by Rumer Godden
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The Battle of the Villa Fiorita
A Novel
Rumer Godden
To Ceryl, who made the dream real
PREFACE
The Battle of the Villa Fiorita was written because I had grown tired of the innumerable novels about child victims of divorce. ‘Let’s have a book where the children will not be victims but fight back,’ I thought and, in the book, the children, a school-age boy and girl, instead of going miserably back to school, run away to Italy where their mother had absconded with a film director, determined to fetch her back. No book of mine has been more unpopular, especially in America.
When it was filmed – it made a good film – actress after actress refused to play the part of the mother because it was too near the bone. With Ingrid Bergman, I came near real trouble as, by an unfortunate coincidence, I had been in Beverly Hills when she left her first husband Peter Lindstrom for Rossellini, also a film director. In Italy as in France, film people are usually called by their surnames and I had no idea Rossellini’s first name was Roberto, the name I gave to the film director in the book. Worse, by Peter Lindstrom, Ingrid had a daughter. I had always heard the child called Jenny, now it appeared her name was Pia. I had called my Roberto’s daughter, Pia. Finally Maureen O’Hara took the part and gave the best performance of her career.
I have a belief – it will sound topsy-turvy to many writers but it is a firm and proved belief – that, when writing a novel or any imaginative work, it is better to write the story first, go to the place and do the research afterwards even when the book is set in a place, or in circumstances unknown to you, otherwise you will probably have a documentary novel, almost always lifeless; which is why, when I had finished the first draft of yet another novel, I wrote to a friend, the Princess Birabongse.
Prince Birabongse and his brother Prince Chula were the pair of ace, and royal, motor-racing drivers from what was then Siam, now Thailand. Both married English women, Prince Chula and his wife settling in Cornwall, but Ceryl Birabongse had tired of the pace of the racing driver circuit and had retreated to her small villa on Lake Garda.
Ceryl Birabongse found us the Villa Fiorita – not its real name – next door to her own, two of the rare villas on the lake side of the busy road; both were built close above the rippling or often troubled lake.
Lake Garda, in all its grandeur, is a cruel lake. A storm can sweep down over the mountains turning the water into an inferno of waves and there are currents deep down.
‘On Garda many, many people drown,’ said Celestina with gusto.
Celestina was our cook and the cook in the novel. And she went on in her mixture of broken English, German, and Italian with tale after tale.
‘Five fishermen,’ said Celestina. ‘Village fishermen, drown fifty metres from the villa. Here in the villa we hear their cries for help, “Aiuto! Aiuto!” and we can do nothing. Nothing! It grow dark, the cries go fainter, then only the women, praying in the garden, sobbing. All drown,’ said Celestina gleefully.
Often no bodies were found.
‘In lake middle, deep, deep,’ said Celestina plunging downwards with her hand. ‘Three hundred metres down, caves, big big caves. Water strong; sweep them like that … Never find,’ said Celestina. She came closer. ‘Lastest year, three doctor, three in motorboat. Gone. Kaput. A little girl, Papa see her kneel to look big feesh. Never find.’
As in my book the two elder children, his and hers, go sailing into such a storm, I had to find a way in which they did not ‘go down’ but survived. Ceryl had a friend, Bruno, of great Italian charm who was also a yachting fanatic and had sailed on Lake Garda all his life.
The four of us spent evening after evening in Ceryl’s villa or ours, looking at maps, planning or plotting or driving along the shore, every now and then scrambling down to find a place where, after the boat had capsized, clinging to the floor boards, the boy and girl could have been swept to the shore and lived. Ceryl said, ‘These children have become so alive they inhabit my house.’
The book had already taken us to Milan because I needed to see the Opera House of La Scala where, by the kindness and influence of the British Council, we were allowed to attend a rehearsal, sitting mute and still in the Royal Box. They gave us tickets for the current opera that night; afterwards we went round to the stage door to see behind the scenes – it is the only stage I know that is guarded by soldiers.
The opera was Rigoletto. By luck it was a gala night so that the vast proscenium, the whole first tier of the circle and its boxes, were banked with carnations. Tito Gobbi and Renata Scotto were singing; it was she we went round to see.
