by Victoria Fox
Her question hangs unanswered. It’s all I can do to turn to my friend, the fight gone out of me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, meaning it, and she shakes her head like it doesn’t matter. ‘I just…’ A well swims up my chest, threatening to spill over, and my voice goes funny. ‘I’m just not coping.’
‘I know.’ Bill hugs me. ‘Please promise me you’ll consider it?’
In bed that night, I do. Lying awake, pretending to myself that I’m not waiting for my phone to light up, I listen to the passing hum of traffic that gradually dwindles to quiet, before, at around two, I finally fall asleep. The last thing I think of, for the first time in months, isn’t him. It’s a house, surrounded by cypress trees, deep in the middle of the Italian hills. As I walk towards dreams, I’m in a tangled rose garden. Something unseen beckons me, a shadow slipping in and out of sunlight.
I come to a fountain, quiet and glittering silver.
I look in the pool at my reflection.
It takes a moment to recognise myself. For a heartbeat, it’s not me I see.
CHAPTER TWO
Italy
My train arrives in Florence three weeks later. It’s happened quickly – the best way, Bill tells me, to counter my usual inclination to overthink everything – and back in London I barely had time to make my decision, take a short phone interview with the owner of the house, renew my passport and get my papers sorted before Bill was yanking my suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and encouraging me to fill it.
I suspect she’s right. Without getting caught up in momentum, there would have been too many opportunities to stall, to opt out, to say that something this reckless and ill thought through really wasn’t me. Then again, what was? What made Lucy Whittaker? I had forgotten. I had lost her – and I wasn’t going to find her hanging around in our Camden flat, jobless and trapped in the past.
‘Go.’ Bill held me by the shoulders when she said goodbye. ‘Don’t think about anything here. Be happy, Lucy. Let go. Fall in love with Italy.’
My first impressions of the city aren’t great. Santa Maria Novella station is hot and crowded; I’m on the receiving end of a wave of distrustful glances when I kneel to sort through my bag because a bottle of shampoo leaked over my clothes on the flight to Pisa, and, as I’m trying to fathom the bus timetable to get me into the centre, a guy falls into me from behind, apologises – ‘Mi scusi, signora…’ – and seconds later I realise fifty euros are missing from the back pocket of my jeans. But when we enter the streets that I recognise, see the bronzed, proud hood of the Duomo with its decorative Campanile, all that marble shimmering pink and white in the sunshine, I forget my plight for a moment and succumb to Florence’s spell. Locals speed past on mopeds, exploding dust on cobbled streets; pizzerias open their shutters for lunch, red and white checked tablecloths being laid on a baking-hot terrace while waiters smoke idly, breaking before service; tourists wander past in sunhats, licking pink gelato from cornets; a dog drinks from a pipe on the Via del Corso. We said we’d come together, once, he and I. He wanted to bring me, promised we’d take a boat out on the Arno, eat spaghetti and drink wine; we’d stroll around the Uffizi, fall asleep in the afternoon in the Boboli Gardens. ‘Forget Paris – Florence is the most romantic city in the world.’
The bus stops and I have to move, as if physical distance might stow the memories away, as if I can leave him here in the empty seat next to mine.
It’s a quick change to take the bus to Fiesole. I’m ready to get there now, see the house and meet its proprietor, fill my hours with tasks that have nothing to do with him or my life at home. My dad wanted to know what on earth I was doing. ‘Italy?’ he interrogated. ‘Why? What about work? You left your job, Lucy? What happened?’
My sisters were the same. Sophie called from a fashion shoot to tell me I was walking away from the best role I’d ever have. Helen emailed from the luxury of her Thamesside apartment to brag about her lawyer fiancé being made partner at his firm, then saying as an afterthought that my ‘mini-break’ in Florence should be fun, but why wasn’t I going with a boyfriend? As for Tilda, I haven’t heard from her in weeks. She’s scuba diving in Barbados, with a surfer named Marc. Unlike the others, Tilda didn’t go to university. That was probably my biggest battle, as the eldest, trying to run my own life while taking the place of our mum: the endless months of Tilda stalemate, attempting to convince her that I knew better when maybe I didn’t.
