Season of Storms (10 page)

“The terrace, probably.” Nicholas gave directions. “If you lose your way just tap out an S.O.S. on the wall and we’ll come find you.”

“Jolly good.”

Which left only Den and myself to be dealt with. Teresa stopped two doors down. “Signor O’Malley.” This room I saw in more detail than Rupert’s—a tall window draped in blue velvet, a long polished desk with a mirror above it, the post of a bed. Den seemed pleased. Dropping his cases, he passed the heavy one of mine that he’d been carrying to Nicholas. “Here you go, Nick, this goes with Celia. I think it’s her rock collection.” Turning to me, he asked, “And where will you be?”

“Signorina Sands,” Teresa announced, with a hint of disapproval, “is in the ladies’ wing.”

“Oh right, the ladies’ wing. I should have guessed.” Den grinned. “That’s where old Galeazzo kept his mistress, I believe.”

“And other female guests,” said Nicholas. He winked. “The lucky sod.”

“Yes, well, we can’t all have his stamina.” Den shifted his suitcases further into the room with his foot, to let his door close. “See you shortly.”

Teresa set off again down the dim corridor, but this time with a rather grim set to her face. I wondered if she didn’t think me good enough to occupy the ladies’ wing.

We had to hunch over to duck through the passage dividing the wing from the rest of the house, but on the other side the ceiling soared upwards, cathedral-like, over a broad, U-shaped landing surrounding a second small staircase that gracefully wound its way up from the lower floor, lit high above by a skylight of stained glass that dappled the dark Persian carpets with colour.

I counted four doors on the landing—one on its own to my right, and the other three set at angles in the far left-hand corner. It was to the last of these three that Teresa now led me, while Nicholas nodded across at the door on the right.

“That’s Maddy’s room,” he told me. “There are only the two of you sharing this wing. And the stairs there go down to the dining-room passage. That’s the best way to get to the terrace, for drinks—just go down and turn left, then turn right and go straight.”

I only half-listened to what he was saying, because by that point Teresa had opened the door and I’d seen what lay inside.

ii

I
was almost reluctant to step through the doorway, for fear I might spoil it.

“Is your sitting-room,” Teresa said, moving ahead of me into the high-ceilinged gold-and-white space with its tall arching windows. She opened the shutters and expertly twitched back the filmy white curtains to let in the light.

Nicholas set down my cases on the kitten-soft carpet, looking round appreciatively. “God, and I thought Maddy’s room was luxury. It must be nice to be producer’s pet.”

“I’m not,” I said, and then because I didn’t want to step on any toes I added, “Look, I’ll gladly trade with Mrs. Hedrick, if she’d rather have this room. I really don’t—”

“Relax,” he calmed me. “Maddy doesn’t have that kind of ego.” Smoothing his hair back he glanced round again. “Lucky you.”

And with that he made a practised exit, leaving me alone with Teresa. The look she sent after him seemed to imply that she didn’t think much of the famous Nicholas Rutherford, but she kept her thoughts silent. “Here is your bathroom,” she said, pointing out the door at the end of the room, “and also after that the bedroom.”

“Thank you.” I paused then and, wanting to get in her good books, I thanked her again in Italian, trying to remember Rupert’s coaching on pronunciation, rolling my
r
and giving each vowel a separate sound:
“Grazie.”

Teresa nodded.
“Prego.”
And then, with a final disapproving look around, she turned and left me.

As the door clicked shut behind her I fell into the embrace of the overstuffed sofa and revelled in the feel of it, the obvious expensiveness of everything around me. But I couldn’t stay seated for long. There was too much to see, to explore. Rising, I crossed to the windows.

The view was more stunning than any I could have imagined. I hadn’t realized quite how high we’d climbed until this moment, when I saw the pointed cypress tops beneath me falling sharply to the long blue lake below, a darkly fragrant forest into which the villa’s gardens had intruded in an unexpected paradise of terraced lawns and shaded groves with flowers showing everywhere and footpaths winding through the mingled greens, beneath the clustered trees too numerous to count and much too varied to identify. I recognized the flaming glory of a copper beech directly underneath my window, and knew by sight the silvery leaves and gnarled trunks that marked the olive trees, but all the rest looked unfamiliar to me, wonderful and strange.