The Principals’ dressing-room opened off a panelled lobby that had, suitably, a red carpet and heavily impressive mahogany doors bearing, that night, those famous names.
Renata Scotto came to her door herself. She was wearing a short quilted nylon dressing-gown that might have belonged to my daughters. With her was, it seemed, her entire family; we were introduced to father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, aunts, all eating cold sausage. The only exception was a small boy sitting on the floor in a corner; he was eating the carnations Renata had been pelted with.
Our villa belonged to an Austrian Contessa who died soon after we left. The book was finished in London but as I worked I seemed to be still in the villa. ‘Let’s go back,’ I said to my husband, James, but Ceryl told us it had been sold, with everything in it: its inlaid furniture, Persian rugs though they had grown so thin they lifted when the wind came under the doors, as it often did, its pretty small chandeliers; the bed painted with roses in which I had slept, the silver, fine china, old Venetian glass and, ‘I wonder what happened to my angels?’ I said. I called them mine because I had grown fond of them, a pair, fifteenth century, standing perhaps three feet high, carved of wood, gilded and painted. They had stood holding garlands, one each side on the huge overmantel above the open fire, their gold glimmering against the grey stone. ‘I wonder what happened to them?’
‘They are in the garage,’ said James.
Without a word to me, he had written to the Contessa’s daughter, bought them privately and driven out to Italy to fetch them – I thought he had had to go on business to Milan – and kept them until I, as he had hoped I would, asked about them. No wonder I treasured them.
R. G.
1
The hedges of scented whitethorn on either side of the villa gates had the longest fiercest thorns they had ever seen. The gates were iron-barred and high, the bars set close. Obviously people were not meant to get in. The villa was firmly shut away from the little village that straggled up the mountain, more of a hamlet than a village, having only one hotel, the Hotel Lydia down by the road, a few houses and farms, a camping ground in an olive grove and a trattoria beside the lake. Notices on the gates said ATTENTI AL CANE which conveyed nothing to Hugh and Caddie. ‘Who would ever have thought it meant “Beware of the dog”?’ said Caddie afterwards. PROPRIETA PRIVATA was clear: ‘Private Property’. But I CONTRAVVENTORI SARANNO PUNITI AI TERMINI DI LEGGE? ‘Can that mean “Trespassers will be prosecuted”?’ asked Caddie.
The villa was on Lake Garda in northern Italy. ‘But it doesn’t matter where it was,’ said Hugh afterwards. It might have been anywhere; it was simply a place where two opposing forces were to meet, as two armies meet on foreign soil to fight a battle. ‘The battle of the Villa Fiorita,’ Caddie called it afterwards and always with an ache of guilt.
; Now, looking through the bars, they could see an olive grove, cypresses, a walk of grey stone flags winding away beside a cypress hedge that shut off a farther view; there were glimpses of tumbling flowers, of honeysuckle and wistaria – they had seen that in clusters all along the road – of small yellow roses climbing up a cypress tree. They could hear bird songs coming from that cool green and, faint and far beyond, water lapping. It was another world from the hot white road along which they had trudged, with cars driving past so fast that wind and dust had stung their faces and Caddie’s legs.
Hugh had put down the grips that had wrenched his arms all the way from the bus stop at Malcesine but Caddie still carried their raincoats, the belts dangling, and the netted bag, limp now, that had held the sandwiches, oranges, and a bottle of lemonade they had bought at Victoria. On the gate were gilt letters, ‘Villa Fiorita’. They had arrived, but could they push open these heavy bars, walk past those notices into that private green and shade? ‘We have come so far, we must,’ said Caddie, and she opened one gate a few inches and slipped through; she had a feeling that she was stepping where she should not but Hugh had followed her. Once inside he was drawn by a curiosity that, these days, was becoming his familiar. What did he expect to see? He did not know but he felt on tiptoe with expectancy.
Set back from the gates was a garage, with terracotta walls. On one a painted Saint Christopher took up the whole wall. Outside it was a car, a dark green Mercedes open coupe, left there as if someone had just driven in. They looked at it, almost sniffed it, as cautiously as two dogs. The hood was down and on the seat was a scarf, white silk patterned with brown flowers. Mother’s scarf? thought Caddie. She had not seen it before. Beside it was a pair of driving gloves. His? They both noticed that the car was glitteringly clean.
