The Night Falling (48 page)

‘Who could love such a man? But you stayed for the boy? For Pip?’

‘Yes. I stayed for him. And because I had no idea there could be an alternative. It never occurred to me to look for one.’

‘I wanted you to come here for Marcie – that was also true. I could feel I was losing her, and I wanted her to be happy. But after Boyd spoke about you that way I needed to meet you, too. I needed to … see.’

‘I’m grateful to you. I owe you my life.’

‘No. I risked your life,’ says Leandro.

‘But I’m free of him now, and it’s your doing.’

For a while the two of them stand and watch the world, and wait. There’s no hurry. Clare breathes in, and breathes out, and feels calmer for being by Leandro’s side, and knowing that he is waiting too. Waiting for thoughts to come, and go; waiting for the next moment, and what it will bring. ‘Will you write to me and … keep me informed as to Boyd’s whereabouts? And what happens to him?’ she says, at last.

‘Yes. If you want me to.’

‘Not for me, but for Pip. And I’m sorry, Leandro. I’m very sorry that I betrayed you, and didn’t warn you about the raid,’ she says. Leandro smiles faintly.

‘Ettore gave you little choice. I understand that. And besides, I’m too angry with my niece, and with Marcie, to be angry with you too. I might give myself a stroke if I tried.’

‘You’re angry with Paola?’

‘Of course I am. She was always the firebrand, always the instigator. Left alone, Ettore would have fought with reading and propaganda, with speeches and strikes. He would have fought with his
brain
, you understand? But Paola’s as spit-and-claws as they come. She’s already told me the raid was her idea – she’s proud of it. Attacking her own family …’

‘What … what will you do with her?’

‘Do? Oh, nothing much, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He takes a long breath in, lets it out slowly. ‘I only want her to stop fighting. It’s over. She must stop being a soldier and start being a mother to that baby.’

‘Will you take care of her? She has nobody else now, nobody to support her. Valerio is too sick to work.’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll take care of her. She’ll come and work in my house in Gioia, whether she likes it or not. It’s either that or she can go and be tried as a brigand with the rest of them. She won’t like it,’ he says, grinning sourly. ‘So I get to punish her and take care of her at the same time.’

‘What about Marcie? What will … what will you and Marcie do?’

‘What will we do?’ He shrugs. ‘Again, nothing. We will do nothing. If she wants to leave me, she can, but she’ll leave empty-handed. I’m staying here, in this place. This isn’t the first thing she’s done to hurt me since we came here. I know she hates it here, and I know part of her hates me for bringing her here. But I love her – what can I do? How should I punish her for what she did?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Clare. ‘Pip’s only fifteen years old. She used him … she’s broken his heart.’ She can’t hide her anger.

‘None of us emerge from this spotless, Chiarina. Pip will recover, and he’ll have learnt something important about this world, and the people in it. In time he’ll hardly think about it any more – the young are like that. It will take you and me far longer to mend, I think.’

‘I feel like … I feel like I shouldn’t go on living,’ says Clare. Fresh tears are choking her, aching in her throat, but she’s sick of them and forces them back. ‘This summer has been … it has been the best and worst time of my whole life. The best and the
utter
worst.’

‘But you will go on living, and you have my great-nephew to think about. Or great-niece. Marcie told me,’ says Leandro. He puts one hand on her shoulder for a moment, squeezing it. ‘Perhaps in time, when all of this is less raw, you’ll let me visit you, and the child? Or you’ll come here to visit us? I have precious little family left to me.’

‘I’ll never come back here.’

‘Never? And if Pip wants to visit his father in jail – because Boyd will be jailed, I’ll make sure of it – you’ll make him come on his own?’

‘No.’ Clare hangs her head. ‘No, I won’t make him come on his own.’

‘Life is a catalogue of things we must do for the people we love, whether we want to or not. The only way to avoid it is to never love, and what would be the point of anything then?’

