The Villa Teresa is as the Vansittarts wish it to be now; and as the years go by nothing much will change. In the large room which they call the salon there is the timeless sculptured wall, a variety of colours and ceramic shapes. There are the great Italian urns, the flowers in their vases changed every day; the Persian rugs, the Seurat, and the paperweights which Harry has collected on his travels. Carola and Madame Spad come every morning, to dust and clean and take in groceries. The Villa Teresa, like the other villas, is its own small island.
‘Ruby, don’t you think it’s ridiculous?’ Mrs Vansittart said a month or so ago.’Don’t you, Jasper?’
Mrs Cecil inclined her head. Jasper said:
‘I think that sign they’ve put up is temporary.’
‘If they spell it incorrectly now they’ll do it again.’
Two tables of bridge were going, Mrs Cecil and Signor Borromeo with Jasper and Mrs Vansittart at one, the Blochs, Signora Borromeo and Mr Cecil at the other. In the lull halfway through the evening, during which Harry served tea and little pâtisseries which he made himself, the conversation had turned to the honouring of Somerset Maugham: an avenue was, to be named after him, a sign had gone up near the Villa Mauresque, on which, unfortunately, his surname had been incorrectly spelt.
‘Then you must tell them, my dear,’ urged Jasper, who liked to make mischief when he could. ‘You must go along and vigorously protest.’
‘Oh, I have. I’ve talked to the most awful little prat.’
‘Did he understand?’
‘The stupid creature argued. Harry, that’s a polished surface you’ve put your teapot on.’
Harry snatched up the offending teapot and at once looked apologetic, his eyes magnified behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. Harry isn’t tall but has a certain bulkiness, especially around the waist. His hands and feet are tiny, his mouse-coloured hair neither greying nor receding. He has a ready smile, is nervous perhaps, so people think, not a great talker. Everyone who comes to the villa likes him, and sympathizes because his wife humiliates him so. To strangers he seems like a servant about the place, grubbily on his knees in the garden, emerging from the kitchen regions with flour on his face. Insult is constantly added to injury, strangers notice, but the regular tennis-companions and bridge-players have long since accepted that it goes rather further, that Harry is the creature of his wife. A saint, someone once said, a Swedish lady who lived in the Villa Glorietta until her death. Mrs Cecil and Mrs Bloch have often said so since.
‘Oh, Harry, look, it has marked it.’
How could she tell? Mrs Cecil thought. How could it be even remotely possible to see half-way across the huge salon, to ascertain through the duskiness – beyond the pools of light demanded by the bridge tables – that the teapot had marked the top of an escritoire? Mrs Cecil was sitting closer to the escritoire than Mrs Vansittart and couldn’t see a thing.
‘I think it’s all right,’ Harry quietly said.
‘Well, thank God for that, old thing.’
‘Delicious, Harry,’ Mrs Cecil murmured quickly, commenting upon the pâtisseries.
‘Bravo! Bravo!’ added Signor Borromeo, in whom a generous nature and obesity are matched. He sampled a second cherry tart, saying he should not.
‘We were talking, Harry,’ Mrs Vansittart said, ‘of the Avenue Somerset Maugham.’
‘Ah, yes.’
He pressed the silver tray of pâtisseries on Signora Borromeo and the Blochs, a wiry couple from South Africa. ‘Al limone?’ Signora Borromeo questioned, an index finger poised. Signora Borromeo, though not as stout as her husband, is generously covered. She wears bright dresses that Mrs Vansittart regards with despair; and she has a way of becoming excited. Yes, that one was lemon, Harry said.
‘I mean,’ Mrs Vansittart went on, ‘it wouldn’t be the nicest thing in the world if someone decided to call an avenue after Harry and then got his name wrong.’
‘If somebody –’ Mr Cecil began, abruptly ceasing when his wife shook her head and frowned at him.
‘No, no one’s going to,’ Mrs Vansittart continued in a dogged way, which is a characteristic of hers when her husband features in a conversation. ‘No, no one’s going to, but naturally it could happen. Harry being a creative person too.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Cecil and Mrs Bloch swiftly and simultaneously.
‘It’s not outside the bounds of possibility,’ added Mrs Vansittart, ‘that Harry should become well known. His cycle is really most remarkable.’
‘Indeed,’ said Jasper.
No one except Mrs Vansittart had been permitted to hear the cycle. It was through her, not its author, that the people of the villas knew what they did: that, for instance, the current composition concerned a Red Indian called Foontimo.
‘No reason whatsoever,’ said Jasper, ‘to suppose that there mightn’t be an Avenue Harry Vansittart.’
He smiled encouragingly at Harry, as if urging him not to lose heart, or at least urging something. Jasper wears a bangle with his name on it, and a toupee that most remarkably matches the remainder of his cleverly dyed hair. Sharply glancing at his lip-salve, Mrs Vansittart said:
‘Don’t be snide, Jasper.’
‘Someone’s bought La Souco,’ Mrs Cecil quickly intervened. ‘Swiss, I hear.’
Harry gathered up the teacups, the bridge recommenced. While the cards at his table were being dealt, Jasper placed a hand lightly on the back of one of Mrs Vansittart’s. He had not meant to be snide, he protested, he was extremely sorry if he had sounded so. The apology was a formality; its effect that which Jasper wished for: to make a little more of the incident. ‘I wouldn’t hurt poor Harry for the world,’ he breathlessly whispered as he reached out for his cards.
It was then, as each hand of cards was being arranged and as Harry picked up his tray, that a bell sounded in the Villa Teresa. It was not the telephone; the ringing was caused by the agitating of a brass bell-pull, in the shape of a fish, by the gate of the villa.
‘Good Lord!’ said Mrs Vansittart, for unexpected visitors are not at all the thing at any of the villas.
‘I would not answer,’ advised Signor Borromeo. ‘Un briccone!’
The others laughed, as they always do when Signor Borromeo exaggerates. But when the bell sounded again, after only a pause of seconds, Signora Borromeo became excited. ‘Un briccone!’ she cried. ‘In nome di Dio! On briccone?’
Harry stood with his laden tray. His back was to the card-players. He did not move when the bell rang a third time, even though there was no servant to answer it. Old Pierre comes to the garden of the Villa Teresa every morning and leaves at midday. Carola and Madame Spad have gone by five.
‘We’ll go with you, Harry,’ the wiry Mr Bloch suggested, already on his feet.
Mr Cecil stood up also, as did Jasper. Signor Borromeo remained where he was.
Harry placed the tray on a table with a painted surface – beneath glass – of a hunting scene at the time of Louis XIV. Nervously, he shifted his spectacles on his nose. ‘Yes, perhaps,’ he said, accepting the offer of companionship on his way through the garden to the gate. Signora Borromeo fussily fanned her face with her splayed cards.