The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  ‘If go down three times, never come up,’ said Celestina. ‘Nulla risale a galla. Never come up. A boat with German officer, he think he can sail, one little dinghy at night. They find him boots in empty boat. Boat lost mast. He think he can swim. They find his body. No head,’ said Celestina, drawing her hand across her throat.

  ‘I want Father,’ said Caddie again.

  Often no bodies were found. ‘In lake middle, deep, deep,’ said Celestina, plunging downwards with her hand. ‘Three hundred metres down, caves, big big caves. Water strong, sweep them like that … Never find,’ said Celestina. She came closer. ‘Lastest year, three doctor, three in motorboat. Gone. Kaput. A little girl. Papa see her kneel to look big feesh. Never find.’

  ‘I’m going over to the hotel,’ said Fanny. ‘Caddie, come.’ She was holding Caddie’s hand in a grip that hurt.

  Though it was of little use, the local boats had put out. They saw Mario and Giacomino in the rowing boat, other fishermen in theirs. A crowd was standing round the alimentari and there was no need to explain in the Hotel Lydia. The hotel guests had gathered in curious groups and the German manager, Herr Untermeyer, came out himself to meet them.

  ‘They will find them. Certainly they will find them,’ Herr Untermeyer kept on saying soothingly, but he looked appalled. He took Fanny and Caddie into his office, away from the people, and they waited in silence until the telephone rang. Fanny was there before Herr Untermeyer. Rob’s voice said, ‘Any sign?’

  Fanny told him of the carpenters. ‘They think perhaps Hugh tried to make Riva, put in there.’

  ‘I doubt it. It would be too far, even if that boat was the Fortuna. They probably tried to turn and run before the wind. They may have been blown a long way. Very well. You had better go back to the house. If you see or hear anything, come back to the hotel and telephone the police, the carabinieri, here at Malcesine. If I hear anything, I will telephone Herr Untermeyer. We shall have news soon,’ said Rob. ‘They are alerting every town and village on the lake.’

  ‘Have they thought …?’ began Fanny, but Rob cut her short.

  ‘They know how to deal with it. They have these accidents often.’

  ‘Do they think they will find them?’ but Rob would not answer that.

  It was almost dark now, a jewel evening. The water still heaved and rolled, splashed on the rocks, but the lake was the darkening blue of a sapphire, hardly broken by white. The mountains stood out, their outlines sharp against the sky which had taken opal colours, and higher tonight than it had been was the evening star; as Fanny and Caddie watched it was drawn down, as if by its invisible thread, to fall behind the mountain. Soon the lights of Limone glittered and now they could see lit sparks like fireflies on the water. Fishing boats putting out with their lamps.

  ‘But the lake is so big,’ said Fanny.

  ‘Thirty-two miles long, eleven across,’ said the exact Caddie.

  There were scores of fishing boats.

  ‘The Signor has offered a reward of a million lire,’ said Celestina.

  ‘A million!’ said Caddie.

  Police had come along the road, stopping at every village, and the hornet noise of their motor-bikes was matched by the zooming of speedboats, criss-crossing the lake.

  ‘Tre,’ said Celestina. They were all the speedboats in Malcesine. ‘Tutti i motoscafi a Malcesine,’ said Celestina.

  One turned south; another, driving a course up their side of the lake, headed north – ‘That’s the Nettuno with Salvatore’; the third cut a zigzag across to Limone. More boats, Celestina told them, would be putting out from Riva.

  ‘Vi sono palombari, squadre di soccorso. Divers mens, rescue mens, afterwards they search caves.’

  Fanny shivered.

  She was called once to the hotel. Rob was on the telephone and, with a beating heart and a dry throat, she took the receiver from Herr Untermeyer, but Rob was only saying, ‘The police want to know what they were wearing. Can you endorse what I said?’

  On the terrace they still strained their eyes to see. ‘But it’s too dark now,’ said Fanny, and her fingers closed on Caddie’s shoulder, holding it so tightly that she bruised. Caddie tried to comfort her.

  ‘Perhaps they are all looking in the wrong places. Hugh and Pia may not be on the lake at all. They may have been washed ashore. They may.’

