The Night Falling (13 page)

He stands and watches her for a moment or two, and Clare wishes she could read him better. She struggles to hold his gaze, when her own wants to slide away from him and hide. Eventually he sighs a little, and shakes his head.

‘Mrs Kingsley, I am so sorry.’ He waits, as if she ought to fill the pause, but she has nothing to say to this. ‘I’m well aware how distressing it must have been for you, and the boy, to witness such a thing.’

‘Thing? Mr Cardetta, that was not a thing. That was a murder.’ Her voice wobbles on the final word.

‘The man lives—’

‘For now, and by pure chance.’

‘I understand that you’re upset, but please, don’t be so quick to leave – not when you’ve barely arrived.’

‘It seems entirely inappropriate that we’re here at all, Mr Cardetta. There’s clearly some kind of … crisis going on here. Perhaps nobody wants to acknowledge it, but there it is. Pip and I have no place here, whatever my husband says.’ She takes a breath to steady herself; Leandro watches her carefully. ‘Who was that man? The man they beat?’

‘His name is Francesco Molino. He was – he is – an advocate for the reforms; a key voice in the peasant league.’

‘And the men who attacked him?’ At this Leandro pauses, and Clare can see him choosing what to tell her, how much to reveal. She holds his gaze.

‘Mrs Kingsley, you are quite right. There is a crisis here – in truth, there’s a war. Nobody is calling it that, yet, but that’s what it is. There is a war going on between the farm labourers and the men who own and run the farms. And I believe the tide is turning. After the Great War ended things went in the workers’ favour. There was so much anger and hardship, and the time was ripe for change. But the proprietors have a new weapon now.’

‘Those men?’ says Clare, and Leandro nods.

‘Members of the new fascist party – squads paid by the wealthy to … turn the tide back their way. To break strikes, and undermine the socialist movement. You have nothing to fear from them, of course. You’re not a part of this.’

‘How can you say that after what happened yesterday? And how can they just … do what they want like that, with no fear of arrest or censure?’

‘This is not Britain, Mrs Kingsley; this is not even Italy. This is
Puglia
. The local branch of the fascist party, begun here only in June, was founded by members of the police force.’

‘You mean … they may act as they please? They have official sanction – the law is with them?’

‘No. They have unofficial sanction, and the money is with them. That’s far more important down here.’

From the garden below the window Clare hears Boyd’s and Pip’s voices, echoing slightly, making a calm sound. Leandro pulls up a chair to face Clare and sits down.

‘I have a proposition for you,’ he says, lacing his fingers and watching her over the top of them. ‘Stay here in Puglia, but not here in Gioia. Not in town.’

‘No, Mr Cardetta. I want to go home, and so does Pip. Boyd may even come too, if I can convince him. You have been an excellent host, but I don’t understand why my husband can’t work on his plans for your new façade from somewhere else. He won’t tell me … he …’ She shakes her head. The trembling has stopped, outwardly, but she can still feel it in her gut, like aftershocks. ‘He insists that he must remain here with you, even if he won’t explain why. So – please – let him go. Let him come away with me and Pip.’

‘Stay, for his sake. Even I can see that he’s happier, and works better, when you’re with him. We can all see the good you do him.’

‘But you just said yourself, there’s a war on here! How can you ask us to stay?’

‘Stay for his sake, and … stay for Marcie’s sake. Please. I have a
masseria
outside of Gioia – a farm deep in the countryside, in a tranquil place where none of these troubles will come near you. You and Marcie and the boy can go there, Boyd and I can travel back and forth as we need to. Mrs Kingsley, I know my wife isn’t happy here. I’m not blind. If only you could see how much good it’s done her to have your company! These past three days she’s been more like she was when I first knew her – more like she was in New York – than at any time since we moved here. Please. Go to the
masseria
. My wife needs you, and your husband needs you, and I need your husband.’

Leandro keeps his steady black eyes on her until she feels skewered, and knows that however much she twists there’ll be no breaking free. She has that same choking feeling that she knows so well, that feeling of something around her throat. It helps her not to agree; the silence grows until it seems to ring. ‘This is very important,’ says Leandro eventually, softly, still not breaking his gaze. ‘I may not speak freely about everything that concerns me, and I can only ask your forgiveness for that. But I can’t allow you to leave yet. I’m afraid I
will
not
allow it.’ Clare stares at him, stunned mute. She can’t quite believe what she’s heard, but there’s no mistaking that Leandro is entirely in earnest. He is steely with it, too sharp to touch. ‘Do you understand, Mrs Kingsley?’ In his face, in his tone, she sees the truth. She is entirely subject to his will, entirely at his command; they all are.
When Leandro goes off it’s like a volcano
, Marcie said. Clare’s pulse flickers in her neck; she has to swallow before she can speak.

