The sound of a door closing jolted me back to the present, and I looked around, curious. I couldn’t tell which of the doors was intended to be the main entrance—there were several, all impressive with their steps and iron railings.
A woman was crossing the courtyard towards us. For an instant my heart did a coward’s flip, stealing my breath, but I relaxed when I saw that it wasn’t Madeleine Hedrick. This woman was younger, only in her midthirties or so, and rather more rounded, with black hair scraped back and a bustling walk.
“Oh, good, here’s Teresa,” said Nicholas. “She’ll get things sorted.”
She looked the kind of woman who could do that very capably. Dressed neatly in black skirt and blouse, her low-heeled shoes clicking on the cobblestones, she radiated competence. And though her face was plain and unremarkable, the sort of face one easily forgot, her eyes were busily aware.
They looked us up and down efficiently as she drew near, and I saw her expression crease into a frown as she noted our somewhat dishevelled appearance, our glistening faces, the way we were breathing. And then she looked at Nicholas, carrying my suitcase, and the frown for a moment showed worry.
“Giancarlo is not with you?” Her English was thick, but understandable; her voice low for a woman’s but pleasantly pitched.
Nicholas shook his head. “No, your husband apparently never turned up at the station.”
“We took the bus,” said Den. But he had also seen the worry in the woman’s eyes, and ever the charmer, he tried to reassure her with a smile. “We probably just missed him.”
Teresa’s dark gaze took Den’s measure carefully, and seemed to find him worthy of approval. “Yes,” she said, “Giancarlo is not always good with time.” Turning to the rest of us, she said, “You will be tired. Please come, I will show you the rooms.”
My thigh muscles burned a protest as I followed her back across the cobblestones and climbed the marble steps to a heavy dark wooden door framed with Corinthian columns and carvings of cherubs and gargoyles, weirdly combined.
Inside, for a second, I felt I’d gone blind. The sunlight couldn’t penetrate more than a few feet into the entry hall, so intense was the darkness. I had to stop and wait until my eyes adjusted to the sudden change, before I finally saw the panelled walls that pressed in close on either side, years of varnish blackening the wood. The ceiling, too, was low and panelled, inset with what looked like squares of damask silk in some dark colour—green, perhaps, or brown. On the wooden floor a length of oriental carpet, black with a design of rose and gold, stretched away from us, travelling out of sight up a curved staircase that seemed to be the only way out of this windowless cell.
Den groaned at the sight of the stairs, but Teresa turned, her expression encouraging. “Is the best way to the bedrooms, very fast.”
Nicholas nodded. “She’s right, it’s a much longer walk from the main entrance—too many corridors. The house,” he complained, “is a damned rabbit warren. I’m still getting lost.”
“Still?” Rupert raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d only just arrived, yourselves.”
“We came yesterday, actually. Maddy was keen to get settled. She doesn’t like travel.”
“Ah,” said Rupert. “And where is she now?”
“She was resting. I’m sure she’ll come down for a drink, though,” he said, “now that you’re here.”
The idea seemed rather surreal to me still: ‘drinks with Madeleine Hedrick.’ As fanciful, almost, as ‘tea with the Queen.’ I’d been practising what I would say when I met her—a short speech, neither too formal nor too familiar, something that projected quiet confidence, maturity . . .
“Celia, dear, watch where you’re going,” said Rupert, reaching a parental hand to press my head down and safely under the low ceiling beam that spanned the top of the staircase.
“Sorry.” I straightened, looking round me at the narrow corridors that ran in three directions, their walls, like the ones downstairs, panelled in dark varnished wood veneer. I wasn’t good with wood—I couldn’t tell what kind it was by looking, but when I trailed my hand along a wall it felt expensive.
“This way,” said Teresa, leading us off to the left.
I could see why Nicholas got lost. I felt like a rat in a maze, turning this way and that, passing door after door, darkened alcoves, more corridors, lit by amber-tinged Art Deco wall sconces.
