Sally would often wonder in later years what would have happened if Margaret’s plane had not been delayed. Did airlines know or care what they did to people’s lives when their aircraft did not run to schedule? All the tragedies were not caused by crashes.
There had been time for Sally to change her mind about marrying Philip. Michele had been gone for a week with her new husband before Sally had called Margaret. In that time Philip had arrived unexpectedly from Rome. Michele had called him to ask him to wish her luck and would he please go up to Paris and console poor darling Sally who must be desolate. Sally had fallen into his arms because they were the only ones available; and too, she did love him, in a kind of way. He did not ask her to go to bed with him, but he did ask her to marry him. Impetuous as ever, as desolate as Michele had said she would be, loving Philip for just being there, she had said yes. He had gone out at once and got a licence; only to come back and say they would have to wait ten days before they could be married. He still did not ask her to go to bed with him and she had appreciated that; it showed how considerate he was and properly loving. In the intervening days she had had time to consider if she was doing the right thing; but she had not been able to bring herself to discuss it with Margaret over the phone. In the end, when the arranged date for the wedding arrived and Margaret had not, she went ahead and married Philip. And, as always when she had committed herself, was happy, as if the decision itself and not the consequences was the most difficult to bear.
‘But don’t you know who he is?’ Margaret said.
‘I know his real name is Philip Gentleman, not Mann. I’m going to have to get used to that, being called Mrs Gentleman. It’s kind of funny.’
‘It’s not funny at all, it’s the unfunniest part of all.’
They were alone together in Sally’s apartment just off the Avenue Matignon. Philip had gone out on business, but promised he would be back to take them to dinner. Sally was closing up the apartment and she and Philip were going back to Rome at the end of the week. She had been aware of Margaret’s agitation ever since they had met at the airport, but she had put it down to travel exhaustion and the delays en route. But now she saw that something deeper was worrying her sister. ‘What are you trying to say, Meg?’
‘His father is Tony Gentleman. He’s a Mafia don, a gangster. Philip is the one who invests their money, all that they make out of their rackets. He launders it, as they call it. Making dirty money clean, putting it into legitimate businesses.’
Sally sat very still. ‘I won’t say I don’t believe you. You haven’t come all the way over here to lie to me. But how do you know what you’re saying is true?’
Margaret leaned back in the couch where she sat. The room was ultra-modern in its furnishings, a contrast to the building that housed it. White walls were enlivened by paintings splashed with vivid colours; black leather-and-chrome chairs and glass-and-chrome tables looked like artefacts sent back from the future; bright rugs, matching the colours in the paintings, were strewn on the thick white carpet. Sally had no interest in furnishings and she had allowed Michele to do the apartment to her own taste. She had never felt comfortable in it; it was an edgy room, one that rubbed against her nerve ends. Margaret looked around it now and looked just as nervous and edgy. Then Sally realized that the room had nothing to do with Meg’s nervousness.
‘I thought I’d never have to tell this to anyone …’
Sally listened, feeling herself going blind while her hearing increased to an acuteness where every word was like a sharp pain. She did not know that Margaret was not telling her everything about Frank and herself; but what she was told was more than she really wanted to hear. She was a turmoil of feeling: anger, shame, pity. Anger at how fate had treated her; shame at some of the things she had thought about Meg in the past; pity for all Meg had had to go through. At last her senses reversed themselves: she no longer heard what Meg was saying, her eyes cleared and took in the pain in her sister’s face. Abruptly she stood up, no longer able to sit still.
‘God, we get ourselves into messes, don’t we? What are we going to do?’
Margaret looked at her; she smiled wryly, but she was not really amused. ‘I’m not married to him. I’ll help you, but I really can’t interfere. I’ve interfered enough – Oh God, why weren’t those damned planes on time!’ She looked for something in her handbag, couldn’t find it, snapped the bag shut angrily. ‘Would you have still married him? I mean if I’d got here in time. On time.’
Sally stood at the window. Down in the street a man and a girl met, kissed as if they were alone in a room, went off hand-in-hand. She had always loved the lovers of Paris; they were probably no different from lovers anywhere else, but Paris itself had always had its romance for her. But no longer.
‘I don’t know … God, listen to me! I’ve been married exactly – ’ she looked at her watch – ‘Exactly seven hours. I haven’t even had my wedding night yet. And now I’m saying I don’t know if …’ Her voice trailed off in a dry, stifled sob.
Margaret got up, put her arms round her. ‘Perhaps Philip will never go back to Chicago. Things may work out – ’
‘You don’t really believe that. I should have come home when things started to break up with Michele – ’
‘What made her marry? An African, too, isn’t he? I thought she was running away from the black side of her.’
‘He’s like her, he has white blood in him, Belgian. He’s also like her in that he’s ambitious – though I don’t know what hopes there are for ambitious politicians in Africa. Especially in the Congo. But he has money and he’s charming and she went and married him and that’s that.’ She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice; self-pity swamped her like a fever.
Margaret began to gather up her things. ‘I’d better go. I can’t stay here. I’ll call the Crillon.’
‘Can’t you wait till Philip gets back? No. No, I suppose not. I don’t know how I’m going to face him. I mean, ask him those questions – ’
‘You’ve never been lacking in courage before.’
‘Racing cars, flying a plane – that’s different. I enjoy that – I don’t think of those sort of things needing courage. But I’ve always been a moral coward. If I hadn’t been I’d never have got myself into the messes I have. Cindy, Michele, Philip. Yes, even him, I guess. I always took the easy way out.’
‘Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘How long are you going to stay?’
‘Just a few days. I have to go back – I can’t leave the children too long.’
‘Are you a good mother? No, I shouldn’t ask that. You are. You’ve been more understanding towards me than I think Mother would have been.’
‘You don’t know how Mother would have been. She might have surprised us all.’
‘What about Daddy? How is he going to react when he finds out who his new son-in-law is? He doesn’t even know he has a son-in-law yet.’
‘I think you’d better have your talk with Philip first.’ Margaret kissed her. ‘Nina and I have survived our troubles. I don’t think we’re any stronger than you are.’
