The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Good morning,’ Caterina replied, conscious that her mother’s blue dress was sticking to her legs and strands of her hair clung to her damp neck.

  ‘It is warm today. Please enter.’

  The woman stood back to allow Caterina to pass into a vast cool atrium with a high ceiling and an elaborate dolphin fountain in the centre. As Caterina came close to the woman she smelled a strong scent of verbena and felt the dark-eyed scrutiny taking in every detail of her appearance. Her hair needed a brush, her dusty sandals a clean before stepping into this pristine house, but she regarded the woman with interest.

  She was tall, probably fifty, but with jet black hair, sleek as a seal, pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. She held herself very erect like a mannequin, and her strong features remained rigid, controlled into an unnatural stillness. Only her thick arched eyebrows lifted to show a ripple of surprise.

  ‘You are young,’ she said.

  ‘I’m twenty-one.’

  The dark crimson lips tightened, but nothing more.

  ‘Count di Marco will see you now, but don’t overtire him.’

  ‘Is he unwell?’

  ‘He is old.’

  ‘I see.’

  The woman in the man’s suit flicked a glance at Caterina’s face and held it there.

  ‘I doubt that you do,’ she murmured, and led the way down a corridor lined with ranks of marble female busts. The goddesses of Rome were out in force.

  ‘Octavia, fetch the poor girl a drink, for God’s sake. She looks . . .’

  The man stretched out on a day-bed didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t say what she looked like. His cool grey gaze was enough. Caterina stood in the centre of a graceful terrace, her blue dress the only splash of colour among a desert of white marble.

  The woman in the black suit, the one he called Octavia, had stalked through the villa ahead of her without a glance over her shoulder, leading her through a room containing a white sunken pool surrounded by furniture that was elaborately gilded and protected from the fierce sunlight by fine white lace curtains. Beyond that lay the terrace where she was now standing in the midst of more bloodless statues of Roman beauties with a panoramic view of the Bay of Naples.

  ‘Count di Marco.’

  That was how the man had greeted her. With his own name, not hers.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me, Count.’

  Caterina started to move towards him, curious to inspect him close up, but a sudden deepening of the creases on his forehead and an unease in his eyes made her halt. He was an extremely tall man with elongated restless limbs and a face dominated by a strong aquiline nose and a square clean-shaven jaw. The woman had said he was old but he didn’t strike Caterina as so old, in his sixties, maybe seventy at most. His body was half hidden among an avalanche of snow-white cushions on a chaise longue and he was wearing some kind of flowing robe of bleached linen, almost a toga but not quite. Above his head stretched a pale canopy that shielded him from the sun’s glare, his own personal island of shade.

  ‘Excuse my not rising to greet you, signorina. My legs are not what they used to be.’

  ‘I don’t wish to disturb you. I just need to ask a few questions, if you have a moment.’

  ‘Of course you are disturbing me, young lady.’

  This was not a man who would welcome questions.

  ‘I don’t know if you are aware that my father died two years ago, when a . . .’

  ‘I am aware of that. You are Antonio Lombardi’s girl. That is the only reason I agreed to see you, otherwise you would not have been allowed past the gates.’

  He said it brusquely, almost rudely, and yet a smile softened the harshness of it and he waved a hand towards a round table and chair which stood a few metres from him in a little patch of shade on its own. A parasol’s fringe rippled above it. All white. All spotless despite the seabirds.

  ‘Sit down, please, Signorina Lombardi.’

  Caterina sat at the round table, her fingers caressing its surface. It was tulip wood but inlaid with a design of ivory and mother-of-pearl which turned it into a chess table, each square of inlay shadowed by carefully selected slivers of persimmon to give it a three-dimensional look. A fine hairline of ebony framed the board and a thread of spun gold was wrapped around the ebony. It was beautiful, so beautiful she could not take her hand from it. She had never seen the table before, but she knew it was her father’s work as surely as if he had engraved his name across it.

  ‘You like it?’ the Count asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s lovely.’

  ‘He made it for me before you were born.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘I am pleased you have finally come here, Signorina Lombardi.’

  Caterina dragged her gaze from the table and concentrated on this strange man embalmed in white.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because your father told me about you.’ The grey eyes studied her. Made her wait. ‘He told me he admired your skill with wood. “My daughter could be as good as I am one day,” he used to tell me, and when I asked, “Even better than you?” he would laugh, but he didn’t deny it.’

  The air on the terrace seemed to grow thin. She had not expected this, to be given such a gift. As good as I am one day. Her father had never said those words. Not to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  At that moment the woman in black appeared at her side and placed a tall glass of fresh lemonade with ice and mint on the table.

  ‘Grazie.’

  But she was gone, silent as a shadow on the marble.

  ‘I am an old man now,’ Count di Marco said softly, ‘and not in the best of health. My life . . .’ he extended one long hairless arm from the folds of his robe and swept it in a curve that included the grandiose villa behind him and the splendour of the bay ahead of him, with Naples now no more than a dusky blur at the foot of Vesuvius. ‘My life is quiet and simple now. I live vicariously through others. I watch the seabirds and in my mind I fly with them while my worthless body remains marooned on this island, on this great rock of ancient limestone.’