  Now the boats showed more definitely on the water than they had in the twilight; some bigger boats were there; one looked like a ferry steamer, its lights showed green or red as it turned. Searchlights shone their beams, white, this way and that, picking up a length and breadth of water.

  Just before ten o’clock they heard Rob’s step. Its slowness and heaviness made Fanny stand up, holding to the back of her chair, Caddie beside her. Haggard with tiredness, his shoulders sloped, he appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Yes?’ whispered Fanny. ‘Yes?’

  ‘They have found the Fortuna.’

  Fanny’s throat moved but she could not speak.

  ‘She was drifting down, just off Campagna, the village below Limone. Hugh didn’t get the sail down; the mast must have snapped because it was over the side. She was capsized.’

  ‘And them?’

  ‘No sign. They may have been picked up. They may have got to shore somehow.’

  ‘Hugh could swim.’ That was Caddie. ‘He could life-save. He would life-save Pia.’ But she was talking against that tide of knowledge: no one can swim in a storm like that; the third time they go down they never come up: the undercurrent takes them: caves three hundred metres down: but, ‘He would life-save Pia. I know he would,’ said Caddie.

  ‘We can hope,’ said Rob to Fanny. ‘We must hope, but I’m afraid, dear, they want you down at the police station. I have come to fetch you.’

  Children, thought Caddie, are always left out. In any crisis of fear or sorrow they are treated as outsiders, left to wait without news, not told. With scarcely a glance at her, Rob had taken Fanny down to Malcesine. Caddie was left on the terrace alone again.

  If Hugh had taken her as his first passenger, the first sail on which he had taken anyone, as he promised, thought Caddie, she would have been at the centre of this drama, instead of Pia. She would have been a real heroine. I wish, thought Caddie, as the wretched tears prickled her eyes again, I wish … yet even as she wished she knew it was not quite honest. It was better to be Caddie left alone but alive, than to be drowned in that great waste of lake. Once, when swimming in the baths at school, she had gone down too deep and she remembered how she had fought for breath, her chest feeling as if it might burst, a raw hurt in her nose, mouth, ears. It was better to be alive, even if you felt half dead. With dragging steps, she went back into the empty drawing-room and stood at the window, watching the lights dotted over the lake.

  Celestina came in with a tray of soup, soup with the pasta in which she so much believed, but she did not stay – there was too much talk and excitement in the kitchen. ‘Cerca di mangiare qualcosa,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You try eat.’ She patted Caddie’s shoulder and disappeared. Caddie could have gone with her. In the kitchen she would have been a near heroine, but she was too tired. This endless day seemed to have worn holes in her, as the waves had worn holes in the rocks; she was worn out. Suddenly she did not care any more, and suddenly, too, she could not bear that angel’s smile. She got up on a chair and turned them both with their faces to the wall. Then she took two or three spoonfuls of the soup, put down her spoon, staggered over to the sofa and lay down.

  Giulietta found her there when she came for the tray. She tried to rouse her to take her upstairs but Caddie was too fast asleep. Giulietta put a cushion under her head, took off her sandals, and fetched a blanket to put over her.

  ‘Poverina. Poverina,’ murmured Giulietta as she tucked Caddie in. All at once she noticed the angels.

  ‘Tchk! Che diavolo,’ said Giulietta. Scandalized, she fetched a chair and turned them back again.

  17

  It was the str
angeness that woke Caddie, or perhaps it was the hardness of Madame Menghini’s sofa – she had dreamed she was back in the train again – or perhaps it was the chill; she had only one light blanket over her and her knees were bare. I’m asleep in my clothes, she thought still half in dream, in my best jerkin. Her skirt was twisted round her waist, its pleats crushed, and instinctively she thought, What will Pia say? She rubbed her feet together and found her socks were round her ankles. No wonder her knees were cold. Then the fact that she was in the drawing-room began to dawn on her; the angels glimmered golden in the pale light. But I turned them with their faces to the wall. Who had turned them back? Was it an omen? But the memories of the night came flooding in. How could I have gone to sleep? What had happened while she slept?