They are silent again, letting more time pass. The wind rolls around them and the hot sun is in their eyes, and it seems as though they might ossify, slowly, if they stayed there long enough; they might become a part of Puglia’s bones. Clare can see the land’s hard beauty, then; the harsh glory of it. It makes her think of Paola; it makes her see that you’d need that stony strength of heart to live there. ‘This war is almost over,’ says Leandro. ‘You asked me how it could ever end and here’s the answer – with the rich crushing the poor in an iron fist. The
braccianti
have already lost; in a few more weeks they’ll have to admit it, even to themselves. The proprietors have won.
We
proprietors, I should say. Every time the workers resist, they will be beaten down.’ As he speaks, Ludo Manzo rides past the gates on his new brown horse, kicking up dust from its hooves. He rides easily, sitting back in the saddle, holding the reins loosely. ‘They may happen to call themselves fascists right now, but there have always been men like that to beat the peasants down, and there always will be,’ says Leandro, nodding towards his overseer. ‘The Manzos. At least we’re down to one of them.’

‘Ettore said that Ludo has a knack for staying alive.’

‘That he does, more’s the pity. His son was the one that killed Ettore’s fiancée. Did you know that?’

‘Federico? No … I didn’t know.’ Even in her detached state, Clare feels the shock of it.

‘Despicable. I’m sure my nephew had a hand in Federico ending up in that fire. He and the girl’s brothers; and I don’t blame them one bit – he had it coming. The man that was killed that night was Ettore’s good friend. The one who looked like a movie star – I think his name was Pino. So I’m sure Ettore was there.’

‘Oh, not Pino too.’ Clare thinks of Pino’s kind face; his young wife peering out past him at their door, and the way he kissed her before he left. She thinks of him saving her from Federico, and searching for the right word to say to her afterwards.
Coraggio
. Somehow his death seems the worst injustice of all. ‘This place is horrible! It’s
brutal
!’ she says bitterly. ‘How can you love it?’

‘Love it? No, I don’t love it. But it owns me.’ Leandro turns to her and smiles sadly. ‘Whenever you’re ready, I’ll take you and the boy to the station.’

Clare packs her things. She leaves Boyd’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe, his shaving brush and soap on the washstand, the rubber sheath in its flat box, tucked into the bedside drawer. She doesn’t know or care what will happen to these things. She goes up to Marcie and Leandro’s room and finds the door shut, the corridor outside in shadow. She stands at the door for a long time, with the hair on her arms prickling; gripped by such knotted emotions she can’t pick one from the other.
You nearly made a murderer of Pip
, she wants to say.
Kind, sweet Pip
.
You broke his heart out of spite. Or was it simply boredom?
And then she wants to say,
I know you’re miserable
.
I know you hate it here, but you can’t leave
.
I know you didn’t want Ettore to die
.

‘Marcie?’ she says. The word bounces back at her from the wood. Perhaps she imagines it, but the silence inside seems to take on a sentient quality. She’s sure Marcie can hear her. She raps her knuckles against the door. ‘Marcie? Can I come in?’ There’s a tiny sound of quick, panicked movement; a rustle of cloth against skin. But that’s all. Clare waits for a long time but the door doesn’t open and she doesn’t knock again. ‘We’re leaving soon. We’ll be gone, so you won’t have to see either one of us,’ she says. And even though she’d planned to say much more she doesn’t, because she can’t say sorry, and she can’t lay blame; she can’t demand an explanation, and her anger is already burning itself out. So she turns her back and walks away, and leaves Marcie hidden there in silence. And then she realises that there could be no greater mark of regret from Marcie, no clearer expression of grief, than silence.

Clare goes to Pip’s room and her heart jolts at finding his bed empty, the door ajar and the windows open, blowing out the fustiness of sleep. She takes a deep breath and grips the bedpost until she feels steady. Then she gathers up all his things and packs them into his trunk, and drags it over to the doorway. It only takes five minutes.
We’ll leave and everything here will carry on without us. And we will carry on. It’ll be like we were never here
. As if in answer to this, as if to deny it, a wave of nausea forces her to sit down on the lid of the trunk, drenching her forehead with cold sweat and her mouth with saliva. She wipes her face and then puts both hands on her midriff. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you,’ she tells the baby quietly, and almost smiles. She knows then that the child will give her back the notion of joy, in time, and that even if the world must think the child is Boyd’s, she will tell it about its real father – about his wild blue eyes, and his strength and his gentle heart; how it had felt like she’d always known him, and that she’d loved him instinctively, right from the start.

Time passes and she stays there, on the lid of Pip’s trunk, trying to picture what it will be like to be back in Hampstead, back in the house that was Boyd’s before it was ever hers. She pictures the slow turn of the hands on the clock in the empty hallway, and the silence that will settle once Pip is back at school, and she knows in that moment that she won’t stay there. Not for any longer than she absolutely has to. She will have to find work, and a flat to rent, and she doesn’t know what or where she will do or go, but an image of the sea on a summer’s day comes into her mind – the deep, deep blue of it, with the mirroring sky above. She longs to have this shade of blue in her life, this saturation of colour.

