She had baulked a little at this, but she had seen the flash of his old indolent smile, ‘Mia Katrina, you will learn that in my family very little is serious except birth, marriage, and death. They are the three occasions on which we go together to church. I imagine, too, that your father would wish to have his permission asked.’
For the rest of that holiday period, he had showered her with presents, treated her like an idolized figure on a pedestal. She felt cosseted, cared for, caressed. Now that his desire was spoken, legitimated by the promise of a future, her own flowed forth untrammeled. She wanted always to be near him, to touch him, to hold him. Kisses weren’t enough. Sitting at dinner, or driving through the shadow of the towering slopes, she would imagine him naked beside her, his body glowing, the movement of his limbs.
One night, she had said as much to him. He had cast vibrant eyes on her, stroked her face. ‘No Katrina, now we must be like good children and wait for the sanction of the priest.’ His cheek dimpled playfully, ‘And dream about the pleasures of our wedding night.’
On the weekend, Violette had driven up from Geneva. Soon after her arrival, she had asked Katherine to go for a walk with her. It was one of those crisp clear days when the snowy peaks seemed within arms’ reach and the branches of the trees traced a network of dark filigree against the sky. They trudged companionably along a woody path, caught up on work and studies. Then Violette stopped and looked at Katherine.
‘Carlo tells me he has proposed to you. That you have accepted.’
Katherine was startled. She hadn’t known that Carlo had seen Violette. And there was something of an accusatory note in Violette’s tone. ‘Yes,’ she said tersely, began to walk again.
Violette read her expression. ‘Ah, you didn’t know Carlo had already told me. You thought he’d wait for the grand mama’s approval before mentioning it.’ She laughed brusquely. ‘Carlo tells me most things. We go back a long way, you know.’
Katherine didn’t like the implication of that. She looked away, her face stiff.
‘Don’t worry, Signora la Contessa Negri will approve. Mat’s name will be mentioned frequently. And the old crow is getting desperate for bambini. Carlo hasn’t been very accommodating until now. But I guess Mama has finally got through.’
The cynicism in Violette’s voice grated on her, opened up a chasm of suspicions. ‘You sound jealous,’ she said brutally, in self-defence.
Violette was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, yes perhaps I am,’ she responded softly. She picked up a stone from the path and threw it forcefully against the stump of a tree. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, Katherine?’ Her voice was quiet now, reflective.
Katherine nodded vigorously, started to walk again with brisk steps. She was tempted to run away.
Violette matched her pace. ‘Carlo is not an easy man, you know. He’s restless, moody. He…’
‘Is that why you didn’t marry him?’ Katherine cut her off vengefully. For the first time the thought that Violette and Carlo had been lovers, real lovers, bedtime lovers, had crystallised itself in her mind. She didn’t know why it had taken so long for the notion to rear itself consciously. She was a stupid innocent. But now that it was there it took on the substantiality of a vast secret edifice that couldn’t be overlooked, that had to be negotiated cautiously.
‘No, no, that’s not why.’ Violette’s face had that look of painful honesty which made her so like the Princesse. ‘No. He simply never asked me.’
The sentence hung there between them in silence. Katherine didn’t break it. She felt jubilant. Carlo loved her. It was her he had asked.
Violette continued after a moment. ‘The timing was never right, I guess. And we’re too alike. Power games.’
Her voice had a reedy quality. Katherine didn’t know what it hid.
‘And then, I don’t think I want children. I’m not sure I can have any anymore,’ she paused.
Katherine’s steps faltered. She stopped to look at her sister. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, meaning it. ‘Why? Why can’t you?’
Violette surveyed her intently and then shrugged. ‘It’s too complicated to explain. And it’s not the end of the world.’ She put her arm around her. ‘What I was trying to say is that Carlo is… well, he’s fine. But you mustn’t have too many illusions.’ She hesitated as if she were about to say something else. Changed her mind, smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful mother, if only to make up for Sylvie.’
Katherine flinched at the mention of Sylvie. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said tautly.
