Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘Italy is a Roman Catholic country,’ he observed. ‘You can’t buy these pills here. But that doesn’t stop women wanting to avoid being in a constant state of baby production, does it? And the pills are marvellous for them, they can take them without the devoutest husbands knowing anything about it.’

‘Good God,’ I said.

‘My brother’s wife collects them at home from her friends and so on, and when she has a bottle full I bring it to Gabriella and she passes them on at this end. I know for a fact[190] that at least four other pilots do the same, not to mention a whole fleet of air hostesses, and she admitted to me once that a day seldom goes by without some supplies flying in.’

‘Do you… well… sell… them to Gabriella?’

He was quite shocked, which pleased me. ‘Of course not. She doesn’t sell them, either. They are a gift, a service if you like, from the women of one country to the women of another. My sister-in-law and her friends are really keen on it[191], they don’t see why any woman in the world should have to risk having a child if she doesn’t want one.’

‘I’ve never thought about it,’ I said, fingering the bottle. ‘You’ve never had a sister who’s borne six children in six years and collapsed into a shattering nervous breakdown when she started the seventh.’

‘Gabriella’s sister?’

He nodded. ‘That’s why she got some pills, in the first place. And the demand just grew and grew.’

I gave him back the bottle and he put it in his pocket.

‘Well?’ he said, with a hint of challenge. ‘

She must be quite a girl[192]’, I said, ‘to do something like this’.

His curving mouth curved wider. ‘If she smuggled the Crown Jewels you’d forgive her. Confess it.’

‘Whatever she did,’ I said slowly.

The amusement died right out of his face and he looked at me soberly. ‘I’ve heard of this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never seen it happen before. And you didn’t even need to speak to each other. In fact, it’s just damn lucky you can speak to each other.’

Three times during the afternoon I made sure of that.

She would get into trouble, she said, if she just talked to me when she should be working, so I bought presents, separately, for my father, mother and sister, taking a long time over each choice[193]. Each time she spoke and looked at me in a kaleidoscopic mixture of excitement, caution and surprise, as if she too found falling helplessly in love with a complete stranger an overwhelming and almost frightening business.

‘I like that one.’

‘It costs six thousand lire.’

‘That is too dear.’

‘This one is cheaper.’

‘Show me some others.’

We began like that, like school-day text-books, in careful stilted French, but by the end of the afternoon, when she locked the display cases and left with Patrick and me through the employees’ entrance, we could talk with some ease. I perhaps knew most French of the three of us, then Gabriella, then Patrick; but his Italian was excellent, so between us everything could in one language or another be understood.

We left the airport in a taxi, and as soon as we were on the move Patrick gave her the aspirin bottle. She thanked him with a flashing smile and asked him if they were all the same sort[194]. He nodded, and explained theyd’ come from some R.A.F. wives whose husbands were away on a three months overseas course.

From her large shoulder-sling bag of black leather she produced some of the bright striped wrapping paper from her airport gift shop and a large packet of sweets. The sweets and the aspirin bottle were expertly whisked into a ball-shaped parcel with four corners sticking up on top like leaves on a pineapple, and a scrap of sticky tape secured them.

The taxi stopped outside a dilapidated narrow terrace house in a poor-looking street. Gabriella climbed out of the taxi, but Patrick waved me back into my seat.

‘She doesn’t live here,’ he said. She’s just delivering the sweets.’

She was already talking to a tired-looking young woman whose black dress accentuated the pallor of her skin, and whose varicose veins were the worst I had seen, like great dark blue knobbed worms networking just under the surface of her legs. Round her clung two small children with two or three more behind in the doorway, but she had a flat stomach in her skimpy dress and no baby in her arms. The look she gave Gabriella and her pretty present were all the reward that anyone would need. The children knew that there were sweets in the parcel. They were jumping up trying to reach it as their mother held it above their heads, and as we left she went indoors with them, and she was laughing.

‘Now,’ said Patrick, turning away from the window, ‘we had better show Henry Milan.’