The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Stop it,’ Hugh said now through stiff lips to Caddie. ‘Can’t you stop.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Caddie.

  ‘Put her to bed,’ said Hugh. ‘For God’s sake! Just because we have been up all night.’

  ‘You must both go to bed.’ Fanny’s own tears had dried and she was brisk. ‘Baths first. You look as if you need some hot water. Have you had any food?’

  ‘We had some s-sandwiches we b-bought at Victoria and c-coffee this morning,’ said Caddie between sobs.

  ‘Only coffee? Nothing else?’

  ‘C-couldn’t buy anything in Italy.’ Caddie was becoming incoherent.

  ‘We had a ten thousand lire note,’ said Hugh, clipping his words as if he hated to speak at all. ‘Couldn’t change it on any of the stations. We changed it in Desenzano but then we had to stay at the bus stop for the bus.’

  ‘Where in the world did you get a ten thousand lire note?’

  ‘From Father.’

  ‘F-Father d-didn’t know,’ said Caddie.

  ‘You must be starving,’ said Fanny. ‘Rob, will you tell Celestina? Hot baths at once. No, I won’t hear anything until you have eaten and slept. Hugh, your eyes are bright red.’ This was a Fanny Rob had not seen, brisk, dictatorial. ‘Rob, will you tell Giulietta to take their things up and Celestina must make up two beds. Can Hugh go in your dressing-room, on the day bed there? Are the sheets aired?’ asked Fanny, her forehead wrinkling. ‘Then a hot soup – omelettes perhaps, and …’

  ‘Fanny,’ said Rob.

  There was something in his voice that made Fanny stop. He had not moved but was sitting on the balustrade, smoking. ‘Fanny.’

  ‘Yes, Rob?’

  ‘We were going out to dinner,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Now? When Hugh and Caddie …’

  ‘Now,’ said Rob. ‘The Nettuno’s waiting. Celestina will look after them.’

  ‘We can look after ourselves,’ said Hugh quickly, but Rob’s Italian cut across that as he gave orders to Celestina. ‘Si,’ said Celestina. ‘Si, si, senz’altro.’ Her eyes were bright. She loved an occasion. Then Rob got up and put on his coat. ‘She will show you your rooms,’ he said to Hugh, ‘and the bathroom. The hot water runs very slowly but see that your sister has a bath. Then there will be something to eat.’

  ‘But what sort of something?’ asked Fanny.

  ‘They were not expected,’ said Rob. ‘They must take what there is. Fanny, I have ordered dinner at San Vigilio. They won’t keep it if we are too late.’

  ‘But I must just take them upstairs …’

  ‘Very well.’ Rob looked at his watch. ‘I can give you ten minutes.’ Was it the children who had brought that echo of Darrell’s voice? ‘Ten minutes, then we must go.’

  Upstairs, Caddie quite innocently let off the first shot as Fanny conferred with Celestina on the landing. ‘Yes, Signorina Caddie in the big bedroom, the piccolo Signor in the dressing-room. You can keep your things with Caddie’s, Hugh, then you won’t disturb Rob too much.’ Caddie, looking down at her mother’s hand on the banister – the marble banister – said, ‘That’s a new ring.’

  It was a ring with a great dark red stone. A ruby? wondered Caddie, set in a circle of diamonds. Behind it Fanny wore a thin gold wedding-ring. Caddie tried to think what Fanny’s wedding-ring had been like at Stebbings; she must have seen it hundreds of times yet could not think; it was not like this one, Caddie decided and, ‘Two new rings,’ she said.

  Fanny abruptly took her hand away, but, ‘Gwyneth told us you had to wait two months,’ said Caddie and, because she had to know, she blurted out, ‘Are you Mrs Quillet now or … Mother?’

