Tuscan Rose (12 page)

The night of the ball, the villa took on the appearance of a mauve-tinted underworld. The colour theme for the evening was purple and the house and the statues had been lit in the regal colour. The cut flowers were arrangements of violet roses, hyacinths, lilies and tulips, while the driveway and paths were lined with urns sprouting damson-coloured sweet peas, lavender, anemones and dahlias. The menservants were dressed in plum-coloured livery and the musicians of the thirty-six-piece string ensemble in the ballroom wore aubergine purple jackets. Round tables covered in mauve linens had been set up in the garden. On the loggia was a buffet. Extra kitchen staff had been hired to help Ada and the permanent staff prepare the extravagant dishes. Paolina had shown Rosa the menu a few weeks before. It included cold cucumber and cream soup, prawn risotto, artichoke frittata, trout basted with oil and herbs, and zucchini flowers cooked in a wafer-thin batter. Dessert was to be
fragoline nelle ceste,
baskets of spun sugar filled with strawberries, hazelnut mousse and mascarpone.

Clementina was permitted to attend the first hour to see the guests arrive before Rosa put her to bed. The girl couldn’t contain her excitement when people began to appear in their Rolls-Royces, Bugattis and Alfa Romeos. A few months prior to the ball, modernist lampposts had been imported from Barcelona to light the driveway and Signor Collodi had inserted tinted globes for the evening, so the guests looked as though they were appearing through a tunnel of purple light. Chauffeurs opened the doors and out spilled women in lilac taffeta gowns, men in evening suits and lavender shirts, and lap-dogs dyed violet for the occasion. When one group of guests alighted from their car, Rosa jumped at the sight of monkeys and an antelope leaping out with them. She was surprised that no-one else reacted until she realised it was an illusion. One of the women was wearing a purple cape trimmed in monkey fur, while another strode forward in antelope-skin shoes.

The Marchesa’s outfit was the most striking of all and had been made specially for her by Schiaparelli in Paris. It was a grape-coloured sequined evening gown with a fishtail hem, a low-cut back and a plunging V-neckline that left little to the imagination. Through the deep armholes Rosa could see the Marchesa’s ribs protruding through her pale skin, and the skirt of the dress was tight enough that the Marchesa’s hipbones showed through. It occurred to Rosa that the woman might be sick. She hardly ate anything as it was, but in the last few weeks before the ball she had not even come to dinner. But the guests were too mesmerised by the boa constrictor dangling around the Marchesa’s shoulders to notice her weight loss. The Marchesa had brought the snake with her from her last trip to France, where the Parisian social set were ditching their Pekineses and poodles for more exotic animals like cheetahs and lions.

‘What an amazing atmosphere you have created,’ Baroness Derveaux exclaimed to the Marchese and Marchesa. The Baroness was wearing a lilac Delphos dress with a gold hairband, while her husband had donned an embroidered suit.

‘Well, they say one’s greatest enemy is boredom and we certainly don’t want that,’ the Marchesa replied, turning to her husband.

The Marchese, looking dapper in a wine-coloured damask evening suit, smiled uneasily. He was standing with Vittorio, who was dressed in his fascist uniform. When the Baroness raised her eyebrows, Vittorio pulled back his cuff to reveal a purple watchband.

Once the guests had arrived and were being ushered to their tables, Rosa and Clementina went to retire for the night.

As they passed by the buffet table, Signor Bonizzoni touched Rosa’s arm. ‘Maria is not well this evening,’ he said. ‘I need all hands on deck. After you have put the little one to bed go and see Signora Guerrini. You’ll have to help with clearing the tables.’

Rosa, who had been hoping to play her flute when it was too noisy for anyone in the house to notice, was disappointed but had no choice but to agree to the request. She took Clementina to her room, helped her to wash and tucked her into bed. What was wrong with Maria? The nursemaid had seemed peaky lately but Rosa had put it down to the strain the ball preparations had placed on the staff. She returned downstairs where Signora Guerrini was waiting for her with a maid’s uniform.

‘Now you have come down from your ivory tower, you can see how real people earn their living,’ the housekeeper told her gruffly.