The air was scented, heavenly, and filled with warbling birdsong that went on and on incessantly, a sound so purely joyful that just hearing it restored my spirits, and suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that we’d had to walk from town, or that Teresa didn’t seem to think me worthy of occupying Celia the First’s private suite, or that in half an hour’s time I’d be sipping a drink beside Madeleine Hedrick, who’d most likely hate me because of what Mother had done. Nothing mattered. Only that I was here, in this beautiful room, with the lake shining blue in the sunlight below and the snow-covered mountain that rose from the further shore framed like a painting by neighbouring lavender peaks, and the hill rising high like a shield at my back.

Eager to unpack my things and make myself at home, I grabbed the handle of one of my suitcases, dragging it through the small adjoining bathroom—an oasis of polished green marble and brass—into the bedroom.

I should, by rights, have noticed the bed first. It was fabulous—antique-looking and painted in delicate tones, plump and soft with pillows stacked against the headboard and a coverlet of heavy damask, opulently ivory. And I ought to have noticed the thickly draped windows, the one on the end wall that faced me and the two on my left, close together, that travelled from ceiling to floor and so clearly led out to a balcony. At the very least, I should have admired the marble-topped dressing table in the corner by the wardrobe. I had always wanted a marble-topped dressing table. But the only thing that caught my eye at first was Celia’s portrait.

It was
meant
to catch the eye—a life-sized canvas, hanging square above the bed, so real the eyes appeared to hold my own, the figure seemed to breathe.

But it surprised me, still, to hear the voice. A woman’s voice. It spoke to me from thin air. “I do hope that you’ll forgive me.”

My heart gave a foolish leap upwards and lodged in my throat, but even as I felt the rush of unreasoning panic I knew that it wasn’t a voice from the grave. And I would have recognized the speaker even if I hadn’t wheeled in time to see the curtains billow at the long French windows opposite the bed.

“It’s dreadfully rude of me, I know,” said Madeleine Hedrick as she stepped in from the balcony, “but I thought that our first meeting ought to be private.”

I’d never seen Madeleine Hedrick close up. In my schoolgirl remembrance her Lady Macbeth had been regal, commanding, and on television chat shows she looked willowy and tall, so it came as something of a surprise to find myself facing a woman not quite my own height, with such delicate bones, such a slender physique, that I felt like a great clumping ox by comparison.

Her voice, though, low and pleasant, held the strength and skilled control that I’d expected. “Did I frighten you? I’m sorry. I don’t make a habit of trespassing, really, but I couldn’t think of any other way.” Like Nicholas, she didn’t introduce herself. There wasn’t any need. And she didn’t immediately offer her hand. Instead she paused for a moment inside the French windows, head tipped as though she were onstage and awaiting a prompt from the wings.

I could have done with one, myself. The perfect speech that I’d so carefully constructed and rehearsed had somehow vanished from my memory. Wordless, I stood and looked back at her.

Finally, she spoke. “Did you have a good journey?”

A question I could answer. “Lovely, thank you.”

“I always did prefer the train to flying. So much more civilized, really, and of course one has the scenery . . . from an airplane one only sees clouds, for the most part. And even from a car,” she said, “when Nicky is driving, one can only see a blur.” She smiled. Moving from the window, she sat on the end of the elegant bed, and for the first time I saw the whole person—the simple clean lines of the cream-coloured dress she was wearing, the curling dark hair in its trademark short style, the rounded soft face with its engaging dimples and the large dark eyes that could by turns be sharp or gentle, widely innocent or tragic, as she chose. At the moment they hadn’t committed to any emotion, but watched my face and waited, rather as a border guard might watch someone approach a checkpoint—reasonably certain that the password would be given, but prepared at any moment to defend.

I tried one more time to remember my speech, then gave up and said simply, “You can’t know how much of a thrill it is for me to finally meet you.”

“You are sweet.”

