Bad Girls Good Women (90 page)

Julia felt like an intruder, but she couldn’t sit motionless any longer. She walked across the courtyard and touched the sister’s arm.

‘Pia is dead,’ was the answer.

Pia’s mother lived in an inland village a dozen kilometres away. Her daughter had died before she could reach her.

Julia shook her head. She could hardly take in the words, even though she had known what must be happening. ‘Why?’ she asked stupidly. ‘She was well yesterday. I read Rapunzel to her.’

Sister Maria looked at her. The nun’s oval face was smooth and her eyes were clear. ‘It is God’s will,’ she said.

Seeing nothing, her eyes hot, Julia went out into the secret garden. Guido was brushing petals from the paving. He saw her, and his face split into his empty, happy smile. There was no sign of Tomaso. He must be playing chess at Nicolo’s house, Julia thought mechanically. She would have welcomed his company. She went back through the stone doorway and out into the main part of the garden. She walked faster, then began to run. She ran down the steps of the terraces, her feet catching in the brambles. The prickles tore at her bare ankles. She was thinking of Pia, the beads of blood that her scratching brought welling out of her skin, and the rending gasps for breath that were now silenced. The pity for her short life brought grief and anger welling up in Julia, bringing with them all the other angers and grief that she had known.

The world turned black, and hostile.

She was sobbing when she reached the last terrace that hung out over the smooth sea. She wanted to lash out against the amorphous weight of injustice. As if her efforts could affect the disposition of justice in Pia’s favour, in favour of any of the others, she began to pull at a mass of bindweed and thistle that grew at her shoulder. Something was hidden beneath it. With her bare hands she went on tearing at the weeds until she caught a glimpse of greenish marble. The tears dried on her face as she worked.

At last, the forgotten statue was revealed again. It was a boy, with plump limbs and a sly, secretive face. Julia smoothed her hands over the cold marble, wondering if he was Mercury, or Pan, or Cupid. He stood like a wicked sentinel, guarding the terraces from the sea. She looked upwards, over the cracked stones and the laced fingers of green, invading shoots.

It is God’s will
.

She had none of Sister Maria’s faith. She would have to search for her own answers to the enormity of a child’s gasping death.

And as she stood there, a kind of calm possessed her. She listened to the sea, and spread her fingers out over the stone wall. The earth under her feet was warm, and she could hear the faint rustle of the spreading leaves. She could almost have believed that if she listened hard enough, she would hear the blind roots burrowing beneath her feet, and the music of the earth turning.

There was a solace in that. The turn of the seasons was lovely, and immutable. The cycle renewed itself beyond human reach. Beyond Pia. Beyond herself.

Julia stood up straight. She was convinced, as she went on looking upwards, that it was not enough to play in her walled garden with a boy and simple Guido to help her. Nothing less than a complete restoration of the whole garden would be enough. She would make it live again. That would be her challenge, and her offering.

Julia stayed out in the garden until it was completely dark. Then she went back up the ruined terraces to the black bulk of the palazzo against the midnight sky. She let herself silently into the chapel. There was a nimbus of candlelight glowing around the Blessed Family. She knelt down in front of it and said her own kind of prayer for Pia.

Before she went to bed in her bare room, she put the Rapunzel book away in George Tressider’s marquetry box. She didn’t want to read the story to anyone else.

Julia went to see the Mother Superior, and they talked about the ruined gardens.

‘It will be a very great job,’ the Mother observed. ‘It will need men, experts as well as workers. And money.’

‘I’m not an expert,’ Julia said slowly. An idea was beginning to take shape. ‘But experts can always be found, and workers too. It only takes money.’ She went on quickly, the idea already more than an idea. She was convinced of what she must do. ‘If I could find enough to pay for everything, all the work, should it be spent on the garden? Or would it be better given to the
ospedale
, to assist the work that you do here?’

The nun considered, then she smiled, a surprisingly worldly smile. ‘I think that our
ospedale
will continue in any case. And perhaps if some generous person were to give us money for it, we would lose our little assistance from the authorities. But a benefactor for the gardens, that could affect nothing, could it?’

‘No, of course not,’ Julia said gravely.

