The Lessons Read online

  His voice was almost a whisper. ‘Who left this note in my room?’

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Erm. I did? Sorry. I mean, sorry, I didn’t mean to go into your room without permission. I just couldn’t think of where else to leave it and your mother seemed so insistent that …’

  He stared at me, as if I was an enemy he’d underestimated.

  ‘You? You spoke to my mother?’

  The others were staring at me. I couldn’t imagine what they thought I’d written to Mark. I began to wonder if I’d had some sort of psychotic break and instead of ‘Mark, your mum called, she’s coming to visit next week’ I’d written ‘Mark, your mum called, she’s a filthy whore’, and smeared it with excrement.

  ‘The phone was ringing,’ I said. ‘When I got in the phone was ringing so I answered it and –’ I looked around – ‘all it says is that Mark’s mum is coming to visit.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jess mechanically. ‘That’s lovely news, isn’t it, Mark?’

  ‘Ahm,’ said Mark, and dropped the hand holding the note to his side. A few drops of blood rolled stickily down his hand and splashed on to the pale green carpet. They made perfect round circles. Mark looked down at his hand and then at all of us. His eyes were afraid, dumb and desperate.

  ‘Oh!’ said Emmanuella. ‘Mark, you have hurt yourself!’

  Mark did nothing. He stood in place and the blood rolled down his arm, dripping on to the carpet.

  It was Jess, at last, who stood up and took him by the hand to the bathroom. It was Jess who cleaned his arm and dressed his wounds, not commenting on the five perfectly regular lateral scores across the inside of his upper arm. It was Jess who, afterwards, when he was quiet and peaceful, pulled back the sheets and put him to bed and gave me the razor to put in with my shaving kit until we came to some decision. It was Jess who did these things: the things a good person does.

  7

  First year, June, seventh week of term

  It is striking to me now that it did not occur to any of us to telephone Isabella and persuade her to put off her visit. These days, if she were to call the house in San Ceterino, Mark would be cool and formal. He insists on speaking English with her, claiming that his Italian is too rusty to understand the rapid shower of her syllables. This is a lie; his Italian is perfect, far better than mine. But English slows her, brings her into a world of politeness, where she cannot quite bring off certain of her particular effects.

  We did not think of our parents in this way though, not then: not as problems to be managed or contained, not even as entities quite separate from us.

  So she arrived, as she had said she would, wearing a cream trouser suit and a wide-brimmed hat and carrying two turquoise suitcases. The wicker bag slung over her left arm, which appeared at first glance to contain a teddy bear, turned out on closer inspection to be a dog-carrier with the head of a little terrier puppy peeping incongruously out, like a gruesome experiment in dog-bag hybridization. She was still recognizable as the woman from the photographs – older, of course, the skin creased around her eyes, her hands beginning to mottle with liver spots – but nonetheless this was the woman whose half-naked form was displayed in a variety of poses on the walls of one of the small sitting rooms. I was reminded, suddenly, of Franny’s horror at having heard Dr Rufus McGowan in bed with Mark. For all that we were here to learn, it was possible to have too much knowledge.

  ‘Oooof!’ She mimed wiping the sweat from her brow. ‘It is so hot. And not a drop of water for me to drink.’

  ‘You should have called from the station, Mamma,’ said Mark. ‘I would have come to get you.’ He spread out his arms to embrace her.

  ‘Momento,’ she said, hoisting her bag. ‘I must let Colonel Felipe out of his bag. Poor he, he has been so good.’ She swung the bag round, released a hidden clasp and lifted the dog out. His legs waggled as she held him up. She deposited him on the terrace and he swayed slightly, before skittering off towards the rose bushes.

  ‘I named him Colonel Felipe after my great-grandfather,’ she said. ‘He was a colonel in the army of Pavia. Seven hundred men were lost owing directly to his order to advance to the left, facing right. He meant to say, “To the right, facing left”. Or –’ she waved a hand uncertainly – ‘perhaps it was the other way. The poor man felt such shame he attempted suicide but owing to a defective pistol was unable to finish the task. He shot his right ear off instead. Is it not terribly sad?’

  ‘Mamma …’ began Mark.