  Caterina felt unexpected regret for this man who seemed to have given up on life.

  ‘Your life isn’t over yet,’ she told him and smiled.

  He frowned at her, his heavy brows swooping down, the nostrils of his hooked nose flaring in a sudden flash of anger. ‘Don’t pity me, Signorina Lombardi. One day you will be old and you will want no one’s pity.’

  ‘How can I pity you when you have all this? It is very beautiful here.’

  ‘Beauty is not enough.’

  Caterina sipped her drink, cool on her parched tongue, and rose to her feet. She picked up her white chair and carried it to a spot nearer his island of shade. She sat down on it in full sunshine, and leaned forward.

  ‘Shall I tell you what happened to me yesterday?’ she asked.

  Instantly his eyes brightened. A twitch of anticipation stabbed at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was attacked.’

  He pushed himself up on one elbow. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It happened in broad daylight in a street in Sorrento. Two men. One almost throttled me. The other threatened to kill me.’

  ‘Madonna santa!’

  ‘Fortunately I vomited over one of them and they ran off.’

  ‘Ah, a girl as pretty as you can attract the wrong kind of . . .’

  ‘It had nothing to do with my looks.’

  The frown returned. ‘What then?’

  ‘They wanted information.’

  ‘About what?’

  She caught the whisper of his breathing, quick and sharp.

  ‘About an American soldier who has been asking questions.’

  ‘Why? What is this about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He looked at her hard, then smiled lazily and leaned back among his cushions. ‘Thank you, signorina. That was most interesting. I d
on’t even mind the lie at the end. Why should you tell an old man what is in your heart?’

  But the heat seemed to gather around him, sheltering under his canopy, and he took out an ivory fan. He wafted it in front of his face, and she wondered if he was hiding from her, but abruptly he tossed it to one side.

  ‘So, young lady, why have you come to Villa dei Cesari today?’

  ‘To talk about the table.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The table.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Caterina listened intently.

  Count di Marco told her about the table with no apparent hesitation. He informed her that he had commissioned it from her father two years ago as a wedding gift for his granddaughter, Leonora, who was due to marry in May 1942, but everything conspired against the wedding and it was indefinitely postponed. He did not tell Caterina exactly why. But his face was like stone when he told her that he believed the destruction of the table in her father’s workshop was an evil omen. The wedding was stopped.

  ‘The odd thing is,’ she said, ‘that my father told me nothing about it. He never mentioned a table.’

  ‘I ordered him to keep it secret.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was to be a surprise.’

  ‘Or because of the jewels?’

  He stared at her blankly. ‘What jewels?’

  Either the old man was a good liar or there were no jewels.

  Suddenly he started to laugh, a deep, boisterous sound that burst from his long chest and resounded across the marble. ‘You mean the coloured glass?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Your father designed a wonderful image to be inlaid into the bird’s eye maple of the table. It was of Villa dei Cesari set up on the cliffs of Capri, surrounded by the blue sky and sea.’

  ‘And he was using coloured glass?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes. Intertwined with strings of gold and silver.’

  ‘It would explain why nothing was found of it after the fire, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Somewhere she could hear the excited bark of a dog. It seemed out of place in this carefully controlled setting.

  After a moment’s thought, Caterina stood up. The Count looked surprised. ‘There is no point my staying any longer,’ she said. ‘Grazie. Thank you for your time, but lies are no use to me.’ She walked back towards the house, her shadow racing ahead of her as though eager to leave.

  ‘Signorina Lombardi!’ His tone was sharp.

  She swung round. ‘Do not insult me, Count di Marco. Or my father. He would never have worked with coloured glass. Nor would you have given your granddaughter such an object as a wedding gift. My father wrote the word “jewels” in his order book. He was not fool enough to mistake coloured glass for jewels. So don’t . . .’

  ‘What is going on here?’ A young woman in a stylish ice-white linen tunic and trousers strode out of the villa on to the terrace. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded of Caterina without a trace of civility.

  At her side padded a white German Shepherd dog. Its ears lay flat against its head, its pale blue eyes fixed on Caterina. She could smell blood on its breath and there was a reddish stain on its muzzle. She took a step back.

  ‘I am Caterina Lombardi. I came to speak to . . .’

  But the young woman plunged past her and hurried with a fluttering of hands over to the Count on the chaise longue. He was looking displeased, his feet naked on the marble flooring.

  ‘Nonno, are you all right? Is she upsetting you?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right, Leonora.’

  He lifted a hand and held it out to her. Gently the young woman took it between her own and kissed the mottled back of it. Her dark hair was cut in a sleek bob and her features were small and delicate, quite unlike those of her grandfather.

  ‘Why are you discussing my wedding table again?’ She laughed, a sound as brittle as glass. ‘My fabled table. With a stranger.’ Her hand drifted in Caterina’s direction.

  ‘She’s not a stranger,’ the Count said reprovingly. ‘She is its creator’s daughter.’

  The glossy dark head turned to face Caterina for the first time, her arched eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Is that so? Did you ever see it?’

  ‘Call off your dog.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your dog.’