“No, honestly, it was you who made me want to be an actress. Roo—I mean, Rupert,” I caught myself using the childish nickname and winced. “Rupert Neville, he did all he could to put me off the idea.” He had, in fact, told me that practically any profession was better than theatre; that being a lollipop lady was better, more sane. “But then our school took us to Stratford, you see, and I saw you do Lady Macbeth, and it . . . well, I can’t really describe
what
it did to me, not properly, but acting was all that I wanted to do after that.” Which came out sounding foolish, and I kicked myself for saying it at all. And why, oh why, had I made that remark about school? It was hopelessly impolitic, and surely impolite, to remind an older actress of the difference in our ages.

But one glance at Madeleine Hedrick revealed that I had, by some miracle, chosen the right thing to say; I had uttered the password. She sat back a little, relaxing, fingers laced around her knees. “How nice. I don’t know that I’ve ever been anyone’s inspiration before.” She smiled. “Was that Dennis O’Malley I saw coming in with you?”

I hadn’t been aware that she’d been watching us arrive, but I said yes, it was, and explained how he’d stepped in at the last minute to replace the other man who was supposed to have been our SM.

“I haven’t seen Dennis in years,” she said. “Is he still incorrigible?”

That was, I thought, as good a word for Den as any. “Definitely.”

“Good. I was afraid age might have sobered him. It changes us all, you know, age does.” It hadn’t treated her too badly, really. She would be about my mother’s age, just entering her fifties, but unlike my mother her youthful complexion appeared to owe nothing to surgery. Still smiling, she stood. “But of course you’ll be longing to tidy up after your travels. I ought to have thought. It’s my worst fault,” she told me, “not thinking. Nicky always makes comments. I expect,” she went on, inviting me with a gesture to walk with her through to the sitting-room, “that he’ll have arranged for us all to meet up for a drink on the terrace?”

“I think that’s the plan, yes.”

“I knew that he would. It’s the actor in him, you know. Drinks on the terrace. So predictably theatrical. Mind you,” she said, “as settings go, the terrace here
is
fabulous. You know the way?”

I dutifully repeated the instructions Nicholas had given me. “Down the stairs here, then turn left, turn right, and go straight on.”

She nodded. We had reached the door. She turned and showed me once again that beatific smile that had as much impact up close as it did when one viewed it from the upper circle. “I’ll see you down there, then.”

And it felt to me as though, with that one sentence, she had given me some kind of blessing, as though she had set me a test and was pleased that I’d passed. Though I couldn’t imagine what sort of a test she could have set—we’d barely said anything to each other, really, and nothing that I would have classed as important.

Unpacking my suitcase, I played the conversation over in my mind, editing my own words after the fact, as I often did, to make them say the things I should have said. Naturally, in this revised version, I came off sounding less of an idiot, but I still didn’t think we’d accomplished anything short of breaking the ice, and I still couldn’t tell, when she told me ‘Of course you’ll be longing to tidy up’ whether she was being considerate or catty.

The last thing I took from the suitcase was my copy of
The Season of Storms.
I’d brought it along, not so much for bed-time reading—although Galeazzo’s Celia poems, from what I’d read so far, promised to be very good at putting me to sleep—but because they
were
the Celia poems, and having the book sitting there at my bedside seemed almost an invocation of her spirit . . . a connection with the woman who’d once slept in this bedroom, this bed, and who probably wouldn’t have been nervous at all at the prospect of drinks on the terrace with Madeleine Hedrick.

But then Celia the First had been famous herself, whereas I was a nobody. Hopelessly out of my league.

My flatmate Sally said that rooms absorbed the energies of people who had lived in them. I would have liked that to be true. I would have liked to think that some of Celia the First’s poise, and her talent, might rub off on me while I stayed in her rooms, but I knew the odds on that were pretty long.

I looked up at her portrait and studied her face, and her all-knowing eyes seemed to smile at me. “What was I thinking?” I asked her. When no answer came I sighed, gathered up my travel-wrinkled clothes and, turning, went to run my bath.

iii

“
LEFT
,” I reminded myself, “and then right.” The narrow flight of stairs had brought me down into an equally narrow passage that swallowed the light from the stained glass so high overhead. There were several doors here, but in keeping with Nicholas’s directions I turned left and followed the corridor round till it came to an end in front of yet another door, through which I glimpsed a length of polished table ringed round with tapestried chairs. Here the corridor swung to the right. I saw daylight, and felt on my face the late-afternoon breeze that was blowing unchallenged through leaded French windows that stood fully open, inviting me out to the terrace.

