Property of Blood (19 page)

And yet, how many other people had rung alarm bells which the Marshal had failed to respond to? Signora Verdi, on that first day, with ‘her ladyship wouldn’t have it.’ Nesti with his disgusted remark about whether this was a case or a career opportunity, the maid’s sobs, and her all too justified fear, ‘What will happen to me now?’

Not to mention the alarm bells Caterina herself had set off. A lot of the time she lied, but what about when she told the truth? What about her avoidance of the word
mother
when she used the word
father?
Saying a model was nothing more than a coat hanger? So many things that had made him so uncomfortable that he had refused to think about them.

If he thought at all about the operation soon to take place on the hills it was with a deep-felt wish for a safe outcome but without any detailed thoughts about how it would be achieved. There, he felt on safe ground. The job was in the hands of experts now and was their responsibility. His only contribution had been to act as a connection between Bini—whose years of experience, goodwill, and carefully cultivated contacts made the operation possible—and the men capable of carrying it out. A bit part which he considered adapted to his station and capabilities and which would be ignored in case of scandalous failure, forgotten in glorious success.

But it would be a long time before he would stop being irritated with himself about ‘that poisonous bloody girl,’ as the Contessa Cavicchioli Zelli called her. Now there was a woman who called a spade a spade. There’d been no more fooling himself after meeting her. If only the others had been so explicit.

The Marshal climbed the sloping courtyard in front of the Pitti Palace and turned left to go under the stone archway. His idea, at this point, was to retreat into his own space and apply all his concentration to the little everyday tasks which were normally his lot. First he would have a talk with his second-in-command, Lorenzini, and get himself up to date on what was going on in his Quarter other than a kidnapping, then he would see anybody who was in the waiting room and give any time left after that to his backlog of paperwork. If he achieved nothing else, he would so fill his mind with details that there would be no crevice through which the thought of the Brunamonti girl could worm its way. It was this same quest after normality and sanity that inspired him to telephone his own quarters and ask Teresa, ‘Can we have pasta?’

She laughed at him. ‘You sound like Giovanni!’

‘I am like Giovanni—or, rather, he’s like me.’ He was offended. ‘It doesn’t matter, it was just a thought.’

‘You are a comic. I’ll put the water on. It’ll only be tomato sauce, I hadn’t planned—’

'That’s all right.’

This system worked until five o’clock. Then a twinge of anxiety twisted his stomach at the thought of what the sister might be up to that could in some way damage tonight’s operation. She had shocked him with the Patrick Hines business, surprised him with the closed doors, the sacked maid, the new porter, alarmed him with that newspaper interview. He couldn’t afford to seek his own comfort by forgetting her. He mustn’t talk to her, the Captain had agreed about that, but he had to keep a check on what she was doing.

Fifteen minutes later, he was holding on to the handle above his head as the jeep bounced violently up a rocky tractor path, Lorenzini at the wheel.

‘I didn’t believe you when you said we’d need the jeep to get to a place two minutes away from the city centre but—hell! You all right?’

‘I’m all right. I’ve been up here before. Stop here and turn round and then wait for me. I’ll not be long.’

The bank where the crocuses had flowered was now a forest of Florentine irises, some of which were opening their first pale blue frills. Nothing else had changed. Elettra, as the dogs yapped the news of the jeep’s arrival, burst out the door, accompanied by Caesar and surrounded by her chorus, wearing the ancient grey suit and running a hand through her unruly wisps of grey hair.

‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you! And so is Tessie—-just look how she’s greeting you! She knows the nice marshal is trying to help her mummy, doesn’t she? Yes she does, yes she does, the little sweetheart!’

They had sat in the February sun last time, but now, although the season was more advanced, they went indoors to escape impending rain. The drawing room was lit with small lamps. There were flowered sofas, a polished stone floor, and a wood fire burning in a large grate. They sat facing each other near the fire on a sofa each and, as the sofas filled up with dogs, the Marshal told her his fears.

