Shadows of the Past (2 page)

Another maid came in, she carried a tray of tea things and there were small delicate cakes and tiny biscuits. Alva had eaten on the private jet that had flown her to the port but that was, she realized, some while ago. She sat at the small round table and poured the tea; it was as she liked it, quite weak; she did not take cream and there was none on the tray just a few slices of lemon. Someone had obviously remembered how she liked her tea. She took up a cake; it was sweet and delicate and melted on her tongue.

‘Contessa,’ Claudia said, ‘come see, there are other clothes in the wardrobe, come look, you will wish to change perhaps … ’ Claudia was trying to be kind but Alva could tell that the woman was appalled by her poor clothing. She went across and looked; there was an array of wonderful dresses in the deep, heavily carved wardrobe. The clothes were in all shades and hues and of fine silk and satin — there was a stack of soft cashmere sweaters in a myriad of jewelled colours and, in another closet, trousers and skirts and casual wear. As if aware of her mistress’s curiosity, Claudia said, ‘all this you left behind when you left. The conte did not throw it away, contessa.’ And she nodded enthusiastically as if there was some hidden meaning behind that.

Alva smiled. ‘Claudia, I will be glad to get out of this suit, I have it pinned at the waist, it’s too big — I don’t know why I have something that is so big.’

‘I think you might have lost a little weight but not that much,’ Claudia pursed her lips. ‘Shall I run you a bath, Contessa? You liked a bath and with good oils too, which we have, you will feel better I think.’

‘You’re very kind, Claudia.’

‘Not at all, it is my joy to serve you, Contessa!’

A thought came into her head that she could ask Claudia about this man, Antonio. This man with whom she was supposed to be friendly, yet she discounted the idea immediately. After all, it would be unfair to ask Claudia such a thing. She was employed by the conte and he might not like her questioning his servants. It might, as well, reflect badly on Claudia and cause her to lose her job. Better she found out herself, sometime … and sometime soon.

*

The jeans and lightweight pale-blue cashmere sweater fitted perfectly. It was a mystery why she would be wearing such an ill-fitting suit as she had when she left the hospital. Even if she had put on that many pounds during her separation, her weeks in the hospital would not have made it possible to lose so much weight. It had been weeks and not months that she had been confined to a hospital bed.

He came, as he had said, on time. Only an hour had passed since she had seen him in the hall, although it seemed longer. He cast a look at her, his eyes narrowing a little. Now her hair was loose, it was thick, straight hair, quite heavy and it moved across her cheeks as she walked. The shoulder-length bob flattered her finely sculptured features. She could look cool and aloof but she was like a diamond, fire and ice. Only you were not aware of the fire until you touched her, kissed her, lay with her. There was nothing cool in the way she had wrapped her body around him, offering up herself for his pleasure. These thoughts sent a scalding rush through him, awakening too many memories. These emotional feelings vied with anger. He stormed past her, going on to the balcony, gripping the wrought-iron rail and torturing the metal against his hands until he had control of himself. It was ridiculous to feel that way. When he had thought about her during their separation he had felt misery, anger and sometimes even fear, everything had eventually gone, fading away with time. Now and again he remembered the terrible thing she had done and the melancholy had returned. He had not thought he would ever feel desire again.

When he returned she was standing by the door, a puzzled expression on her face. Her dark green eyes were troubled, her full lips parted as if she would ask a question but seeing his expression, she closed her mouth and said nothing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I had a need of air. Shall we go?’

‘Of course.’

Although not a massive building, the palazzo was difficult to negotiate, for there were many corridors and different stairways. There were bedrooms situated over three floors, and six attic rooms; downstairs there was a library, a drawing room and various other rooms of varying degrees of comfort. At the rear of the palazzo he led her into a beautiful sun lounge. It was full of light and colour and comfortable chairs. ‘You did like to sit in here and read on winter days,’ he murmured. ‘If there is any sun, then you will find it here.’ Opening the long glass doors she saw there was to the right of them, a loggia. It went around the house and would offer cool shade on hot days.

He took her outside; there were stables and she was not surprised when he told her that she rode quite well. She went and touched the horses and found she was not afraid of them but oddly familiar with their feel and smell.

Close to the palazzo there was an indoor swimming pool. The pool though was empty and when she asked why, he merely shrugged and said no one used it any more. ‘Did I use it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, you were, are, a very athletic person. However you did prefer the outdoor pool. That is just along here and you will find that it has water — sea water actually.’ Adjacent to the building that housed the drained swimming pool was a dilapidated building that marred the palazzo’s perfection, like a flaw in a beautiful ornament. It had all the ornate features of the building that housed the swimming pool, but its windows were filthy and the roof tiles were in need of repair. Alva looked at her husband questioningly. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s used for storage but I have to do something about it.
Sometime
.’

Everything else was beautiful, the setting, the mellow stone walls of the palazzo, the shady terraces where vines crawled up pillars and there were terracotta pots of gaudy geraniums and other colourful blooms set out in haphazard fashion on black and white mosaic floors.

The swimming pool area was laid with blue and white tiles, there were matching striped loungers and umbrellas and the water glinted dark blue in the sunshine.

‘Even though there are two pools you used to like to drive down to the beach. It is not far, fifteen minutes and it is quite private. You enjoyed swimming there. You have a thing about the sea.’

‘Yes, I think I can already feel that. It’s quite beautiful, Conte.’

‘Why so formal? You can call me Luca when we are alone.’

‘I think we had better keep it formal,’ she murmured. ‘After all, I don’t know you — at least the me that I am now doesn’t. You’re a stranger to me.’

