Season of Storms (26 page)

He steepled his fingers and watched while his publisher read the last page. The veranda had become so quiet he could hear plainly not only the to-and-fro beat of the pendulum in the long-case clock behind him, but the even subtler ticking of the minute hand as it marked out the hour. It clicked again now as his publisher set down the page and reordered the manuscript.

“Extraordinary,” was the publisher’s pronouncement. “You’ve outdone yourself, my friend.”

“I was . . . inspired.” Turning his gaze to the window he looked at the two figures seated outside in the gardens, on the bench beneath the walnut tree—the still-slender woman like sunshine herself in a pale yellow organdie dress, and the young man beside her . . .

“That’s quite a moustache,” said the publisher, looking out also. “I take it that’s the boy who’ll play the soldier?”

“Yes. He was a friend of Celia’s once, in London. She suggested him.” He tried to say that lightly, letting none of his misgivings show. After all, had not Celia assured him the boy meant nothing to her, that there could be no one else? “You’ll come to the performance?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. May I take this script with me?”
“Of course. And the poems, as well.”

“Ah, the poems.” The publisher picked up the second typescript with less enthusiasm, but politely. “Do you have a title for this new collection?”

“I call it The Season of Storms, from a quote I have found in the book of the Crusades by Charles Lamb, the Englishman—a speech the
Venetian doge makes to his followers, telling them why they must wait before journeying on to the Holy Land. ‘My lords,’ says the doge to them, ‘winter is come, and the season of storms . . .’ ” Without meaning to do it he looked once again to the window; to where the two figures still sat on the garden bench, talking and laughing, and watching them now he felt suddenly old.

Very softly, he said again, “Winter is come.”

xv

I
was seeing ghosts myself, or rather, hearing them. That night after dinner, alone in my bedroom, I heard the floor creak rhythmically as though someone were walking towards me. The creaks stopped, then a few minutes later approached from the opposite side of the bed. It didn’t help that I was sitting up reading
A Study of Spirits,
the book about hauntings and ghosts that I’d borrowed from Alex’s study.

I liked to have something to read in the evenings. The others had taken to gathering down in the Stanza d’Arazzo for drinks and a rehash of what had gone wrong or—less frequently—right, at rehearsal. I sometimes sat in, but more often now I simply went upstairs and read, to unwind. Even in London, I’d never been part of the set that went down to the pub every night to talk shop. I found the work itself so hard and tiring that the last thing I wanted was to let it carry on into my social hours. And working far from home like this, with such a small group of people, made the experience that much more intense, and left me more in need of balance.

But
A Study of Spirits
simply wasn’t doing the trick tonight, and I’d already been twice through
The Season of Storms.
Remembering that Rupert had a bookcase in his room, I went to see what he could offer me, happy to have an excuse for a few moments’ break from my creaking floor and the ever-watchful eyes of Celia the First’s portrait over my bed.

Rupert’s door was locked, and he didn’t answer when I knocked, which more than likely meant he wasn’t in his room. Thinking to find him downstairs with the others, I stopped by the Stanza d’Arazzo but Nicholas was the only one in there, sitting with brandy in hand, and a cigarette.

I paused in the doorway. “You haven’t seen Rupert, by any chance?”

“He was here a minute ago. Went to look at books, or something, in D’Ascanio’s study.”

“Thanks.” Looking round the room, I asked, “Where’s everyone else, tonight?”

“I really couldn’t say.” He took a lengthy sip of brandy. “No one tells me anything.”

“Ah.” I left him there, not wanting to get too closely involved in the romantic entanglements of my fellow actors. Instead I turned my steps towards the Veranda della Diana. Rupert, I thought, must have overcome his reluctance to poke round the study with Alex not there. Alex, I knew, was out—he’d left the dogs in Poppy’s care just after lunch with the warning he might not be back till quite late. She’d been thrilled. Daniela, finding Alex not at dinner, had been less pleased. “Such fuss for a funeral,” she’d said. “It is the family who should arrange these things, not Alessandro.”

Madeleine had replied that perhaps Alex felt that Giancarlo
was
family. “The two of them must have been children together.”

Daniela had shaken her head. “No, Giancarlo was older by ten years.”

But I’d understood Madeleine’s point, and agreed with it. Alex had told me himself that Giancarlo had lived his whole life here; that he’d had an intimate connection to Il Piacere . . . and indeed the house itself seemed to be mourning him. The rooms I was passing through now appeared deeper in shadow than usual, everything round me respectfully hushed.

