By lunchtime there had been the election (actually nomination and election by acclamation) of a secretary and a treasurer, and in addition, two lectures had been given. It was over lunch, in fact, that things began — not to go wrong, no no! — but to acquire an edge. When they reached the fifth and last course, the prime mover in the conference, a man called Terry Butterfield whose bloodhound good looks had over the years set hearts of all sexes aquiver, rose to give the speech of welcome.
“It is a great pleasure,” he began, “to welcome to Pisa all those lovers of Irish literature who believe that much more needs to be done to celebrate the impressive body of work of two unjustly neglected literary figures, Samuel Lover and Charles Lever. Here I would pay particular tribute to Professor Mario Pollini, of the English Department here in Pisa, without whose sterling work this two-day conference — really almost a festival — could never have taken place. Also Professor Jim Northcote, newly retired from his august position at London University, and Brian Bracewell, the well-known writer of... the well-known writer.”
He paused.
“We also owe a great debt to Declan Donnelly, my friendly rival in matters bibliographical, for his custodianship of the financial side of this wonderful coming-together of Lever-lover and Lover-lovers.”
Smiles all round, rather self-satisfied. It was a joke they had seen coming since the day they registered. One or two in the audience thought that in the references to Declan Donnelly they had heard the sound of gritted teeth.
“Does it sound like friendly rivalry to you, mate?” asked the delegate from Australia, any trace of Irish in his accent being subsumed into the cockney tones which are the Australian language.
“No,” said Brian Bracewell, on the other side of the table. “But why rivalry? Does Lever fetch astronomical prices? It seems unlikely. And Lover didn’t write all that much fiction.”
“I should say it’s a question of numbers, mate. Lever went on writing long after anybody much wanted to read him. Scarcity value, that’s what it’ll be. There’s not much logic in the secondhand trade, apart from that. Some subject is taken up, or some writer, often following a television series, and suddenly all the books on Vermeer, or Franz-Joseph of Austria, or Ned Kelly, are fetching sky-high prices. It’s a mad world, and I’ve always kept well out of it.”
Terry Butterfield was coming to the end of his speech, working up to a bit of eloquence.
“I leave it to others to talk about Samuel Lover. I am a Lever man. Charles Lever spent the later years of his life not in Ireland, not in England, but mainly on the continent of Europe, for most of the last twenty-two years in Italy. He was, in his thoughts and spirit, a European. It may seem that his years here have left little trace. We can see buildings that he knew, but we can see buildings that Attila the Hun knew, and he was around fifteen hundred years before Lever.” (Some laughter.) “But if there are only one or two buildings that we know that he lived in, places we know he went to regularly, like the Casino in Bagni di Luca, we are perhaps looking in the wrong place. We should be looking for Italy in his books. And there we find the sun, the love of pleasure, of sheer fun, the realized life which Englishmen find difficult to cope with but which suits Irishmen down to the ground. Instead of looking for traces of Lever in Italy, which are few, we should be looking for traces of Italy in Lever, and they are legion.”
He sat down to warm applause.
Sitting opposite him at the table was the delegate from Helsinki, a man who had made no impression hitherto except for an unquenchable thirst. Now he leaned across the table and put his mouth close to Terry Butterfield’s ear.
“He left something in Italy. There’s a descendant lives in Siena.”
Terry Butterfield’s eyebrows shot up.
“Surely not.”
“Quite legit, at least I think so. Descendant of one of his daughters. Name of Teresa Spagnoli. You should have asked her to be here.”
“I would have if I’d known,” said Butterfield. But he was lying. If she really was a descendant of Charles Lever he would have kept her very quiet from everyone, which meant in particular from his “friendly rival” in matters bibliographical, Declan Donnelly. Their “friendly rivalry” was particularly “friendly” when it came to first editions of Malcolm Merrivale — that late Lever novel, published reluctantly by Newby, and given the sort of print run usually only awarded to silly girls from Yorkshire who thought they had written great novels.
Further down the table Declan Donnelly was taking in the little scene that had taken place after the speech’s end.
“What the hell’s going on there?” he mused.
“Don’t know,” said Morag O’Connor, a close friend of Terry’s. “But he’s interested, Terry is. I know the signs.”
“What in the world could that Finn be telling him?”
“Search me. Does it matter? I could ask him.”
“No. Don’t do that. Things always emerge in conversation. I always get to know things if I go about it in the right way.”
“Aren’t you a judge? I can’t imagine many people gossiping with a judge.”
“Oh, I’m not the sort of judge who used to enjoy putting on the black cap! People talk to me as if I’m an agony aunt. My current wife says I’m ‘the judge next-door’.”
This particular agony aunt, Morag noticed, went in search of agony. When the lunchtime was drawing to a close and groups were breaking up she saw Declan Donnelly, glass in hand, casually wandering up towards the talkative Finn. Or not towards him, but taking a path that, with the odd stop and detour, would land him next to the rather unsteady university lecturer.
“Declan Donnelly,” he said, holding out his hand. “And you must be Jyrki Kaapola. Did I pronounce that right?”
“Not really. Nobody doesh. Why bother? Just call me Jerk.”
“All right, Jerk, I will. I’ve been called worse things than that in my time, by people in the dock.”
“Are you a pleeshman?”
“Judge, Jerk. Terry’s just been telling me what you told him.”
“Oh, yes? This woman — the descendant on the distaff side. Did I say that right?”
“No, but I get the idea. On the female side.”
“Thash right. Daughters — more than one. I mean: daughter of a daughter of a daughter.”
“Daughters of—?”
“Charles Lever, of course. Lives in Shiena. No distance. She should have been asked to come.”
“How do you know about her?”
“Colleague in the English Department in Helsinki. Has a holiday home in Tuscany. Liquor’s cheaper here. He’d met her.”
“Her being...?”
Jerk swayed. He looked as if he had only seconds in which he would remain upright. But he put his hand on the table and with practised skill maintained a vertical stance.
“Name... It’s gone... I had it, but Shpanish shounding... Like an ancestor from... di Spagna. That’sh it. Di Spagna.”
“Christian name?”
“Oh... Matilda, Teresa, or... one of those.”
“I don’t see the connection between the two.”
“End with ‘a’. Trishyllabic.”
Though Declan was about to say practically all Italian women’s names ended with an “a”, the Finn at last lost out in his battle with gravity and sank with a grunt to the floor. The delegates clustered around him, but not before Judge Donnelly had made a strategic retreat. He did not feel himself compromised in the least by talking to a drunk, but he didn’t want Terry Butterfield to see him doing it.
He considered what to do next. He could, of course, take off for Siena at once. He was just one of many delegates, and he had no special duties during the weekend. On the other hand, he was the financial brain behind the weekend and the new society, and he had just been elected treasurer. It would not look good. And judges these days had to be very aware of what would and would not look good.