Rosa stepped into the garden as a commotion was erupting amongst the guests. A Hispano-Suiza car had pulled up with what looked like a gypsy wagon trailing behind it. The chauffeur opened the door of the car and out stepped a bald man in a Chinoiserie silk suit. He waved a flourish at the watching guests and some of them cheered. The chauffeur assisted a woman wearing a dress with puffed sleeves out of the car. She was probably no older than forty but something in her eyes made her seem hard, Rosa thought, or perhaps the chunky amethyst earrings and choker she was wearing aged her.

‘Signor Castelletti and Contessa Pignatello! How delightful!’
said the Marchesa, greeting the late arrivals with kisses on their cheeks. ‘What have you brought for us?’

The guests and servants waited with necks stretched to see what would emerge from the wagon. The back ramp was lowered and out stepped a swarthy man in a grubby hat and vest. He was holding a chain, and something large and black lumbered after him. Rosa realised it was an animal. The man said something to the beast and it rose to its full height on its back feet. Some of the guests gasped but others stepped forward to get a better view. The animal was a black bear with a moonlike crescent on its chest.

‘It’s quite tame,’ said Signor Castelletti. ‘Its mother was killed by hunters and this man raised it from a cub.’

The gypsy gave a tug on the chain, which was attached to a ring in the bear’s nose. The animal flinched but began to dance, lolling from side to side and turning. The audience clapped and cheered. The Marchesa seemed delighted but the Marchese curled his top lip with disgust. Rosa could feel the animal’s humiliation. A scene flashed before her eyes. Her toes turned icy and she realised she was standing in a forest. The vegetation was lush and moist. Voices shouted in a strange language. Russian? There was a crash through the trees and she saw a mother bear and her two cubs running. Then gunshots…

‘Where are we going to keep a bear?’ the Marchese asked his wife.

‘Oh, he will be fine in the cage I have brought,’ said Signor Castelletti, indicating the wagon. ‘That’s what he has lived in most of his life. And if one of your guests makes you unhappy tonight, you can feed him to the bear for dinner.’

The guests laughed at Signor Castelletti’s joke.

‘I think it would prefer bark and berries, you fool,’ the Marchese muttered under his breath.

Signor Collodi was called. He looked perturbed when the Marchesa instructed him to find a place for the cage and the bear somewhere in the garden. Rosa was worried about Clementina: it was in the girl’s nature to try to pat a wild animal. She looked at
the bear as it passed by with its tamer. It had sores on its knees and was missing fur on its snout. It might kill a human from sheer frustration, Rosa thought. She couldn’t blame it. But someone like Clementina would be a misdirected target.

‘It’s a fine beast,’ said Vittorio, after the bear had been led away. ‘But not as efficient as a cannon or a machine gun.’

Contessa Pignatello smiled, assuming that Vittorio was joking. But Rosa thought about what Ada had said. Vittorio
was
having difficulty adjusting to normal life after the war and he seemed to be getting worse.

Signor Castelletti and his companion were welcomed by the guests and Signor Bonizzoni was called to direct them to their table. Before Signor Castelletti departed, he leaned towards the Marchese and whispered loud enough for Rosa to hear, ‘What do you think of my companion?’

‘She’s very charming,’ answered the Marchese politely.

Signor Castelletti laughed. ‘Young and beautiful she may not be, but when a rich and lonely woman makes herself available to be used, it would be most unchivalrous of me not to oblige, don’t you agree?’

The Marchese stiffened with what Rosa guessed was revulsion and she couldn’t blame him. She turned away and began collecting used dishes from those tables whose guests had entered the ballroom. She caught Baron Derveaux staring at her but pretended not to notice.

‘What’s your fascination with that girl?’ the Baroness asked her husband. ‘Are you looking for a young lover? We agreed that neither of us was to take another until we were both over fifty.’

The Baron laughed at his wife’s joke then said something in response, which Rosa didn’t hear. The ensemble began to play a Viennese waltz and many more guests left their tables for the ballroom. Rosa moved around the empty tables, clearing them of cutlery and china. Another maid came to help her and they worked together.

‘How is Maria?’ the maid asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ said Rosa. ‘I didn’t see her.’

The maid glanced towards where the Marchese and Vittorio were in conversation. ‘Stupid fool. Did she think
he
would marry her?’

‘What do you mean?’ Rosa asked.

The maid raised her eyebrow. ‘Maria has a lover,’ she whispered. ‘Surely you must have noticed? When you turn around to speak to her and she’s not there, you can be sure she’s snuck off to be with him.’

