The Whirling Girl (33 page)

THE CAVERNOUS ROOM THEY moved into had
trompe l'oeil
frescoes on either side. On the left was the town of San Gimignano as seen from a distance, with all its tall slim towers; on the right, a view down onto tiled roofs and countryside, as from the top of one of those towers. In each the artist had included an easel in the foreground, which held an almost completed version of that same scene, and an empty camp stool.

“He wished to be there, you see — so he painted the town instead, but left himself out of it,” Gianni's mother was explaining. “I have always thought that was clever. He was a prisoner here, in this house, during the war — or perhaps he was allowed to spend the duration hiding here. I have never quite learned the story.”

The domed ceiling swirled with figures rising heavenward on beams of radiance. Little angels peered over the rim. At the far end of the room, through arches of a loggia, was the actual distant presence of Siena, silhouetted against the blue-black evening sky, jewelled in lights. Gianni's mother was saying that the villa had been designed by a famous seventeenth-century architect to take advantage of that view.

Clare had heard somewhere that one did not admire the possessions of the rich, but she couldn't help exclaiming, “This is a breathtaking room.”

“Yes, we think it is quite amusing,” Gianni's mother said.

AT FIRST CLARE DID not see those guests
invited just for her
. They sat so still, and they were so very small.

“Carolina, Egidio — here we have the little friend of Gianni,” Mammà said.

There was a stir among the cushions in a far island of chairs and sofas. A tiny elderly couple turned their faces from a book they had been studying together. Carolina was all in grey silk, with white braids around her ears; Egidio wore a tiny barrel-chested velvet suit, a red stone the size of a quail's egg pinning his cravat. When Clare came close she saw it was her book they had been studying.

But they were not merely Carolina and Egidio. A pause, like a silent drum roll, preceded the introduction of the
Marchese di Barbareschi
and the
Marchesa
.

They sat beaming up at Clare. She felt all the objects in the room coming to discrete attention. Still, their joint smiles were mild, and very kind. They spoke more or less together in a verbal braid, one finishing or starting the sentences of the other, and occasionally both at once.

“So my dear,” they said. “We have looked with interest at your work in this volume, and it strikes us as quite adequate indeed, though understandably derivative of Margaret Mee. But most promising. You are clearly young. We speak, it must be fairly claimed without beating around the bush, as the most extensive collectors of such material perhaps in Europe, possessing not only the best of recent practitioners but many rare folios and florilegia.” They paused, expectantly.

Clare glanced towards Gianni. Where was this going?

He was studying his shoes.

“And we have been promised,” the duet continued, “Indeed, we have been thrilled to come up from Rome for this: we have been assured that we will see new work where the most skilled techniques of botanical art are combined with the portrayal of cleverly imagined species, which might be precisely what we had hoped to find for an exhibition we are planning — a most daring one, we must proclaim — of material along such lines.”

“Oh!”

Gianni did not meet her eye, instead crossed the room, pulled a bell rope by the marble fireplace.

“Gianni?”

He raised a hand to ward off her inquiry, smiled a guilty smile, “
Aspetta!
Just one moment.”

In less than a moment, a butler-looking person entered carrying the leather portfolio last seen in Gianni's study in the tower. The servant handed the case to Gianni, who set it on the sofa, flipped it open, pulled out Clare's meadow paintings one by one and laid them out on the broad low table in front of Egidio and Carolina.

CLARE COULDN'T LOOK AT Gianni now. She tried to get her feelings straight. It was theft — secretly taking her work, bringing it for these strangers to peer at, setting her up to be publicly judged! But she couldn't snatch the work away. That would be too embarrassing for him. She did glance up. He looked very pale but determined, that tense determined windswept look.

The
Marchese
and his wife leaned close. Clare couldn't help holding her breath as they picked up this painting and that one, glancing occasionally at each other. Despite her shock, she felt a tingle of excitement. She hadn't looked at these paintings herself for so long. Now she saw that they were so — yes — really beautiful. At least to her. They spoke to her. Some with intricate, interlocked, massed compositions, yet paying homage to each individual specimen; others eloquent with secrets shimmering both above and below the soil, delicacy and boldness combined. How they took her back to those hours working in the meadow, when she'd felt she could fly. And now these aristocratic people, these experts, these renowned collectors, were giving them such close attention; surely they would know that these were far more than just cleverly imagined species, that something of far greater worth was going on in these compositions; and then Gianni, too, would accept that these had not been fairytale inventions. The sickening sense of having to prove the truth of her work would vanish, like magic, without her ever having to burst the bubble of enchantment they shared.