It wasn’t easy. This was a very bright lady and he couldn’t expect to fob her off with an invented story, assuming he were capable of inventing one, which he doubted. He had to convince her with something that was less than a lie but not the whole truth. He didn’t know whether the partial ransom had been paid but he thought not. He had to convince her that, if not, it mustn’t on any account be paid now.

‘That article in the paper would become her death warrant. They would be sure no more was forthcoming. They would know that there are no powerful connections who might intervene. To release her for so much less than the requested sum would ruin their business. You do understand?’

‘Of course I understand. I also understand that you’re up to something that makes it suddenly so important not to pay up and that you’re not going to tell me what it is.’

He looked at the wall. ‘I can’t…I’m not—It’s a matter that my superiors—’

‘Virgilio Fusarri, the old fox. I like him. He can’t boss me around, wouldn’t dare try. So he sent you. Tell me. Does it look as if, because of the two photographs, the “spokesperson”—blast her—was really speaking for Leo and perhaps even Patrick as well?’

‘The message is all that matters. A small payment would confirm it. It doesn’t matter to them who the messenger is.’

‘It’s going to matter to Olivia! You don’t think they’d show it to her?’

‘They might well. If they intend to make her write another appeal they will. Don’t you think, though, that she’ll recognize her daughter’s handiwork, even the words she uses?’

‘Of course she will—Caesar, get down off the Marshal! You’re too big to sit on people’s knees! Sorry, he’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback, bred to hunt lions, but he doesn’t know. He thinks he’s as small as all the others. Get down, Caesar. All right, well sit next to him quietly.’

The dog subsided and fell into a deep sleep leaning heavily on the Marshal. He was a very powerful leaner.

‘She’ll recognize Caterina’s poisonous voice in that article—who wouldn’t? But Leo didn’t stop her, that’s the point. He let her do it. He knows she’s crazy. He should have kept her locked up till this was over.’

‘He could hardly—’

‘He should have warned the papers. And how come they printed such a thing if you say it’s so dangerous? Why didn’t you stop them?’

‘We can ask them to cooperate, but their job is to sell more newspapers, and we can’t stop them doing their job. The article contains nothing that infringes the law.’

‘There must be something you can do!’

‘We are doing what we can. We must prevent any payments being made.’

‘That’s what that detective fellow said. Do you have any real information about Olivia?’

It was risky but he needed her help.

Yes.’

You’re not going to make some futile gesture that will make you all look heroic and risk Olivia’s life?’

‘No, no…Her life is already at risk. We have a chance of saving it. It’s only a chance but if that incomplete payment is made we won’t have that.’

There was silence between them for a moment. The Marshal listened to the settling of the wood fire, a sound from his childhood. The many dogs on the other sofas snored quietly in the fire’s warmth.

‘All right!’ The Contessa announced her decision: ‘I’ll help you. That money won’t be paid.’

You’re sure you can prevent it?’

‘Damn sure. It’s my money.’

‘Anything I’ve told you, of course…’

You haven’t told me anything. Don’t worry. I know exactly what you mean. I’ll keep what you haven’t told me to myself.’

The Marshal could do no more. This whole venture depended on two people keeping their word. Two people, each in a hillside fastness, each with a strict code of honour. The Marshal trusted them both absolutely. His part was over.

Caesar escorted the jeep as far as the gates on the avenue below, then turned and bounded back up the hill.

It was raining.

Eleven

T
here must be thousands of people in the world who are suffering constant and terrible pain. You stare at me with those big, watchful eyes of yours and I know you must be wondering why I’m so calm, happy even. To tell you the truth, I was never very brave about pain. As a child I cried at the dentist’s, and vaccinations were a tragedy. And yet, the violent pain that pierced my ears and seemed to penetrate my brain and which terrified me so much at first because I thought I would lose my mind over it became a normal part of my life. I suppose if agony is prolonged and constant, our brains somehow adjust our threshold. The fixed pain becomes the norm and it takes a much greater or more acute attack to make any impression. I know I used to be afraid of pain and of illness, especially cancer, but I’m not anymore. I trust my body to deal with it now. If anything, I was more aware of the lacerations caused by the chain on my ankle and wrist, which worsened despite Woodcutter’s efforts. The chain was so very heavy, and every movement hurt and damaged me. What was even worse was the psychological pain because there was no reason to keep me chained up except cruelty. The cruelty of “the boss” I never saw.

