The Night Falling (12 page)

‘What business were you in in New York, Mr Cardetta?’ says Clare. ‘Will you pursue the same business here?’

‘Waste disposal.’ He smiles at her, pleased by her surprise. ‘Not what you were expecting? There’s a hell of a lot of people in New York, creating a hell of a lot of garbage. And no, those days are over. There’s almost no rubbish in Gioia – haven’t you noticed? What the poor don’t eat, the dogs do.’

They walk on a little further, and pass a group of three men as immaculately dressed as Leandro, standing at a corner with their waistcoats buttoned up and gold watch chains catching the light, and no dust on their shoes. Leandro stiffens; it makes him look taller, stronger.

‘
Buona sera, signori
,’ he greets them, inclining his head but not stopping. Clare starts to smile but stops in the face of their blatant hostility. One of the men spits, off to one side rather than at them, but the insult is clear.

‘You’ve no right to speak to us,
cafone
,’ that man says, darkly, in English. ‘You’ve no right to wear those clothes, or live in that house.’

‘You look well, Cozzolino. The season agrees with you,’ Leandro says mildly. Once they’ve passed Clare feels the men’s eyes glare after them, and she daren’t look back.

‘That man was so rude … what’s a caffoney?’ says Pip.

‘
Cafone
means peasant riff-raff. Don’t look so horrified, Mrs Kingsley. Cozzolino doesn’t deserve to be respected, let alone feared. He’s the worst kind of Gioia
signori
. He thinks his rank is God-given, and excuses all and any excess. But it’ll catch up to him, sooner or later.’

‘I don’t know how you can stand to be spoken to that way. It was horrible,’ says Clare.

‘Sooner or later, they’ll have to get used to me. I mean to give them no choice.’ He glances at her again as they walk back towards Piazza Plebiscito. ‘I never thought a Briton would be so shocked to see class prejudice in action, I must say.’

‘There’s no excuse for bad manners. And I suppose I … I’ve never …’

‘Been at the sharp end of it?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t stand to have to associate with such people.’

‘You would stay away, and let them win? I have a thick skin, Mrs Kingsley – it’s impossible to get anywhere either here or in New York without one. But I don’t forget these slights.’ He taps one finger on the side of his head. ‘One day Cozzolino might regret talking down to me the way he does. Or perhaps you think he’s right? You think high society is no place for an
arriviste
like me?’

‘No,’ says Clare, nervous of the edge in his voice. ‘No, I don’t think that at all.’

‘In a small place like Gioia, this is how politics works, Mrs Kingsley. It’s all about who you know, and who you pay. Imagine if I ended up in city hall one day! Then I could really make a difference here. But it’ll only happen if I make myself one of them, at least outwardly. It’ll be a long process, and perhaps a distasteful one, but every game has a set of rules.’

‘Ought democracy be a game?’ says Clare.

‘I didn’t make the world.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘Politics was ever a dirty business.’

‘Then I think I’d rather not be involved at all.’

‘But, Mrs Kingsley, that’s no solution! Women may vote in your country, now – isn’t that so? Don’t tell me you don’t exercise that right?’

‘Once I turn thirty, I may vote. But I won’t have the first idea who I should vote for. I suppose I’ll take Boyd’s lead on it. Politics has never really interested me, truthfully. Better that I leave it to those who understand it,’ she says. Leandro grunts. He walks with his hands linked behind him, studying his fancy shoes for a while.

‘For you, politics is something that happens in the newspapers. Decisions made at a distance to you, which have no obvious effect on your life. Is that not so? Easy to ignore it, then. Here in Puglia, politics is something that happens on your doorstep; it’s something that happens
to you
, whether you’re interested or not. Politics can take food out of your mouth, and impoverish your family. It can make you unemployable, and land you in prison. It’s not possible to ignore it, to be uninterested.’ Feeling his rebuke, Clare says nothing; the silence is awkward.

‘I hope you do get to be mayor,’ says Pip, and Clare is grateful. ‘Then that man won’t dare to be rude to you.’ Leandro chuckles.

‘Wouldn’t it be funny, watching him try to be civil?’ He flashes Pip his lupine grin.

