by Rumer Godden
That night Rob took Fanny out to dinner. ‘Let’s get away. If we are not there, they might give in and eat. If they won’t, at least we don’t have to see it. Let’s try it.’ Once again he had arranged for the Nettuno, but with a motive, as Pia said. He and Fanny were going, he told them, to Sirmione. ‘An hour’s run,’ said Caddie longingly.
At eight o’clock Salvatore brought the big boat roaring up to the villa. Once again Fanny was reluctant to go. ‘Hugh hasn’t come back.’ ‘Couldn’t you do something to worry them?’ Caddie had said. Fanny was worried now. ‘Rob, do you think there has been an accident?’
‘We should have heard,’ said Rob. ‘Everyone on this part of the lake knows who Hugh is.’
‘But where is he? Where?’
‘Amusing himself somewhere,’ said Rob. ‘He’s fourteen, Fanny. He will turn up. Come along,’ and, ‘We are going right down the lake and back by moonlight,’ he told the children.
‘To see all the lights and the reflections,’ said Fanny.
‘They are bribing us,’ hissed Pia, and sure enough when they were ready to go, ‘You can come if you like,’ said Rob carelessly.
‘Can we?’ In spite of Pia, Caddie could not help falling into this trap too. ‘Oh, can we?’
‘Yes, if you will both eat some dinner,’ and Fanny said, ‘It will be such fun. Come.’ It was said beguilingly.
‘You think you can bribe us with a boat,’ said Pia, but Caddie thought they could have – easily. She did not know what gave her the power to resist and it was heartbreaking to see them sweep away, the great wave with its sparkling wash behind them.
‘My uncle Bertrand has a better boat than that,’ said Pia. ‘I go in it often.’ Sometimes Caddie hated Pia.
‘Niente cena; ne carne, ne verdura e neppure il dolce, niente!’ said Celestina, still with that tinge of triumph. ‘No supper; not meat or vegetables or pudding!’ said Rob, and Celestina whispered to him, ‘Il signorino non e rientrato.’
Fanny’s quick ear had heard it. ‘Did she say Hugh hasn’t come back?’ From the jetty they had walked up through the peaceful moonlit garden to find Celestina waiting for them. ‘Hugh? Not come back? Oh, Rob!’
‘Not yet,’ said Rob. He spoke calmly to calm her, but his face looked suddenly weary. ‘Damn all children! Damn them!’ said Rob violently.
‘Don’t, Rob, something has happened.’ Fanny’s eyes were terrified.
‘We should have heard.’ Rob was still dogged in that. ‘There are not many English boys staying on the lake.’
‘Then I think he has run away. He said he would.’
‘Ha preso la bicicletta di Mario senza chiedergliela.’ Celestina poured out Italian and Rob translated for Fanny. ‘He has taken Mario’s bicycle without asking. Mario has been up as far as Tempesta. At the alimentari they saw Hugh riding towards Riva.’
‘Presto. Presto,’ said Celestina, imitating someone riding furiously on a bicycle. ‘Schnell! Schnell!’
‘He can’t have gone far,’ said Rob. ‘He hasn’t much money and that bicycle is old and heavy. Very well,’ he said with a sigh and took the keys of the car out of his pocket. ‘Fanny, you go to bed.’
‘Bed? When Hugh …’
‘Yes,’ said Rob. ‘I don’t think he is in any danger. I will go and look for him.’
‘How will you know where to look?’
‘If he is running away, he will be heading towards the Brenner. I will find him and bring him back, and that will be easier without you.’
‘Why?’ asked Fanny indignantly.
‘You may not have noticed that Hugh has been getting himself into a state.’
‘I notice everything about Hugh, and I thought he was settling down.’
‘It would seem he wasn’t, or else something has precipitated this, and I have a feeling this will be best handled by a man.’
‘But you won’t …’
‘I will be gentle,’ said Rob. ‘Fanny, you have had enough. You must go to bed. Promise me,’ and in Riva, driving along the quays, Rob saw a thin lonely figure leaning on the harbour wall. Beside it was propped an old bicycle.
‘Rob, how old should you be when you could be expected …’ Hugh picked at the wickerwork on the bar table. Rob had taken him to the Marbella Club. ‘A nightclub?’ Fanny said doubtfully next morning.
