The Night Falling (40 page)

‘How did that happen?’ she murmurs, shaking her head to Pip’s questioning glance.

‘Is
he
coming to the party tomorrow?’ says Pip darkly.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Not of course – you know Leandro loves him, kind of. And Marcie’s never had a family before – cousins or siblings or nephews or anything.’

‘You’ve become good friends, haven’t you? You and Marcie. I’m … glad.’

‘Well I haven’t had much choice, have I? With Father in town, and you …’ Pip pauses, looking away again. ‘With you busy. Out walking. What was I supposed to do, all that time?’

With this twist of the knife he sets off up the stairs, and Peg scrambles after him. Clare stays a while in the shadows – not in the kitchen, not out of it; halfway between worlds, between lives. She puts the flat of her hand to her middle. There’s nothing to feel, of course, it’s far too early. If anything, she has lost some weight since they came to Italy – her stomach is almost concave between her hip bones; the skin is taut, smooth, no different to the touch. And yet she
knows
. She is completely certain. And in that halfway place where she can imagine, for a while, that no grief will come of it, she smiles.

Clare tries to be wherever Boyd is not. He has his work but he’s restive and rises from it often, to pace the sitting room and the terrace, to emerge into the courtyard only to stall there, stock-still, as though he can’t remember why he went. Clare tunes her ears to the sound of his steps, and keeps out of sight. She and Pip have spent much longer at the
masseria
than Boyd; they know it far better – its hidden corners and stairs, the way to the roof, the cracked love seat in the vegetable garden. She goes along the corridor to what was Ettore’s room, and stands in the white emptiness of it. She lies down a while on the bare mattress. No scent of him, no trace.
The father of my child
. Clare turns the words around in her mind, over and over. Somehow she’s sure Ettore will be happy. In a place with so much death, mustn’t new life be a welcome thing? She thinks of Iacopo, and the way he is treasured – he is illegitimate, the child of Paola’s lover who was killed at the Girardi massacre, and it doesn’t seem to matter at all. She’s desperate to tell Ettore, and to look into his eyes as she does. But soon the room gets too empty, too quiet, and Clare’s thoughts are too loud in comparison, so she roams on.

From outside the bat room she hears Marcie’s laugh, and Pip’s muffled voice. There’s music playing so she can’t hear what they’re saying, even though she remembers Marcie saying that they ought to save the gramophone needles for the party. It had been when Clare had been about to dance with Pip. She puts her hands to the wooden door and presses her ear to it, shuts her eyes and feels a hundred miles from them, from Pip. She lets the knife turn in her heart – that she has left him so much alone to be with Ettore; that she turned her back on him from the very first moment Leandro’s nephew collapsed in front of her on the terrace. When she can stand it no longer she knocks and goes in with a tentative smile, hoping to be absorbed into their fun, hoping to see Pip laugh. She expects to see them dancing again, like before, or up on the dais, but they are sitting side by side on the old couch. Marcie has her feet tucked up like a girl, her arms linked under her knees, her body turned towards Pip. She’s listening to what Pip’s saying with rapt attention, and for a moment they don’t notice Clare there, they haven’t heard her come in.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ she says. Pip breaks off mid-sentence and blushes.

‘Clare!’ says Marcie, unfolding her legs. Her feet are bare, smooth and pale; her toenails are shell pink. She looks as though she’ll stand up, but then changes her mind. Pip doesn’t get up either, and Clare is left standing over them, awkwardly, trying to talk from a different eye level. ‘We were just … discussing the play,’ says Marcie. ‘Weren’t we, Pip?’ Her teeth and tongue are stained, and Clare notices two sticky glasses on the floor, and a jug of red wine, dark inside. She can smell it in the air; she can smell it on Marcie’s breath. She glances at Pip, searching for the same traces on him, but he keeps his mouth shut and nods to answer the question, so she can’t tell.

‘Oh. I see,’ says Clare. She looks at Pip again, and because he won’t look at her she knows he has been drinking too, and doesn’t want her to see. ‘All right there, Pip? How’s it going?’ she says.

‘All right, I suppose,’ he says. The words pitched halfway between gruff and petulant.

‘I was thinking about going for a walk – do you fancy coming with me? Protect me from these bandits and rebels I keep hearing about?’ She smiles. She wants to grab his arm and drag him from the room, and knows she can’t. Not any more.

