Learning by Heart (30 page)

‘Zeph,’ he said, ‘what is it?’

She stopped. Wind blew the hair off her face. She stared at the sea, and he noticed that she had been crying, not just recently but perhaps for some time – days, even. Her eyes were swollen, her face puffy.

‘Jesus, Zeph,’ he said. ‘What’s been going on?’

‘It’s my mother,’ she said.

‘Cora?’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Is she ill?’

She smiled briefly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She …’ She stopped.

‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What?’

‘I’m someone else’s daughter,’ she said. ‘She had an affair. I’m a stranger’s daughter.’

It was a full five or ten seconds before he had taken it in. ‘An affair?’ he echoed.

‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ she said bitterly. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’

He felt the sting of the remark, closed his eyes for a second. ‘But how do you know that you’re not Richard’s child?’

‘I can do simple maths.’

‘But you might be mistaken.’

She shook her head. ‘The more I think about it … There are details …’

‘What details?’

‘Well, I don’t have my father’s … Richard’s colouring, for one thing. One bloody obvious thing, when you come to think of it. I’m dark. And this man was Italian,’ she said. ‘Sicilian.’

‘Sicily?’

‘Don’t you see it?’ she said defiantly.

‘Sorry – see what?’

‘My name!’ she cried. ‘Sicily – the island of Persephone!’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he murmured. ‘But that … Zeph, that doesn’t prove it,’ he pointed out. ‘Not really. It could be that she and Richard loved the place and the name … Persephone’s very pretty …’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said, ‘It’s hardly common, is it?’

‘Why were they in Sicily?’ he asked.

‘They went for a couple of weeks. My father had a friend there, someone he’d known in the war.’ She ran a hand across her forehead. ‘I’ve seen this man’s photograph. There’s a resemblance.’

‘Christ,’ Nick said, with heavy sarcasm, ‘your mother had a holiday romance?’

‘He was the son of a friend of my father’s,’ she said. ‘He was nineteen. She was thirty. He wanted her to marry him.’

He was shocked. ‘He wanted that, at nineteen? So young?’

‘He wanted her to leave England and go and live in Sicily. He wrote to her afterwards. He begged her.’

‘How do you know all this? Where did you see his picture?’

‘This man kept a diary. At the time he wrote everything down, and he wrote letters to her for years afterwards, and he wrote about her. In fact, he wrote a book about her.’

‘A book? What do you mean – he published the diary?’

‘A novel,’ she said. ‘He died just ten days ago, and left the journal to my mother.’ She shook her head. ‘My mother,’ she said softly. ‘The love of his life.’

He gazed at her, astounded, trying to match his impression of Cora to the woman Zeph was describing.

Zeph took a huge breath. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things he says in the book,’ she whispered. ‘Personal things.’

‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘He died ten days ago in Sicily? What was his name?’

‘You’ll know the name,’ she told him. ‘Pietro Caviezel.’

He gazed at her in astonishment. ‘Caviezel?’ he repeated. ‘
Caviezel
? You’re his daughter? Holy shit!’

She gave a twisted, wry grimace. ‘I thought you’d be impressed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’m sorry, Zeph. But – Jesus Christ! Caviezel himself. Do you know how famous this guy is?’

‘Of course.’

‘And she actually showed you the journal?’

‘No. I found it by mistake. I thought it was something else, something to do with the farm.’

‘And you read it … and you told your mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell did she say?’

Zeph raised her gaze to him. ‘It doesn’t matter what she says,’ she replied tonelessly. ‘The fact remains that I’m not Richard Ward’s daughter. That’s all that matters to me. I’m the product of a
lie
.’

‘And Caviezel knew about you? That he had a child by your mother?’

‘I don’t think so. There’s nothing in the journal about me.’

‘She never
told
him?’

‘How should I know?’ Zeph asked.

‘But haven’t you asked her?’

‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to know what I already know, never mind anything else.’

‘But you must find out,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘So that she can tell me I’ve not only lost who I thought was my father but that my biological father never even knew I existed?’

