Authors: Katherine Webb
‘Luna told me you were here but I hardly believed her. Chiara, what in God’s name are you doing? Do you have any idea … do you have
any
idea?’ he says. Paola steps forward and holds out her hands for her son, and Clare gives him up reluctantly.
‘I needed to see you,’ she says. The recumbent man in the alcove speaks for the first time, something low and hoarse that Ettore answers curtly.
‘You can’t just come here like this!’ he says to Clare.
‘Is that what your father just said?’
‘It’s what
I’m
saying!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Without Iacopo to hold Clare doesn’t know where to put her arms and hands, or how to stand. Three days away from the
masseria
and Ettore looks grimy and tired; she can’t tell if the shadow under his good eye is another bruise. ‘I wanted to say sorry – if I hadn’t said anything about Ludo being at Girardi you wouldn’t have fought him, and you wouldn’t have had to leave …’ Ettore raises one hand to silence her and shoots Paola an anxious glance. Paola looks tensely from Clare to her brother and back, as though something in these words disquiets her.
‘Stop. Have you said anything to my sister of these things?’
‘No, I haven’t, we—’
‘Good. Do not.’ He puts one hand to his mouth, cups his chin the way he does when he’s thinking, worried. ‘It was high time I left my uncle’s farm. We’re almost strangers to each other now. I’d stayed too long.’ He looks up at her as he says this, and she can’t tell if he’s angry or tender. With a sigh Ettore turns, cracks open the door and looks out, then raises his hand to her. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘It’s not good for me to be here.’ Paola asks him a sharp question, and Ettore gives a soothing answer, but there are no more smiles from her as Clare nods goodbye. She is closed off again, frigid, her squirming son held tight in her arms.
The courtyard is deep grey, lit only by the gauzy evening sky, but it’s still brighter than it was inside. There’s an argument nearby – two women, shrill with anger, their words an incomprehensible tumble. Ettore takes Clare’s elbow and leads her out of the courtyard in the opposite direction that she came in. Their route twists and turns, then passes beneath a stone archway three metres thick, with rooms above it, into a larger courtyard crowded with overhanging upper storeys and stairs and doorways. Ettore tows her into the shadows beneath one overhang, in a far corner away from the street. He turns and holds her briefly, and she grabs onto him tightly, so that he winces. He has a sharp smell of sweat on unwashed clothes; she thinks back and realises he’s wearing the same clothes as when he left the farm. There’s a tidemark of dirt along his hairline, and ground into his cuticles, and for some reason this brings a lump to her throat.
‘Sorry. You’re hurt,’ she says.
‘I think that bastard cracked one of my ribs.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’ At this Ettore only smiles, a little sadly.
‘You can’t come here. You know it’s not safe.’
‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ she says, and swallows against the tightness in her throat, the oncoming ache of tears. ‘I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.’
‘I will never go back there. Not until …’ He leaves the sentence hanging, shakes his head.
‘Then you would have just not seen me again, if I hadn’t come to Gioia? It would have been that easy for you?’
‘Nothing is easy. Only necessary,’ he says bleakly. But then he relents and brushes his thumb across her cheek. ‘You knew this was not reality.’
‘It could be – I want it to be! I want …’
Clare takes a deep breath. She sounds like a child; like a spoilt child when she wants to tell him that she can’t imagine not being with him, can’t imagine going back to London and living as she lived before. She wants to say that he has changed everything; he has changed her. That everything from before seems as flat and distant as a photograph. She has the sensation of a huge wave building up behind her, higher and higher. She has no idea what will happen when it breaks, and can’t put it into words. ‘I can’t bear it,’ is all she says, closing her eyes. Ettore puts his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her head to his chest.
‘You can bear it. You have to,’ he says quietly. ‘When I saw you earlier, holding the baby … For a moment it seemed …’
‘It seemed like what?’
‘Like … you belonged there. But you don’t. You mustn’t come here again. It’s not safe. There are men here who would kill me if they could. Do you understand? This is what’s real – this danger. I daren’t even stay in my own home, in case I cause them to come looking there again. If we are seen together, if they know that we are … close. Do you see? Being foreign will not protect you.’
‘That servant knows. Federico, with the rabbit’s lip. The one you told me was a fascist.’
‘Harelip.’ Ettore’s voice is dead flat. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He … he hissed at me. When I came back from meeting you one day.’