Rosa was dumbfounded. Maria was running around with the Marchese? She couldn’t believe her employer would behave that way with his daughter’s nursemaid! Then she recalled the gossip of the women in the millinery shop and their comments about why the previous nursemaid had left.

‘Signorina Bellocchi, could you help with the buffet?’ Signor Bonizzoni called to Rosa.

Rosa put the used cutlery on a trolley and hurried to the loggia where she began removing empty platters so the menservants could replace them with new ones. The Marchesa was leaning against a column talking with a plump woman who was holding a papillon spaniel with a mauve ribbon around its neck.

‘If you are from Milan you must know the Trivulzio family,’ the woman said.

The Marchesa shrugged. The noncommittal gesture might have meant that she didn’t know the family or that she did know them but didn’t think highly of them. The woman was taken aback but continued on, perhaps hoping to impress the Marchesa.

‘They have a butler,’ she said, ‘who runs the tightest ship. He can sniff out a speck of dust from yards away. But he is blind.
Completely blind.
Yet he is the best butler you could imagine. And, as I’m sure you know, good butlers are not so easy to find. They must know everything about the family but never breathe a word.’

The woman laughed and patted the Marchesa’s arm. The Marchesa shrank back against the column. Rosa assumed she was cringing because of the woman’s reference to the butler’s ‘deformity’. She wondered what the woman would think if she
knew that the Marchesa had ordered a puppy destroyed simply because it had a splodge on its nose.

On her way to the kitchen, Rosa overheard Contessa Pignatello talking with Baroness Derveaux.

‘The Marchese is an egotist but charming. I can’t say so much for his wife. She’s as cold as a fish,’ the Contessa said.

The Baroness came to the Marchesa’s defence. ‘Oh, I have pity for her. I believe her father was a powerful and sometimes cruel man. And do you know what her mother was once heard to say? “A wise woman doesn’t give anyone anything. Not even sympathy.” How could Luisa have grown up any other way but to be standoffish? I believe under that hard exterior there is a fine human being.’

Rosa was surprised by the Baroness’s words. Either she was generous in attributing good qualities to people whether they deserved them or not, or she knew something about the Marchesa that nobody else did. She certainly seemed to be the Marchesa’s only true supporter.

The ensemble stopped playing and the guests gathered around the sides of the ballroom. Rosa was blocked from the kitchen and had no choice but to pause for a moment too. Baron Derveaux had seated himself at the Bösendorfer piano and indicated to the musicians that he intended to play something. He had been smoking a cigarette and placed it, still smouldering, on the lid of the piano. He would have to remove it soon otherwise it would damage the wood. Rosa cringed; as a musician she would never treat an instrument with such irreverence. The Marchesa followed the other guests into the ballroom. When she saw the Baron at the piano and the cigarette on the lid, a look passed over her face that made Rosa shiver. Her eyes narrowed as if she intended kill him. But why was the Marchesa reacting that way? Shouldn’t she be pleased? The Bösendorfer had belonged to her rival.

The guests fell silent in anticipation of being entertained by the Baron. The Marchesa wove her way between them, her spine arched and her eyes like slits.

‘What will you play?’ Signor Castelletti shouted to the Baron.

‘Liszt.’

The Marchesa slipped through the guests and made a line straight for the piano. The Baron didn’t see her coming. He brought his hands over the keyboard and hit the first chord. The piano was out of tune. The guests burst into laughter. The Baron smiled but was put out at having his moment of fun thwarted.

‘Luisa,’ he said, picking up his cigarette just as the Marchesa reached for it. ‘Has no-one tuned this thing in years?’

‘Nobody
plays it,’ she said.

‘One day Clementina might,’ said the Baron, missing the Marchesa’s meaning. She was giving a warning, not making a statement. Rosa sensed it. For a moment she saw something: a flash of light; a sheet of music. But no vision came.

‘We haven’t heard truly fine music in Fiesole since Nerezza passed away,’ said one elderly man.

The guests murmured amongst themselves.

‘Fiesole? I haven’t heard such playing anywhere. Not in Paris nor Vienna,’ exclaimed a matronly woman.

The Marchesa pursed her lips. Rosa could almost see the goose bumps prickling the woman’s skin. Rosa had gathered from her conversation with Signor Collodi that this party was meant to outshine those hosted by Nerezza, not be compared to them.