Silence in the room. Then the whisper of displaced air from the puffy sofa cushions as Carolina and Egidio at last settled back, looked up at Clare with kindly smiles.

“How sweet,” Carolina said. “Have you thought of doing designs for decorator cloth? Or wallpapers perhaps!”

“Absolutely!” Edigio said. “This, for example, is very like the paper in the cabana of the Browns we stayed in, near Galveston, only more meticulously observed.”

“We have a very good friend in Como,” Carolina said, “who manufactures and exports all around the world! Will we put you in touch?”

Clare caught a covert fluttering of glances among the others, all still standing around as if in the presence of royalty, as perhaps they were. Even Mammà was still upright, leaning on her cane, perhaps not exactly following the contretemps but delighted that something amusing was going on.

Wallpaper.

Clare tried to look as if she had not picked up the devastating slight. Ashamed, at first, not just for herself but for these people, too; for how truly barbarically cutting those sweet smiling remarks had been. But perhaps they didn't understand, she told herself. Perhaps they moved in a higher realm where you could drop these small indictments on the needy, for their own good. Drop them lightly and move on. And maybe they were right.

“But come!” the Marchese di Barbareschi said. “You must tell us about yourself.” His wife reached out a hand, drew Clare down between them. “You are from America we understand.”

As if on cue, they began to sing in harmony, “
Oh the sage in bloom, is like perfume, boom boom boom boom …
” They reached across Clare to clap one another's hands. “
Deep in the heart of Texas! Reminds me of the one I love, deep in the heart of Texaaaaas!
”

The
Marchese
blew Carolina a kiss. She giggled like a girl. “We had such a romantic holiday in Texas, that time we stayed near Galveston!” Then, seized with a fit of coughing, she rustled for a lozenge in her tiny grey woven-leather reticule.

“Alfredo, water!” Gianni's mother ordered the butler who still hovered near.

Carolina leaned close to Clare. “It has been just a little difficult, as you can see, for us to come all this way from Rome, Egidio with his
reumatismo
, and me with my fatigues.”

Another guest came in just then — white-haired, cold-eyed, long-fingered, dressed in pale blue denim. He was introduced as Aldo. He said, “
Santa Maria
I am parched, where in heaven's name are the drinks?”

Gianni's mother said she had forgotten the drinks, because Gianni had been showing the paintings of his little friend.

“Toto!” she called to her husband. “What are you thinking of?”

CLARE GOT UP AND went out to the loggia, trying to collect her emotions and her thoughts. The setting was extraordinary. This was almost the worst, to be here, in this setting, suffering this tangle of confusions. A full moon had risen, presenting a scene of black and silver, everything of an extreme unreal perfection which at the same time felt as if it had been simmering all her life just below her skin. Whose eye could this have been designed for, if not for hers? The succession of descending terraces and clipped boxwood hedges that had been arranged with such intelligence, leading down to a lit-up fountain spraying a basket of water that exactly held the view of Siena, its lights quivering and shifting as if set on this liquid crown, an effect conceived centuries ago by that same famous architect, no doubt, who'd conceived the domed ceiling in the room where little angels had peered at her while the noble couple judged her paintings.

Gianni came and joined her. She should be angry, but how could she be as angry as was called for? It must have been humiliating for him to put her work forward, then to have its worth so saccharinely scorned. The best thing would be for her to plead a headache, ask him to take her back to his place right now.

He said, “Clare you must not take this too much to heart.”

So he wasn't even going to pretend it had not been a disaster?

She said, “Why on earth did you do that, hold me out like that?”

He tried to take her hand. She pulled it away. She said, “You did not like those paintings!”