‘It was the only place I could find open where there was food.’
‘I thought Italian hotels served dinner up to any hour.’
‘It’s too early in the season,’ said Rob, ‘and it must have been nearly midnight. We didn’t get back from Sirmione until eleven. We were lucky to find the Marbella.’
Rob had watched Hugh ravenously eat a plate of soup, some chicken; now some colour had come into his face, he turned his glass of wine round and round in his fingers, while Rob, opposite, sipped a brandy and waited. ‘How old when you could be expected …’ The words seemed to have hooks from which Hugh could not free them. ‘Be expected to have … I mean make lo … I mean … expected to sleep with …’ His eyes lifted to Rob in a tense pleading.
‘You mean go to bed with a woman.’
‘How old should a man be?’
‘There’s no should about it,’ said Rob. ‘It depends on the person, but usually, I should say, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.’
Some of the tenseness went out of Hugh. Well, even seventeen is years away, thought Rob.
‘Would you say … fourteen is too young?’
‘I should say it was a bit precocious.’
‘A woman wouldn’t expect it?’ The question was so nervous that Hugh’s voice went down at least an octave.
‘If she did she must be, shall we say, sex hungry?’
‘Oh!’ Hugh visibly recoiled. Then he buried his face in his hands and said, ‘I can never go back to the villa. Never.’
‘Suppose,’ said Rob with extreme gentleness, ‘suppose you try to tell me what happened.’
Taking the Fortuna’s sails down Hugh had slipped, ‘I was up to my waist in the water and had to go into my room to change. I was going back to the boathouse, but Giulietta …’
That was evidently the fatal name. He could not go on. Rob, trying not to move a muscle of his face, said, ‘Giulietta?’
‘Giulietta was cleaning the stairs.’ It came out in jerks.
‘Cleaning? In the afternoon?’ said Rob, trying to keep the level normal.
‘Yes. I don’t know why. Perhaps she hadn’t had time before, or hadn’t done them properly. She was sweeping,’ and in such a way that Hugh had stopped to look. It seemed quite pointless; Giulietta was sprinkling each marble step with sawdust and then sweeping the sawdust up. ‘That’s an age-old way of keeping the dust from flying,’ said Rob. ‘Go on.’ She had been too absorbed and used to Hugh to stop or look, but he had stood on the top step watching.
Giulietta had been below him, her strong back bent double; as she turned to brush the corners, her hips in the tight black skirt rippled like some splendid animal’s quarters; her black hair fell forward over her face to show her neck, and, ‘I suppose I am possessed by necks,’ said Hugh. Giulietta’s neck was brown-pink, healthy as an apple, crossed by a gold chain that, like the sawdust, was a little damp. He could see a drop of sweat on it.
Giulietta was probably the only person who had really welcomed his and Caddie’s coming to the villa; she was interested and friendly in spite of the extra work. It was she who taught them to say ‘Grazie’, ‘Tante grazie’, and answered, ‘Prego’, with the smile that showed her perfect white teeth. It was Giulietta who joked with Rob, never ready when she flung open the glass door for dinner calling, ‘A tavola’ or, if she were more sedate, ‘Il pranzo è pronto.’ Now for Hugh she was a different person. He looked down at the drop of sweat on the gold chain and he knew how her neck would feel, warm, damp, a little sticky, but a woman’s living flesh. ‘Go on. Those girls expect it,’ Raymond would have said, but it was not Raymond who made Hugh put out his hand. It was Hugh. He bent an
d wiped the drop off with his finger.