Sally did not know how strong she was, but she knew how weak she could be. ‘I’ll call you tonight. Will you have dinner with us?’
‘See how it works out with Philip first.’
Sally felt that the next hour was the most agonizing she had ever spent. She waited for Philip’s key in the front door; it seemed that she walked miles and miles round the apartment. When he eventually opened the door and came in he was smiling, the happy bridegroom.
‘Where’s Meg – lying down?’
He kissed her before she could stop him; but she wondered even as he did so why she should not want him to kiss her. ‘Philip – she’s gone to stay at the Crillon. She told me something about you – ’
He took off his topcoat, put it on a hanger and hung it in the closet. She had noticed before that he had a habit of deliberately pacing himself when he was careful about what he was going to say next: he had proposed to her in the same careful way.
‘I know what she’s told you. I knew it was going to happen – I could see it in her face at the airport when you told her we were married.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She tried to keep her voice level; but she wanted to cry out. ‘Good Christ – the Mafia!’
‘Sit down, darling. Sit down!’
She had taken a step away from him, turning to keep moving about the room. But the tone of his voice cut the legs from under her; she sat down with a thud in the nearest chair. He drew up another chair, sat down with his knees almost touching hers.
‘Mafia is a word we don’t use back home. My father, if he ever calls our organization anything and he rarely does, calls it The Honoured Society. Which is what it was called in Sicily when he left there. So don’t use that word again.’
‘All right. But semantics aren’t going to change what you represent.’
‘I don’t represent anything. Not the way you mean it. Everything I do is legitimate, as perfectly legal and decent as anything your father does. You may think the money I handle isn’t as clean as your father’s, but it all only comes out of providing something that people want.’
She couldn’t argue with him: he seemed so cool and – self-righteous? ‘Philip, please don’t talk to me as if I’m a child. Your – Honoured Society makes its money out of crime. I don’t know what sort of crime – ’
‘Prostitution. Betting – the numbers game. And back in Prohibition days, before I was born, my father made a living bootlegging.’
‘I suppose he worked for Al Capone?’
‘No, he didn’t. He worked in New York in those days. All those things I mentioned are, or were, against the law. But the man who bought a bottle of bootleg whisky or the one who pays a girl to go to bed with him – you ask him, he doesn’t think of himself as a criminal.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it! You’re gangsters – that’s the only word to describe you! You kill people – you’re all covered with blood-’
He reached across deliberately, almost slowly, and slapped her across the face. ‘I’m sorry to do that. But you’re getting hysterical. I’m not trying to excuse anything the Society – even my father – has done. We have our own way of doing things. By and large, we kill only our own. And I’ve never been even remotely connected with a killing. I don’t own a gun and I don’t intend to. I’m the respectable son of my father and my father wants me to be nothing else. That’s why they chose me to handle their investments.’
‘They? You see – you belong to the – the Society!’
He was silent for a moment, as if she had just pointed something out to him that he had not wanted to admit to himself. ‘Okay, I belong to it. But it is never going to ask me to do any more than I’m doing now – it’s in its own interests for me to stay the way I am. As for you and me – there’s no reason in the world why you should be involved in the Society. It is always only the men who are involved.’
She shook her head dumbly, pulled herself back as he reached out a hand for her.
‘Sally – I didn’t marry you out of pity. I married you because I love you.’
That was a lie, but, said in his quiet voice, it had the ring of truth. He had married her because he liked her and because she was a Beaufort: principally for the latter reason. He had not married her for her money but for the respectability of her name. Some day soon he would retire from what he was doing now, would turn his back on the Society, be Philip Mann, gentleman.
‘I should have been honest with you – I would have been if there’d been more time. But I was afraid you’d say no – You would have, wouldn’t you?’
She nodded, looking at him cautiously, afraid of his sincerity.
‘I’ve been worried by it. I knew I’d have to tell you – sooner rather than later. I think I was relieved in a way when Meg turned up today.’
‘Why can’t you just turn your back on – on the whole thing? Tell your father you want nothing to do with it.’
‘I’m my father’s only child.’ There was a certain formality to the way he said it. ‘I love him – as much as I love you, I suppose, but in a different way. I mentioned your father’s money a while ago. It wasn’t all that clean to begin with. Not the way your grandfather made it. But it doesn’t seem to worry you.’
At least her grandfather had never killed: not even his own. Or had he? Heads had been busted by strike-breakers in plants owned by her grandfather; maybe men had died. She had just never wanted to know: a moral coward again.
‘What makes you run away from your father?’ he said.
It was an unfair question in the context; but she had no answer to it. She got up from her chair, waiting for him to tell her to sit down again; but he said nothing, just watched her as she moved aimlessly about the room. She passed the windows, looked out into the dark night, then drew the drapes.
At last she said, ‘What are we going to do, then?’
‘I think we should give our marriage a chance. We’ll go back to Rome and settle there. It’s a good city and it’s getting better all the time. I think I can persuade my father that I should stay in Europe – it’s a good area for investment now. There’s no reason why we should ever have to go back to Chicago, except on business.’
‘I’d never go.’
She couldn’t see his face clearly; he was against the light. But he sat very still and she sensed the anger and hurt in him. But he controlled it, said quietly, ‘Then you can’t expect me to go to Kansas City.’
It took her a few moments to make the concession: she could not put her father on the same level as Tony Gentleman. ‘All right. But it’s not a very good start for us, is it?’
‘We’ll work it out somehow. I love you, Sally, and I’m not going to give you up without giving ourselves a chance to make a go of it.’
So Sally, who was weak and knew it, gave in. They took Margaret to dinner at Le Grand Véfour. It was Sally who suggested the restaurant and Philip wondered aloud if the Beaufort sisters ever dined at small intimate places.
‘In small intimate places you can be overheard,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t want strangers listening in to us tonight.’
So there in the restaurant where Napoleon and Josephine had exchanged confidences, Margaret was told what Sally and Philip decided.
‘I’ll give you my blessing, if that’s what you want, but it isn’t easy. You should have told her the truth before you were married, Philip.’
