The Night Falling (39 page)

‘So you … you walked up to the mayor and told him who to hire?’

‘No, of course not. The … one of the other men talking to him was to raise the topic, and to mention Cardetta’s name. I was to provide a … character reference for him. Off the cuff – by chance, it was to appear.’

‘And what did you say about him?’

‘I said … I said I’d worked with him on a building project. He had interests in construction as well, for years. I said he’d built for me, and I’d found him to be honest and open in all his dealings, and had delivered an excellent standard of work. I said I believed the rumours about his … other business concerns to be malicious ones put about by rivals and xenophobes.’ Boyd sounds like he’s reading from a script and Clare realises that he has this by rote. Still, seven years after the event, it’s imprinted in his mind. She thinks back to their stay in New York, and the sudden erosion of all her hopes for her marriage.

‘It was Cardetta who came to the apartment, wasn’t it? Or his men,’ she says, and Boyd nods. ‘I thought it was people who’d known Emma. Old friends of hers and yours, and it had upset you to see them. Thrown you back into grief.’ He shakes his head and then hangs it; he looks pale and uneasy.

‘But why did you do it for him, Boyd? How did he even know you?’

‘He … I … It was a straight trade, you see. I did this for him, and he made sure that … he made sure that my building …’

‘He made sure that
your
design for the new bank was chosen?’ To this there’s that hangdog nod again, that reek of self-loathing. ‘But how did he find you, Boyd? How did he even know who you were?’

‘I don’t know. I …’ His brows knit in thought, still not looking at her. ‘After Emma died I … I had a rough time of it. He … we …’ He trails into silence, gulping in a breath with a spasmodic lurch of his chest.

Clare stares at him. At this point she would normally relent and soothe him. She would be too afraid to push him into a depression that might take him days, weeks, to come out of. But that was the old Clare from before, in her safe, careful, quiet life. It amazes her, now, how frightened she was then, when she had nothing whatsoever to fear. Not compared to now.

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ He glances up at her flat tone, her uncharacteristic mien. She sees a flicker of self-awareness in his eyes, a swift recalculating, and realises how easily he’s played on her fears in the past. She takes a deep breath but then he crumples. Anguish stampedes over his face, and it’s real.

‘I’ve lost you, haven’t I, Clare?’ he whispers.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. She feels far out, alone; she feels that there can be no going back from here, or any undoing of these things.

‘That was the one thing … That was the one thing I never wanted. Never, ever.’ He smears tears from his eyes with the thumb of one hand. ‘I love you so much, Clare. My darling. You’re my angel, truly. You’re … perfect. I couldn’t live without you … you must believe—’

‘Stop it!’ She has no control over her sudden shout. ‘I can’t bear it when you say those things! I can’t
bear
it!’

‘Why not?’ he says, shocked. Never once in their ten years together has she raised her voice to him.

‘Because they’re
not true
! And how can I possibly live up to them – how could anybody ever live up to them? They’re tyrannical! And they make me hate myself – you make me
hate
myself!’

The quiet after her outburst seems to roar in her ears; the night’s silence returns, steadily repairing the tear she made. They don’t speak for so long that it becomes impossible to. They can only wait, with this pounding quiet between them, until one of them makes a move. Clare reaches up and wipes away half-dry tears with the flats of her hands. She feels sick, exhausted, and her head is ringing. Wordlessly, she comes to the bed and lies down on top of the sheet. Boyd stays where he is, sitting up and hunched, and she’s too tired to guess at his thoughts, or what they should do next; how things can go between them from now on. She shuts her eyes and pictures herself inside a sunlit church, small and ancient; she pictures the delicate way Ettore touched her, and kissed her; the tenuous, disconnected look of happiness on his face. But however much she tries the image remains distant, already fading. She falls asleep telling herself, over and over, that it was real.

Pip comes trotting down the outdoor stairs when he hears the car, and Clare’s heart leaps up to greet him; but when he sees her he falters, and when he sees his father he halts altogether. He hasn’t seen Boyd since before the night Clare locked herself out of her room and he discovered her lie; she has no idea how he will react to his cuckolded father, or how he will act. She watches as he stops on the bottom step, squinting in the sunlight with strands of his fringe in his eyes. It’s been weeks since it was cut. He looks slightly harried and flushed; he has points of colour on his cheekbones as though he has a touch of fever. Clare daren’t put her hand to his forehead to check. She hardly dare approach him at all, when all she wants is to put her arms around him and hold him until he can feel how much she loves him, and how she can’t bear his hurt, his anger. She watches to see if he’ll blurt out her betrayal at once, and expose her publicly, or whether her punishment will be more slow-burning than that.

