The Daffodil Sky by H.E. Bates

Author:H.E. Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1955-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

The Small Portion

The girl and her mother had driven down from the mountains in August, by way of Cortina and the Vale de Cembra and the towns of Lombardy, at the time when the wild cyclamen were in bloom. It was still hot, with distances of smoky glass, when they reached the lakes in September.

‘What dish is this? Do you speak English? What do you call it?’

Mrs Carey poked with her knife at the main luncheon dish so that the flash of sun on steel made white winks on the under-bellies of the terrace umbrellas.

‘It is a sort of pasta, madame. A sort of——’

‘A sort of what? What is this green material? Why is it green?’

‘That is the pasta itself, madame. Pasta Verdi. Green macaroni.’

‘It looks most extraordinary.’ Mrs Carey poked at it again.

‘It is very good, madame,’ the waiter said. ‘You will like it, I’m sure——’

‘Give us both a very small portion.’ Mrs Carey waved her knife again as if to sever the dish into even smaller segments than those the waiter was spooning. ‘Smaller—smaller—not so much as that. We do not like large portions. You understand? We don’t eat much. We do not like large portions.’

‘Yes, madame.’

‘No cheese. No cheese. We do not like cheese.’

With pale eyes the girl sat staring at the lake. The water was a strong blue-green, with distances of molten rose, and above it a sky of misty torrid blue in which the edges of the horizon were completely dissolved. Below the terrace a few people were still swimming; she saw a flash of brown arms on a diving board.

‘The lake looks lovely——’

‘Eat your food while it’s hot. The lake is very deep,’ Mrs Carey said. ‘It is fourteen hundred and fifty feet deep in one place. I was reading about it yesterday.’

The face of the girl had the soft colourless plumpness of a big summer apple that has grown unexposed to sun. With unresistant eyes she stared at the lake, eating slowly. She had seen Cortina and Verona and Bellagio and Como and Ponte Tresa, or rather she had been shown them all; but she could not help feeling that Maggiore, now, was the most beautiful of them all.

‘It would be nice to stay here——’

‘Well, I don’t know. We shall see. We shall see what this place is like.’ Mrs Carey peered with spectacled intensity at something among the macaroni. ‘Those are pieces of spinach stalk. They’ve not been sieved properly. Put them on the side of your plate if you don’t want them.’

While her mother sat microscopically peering the girl looked up.

‘Those people we saw at the Arena at Verona are here,’ she said. ‘Mr and Mrs Smithson and the boy. They’re just coming on to the terrace——’

‘Concentrate on your food. I don’t know that we altogether——’

‘Well, hullo!’ Mr Smithson said. ‘Small world!’

Mr Smithson wore a bright blue linen shirt with a deep open neck that showed a forest of strong black chest hairs.

‘You remember Mrs Carey and Josephine, Mother,’ he said. ‘The amphitheatre at Verona.

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