The Soul Room (23 page)

‘Don’t say that Dan – I told you...’

He raised his hand placatingly. ‘OK, I know, I’m sorry.’ He rubbed his
eyes.

I looked at my watch, saw it was 2.30am; was that all it had taken for
everything to change irrevocably, for me to be imprisoned – just two hours?
‘’So you came over to Italy?’ I prompted gently.

‘For a week or two I just watched him. He had no idea who I was of
course. I stayed in Terranima and regularly took the tour of the vineyard,
walked a lot until I knew the extent of his empire, oiled the mouths of those
locals that spoke English with cigarettes and drink. I was going to make a
grand plan, confront him spectacularly – and then – one morning – I came across
him in the southern vineyard. It was cool and overcast for once. He appeared
suddenly at the end of the row – said hello quite cautiously. I stammered out
that I was on a tour and had got lost. He came closer to me, stopped just a
foot from me and searched my face. He asked if he had met me before, and that was
when it all came out. I told him I knew everything, told him about Mum’s diary,
that I knew about the rape, that I was his son, that I was going to expose him
and bring his foul corrupt empire crashing down. I could barely breathe I was
so angry, so pent-up, I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t even contemplate the
consequences. When I stopped, he didn’t say a word, he just stared. I spat at
him, it landed on his cheek – quivered there – and still he didn’t move; his
eyes were hard, impenetrable. There was nothing for me to do but turn heel and
go. That night two men came and took me from my room at the hotel, even though
I was there under an assumed name. It can’t have been hard for him to find me,
one of only a handful of Englishman in his village. He probably knew about me
already. I should have come home that day – walked out of that field and kept
going until I reached Rome airport. I was a fool.

A thought prickled at the back of my mind. ‘Why keep you so long though,
I don’t understand. Can it really just be because he doesn’t know what to do
with you?’

Dan looked back at me tiredly, his face drawn, and shrugged.

The thought prickled at me again, then came crashing into my
consciousness with sickening clarity. ‘It’s because of me and the baby!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you see Dan, maybe it wasn’t at first. Maybe he was genuinely
unsure what to do with you. But after the first couple of weeks, when Sergio
told him I was pregnant, then, he must have started thinking. And once Sergio
died, imagine what went on inside him then. Finally he saw a way out. Buy both
our silence and capitulation by threatening the other. He gets your silence by
threatening to make me disappear and keep my baby...’ I felt sick even thinking
it, ‘and gets mine at the same time by threatening to make
you
disappear.’ I stopped, silence spilled into the room like syrup.

‘God no, he couldn’t be that...that...’

My head was full and my eyes gritty with exhaustion.  ‘Think about it,
he’s kept you here while he watched and waited for me to work it out, come to
Italy to find you. He was a big fat spider, luring me into his web. And tonight
I did, like an idiot, I hid behind a sofa and then walked right into it.’ I
couldn’t cry, there was nothing left.  ‘Dan, I need to sleep.’

Wordlessly he came over, sat beside me on the bed, his back against the
wall, and let me lie down with my head in his lap. He stroked my hair.
Strangely I thought of all the animals and insects outside; mating, fighting,
hunting, eating – and us, imprisoned in our underground room, desperate to join
them.

‘Like you said, by seven-o-clock tonight, Dad will raise the alarm. We’ve
just got to stall him, hold him off somehow.’ Dan’s deep voice faded into
nothingness and exhaustion gathered me into its dark arms.

The descent was
shorter than ever, I hurtled through the darkness as if I was in a lift that
had had its cables cut. But like before, it slowed just in time, only a few
feet from the tiled floor.

I heard someone running, the step was light but urgent. He appeared,
dark hair tousled as if he had been worrying at it, his t-shirt half-tucked
clumsily into his jeans. I could feel the fear emanating off him, could almost
smell it – warm and slightly sweet. I made myself look in his eyes, it was like
pulling off my skin.

‘Mummy, Mummy I’m scared!’ He ran at me, wildly, his arms
outstretched. I shrieked and jumped away. He stopped, stumbled, turned back,
his face full of pain. ‘But I need to Mummy! It’s time! I need to!’

‘Oh God, baby, I’m sorry but you can’t touch me yet, you can’t come
yet – It’s too soon!’