  On Fanny’s first day in the villa there had been a package on her dressing-table. She remembered how she had followed Giulietta upstairs, the powerful brown legs and strong back bounding up before her as Giulietta carried the heavy cases. ‘Shake hands,’ Rob had whispered to Fanny – as this evening she had whispered to Hugh and Caddie – ‘Shake hands,’ when Renato Menghini had introduced Celestina and her niece Giulietta. Giulietta had opened the bedroom door, carried the cases in and stood back invitingly, but Fanny had not gone in; she stayed in the doorway, drawing her gloves through her fingers. ‘Come in. Come in. Entri, entri pure, questa è la sua camera,’ said Giulietta. ‘It is your room.’ How attractive she is, Fanny had thought, not pretty but healthy, ripe with that glowing rose skin, and those white teeth. In a few years she would, this young Giulietta, become like Celestina, worked into coarseness. Would Giulietta, too, marry a Giacomino about whom Rob had told Fanny? Perhaps she, too, was in love but now Fanny did not want her. She had to be alone in this room. ‘Grazie,’ she said, which was the only Italian word she had known then. ‘Grazie. Grazie,’ and Giulietta had understood. ‘Prego.’ She gave Fanny her wide smile and went out past her. In a moment she had shut the door and Fanny had walked slowly into the room, her heels clicking on the tiled floor, and sank down on the dressing-table stool. She was alone in their bedroom.

  Rob had scarcely looked at her or spoken to her since he met her at the airport barrier. He had brushed her cheek with his lips, taken her small case and waited impatiently, jingling the coins in his pocket while the porter put her luggage in the Mercedes. Driving he had looked steadily ahead, driving too fast and jerkily. Again he did not talk to her, and this neglect filled her with content.

  It had been the same after each of their partings, partings whose anguish had augmented rather than lessened as they grew accustomed. Rob had grown even thinner in this month she had not seen him, the month of the divorce, of the children’s Easter holidays, when she had not seen them either. She, the guilty one, had not had to go to court but she had kept vigil up in Scotland, packing up Aunt Isabel’s house, alone with Danny; the big collie was the only one of the family left to her. ‘But why?’ Rob had asked of the vigil. ‘Why, there alone, when it isn’t any use?’ ‘Somehow I should feel better,’ and he had let her have her way. I was selfish, thought Fanny seeing him now; his fingers were stained with the cigarettes he lit and threw away; but it was the same each time, until we were alone. Now we are alone for the rest of our lives and, in the bedroom, Fanny’s heart began to beat as it always beat in those times of meeting Rob.

  This room of delicate colours, with its windows on the lake – though I must take down some of those dozens of little curtains, thought Fanny – its wide bed with its silver and peach-coloured brocade and coverlet of lace belonged to them now.

  There were flowers and, Celestina did not arrange those, thought Fanny, lily of the valley and white roses. They were Rob’s, and on the dressing-table was the small package tied and sealed from curious eyes – servants, thought Fanny – and addressed to her. It unwrapped to a small blue case. Fanny opened it and saw the wedding-ring.

  The day the decree was given Fanny had taken off Darrell’s wedding-ring. ‘In honesty, I had to,’ she had said. His diamond engagement ring had gone to the bank with her other jewellery for Philippa and Caddie and, when she had come down from Scotland to spend a few days in London before she had flown out to Milan, her hand had felt curiously bare; it increased the feeling of a dream in which she herself was suspended, without status, without a name.

  ‘How many rooms? How many beds?’ Celestina had asked when she had been told Rob and Fanny were coming to the villa.

  ‘Two,’ Madame Menghini had said, then hesitated. ‘Yes, two, my bedroom and its dressing-room.’

  ‘Then it will be Signor and Signora Quillet?’ Celestina had asked. Madame Menghini had hesitated again, then put it differently: ‘Signor Quillet and the Signora.’

  Rob had given Fanny the ruby months ago, on the day this became irrevocable, though she had not known that then. It was one of the days when they had been starved for one another and she had been so restless that she had come up to London and telephoned Rob.

  ‘Fanny! You are in London?’

  ‘Yes. Are you free?’

  ‘For you.’
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  ‘Could we lunch?’

  ‘Chirico’s, one o’clock. Or shall I come and get you?’

  After lunch Rob had had to admit there was an appointment, ‘Almost unbreakable,’ he had said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Fanny. ‘I have seen you and I can walk in the Park until it’s time for my train.’ I walked miles in those weeks, thought Fanny; it was the only thing that steadied her, but, as they came out of Chirico’s, it had started to rain and, ‘You can’t walk in this,’ said Rob.