He nodded, toying with his food. They should not have come to this restaurant; none of them had an appetite. The waiters hovered in the background, contemptuous of the three Americans who obviously did not appreciate good food, who would have been more at home with hamburgers. Philip, his eye sharpened by prejudice against himself all his life, had begun to suspect that the biggest snobs in the world were those who worked in expensive establishments rather than those who paid the bills. He took a mouthful of the entrecôte à la bordelaise, nodded appreciatively just to prove himself to the waiters. One of them nodded in acknowledgement and Philip decided he had done his bit for American taste. Then he thought, the hell with them; and wondered why he had such an inferiority complex. None of these waiters knew he was the son of Tony Gentleman. But even as he wondered, he knew the answer: he would never be truly respectable, no matter how much he wished for it or how much his father encouraged him. He would never be a gentleman with a small g.
‘I think you had better call home tonight,’ Margaret said, ‘and break the news. Tell Nina first, so that she can break it gently to Daddy. Though he should be getting used to his daughters springing weddings on him. Well – ’ She raised her glass, looked at the wine in it, then shook her head. ‘No, I’ll be traditional. I’ll drink to you both in champagne.’
The sommelier was impressed when Margaret named the champagne she wanted: these Americans were not so uncivilized after all. He brought it and Margaret toasted her sister and her new brother-in-law. ‘Be happy, that’s the best I can wish you. It hasn’t been a tradition so far with the Beaufort sisters. You try and break the run of bad luck.’
‘We’ll try,’ said Sally, and wanted to weep, wondering how much good luck she had had so far. She and Michale had sometimes come to this restaurant together; she looked about, hoping she might see her now, even if with her husband. She thought of something Lamartine, another diner here, had once written: Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. Guiltily, she pressed Philip’s arm: he, for all his faults, was trying to take Michele’s place, make the world less depopulated.
Margaret flew back to Kansas City two days later. Sally closed up the apartment and she and Philip flew back to Rome in her own plane. The news of her marriage had surprised Nina, who had called to congratulate her and Philip but had not said much else. Lucas also was surprised, but predictably wondered why all his daughters had to rush their weddings as if their husbands were going off to war.
‘Your mother and I were engaged for twelve months before we were married. A decent long engagement we had in my day.’
Sally had not tried to explain: because she had no explanation that would satisfy him and she was not a good liar. ‘We’ll be happy, Daddy. That’s all that matters.’
And she fervently hoped so. Having committed herself to the marriage, she was determined to make the best of it. Except for his family background she really did not have anything to complain about in Philip. Having told herself that, she then, because she was always so honest with herself, admitted it was not much of a basis for marriage. She loved him, but she knew it was not the sort of love that – well, that Nina had felt for Tim. She had loved Michele, but that had brought her only intermittent happiness; and she could not imagine Philip’s being as cruel and callous as Michele had sometimes been. So she tried for happiness as she might have tried to win the Mille Miglia, determinedly and with a certain physical recklessness.
She had had little experience of men in bed. She had been made love to by a Yale man when she had been at Vassar. He was studying law and he had seduced her as if he were trying to win a case before a jury; he had advanced point by point and climaxed his argument with a pounding that would have had him charged with assault had he actually been in court. Her only other encounter with a male lover had been a French racing driver at Le Mans, where she had gone to watch the running of the Twenty-Four-Hours race. He had had none of the finesse she had expected and she had emerged from the bed feeling she had been driven round it in lap record time. After those two experiences she had shied away from men in bed.
Philip made love to her gently the first night. Any man, taking the place of a former lover, knows there must be a comparison, even if only subconsciously. To take the place of a woman as lover was a handicap that might have made him brutal or impotent. Instead of which he was compassionate, if also passionate when the moment was right. She fell asleep in his arms, convinced she was going to be happy.
They set up house in Philip’s apartment in an old palazzo on The Corso. Sally had had no experience of housekeeping, having always employed a woman to look after her and Michele. So Philip’s housekeeper was kept on. Lucia Giuffre was a plump plain woman who knew who her new mistress was and decided that the apartment was not sufficiently grand for such a rich girl.
‘There is an apartment above us, signora. It is much bigger, it is where the family lived in Mussolini’s day. You and I could make it into something beautiful for Signor Mann.’
It troubled Sally that, though she had married Philip under his real name, they were still known in Rome as Signor and Signora Mann. ‘That would take a lot of money, Lucia.’
Lucia spread her hands: if Signora Mann didn’t have money, who did? ‘What is money for, signora?’
Sally had always been the most indifferent of the sisters towards the family wealth. She had indulged herself with her cars and her plane, signing cheques without ever giving a thought as to what her bank balance might be. Yet her extravagances were intermittent and over a year she probably spent no more than Nina or Margaret. She was not a determined, or even a conscious, profligate. But as Lucia had just said, what was money for if not to spend?
So the Manns moved up into the larger apartment, but it never became one of the salons of Rome. Sally did not have the skills of Nina or Margaret as a hostess; she was glad that Philip liked to keep a low profile in both business and social life. They never became part of the growing American colony in Rome and she began to enjoy their comparative anonymity. Then she found she was pregnant.
‘Are you glad, Philip?’ She was happy with him, happier than she had expected to be. She loved him, though not in the passionate, fascinated way she had loved Michele.
He lifted her hand, kissed the inside of her wrist: such gentle intimacies endeared him to her. He did nothing with a flourish, being always quiet and restrained; but he was not a dull husband and lover and there were always quiet gestures and expressions to tell her how much he loved her. For his part he now did love her; or more so than he had expected. He patted her belly.
‘He’s the best thing that’s happened to us.’
You’re sure it’s going to be a he?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t really care. Maybe a girl would be better.’
Because a girl could escape from the Mafia. She did not say it, because she did not want to hurt him. She still was not able to accept his background, but she kept pushing the problem to the back of her mind. If any emissaries from Chicago came to Rome, she never met them or even knew of them. Philip saw them at his office out at EUR, where he had taken a suite because, he said, he could not work in the dingy offices available in the centre of the city. She sometimes wondered if his going out to EUR was to keep his Chicago connections completely separate from his life with her. She had noticed that at their occasional small dinner parties very few Americans were on the guest list.
