‘You know the sort,’ she barged on, oblivious, ‘the ones who brought up Henry. I use the term lightly. They wouldn’t know mothering if it slapped them in the face.’
She darted to the terrace. I followed her out of instinct. The Major refused to raise the balustrade, even though echoes of the Doctor urging him to do so rang in my ears. She leaned on the edge. It made the vice around my stomach tighten. The desk from her room now stood there, fading in the sun, the leather top spattered with paint, tubes twisted and crushed by her frenetic fists, some with the lids off, color oozing out in a bilious gloop. I began to trace the lids to their pairs and twist them back on.
‘You are an angel, Santina. Yes, that you are,’ she called to me, wrapping her hands around the canvas upon the easel beside the desk. She turned the square several times, viewing the swirl of blues from opposing angles. ‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter which way. I think whoever buys it can choose, don’t you?’
I placed a tube of ruby back on the table, rubbing the paint between my two fingers, noticing it was almost the exact shade of my cut.
‘I think it’s beautiful, signora.’
‘Well, no it isn’t. Not really. It’s merely my opinion. It’s what I saw as the sun came up this morning, you know? People don’t want to buy beauty. They buy a chance to see the world through my eyes.’
Her gaze darted down to my finger.
‘Good heavens, I completely forgot about the gash! Yes, the injury. That’s why we’re up here in the ward, yes? Henry!’ she bellowed, leaning over the top of the terrace balustrade. I stepped forward, knowing it was only a matter of a slim over-balance that could send Adeline over the edge.
‘Henry!’ she cawed.
‘Signora,’ I interrupted, placing a gentle hand on her back, ‘I am fine, really. I shall go downstairs and see to it myself.’
‘Nonsense. With one hand, child? How can you do that with one hand?’
She marched back inside, for which I was glad, only to start rummaging in her dresser. She tossed underwear out behind her, some missing my head, others tapping against the overhead papers. The wire began to swing with the rippled movement, setting the papers alight, a flock of birds shaking their feathers before lifting up into the sky.
‘It’s here somewhere. You know the injection they do. It will make it hurt none. Yes, definitely take the pain away. And infection. Don’t be infected.’
She opened a second drawer. That’s when I heard the rattle of glass vials and started to give in a little to burgeoning panic.
The Major appeared at the doorway.
He looked at me. Then his eyes darted to his wife, now launching a full assault on the contents of a third drawer.
‘Adeline, my darling, whatever are you doing?’
‘Santina is injured, Henry, can’t you see? I cut her, Henry, she’s got a gash, yes, her finger might be infected,’ she replied without altering her manic speed.
The Major reached for her hands and wrapped his fingers around them.
‘My love, let me help you. No sense throwing everything onto the floor is there? Lots of useful things in the bathroom, yes? Do let me see to it. You’ve so much work to do here.’
‘Will you, Henry? Yes, you see to it. To her. She’s not an “it”, for God’s sake. She’s a person, Henry. Who feels pain. Look at her – she’s pale as a ghost, or a sheet, or a cloud. Yes, a January cloud. No, not that heavy. Not so grey. No, a wafting cloud. Spring sun. Spring sky, I mean. Not the sun, because that would be bright white, not faded white. That would be sparkling with streaks of gold and silver, red even, faint red, a lick of vermillion maybe?’
The Major wrapped his hand into hers and led her to the edge of the bed. They eased down to sitting. He wound his arm around her.
I watched them sway for a moment, then turned to leave.
Adeline called back to me, ‘Santina, don’t go anywhere, you’ll get an infection, won’t she, Henry? Outside in the garden lots of things can get in there, you know, to the wound. Give her a vial, Henry, or an injection. Do something! You’re just sitting there like you don’t care about the child.’
He kissed her gently on her cheek.
‘All right, Adeline. I’ll do that. Why don’t you attend to the blues outside? They’re rather magnificent.’
Their eyes met. Her smile was a watery reflection of his. He waited as she returned to her easel. We watched her for a moment; the dipping light streaming over Capri toward our cliff turned her body into a bony silhouette through the threadbare nightgown.
