The Italian Romance (5 page)

‘Lilian! What are you doing?'

‘I'm working,' I say. I hope it hits the mark but I know very well it won't. Margaret wasn't born that way. I breathe heavily into the telephone.

‘Listen,' she says. ‘I knew you'd be interested in this. There's a new woman doing archaeological tours. She's excellent, evidently. Don't know her. English, I think. Or maybe she's a Yank. Anyway. Every Thursday morning for six weeks. What do you think?'

‘Well, as I say, I'm working at the moment, Margaret.'

‘But this won't take long. And you might get a good idea for a book out of it, that's what I was thinking. They reckon she points out where the bordellos were for the clergy, hundreds of years ago.' She laughs. ‘My God! And we could go for lunch, afterwards. Oh, listen, by the way...' she says and there is a hiatus.

I wait for a modest pause and say, ‘Yes, Margaret?'

‘I heard about that dreadful woman at your dinner the other night. I mean, we were busy as it happens. But what did you do? I couldn't believe my ears.'

I can see the wall socket holding the phone connection. If I were to lean over in my chair and yank it out, surely she'd be none the wiser. I could leave it out all day. All week, in fact. Except I couldn't, because Francesca might ring.

‘Johnny told you, did he?' I say.

‘No, it was ... Oh God, I can't remember. Oh, I know who it was, it was Frank's secretary. Even the ambassador's wife thinks she's a slut. Frank's secretary, I mean. I'm not worried about it because I know good, old Frank. He knows which side his bread is buttered on, that's one thing you can say about him.'

‘Who told her?' I say, calmly.

‘God, who did she say it was again?' She drifts off for a thoughtful moment. ‘Oh, Johnny! You're right. She's after him, I believe. Poor old Johnny. You ought to warn him, Lilian. She's incredible. She's like one of those cartoon things, garbage bin things, you know, with teeth.' She makes a few rather vivid gnashing sounds.

I can't bear her any longer, not her endless prattle, and certainly not her terrifying, bulging-eyed panic. Not today. And I am enraged.

‘Well, look, Margaret, thanks for thinking of me. But I really can't get Thursdays clear for a while. I'm under pressure with this one.'

‘A deadline,' she says, perhaps seriously.

‘Absolutely. So, thanks again. I'll make contact when I come out from under,' I say. I am ready to put down the receiver.

But she is too quick for me. ‘But what did you do? She sounds really, really dreadful. She just walked out, did she?'

‘Oh, it wasn't like that. She arrived late, by accident. Got lost. And then had to go early. Just a little awkward for her, that's all.' I am so smooth these days.

‘I thought there was some kind of a row or something,' Margaret says hopefully.

I laugh. I haven't laughed a good belly laugh, even a pretend one, since I met Francesca. Again. ‘Good Lord, isn't Johnny hilarious?' I say. ‘No, no, no. Nothing like that.' I am playing with my pen. I pick it up and, in the margin of my open writing pad, draw a noughts and crosses grid. ‘Well, do let me know how the walking tours go, Margaret, and thanks for thinking of me.'

‘I just thought you might get a book out of it.'

‘Very kind. Thanks, Margaret, bye.'

I hear her say ‘Bye!' as I get the receiver down to its cradle.

I'm a leather boot, as far as toughness goes; wasn't always, but I am now. So I feel absurd sitting here at my desk, filling in my scrawled grid with a nought here, a cross to block it there, and I can hardly see the damn thing. My eyes are filmed with the most unforgivable tears, and each one forms a plop which slides down my face, and even drops on to the pad. What will they make of this rough, barely legible draft, the doctoral students, when they examine it for clues? That the writer – so caught up in her characters, so alive to their aliveness, so heart-sore at their coming doom – actually cries? She actually cries, and plops big, dreadful puddles on to her page.

Where was I up to?

Alphonso slammed the car door. Sonia watched him as he walked along the footpath. The old man was limping badly today, and he pressed his knuckles into the painful hip. He thought she wouldn't see. She gazed away.

So do I gaze away. I can't work anymore today. That's it. Ruined. I pick up the receiver and slam it down hard.

‘For Christ's sake,' I say.