  She sat up. There was a wry taste in her mouth that, experienced now, she knew came from not having brushed her teeth. Someone had set her sandals side by side, covered her with the blanket, turned out the light, put back the angels. Celestina? Giulietta? Fanny? Caddie swung her legs down, pulled her socks completely off and stood up. The floor was so chill it made her toes curl away from it and gave her the same shock of reality that her bedroom tiles had given her long ago, so long ago that it was another Caddie who had felt them. She left her sandals where they were, shook her skirt straight – Pia would indeed have been shocked at its crooked pleats – pulled down her jerkin, smoothed her hair and stood listening. The villa was silent, it was too early even for Celestina’s birds, there was no sound but the lapping of the lake, gentle now. Caddie tiptoed into the dining-room.

  The clock here said twenty to six. The shutters were down, but the terrace door was open and she went out.

  Outside it was full daylight, though the sun was still behind Monte Baldo and the sky was pale, the mountains dim, their rock steeps not yet turned rosy. As she walked down the garden the grass was dry under her bare feet. She kept a look-out for her dear snakes but it was not warm enough yet to tempt them on to the rocks; they were all in the lake, and that made her think horrifyingly of Hugh and Pia. She saw them floating, bobbing, with the live snakes swimming round them, and she remembered how Pia had always shrunk away from them. ‘How can you like them?’ she used to say and shudder. Now they could touch her, twine all round her, thought Caddie.

  It was easy to imagine Pia dead; her small pale face could easily look shut and wet, the black hair plastered down; but Hugh … To Caddie he remained obstinately himself and alive.

  ‘Full fathom five, thy father lies,’ Caddie tried to say, tormenting herself with the thought of those caves. ‘Of his bones are coral made …’ But there wouldn’t have been time, she thought. Coral takes ages and is there any in the lake? ‘Those are pearls that were his eyes,’ but she saw them rather as dead fishes’ eyes, white because they would be rolled up … and she had hurriedly to go into the house.

  It seemed to be wrapped in sleep. Would they sleep when Hugh and Pia …? It seemed odd, but then Caddie herself had fallen asleep on the sofa and stayed asleep all night. After all, if Hugh and Pia were drowned there was no sense in the rest of them staying awake. Perhaps it was only Celestina, Giacomino and Giulietta who slept. The other Italians would all have gone home: Mario to the boathouse; Beppino, Gianna, the trattoria mother and father, to the trattoria; the alimentari couple to the alimentari; villagers to the village. Perhaps Fanny and Rob had not come home, perhaps they had found … Here Caddie’s stomach gave a strange heave, and she began to shiver. She was cold and still weak and she thought lit would be wise to go into the kitchen and find something to eat.

  Her bare feet made no sound as she went across the dining-room tiles; if it had not been for their coldness she would have felt as if she were floating on air, but when she reached the foot of the staircase she forgot about going into the kitchen; she seemed to be drawn upstairs, past the brocade door, up to her own room. There was nothing to see there. The two beds were empty and smooth as Giulietta had made them in the morning, yesterday morning, thought Caddie, yesterday, an aeon ago, twenty-four hours that seemed to stretch into infinity. The sight of Pia’s table, the missal, the vase, the photograph of ‘my friend’, made Caddie’s heart stop again. Will Rob take her body to Rome if they find it? And at that, Celestina’s stories came vividly alive. Probably there would be no body; the German officer had lost his head; that other little girl never been found. By now Pia probably was in the caves and even with divers they would not find her, even though Rob had offered that million lire. The highly-coloured phrases made Caddie’s head swim so dizzily that she ran cold water into the basin and dowsed her face. As she dried it and combed her hair she was surprised to see her hand was trembling.

  Still feeling as if she were floating, she went out of the bedroom on to the landing. She was remembering the first evening when she and Hugh had explored the empty villa, seen Rob’s shirt drying on the balcony, gone into his study and read the notice, seen the signs of Fanny’s bath in the bathroom, the big bed turned down. Once again Caddie listened: Celestina’s birds had begun to chirp now, a few sleepy trills, answering the birds outside. A shutter gave a small clatter, and even here came the quiet sound of the waves against the rocks. She peeped into the study; the table was cleared; there was only a litter of paper on the floor. She withdrew on to the landing, turned, went into the dressing-room where Hugh had slept – and stood rooted on the rug, wide awake as if life had suddenly been poured back into her bones. Hugh was lying in the bed.