‘You listen to me, now. You stay away from him. Do you hear me? I don’t care what you have to do, you stay away from him.’
‘But if he’s at the farm, how can I? He’s here in Gioia now, though. Leandro and Boyd came back here three days ago. They had a terrible argument over the designs. Your uncle is making him start again. We could be here for weeks more, you see,’ she says, smiling. But Ettore doesn’t smile.
‘Goddamn it,’ he murmurs, hanging his head for a moment.
‘Ettore, what is it?’
‘Can’t you go? Can’t you just go home, to England? You and the boy.’
‘Well, no,’ says Clare, stung. ‘Not until your uncle says so. And I want to stay. I want to be near you.’
‘But can’t you just
go
? Never mind my uncle.’
‘Ettore, what is it? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘I …’ He shakes his head. His eyes are lost in shadows now; she can only see the outlines of his face. ‘You are not safe there. At the
masseria
. I don’t understand what he’s doing, keeping you here. I don’t understand at all.’
‘Nobody is safe anywhere, from what I have seen. I could … I could come back to the house here in Gioia. All I’d have to say is that I was missing Boyd. Perhaps your uncle would allow it? Then we could meet more often, and—’
‘No! That would be worse.’
‘Ettore, I … I don’t understand.’ Clare waits, but he keeps his face averted and his thoughts to himself. ‘Who was the girl I spoke to?’ she says. ‘The girl who told me where you live?’
‘Luna, Pino’s wife. I have stayed with them, and with other friends, since I left the farm.’
‘Couldn’t you stay at your uncle’s house here? Wouldn’t you be safe there? Why do men want to kill you?’
‘Because that’s what happens in a war, Chiara!’ He gives her a small shake, and she feels childlike again. ‘I will side with my uncle no longer.’
‘I wish you would. If you’re in such danger.’ To this he only shakes his head, and watches her steadily, and doesn’t try to explain, and she is helpless, hopeless. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit pleased to see me? Even a little?’ Ettore smiles then, a sketch of a smile, more in his eyes than on his lips.
‘I could have stayed where I was when Luna told me you were here. I didn’t have to come to find you,’ he says.
‘Then I’m glad I did. I’m glad, if this is to be … if this is the last time.’
There are voices and footsteps from the alleyway beyond the courtyard, and behind the wall they’re backed against are sounds of life – the rattle of a metal pail; a man coughing; the rustle of kicked straw. But Ettore kisses Clare hard and tightens his arms around her, cinching her ribs, shortening her breath, and she doesn’t care if the whole of Gioia stops to watch. They make love in a rush, like the first time, and Clare tries to pretend that it won’t be for the last time; that she will see him again, that she will stay in Gioia and live there with him, and be married to him. But she can’t believe it, not truly. Not even then, drowning in his touch and the movement of his body, and the smell of him and rightness of it. So she lets her head be empty instead. She lets go of all her thoughts, until she has the feeling of only existing in that single point in time, with nothing in her past and nothing in her future; it’s frightening, and it’s wonderful.
When they’ve caught their breath and straightened their clothes it’s full dark. They stay for a long time, sometimes in easy silence, sometimes talking disjointedly about things far off and unconnected. They stand close, always touching. Clare has a handful of Ettore’s shirt at his waist, and the other grasping his forearm, hard as a bundle of iron rods beneath his skin. Ettore combs his fingers through the sweaty tangle of her hair, and rests it at the nape of her neck, as he likes to do.
‘Tell me about your home. Tell me about where you live,’ he says, in a languid voice. ‘It’s very different. It must be.’
‘Yes, it’s very different. Green – it’s very green. It rains a lot. All the time, it sometimes seems. It can be cold in the winter but not too much so. The summers are mild, warm. Compared to here it seems soft. In all my thoughts of it, it seems soft, and safe.’
‘And nobody is hungry.’
‘Some people are,’ she demurs. ‘The very poorest, of course. Of course they’re hungry. But far fewer people are hungry than here. And … perhaps it’s easier to find help there. There are charities … places the very poorest can go for help.’
‘Do the rich hate the poor?’
‘No. Not like here. Sometimes they don’t think of them at all, and sometimes they pity them, or scorn them … but they don’t hate them. And people are not only either rich or poor, they can be in the middle. There are lots of levels in the middle – Boyd and I are in the middle. The English are polite, and … contained. Everything is done behind closed doors. There are huge trees, and public gardens full of flowers, where anybody can go, and the children can play.’ Of all the things she has said, this seems to present the starkest contrast between England and Puglia: a public garden full of flowers, and children playing.