They had been married six months before Tony Gentleman came to Rome to see his daughter-in-law for the first time. Lucas had flown over the first week after they had returned from Paris. He had got on well with Philip, asked him about his business, seemed satisfied with whatever answers Philip had given him, then returned home. Once a week he phoned Sally, shouting and grumbling at the bad connections, always ending with the same question: when was she coming home for a visit? To which Sally, always with the thought that Chicago was only a few hundred miles north of Kansas City, said soon, Daddy, soon.
Tony Gentleman never used the phone unless he had to, though his daughter-in-law did not know that. He knew the dangers of a wire-tap, a hazard that never entered her head. Tony Gentleman was a rare capo: in all his life he had been arrested only twice but never indicted. His record was clean, but he knew the FBI did not regard him as a model citizen and J. Edgar Hoover was once known to have kicked one of his pet dogs in a fit of temper when Tony Gentleman’s name was mentioned. So he never committed anything important to the United States mail, figuring that neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night was as hazardous as the FBI; and for the past year he never made any business phone calls unless unavoidable and no overseas calls at all. All his communications to his son in Rome were delivered by hand by a courier who flew the Atlantic once a week.
He arrived in Rome seemingly without company; but two of his security guards had travelled separately in economy class. He had travelled a roundabou troute: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Montreal, Paris, Rome: along the way he had lost any tail the FBI might have had on him. He travelled on a passport that said he was Carlo Borzello, a native of Palermo, Sicily, but an American citizen. He told no one that the main reason for the hiding of his real identity was not to escape the attentions of the law but to avoid embarrassing his son. He wanted nothing so much in life now as respectability for Philip. It did not occur to him that he would have given him more chance of respectability if he had disowned him.
Sally was cautiously friendly in her welcome of the old man. He did not look dangerous; though she was not sure what she had expected. Philip had had no photos of his father; because Tony Gentleman, if it could be avoided, did not stand in front of cameras, no matter who Was operating them. This extremely well-dressed, silver-haired man looked every bit as distinguished as her own father, perhaps even more so. The rough, uneducated voice was the letdown: he sounded just as she had expected. She read her own sense of menace into the soft hoarse voice.
He shook her hand, awkwardly: he had none of his son’s social graces. ‘You’re a lovely girl. Philip is very lucky. Right?’
‘I told you that, Dad.’ Philip was hiding his shock at how old his father had become in the year since he had seen him last. ‘Let’s get out to the car. You look tired.’
‘A little. It’s a long way to come.’ His limp seemed to have increased; he leaned on a silver-topped stick. ‘I think I oughta retire, go to Florida to live. Chicago ain’t the right climate, a man my age.’
Driving into Rome Sally, for want of something better to say, said, ‘Are you going to visit Sicily too?’
The old man looked at Philip, then back at Sally. ‘You know anything about Sicily? It ain’t a place to go back to.’
He said no more and Sally, still trying, for Philip’s sake, to do her bit, plunged on: ‘I believe you’ve met my sister Margaret.’ He looked at her again: not blankly, yet with no expression. ‘Mrs Minett.’
‘Just a little business. For her husband.’ She had the feeling that he was speaking carefully, one eye on Philip. ‘A nice girl.’
That night the three of them dined in the apartment. Lucia, dressed in her best black, supervised the meal; her nephew, in black livery and white gloves, served the meal. Tony Gentleman was impressed.
‘You got a nice place. Very grand.’ He waited till Lucia and her nephew had retired from the dining room. ‘When I was a little kid, I work in a big house in Palermo. Cleaning the pots and pans. I never see the inside of the house, nothing but the kitchen. But I remember the servants used to come into the kitchen dressed like that feller. The white gloves and all.’
‘You’ve come a long way,’ said Philip. ‘Enjoy it all, Dad.’
‘Oh, I’m gonna do that. You live like this back in Kansas City, Sally?’
‘No white gloves.’ She knew Philip would not want her to call his father Mr Gentleman; but she could not bring herself to call him Dad. ‘Philip loves the life style here. I think he’s an old Roman senator at heart.’
‘You wanna stay on here?’ The old man looked at his son.
‘We’re making a good life here. Neither of us wants to go home to America.’
The old man looked at his daughter-in-law. ‘You too? You don’t wanna go home to your father some time?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She wasn’t quite sure whether it was a lie or not; she still occasionally thought of Kansas City with nostalgia, still missed her father and her sisters. ‘Not to live there, I mean.’
Tony Gentleman nodded to himself. ‘I can’t complain, I guess. I run away from Sicily, I don’t never wanna go back. I just can’t understand people running away from America, that’s all. I mean, people who ain’t gotta run away.’
He stayed in Rome a week, enjoying the company of his son and daughter-in-law. But it was obvious that he was uncomfortable, insecure; he missed the security of the house where he had lived for the past ten years on the North Side of Chicago. He could not imagine anyone’s wanting to run away from America; but he had settled for the smallest piece of territory, a house behind a high wall that shut out what America stood for. He was dying and he wanted to die in the only place where he could be certain of being honoured as a ‘man of respect’ in his own house.
He kissed them both at the airport, holding his son tighter and longer than he did Sally. But he did not ignore her. ‘God bless you with the baby. How soon will it be?’
‘Just over two months. We’ll call you the minute he arrives.’
‘He? You want a son?’
It had been a slip of the tongue. ‘A boy, a girl, it doesn’t matter. Just so long as it’s healthy.’
‘You can’t ask for more,’ he said, who had no health left.
He left them and limped away through the gate and out to the plane. Sally saw two men pause and wait for him and help him up the steps and thought how considerate it was of them. Then she looked at Philip and saw the tears running down his cheeks.
A month later the phone rang in the apartment: it was Chicago, the first time ever. The caller told Philip his father was dying.
‘I’ll catch tonight’s plane. Will you be all right?’
She was glad that he did not ask her to go with him. ‘Don’t worry, darling. I’m as healthy as a horse. I’ll call you every night. What’s your father’s number?’
It was only later that she noticed he had not given her the number. ‘No, I’ll call you. Every night.’
