The Silent Fountain

by Victoria Fox

  ‘That isn’t fair,’ she says coolly.

  ‘Is any of this fair on me?’

  ‘I spoke to your dad today. Should I call him back, tell him you’re not coming any more? I’m sick of dealing with things here, Lucy. I do have a life of my own, you know. And then you yell at me for taking the time to give you a wake-up call?’

  A tear leaks out of my eye and plops down my cheek. I hang up, knowing as I do that it’s a horribly spineless thing to do. I wait for a second with the phone in my hand, half wishing and half fearing that she’ll ring back, but of course she doesn’t. I wouldn’t. I’ve been a complete bitch, after all she’s done for me.

  I sense Max at my back, and am embarrassed by my outburst.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says, taking my hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Vivien, Italy, 1986

  For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Then she went to close the door.

  Gilbert pushed against it. ‘Vivien, my child – let me in.’

  She drove her whole weight into the effort. Her mind raced, tripping over itself, too much and too fast, how had this happened, how had he found her?

  ‘Vivien! Please, my lamb, a chance is all I ask—’

  She’d forgotten how strong he was. Even now, in his fifties, he possessed brute strength: the power of an iron will, of determination, of never losing, of keeping her down. Vivien could support his resistance no longer. In the distance, Alfie’s cries reached fever pitch. She heard Adalina’s footsteps hurry across the hall upstairs.

  Gilbert Lockhart stood before her. He was like a ghost, not least because she had figured him for dead: her bastard father.

  This can’t be happening. It’s a dream.

  Nightmare upon nightmare crashed in on her, dark memories heaped one on top of another.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she rasped.

  Gilbert stood before her, his hands by his sides, palms up in a gesture of reconciliation. For the first time she took in his appearance, haggard lines etched across his face, thinning hair, a disappointed droop to the mouth. What had happened since she’d left? What had become of him after her mother died? His clothes were thin and poor, his shoes battered. ‘You always get a measure of a guy by what he wears on his feet,’ Mickey had used to say at Boudoir Lalique. You could tell a drunk, a pauper, a pervert. Gilbert Lockhart’s shoes had seen better days – as had the threadbare bag in which, it seemed, were contained all his worldly belongings.

  What had happened to the Lord’s providence?

  ‘God showed me the path back to you,’ he answered simply. ‘Vivien, my darling – it’s been so long. I had to see you. I had to see my daughter. I prayed for this, years I’ve prayed, and finally my prayers were answered. God decided the time was right – his Great Plan permitted me this clemency. I have to meet my grandson.’

  Shock paralysed her. The thought of her father going anywhere near Alfie was anathema. At any moment, she expected to wake in bed, embroiled in sweat-soaked sheets, having imagined the whole thing. The gentle rattle of Isabella’s potion in her pocket reminded her that this was real: horribly, inescapably real.

  ‘Stay back,’ she said. ‘Don’t come any closer.’

  But he wouldn’t be deterred. In her father’s zealous, manic eyes she saw how ready he was to climb the mountain to absolution, and nothing she could say would dissuade him. This was more than his heart’s desire: it was a holy mission.

  ‘We had our problems,’ Gilbert went on, ‘I accept that – but I’ve changed, Vivien. Have faith in me as I have faith in God’s mercy.’ He seized her hand, his own clammy with moisture and excitement. ‘He granted me wisdom to know my sins and beg forgiveness for them, and I will spend the rest of my days begging forgiveness from you. I want to be a father to you, Vivien, and a grandfather to your boy.’

  ‘Never.’ She snatched her hand away.

  Did he expect her to cave that easily? To say: All is forgiven, Daddy, all it ever took was a few words, and then I’d forget about the beatings and the torture.

  ‘The Lord advised me to prepare for this. He told me you would fight.’

  ‘I’m amazed at His insight,’ she said acidly.

  ‘Let me come in. Let me talk to you. Twenty minutes – that’s all I ask.’

  He put his hands together in prayer, gazing skyward like a martyred saint: bully, aggressor, tyrant of her childhood… the man who’s supposed to be dead.

  Panic surged as she recalled her lie to Gio. It was too long and too deep to ever recover from. Telling him she was an orphan when he’d suffered the real thing, and so terribly. Imagine if her husband were here! She couldn’t think it – it was too dreadful. She had to evict Gilbert before anybody saw. Before anyone found out.

  ‘Turn around,’ she said, ‘go back to America, find whatever hole you crawled out of and crawl right back into it again. I don’t want to see you. I never will.’

  ‘Your mother—!’ he appealed, as she was shutting the door.

  The mention of Millicent pulled her up short; she hated her mother for her weakness but there would always be a bond between them, of casualty if nothing else. She felt guilty about having missed her mother’s funeral, drinking her way through the news like a coward. She waited for Gilbert’s poison words, the Biblical blathering he’d spouted from the pulpit, chilling her to the core while forcing her to listen.