‘Yet, the tiniest joys could obliterate it all. The fresh sun touching my forehead as I sat at the opening of the tent. Sat waiting contentedly for cool water and crunchy bread but perhaps receiving instead a rare cup of wonderful coffee, the smell of it mixed with sweet wood smoke on the pure morning air. I will always appreciate coffee more now than I used to, but never as much as I did then.

‘I had begged Woodcutter for, and obtained through good behaviour, the few privileges I needed, the most important of these being the use of the bedpan outdoors in the mornings. I had also been given a change of clothing, a bag full of very cheap-feeling cotton underwear, and a green tracksuit. I also had plastic slippers instead of my boots because it was getting warmer. The bag of underwear was sometimes taken away and washed. Was it Woodcutter’s wife who did this? I tried to imagine what she knew, what she thought. I remembered Woodcutter’s words about how you could never get out. Perhaps she didn’t think anything, ask anything, just did as she was told out of fear.

‘I organized my day around their arrivals and departures, their changes of shift, the serving of my meals. I divided up the interim periods and developed one train of thought at a time—my children, my work, my lover, my parents, and the past. Friends, too. I allotted them each a space and thought about them. You know, when you live in another country, your friends assume the importance of family. I learned that I had to be careful in organizing this timetable of contemplation, avoiding any pathway that might upset me just before it was time to sleep. Sadness becomes overwhelming in the lonely night. It didn’t keep me awake—the rhythm of my days was too regular to allow my old insomnia to plague me—but it could cause distressing dreams, even nightmares.

‘So, after each meal, I placed my tray carefully on the ground, retreated into the tent, pulling my chain in with me, and settled down to think. In a way, I’ve been privileged to have this quietness, this thoughtfulness, forced upon me, though I don’t expect anybody to believe that. They won’t envy me for it either, will they? I’ll probably never tell anyone.

‘I feel the need to tell you things, though, as if this is the one stop, the halfway house where two worlds meet and you’re the keeper of it, the only person who knows and understands both. I’m sure that nobody out there will understand where I’ve been. For them I’ve only been absent. I believe that once I’m back in my own world I’ll never talk easily about this again.’

The Marshal, well aware of it, sat still and silent, memorizing what he needed, not daring to make a note.

‘My mother seemed all right after my father’s death. She appeared to be going along as usual, but it was only a facade. I felt such anguish when I was in the house that I hated going home and spent all the time I could at the homes of my friends. I was thirteen and didn’t understand what was wrong until she was taken away to a clinic to dry out. I remember my aunt opening the wash-house door and finding all the bottles. I think she was the one who said, either then or later, “Remember you’ll have to stand on your own feet from now on. It’s a hard world and you’re alone in it. Nobody will help you.” I spent a few years in a boarding school, passing the vacations with one relation or another, and then went to college, against my aunt’s wishes.

“‘Nobody will help you.” Do you know that my whole life has turned on that one cruel phrase uttered at my most vulnerable moment. What the hell did she mean by it? I was thirteen years old and a virtual orphan. Why couldn’t I be helped? From that day I saw life as a battle I had to fight alone. I became tough, at least I managed to appear so, but before this happened, I had reached such a point of inner exhaustion that I knew there was no way forward for me. At night I sweated with years of accumulated fear, by day I tried to reason it out. Should I give up the business because it was too stressful, leave it all to Leo? Should I marry Patrick, dear man, who did understand and tried to help me. “Nobody will help you.” That was the rule I lived by. Patrick would cradle my aching head on his chest when I was reduced to tears by anxiety and exhaustion and say, “Listen to this poor turnip of yours pounding away. Give it a rest. Lay down your sword, I’m here now.” And I did. With him I rested. Then next day I’d grab my sword again. Years of habit, you see. Besides, apart from Patrick, who saw through me, everyone believed I was invincible, tough as nails. “Olivia will sort it out somehow. Olivia always knows what to do. Olivia’s a fighter.”