“This room is for Signor Neville,” said Teresa, as she stopped outside a door and waited. I didn’t understand the pause at first, until I realized that of course she wouldn’t know which man was which. “Is a small room,” she hastened to add as Rupert sidled past her through the door, “but there are many books, and Signor D’Ascanio said you would like.”
“I do.” Rupert paused inside the doorway, looking round. I couldn’t see much past him, only a section of yellow-striped wallpaper and half a shuttered window. “It’s a lovely room, I like it very much,” he said, smiling first at Teresa, then turning to share the smile with all of us. “I’ll just clean up a little, then, and change before that drink. Where shall I meet you?”
“The terrace, probably.” Nicholas gave directions. “If you lose your way just tap out an S.O.S. on the wall and we’ll come find you.”
“Jolly good.”
Which left only Den and myself to be dealt with. Teresa stopped two doors down. “Signor O’Malley.” This room I saw in more detail than Rupert’s—a tall window draped in blue velvet, a long polished desk with a mirror above it, the post of a bed. Den seemed pleased. Dropping his cases, he passed the heavy one of mine that he’d been carrying to Nicholas. “Here you go, Nick, this goes with Celia. I think it’s her rock collection.” Turning to me, he asked, “And where will you be?”
“Signorina Sands,” Teresa announced, with a hint of disapproval, “is in the ladies’ wing.”
“Oh right, the ladies’ wing. I should have guessed.” Den grinned. “That’s where old Galeazzo kept his mistress, I believe.”
“And other female guests,” said Nicholas. He winked. “The lucky sod.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all have his stamina.” Den shifted his suitcases further into the room with his foot, to let his door close. “See you shortly.”
Teresa set off again down the dim corridor, but this time with a rather grim set to her face. I wondered if she didn’t think me good enough to occupy the ladies’ wing.
We had to hunch over to duck through the passage dividing the wing from the rest of the house, but on the other side the ceiling soared upwards, cathedral-like, over a broad, U-shaped landing surrounding a second small staircase that gracefully wound its way up from the lower floor, lit high above by a skylight of stained glass that dappled the dark Persian carpets with colour.
I counted four doors on the landing—one on its own to my right, and the other three set at angles in the far left-hand corner. It was to the last of these three that Teresa now led me, while Nicholas nodded across at the door on the right.
“That’s Maddy’s room,” he told me. “There are only the two of you sharing this wing. And the stairs there go down to the dining-room passage. That’s the best way to get to the terrace, for drinks—just go down and turn left, then turn right and go straight.”
I only half-listened to what he was saying, because by that point Teresa had opened the door and I’d seen what lay inside.
ii
I was almost reluctant to step through the doorway, for fear I might spoil it.
“Is your sitting-room,” Teresa said, moving ahead of me into the high-ceilinged gold-and-white space with its tall arching windows. She opened the shutters and expertly twitched back the filmy white curtains to let in the light.
Nicholas set down my cases on the kitten-soft carpet, looking round appreciatively. “God, and I thought Maddy’s room was luxury. It must be nice to be producer’s pet.”
“I’m not,” I said, and then because I didn’t want to step on any toes I added, “Look, I’ll gla
dly trade with Mrs. Hedrick, if she’d rather have this room. I really don’t—”
“Relax,” he calmed me. “Maddy doesn’t have that kind of ego.” Smoothing his hair back he glanced round again. “Lucky you.”
And with that he made a practised exit, leaving me alone with Teresa. The look she sent after him seemed to imply that she didn’t think much of the famous Nicholas Rutherford, but she kept her thoughts silent. “Here is your bathroom,” she said, pointing out the door at the end of the room, “and also after that the bedroom.”
“Thank you.” I paused then and, wanting to get in her good books, I thanked her again in Italian, trying to remember Rupert’s coaching on pronunciation, rolling my r and giving each vowel a separate sound: “Grazie.”
Teresa nodded. “Prego.” And then, with a final disapproving look around, she turned and left me.
As the door clicked shut behind her I fell into the embrace of the overstuffed sofa and revelled in the feel of it, the obvious expensiveness of everything around me. But I couldn’t stay seated for long. There was too much to see, to explore. Rising, I crossed to the windows.