‘Giulietta,’ he whispered, and his hand did what Rob’s hand had done with Fanny, played on her neck. With Hugh’s slight fingers it could not have been called ‘paddling’ but it was unmistakably a caress. It was only for a second; Giulietta straightened in a flash. She was taller than Hugh but he was a step above her and he could see that her dark eyes were sparkling, whether in anger or pleasure he could not tell. ‘Go on. Don’t be a little boy,’ Raymond seemed to say. ‘Go on,’ and once again, ‘Those girls expect it,’ but now they were face to face, Hugh had no idea what Giulietta would do. Her face looked large, her eyes, seen so close, were not black but brown with a yellow tinge, her nose was high and her mouth alarming. Her breath, like Celestina’s, smelled of wine and garlic – ‘Well, it was not long after lunch.’ Hugh was terrified. His breath seemed to stop. He wished the stairs would open and swallow him up, but, ‘Don’t be a little boy,’ that voice persisted. He put out his hand again and tremulously touched one of those points of Giulietta’s, under her jersey; they were not hard as they looked, but soft, and springy, thought Hugh, surprised. That odd hot shiver seemed to come up the back of his legs, into his stomach. He gave the swelling a squeeze. Giulietta laughed; her deep laugh; she seemed not to care if it sounded through the villa. Her arm came round Hugh’s neck, pulled his head forward and she kissed him squarely on the lips, a long kiss that bruised them and was unexpectedly wet and warm. He felt her tongue and started as if he had been burned but she would not let him escape. At last, ‘Così,’ said Giulietta, as one would say, ‘That’s what you asked for. Questo è quanto hai chiesto. Now you have had it – and more than you expected,’ and she picked up her brush and went back to the sawdust and the stairs.
‘Was that all?’ Rob asked cautiously.
‘All?’
Somehow Hugh got himself down the stairs and out of the house. He fled to the garage, where he stood childishly wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Then he took Mario’s bicycle and pedalled furiously towards Riva, and on the wrong side of the road until a motorist stopped him and, shouting angry Italian, pointed him on to the right. ‘And then I got to Riva,’ said Hugh.
‘You have been here ever since?’
‘I think so.’
Hugh took a sip of his wine and shuddered at the taste; Rob could see the shudder go down his spine, then he turned to Rob again. ‘Should I have stayed?’ he asked in anguish. ‘Should I? Is that what I should have done next? Raymond, a boy at school, told me … But, as a matter of fact,’ said Hugh, in a burst of confidence, ‘I don’t believe I could do it … yet.’ He looked at Rob with haggard eyes. ‘But suppose she wants me to? Suppose she … liked what happened?’
‘The question is,’ said Rob, ‘did you like it?’
‘No.’ The poor voice cracked and went down, cutting the word in half.
‘Then you don’t go on,’ said Rob. ‘Don’t forget, men are the prime movers. It’s for you to choose. So many of us,’ said Rob, ‘let other people choose; especially we let women. If you do that, you will never be a man. A man chooses – and abides by his choice,’ said Rob, his jaw obstinate.
‘You chose Mother,’ said Hugh.
‘The first time I saw her,’ said Rob.
‘But what shall I do when I see her?’
‘Your mother?’ Rob was teasing, perhaps in relief, but ‘Giulietta,’ said Hugh, still in anguish. ‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But … Suppose she expects something to happen?’
‘If she does, and I am sure she doesn’t, she will soon give up expecting. It may be awkward for you when you see her at first, I grant you that. It may even be painful.’ Rob did not look at Hugh, for which Hugh was grateful because he had blushed. ‘But it’s the only way and always kinder in the end, to make your intentions clear; and I don’t think, as a matter of fact, you need to be kind to Giulietta. She is engaged to a very nice young man, Carlo Lucchini, in the village.’
‘Engaged?’ The misery lifted from Hugh’s face. ‘Oh, thank you, Rob. Thank you.’
‘He’s back,’ Rob reported to Fanny, ‘and safe in bed. He will sleep, if you leave him alone.’
‘But where …’ Fanny had started up in bed.
‘I will tell you in the morning. Now I’m tired, and sick to death of children. Let me sleep.’
12
‘She must have led him on,’ said Fanny, sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘I gather not.’ Rob was still in bed, oddly tired – and sticky, thought Rob.
The weather had been growing steadily warmer, more balmy, but this Monday, the fourth day of the strike, promised to be hot, too hot for May, and not blue but lowering. Rob did not want to argue with Fanny, he did not want to work. I feel thoroughly out of sorts, thought Rob.
‘I thought she was a nice girl.’
‘She is a nice girl. Hugh was lucky.’ Rob stretched and sat up.
‘Lucky!’
‘Yes. She frightened him off, in fact frightened him almost to death. I had hard work persuading him it was safe to come back.’
‘You’re laughing.’ Fanny lifted accusing eyes.
‘Not really,’ said Rob. ‘But perhaps we should laugh. Try and laugh a little too.’
