The Night Falling (27 page)

One stuffy night he’s on duty in the
trullo
by the gates. The dogs whine and mutter to themselves as they settle down for the night; geckos cheep at one another as they wriggle across the warm stones, pausing to mark Ettore with the black spheres of their eyes. He sits with the rifle on his knees and lets his mind wander. There has been no sign of raiders or thieves since he arrived at dell’Arco, and the mood of the guards is relaxed. Twice Ettore has been to the roof and found Carlo fast asleep; once he castigated the young man mildly, and only afterwards realised what he was doing – warning him to be ready to attack Ettore’s own people. Then he was so appalled with himself that he almost laughed. One by one the lights go off inside the
masseria
until the darkness is complete, and Ettore’s eyes stretch and strain as they adjust. A soft sound gives his skin a prickle of warning; he’s on his feet in an instant, his finger on the trigger, heart lurching. The nearest dog growls with quiet menace but then there’s silence and he thinks he’s imagined the sound, until a face appears at the gates, not two feet away from him. With a gasp Ettore swings the gun up, knocks the barrel against the metal with a clang that makes the dog yip in excitement. Then he lowers it again, shutting his eyes in relief.

‘Paola, Mother of God! Don’t sneak up like that!’ he whispers, and sees her fleeting smile.

‘I stayed downwind of the dogs,’ she says, pleased. ‘Quiet when I want to be, aren’t I?’

‘Quieter than a shadow. Why are you here?’

‘I wanted to tell you something, and ask you something. When are you coming back?’

‘Soon.’ He puts the gun down, glances back at the farm. ‘Soon. What’s going on – is it Valerio?’

‘No, he actually seems a little better. I wanted to tell you … there’s a plan.’

‘A plan?’

‘Yes. A plan to fight back, but properly this time. No more strikes that they simply break with blacklegs. No more political debate. If this is a war then let it be an open one.’ In the near dark her eyes are huge and they shine. He can read nothing in them but conviction, and it makes him uneasy.

‘What is this plan?’

‘Well,’ she hesitates, choosing her words. ‘Well, brother, you’re not going to like it.’

Part Three

But when, after infinite endurance, they are shaken to the depths of their beings and are driven by an instinct of self-defence or justice, their revolt knows no bounds and no measure. It is an inhuman revolt whose point of departure and final end alike are death, in which ferocity is born of despair.

Christ Stopped at Eboli
Carlo Levi

Chapter Eleven

Clare

The more Clare speaks to Ettore, the more time she spends with him, the better her Italian becomes. The latest word she’s learnt is
tradimento
. Betrayal. She was so sure that Boyd would guess at once that for the first few days fear chafed at her every time she saw her husband. She’d been sure he would see it in her eyes, or smell it on her – smell Ettore on her – but he’s said nothing, and shown no signs of suspicion. Since he told Clare about Leandro Cardetta and his strange, precarious relationship with the man, Boyd has been diffident with her, cautious, as though he’s not quite sure what she’ll do. Perhaps this distraction is what keeps him from noticing that nothing is how it was before – that the world is not what Clare thought it was, that they are not the same people, any of them, and that to this new version of herself, Ettore Tarano is as necessary as breathing. She fears the speed with which Ettore is healing, his leg strengthening; she dreads his departure from the
masseria
.

One afternoon she goes directly from Ettore’s room to the quiet chamber where Boyd works, at the back of the
masseria
. She goes with her hair dishevelled, her blouse untucked from the waistband of her skirt and sweat drying along her hairline, but these could be symptoms of the heat, nothing more. Boyd starts as she comes in, his body curved over his work, the desk covered in papers and pencils; he looks up and the sight of her wipes away his frown of concentration, leaving pleasure and hope in its place. The room smells faintly of him, and of wood and ink, like a schoolroom.

‘Hello, darling,’ he says, and he smiles. Clare pulse flutters in her throat; she’s alive with nerves, and yet a part of her almost
wants
him to guess, even if the thought of what would happen then terrifies her. She wonders if it was this same impulse that made him confess everything to her about his affair, the year before, with Christina Havers. Clare hadn’t guessed anything; she hadn’t seen or sensed anything different, until he broke down and wept, and made her sit while he knelt before her and confessed it all. Had he come home with traces of Christina on his body? Had he wanted her to guess, and felt this same frustration when she hadn’t?
Nothing has changed
. He said it over and over.
Nothing has changed, my darling, I promise
. But he’d been wrong about that, because Clare took a quick look into her heart and couldn’t even find an echo of what she’d felt for him when they wed. She doesn’t think it was his affair that made it vanish, but that gave her cause to examine her feelings. And because there was no love there was no injury, there was no anguish. There was nothing much at all.

