The Night Falling (4 page)

‘I’m sure we could find a servant to do that for you – Cardetta seems to have hundreds of them,’ he says. Clare smiles over her shoulder at him.

‘I can manage well enough without a ladies’ maid,’ she says. ‘He must be very rich, then?’

‘I should say so. This is one of the oldest and biggest houses in Gioia – well, of those that he could get his hands on, anyway.’

‘Oh?’

‘Cardetta wasn’t always rich – and he was away in America for twenty years. I get the impression that the
signori
here – the upper crust – treat him as a bit of a Johnny-come-lately.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s understandable,’ she says. ‘Especially if he was away for so long. How did he make his money?’

‘In New York.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Do stop that and come here,’ he says, with mock severity. Clare looks at the crumpled silk shirt in her hands, and the way the pale yellow of it perfectly mirrors the light-filled sky outside. She wishes she wouldn’t hesitate but she can’t seem to help it. But then she smiles and does as he says, sitting gingerly in his lap. He wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her chest, and somehow it’s not sexual, but as though he wants to hide. ‘Clare,’ he breathes out her name, and she feels the heat of his breath on her skin.

‘Is everything all right, darling?’ she says, trying to sound bright, trying for offhand.

‘It is now that you’re here.’ He tightens his grip until Clare can feel his watch digging into her ribs. ‘I love you so much, my dearest Clare.’

‘And I love you,’ she says, and just then notices how very dry her lips feel. Dry and miserly. She shuts her eyes for a moment and wishes that he would stop there, say nothing more. She wishes that his grip would loosen. But he doesn’t stop there, and he doesn’t loosen his grip.

‘I would die without you, you know. I swear it.’ Clare wants to deny it – she has tried to before. She has tried, in the hope that he will realise how onerous his words are. ‘My angel,’ he whispers. She can feel his arms shake from the strain of keeping hold. Or perhaps it’s she that shakes. ‘My angel. I would die without you.’ She wants to say,
no, you would not
, but when he says such things something gets hold of her throat and squeezes it, and no words will come out. She can’t tell if it’s guilt, or fear, or anger. She reminds herself that most women would be grateful for such devotion in a husband; she reminds herself to be grateful.

‘I should go and check on Pip,’ she manages to say, sometime later.

When the sun has set they join their hosts for a drink in the garden, at the long table beneath the vine-covered veranda. A silent girl with her black hair parted in the middle, wearing an old-fashioned, high-necked blouse with a frill, brings a tray of glasses and a jug of some dark drink, and begins to pour. Small round fruit plop out into the glasses with the liquid, like soft pebbles.

‘Oh, good –
amarena
,’ says Marcie, clapping her hands. ‘This is just the thing you folk need after your long trip. Wild cherry juice – we can’t always get them, but when we do, one of the kitchen girls mixes up a batch of this stuff. She keeps the recipe all to herself, mind you – she absolutely refuses to show me! There’s some herb she adds that I just can’t put my finger on. She says it was her grandmother’s secret. Isn’t that just hilarious? To guard something as silly as a recipe?’

‘It’s not silly at all,’ Leandro tells his wife serenely. ‘She has precious little to call her own.’

‘Well, fine then.’ Marcie doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Try it – go on. There’s sugar there if you want it, but I think it’s delicious as it is.’ She beams at Pip, and he does as he’s told. He’s changed into a clean shirt and tie and his stone-coloured linen blazer with its matching waistcoat, but somehow his clothes still look wrong in their surroundings. He looks like a hastily spruced schoolboy, when at home he’d worn the new outfit into town with the hint of a proud swagger in his step. As if he realises, Pip stays at the edge of his chair and looks embarrassed. Clare sips her drink.

‘It is delicious,’ she says automatically, and then realises that it’s true. She steals a long glance at Leandro Cardetta.

He looks to be approaching fifty; he has copious iron-grey hair, swept back from his temples and from a high forehead, deeply lined. He is certainly not beautiful, but perhaps he’s almost handsome; his face has a certain gravitas, a kind of heft to the sculptural features – jaw and nose and brows. His skin is bronze and has the thick, smooth look of good leather. There are deep creases at either side of his mouth, and pouches under his eyes, and those eyes are so dark it’s hard to see the pupil against the iris – it looks instead as though his pupils are enormous, dilated far beyond the norm. Perhaps it’s this that makes his resting expression one of warmth and approachability. He is not overly tall, not nearly as tall as Boyd; his shoulders are strong and square, ribs like a barrel; a slight paunch, a mark of good living, fills out the space behind his shirt. He leans back in his chair, the small glass of
amarena
held in the fingers of his left hand with surprising delicacy. He is watchful without being disconcerting; elegant not but effeminate.

