The Night Falling (11 page)

Later on, after dinner, Clare finds Pip in the very library where she and Boyd made love that afternoon. She’s glad he’s chosen a chair and isn’t sitting at the desk, which she can’t quite bring herself to look at. There was no shame in what they did, only impropriety, but somehow shame is what she does feel – shame not at the memory of them together, but of the minute she spent there alone, bare-breasted, while Boyd went out of the room for the sheath. She’s ashamed of the controlled way he was able to stop himself in the midst of the moment, and of her own dispassion. Pip has an illustrated atlas of birds open across his knees, and is flicking through it without paying much attention.

‘All right there, Pip? Are you bored to tears?’ she says. He has already caught the sun, and in the lamplight he has a subtle glow. Beneath his shirt his shoulders and elbows are sharp angles.

‘A bit. But this afternoon was the
best
. Leandro says he’ll teach me to drive while we’re here. Properly, I mean.’

‘That’s Mr Cardetta to you.’

‘But he says to call him Leandro.’

‘Even so …’ She’s about to say more when a sound from outside stops her. Shouting, and the sudden clatter of footsteps. She and Pip share a quick look and then go together to the window that looks over the street.

Clare tilts the shutter slats flat and they peer out through them. There is more shouting, one voice louder than the rest, in words she can’t understand.

‘Open them properly, Clare, or we won’t see a thing,’ says Pip. Clare does as he suggests, and they lean out to look along the length of Via Garibaldi, and down to the stone-flagged road. A loose column of men is marching along it, wearing the customary black, but no jackets. The sleeves of their shirts are rolled up; some of them have guns on belts around their hips, others carry short, sturdy wooden clubs. There are flashes of light where a badge or an emblem reflects the light, but they are too far away to make out. A man at the front has a peaked cap, like a policeman, and this is what Clare thinks at first – that they are police. She can think of no good reason why a police procession would be going on at night, and why the men aren’t in uniforms, just dressed to identify with one another, to be seen as a group. The sight of them makes her uneasy. Their faces are mostly young, clean-shaven; their eyes have the feverish look of boys doing exciting things. ‘Who are they, Clare?’ asks Pip, loudly enough.

‘Hush!’ she says, though the chances of them being heard are small. She’s suddenly absolutely certain that she doesn’t want any one of the young men to look up and see them watching. ‘I don’t know,’ she says quietly. There’s more shouting, angry words, and figures flit here and there in the shadows on the dark side of the street, in the mouths of alleyways. The column keeps marching, and only changes direction when a rock is thrown – Clare thinks it’s a rock – and lands with a loud smack and a scattering of dust at the leader’s feet. The man in the peaked cap raises his arm to halt them, then points; the men swerve suddenly, as one, and vanish into a side street. They make Clare think of a flock of birds, or a swarm of insects, homing in on something to eat.

Pip is uneasy now, too. They wait in silence, though there’s nothing more to see except a woman in a long skirt, hair covered by a scarf, who hurries over to stand on the corner and peer cautiously after the armed marchers. A while later there’s a loud, repeated banging, the sound of glass breaking, and a woman’s scream. There’s more shouting – one voice again, a man’s, loud and aggrieved. Then he stops, and there’s nothing else. Clare realises she’s been holding her breath, and craning too far out of the window.

‘Come in, Pip,’ she says, grasping his sleeve. She closes the shutters again, latches them, checks that she’s done it properly. Pip’s eyes are wide and his face is blank with disquiet.

‘What was all
that
about? Were they the police?’ he says. ‘Shall we go and ask Leandro? He’s still up, I saw him go across the courtyard a little while ago.’

‘It’s Mr Cardetta, Pip, and no, let’s not bother him now. It’s probably nothing. Most likely nothing at all.’

‘It didn’t look like nothing. And it didn’t
sound
like nothing,’ says Pip huffily. Clare raises an eyebrow at him and he scowls but goes with her towards the bedrooms. But she can’t blame him because he’s right. It didn’t look or sound like nothing. Clare suddenly thinks of the way she felt earlier, by the walls of the castle – the same way she felt just now, when she thought she might be seen by the marching men.
We shouldn’t be here
, she thinks.

