by Rumer Godden
‘Yes, but that was hours ago,’ and, ‘Let’s start after lunch,’ Caddie suggested to Pia. ‘We can eat so much that tonight we won’t mind.’
‘I shall never mind,’ said Pia and, ‘You see,’ said Hugh to Caddie. ‘You will never do it.’
‘We shall start with lunch,’ said Caddie.
Pia shook her head; Giulietta passed on to Caddie, and Caddie shook her head. Giulietta, holding the dish, looked inquiringly at Fanny.
‘No gnocchi?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘But I thought you liked it?’
‘We do, but not today.’
‘Are you not feeling well?’
‘Quite well, thank you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Very well, Giulietta. Put it down.’
‘Posalo sulla tavola,’ said Rob, and Giulietta, as was the custom at lunch, put the beautiful cheese-smelling dish, so invitingly browned on the top, down on the table. It happened also to be beside Caddie – ‘Right under my nose,’ as she said afterwards. Her stomach immediately gave a loud gurgle. ‘You are hungry,’ said Fanny. ‘Don’t be silly. Have some gnocchi.’
‘No thank you.’
Perhaps they are sick of cheese, thought Fanny. She was remembering what she had heard Hugh say – but that was just anti-ism, she thought, and Hugh was eating a little. ‘Have some salad and rolls and butter,’ she said to Caddie and Pia.
‘No, thank you.’
‘You mean you are not eating anything at all?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Then would you like to go?’ Thankfully Pia and Caddie escaped. ‘I almost couldn’t,’ Caddie told Pia, who said kindly, ‘Gnocchi alla Romana is a very good dish.’
It was a long afternoon. They both felt yawningly empty. ‘Who would have thought one meal would have made so much difference,’ but, ‘It’s going to be meal after meal,’ said Pia. Fanny, who had to go to the post for Rob, took them into Malcesine and down to the harbour where, to Rita’s amazement, they refused cake or an ice, even orange juice or a coffee. ‘Are you both ill?’ asked Fanny again.
‘We just don’t want any.’ Fanny could understand Pia, that waxen pallor might mean an erratic stomach, but Caddie? She looked perfectly well, if a little pale. ‘Perhaps you both need a good dose,’ said Fanny, at which they relapsed into giggles.
‘Is it a joke?’
‘Certainly not.’ Yet each time they refused they looked at one another, and Caddie had adopted Pia’s trick of making her eyes blank. For the first time since the day in Riva, she and Pia seemed drawn together. ‘You must expect,’ Pia warned, ‘that when they do understand, they will be angry.’
Fanny began to understand at dinner.
Dinner was asparagus soup: slices of roast pork, tender as Celestina knew how to make them, in a gravy of young carrots and parsley: a purée of potatoes, and after it, artichokes to be eaten leaf by leaf, dipped into bowls of vinaigrette. Then cheese – bel paese that Caddie loved – ripe pears, and Rob always gave them wine in their Perrier water. The soup was left untasted; Giulietta again looked questioningly before she took the plates away, Caddie and Pia had not as much as picked up their spoons. They shook their heads to the dish of pork, though Caddie felt almost faint, to the potatoes, the artichokes. ‘I see,’ said Fanny. ‘You are going to eat nothing at all.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘What is this? A hunger strike?’
They looked at their plates.
‘Hugh, what is this?’
But Hugh said, ‘They are idiots, that’s all.’
‘You had better go,’ Fanny said to Caddie and Pia, but Rob was more cunning. ‘No, don’t let them go. Let them sit here and watch us eat.’
‘Saint Sebastian was shot with arrows,’ said Pia. ‘Look,’ and she showed Caddie a picture of a young man naked, his face serene and upturned though he was bound to a post and, as a pincushion is stuck full of pins, his body was stuck with arrows, each with a trail of bright crimson blood.
‘Ugh!’ said Caddie.
