September in the Rain Read online

  Peter Robinson

  SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN

  A Novel

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Poetry

  The Benefit Forms

  Overdrawn Account

  This Other Life

  More about the Weather

  Entertaining Fates

  Leaf-Viewing

  Lost and Found

  About Time Too

  Anywhere You Like

  Selected Poems

  Ghost Characters

  The Look of Goodbye

  English Nettles

  The Returning Sky

  Like the Living End

  Buried Music

  Prose & Interviews

  Untitled Deeds

  Talk about Poetry: Conversations on the Art

  Spirits of the Stair: Selected Aphorisms

  Foreigners, Drunks and Babies: Eleven Stories

  The Draft Will

  Translations

  The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems

  Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni

  The Greener Meadow: Selected Poems of Luciano Erba

  Poems by Antonia Pozzi

  Criticism

  In the Circumstances: About Poems and Poets

  Poetry, Poets, Readers: Making Things Happen

  Twentieth Century Poetry: Selves and Situations

  Poetry & Translation: The Art of the Impossible

  Copyright © Peter Robinson 2016

  Peter Robinson asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Although portions of September in the Rain are derived from real events, each character in it is a composite drawing upon several individuals and the author’s imagination. Place and time have been adapted to suit the shape of the book, and with the exception of a few public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be taken for ones held by the writer.

  Hardback ISBN 978-1-910688-08-3

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-910688-10-6

  Kindle 978-1-910688-09-0

  Cover : Vincent Van Gogh.

  Detail of Enclosed Wheat Field in the Rain, November 1889,

  Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

  September in the Rain”

  By Harry Warren And Al Dubin

  All Rights Administered

  By Warner/Chappell North America Ltd

  Cover design by Ken Dawson

  Typeset by handebooks.co.uk

  Published in the USA and UK

  Holland House Books

  Holland House

  47 Greenham Road

  Newbury, Berkshire RG14 7HY

  United Kingdom

  www.hhousebooks.com

  Contents

  NOTE

  20 SEPTEMBER 1975

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  NOTE

  Though based upon a series of events that took place over forty years ago, September in the Rain, as its subtitle says, is a work of fiction. When not invented, its characters resemble only in outline their originals, and are composed for fictional purposes. This novel has been the recipient of a great deal of advice from many loved ones, friends, family, and acquaintances. I warmly and gratefully thank them all. For their particular care and attention to this book, I would especially like to acknowledge the help of Kate Behrens, James Peake, my editor at Holland House, Robert Peett, and Marcus Perryman. Surviving faults and weaknesses are, of course, my own.

  ‘Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade

  est possédé du désir de changer de lit.’

  Charles Baudelaire

  20 SEPTEMBER 1975

  The yellow breakdown truck pulls off and halts outside an Agip petrol station bar. Pushing the stiffly sprung door, the driver throws back his blue anorak hood and shakes off the worst of the rain. Behind him come the two of us, bedraggled from the storm, wet through, with limp hair and blank faces, eyes blinking in the neon as if startled out of a troubled night’s sleep.

  Head down, with your long dark hair dripping from the rain, you’ve retreated to a corner as far as possible from the counter and customers. And there you’ll stay, your face still wet with tears or the rain, shivering beside the chrome stands where dolls in plastic bags and soft toys for souvenirs are dangling on display.

  The breakdown truck driver walks across the marble floor. It’s muddied with the feet of transients through the small hours of this Saturday morning. Reaching the polished counter, he orders and falls into conversation with the few men standing there. Not much to tell: he hadn’t understood what the two young people were trying to say. Someone had pressed a button on the red emergency box beside a crash barrier down the hard shoulder. He’d stepped out of his truck, into the pouring rain. But there wasn’t a car in sight, and the breakdown man was only a mechanic getting through his long night shift.

  ‘Polizia!’ you had cried. ‘Polizia!’

  So the mechanic had slung our wet rucksacks onto the back of his truck, bundled us into its cab, and driven directly to the Agip service station where, yes, he would phone the police. Now he’s asking the barman for use of the phone to make a quick call to the polizia stradale. That’s right, he had found two foreigners alone on the autostrada towards Como at about half past four in the morning. They were soaked to the skin, and there was definitely something wrong because they were saying ‘polizia’ over and over. Then he puts the receiver back into its cradle. The police would drive over to see for themselves.

  By the bar, the workmen are starting to stare towards the souvenir stands. You’re still silently shivering in amongst the bric-a-brac, not responding to anything I might try to say, standing stiffly and slightly stooped. Puddles are starting to form about your feet, further muddying the barman’s floor. Here he comes out from among his shelves of bottles and glasses with a mop, wiping clean arcs around him from the counter to the door and back again. Seeing our disarray, he’s left that part of his floor to look after itself.

