The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  ‘I can’t stay.’ Hugh pressed himself down in the bed; if he kept himself flat his voice might not betray him.

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. After that journey!’

  ‘I should never have come.’

  ‘But you did come.’ Fanny was calm, reasonable and, ‘Shock her. Shock her. Shock her,’ cried Raymond in Hugh. ‘Say filthy things, boy’s language that she doesn’t know exists.’ Fanny, instead of going away, came nearer, sat down on the bed. ‘This is going to be the rest of my life, Hugh. Can’t you accept it?’

  He was drowning, suffocating. ‘I must go back.’

  ‘You will when Father gets home.’

  ‘God! Can’t I go by myself?’

  ‘You must do as he says.’

  ‘I won’t. I won’t.’

  ‘You must.’ Fanny kept her voice crisp to hide her hurt. ‘To begin with, you haven’t any money.’

  ‘I shall walk. Walk and hitchhike,’ but he knew he would not. Once … but now he was in pieces.

  ‘Hugh.’ He opened his eyes and looked at her, a witheringly scornful look. It broke through her shell. Abruptly she got up and went away.

  ‘We have two weeks,’ said Caddie. ‘More than two weeks.’ At Fanny’s order she had brought Hugh the tea that Doctor Isella had said was still to be drunk, tea and charcoal pills every four hours for three days. Hugh was up but looked unwell, his skin was livid and he had dark marks under his eyes and on his lids. He was, too, in an evil temper.

  He would not touch Rob’s Lapsang Souchong. ‘Filthy taste.’ Celestina had said that she had tea and produced with pride a very old tin; ‘Queen Mary’s tea’. ‘Tea della Regina Mary. La Regina Mary. Eccellente!’ said Celestina.

  ‘Queen Mary’s been dead for years,’ said Caddie doubtfully, and, sure enough, Fanny said the tea was musty, and Caddie had gone with Giulietta to the alimentari to buy more. The alimentari, kept by Celestina’s cousin, was one of the new shops opened in every village on the lake road, each with a stand of fresh oranges and lemons outside and hanging bundles of the straw-covered Chianti bottles, ‘If it is Chianti,’ said Rob. ‘Chianti or Bardolino. Spivs borrow those famous names to sell cheap made-up wines that are mostly powder. There is a proverb in Italy now,’ said Rob. ‘“You can also make wine with grapes”.’ It took Caddie a long while to puzzle that out.

  The only tea the alimentari had was in the tea bags that Caddie had seen in Switzerland. ‘I wonder what Gwyneth would say to them,’ she said, and to there being no kettle in the villa; the tea each time took a long while to make in Celestina’s little pan, and then Hugh said it was abominable, but, ‘Take it to him,’ Fanny said, ‘and see that he drinks it.’

  ‘He won’t drink it for me,’ said Caddie. Fanny still would not take it. ‘You have been foul to Mother, haven’t you?’ Caddie asked, and Hugh nodded. ‘Good,’ said Caddie. ‘She will mind that.’

  Everything seemed to be playing into their hands; they had been reprieved by this extra fortnight; Hugh was evidently being as unkind as only he could be, where Caddie had been afraid he would be renegade; Pia was coming, ‘and that’s too many children in this villa,’ said Caddie.

  ‘If it’s bad weather, we shan’t be able to get away from one another,’ said Fanny.

  ‘No,’ said Caddie with satisfaction.

  ‘Oh dear! I hope Pia’s nice.’

  ‘I hope she’s horrid,’ said Caddie silently, all the same it was a little alarming. Pia, Fanny told them, lived with her grandmother in Rome, in fact she had been brought up by her grandmother, ‘And by her grandmother’s mother, who is still alive,’ said Rob, ‘and by great-aunts, great-uncles, aunts and uncles, and dozens of cousins.’ It sounded almost like Celestina’s family.

  ‘Can Pia speak English?’ asked Caddie in alarm.

  ‘Of course. I have brought her up too, a bit, and she has an English governess.’

  ‘There’s no room in the villa for an English governess.’

  There was, in fact, very little room. Hugh had been moved back into Rob’s dressing-room and in the north bedroom the small day bed, carved in walnut with a tapestry cover, was made up for Pia, though Celestina was mystified as to why this new child and Caddie could not sleep together in the big bed. Caddie was dismayed enough as it was. ‘I can’t sleep with Pia. I don’t know her.’

