The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  ‘He knows the people who have, and he has big estates and a castle,’ said Fanny.

  Now he bestowed a fleeting smile on Caddie and turned back to Rob. ‘Tonight is Rigoletto and I heard today, only today at four o’clock, that Renata Scotto, the Gilda, is ill. They have flown the little Letti up from Rome. Bianca Letti. You remember my telling you? She is ver-y ver-y pretty.’ He tapped Rob’s arm to emphasize this. ‘Beautiful, besides the voice. She is singing Gilda. Gilda! Tonight! It’s a unique chance.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We could be in time for the third act. Guido will let us in, but we must go at once. Rob, I tell you …’ and he lapsed into Italian; a stream of it went from him to Rob, from Rob to him, over Caddie’s head. If they must go, why don’t they? she thought, but no, the waiter brought more coffee, brandies, a cigar for the prince and still they sat on talking, talking.

  Caddie feared she was growing sleepy and put her elbows on the table, stretching her eyes open with her fingers, but her eyes still seemed to have an annoying way of curling up at the corners.

  She suddenly and unexpectedly gave an enormous yawn. Made awake by shame, she glanced at Rob to see if he had seen, but he and Prince Aldo were still talking, cigarette and cigar smoke curling between them, Rob’s finger flicking away the ash as if he were excited.

  She was forced to intrude. She was growing more and more uncomfortable, trying not to wriggle on her chair. At last, ‘Mr Quillet – Rob,’ she said desperately.

  ‘Rob.’

  ‘Rob, please, Rob … Rob, I must …’ and the prince broke off. ‘Rob, she is asking you …’

  ‘Rob, is there a ladies’ room here?’ She said it far too loudly and blushed, but the waiter had understood and was motioning her to follow him across the floor.

  ‘Wait.’ Rob fished in his pocket and brought out a note. ‘Give this to the signorina.’

  ‘But … Mother gave me some pennies.’

  ‘Give the signorina this,’ and he turned back to the prince. He was right. She did not need the pennies and the ladies’ room was not at all like the airport. It was as full of grandeur and marble as the lounge; even the cubicles were pale glossy pink and there were marble basins, hot water, immaculate small towels, a signorina in black with starched lace cuffs. Washed and feeling very much better, Caddie returned. She had been afraid they would go without her, but no, they were still talking.

  At last the bill was brought, a pile of the outsize Italian notes put on the plate, and they stood up. The kind waiter brought her things. She had not time to pick them up properly; if he had not whisked her past the table to the door, she was sure she would have been left behind. The men had gone, still talking, and she, with her coat and grip trailing, ran after them through the marble lounge and hall, past all the people, out into the noisy Milanese night. The street was full of traffic, the pavements swarming, trams clanking past, as Caddie hurried after Rob and the prince, dodging people or bumping into them, coming up short at a traffic light where a man flung out an arm to stop her, then running to catch up with them; but they had not far to walk before they turned into a big cream-coloured portico hung with theatre bills.

  There had been only one night between this and the journey, only two anxious and exhausting days, and now Caddie was so dogged with tiredness and filled with good food that the night began to behave like a dream, in which things came nearer and then went away, swelled up into distinctness and faded, with curious blanks in between. She remembered standing in a lit space, thick carpeting under her feet, an impression of mahogany, brass, marble, crystal, while the prince and Rob talked with a tall man in evening dress whose name seemed to be Guido. Do all Italian men’s names end in ‘o’? asked Caddie’s tired brain – Aldo, Renato, Giacomino, Mario? Women in ‘a’? Celestina, Giulietta, and now this Bianca of whom they were all talking. Or was she a woman? A coloratura, they said; it sounded to Caddie like a cockatoo.

  Then they were in a wide corridor, cream-walled, with countless little cream doors lettered in gold. They were led by another man in black, wearing a heavy silver chain round his neck. ‘Four and twenty white mice, with chains around their necks’ … but this was a man, not a mouse. Was it true, thought Caddie, or was she dreaming?