‘He smiled,’ said Pia. Pia’s eyes had plenty of expression now, they were lit and dreamy, almost ecstatic. ‘Saint Agatha had her breasts cut off,’ she said. ‘You can see paintings of her with them on a plate, and of Saint Lucy with her eyes. They were pulled out.’ She meant gouged and made the appropriate gesture with her two small thumbs. Caddie thought Pia enjoyed telling about these things and she was not sure they were an inspiration. Saint Agatha or not, both Pia and Caddie had headaches and they felt curiously sick, ‘And it’s only the second day.’ They had not been able to sleep. ‘Of course not,’ Fanny had said. She had heard them moving about and had come in – then she had not been able to sleep either. ‘You are too empty to sleep, you silly little girls.’ She had gone down to the kitchen and, fathoming the difficulties of Celestina’s cooker, a battered Calor gas one with four rings standing on top of an old range, she had brought up two tumblers of hot milk and a plate of biscuits. ‘Drink this and stop this nonsense.’
‘If we had one biscuit each, would they notice?’ asked Caddie.
‘She probably counted,’ said Pia. ‘You see, she is getting upset.’
Pia counted the biscuits herself, as if she doesn’t trust me, thought Caddie. After Pia did that, nothing could have made Caddie take even a sip of milk, though she lay awake trying not to smell the steam, and in the morning Giulietta found the tumblers and the plate of biscuits untouched beside their beds.
‘The martyrs were brave,’ said Pia. ‘They suffered terrible things.’ Could they, thought Caddie, have been more terrible than the aching emptiness of one’s inside? The continual resistance of temptation? For lunch on that second day there was risotto, rice cooked until the good chicken liquid was absorbed right into it, risotto, followed by crisp eel fritters.
The first time they had these, Caddie had not known they were eel, nor Fanny and Hugh either, but the fritters were so delicious that when they did know they didn’t care, and now, ‘I’m sure they are having the nicest things on purpose,’ said Caddie.
‘Naturally,’ said Pia. ‘My father is clever.’ ‘Your mother may be a simpleton,’ was implied, ‘but he is very clever.’
He was. He did not argue with them, he simply took as long as possible over every meal with Caddie and Pia pinned in their chairs. ‘Have some more, Fanny.’ ‘Pia, pass those peas to Hugh.’ ‘Beautiful coffee this morning, Fanny.’ ‘Such fresh rolls.’ ‘Nice crisp lettuce.’ Pia and Caddie gazed stonily over his head, but it was torture.
The strangest part was Hugh. He, who had condemned Italian food, had picked at it, now ate as never before. ‘Does he want to be unkind?’ asked Caddie of Pia, who shrugged. Hugh did want to be unkind, a hard little lust of cruelty was in him; the more he ate, the more impatient he was of Caddie, the more he hated Fanny.
Fanny herself, even more than Caddie, was hurt and displeased. ‘I thought he would have been more loyal,’ but no one, it seemed, was loyal. That second day she had a registered parcel from Paris, a box, labelled ‘Fragile’, and heavy. ‘Philippa?’ she said, looking at it in amazement.
‘Flip?’ said Caddie. How far apart the family had grown; she had not thought of Philippa for weeks – days, corrected Caddie. Was it only a matter of days since she and Hugh had seen Philippa off to Paris?
‘Flip.’ Fanny sounded both tearful and excited. ‘She hasn’t written to me since …’ She saw Caddie’s and Pia’s curious eyes and took the box away up to Rob’s study.
Inside, when she had unpacked them from the shavings, were revealed two ornamental cups and saucers, lettered in scrolled gilt: ‘Toi’ and ‘Moi’. ‘Oh, poor darling!’ said Fanny defensively.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Rob, picking them up. ‘Philippa has a better eye than you. These are not the tourist things you think. Early Victorian,’ he said, looking at the markings. ‘She must have paid a great deal for them, particularly in Paris,’ but Fanny was
devouring the letter that was with them.
‘Oh, Rob! She says they are a wedding present!’
‘Well? Isn’t that nice of her?’
‘Philippa shouldn’t give us a wedding present – a wedding present to her own mother! It seems all wrong and she asks if she can come to us this summer. She says she is longing to meet you.’
‘Well? Isn’t that good?’
‘She was Darrell’s especial one,’ said Fanny slowly. ‘He was counting on her.’
‘Does that exclude you?’ but Fanny only said, ‘Darrell will mind – terribly.’
‘Do I have to agonize over Darrell now?’ said Rob. For the first time he was impatient. Then, ‘I’m sorry, Fan,’ he said. ‘It’s all these alarms and upsettings. I married you, not your family,’ but Fanny, sitting forlornly by the table, had to say, ‘I am my family.’