‘Oh, my Lord,’ he muttered. He knew only too well what her father had meant to her. ‘I’m really sorry.’ He saw that she had begun to cry and tried to put his arm round her, tried to hold her, but she pulled away.

‘Listen,’ he said, trying to console her, ‘your dad is still your dad, right? He loved you.’

‘I don’t think he knew.’

‘Knew what?’

‘I don’t think he knew the truth.’

‘But surely he must have worked it out.’

‘Why?’

‘Hadn’t they been married – what? – fifteen years when you were born? Had your mother ever been pregnant before, lost a child?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’

‘But if there weren’t any other children, then surely he put two and two together …’

‘But he loved me,’ she protested. ‘How could he love a child that wasn’t his?’ A look of pure childhood terror came over her face, as if to refute this would bring her whole life crashing in pieces around her; as if she truly doubted this once incontrovertible fact.

All kinds of pictures flew through her head: the handles of the cupboards – the wooden animals – which she had stroked for hours after he had died because they reminded her of his care; the warmth of sitting beside him as he read to her; the way he held up his arms for her to swing down out of his truck. And the presents, just little things, bags of sweets, a notebook, a plastic bracelet that poppered together, and songs he made up for her, his patience, his hands on the reins of the pony, and on the girth as he tightened it –
How does that feel? Does it feel safe enough
– and being carried on his shoulders across the field …

The memories nearly asphyxiated her.

Nick put his arms round her, and at last she allowed herself to press her face into his shoulder. ‘It was all for nothing,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘That’s what I keep thinking. It was all untrue.’

‘It wasn’t untrue,’ he told her. ‘He loved you, you know he did. You know that for a fact, Zeph.’

Eventually she pulled away, and wiped her face with her handkerchief.

‘Is this what you wanted to tell me?’ Nick asked her.

‘No. Actually I came to say … about Joshua …’ She blew her nose and stowed the handkerchief in her pocket. ‘I wanted to tell you that whatever you wanted to do, whenever you wanted to see him, it was all right.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised.

‘I wanted to talk to you about times, how to arrange it.’

‘OK.’

‘I don’t want to fight.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘He misses you very much.’ She paused. ‘I don’t want to hurt him.’

Nick flushed, and she noticed it – a sign of deep emotion – but she made no comment.

She turned and began to walk back to the car. At the rise to the top of the dune, she waited for him to catch up. They said nothing until they had come down the other side, and were in the car park.

She hesitated by her car. ‘Will you tell me something?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Will you tell me the truth, if I ask a question?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you still seeing her?’

‘No.’

She appraised him, as if trying to read his thoughts.

‘Zeph …’

‘And one other thing.’

He waited.

‘Did you love her?’

‘Oh, Zeph,’ he said. Her tone had been so pathetic: it cut him to the quick. Her voice had wavered with grief. He felt a great wave of guilt rise in him. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said, ‘won’t you try to forgive me?’

‘You didn’t answer me,’ she said.

‘Love her?’ he repeated. He tried to find the words to frame his horror. He could see from the way she held herself, closed in, wrapped up against him, her arms across herself, that everything she had once believed of him had been blown away. And he saw in the same moment that if there was to be any future for them it was up to him, and that he would have to start again from the beginning, making it better than before, building it up with more patience than he had ever summoned in his life. ‘Don’t you know?’ he whispered. ‘Don’t you realize? I never loved her. I never loved her at all. How could I? I love you.’

‘Then why?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘Was it your doing?’ she asked. ‘Did you come on to her?’

He paused.

She screwed her hands into fists at her side. ‘The truth,’ she said.

‘It was mutual,’ he said.

‘Mutual,’ she repeated softly.

‘I spend every minute of every day regretting it, Zeph.’

‘Mutual …’

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘And I spend every minute thinking of you with her,’ she whispered.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She began to cry, but the tears were silent. It appalled him to see them roll down her face unchecked.