‘Thank you, Santina,’ he said.
I looked down at him upon the bed. His linen shirt hung in crumples along his shoulders. The blanched white creases intensified the deep red of his hair, a few stray longer lengths falling in distracted waves over his forehead.
I felt a bristle of guilt.
He stood up.
‘Let me see your war wound.’
‘It’s just a scratch.’
He reached down for my hand. The touch of his skin against mine sent me to our moonlit sheets in a blink. I washed the river of pictures away to the back of my mind. It would take longer to forget the delight of his touch than I realized.
He studied the scrape. It was small. The blood had already stopped flowing. His gaze was fixed, unhurried, committing every crease to memory. His eyes followed the tiny lines with distilled concentration, an astronomer mapping an encrusted sky.
‘Come with me,’ he said, his voice coated with a clinical veneer, a brittle mask I saw through. He left the room for the bathroom along the corridor. I followed. He opened the cabinet above the large ceramic sink. I took a reluctant step onto the marble tiles. The showerhead dripped forgotten water into the deep bath. The sound filled the stone room with tinny echoes.
He lifted my hand. I watched his fingers reach for the tip of mine. He unfurled it, teasing it open with the softest of touches. I’d watched him reach for our plants in the same way, placing leaves between his enquiring fingers, careful not to damage the surface, interrupt its growth or the private seclusion of its world. His tips traced the side of my finger. A whisper of invisible needles ran alongside his delicate touch, prickling in toward my palm. My hand was hot, expectant; at once I felt dipped in the pitch black silence of the villa, alert to its every sigh and creak.
He looked at me. I chose to hold his gaze.
He placed my hand on the side of the sink. The stark cold shunted me back into the room. He reached inside the cupboard above and placed a small bottle of powdered iodine upon the ceramic, beside it a roll of gauze and crepe. His movements were slow, deliberate, unhurried yet purposeful; a lover smoothing the sheets.
He twisted the small lid off the iodine and lifted my hand once again. We watched the powder fall, mesmerized, as if we were side by side on the balcony, watching the first flurry of a bitter December’s fall.
Next, he cut a length of gauze. A tremor scissored along the back of my hand, a fault line betraying my slipping grip on calm. He took my finger between his two, the sides pressing against mine, and began winding the gauze length around the cut. The awful familiarity of his touch wrinkled a minute electric pulse toward the tip of my nail. He raised my finger with the tip of his and then back down again.
Our eyes fixed upon the dance, our digits performed their spiral, winding down an invisible staircase, each step at once firm yet tentative. We watched the revolutions, impossible to sense which led or followed, the cranking of a tiny handle as a mechanical music box’s teeth tweak a metallic tune.
He brought the silent lullaby to a pause, lifting a finger of mine from my other hand to hold the wrapped gauze in place. The weight of his hand sighed an invisible draught up my neck. I observed myself count the tiny square spaces between the threads. My absurd attempt to cling to order achieved little to that effect.
He reached for a small length of tape. His movements were legato, his hands still in the gentle sway of our secret tune. He placed the tape onto
the gauze. It smarted the sensitive tip of my cut.
My breath snatched. His hand clasped mine.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.
I shook my head.
I watched his lips lower toward my hand. I didn’t move as he unfurled my palm. His lips were inside the nook where the lines criss-crossed, intersections to nowhere and everywhere, my short life etched within my grasp, memories embossed and hidden. Among those frays, his kisses, our balcony, our moon.
He didn’t kiss it.
His eyes met mine. ‘Can we do this, Santina?’
‘Do what?’ I replied, in the same hush as his. To utter syllables felt more of a betrayal than the choking sting of our finger ballet.
‘I’m not entirely sure how to stay away from you,’ he said.
His eyes ignited with the fierce courage I once saw in Adeline.
‘I want you to tell me everything is as it should be,’ I replied.
‘I want to tell you that too, Santina.’