The affair with Christina showed Clare a side of her husband she’d never seen before. Since their trip to New York she’d known there were things about him she didn’t understand, and perhaps never would. She would never know how deep his grief for Emma went, because it seemed fathomless, like his love for her. She knew there were things from that past life that he would not, or could not, put into words. But the way he rounded on Christina Havers – the young, bored wife of a client – after their affair, was a revelation. Christina had thick, dark hair, lazy eyes and bee-stung lips. She was about the age Clare had been when she’d married Boyd – eighteen or nineteen. There was still a layer of puppy fat on her figure; her big, round breasts nestled between soft arms. Boyd said she’d seduced him – got him drunk at a drinks party and came on strongly. He called her a whore, a slut, a trollop, spitting out these ugly words as if they tasted bad; he clearly hated her with a passion. But he hadn’t only slept with her once; somehow he’d found himself at her mercy four or five times before guilt and loathing overwhelmed him, and made him throw himself on his wife’s mercy.

Clare had believed his remorse – it was impossible not to when he’d worked himself into such a lather. His utter abjection made her think of New York, of the vomit and the white dots on the carpet, and the terrifying way he’d seemed like a stranger – completely, in that moment, and partially ever since. So she followed her instinct to calm him, to reassure him. She believed that he loved her, hated what he’d done, couldn’t explain quite why he’d done it, and was terrified she might leave him because of it. But she also believed his hatred of Christina, and that was what bothered her the most. She wasn’t sure what it meant; she didn’t know how he could make love to the girl and then blame her entirely, and hate her. Making love had required both of them to be there, and willing, after all. Troubled, Clare said very little on the whole subject, and Boyd took her silence as a dignified toleration of his transgression that might soon lead to forgiveness, and life returned to the way it had been before.
That bitch
, he called little Christina, his lips white with the word, tears shining on his rumpled face.
That whore
.

Now, Clare finds herself wondering what it would be like to hear those same words from Boyd directed at her. She can’t imagine it – not when he has only ever told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she is an angel, that she has saved him. But that was the Clare before Ettore. Boyd holds his hand out to her, and with the thrill of wondering if this will be what gives her away, if touch will be the sense with which he sees clearly, Clare crosses the room and takes his hand.

‘How’s it coming along?’ she says. Dry mouth; shallow breaths. Boyd turns back to look at his drawings and shrugs slightly.

‘Well, they’re almost ready to show him. As to how he’ll react to them …’ He looks up at her with mute appeal. ‘I can only hope he’ll be happy, and we can go home.’ Panic bubbles up in Clare. In the space of two weeks her goal has turned on its head, and now she doesn’t want to leave. She remembers what Ettore said – that Leandro wants to find something out from Boyd before he will let them go. It could simply mean that Leandro wants to see these finished designs, but it could mean something else. Something more. As soon as Ettore told her she’d thought of New York, and it’s on the tip of Clare’s tongue to ask, to speculate, but she stops herself. If he doesn’t know already, then she doesn’t want Boyd to hear that this missing information is what’s keeping them there. He might clear the matter up in minutes; their visit might end there and then. There’s unease behind all this silent thought – she can’t imagine what information Boyd could possibly have that Leandro might want.

Boyd squeezes her hand for attention. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he says. Clare has been staring at the drawings for a minute or more without really seeing them. She blinks, and concentrates. The new front Boyd has drawn for the house on Via Garibaldi has
trulli
along the roofline. Four small, stylised
trulli
, built of interlocking stone just like the real things, but with regular-sized cut blocks, put together precisely, so that the sides are almost faceted and they are halfway to being pyramids rather than cones. Each one is topped with a tall spike, like that of a small minaret, and the rest of the front is plain, elegant, almost austere, with four Doric columns flanking the large street door. Clare has a sinking feeling inside.

‘It’s just … wonderful, Boyd,’ she says honestly. ‘It’s so different, and yet it won’t jar with anything around it … It’s understated, but it’s striking. I think it’s one of the best things you’ve designed. Cardetta has to be pleased.’ Boyd sags visibly in relief.

‘I am so glad you think so, darling. I was hoping … that is, the building seemed to take shape as I drew it – it seemed to know how it ought to look. That’s always a very good sign. The
trulli
are such iconic buildings of this area. I’d never seen anything like them before I came here. I think they represent Mr Cardetta rather well, don’t you? As emblems, I mean. They’re peasant dwellings, after all, but they can stand for hundreds of years. He came from the peasantry but has constructed a far grander life, and a more lasting one, by being steadfast and adaptable.’ Boyd pauses, scrutinising his work with an anxious gaze. ‘Never mind quite what he has constructed it upon,’ he murmurs.

‘Indeed,’ says Clare, and there’s a loaded silence while they both wait to hear what will be said next.

They haven’t quite settled this between them yet – the tone they will take when discussing Leandro Cardetta, his past, his designs for them, the kind of man he is, and that Boyd has brought them here at his behest. It bothers Clare that she still doesn’t know how her husband came to meet Cardetta in the first place; that he has still never answered that question. Boyd picks up a pencil and starts to sharpen it with the small paring knife he keeps on his desk. Clare moves away from him, ostensibly to study a painting of St Sebastian on the wall, head thrown back in agony, bristling with arrows.
Tradimento
. Here they are talking as though nothing has changed, as though they are a team, when there is so much they don’t know about one another.