A path led away through the olive grove, a wide belt of rough grass and old, old trees with twisted trunks, some lichened, some split halfway up their length, showing wood dried to paleness; their roots made humps and coils in the grass but each of them had a crown of leaves, blowing now green, now silver, in the light wind. They were circled round with stocks, purple and white, growing wild. By common consent, Hugh and Caddie had kept off the path and walked quietly on the grass; to get into the garden beyond they had to step on to the path with its rough worn flags, but here they were in the shadow of a hedge. The evening sun drew a warm spiced smell from the clipped cypress and with it a drift of scent from the stocks, a scent that grew stronger as they came out into a hedged garden. Sunk behind the villa it was out of the wind, still and hot in the sun, and filled with a tangle of flowers: lilacs, japonicas in bushes of red and salmon pink; narcissi, pansies; a jasmine falling from a terrace above to which a flight of worn pink steps led up with, on every step, pots of geraniums. ‘We have to go up there,’ whispered Caddie, but she wanted to stay, still, where she was. She and Hugh were both gilded in sun; the things they held, the grips, coats, and net, had edges of light as had Hugh’s bare head, Caddie’s panama. Light bathed their tired dusty faces, their clothes which were crumpled and dishevelled as only clothes that have been slept in all night can be; it lay on their hands and legs, their dusty shoes, a light more warm and gold than anything they had known, but, ‘It’s Italian,’ said Caddie as if suspicious of it. All the same she would have liked to have shut her eyes and let it rest on her eyelids that felt brittle as paper; on her neck and shoulders and hands, on her aching legs, but, looking up, they could see above the terrace a tiled roof, dark yellow walls, with painted eaves, cream arches like the cloister arches in the print of the Fra Angelico Annunciation that hung in Caddie’s bedroom at home in Stebbings, and ‘That’s the villa,’ she whispered.
Timidly, she followed Hugh up the steps. Now they could see that the terrace had a roof of vines; on the right a long walk trellised with wistaria led down and out of sight. From somewhere came a shrilling of birds. The terrace made a forecourt under the vines whose tendrils were just budding – ‘Funny,’ said Caddie. ‘I never thought that vines had flowers’ – and led to an open porch with a floor of black and white tiles; an iron table and chairs were set there and the front door was open. It was from here that the shrilling came; they saw that the house wall was covered in cages, each a few inches square and holding a bird that hopped from floor to perch, perch to floor, sometimes opening its wings, and, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ cried Caddie.
‘Ssh!’
‘But … They’re wild birds, shut in. There’s a chaffinch.’
‘Ssh!’
‘Those tiny cages …’
‘Ssh!’ Hugh’s fingers pinched Caddie into silence. ‘You clot! Do you want someone to hear us?’ Why this imperative need for silence, he did not know. Their crêpe-soled shoes had made no sound, even on the gravel, and the birds’ voices had drowned Caddie’s.
It seemed a place of birds; swallows nesting under the roof flashed dark blue and cream coloured as they flew in and out. ‘The poor caged birds have to watch them,’ whispered Caddie in misery. There seemed no human about. Then, from behind an arched door on the left, they heard singing, loud, almost raucous, but abstracted, the abstracted singing of someone who worked as they sang. ‘Italian,’ whispered Hugh and he looked at the arched door again. Outside it was a basket with a hoe and a string of onions. ‘That must be the kitchen. Should we knock there?’ asked Caddie. Hugh shook his head. He did not want to knock.
The singing went on and Hugh, with Caddie tiptoeing after, went to the front door. ‘Can we go in? Shouldn’t we ask?’ but Hugh only said, ‘Ssh!’ That compulsion of secrecy was still on him.