Catching Clare’s surreptitious gaze, he smiles.

‘Whatever will make your stay with us more comfortable, you must only ask, Mrs Kingsley,’ he says smoothly.

‘Unless it’s music or shopping or cinema, or a blaze through a casino – in which case you’re bang out of luck!’ Marcie declares.

‘Marcie,
cara
, you must not make it sound as though Gioia is completely devoid of fun. We have a very fine theatre – do you care for the theatre, Mrs Kingsley?’

‘Oh, very much so. And Pip too – he is proving to be a fine actor, in fact,’ says Clare.

‘Philip – is it true?’ Marcie leans across and grasps his forearm, staring avidly.

‘Well, I …’ Pip’s voice breaks and he clears his throat, flushing. ‘I was in a play last term, and people said I did well. I was Ariel in
The Tempest.
’

‘And you were quite brilliant, actually,’ says Clare.

‘But –
I’m
an actress, didn’t you know? Well, I was, back in New York. Not much call for it here. But, oh, I
love
the theatre! I love acting … It’s something in the blood, don’t you think – it’s a calling you can’t ignore. Do you feel that, Pip? Does acting make your heart soar?’

‘Well, I … I do think I should like to be in another play, certainly,’ he says. ‘But it’s not something one can really make a career out of, is it?’ These are Boyd’s words, coming out of his mouth, and they give Clare a sinking feeling. Pip’s heart did soar during that play. She saw it happen.

‘Well, why ever not?
I
did.’

‘Pip’s a good scholar. He’ll go up to Oxford, and then to chambers,’ says Boyd. He sips the crimson drink then rolls his lips back slightly.

‘Add some sugar, if it’s too sour,’ says Leandro, passing him the sugar bowl. Boyd smiles thinly without looking at him, and spoons some into his glass.

‘Chambers? You mean law? Ugh, why not say mausoleum? Poor boy!’

‘Not at all. My father always intended me for the law, but I hadn’t the mind for it. Pip has. It would be outrageous to waste such natural good fortune.’

‘And what about what Pip wants?’ Marcie asks this lightly but Clare can see Boyd taken aback to be challenged; she wishes Marcie would drop it.

‘He’s only a boy. He can’t be expected to know what he wants,’ he says. Marcie pats Pip’s arm, then gives him a jaunty wink.

‘I’ll work on them, don’t you fret. What’s the law compared to applause?’ she says. Clare is relieved when Boyd chooses not to reply to this question.

Dinner is an array of dishes, some of which arrive together, some on their own after a suitable pause. Fresh white cheeses, breads, vegetables dressed in lemon and oil; pasta with broccoli; rolled strips of veal; soft focaccia bread oozing olive oil and the smell of rosemary. Pip eats as though he hasn’t for days, but even he is defeated in the end. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and Leandro laughs – a deep, sudden bark.

‘Philip – I should have warned you. Forgive me. In this house they will keep bringing food as long as you keep clearing your plate.’ Pip has had a glass of wine, and looks far more relaxed.

‘I think I shall be very happy here,’ he says, and Leandro laughs again.

‘Perhaps a short walk, to look at the town and to let the meal settle before bed?’ says Clare. She too has overeaten; the smell of the fresh food woke a hunger gone dormant from being so long ignored. Marcie and Leandro share a quick glance between themselves. ‘Isn’t that the thing to do, here in Italy?
La passeggiata
?’ says Clare.

‘Yes, Mrs Kingsley, that’s so. However, here in the south we take our
passeggiata
earlier in the evening – around six, as the sun is setting. The gentlefolk, I mean. Now, this late, the streets are … more for the working men, lately back from the fields. There’s no law, of course, but perhaps tomorrow, at an earlier hour, might be better for you to walk,’ says Leandro.

‘Oh. I see,’ says Clare. Leandro inclines his head smoothly at her acceptance, and she wonders about the black-and-whiteness of this, the idea that people are either peasants or gentry, with none of the middle strata to which Clare and Boyd belong at home.