Just then there’s a commotion in Piazza Plebiscito, immediately up ahead. They are at the edge of the square and a loose ring of people have stopped to watch; they shift on their feet, nervous, uncertain. Wearing the peasant black, these could be the same aimless men Clare noticed before; one or two of them call out words in the dialect, but the men they’re watching don’t pay them any attention. These others are three men in black shirts, with batons in their hands, standing every bit as poised but with none of the uncertainty of the onlookers. A fourth is putting his shoulder to the door of a house that opens onto the square; his teeth are gritted, snarling, and he grunts each time he drives himself into it. With the other people whose evening strolls have brought them unexpectedly on this spectacle, Clare, Pip and Leandro stop still, paused in the act of turning away.

‘Are they the police? Are they going to arrest somebody?’ says Pip.

‘We should go,’ says Clare, and finds that her throat has gone dry, but Leandro neither moves nor speaks. He watches the scene with an unreadable intensity. So Clare and Pip watch too, and she’s sure that whoever the men are, they’re not the police. With a crash of splintering wood the door gives way and the men are inside. Somewhere above, a woman shouts incomprehensible words; there’s the scuff and thud of footsteps on wooden stairs. The ring of onlookers take an involuntary step forwards, as one, but again, something stops them. They are afraid, Clare realises. They are horribly afraid.
We should go
.

Thirty seconds later the men in black emerge, bringing another man out between two of them. The man is middle-aged, his neat beard shot with grey. He has round, wire spectacles; he’s slightly built, and they have messed up his hair so that it flops onto his forehead. He walks with a certain reluctance but offers no real resistance. He is dignified, and Clare exhales a little, thinking the worst is over.

‘Do you know who that …’ she begins to ask, but then words abandon her. Once they are clear of the house the man’s arms are released. He reaches up and straightens his spectacles with the index finger of his right hand, then one of the men in black raises his baton and strikes him viciously around the side of his head. It makes a horrible sound, meaty and oddly hollow. The man’s spectacles fly off as his head cracks around; Clare hears them rattle as they hit the ground. The man falls down, boneless; there’s a spray and spatter of blood. His left eye socket looks odd and collapsed but he must still be awake because he curls himself up and tucks his elbows in, as if that will protect him as more blows fall, the four batons rising and falling, again and again, clenched in white-knuckled hands. They kick him too, driving their booted feet into the soft parts of his body for a long time after he has stopped moving; they are breathing hard when they finish. Clare doesn’t see them go – she doesn’t see if they saunter, or run away like guilty men. She can only see the crumpled, broken man on the paving stones, and his ruined little spectacles next to him. And then she sits down, without blinking, as if she owes him her undivided attention, and Pip throws up beside her.

Boyd wakes her hours later, with darkness outside the shutters. He turns on the bedside light and it sends a stabbing pain into her skull.

‘How are you now?’ He takes her hand in one of his and brushes the fingers of the other over her cheek.

‘I want us to go.’ Clare sits up carefully. She’s finding it hard to think because the world is a different place than it was before – it’s dangerous and unknowable; there are killers in the shadows. She suddenly knows, in way she didn’t before, how breakable she is. How easily she might die. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on for the
passeggiata
, and when she looks down she expects there to be blood on them. A shudder courses through her. ‘All of us, you, me and Pip. I want us to go home.’

‘Clare—’ Boyd shakes his head.

‘Please, Boyd. There’s something terrible going on here, and I don’t want to be here while it happens … I don’t want Pip to be here! For pity’s sake, Boyd – your fifteen-year-old son just saw a man beaten to death!’

‘He’s not dead, apparently. He was still alive when he was carried—’

‘Is that somehow supposed to make it better?’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘Well. If he lives, then … then I’m glad. But it changes nothing, Boyd. We don’t belong here.’ She wishes she could stop shaking but the tremors seem to come from the very core of her, rattling up from her bones implacably.

‘We can’t leave, darling.’ Boyd shakes his head, calmly regretful. The lamp lights him from below, and puts deep shadows under his eyes. He sits down on the edge of the bed, his spine a long curve, his shoulders collapsing around him. Clare wants to shake him, the way she has been shaken.

‘
Why
not? You’ve had time to get to know this building … You could work well enough from Bari, or Rome. Or from London – from
home
, Boyd.’

‘That’s just not possible.’ He stands up and drops her hand; walks to the end of the bed and then back again.

‘But why?’

‘Because I’ve given my word, Clare! Leandro asked me to come out here and work with him on this, and I agreed. I can’t go back on that.’