For two days, Clare thinks about the column of men all in black, but says nothing. For two days she thinks of the insistent way Boyd made love to her, and his refusal to give her a child, but says nothing. She’s suddenly more aware than ever before of all the things she doesn’t say, and she has that same prickling feeling as when Boyd’s breath on the back of her neck was too hot, and his arm around her wouldn’t loosen, and he wouldn’t let her get up from the bed. It’s a feeling like something building up, something gathering. Nobody else seems to notice, as the days settle into a pattern of sorts, and suddenly the thought of spending the whole summer that way makes Clare worry that the feeling could grow into something worse; into something like hysteria, or panic.

Boyd spends hours at the desk in the library, drawing and erasing and drawing again, frowning at his work but completely immersed. Pip has more driving lessons with Leandro, and in between he finds an old bicycle in one of the shady downstairs rooms that the servants inhabit, and rides it around the courtyard, in and out of the colonnades, like a little boy. When it gets a puncture Federico finds the hole using a basin of water, patches it and pumps the tyre back up. Clare sees them exchange a few words and smile. The servant’s cleft lip is less noticeable when he smiles – it evens itself out, and he keeps his mouth shut, as if ashamed of his teeth. When the bike is fixed the two young men shake hands before Pip remounts, and Clare wonders if she’s being unfair in disliking Federico the way she does.

She spends a good deal of time reading. The library is stocked with works in Italian that have faded spines and dusty tops; they clearly came with the house and haven’t been read in a generation. There are only a few books in English, which came with the Cardettas from New York, and Clare wishes she’d brought more with her. When she runs out of things to read, the hours will be even longer, her sense of suffocation harder to ignore. Marcie sews her clothes into new shapes, and writes long letters to friends in New York, and chatters and laughs; her smile flits from room to room like a nervous cat, and Clare wants to soothe her, somehow. But she doesn’t know how to soothe a person who is outwardly joyful, and laughs at the merest thing.

‘Tell me about London, go on,’ says Marcie one afternoon. ‘I’ve never been. Is it wonderful? It must be.’

‘Well, I like it very much. The place where we live – Hampstead – is very quiet and green, nothing like the centre of London. There’s a huge hill you can walk up, to get a view of the city to the south. There are lots of little teashops and places to eat lunch; the children go on donkey rides and splash about in the swimming ponds. It’s lovely …’

‘But don’t you go into the city? Don’t you go dancing?’

‘Well … yes, we do. Not very often – Boyd spends all day there, you see, at work. He likes to come home to the peace and quiet. And he never was much interested in dancing. We go to the theatre quite often.’

‘And shopping? There must be wonderful shops.’

‘Yes,’ says Clare. ‘Yes, there are.’ She doesn’t elaborate, though she can see Marcie’s frustration at her reticence. She doesn’t want to say that the wife of a modest architect shops rarely, and then in small ladies’ outfitters, not at Liberty or Harrods.

‘But what do you
do
all day, Clare?’

‘Well, I …’ Clare pauses. Her first impulse is to defend their quiet life, but then there are the murmurings of panic she feels at the thought of Pip leaving home – of not having him to look forward to; of being alone with the serene slide of the afternoons, waiting for Boyd to come home, and the amorphous disappointment of the evenings once he has. At the thought of being alone during one of his bad spells, when his silence and self-destruction might drive her mad. ‘I suppose it can be a little dull,’ she says. ‘But for the most part I’d rather have dull than frantic.’

‘Would you? Golly, I’d far rather have frantic!’ says Marcie. ‘But then, when you love your husband there’s always fun to be had – the best kind. Am I right?’ She smiles wickedly, and winks at Clare, and Clare can only nod, embarrassed, because fun isn’t a word she has ever associated with Boyd.

The days are uniformly hot and bright. Clouds sometimes gather in the afternoon, but they slink sheepishly into the night as it falls, and are gone by morning. As to how exactly Leandro Cardetta fills his days, Clare can only wonder. He comes and goes, and is rarely in one room for long. On the third afternoon, as the sun begins to mellow, Leandro suggests they join in the
passeggiata
with Gioia’s
signori
. Marcie declines with a headache, lying across a long couch in the shade like a fallen leaf; Boyd looks up from his desk when Clare goes to fetch him, and shakes his head.

‘I’m on to something here, darling. You carry on without me,’ he says.

‘Please come, Boyd. I really don’t want to go on my own.’

‘Don’t be silly. Of course you must go, if Cardetta’s asked you to.’

