Love Falls (6 page)

That evening Lara curled herself into the cream sofa, flicking through a magazine while Caroline and Lambert talked.

‘Do you still see Henry?’ she asked.

‘Why would I?’

‘Well, you used to like him.’ Caroline shrugged.

‘I did bump into him once,’ Lambert said, ‘on a bus.’

Lara looked at her father, unable to imagine the circumstance under which he’d ever caught a bus.

‘Actually, he was on rather good form. He suggested I borrow some money off him and when I asked why, he looked surprised. “So that I can spend the next ten years trying to get it back, of course.” I thought that was quite inspired.’

‘He obviously misses you.’ Caroline curled her slim legs under her, hiding a dark bruise that spread up from her ankle.

‘Well, maybe, but I imagine he’s got over it. That was about fifteen years ago now.’

For a while neither of them spoke and the only noise in the room was the flicking of the pages of Lara’s magazine. It was a Spanish magazine –
¡Hola!
– with pictures of European royalty, interspersed with the occasional racing driver or Hollywood star. The entire middle section was devoted to speculation over Lady Diana’s wedding dress, with a series of photo-fit possibilities attached to her smiling head. Lara ran her eyes over the options, slinky, puffed-sleeved, spaghetti-strapped, layered in satin, sheer with lace. There were dresses in ivory, cream and lemon, rose and icing-sugar white, but in each photo Diana herself had the same feathered wedge of hair, hanging shyly down, obliterating half her face.

‘Were you terribly disappointed?’ Caroline was addressing Lara now. ‘To miss the big day?’

‘The big . . .?’ She looked up from a great froth of peachy-coloured netting. ‘The wedding, you mean?’

‘I hear people have already started setting up camp along the route, but I wasn’t sure how you young people felt about it.’

‘Us? Well . . .’ How to put this politely. ‘We’re not really very interested, at least not the people I know.’ To strengthen her stance she shut the magazine. ‘It just seems a bit tragic, I suppose.’

‘Really?’ Caroline was eyeing her with disbelief. ‘I’d have thought it was the answer to a young girl’s dream. Marry a prince. Live at Buckingham Palace. Meet rich and powerful people, travel the world.’

It seemed so clear to Lara that this was not the case, that this would not make any young girl happy, but the only evidence she had to fuel her argument was that the prince in question, Prince Charles, wore his parting too far over to one side. Lara had to bite her bottom lip to stop herself laughing. Hair was obviously her only criterion for making judgements about people. She should write a thesis on it. She should give up A level history and take up work instead on the psychology of hair.

‘It all just seems so old-fashioned,’ she said instead and then instantly regretted it.

Caroline lay back on the sofa, lighting a cigarette, while Lambert picked up a day-old copy of
The Times
, bought at great expense that morning in Siena. On its front page it had the photograph that had sent the nation into a frenzy – Diana, standing outside the nursery school at which she taught, her legs silhouetted, thanks to the sun, and seemingly naked, against the thin material of her skirt.

‘She is very handsome, it must be said.’ Caroline had her head on one side and Lambert craned round to look. ‘He got the wrong one apparently.’ Caroline blew out a soft white plume of smoke. ‘At least that’s what everyone’s saying.’

‘But wasn’t it all arranged?’ Lambert was squinting at the paper.

‘Well, yes, but people think she got it wrong. Pointed him in the wrong direction. He was going for one of the other sisters . . . is it Jane, or Sarah? I get them muddled up, but then the word came through – no, the quiet one – Diana.’

Lambert stared into the picture in just the same way he might scrutinise a train crash or the aftermath of a bomb. ‘Quiet she doesn’t look. No, she’s going to be lively. I’m not sure they know quite what they’re letting themselves in for.’

‘The Royal Family? They arranged it?’ Lara was aghast.

They both looked at her.

‘No,’ Caroline’s eyes were twinkling. ‘Charles’s girlfriend picked her out.’

