Learning by Heart (26 page)

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Richard had said, coming to the door behind her.

‘Come out here,’ she whispered. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Someone will see you,’ he told her irritably. ‘Don’t stand there like that, Cora. Come inside.’

She did as he asked.

Over dinner, she asked Alex Carlyle about the house. It was ancient, he told her. One of the oldest buildings along the coast. ‘All of Sicily is old,’ he said. ‘It has an old heart, very slow, where Naples and Rome are fast. If you listen hard, you can hear Sicily’s heart beating.’

And he raised a finger theatrically, as if they could bear witness to it.

Cora sat back in her chair, gazing at him down the long, pale-wood table. The candles were burning low after their meal; the windows were open. She strained to listen, and heard voices far down in the street, the low drumming of insects.

‘You’re a romantic,’ Richard remarked to her, rather tonelessly.

‘One cannot be anything else in this town,’ Alex replied. He turned back to Cora. ‘Sicily has been at the heart of shifting civilizations for two and a half millennia,’ he said. ‘In the twelfth century, Palermo was described as the vastest and finest city of the world. The Arabs made the Conca d’Oro a garden. It was they who planted the palms and sugar cane.’

‘Sugar?’ Cora murmured. ‘I’ve heard of the lemons and oranges.’

The maid returned to the room with coffee, in a little aluminium pot, and three tiny porcelain cups.

‘What would Neapolitan coffee be without sugar?’ Alex asked. ‘Did you know that in Naples the sugar always goes in first?’

‘I didn’t,’ Cora said, beginning to laugh. ‘We hardly ever have coffee at home.’

Alex returned her smile. ‘And I’ve forgotten tea,’ he said.

‘You’re an Italian through and through,’ she said.

‘I’ll never be that,’ he answered. ‘I wish I could be.’

After coffee, they walked out on to the narrow terrace. It was full of flowers: red pelargonium in large clay pots. The balustrade of the balcony was decorated with insets of copper, coated with verdigris. Cora traced the trails of petals in the design while, far below them, the sea had the same greenish traces, phosphorus under the low moon.

‘Do you remember the Caviezels?’ Alex asked Richard.

Cora was amazed to feel the current of electricity that attached itself to the name. It hung in the air, redolent with its own inner rhythm.
Caviezel
. It’s like the name of one of those islands, Cora thought, between Sicily and Italy. The ferry had passed them in the maddening heat of noon, when the sun had been too bright to look at the ocean, and all she had been able to do was listen to the place names as the captain read them out, unable to distinguish anything in the blazing mirror of the water. Lipari, Salina, Alicudi, Filicudi, Stromboli, Panarea. Names like poems.

She wondered if this was a place name too.

‘I remember,’ Richard said.

‘They’ve asked to meet you again,’ Alex continued. ‘They have bought a mill site inland and arranged a party there tomorrow.’

‘I see,’ Richard said.

Cora gazed at him. He was as rigid and still as a statue.

‘If you’re not too tired, of course,’ Alex added.

When Cora and Richard went to their room, it was slightly cooler than before, enough to close the shutters. Cora sat on the edge of the bed and watched as Richard washed, using the bowl and jug of water.

‘Has Alex ever married?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think Alex is the marrying type,’ Richard replied.

‘You mean he has a string of women?’

He dried himself off. ‘You always want to know about people’s personal lives,’ he remarked.

‘I’m interested.’

‘Cora,’ he said, ‘Alex has never married. He has never had an affair with a woman.’

‘But why?’

He smiled and shook his head in exasperation.

‘Oh,’ she said, realizing. ‘Well, I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.’

‘You must always know everything,’ he muttered, turning away from her, and sitting on the opposite side of the bed with his back to her.

‘Well, I like him,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a charming man, well-educated.’

‘Yes,’ Richard agreed, equally softly. ‘You should get on together.’

She heard the edge in his voice, leaned across the bed and touched his back. She stroked the curve of his spine with her fingertips. He straightened, reached behind him and lifted her hand by the wrist.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I’m tired,’ he said.

He swung his legs into bed, and pulled the sheet over him.

‘Who are the Caviezels?’ she asked.

One beat of quiet … two … three.

‘Why does Alex think you know them?’