He rang her twenty-four hours later and even through the bad connection she could hear the grief in his voice. ‘Dad died an hour after I got here. He was consicous when I saw him, so at least I got to say goodbye to him.’
‘I’m sorry, darling. How long will you be staying?’
‘The funeral is the day after tomorrow. Then there’ll be the estate to be looked into. Sally – ’ There was a long pause and she thought they had lost their connection. Then: ‘You wouldn’t come over here? Just for a month or two, have the baby here? There’s a lot I have to attend to – ’
‘I’m sorry.’ She put her hand on her stomach, glad of the baby therein. ‘I just couldn’t face all that travelling, not now.’
Again the silence; then: ‘Sure. I shouldn’t have asked.’
He called every night during the next week, promising each time to be on his way home in a day or two – ‘There’s so much to be done. I’m trying to wrap it up as quickly as I can. Be patient, darling. Another day or two, that’s all.’
On the Saturday the phone rang at noon. But it wasn’t Philip: it was Michele. ‘Darling – ’ The sweet husky voice had not changed. ‘I’m in Rome just for the weekend, on my way to Paris. Can you and Philip have dinner or something?’
Sally shivered with panic, looked down at her swollen belly. She could not let Michele see her like this. Michele had never liked children nor even the sight of pregnant women – ‘They look disgustingly ugly. Filling up the world with too many people.’ To meet Michele looking like this would be disastrous, humiliating. And yet she could not resist the lure of the darktoned voice.
‘Michele – ’ She wanted to be firm, to tell her to go to hell; but she could not. ‘I wouldn’t be good company. Philip is in Chicago – his father’s just died. And I’m – I’m pregnant. Eight months gone.’
‘Oh, my love – no! Poor you.’
That angered her, gave her strength. ‘No, not poor me. I’m looking forward to being a mother.’
‘Well – ’ There was no apology; but Michele was incapable of apology for anything. ‘Well, I’ll call you next time I’m in Rome.’
She relented, not wanting to lose contact. ‘How are you? Are you – are you happy with Gaston?’
‘Are you happy with Philip?’
‘Yes,’ she said emphatically: to make the point to herself as well as to her ex-lover.
‘I’m glad. He’s a beautiful man – as men go.’ She chuckled; and Sally was surprised that it sounded dirty to her. ‘Oh, Gaston and I get along. I just don’t like Leopoldville, that’s all. But Gaston’s business keeps him there now. But he indulges me. This trip to Paris, for instance. Goodbye, darling. I’ll call you next time I come through.’
She hung up and Sally sat there with the dead phone in her hand, feeling the trembling in her limbs and the nausea welling up in her throat. She longed for Philip’s comforting embrace. She wanted to call him, but she had no number. I’ll get his father’s number through directory enquiries in Chicago; but suddenly it was all too much effort. Instead she called Kansas City, the number that came so readily to mind.
‘Meg?’
‘Sally! What’s the matter! It’s only five-thirty in the morning here. Is something wrong with the baby?’
‘No-o.’ All at once she felt foolish. ‘I just – just wanted someone to talk to. Philip’s still in Chicago. You know his father died?’
‘I know. It was in the papers. There was a huge funeral.’
‘Philip wouldn’t have wanted that.’
‘I know. I’ve tried to call you twice, but couldn’t get through. Perhaps Philip wasn’t the one who decided about the funeral. I hate to say it, but every Mafia chief in the country was there. It was spread all over the newspapers and television.’
‘Did – were there any pictures of Philip?’
‘I’m afraid so. But he wore dark glasses and a moustache. You didn’t tell us he’d grown a moustache.’
It had to be a false one: but she was not going to confess that, not even to Meg. ‘It’s recent. Did Daddy recognize him?’
‘I don’t know. You know what he’s like – he rarely watches television. And you wouldn’t have recognized Philip from the newspaper photos. Don’t let it worry you, Sal – please. How’s the baby?’
‘Kicking.’ She felt ready to give birth right at this moment. Suddenly she broke: ‘Oh Meg, I wish I were home!’
‘Why don’t you come, then? No. No, if you feel like I felt with Martha you won’t want to get on a plane and come all this way. Look – I can’t come over, Emma is down with the measles and Martha looks as if she’s getting them. But I’ll ask Nina – ’
‘No, please don’t – I’ll be all right – ’
But Margaret would take no arguments. Nina arrived two days later with Lucas and Prue. ‘You need all the moral support you can get,’ said Lucas. ‘What are these Italian doctors like?’
‘He was going to bring over the Mayo Clinic,’ said Prue. ‘Fly it over holus-bolus.’
‘The Mayo Clinic is not an obstetrical hospital,’ said Lucas.
‘You’re getting old, Daddy. Your sense of humour isn’t too sharp.’
He smiled, accepting the joke against himself. ‘You’re right. Well, I must say you look beautiful, Mrs Mann. Nothing like a racing driver, thank God. You’re not still flying your damned airplane, I hope?’
Sally was thrilled to see them all, though at first she had had misgivings about the arrival of her father. He looked well, though older. Nina looked elegant and composed, as if she had at last come to terms with her loss of Tim and Michael. Prue was gay and beautiful, already hinting at dangers ahead for men if not for herself. Sally once again felt a sense of security, only now aware of how much she had missed it. For now at least she did not feel adventurous.
The apartment was big enough to accommodate them all: Lucia was a jelly of delight at having the signora’s family to look after. She had been worried for Signora Mann, not understanding how Signor Mann could remain away in America, even though his father had died, at a time like this. Then Philip came home two days later, minus moustache and dark glasses.
But he was changed, different from the Philip who had gone away only two weeks before. Sally noticed it as soon as they were in the car on the way back to the city. Wishing to be with him before his meeting with her family, she had had Lucia’s nephew Enrico drive her out to the airport. Philip sat holding her to him in the back of the car, though now with the baby so big in her she found it difficult to lean into his encircling arms. At last she straightened up and sat back in the seat.
‘I’m too big for cuddling – we’ll have to wait a few more weeks. How was it? I mean – ’ She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. ‘You look worried.’