The thought of starting over, of a town full of strangers, holds no fear for her. Instead she wonders how she can have been so afraid of such trivial things before. Before Puglia, before the Masseria dell’Arco, before Ettore. She realises she’ll always be better for coming here; she will always be more alive; she feels like some of Ettore’s strength has bedded into her alongside his unborn child. And when enough time has passed she’ll be able to divorce Boyd, and cut herself free of him. She doesn’t care that she will be gossiped about; she doesn’t care what anyone will say. The Kent coast, or Sussex; a small town by the sea where Ettore’s child can be born, and Pip can come in the holidays, and the puppy can run about. Boyd’s house in Hampstead can sit and wait for him, if he should ever return to it. Clare will not be waiting; she will go her own way.

She finds Pip in the bat room, curled up on the old sofa. His hair is messed and greasy; he’s still in his pyjamas. He has Peggy on his lap and the puppy sits up when Clare comes in, staring, perking her ears. Pip frowns at the puppy like she’s misbehaved in some way, and as Clare walks across to them she finds herself holding her breath. Her footsteps echo in the rafters; light pours in through the windows and dazzles her. From high on the wall, that one watching eye of the mural stares down, and Clare tries not to think about everything it has witnessed that summer. She comes to stand right in front of the couch and Pip still won’t look up, and fear makes her palms clammy. This is the moment when she’ll know if she’s lost him. This is the moment when she’ll know if their bond has survived, or has shattered under the strain.

‘All right there, Pip?’ she says, and can’t keep her voice even. Some emotion clenches his face, and his cheeks mottle with blood. She waits for a moment, in case he’ll speak, but when he doesn’t she turns her body slightly, towards the door. ‘It’s time to go, I think. Don’t you?’ She tries not to let the weight of everything sound in her voice; she doesn’t want him to feel it, or have to share it.

‘Home?’ he says hoarsely, almost whispering.

‘Home,’ she says. Then she holds out her hand to him, and they can both see it trembling. Pip looks away and opens his mouth, and seems afraid to speak.

‘I didn’t …’ His brows pinch together. ‘I didn’t mean to shoot him.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Clare says at once. She waits a while, but Pip stays quiet. ‘Coming then?’ she says. She holds her breath again, until it burns and her heart lurches in protest. Then Pip gathers Peggy under one arm and takes Clare’s hand.

‘All right, Clare,’ he says.

Author’s Note

The Night Falling
is a work of fiction. Though the town of Gioia del Colle is real enough, and much of the historical detail is as accurate as I can make it, some events have been omitted, altered or imagined to fit the story, while – I hope – remaining true to the era and to the social and political landscape. I trust that those in the know will forgive this use of artistic licence. While key historical figures including Di Vittorio, Di Vagno, Capozzi and De Bellis were real people, all characters with significant roles in the story are entirely fictitious, including Francesco Molino, the man Clare sees beaten by a fascist squad in Piazza Plebiscito.

In September 1921, the socialist political leader Giuseppe di Vagno was assassinated as he gave a speech in Mola di Bari. His killers were rumoured, though not proven, to have been hired by the landowners and proprietors of Gioia del Colle. By the early months of 1922, two years’ hard-won progress made by the peasants’ unions and by socialist local government had been almost completely undone by the rise of fascism and its use of violence and intimidation to weaken opposition, culminating in the fascist March on Rome and the commencement of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in October 1922.

The six workers killed at Natale Girardi’s
masseria
on 1 July 1920 were: Pasquale Capotorto, Rocco Orfino, Rocco Montenegro, Vincenzo Milano, Vito Falcone and Vito Antonio Resta. I placed Paola’s lover Davide amongst their number for the sake of the story. For a comprehensive account of the incident, I recommend
L’Eccidio di Marzagaglia
, an article by Ermando Ottani, available online. Historical works concerning this era of Puglian history are hard to come by in English. I have found
Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy
by Frank M. Snowden (Cambridge, 1986) very useful for research purposes. For those who can read in Italian,
La Memoria che Resta
, edited by Giovanni Rinaldi and Paola Sobrero (Provincia di Foggia, 1981) is a moving collection of first-hand accounts of peasant life at the time.