Season of Storms (40 page)

EPILOGUE

But my fate ever in a frequent round
Turns . . . and changes character.

Sophocles:
The Lost Dramas,
Fragment 713

We don’t go very often to Il Piacere, now.

The Trust has the charge of the house and the gardens, and although they detour the tourists round our private rooms while we’re in residence, it still feels rather strange, as though we’re part of the display. Teresa has several times turned people out of her kitchen, and once I came across a straggler who had stopped to use our bathroom. Still, the house works better as a showpiece than a home, I think, and I have no doubt Galeazzo’s ghost is somewhere looking on delighted at the sight of people queuing for a glimpse inside his legendary bedroom, or the desk in the veranda where he wrote his final poems. As for the spirit of Celia the First, if she still haunts her rooms in the ladies’ wing, she keeps a low profile. None of the Trust’s workers, nor any of the tourists, have reported anything ‘happening,’ as Teresa would put it, in Celia’s suite.

I myself am inclined to believe that what I saw and heard were mere imaginings, and yet . . . and yet, there is a part of me, I must admit, that wouldn’t be surprised if someday someone chanced to stumble on the resting-place of Galeazzo’s Celia, sheltered in the gardens of Il Piacere. Walking there, I almost feel her presence.

But so far only one body has been found at the estate, and that a more recent one—not in the gardens, but down on the small stretch of beach by the boathouse. As Alex had suspected, the little maid who’d vanished on the day I’d first arrived hadn’t run off to Milan at all; she hadn’t run to anywhere. I’m told that Lake Garda is known to not give up its dead, but it gave back the maid . . . gave her back very gently, and set her in plain view to bear a mute witness to murder.

Pietro, still in prison, claims it wasn’t he who killed her, that Daniela’s husband did it, and forged the letter to her family saying she was fine; but it’s likely we shall never know the truth. The two of them—Daniela and her husband—have eluded the authorities for so long now it seems to me unlikely they will ever be found, let alone brought to justice. We actually had a postcard from Daniela, last Easter . . . at least, Alex did. It came addressed to him, at Il Piacere—a view of Buenos Aires, and on the back her signature, and nothing more. It had occurred to me that she must have truly had some feelings for him, to take such a risk, but when I’d said so to Alex he’d shaken his head and replied that women like that didn’t care about anyone, really; that men, to them, were playthings. I could understand the argument—Daniela, after all, was a good deal like my mother, who had grown so accustomed to being the bright centre of the universe that, like the wicked queen in the fairy tale, she couldn’t conceive of anyone being fairer than her—but I couldn’t help but think that in Alex’s case, Daniela had felt something more. I’d seen her eyes that day on the terrace, when she’d warned me off.

“And anyway,” Alex had gone on, still holding the postcard, “she’s not taking any risk, sending me this. They’ll have moved on to somewhere else by now, take my word for it.”

With the money they must have made selling the Fourth Crusade collection, they will doubtless be able to keep moving for quite some time. Where the stolen items went, we still don’t know—they have, as Alex put it, merely continued their illicit journey from hand to hand, as they came down through the ages. The few fakes salvaged from the Villa delle Tempeste after the fire have been put on display by the Trust, and the story of the theft has found its own place in the tour guides’ patter, one more curiosity to entertain the tourists.

But there is one piece yet surviving—the prayer-book, which Alex allowed me to bring with us when we left Italy. That, and the portrait of Celia the First that had hung in my bedroom, and which is hanging now above me as I write this, are the only things we’ve taken from the house, the only things we didn’t want to leave behind. The rest is for the Trust, and they are welcome to it, Alex says.

He talks from time to time of putting on another of his grandfather’s plays in the theatre, but I don’t imagine anything will come of it. At any rate, it wouldn’t be the same. We could never match the triumph of
Il Prezzo.

It was
Il Prezzo
that first brought us to New York, by invitation, when our summer’s run in Italy was over; and the play is running still, to good reviews, although the only original cast member remaining is Madeleine. Nicholas left two months after we’d moved to New York. He now lives in Los Angeles, where I understand he has been seen at several parties with the actress who last year received the Oscar for best work in a supporting role—which was, I thought, appropriate.

I’d have stayed on longer with
Il Prezzo
myself if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was offered, unexpectedly, the lead role in a television miniseries, and when I wavered it was Madeleine herself who pushed me into it. I remember she and Den had been throwing one of their famous parties that weekend, at their house in New Jersey, and Madeleine and I had found a corner of peace on the covered back porch, and with our drinks in hand were watching Poppy throw a ball for her new cocker spaniel puppy, and Madeleine, making her case for the miniseries, had quoted from Shakespeare, from
Julius Caesar
: “ ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune . . .’ ”

And when she’d said that it had struck me that I’d had my tide already, and had taken it, and had indeed found fortune. Not only in a financial sense, though I’d be the first to admit that I’ve travelled a long way from that draughty fourth-floor flat in Covent Garden, but in those things that make one truly rich—in friends, and in my ever-growing family, and the joy of being able to perform.

I did the miniseries, though. I’ve learned it’s always wise to take advice from Madeleine.

I took her advice about Alex, after all. She said I ought to marry him, and so I did, and that has worked out well enough—the evidence is sleeping here beside me in a Moses basket, guarded well by Max and Nero. Bryan and Edwina will be coming in a week’s time for the christening. We had a small dispute about the name—Alex had felt that it ought to be Rupert, only I had argued that Rupert had never much liked his own name, and had several times said that he wouldn’t have wished it on anyone else . . . and choosing between Den and Bryan would have been impossible for me, so in the end we had settled on Christopher.

“It’s all his own name,” I’d said, watching our son while he slept. “No one else’s.”

It had pleased me then, as it does now, to know he’ll have no expectations to live up to on that count, and nothing that he’ll have to prove. Mind you, it doesn’t bother me so much these days to carry Celia’s name. With the success of
Il Prezzo,
and the first episode of my miniseries scheduled to air on Sunday next, I feel more confident in my ability to make my mark.

According to Madeleine, I already have. Only this morning she came by to tell me how, at dinner last night, she and Den had chatted with an influential critic who’d been praising my performance in
Il Prezzo.
“And Den got to bragging, you know how he is, and he told the chap that, in his opinion, you had done a better job than the first Celia Sands could have done with the part.” Whereupon the critic, so Madeleine says, looked up in some surprise and asked them, “
Was
there another Celia Sands?”

Perhaps they’ll write that as my epitaph. I think that I should like that.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The character of Galeazzo D’Ascanio and the estate of Il Piacere were inspired by the real-life poet Gabriele D’Annunzio and his grand home Il Vittoriale, built on the shores of Lake Garda above the beautiful resort town of Gardone Riviera. In paying homage to a fascinating man I did not, of course, mean to imply that any of the events described in this book actually took place—the story is entirely imagined, and my own.

For my research into D’Annunzio’s life I am greatly indebted to the wonderfully colourful biography written by his friend and secretary, Tom Antongini, and published in English by William Heinemann Ltd. in 1938.

To all those others, both in Italy and here, who were kind enough to assist me in my research for this book, I give my heartfelt thanks; most particularly to the woman at Equity in London, whose name I never learned; to Humphrey Price; to Jane Bradish-Ellames of Curtis Brown; and last but by no means least, to the actress Cynthia Dale, who generously prompted from the wings.