‘Do you have all this money, Julia? You do not have the look of a rich woman.’ There was no surprise, or curiosity even. Only the calmness that Julia loved.

‘I have a business, in England. Some shops. I gave many years to them, perhaps too many. I think that now the time has come to sell. If I did sell, Mother, I would like to use my money to pay for the gardens.’

More than like
, Julia thought.
It would give me more happiness than almost anything else I could imagine
.

She said, ‘The work would take a year, perhaps. We could employ local men, and Signor Galli might advise us where to turn for expert assistance. And once the restoration is complete, I think that the gardens could be maintained by two, perhaps three workers. Maybe one man with help from some of the residents here, like Guido and Tomaso. And myself, of course.’

The plans came to her mind ready-formed, as if her subconscious had established every detail.

The Mother Superior looked at Julia. ‘Do you intend to make our gardens your life’s work?’

Julia thought of the simplicity of life in the palazzo, the friends that she was beginning to make inside its walls and in the houses that clung around them, and then of the sweep of the terraces overlooking the sea. She remembered her empty flat in Camden Town, and the dull, busy streets. There was nowhere she wanted to be except Montebellate.

Only Ladyhill, and that was impossible.

‘If you will let me,’ she answered.

The nun smiled again. It was agreed that Julia and Nicolo could begin to plan the restoration of the entire garden.

The sale of Garlic & Sapphires was less easy. The business was doing better than it had ever done, since the very beginning. For Julia, in her isolation at Montebellate, it had been both reassuring and saddening to read the reports and balance sheets that were forwarded to her, and to realise that she was no longer needed. It would be a relief, in a way, to cut herself off altogether. But Julia still cared enough about her business to want to find the right buyer. It had taken enough years of her own life, and too much of Lily’s childhood, to be worth less than that.

The sale took weeks of long-distance calls, while independent valuations took place, then more talks, and finally haggling between solicitors. Julia made two brief trips to London, seeing no one while she was there and feeling each time as though she was visiting a foreign city. At last, at the beginning of the summer, a deal was struck. Julia’s shops would be owned by an astute, cold-eyed young businessman and his warmer, vaguer, artist wife. Julia thought that they would do well together. At least her creation would not be swallowed up and obliterated by a bigger chain.

The contract was signed, and a very large sum of money was credited to Julia’s Italian bank account. It arrived none too soon. The money left over from the sale of the house by the canal had already been poured into the gardens. Julia flew back to Italy, with the sense that she was going home for good.

Then it was July, and Lily’s summer holiday. To Julia, it seemed a painfully long time since she had seen her, and yet the months had gone so quickly that she had had no time to look for the village house that she had intended to make into a home for herself and Lily. Julia went to see the Mother Superior again.

‘I could ask Signor Galli if Lily might stay in his house …’

‘But you would like to have your daughter with you here, of course. There are other guest rooms. We have no shortage of space for our friends, Julia.’

‘Thank you,’ Julia said.

She borrowed Nicolo’s car, and drove to Naples to meet Lily’s plane.

Lily came out in a press of other travellers, but Julia saw her immediately. They ran to each other, and as she hugged her Julia felt Lily’s new height, and her adult shape emerging from the childish roundness.

‘You’ve grown,’ she said.

‘And you’re thin, Mum. And you’re so brown.’

‘I’ve been working very hard. Look at my hands.’ Julia held them up. The fingers were ingrained with earth and the nails were cracked and split. Lily looked at them, amazed. In the car park, beside Nicolo’s rusty Fiat, Lily asked, ‘Is this your car?’

Julia laughed. ‘It’s a special occasion, I borrowed it. I haven’t got a car. I haven’t got a house, either. You’re coming to stay at the palazzo.’

In her letters, Julia had described everything. She had telephoned Lily too, and told her about the sale of Garlic & Sapphires. To her surprise, Lily had received the news as if she had been expecting it.

‘You didn’t care so much about the shops any more, did you?’ she said. ‘Not like the way you used to when I was little. I thought you loved them more than me.’

‘I didn’t. I was doing it for you.’

‘I know that now.’ Lily had laughed, the laughter sounding close at hand, for all the miles that separated Ladyhill from Montebellate.