  The man opened one of the doors, someone whispered ‘Silenzio. Fate silenzio. Absolute quiet,’ and she was steered into what at first seemed darkness, a red darkness and a din of sound. She felt hardness, covered in velvet, against her hands that was the rim of a box; velvet against her legs, and found a chair into which she sank, though first she had almost sat on the floor. Then before her opened a width of light, so violently lighted that her eyes could not take it in, yet below the light they caught what seemed to be hundreds of movements. After a moment she saw they were movements of arms working, hands holding the bows of violins, violoncellos, basses, fingers working on them and on wind instruments, a hand poised over drums, hands lifting gleams of brass that were trumpets, hands held still on harpstrings where a harp frame caught the light. It was a huge orchestra pit, and, ‘You were in La Scala,’ Fanny told her afterwards.

  ‘What is La Scala?’

  ‘The most famous opera house in the world,’ but the ignorant Caddie did not really know what opera was. ‘A play, stupid,’ said Hugh. ‘When all the words, or most of the words, are sung.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Caddie, and she could have said, ‘We didn’t go to a play. We went to look at Bianca Letti and hear her sing.’ That much Caddie had fathomed. Rob was looking at Bianca Letti, hearing her, for the part of Berengaria, in something called Saladin, ‘Just look at her, Rob. That is all,’ Prince Aldo had pleaded. ‘Just look at her.’

  At first Caddie was deafened. They were almost on top of the orchestra and, too, she was blinded by the light. They were so close to the stage that when her eyes did grow accustomed she could see the cracks in the paint of the scenery, the lines of the floorboards, the crease in the Duke’s top-boots, powder on his slashed sleeves, the make-up on the singers’ faces, particularly, white as flour, on the hunchback’s. Guido told her he was Rigoletto, though who and what Rigoletto was she did not know. While Prince Aldo and Rob whispered together, Guido did pay some attention to Caddie. ‘Enrico Rufini is singing Rigoletto,’ he whispered, which added to the confusion.

  On the stage was what seemed to be a hut, brightly lit, and a great stone bridge outside a wall with cypresses – Caddie recognized those from the villa garden. Inside the hut was a young man, ‘The Duke,’ whispered Guido, and a woman in red and yellow striped skirts, a red shawl over a white blouse, red beads, a fall of dark hair. ‘The Maddalena,’ Guido whispered again and Prince Aldo turned his head and said, quite loudly, ‘She is nothing.’ Outside the hut the hunchback, in a long cape, swung and lumbered about the stage, and with him was a girl, young, with a golden plait that hung over the shoulder of her long grey cloak. Its hood made a frame for a small face, and Caddie could see it was indeed very, very pretty. When it lifted, there was a flash from a pair of great dark eyes. ‘That is Gilda, Bianca Letti.’

  Caddie was aware now of a sea of heads below her, the auditorium, and of honeycombed tiers of boxes like the one they were in, rising up to the roof with gleams of deep rose, deep red. ‘On gala nights,’ Guido told her in his soft whisper, ‘it is all carnations. On the front of every box is a wreath, carnations everywhere, but then it is not opera,’ said Guido, ‘it is a dress parade.’ His whisper had carried and, ‘Ssh! Basta!’ someone hissed from the box next door.

  The orchestra seemed to take a breath, and as a rocket soars up and bursts into a rain of coloured stars it burst into music, gay, pronounced, and the fat young man in the thigh boots and doublet, the Duke, began to sing.

  At the end the clapping burst too, but Caddie, her hands between her knees, her face fixedly turned to the stage, waited as if she were mesmerized, waited through the recitative until, once again, there was that breath. Then the four began to sing together, Gilda and Rigoletto outside the hut, the Duke and Maddal
ena in. ‘The quartet, Bella figlia dell’amore,’ said Guido.

  ‘What is dellamore?’ Caddie’s whisper was too loud and, ‘Ssh! Basta!’ came even more fiercely. She shrank with shame, but Rob, as if he had suddenly remembered her, put his hand, for a moment, on her knee. ‘Listen to Gilda’s notes,’ he said.

  Listen to Gilda. Caddie could not understand a word of what they sang, nor did she know what the opera was about, except that the hunchback and Gilda seemed in terrible distress, but as she listened to those four voices it was as if a skin parted in her mind, something tight and stretched in which she had been sealed and against which her unhappiness had boiled and seethed. For days she had been too small a Caddie for all that was in her. ‘I have grown too big for me,’ she could have said. Now she escaped, let out on the sound of that music, sound that she could not have believed. Oddly enough, it was to do with Topaz. What could a little pony in England have to do with singing in Milan? Yet, mysteriously, she seemed to be stroking Topaz’s neck again; his mole warmness had vibrated and flowed under her hand, as this singing vibrated and flowed through her so that she seemed to be stroking, not a pony, but life itself.