I'll have to make coffee. I storm out to the kitchen, viciously unscrew the espresso-maker. The filter is chock-a-block full of used, wet coffee grains. I tap it hard against the side of the kitchen bin and the solid, blackened mass plops on the remains of last night's salad. And now I spill the contents of my coffee tin into the sink. The grains oblige me by scattering like ants and, to ensure against a change of heart, darken as the dampness of the sink seeps into them.

I consider wiping my hands on my skirt for good measure. But I am regaining mastery. I pick up a tea towel from the back of a chair instead.

This room is very light today. Too much light. I can't concentrate
without a bit of shade. We shouldn't have bought this apartment. There's no subtlety in it. I long for the shadows in Sonia's villa, the chiaroscuro that surrounds her and emanates from her.

The telephone on the sideboard catches it, the light, like glass.

I finish drying my hands, toss the tea towel to the table and sit heavily on a chair. I lean against its high, wooden back. I am so tired. And there is no one in the world I can say that to.

I have hesitated to ring what's-his-name, the bushman. What is his name? I have him somewhere here in my address book. Jim. Under J. He is the key. I haven't wanted to involve him, that's the difficulty. I don't want to explain, describe, heaven forbid not justify. It is better not to put words on things. Cleaner, somehow.

All the same, I need to find out, very badly. And so I dial the number of his hotel and ask to speak to him. I wait. The room extension is ringing. I hope, of course, that he's not in, that I will leave a message for him to call, and when he does, which he will, he can launch the conversation, tell me what happened later that dreadful night, and even if he pauses for me to fill in the gaps I can prod him on until I have it all, and then I can simply say goodbye.

‘Hello,' he says.

Ah.

‘Jim?'

He doesn't speak for a moment. ‘Yes?' he says. His voice is deeper over the phone.

‘Lilian here.'

‘Lilian! I thought it was...'

‘Sorry,' I say.

‘No. It's just that your voice is remarkably like Francesca's on the phone.'

I am a rabbit in the headlights. My heart beats like a fist. And I am crying again. My God, can he hear it? I search my skirt pocket for a tissue, find it and, as silently as I can, dab at my eyes.

‘Lilian? Hello?'

‘I was just wondering if you caught up with her the other night. And if she got back to the hotel all right.'

‘Yes to both.'

And then nothing. I hear his breath. He probably hears mine. I dab my eyes and my nose.

‘How is she?' I say, surrendering.

‘She's okay. I saw her last night. She might have to go to London sooner than she thought.'

‘Oh, no,' I say, too quickly.

‘Yes,' he agrees. ‘Oh, no.'

It takes less than an instant to know. I knew before, of course. He would be the key.

‘Ah,' I say.

‘Mmm,' he agrees.

I try this: ‘Perhaps she can be persuaded to come back.'

‘I'm trying.'

A long, deep sigh escapes from my chest before I can even think to catch it. ‘Would it do any good if I contacted her?' I ask.

‘I don't know. Perhaps.'

I clench my jaw and say, ‘Did she tell you?'

‘Yes.'

My heart thuds. She has said the words. I am elated, in the most profound, bell-ringing way. I nuzzle my ear against the receiver. The tears river out of my eyes. My cheeks and jaw are running with them, and I have no strength or even desire to mop myself up.

He says, ‘Are you all right?'

‘Mmm,' I say. I try to speak. My mouth won't open.

He is silent for another moment and then says, ‘I don't know what to say to you, Lilian. Whether it would make it worse if you contacted her. Or better. I honestly don't know.'

I nod.

‘But if I were you,' he says. ‘I'd say I have nothing to lose. And I'd try.'

I hold the soggy tissue to my mouth and mumble, ‘Thank you.' My throat is aching with tears. I am going to pieces. My shoulders begin to shake.

‘Listen,' he says. ‘I'm free this afternoon. I don't go in for all this siesta stuff. How about we go for a walk, or have coffee?'

‘Yes,' I manage to say.

‘You say a place and I'll meet you there at two.'

‘Okay,' I say, like a child.

Alphonso slammed the car door. Sonia watched him as he walked along the footpath. The old man was limping badly today, and he pressed his knuckles into the painful hip. He thought she wouldn't see. She gazed away.