  His phone call finished, the breakdown truck driver has turned to the other men standing at the bar. Now one of those nightshift workers is venturing across the floor towards the reddish smears from the wet clay earth. It’s streaked up the legs of your jeans, and even on the elbows and front of your clothes. The mechanic, it seems, has encouraged this other man to come and find out what the matter could be.

  ‘Bist du Deutsch? Sprechen sie Deutsch?’

  You don’t so much as look up.

  ‘Inglese,’ I reply.

  He shrugs incomprehension.

  ‘Mia donna …’

  ‘Sì,’ says the workman, nodding.

  But I don’t know how to say it, and stumble over noises in pretended Italian.

  ‘Cosa?’ says the workman, with a kindly but puzzled expression. Now
he’s looking sideways towards you, your head still lowered among the toys. The workman shrugs his shoulders.

  Look, this is my hand pointing out into pitch darkness, pointing towards the clatter of September rain on roofs and leaves. Then this is the shape of a gun being pointed, index and middle finger, the barrel, the thumb raised like a cocked trigger.

  ‘Ah, si, pistola,’ he says. ‘E poi?’

  It’s a ghastly game of charades. The nightshift workman gasps, seeming to understand. He looks askance at you again, hunched there amongst the teddy bears with their flexible arms outstretched, your eyes fixed firmly on the barman’s floor.

  ‘Venite, venite ragazzi,’ he says, gesturing towards the service station counter. The rain is still pouring in the blackness outside. Rivulets are coursing across the plate-glass windows, fusing and dividing as they run. The interested workman crosses towards the glistening chrome surfaces. Looking around as he walks, he waves an arm in a way that clearly means follow—which is what I do, alone. Up at the counter, the barman is busy with his coffee machine and at first takes no notice of these new arrivals. Now he’s pouring drinks into short glasses and talking with his regulars. Finally, one of the workmen directs his attention towards me standing there, a bedraggled boy with dripping wet hair drawn back from his face. The mirrored wall behind the barman’s back is lined with brightly labeled bottles; bits of a suntanned English face are reflected between their curves and variously coloured contents.

  ‘Due caffè, per favore.’

  ‘Corretti?’ asks the barman.

  Correct?

  ‘Sì, sì.’

  ‘Sissy,’ the barman says, parodying my impure vowels. Then, after producing the two espressos, he adds a measure of brandy into each of the small white cups lined up on his freshly wiped bar.

  There are a few loose coins in my damp trouser pockets. I slide them onto the counter, gulp the coffee down, and take yours over to the souvenir stands. You’re shivering still with your arms clasped about you, long straight dark hair parted in the middle but falling forward and closing around the head to hide your features. A few traces of the red mud cling in the lank brown strands. You’re wearing my shapeless, crumpled summer jacket, its shoulders and back darkened from the soaking. Other night workers and travellers are swiveling round and glancing towards you. They’re talking about those ragazzi inglesi, making guesses about what must have happened outside in the rain. You sip at the coffee, holding the small white cup near your face with both hands.

  The polizia stradale pull up outside and two uniformed men step in. One is carrying a short carbine with a wooden butt. Now they too are trying, with the aid of the German-speaking workman, to discover what the matter can be. Only they aren’t able to hear anything they might understand, just the loud noise of a raised voice speaking a language that none of them knows. But the two traffic policemen can gather from the breakdown truck driver and assorted bystanders that this is none of their business. Nothing about what’s occurred sounds like a motoring offence. Quite simply it will have to be reported to the Questura in Como.

  How can this policeman not be concerned about what has happened out there in the rain? What are the police for here, if not to investigate crime? Yet it’s not the policeman’s job to explain for our benefit, and explain in English, that Italy has half a dozen, entirely independent categories of police. Now here in front of your face comes a waggling thumb.

  ‘Autostop?’

  No, it is none of their business. The senior of the two will have to spell it out.

  ‘La polizia,’ he begins saying slowly and loudly, ‘più vicina … è … a Como … dovete … andare … a Como … ragazzi.’

  Then he turns his attention to you. Your arms remain held across your breasts, hands clutching your sides as if doing the best you can literally to pull yourself together.

  ‘Coraggio! Coraggio!’ he says, resting a large hand for an instant on your shoulder. At which you visibly stiffen. The two policemen turn, step out into the watery early morning light, and are gone towards their blue squad car parked by the door. In they climb, and drive away.

  ‘Courage?’ I gasp. ‘And would somebody like to tell me how we’re supposed to get to Como? Hitch-hike?’

