The Runaway Visitors (12 page)

‘I think it might be difficult to get away,’ she said softly. ‘Please try. I want to see you so much,
carissima
. . .’ and he began to kiss her hair and her cheeks again.

Suddenly another voice spoke out of the darkness.

‘Victoria,’ it said, quite clearly and so close that they both started violently, she and Giorgio.

‘Victoria,’ the voice went on quietly, ‘I’m sorry about this, but

I can’t get out of the garden without passing you, and I don’t want to intrude by listening to your conversation. So, if I may, I’ll say good night to you both and leave you. But don’t let me disturb you.’

There was a silence filled with a great variety of emotions. Victoria and Giorgio had drawn apart, embarrassed. Charles had risen from the stone bench by the fountain, still only a dark shape indistinct among other darknesses, and began to make his way towards the steps.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said, and
he
sounded quite at his ease, which Victoria and Giorgio most certainly were not. ‘I was already sitting in the garden when you all returned from your party, and I did not expect to be joined there. I’ll say good night, but there’s no hurry for you, Victoria or Giorgio. Goodnight.’

‘Buona notte, signore
!’ Giorgio said, detaining Victoria still by tightly holding her hand.

‘Good-night, Mr. Duncan,’ Victoria said in scarcely more than a whisper. How awful, how awful, she was thinking, to be discovered in this situation.

Charles passed them and went up the steps. Victoria and Giorgio stood motionless until the sound of his footsteps died away; but when he would have taken her into his arms again, she was resolute.

‘No. No more, Giorgio, I must go in.’

‘Then will you meet me tomorrow, at eleven in the morning, at the little barn on the hill? Do come, Victoria, promise me.’

‘All right,’ she agreed, because it seemed imperative at the moment to get rid of him. He kissed her once more and they went up to the terrace again, from where he could leave by the garden gate. Victoria stood alone, thinking. How embarrassing that Charles should have been there! He would probably think that she and Giorgio were more intimate than was really the case, and feel some responsibility about it. And
he
had not waited to eavesdrop, as she had once done. He had declared his presence the moment it threatened to intrude on something private. But she wished he had not been there to overhear.

She went into the room she shared with Amanda.

‘You’ve been a long time,’ Amanda said jealously from her bed.

‘Mr. Duncan was in the garden,’ said Victoria.

‘Oh. Did he talk to you?’

‘Yes, he did.’

This placated Amanda. She turned over, away from the light, sighing happily.

‘It turned out to be a marvellous birthday after all,’ she said, and gave herself up to remembering it.

CHAPTER VI

Victoria finished writing her letters, enveloped them, affixed their Italian stamps and made them into a neat pile for posting. Briefly, thinking of the people to whom they were addressed, she felt nostalgia for places such as London, Cornwall and the south coast, wondering what Peter, Fiona or Julian would be doing, longing to talk to them again. Beautiful as Firenze and the surrounding countryside were, she still felt somewhat lonely and cut off there.

As it was hot here on the terrace, she decided to go for a walk in the hills, above the house, where there was usually a breeze and it was always much cooler than Firenze itself, which seemed daily to grow hotter and hotter. Sebastien was out, presumably at the farm, which was a magnet to him. Amanda, her embroidery abandoned, had also disappeared, saying she might meet Sebastien returning, but Victoria knew she was hoping to see Giorgio. Victoria suddenly rose, took her letters into the hall, and left the house for the hills.

As she climbed the tiered garden towards the studio level, she heard music which gave her pause. She knew she could not be seen from Charles’s studio, which was her reason for coming this way, so she stopped to listen to the recording of Mozart’s horn concerto which Charles was playing quite loudly with the double doors of the studio wide open. Oh, beautiful, mellifluous horn playing! Victoria sat herself on a low stone wall to hear it through to the end.

She missed music. It had not occurred to her to ask Charles’s permission to listen to his records. They had Sebastien’s radio, but it did not work very well here and the music was too distorted to be a pleasure.