  ‘Millicent wanted this…’ Gilbert implored her. ‘When she went, she begged me to find you. She said it was her only hope, and how sorry she was that things turned out as they did.’ That part Vivien could believe: her poor mother had never been happy, and in running from home Vivien had stolen any modicum of joy life still had to offer. ‘And now you have a son,’ said Gilbert. ‘We have a right to see him – if not for me then for your mother. She loved you. She missed you, right to the end.’

  A hot swell rose in Vivien’s chest and she fought it down. He would not see her cry: she had given him too many tears back in Claremont.

  ‘Please,’ he ventured, ‘let me in. Just for a short while. Let me show you how I’ve changed. Let me realise your mother’s wish. Let me make it up to you – and, if you still want me to leave, I promise to do so and never to bother you again.’

  Vivien checked behind her. The house was quiet. She could take him to the library, hear him out in private then send him on his way. Otherwise, she feared his return. It was not a risk she could afford to take. She stepped back to let him in.

  *

  No sooner had Vivien decided how she would play it – keep him standing, so as not to imply he would be getting any longer than the allocated time; make no offer of a drink or any other extension of hospitality; fold her arms and listen stoically, while letting his words skim off her like flies – than the worst happened.

  Isabella. Oh, that wretched Isabella.

  ‘I thought I heard a guest,’ she sang, sweeping into the library as unexpectedly as a gust of bitter wind on a spring day, shooting Gilbert her sweetest smile while laying down a glittering tray of coffee and macaroons. ‘What a treat!’ She extended an alabaster hand, fingers delicate as a robber bride’s. ‘I am Isabella Moretti.’

  Vivien fought to keep control. A million ideas occurred to her at once – how she could get out of this, say he was someone else; anything but admit he was—

  ‘Vivien’s father,’ he practically fell on Isabella’s beauty, ‘Gilbert Lockhart.’

  There was a split second where Isabella, untouchable, unfathomable Isabella, was flummoxed. Then a sharp delight crossed her features. ‘How thrilling,’ she said.

  ‘I expect Vivien told you all about me,’ he spouted, like a gushing tap. ‘We haven’t been in touch in a while. I’ve been searching for her for years.’

  Isabella’s face was a picture of amazement. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, laughing lightly. ‘I seem shocked. It’s just… you look so similar.’

  ‘That’s what they used to say back in South Carolina!’


  ‘Is that right.’

  ‘Seeing her name in lights, you can imagine how proud I was. How proud I am.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  At last, Isabella met her eye. Through clouds of fury and disappointment, Vivien made herself meet it: that dark, satisfied glint. This was it, her final exposure. Isabella would tell her brother everything. Isabella had succeeded. It was over.

  Screw you, Daddy, she thought dementedly. You’ve done it again.

  She waited for Isabella to give her away. That’s a funny thing, she’d say to Gilbert, relishing every second. Vivien told us you were dead. But Isabella didn’t.

  Instead, she said:

  ‘Well, you will sit a while and have coffee with us, won’t you?’

  ‘He was just leaving,’ mumbled Vivien. ‘He’s not staying.’

  ‘What a shame,’ said Isabella.

  ‘I could stay…?’ suggested Gilbert, as Isabella offered the tray of delicacies. He removed one and popped the whole thing in his mouth, which was obscene, somehow, eyeing Vivien as he did with a host of silent victories.

  *

  Vivien knew that Isabella was multi-faceted, but even she was impressed at the dazzling persona that now charmed Gilbert Lockhart like a snake winding through grass. It made her rage that Gio never saw this dual performance of hers: quiet and reserved around him, ever the wounded; and then like this, brimming with poise and conviction, a different woman entirely. Which was the real Isabella?

  I want him. That was the real one.

  To Vivien’s disgust, Gilbert stumbled his words, while Isabella hung off every one, and he, like every deluded man before him, imagined this temptress found his old bones attractive and wanted to be close to him. Perhaps a life spent in God’s service had addled Gilbert’s brain, made him think he was a gift to women; his ego hadn’t suffered the years. Meanwhile Vivien looked on, dismayed, trapped between how the hell she was going to get her father as far away from here as possible before Gio returned, and desperate to come up with a way to stop Isabella disclosing the truth.

  ‘What did you think of Vivien’s career?’ asked Isabella over supper, her chin on her hand as she awaited Gilbert’s answer with rapt attention. She wore a clinging jade gown, her hair in sleek waves. Are you trying to seduce every man in my life? Vivien was astounded, yet at the same time completely unsurprised. She understood how Isabella’s mind worked. Vivien had been unable to impress her father. These days she couldn’t care less, but once upon a time, when she’d been young, of course she had yearned for his approval. Isabella wanted to show how easily she could amaze, with a laugh or a flash of her eyes. She was better than Vivien, in all ways, to all men.