  Momentarily, you look up. You’re standing a slight distance from me, your state made worse by the policemen’s visit. But that considerate workman has foreseen this difficulty too. He’s leading somebody across from the small crowd gathered by the bar. This man in a light blue overall is a pump attendant at the petrol station and will be driving into town at the end of his shift. So the thing is to wait until the attendant clocks off, pointing at his watch, then he’ll drive into Como, turning an invisible steering wheel with his hands, and make a detour by way of the Questura. The what?

  ‘Polizia?’

  ‘Sì … polizia.’

  At regular intervals other workmen and drivers come in from the road. They glance around and catch a glimpse of you huddled among the dolls and bears, me standing helplessly beside you. These newcomers appear to think nothing of it. Buying their refreshments, now they’re being filled in by the barman or a customer about whatever our story is supposed to be.

  They don’t seem surprised, turning around to take another look at us standing over here. It’s as if this sort of thing happens all the time. This nonchalant attention, added to the policeman’s consoling gesture, is piling on your agony. It almost begins to seem worse, even worse than what had taken place out in the dark. The safety of some neon light and the company of those others from the small hours has been so quickly transformed into a purgatory of curiosity—as if we’re already dead, come back to haunt the scenes of our last moments like a pair of unappeasable revenants. It feels like being the blurred black-and-white photos of car accident victims in the Sunday morning editions.

  Back turned to them now, standing between you and the bar, I’m making an attempt to shield you from those customers’ eyes. Underneath your thin summer clothes, my damp red-smeared jacket, and the flowery smock you made yourself, your body quivers and quivers. The nightshift might come off around six-thirty. And it’s just after five-fifteen by the bar’s electric clock. The best part of an hour has passed already. Like a compulsive hand-washer, whenever there’s a lull the barman comes out with the mop and attacks his muddy floor. Outside, the rain has begun to ease. A row of Lombardy poplars is forming itself from the blackness, swaying slightly in the middle ground, with an outline of mountains starting vaguely to sketch itself onto the far distance. What promises to be a warm early autumn day begins to lighten through the bar’s glass panels, a landscape’s routine emergence from the dark …

  Now the Agip employee is walking out to his Fiat parked beyond the petrol pumps. The air felt chill and fresh across the drying asphalt as we followed him. Car windows down to get the pleasure of this refreshingly cooled atmosphere, he set off without a word. Dawn was lightening on the road. That storm of the early hours had rinsed the sky. Distances stood out pellucid and near. A town came into sight around the wide curve of the lake’s edge. Lines of cable cars led up sheer inclines to the levels of houses and villas high above its glistening water. The streets were almost empty, silent but for the occasional roar of a car, or the clatter of a shutter being raised.

  Finally, the mechanic pulled up at a curb. Was this Como? So which one of those nondescript buildings would be the police station?

  ‘È quella là, la Questura,’ he said.

  The mechanic was pointing towards a dusty-grey frontage with barred and meshed windows, on the opposite side of the street. Treated with a generous indifference by the man in the light blue overalls, still I felt a relief in having climbed out of his car, to have removed our rucksacks from its boot and stood away.

  ‘Auguri … e buon viaggio,’ the man said.

  At the street’s edge, undulating tarmac flaked into recently coagulated
dirt. The doors of the Questura di Como were firmly locked and with no sign of life inside. A film of grime covered the grilled windows. It was nowhere near eight o’clock—which was the time a notice announced the building would be open.

  ‘Let’s try and find something to eat,’ I suggested.

  You looked up at me a second time. A few yards ahead the road began to widen. Not much further, a side street appeared to lead off to the left. Some distance down, on the right, a pile of chairs was stacked against the wall.

  ‘That looks like it might be a café. Why don’t we try down there?’

  ‘If you like.’

  The place looked dingy, but quiet and anonymous—like a good place to hide. Its door wasn’t locked, though there seemed to be no one inside. A sharp tang of floor disinfectant suffused the air. Then came the usual hesitation between the vulnerable feeling of staying outside, and the fear of being caught in some impossible situation. But, as if in response to my anxious peering, a middle-aged woman appeared from a passage behind the bar. The skin around her eyes was tightly wrinkled and discoloured. She was emptying impacted coffee grounds from the café’s red and silver Gaggia machine.

  The woman hadn’t said a word, which probably meant it was all right to stay. You didn’t wait to find out. Making your way between the chairs and tables to a place in the far corner, you dropped the grey pack on the floor and sat down. Smears of the same reddish clay mud were visible all over the rucksack, and on the frayed ends of your jeans; similar encrusted traces of the night were mottling my trouser legs, and the tan desert boots I’d bought in Florence.