Free Mimi's Ghost by Tim Parks

would be desperately cold or desperately expensive to heat. He tapped at a loose pane of glass.
    The former, Morris explained, since there was no central heating and the chimneys needed extensive work before a fire could safely be lit. ‘Just the right look for a brochure though,’ he insisted: ‘the hill, the vines, the cypresses, the noble façade with the statues.’
    â€˜Rudis indigestaque moles,’ Forbes commented.
    Which meant?
    That I’d hoped for something better, but quod bonum felix, faustumque sit, I’ll move in tonight.’
    It appeared that Forbes’s rent was in considerable arrears due to the difficulty of maintaining two separate households on a miserable pension that didn’t always arrive. His wife back in Cambridge was being unreasonable, forever writing about the cost of heating oil, public transport, theatre tickets, etc. Obviously she still hadn’t accepted their separation. He was grateful to Morris, he explained, for giving him this chance to regain his dignity, for saving him from an ignominious return.
    Yes, he was genuinely grateful, Forbes repeated, turning to take Morris’s hand and looking him straight in the eye, his own watery between dusty folds of skin. There was a kind of schoolmasterly nobility about him. Morris smiled warmly. Not to mention it. He was glad to be in a position to help someone so worthy. He enjoyed the curious glance the older man shot him as he said this.
    They looked the place over. The stucco was coming away in great chunks and the shutters seemed to be held together by nothing more than thick old coats of paint. A cold stone staircase gave way to the rickety floorboards of underfurnished bedrooms: a sagging mattress between gothic headboards, a dresser with marble top (cracked), a painting of St Peter crucified upside down, ruined by damp. In the penumbra of the top landing a young woman knelt weeping by an extravagant tomb, her eyes glinting in canvas candlelight. Forbes shook his head and muttered something in Latin.
    But Morris felt supremely confident. Wasn’t it just the kind of culture-saturated location they had been looking for? It was going to look splendid on the leaflets they’d be mailing off to Eton and Harrow in a year or so. Meanwhile, to pay rent and renovation, the immigrants would be arriving in the next couple of days. Say thirty per cent of their wages for bed and board? That was hardly unreasonable. He turned on a tap that delivered a trickle of rusty water followed by a long groan. ‘ Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,’ was all Forbes would comment, and this time he refused to translate.
    But no, the real reason he was feeling so buoyant, Morris thought, driving faster than he should back down the Valpantena, the real reason he could be so confident, was precisely because he was so ruthlessly hard on himself when things went wrong. Emotionally, he earned these highs, and of course when, as now, you had everything planned to a tee for once, it was difficult not to be elated and rather impressed with oneself. Life was a game in the end, and Morris was staying ahead of it. Way, way ahead. ‘Isn’t that right, Mimi, cam?’ He picked up the phone, then promptly put it down again. There were moments when he felt he should steer well clear of that oddball stuff and keep life as simple and practical as possible. Mimi would be in touch just as soon as she needed to be.
    He found Kwame by the main traffic lights outside the cemetery, cleaning windows for small change. The big black knew Morris was a soft touch and immediately came towards his Mercedes, bucket in hand. Despite his eagerness to be up and doing, Morris let the boy sluice the windscreen and then attack it with his sponge. The light turned green. The cars ahead and in the left-hand lane began to move. Kwame worked on conscientiously, scrubbing at encrusted flies. A car behind hit its horn. Morris sat tight. The horns began