  ‘Marco, do not stand there doing nothing. Bring some water please in a bowl for Colonel Felipe. He is thirsty.’

  Mark backed away a pace or two, then turned and hurried through to the kitchen. While he was gone, Isabella introduced herself to us all. We tried to call her ‘Signora Ranelli’ – or, in my case, ‘Mrs Winters’, momentarily forgetting that Mark’s parents had been divorced for many years – but she brushed off these attempts at formality.

  ‘Isabella, please. Call me only Isabella. No Mrs,’ she continued, ‘no Signora. Isabella. Like one of your friends.’

  As Mark returned from the house, carrying a deep pudding basin of water for the dog, Isabella frowned at him.

  ‘No, no. Can you not see that this is too deep for poor Colonel Felipe? He will not be able to reach with his little head! Or he will drown! Bring a smaller bowl.’

  Throwing a look of loathing at the dog that made me suspect he rather hoped to drown it, Mark went back into the house. We stood awkwardly in silence on the terrace until he returned a few moments later with a soup plate of water.

  Isabella looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘You do not look well, Marco. You do not speak. Do you sleep? Has he slept well?’

  She looked around at all of us, frowning. We nodded eagerly, although it wasn’t true: he hadn’t slept well for days before her arrival.

  ‘Good. You must learn to take care of yourself, Marco. Now give Colonel Felipe his water please.’

  Mark, moving clumsily, put down the dog’s water. It took a few eager sips, then stopped, its head cocked to one side, waiting. Isabella looked at it fondly and as if this, only this, had reminded her, she spread out her arms to Mark.

  ‘Marrrrco, how good it is, how good to see you.’

  She wrapped her glittering ring-coated fingers around his shoulders and pulled his face down to hers. She planted kisses on his cheeks, one two, one two. Then, quickly, she muttered something in Italian, too low and too fast for me to catch even if I had been able to understand it. Mark flinched. He took two rapid steps backwards.

  ‘Now, my darlings,’ she said, ‘you will forgive me. I am so tired and it has been such a long way. Do you, perhaps, in all of this big house, have a chair?’

  ‘Mamma …’ murmured Mark, but Emmanuella was already leading Isabella through the open French doors to the garden room. Isabella swung back and laced her arm through Jess’s, who allowed herself to be taken through. Simon shrugged, picked up the turquoise cases and followed.

  On the terrace, Colonel Felipe had finished his water and relieved himself on the terrace, and was now attacking a small privet bush, snarling and making little runs at it.

  Franny reached out a tentative arm and touched Mark between the shoulder blades. He did not shrug her off.

  She said, ‘Are you all right?’

  Mark smiled. ‘God, yeah. She’s a pain, though, isn’t she?’

  ‘Totally. Yeah, totally. D’you think we should bring the Colonel in?’

  We stared in silence at Colonel Felipe. He had a branch of privet between his teeth and was shaking it about, yipping and pulling his lips back to bare his pink and black gums.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere near the little rat.’ He drew his foot back thoughtfully, balancing on one leg, as if about to aim a swift hard kick at the Colonel. For a moment, I thought he’d do it. But as he got close enough almost to brush the dog’s fur, he pulled back, wheeled around and marched into the house.

  ‘ … and
all this doing was for nothing, for the villa fell from the cliff into the ocean!’ Isabella finished as we walked through the French doors.

  Simon guffawed appreciatively. In those few minutes, one of Isabella’s suitcases had been opened. It was full of tissue-paper wrappings: pink and gold and green and white and blue. Isabella had taken Jess and Emmanuella to sit on either side of her and was patting their hands.

  ‘Marco,’ she said, ‘you remember Ginella? We saw her that summer in Las Palmas?’

  Mark nodded warily.

  ‘I have been telling your friends about when …’ She looked at him, suddenly uncertain. ‘Ah, it does not matter. Marco, I must hear all about your studies. Have you been working hard? Come here, come and sit by me.’

  She patted the half-inch of space on the sofa between her and Jess. Mark, ignoring her, sat sullenly in a chair a little way off.

  He indicated the tissue paper. ‘So what’s all this, Ma? Did you buy up half of Paris?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Isabella. ‘Only a few things, some little things. For your friends.’