The narrow space of air between us crushed with hushed memories. In that sliver of time I understood a kiss was not a physical act alone. Because as we stood in the damp shadows of that bathroom, the light from the window withering through the frosted glass, we returned to a secret place. Neither spoke. Our lips didn’t part, nor touch, nor lead the other inward. But for a breath we left that tiny grey space. All was remembered and forgotten. A puff of smoke from fading embers.
‘Is it possible to make space for our feelings? Can we just let them hover?’ he asked. ‘Like a tuft of dandelion seeds on the breeze? Is that strong or selfish? Careless even? I don’t know.’ He searched me for an answer. My thoughts remained hidden. I wasn’t ready to trawl them now, a fisherman casting a hopeless net toward retreating fish beneath the weedy bed.
‘I only know that if you bury something,’ he continued, ‘it has an awful knack of rearing its ugly head when you’re least expecting it. I don’t want to bury us. I don’t want to crush you either. Or me. Or Adeline.’
‘I have no map,’ I said at last, filling the pause, a dying wave as it grieves the shore.
‘Neither do I. Perhaps that’s the point. I’ve always been so very much in control. It’s the first time I’ve felt utterly limbless. Liberated beyond comprehension. And lost,’ his voice waivered, ‘so dreadfully lost.’
I watched his eyes fill. I wanted to take my hands to that face, to feel his heat against mine, but it hurt too much.
‘You are an angel. Even in this dreary light,’ he said, fighting a smile to fence in his tears.
I sighed a laugh then, a solitary tear streaking my cheek.
He reached toward me and kissed it dry.
Then leaned his cheek against mine.
We breathed in the quiet. Warmth against warmth. Inhaling this moment. Exhaling it to the past.
‘Signore, the baby is asleep.’
The young woman’s voice clipped our open-ended silence, a gate lock snapping shut.
We turned toward her with a jerk.
Off her look I wondered if we appeared as awkward as I felt.
‘Very good,’ the Major replied with his characteristic smooth shift. ‘Santina will see you out. Have a good week and we’ll expect you next Sunday, si?’
‘Grazie, yes,’ she replied.
Our footsteps echoed down the stairs, a percussive beat beneath our silence. I closed the main door behind her, wishing the memory of her expression would fade from mind, a translucent watercolor sketch rather than a vivid depiction of an Adeline.
With the new week, the Major instilled a refreshed morning routine for Adeline. It involved waking her to join in with the gardening rituals. I knew it came under the advice of the doctor in the hospital. He was the one responsible for encouraging Adeline to pick up her brushes again, and had therefore earned the Major’s respect. The staff at the hospital had relayed how therapeutic the gardening was for their patients and the Major witnessed it himself during his own visit.
I silenced the vague whispers hinting that her joining us provided some mental barrier between the Major and me. It was the perfect way of turning the intimate place where we had first fallen toward one another into a new, sacred, shared space. Our gardening became Adeline’s treatment, to which we both committed with verve; an artful way to disperse any final remnants of guilt, those memories were now dug out weeds, upturned roots burnt by the sun.
Whilst the Major undertook the supervision of Adeline, I could get on with all the other tasks. That day it involved an eager Elizabeth, who ran the length of the tomato plants with glee, her toddler limbs getting longer and stronger by the day, picking off the reddest fruits and loading our baskets with their lustrous bounty. When the sun rose toward its punishing peak, the Major led Adeline inside for her rest. Elizabeth and I set to work in the shade of the terrace beyond the kitchen, where I’d covered the table with a waxed tablecloth and clamped a tomato crusher to its edge. Below, upon a low wooden stool, I set a large enamel bowl. Elizabeth stood beside me, feeding the fruit into the wide mouth above the clamp, and together we cranked the metal handle as she watched the flesh crush through the teeth and drop into the bowl below. When she seemed to tire of it I set another bowl beside me into which she stirred some of the fresh passata and tore in basil leaves. She held a wooden spoon and took to the preparation with impressive professionalism.
‘Pomodori!’ she announced, with jerky mixing, her red curls dancing down to her shoulders.