‘I’ve just lost my father.’ He sounded defensive.
‘I know that. But it’s not just grief – Did something happen in Chicago?’
He nodded almost imperceptibly at the back of Enrico’s head. ‘No. I’m just worn out, that’s all.’
Perhaps so: but she knew there was more to it than that. She felt for his hand, held it all the rest of the way into the city. The meeting with her father and sisters was warm and friendly, restrained only by the awareness of his bereavement. Then he excused himself, saying he wanted a bath. Prue pulled Sally into one of the guest bedrooms.
‘He’s divine! God, he’s got that absolutely tragic look – ’ Prue had not previously met Philip.
‘Don’t be so extravagant. What’s got into you? You used to be so down-to-earth.’
Prue grinned: the kid Sally remembered peeped through the façade of the beautiful young woman. ‘I guess I’m trying to be European. I want to come back here and live, as soon as I get through college.’
‘Another three years. By then you’ll learn that the only Europeans who use extravagant adjectives are the English girls from expensive schools. What are you reading now? Barbara Cartland?’
‘Who’s she? No, I think I know everything I need to know now. About sex, I mean. It’s a dull subject, actually. To read about, I mean.’
‘It’s taken you a long time to find that out.’ Then, seriously: ‘Prue, don’t start practising it. I mean, not until you’re sure about the boy, whoever he is.’
‘I’ve already started. I went all the way when I was fourteen.’
Sally felt the baby jump. ‘For God’s sake –!’
‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to. I just can’t be hypocritical about it. I wouldn’t tell Daddy, but I thought I could tell you without you acting like some Mother Superior in a convent.’
‘Who was it?’
Prue shook her head. ‘I’m not telling his name. He was a track star at Rockhurst. When he found out I was only fourteen, he broke the marathon record getting out of the State. But he’s past history – ’ She waved an airy hand, putting a used lover down the waste disposal. ‘Don’t worry. I’m careful.’
‘Do Nina and Meg know about your – your lost virginity?’
‘It’s not lost. I know where it went.’
Sally stared at her sister, then she started to laugh. Prue also began to laugh and they lay side by side on the bed shaking with merriment. Then Sally felt the first pain and she froze with her mouth open, the laugh turning to a sob.
The baby was born at midnight on 20 August 1958 and died two minutes later before the doctors could save it. It was the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of Tim and Michael; Sally did not remark the coincidence, but Nina did. And so did Lucas, who had the date burned in his mind, the brand of his own guilt.
Independent of Nina and unbeknown to her, Lucas had never given up the search for his son-in-law and grandson. He would not have been at all upset if he had learned that Tim Davoren was dead and would have said so to Edith had she still been alive; he was no hypocrite, he told himself, and spoke ill of the dead if they deserved it. But Edith was dead and he had no one to confide in any more; so he said nothing to anyone about Tim. He knew that he and Tim had not been hypocrites when they had expressed their opinions of each other. Enemies are often closer confidants than friends.
He went to the hospital on the morning after the birth and death of his fourth grandchild. He asked to be alone with Sally; and Philip, Nina and Prue went out into the corridor. He sat down beside the bed and took Sally’s hand.
‘What is there to say? They tell me there was a malfunction in the heart. It would have been an invalid if it had lived.’
‘I wanted it so much, Daddy.’ She was wan with grief and exhaustion. ‘It was a boy, too. That would have pleased you.’
He nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself on that fact. ‘You’re still young.’ He continued to hold her hand; as he had not done since she was a child. ‘I’d like you to come home.’
Her hand contracted in his. ‘Daddy – not now. Please. I have to stay with Philip. We need to be together right now – ’
Lucas sighed, put her hand carefully back on the bed as if it were a fragile token. ‘I wish you’d think about it.’
‘Later, Daddy. In a few months.’
He kissed her, wanting to weep for her; and for himself. Then he went out into the corridor and jerked his head at Philip. ‘Could we go somewhere for a walk and a talk?’
‘The Borghese Gardens?’ The hospital was not far from the gardens. ‘I could do with some fresh air after sitting here in the hospital all night.’
The two men went out into the breathless summer morning. Two Vespas went by, coughing fumes; the girls on the pillion seats looked back, arrogant as circus bareback riders. A water truck laid a small rain on yesterday’s dust; two priests skipped aside, laying down a curse on the truck driver’s head. Overhead the sky was a bleached blue: it had been a long hot summer.
It was early but the tourists were already appearing, stretching the day as far as it would go. The two men walked past them, oblivious of them. ‘Well, I suppose it’s time we had our talk,’ said Lucas. Philip looked sideways at his father-in-law, a man he did not know. ‘What talk is that?’
‘About you. I’m sorry the baby was born dead – that’s a shock that both of you should have been spared. But in a way I’m glad. I’m sorry to be so blunt and, I guess, callous.’
‘Callous sounds about right. But go on, Mr Beaufort.’
Sun filtered through the trees, reviving yesterday’s heat which had not really died; ducks, their jewelled heads shining, glided lazily on the artificial lake. A gardener swept up yesterday’s leaves and discarded candy wrappers; he longed for winter when he and the ducks would have the gardens to themselves. Across the river the dome of St Peter’s caught the sun, God’s morning blessing for the One True Church; Protestant churches in Rome got the sun a little later in the day. On the Spanish Steps the artists and flower-sellers set up their competing colours and the tourists flowed down the steps to them like lemmings. But Philip, watching his father-in-law closely, was aware of none of it.
‘What are you going to do now your father is dead?’
‘I’d like to go on living here in Rome. But I don’t know if it will be possible.’
‘Have they asked you to take over your father’s position?’
‘They?’
‘When Sally married you, Philip, I had you looked into. Investigated, if you like. The only time I’d met you, that night we had dinner in Paris with Sally and Nina, you hedged too much when I asked you what you did. I didn’t worry then, because I didn’t think Sally was serious about you. But when she married you and neither you nor she was forthcoming in telling me any more about you, I had you looked into. It seemed strange to me that I was never invited to meet your father. I only understood it when I found out he was Tony Gentleman.’