‘Of course,’ he said in a clipped kind of way. She gave him a careful glance from beneath her long curling lashes. He was tall and well-built, more so than she had first thought. He was a muscular man but one, she imagined, without an ounce of fat. How had she captured such a man — she was not rich, could not have been to have arrived in such a poor state and if no one else had contacted her, or wanted to look after her. That was why she had had to come here. What did that make her? An orphan — she had to have had no family otherwise she would not be here as a last resort. She could have stayed in England. However, she had no money, no address and no one had been looking for her. If it had not been for a journalist with a long memory she might still have been there but seeing her photograph in the newspaper, he had gone into its archives, because something about her niggled at him. It was he who had found their wedding photographs; this was no poor little lost girl, she was the Contessa Mazareeze, estranged wife of the Conte Mazareeze of Santa Caterina island.

‘May we sit?’ she asked, seeing a carved stone bench by the lily pond.

‘Yes, please do.’

‘Sorry, I do feel a little weak.’

‘Would you like me to fetch you something?’

‘No, I’ll be fine; really, it’s just that this has been a long day.’

‘Of course, perhaps we should not have walked so far.’

‘Oh no, I love it, I like being outside. Being confined to a hospital room is not my idea of heaven. I haven’t said, perhaps I should, it is very kind of you to have me come here. I’m sure I will get better more quickly by being here. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and surely a place like this will stir my memory.’

‘Perhaps it will. Anyway, what else could I do, Alva? You have no one else.’

‘I don’t? No one at all? Please tell me, Conte, I really know so little.’

‘Well there is not much to tell. Your parents died when you were fourteen years old. They were working in India and were caught up in a cholera epidemic … ’

‘India? Had they left me behind? Why were they there?’ Curiosity caused a dark flush to invade her neck and cheeks. There was a look of animation and it really wounded him to see it there; however a kind of hope withered inside him, her memory would not be restored just because he told her who she was.

When he had first heard about her and her condition he had thought she was lying. His suspicions were aroused because he had just that week ordered his lawyer to contact her and ask for a divorce. It seemed far too convenient for her to have lost her memory. Yet seeing her now he realized she was not lying.

She might be able to fool the psychiatrist he had sent to examine her, but she could not fool him. There was something so vague about her and things were different about her that made him realize she was not deceiving him at all.

‘As far as I know, they went to work at a hospital for the poor. Your father was a doctor and your mother was a nurse. They were very — I cannot think of the correct word in English — but perhaps compassionate will do? They gave their time to good causes when they could, and this opportunity came for them to be in India and so they went. You were at boarding school, I believe, so it wasn’t a problem. I think they envisaged that in the long holiday you would go out there to be with them but it never happened. There was an aunt and you went to stay with her, I think she was on your mother’s side, but it did not work out. She was not very kind to you, or so you said.’

Alva shot him a look as if suspecting he meant it as a criticism, but she folded her lips tightly together and said nothing.

‘When you left school you went to university and there was no need for anyone to look after you. You studied politics and languages and after university you went to work for a politician. I had some business with him since he was something to do with trade and industry. That is how we met, at a meeting of delegates from your country and mine. You were with your boss because he could not speak Italian. He was an obnoxious fellow but it was a job, you said.’

She mused on what he had said for a long moment, she toed the ground, moving the tiny pieces of gravel about with her foot. Nothing of this came into her mind. No pictures of her kind and altruistic parents. Alva could not see herself at university, being a carefree student, nor in the exciting society of political power. Her memory bank was empty.

At length she asked. ‘I wonder why he did not see me in the newspaper then, if I worked for him. It might have given him some good publicity.’

‘Believe me, he would have been pleased to have been in the headlines. However, he disgraced himself over some affair or other and went to live abroad. The States I think.’

‘Oh, really.’

‘He was very unpopular with everyone. I should not be surprised if they had not set him up just to get rid of him.’

‘Laws!’

‘He rather liked you though. He thought you gave him class but that is something that you cannot get from someone else.’

She looked at him — he had class while she — well what was she? Well, hardly an honourable something or other.

‘But the aunt did not come forward,’ she murmured.

‘Well, she probably wouldn’t. I think she disliked you as much as I disliked the politician but for different reasons.’

‘I wonder what those reasons were.’

‘You were beautiful and clever and all the things she could not be. Also you married an Italian. I hardly think she approved of that.’

‘How silly and spiteful that was. I mean leaving me there, not knowing anything, and having to trouble you.’

‘It is no trouble, Alva. You are obviously not faking this illness.’

She turned furious eyes on him. ‘Did you think that I was?’

He saw that she still had her essential spirit.

‘I am afraid I rather suspected you might do something like that.’

Her expression was one of puzzlement, her brows pulled down, as she tried to visualize the woman she had been. She did not feel inside herself that she could fake this kind of thing but how did she know that she could not. It was impossible to know anything. Yet even if she had faked her illness, why would she? What benefit could she gain? They were parted; surely it had been an amicable parting.

‘But why would I want to do that?’ she asked.

He shrugged ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, yet instinctively she knew that he was lying. He had meant what he said but now he wanted to back away from his statement. ‘You might have wanted to forget … things.’

Alva shivered as a wind drifted by them; it caused the trees to rustle, yet it was a scented breeze. ‘What things would I want to forget?’

Ignoring the question, he commanded, ‘Come, you are cold, we should go back.’

‘The clothes I came in?’ she asked, deciding to let the matter of the
things
go for now.