‘I think of you in bed with her,’ she said. ‘I think of you … doing the things we did, lying with her afterwards, talking to her …’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he protested.

‘And having little jokes, eating a meal with her …’

‘No, no …’

‘Naked with her, making her come …’

‘No, Zeph. Please, God, don’t do this. I saw her half a dozen times – it wasn’t—’

Suddenly she caught hold of his jacket. ‘What was it, then?’ she demanded. ‘You mean you didn’t fuck her? You didn’t do that? Tell me you didn’t! How can I get these pictures of you out of my head?’

They were staring at each other, standing close.

‘I love you and I missed you,’ he said slowly, choosing each word carefully, deliberately. ‘It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. It always will be mine.’

‘You missed me?’

‘After Josh was born.’

‘You think I neglected you?’

‘No …’

‘That’s what you’re saying.’ She let go of him. ‘You’re jealous of your own son.’

He opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped himself. ‘It all changed,’ he said. ‘You were always tired.’

‘It was a bloody tiring job on my own,’ she said accusingly. ‘You only played at helping me. Not the difficult bits. Just the fun things. That was all you did.’ But even as she was saying the words another voice spoke in the back of her mind.
You shut him out
, it whispered.
You were ill, you were depressed
, it insisted,
and you shut him out
.

‘OK,’ Nick was saying. ‘But you never wanted to go anywhere with me, get a babysitter …’

‘I did my best,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if it wasn’t good enough.’

‘You did brilliantly,’ he told her. ‘That was it, don’t you see? Can you understand? You did everything brilliantly, and the only person Josh seemed to want was you. Even if I held him I was doing it wrong, and I just …’

‘Just what?’ she prompted.

‘I guess I just gave up trying to be good at this thing. I just accepted I was some klutz that you tolerated, a clumsy klutz.’

‘Nick, that’s not fair.’

He shrugged.

‘You don’t really think that,’ she said.

He looked surprised. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

Grief, guilt and horror gripped her in equal measure. ‘So you went to somebody else. Just like that.’

‘Not for that reason. And not just like that.’

‘Well, it must have had something to do with it, as you bring the subject up.’ She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘I felt dispensable,’ he said. ‘Like I’d done my job, and I wasn’t needed, and that was it.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘I’m telling you what I felt.’

She was weighing her car keys in her palm. She was thinking clearly, for the first time, of how she had abandoned him, not the other way round. Like her namesake, she had been in the underworld. Now she had a chance to come back to the light.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘What do you want me to do?’ he repeated. ‘Tell me what would make it all right. What is it? You want me to crawl on my hands and knees?’

She raised her chin. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I’ll scrub out St Paul’s with a toothbrush.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said, ‘if you can’t take this seriously …’

‘I am serious,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything. Say what it is.’

‘I don’t want you to do anything, Nick.’

He tried to take her hand, but she pulled away. There was a fumbling of fingers. At the other side of the car park, a family was returning to their car, the children running riot in circles round the parents; the mother carrying a baby, the father pushing a toddler bike.

Zeph gazed at them, envying them.

‘We can be them,’ he said.

‘No,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all ruined … ruined.’

She started to cry again.

All at once, he remembered.

He remembered what it was that she had been talking about.

Here. On this beach. That first weekend.

They had come to this spot and it had been late at night. They had tried to swim but it had been too cold and, laughing, they had run back up the slippery, shifting bank of pebbles to their clothes. And she had lain on her back, laughing still, and he had made love to her there, under the black sky, with the vast sea as still as a mirror, and no light at all, either on the water or the land.

Now he stepped towards her, took her in his arms, pressed his lips to her hair. ‘It’s not ruined,’ he told her. ‘I won’t let it be. Give me half a chance, Zeph, and I’ll prove it to you. Only give me the chance, Zeph. Please.’

Rosso

I wonder how anyone else would describe this time, and with what colour. I suppose most would call it black. But it is red for me, because I have come back to Enna to lie here in this house and wait for what comes. Red, the colour of celebration, and of warning. The colour of passion and violence
.