  ‘I can – or look at the shops.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I won’t have you getting wet and tired. I will drop you at my flat and you can wait there.’

  ‘I have never been to your flat.’

  ‘It’s empty,’ said Rob, watching her face. ‘Empty and harmless. You can even make some tea.’

  They went to Lowndes Square. Rob took out his key. ‘I shall need this, so I will just let you in.’ He opened his front door, glass-fluted and set in gilt as were all the doors in these expensive flats. In the hall he stepped past her to switch on the fire. ‘The bedroom’s through there, and the bathroom.’ He opened the doors to show her, bent down to kiss her ‘… and it happened,’ said Fanny.

  They should have known. On the first evening they had been alone, in the drawing-room at Stebbings – ‘When you came to fetch me that first time’ – as Rob handed her a glass of sherry, his fingers had brushed hers. Soon they had only to be near one another for this current to begin, anytime, anywhere. If he rested his hand on the back of her seat at the theatre, leant across her to shut the car door, touched her hand, it began; but, that moment we were almost innocent, thought Fanny afterwards and over and over again. We were thinking of other things; Rob had his meeting, I thought I would look round his flat – of course I was curious – and leave when the rain stopped, but he kissed me and we made love. Fanny knew now that most women only have a mirage of love. To her it had been a revelation. I suppose, in spite of Darrell and having three children, I was untouched, virgin to love. Afterwards I could have knelt to Rob and he to me. How crooked the world was. This, that she ought to have felt for Darrell, she felt for Rob. Yet because of Darrell, over it, each time, there was a shadow. Well, with a sacrament, each time you come near it, you bring the shadow of your sins, thought Fanny. Sin seemed a hard old-fashioned word to use, an Aunt Isabel word, but it was true, and for Rob and Fanny there must always be, not far off, never out of mind, inevitably, the shadow.

  She remembered now Rob had lain with his eyes shut. ‘Fanny.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing else. Only Fanny.’

  Perhaps she ought, then, to have thought of Darrell, but he never crossed her mind. This was Rob’s. Anyone else was an outsider. Then, lying beside him, she had gone to sleep. Presently she felt him kiss her eyelids. ‘I’m going now. Ring Gwyneth and tell her you will be late. We will have dinner and then I will drive you home. Chirico’s at seven.’

  He had gone and Fanny woke. ‘Not from sleep, from it,’ she said.

  She did not know afterwards where she went or what she did. It was panic. ‘What a fuss.’ She could imagine Margot’s or Anthea’s cool voices saying that. ‘Do you think this doesn’t happen, every day, everywhere? Why, most women …’ ‘But I’m not most women,’ as Fanny so often had to say. ‘I never managed to be as slippery.’ That sounded priggish, but she knew it was because she was inept – and because things that happened to me mark too deeply.

  The panic had stayed. It was still raining, the day turning to a dark cold evening; rags of cloud blew across the sky that showed between the houses. People passed her, hurrying with umbrellas. She was bumped into, knocked and pushed – I must have been in the way – but she still walked on, soaked and cold. Yet she had had a burning thirst and somewhere, in a poor street, she had gone into a little brown-painted cafe where, on an oilclothed counter above the cups and tea-urns, globes of orange and lemon squash turned under a celluloid orange and lemon. She asked for a lemon squash, and when the woman had poured it from a stop-tap underneath, Fanny found she had no money. Her bag was in Rob’s flat. The men in the cafe stared as she had to come out and the woman’s indignant voice sounded after her down the street.

  She went into a church. Somewhere in the back of her mind was ‘a cup of cold water’ – I suppose I was a little delirious, thought Fanny – but there was, of course, no water in the church, not for the public. She had knelt down in the first pew, but not to pray, her mind was too numb. Then she had felt faint and had to sit down; her whole body was dizzy and bruised; Rob had hurt in the fierceness of that ecstasy. She was tired, and satisfied as she had never been satisfied before and, I fell asleep again, thought Fanny.

  When she woke it was dark. Only the sanctuary lamp burned by the high altar and its jewel-red warmth made her think of Rob.