‘Very well,’ she says, and Leandro’s answering smile is warm and relieved, and all trace of the threat disappears.

Word is sent ahead to Cardetta’s
masseria
– the Masseria dell’Arco – to be ready for their arrival, and they stay the rest of the day in Gioia while Clare and Pip repack their things, and Marcie fills a steamer trunk with clothes and shoes and make-up. She seems as giddy about the change in plans as if they’ve decided to go on a picnic or to a gala of some kind.

‘You’re going to love the
masseria
, Pip,’ she declares, as they sit down to dinner and Clare has the manic sensation that they’re all fiddling as Rome burns. She glances from face to face to see if anyone else senses anything amiss, but they are all acting as though nothing has happened, and she can’t work out if it’s her who’s unreal, or if it’s them. Only Pip can’t keep his disquiet from showing. He’s bounced back from his shock with the resilience of youth, and by sleeping fourteen hours overnight, but he’s still quiet and his eyes, when nobody’s talking to him, have a far-off look. ‘It’s like a kind of castle, really. Built to keep out marauding bandits, aeons ago. Lots to explore, and lots of animals too. Do you like animals?’

‘Yes. I like dogs – I should like to have a dog.’

‘Well, we have plenty of dogs there!’ Marcie beams at him. ‘Plenty of cows and horses and mules too, but they’re far less fun, I know.’

‘They’re farm dogs, mind you,’ Leandro cautions. ‘They’re not pets, so don’t try to play with them until they know you.’

‘Oh, darling, of course he won’t! Pip’s not silly,’ says Marcie. ‘And the stars! You won’t believe the number of stars.’ When the food arrives everybody eats, including Pip, but Clare finds that it all tastes of nothing; her tongue seems numb, and even though her stomach feels caved in with hunger, when she tries to swallow it almost makes her gag. Boyd takes her hand under the table and squeezes it with a quiet intensity. She doesn’t look at him, and drinks her wine too quickly.

Federico drives the two women and Pip out to the farm in the red Alfa Romeo. The men will follow in a couple of days, and as they leave Clare turns to look up at Boyd from the back seat, so that her last view is of his face thrown into shadow as the car pulls away. He stands with his shoulders slumped, and when he kissed her goodbye minutes before there was something feverish about it, something frantic in the press of his lips that almost made her recoil. The car’s headlights lance ahead through the darkness; a plume of dust and fumes trails behind it. Clare thinks of her promise to Pip – that they would go home soon – and wonders if he remembers it. If he will challenge her about it. Right now he seems distracted enough by Marcie and her constant talk. She sits in the front seat next to Federico, and turns back to face them.

‘Do you know, there’s a raised area in one of the old bedrooms at the
masseria
– it used to be where the bed would have stood, but we don’t use that room at the moment because there’s a hole in the corner of the roof and bats get in and swing from the rafters – bats! Can you believe it?’ She shudders theatrically. ‘I’d smoke ’em out, if it was up to me, but Leandro says to let them be. Let them be! We don’t need that room! Well, he has some strange notions, sometimes. But – anyway – the platform would make a very fine stage. What say you and I have a few acting lessons together, Pip, and maybe put on a bit of a play? What do you say?’

‘All right. That’d be good. What play should we do?’

‘Whatever you’d like. We’ve no texts, of course, but we can do our own version of whatever story you like. We could even write a script ourselves.’

‘How about
Dracula
? Then we could use the bats as extra members of the cast,’ says Pip with a grin, and Marcie chuckles.

‘How about
Macbeth
– we can use real wool of bat for the witches’ potion!’

‘How about
Antony and Cleo
bat
ra
?’

‘
The Merry Bats of Windsor
?’

‘
The Taming of the Bat
?’

