Authors: Katherine Webb
Once Chiara has left Ettore goes to tell Paola that she’s agreed to help them, but his sister’s not at home; Valerio is alone on his shelf, sleeping soundly. Dogged by restless impatience he walks a convoluted route back to the church, and as he’s going in a strange figure comes hurrying towards him, moving in a crabbed way, keeping to the deep shade on one side of the street. Ettore braces himself for trouble, for a fight, but the figure is Pino, and Ettore relaxes for a second before he sees why his friend is walking so peculiarly. He has Chiara in his arms. Ettore stares stupidly, making no sense of this, as Pino barrels past him into the church.
‘Ettore! Shut the damn door!’ he says, sitting Chiara down on a pew. She curls forwards, her face almost on her knees. Her blouse is torn, her skirt too. There’s blood from somewhere, smudged on her cheek and her collar, and Ettore’s mouth goes dry. He slams the door, slides the bolt across.
‘What’s happened?’ He goes over to Chiara, puts a hand on her shoulder and feels her shaking. ‘Pino! What’s happened?’ Pino looks away, catching his breath; he seems reluctant to speak, like he’s almost afraid.
‘She was attacked,’ he says at last. He sucks in a deep breath. ‘It was blind luck I was passing. Work stopped early – there was nothing left to thresh. Or I wouldn’t have been back. I wouldn’t have been there to stop it …’
‘Chiara?’ Ettore crouches down and looks into her ashy face. Her pupils are huge, black, focused on nothing. Her lower lip is split, and blood is smeared over her chin; her hands are bruised, the nails broken. ‘Who did this?’ he says. She shows no sign of having heard him. Ettore looks up at Pino. ‘Was she raped?’ The ugly word rasps in his throat, turning his stomach. Pino shakes his head.
‘I got there in time. But I think it was his intention,’ he says guardedly.
‘Whose intention? You saw who it was?’ says Ettore. His own hands are shaking now; pressure’s building behind his eyes, and in a tight band around his ribs. Just then Chiara takes a ragged breath in and shudders. She says something quiet that Ettore can’t hear. He crouches in front of her again.
‘Ettore …’ says Pino; a note of warning.
‘Chiara … you’re safe here. I’m here,’ says Ettore.
‘Tell me …’ she says indistinctly. She blinks slowly, drunkenly; slides her eyes to look at him. ‘Tell me I’m your sweetheart,’ she murmurs. Ettore can’t breathe. He reels back from her, loses his balance, sits down with a bump.
‘Ettore, I saw who it was. It was Federico Manzo. He must have followed her here,’ says Pino.
‘That’s what he said. What he kept saying.’ Chiara’s voice is hoarse, whispery dry. ‘He kept saying, “Tell me I’m your sweetheart.” ’
Clare
Pino and Ettore start to clean her face and brush at the dirt on her clothes, but in the end they realise there’s no point. After a curt exchange in the dialect they lead her back to Via Garibaldi, and she goes with clumsy steps, dazed, and at some point realises that the only hand on her elbow is Pino’s – Ettore has gone. Pointlessly, she turns to look over her shoulder. When they’re at the door to Leandro’s house she pulls back.
If you speak of this
, Federico said,
I will tell them where you have been. Where you have been many times. Anyway, you like Puglian men, don’t you?
This said with triumphant levity, with one grimy hand clamped over her nose and mouth so she could hardly breathe; a knife in the other, its tip pressed casually into the hollow above her collarbone.
No screaming
, he said, as he took his hand away, reached down for his belt.
Now, tell me I’m your sweetheart
. A lingering kiss, a hideous mockery of tenderness.
Tell me I’m your sweetheart
; more insistently, when she didn’t speak. And then, miraculously, Pino was there, and Federico was running away, and the relief was so overwhelming that for a moment Clare forgot how to stand, how to speak or think or move.
Federico Manzo, mending the bicycle for Pip. Federico Manzo, offering her flowers and then hisses – from stately courtship to gleeful menace in a day, when he realised she was no Madonna. Clare looks at the door to Leandro’s house. Will Federico open it to let them in? He’s had time to get back, to compose himself, but Pino gave him a kick in the stomach that sent him scuttling off, doubled over, so perhaps he won’t be back yet. The thought of coming face to face with him brings on waves of clammy dread.
If you speak of this, I will tell them where you have been
. She puts her arms around Pino’s waist for a moment, presses the side of her face to his shirt. He smells of sweat and labour, of earth and straw.
‘
Grazie
, Pino,’ she says. When she steps back he looks pleased, abashed, and she believes everything Ettore has ever told her about this man’s good heart. He frowns in thought, searching for a word he can give her in Italian.
‘
Coraggio
,’ he says, and she nods.
Courage
.