‘The only way I could alleviate my orphan’s distress was by offering comfort to others. When my husband went, I became a father as well as a mother to the children. They would never hear the words “Nobody will help you” just because their father was dead. I found it odd, thinking of all this, that the one person I ever allowed to do anything for me was my son, Leo. Perhaps because I recognized myself in him, perhaps because he was the one person I knew had a mother who loved him and would always be there for him, the one person I didn’t need to be afraid for. Leo was always my early evening thought, before Patrick, my father, and sleep. It was such a joy to scan his life. I loved his deeply solemn gaze as he sucked with quiet determination at the breast. Such concentration he had as a small child! At three he made careful wobbly drawings—almost always of insects. He wasn’t old enough to know how to scale a larger object down to the size of his paper. Later, at seven, he painted delicate watercolours out on the loggia. The palaces and trees down in the piazza, bats and swallows in a red sky at sunset, painting for two or three hours at a stretch until the fading light forced him to stop.

‘The migraines began when he was fifteen. The pain was so terrible it filled the whole house, weighed like lead in every room so that I could barely breathe. I wanted to comfort him, do something to help, but he would beg me in the faintest whisper, “Just leave me alone in the dark …” I had to sit in the dark myself, outside the just open door, so that no crack of light could disturb him. Caterina hated it because she felt neglected. She couldn’t understand, a child of ten, that her brother didn’t lie there still as death because he was sleeping but because of a pain so terrible he couldn’t move. When it was over it left no trace and he never talked about it.

‘There was such a stillness about him, such an unfathomable intensity, and, every so often, a bubbling up of thoughts and dreams or of stored merriment. He would suddenly burst out into astonishing imitations of the teachers in his Liceo Artistico, especially the local artisans who came in to teach their skills—casting, printing, and so on—with their loud Florentine dialect and scathing jokes. And I suppose much of the astonishment came from the contrast with his habitual silence. How he made me laugh! You must think I’m crazy, unbalanced after my terrible experience, though your face gives nothing away, because I tell you of dreadful experiences with a calm smile and now I’m telling you of joyful things and I—I can’t—I’m sorry. It’ll stop now. I’m sorry. I’ve missed him so much… Oh dear, this dreadful noise I make because I’m still afraid to cry, although the plasters are gone. I’m not crazy, I promise you… Thank you. Just a sip and I’ll be all right.

‘They used to change the plasters once a week—Woodcutter did that. Thank God it was always him. He told me it was once a week. I didn’t count in days and weeks, only in seconds and minutes, dripping slowly in time to my thoughts… Each time he came to change them, tugging gently twice on my chain so I would know who it was, I’d hope for news, developments, another newspaper article, anything. Well, I got what I wished for and I will never wish for anything again as long as I live, I swear to God. I knew that morning that something was wrong. When I was still sitting in the doorway of the tent with my breakfast tray—only bread and water that day, but I didn’t mind. The air was damp with impending rain and all the sweet smells of new grass and spring flowers were accentuated. There had often been rows before, though I could never hear or understand well enough to know what they were about. Perhaps their shifts, the food, their boredom and nervousness about how long this was going on. After all, they probably wanted to get back to their lives as much as I did to mine. I couldn’t follow their arguments but, like a small child, I was immediately aware of tension, a quarrel among the “grown-ups” which would often result in some unreasonable punishment for me. As I sat with my tray, raised voices penetrated the waves of my undersea world and I tensed up, careful not to turn or lift my head because sweat had loosened the plasters across my nose and they might think I was trying to look at them. I had only felt this edginess before on Sundays when there were so many hunters’ guns going off around us and the risk of discovery was at its greatest. Because of my blocked ears, the shots reached me as a far-distant
plaff but
they were hearing them sharp, clear, and near so it was bound to get on their nerves.