He said no, no, that was completely untrue! He had always known those paintings were remarkable. He had told her they were remarkable. He had felt sure that when the Barbareschi saw them they would recognize such singular talent, despite the slightly fantastical nature of the work.

“I believed their approval would be the drug you needed to bring you back to painting again, and then turn your ability to what so badly needs to be recorded on this earth: what is real and true and often threatened.”

“Truth! From the man who believes in unicorns.”

He took a breath. “I am so devastated by this, on your behalf. But you see, Clare, as I said before once, I have some fear for you. Please, don't move away. What I must say now is so very hard for me to say.”

He said it, though.

At last.

He said that he knew, for one thing, that she had never been to the Amazon; he had many contacts, as she would undoubtedly understand. He confessed that at first he had thought that he would play along.

“But then I fell — bang!” He hit his forehead against a pillar to demonstrate the power of that bang. “And after this, I have wanted to bring you here and keep you safe and nurture you, for I have perceived that somewhere you have been badly damaged by the world. Yet what you have retained is so rare, and you can be so much more!”

Wasn't that what she wanted? Rescue. Wasn't that what she had wanted before, when they stood in her kitchen? Giving in. Being known, sheltered, understood?

Why was she holding back, saying, “Listen! I'm sorry my paintings didn't stand up to those noble people's noble scrutiny, and that the whole thing has been such an embarrassment for you, but —”

“For me? For me I do not care one fig! But I will never again have you exposed to such denigration, and then such foolishness with their damn song! I could have strangled the neck of that little man and pushed his ruby into his gullet.”

“Please! I've got to get out of here right now. Just drive me back. Tomorrow you can take me home. It was a mistake to come to La Celta. It gets me confused, if you really want the truth. It gives me uncomfortable ideas that I can't afford. I have to go back to my real life now.”

He looked shocked. “This is our real life. We have made all these plans!”

“You made them, Gianni. But you have a few other serious entanglements, don't forget.”

“No.” He pulled himself straight. He glared. “I have already crossed the Rubicon.” He straightened further, into a heroic stance, and she couldn't help smiling.

“You have?”

“I have written to Eleanora this morning, when we came back from the garden, when I saw you so upset. I have told her she does not need me, and I have been blessed beyond all measure to find someone who does. I have told her that you and I will marry.”

“Wait …”

For one moonstruck moment, everything did wait. The glittering drops of the fountain paused mid-air. The silvered scene hardened. Even the shadows gleamed metal, reflecting an overreaching wish come true.

Then a throat-clearing just behind. Aldo, of the thousand-dollar jeans.

“I have been delegated to tell the young people we are about to move to the dining room for dinner.”

Ring For Champagne

GIANNI'S MOTHER HAD REDONE the dining room to celebrate the estate's mythic roots, the walls papered in a design of Celtic knots set around Scottish scenes: a piper on a hill, a moon dancing on a rill, a stag at bay. She was explaining to the Barbareschi that the silk tartan table covering had been especially woven at Como. The napkin rings were amethyst and silver, each set with a rabbit foot.

Ralph Farnham put a hand on Clare's elbow as he pulled out her chair, murmuring ,“Welcome to the higher echelons, old dear. Didn't I once tell you that nothing could ever be good enough?” He looked pleased to have a fellow traveller on that road. “Just thank your glitzy little American stars that you're the girlfriend,” he added, “and not locked in like some of us.” Federica shot a scowl mirroring the stag's head on the wall.

Gianni was seated across from Clare, but not directly opposite.

A new arrival, Nunziata, had been put beside him, a woman of a certain age, making every effort to fend it off. Succeeding, too. Mulberry hair in wild curls. Green eyes. All the lines and wrinkles falling gracefully into place, under a toffee glaze of sun. How was it possible, also, to wear so few inches of very bright green silk and still signal elegance and class?

Nunziata's husband was in Zurich. There was laughter around this. With Nunziata's arrival, the tide of language swept into fast Italian.

“You must forgive us,” Nunziata said, leaning in Clare's direction after another burst of laughter, offering cleavage down which Tomasso was sadly staring. “This is all my fault. I do not to speak your language very well.”

But Clare was glad to be left out. Since Gianni's declaration, her ribcage had turned metallic too, like a true cage, so much racketing around inside.

