Mimi's Ghost by Tim Parks Read Free Book Online

orders too. What are car phones for after all?’
    Morris said: ‘I was supposed to see a client at ten-thirty and I’m already late.’
    â€˜Come on, Mo, Hi dolce!’
    â€˜Veramente, I can’t.’
    â€˜Antipatico!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Spoil-sport, I’ll make you pay for that later.’
    It was unclear whether this was meant as a promise or a threat.
    â€˜Paola?’ he said. Was he slightly in awe of her?
    â€˜Dio, will I make you pay!’ She hung up.
    Morris clicked back the receiver, put both hands firmly on the wheel. You phoned your wife of six months standing to try to get her to take a responsible attitude towards her life and career, and what did she do? First she pleaded the excuse of a dying mother, a predatory brother-in-law, and then she tried for mutual masturbation over the car phone. There were times when dismay was the only proper response. Morris drove on for quite some while in bitter silence.
    The car rode up into the browns and dull greens of the Apennines, a rollercoaster landscape of olives and cypresses, bare vines reduced to fields of gnarled crucifixions against the stone-speckled soil. Morris tried to concentrate on the aesthetic pleasure of taking every curve at exactly the right speed while always leaving the same distance between wheel and white line. Forbes, meanwhile, seemed in no hurry to return to their previous conversation, despite the delicate point at which they had left it. And Morris appreciated that. Forbes was the kind of intelligent man who would be sensitive to his temporary discomposure. Morris had done the right thing in escaping from the feckless crowd of younger expats who had tormented and humiliated him in his earlier days in Verona, the ex-hippies and would-be artists, their coercive mateyness and empty dreams (not to mention the rather unnerving fact that community leader Yankee Stan had actually seen him that day at Roma Termini with Massimina: there was a danger!). No, the wisdom of an earlier generation was so much more gratifying. Indeed it occurred to Morris that if he had met Forbes earlier on perhaps, when he first arrived in Italy, yes, if he had frequented someone like Forbes, rather than the Stans of this world, then there would have been no need for the extraordinary aberration of two summers ago. Or, better still, if he had had Forbes as a father, if . . .
    â€˜Siste viator!’
    They had just passed a sign for a service station. Interrupting Morris’s promising train of thought, the older man’s voice pronouncing one of his endless Latin tags had a gravelly, emphatically upper-class texture.
    â€˜Sorry?’ Morris said. He had decided never again to pretend to understand something when he didn’t. Only people with an abject self-image did that kind of thing.
    The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,’ Forbes explained with a deprecating smile. ‘Stop.’
    It was the second time in only an hour’s driving.
    Morris pulled in at the service station and watched as Forbes’s tall, spindly figure shambled over to the servizi. Inevitably, as he watched the flapping grey suit in the cold winter light, the word ‘Gents’ sprang to mind. Morris felt calm and happy again. In the end he had good friends, exciting projects. His psyche was not irremediably damaged. All would work out.
    He was just lifting the phone to ask dear Mimi whether she mightn’t confirm yesterday’s sign with something more concrete today, some indication that she approved of his plan, when a movement beside the car startled him.
    â€˜Vu cumpra’?’
    A squat Moroccan was grinning through the window Morris had unwisely buzzed down. The man’s bad breath came through despite freezing air and diesel fumes.
    â€˜Vu cumpra’? Wanna buy? Very good video camera. Molto economico.’
    Morris stared at him.
    â€˜Economico, molto cheap, molto