Clare has never seen the man who opens the door before; he’s a different servant, older, stooped. She uncurls her sweaty fists. The house is quiet, could be empty. Faint echoes of her footsteps drift around the shadowy colonnades. She goes upstairs to the room she had before, but none of her things are there, of course, so she can’t change. Some of Boyd’s clothes are in the wardrobe; his shaving brush and soap are on the washstand, and there’s an inch or two of water left in the jug. Clare uses his comb on her hair, and redresses it; washes as best she can and changes out of her torn, bloodied blouse, putting on one of Boyd’s clean shirts instead. It hangs low and shapeless on her, like a bad imitation of one of Marcie’s tunics, but it covers the tear in the waistband of her skirt, the dirt on the seat. In front of the mirror she stops to stare into her own eyes – they have swollen lids and an odd emptiness that even she can’t reach into. She tries to think back to when it was that Ettore left her – at what point on the walk from Sant’Andrea to Via Garibaldi. She can’t remember.
I’m here
, he said, but then he seemed to vanish, and he’d had a look in his eyes she’d never seen before, hard and hungry. Pino had fidgeted nervously, moving diffidently around his friend as though Ettore was ill, or dangerous. The sunlit hour in the church, before all this, seems to have happened in another age, to another person. And she’d been fool enough to think, for that short while, that she’d never been happier.
A knock at the door and the breath squeezes out of her lungs. Boyd comes in and straight over to her; a hand on her shoulder, a wide, appraising gaze, full of concern.
‘Darling, the servant just came and told me you’d arrived. But Anna was here hours ago … where have you been? Are you all right? What’s happened – your lip!’
‘I’m all right, Boyd.’ But her voice wobbles treacherously. She doesn’t know how to be with him any more; she doesn’t know how to act.
‘Did somebody do this? Have you been attacked?’ His voice has gone high in outrage, in disbelief. Clare shakes her head.
‘I … I went for a walk around town and I … fell down some steps. Silly of me. I just lost my footing.’
‘Some steps?’ He furrows his brow, not quite believing her. She claws through her memories of Gioia. The town is level, the only steps lead to the doors of upper level apartments. Like Ettore’s.
‘Yes. The steps from the church. You know, the front steps of the Chiesa Madre?’
‘Were you feeling faint again, my darling?’ A hand on the side of her face; stooping over her. Clare feels trapped, overshadowed; can hardly stand it. She shakes her head.
‘No, not really. I just lost my footing.’
‘Why didn’t you come here first? I’d have gone for a walk with you, happily.’
‘I … I thought you’d be working, darling. I thought I’d wait until lunchtime before I interrupted you …’
‘You mustn’t walk around on your own. Please promise me. You mustn’t any more. It’s not safe, least of all when you’ve not been well.’
‘All right.’
‘But why did you come into town at all, darling? Why are you here?’
Clare looks up at her husband. Pale face, scrubbed and clean-shaven; soft, limp hair combed neatly back; his lanky height, thin shoulders slumped so as not to tower over her. For a moment she can’t make her mouth open; can’t make her tongue move. There are too many things she can’t say.
‘I … wanted to see you,’ she says, and the words are so crabbed with duplicity she’s sure he must hear it. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Oh?’ His eyes search her face, worried now.
‘Yes, but I do have rather a headache now …’ She puts a hand to her forehead, as much to break his gaze as anything, but in truth her head is pounding as though there’s too much in it – too much blood and matter, too many thoughts and fears.
‘Of course. Leandro wants to see you too, but rest first. I’ll have them send up some fresh water and a cold drink for you.’
‘Thank you.’
He goes from the room as softly as he came in, moving as he always does – with steady grace, never sudden or abrupt. Sidling through the world as though he doesn’t want it to notice him. When the door clicks shut Clare sits down where she is – sinking to the floor with her back to the mirror. She needs a moment to try to think of any one useful thing, any one right thing, and she can’t seem to do it while she must concentrate on standing. Pino came. Pino came and saved her. Yet her thoughts are brimming with what might have happened otherwise – Federico’s parody of a kiss, one hand undoing his belt; the press of his erection against her stomach, and the tip of the knife at the base of her throat.
I’m here
, Ettore said, but then he wasn’t. There’s acid in the back of Clare’s mouth, cramp between her ribs. She can still smell Federico’s breath and feel the odd shape of his mouth on hers, his crooked teeth too prominent when he kissed her. Her stomach swims with nausea; sweat breaks out on her face.
At the end of the afternoon Clare goes downstairs because she realises that, more than anything, she wants to be out of Gioia. Her legs are unsteady and there’s still a strange taste in her mouth, at the back of her throat – a metallic kind of tang, like copper or iron. Almost like blood but different, cleaner. She finds Leandro on the terrace, studying a list of notes and figures in a ledger with a glass of wine held lazily in one hand. There’s no outward sign of her cut lip but a thin red line and a gentle swelling. Most of the damage is on the inside – caused by her own teeth when Federico crushed his hand over her mouth. Leandro puts down the ledger but doesn’t rise as she comes over to him. He crosses his legs and watches her, so unflinching and so knowing that Clare feels naked. She can’t keep her hands from shaking. Leandro sees this, of course, as he pours her wine and she gulps at it; he sees everything. The wine tastes odd – almost musty, but Leandro seems to find nothing amiss with it.
‘Somebody attacked you?’ he says mildly. Clare shakes her head.
‘I fell down …’
‘The steps of our Chiesa Madre, yes, your husband told me. Wide, even steps, and only a flight of three.’