I had seen it before. The most famous—or at least the most widely reproduced—photograph of Galeazzo D’Ascanio in old age showed him here on this terrace, at rest with his back to the parapet, forsaking the view of the mountains and lake while he bent his head close to the muzzle of one of his well-beloved greyhounds. It was a smashing portrait—one could read in that creased face, that smile, the curve of the shoulders, the strange combination of arrogance and vulnerability that had marked the great poet. When I’d seen it for the first time I had thought I understood what had made Celia the First chuck the stage and her family and friends and run off with a man nearly three times her age. But standing on the terrace now my only thought was: How could he have turned his back on
that
?

Because the view was quite beyond belief—the sort that hit me squarely in that little hollow place behind my breastbone, made me catch my breath and wish I had a camera, even though I knew full well the camera’s lens could never capture what my own two eyes were seeing.

So high were we above the lake, so steep the cypressed hills that plunged to meet the tiny town below, that for a moment I imagined I was standing at the summit of the world with nothing over me but eagles and the blue, blue arc of sky.

It was Den who brought me down to earth. “At last,” he said, and raised his glass. “I thought we’d have to launch a search and rescue mission.”

I didn’t think I’d taken that long, really, getting ready, but the others had managed to get here ahead of me. They were fairly spread out—Nicholas wandering round at the far end while Madeleine lounged in a striped chair and chatted with Rupert, who stood a short distance from Den, near the parapet. Four people—five, counting me—would have filled most spaces, but the terrace was so huge it swallowed all of us, and the walk across the paving stones to where the others were seemed endless.

Madeleine stopped talking and turned in her chair to watch me. She’d changed clothes as well, and in place of the cream dress now wore a more casual trouser suit, her dark hair wrapped in a bright turquoise scarf. I thought it odd that she had bothered changing, she had looked so smart before. It was almost as if she’d deliberately chosen to dress to the nines for our first private meeting, as though she had needed, or felt that she’d needed, the armour that fashion provided; and that having once met me she now felt reassured of her advantage and could dress whatever way she liked.

The less paranoid explanation, of course, was that she’d worn the dress to lunch with Nicholas—he’d told us, after all, that they’d gone out, and it was perfectly conceivable they’d eaten someplace swish. She might have only changed for comfort. But it still made me curious.

She shaded her eyes with one hand as she watched me approach. “Hello again.”

That caught Rupert, who’d been preparing to introduce us, off guard. “Oh, you’ve met?”

Madeleine said, “Yes, we ran into one another upstairs. Come have a drink. We’re just helping ourselves, they’re short-staffed here today.”

“Yeah, there’s a little bit of a mystery in that, I guess,” Den said, with the look of someone who had secret knowledge. “I heard Teresa talking on the phone when I came down. Apparently this maid who’s missing left her house this morning, same as usual, all dressed for work. Her family’s worried sick.”

“I do hope nothing bad has happened to her,” Madeleine said, with a look of concern. “She served us at dinner last night; she’s a sweet little thing.”

“Oh, she’ll probably turn up,” said Den.

“Who will?” Nicholas wanted to know, as he sauntered over to join us with a cigarette in hand.

Madeleine turned to look up at him. “The little maid who didn’t come to work today.” And she told him what Den had overheard Teresa saying on the telephone.

Nicholas’s first reaction had nothing to do with the maid. He looked at Den in mild surprise. “You speak Italian?”

“Half the kids on my block growing up spoke Italian. It rubbed off.”

“Ah.” I didn’t know how well Nicholas could speak Italian himself, but I gathered he spoke it well enough to have thought it should accord him special status in our group. He’d be even less pleased, I decided, when he found out that Rupert knew Italian, too. People like Nicholas liked to be frontstage and centre—they didn’t like sharing the spotlight. “Anyhow,” he said, to Madeleine, “I wouldn’t worry about this maid of yours. I can’t imagine anything would happen to her in a place like this.” With a wicked smile he added, “Maybe she’s run off with Giancarlo. It’s rather suggestive, the two of them missing. And after all, Teresa’s not the most attractive woman.”