Marcie suggests a tour of the house to Clare instead, when the food is cleared away. Boyd and Leandro stay at the table, drinking a bitter fennel liqueur that Clare can’t stomach, and that makes Pip grimace. Leandro fills and lights a long pipe, made of some pale wood and banded with ivory. Its blue smoke hovers in the air like a phantasm. Pip dithers for a moment, half out of his chair. He’s not child enough to follow the women, not man enough to want to stay with the men. His eyes are pink and sunken with fatigue.

‘You look done in, Pip,’ says Clare. ‘Why not turn in? I shan’t be far behind you.’ She guesses he will like the time alone, to read and explore his room, and she sees she’s right in his relieved expression.

‘Perhaps you’re right, Clare,’ he says. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Cardetta? Father?’

‘By all means, Philip.’ Leandro nods, gives a benevolent smile. ‘Rest well. Tomorrow, we will talk motor cars, you and I – I have something to show you that I think you’ll like.’

Marcie leads Clare away, passing from room to room, flicking the light switches on as she goes, leaving them for the servants to switch off behind them. The leather soles of her sandals make almost no sound as she walks; her narrow figure is sinuous beneath her clothes. They pass through a library and some stern, masculine rooms that have huge desks and severe-looking chairs, through a cavernous sitting room more lavishly done, and then another, and then a dining room with a table in the middle that could comfortably seat twenty-four diners, and a ceiling festooned with painted plasterwork. The floors are of polished stone or colourful, intricate tiles; the windows all have heavy shutters, and their voluminous curtains are held back by twisted silk ropes. It is all grand, with a kind of solid splendour, but Clare finds it oppressive, stagnant, as though it froze in time fifty years earlier. She begins to imagine the air creaking as they push through it. The place smells of stone and parched wood, and the prickle of dusty damasks.

Marcie turns to face Clare as they reach the foot of a marble stair.

‘Well, what do you think?’ she says. Her accent runs the words together:
whaddyathink?

‘I think it’s very lovely,’ says Clare, after a fractional pause. Marcie smiles delightedly.

‘Oh, you Brits are always so damned
polite
! How could anyone not love you? It’s a
museum
, I know it is; a gentleman’s club from eighty years ago. Deny it – I dare you!’

‘Well … some of the decorations are perhaps a little dated.’

‘Ain’t that the truth. I’m working on him, honey, I’m working on him. My Leandro isn’t all the way used to the idea of a woman’s touch yet, but I’ll get him there, you’ll see.’

‘Now is the perfect time, surely? If Boyd’s here to redesign the façade, why not update the interior at the same time?’

‘That’s my
exact
argument, Clare. My exact argument. Can I say something rather personal?’ The question comes so suddenly that Clare blinks. In the half shadow of the staircase it’s hard to read Marcie’s expression. She’s smiling, but then, she’s always smiling.

‘Of course,’ says Clare. She hopes the question is not about Boyd.
What has he said?

‘Well, it just seems to me that you can’t even be
thirty
yet. I can’t figure that you’re that charming boy’s real mother?’ Clare’s heart thuds in relief. She exhales slowly.

‘I’ll be thirty at my next birthday, and you’re right. Pip’s mother was Boyd’s first wife, Emma. She was an American – a New Yorker, like you. She died when he was four years old.’

‘Oh that poor child. And poor Emma, knowing she had to leave her tiny boy behind! But lucky him to have such a thoroughly lovely and
un
wicked stepmother.’

‘We’re very close. I was only nineteen when I married Boyd …’ Clare trails off, unsure what she intended to say. Marcie’s eyes are alight, her curiosity plain, and Clare wonders how long she has been alone in this house, and how lonely she has been. ‘Well. I suppose I’ve been more like a big sister to him than a mother. He remembers Emma, of course.’

‘How did she die?’

Clare hesitates before answering. Soon after she met Boyd she asked her parents the same question, since they had mutual friends and a closer acquaintance with him then. She was told Emma had died in childbirth, while they were living in New York; that Boyd’s grief had been all-consuming, and she should avoid all mention of it. She’d accepted this unquestioningly, until a few months after her wedding when she’d come to know Pip a little better, and discovered that he had memories of his mother. Then her curiosity had been uncontrollable. It would have been too cruel to ask Pip, still a small boy, the true cause of her death so in the end, on an evening when Boyd was calm and happy, Clare gathered her courage and asked him. And he’d looked at her with such profound shock it was as though she hadn’t even been supposed to know Emma’s name, or that she had existed, let alone shown any interest in her. His pained expression had chilled her; it made her regret her words at once. She tried to take his hands and apologise but he disengaged her, stood and went to the door as if he would leave without answering. But then he paused, not looking at her.