The years between us are nothing significant, the kind of gap an ordinary family wouldn’t think twice about. But, for us, they were everything. They marked me as an adult before my time, and my sisters as children when really they could have been more. Helping to raise them was just what happened, a natural choice – no, not a choice, a given, but never one I resented. My dad couldn’t do it alone, and my sisters were too young to understand what it meant to be without their mother. It broke my heart that she would never see them pass their first exams, meet their first boyfriends, make and break those intense alliances exclusive to teenage girls, ever see them engaged or married or with children of their own – and of course much of this applied to me, although I never dwelled on that. I’m proud of the role I took on, but sometimes I wonder what might have been if I’d had the chance to have normal teenage years, be a normal girl. Then, maybe, my first love and first mistakes would have been less devastating than the ones that brought me here.
As the Tuscan countryside rolls past, winding and winding up from Florence through flame-shaped cypress trees and golden fields dotted with heat-drenched villas, I consider if what I’m doing here is exactly what I did after Mum died. Running without moving. Building a wall of practical tasks, tangible end goals, things I can get my hands dirty with, to avoid feeling… Feeling what? Just feeling.
None of my sisters knows about what happened. It’s not their fault – I haven’t told them. I’ve never told my family anything about my life, and the more personal it is, the more precious and the less willing I am to share it. Because I’ve always been the reliable, responsible one, and I’ve always looked after myself. I’ve never needed them for comfort or reassurance, not like they’ve needed me.
They’ll find out soon. Everyone will.
And then what?
The question echoes in my mind, unanswered and unanswerable.
‘Piazza Mino,’ the driver calls, as the bus jolts to a stop. I haul my bag. There’s no GPS signal so I consult the map I printed before I left, and begin walking.
The path is scorching. My muscles burn as I travel uphill, bright sun drenching the backs of my legs. I enjoy the air in my lungs, the sheen of sweat that gathers on my lip. These things make me feel alive, remind me I’m still breathing.
Thirty minutes later, I’m hot and thirsty. I’ve long since left the village behind and entered an ochre landscape, fields of maize and barley rolling wide on both sides, as I climb dusty lanes and take refuge in the occasional dapple of the olive groves. Silver-backed leaves offer flickering shade and I rest a while beneath them, drinking from my bottle and starting to feel faintly worried that I shall never find this place.
Then, beneath the smell of almonds and the sweet hint of blue-black grapes, a brighter scent: I spy a crop of lemon trees over the hill, running as far as the eye can see, each richly laden with yellow fruit. Squinting against the sun, I step up to the wall. On the horizon, melting to a blur in the fragrant heat, there is a building. It is enormous, its façade the colour of overripe peaches and with a sprawling, age-damaged terracotta roof. There are turrets, and the dark outline of arched windows.
I look at the map. This is it. The Castillo Barbarossa.
The road winds in a great loop around the estate and, making a decision, I topple my bag over the wall and opt for the shortcut. If the size of the castillo is anything to go by, it owns this grove and several other hectares beyond. I pick my way among the fruit trees. The lemons make me want to drink. I picture the owner of the house welcoming me with a refreshing glass, but then I rem
ember what Bill told me. I remember what the woman was like on the phone – that strange, stilted interview, disconcertingly brief and undetailed, as if she hadn’t wanted to speak to me at all and was doing so under duress. I was relieved to know she wasn’t Italian, as I was planning to learn the language on the job; instead, I met a hint of an American accent, blunted by years in Europe and carrying with it the sharp plumminess of wealth and power. Afterwards, I told myself the connection had been bad. It would be better when we met in person. The follow-up message I received to tell me I’d been successful was testament that I had passed muster. There was nothing to doubt.
As I come closer to the house, dwarfed now by its massive proportions, the sun slips behind a cloud. The place looks ancient, and curiously un-lived-in, its wooden shutters bolted, its creamy walls more cracked and dilapidated than they had appeared from a distance. A sprawl of dark green creepers climbs like a skin rash up one side. I frown, checking the map again, then fold it and put it in my pocket.