Lara was so shocked she chose not to believe her. Surely the whole reason Prince Charles had been unmarried for so long was that he couldn’t
get
a girlfriend! ‘But . . . if . . .’ she spluttered. ‘Why . . . I mean if he’s got a girlfriend why doesn’t he just marry her?’

‘She’s . . .’ Caroline looked at Lambert as if the truth might be too shocking for her seventeen-year-old ears. ‘She’s unsuitable.’

Lara picked up
¡Hola!
again and looked with more interest at the photos of Diana. No – she scanned each identical one – she could see it in the quiet confidence of her face, in the hopefulness of her smile, even in the hair that flopped over her face: Diana had no idea.

That night Lara dreamt of Charles and his black Jamaican girlfriend searching for his trousers in her room. They giggled and flirted and made lustful, lascivious comments, somewhere between Ray Cooney and Macbeth, and she had to hide under the covers for fear they would fall on to her bed.

The next morning they all drove into Siena. Caroline had an appointment with the doctor at ten. ‘I’ll meet you here in an hour or so.’ She indicated an outdoor café and moving delicately, clutching her handbag, she walked away.

Lara stood on the edge of the Piazza del Campo and stared. They were in a medieval square, a circle really, surrounded by stone buildings, so tall and ancient they formed a shelter from the sun.

‘Is this where they have the horse race?’ she asked, and she stepped out from the coolness of the wall.

The Piazza, like all of Siena, was built on a hill. It was in the shape of a half-moon, or of the sun setting, its rays spreading up towards them from the bottom of the slope. All around the edge of this half-moon was a strip of flattened concrete and at its highest end was a row of cafés, their tables and chairs shaded by umbrellas.

Lara began to walk downhill, stepping between the people sitting on the ground, dodging children who ran, arms stretched, down the gullies of the rays. In every groove, between each dark-red brick, there was a scattering of confetti, and she imagined a whole spring and summer of wedding parties bursting out from some dark courtyard, followed by well-wishers, sprinkling them with shreds of colour.

Above the rooftops, beyond the square, was a striped black-and-white tower. ‘The Duomo,’ Lambert told her. ‘It can’t be far away.’ Marking it with their eyes, they chose a lane that led off the Piazza.

The lane was narrow, its high walls creating alleyways of cool, with shops like caves hidden entirely from the sun. There were delicatessens, their windows decorated with packets of pasta, curled and coiled, striped like candy, formed into multicoloured bows. There was dried fruit arranged in doorways, apricots so plump Lara could hardly resist, nuts and seeds and packets of dry biscuits made from almonds and vanilla sugar, just waiting to be softened in a cup of tea. There were tiers of handbags, just as beautifully arranged, and a pharmacy, its walls covered in gilt mirrors, chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, its cabinets as ornate as a museum.

By now they’d lost sight of the striped tower, and so they hurried on uphill until they came to another square, and found they were above it, that it had somehow swapped sides. They turned downhill, glancing into stone alleyways that sliced between tall buildings, their windows strung with washing, pastel-coloured Vespas parked below, until eventually they came into an opening, and there it was before them, a cathedral of such beauty that its tower now appeared only to be a detail, the tail of an animal, tacked on behind. The front of the cathedral was striped as well, but paler, pink and cream, the columns and turrets picked out and moulded like elaborate decoration on a cake. At the top was one round window and above that a mural set against gold leaf.

‘The Duomo,’ Lambert murmured, as if it were a half-forgotten friend, and they climbed the steps to the main door.

Inside it was completely dark. Lara had to clasp her father’s arm to stop from stumbling. ‘Sorry,’ she said, when she realised what she was doing, and she let go. They stood side by side waiting for the dark to lift until, like a negative developing, the cathedral slowly flickered into life.

‘Oh my God!’

The whole interior was striped in black and white, the pillars, the arches, the walls, and above them the vaulted layers of the ceilings were scattered with gold stars. The floors were tiled in black and white and red, in some places so intricately that whole areas were roped off, and there were statues, carvings, heads of cardinals lit up with gold.