  She bent over the suitcases and pulled out various gifts: a pair of leather driving gloves for Simon, a blank calfskin book for me, some bath salts and perfume in intricate glass bottles and silk scarves for the girls.

  I felt uncomfortable. I was not accustomed to receiving expensive gifts, let alone from a friend’s mother. Only Emmanuella knew the proper form. She swooped down on Isabella, kissed her, then wound her scarf around her neck, trying out different knots in the mirror. Simon, noticing how well this reception looked, put his gloves on too, but the effect was not the same.

  From the bottom of the case Isabella pulled a large gift box covered in white suede.

  ‘Can you guess what it is I have brought for you, Marco?’

  Mark assumed a satirical expression.

  ‘Why no, Mamma. Is it Enrico’s wig collection?’

  ‘Marco!’ Isabella rapped him on the knee, but she smiled. ‘Enrico was my second husband, after Marco’s father,’ she confided. ‘He was a pig, a tyrant, not even half as much money as he said. I divorced him after five months. And, for a joke, Marco and I stole all his toupees and made a bonfire of them. But they were plastic! They did not burn, they melted all into the grass and the gardener had to dig them out. The smell was beyond description.’ She flared her nostrils as if the scent had again invaded her nose. ‘No, no, Marco. I have brought you something wonderful. Open, open.’

  Mark pulled at the gold ribbons tying down the lid and opened the box. He stared at the contents for a second or two completely impassively. He looked at his mother with suspicion.

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘Certainly, why not?’

  Slowly, Mark lifted out an object of gold and glass and placed it on the coffee table.

  It was a shining confection, an ornate glass box covered with gold scrollwork, with six curved gold feet like eagle’s talons holding on to orbs. There was a white velvet-lined central compartment and a mechanism of notched cylinders and metal combs.

  Mark felt underneath the box, turned an unseen key – we heard the strained cranking – then opened the lid. A metallic note sounding out a childhood tune: ‘Au Clair de la Lune’. It was a music box. We listened in silence as the melody played out three times and the box wound down, the final notes coming in a syrupy slow dragging drip.

  ‘Of course,’ Mark said when the tune was finished, ‘it’s a very gaudy thing.’

  ‘You loved it when you were a boy, Marco, do you remember?’ Before giving him a chance to reply Isabella barrelled on. ‘It was my mother’s. It is precious. It was made for her family 150 years ago, very rare. This box, Marco could not hear it enough. He used to ask for it in the night when he was frightened and she would put it on the little table by his bed and start it to play. She left the door so he could see the light from the hallway. Do you remember, Marco? In the night?’

  Mark’s expression was hooded, his eyes half-closed.

  ‘I remember,’ he said at last. ‘I loved it.’

  ‘You should thank your mamma for bringing this beautiful thing for you all the way from California.’

  And he murmured, ‘Thank you, Mamma.’

  The following day, Isabella invited a monk for tea. Franny told me once that Mark’s father – who was the source of Mark’s money but was mostly absent from his life – had made a vast donation to his own old college to secure their agreement for Mark to study philosophy and theology, even though they did not officially offer this subject. He had likewise arranged, through some arcane connection, that Mark should take half his tutorials among the monks of St Benet’s Hall.

  Father Hugh was, I believe, a fairly senior figure at the college. It was impossible to take him seriously, though. First, because of Mark’s nickname for him, ‘Hugh the Huge Hunky Monk’, and with his strong jaw, rough mop of brown curls and muscular physique, I could see what Mark meant. He had a way of crossing his legs and hurling himself against the sofa at moments of animation which suggested that his cassock was about to open, laying bare all that ought to remain concealed. He had brought with him an oiled olive-wood rosary as a gift for Isabella – I guessed that Mark’s family had exhibited their generosity to Benet’s too – and two people he described as ‘young Christians’. They were Rosemary – a girl with a nose made for dripping and a shapeless outfit of pale blue – and Eoin, who, despite his name, was thoroughly English and wore the Oriel College rowing jersey.