  ‘It is a little hard,’ Fanny said to Rob. ‘One mustn’t expect them to like one another straight away.’

  ‘Being with people you don’t like is part of growing up,’ said Rob.

  ‘Does Pia have to come?’ asked Caddie.

  ‘Rob had you, so I have to have her.’ That was too ungracious to say though it was the truth – but not the whole truth. ‘I want her to come,’ said Fanny. ‘When you love someone, you want to love the people they love.’

  ‘But will you be able to?’ asked Caddie.

  That was the rub. No one, thought Fanny, is as foreign as a foreign child. To her, Italian children still looked much alike, small-boned, alabaster-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed; if the boys’ eyes could be called melting brown, the girls’ eyes seemed to be bright, even a little beady, as if already they had a feminine calculation – and they have, thought Fanny. Gianna, Celestina’s niece from the trattoria, had it, and all of them, even two-year-olds, the tiny girl at the telephone café for instance, had a feminine elegance. Will Pia look like that? Be like that? thought Fanny.

  Rob’s complete confidence made it worse. ‘Suppose she doesn’t like me?’

  ‘She won’t be able to help it. She has never had a mother, remember. This will be wonderful for her.’

  Fanny had gone with Rob when he telephoned to Rome. The grandmother’s voice had come, high, eloquent, and indignant, thought Fanny, through the booth door into the café. It was a swelling of words, and when Rob came out and ordered himself a coffee and cognac he rubbed his ear. ‘Nonna’s voice doesn’t grow any softer.’

  ‘I heard it,’ said Fanny, and suddenly she asked, ‘Is Pia a Catholic?’

  ‘Naturally. Lucia was.’

  ‘Then what does she, Nonna, what do all of them, think about me?’

  ‘I haven’t asked them,’ said Rob. ‘You are not their business. You are mine.’

  ‘If Pia is their business, I am,’ and Fanny said, ‘I’m surprised they let her come.’

  ‘She happens to be my child.’

  ‘I meant – before we are married.’

  ‘That shows how little you understand,’ said Rob, and he said very gently, ‘To them, Fanny, we shan’t be married even when we are. We can’t be married while Darrell is alive.’

  ‘But we shall be married, legally.’ Fanny was defiant.

  ‘Legally is man’s law,’ said Rob. ‘To them, marriage is a sacrament.’

  ‘And to me,’ Fanny could have cried out. ‘I want our marriage to be a sacrament.’

  ‘It can’t be that,’ said Rob. ‘Except to us. Isn’t that enough for you? It is for me,’ but Fanny could not get the sound of Nonna’s voice out of her head. ‘Why go tormenting yourself over a pack of people you will never meet,’ said Rob.

  I shall meet them in Pia, thought Fanny.

  Rob fetched Pia from Milan. She was coming, Fanny told them, on the rapido di lusso, ‘which couldn’t have been more different from our travelling,’ said Caddie. It was the most luxurious train in Europe, Fanny told them, with only a few passengers, large salons in each coach, a dining-car, a kitchen as good as the best hotels, a guide and a hostess, ‘Which is why Pia is travelling on it,’ explained Fanny. In charge of the hostess or not, it seemed to make Pia important, far removed from themselves. Caddie washed carefully, gave her hair a good brush, put on clean socks, all she had in the way of clean clothes, but as soon as she saw Pia she knew that it would be wiser not to try to compete.