‘I do know them,’ Richard said. ‘They are a family from Syracusa.’

‘You’ve never mentioned them.’

‘I hoped never to see them again,’ he told her.

She waited for an explanation.

‘Can’t you tell me why?’ she asked.

‘Cora,’ he said, ‘I’d rather sleep.’

The rebuff was pointed. ‘All right,’ she said.

Suddenly he looked at her with such violence that she was unnerved. She sat back as if stung.

‘Everything’s always all right with you, isn’t it?’ he demanded, in a forced whisper. ‘Everything’s always fine.’

‘What have I done?’ she asked.

He turned his face so that the slanted light from the window fell upon it. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said.

She got up on to the bed on her haunches alongside him. ‘I won’t go to sleep until you tell me what the matter is,’ she said.

‘Cora,’ he said, ‘we’ve travelled a long way today. Go to sleep, please.’

‘It isn’t me,’ she said. ‘It’s this place. Why did you come here if you dreaded it so much?’

‘I don’t dread it.’

She gave a gasp of surprise. ‘You’ve dreaded it in dreams for years,’ she told him. He said nothing. She took hold of his arm. ‘You’ve dreamed about men alongside you,’ she whispered urgently. ‘You’ve been on your knees hiding from them.’ He tried to wrench himself away from her. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Can’t you tell me, now we’re here? Can’t you trust me, Richard? Can’t you tell me at all?’

Still with his face turned away, he closed his eyes. She could see the emotion racing under his lids, telegraphed by flickering. She saw the pulse beat hard in his throat.

‘Why do you keep it from me?’ she asked him. And she put her hand to the pulse. Her heart ached. This was how it had been for such a long time, politeness and withdrawal descending on them. He would never engage in an argument; he would never raise his voice. He would betray his irritation, his disturbance, by some sharp word or phrase. He used silence like a blunt instrument.

He had used it when they talked about children.

‘Tell me,’ she repeated. ‘Tell me.’

But he used it again now.

They set out late the following afternoon. It was not as hot as the day before, and clouds occasionally obscured the sun, casting an oppressive shadow.

‘Where are we going?’ Cora asked Alex, as they went down the steps to the car.

‘The Monti Nebrodi,’ he told her. ‘It’s not far, a few miles west of here.’

The road wound upwards, past Randazzo and Cesaro. It reminded her of their honeymoon, travelling inland from the French coast and leaving all the clattering glamour of St Tropez for the foothills of the Mole forest. They had gone through low-lying cloud and endless hairpin bends, deeper and deeper into a blanketed, silent country until, at midday, they had emerged into Collobrières, a pretty little shuttered town recovering, that day, from rainstorms that had washed the square almost yellow, so bright were the saturated sandstone houses. They had sat in a restaurant and looked at the tiers of vines that seemed to rush down the hillside towards the restaurant window, all brilliantly green from the downpour.

Now she leaned forward from the back seat to touch Richard’s shoulder. ‘It’s like the road through the forest,’ she said.

‘Which one?’

‘You know,’ she said. ‘In France …’ And she could see that he was impatient with her interruption. All at once she forgot the names, sat back in her seat, and said no more.

It was almost cold when they reached the mill at nearly six o’clock. They got out of the car in a deserted courtyard, high up in a wooded valley, the condensation of the day collecting in misty pockets between the trees.

‘They bought this last year,’ Alex explained. ‘Giulio has become a man of property, but he wants this as his home.’

‘It’s vast,’ Cora said, peering up at it.

‘Medieval,’ Alex said. ‘It was built to mill grain – you remember what I said about sugar, last night? Well, it was converted to process sugar cane and then, four hundred years later, it went back to grain.’

‘It hasn’t been used for some time,’ Richard said, and kicked a tussock of grass with the tip of his shoe.

‘Giulio wants to turn it into a feudal estate,’ Alex joked. ‘He’s a great builder. He has renovated apartments in Syracusa, and built villas on the coast. You’ll remember that his father was unstoppable too?’

They waited a minute or so. The place was boarded up, defaced. Cora turned, and saw a tiny stream working its way down the stony hillside.