  Up and up went Gilda’s voice and Caddie seemed to be going with it as if she were one of Celestina’s birds let out of its cage. Then Rigoletto’s and the Duke’s blended with Gilda’s, Maddalena’s came up in such an orgy of sound that Caddie was lost, yet still she knew it was there, the bigness could not be split up, not into an individual girl and her pony, into a man’s or woman’s voice. The pony was more important than the girl, the song than the singers. Caddie sensed that – and how few people sense it – but it and they were one. It was all a oneness and – everything is everything, thought Caddie certainly, on the tide of that singing.

  It was only a few minutes, a glimpse. Afterwards it was as if, for a moment, she had laid her hand on truth, tried to grasp it and her hand was empty – but not quite empty, because she knew now it was there. The quartet ended, there was a thunder of clapping, and Caddie was once again a small alien girl who had somehow got into this box. Nor did she catch another glimpse again, in the rest of the singing.

  She was interested in the stage storm, in the way the cypresses really bent and shook; the washing on the roof did not shake enough, she thought critically; but slowly emotion, dinner, and tiredness overcame her, the tide of sound on the stage seemed to sink away and she must have gone to sleep. She woke with clapping ringing in her ears, clapping and shouting. The lights had gone on and the singers were bowing in front of a vast velvet curtain, carnations were being thrown down – for ever afterwards, carnations, for Caddie, meant Milan – some hit the singers’ heads, the front of the stage was strewn, but she could not stay to look. The men were leaving the box. She was just in time to stumble out after Rob, Prince Aldo, and Guido. Blinking in the brilliance of the corridor she asked, ‘Rob, are we going home?’

  ‘Going round,’ said Rob. She had not time to ask, ‘Going round what?’ because they were already walking away, one of them each side of Rob, talking, gesticulating. ‘We shall be quicker,’ Guido was saying, ‘to go outside and in at the stage door.’ Once more they were out on the street, threading through a café of little tables half hidden by trees in tubs, while the crowd milled round the Scala entrance. Then they turned down a side street into a paved courtyard where cars were waiting; Guido spoke to a man in a grey uniform and led them up a flight of stone stairs, Caddie’s legs aching as she tried to keep up, through a great many doors and rooms until, ‘We’re on the stage!’ cried Caddie.

  It seemed to her eyes enormous. A gang of men in overalls was working and great expanses of scenery were being wheeled into position, others were going down through the floor – again was she dreaming or was it real? But again too she could not stay to look; as it was she had to scamper over the bare boards to catch the others, but, I have been on a stage, a stage, thought Caddie. Even Philippa had never done that.

  They climbed another staircase, went through more doors until they came to a pair of heavy swing ones and here they stepped into quiet, a small rich corridor, with a dark-red carpet – and two dear little chandeliers, thought Caddie. She was wide awake now. The corridor was lined with mahogany doors at one of which Guido knocked. It was opened a crack wide and they all went in.

  It was a box of a dressing-room, mahogany again, with a sofa covered in old-gold velvet and gold velvet chairs to match. Down one side was a long open wardrobe filled with dresses; a woman in a white overall was hanging up the doublet and cape of lavender velvet that Gilda had just worn. There were other dresses, a shelf of crowns, a cap of pearls, from which hung a plait of gold hair; Gilda’s plait, then, did not belong to Bianca Letti. The room was full. ‘Who were all those people?’ Caddie asked Rob afterwards. ‘Bianca’s mother and grandmother,’ said Rob, ‘and every relation she has living in Milan.’ The grandmother sat in state in a chair. One of the men was eating a roll split with sausage, and a little boy was playing with a carnation, perhaps one of those that had fallen on Gilda’s head. He was not more than three or four years old and, ‘It must have been nearly midnight,’ Caddie told Fanny. Then, from an inner room, Gilda, or Bianca, came out, not dressed, but wearing a short little dressing-gown of white nylon with blue roses, her face covered in cold cream.