  Fanny had thought Hugh slim and graceful until she saw Pia, who had the immediate effect of making the English three of them seem large and lumpish. She was an exquisitely made little girl,
having at present the long legs of a fawn, made longer by dark stockings – ‘Only they are not stockings, they are tights,’ Caddie reported later. ‘Lots of children wear those in Italy and Germany,’ said Fanny. Pia had an erect carriage – Fanny had never seen such a straight back – a poised head, small hands with slim wrists, little feet. She had too the waxen paleness of some Italian city children, not enough air, rich food, late hours, thought Fanny – the skin almost transparently fine. Fanny had been prepared for all these but not for the beauty of Pia’s face. ‘She’s like Nonna,’ said Rob, ‘who was a beauty, is a beauty, even now. Both far more so than Lucia. Perhaps that’s what binds them together.’ It was an old beauty; one could trace in it the face of generations, perfect in proportion, the forehead more wide than high, level brows, a small goat nose, a mouth with teeth so even and pearly that they might have been first teeth. Fanny had searched Pia’s face for some sign of Rob, as every woman must, she thought, when she looks at the child of the man she loves, if it’s not her child. One day perhaps, thought Fanny, and, for a moment, that hope thrilled through her with added life. ‘I’m too old,’ she told herself as she told herself twenty times a day. ‘It’s almost twelve years since Caddie. All the same it’s sixteen days late, no, seventeen, now,’ and very kindly she put her hand on Pia’s shoulder. ‘Hullo, Pia. I’m so glad to meet you.’ Caddie thought Fanny meant to kiss Pia, but Pia made a small curtsy and held out a gloved hand.

  Caddie was struck by the curtsy and yet it looked obedient, drilled. I suppose manners do cover up your feelings, thought Caddie. It had never struck her that that was one reason for them. Pia had not chosen to come as Caddie and Hugh had, and Caddie was reminded once again of Hugh’s, ‘Posted about like parcels.’ Pia perhaps had been on the point of going back to school; Rob said she went as a weekly boarder to a convent, ‘One of the Sacred Hearts.’ ‘What’s a Sacred Heart?’ Caddie had asked. Pia had probably been happily sunk in her own affairs when she was suddenly ‘demanded’, and put on the rapido di lusso and dumped down in the middle of them all here in the villa.

  Hugh had thought Pia would be too young to be of much interest, ‘Another Caddie,’ he had said, lordly, and going purely by age; but, to his surprise, he found he was taking in every inch of her, or every centimetre, he thought with a smile that was new to Hugh, the smile of a boy looking with a little interest at a girl. He took in her clothes; Pia wore a loose belted coat hanging from her shoulders, a pleated skirt, a jersey, ordinary clothes for a girl but immaculately fresh. ‘You had sat up all night in those dirty carriages,’ said Fanny, who, in her uncanny way, had fathomed what he was thinking. ‘Pia would have looked rumpled then,’ and Caddie voiced Hugh’s thought, ‘I don’t believe she would.’ Pia had white gloves, a handbag in scarlet – the jersey had a small white cambric collar embroidered in red – and an upturned hat of brushed white felt with a red ribbon streamer. When Caddie saw that hat she went straight upstairs, took her school panama and squashed it down behind the chest of drawers. Giulietta carried up the luggage – no servant at the villa ever allowed anyone to carry anything – a big and small case in scarlet leather, and Rob had the book Pia had been reading in the train, Murder for Ten Dollars, but she also had a comic. Caddie would not have been allowed to read either.

  ‘Caddie, will you show Pia her room?’ Why did grown people put something as a question when it was meant as a command? Suppose I said ‘no’, thought Caddie, but of course she could not say ‘no’, and she led the way upstairs, through the brocaded door, on which Pia did not bestow a glance, and into the north bedroom. ‘I’m afraid you have to sleep with me,’ she said, indicating the day bed. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘At school you have to sleep with all sorts of people,’ said Pia. Perhaps she did not mean it to be as rude as it sounded, but then she spoke English very well.

  ‘If you would rather have the big bed …’ Pia shrugged. That nonchalant shrug was the most silencing thing Caddie had experienced and she sat stonily on her own bed and watched while Pia unpacked piles of her small personal linen and two or three dresses folded into her case on hangers. She shook them out and, ‘Shall I hang them up for you?’ asked Caddie who could not be stony for long.

  Pia allowed Caddie to do that, and take shoes out of white linen bags and arrange them in the bottom of the cupboard: espadrilles, a white suede pair with buckles, short rubber boots with buttons, no school sandals. ‘Don’t they wear sandals at your school?’ Caddie longed to ask, but did not wish to draw attention to her own. There was a white ivory brush and comb, a manicure case, handkerchiefs, more white gloves. Whoever had packed Pia had taken great trouble. A thick prayer book in black was wrapped in tissue paper. Pia put it by her bed. ‘That’s not a proper prayer book,’ said Caddie looking at it.

  ‘It’s a missal.’

  ‘What’s a missal?’

  Really! Pia’s eyebrows seemed to say but she answered, ‘It’s for Mass.’