Marcie tips back her head and laughs, and Clare is grateful to her because Pip is laughing too, pleased to have amused her, and he seems to have forgotten what they saw yesterday. Clare can’t even find a smile. She feels as though somebody is pressing a knife to her throat; she hardly dares move. She leans her forehead against the cool glass and stares out at the walls and scrubby trees blurring past as the car rumbles along the dirt road, its headlights giving the world a sickly caste. And then they pass a man, sitting slumped against the wall beside the road with his face turned up to the sky. They are past him in a heartbeat, and Clare turns to look back but he has vanished into the darkness. It’s late in the evening and they are far from town, and something in his posture makes her think he’s not just resting, not just star-gazing – he’s in trouble. In her mind’s eye batons rise and fall, and she fears for him, takes a breath, and for a moment the words hover on her lips:
Stop the car. Go back
. But she stays silent and he is behind them, and this is one more thing that she doesn’t say, and has no power to change. She feels exhausted and afraid. She feels like surrendering but doesn’t know to whom, or what her battle is. They arrive at the
masseria
soon afterwards and go straight to their beds. Clare has the impression of massive stone walls and the smell of cow manure. She’s so tired she can barely climb the stairs, but then she sleeps only fitfully, skimming through dreams that she knows would frighten her if she could see them clearly.

Every wall of the
masseria
is painted white, and in the morning sunshine it’s painful to look at. The place is arranged in a square around a large courtyard, its solid, flat rooflines like shoulders hunched against the world, and the only way in or out is via the huge archway that gives the place its name, tunnelling under the full width of the rooms above it, fifteen feet or more, and closed off by wooden doors twelve feet high. One and a half sides of the quadrangle are barns and storage sheds for grain and animals and equipment, with servants’ rooms above; these have reinforced gates that open only outwards, not into the courtyard. The dairy forms another side, and then the living quarters rise up three storeys, and only open inwards, not outwards. If the place came under attack, this inner keep would be well protected.

It’s early and Pip is still asleep; Clare sits with Marcie, who is quieter before noon, at a table on a partly covered terrace over the dairy, accessed via an exterior stone stairway. The cows have been and gone from milking; Clare heard the soft clatter of their feet, and occasional lows of discontent, sometime soon after dawn. She looks out at the view over the barns, at the parched brown fields and their grey stone walls, and hears the breeze making a low thrum as it rolls along the shallow crease in the land where the
masseria
is situated, and through a forbidding thicket of prickly pear. A dog barks, not far away, and the leathery leaves of a fig tree rattle against the outside wall of the dairy; other than that, the stillness is striking.

‘Are you all right, Clare? Did you sleep?’ says Marcie. Clare manages to shake her head, but can’t speak. For a while she feels Marcie watching her, from one side, then: ‘Poor little mouse.’ And it might be sympathetic, or an accusation of cowardice.

Clare still can’t bring herself to eat, though she knows she should. After two nights of failed sleep the hunger makes her unsure if she’s quite awake, or if her eyes are even open, and though she knows Marcie spoke a few minutes ago, she can’t quite remember what she said. Something about the weather, perhaps, or about the day to come. When she sips her coffee, she’s surprised to find it gone cold. When she looks up to ask Marcie if a fresh pot could be brought, she finds that she’s alone at the table, and for some reason this makes her want to weep. She stares out along the gentle curve of the land, squinting into the distance, and tries to think what she ought to do next. She must not be so strange once Pip is up, but everything is different and unsafe and she can’t think of a way back to a logical scheme of things, a way back to normality, where she knows what’s expected of her, or what to expect of those around her. She has no idea what’s happening. There’s some commotion down in the courtyard, and the creak of the gate opening, but she pays it no heed. Only when figures appear, directly in her line of sight, does she blink and try to focus.

Two men and a woman stand in front of her, the smaller of the men supported by the larger, who has the face and physique of a movie star. There’s a revolting smell with them, a smell of rot and corruption.

‘
Signora Cardetta, Signora Cardetta, scusi
…
Ettore
…’ the movie star says, and then something else she can’t decipher, and Clare shakes her head. They’re looking for Marcie, this odd trio. The woman has a raw-boned face and a gaze like a whip crack. Her hair is hidden under a scarf and there are two damp patches on the front of her blouse, over her nipples.
Where is her baby?
Clare wonders. The knees of the smaller man are sagging, and his head lolls on the other man’s shoulder, but just then he gasps, his eyes open and they find Clare’s. And suddenly she is wide awake. His hair is black and his skin as swarthy as any she’s seen in Puglia, stretched tight over cheekbones like razors, but his eyes are electric blue – a ridiculous, unreal blue like a shallow ocean on a sunny day. The colour of them hits her like a slap in the face, and for a few seconds it’s all she can see; his expression is at once bewildered and full of wonder, and she longs to know why. And then his eyes roll back and he collapses, and there’s a sudden strange expansion inside her head, like something swelling up at speed, and bursting.