Wide stone steps descend from the entrance, spilling on to a gravel shelf that rolls on to a second, then a third, then a fourth, at one time grand and verdant but now left to decades of neglect, their oval planters crumbling and full of dead, twisted things. At the helm is a fountain, long defunct, a stone shape rising from its basin that I cannot decipher from here. I feel as if I have seen the fountain before, though of course that is impossible. I emerge on to the drive and when I pass the fountain I do not want to look at it. Instead, I stop at the door and raise my hand.
CHAPTER THREE
The woman hears the door go. They have so few visitors that it shakes her with a jolt. She hasn’t been sleeping but she hasn’t been awake: somewhere in between.
Distant voices. One is Adalina’s; the other belongs to a stranger.
The woman sits, unease racing from her toes to her stomach, where it settles. She watches the walls, listens for the telltale creaks of a board, wonders how long it will be before Adalina explains her absence. What will the maid say? How much will she elaborate? The woman has been clear about the story she wishes to tell, but whether that story gets translated, behind locked doors, in hidden corridors, in hushed voices in the old servants’ quarters, is another thing. She is no fool.
It is an effort to bring her legs out of bed, but the floor feels welcome on her naked soles. Sometimes she pictures the materials of this house, the solid wood and hard marble, the cool stone, absorbing every thought and feeling her body has expelled. If she squeezes the drapes, tears will seep out, like the wringing of a cloth; if she scratches the stairways, secrets will plume and curl in a thin ribbon: grey smoke.
She goes to the door and checks it is locked. At the window, she parts the shutters and checks the approach for some clue of the girl who has entered her home. There is none. Just the distant spread of olive groves and a wide, empty sky.
Her reflection is transparent in the glass, a see-through woman. It is forgiving, this trick: it makes her appear young, no shadows, no creases – no evidence of the painful years that have scarred her face. She can seldom recall the person she was; it is like peering into someone else’s life, a life that bears no relation whatsoever to one’s own. It is peculiar to think of that other self. She sees the photographs and watches the movies; she reads the items they printed about her in magazines, that bright white smile, the lacquered waves of blonde hair, that slick of raspberry lipstick… She’d been beautiful. There was no denying it. She’d been charming. She’d been witty. She’d been scintillating. Everybody had wanted to know her.
How quickly the world forgot. How efficiently tragedy brought leprosy on whomever it inflicted. She ought to be grateful for her obscurity. Most days she was, but on others she thought about the woman she had given up, or who had given up on her, and the difference between her life then and her life now was so staggering, so acute and painful that it stole her breath away. That vanished her would have flung the door wide and gone to greet their guest. She would have intimidated her with beauty and standing, and enjoyed the effect those assets had. No female would have got the better of her. But that was another world. She has learned a lot since then.
The shutters close, blink-quick. One glimpse of the fountain is enough. Adalina cannot understand why she doesn’t switch rooms. It might make her sleep better, chase the nightmares away. But she cannot. Instead she rests her forehead against the wall, a shiver of cold rinsing her body. She fights the bleeding cough that rattles in her throat, fights with all her might but still it breaks free, a warning, a candle slowly licking itself to extinction. A thread of sunlight filters through the shutters and on to the floor, where it pools, and at its centre a black beetle circles pointlessly, round and round, round and round, intent on its journey, going nowhere.
She’d been going somewhere, once. Years ago, in another life, a young girl with her toe on the brink… She’d had it all ahead of her, the map undrawn.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vivien, America, 1972
It was April, the hottest on record. In the little chapel in Claremont, South Carolina, Vivien Lockhart and her mother stood side by side, Vivien careful not to slouch or round her shoulders because her father told her off for that, and when he told her off she’d be better off dead. Her white cotton dress stuck uncomfortably to her waist and she longed to tear it off, run in her petticoats down the aisle and out into the fresh air where the other teenagers were leaping into rivers and sunbathing on the grass, climbing trees and kissing boys. But instead she stayed where she was, every part of her yearning for more, pretending to pray and not to be having any of these thoughts.
