Water Theatre (24 page)

After a time I became aware of Allegra standing a little behind me. When I made way to give her a better view, she moved to stand at my side. Moments later the piece came to an end. Fra Pietro glanced away shyly from the applause before Angelina engaged him in conversation.

“Doesn't he play beautifully?” Allegra said quietly.

“Almost as beautifully as you sing.”

“Thank you.” The response was neither coy nor casual. With one hand she pushed back her hair. When I asked her
how Adam was, she said, “The head wound doesn't look too serious. More of a graze than a knock, I think. He's asleep by now, I guess. He was quite exhausted.”

“Is the doctor on his way?”

“Not till tomorrow. He seemed to think a night's rest was the best thing.”

“Not just for himself, I hope?”

“Gabriella wouldn't have let him get away with that. It's just precautionary. We need him in good shape for this weekend.”

“For the gathering you mentioned this afternoon?”

“Yes. We're expecting a number of people. I just assumed you were one of them.” The sound of banter between the three Italians drifted on the air. Angelina chuckled merrily again; then Allegra turned to me and said, “So how did your conversation with Marina go?”

“It got better, I think, towards the end. Your singing helped. But I would have appreciated it if someone had thought to warn me that she's lost her sight.”

“You didn't know?”

“How could I? Apart from anything else, she hardly looked at me all evening. How long has she been like this? How did it happen?”

Allegra considered me a moment and took in my distress. “It was a few years ago,” she said. She was walking the hills with Gabriella when she looked up and thought it was snowing. By the time they got back she was blind. It's a disease. A deterioration of the cell structure in the retina. She must have known something was wrong before then, but she was working on a big mural at that time and she did nothing about it. Afterwards she said she'd been frightened, of course, but she was determined to finish the painting.” Allegra's pragmatic tone of voice was matched by a philosophical shrug. “That's my mother for you!”

I questioned her more closely. Was the condition really irreversible? Surely something could be done? Weren't there
specialists in the field? But the best eye surgeons had been found, they had done everything that could have been done, and Marina's sight was gone. “She accepted it a long time ago,” Allegra said, “and now she copes so well that it's not surprising you didn't notice.”

“But painting was her life.”

“Yes. And now there are other things.”

“God knows how I'm going to break this to Hal.”

“You're his friend, aren't you? And isn't it your job – bringing bad news to the world? Isn't that what you're good at?” But she must have seen the pain in my face. “I'm sorry,” she added. “It must have come as a shock.”

“I keep thinking of her shut up in the dark this way.”

“But she's not. She's not shut up anywhere. In fact, my mother is one of the most alarmingly free people I know.”

I was still trying to gauge the force of that adverb when Allegra said, “Look. I think Angelina's going to sing for us.”

The cook was standing on the terrace with her hands clasped at her bust. She took a deep breath as if inhaling the fragrance of the night, and gave her whole big body over to unaccompanied song. In contrast to her earlier merriment, the refrain was filled with plaintive lament, and as her voice faded on the air, the others responded to its sadness with audible sighs. Then Angelina opened her arms, tilted her head, jiggled her index fingers to change the mood once more, and led them into the chorus of a jollier song. Orazio took up the first verse in his husky baritone and, after a repetition of the chorus, Fra Pietro grinned his way into the second, before Angelina brought the song to its climax. Allegra joined in the final rousing chorus and clapped her hands in delight as it came to an end amid laughter and mutual congratulation.

But my own feelings were still too bewildered to share their levity. Glancing at my watch, I said, “It's late. I should be getting back.”

“What's the hurry?” Allegra asked. “Why not stay here tonight? Gabriella wouldn't mind, and you could talk to Marina again tomorrow. She might have second thoughts.”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, what about me? You're part of my past too, aren't you? I find that interesting. I think you know things I need to know. And didn't you say you wanted to know more about me – things that you could tell Hal?” Our eyes met in a stare of mutual assessment, from which I was the first to glance away. “I'm puzzled by you,” she said. “You seem very nice, but everyone keeps warning me against you. Are they right?

“If they were, would I say?”

A capricious glint brightened her eyes. “Tell me,” she asked, “were you and my mother lovers once?”

After a moment's hesitation, I said, “A long time ago.”

“I rather thought so. Did you break her heart?”

Again I paused before speaking. “Yes, I think I did – though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. And in the process my heart got damaged too.” Then with a quick ironical smile I added, “I don't think it ever quite recovered.”

“She was your first love?”

“My first real love, yes.”

“Ah, this is interesting. So now there are two reasons why you might be here!”

“You know why I'm here. I told you this afternoon.”

“I know why you came,” she said, “but not why you're still here. After Marina's outburst at dinner I thought I knew. I thought it must be out of guilt. Guilt over something you'd done a long time ago perhaps. A guilt that you came here hoping to expiate in some way. The bad history you talked about earlier, right?”

She eyed me shrewdly, waiting for a response. When none came, she said, “But now it looks more complicated. I think maybe you're still in love. But not just with Marina. With the whole family. With Hal certainly, otherwise you would never
have come at all. But with Marina too? And what about Adam?” Without giving me room to reply, she added, “You've never been able to let go of any of them, have you? Why should that be, I wonder?”

“I do have a life, you know. A rather full one, as it happens.”

“With the woman you were speaking to on the phone this morning? Is she your wife?”

“No. There's not a lot of room for a wife in the kind of life I live.”

She tilted her head from side to side, as though examining a portrait, looking for flaws. “Being the intrepid reporter, you mean – wandering the world in search of violent action? So what happens for you personally? In your emotional life? When you're not dodging bullets and bombs? Do you just get it together with someone for a time and then move on?”