‘I can’t laugh,’ said Fanny. She had had an almost white night; now her head ached; in fact she felt a physical unwellness that had nothing to do with the worries in her mind, though it made them sharper, and she said, ‘It’s our fault. You said we had made him grow up too quickly. At fourteen! With a servant girl!’
‘It has happened thousands of times,’ said Rob. ‘Thousands, all down the ages, everywhere. The only pity is that you had to know of it. He did that by running away, the little fool.’
‘But what are we to do with him?’
‘Leave him to Giulietta.’
‘To Giulietta? After this?’
‘Yes.’
‘We should send her away.’
‘She’s not our maid. She’s Madame Menghini’s. Look, Fanny, Giulietta is a sensible girl. She is engaged and she has plenty of brothers and cousins. I think you will find she knows very well how to deal with a little boy who has ideas, if he has any now, which I doubt.’
‘Don’t.’ Fanny put her hands over her face, but Rob leant forward and pulled them away.
‘Where’s your sense? Don’t be a tragedy queen.’
‘It isn’t only Hugh.’
‘I know it isn’t.’
‘What is in these children, Rob? I’m frightened.’
‘Frightened? By children?’
And Fanny said again, ‘I feel as if I’m being pulled in half.’
‘I think,’ said Rob, putting back the bedclothes and getting up, ‘the time has come for a showdown.’
‘Rob wants to see you in his study.’
They stood in front of him, as he sat at his kitchen table.
‘You know why I have sent for you?’
‘Yes.’ It barely escaped Hugh’s lips.
‘You, Hugh,’ said Rob, ‘are not, I think, in this, but I want you to hear,’ and he turned to Caddie and Pia. ‘As far as I am concerned,’ said Rob, ‘you can starve yourselves. I don’t care.’
Hugh looked at him with respect. Caddie caught that look and Rob’s answering one; it was a kind of comradeship, a truce.
‘I don’t care,’ said Rob, ‘but I am not, repeat not, going to have your mother worried like this.’
‘She is not my mother,’ said Pia.
‘Fanny – worried like this.’
‘How are you going to help it?’ asked Pia in a silken voice.
‘You will see,’ said Rob. ‘It is now three and a half days since you started this nonsense.’ For nonsense it seemed to be having a remarkable effect, and for all his not caring Rob looked ravaged. ‘If you don’t eat your lunch, there will be trouble. Now go.’
They went.
‘He can’t make us eat,’ said Pia. ‘We can
shut our lips tight.’
‘They forcibly feed you in prison,’ said Caddie. ‘Will they do that to us?’
‘They wouldn’t have the things here,’ said Pia. ‘They need tubes.’
‘Tubes!’ cried Caddie in horror.
‘They put them down you and feed you through them.’
‘But what could they put down tubes?’
‘Soup,’ said Pia, and Caddie was very nearly sick.
It was a miserable morning for everyone, and a heavy hot day. ‘Thunder. Tuono. Donner,’ said Celestina. Fanny looked white and strained and she had red eyes as if she were tired out or had been crying. Hugh tried to keep out of the way in the boathouse but the outboard motor had broken again and Mario was in a temper. He curtly ordered Hugh to remove himself and, Giulietta has told him, thought Hugh.
That made Hugh quail. I never knew I was such a coward. In fact he dared not be alone. He did not want to give Fanny the chance of asking questions – as it was she followed him with her unhappy eyes every time he moved. In the end he attached himself to Pia.
More and more he was taking to being with Pia. She seemed to be the only person who did not exacerbate him. Her bony little body was still straight up and down, whereas even the familiar Caddie had two swellings on her chest that he could not help seeing when she wore the gingham dress which was too tight. He liked, too, Pia’s detached coolness, and she had the great attraction of not wanting to talk. She preferred to read. At the moment it was Deal Twice for Death, but as she read she had the habit of absentmindedly singing a maddening high-pitched nasal song.
‘Don’t do that, Pia.’
‘Do what?’
‘Sing.’
But she did not know she did it and unconsciously began again. This morning it made Fanny want to put her fingers in her ears and it penetrated to the study upstairs.
Caddie found a water-snake asleep in the cypress hedge by the stone table. It was so fast asleep, its head on one of its loose coils, that it did not hear her on the gravel, ‘And usually they try and flick out of sight at once,’ she told Fanny. ‘You have to be clever to catch one.’ Unfortunately, Celestina, coming out on the terrace, saw it too:
