Authors: Katherine Webb
‘Go? I can’t
go
!’ said Boyd, almost shouting. He shook his head manically. ‘I can’t go home. I have to be there.’
‘All right,’ she murmured, and in that moment, again, she didn’t know him at all. There was something underneath, something inside him she didn’t recognise. ‘May I see your drawings?’ she said. He took a breath and looked away.
‘Yes. If you’d like. They’re risible,’ he said. But they weren’t risible. Boyd had designed a building both grand and graceful; simple yet striking. What it was not was innovative. It was a perfect piece of stone-built, European
beaux-arts
, and wouldn’t have looked at all out of place on the Champs-Élysées. There was no Egyptian clock tower, no pinnacles; nothing of the exotic. Clare swallowed her confusion, and something that was almost disappointment. He seemed to neither want nor need her opinion, but she gave it anyway, as robustly as she could.
‘I think it’s wonderful, Boyd. I think it’s just wonderful.’
‘Do you?’ he said, but he didn’t want reassurance. The question sounded scornful, and an affirmation died on her lips.
As they entered the foyer of the Hotel Astor on the night of the party Clare felt tremors running through Boyd; insistent little shivers, as if he was freezing on the inside that warm May night. She didn’t care that she wore the least jewellery of any woman there, or that her dress was the least fashionable. She didn’t care about being patronised, and called
quaint
. She no longer even cared whether or not the bank chose Boyd’s design. She only cared about getting away, getting out of New York, going home, with the hope that he would then go back to being the man she’d married. That man had sorrow inside him, but at least sorrow was a thing she could recognise. This nameless terror, this crack in his soul that seemed to be widening, was nothing she knew. He spoke to nobody; he drank with grim determination and his eyes darted from face to face, and into the corners of the room, as though he felt watched.
The young mayor made a speech about their ever-developing great city, and about clearing out corruption. Boyd paled as he listened. He radiated tension, and as the evening grew old he crossed the room to talk to the mayor, who was conversing with two other men. And then it was over. They went back to the apartment, and caught the boat home the next day, and a week later heard that Boyd’s building had been chosen, and would be built. He squeezed Clare tightly then, and for a long time.
‘Thank you, Clare. My angel, thank you,’ he whispered. ‘I wouldn’t have survived it without you.’ By that time, Clare was too exhausted and too bewildered to guess, or to ask what it was he’d survived.
Now she thinks she knows, at least in part, because it can’t be a coincidence that they have been called to Italy by a New York acquaintance Clare hadn’t known existed, and that Boyd is showing some of the same symptoms of stress that he had in New York. For the first time ever she’s angry with her husband for hiding things from her. For leaving her to guess at so many things that he won’t talk about.
I won’t allow it
, Cardetta said, and there had been no doubting that without his consent, she and Pip could not leave. The anger is as unfamiliar to Clare as the new wakefulness she’s felt since Ettore Tarano was brought to the
masseria
. She examines the feeling, noting the way it makes her move abruptly and create more noise than she normally would.
Everything that was muted is loud and obvious now. She’s fascinated by the feel of things. She runs her hands over the powdery plaster walls of the bedroom, the smooth dark wood of the bed frame, the rough stone blocks in the stairwell, the hard linen table napkins, shiny from pressing. She rolls splinters of bread crust into powder between finger and thumb; pulls her hands through long lengths of her own hair. The lines of grout between the white and red floor tiles press hard into the soles of her feet; grit gets into her shoes and grinds against the leather insoles as she walks; she hears the changing percussion of her heels on tile, stone, and dusty ground. Before, she could only smell the mess of the dairy cows, the cloying scent of their milk and the jasmine flowers. Now she can smell the stone itself, limey and hard; she can smell the guards’ sweat, built up over years in the fabric of their shirts. She can smell her own sweat, and Pip’s hair that needs washing again. She can smell Marcie’s face powder. She can smell the dust in the tasselled curtains.
Pip is determined to make a pet of one of the guard dogs. He spends two days studying and assessing them, decides which seems the most receptive and names it Bobby.
‘
Bobby
?’ Marcie echoes, when he tells them over lunch. ‘Shouldn’t he have an Italian name, though? It’ll be hard enough to tame him if he can’t understand you.’
‘It’s short for Roberto,’ says Pip, with a grin, and Marcie laughs.
‘You must be careful, Pip,’ says Clare. ‘Mr Cardetta warned you that they’re not the kind of dogs you’re used to.’
‘I know, but Bobby’s different. Come and see, will you? Can I take him the bones from my chops?’
‘Oh, sure, whatever you want,’ says Marcie. ‘Only don’t ask me to go and stroke the thing. I’ve never liked dogs.’
‘Bobby’s not a thing! Come on, Clare.’ The dogs start barking as soon as they appear through the front door of the
masseria
. Their feet churn the dust as they pace at the ends of their chains; their voices are deep and hoarse. Clare had expected lean, sparse, desert dogs to cope with the Puglian climate, like the dogs from the hieroglyphs on an ancient tomb; not these heavy, shaggy, white things. The fur under their bellies is filthy and knotted. Pip leads her to one, which she assumes is Bobby. It cowers and bares its teeth; it snarls even as it wags its tail; runs at them then sidles back. The animal has been driven half-mad by its tethered life and has no idea who or what it is, or how to behave towards a stranger offering food, and Clare both pities and fears it. Its confusion is dangerous; Pip can’t know what the dog will do next if it doesn’t know itself. She takes his arm, stops him getting too close.
‘Careful, darling. Please – I know you like him but it will take him a while to trust you, and if he’s frightened he might bite.’
‘He won’t bite me,’ says Pip, but Clare’s relieved to see he keeps himself at a prudent distance. Bobby refuses to come and take the pork bones, and in the end Pip has to throw them. The dog stinks; Clare can smell its breath when it barks. Its bewilderment pierces her heart. ‘He could be a good dog, don’t you think?’ says Pip.
‘He already is – he has a job to do here, and perhaps it’s not very fair to try and interfere with that,’ she says.
‘I’m not
interfering
,’ says Pip, hurt. ‘I’m only making friends.’
‘I know, darling. Come on – fancy a walk?’
Later, when Ettore joins them for dinner, Clare’s distracted by nerves. She can’t concentrate on the food or on Marcie’s chatter. She can sense Pip’s curiosity, and their hostess’s slight mania; she guesses that there is some family drama concerning Leandro’s nephew, yet to play out. Most of all she can sense Ettore’s indecision, his desperation. She sits forward, ready, not sure what she’s ready for. He gives her the same feeling as Bobby does – that she has no idea what he will do next; that he also has no idea. He eats like he hasn’t in a week and she wants to steady him in case he chokes. He is whip-thin, the muscles on his arms and shoulders are lean and hard; there’s nothing spare. Below his ribs his stomach is concave. When she speaks to him she hopes she is understood. Their rapid English, which they allow to pass him by, seems like an insult, and she hates it. She thinks hard, searching out the right words in Italian, and when she says them there’s the slightest easing of his tension, and she’s glad. She wants to know about his unusual eyes, but what can she ask? These things happen; the commingled blood of a thousand ancestors produces strange anomalies, now and then. She wants to tell him he is beautiful, but he wouldn’t want to hear it. He’s living through a crisis, she can feel it, and she couldn’t bear to make herself ridiculous to him.
Ettore keeps himself apart from them. The next day, Marcie and Pip start their acting lessons in the unused room high in the south-west corner of the
masseria
, which has windows looking out across the
aia
, and to the horizon where the sun will set. Clare goes up to watch, for something to do, because her mind is too full and there are no books to read, nothing to distract her, or to keep her eyes from searching him out constantly. The room is empty of furniture apart from a dusty old couch – sagging, dishevelled – which they drag in from a neighbouring room and position facing the dais where a bed would once have been, which will be the stage. On the wall above this platform are the faded remains of a large mural, painted into a shallow, half-moon alcove. There are traces of blue and red robes, the feet of a dog, faces blurred by time and the chalking of the plaster. One perfect brown eye remains, floating in strange clarity in the obliterated remains of a face. It’s wide and benign, but still it gives Clare an uneasy feeling, a sense of being transparent.
Marcie and Pip’s voices echo back at them from the lofty ceiling; the curtains have been taken down, the rest of the walls are bare. In the corner where the roof leaks there’s bat shit on the tiles and a swathe of algae and water stain creeping down the wall.
‘So it must rain here, sooner or later,’ says Clare.