  The dark gaze slid to the German Shepherd. The animal was still standing in front of Caterina stiff-legged, head thrust forward, a silent snarl revealing long, blood-stained teeth. Caterina had not moved a muscle.

  ‘Call off your dog.’

  The Count’s granddaughter snapped her fingers and the dog came instantly to heel. She caressed its white head and repeated a softer version of the laugh that wasn’t a laugh.

  ‘Behave yourself, Bianchezza,’ she crooned. ‘You mustn’t frighten Nonno’s guest.’

  ‘Damn that animal,’ the Count muttered with irritation. ‘It scares us all, Signorina Lombardi. Take the creature away, Leonora. It has blood on its face.’ He made a retching sound. ‘You know the sight of blood makes me sick.’

  Leonora di Marco’s eyes met Caterina’s and gave a fleeting smile, before she flounced off the terrace with the dog like a second skin at her side. It occurred to Caterina to wonder whether the young woman had brought the dog on to the terrace with its muzzle bloodied on purpose, yet she had appeared genuinely affectionate to her grandfather. It struck Caterina as odd.

  The moment Leonora was gone, Caterina crossed the terrace to be at the old man’s side before they were interrupted again. He was staring at the glass door through which his granddaughter had vanished and his fingers stripped threads from the hem of his robe with impatience. A breeze from the seas carried the scent of the lemon trees that grew on the slopes, as Caterina sat herself next to him. His head jerked around and he scowled at her.

  ‘Remove yourself.’

  ‘Count di Marco,’ she kept her voice low, away from inquisitive ears in the house, ‘if there had been coloured glass in the table it would have melted in the fire in my father’s workshop. If there had been jewels, they would have been lying there among the ashes. They weren’t. I scoured the burnt remains for anything that could be salvaged.’

  The Count placed a hand on her shoulder. She felt the bite of it, the full weight of him bearing down on her bone as he used it to push himself to his feet to stand upright in front of her. Behind the shapeless toga and the relentless shell of whiteness, she could see the sharp edges of the man picked out by the sunlight.

  ‘So where,’ he demanded, ‘are my jewels?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell me about them.’

  His grip on her shoulder tightened. ‘Emeralds from India that would break your heart with their beauty. They were for the depiction of the island. The sky and sea were to be of sapphires and diamonds. Pearls for the villa, sheets of gold for the sun on the water. Before the war I was an international dealer in precious stones and I know from experience that they can steal a man’s soul.’

  ‘Or a woman’s.’

  Caterina eased herself from under his hand and stood up. She was far shorter than the Count. When he spoke of the jewels, a softness came into his voice and relaxed his fingers which were long and spidery. He treated her to a half-smile.

  ‘Yes, you are right there, even yours maybe?’

  ‘So it seems that we cannot help each other. Neither of us knows anything.’

  Her words unlocked something in him, and he gave her a brief bitter glare.

  ‘Octavia!’ he called.

  The black shadow slid into place at his elbow.

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘Tell Leonora to drive our visitor back to the ferry at once.’

  There was laughter in the car. Caterina had not expected that. It was a sedan, sleek and smooth, the creamy colour of buttermilk. The laughter came from Leonora di Marco, but unlike the brittle version of it on her grandfather’s terrace, here it was effortless. She was laughing fondly at her dog on the
back seat as it hung its big white head out of the open window, its silky fur and ears buffeted by the wind. Ever since speeding through the gates on to the dusty road, Caterina felt as if she were sitting next to a different person. Younger and more pliant, her voice less guarded, and she noticed there was no gold band on her finger. No wedding then. With or without the table.

  As the car plunged downhill, Caterina gripped her seat. The road was narrow and swept through switchbacks and hairpins as it zigzagged down the flank of the mountain. A forest of pine trees and steeply terraced olive and lemon groves clung to bare rock in a dizzying feat of tenacity, as the ground fell away on one side, while on the other side rose the grey shoulder of the island mountain itself. Rough and jagged, not something to argue with. Leonora drove fast, taking the lethal bends with confidence, demonstrating a familiarity with them that was reassuring, but every now and again Caterina felt a back wheel skid on a loose patch of gravel and her grip tightened.

  ‘Well?’ Leonora asked without preamble. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of the villa. Of my grandfather.’

  Caterina regarded her warily. The girl was probably younger than herself, her sleek bob tucked behind one ear to show off her elegant profile, her focus on the road. Caterina decided not to lie to her.

  ‘It must be like living on an iceberg.’

  Leonora’s head snapped round to stare at her. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘That is exactly it.’

  A tree trunk was suddenly racing towards them.

  ‘Watch the road!’

  Leonora swung the wheel as they entered the next hairpin, just in time to avoid flying off the mountain edge into the void that reached out to the blue waters of the bay far below. She grinned and the dog gave a yip of excitement.

  ‘Did you ever see my father’s table?’ Caterina asked.

  ‘No. It was to be a surprise, but I’m not sure it ever really existed. That’s why I call it the fabled table.’ She laughed.

  ‘It existed, I’m sure. It was in my father’s order book.’

  ‘As it turned out, it didn’t matter.’ The white tunic shrugged. ‘No wedding.’