‘Oh come on Katherine.’ Violette, ever perceptive, was aware of her recoil. ‘I know Sylvie was beastly to you, but you’ll have to come to terms with her sometime. Mat once said to me that Sylvie was simply a woman ahead of her time. If she had been born in my generation, everything would have been different for her. She might have been like - well, like me,’ Violette laughed wryly.
Katherine hadn’t joined in with her.
She had dressed carefully for dinner that night, a dress for Carlo’s taste, soft velvet, elegantly cut, hugging her body, at once revealing and concealing. There were to be only the four of them, the three women and Carlo. She had not seen him since her conversation with Violette and suspicions like fleas bit at her body giving her no peace.
But the glow of Carlo’s eyes on her as she came down the stairs had assuaged her.
‘Carissima Katrina,’ he murmured, kissing her lightly on the forehead and reaching for her hand. It was the first time he had ever touched her openly in public and she was surprised. His soft words explained everything. ‘I have told Princesse Mat about us and she has given her approval. That means my mother will not resist. I imagine your father…’
She squeezed his hand, held on to it as they approached the others.
‘Katherine, I’m so pleased,’ the Princesse embraced her. She looked at Carlo speculatively, ‘And Carlo, Carlo is already like a member of the family.’
Katherine had smiled and smiled.
Later, towards the end of dinner, Violette had dropped her bombshell.
‘Well, since it’s a week of announcements, I might as well make mine. I’m getting married too. Christian Tardieu is the lucky man. We thought we would do it quietly, over Easter, if Leo and Jacob can make it then.’
While Violette talked, Katherine read the startled expression on Carlo’s face and then something else, what was it, something darker, a challenge. But he was all congratulations and good wishes. Then he said, half jokingly. ‘Perhaps we can make it a double wedding.’
‘Ah non,’ the Princesse was emphatic. Your mother will never stand for that suddenness. And in any event, Katherine will want to complete her degree. ‘In June, perhaps. June would be an appropriate month for you.’
Katherine had watched Carlo carefully when Christian Tardieu, a shy burly man who was all affection for Violette, made his appearance. But she could detect nothing unusual in his behaviour.
And when he had held her tightly that night under the twinkling blanket of wintry stars and seared her lips with his heat, all her suspicions had been obliterated by the weight of their double and acknowledged passion.
On her return to London, she had instantly told Portia of her plans. They were sitting in a pub opposite the British Museum near the publishing firm where Portia now worked.
‘You’re having me on. I don’t believe it,’ Portia looked at her aghast.
‘Well, it’s true. We’re getting married, probably in June. I’m sorry it doesn’t please you.’
‘It’s not that. It’s just, well it’s just as if you’d swallowed all the romances in the world, hook, line and sinker. What about all those things we talked about. The career you were going to engage in. Museum work. You’re, we’re still so young. Marriage is for old people.’
‘There are galleries in Rome. Carlo has nothing against my working. We’ve talked about it.’
Portia sat mute.
‘Portia. First you tell me you
’re worried ‘cause he’s going to love me and leave me. Now you’re against it all because he won’t leave me. Well?’
Portia looked at her skeptically, ‘You’re in love, right?’
Katherine nodded.
‘Well, there’s no talking to women in love.’
‘But you’ll come to the wedding. Be my bridesmaid?’
Portia groaned. ‘Who else?’
Portia had been right. There was no talking to a woman in love. And very little ability to concentrate. Katherine sighed. She would have to get today’s lecture notes from somebody else. And she must stop daydreaming, settle in to work. Study. Study hard.
Carlo would be coming to London in two weeks’ time. And then they would set the date.
The date was a Saturday at the end of June.
The Contessa had insisted that the wedding take place in the Chapel on the Palazzo grounds and the party be held there afterwards. Generations of Buonaterras had been married here. In any case, what else had she to do but organise parties? And this was one she had been looking forward to for many a year. She gave one wing of the Palazzo over to Katherine and her family and friends. Another to Princesse Mathilde and her family. No, no, she wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. They must all come, stay here with her, for as long as they wished.