Now Lily was in the car beside her, peering between the hurtling airport buses at the press of Neapolitan traffic. At Julia’s words she turned round in dismay. ‘We’re staying in the palazzo? With the funny people?’

‘They’re not funny, Lily. They’re ill, or damaged, or old. Otherwise just the same as you.’ Julia had spoken sharply. It was an inauspicious beginning. ‘Never mind,’ she said quickly. ‘You haven’t said about you. Tell me everything you’ve been doing.’

Lily’s letters had already told most of it. With amusement, Julia noticed fewer references to Marco Polo, many more to Lily’s friend Elizabeth and their doings together. It made her think of Mattie and herself, at Blick Road Grammar School.

‘Have you seen Mattie?’

‘Yes, she came with Mitch. He’s nice. Mattie’s got a Jaguar, a white one.’

‘Mattie has? Can she drive it?’

Lily laughed a lot. ‘Not very well.’

Julia had written to Mattie, but Mattie had never been a great correspondent. Her notes in return were superficial, sometimes illegible. The veil that had descended between them showed no signs of lifting.

Lily chattered on as they drove. When they came to the coast she leaned forward in her seat. ‘Look at the sea. Isn’t it blue?’

Julia pointed at the conical hill rearing ahead, with Montebellate crowning it. As they began to wind up the hairpin bends, with the scents of wild thyme and curryplant drifting through the open windows of the car, Lily’s talk died away. She looked nervous, peering upwards. She asked abruptly, ‘Mummy? Are you all right?’

Julia touched her hand. ‘Everything is all right.’

But the first days of the visit were not a success.

Lily stood in the doorway of Julia’s room. She looked at the narrow bed and the single chair drawn up to a table spread with gardening books and plans.

‘Is this all there is?’

‘Yes, because it’s all I need. Not everyone lives in nice houses in London, or in manor houses in Dorset.’

‘I know that,’ Lily said mulishly.

‘Do you?’

At the refectory supper she sat in silence, hardly touching her food.

Julia had her work to do, and she went calmly on with it. During the day Lily shadowed her, or else she sat apart in the secret garden. Julia knew that she was sulking, felt angry with her, and then relented. It was Lily’s holiday, after all.

‘I’ll take you down to the beach this afternoon,’ she offered. ‘We can take some of the little ones, too.’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere with all those kids. People will stare at us. You’re
my
mother.’

‘And you’re my daughter. But we don’t own each other, do we? You have proved that for us both.’

Lily tried to outstare her. ‘I don’t like it here. All these old people, and sick kids, and nuns. It’s creepy. I can’t eat my food with them slobbering and grunting all round me. I thought I’d be coming to your house. Like it used to be.’

Julia’s expression didn’t change. ‘I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t remove the people. They belong here, and we don’t. And you are twelve years old. You can face a little uncomfortable reality, can’t you?’

‘Not if it’s drool and prayers and snotty kids,’ Lily muttered darkly.

It was Tomaso who saved the day.

Julia had noticed him watching Lily. He eyed her pale skin and her pretty clothes, and then turned away scowling when anyone caught him at it. Lily pretended not to notice him at all.

Lily had been at the palazzo for ten days when Julia, driven to snapping point by her sulks, sent her out into the secret garden to do some work. She gave her the shears, and told her to clip some of the hedges. It was an easy, if laborious job. It should keep Lily usefully occupied for an hour or so. It was much later when Julia finally finished what she was doing and went in search of her. She wasn’t in the walled garden, although the shears were lying in the middle of the parterre. Some of the box had been clipped, surprisingly well. Julia went out on to the highest terrace and looked down. The sea was the pale opal of early evening, and the sky above an infinitesimal shade paler. Lily and Tomaso were leaning against the wall at the bottom, looking out over it.

Julia turned aside, and went back up the steps to the palazzo.

Later, she said, ‘I’m glad you’ve made friends with Tomaso.’

‘He clipped the hedges for me, that’s all.’ Lily tried to be dismissive, but her need to talk overcame her. If Elizabeth was here, Julia thought, hiding her smile, I’d never hear about anything. Casually, Lily added, ‘He’s okay looking, don’t you think? For an Italian?’