‘Perhaps later on. After lunch,’ he says. His eyes flick up to hers briefly, guilty and defiant.

‘Yes. It is rather early, isn’t it?’ says Clare. She looks at Marcie, whose cheeks and eyes are pink, and whose smile has gone as hard and flat as glass.

‘Oh, there are few such rules here. This isn’t England,’ she says, too loudly, and her tone dares Clare to argue. There’s a glitter in her eyes, a simmering anger, and Clare thinks of the row she overheard, deep in the night – the frayed edges of Marcie’s voice, the hint of mania there.

‘No more it is,’ Clare murmurs. She can’t hold Marcie’s gaze so she looks at Pip again, but he’s peering at his hand and running his thumb over the bite marks – dry and flaking, almost gone. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she says, with a desperate feeling, like she might cry.

‘Enjoy your walk,’ Marcie calls after her, and though Clare wants to look back and see if this is mocking, or serious, or angry, somehow she can’t bring herself to.

From a narrow window, sunshine pouring through, she sees Leandro Cardetta on the roof of the opposite side of the quad. He’s standing near the edge with his arms loose at his sides, his chin high; lord and master of all he surveys. The weather is restless and threatening. There’s a hot, dry breeze, the kind that spreads fires, and blackish clouds on the southern horizon. The air catches at Leandro’s hair and shirt; they are the only things moving in that still scene – the parched ground and stone walls behind him look like a painted backdrop. He stares fixedly into this menacing distance and Clare realises that, despite all the time she has spent as his guest that summer, she can’t even guess at his thoughts. In Gioia he had been about to tell her the real reason he brought her and Pip out to Italy, she was sure of it. He’d said she was in danger. But then Boyd had appeared, and he’d cut himself off. What did that mean? That he didn’t want Boyd to know the reason, or didn’t want him to know that he intended to tell Clare?

She stares at Leandro; is every bit as still as him. In spite of all that has happened to her, all that has terrified her, she hasn’t quite got the courage to interrupt him. He is a closed book; stern face, implacable eyes.
Leandro Cardetta is a very dangerous man
. For the first time Clare looks at what Boyd said from a different angle – beyond the obvious fact that Cardetta is a man who’ll use his own means to achieve his own aims. Dangerous beyond that – dangerous to Boyd in some specific way? She watches his windblown figure with growing unease until the black car pulls into the courtyard and Federico Manzo climbs out of it. Then she shrinks back to her own room, keeping close to the walls; jittery with revulsion and wishing there was still a key she could turn in the lock.

On Friday evening, the night of the party, Marcie comes alive. The furniture in the long sitting room is pushed back to make room for dancing, and the gramophone is set up on a side table. Torches outside the main gates and every lantern in the place are lit to beat back the dark. On the terrace the long table is laid with twelve place settings. For all the invites she sent, for all the expectation and preparation, Marcie has only managed to find seven people, beyond her husband and houseguests, willing to come to Masseria dell’Arco for dinner. In defiance of that she fusses as though the King of Italy will attend, and is wearing her silks and jewels; the light swoops over the shallow curves of her hips, the deeper ones of her chest, and glitters from her ears and neck and fingers.

Clare is dowdy in comparison, and doesn’t care. She washes her hair and leaves it loose to dry, so that it hangs without shape or bounce. She puts on clean clothes and the only pair of evening shoes she has with her, but pays no attention to the outfit. She catches sight of her reflection as she’s about to go down and only then sees how pale she is – a strange kind of pallor that seems to come from within, since the sun has coloured her skin for weeks and brought out freckles. Beneath the suntan, her face is bloodless. She rubs some blush into her cheeks and puts on a little lipstick, but somehow these touches only make it worse. When Marcie sees her, her face falls. But she takes Clare’s hands and squeezes them together.

‘Clare, honey. Are you sure you’re up to this evening? You look pale, and I know you’ve been feeling under the cosh lately.’

‘Aren’t we all under the cosh here? But I’m fine, thank you,’ she says. Marcie smiles.

‘Tonight’s going to be so much fun. We can pretend to be normal wives, leading normal lives. Won’t that be grand? Just for a little while,’ she says. Her eyes sparkle, and Clare wonders if she even remembers their tight exchange in the bat room. Marcie takes a deep breath; her grip on Clare’s hands gets tighter, and tighter.