‘Please Mummy please!’ He started to cry, holding his hands out
towards me again. I started to sob too, as I backed away.

‘You don’t understand – it’s not safe. I love you! I’m sorry!’

I woke up
suddenly, roughly. For a moment I couldn’t work out if I was really crying or
if I had just been dreaming that I had. I felt utterly desolate.  I didn’t want
to open my eyes because I knew what they would see. I didn’t want to be myself
because I felt so ashamed. I didn’t deserve my son, I said to myself over and
over; something was going to go wrong with his birth and it was my fault. A
chill took hold of my gut. I put my hands on my belly and stroked it gently. It
felt like a betrayal, a paltry gesture to try to comfort when I was the one who
had put him in danger.
Please kick!
I said to myself desperately.
Please
kick and show me you are OK.
There was nothing,
it’s happened already.
I
thought with a rising sense of panic,
that’s it, it’s over
. I wanted my
baby so much at that moment, more than I ever had before. I wanted to hold him
and stroke his fine silky hair, burrow my nose into the sweet damp folds of his
neck. Kiss his plump cheeks over and over.

‘Maddie?’ Dan’s voice was urgent though barely above a whisper. ‘I think
he’s coming!’

The key sounded in the lock, and Mario and his accomplice came into the
room, still masked, one of them carrying a folded screen. There was a soft
pinkish light glowing in the thin windows at the top of the walls so I guessed
it was dawn. Like me, they must have hardly slept. I heard it then, his heavy
authoritative step. A few seconds later and he was in the room, his hands in
the pockets of his expensive tan leather jacket, another cigar clamped
nonchalantly in his mouth. I struggled to sit up, quickly smoothed my hair and
tried to look back at him. I took hold of Dan’s hand, he looked strangely calm
and gripped my hand back tightly.

Fabrizio came over and sat on the bed beside me, patted my leg. I brushed
off his hand instantly, recoiled against Dan. ‘Maddie,
carrissima
.’ Said
Fabrizio paternally. ‘How very sorry I am that it has come to this.’ He sighed
regretfully, gestured at the scruffy room. I wanted to sink my nails into his
face; my hands trembled with the effort of keeping them in my lap.  He gestured
to the man with the screen, and he placed it around the chipped and stained
toilet in the corner of the room. ‘I am sorry for the surroundings,’ he said in
a throw-away tone, ‘but I am hoping very much you will not be here much
longer.’

I forced myself to look at him again, to try to glean his meaning, but as
ever his unshakeable composure made him impossible to read.

‘I am thinking, in many ways, that I am admiring what you have done,’ he
continued, ‘it shows
coraggio
and loyalty, qualities most desirable in
the mother of my grandson. However, you have also been
molto, molto
stupido
.
You have forgotten your responsibility for your child. You take terrible risks.
In this you show me that you are not fully competent,’ he paused as if
searching for the right way to say something, the polite way, ‘to make
decisions for this baby.’

‘The only reason myself and my baby are at risk,’ I said quietly, my
breath clenched in my chest like a fist, ‘is because you are a rapist, a
kidnapper, and a crook.’

He looked at me coldly and stood up, started to pace around the room. ‘Oh
dear Madeleine, you disappoint me. What kind of man would I be if I did not
defend my family name – the birthright of my children and grandchildren?’

‘This vineyard was here before you and will be here after you. Nonna is
right about souls, Fabrizio, and yours will poison you in the end!’

He looked as if he was going to hit me. Dan sprang up, his eyes blazing.
Instantaneously Fabrizio’s strong-arms came forward, he waved them back.

‘He wants to protect his
sorella
,’ he said smoothly, ‘but what he
does not understand is that she is safe, the safest woman in the world
in
questo momento
. She carries my grandson, I will give anything, my life to
protect them. He would be helping no one, least of all himself. Sit down Mr
Armstrong and listen to what I have to say.’ Dan was visibly struggling to
control himself, but he sank down shakily into the arm-chair. I swung my legs
over the edge of the bed and shifted up so I could reach over and put my hand
on his arm. I could feel the muscles, tight under his dark skin.

‘I have a proposition to make to you both.’ 

I looked up at him reluctantly, my eyes burning with hatred. ‘This is
crazy. Nonna will be awake now and wondering where I am. What are you going to
tell her? You can’t keep us down here like this. People will start to ask
questions!’