“Nicky, stop. You have a nasty mind,” Madeleine accused him. But her tone was light. “Do make yourself useful. Fetch Celia a drink.”

I saw his eyes in the instant before he smiled at her, and in my Shakespeare game I knew I would have cast him as Macbeth—he had the vanity, the shallowness, and all the self-centred ambition, and like Macbeth, I thought, he’d probably do anything to get what he’d decided he deserved. And because of that one glimpse into his nature, the smile he turned on me, although it would have weakened many women’s knees, had no effect. “What will you have? We’ve got sherry or vodka martinis, your choice.”

I chose a martini. Then, seeking the comfort of familiar company, I joined Rupert at the parapet, loving the feel of the breeze on my face as I gazed at the lake. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Rupert nodded. “Very. It’s been a resort since the days of the Romans, you know. They built holiday villas here, and came to take the waters. There are mineral springs about, I’m told.”

“At Sirmione, aren’t they?” Den said, trying to recall.

I felt the small airborne ripples of Rupert’s sigh as he was once again upstaged, but Den, who hadn’t done it intentionally and at any rate hadn’t noticed the sigh, went on, “I’m sure the Romans built a spa at Sirmione, down that way.” He waved a hand to indicate the south shore, past the jagged headland jutting out to partly screen our view in that direction. “There are still some ruins there, I think, if you like that kind of thing.”

I looked at him. “I gather you don’t?”

He shrugged, refusing to commit himself, and Madeleine said, “Well, I love them.”

Nicholas, who’d been getting himself a fresh drink, rejoined the conversation. “Love what?”

“Ruins.”

“You’ll be loving this house, then,” he said. “Half the plaster on that wall over there only wants a good rain to dissolve it.” He tapped his ash over the parapet, yawning. “Our boy hasn’t half got his work cut out for him, restoring this place.”

I took a look round at the high, yellow walls. “But he’s got the Forlani Trust helping him, hasn’t he?” I knew the Trust by reputation. I’d seen a television programme last year on a project they were doing near Florence, and they had looked to be a first-rate organization. Their intent seemed to be to acquire and restore as many of the great old Italian estates as they possibly could, in keeping with the wishes of their founder, the art-loving tycoon Leonardo Forlani. His widow still sat on the board of directors, and while she hadn’t actually appeared on the programme I’d watched, she apparently still took a hand in all the restoration projects, though since her husband had been well into his nineties when he died, she likely did most of her own work from a walking-frame.

Nicholas agreed that the Trust must be a help to D’Ascanio’s grandson. “But last night at dinner he was saying there were rooms that they hadn’t so much as looked inside yet—wasn’t he, Maddy?”

She nodded. “It must be a difficult job.”

Den folded his arms as he lowered his glass. “So what’s your opinion of D’Ascanio?”

Madeleine said, “He was very nice, I thought.”

“Quiet,” said Nicholas, blowing out smoke. “Didn’t say any more than he had to at dinner. I don’t think he knew what to do with us, really.”

Rupert nodded agreement. “No, he’s not very comfortable in social settings, I did notice that, the time we met in London.”

Madeleine thought that it must be because of his upbringing. “Poor little rich boy, and all that.”

“And where does he get all his money from?” Den asked. “Is it all inherited, or what?”

Nobody knew. Nicholas admitted that he didn’t even know what D’Ascanio’s father had done for a living.

Den grinned. “Well, you know Italians.” Adopting the hoarse, reedy voice of a Hollywood mob boss, he told us, “They probably run a respectable olive oil business.”

“I somehow don’t think so,” said Nicholas drily. “And you won’t either, once you’ve seen him. Anyway, those Mafia types all have hard names like Guido and Vito and Tony, not Alessandro.” He drew the name out with an exaggerated roll. “No, an
Alessandro
could never be a hit man. He’d have to be more like an opera singer, or a magician.” Spreading his arms he announced with a music-hall flourish: “The great Alessandro D’Ascanio . . . Christ, that’s a mouthful, that, isn’t it?”

All of us laughed except Rupert, whose mild gaze had moved past my shoulder. He coughed, a discreet little cough. I knew Rupert’s looks; I knew what this expression meant, and I could feel my face flushing before I could turn.