‘Si, pomodori – tomatoes. We are making passata. What do we use this for?’
‘Spaghetti marinara!’
‘Brava cuoca, Elizabetta! You will be a fine cook one day.’
‘I will,’ she declared, and with that disappeared back into her thoughts.
The door shook. It startled both of us. I wiped my hands on my apron and went to open in. On the other side stood two gentlemen dressed in smart clothes. One was tall, wan, wiry. The other his polar opposite. The latter spoke first: ‘I’d like to speak with the housekeeper.’
‘That’s me,’ I answered, suddenly aware of the red finger stripes along my apron. ‘May I ask who you might be?’
‘I thought as much. Told you she spoke English,’ he sang up to his partner, ‘you even sound English when you speak Napoletano. All posh. You are Santina Guida, si?’
‘And you are?’
‘Sorry, where are my manners? Just because you’re a paesan, doesn’t mean I should take liberties. I’m police officer Antonio Sant’Angelo. This is my shadow, Giancarlo. We will come in now and ask you some questions.’
I nodded, taut.
‘About the robbery.’
‘I see,’ I replied, stepping backwards to allow them inside. They followed me toward the front table. We sat. I watched him commit every nook of the terrace to memory, his eyes lingering a while on Elizabeth, her hands dripping with red, a diminutive butcher.
‘That’s the fanciulla you look after then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not a woman of many words, no?’
‘No.’
He nodded with reluctance. He took his time to retrieve his notebook, buried somewhere deep inside his trouser pocket beneath the folded flesh of his abdomen.
‘This won’t take long.’ He smiled.
I didn’t reply.
‘I’d like you to tell me where your brother Marco was on the day of the robbery.’
Glassy fingers traced my spine.
‘Marco?’ I asked. ‘He was at work. He works at the cemetery.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’
My eyes darted to the taller policeman whose eyes were spent. How would someone so vacant be of any possible use to the stout guard dog growling beside him?
‘I can. He works mornings and afternoons. We had lunch. I left for town, he left for work.’
‘Did you see him leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you be sure he reached work?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re aski
ng my housekeeper exactly, Officer, but from where I’m standing it sounds a lot like leading the witness.’
We followed the voice.
The Major stood in the doorway.
He walked across the terrace and reached out a crisp handshake to both of the officers, who stood to attention.
‘Buon giorno, signore,’ the round man spluttered, ‘just eliminating suspects at this stage. Following on from our conversation at the station, sir.’
His command of English surprised me.
‘I understand,’ the Major replied. ‘May I offer you some refreshments?’
‘No, no, honestly, we’re fine, don’t want to impose.’
‘I would,’ the blank one said, a hint of energy twitching the corner of his lips.
‘Certainly,’ the Major replied, nodding toward me. He was granting my escape, bolstering my solo team to match the duo. I placed several glasses upon a metal tray and lifted the jug of fresh lemonade from the fridge. The idea of Marco being implicated made every sound ricochet echoes of doubt. The memory of that day darted around my mind like a jerky colt, limbs flaying in opposing directions without control.
I placed the tray upon the table with a clumsy clang.
The Major shot me a look.
So did the small man. He was sweatier now. I had the Major to thank for that.
‘Thank you, signorina. I hear you’re to marry the Cavaldi impresario, no? When’s the happy date?’
I could sense the polite turn of the Major’s head, felt the warmth of his questioning gaze without turning toward him.
‘Oh, no decisions on that just yet,’ I flustered, watching the lemonade swirl up the glass. ‘I don’t have anyone to give me away. It will be a very small affair.’
‘Not if his mother has anything to do with it,’ he replied, wiping the salty drips across his brow.
The skinny man chortled.
‘You snigger, imbecile, but you didn’t know Cavaldi when she was a young catch around here! Men buzzing around her like a honey pot. Chose a bad egg, though. Women do that. They see the shine, like a magpie, peck at the treasure but don’t look deeper. Caught up in a bad crowd, Paolino’s father was, that’s for sure, God rest his soul.’
The Secret Legacy Page 26