The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked, the sound of tiny bones being ground to dust. From a nearby church there came the sound of a bell tolling: a requiem Mass was being said. An attendant went by carrying a dead duck that he had fished from the lake. Philip suddenly had a premonition of death: the sun cooled, though there was no cloud.
‘Do you belong to the Mafia?’
‘Yes.’ He said it fatalistically and made no attempt to correct Lucas on the terminology.
‘Does Sally know?’
Philip hesitated, then said, ‘Yes. I don’t think she knows to what extent I’m involved.’
‘How involved are you?’
‘More than I wanted to be. Much more.’
He had worked for the Society but had never thought he had belonged to it. That, he knew, had been self-delusion. His father had protected him, always keeping him dealing only with the clean business side; the other capos besides his father had seemed in agreement to the arrangement. He had worked in a situation that had had its own slow-burning fuse; he was intelligent enough to know it but too sentimental to escape it. He had loved his father with a devotion that he had never attempted to explain to Sally; even the long separation while he had lived here in Italy had not lessened the love. He had stayed with his father, working for him and the Society, because there had always been the hope at the back of his mind that some day they could both retire honourably from the Honoured Society. He knew now that that hope had been futile and stupid.
‘Then I am going to take my daughter away from you.’
A nun came towards them, held out some holy cards. Each of them gave her some notes, Philip giving his with a silent prayer. The nun shoved a holy card on them and moved on like a dark spirit. Again Philip felt cold.
‘You can’t do that, Mr Beaufort,’ he said evenly. ‘There’s such a thing as the law.’
‘Don’t quote the law to me. Not you.’
‘Then we’ll leave it to Sally to decide.’
Lucas nodded after a moment. ‘All right. But I’ll tell her everything she should know.’
You don’t know even the half of it. ‘I’ll tell her. I promise.’
‘Can I trust you?’ Lucas looked at him, at first quizzically, then confidently. He had had confrontations with all three of his sons-in-law; he wondered if other fathers had had so much bad luck in the draw. Philip had the worst handicap of all of them; yet he liked him the most. He felt sorry for Sally, though he wondered why she had risked so much for love. ‘All right, you tell her. Everything. But you and I will still have something to talk about even then.’
They walked back to the apartment on The Corso. The city, invaded over the centuries by Gauls, Goths, Arabs, French and Germans, was just about to be invaded by the motor car, the worst of all because every citizen wanted to be a collaborator. Horns bugled arrogantly; the older, poorer natives fled before the charges; traffic cops became field-marshals. The decline and fall of Rome had just begun again, but Lucas and Philip, brought up to be wheel-borne, saw it only as progress. It was the one thought they had in common as they walked back through the seething traffic.
That afternoon Philip went to the hospital alone. As soon as he was beside her Sally reached for him and held him to her. ‘Darling – ’
He had no words for the moment, yet he knew that the next few minutes would bring from him the most important, the most difficult words he had ever had to speak. He laid his head on her breast, still full of the milk that would not be needed.
‘Are you terribly disappointed?’ she whispered. ‘God, I just wanted to die when they told me – ’
Now was not the time to tell her; but he had to. He lifted his head, held her hands cupped in his ‘We’ll try again. But first – Darling, we have to go back to Chicago.’
She looked at him in puzzlement, her lips murmuring some vague word of query. This was not what she had expected them to be talking about: not now.
‘They killed my father.’
‘They?’
He was aware of the echo of his own voice that morning with Lucas. The world was full of echoes, he guessed: time and history were made up of them. ‘My father’s – ’ He searched for the word, let it fall as if it were phlegm: ‘Friends. The pall-bearers at his funeral.’
‘How did they kill him? You said it was cancer.’
‘He had cancer. But he might’ve lived another year, two, even three. But they weren’t prepared to wait for him to die, they wanted him out of the way. They poisoned him.’
‘Poisoned?’ She thought all Mafia murders were by the gun. ‘How do you know?’
‘The doctor told me. He’d been my father’s friend for years. He signed the death certificate as death from cancer, but he told me the truth.’
‘Why didn’t he tell the police?’
He wanted to smile, but couldn’t. ‘We never tell the police anything. He didn’t belong to the Society, but he was a Sicilian. He came from the same town as my father. If he had gone to the police they’d have killed him, too.’
All the time she had been married to him words like these had been in her mind, whispers that had been like a migraine. But she had hoped, with the desperate hope of the helpless, that if she turned a deaf ear the whispers would go away. But they hadn’t; and she had known they never would. She lay back on the pillow, less from shock than from resignation. Her life was doomed: the dead baby had been only another proof of that.
‘Why do we have to go to Chicago?’
‘There are some men in the Society, younger guys, who want me to take over. They are tired of the old men – ’
‘No!’
He could not tell her the real reason why he had to return to Chicago. She would never understand the need – no, the command to avenge. His father had asked for it with his last breath: he had known, somehow, that he was dying of more than cancer. Tony Gentleman, eyes dimmed by approaching death, acting on instinct out of tradition, had forgotten that he wanted his son to be respectable. A true man of honour had to be avenged. And Philip, honour inherited in his blood, bound by love to his father, had given his promise.
‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’ll say no to them. But I have to go back – just for a while. There are things to do.’
‘What things?’
But he had already told her too much. More, he knew, than his father would ever have told his mother. He was becoming secretive, as his father had been: silence was the best defence, the old proverb said. ‘Just business.’
‘Will we go on living here then?’
Ah, he thought sadly, that’s another matter. There were three old men to be killed. If the deed were done, then he himself would already be dead: the premonition this morning had really been precognition. They could not change their name and disappear: she, being who she was, would always mark him, like a flare above a target. A Beaufort son-in-law might disappear (he knew about Nina’s husband), but Lucas Beaufort would never allow one of his daughters to disappear without trace. He realized sardonically that he would have been safer, just as respectable, if he had married someone other than a Beaufort.
The only way to survive would be to take over as capo in Chicago, as the younger men wanted. And that would always be a fragile survival; the vendetta did not wither away with the victory of one side or the other. He had talked with the doctor in Chicago, the man from the Sicilian mountain town, and he knew now things his father had never told him. The vendetta had started fifty years ago; there had been truces but it had never died. One of the old men, posing as a friend, had been his father’s enemy all those years. Just waiting, as only a mafioso could wait.
