The Night Falling (29 page)

By the time she reaches Pip he’s standing with his legs wide apart and his arm extended, squinting along it. The sight of the pistol in his hand gives Clare a nasty jolt, like he’s holding a live snake – she wants him to drop it and step away. There’s a splash of white paint on the trunk of the olive tree, and Ludo is at Pip’s side, steadying his hand, looking down along it, adjusting his aim. Leandro catches her arm to stall her as she hurries towards them.

‘Wait a moment,’ he says. ‘He’s about to shoot.’

‘I don’t want him to,’ she says automatically. Leandro hushes her gently, and keeps hold of her arm. After a moment Clare pulls it away, but she stays at his side. The sight of Ludo Manzo schooling Pip is almost as abhorrent as the sight of the gun. Stepping back, Ludo checks the target once more and gives a curt nod. His eyes are narrow and sharp; he doesn’t flinch when the gun goes off, and Pip’s arm jerks back wildly before he can stop it.

The bullet smacks into the stone of the wall two metres to the left of the olive tree, there’s a cloud of dust, a shower of grit, and Ludo grins. He says something and then chuckles, and Pip’s cheeks flame. He’s breathing hard, his eyes are wide with excitement.

‘Ludo says the first time he fired a gun he gave himself a black eye, so you did good, Pip,’ says Leandro, and Pip turns to smile at him. He seems surprised to see Clare there, but pleased as well.

‘Did you see that, Clare?’ he says.

‘I saw it,’ says Clare, but she can’t smile.

‘You don’t approve?’ Leandro murmurs.

‘He’s still a schoolboy. He doesn’t need to know how to fire a gun.’

‘You never know when it might come in useful,’ Leandro demurs. ‘Especially out here.’ Clare glances sharply at him, but Leandro walks forwards before she can ask him what he means. He puts a hand on Pip’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. ‘Now you know how it kicks, so you’ll know to be ready for it. Try the shot again. Squeeze the trigger gently, and brace your arm for the recoil.’

‘All right,’ says Pip. Clare draws breath to speak but doesn’t know what she wants to say. Pip is enjoying himself, and she doesn’t want to spoil it for him, but she thinks of the naked man grazing the stubble at Ludo’s feet, and the way he grinned then, too. She thinks of Federico leading a squad in Gioia, and of Leandro, refusing to let her leave. She’s surrounded by men of violence, and she doesn’t want the least trace of it to touch Pip, or linger on him, or shape him in any way. The brutality is like a poison, like a sickness, and the thought of Pip catching it is appalling.

His second shot carves a ragged tear in the bark of the tree trunk, still wide of the target but far closer.

‘Bravo!’ says Ludo, nodding. Pip smiles, shrugs modestly.

‘I can do better, I’m sure of it. I just need to practise more. Will you tell him for me, Leandro?’

‘Of course. And of course you’ll improve – a farm is the perfect place to practise. You’ll be a crack shot by the end of the summer.’

‘But perhaps that’s enough for now?’ says Clare. She too has gone closer. She wants to catch Pip’s eye, she wants him to sense her unease so she won’t need to speak it.

‘But we’ve only just started!’ says Pip. He still has the pistol in his hand, held awkwardly and half extended away from him, like he doesn’t quite want it to touch him. ‘I need to practise more. Then Ludo’s going to teach me to shoot the rifle as well, and then I can go and shoot at rats in the barn.’

‘Well, be warned – they’re devilish hard to hit,’ says Leandro. ‘You won’t believe the speed of them. If you can shoot rats then there’s not much you won’t be able to hit.’

‘I don’t see why you need to shoot
anything
,’ says Clare, almost pleading. But Pip doesn’t seem to hear it.

‘I’m good at archery,’ says Pip. ‘I think I could be good at this, too.’

‘A gun is just a tool, Mrs Kingsley,’ says Leandro calmly. ‘On a farm it’s just a tool, like a scythe or a mattock.’

‘Pip’s not one of your guards, Mr Cardetta.’

‘It’s really fine, Clare. Father said it was a good idea,’ says Pip, stepping away from her, raising the gun again, staring down its sights. ‘There are brigands, you know. And packs of rebels. This way I can defend us, if I need to.’ He screws up his eyes, tilting his head to take aim. Clare stares at him in shock.

‘The boy has been upset by some of the things he’s seen here,’ Leandro says quietly, for Clare’s ears only. ‘This is how to make him strong; unafraid.’

‘No. This is how to inure him,’ she says shakily.

‘That’s how we get strong.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘No harm will come of it, I give you my word.’ Clare watches for a minute more, and knows she’s defeated. She wants to say to Leandro, and to Ludo,
you can’t have him
. But Pip is no longer a child, and he was never truly hers. Ludo glances up and meets her eye, and this time there’s no grin, no amusement; just a cold, steady scrutiny. Clare leaves them, and as she goes Pip’s third shot rings out. The sound makes her ears hum, and then she hears Pip’s delighted laugh, and Leandro clapping.

A day later, Clare sits out on the covered terrace with Pip, playing rummy with a deck of yellowed playing cards that he found in an empty bedroom. Clare is still tense; she feels full of things she wants to say to him, but when it comes to it she doesn’t know how to phrase any of them, so she stays silent. She can’t explain to him why it bothered her so much to see him learning to shoot a gun with Ludo and Leandro; or why she distrusts both men so deeply. For the first time ever, the silence between them feels awkward. This is another thing she wants to object to, but to acknowledge it would only make it worse. When raised voices echo out across the courtyard they exchange an anxious look and their game stalls as they listen. It’s simmering hot again, but the sky is a deep blue and there’s a gently cooling breeze. It seems an altogether too beautiful day for such an explosion of anger. It’s Leandro’s voice – instantly recognisable – and there are pauses in his tirade as if somebody else is answering him, in a voice too quiet to be heard. It could be one of the servants, it could be Marcie, or Boyd. There’s a hiatus during which the whole
masseria
seems to bend its ears towards the absence of sound, then Leandro shouts:

‘Is this a goddamned
joke
?’ There’s a bang of a door slamming and then quiet, and the sparrows in the courtyard, as though they’d been holding their breath, start to hop about and chatter again.

‘What do you suppose
that
was all about?’ says Pip nervously. He’s always hated shouting, raised voices, any kind of confrontation.

‘Perhaps I should go and see … and make sure everything’s all right,’ says Clare, getting up. ‘You’ll stay put?’ she says to Pip, who nods, reshuffles the cards and starts laying out a game of solitaire.

She goes down to the long sitting room. Somebody left in high dudgeon, and slammed the inner door, but she has no idea if that person was Leandro or the object of his wrath. Peeping around the threshold Clare sees papers scattered over the central ottoman, curling gently in the breeze from the open doors. She sees the back of Leandro’s silver head, his sloping shoulders and solid ribcage, and catches her breath. She’s about to slip away again when she realises that the papers in front of him are Boyd’s drawings. Her fingers curl tightly around the doorframe, her nails making a minute scratching noise that turns Leandro’s head at once.

‘Mrs Kingsley,’ he says sombrely. His face has a dragged- down look. ‘Do come and join me. You must have heard my little outburst. I’m sure they heard it in Gioia.’

‘Is everything all right, Mr Cardetta?’ she says pointlessly. She sits down uneasily, on the edge of a couch opposite him.

‘In a way I suppose it is, in fact. I fear I’ve given your husband a pasting he didn’t quite deserve. Perhaps he meant nothing by it. A misunderstanding, nothing more. I can’t imagine him being the type of man to goad another deliberately.’

‘Certainly I can’t imagine him ever goading
you
deliberately, Mr Cardetta.’

The proprietor delicately rearranges some of the drawings in front of him, using only his fingertips; he frowns at them in thought.

‘We all have our weaknesses, Mrs Kingsley,’ he murmurs. ‘Mine is my temper. I have such a store of anger in my heart, you understand.’ He taps his chest to show her. ‘Such a store of it. Nobody could be born poor here and not grow up to have it. It doesn’t matter what you do later, or what changes. It never goes.’

‘You … don’t like the designs?’ says Clare. Leandro looks up at her sharply, as if even now suspecting mockery. He shakes his head.

‘You can’t see it either, can you? That rather confirms Boyd’s innocent intentions.’ Leandro makes a sweeping gesture over the drawings. ‘
Trulli
. He has designed it after
trulli
. I have worked and worked; I have done things you couldn’t imagine, Mrs Kingsley, to pull myself up to where I am. Still, my peers here treat me as peasant scum, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. And now look – after all of it, your husband would put me back in a
trullo
!’ He laughs suddenly, loudly. ‘In case!’ He wags a finger at her. ‘Just in case anybody should forget, and mistake me for
signori
!’ He laughs again, a self-mocking chuckle that soon peters out. Clare swallows nervously; the thought is there at once that if the designs aren’t right, Boyd will have to stay longer. She will have to stay longer.