Eventually, the silence was broken. Both Vivien and her mother straightened, just as they did at home, where, when the man of the house opened his mouth, all else ceased to exist. He demanded to be heard, and never more than when he was talking about God. His congregation clung to his every word. Vivien thought of him at the breakfast table that morning, wiping dots of fatty milk from his moustache, flipping out the newspaper and telling them that the blacks were getting away with murder.
‘And what did the Lord say when the blind man came to Him, and asked to see again?’ Gilbert Lockhart paused, forehead beaded with sweat and excitement. He leaned forward, extending one talon-like finger, like a vulture peering off a tree branch. ‘He said, in all His Glory and Almighty Power, I grant you eternal sight!’
The crowd exploded in applause. Even the prim Mrs Brigham, in her neatly pressed frock and a hat that resembled a bowl of fruit, shook with elation.
‘And what did the Lord say when the deaf man came to Him?’
This time, the minister’s beady eyes landed on his wife.
‘I grant you eternal hearing,’ replied Millicent obediently. The crowd went up, their shouts at fever pitch. Gilbert forced his wife and daughter to rehearse their script before every sermon. He would hit them when they slipped a word or forgot a line – stupid women, dumb women, good-for-nothing women without a sensible thought in their head. Vivien wondered if he trusted these lies. She didn’t know which was worse – that he was mad enough to, or that he knew he spun a wicked fiction.
Vivien knew what was coming, though every time she wished it weren’t so.
‘Indeed,’ cried Gilbert, ‘ye shall hear for ever!’
Vivien joined in with the appreciation, hoping that might be enough for him today, her mouth already drying at the thought of having to speak. But then he turned on her, and so too did the attention of his flock, for, in her lily-white dress with her neatly ringleted blonde curls, sixteen-year-old Vivien was the only child of the most beloved man in their community. Every word that spilled from her lips was nectar.
‘And what,’ said Gilbert slowly, ‘did the Lord, in all his wisdom and mercy, bestow upon the man who feared for his life?’
She knew the answer. The trouble was, she didn’t believe it. How could she say something she didn’t believe in? Millicent jabbed an elbow into her side.
‘I don�
��t know, Daddy,’ said Vivien meekly.
Gilbert was making an effort to remain calm. She could tell by the lightly throbbing vein in his temple. Just say it. Say what he wants to hear.
Above her father’s head, Jesus stared down at her from the cross, feet nailed with a bolt, a bloody crown of thorns around his head. The crimson slash in his side grinned horrendously. His chest was concave, his ribs visible. He died for your sins. Words Vivien heard every day of her life, and she didn’t understand them now any more than she had when they were first uttered. Vivien had never sinned – at least not in any way so serious as to condemn a man to death. Telling Mother that next door’s dog had eaten the vanilla-cream muffins when in fact it had been her didn’t count.
‘Yes, you do,’ said her father.
Say it. Or you know what will happen. Her mother did, too. Millicent was stiff as a board at her side, her head bowed. Why did she never stand up for herself – or for her daughter? Like when Vivien asked to play with the Chauncey kids one evening on their lake swing, or she was invited to Bridget Morrow’s birthday party and had the idea of going dressed as her favourite movie star, or she wanted to run barefoot across the prairie after lunch and chase the wild ponies who grazed there, her mother would fold her arms and say brittly: ‘Your father won’t like it.’ And that was the end of that.
What did her father like? Apart from God, she didn’t know.
Did he even like her?
‘He said,’ Gilbert capitulated in a strained voice, its menace perceptible only to his family, ‘I shall take your Fear away, and grant you everlasting Peace!’
The pews exploded once more in adulation.
But there would be no peace for them tonight.
*
Gilbert Lockhart was a supreme minister. His disciples exalted him. Vivien watched him outside church every Sunday, shaking hands, issuing blessings, and wondered where this kind, caring man went the instant they arrived home on their porch.
