Cara Massimina by Tim Parks

Author:Tim Parks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2015-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

13

They were on the train at eight fifteen. Morris wanted to take the rapido but Massimina wouldn’t hear of paying the surcharge and so they were caught in a compartment full of the ‘plebs’ as dear Sandra would have called them. Massimina sat opposite and away to the right of Morris and gave him sweet little smiles every time he turned in that direction, which was irritating. He was longing to read the report in the newspapers and yet couldn’t buy himself a paper in the station because then of course she might have seen it. He tried to imagine the words they would use and he thought it was odd but you couldn’t think of a murder—or a kidnap if it came to that—outside the words the press would use to describe it, not even if you’d done it yourself. It was like a football match, or a debate in parliament, or a new theatre performance, you had to read what the critics said before you really knew it had happened.

He was feeling a little more himself this morning and strangely (madly?) carefree. What if he had left the Arena in there? Looking back on it now in the clear light of another day he saw it would take a genius to make the leap required to pin the murder on Massimina’s kidnapper. And then another giant hop, skip and jump to nail Morris as that kidnapper. Living in Verona it was perfectly logical that Giacomo should have bought an Arena and who cared what page it was open at? The other thing was that he didn’t feel profoundly changed in any way. He had checked very carefully through his mind for some kind of trauma or horror or general mental handicap resulting from the event, and instead nothing. Absolutely all clear. No, all that bothered him was he couldn’t be alone to read the papers and maybe dictate a jubilant letter to Dad, get his thoughts down. He hadn’t intended to kill after all. There had been nothing premeditated about it—quite the opposite. He’d been forced to it by that stupid lascivious idiot who hadn’t deserved any better in the end anyway and Morris was damned if he was going to eat his heart out about it. (Murder should be judged on the value of the victim, his claim to live, not on the merely academic aspect of whether the death was murder or not and if so who did it.)

Added to which, the experience with Massimina had been very promising. He could do their funny business as well as the best of them it seemed. He felt rather protective towards her. Happier in her company. It was almost as if one experience had cancelled out the other. He had slept all night with her, her warm smell and heavy breasts not unlike Mother’s those times. Really, he felt quite tempted to tell her everything. Maybe she would play along perfectly happily.

‘Panino, Morri?’ They had stopped at Fano and Massimina wanted him to pick up a sandwich from the man pushing his trolley up the platform.

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