‘When will you show him the drawings?’ she says, at last.

‘Soon. I don’t know … soon,’ says Boyd. He frowns at his work again. ‘I want to make sure they’re perfect.’

‘Nothing is ever perfect. You’ve said before that you tend to overwork things sometimes.’ Clare hears her own words, incredulous. She should tell him to delay, to wait, to spoil the drawings. She should do whatever she can to prolong their stay. But then she thinks of Pip, and his sullen unhappiness, and she is torn, bewildered.

‘You’re right, my darling,’ says Boyd.

Just then, a strange sound comes from some far-off part of the house, and Clare listens for a moment before she can make it out. Then, unmistakeably, she picks out the three-time rhythm and shrill strings of a waltz.

‘Is that Strauss?’ she says, and Boyd smiles.

‘I forgot, I was meant to tell you – Marcie’s looking for you. She said something about a party.’

‘I’ll go and see.’ Boyd opens his mouth as though he will say something, ask something, but he hasn’t time to before Clare leaves the room. She goes up to the bat room, the rehearsal room, the spare room – it has these various names – the music getting louder with each step she takes, echoing along the stone corridors, and it’s been so long since she heard any that Clare is drawn towards it. It’s so profoundly out of place here at the
masseria
, here in Puglia. It’s music from another time, another place; it’s music from another world, and sounds alien in this sparse land, with these hard people. But it’s Marcie, of course; she doesn’t belong in Puglia any more than Clare does.

Clare opens the door to twirling figures; they are waltzing across the floor – Marcie and Pip. Pip is awkward and slightly out of time but Marcie doesn’t seem to mind and follows his lead, however halting. She keeps a beautiful frame, her neck arched back, eyebrows high and haughty, smile serene. She’s slightly taller than Pip in her heels; he has his chin up to compensate, and is concentrating hard.

‘Clare!’ Marcie calls when she sees her standing there. ‘You’ll never guess what, but Federico has only managed to fix this old gramophone! I thought it was dead and gone – it’s been in the junk room for months.’ The waltz is getting slower and slower as the gramophone winds down, so Clare goes over to wind the handle and tighten the mainspring.

‘Lord, now it’s too fast for me!’ says Pip, struggling to organise his feet, and Marcie laughs, and they dance faster, turning around and around until Clare is dizzy watching them. She’s suddenly awash with all her love for Pip, and all her pride in him, and the fact that he’s dancing when everything around him is so strange and so dark. Her eyes swell with tears and her heart with guilt, because it’s him she’s betraying too, of course, not just Boyd. Where can her love for Ettore lead her, apart from away from Pip? She has a sudden clear premonition of agony ahead.

‘No more! I’m dying!’ cries Marcie, breaking off her hold. ‘My mama told me a lady should never perspire, but in this heat who could help it?’

Clare lifts the needle out of the groove and quiet fills the room.

‘We could have carried on,’ says Pip. ‘Clare, don’t you want a go?’

‘Well, we need to save what needles we have for the party, Filippo,’ says Marcie.

‘You and I will dance then,’ says Clare. She wipes her eyes with her fingertips. ‘You looked very elegant, Pip. Any young lady would be proud to dance with you.’

‘Are you
crying
?’ Pip smiles.

‘Oh, Clare, whatever’s the matter?’ says Marcie.

‘Oh no, don’t worry – you should have seen her at my last school play. She cried all over the place,’ says Pip, lightly, but there’s something else underneath his words, almost like a tinge of contempt. It jars Clare, so that she clears her throat, reorders her face, and tries not to show her pain.

‘I’ve sent Federico out with the invitations. Ilaria will cook up a feast, and we’ll drink too much wine and dance until dawn! Oh, I can’t wait,’ says Marcie, coming over to Clare and gripping her arms. Her face is flushed beneath the powder, her eyes slightly frantic. ‘I wonder if Ettore would come? There must be precious few parties in his life right now. It’d do him the world of good.’

‘I’m not sure his leg is ready for dancing,’ says Clare.

‘Oh, have you seen him lately, then? I hardly even lay eyes on the kid when Leandro’s here.’

‘I saw him … on guard duty, I think. And he’s hardly a kid, is he?’ Clare fiddles with the gramophone handle, her fingertips feeling both raw and numb, like the rest of her – unbearably self-conscious.

‘Oh, they all get that weathered look down here in Puglia. Ettore’s only twenty-four though – you wouldn’t think it, would you?’

‘No.’ Clare can’t breathe for a second. She thought he was older than her; he seems it in so many ways. Suddenly she understands how young he must have been when hardship began its march over his body and face. ‘Will you be performing your play at the party as well?’ she says tightly.

‘Oh, heavens, I don’t think we’re ready, are we, Pip? Are we? No, I think that’ll have to be a bit later on.’