Season of Storms

by Susanna Kearsley

  “You were with Alessandro last night,” she accused me.

  My first instinct was to make a rude reply and throw her out, but even as my blood pressure rose, I tried to hold my temper. Wiping my face clear of any emotion, I said in my coolest voice, “I don’t recall hearing you knock, or inviting you in.”

  “You were with him.”

  “Did he say I was?” Turning my back to her, I gathered my rehearsal clothes with careful hands, keeping my movements deliberately slow, unconcerned.

  She didn’t like that. “If you play a game with me, you will be sorry. I am asking you a question, and—”

  “And I suggest that you ask Alex.” I faced her squarely, holding my rehearsal clothes against my chest. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready.”

  For a long moment I didn’t think she would give way, but at last she shrugged and moved aside. I went with her to the door and held it open, to make certain that she left. She turned on the threshold and paused. “Does he make love to you,” she asked, “my Alessandro?”

  Certain questions, Bryan always told me, oughtn’t to be dignified with answers, so I gave it none.

  Daniela smiled a viper’s smile. “No,” she said, “I do not think he does. For that he needs a woman, not a little girl.” Her tone grew arch. “Be careful when you try to fight with someone who is stronger. You will find that it is dangerous.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I said.

  “You are a fool, then.” And with that she turned and glided off, her footsteps on the stairs a grim reminder that again, as on the terrace, she had scored the final point.

  Damn, I thought. Why was it I could never think of what to say when it most mattered? I’d find the perfect comeback line eventually, I knew—tonight in bed, perhaps, or in the bath, having replayed the whole conversation a hundred times over, perfecting my lines till the last stabbing comment was mine, not Daniela’s. But that would be too late.

  I sighed. And then, aware suddenly of a feeling of being watched, I looked up and over the landing.

  Madeleine smiled. She was hugging her half-open door as though trying to keep out of sight, not from nosiness, I thought, but for discretion’s sake. “I heard Daniela’s voice,” she said. “I thought you might need rescuing.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” My words did not convince her. I suspect I neither looked nor sounded fine, because her eyes grew rather thoughtful.

  “Have you finished with your warm-up? Yes? Then why don’t you come in and keep me company while I get ready?”

  Holding up my folded rehearsal clothes, I said, “I need to change.”

  “You can do that in here,” she invited me, pushing the door wider. “Plenty of room.”

  I could hardly say no.

  xix

  I’D never been inside Madeleine’s room before. It had the look of her, somehow—a quiet, gracious beauty that exuded class from every corner. Thick carpets cushioned the floor; and the walls, wrapped in rose brocade, softened the light coming in at the lace-draped French windows. She’d made up the chaise lounge against the far wall for Poppy to sleep on—Poppy hadn’t slept in her own room since the séance had given her nightmares—and a studding of nails in the rose brocade walls showed where the photographs of Celia the First had hung before Madeleine had taken them down, so as not to further feed her daughter’s imagination.

  “I’m just finishing putting my face on,” said Madeleine, heading for the door of what I guessed would be her bathroom. “Won’t be long.”

  I was dressed in my rehearsal skirt and blouse when she came out. Because I hadn’t known where to sit, I’d stayed standing, moving round the room admiring furniture and objects with my hands clasped firmly behind my back, as though I were touring a museum exhibit. I didn’t notice much of what I saw, though, to be honest. My mind was busy running through my conversation with Daniela, and though I thought I’d schooled my face sufficiently when I looked round at Madeleine, she must have seen it anyway.

  She said, “My dear, you really mustn’t let her bother you.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Daniela Forlani. She’s only trying to get your goat, as my grandfather would say.”

  “Yes, well, she’s doing an awfully good job,” I confessed.

  “The thing with a woman like that,” Madeleine said, “is that she thrives on power; likes to feel superior. You have to turn the tables on her—let her know you think that she’s beneath you.”

  “No chance.” I smiled. “I’m not clever enough, I can’t think what to say.”

  “Darling, none of us can. I’m absolutely hopeless if the lines aren’t written down for me. But it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it. It’s acting.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Crossing to her dressing table, she chose a pair of earrings from her jewellery box and stood before the mirror to put them in. “You simply pretend that you’re. . . oh, I don’t know, a queen, for instance. Think of how a queen would move, the way she’d hold her hands, the way she’d speak. And then pretend the other person is the lowliest of servants in your palace. It’s all in your demeanour,” she advised me. “You could stand there and say nothing, and you’d still achieve the right effect.”

  “I’ll give it a try, if you think it will work.”

  “I’m certain of it.” Smiling, she turned from the mirror. “I’ve had plenty of run-ins with difficult women myself, in my life.”

  She meant Mother, of course. I flushed with shame and glanced down to hide it, focussing instead on a small framed photograph of Poppy, unsmiling in her school uniform. Touching the frame with an absent finger, I said, “You haven’t told Poppy whose daughter I am.”

  “I haven’t, no. I didn’t see the point. Poppy’s rather too young, yet, I’m afraid, to understand the intricacies of adult relationships. Her world is black and white—she loves and hates, there’s nothing in between.”

  “She hates my mother,” I observed.