She wound the window fully down and draped her gloved hand over it. The early summer breeze was balm to her, and she rested her head against the leather seat. They were early. She played with the clasp of her handbag. She'd stained her glove with lipstick – she raised her finger and stared at it as if it were a novelty to her, something other than herself, and then she rubbed at it slowly with her thumb.

One lone boy suddenly appeared at the school gate and ran up the empty street, his light steps beating and falling till the air stilled again. She stared at the silent entrance, expectant. Alphonso, leaning his weight too casually against the gate, turned his head to stare into the schoolyard. Nothing happened.

The sun was a high bright disc, already on its descent to the
western horizon. Its glare made her eyes water. As she looked down, she found that her fingers had snapped open the metal embrace of the handbag's clasp. Almost against her will, she touched the sharp-edged crease of the letter. She closed her eyes. Tiny pain lines wrinkled against her nose. And then the school bell rang, loud and golden. The leather seat squeaked under her as she sat forward, and the uproar of schoolboys rolled into the quiet piazza.

She saw him among them. ‘Gianni,' she shouted. But Alphonso had called him too, and she watched as the boy turned and how, as he spotted the old man, his face broke open into a grin. Alphonso limped towards him. The boy's hair, which she would have oiled back, fell in a dark curl across one eye. Her heart leaped.

The second boy seemed to appear magically, her brother's son. She was relieved. She'd been anxious that Alon, not expecting them, might slip out from the schoolyard, jump on a bus and make his way home. Alon was more like his own mother. He was slighter than his cousin, at first glance more serious, yet his eyes were black as cherries, mischievous, mercurial, and it was Gianni who was the more placid of the two.

The boys trailed after Alphonso as he walked stiffly to the car. He did not meet her eye as he slid into the driver's seat. He'd been driving for her family, had become part of her family, since before she was born; he was older than her own father. In the rear-view mirror, she saw him wince, and he couldn't suppress a grunt. Sonia looked studiously towards the boys as they struggled to open the passenger door. Alon tugged at the back of his cousin's blazer. Alphonso, in no mood for anything much, hit the seat beside him and shouted out through the window, ‘In the back, both of you. Alon, if you rip that jacket, you'll get the back of my hand, do you understand?'

‘Yes,' the boy said. Gianni, delighted at his cousin's defeat, stuck his fist up under the boy's chin. The old man hit the leather seat again and shouted, ‘Move. Now.'

Sonia said quietly, ‘Gianni, Alon. Get in the back.'

Gianni glanced at the old man, who stared straight ahead through the windshield. Alphonso's hand was ready on the bulb of the brake. Sonia leaned across to open the other door. ‘Quickly,' she said.

Sonia retreated to the corner and pressed her knees in to the door. Gianni's face was bright and innocent as he bumped along the seat. He was handsome in the Italian way, very like his father. She loved his face. When he was a tiny boy she had stroked the long, dark lashes which framed his dark eyes.

The car jerked forward and pulled out. Sonia had to grip the back of Alphonso's seat. Her fingernails grazed his sun-browned neck. ‘Sorry,' he said, over his shoulder to her.

Before she could reply, her son asked her, ‘Why did you come in to get us, Mama?'

‘We're going to Grandfather's,' she said.

‘Alon, too?'

‘Yes.'

She looked out the window. Alphonso turned into the street along the river. She gazed at the light fracturing into diamonds on the downward flow of the water.

‘Mama?'

She forced herself to turn and smile. ‘Yes, my darling, we're all going to Nonno's.' She saw two tiny furrows above Gianni's nose. His forehead was still a child's; there was something almost frighteningly vulnerable about its delicacy under the flop of dark hair. He smelled her anxiety, she knew it. She touched her fingers to the stray curls, and raked them up. He batted her hand away, almost as he would an annoying mosquito.

‘Mother of God,' Alphonso roared. The two boys stared apprehensively at the bullish neck. Alphonso slammed at the brake, and the car slid to a halt.

And then Sonia heard the march of feet. She thought they were behind her – she turned quickly around to look through the back window.

