The Night Falling (19 page)

‘You’re different, Clare … what’s happened? What’s changed?’ says Boyd.

‘I woke up,’ she says softly.

After a long pause she turns to the bed, and climbs in on her side. ‘We’d better hope he likes your designs, or perhaps it’ll be curtains for us.’ Boyd frowns at this and lies down beside her, not trying to touch her. He leaves the light on as if they might talk more, but for a long time they are silent. Clare rolls onto her side, turning her back to him.

‘You’re so strong, Clare. So much stronger than I am. I’m so lucky to have you … I know I am. I couldn’t be without you, darling,’ says Boyd. ‘I don’t know what I’d do, if I ever lost you.’ Clare lies very still and doesn’t answer him. None of it is a question, but all of it begs for acknowledgement. She feels hot, and hard, and tightly wound; she doesn’t trust herself to speak. She stares at the heavy door to their room; the vast iron lock, the archaic key that sits in it, ready to be turned. But she is trapped with Boyd already, of course. She has been for years.

Next morning there’s a hush at the breakfast table, as if they’re all waiting for something; even Marcie seems to feel it because though she smiles a great deal, words are few. After a while Clare realises that she isn’t the only one waiting for Ettore to appear – her hosts are too. The longer he doesn’t show, the more strained Marcie seems, and the darker Leandro’s expression becomes.

‘Perhaps your nephew wasn’t feeling very well again when he woke up. Do you think I should go and check on him?’ says Pip. All eyes turn to him, and he blushes, and Clare wonders at his intuition. For a second Leandro’s hard, black gaze settles on Pip, and Clare’s heart lurches, but then his face softens and he shrugs a little.

‘I saw him out first thing this morning. Loping along on that crutch he’s found. He’s fine, Pip, he just doesn’t want to sit down and eat like a gentleman.’

‘Why not?’ says Pip.

‘Philip, it’s rude to pry,’ says Boyd, keeping his eyes on the slice of bread in front of him, the puddle of honey where a fly is trying to land. He is sitting in a shaft of morning sun, squinting; the women have their backs to it.

‘Well, my nephew thinks I’ve sold out,’ says Leandro, ignoring Boyd.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he thinks I’ve betrayed my people – my class – by getting rich, and becoming the owner of this place instead of one of the peasants who simply work on it.’

‘I should’ve thought he’d be happy about it,’ says Pip. ‘Like now, when he’s sick, and he can come here to recover. Isn’t he happy about that?’

‘Oh, Pip, dear, it’s very complicated,’ says Marcie. ‘The peasants here, they’re … well, it’s like they’re from a different country altogether. Like they’re a different kind of people, you know? They have their own rules and codes and …’ She waves a hand, doesn’t finish.

‘Am I a different kind of person to the rest of you?’ says Leandro. His voice is smooth and even, but the words jolt Marcie.

‘No, of
course
not, sugar. I was only trying to explain …’

‘Perhaps explanations are better left to those who understand,’ he says. Marcie smiles and nods, and turns all her attention to her cup of coffee. Pip’s cheeks blaze on her behalf, and Leandro smiles when he sees.

‘Ettore is happy for me. That is, he was. He doesn’t resent my wealth – it’s not that. So many men went to America from here, and so few came back. His sister’s husband went, and he vanished. They’ve had no word from him in five years now. I tried to find him over there; I tried constantly, but I never did. The last anybody heard, he was digging tunnels for the subway. Now he could be dead, alive …’ Leandro shrugs. ‘And as I said before, those that do come back usually spend what little money they saved and are soon back to where they started.

‘These are hard times; even the rich aren’t rich. The peasants look at a farm like this and they think the man who owns it must be rich. But we’re not – not by any measure outside of Puglia. The yields are poor, petrol is hard to come by, the government took most of the machinery and good animals during the war, it never damn well rains, the soil is ruined from generations of bad farming … We can’t afford to pay as many workers as want work. We leave some land fallow, because we can’t afford to pay the men to work it, and what do they do? They go and work it anyway – their Chambers of Labour tell them they have the right to work, so they go and they work it, and then they come to the proprietor and demand to be paid for their labour! So, at first my nephew was happy to see me, and he thought that because I know what life is like for these men, I would give them work – plentiful work, for good pay, all the year round. But I can’t do that, so he tells me I am one of them now, and he hates me.’ Leandro spreads his hands and shakes his head. ‘I’m wrong to say he hates me,’ he adds quietly. ‘He’s only angry. Angry that I couldn’t find Paola’s husband in New York. Angry that I can’t change the world for him. Angry about what happened at the Girardi place last year. Angry that his woman is dead.’