  “I know she does. That’s why I didn’t want her judging you with prejudice. I wanted her to like you. And she does.”

  I kept my head down; touched the frame again. “And I like her.”

  “Well, there you are then,” said Madeleine. “One day Poppy will be old enough to understand you’re not to blame for what your mother did, any more than Poppy herself could be held responsible for something that I—”

  “But I am.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but the weight of my guilt suddenly seemed much more than I could bear and the words came out all in a rush with the air of a formal confession. Swallowing hard, I glanced sideways at Madeleine. “I am to blame.”

  “Oh, my dear, you can’t possibly think that.”

  “It’s true. I provoked her, you see. I told her that she couldn’t act for toffee, next to you.”

  “My dear.” Her voice was very gentle.

  “I shouldn’t have said it. I knew from the look in her eyes that I shouldn’t have said it, but I—”

  “Celia,” she broke in, still gently, “it wasn’t your fault. They’d been lovers before, you know. Long before I came along. And anyway, if it hadn’t been your mother, it would have been somebody else. There were many, many others. He was not a faithful man.”

  I struggled to take in what she had just told me. My mother and Madeleine’s husband . . . Surely Rupert would have mentioned that they’d known each other earlier, before their great affair. But then, I reasoned, why would Rupert tell me that? He’d never talked to me about the men that Mother slept with, just as I had never talked to him about that night, the argument, the awful thing I thought I’d done.

  “You haven’t thought this, all these years?” Madeleine came closer, her large eyes spilling sympathy. She shook her head and said something that I took for a quote from a play or a poem—I’d never heard it before. “ ‘Oh, how the debts of the fathers are paid by the child,’ ” was what she said. And then, as if I were no older than Poppy, she folded me
into her arms with my head on her shoulder, her hand on my hair. “Darling Celia, it wasn’t your fault.”

  I’d never been religious, not in any standard sense. But as I stood there in her quiet room, held safe within her motherly embrace, I couldn’t help but feel I was receiving absolution.

  ACT V

  * * *

  A STORM, WITH THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

  Sleep . . .

  Secure from human chance, long ages out,

  While all the storms of fate fly o’er your tomb;

  Dryden: All for Love

  i

  MY dreams, in vivid colour, came that night in a relentless stream. I woke, and turned, and fell once more to dreaming—unconnected dreams that grew more wild and twisted as the night wore on.

  In one of the more pleasant ones I was walking with Poppy, who’d grown up to be nearly my age, a lovely young woman. We were walking in a park, along a well-kept path with chestnut trees along it, and then suddenly the path became a flat and golden ladder, and the park a giant game board, and we slid up the ladder together, arms linked. Poppy looked at me, laughing. “I’ve always wanted a sister,” she said.

  But where there were ladders, there also were snakes. In the next dream, my mother was dragging me through the same park by the hand. I was small—maybe four or five, trying my best to keep up. I stumbled, and Mother let go of my hand and hurried on without me, not looking back, and I sat in the path and cried and cried until footsteps approached. Looking up, I saw Edwina standing over me, uncompromising. “Let the past be past,” she told me. “Let the past be past.”

  And then in that strange, wholly natural way that things happen in dreams, Celia the First happened by in a soft yellow summery dress, and she scooped me up, laughing, and carried me off, setting me down all grown up again back in my bedroom at Il Piacere. I’d never heard her speak, of course, but in my dream her voice was soft and lyrical. It sang the words. “You will tell him I didn’t run off?” She smiled as though reminding me of something I had promised. “I couldn’t bear to have him thinking that, it’s such an awful lie, and I do love him. Tell him I was murdered, won’t you? Tell him I’m still here.”

  Still here . . . The words were echoing through the dark room when I woke. At my bedside the glowing numbers of my alarm clock read 3:22. Exhausted as a distance runner midway through a marathon, I reached to put the light on, sitting up in bed and raking back a handful of my dampened hair.

  And then I heard the voice. A woman’s voice—little more than a murmuring, actually, as though someone were talking very softly on the telephone. It seemed to be coming from my sitting-room.

  Mindful of Daniela’s unauthorized entry earlier, I sat up in bed, listening. It didn’t sound like Daniela, the voice was too gentle. It sounded, I thought, more like Madeleine. But then what would Madeleine be doing in my room at all, let alone at this hour of the night?

  Fully awake now, I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my dressing-gown, shrugging it on as I crossed through the bathroom and opened the door.

  There was nobody there.

  The sitting-room was empty except for my shadow, made huge by the angle of light spilling out from behind me and stretching the length of the carpet. The murmuring had stopped, and all was silent.

  Frowning, I shut the bathroom door again and leaned my weight against it. I heard a creak, just faintly, and then a pipe inside the wall began to make a thunking noise and I relaxed.

  This was an old house, I reminded myself, and not only would an old house harbour lots of little noises of its own, but other sounds would travel queerly here. The voice that I’d heard was most likely an echo from Madeleine’s room that had somehow spilled over the landing.

  But that didn’t stop me from turning the key in the bathroom door lock before making my way back to bed, nor from pulling the blankets up over my ears so I wouldn’t hear anything else.