‘Oh, yes. It’s long overdue. Mind you, last year was a
disaster
– such a drought! And all the men muttering darkly about the harvest, all the time. Oh, it was grim. This year’s been positively soggy in comparison,’ says Marcie. ‘We had one rainstorm – well, you would have had to see it to believe it. You see the way the ground goes into that shallow gully out front there?’ She points out of the window, and Clare nods. ‘Full of water. Running like a river. It was amazing! I went a little bit nuts at the sight of it – I’d have paddled in it if Leandro hadn’t stopped me. They all just stood there and stared at it – all the farm boys. Like they’d never seen such a thing, and I suppose maybe they never had. It was all gone by the next morning, of course.’
‘Oh, look at the bats!’ says Pip, pointing up. Along one ceiling beam are a clustered line of dark bodies, silent and unmoving.
‘Ugh! Don’t!’ Marcie shudders. ‘It’ll be far, far better if I just pretend they aren’t there. Now, first things first. Some exercises to loosen us up and make us breathe and project properly. Filippo, if you’ll join me.’ She steps up onto the dais and shakes out her arms.
For almost an hour Clare watches Pip and Marcie inhaling and
do-re-me
-ing; rolling their heads, shaking their hands, expanding their ribcages. They each recite a favourite poem and then some lines from a play, and Marcie gives tips in the same breath as she praises, and Clare thinks that she would have made an excellent teacher if she hadn’t ended up on a remote farm in the remotest part of Italy. The smell of the guano makes her head ache; dust from the sofa makes her itch. It’s all she can do to sit still, not get up and run somewhere; she doesn’t know where. Then the dogs all start barking at once, the metal gates squeal and they hear a motor pulling in. Marcie pauses, then beams and claps her hands.
‘That’s a wrap, Pip – here’s your pop and my Leandro!’ She ushers them out, biting her lips and patting her hair into its neat wave. Clare’s hair is unravelling from its knot, as usual; she knows her face is shiny from the heat, and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if Boyd sees her that way, and can’t decide if she envies or pities Marcie for her devotion to beauty, and her obvious devotion to her husband. Clare wouldn’t want Ettore Tarano to see her wearing make-up. She wouldn’t want to accentuate the obvious – that their two lives, their two worlds, could not be further apart. It troubles her, as they go down to the courtyard, to realise that it’s his eyes she’s trying to see herself through, not Boyd’s.
After he’s spoken with his nephew, and they’ve eaten lunch, Leandro insists on taking them on a tour of the farm, and the four of them follow obediently as he shows them around the barns and the dairy and the dusty olive grove that stretches over several acres to the front of the
masseria
. Marcie ties a diaphanous scarf over her hat and loosely under her chin, and flaps her hand constantly at the flies.
‘This damned dust gets into everything – you’ll soon see, Clare. Just you wait, when you get ready for bed later you’ll find it in your chemise,’ she says.
‘My Marcie is a city girl,’ says Leandro, with a smile. ‘This is honest dirt, honey. Not like the soot and corruption of New York.’
‘I knew where I was with soot and corruption,’ says Marcie. ‘And there weren’t all these bugs.’
‘My friend John is obsessed with insects,’ says Pip, walking ahead of Boyd and Clare, alongside Leandro and Marcie. ‘He catches them and puts them in jars to study them. Then when they die he pins them to pieces of card and keeps them. Even little tiny gnats and thunderbugs. Although, he has to use glue for the thunderbugs because they’re too small to pin.’
‘Ugh.’ Marcie gives a shudder. ‘And you’re
friends
with this kid, Filippo?’
‘Better an odd interest than no interests at all,’ says Leandro. ‘I’m an oddity, myself. Just ask anyone around here. Many men who leave Puglia for America never come back. And those that do buy a patch of land, and only then remember what farming down here is like, and are broke again in a matter of months.’
At the far side of the olive field is a
trullo
built into a section of field wall, sitting empty with weeds growing all around and inside it. Pip ducks inside the small building straight away, picking his way through fallen stones.
‘There’s not much in here,’ he calls out. ‘Lizards and thistles.’
‘Watch out for snakes,’ says Leandro, and laughs when Pip goes still. Clare gives him an anxious look. ‘You should be fine. But mind where you put your feet.’
‘They’re kind of like igloos, aren’t they?’ says Marcie. Boyd is walking slowly around the structure, studying the way the stones are laid.