For a while Ettore is silent, as though picturing this scene. He breathes in, long and slow; Clare daren’t ask him what he thinks. If he would ever go with her to England.
‘I can see you there,’ he says at last. ‘I can see you in a garden. In a safe place.’
‘Ettore, I
can’t
go—’
‘How will you get back to the
masseria
? How did you get here?’
‘I walked a long way, then a lady brought me in her cart. I suppose I’ll walk back.’
‘Walk? Now, in the night?’
‘There’s not much choice, really. I … I didn’t really think beyond getting to see you, you see,’ says Clare.
‘Shit and hell, Chiara!’ Ettore shakes his head then turns to look out beneath the archway, into the alley they came along. Scraps of borrowed light show up the knots in his jaw as he thinks.
‘I’ll be all right. I didn’t see anybody along that road.’
‘Not in the daytime, perhaps. Now, you can’t. You’ll have to go to Via Garibaldi for the night.’
‘No! I told you – Boyd’s there, with Leandro. They’re not expecting me, and Marcie and Pip think I’m asleep back at the
masseria
. How would I explain to them all? I can’t, Ettore! They’d know for certain I was lying. I’ll walk back. It’ll be quite all right.’
‘No, it won’t.’ Ettore takes her hand and they march back out to the alleyway.
‘Ettore, wait—’
‘Come on. You shouldn’t have come – do you see now?’
‘Well I’m glad I did, even if you’re not! I’m glad,’ she says defiantly. Ettore pauses to give her a helpless look.
‘Chiara … you are bold. And foolish,’ he says.
‘You make me both,’ she says, and as he turns away she sees the glimpse of his smile again, just for a second.
Ettore leads her through several twists and turns until, though they can’t be far from Piazza Plebiscito or the castle, Clare couldn’t say for sure in which direction they might be. He stops so abruptly to rap at a door that Clare runs into the back of him, and he loops an arm around her waist to hold her, as though she might try to run. Pino answers the door, and Clare recognises him at once – his beautiful, sculptural face, his unusual height and build. She shivers; the sight of him recalls that violent moment when they arrived at the
masseria
and she first saw Ettore and everything changed. Now he smiles uncertainly at the sight of them on his doorstep, and behind him the pretty girl Clare spoke to earlier darts curious looks out at them. The two men talk at speed – a rapid, incomprehensible exchange that ends with Pino shrugging and coming up with a name. Ettore turns to Clare.
‘Did you bring any money?’ he asks. Clare shakes her head, and sees him sag. He sighs, pauses, then crooks his finger and lifts the thin gold chain around her neck. ‘Is this dear to you?’ Clare shakes her head again.
‘A gift. From my husband.’
‘We’ll need it,’ he says, his mouth twisting slightly in distaste. Without hesitation, Clare unclasps the necklace and hands it to him. Ettore passes it to Pino, who winds it around his thick fingers and says something to Ettore.
‘What did he say?’ says Clare.
‘He says it’s too much, and it is. But if the choice is between too much and nothing …’ He shrugs. Luna’s head appears around her husband’s arm to gaze at the precious metal, her face like a child’s at Christmas, and Clare guesses she has never seen gold before. Not up close. Pino closes his fist over it, as if to protect her from it, and Luna turns her rapt gaze onto Clare, so full of questions and wonder that Clare looks away, uncomfortable. Pino says some soft words to his wife, kisses her mouth and sets off along the street. Wordlessly, Clare and Ettore follow.
The two men seem to see better in the dark than Clare; they walk quickly, turning left and right, passing under archways, sidestepping piles of manure and rubbish, as Clare stumbles and dodges along behind them, soon out of breath. Piazza Plebiscito, as they pass along its short western edge, is a blaze of yellow streetlight, but empty. No walkers, nobody taking the air, or killing time, or smoking and gossiping. All of Gioia has the hushed, furtive air of a town under curfew, so much more so than a month earlier, when Clare first arrived. The light of the square only seems to create deeper shadows, deep enough for movement to go unseen, for watching eyes to hide. Clare stays close to Ettore’s shoulder, feeling jittery and exposed; like she’s walking a narrow ledge above a lethal drop, not across a wide pavement. In spite of everything she has seen and everything Ettore has told her, only now is she afraid. Only now does she actually feel the threat of the place.