The view was more stunning than any I could have imagined. I hadn’t realized quite how high we’d climbed until this moment, when I saw the pointed cypress tops beneath me falling sharply to the long blue lake below, a darkly fragrant forest into which the villa’s gardens had intruded in an unexpected paradise of terraced lawns and shaded groves with flowers showing everywhere and footpaths winding through the mingled greens, beneath the clustered trees too numerous to count and much too varied to identify. I recognized the flaming glory of a copper beech directly underneath my window, and knew by sight the silvery leaves and gnarled trunks that marked the olive trees, but all the rest looked unfamiliar to me, wonderful and strange.
The air was scented, heavenly, and filled with warbling birdsong that went on and on incessantly, a sound so purely joyful that just hearing it restored my spirits, and suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that we’d had to walk from town, or that Teresa didn’t seem to think me worthy of occupying Celia the First’s private suite, or that in half an hour’s time I’d be sipping a drink beside Madeleine Hedrick, who’d most likely hate me because of what Mother had done. Nothing mattered. Only that I was here, in this beautiful room, with the lake shining blue in the sunlight below and the snow-covered mountain that rose from the further shore framed like a painting by neighbouring lavender peaks, and the hill rising high like a shield at my back.
Eager to unpack my things and make myself at home, I grabbed the handle of one of my suitcases, dragging it through the small adjoining bathroom—an oasis of polished green marble and brass—into the bedroom.
I should, by rights, have noticed the bed first. It was fabulous—antique-looking and painted in delicate tones, plump and soft with pillows stacked against the headboard and a coverlet of heavy damask, opulently ivory. And I ought to have noticed the thickly draped windows, the one on the end wall that faced me and the two on my left, close together, that travelled from ceiling to floor and so clearly led out to a balcony. At the very least, I should have admired the marble-topped dressing table in the corner by the wardrobe. I had always wanted a marble-topped dressing table. But the only thing that caught my eye at first was Celia’s portrait.
It was meant to catch the eye—a life-sized canvas, hanging square above the bed, so real the eyes appeared to hold my own, the figure seemed to breathe.
But it surprised me, still, to hear the voice. A woman’s voice. It spoke to me from thin air. “I do hope that you’ll forgive me.”
My heart gave a foolish leap upwards and lodged in my throat, but even as I felt the rush of unreasoning panic I knew that it wasn’t a voice from the grave. And I would have recognized the speaker even if I hadn’t wheeled in time to see the curtains billow at the long French windows opposite the bed.
“It’s dreadfully rude of me, I know,” said Madeleine Hedrick as she stepped in from the balcony, “but I thought that our first meeting ought to be private.”
I’d never seen Madeleine Hedrick close up. In my schoolgirl remembrance her Lady Macbeth had been regal, commanding, and on television chat shows she looked willowy and tall, so it came as something of a surprise to find myself facing a woman not quite my own height, with such delicate bones, such a slender physique, that I felt like a great clumping ox by comparison.
Her voice, though, low and pleasant, held the strength and skilled control that I’d expected. “Did I frighten you? I’m sorry. I don’t make a habit of trespassing, really, but I couldn’t think of any other way.” Like Nicholas, she didn’t introduce herself. There wasn’t any need. And she didn’t immediately offer her hand. Instead she paused for a moment inside the French windows, head tipped as though she were onstage and awaiting a prompt from the wings.
I could have done with one, myself. The perfect speech that I’d so carefully constructed and rehearsed had somehow vanished from my memory. Wordless, I stood and looked back at her.
Finally, she spoke. “Did you have a good journey?”
A question I could answer. “Lovely, thank you.”