‘I tripped.’
‘I would happily take action against the man who did this,’ he says, as if she hasn’t spoken. Again, she shakes her head.
‘Then I hope you’ll have the sense not to see him again. And not to come into Gioia by yourself to do so.’ Clare catches her breath, poised to defend Ettore before she realises that she can’t, any more than she can tell Leandro what really happened. Not without confessing her infidelity, however much she wants to denounce Federico. She can’t stand to think of him out at the
masseria
with Marcie, and Anna and the other servants; or in Gioia at night with the
braccianti
’s wives and daughters.
‘I came to see my husband,’ she says. Her voice is small and tremulous. Leandro grunts.
‘As you wish.’ He takes a swig of wine, always with his eyes on her. ‘I’m beginning to think I made a mistake in bringing you out here, Mrs Kingsley. You and the boy. I did it for a good reason, you must understand. But perhaps I’ve made matters worse. Perhaps it’s time I sent you home.’
‘Will you tell me why you brought me here?’ she says. Leandro pauses, and behind his unswerving gaze she can see the shifting of thoughts, the weighing up of things. He uncrosses his legs and leans forwards.
‘It might be hard for you to understand, or even believe, Chiara, but I brought you here for your own safety. I think you could be in danger.’
‘What can you mean? I wasn’t in any danger until I came here.’
‘Yes, I see that now. Ironic, in some ways. I must tell you, though—’ He cuts himself off as Boyd steps out onto the terrace. ‘Downing tools for the day?’ Leandro says smoothly, in the exact same level tone, and Clare has the clear impression that whatever he’d been about to tell her had been for her ears only. He shoots her a warning look as Boyd seats himself, and she bites back all the sudden questions she has for him, and all the sudden fear.
Anna comes to ask if Clare will be travelling back to the
masseria
with her that evening, but since she has told Boyd she wants to speak to him, and since he wants her to stay the night, she has to turn the offer down.
‘Federico can drive you tomorrow,’ says Leandro.
‘No!’ says Clare, too loudly, before she can stop herself.
‘No?’ Leandro echoes, watching her closely. When she returns to silence he doesn’t press. ‘Very well. I’ll drive you myself – all of us. We were heading back on Friday, anyway, for this party of Marcie’s. A day early won’t matter, and we can stay for a few days. I miss the clean air at the farm.’ Marcie’s party – Clare had forgotten all about it. A party on Friday night, and on Sunday night the farm will be attacked. It seems impossible. Did Ettore really tell her about it, and ask for her help? It has the same caste of dreamy unreality as everything else that happened that day before Federico. Marcie’s party; Marcie and Pip waltzing around an empty room; Pip taking the mongrel puppy from her wordlessly, as they stood opposite each other in the dark outside her locked door in that awful, bruising silence. Peggy, he’s named the puppy – after its spindly peg legs, and after he ascertained that she was a bitch. Clare’s eyes scorch with tears; she excuses herself before the men notice.
In bed, with darkness outside, Boyd curls himself around her. He seems too long, too soft, too awkward. There’s something loose but clinging about him, like the stifling drape of a heavy, heavy blanket. He doesn’t fit her neatly like Ettore does, and he doesn’t smell right. Clare stares into the shadows as he strokes a lock of her hair down over her ear. The shivers it gives her are the wrong kind.
‘Please don’t hold me so tightly. I can’t quite bear it,’ she says, and he leans away wordlessly, hurt.
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he says. Clare’s thoughts are fragmentary, jarring into the distant past, into recent happenings, into the future; alighting and then skipping on so fast she can hardly follow them. Finally, she chases her unease and all her unanswered questions right back to New York.
‘What did you say to the mayor?’ she says.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘In New York, when we were there seven years ago. At the party when the three designs were exhibited, by the different architects.’ There are three steady beats of silence, a fourth, a fifth. She can hear him breathing. ‘You were very nervous. Desperately so. You didn’t speak to anybody all evening, not even me, until you went up to talk to the mayor and some other men. Then you seemed better; and then we left. What did you have to tell him?’
‘Good Lord, Clare, I really can’t remember,’ he says; an awkward parody of offhand. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Clare—’
‘I don’t believe you! I want you to tell me.’
‘Clare, don’t raise your voice. You’ll be heard.’
‘I don’t care!’ She struggles up from the bed, out of his grasp. The sudden movement makes her head swim. She stands facing him, barefoot, arms around herself like armour.
Boyd sits up slowly. The sheet drops to his waist; he’s bare-chested – a soft sag of skin around each nipple, a short run of ribs visible above his rounded stomach, a fuzz of pale hair around his navel. She shouldn’t be in bed with this man; it seems wholly inappropriate that he should be so undressed. ‘Tell me.’
‘It was …’ He shuts his eyes, passes one hand across them. ‘I had to put in a word for Cardetta. I had to put in a good word for him.’
‘Why? For what?’
‘He … they … the city waste management contract was up for review. Leandro wanted it, but there were … rumours about him. And the new mayor – the one who seemed too young to be out on his own – was making a point of clearing city hall of corruption. So he was unlikely to award the contract to a known mobster, or a suspected one.’