  That astonished Caddie. Even Philippa would not have come out in front of strangers like that, but the cold cream did not disguise Bianca’s beauty, ‘and for a prima donna to be beautiful is extremely rare,’ Rob was to tell Caddie. Bianca was also shy – but Rob talked to her in a soothing, gentle voice. Caddie noticed how the other men, the whole room, became silent, from respect, she thought, and presently Bianca sat down with Rob and began to talk too, but all the while Rob’s eyes were examining and watching her, just like the judges with a pony at a show, thought Caddie.

  The powder in the air made Caddie sneeze, her eyes were stinging from tiredness, but it did not seem as if the night were over yet. The voices were in full spate. There was a suitcase in the corner. She sat down on it to wait.

  Next morning Celestina, going out to hang her birdcages in the magnolia tree, heard voices raised high in argument: Signor Quillet and the Signora. ‘It was only an argument,’ said Fanny. She insisted it was not a real quarrel but it began to sound like a quarrel. ‘È rientrato alle tre! At three o’clock!’ said Celestina to Mario, who, on his way to clean the Mercedes, paused to listen too.

  ‘Three o’clock. L’ho sentito, I heard him,’ said Mario.

  ‘English ladies no allow that,’ said Celestina.

  ‘È chi sposerebbe un’ inglese!’ said Mario, but Celestina and Mario were not just. Fanny had not even reproached Rob – not about that.

  It was when Giulietta brought their coffee, up to their room – ‘The Signor was so late,’ Fanny had said – and, ‘Un altro piatto e una tazza,’ she said in her halting Italian, ‘Another cup and plate. For Hugh, per il signorino.’

  ‘E per la piccola signorina?’ asked Giulietta. ‘Mees Caddie?’

  ‘Mees Caddie?’ Fanny stared. ‘The little signorina is in England. Inghilterra.’

  ‘Non è in Inghilterra, è a letto … in beds,’ said Giulietta with a great effort.

  ‘In bed?’ asked Fanny incredulously.

  ‘Si, si,’ and Rob woke up and explained and Fanny had exploded into something like wrath.

  ‘But three o’clock in the morning, Rob, when a child was with you!’

  ‘I had her with me,’ said Rob, ‘and it didn’t hurt her. She slept part of the time. Of course she had had some wine.’

  ‘You gave her wine?’

  ‘This is Italy, where we don’t keep our children under glass.’

  He sat up and saw her angry face. ‘What is the matter? You’re not a puritan, Fan.’ He looked at her more closely. ‘My darling goose, you’re jealous.’

  ‘Jealous of Caddie? Don’t be ridiculous,’ but Fanny was jealous, humiliatingly, violently jealous. Those hours of w
aiting for Rob had frightened her. The villa without him, even with Hugh there, had been desolate and there had been practical difficulties too. She had not known what to do about Prince Brancati’s telegram, and Celestina had gone on keeping dinner hot.

  At eleven o’clock Fanny had sent Mario over to the Hotel Lydia to telephone the airport. Mario came back; Flight 507 had left on time. Then Fanny had had to sit calmly while Celestina told her of the terrible accidents there had been on the autostrada and on the lake road. ‘Italian driver all bad,’ declared Celestina comfortingly. ‘Signor Quillet drive much fast, too fast.’ She told graphically how a bus had pushed a car over the road edge. ‘Here, by Malcesine. Three people kill.’ She held up three fingers. ‘All deaded.’ Fanny sat through it, but after Celestina had gone she paced the floor, until the villa itself seemed to check her. Its châtelaines, it seemed to suggest, should not gossip with servants. Madame Menghini, for instance, would have kept Celestina in her place, nor would she have paced. ‘You cannot have it all ways,’ Fanny told herself. If Darrell had said he would be back at eleven, he would have been; that reliability was not in Rob. Well, you love his quicksilver quality, thought Fanny. He has probably met someone, or something has turned up to do with work, man’s business. ‘Keep to a woman’s,’ Fanny told herself and made herself go upstairs, have a bath, give her hair a good brushing, look in on Hugh, then find a book and go to bed. ‘Then if anything has happened you will be fit to deal with it. If it hasn’t, this is where Rob will want to find you.’ ‘Never be tiresome.’ Fanny felt that could have been Madame Menghini’s motto.

  Fanny was not tiresome – then. In fact she had been asleep when Rob came in beside her. ‘I’m sorry, Fan.’

  ‘Did you meet someone? Tell me …’ she murmured, half asleep.

  ‘In the morning.’ He kissed her. ‘Sleep now,’ and she had gone back to sleep, never dreaming …