“I always did prefer the train to flying. So much more civilized, really, and of course one has the scenery . . . from an airplane one only sees clouds, for the most part. And even from a car,” she said, “when Nicky is driving, one can only see a blur.” She smiled. Moving from the window, she sat on the end of the elegant bed, and for the first time I saw the whole person—the simple clean lines of the cream-coloured dress she was wearing, the curling dark hair in its trademark short style, the rounded soft face with its engaging dimples and the large dark eyes that could by turns be sharp or gentle, widely innocent or tragic, as she chose. At the moment they hadn’t committed to any emotion, but watched my face and waited, rather as a border guard might watch someone approach a checkpoint—reasonably certain that the password would be given, but prepared at any moment to defend.
I tried one more time to remember my speech, then gave up and said simply, “You can’t know how much of a thrill it is for me to finally meet you.”
“You are sweet.”
“No, honestly, it was you who made me want to be an actress. Roo—I mean, Rupert,” I caught myself using the childish nickname and winced. “Rupert Neville, he did all he could to put me off the idea.” He had, in fact, told me that practically any profession was better than theatre; that being a lollipop lady was better, more sane. “But then our school took us to Stratford, you see, and I saw you do Lady Macbeth, and it . . . well, I can’t really describe what it did to me, not properly, but acting was all that I wanted to do after that.” Which came out sounding foolish, and I kicked myself for saying it at all. And why, oh why, had I made that remark about school? It was hopelessly impolitic, and surely impolite, to remind an older actress of the difference in our ages.
But one glance at Madeleine Hedrick revealed that I had, by some miracle, chosen the right thing to say; I had uttered the password. She sat back a little, relaxing, fingers laced around her knees. “How nice. I don’t know that I’ve ever been anyone’s inspiration before.” She smiled. “Was that Dennis O’Malley I saw coming in with you?”
I hadn’t been aware that she’d been watching us arrive, but I said yes, it was, and explained how he’d stepped in at the last minute to replace the other man who was supposed to have been our SM.
“I haven’t seen Dennis in years,” she said. “Is he still incorrigible?”
That was, I thought, as good a word for Den as any. “Definitely.”
“Good. I was afraid age might have sobered him. It changes us all, you know, age does.” It hadn’t treated her too badly, really. She would be about my mother’s age, just entering her fifties, but unlike my mother her youthful complexion appeared to owe nothing to surgery. Still smiling, she stood. “But of course you’ll be longing to tidy up after your travels. I ought to have thought. It’s my worst fault,” she told me, “not thinking.
Nicky always makes comments. I expect,” she went on, inviting me with a gesture to walk with her through to the sitting-room, “that he’ll have arranged for us all to meet up for a drink on the terrace?”
“I think that’s the plan, yes.”
“I knew that he would. It’s the actor in him, you know. Drinks on the terrace. So predictably theatrical. Mind you,” she said, “as settings go, the terrace here is fabulous. You know the way?”
I dutifully repeated the instructions Nicholas had given me. “Down the stairs here, then turn left, turn right, and go straight on.”
She nodded. We had reached the door. She turned and showed me once again that beatific smile that had as much impact up close as it did when one viewed it from the upper circle. “I’ll see you down there, then.”
And it felt to me as though, with that one sentence, she had given me some kind of blessing, as though she had set me a test and was pleased that I’d passed. Though I couldn’t imagine what sort of a test she could have set—we’d barely said anything to each other, really, and nothing that I would have classed as important.
Unpacking my suitcase, I played the conversation over in my mind, editing my own words after the fact, as I often did, to make them say the things I should have said. Naturally, in this revised version, I came off sounding less of an idiot, but I still didn’t think we’d accomplished anything short of breaking the ice, and I still couldn’t tell, when she told me ‘Of course you’ll be longing to tidy up’ whether she was being considerate or catty.
The last thing I took from the suitcase was my copy of The Season of Storms. I’d brought it along, not so much for bed-time reading—although Galeazzo’s Celia poems, from what I’d read so far, promised to be very good at putting me to sleep—but because they were the Celia poems, and having the book sitting there at my bedside seemed almost an invocation of her spirit . . . a connection with the woman who’d once slept in this bedroom, this bed, and who probably wouldn’t have been nervous at all at the prospect of drinks on the terrace with Madeleine Hedrick.
Season of Storms Page 9