She sat enjoying every note until the concerto came to an end; and then sat on, thinking idly; of Giorgio, who was becoming a problem because he seemed to be falling in love and Victoria knew she was a bird of passage: of Amanda, who was too guileless to hide the fact that she had a passion for Giorgio.

Suddenly, into her field of vision, Charles strode out of the studio, turned sharply away from her, walked with firm purpose round the corner of the house, out of her sight, and clattered down the outside flight of stone steps. His brief appearance startled her, but she relaxed as she heard his footsteps receding; and a moment or two later, temptation came to her swiftly as she realised that the studio doors were wide open, the studio itself empty.

She had always wanted to be able to explore it. Surely there was no harm in looking inside. Slowly she walked to the doorway and looked in: a moment or two later she stepped in, looking about her with enormous interest.

Full and heavy curtains were now drawn across where the wrought-iron railing bounded the gallery, from floor to ceiling. The group of miners, on which Charles was currently working, was completely covered with thick layers of damp muslin and then polythene, presumably to keep the clay moist. Another piece of sculpture, probably a head or bust, was similarly covered. But without these two, there was plenty to look at: an old Italian peasant, as full of character as he was of wrinkles; a man who looked like a scholar; a boy’s head, shock-headed; and a young woman— Margarita! This arrested her, as she tried to discover how Charles saw Margarita. It was certainly very beautiful, the flowing hair suggested rather than sculpted, the face and shoulders all voluptuous curves, the lips remembering a smile rather than smiling, the whole sensuous and intimate. Victoria thought they must know each other very well for Charles to portray her like that.

She had an irresistible urge to touch the sculptures, to stroke the smooth surfaces, to feel the rougher ones as if she were searching for the bones inside the head or the torso. She felt that this was a way of understanding the work. With the back of her fingers, she stroked the smooth, seductive cheek of the marble Margarita, and when she came to the model of a fifteen-inch-high horse, she immediately traced with one finger the long line from its head to its tail. Victoria gazed at it, realising what power was suggested in it, what grace, what an impulse to leap forward.

She felt that she was understanding Charles more with every moment. She felt almost awe that he should be able to model such beauty from lifeless clay, or chip out such marvels from blocks of stone. She passed on, almost reluctantly, to study the smaller objects on the shelves.

Here there were several small models used later for the full-scale sculpture; also children’s heads, groups, abstracts: pieces of rock or marble which had interested him with their contorted shapes: a miscellany of objects which she too found fascinating. Then she saw the small group which her hands stretched out for instinctively. She picked it up, surprised by its heaviness; and it was no maquette but carved in stone so polished that one’s hands wanted to caress it.

As she studied it, she realised that it was two figures inextricably entangled together, two children or young people. A chunky piece which appealed to Victoria enormously. She did not want to put it down. She stood stroking it gently with one hand, supporting its weight with the other.

‘Don’t drop it, Victoria,’ said Charles’s voice, which startled her so much that she almost did drop it. ‘The stone is more friable than it looks and it could break.’ He came into the studio and walked towards her. As usual, when he was at home, he was informally dressed, in a pair of fawn cotton trousers and a loose, short-sleeved shirt. His hair, as usual, was ruffled. His tanned face, with strong lines and an alert expression, was today unusually mellowed, kind-looking.

‘I’m trespassing,’ said Victoria, looking at him uncertainly.

‘You are a guest in this house. You’re not trespassing anywhere in it.’

‘But this is your holy of holies, isn’t it?’

Charles laughed, dispersing by his candid, matter-of-fact approach her almost devotional attitude.

‘Well, that’s a nice respectful attitude to have towards it; but it needn’t exclude you.’

‘I’ve wanted so much to come in and see all this.’ Victoria

waved her hand round the studio. ‘But I thought you wouldn’t like it. ’

‘Rubbish, I’m flattered by your interest. . . . And you like this, do you?’ touching the stone that she still held in her hands.

‘Yes, I like it enormously. What do you call it? Does it have a title?’

‘Yes. Simply—The Embrace.’

She began to replace it on the shelf.

‘Would you like to have it, Victoria?’