‘I’m … I’m quite sure Boyd had absolutely no intention of insulting you, Mr Cardetta.’

‘Ah, you’re probably right.’ Leandro sighs and leans back in his chair. He runs one hand across his mouth, grips his jaw; the same gesture Clare has seen Ettore make. ‘Perhaps I should scrap the whole idea and save my money. Chances are the place could get ransacked anyway, before this trouble is done.’

‘Then … you don’t want him to redraw them?’ she says breathlessly.

‘You must be ready to return to your home?’ he says. ‘Perhaps this whole thing was a mistake,’ he adds softly, and she isn’t sure which thing he means.

‘No, I … that is …’ Clare can’t for the life of her think how to answer. For a mad second she almost asks him what it is he wants to know from Boyd.

She looks up to find him watching her speculatively.

‘You are not at all what I expected you would be, Mrs Kingsley,’ he says. ‘The British are often so set in their ways. So rigid in their thinking. You seem, if you don’t mind my saying, to be just the opposite of that. In fact, most of the time I find myself unable to put my finger on what it is you do think.’

‘I find the same thing myself, sometimes,’ she says, and Leandro smiles.

‘Your husband has told you something of my former life in New York, I can tell.’ He says this lightly, and Clare is instantly on her guard. She doesn’t trust any levity in him.

‘Yes,’ she says. Leandro grunts, nods.

‘You demanded to know, I’ll wager. I can’t imagine him volunteering the information. And may I counsel you not to credit everything you’ve heard, Mrs Kingsley? Your husband and I have a … complicated past. I know he would never tell you all of it. Perhaps he should have told you none of it.’

‘Will you tell me?’

‘Me? Christ, no.’ He chuckles again. ‘But I will tell you this. In the course of my life I’ve had to do things that no man in his right mind would be proud of. I’ve been on the wrong side of the law – so far on the wrong side I forgot there was a right side, sometimes. I forgot there was a law. I’ve left that behind me now; I’m not that same man any more. But it got me to where I am, it got me to where I wanted to be, and how many men can say that? Do you know what I used to dream of when I was a little boy, Mrs Kingsley?’ He leans forward keenly, elbows on his knees. ‘I used to watch the
signori
going into the Teatro Comunale in Gioia in the evening. I used to look at their fine suits and the dresses and jewels the women wore, and the carriages they came in, all lit up with lamps. Their horses were sleek and spirited, not broken-winded, or worm-eaten. I used to dream of being one of those men – of walking along with them with a beauty on my arm, and laughing about whatever it was the rich found to laugh about, and spending an evening well fed, watching a play. I didn’t even know what a play was, really. I couldn’t picture it – there I was, all bones and dirt, a starving, snot-nosed rat like the rest of us. And I watched them, and I dreamed. Do you know how old I was the first time I worked a full day in the fields, Mrs Kingsley?’ Clare shakes her head, mute. ‘Eight. I was eight years old,’ says Leandro, and his face drags down again, remembering. ‘You’ve no idea of the things I’ve done, and the shit I’ve waded through, to put myself where I am. And I will cut down any man who tries to take it from me. I will
cut him down
.’ He says this with total calm, total conviction, and Clare feels her legs twitch, the instinctive urge to run.

Suddenly, Leandro smiles. ‘I’ve lost the thread of my story. Forgive me.’

‘I can’t imagine what life must be like for the very poor here. I can be told, but I can’t imagine it,’ says Clare.

‘None of us can walk in another’s shoes, not truly. But don’t let it distress you, Mrs Kingsley. Soon you’ll be back in London, with your husband and your son, and it will be as though none of this ever happened. You need never spare a thought for poor Puglia again. Isn’t that what you want?’ She looks up sharply because the question has an undercurrent of unspoken meaning.

‘I won’t ever forget coming here,’ she says.

‘No. I don’t suppose you will,’ he says gravely.

‘Will you tell me what happened at Masseria Girardi?’ She takes a chance in asking, since they’re speaking plainly. ‘You said Ettore was angry with you about it.’

‘Angry with me about it – no. Although, perhaps he ought to be. No, my nephew is just angry about it. He’s angry about so many things. Of course he is. He was one of those starving brats, same as I was, and he’s never managed to change it at all.’

‘But what was it?’

‘It’s a hard story, Mrs Kingsley.’

‘I want to hear it.’