  Dead? thought Caddie. But if he were dead, surely they would not have brought him back to the villa? Nor covered him up in blankets? She had an idea that dead people were covered with a sheet, and then she saw that, unmistakably, evenly, the blanket was moving up and down. Hugh was breathing.

  She crept nearer. He was asleep, perhaps too much asleep, because he was breathing in a strange way; young people did not breathe as heavily as that. The ear nearest her had a grazed edge, rimmed with a dark red crust of dried blood. She could see another graze on his cheek and a bluish swelling. Tentatively she touched him, putting out a finger as nervously as if a snake might come out of the blankets – she too had a horror of them now – but the spot of skin she touched was damp and warm. Hugh was alive. But how? thought Caddie. How?

  Filled with wonder she gave a loud and unexpected sneeze.

  ‘Caddie?’

  It was Fanny’s voice, but not Fanny warning Caddie off as she usually did when Hugh was ill. It was like a stifled cry, asking, pleading for help? thought Caddie. That was what it sounded like, but she must be wrong.

  Yet, ‘Caddie,’ it came again, more urgent. ‘Caddie.’

  The door between the dressing-room and the bedroom was open. Instinctively the children had avoided that side of the landing at night or in the early morning; a bar of shyness had descended when any of them had to pass that bedroom door to go to the lavatory or bathroom, especially if they heard voices inside, or saw Rob come out in his dressing-gown. Caddie and Pia had not been old enough to understand, but they understood all the same, and they all kept away, did not listen or look, but, ‘Caddie.’ Again that voice, mournful and hollow, as if it were Fanny, not Hugh or Pia, who had been drowned.

  Caddie went to the door, listened again, and then went in.

  Fanny was sitting by the window, dressed as she had been the night before, for travelling, thought Caddie. Only her hat had been taken off and was where she had thrown it last night on the bed. The bed, like Pia’s and Caddie’s, had not been slept in.

  Though Fanny had called her, Caddie had to stand beside her for perhaps a minute before she turned her head.

  ‘Caddie?’

  Caddie did not say ‘Yes?’ but answered, for what reason she did not understand, ‘I’m here.’

  ‘You … woke up?’ That was obvious, but, in this new awareness, Caddie treated it gently.

  ‘Yes. A little while ago. Hugh’s not drowned.’

  That was obvious too but Fanny only shook her head.

  ‘Is Pia
?’

  ‘No. She has a broken leg.’

  Fanny spoke as though from a long way off, through veils, thought Caddie.

  ‘Pia is in Riva hospital but Rob is taking her to Milan. Her grandmother is coming. They are both safe.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Caddie. ‘How?’

  ‘Hugh knew when he went out it would be rough, that a storm was coming, but he didn’t care. That was our fault.’ Fanny’s voice trembled. ‘Then, when it grew so dark and thundered, he got frightened. He tried to get up to Riva, then to put in to a beach, but the storm broke before he could; you know how sudden it was. He struggled to get the sail down but he couldn’t. He said Pia would cling to him and they were swept across the lake towards Limone.’ The words came out slowly as if jerked from a machine. ‘The mast broke and the Fortuna went over. He held Pia and clung to the side. They were swept still more towards the shore. A duckboard floated up. He managed to catch it and push Pia half on to it, and he held on above her, trying to swim.’

  ‘Then the current did not take them down?’

  ‘They were close inshore. The Fortuna was clogged by her sail, but as soon as they left her they were swept on to the rocks. That’s where Pia broke her leg. She was knocked unconscious. Of course the boat was not far out, but in those waves … It couldn’t happen. They all say it’s impossible, but it did.’ A little life came into Fanny’s voice. ‘Celestina says it’s a miracle. Hugh was brave, Caddie. They say as brave as a man. He pulled Pia up from the waves. Then he said he fainted. When he came to, he found a … cleft.’ Here the voice tailed off and Caddie caught only the words, ‘grass tufts … oleanders … climbed up to the road. One of those double lorries … two men … one stayed with Hugh, the other went to Limone … They got a doctor with a boat and took Pia off … sent for us.’

  ‘Is Hugh hurt?’

  ‘Bruised and cut and shocked. Doctor Isella put him to sleep.’

  Only bruised and shocked. There was a silence, then Caddie asked the question she had to ask.