  I was glad when the light finally came. By then the birds were drowning every other sound with their exuberant singing, flitting through the branches of the trees beyond the terrace with an energy and joyfulness that made me feel quite limpid by comparison.

  Rising to open the window, I caught a glimpse of Rupert walking down towards the orchard through the gardens. He seemed to be walking more slowly than usual, head bent, hands clasped behind his back—a lonely-looking figure. For a moment, from this angle, he looked old.

  My conscience pricked. I let the curtain fall and, dressing quickly, went outside myself to try to catch him up.

  ii

  RUPERT had vanished from view by the time I got out to the gardens, of course, but I knew which path he’d taken and I started out behind him at a quickish pace, confident that this time I wouldn’t get lost.

  The sky was full of shifting clouds and sunlight that had fooled me, from my window, into thinking it was warm, but I wished now that I’d worn something heavier. The air felt freshly sharp, and by the time I’d reached the orchard my hands had grown so cold that I could barely work my fingers. Flexing them, I hugged myself and tried to warm my hands against my body for a moment while I looked around for Rupert, trying to decide which of the pathways he’d taken from here.

  He might have gone right, through one of the long walls of stone columns and arches that had been purposely built to resemble an old Roman ruin, sealing the orchard off from the rest of the garden and giving it a sort of timeless feeling and a sense of peace. Or he might have gone left, along the path that wound its way into the wood. Or else he might have gone straight on, one terrace down into the tidily ordered rose garden, Celia the First’s ‘bit of England.’ The new bed that the gardeners had been preparing the last time that Rupert and I had been down here was planted over now with spiny bushes, and already hedged with lavender. Behind it I could see a path that led along the copper beeches, straight towards the Villa delle Tempeste.

  Above the trees the villa’s upper windows showed against the rose-washed walls, and though they still were tightly shuttered I couldn’t help but feel that they were looking at me, watching, as I stood and tried to choose which path to take. In fact, I felt exposed on all sides, watched from every angle, as though someone might be standing there, behind that crumbling column, or that hedge . . . that ivied wall.

  I knew it was only imagined—a bit of paranoia left over from finding that cigarette end by the path above the theatre Sunday evening—but that didn’t make me any less uncomfortable.

  So when I thought I heard a rustling from the woods, instead of turning towards it as I should have done, on the logical assumption it was Rupert walking on ahead, I headed in the opposite direction altogether, down the narrow path that drove its way between the ruined columns.

  It brought me to a quiet place, a Japanese-style garden filled with twisted-looking trees and ringed with tall bamboo that smoothly grew in peaceful, silent groves. Most of the sections of D’Ascanio’s gardens, I’d noticed, were arranged around a fountain, but there was no fountain here. At least, not in the traditional sense. In its place, a see saw bamboo trough had been set up to catch the water dripping from an overhanging stone—when the bamboo trough filled, it tipped over with a pleasant hollow ringing sound, as though it had been struck by a hammer, and, depositing its load of water down into a trickling stream beneath, it righted itself with another sharp clack and prepared to begin the whole process again, keeping time at a leisurely pace.

  As I left the Japanese garden, passing underneath an arbour draped with some sort of vine trailing tiny white flowers, the sound of the bamboo trough followed me, as rhythmic as a metronome. So rhythmic and hypnotic that at first I thought the other noise was part of it, a periodic snapping noise that followed just as faithfully as I moved on, past fragrant clumps of glossy-leafed oleander and jasmine to the next small sheltered enclave where a statue of a weeping girl poured water in a small round pond beneath a drooping evergreen. The path here grew soft and a little bit slippery, having been protected from the drying wind an
d sun by an enclosing ring of cedars. From the absence of footprints I knew that not only had Rupert not come this way minutes before me, but nobody else had been on this path, either, for some few days. Only myself.

  I had paused and was standing, considering this, when the snapping noise stopped. And that’s when I noticed it.

  Cocking my head to the silence, I listened.

  Given that the snapping had stopped when I’d stopped walking, I reasoned, it might have been a noise that I’d been making myself, without realizing. Testing this theory, I slowly walked on. For a few steps I heard nothing, then the snapping started up again, a sound like dry twigs being trodden on heavily, and this time I could tell that it was coming from behind me.

  I stopped a second time, and turned. “Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”

  Only the breeze and the birdsong replied. The path behind looked innocently empty and idyllic, but as before in the orchard, I could feel the eyes.

  I lifted my chin in defiance. “You’re wasting your time. I’m not frightened.”

  But when the sound started again I turned tail like a rabbit and ran, pushing my way through the branches that blocked me, and stumbling a step as the path changed from plain dirt to paving stones. Recovering my balance I charged onwards, head down, running as though Death himself were after me. And when I rounded a bend and collided with a man who reached to hold my arms, to steady me, my first thought was to struggle.

  “Hey, hold on!” Den’s voice. “What’s happened? Where’s the fire?” He set me back a step to look me over.

  Breathing hard, I glanced back. There was nothing there now, and no sound of pursuit. I met Den’s eyes, embarrassed by my cowardice. “It’s nothing,” I told him. “I thought I heard someone behind me back there, but—”