‘They're coming down this way,' Alphonso said.

The skirt of her linen suit had risen above her knees. Her heart was beating fast. ‘Where?' she said.

‘Don't worry, Signora,' he said. ‘They'll cross the bridge.'

On the footpaths each side of the road, pedestrians stopped. Nobody wanted to be seen scurrying away, but they pushed up against shop fronts and, across the street, a woman became very interested in the contents of her bags. One man walked up to the junction. Sonia watched him. He raised his arm high in a stiff salute. The trouser leg on his right side rose up, too. ‘Idiot,' she said.

‘Ssh,' Alphonso hissed to her, as if she were still a child herself.

‘Why is he an idiot, Mama?' Gianni asked in the way children do when they are already aware.

‘Ssh,' Sonia said quickly and she glanced out to the footpath beside her. ‘It's just his socks, that's all.' She looked at Alphonso's profile. He was watching the approach. ‘They're too small for him. His garter shows.'

‘Garter!' Alon sniggered. He lifted a leg of his own trousers and bent down to pull at his sock.

The phalanx of marching men did not pause at the crossroad. The leader expected all traffic to have ceased, and it had. The dark, high boots kicked out at each row of six, and arms swung like scissors. The sun seemed drawn to the polished leather, sparking and glinting from a unison of raised legs. The sun disappeared into the black shirts. They were only a hundred or so, yet they seemed more. In the new silence of the street, the crash of boots against the ground, and even the cutting of the air, multiplied them till they seemed like a thousand. She held her hand to her breast.

Alphonso turned the ignition key as the rear paraded out into the intersection. The engine did not take. He tried again, casually. Sonia waited. The car strained. And then the engine caught. Alphonso let it purr till the last of them were on the bridge, and he slid out. Sonia settled back against the seat; her shoulder blades were sharp.

The breeze brushed against her. She slowly pulled off her gloves, one finger at a time, and flapped them pointlessly near her face. ‘Take off your jackets,' she said to the boys. They were quiet now. ‘It's getting hot.'

None of them said another word. Alphonso drove out of the town and up the hill. The boys, legs wide, were mercifully at rest. Sonia gazed at the hillside above the river; olive trees seemed almost water-coloured, pale grey brushstrokes of smoke, and further up a row of darkening cypress and behind them, in the afternoon light, an even darker congress of cypress, rigid and perfect. The car turned into the avenue. She manoeuvred her hands back into her gloves. The wisteria at the side of the villa was in bloom, its cool blue droplets covering the stone wall of the staircase.

Her brother's car was already there, parked in the lengthening shade at the side of the house. He was standing at the driver's door, still open, lighting a cigarette.

Alon leaned out of the window as Alphonso circled in under the laurel tree. ‘Papa,' Alon said. He waved his arm.

‘Wait till Alphonso stops,' Sonia said to her nephew.

The boy gripped the door handle with both hands. ‘Papa,' he shouted again. His father walked towards them and the boy jumped out as soon as Alphonso pulled on the handbrake. He threw his arms around his father, who held his cigarette high between two fingers to vigorously pat his son on the back with his free hand.

Gianni, still quiet beside his mother, said, ‘Why is everybody here?'

Sonia put her gloved hands on either side of his handsome young face. He did not pull away, as he usually would. She stroked the side of his nose with her thumb. ‘Nothing is wrong,' she said. ‘Grandfather just wants to see us, that's all.'

‘Promise?' he said.

‘Promise.' She kissed the soft skin of his forehead and
murmured, ‘Precious. In fact, I have very good news. Your papa wrote. He said to kiss you.'

He said, breathless, ‘Has he escaped?'

‘No, my love. He's still in the prison camp, but he's very well.'

‘Can I write to him? Did he have to write it in English?'

Sonia laughed. ‘No, darling. He wrote in Italian. And you may write to him.' She kissed the tip of his nose and said, ‘From your Papa.'

Beside them, her door opened. Alphonso's familiar bulk stood over them. ‘Signora,' he said, waiting.