‘Nonna has already been here and I tell her what I will tell anyone else
who asks questions – that you have gone to Rome with my wife to buy things for
the baby.  That you are likely to stay over a night or two and have a – what do
you English call it? Yes!
A girls night out.’

‘It won’t work!’ I blurted out. ‘Nonna...’

‘Yes?’ He smiled at me, dangerously, quizzically. It occurred to me that
I could put Nonna into very great danger if I said too much. Nonna would know
something was wrong, she would find a way to help. ‘She will try to ring me.’

‘Your phone will be out of signal.’

‘She’ll ring Rosa then.’

‘And Rosa will tell her just as I have, and add that you are taking a nap
and will call back later.’

There was a movement, a glorious vigorous twist of baby against the
right-hand side of my tummy. It suffused me with relief in the midst of the
horror, made me feel a shade less desperate. ‘You had better tell me what it is
you have to say.’ I said flatly, a taste of bile coming into my mouth.

‘It is very simple. Dan, if you continue with my
ospitalita
for
now, Maddie is free to come and join myself and Rosa and live with the
famiglia
. With us she will receive the best private medical care before and
after the birth. While she is with us; and while she talk to no one about
finding you, about your
Mamma
, or anything else you have told Maddie
about me, I promise I will not hurt you.’

 I had been expecting something like this, but still it hit me deep in my
gut. ‘And after the birth?’ Do you honestly think you can keep this from Nonna?
That Rosa, a woman and a mother, would let you do this to me and the baby? When
she knows you have threatened me? Kept my brother, your son, a prisoner all
these months?’

‘Rosa is my wife, a
good
wife; she knows everything. You think too
little of what losing a son does to a mother. Rosa would do anything for a
second chance. It comes down to her loss or yours. I know which she will
choose.’

My flesh crept. ‘What do you mean
my
loss?’

‘After a few months,’ he said reasonably ‘once the baby has a…’ he looked
at the ceiling, struggling to find the word, ‘…ah yes, a routine, Dan and
yourself can return to England. If you hold your tongue you can come and visit
your son twice a year. If you do not he will be removed from here, to a safe
place where we can care for him without fear of your
interferenza
.’

‘Leave my child! With you! With a violent, foul...!’ I clutched at my
belly wildly. I knew now that there was something wrong with Fabrizio, Sergio’s
death had dislodged something in his mind, he wasn’t rational.

Dan started to laugh, got up, still laughing and went right up to
Fabrizio till his face was only a few inches from his own. ‘You’re crazy
papa!
’
He said, sarcastically, ‘You’re completely mad! This whole thing is going to
blow up in your face. Surely you know that!? The house of cards will come
tumbling down with you and your precious Amarena name with it. Maybe you can
pull it off for a few weeks; but months? Years?? There’s no way you’ll get to
keep Maddie’s baby and you know it.’

‘It is not so strange if you think about it,’ Fabrizio returned, calmly
ignoring Dan, but backing away from him, sitting down in the old armchair. He
put his finger-tips together, held them under his chin thoughtfully. ‘Let me
tell you a story. A story about a woman I know. Let us call her
Margaret.
She was married to a man whose daughter died, very tragically, and even a
little because of Margaret’s own selfish actions,’

I stared at Fabrizio, hatred bubbled under my skin like lava but there
was something else too, something worse. The old haunting debilitating feeling
that I had almost learned to forget.

‘Yes Maddie, your father and I had a very good chat about you when he
called to ask if I had any work for you. I have also had professional help,
when I needed to fill in the gaps. Anyway, to return to my
storia
:
Margaret’s
Mama
, she dies of cancer, it is very sad. A few years later
her step-daughter dies in an accident walking home from school; then her
husband, he commits suicide. He cannot live without his
bambina,
she was
only ten years old, a terrible waste don’t you think?
Tragedia
follow
tragedia
for poor Margaret, she become very depressed, she is ill for a long time; she
cannot work, she abandons her friends, she is on anti-depressants. Her brother
– a
homosexual
well known for…I think they call it…’recreational drug
use’ and, I am thinking also, much casual sex; later disappears; this he has
done before, many times. But this time he also tell no-one what he do or where
he go. He cause a police enquiry in two countries. This is very expensive, it
wastes police time.’