Then I spoilt everything. For some unknown reason, standing beside the officers desk in the hot and crowded room, with an armed sentry at the door, my mind went suddenly back to the morning of my stepmothers funeral, the chapel full of distant relatives, and the voice of my aunt breaking the reverent whispers: I was present once at a premature cremation. I had looked forward to the funeral as a break in the orderly routine of my retirement and what a break it had proved. I had been worried, I remembered, about the rain falling on my lawn-mower. I began to laugh, and when I laughed all the enmity returned. I was again the insolent foreigner who had blown his nose on the flag of the Colorado Party. My first assailant snatched away his handkerchief, and the officer, pushing aside those who stood in his way, strode to my side and gave me a severe cuff on my right ear which began to bleed in its turn. Desperately trying to find the name of anyone they might know, I let out Mr. Viscontis alias. Señor Izquierdo, I said with no effect at all, and then, Señor OToole. The officer paused with his hand raised to strike again and I tried, Embassy Americano.
Something about those words worked[288], though I was not sure whether the working was in my favour. Two policemen were summoned and I was pushed down a corridor and locked into a cell. I could hear the officer telephoning and I could only hope that Tooleys father really knew the ropes. There was nothing to sit on in the cell only a piece of sacking under a barred window too high for me to see anything but a patch of monotonous sky. Somebody had written on the wall in Spanish perhaps a prayer, perhaps an obscenity, I couldnt tell. I sat down on the sacking and prepared for a long wait. The wall opposite me reminded me of what my aunt had said: I trained myself to be thankful that the wall seemed to keep its distance.
To pass the time I took out my pen and began to doodle on the whitewash. I put down my initials and was irritated, as often before, because they represented a famous sauce; then I wrote the date of my birth, 1913, with a dash against it where someone else could fill in the date of my death. It occurred to me to record a family history it would help to pass the time if I were to have a long stay, so I wrote down my fathers death in 1923 and my stepmothers less than a year ago. I knew nothing of my grandparents, so the only relative left me was my aunt. She had been born somewhere around 1895, and I put a question mark after the year. It occurred to me to try to work out my aunts history on the wall, which had already begun to take on a more friendly family air. I didnt entirely believe all her stories and perhaps I might discover a chronological flaw. She had seen me at my baptism and never again, so she must have left my fathers house somewhere around 1913, when she was eighteen it could not have been long after the snapshot had been taken. There had been the period with Curran in Brighton that must surely have been after the First World War, so I put Dogs Church 1919 with another question mark. Curran had left her, she had gone to Paris, and there in the establishment in the Rue de Provence she had met Mr. Visconti perhaps about the same time as my father died in Boulogne. She would have been in her twenties then. I began to work on the Italian period, her travels between Milan and Venice, Uncle Jos death, her life with Mr. Visconti, which had been interrupted by the failure of his Saudi Arabia scheme. I put tentatively the date 1937 against Paris and Monsieur Dambreuse, for she had returned to Italy and been reunited with Mr. Visconti at the house behind the Messaggero before the outbreak of the Second War. Of the last twenty years of her life I knew nothing before the arrival of Wordsworth. I had to admit that I had found nothing intrinsically false in the chronology. There was ample time for all she had told me to happen and a great deal more besides. I began to speculate on the nature of the quarrel with my so-called mother. It must have occurred round about the time of the pretended pregnancy if that story were true The door of the cell was thrown open and a policeman brought in a chair. It seemed a kindly action, and I got up from the sacking to take advantage of it, but the policeman pushed me roughly away. OToole came in. He looked embarrassed. You seem to be in trouble, Henry, he said.
Its all a mistake. I sneezed and then I happened to blow my nose
On the Colorado colours outside the Colorado HQ[289].
Yes. But I thought it was my handkerchief.
You are in an awful spot.[290]
I suppose I am.
You could easily have a ten-year sentence. Do you mind if I sit down? Ive been standing for hours at that damn parade.
Of course. Please.
I could ask for another chair.
Dont bother. Im getting used to this sack.
I guess what makes it worse, OToole said, is that you did it on their National Day. It seems kind of provocative. Otherwise they might have been content to expel you. What made you ask for me?