  As she came out of the church – and for a moment she had thought she was shut in and had battered on the door, only to find it open – under a lamp-post she looked at her watch. ‘Chirico’s at seven.’ It was half-past eight.

  Before I see him I must tidy and wash my face, thought Fanny. There was a public lavatory in the next tube station. Having no money, she had to use the free cubicle and could not wash, only rinse her hands under the tap; but, using a square of mirror, she took off her hat and tried to re-do her hair, but she had no comb. She had been watched by the young West Indian attendant and, ‘I can’t tip you, I haven’t a penny with me,’ she wanted to say but she could not speak. Outside again, she took a taxi; the doorman at Chirico’s will pay, unless Rob has given up and gone.

  He was there, sitting, watching, waiting. When he saw her he came quickly across the room to her, steering her between the tables to their own; in these last weeks it had become theirs, part of us, thought Fanny. He took her hat and gloves, undid her soaking coat and gave them to the waiter, gave her her bag – ‘I found it in the flat’ – and ordered brandy in a voice she had not heard him use before. Is it the one he uses on the set? she wondered.

  ‘Did you think I wasn’t coming?’ She tried to smile but her voice was so cracked and dry it frightened her.

  ‘I knew you couldn’t not come now,’ said Rob. He did not ask any questions, only made her drink the brandy, and every now and then he took her hand and cradled it in his. ‘Don’t talk. Don’t think. Drink,’ he said. That was the first time I had ever drunk brandy, thought Fanny. With it and the food he made her eat, not asking her what she wanted but ordering for her, and with the slow warmth that was beginning to creep into her bones, tranquillity fell upon her. ‘I have known joy,’ she could have said, ‘joy complete. Not many women can say that. Rob will go away. He must. It’s in the nature of things. He has this new picture to make in Africa. I …’ and here she flinched as she thought of Darrell. He, her husband, had turned into an intruder, almost into a thief. Poor Darrell. What had he done to deserve this? But she would not think of him now, not yet, thought Fanny. I don’t know what I shall do, but I have had my joy. Nothing can take that away from me.

  When the waiter had brought their coffee and they were left alone, Rob had put his hand in his pocket and brought out a case, twin to the one on the villa dressing-table. ‘I couldn’t go to the meeting and I had to do something, so I went hunting,’ he said and he opened it and held it out to her. On the white velvet she saw a deep sparkle – no, not a sparkle, a glow, the colour of the sanctuary lamp, deep red, Rob’s colour, as it became for Fanny. ‘I wanted a ruby,’ said Rob and he put his hand over hers, ‘I would say heart’s blood but they call it pigeon’s blood!’ he said.

  ‘But, Rob, what is it?’

  ‘Your ring.’

  ‘My ring?’ Fanny was dazed.

  ‘Men usually give a ring to the woman they are going to marry.’

  Chirico’s panelled walls, its prints of travellers, the pink-shaded lamps, the tables with their white cloths, carnations, plates, glasses, bottles, the black and white of waiters, the
white coats of the boys, seemed to tilt together into a blur and run away from Fanny; their table tilted and blurred, there was a loud buzzing in her ears, then it steadied as once again Rob’s hand came over hers. ‘It has to come to that,’ said Rob, ‘hasn’t it?’

  In this new bedroom at the Villa Fiorita Fanny had sat looking at the two rings in her hand until, ‘They are to wear,’ said Rob behind her.

  He had come in so quietly that she had not heard him and, for once, not sensed him. ‘Put them on.’

  ‘You mean … because of Celestina?’ said Fanny.

  ‘Because of us.’ Rob had blazed at her so fiercely that she shrank. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rob. He knelt down beside her. ‘But sometimes I think you will never understand. I have waited nearly a year,’ said Rob. ‘Each day was a year. This last month was twenty, and then this interminable day.’

  ‘The day’s nearly over.’ She tried to speak lightly. ‘Look, the sun is going down.’

  ‘I don’t want it to go now,’ said Rob. ‘It’s just beginning.’ He had his face against her hair. ‘Your hair smells like a child’s, honey and satin.’

  ‘It’s beginning to be grey.’