Then, all at once, the silence was broken. A boy came out of a gate in the wall, stopped and held up his arms in astonishment. He called behind him; other faces appeared. In seconds, half a dozen people were at the mill entrance; the two parties remained where they were, as though assessing each other. Then a yellow dog came barrelling down the hillside, barking for all it was worth. The boy came running after. When he was close, Cora could see that, although he was slight, he was less a boy than a young man with a shock of dark hair.

‘Hey, Alex!’ he shouted. ‘My comrade!’ He flew into Alex’s arms. Over his friend’s shoulder, Cora saw Richard’s disapproval. The young man turned to him in the next instant, caught the look and hesitated. Then he held out his hand politely. ‘You are Richard Ward,’ he said. ‘I am Giulio’s son. I am Pietro. I am honoured to meet you.’

Richard shook his hand, then indicated Cora. ‘This is my wife, Cora,’ he said.

Pietro held out his hand; she took it. His grip was firm, unlike Richard’s. He beamed at her, his whole face lighting up. She saw how very handsome he was, his looks enhanced by his open smile. ‘But that is a very beautiful name,’ he told her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘It’s a Sicilian name.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Yes,’ he insisted. ‘From Kore. It is another name for our goddess Persephone.’ Only then did he drop her hand. As he did so she felt something extraordinary, something that astonished her, something she had never felt in her life with such force: a sudden, electric jolt of desire. A blunt blow, shocking. She took a step back.

‘He’s right,’ Alex said. ‘Pietro is always right.’

The young man blushed. ‘No,’ he murmured. He kept glancing at Cora. Then, ‘My father is waiting.’

They followed him up the slope, the dog dancing at their heels. In the space of those few moments, other people had joined the group at the gate. Alex took Cora’s elbow to guide her the last few yards. ‘Courage,’ he muttered. The whole tribe is here.’ He winked at her secretively. ‘But not for us.’

They stopped and Giulio Caviezel walked forward. Cora was astonished to see tears in his eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a dark suit; he held out both hands to Richard, but before Richard could respond, he had placed them on his shoulders and kissed his cheek.

He turned back to the family grouped behind him. Cora’s eyes ranged over the women: two older ones, dressed traditionally in black, and four pretty girls in their twenties. Toddlers hung on the hands of the older two; a younger one was heavily pregnant. Three young men stood at their backs, evidently their husbands.

‘You remember Galatea,’ Giulio said, indicating his wife. ‘Her sister … my daughters …’

Solemnly, Richard bowed to each in turn.

‘And this is my son,’ Giulio said finally. He brought Pietro to his side and put an arm round his shoulders, ‘who could not wait, so that he runs down the hill with the dogs.’

The women laughed softly.

Giulio let his arm drop and spread his hand, once more, in Richard’s direction. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is the man to whom I owe my life.’

The night came in softly across the mountain, in shades of grey and green that darkened until the trees could no longer be distinguished.

In the mill’s courtyard, they lit a fire and positioned tables round two sides of the square, against the walls, so that the chairs faced out towards the glow. Sparks rushed up into the darkness; there was a smell of rosemary from the flames. Before long, Cora found herself sitting at one end of the table, a baby balanced in her lap, the women fussing around her, throwing starched cloths over the trestles and bringing bread and olives, water, demijohns of wine, bowls of oranges. Cora split one open, tasted its sweet flavour.

Richard was nowhere to be seen: Giulio had taken him away, leading him through the vast wooden doors to show him his work on the mill. Once, about twenty minutes before, she had glimpsed her husband’s face at an upper window, looking down at her in the courtyard. She had raised her hand; he had stepped backwards into the shadow. She had looked up for some time at the pane, hoping he would reappear. She wondered whom he had become, in the last hour – someone unknown to her. It was like seeing a stranger’s face emerge in place of something utterly familiar. He hadn’t told her a single detail, not about the Caviezels, not about any time after his ship had left Egypt. Only the nightmares about the beaches – that was the only fragment of Sicily. And now he walked out of the past with a different persona.
This is the man to whom I owe my life
.

Eventually Alex came to sit beside her. He brought her a glass of wine. ‘Do you know anything at all about this?’ he asked. ‘Sicily – all this?’

‘No,’ she told him.

‘He’s never spoken of it?’

‘Not really.’

‘This must be a shock to you.’

‘It’s not a shock to know he’s respected.’

‘Do you want to know why?’