a possible mistress. He had been politely gallant with her—on principle almost, and by force of habit—but without really wanting to succeed; and when she had shown herself unresponsive, he hadn’t cared. But perhaps he ought to have cared, perhaps he ought to have tried harder. In Berto’s world it was a sporting duty to do one’s best to seduce every woman one could.
The most admirable man was the man with the greatest number of women to his credit. Really lovely, Tonino went on to himself, trying to work up an enthusiasm for the sport. It would be a triumph to be proud of. The more so as she was a foreigner. And very rich. He thought with inward satisfaction of that big car, of the house, the servants, the silver. ‘Certo,’ he said to himself complacently, ‘mi vuol bene.’ She liked him; there was no doubt of it. Meditatively he stroked his smooth face; the muscles stirred a little under his fingers. He was smiling to himself in the darkness; naïvely, an ingenuous prostitute’s smile. ‘Moira,’ he said aloud. ‘Moira. Strano, quel nome. Piuttosto ridicolo.’
It was Moira who opened the door for him. She had been standing at the window, looking out, waiting and waiting.
‘Tonino!’ She held out both her hands to him; she had never felt so glad to see anyone.
The sky went momentarily whitish-mauve behind him as he stood there in the open doorway. The skirts of his rain-coat fluttered in the wind; a wet gust blew past him, chilling her face. The sky went black again. He slammed the door behind him. They were in utter darkness.
‘Tonino, it was too sweet of you to have come. Really too . . .’
The thunder that interrupted her was like the end of the world. Moira shuddered. ‘Oh God!’ she whimpered; and then suddenly she was pressing her face against his waistcoat and crying, and Tonino was holding her and stroking her hair. The next flash showed him the position of the sofa. In the ensuing darkness he carried her across the room, sat down and began to kiss her tear-wet face. She lay quite still in his arms, relaxed, like a frightened child that has at last found comfort. Tonino held her, kissing her softly again and again. ‘Ti amo, Moira,’ he whispered. And it was true. Holding her, touching her in the dark, he did love her. ‘Ti amo.’ How profoundly! ‘Ti voglio un bene immenso,’ he went on, with a passion, a deep warm tenderness born almost suddenly of darkness and soft blind contact.
Heavy and warm with life, she lay pressed against him. Her body curved and was solid under his hands, her cheeks were rounded and cool, her eyelids rounded and tremulous and tear-wet, her mouth so soft, so soft under his touching lips. ‘Ti amo, ti amo.’ He was breathless with love, and it was as though there were a hollowness at the centre of his being, a void of desiring tenderness that longed to be filled, that could only be filled by her, an emptiness that drew her towards him, into him, that drank her as an empty vessel eagerly drinks the water. Still, with closed eyes, quite still she lay there in his arms, suffering herself to be drunk up by his tenderness, to be drawn into the yearning vacancy of his heart, happy in being passive, in yielding herself to his soft insistent passion.
‘Fatti pagare, fatti pagare.’ The memory of Berto’s words transformed him suddenly from a lover into an amorous sportsman with a reputation to keep up and records to break. ‘Fatti pagare.’ He risked a more intimate caress. But Moira winced so shudderingly at the touch that he desisted, ashamed of himself.
‘Ebbene,’ asked Berto when, an hour later, he returned, ‘did you mend the fuses?’
‘Yes, I mended the fuses.’
‘And did you get yourself paid?’
Tonino smiled an amorous sportsman’s smile. ‘A little on account,’ he answered, and at once disliked himself for having spoken the words, disliked the others for laughing at them. Why did he go out of his way to spoil something which had been so beautiful? Pretexting a headache, he went upstairs to his bedroom. The storm had passed on, the moon was shining now out of a clear sky. He opened the window and looked out. A river of ink and quicksilver, the Arno flowed whispering past. In the street below the puddles shone like living eyes. The ghost of Caruso was singing from a gramophone, far away on the other side of the water. ‘Stretti, stretti, nell’ estast d’amor . . .’ Tonino was profoundly moved.
The sky was blue next morning, the sunlight glittered on the shiny leaves of the magnolia tree, the air was demurely windless. Sitting at her dressing-table, Moira looked out and wondered incredulously if such things as storms were possible. But the plants were broken and prostrate in their beds; the paths were strewn with scattered leaves and petals. In spite of the soft air and the sunlight, last night’s horrors had been more than a bad dream. Moira sighed and began to brush her hair. Set in its leather frame, John Tarwin’s profile confronted her, brightly focused on imaginary tumours. Her eyes fixed on it, Moira went on mechanically brushing her hair. Then, suddenly, interrupting the rhythm of her movements, she got up, took the leather frame and, walking across the room, threw it up, out of sight, on to the top of the high wardrobe. There! She returned to her seat and, filled with a kind of frightened elation, went on with her interrupted brushing.
When she was dressed, she drove down to the town and spent an hour at Settepassi’s, the jewellers. When she left, she was bowed out on to the Lungarno like a princess.
‘No, don’t smoke those,’ she said to Tonino that afternoon as he reached for a cigarette in the silver box that stood on the drawing-room mantelpiece. ‘I’ve got a few of those Egyptian ones you like. Got them specially for you.’ And, smiling, she handed him a little parcel.
Tonino thanked her profusely—too profusely, as was his custom. But when he had stripped away the paper and saw the polished gold of a large cigarette-case, he could only look at her in an embarrassed and inquiring amazement.
‘Don’t you think it’s rather pretty?’ she asked.
‘Marvellous! But is it . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Is it for me?’
Moira laughed with pleasure at his embarrassment. She had never seen him embarrassed before. He was always the self-possessed young man of the world, secure and impregnable within his armour of Southern good manners. She admired that elegant carapace. But it amused her for once to take him without it, to see him at a loss, blushing and stammering like a little boy. It amused and it pleased her; she liked him all the more for being the little boy as well as the polished and socially competent young man.
‘For me?’ she mimicked, laughing. ‘Do you like it?’ Her tone changed; she became grave. ‘I wanted you to have something to remind you of last night.’ Tonino took her hands and silently kissed them. She had received him with such off-handed gaiety, so nonchalantly, as though nothing had happened, that the tender references to last night’s happenings (so carefully prepared as he walked up the hill) had remained unspoken. He had been afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending her. But now the spell was broken—and by Moira herself. ‘One oughtn’t to forget one’s good actions,’ Moira went on, abandoning him her hands. ‘Each time you take a cigarette out of this case, will you remember how kind and good you were to a silly ridiculous little fool?’
Tonino had had time to recover his manners. ‘I shall remember the most adorable, the most beautiful . . .’ Still holding her hands, he looked at her for a moment in silence, eloquently. Moira smiled back at him. ‘Moira!’ And she was in his arms. She shut her eyes and was passive in the strong circle of his arms, soft and passive against his firm body. ‘I love you, Moira.’ The breath of his whispering was warm on her cheek. ‘Ti amo.’ And suddenly his lips were on hers again, violently, impatiently kissing. Between the kisses his whispered words came passionate to her ears. ‘Ti amo pazzamente . . . piccina . . . tesoro . . . amore . . . cuore . . .’ Uttered in Italian, his love seemed somehow specially strong and deep. Things described in a strange language themselves take on a certain strangeness. ‘Amami, Moira, amami. Mi ami un po?’ He was insistent. ‘A little, Moira—do you love me a little?’
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Then, with a quick movement, she took his face