  I wasn’t invited to the tea party and all the others were out. But as I crossed the hall, Mark called to me through the open door to the long salon. He was hunched over, on a chair between the two sofas, one occupied by his mother and Rosemary, the other by Father Hugh and Eoin. He looked like a tethered dog.

  ‘James!’ he said. ‘James! Come and have tea with us!’

  Isabella frowned. The monk and his two young friends looked at me with shining-eyed interest. I almost said no. But then Mark caught my gaze again. He put the tips of his fingers together into an almost-praying gesture and mouthed ‘Please’. So I came in and sat down.

  Eoin had just returned from the Himalayas, as he was pleased to inform us after introductions had been made. He pronounced the word with extraordinary stress on the second syllable, gulping all his sentences from the back of his throat.

  ‘Yuh,’ he said, ‘eight days climbing. Failed to summit because Callan Gosset – do you know Callan?’

  This, startlingly, was directed at me. On further reflection, I supposed that he had every right to assume that I came from his social group: he had found me living in this house, after all. I shook my head.

  ‘No? Shame. Top man, Callan. Absolutely barking mad, been digging wells in Namibia with Icthus Relief?’

  I shook my head again.

  ‘No? Never mind. The thing was, Callan’s fingers froze. Tried to thaw them out, all five of us pissed on them. Sorry.’ This was to Isabella with a rueful smile. ‘But nothing for it. Gangrene set in, had to get back to base camp. Missed the summit by 120 feet.’

  Father Hugh kicked his sandalled feet out, billowing his cassock dangerously.

  ‘It was all for Christian Aid, wasn’t it, Eoin? Wonderful cause, I always say.’

  ‘Oh, yuh,’ said Eoin, through a mouthful of cake. ‘Tremendous thing, sponsored, raised £15,000. Thereabouts.’

  Isabella nodded appreciatively. ‘Isn’t that lovely, Marco? All the money for charity.’

  Mark muttered something under his breath. I thought I might have heard the words ‘sponsored silence’, but it was too low for me to catch.

  ‘What was that, Mark?’ boomed Father Hugh.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking, Eoin, that you should try other sponsored activities. Maybe an ascent of the Eiger?’

  Eoin took another sandwich from the pile on the table in front of him and bit down happily.

  ‘Yuh,’ he said, ‘this summer, kayaking along the Amazon. For the Glaucoma Trust.’

  ‘
Marvellous,’ murmured Isabella.

  ‘Still a few places if you want to come,’ Eoin said to me and Mark, wolfing another sandwich. ‘Have to register, get vaccinations. Three weeks in a canoe, Amazon river, chance of a lifetime.’

  I shook my head. Mark turned smoothly in his seat.

  ‘What about you, Rosemary?’ he said. ‘Got any summer plans you can’t cancel?’

  Rosemary sniffed away a non-existent drip and spoke so quietly that we all instinctively leaned forward.

  ‘I’ll be in Rome,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh!’ Isabella leaned even further forward, full of excitement. ‘Roma! The most beautiful city in the world! Where do you stay? What do you see?’

  Rosemary sniffed again and cleared her throat. If possible, she spoke even more softly.

  ‘The Sisters of Holy Charity have kindly given me board,’ she said. ‘I am studying manuscripts held in the Vatican.’ She lowered her voice a touch. ‘For my PhD.’

  Father Hugh smiled a toothy but engaging smile.

  ‘Rosemary’s quite a star of the Theology Department. She’s at All Souls, you know.’

  Even I could not fail to look at Rosemary with increased respect at this news. All Souls College is one of Oxford’s legends, the kind of anachronism that surely could not have survived until the present day, and yet it stands. It is a college with no students, giving fellowships to those who – having naturally gained a first – are bright enough to impress the other fellows in its examinations, one of which consists of writing for three hours on a single word.

  Isabella, confused about the meaning of the words ‘All Souls’, nonetheless registered the admiration on my face and Mark’s.

  ‘You see, Marco,’ she said, ‘it is not only duddy-fuddies in the Catholic Society, is it, Father?’

  ‘No indeed,’ he said, ‘and we don’t demand any particular commitment. Although naturally –’ he shifted his legs again in that disturbing way – ‘I always say that the more you put in, the more you get out. Are you a Catholic, James?’