Clare starts at this, she can’t help it. Boyd covers her hand with his but she doesn’t look at him.
His woman is dead
. A dry breeze moves through the courtyard, reaches into the buildings and slams a door. The tablecloth flutters. Nobody speaks; they all wait for Leandro’s lead, and keep their eyes down, and suddenly Clare hates herself, and all of them, for their cowardice. She looks across at Leandro.

‘A serious subject for the breakfast table,’ she says.

‘The world is a serious place, Mrs Kingsley,’ says Leandro. She notices how rarely he blinks. But then he smiles. ‘But you’re right. These are not matters to be solved over morning coffee. At least the boy is healing; I’ve no wish to see him ruined. I offer him work here on the
masseria
– I offer it every time. But the
annaroli
are as bad as the proprietors, as far as the
giornatari
are concerned.’

‘What’s an
annaroli
? And what happened at the Girardi place?’ says Pip.

‘
Annarolo
means a man who works here all year round, in a permanent job – the overseer and the herdsman, the corporals. And never mind Girardi. Come – let’s talk of other things. I’ll speak to my nephew again today, and what’s between us is for us to untangle. Tell me instead about this play you’re devising.’

Clare wants to ask him about the woman who is dead, the woman who belonged to Ettore, but she doesn’t dare. Suddenly, it’s more important than Leandro’s past, more important than his hold over Boyd and the lies she’s been told. She concentrates on breathing; she can smell the cattle on the breeze, and a woody, fungus aroma she can’t place. She can smell the greasy dogs on their rusty chains. She gets to her feet, knocks the table and causes cutlery to chime against porcelain.

‘Clare, are you all right?’ says Boyd. She looks down at him, and it feels as though she’s looking at him from a long way away.

‘I’m fine. I think I’ll go for a walk; I need some fresh air.’ She knows this sounds absurd, since they’re sitting outside, but she doesn’t care.

‘I’ll go with you,’ says Pip, also standing and snatching up the last piece of bread from his plate. Nobody else offers and Clare is relieved. Pip is the only one she can be with just then.

‘Rehearsals when you get back, Filippo,’ Marcie calls as they go. She turns to Boyd and adds: ‘I’ve been wracking my brains, but I honestly don’t think that there
is
an Italian version of Boyd, I’m afraid.’ Clare doesn’t hear Boyd’s murmured reply.

Once Pip has stopped to greet Bobby, who barks slightly less but still fidgets at the end of his tether, they walk out through the main gates and around the back, past the
trulli
where some of the men sleep. One or two loiter there, simply standing, smoking. Clare feels their eyes following her and Pip. She looks over defiantly but one of them is Federico, and she looks away again quickly, but not before she catches that same questioning look in his eye, and perhaps Pip notices it too, because he scowls even as he gives them a small wave. The mule that was treated for lampas is standing in the stockade with its head down, a picture of misery. Clare says nothing, hoping Pip won’t notice it there.

In the distance the milking herd are grazing in a walled field, so they walk in that direction, glad for something to aim for, something to look at. Aside from the dusty road that leads away from the gates, there are no discernible paths. The road curves away and vanishes behind the shallow hill; Clare has no idea if Gioia lies to the north, south, east or west. She can’t exactly picture where she is within Italy, other than south; far south. This realisation frightens her – she is completely lost. Completely dependent on Boyd and Leandro.

‘You don’t like Mr Cardetta very much, do you?’ says Pip, with studied casualness. He picks up a stick from beneath an olive tree and starts to peel away the bark. Mr Cardetta, he says, not Leandro – just as she instructed. Clare wonders how stern she must look for him to suddenly do as she’s asked. She tries to soften her face but it’s not quite in her control.

‘I don’t feel I know him well enough to decide yet,’ she says, and this seems to trouble him.

‘But you like Marcie, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. It would be hard not to like someone like Marcie.’

‘That’s a reason to like Mr Cardetta, isn’t it? I mean, if somebody nice has married a person, I usually take it as a good sign about them. Don’t you?’

‘I suppose so. Sometimes. But people do change,’ says Clare. ‘He obviously loves her a great deal.’

‘Are you going to watch our rehearsal today?’

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Yes, of course. Only it might ruin the play if you watch all the rehearsals. I mean, we’re planning a surprise ending.’