He listened again. ‘It’s all right. Come on.’ In the hall he stopped. A coat they recognized was hanging there. Fanny’s, their mother’s coat. A man’s short sheepskin-lined duffel hung beside it. Below on a rack were shoes; their mother’s walking shoes and a man’s shoes, brogued and laced. ‘His feet are not as big as Father’s,’ whispered Caddie. There was a Japanese sunshade of oiled paper, lavender colour. ‘She didn’t have that before.’ Again they seemed to sniff its unfamiliarity, then, quietly, they slipped into the room beyond.
It was a dining-room. They noticed immediately that the table-cloth on the round table was all of lace with a branched silver candelabrum in the centre. More candlesticks were on the sideboard, a stand of pink hydrangeas in the window. There were Persian rugs in soft colours. ‘Well, we had Persian rugs at home,’ said Caddie.
‘Not like these,’ said Hugh.
A trolley of drinks had been wheeled by the door. ‘Dozens of bottles,’ said Caddie. The room smelled of flowers, wine, and food, and Caddie’s hungry stomach gave a loud rumble. Glass doors divided this room from the next, a drawing-room, bare and cool, with more Persian rugs on a polished wood floor. Caddie left a dusty footmark when she stepped on it and hastily withdrew her shoe; they did not go in, but stayed just inside the doors, looking. Cream paint and double windows, their shutters half down, gave the room a look of the rooms they had seen in Switzerland, but the furniture was – ‘Italian?’ asked Caddie in a whisper – certainly antique; polished wood chairs, upholstered in cream brocade; a low table covered with crystal, silver, and enamel boxes and ornaments. There was a great carved chest, an inlaid writing-table with gilt legs, its top holding rows of miniatures, a tapestried stool and, ‘What is that thing?’ asked Caddie.
‘I think it’s a prie-dieu,’ said Hugh. ‘You kneel at it to pray.’
‘In a drawing-room?’ asked Caddie, astonished.
There were tapestries on the walls and paintings in gilded frames. At one end a fireplace was made of the same pink stone as the steps they had climbed from the garden; it was laid with olive branches and perhaps the faintly pungent smell in the room was of olive smoke. It mingled with the scent from the azaleas and begonias grouped on the window-sills. Each side of the fireplace were bookshelves, reaching to the ceiling, and, above the fireplace itself, two carved angels, almost as tall as Caddie, held sconces; their gilded wings shone in that dim end of the room. F
rench doors opened on to another terrace on the lake side of the house. They could catch a glimpse of the wistaria trellis beyond but did not dare to cross that shining floor and look.
The dining-room floor was in tiles, patterned with flowers, and from it a staircase curved out of sight. ‘Is it marble?’ asked Caddie, awed. It was of white marble and, ‘Can we go upstairs?’ asked Caddie, shrinking. Hugh listened again; there was still only that singing, and, ‘Come on,’ he said, sounding bolder than he felt, but, when gingerly they trod on the smooth whiteness and came up the first few steps, they saw the staircase was closed off from the upper flight by a door of rose brocade. A brocade door! That seemed to lift the house into undreamed-of luxury.
When it was opened, they stood again to listen; then, stepping silently on the bare marble of the treads, they went up the short flight to a landing. It was here that the arched Fra Angelico cloisters guarded a balcony that looked down over the sunken garden they had walked through and over the olive grove. On the balcony a towel-horse was spread with a towel on which vests, stockings, and socks were laid out to dry. A hanger held a shirt, open-necked, dark blue; a woman’s slip, white and threaded with ribbon, and some white briefs hung over a line. ‘We shouldn’t look,’ said Hugh suddenly.
‘Why not?’ said Caddie. ‘It’s only washing.’
The landing had four doors. Greatly daring, Hugh opened the first, but it was an empty room. They saw a bedroom where the shutters were down so that its light was dim. They could make out boxes on the bed, a chair covered by a sheet, a gleam of mirrors. The next door was of a dressing-room. Its green shutters were only half closed and, standing in the doorway, they looked at a dressing-gown thrown down on the day bed, a row of shoes, ties hung over a chair on which a pair of binoculars were slung. Ivory brushes were on the chest of drawers, with a litter of ashtrays, packets of cigarettes, a handkerchief, bottles, jars, some with their lids on crookedly, while a Penguin lay face downwards on the floor. ‘He’s not very tidy, is he?’ whispered Caddie.