  ‘And that string of beads?’ Caddie knew it was ill-bred to ask questions but she could not help it.

  ‘My rosary.’

  ‘A rosary! Oh, tell me how you say it. I have always wondered.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I would,’ but Pia put the rosary away.

  Caddie transferred her gaze to a photograph in a heart-shaped frame that Pia put, too, by her bed.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My friend.’ It was said firmly and Caddie blushed. She had not meant to be inquisitive, only friendly as to a new girl at school. ‘Remember,’ Fanny had said, ‘if it’s difficult for you it’s far more difficult for Pia.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Caddie.

  ‘There are two of you and I’m your mother.’

  ‘Rob’s her father.’

  Caddie thought she had been right; Pia gave no sign of finding anything in the least difficult. Then the bell rang from downstairs. ‘I expect that’s for dinner, cena,’ said Caddie; she had been learning Italian words from Giulietta.

  As they were going down, ‘Caddie?’ said Pia. ‘That is not a name. That is golf, for carrying the clubs.’

  ‘My name is Candida, after my grandmother.’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ A queer spasm crossed Pia’s face; it made her, for a moment, look as ugly as a monkey.

  ‘Pia …’

  ‘We have to go down,’ said Pia coldly.

  9

  ‘They don’t mean to do it,’ said Fanny. ‘It happens.’

  ‘It has happened ever since they came,’ said Rob, but Fanny shook her head. There had always been pricks: Renato’s awkwardness over her name for instance; the scene about the ring, and, for her, always, the sight of other children. She had not been able to bear it when the trattoria children came to play in the garden, filling it with the sound of running feet and high voices, just as she had not been able to look at the toddling procession from the Asilo and had to shut her ears to the gabbles of delight from the babies feeding the church pigeons. These were expected pricks, but now every small awkwardness was magnified: ‘Mr Quillet.’ Hugh and Caddie had punctiliously called Rob that until Fanny stopped them, ‘Call him Rob,’ but neither of them did except when they talked of him to one another. The awkwardness of what Pia was to call Fanny was worse. ‘I hope one day she will say “mother” like the others,’ said Rob, but Fanny shook her head. ‘We can only hope for that.’ Pia’s manners shrank from saying ‘Fanny’. She said ‘You’ and to Hugh and Caddie, ‘Your mother.’

  ‘Though you say “Mozzer”,’ said Caddie.

  ‘After all, you’re half English, half spaghetti,’ said Hugh at which Pia flew into a rage.

  ‘You are not to say that. It’s vulgar. I am English-Italian.’

  Treat them as a clutter of children under one’s feet. ‘One has to be careful everywhere one steps,’ said Fanny.

  Fanny and Pia were thrown much together. Rob was trying to work and Hugh, now he was better, seemed to shut himself out of
the house. He had struck up a friendship with Mario. Fanny knew they smoked together, ‘and they drink wine,’ said Fanny, disturbed. ‘I wish you would speak to Mario, Rob.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Rob, ‘and I think it’s mostly fishing and boats.’ It was. Hugh helped Mario with the boats; Mario had lent him a rod, let him help to run the outboard motor and, best of all, was teaching him to sail.

  Sitting on the end of the jetty, on the warm boards with his legs hanging down, watching the shallows where the water eddied and moved with that timeless lap, lap, Hugh could get rid of Raymond. He was himself again. Each time he dropped his hook in with its gobbet of bait, small fish darted from all sides, ‘You would think they would have more sense, but they haven’t.’ The sun made a warm spot between his shoulders, and shone on his head until he slipped into a daze dream in which he could forget Fanny, Rob, Caddie, and Topaz. Now and then Mario would come and pull up the line with a brown hand seamed with oil or tar, examine the bait, grunt and put it back again or change it. ‘Non abboccheranno mai. You won’t get a bite.’ Now and again he would teach Hugh to cast. ‘Così,’ he would say, showing him how to throw the line far out into the lake, and Hugh would take the rod from him and throw.

  ‘Gentilmente, non in modo brusco. Così,’ said Mario, and would show Hugh how to wind in his line gently, without jerking. Caddie hung around, but Pia would not come down to the boathouse; fishing, Pia’s look said, was for boatmen and boys. Left alone in the house she was often, rather against both their wills, with Fanny.