11
Rob laid a trap for Pia and Caddie. He came out of his study at four o’clock and gave his call, ‘I want a child,’ and without thinking, Pia and Caddie came running. ‘I’m going into Malcesine. Come along and we will buy an ice.’
‘What do we do,’ asked Caddie in the car, ‘when he orders ices?’
‘Let him order and then not eat them. That will make him crossest,’ said Pia.
They had not had a warmer, thirstier afternoon, a drive that met more dust, and, in all she had met in Italy, Caddie liked best the orange ices they made in Garda, whole oranges filled with water-ice, and tasting of the fresh fruit juice. Now she and Pia sat on the wicker chairs with the ices on the table in front of them and did not taste a morsel. ‘Not good?’ asked Rita.
‘Grazie, sono buoni, molto buoni. Very good,’ said Pia, and she and Caddie left them.
‘I have a good mind to make you walk home,’ said Rob.
At dinner that second day, asparagus, veal cutlets with lemon and fresh peas, apricot tart, Fanny could hardly get her own mouthfuls down, nor did Rob eat much. ‘I told you,’ said Pia afterwards. ‘Nothing upsets them more.’
‘Dear, this is a children’s game,’ said Rob when he and Fanny were alone.
‘Then children’s games can be extraordinarily cruel.’ Fanny’s eyes were filling. ‘That they should feel they need to do it. That’s what hurts.’
Rob swore. ‘I begin to think there’s only one way to deal with children and animals: to treat them totally without imagination. You must ignore them, Fanny. They will never be able to hold out.’
‘They must be getting food from somewhere,’ he said, after breakfast was refused the third day.
‘Where?’
‘In the trattoria?’
‘They don’t go there and Celestina would know. Nothing happens in the villa that she doesn’t see or know.’
‘Besides they haven’t any money,’ said Rob. ‘Pia gave me hers for safe keeping and you haven’t given Caddie any. Though of course, there’s Hugh.’
‘Hugh doesn’t approve,’ said Fanny, ‘but I will ask Celestina.’
‘No,’ Celestina said. The trattoria had sold nothing to any of the children. They had had, Celestina was sure, no food from anywhere. ‘Non un boccone.’
Almost none. Towards noon on the second day, wandering down to the boathouse, Caddie had come upon two rolls, a few olives, put down on a half sheet of newspaper. It was one of the fishermen’s lunches, for beside it was a bundle of nets. She looked over the water and could see two men working in the motor-boat where the outboard motor kept spluttering out. They were too busy and exasperated to look shorewards. In each of the rolls was a wedge of salami. It was too much. She took a quick look round and ate them.
The worst part was confessing to Pia. ‘We might as well give up,’ said Pia.
‘Oh no! Nobody saw. Not even Celestina. I let Césare off the chain and they will think it was him,’ but it was hard work persuading Pia not to end the strike – Caddie had a suspicion that Pia made it more difficult. In the end she was mollified but no more.
Celestina tried leaving a plate near them, not when they were together, when they were alone, which was far more subtle: an omelette sizzling gold, ham sliced on a bed of lettuce, a meringue with cream. ‘I no tell,’ Celestina would say and disappear, leaving them to temptation. ‘Exactly what the devils did to Saint Anthony,’ said Pia.
‘What devils?’
‘Devils in the form of women,’ said Pia, her eyes lit with interest.
‘Celestina isn’t a devil. She’s kind. Perhaps she really wouldn’t tell,’ said Caddie wistfully.
‘She would. She would go straight and tell.’ Caddie knew Pia was right and the plates were left, not one mouthful touched, not a bit. ‘Neppure una bricciola,’ Celestina would tell Fanny in a kind of triumph.
At first Celestina had felt slighted. ‘Due ore per fare le lasagne,’ which Pia told Caddie meant ‘Two hours to make that pasta’. Every ribbon of it was homemade and to have it sent away was hard, but by the third day Celestina had changed to admiration. ‘It like the Hindus,’ she told Rob. ‘Tara Singh. That Sikh man on radio. And Gandhi. Very holy mans,’ said Celestina.