Alessandro D’Ascanio was younger than I’d thought he’d be, certainly no older than thirty-five, with hair the same colour as Bryan’s, the kind that could be either dark golden blond or sandy brown, depending on the light and time of year. Unlike Bryan’s hair, though, his curled loosely. His eyes were in shadow. He stood very tall at the end of the terrace, between two long-legged greyhound dogs who held their brindled heads stone-steady, level with his knees, and waited, poised like matching statues.

Maybe, I thought, he was too far away to have heard us poke fun at his name. Ashamed, I bit my lip and watched him, hopeful, till his hand at last went out and touched the nearer dog and stroked its ears. His voice, when he spoke, carried clearly with only a trace of an accent.

“My mother called me Alex. She was English,” he said calmly, “if you find that any easier.”

I felt like a child who’d been caught calling somebody names in the playground. I know my face went crimson.

Madeleine Hedrick, by contrast, managed to strike the right balance of composure and apology. “You mustn’t take notice. We actors are horribly lacking in manners.”

“Especially me.” Nicholas, far from being chastised, looked amused. He pitched his spent cigarette over the parapet. “Sorry, just a bit of fun, and no offence intended.”

“Yes, of course.” D’Ascanio’s quiet voice neither forgave nor condemned, but he didn’t smile back. As he stepped now from the shadows I could see he was a most attractive man, not flashily handsome like Nicholas, nor a dyed-in-the-wool charmer like Den, but attractive in the strong-and-silent way that caught my interest. Crossing the terrace towards us he turned his attention to Rupert, holding out his hand in greeting. “I’m so glad to see you made it. I apologize for your not being met at the station. I’m told you had quite an ordeal.”

Rupert shrugged off the experience. “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. We survived it. Well, some of us did,” he amended, as he caught Den’s wry sideways look. “Alex, you haven’t met Dennis yet, have you?”

“No.” He had hazel eyes, as quiet as the rest of him, that travelled Den’s length as the two men shook hands. And then it was my turn.

Rupert, still in charge of introductions, started off, “And this is—”

“Celia.” There was something quite decided in the way he said my name. His gaze raked me once as it had done with Den, but his expression didn’t change. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

I liked that he didn’t take my hand as some men did, with that limp partial grasp of the fingers that so often passed for a feminine handshake. His touch was firm, and warm, and very sure. I only wished he would have smiled. It would have made me feel less nervous.

Clearing my throat, I said the only thing that came to mind. “You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes,” said Rupert, stepping in to save the conversation, “we’ve all been admiring the view from your terrace.”

Alex D’Ascanio nodded, turning from me to glance round. “This was one of my grandfather’s favourite places, I’m told. And mine.”

Rupert smiled. “I see you share another of your grandfather’s preferences.” He nodded down at the dogs, who stayed obediently close to Alex’s side but continually shifted position with a restlessness that hinted they’d much rather be out hunting.

One of them turned a long head and fixed me with a level gaze, assessing whether I was worth the effort to make friends, as Alex told Rupert, “Yes, these are descendants of one of his champions.”

“Really?” Madeleine offered her hand to them. “What are their names?”

“This is Nero.” He touched one sleek head. “And the other is Max.”

Max, I decided, was the flirtatious one, the one who had been eyeing me. As though he knew I had him pegged, he looked away now, feigning indifference, and sniffed politely at Madeleine’s fingers.

“I used to keep dogs,” she said. “Corgis.”

Nicholas grinned. “Like the Queen.”

“Well, not exactly. Mine were rather fat. But that was when we had the house in Hampstead. We couldn’t keep dogs now, not in the flat. They’d be miserable. Not that my daughter will ever stop trying to convince me otherwise.”

I’d forgotten that she had a daughter—during the scandal with Mother the papers had made a great deal of the fact that Madeleine and her husband had only just had a baby together, but one never heard a mention of the child now. Madeleine, I thought, must keep the girl well under wraps. Not like my mother, who’d delighted in posing with me for the cameras, at least when I was very small. The practice had lost its appeal as I’d grown, mainly because Rupert had pointed out—rather cleverly, I’d always thought—that anyone looking at me with my mother was bound to start doing the maths. Mother hated revealing her age.