Only Carlo was banished from the house for two days prior to the event.
‘We can allow ourselves to play with certain forms, Katrina. But for the groom to see the bride before the appropriate moment is bad luck. And I am superstitious.’
Katherine, without Carlo there to shore her up, felt more than a little lost in the midst of this cavernous splendour. But the Princesse was there and Leo, so bronzed and handsome after his year in Tanzania, and Jacob, a little melancholy but so careful of her now that she was going to be given over to another. And Portia, with that slightly puritanical glint in her eye, reminding her that she didn’t altogether approve, but filled with curiosity about the world of the Palazzo. Only Thomas was missing. She had rung him to persuade him to come, but he had demurred, insisting it was not his place. She would have liked him to be there.
The day of the wedding dawned with that crystal Mediterranean clarity the poets celebrated. From her window, Katherine could see across miles to the meandering line where shore met sea. And already, despite the earliness of the hour, the Palazzo was humming. In the gardens, under the cover of ancient trees, the tables were going up. Crystal and silver and china tinkled. Flowers appeared in wild profusion. Instruments. A band. And all, Katherine thought, for her and Carlo. Wonder enveloped her.
Princesse Mathilde and Portia helped her dress, along with a maid. The dress was one Mat had travelled specially to London to help her choose. She had insisted, proclaiming that one needed an older woman at such times and she understood such things, knew a designer. They would do the Contessa and Carlo proud. She felt responsible.
The dress had arrived at the Palazzo two days ago in a vast box. A satin fairy tale gown, Katherine thought looking meaningfully at Portia as she slipped into it. A tiny lace collar, a hundred miniscule buttons along closely fitting lines which gave way below her hips to volumes of material and a long lace train.
‘Yes,’ the Princesse looked at her approvingly. ‘Simplicity with a touch of splendour. It suits you to perfection. Carlo is a very lucky man.’ She mused a little, rearranged a stray lock of Katherine’s heavy burnished hair, took from a box a tiara with a fine lace veil attached to it. ‘This was mine. I thought you might like it instead of what we chose in London.’
Katherine gazed at a crown of silver, a multitude of sparkling stone, ‘No, no, I couldn’t,’ she protested.
‘You can and you must. I have no use for it and as you know, our dear Violette, with her modern ideas, insisted on the outrageous simplicity of a suit for her civil wedding,’ Princesse Mat laughed. ‘So this needs an airing. You can pass it on to one of my grandchildren or yours at the appropriate moment.’
‘Go on Kat,’ Portia urged her. ‘You’ve gone this far, so you might as well go all the way.’
Katherine let the Princesse place the tiara on her head and arrange the veil.
‘There, my dear. A bride to perfection. How does your English rhyme go. Something old, something new…’
‘I’ve brought the “something borrowed and something blue”,’ Portia smiled. ‘There.’ She handed Katherine a pale blue handkerchief with a picture of Alice in Wonderland embroidered on its edge.
The girls burst into giggles.
The bells chimed. From the chapel doors the strains of the organ poured onto the grounds. Katherine clung to her father’s arm. Rising panic overtook her. A sea of unknown faces. The heavy smell of flowers mixed with incense. She straightened her shoulders, looked through the haze of the veil straight ahead at the gold and Venetian blue of the altar. That was beautiful. She had examined it yesterday with her art historian’s eyes and marvelled at the purity of colour and figure.
And then he was there. Carlo. Like a stranger. So dark, so fine. That little devilish smile tugging at the corner of his lips. She didn’t listen to the words of the ceremony. Wasn’t sure that she understood them. She was only aware of the proximity of that man, her husband. He took her hand, slipped a fine golden band on her finger. He had already given her a ring, to mark their engagement, a diamond in an antique setting. It was beautiful, but she had an age-old dislike of rings. She could hardly bring herself to wear it. Now this. But it felt alright. So light.
And then he kissed her. Softly. For the first time she met his eyes. They were darkly serious, intent. It was then she suddenly realised how very meaningful the ritual was for him.