Gianni's bold pronouncement was sure to evaporate — that much came clear, as the nonsense in her chest settled down. Maybe he had written to his wife, but hadn't posted the letter — or if an email, he'd neglected to press “Send.” He was making stiff conversation with Nunziata now, glancing Clare's way from time to time, and she tried to telegraph him the message
Don't worry. I know it was just another lovely dream
. She smiled. He looked more worried still, perhaps mistaking her smile for excitement at his supposed decision, imagining she'd taken him seriously, believed?

Carolina and Egidio were in fine form, tackling their antipasto with rapid tiny bites, and more than once bursting into snatches of song. Was this their concept of noblesse oblige, an attempt to keep the party lively and at the same time to cover up what they might now be thinking had been their insensitivity?

Gianni looked increasingly pale and tense, and Clare wondered if she hadn't wished those overreaching wishes earlier today, would he have spoken as he had, and landed himself in such a pickle now?

Look what I've brought on him, she thought. She remembered him listing all the butterflies gone from the world, how he'd made those names into a poem. He'd battled the terrible sadness of extinction by saving what he could — even to the point of a defiant faith in things that never could be what he thought. Like the unicorn. Or her.

The consommé arrived. Carolina and Egidio turned to Clare. “In America, you have such soups!” they said. “We heard the jingle everywhere.” Egidio raised his spoon. “
Mmmm good!
” Carolina chimed in with the tune. The others laughed and clapped.

“Signora Livingston,” Carolina said. “In truth, you must be just a little homesick for your great country. Eager perhaps to return?”

Gianni pushed back his chair.

“Signora Livingston has no intention to leave. This evening I have asked my dear Clare to be my wife.”

The stag's head bobbled on the wall, the rabbit feet skipped across the cloth; Clare had no idea how long it was before it all rearranged itself. If she had been prepared for this, she would have expected argument, outrage. But Gianni's mother was looking at her, for the first time, with piercing interest. Even Tomasso had emerged from his protective detachment to nod across the table at his stepson, wearily, as if to say
Welcome to the club
. Everyone indeed seemed to quicken at the coming scandal, which would in a manner absolve them all by being even more notorious.

But little was said.

“Tomasso. Ring for some champagne,” Gianni's mother ordered. “We must acknowledge this interesting news.” Gianni was beaming, as if all his earlier tension had been about finding the right moment to make his announcement. Tall crystal glasses were raised, though no one proposed a toast. Even the
Marchese
and his little grey mate seemed unable to rise to the correct ebullient protocol. The meal continued. Talk became general again. Carpaccio followed. Then quail. Clare found herself studying Mammà,
the fatal trout
, trying to calibrate Tomasso's feelings for the woman who had cost him so much, and who was telling the story once again of her origins as a citizen of France, tossing her thin ringed hands, batting her bluerimmed eyes at Aldo now. Clare decided that Tomasso didn't feel indifference to the once-fatal beauty after all, no. What his restrained expression revealed was pure and intensely loyal hate.

The air in the room began to solidify. Clare imagined herself in distant years, at this table, repeating for the fifth time some story of her own past, and Gianni looking at her in that same way, everything long ago hardened between the two of them, the way the silver scene had earlier. He is the endangered one, she thought; but how skittery the truth was. She watched it dart round the table, thinking that for once she had to catch it, make it talk. Instead, she saw the Roman garden Gianni had promised he would build for her inside their dream villa, the garden where she would sit and paint, and he would watch: the beautiful place, walled up brick by brick, by that watchful love.

Gianni was giving minute attention to the many tiny bones of his quail, looking ravenous, relieved, subsumed by happiness. Clare got up from the table, intending just to find the powder room, but as she passed under the gaze of the little angels on the ceiling of the San Gimignano room, her meadow paintings called out in the semi-gloom. She gathered them together, slid them into Gianni's portfolio, carried this with her to the arched front door as she went out to breathe the air.

Across the gravel court the musical iron gates were singing. It was like a dance, as she took one step down the marble staircase, and another and another, one flight to the right, doubling back to the left. She passed the fountain with the spouting dolphin, and kept going.