‘It wasn’t Sunday. It was the day for changing my plasters and that was never done on Sunday but on one of the two days a week when hunting was forbidden. And yet, something was very wrong. Woodcutter himself was rough with me, ripping the tray from my hands and ordering me in an angry whisper near my face to get inside and be quick about it.

'I crawled into the tent and pulled in my chain.

“‘Are you going to do my plasters?”

‘He didn’t answer and I heard the zip swish down, a fast, angry movement.

‘Trying to appease him, my only ally, I said, “You should change them. They’re coming loose over my nose. I promise you I haven’t touched them, it’s just sweat, and I haven’t tried to lift my head and look—”

“‘Shut up!”

“‘Please don’t be angry with me. You said I should tell you, for my own good, if they—”

“‘Shut up.” He began ripping the plasters off himself instead of letting me do it slowly so it wouldn’t hurt. He tore some hair out by the roots near my temple and I cried out. I sensed his arm lift as though to hit me and I cringed. The plasters were off and he threw a newspaper onto the sleeping-bag, telling me to read it. My heart pounded as I saw Caterina. Caterina in dark glasses. She never wore sunglasses, she hated them, and I imagined her beautiful brown eyes, wide and childlike, ruined now with tears. And Leo, Leo in his old ski jumper, turning to look over his shoulder at me, the same as last time. Only this time I must force myself to keep control of my emotions and read about what was happening. Woodcutter wouldn’t leave my eyes unbandaged for long. I began to read. Stopped. Started again, unable to understand. I was stumbling, tripping over the words that danced around on the page so that I could make no sense of them.

“‘Have you got the message?” yelled the agitated Woodcutter into my face. “They don’t want you back, your fancy educated rich children, do you hear me? They’ve decided to keep the money and do without you—well, it’s what would happen in the long run, isn’t it, so what’s the odds? This is the result of those stupid farts taking you instead of your greedy bitch of a daughter—you’d have paid up, wouldn’t you? Mothers do. You can never risk taking a woman like you without even a husband who wants her back. A husband, even if he’d prefer to keep the cash and set up with his mistress, would be ashamed to do it so publicly!” He flung the newspaper at me. “That’s what you’ve been bringing up all these years. Like the Florentines are always saying—the trouble with having children is you don’t know what sort of people you’re letting into the house. Well, you do know now. Your children want you dead!”

‘I sat staring at the paper and felt my stomach turning colder and colder, a coldness that spread upwards. When it reached my head I passed out, and only the pain as my stone-hard ear block hit the floor caused me to come to. I managed to grab the bedpan in time to vomit undigested bread and water into it. The sour smell of vomit mixed with the bleach and made me retch again and again but to no avail. Woodcutter took the bedpan and put it outside, closing us in again with the smell still there. He shunted close to me and, giving me the pads to hold against my eyes, said, “It’s over for you. The boss has decided. There are only a few days left to the deadline and they haven’t contacted us. If they don’t pay, or try to fob us off with less than we asked for, you’ll have to be killed.” His anger seemed less as he said this, his fingers gentie as he moulded new strips of plaster over my nose. Then he whispered, “Give me your hand.”

“‘Why? Why?” This unnecessary cruelty was as much as I dared register and react to. ‘You never chain my hand in the daytime. Why? Please don’t! It hurts me.”

“‘It’s for your own good. It’s so I can leave the tent flap open, get rid of this stink.”

“‘But I promise not to move. I’ll lie in the sleeping bag. Please.”

“‘Give me your hand.”

“‘At least don’t do it so tight. It doesn’t need to be so tight.”

‘He did try it on the next link, only to pull it tight again. “It’s too slack like that. If the others see it, they’ll only tighten it even more than I do.” He snapped the padlock shut and I heard him crawl out backwards, leaving the flap unzipped.