“I'm not as cold as you make me sound.”

“No, you don't feel cold to me. But it does seem a bit lonely. As if somewhere along the line you missed your own real life and ended up filling it with other people's disasters.”

“Don't you think that's a rather large assumption?” I answered with studied lightness. “But I can see you're blessed with a romantic imagination, so I forgive you. In any case, there's a simpler explanation for why I'm still here – one you don't seem to have considered even though you suffer from it yourself.”

“What's that?”

“Curiosity. I haven't seen either Adam or Marina for years, and neither of them seems to be the person I once knew. Marina's work has changed out of all recognition – the paintings she did before she lost her sight, I mean. It's as if they were painted by a different person. And Fra Pietro had some rather strange things to say about Adam. So it's not surprising I'm intrigued. I'd like to know what's been happening to them and what they're both doing these days. This gathering you mentioned earlier, for instance – the one that's got Lorenzo in such a state – I'm wondering what that's all about.”

“That would be hard to explain,” she said, “even if I was free to do so.”

“Who's stopping you? Larry? Gabriella? Your mother?”

“All of them – and none of them. They would tell you the same thing.”

“That all sounds very mysterious.”

“Yes,” she answered, “that's the right word.”

I was about to press her further when we heard Larry's voice complaining in the hall outside. “But Gabriella, darling, you can't insist on putting me out like a cat at this ungodly hour. Especially at a moment like this. After the amount I've had to drink I shall certainly drive into a tree, and then how would you feel?”

Glancing across to where Allegra and I stood together, Gabriella, who was holding a green ring binder, said, “Fra Pietro will lead the way on his Vespa.”

“I'll drive you back, Larry,” I volunteered.

“No,” Gabriella shook her head, “you and I must have words, Mr Crowther.”

Allegra said, “I've already told him you wouldn't mind if he stayed the night.”

“That will be convenient,” Gabriella nodded, and I was left with no more room for argument than Larry, who was ushered out to where Angelina and Orazio chatted with Fra Pietro. A few minutes later he drove off, muttering as he followed the Vespa's tail light into the night.

When we came back into the house, Gabriella suggested that Allegra must be tired after her journey from Rome that day – perhaps it was time she went to bed? Allegra was about to demur when she saw from the glint in Gabriella's eye that she wanted her out of the room. Moments later Gabriella and I were alone together.

Arching her brow, she said, “I see that you have quite charmed Allegra.”

“On the contrary, it's she who has charmed me.”

“Well, perhaps it is so. And perhaps your luck is changing after all. It seems that Adam is eager to meet with you again.”

“He knows I'm here then? How is he?”

“He is weary and a little dazed, but yes, he knows you are here.”

“Does he know why?”

“He knows that his father has asked you to come, yes.”

“And what did he say? Will he go back to see Hal?”

“That is not yet decided. But I think that Adam may be well disposed to you.”

“I'm relieved to hear it. Marina was very edgy with me still.”

“Perhaps she has good cause?”

“I think you know that she does.”

Gabriella smiled at me. “That is commendably honest, Mr Crowther. I wonder if Lorenzo is wrong to be so mistrustful of you. But then he tells me that he liked you much better in the time before you became a journalist.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you still wary with me?”

She gave a little shrug, wry but not unfriendly. “My feelings are not so important. But let us say that you interest me. I shall like very much to see how you will respond to what Adam has asked me to show to you. Then I will know better what kind of man you are.” She tapped the binder she held at her chest. “He wishes you to read what he has written in these papers.”

“What are they? Do they explain what he's doing here?”

“Some things, but not all. He hopes that they will interest you.” Gabriella handed me the file. “Maybe this will help you to understand us all a little better.”

I opened the file on what seemed to be some kind of mission statement:

1.  Our lives are as we imagine them to be.

2.  Imagination is the agency of change.

3.  Change in the collective begins with change in the individual.

4.  Compassion is an act of the imagination.

5.  Let us re-imagine our world.

Turning to the next of many pages, I came upon a single word:

“Read this and sleep on it,” Gabriella said. “Tomorrow we shall see.”

That September, Martin was preparing to leave home for his first year at university when, unusually, his father came home from work one evening in the Bamforth Brothers' lorry. The driver unbolted the back and helped Jack carry into the house an old steamer trunk that he had bought from the manager of the mill. They put it down on the floor at Martin's feet in the small sitting room.

The trunk might have been half a century old or more and had seen better days, but it was strongly bound with studded woodwork, its corners were reinforced by leather and steel, and it was still in sound condition. Across the curve of its lid were glued the remains of ancient labels telling of voyages around the world – by Union Castle to South Africa, P&O to Malaya, and on the Cunard line, across the Atlantic, to America. The name of the previous owner had been painted out, and Martin's own name and address stencilled in white across the black patch.

Looking down at his purchase with suppressed pleasure, Jack Crowther said gruffly, “I thought you'd be needing summat like this for carting all your books and stuff.”

When Martin did not immediately answer, his mother said, “It looks like a good'n, Jack.”

“It'll last him the rest of his life, if he can be bothered to look after it.”

Aware of the pride and sadness in his father's face, and of the hidden trepidation too, Martin flushed and muttered, “You never said owt about it.”

“I didn't think there were any need.” Then Jack Crowther risked a step further than the usual wary exchanges between them. “Well, do you like it then?”

Refusing to encounter that earnest gaze, Martin bent down to examine the trunk. Already amazed by the unanticipated way this battered veteran of the imperial past had crossed the oceans of the world to fetch up at last in his own life, he swallowed and said, “Yeah, course I do.” Then for the first time he glanced directly into his father's eyes. “It looks great.”