‘To have it? Do you mean to borrow it, for my room?’

‘No. I mean for you to keep it, if you like it so much. ’

‘But I couldn’t possibly. I expect it’s worth a fortune.’

‘No such luck. You seem to have an exalted idea of my worth. You can have it if you’ll model for me. Only a few sittings. I think I can get that curve of neck and head in a few sittings.’ ‘Me? But why do you want to use
me
? I’m quite unremarkable.’

‘Such modesty would be refreshing if it were sincere, but I don’t believe in it. Now, please, stand just as you were when I came in, holding the piece and looking down at it. No, not quite like that. Turn slightly away from me, bend your head a little more. Yes, that’s it. Excuse me . . .’ He stepped forward and untied the ribbon which was holding back her hair; then he put his hand under it and brought it forward over the shoulder farthest away from his point of view. He stepped back again. ‘Yes, that’s it, Victoria, a curtain of hair falling behind the profile. Bring your right hand round to lie on your left wrist. That’s it, that’s it. Yes ... Now can you stand like that while I take some photographs, so that I can get you into just that position when I’m ready to start. ’ Victoria stood like the statue she was probably going to become, while Charles fetched his camera and took shots of her from various angles. Then he smiled at her.

‘You can relax now, Victoria. What a piece of luck, your wandering in here this afternoon. ... I’ve been asked to do a Madonna for a village church, and to tell you the truth I was about to refuse the commission on the plea that I had a great backlog of work; because I didn’t feel at all like doing it. Some benefactor has left this church a great deal of money with the

stipulation that some of it should be spent on a handsome Madonna. I felt it wasn’t my style; but walking in just now and seeing you in that natural pose, so graceful, so flowing, I knew that I could do it, that I’d be interested in capturing just that perfect line from the head, the back of the neck, and down. It’ll be a different Madonna. I’ll do a maquette to see if they approve of it.’

He took the small sculpture from her hands at last and put it down on a table. ‘You can take it when you go,’ he said, and gave her back her ribbon, watching while she tied her hair back again for coolness. ‘Now shall we have a tour of inspection?’ he asked, and put his arm about her shoulders and turned her towards the centre of the room. ‘Jeanie Jameson insists that I pull these heavy curtains across when I’m working to keep the dust from the library,’ he said, ‘but we can open them now.’ He pulled the cord that swept them open, and then, with his arm still about her shoulders, proceeded to show Victoria his sculptures; and she did not say she had already made a tour of inspection because she liked this new friendly Charles, liked the comfort of his arm about her, liked to hear the deep, resonant voice explaining what he had done or had hoped to do. But at last he said: ‘Well, I suppose I’d better get on, I’ve a lot to do.’

‘And when do you want to start on the Madonna?’ Victoria asked.

‘When I get an idea for a new project, I always want to start at once, capture the idea immediately; but that I can’t do. I must finish first what I’m on. But you’ll be here a long time yet, Victoria. We’ll see.’

‘Then I’ll leave you to your work, Mr. Duncan.
Ciao.
’

‘Ciao, madonna,
’ he said, with a friendly wave of his hand, and Victoria went out of the studio, no longer feeling energetic enough to walk on the hills, drifting back towards their terrace, her head full of new ideas, new emotions. Full, too, of the things he had said about her, certainly with no conscious flattery, but simply seeing her as his model. He had said:

‘Seeing you in that natural pose, so graceful, so flowing . . .’ and ‘that perfect line from the head, the back of the neck, and down . . .’ Pleasant things to hear about oneself, things that helped to counteract some of the less pleasant things she had heard from him from time to time.

She had picked up a book, but she gave it little attention. She sat on the terrace day-dreaming, no longer with that feeling of loneliness and of being cut off, which had assailed her earlier this afternoon. She was back in Charles’s studio in her thoughts, when her quiet was broken into by the arrival of the Beltonis’ farm truck, which disgorged Giorgio himself and Sebastien and Amanda. They all came on to the terrace, and Sebastien and Amanda dropped into chairs at once.