Peg is under Pip’s arm, squirming and mouthing at his fingers. Boyd stretches his back, standing his full height for once, and walks over to his son with a studied ease.

‘Philip,’ he says, with peculiar formality. They haven’t spent much time together on this trip – stilted mealtimes, passing moments at breakfast and dinner, and then only during the times Boyd has been at the
masseria
. They clasp hands, lean in for a brief press of their shoulders, Boyd’s left to Pip’s; half of an embrace. ‘How are things? What on earth is this?’

‘This is Peggy,’ says Pip. His voice sounds deeper, more adult, than even the six weeks ago that they travelled down on the train. Clare’s amazed by how things have changed since then; how many things, and how much. Pip raises his eyes to her, just for a second. A flick of a gaze, to remind her what he knows, and Clare’s stomach flutters. Her lip is still swollen, with a reddish bruise spreading onto her chin, but he doesn’t seem to notice it. ‘Clare found her in one of the ruined huts when she was out for a walk,’ he says. This is the story they agreed to tell, when, in the darkness outside her locked door, Pip said: He
gave it to you, didn’t he?
And Clare had nodded, dumbly. ‘We think her mother must have abandoned her,’ he adds. Boyd grunts.

‘She’s probably the runt. Best not to get too attached to her, son, they often die.’ This makes some little spark in Pip fade out, visibly, and Clare wishes Boyd would see. She wishes he wouldn’t say such things.

‘I’m sure she’ll be fine now she has Pip to look after her,’ she says, but Pip doesn’t react.

‘It’ll be full of worms – don’t let it chew you like that. And make sure you wash your hands with lots of soap.’

‘Peggy’s a she, not an it,’ says Pip.

‘Pure Gioia mongrel, through and through,’ says Leandro. He smiles, scuffing the puppy’s smooth head with his knuckles. Peg twists around and tries to gnaw his hand. ‘Tough as old boot leather; smart and loyal too. She’ll be a good dog for you, Pip.’ When Pip smiles Clare feels the pull of it in her chest, far under her ribs; a spreading warmth like a swig of brandy, swallowed fast.

‘Well, she’ll have to stay here when we leave,’ says Boyd, and Clare hates him for a moment.

‘Peggy’s coming home with us,’ she says flatly. She walks past her husband and up the stairs to greet Marcie, who has appeared on the terrace with fresh powder on her cheeks and fresh red lipstick on her mouth, her hair immaculate.

Clare looks up at Leandro’s wife as she reaches the top step, and for a second sees an expression on Marcie’s face that she’s never seen before – something flat, cold, almost hostile. She falters but the look disappears at once, replaced by that dazzling, indiscriminate smile, and Clare thinks she must have imagined it.

‘My dear Clare, what on earth has happened to you?’ says Marcie.

‘Oh, I fell. I lost my footing on some steps.’ They kiss with a light press of each cheek, like the men with their shoulders – the same not-quite embrace.

‘Sweetie! Were you faint again?’ Marcie takes her hands, drops her voice and her face towards Clare. ‘You’re not in the family way are you, honey?’

‘Oh, no,’ says Clare, at once. And then she thinks of her dizziness, her nausea, the odd tastes in her mouth, that she hasn’t had her period at all since they arrived in Italy. The shock of it causes her throat to clench, choking out a single stunned syllable. Marcie looks at her quizzically.

‘Well, come and sit down, do. How was your little trip?’ There again is something in Marcie’s tone, some note that could be a warning. But Clare can’t tell if she’s heard it or imagined it, and she lets herself be led to a chair and seated because a mad buzzing has started up in her ears, and she can’t follow what Marcie says next.

Later on Clare helps Pip dose the puppy for worms. They go down into the smoky kitchen – a cavernous space running beneath the long barn that forms the west wing of the quad, where the low vaulted ceiling is black with generations of soot, and the heat is a solid, tangible thing. There’s a huge iron range with a stack of twisted firewood beside it, and pots on every hot plate; a smell of smuts and meat, of yeast and ashes. The cook, Ilaria, has a recipe to purge the parasites; she describes it at length as she mixes it, not seeming to mind that Clare and Pip don’t understand a word, and make no reply. She grinds cloves and pumpkin seeds, dried wormwood with its bitter stink, and some other herb that Clare can’t identify. She binds this mixture into a pellet with a glob of lard, sticky and rank. Peggy squirms as though she knows what’s coming as Ilaria cranks open her jaws and shoves the purge far down her throat. The puppy gives a little whine of protest, and gags as it goes down. Ilaria wipes her fingers on her apron and gives them a satisfied nod. Job done. They thank her in Italian as they turn to leave.