‘Perhaps we are normal wives. Perhaps this is just what life is like,’ says Clare. Marcie drops her hands at once and takes a step back, shaking her head.

‘Don’t say that. Well! Try to enjoy yourself, anyway, Clare. It could be your last chance to before you go home, and the only exciting evening we’re likely to get this summer. God, I need a drink.’ She stalks away, the high heels of her silver shoes tapping and glinting, and Clare watches after her with a seasick feeling, thinking how wrong she is. A more exciting evening, exciting for all the wrong reasons, crowds the steps of this one.

It’s Friday night, and in two nights’ time, on Sunday, Ettore will come, the farm will be raided and she must play her part, and play it well, or risk harm coming to him. The thought stuns her, blindsides her, every time it comes into her head. It’s like a sudden cacophony that drowns out everything as the other guests start to arrive, and Pip appears from his room in his best clothes, and Boyd comes up from the sitting room with Leandro at his side and a glass of whisky in his hand. The other guests are the doctor who treated Ettore’s leg and Clare when she fainted, his wife and teenage son and daughter; a stern man called Labriola, a retired teacher who likes to practise speaking English; and Alvise and Carlotta Centasso, a witless pair from Gioia too dazzled by Leandro’s wealth and Marcie’s jewels to mind that they are American
arrivistes
. They drink milky, almond-scented
rosoglio
on the terrace and Clare gulps at hers, longing to be feel numbed, to feel serene for a time. The drink is hot in her stomach, but doesn’t settle it.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ says Boyd, close to her ear. Clare shrinks from him; she can’t help it. She nods wordlessly and moves away towards Leandro, who is grand and groomed in his evening suit, a black silk tie fastened with a perfect knot at his throat. So it’s by pure chance that she’s standing next to him and not next to her husband when Federico Manzo comes up the terrace and crosses to Leandro to murmur some message in his ear.

Clare is hung; she can’t take her eyes off him, or move away, however much she wants to. All she sees now are the muscles beneath his clothes, and the ease with which they overpowered her; she sees his mouth and instantly recalls the feel of its odd shape against her own, and the taste of his saliva; his broad hands, and how just one was wide enough to prevent her breathing. She rocks back on her heels; wants to run but is paralysed. She feels stripped naked, humiliated; the blood roars in her ears and when Federico turns to go he looks at her and the glance is sullen, coldly hostile. For the short moment his eyes brush over her it’s like the unwanted touch of his hands again, the intimate press of his body. It turns her cold.

When he’s gone she grabs at Leandro’s arm without thinking, only needing the support. He smiles down at her and then notices her distress and draws her immediately to one side.

‘What is it, Chiarina?’ He uses the diminutive of her Italian name with such concern, such warmth it almost undoes her. She swallows tears.

‘Federico,’ she says quietly.

‘What of him?’ he says, but Clare can’t answer. She looks away, looks down, and can’t prevent a shudder going through her. There’s a long pause. ‘He did this, didn’t he?’ says Leandro then, in a very different tone; touching one finger softly to her chin. Clare nods. ‘But why? I thought it was my nephew you’d fallen for?’

‘You
know
?’ says Clare, stricken.

‘But of course. My dear, not much goes on around here that I don’t know about. Tell me – why did Fede hit you?’

‘He just … I was alone, in town. He must have followed me, and …’ She can’t finish this, can’t say the words. Leandro’s face gets that dragged downward look she’s come to recognise – his features weighted with anger, black eyes snapping.

‘Forgive me. This is my fault,’ he says, in a voice flat with fury. ‘He attacked one of the kitchen girls last year. Spun me a yarn about how they’d been courting, and how she’d given her consent and was lying about it after the event. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘No. The fault is mine,’ says Clare. ‘He saw me … he knows about Ettore.’ She raises her eyes to him wretchedly. ‘Don’t tell my husband! Please, tell no one. Not even Marcie,’ she whispers.

‘No, no. We won’t speak of it. And Federico Manzo won’t set foot here again, I promise you that. I’ve no need for a man like that – no better than an animal. It’s the duty of the men in my household to
protect
the women, not endanger them! I’ll go now and see to it. Are you steady now? Here – take another drink.’ He passes her his own glass and watches her drink, then steers her by her elbow to Marcie’s side, where she can hide in the shadow of his wife’s radiance.