‘Oh my God!’ Lara said again more quietly, and then laughing she realised that this was exactly the reaction that was required.

Around the pulpit was a seething mass of carvings, Jesus Christ himself, dying, nailed to the cross. There were dogs with puppies hanging from their teats, lions devouring long-necked monsters, snakes and people that looked like slaves.

‘Dad?’ She was hoping for answers, but when she looked up he had gone.

Lara walked very slowly around the cathedral, hovering on the fringes of groups of tourists listening to their guides, but even when she came across a guide talking in English, she realised she was too restless to stop. She found herself in an ante room where one man was praying, kneeling against the railings, lit up, as if he had arranged it, by a shaft of light from a high round window above. The man was oblivious, his face closed, his lips pleading as he clasped a rosary between his hands. He was too absorbed to notice Lara, and she was sure, just from the shape of his body, that he was praying for someone on the brink of death.

Outside this room there was a bank of candles, all flickering hopefully in the gloom, and quickly Lara took one herself. Who was she lighting it for? She held the wick against a flame while she decided. She was lighting it for someone – the wick had caught and she’d have to hurry – someone she was going to love.

‘Lara?’ She jumped, blushing, as if she’d been caught out, the daughter of a Buddhist and an atheist Jew, caught in the act of being superstitious, but when she turned to Lambert he smiled and said gently that they’d better go.

For a moment they stood on the steps, once more unable to see, and when their eyes eventually adjusted they stood there for a minute more, watching a group of nuns attempting to take photographs while three boys threw a rugby ball from one to another, bouncing it at unexpected angles on the cobbles, forcing the nuns to jump and scowl.

They were almost back at the Campo when Lara slowed to look into the window of a shop. Inside there were swimming costumes of every kind. Some hung from the ceiling, caught up with string, while others were pulled tight over cotton torsos, their chests thrust forward, the Lycra of their briefs stretched flat.

‘Is there something you need?’ Lambert asked.

Lara pointed to a black-and-brown polka-dot bikini, a demure version of the one she already had.

‘Why don’t you try it?’ he offered, and waited while she stood in a small cupboard, walled in by bags and boxes, and hurriedly tugged it on.

Yes. It covered her. That was all she needed to know, and eager to rescue him from the indignity of standing with gussets and bra straps brushing against his head, she quickly pulled it off.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said, as Lambert took out the necessary lire, and the shopkeeper, a woman, held the door for them with a disapproving look.

Caroline was already at the café. She was drinking black coffee and smoking a long thin cigarette.

‘How was it?’ Lambert kissed her under the shadow of her hat.

She blew out a plume of smoke and laughed. ‘Much the same.’ But even so she looked suddenly exhausted. Lambert pulled his chair close and sat beside her, but when he took her hand she pulled away. ‘Don’t fuss,’ she said. ‘Really. You of all people.’ And she clicked her fingers to the waiter and ordered more coffee. ‘Just a cold lunch, I think, when we get back.’ Caroline took out a powder compact to examine her face. ‘And then of course tonight we’ll be dining out.’

Lara looked around at the other tables, couples chatting amiably, families sprawling, taking up several tables’ worth of space. What would they talk about, the three of them, for an entire night, and she wondered if it would be inconceivably rude if she asked to stay behind.

‘Dining out?’ Lambert raised an eyebrow.

Caroline inhaled hard on her cigarette. ‘I said we’d go up to the Willoughbys’. You know they’re only up the road at Ceccomoro. I thought it might be amusing for Lara.’

‘Andrew Willoughby?’ Lambert opened his mouth as if to say more, and then shut it again.

‘Oh for God’s sake, Lamb,’ Caroline tutted. ‘Don’t be such a . . . It’s all so long ago, that miserable business, and whatever you say about him, he’s been a help to me out here.’

Lambert looked out over the square. ‘Of course,’ he said coolly, and he said nothing more.