Beautiful Ruins (59)

He winked and swerved and Pasquale put his hand on the dashboard. “Now, there’s an idea. Cognac? Keep an eye out, eh, sport?” He took a deep breath and returned to his story. “Of course, the newspapers get hold of Liz and me and her husband comes to town and I sulked a bit, spent four days pissed, and somewhere in there, sotted and sorry, I went back to Dee again for comfort. Every two weeks, I’d find myself knocking on her door.” He shook his head. “She’s clear, that one—smart. It’s a burden for an attractive woman to be so smart, to see through the curtain. She’d agree with Larry, I’m sure, that I’m wasting my talent making rubbish like this film. And I knew Dee was guns for me. I probably shouldn’t have pursued her, but . . . who are we but who we are, am I right?” He patted his chest with his left hand. “You wouldn’t happen to have another fag?”

Pasquale pulled out a cigarette and lit it for him. Richard Burton took a long drag and the smoke curled from his nose. “This Crane, the man who diagnosed Dee—Liz’s pill-pusher, man rattles when he walks. He and Deane cooked up this cancer rubbish to get Dee out of town.” He shook his head. “Goddamn it, what kind of hopeless bastard tells a girl with morning sickness that she’s dying of cancer? They’ll do anything, these people.”

He braked suddenly and the tires seemed to jump, like a scared animal, and the car careened off the road and screeched to a stop at a market on the outskirts of Rome. “You as thirsty as I am, sport?”

“I am hungry,” Pasquale said. “I have not eaten.”

“Right. Excellent. And you wouldn’t have any money, would you? I was so bollixed up when we left, I’m afraid I’m a bit underfunded.”

Pasquale opened the envelope and handed him a thousand-lira note. Richard Burton took the money and ran into the market.

He returned a few minutes later with two open bottles of red wine, gave one to Pasquale and settled the other between his legs. “What goddamn kind of place hasn’t got a bottle of cognac in it? Are we to write our names in grape piss then? Ah well, in a pinch, I suppose.” He took a long pull of the wine and noticed Pasquale watching him. “My father was a twelve-pint-a-day man. Being Welsh, I’ve got to keep it in control, so I only drink when I’m working.” He winked. “Which is why I’m always bloody working.”

Four hours later, the man responsible for impregnating Dee Moray had drunk all but a few tugs of both bottles of wine and had stopped for a third. Pasquale couldn’t believe how much wine the man could handle. Richard Burton parked the Alfa Romeo near the port in La Spezia, and Pasquale asked around in a harbor bar until a fisherman agreed to take them up the coast to Porto Vergogna for two thousand lire. The fisherman walked ten meters ahead of them down to his boat.

“I was born in a tiny village myself,” Richard Burton told Pasquale as they settled onto the wooden bench in the stern of the fisherman’s dank, ten-meter boat. It was a cold, dark evening and Richard Burton turned up the collar of his jacket against the sharp sea breeze. The boat’s captain stood three steps above them, the wheel in his hand as he rode a cross-chop out of the harbor, the froth rising up to the bow, rolling over, and then settling back, the salty air making Pasquale even hungrier.

The captain ignored them. His ears glowed a cold red in the brisk air.

Richard Burton leaned back and sighed. “The stain I’m from is called Pontrhydyfen. Sits in a little glen between two green mountains and is cut by a little river clear as vodka. Little Welsh mining town. And what do you think our river was called?”

Pasquale had no idea what he was talking about.

“Think about it. It’ll make perfect sense.”

Pasquale shrugged.

“Avon.” He waited for Pasquale to react. “Fancy bit of irony, no?”

Pasquale said that it was.

“Right . . . okay then, did someone mention vodka? Right, I did.” Richard Burton sighed wearily. Then he called up to the boat’s pilot, “Are we truly to have nothing to drink on board? Really? Captain!” The man ignored him. “He’s risking outright mutiny, don’t you think, Pat?” Then Burton leaned back again, resettled his collar against the cool air, and resumed telling Pasquale about the village where he grew up. “There were thirteen of us little Jenkinses, tit-suckers every last one, till the git after me. I was two when my poor ma finally gave out, sucked dry. We drained the poor woman like deflating a balloon. I got the last of it. My sister Cecilia raised me after that. The old blighter Jenkins was no help. Fifty already when I was born, drunk the minute the sun came up, I barely knew him—his name the only thing he ever gave me. Burton I got from an acting teacher, though I tell people it’s for Michael Burton. Anatomy of Melancholy? No? Right. Sorry.” He ran a hand over his own chest. “No, this is all a thing I invented, this . . . Burton. Dickie Jenkins is a petty little tit-pincher, but this Richard Burton chap . . . he bloody well soars.”

Pasquale nodded, the chop from the sea and Burton’s endless drunk talk conspiring to make him extremely sleepy.

“Jenkins boys all worked in the coalface, except me, and I only escaped by luck and Hitler. The RAF was my way out, and though I turned out too bloody blind to fly, it still got me into Oxford. Tell me, do you know what you say to a kid from my village when you see him at Oxford?”

Pasquale shrugged, worn down by the man’s constant chatter.