I think he was trying to be rude, but he could not manage the effortless offensiveness better bred Britons brewed at preparatory school as a distillation of seven-year-old homesickness.
Distilled essences of Celtic sorrow, blended or malt, were equally hard to come by that evening – two litre bottles of Italian wine, beer, martini and unobtrusive sherries making up the booze scene. There seemed, however, to be a general resolution to shift as much of it as was humanly possible.
‘Ever heard,’ I asked, ‘about the old Italian peasant who was dying? “Gather round my sons.” So they gather round. “All-a my life, I make the wine. I teach you to make the wine. Now I am dying. We make a big-a fortune from the wine. Now I tell you my last-a secret. How to make-a the wine from grapes.” And all the boys fell back in astonishment from the bed, and then the oldest son says, “Poppa. You mean you can make it from that as well?” ’
‘I love the way you Scots talk,’ she said. ‘Say something else.’
We were sitting on the floor. She was a big girl with a strong face that had something in it to draw me across the room to her.
‘Don’t laugh at my funny accent,’ I said, ‘and I won’t laugh at yours. Where are you from?’
‘London. What do you mean “accent”?’
‘ “Maybe it’s because you’re a Londoner . . .” ’ I crooned to her.
‘But I don’t talk like a Cockney,’ she said. ‘I talk like ordinary people who sound as if they don’t come from anywhere. My mother has an accent, though – that’s why I wondered.’
‘Your mother?’
‘We came from Hungary. My mother and brother and me. I was only a baby. My brother was shot in the hand. He’s a lot older than me, and until then all he had wanted out of life was to be a violinist. After he was shot, he couldn’t bend his hand.’
‘That was the Russians?’
‘Yes. It was the second time my mother had left Hungary. She left before to get away from the Germans. This time it was the Russians. I don’t remember any of it. But my older brother can’t play the violin. If you could believe my mother, he was a child prodigy.’
‘That’s the thing about great disasters. Each one is a mosaic of personal tragedies.’
I was very solemn. I really liked her and her long strong face, her brown Jewish eyes and her long legs curled under the wide skirt that suddenly looked Hungarian. I could have wept for her brother. I had a desire to stroke her face and talk to her in some private place; something sparked between us and the feeling was not only mine. I really liked her.
A squat red-faced man half stood on me. Instead of apologising, he glared down, a tumbler in each hand.
‘You want to keep your legs in!’ he snarled in a thick brogue.
‘Talking of accents, a boy from the bogs,’ I said.
‘He’s a nasty bit of work,’ she said looking after him. ‘Rosemary – you know Rosemary – said that he walked her back after a lecture she’d given. He was carrying her books and he tried to touch her up. When she stopped him, he threw her books down. She told him to pick them up and he walked away. But next morning he came and apologised and said he hoped it wouldn’t prejudice her against his work. He’d been so smarmy to her before that I’d thought it was sickening – like a kid at school sucking up to the teacher.’
‘ “Servile when you must, insolent when you may.” ’
‘Who is?’
‘That’s what Liam O’Flaherty’s Liverpool landlady wrote to him – “You are like all your race, servile when you must, insolent when you may.” ’
‘Seems rather harsh.’
‘Understandable. He had preferred fleeing as a fugitive from the British army to staying in hiding with her and having to marry her daughter.’
‘They’re a funny crowd the Irish.’
‘Like the Hungarians. You’ve been too long among the English.’
‘Here! – I am English. So’s my husband.’
‘So was O’Flaherty’s landlady. It’s a small world.’
By that time, it didn’t matter too much what we were saying. I was sensitive to everything about her, her eyes and the way one arm took her weight as she leaned towards me. Discreetly, we fed off a shared excitement.
‘Why don’t we go somewhere private?’ I suggested. ‘Have a drink away from all this racket.’
The Irishman who had offended Rosemary was at the centre of a group just in front of us. The group was laughing at or with him.
‘I’d like that. Shall I bring this?’ She held up her glass of red wine.
‘No problem.’ I reached under the chair and eased out the bottle I’d hidden there earlier. ‘Best wine on the table. I liberated it just after I arrived.’
‘What would happen if everyone did that?’
‘I expect some of them have. Old Scots custom. Necessary foresight of a small nation kept poor by a maniac imperialist next door.’
‘Sad,’ she said mockingly.
‘Don’t cry over my history and I won’t cry over yours.’
We climbed to our feet and stood swaying gently and smiling at one another.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Is your room in the main building?’
‘I don’t have one. I’m a visitor.’
‘Be my guest.’
At the door Primo materialised.
‘You have to stay here.’
She looked at me as if I had grown horns.
‘Who’s he?’
‘Nobody.’ I half turned from her and muttered desperately, ‘Look. We’re going outside . . . you know. We’ll be back. No funny ideas. Brond said it – where would I go?’
He looked at me impassively.
‘Back inside.’
‘What is this?’ She touched my arm. ‘Are you coming or not?’
I shrugged.
‘No – it doesn’t look as though I am.’
‘My God!’ she said. ‘I mean I’ve been stood up but . . . Oh, God!’
To my embarrassment, she looked hurt more than angry. As I shuffled, she gave a shiver and turned back inside. She stood looking at the bright room and then swung round and pushed past us. She vanished into the lengths of the corridor.
‘She thinks you’re my boy friend,’ I said to Primo.
He didn’t react. The idea was too silly to touch him.
‘No, not you,’ I said. ‘Not the Scottish soldier. Jesus! Has nobody told you? There’s no Empire any more and all the Chinks are colonising the restaurants.’
‘I don’t go for that Empire stuff. I’ve seen through all of that,’ he said. ‘But you don’t listen, do you?’
‘Here!’ I shoved the bottle of wine at him. Reflexively, his big hand closed round it. ‘A present. Stick it up your kilt!’
The Irishman was still being the life and soul of the party. Brond was on the edge of the group listening with a little smile.
‘Did you have to spoil my chances?’
‘Chances?’ Tasting the word, Brond found it, like the wine, cheap.
There was so much distraction we exchanged words in a cocoon of privacy.
‘Not for anything you’d understand,’ I complained, sounding petulant.
‘Oh, chances. The girl. Did you try to slip away with her?’
‘Make love not war. Why did you bring me here?’
‘To pass some time. It was too early for where we have to go. Anyway I had been invited and I thought you would enjoy the cultured atmosphere.’
‘Wonderful,’ the girl in front of us said. Like most of the people at the party, she was English by the sound of her. The man who answered was as well.
‘Mm. He tells marvellously funny stories.’
‘Tell us a story,’ the girl called, ‘about your Uncle Danny!’
General laughter.
‘The one about the pig!’
The Irishman grinned vastly. His nose was beaded with sweat.
‘He was known for it in the village,’ he cried. ‘Did I sing you the song about him?’
A rearrangement of the circle left me in front of him. I composed my face into my ethnic interest look – the one that went with visits to folk clubs. As a fellow Celt, I wished him . . . He looked at me and shook his head.