Sally held his hand tightly. ‘Darling – don’t go back. Let them have whatever’s there.’
‘I don’t have any money.’ He used the first excuse that came to mind. ‘Not enough.’
His father had left him money but he had no idea how much. Most of it was in a bank in Zurich and he had not yet had time to go there.
‘Philip – if the baby had lived, would you still go back to Chicago?’
She had no right to ask such a question. She was like a surgeon who had blundered on to a nerve. He had wanted a son, even though that would have increased the risk against a safe future. There had been a mixture of grief and relief last night when they had told him the baby was dead; but the former had outweighed the latter. He believed in a son succeeding his father: that was why he had to go back to Chicago now.
‘How would I know?’
But Sally knew: the answer was there in every expression in his eyes, every nuance in his voice. She let his hand go, put her own hand on her empty belly. There was still pain there, despite the drugs they had given her; and between her legs. The doctors had had difficulty in taking the baby from her; they had wanted to perform a Caesarean, but she had objected strongly to that. She had gone through all the agony for nothing.
He kissed her, not with love but with tenderness. He had tried to love her, if for no other reason than to repay her for her love for him. He had had doubts at first that she really loved him, but the doubts had soon evaporated. He felt ashamed for what he had done to her. There was no way of repaying her. What a pity she wasn’t poor: the money in Zurich, however much it was, might have been some compensation.
She returned his kiss, trying to hide the fact that she did not love him. She had tried, so hard at times that it had been almost like a physical pain. He was kind and considerate and he had rescued her from despair after Michele had left her. But always there had been something in him that she had not been able to reach and she had not succeeded in loving him. But she would never let him know. She owed him that.
‘I’ll be back tonight. I’ll take your father and Nina and Prue to dinner afterwards.’
‘Don’t tell them you’re going back to Chicago. They’ll be going home in a few days.’
‘I don’t want you left alone. Maybe you’d better ask Nina to stay on.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
He came down into the street from the apartment, glad to escape from Lucas Beaufort. At last night’s dinner nothing had been said between the two men. It had just been a family gathering, subdued but pleasant. Nina and Prue had looked elegant and beautiful and, despite the sadness they felt at Sally’s losing her baby, they had been good company. Philip had found himself looking at Prue, attracted by her as he had been by none of the other Beaufort sisters, but he had been careful not to give himself away. He had wondered if, in other circumstances, he might have fallen in love with her. But then, a man of honour, as he now saw himself, he had chided himself for being untrue, even if only in his mind, to Sally.
This morning he had had his talk with Lucas. Nina and Prue were still asleep and the two men had breakfasted together in the dining room of the apartment. Both men ate American breakfasts: cereal, ham and eggs, toast, coffee. Lucia, who otherwise admired Americans, had never become accustomed to such barbarism and served them with ill grace.
‘I told Sally everything last night.’
‘What did she say?’
‘We’re going to work things out when I come back from Chicago. I have to settle the estate.’ He would not be coming back; but he had not even told that to Sally. He would be leaving here at the end of the week, saying goodbye not only to her but to Philip Mann. He was going back to being a Gentleman: he smiled at the bitter joke.
‘You’d do better not to come back,’ said Lucas.
Philip let that pass. ‘You have a great deal of power. Does it ever go to your head?’
‘Is that meant to be personal?’
‘No. It’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask someone like you. Ever since I was at the LSE. The London School of Economics.’ He explained as he saw Lucas’s eyebrow go up.
‘I know what it stands for. I’d forgotten you’d gone there. I’ve got used to thinking of you only in your other context. Power? No, it doesn’t go to my head. You use it if you have it, that’s what it’s for. But once you let it get the better of you, you’re finished.’
‘Lord Acton was right then?’
Lucas chewed on some toast. ‘Of course. But why didn’t you ever ask your father that question? He had power. The wrong sort, but he had it.’
‘I never thought of it.’ But he thought of it now, felt heavy, as if the coffee in his mouth were a potion. If he should become capo …
After breakfast he put on his jacket, picked up the Gucci brief-case Sally had given him on his birthday, said goodbye to Lucas and went down in the creaking cage of the elevator. He went out through the echoing entrance hall of the palazzo, his heels clacking hollowly on the terrazzo floor. Men of power had passed through this hall on visits to the family who had owned the palazzo: the Orsinis, Mazzini, Mussolini. Power had corrupted some of them, but he would see that it did not happen to him. He would study Lucas Beaufort, use him as a model.
He stepped out into the street, felt the heat at once even though the morning was young. He walked along The Corso, then turned into the side street where he garaged his car. He did not see the two men until they came up, one on either side of him, as he got to the short tunnel that led into the garage.
‘Don’t make any fuss,’ said one of the men, a big man in a seersucker suit and dark glasses. ‘Just keep walking. Where’s your car?’
His step faltered, but the man on the other side of him poked something hard into his waist. He was a thin young man, this one, dark-suited, dark-glassed and Italian. He said nothing, but he did not need to: the gun in his pocket spoke for him.
Philip walked down the slight slope of the tunnel into the dimly-lit garage. A car came in behind them, engine growling, and for one crazy moment he thought of breaking away and trying to run to the other side of the car. But he knew he would be dead before he had moved three feet.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Someone wants to talk to you,’ said the big man. He had a Texan accent and Philip wondered why Chicago had sent someone from Texas all the way here to Rome. ‘This your car?’
The dark blue Fiat stood at the end of a line of cars, but he could hardly see it. All his senses had stopped working.
‘Get in,’ said the Texan.
‘You – do you want me to drive?’ His voice sounded like his father’s: high, dry and soft.
‘It don’t matter.’
He slid into the driver’s seat, looked up as the big man took the pistol fitted with a silencer from his pocket.
‘Don Carlo said to say goodbye.’ Don Carlo Belgini had been his father’s friend and pall-bearer, the enemy who had killed him.
Jesus, Mary and … Philip died before he could finish the prayer.