The village was not far behind Celestina. The story of the saintly children had spread: not to eat when one had the chance! That seemed superhuman, akin to saintly madness. Still in the village memory were the hard years after the war, and, for all the tourist prosperity, the springing up of bars, ristoranti, hotels, camping sites and their canteens, there were still families living in tumbledown hovels, even in caves; still children who spent the whole day minding a single goose or goat; still women without a coat in winter. Food prices had risen so that every gramme was precious, most of all meat. These children, the stories ran, could even resist meat.
Fanny could feel that her own popularity had declined. Celestina no longer came in to chat with her or called out a greeting when she saw her in the garden. Fresh flowers were not put on her dressing-table. Giulietta’s big smile had disappeared and Giacomino looked the other way. Even the old milkwoman no longer nodded and gabbled her incomprehensible dialect – and Fanny had grown to like the old milkwoman. The couple in the alimentari handed out soap flakes and face tissues without a word. Fanny began to be looked at askance as far as Malcesine; people stared at her, gathered together in knots and whispered. ‘She really is getting upset,’ said Caddie to Pia, and she begged Hugh, ‘Won’t you join in? If you didn’t eat, she would mind most of all.’
Anyone would have thought that now, by this third day, Hugh’s scorn would have given way to respect, which would have done more than anything to stiffen Caddie, but no, he was even more deeply taciturn. ‘If you joined in now she might give in. She might come back.’
‘I’m not sure I want her back.’
‘Not – want – her?’ If the villa roof had fallen on Caddie, she could not have been more astounded. ‘But … that’s what we came for.’
‘I know. It was idiotic. Look, Diddie.’ Once again Hugh called her by that baby name, and this time it alarmed her. ‘Look. It’s done, the divorce I mean, and nothing can ever be the same.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s not the same. I’m not the same, or you, or Father. Even if she came back it’s gone – for ever. Can’t you see that?’
‘No,’ said Caddie. ‘It’s got to be the same,’ but Hugh escaped her. Mario had said he could take the Fortuna out alone, though he must keep in sight. ‘Non allontanarti,’ said Mario.
‘I suppose he is all right,’ said Fanny, watching the white sail swing as Hugh brought the Fortuna up into the wind.
‘Mario has taught him very thoroughly,’ Rob reassured her, ‘and the lake is like a mill-pond today.’
‘It can change very quickly. They all tell you that.’
‘Hugh can swim, can’t he?’ said Rob.
‘Of course,’ and Caddie chimed in, ‘He got his bronze medal for life-saving.’
For Pia and Caddie the third day, mysteriously, was not as bad. ‘Our insides are getting accustomed,’ said Caddie, but they bot
h had fits of dizziness. ‘We are getting weak,’ said Pia.
‘Do you suppose we shall die?’ Caddie had a vision of herself and Pia laid out on their beds, with some of the wonderful artificial flowers from the pompe funebri round them and Rob, Fanny, Hugh, Celestina, and all the village weeping. Pia was more realistic.
‘You can go for three weeks without food.’
‘Three weeks!’ said Caddie faintly. Her dismay must have shown because, oddly enough, Pia tried to comfort her. ‘Something will happen before then. Your mother is looking quite ill. It’s the worry. I told you so,’ said Pia.
Fanny that day appealed to Caddie. ‘Do you want to distress me?’
‘Yes,’ said Caddie.
‘Oh, Caddie!’
‘You distressed us,’ said this new, hard Caddie.
‘I didn’t want to. You must believe me.’
‘But you still did it.’ Caddie looked at Fanny, face to face without flinching. ‘If you want us to eat, you know what to do.’
‘What?’
‘Come back with us to England.’
‘You are an absurd and silly little girl,’ said Fanny. ‘Meddling in things you don’t understand.’
She went straight to Rob, and Caddie was left standing in the bedroom by the brocade and gilt bed from which the cross was gone. One of the things about not eating was that it made it shamefully easy to cry. Caddie lifted her chin but the tears were running down her face.
That afternoon Fanny made tea on the terrace. She looked as if she had been crying herself, and Rob had come down with her.
‘Has anyone seen Hugh?’ she asked, and asked it again, but, though Hugh had brought the Fortuna back when Mario signalled him, he was not in the boathouse, nor fishing on the jetty, nor on the back terrace, nor in his room.
‘Perhaps he has gone to buy bait,’ said Caddie. She looked in the garage. ‘He must have. He has taken Mario’s bicycle.’