Gianni looked up sheepishly, caught out by the older man in a moment of boyish weakness. He pulled free of his mother's hands and hurled himself out through the other door. Sonia lifted her handbag to her arm and eased herself out, holding tightly to Alphonso's big hand. Under the shade of the laurel tree, the breeze bouncing the shadows as leaves and boughs swam in its current, she did not want to let go of that hand. He seemed to know. He had carried her around in the crook of his arm when she was a tiny girl.

‘When is it going to be over?' she said to him.

‘They will be here soon,' he said. ‘Don't worry. My sister wrote to me about it.'

‘Did she say when?' Sonia asked, a child again. She had sat at the kitchen table many weeks ago and listened as Alphonso read out, awkwardly, the letter from New York. She knew its contents as much as he.

‘Very soon,' he said.

Her brother's voice sang out, ‘Are you going to stay there all day?'

‘Coming, coming,' she said, and she pulled away from the old man.

The two boys and her brother mounted the steps. Alon couldn't restrain himself from plucking a luscious dangle of wisteria,
pulling at it till it gave and the stem snapped back. He barely looked at his prize, shook it once or twice and casually dropped it over the side to fall at Sonia's feet.

As she climbed behind them, she heard Alphonso's unsteady tread on the pebbles lying scattered over the dry, dusty earth.

Her father was just inside the doorway. He'd gripped Jacob's elbow and was already in a concentrated passion, explaining his point with his other hand, fingers webbed. He saw her and said, ‘Ah, here she is,' but he did not want to release Jacob. He hesitated between his two children for a moment. Then he said, ‘Come on, come on in, you two,' and continued his conversation as he slowly walked her brother into the drawing room. The two boys had already disappeared.

She caught sight of her reflection in the huge, gilded mirror on the wall. She was quite a beautiful woman, dark, the bones of her face setting her apart from many others. Anyone seeing her on any Italian street would consider that she'd a fine Roman nose, classic and refined equally. Her eyes were large and dark, almond-shaped. For a woman so blessed, she oddly lacked sensuality. It just brushed by her, somehow.

She brushed at the collar of her linen jacket. She had never enjoyed the vanity of gazing at herself. When she heard Alphonso, the heaviness of his breathing, the click of his step, she looked away. She placed her handbag down on the ornate, high-backed chair sitting quietly against the wall, and walked into the drawing room.

Her mother was playing the grand piano positioned exactly between the two large windows. Rachel was always there on the brocaded stool, white sheets of music propped in front of her, a thumb and finger plucking at the corner of a page to turn it without breaking her rhythm – unless a faithful acolyte stood ready by her shoulder or, to be precise, a step back from her so not to create a tension in the air around her. Always there, or so it seemed to her daughter when she considered it.

She was playing a tune from an American movie. She could do that, easily enough, or Schubert or Chopin or even Liszt. It wasn't true that Rachel lived her whole life at the piano, but she'd spent an inordinate amount of time there over the past year or so. She didn't stop now, though she was speaking to her son as Sonia entered. She was saying, ‘You should have brought her, Jacob. She needs the fresh air. It's getting so hot down there in town...' and she closed her eyes and began to hum.

‘Hello, darling!' she said suddenly. ‘Are you all right, my lamb? Look at her, Papa, she's so pale.'

‘I'm fine, Mama,' Sonia said.

His gaze fell on his daughter from where he stood in a huddle with Jacob, and he said, ‘She looks all right to me.'

Her mother raised her eyebrows. ‘Ah, well,' she said, bemused at the world. She brought the Hollywood song to a crescendo and finished it off with a few downward chords.

Her father, noting his wife's temporary distraction, winked at his daughter. Sonia smiled like a naughty little child. He left Jacob and came across the room to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her in to him. He kissed her cheek with a loud smack and enfolded her further so that he could pat her back as he used to do. ‘Are you all right, Princess?' he asked her.

‘Very well, Papa,' she said. She disengaged herself, but she was flushed, pleased at his affection. She unbuttoned her glove and pinched it off, finger by finger. ‘I have good news. I received a letter today.'

‘Now!' her father said. ‘Now, didn't I tell you not to worry. See, Mama. I told you.'

‘Oh, my dear,' Rachel said. She held her hands to her cheeks. ‘What does he say?'