At the bottom of the kitchen steps Clare puts her hand on Pip’s arm.

‘Please, wait a moment,’ she says. Up above is the bright oblong of the doorway, the blanching sunlight waiting outside, making it hard to hide. Clare wants shadows and quiet in which to speak. Pip bends and puts Peggy down; the puppy gambols between their feet and then settles down to chew the toe of Pip’s shoe. ‘Pip, listen. I …’ But Clare doesn’t know what she wants to say, exactly. Only that she must speak. Pip has saved her from herself already – it was he who suggested that they get the master key from Carlo to reopen her bedroom door, when she’d been frantic and stupid with fright and self-recrimination at losing the original.

‘Did he do that to you?’ says Pip, looking at her swollen lip.

‘No! Of course not.’ She’s not even sure how he knew, or why she didn’t deny it.
You’ve been with him, haven’t you? With Ettore?
That was his question, his accusation, in the dark of the
masseria
, outside her locked door. She could have denied it; she could have laughed, or feigned outrage. But she’d felt utterly exposed, and wretched, and she’d needed him, and all she’d had left was honesty.

‘Are you going to leave Father?’ he says.

‘No.’ She has a numb feeling, and that buzzing in her ears again, and she knows he’s really asking:
Are you going to leave me?
And the answer to that has always been no.

‘But you’re in love with Ettore.’ Pip shakes his head, won’t look her in the eye. Clare wonders if he can see this love on her, somehow; then she realises that he simply can’t conscience her being treacherous for anything less.

‘But I’m married to your father, darling.’

‘I’m not a child, Clare! Stop treating me like one! You think you can give me a puppy – a puppy
he
gave you – and that’ll make everything all right? That I’ll be so busy playing with her I won’t notice you lying and sneaking?’

‘Ettore meant the puppy to be for you. Pip, please.’ She catches his arm again, as he turns to go.

‘I want to hear the truth, Clare. I can’t … I don’t want you to lie to me. To hide things.’ He’s working hard not to cry.

‘All right, Pip. All right. I … I am in love with him. But I’m not going to leave you.’ She can’t bring herself to say she won’t leave Boyd; she can’t make herself imagine what life will be like if she stays with him, for ever. But that is what she promised when she married him. It’s like being crushed by a heavy, heavy weight.
Are you in the family way?
If she is, there’s no possible way the child can be Boyd’s. How can their marriage continue under those circumstances? Yet beneath her panic there’s a rising arc of elation. A baby; Ettore’s baby. Pip’s face contorts and for a moment she thinks he’s going to cry; then she realises its disgust.

‘How could you, Clare? He can barely speak Italian, let alone English! I bet he can’t read or write. He’s a … a dirty peasant!’

‘
Pip
!’ Clare is stunned. ‘How could you be so hateful? A dirty
peasant
? You sound like …’ She searches her mind, because these words are familiar but they don’t sound like Pip’s. Then she realises – they sound like Marcie’s. Clare shuts her mouth abruptly, and Pip’s cheeks blaze. He looks stricken, ashamed of himself but defiant.

‘Well, anyway, you won’t see him any more, will you? You won’t keep going to Gioia,’ he says.

‘No. No, I won’t go again.’

‘And you still love my father? You always told me it was possible to love two people – the way Father loves my mother, and you as well.’ There, in the midst of this frighteningly adult conversation, is a snatch of the childishness that hasn’t quite left him.

‘Yes, you can love more than one person. And your father is my husband,’ she says, and they both know that this is no answer at all. But she can’t lie to Pip, ever again, if she wants to keep him.

Pip looks down at his feet, where Peggy is cavorting on her back: a pot belly and waving legs, eyes rolling, ears inside out. Clare waits for some sign from him that this talk has improved things between them. She feels the weight of her promise not to go to Gioia again, dragging at her. It’s all so much, so heavy. She longs to lie down and steadies herself against the wall with one hand, noticing the rough cobbles, the film of dust on every upward surface. It’s an ancient wall, hundreds of years old, six feet thick, built in another age to keep out raiders and thieves. And now raiders and thieves are coming again, and Clare will be one of them.