‘But I just … don’t know him all that well yet. I’d far rather you came too. Won’t you?’ The thought of being alone with their host unsettles her; though he’s only ever solicitous and polite, still there’s something arch and knowing about him.

‘Not now, Clare. Take Pip with you, if you need company.’ Clare goes back down to where Leandro is waiting, and he smiles as though he can sense her reserve.

With Pip, they stroll along Via Garibaldi first one way and then the other. People are not quite as ready to snub Leandro as they were Marcie. When he greets them it’s with a subtle positioning of his body that makes them stop walking; he stands just enough in their way that brushing past him would be obvious and rude. Clare can almost follow their conversation in Italian, but the southern accent is strange to her; some words elude her, and as she chases after them she misses what comes next. Pip’s face mirrors incomprehension, but when Leandro introduces him to someone, he shakes the men’s hands with a confident
buona sera
.

‘This is one of our distinguished doctors here in Gioia, Dr Angelini,’ says Leandro, as Clare shakes the hand of a short, fat man whose face and grey hair shine with grease. ‘Well, I say distinguished doctor, what I really mean is revolting quack. This man fleeces the poor of Gioia, selling fake medicines supplied to him by his brother, the druggist; and he examines the women far too enthusiastically – I’m sure you don’t need me to elaborate. I don’t believe he ever even graduated, and he’s the first to flee his post for Rome when cholera breaks out. Don’t worry, he can’t speak a word of English,’ he says, all in the same convivial tone, as Dr Angelini smiles and tilts his head obsequiously. Clare struggles not to show her surprise, and Pip gives a quiet guffaw before he can help himself. The doctor’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and Cardetta says something to him, evenly and with no trace of inappropriate humour. The man inclines his head again, but glares at Pip as they part.

Clare steals a sideways glance at Leandro Cardetta as they walk on, and his smile is roguish in response.

‘That was so funny!’ says Pip, and Clare almost hushes him censoriously, then realises that to do so could be a slight to Leandro.

‘You didn’t approve of my introduction, Mrs Kingsley?’ he says.

‘I was just a little … caught unawares,’ she says. They’re walking west into the glaring sun, and her eyes are fighting the light.

‘I’d hoped you’d find it refreshing. Unpleasant people deserve to be mocked, after all.’ He shrugs. His way of speaking is unusual; the New York accent is quite soft for one who learnt English there, and the imprint of Italian intonation is on every word.

‘Why trouble yourself to know them, if you dislike them so?’

‘Ah, alas, Mrs Kingsley, in order to be somebody, you must know everybody.’

‘What kind of somebody do you want to be?’ says Pip. He has become far too familiar with their host since the driving lessons began. And yet Leandro Cardetta doesn’t seem to mind at all, and Clare wonders then if all her misgivings – about Gioia del Colle, about Federico and Leandro – are only in her mind, brought on by the tension she senses in Boyd. Jumping at shadows.

‘I want to be listened to, Philip,’ says Leandro Cardetta. ‘I am no idealist. I know that for a
terrone
like me, their respect will always have to be bought. But however I must get it, I
will
get it.’ Clare says nothing, and he glances at her again. ‘You don’t approve, Mrs Kingsley?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I know little enough about it.’ His smile turns a little stiff.

‘Ah, I sense that old British maxim, hovering on your tongue – that respect must be earned to be of value,’ he says. ‘Your husband has said the same thing to me before, but it isn’t always true. If the people I have to deal with only understand money and power, then that’s the path I must take with them. I learnt in New York there’s a way to get to everybody, you only have to know how to find it. And I didn’t work my way up from nothing over there to be dismissed by people who’ve done nothing in life but sit and squander it, growing fatter and lazier and stupider all the while.’

‘But why come back, then, if you’ll be forced to be friends with people you don’t like?’ says Pip.

‘Friends? Oh, I have no friends here. But this is my home, in spite of all of it. I remember these streets from when I was a tiny child. This stink …’ He takes a deep breath. ‘The taste of it. Can you know what that means, Pip? Perhaps you’re too young yet. I lived in America for a long time, but every day –
every
day – I thought of coming home. Now I’m here, and I’m not wanted. Well, too bad. I’m home. And home I will stay.’ There’s no room for manoeuvre in this whatsoever. Clare wonders how often Marcie has come up against the same brick wall, and feels sorry for her.