‘Well, I’ll watch until you come to something you want to keep secret, how about that?’

‘All right.’ He swishes the olive stick, makes it
whoop
through the air. ‘Have you seen any other ch—’ He cuts himself off, caught in the act of calling himself a child. ‘Young people here? At the
masseria
, I mean?’

‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t,’ says Clare, knowing how lonely and quiet it must be for him.

‘Good job I’ve got Bobby,’ he says stoutly. She puts her arm around his shoulders for a moment, and gives them a squeeze.

‘Do you know, my aunt’s old dog used to go bananas for toast crusts? Especially if there was a bit of jam on them. He’d do anything – turn circles, play dead, shake hands. Maybe toast crusts will be the key to Bobby’s heart,’ she says.

They stop at the edge of the cattle field and sit down on the wall for a while. Lizards scatter from their feet, darting out of sight; flies appear at once to buzz around their heads. The cows are browsing the wheat stubble and the dark, dirty weeds in amongst it. The herd leader’s bell has a sad chime, flat and in a minor key, and they all whisk their tails continually at the flies. A few of them have small calves at their feet, and the calves try repeatedly to suckle from their mothers. From a distance it’s hard to work out why they can’t seem to manage it, but as the herd gradually comes closer Clare sees the collars the calves are wearing – collars of long metal spikes, even longer than those that the guard dogs wear. Every time the calf gets close enough to reach for the udders, its mother gets jabbed, kicks out and moves away from it. The calves are bony and forlorn, they pick at the stubble while their mothers’ udders swell.

‘Why aren’t they allowed to drink?’ says Pip, and in an instant Clare knows the answer.

‘So we can.’

‘Oh. That’s so cruel, though,’ he says, and he looks across at them, scowling. Clare wants to get up and walk away from the pitiful spectacle, and try to distract Pip from this realisation, but something stops her. They both drank the milk at breakfast, and ate the fresh mozzarella the night before.

‘A lot of what people do to animals is cruel. A lot of what people do to people is cruel,’ she says, surprising herself. She wouldn’t normally say such a thing to Pip, especially not after the brutal spectacle of the mule the day before. Not every cow has a calf, and she thinks of the veal they ate back at the house in Gioia. Pip stands up and turns his back to them.

‘Well, I think it’s completely unacceptable. They’re only babies! I’m going to ask Marcie – I bet she could get them to take the collars off.’

‘I don’t think you should, Pip. This is how the farm is run … It’s not up to you. It’s probably not up to Marcie.’

‘You always used to say I should stand up against injustice however I could,’ he challenges her.

‘Yes.’

‘Well then.’ He shrugs.

‘Pip—’

‘You said we were going to go home.’ He sounds petulant, younger than his age, so she knows how unhappy he is, and she’s hit by a wave of guilt; she puts her hand out to him.

‘I’m sorry. It’s … it’s not up to me.’ For a moment they’re silent. Pip ignores her hand, kicking at a rock the size of his fist, knocking it to and fro. ‘You do understand that, don’t you? Your father wants us to stay,’ Clare says.

‘How long for?’

‘I don’t know. Until he’s finished his work, I suppose. Mr Cardetta wants us to stay too, to keep Marcie company.’

‘Marcie told me we’re the first guests that have come to stay with them here – the first ones ever. Can you believe that?’

‘Well, it’s no wonder they want us to stay then, is it?’ she says. Pip shrugs, and nods. He kicks at the rock and lashes the olive stick to and fro, full of frustration. Clare looks to the horizon, across the vast stretch of land, dry as old bones, beneath a sky like hot metal. She thinks it no wonder that the Cardettas’ first guests have been compelled to come, and must be compelled to stay.

After that Clare walks a lot. She walks in the morning and late in the afternoon, when the heat is not as fierce. Even so, her face and arms begin to tan, and freckles appear across the bridge of her nose. Marcie exclaims in dismay at them, and loans Clare a white scarf to drape over the brim of her hat, but it’s too hot and Clare can’t stand it obscuring her vision, so she carries it but doesn’t use it. Boyd insists on accompanying her on one occasion, but after his attempts at conversation founder they walk in a silence that he clearly finds excruciating. Clare doesn’t mind it. Suddenly she has nothing to say to her husband, and there’s nothing she needs to hear from him. When he holds her hand sweat slides between their palms. After that he lets her walk by herself. Leandro suggests she takes Federico with her and she declines at once.