I didn’t like to disturb the silence by knocking at the study door, and at any rate Rupert had left the door slightly ajar, so I just nudged it open and put my head round.

“Ah, Celia,” Rupert greeted me, and waved me in. “Come look at this.”

He was standing with Alex, a few feet away, bending over some large book that they’d spread open on a side table. Alex turned as well, when Rupert spoke, and as I came into the room he stepped aside to make a space for me between them.

“What did I tell you?” asked Rupert, and for a moment, from the delighted look on his face, I thought he might actually have found his longed-for lost play by Sophocles—a large book, he’d said it would be, and an old one, and this was decidedly both. But when I looked down at the open pages I could see that it wasn’t a play. It looked more like an illuminated manuscript, with brightly painted pictures of religious scenes.

“I told you the Crusaders carried books out of Constantinople,” said Rupert. “Have a look at this prayer-book—have you ever seen anything so marvellous? Alex brought it down to show me.”

Alex raised a shoulder. “Yes, well, you were asking me about the Fourth Crusade, and I know how interested you are in books. This was one of my father’s favourite private treasures. It’s never been properly authenticated, mind you—I don’t think it left my father’s room while he was living, and he certainly wouldn’t have permitted anyone to have taken it away to be studied, or properly dated. I suppose I ought to have it done, myself, sometime. Send it off to an expert.”

“You might never get it back,” said Rupert. He was looking rather covetous himself, I thought. He loved old books, and this one was positively ancient—leather-bound with parchment leaves that showed the wear of centuries, their edges rough and browned and stained in places with the evidence of damp.

I couldn’t read the writing, which was Greek, but Rupert could. Gingerly turning the pages, he read aloud in rough translation various prayers and rites of the Greek Orthodox Church.

I wasn’t really listening. I was too aware of Alex standing next to me to concentrate. From time to time I fancied I felt him glancing down at me, and once I shot a quick look up myself and our eyes met, just briefly—mine hesitant, his tinged with something that looked like impatience. I broke the contact, looking down.

“Here’s one for your grandmother, Alex,” said Rupert, reading aloud: “ ‘A Prayer for the Laying of Ghosts.’ ”

The illustration for that prayer was unexpectedly lovely, a radiant sunburst against a cloudy sky, as though the heavens had opened to admit a wandering spirit that had just been laid to rest.

Rupert started to read the words to us, but the telephone rang on the desk, interrupting.

Alex stepped away to pick up the receiver, speaking curtly.
“Pronto.”
Then his voice changed, and although I couldn’t understand the language I could tell that he was talking to a woman. He said something calmly, soothingly, and nodded, ringing off. “I’m afraid I must go out,” he said.

Rupert closed the prayer-book with reluctance. “I should let you have this back, then.”

“Oh, no, keep it for a few days, if you like. It’s just gathering dust on its shelf; it deserves to be read and enjoyed, and I know I can trust you to take care of it.”

You would have thought he’d handed Rupert the Crown Jewels. “Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes, of course. Take it back to your room.”

“I’ll come with you,” I offered. I’d meant that for Rupert, of course, but Alex, who had turned towards the door himself, misunderstood.

“All right,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, caught off my guard. “Sorry . . . I mean, I was talking to Roo . . .”

Rupert, of course, hadn’t heard me. He wasn’t even listening to me now. Head down, he was happily lost in his prayer-book.

“Ah,” said Alex. He looked, I thought, almost disappointed.

Trying to make light of the mistake, I smiled. “I shouldn’t think you’d want me tagging along, anyway.”

“On the contrary.” Alex slanted a look down at me. “I’d very much like you to come.”

“You would?”

He registered the disbelieving tone of my voice with the slightest of smiles. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Celia.” And with that he held the door for me and waited.

xvi

HE
didn’t say anything else on the drive down to Mira del Garda. Not that the drive was a long one, it probably took less than five minutes, but his silence and the close confines of the car made that brief time seem like an hour.

I still didn’t know exactly why I’d come. After all, this wasn’t like our trip to Sirmione—I’d been cornered into that one by Rupert, I hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter. But this time I could have declined, without giving offence. The fact that I hadn’t declined had, I think, something to do with the way Daniela had reacted to our Sirmione trip, with her threats and condescension. After that, I suppose, it was difficult for me to see her as a wronged party, or to worry what she’d think if I spent time with Alex. I knew full well she’d think the worst, no matter what I did.