‘Why can’t you? I’m sure he’d understand – any reasonable person would understand!’

‘It’s not
possible
, Clare!’ he cries, standing in front of her, looking down, clenching his hands into fists. Clare stares for a long moment. She doesn’t understand him; just then she feels she hardly knows him. When she speaks it’s almost a whisper.

‘Why are you so afraid of him, Boyd? Whatever happened between you, in the past? Something did – something happened in New York, didn’t it?’ Boyd stares down at her, and tears spring up, shining in his eyes.

‘Nothing,’ he says roughly, and they both know it’s a lie. ‘That’s enough. You’re my wife and I … need your support. I have made my decision.’

‘But Pip and I don’t need to stay – I never gave my word to stay, and Cardetta can’t possibly expect us to. Come with us, Boyd,’ she begs.

‘Clare, no. You may not leave. I can’t bear to be here without you.’ Clare can feel the erosion of her resolve – the precise way in which it crumbles, from the edges to the core – but behind it is the thought of staying in Gioia for the rest of the summer, which causes a sickening lump to form, low down in her throat. She fights against her fear of standing her ground, of meeting him head on, unbalancing him.

‘I’m … going to go and see Pip.’ She stands gingerly, half expecting the floor to break beneath her feet, and leaves him there by the bed, buckled in on himself. She goes barefoot to Pip’s room.

Pip is sitting in the window again, wrapped up with his dressing gown pulled tight around him, as if he’s cold. There’s an untouched supper on a tray by the bed, and a cup of milky coffee that has dried into a saggy skin across the top. Pip’s face is ashy white, and Clare goes and hugs him, holding his head to her shoulder, until after a moment he puts his arms around her and she feels a single sob rock through him.

‘He wasn’t even trying to get away,’ he says, muffled and bewildered.

‘I know, darling.’

‘Why did they attack him like that, then? Why didn’t the police come?’

‘I don’t know, Pip. I don’t understand it either. We’ll be home soon, I promise. We won’t stay, you and I. All right? We’ll go home.’ There’s a thrill as she says this; she’s never disobeyed Boyd before.

‘All right. Good.’ Pip nods, and pulls away from her, and Clare runs her hands through his hair to straighten it, and tries to smile. His eyes are enormous.

‘I felt like I was part of it. I felt like I was as bad as them, because I just watched and didn’t do anything to help. That poor man. He wasn’t even trying to get away. Do you think those were the same men we saw the other night? Do you think they were on their way to do that to someone else when we saw them?’

‘Shh … Try not to think about it too much, Pip. There was nothing we could have done. It was … awful. It was just awful, I know. We’ll go soon, I promise.’

‘You promise?’ he echoes, too upset to be embarrassed about the tears streaking down his cheeks. Clare nods, kisses her fingers and presses them to his forehead. ‘You’re shaking,’ he says, and Clare smiles.

‘I can’t seem to stop. I’m like a bowlful of jelly,’ she says.

‘I threw up on Mr Cardetta’s shoes,’ he says tonelessly. ‘You know, the black and white ones, with the fancy stitching?’

‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ Clare murmurs, and is rewarded with a tiny glimpse of his smile. But her throat feels itchy and hot, and she’s aware of her heart beating, harder than normal, tight against her ribs.

In the morning Clare has coffee in her room, near the window so she can see the sky. She doesn’t want to go downstairs or eat, she doesn’t want to see Leandro Cardetta, and when Marcie comes to flutter around her, fussing and cooing in her fragile way, she is all but unresponsive. She can’t seem to find the energy for more because she keeps hearing the rattle of wire spectacles hitting the ground, and Boyd has sunk into the silence that she dreads, and she knows that she’s the direct cause of it. But she can’t bring herself to say she’ll stay; she’s as afraid of upsetting Boyd as she is of staying in Gioia. She’s torn, and hoping for him to tell her she can go home. She reads without absorbing a word, and jumps every time there’s a noise from the street. She was witness to a crime, so the perpetrators have reason to come after her – her and Pip. But then, there were plenty of witnesses. If witnesses were a worry to them, they would not have gone in broad daylight to batter the slim man with the wire spectacles. They had
wanted
people to see them at their work. Clare lowers her book as she realises this, and nearly drops it when there’s a knock at the door. She doesn’t answer, but a second or two later it opens anyway, and Leandro walks slowly over to where she’s sitting.