The Princesse looked on. Mused. The girl was in love. She radiated it. And Carlo? Perhaps he was, too. She hoped they would be happy. But what did it mean, in any event, to be in love? Love could be as blind as parental will. It was no guarantee of anything.
She looked at her own daughter, her husband. No. Violette wasn’t in love with Christian. But he suited her, was in love with her. He would be good for her, would settle her a little. Violette had been floundering. Too many years of living on the edge. And he had a little boy, a son from a previous marriage. That, too, would calm her a little, give her a centre. She hoped. She had stopped trying to interfere in her daughter’s life years ago. It never had the desired effect.
She smiled. Looked at Jacob. Still so straight, so handsome. She had been in love with him once. And then they had been friends. Were friends. Rare friends. The kind who knew each other’s secret lives, could read the flicker of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip. She knew now which she valued most. She had only a residue of patience left for that world of excess, of heights and depths and blind gropings. But then she was old. Time, so much time, pulling at one with the force of gravity, weighing down one’s shoulders. She straightened hers.
Jacob walked past her to the march of the organ. He met her eyes, smiled. It made her feel younger. But she could read his worry. He was worried about Katherine. Always worried. Ever since she had been tiny. He didn’t know what to make of Carlo, wouldn’t perhaps have known what to make of any man who so fully stole his daughter’s desire. She returned his smile. Hoped, and since she was still in a church uttered a tiny prayer, that she would never have to mention Sylvie’s last visit to her.
Katherine, in a dream, danced. Head high, graceful, in Carlo’s arms. Eyes locked. Brimming with promise. Around them, other couples. A melody of pastel gowns and light suits. Her father with the Princesse. They changed partners. Now, at the peak of her love, she could be generous to him. ‘Perhaps you’ll be next,’ she radiated, ‘With the Princesse.’ He laughed, kissed her, collided with Portia and Leo. ‘And you two after that. That would be too wonderful. Please.’ They blushed in unison.
Katherine danced on. A welter of arms. Men she didn’t know. Smiling faces. And then the car. Gleaming white. Carlo beside her. Portia at the window, throwing rice, kissing her, whispering, ‘Rem
ember Katherine, they live happily ever after.’
Chapter
Eighteen
__________
∞
As the bells tolled over Katherine Jardine’s wedding, Alexei Gismondi’s dreams were not dressed in bridal white. They wore the riot of colours of his rebellious generation and the magical hues of celluloid.
He was in the second year of his studies at the Philosophy Faculty in Rome. After three months at the University, it had become plain to him that his actual course was a total charade. Dull professors reading inaudibly from the even duller books they had written on Plato or Aquinus or Augustine. Dusty over-crowded halls filled with bored students. Soporific lectures without a smattering of intellectual excitement or an iota of relevance to the world in which they lived. No questions, no exchange, no argument - just a stream of words from a lazy figurehead empowered by tradition. One could just as easily and far more fruitfully stay home and read the given texts in order to regurgitate them in ridiculously inept oral exams.
This was the first lesson Alexei learned at the University of Rome. He was hardly alone in mastering it. Throughout Italy, France and Germany, students universally agreed on one thing: university structures, the contents of courses were abysmally antiquated and ripe for change.
The second lesson Alexei learned, and it followed with total logic from the first, was that any education that was to be had was only available outside the lecture halls. In student refectories and cafés, in a variety of gathering places from piazza to crowded flat, friends met to laugh at the ineptitude of the ‘official’ curriculum. And to discuss what really mattered to them.
This unofficial curriculum was broad. It ranged from the living conditions of students and workers to the writings of Marx and Freud. It confronted the fact that Italy’s economic bubble had burst and jobs for graduates were no longer easily to be had. It took up Lorenzo Milani’s book, Lettera a una professoressa, a vibrant challenge to an educational system which discriminated against the poor. It focussed on the war in Vietnam and liberation struggles in the third world. It questioned moribund conventions, censorship and bureaucratic corruption. It monitored and confronted the rise in violent activity by groups of fascist thugs.
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