And anyway, Alex had asked me to come.

I didn’t notice which way he turned at the base of the hill, only that the houses where we stopped were small and warmly lit from within, and that the air around them had a kitchen-cooking smell that wrapped around me, welcoming, as I got out and stood.

“This way,” said Alex, waiting till I’d joined him before walking round to the back door of one of the houses. He knocked. The old woman who came to the door clearly knew who he was. As she ushered us in, she called over her shoulder: “Teresa!”

So that was who we’d come to see, I thought, relaxing a little. That was the woman who’d phoned him.

Poor Teresa didn’t look to me as though she had been sleeping. Dressed in widow’s black, she looked paler, slightly older, but her walk still had the same firmness of purpose. Her surprise at seeing me was plainly evident, but Alex said something that took the distrust from her eyes. Speaking low and quickly in Italian, she motioned towards an adjoining room and Alex nodded.

He turned to me. “Teresa’s brother, Mauro, wants a word with me in private. Will you be all right out here?”

I looked from Teresa’s dour face to the sharply curious eyes of the old woman, who’d resumed her seat now at the kitchen table and was slicing mushrooms with a small but wicked-looking knife. I showed a brave smile to Alex. “Of course.”

When he’d gone, though, my confidence wavered a little until the old woman made a gesture with her knife and said something. I didn’t understand the words, but she had a kind voice.

Teresa said, “My mother asks please will you sit.”

As I sat at the table, a little more upright than usual beneath the scrutiny of the two women, Teresa’s mother asked another question.

Teresa said, “Do you like wine, Signorina Sands?” She was moving to the cupboard as she spoke.

“Yes, but please,” I said, to stop her—she’d just lost her husband, after all, and it wasn’t right that she should have to serve me—“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Is no bother.” Returning with glasses and an open bottle, she poured for the three of us, taking a seat by her mother.

“Grazie,”
I told her, and then turned to thank her mother, also.
“Grazie.”

The sharp eyes softened, crinkling at the corners. This time she rose herself, and fetched a plate. There were trays on the worktop, of small breads and savouries that had probably been specially baked for the funeral, but she filled the plate with some of them and brought them back to set between us on the table.
“Mangi,”
she instructed me, and pointed with her knife.

Obedient, I ate a pastry. Embarrassed by the hospitality, I looked at Teresa, wanting to express how sorry I was about her husband’s death. The words came out rather more clumsily than I’d intended, but she didn’t take offence.

“Signor D’Ascanio says you were there, with Giancarlo,” she said, “on the road.”

“Yes, I was.”

She studied me a moment, then she told me, “Is a good thing. I am glad he did not die alone.”

Her mother interjected, and Teresa said, “My mother asks how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-two.”

Teresa’s mother took this information in translation, smiled, and said something back in a tone of amusement. I caught the words ‘Signora Forlani,’ but Teresa didn’t pass the comment on. She merely made a statement in her turn, and whatever she said made her mother look up at me, surprised. “No!”

Teresa nodded; turned to me. “I tell my mother that you stay in the ladies’ wing, in the rooms of the English actress. She knows many stories of Il Piacere, of those rooms.”

She was telling me a few of them now, apparently. Her face had grown animated, and the hand with the knife gestured widely for emphasis. When she’d finished, I turned to Teresa, but once again she didn’t bother with translation, only shrugged and said, “Is like I said—things happen in those rooms.”

Her mother, clearly dissatisfied with the interpretation service, tried to talk to me herself, aiming the point of the knife at my necklace and stabbing the air. “
Angelo
 . . . good, good.” She smiled at me. “
Dio
protect.”

She was saying, I gathered, that God and his angels would guard me from harm. I touched the little gold-and-diamond angel that I wore and smiled to show I understood.

She would have told me something else, I think, but the door to the other room opened again at that moment, and Alex stepped out. He carried a parcel the size of a shoebox, wrapped up in brown paper. Exchanging a few words with Teresa and her mother, he looked at me. “Ready to go?”

I stood and thanked the women, leaving behind my unfinished wine as I followed Alex to the door. Teresa’s mother, sitting at the table, tossed a remark to Alex and Teresa said in disapproval,
“Mamma!”

But beside me Alex only turned his head and briefly smiled before the kitchen door swung closed behind us.