  ‘Well…’ Gilbert was lightly sweating; Vivien was sickened. ‘Obviously it was a surprise. I discouraged her from pursuing her ambitions in Hollywood…’

  Discouraged? That was one word for it.

  ‘But then, when she did well, I realised I myself had been responsible for it.’

  Vivien’s mouth fell open. Oh, she had to see where this one was going.

  ‘You see, I encouraged her through religion during her childhood. She came to see how vital God is in guiding us through life and in trusting in Him, and that if we have the courage to ask for what we want, He will deliver. Isn’t that right, Vivien?’

  The two of them turned on her. In Isabella’s eyes was a shimmer of mischief. Vivien thought of all the occasions where she had appealed to Gilbert’s God and heard nothing in response. Please stop my daddy hurting me. No reply.

  ‘I made my own way,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Which was precisely the Lord’s doing,’ continued Gilbert, as if they were in accord. ‘Vivien’s success was in His plan for her. I merely facilitated it. God has been a shining light in our family for generations, a beacon in times of despair.’

  Isabella was nodding. ‘I completely agree,’ she said softly, liquid eyes darting to her lap; even Vivien thought her gorgeous in that moment. ‘I believe that God saved my life. I nearly drowned as a child. My parents died and I was left to die with them. But someone saved me.’ Sure did, thought Vivien, the coastguards.

  ‘No,’ gasped Gilbert, reaching out. ‘You poor child.’

  Incredibly, Isabella went on to recount the events of that day. Vivien had never heard the sister speak of them before, but there was a disingenuous note to her delivery, as if this were a mere fiction she had narrated many times before, and in its retelling she had become distant from it, as if it had happened to somebody else.

  Salvatore refilled their glasses, his face dutifully neutral. Adalina stood in the doorway; Vivien couldn’t bear to look at her. What must the maid think of her? A liar, a hypocrite, but never an orphan – after all the insults she had thrown at Isabella!

  She should have been honest with her friend.

  I should have been honest with Gio.

  ‘How inspiring…’ Gilbert was fascinated.

  ‘I try to take inspiration from it.’

  ‘And you’ve only recently regained your voice?’

  ‘All thanks to my brother.’ Isabella sipped red wine and surveyed Vivien over the rim of her glass. ‘He truly is a wonderful man.’

  Gilbert seemed to remember that Vivien was with them, and regarded her in a slightly perplexed way, as if having to remind himself that this brilliant Gio Moretti, who had such a captivating sister as Isabella, had chosen his plain little daughter as a wife. Perhaps he saw himself in a similar way, having stooped or compromised in his marriage to Millicent, when in reality he’d been destined for more.

  ‘And my daughter is a lucky woman,’ simpered Gilbert, ‘to have such a sister-in-law as you. I look forward to meeting the man himself!’

  ‘Gio’s away,’ said Vivien quickly.

  ‘Yes, but he’ll be back soon,’ crooned Isabella.

  ‘It would be all right if I waited for him, wouldn’t it?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘No,’ said Vivien. ‘He’s not home until the end of the month.’

  ‘Why not?’ Isabella countered. She had the courtesy, at least, to react to the barbed glare Vivien shot her way and go on to add, ‘It’s hardly as if there isn’t room!’

  ‘It’s too much with a small baby,’ said Vivien, throttled by fear.

  ‘I’m sure I can entertain your father,’ said Isabella. ‘Oh, come to think of it, you must see this, Gilbert. Vivien hasn’t shown you the painting already, has she?’

  ‘What painting?’ Gilbert nearly tripped over himself in his efforts to stand from the chair and follow her. Before Vivien could object, he had trailed Isabella into the hall like a simpering puppy. Vivien went after them, at first confused and then not needing to hear her father’s gleeful cry to know what had happened. For there, on the staircase, was the monstrous portrait Vivien had rejected – the one Isabella had orchestrated after her fight with Gio, the one of her as a girl, the lily-white dress and the pigtails, her father at her shoulder. Isabella must have mounted it this afternoon, removing the re-commissioned one, so that it sat dwarfed next to the Morettis, excruciating and evil and every bad thing she could summon. That irrepressible witch!

  Vivien had asked Gio to destroy it. Clearly, he had gone against her wishes.

  ‘You included me!’ Gilbert was jubilant, rushing to stand in front of it like somebody embarrassing at a museum.

  ‘It was Isabella’s idea,’ Vivien said sourly. It was meant to pack a punch from her side, but instead it just made Isabella’s star glow brighter.

  ‘I should have known,’ said Gilbert, and Isabella smiled warmly at him.

  ‘Adalina,’ Isabella directed, ‘could you make up the Lilac Room? I want Vivien’s father to be as comfortable as possible while he stays with us. He’s travelled a long way.’ She smiled at Vivien. ‘And it’s such an unexpected pleasure to see him.’

  *

  That night, Vivien didn’t sleep. The baby was one thing; her delirium was another. She kept being jolted from the cusp of oblivion, the dread
knowledge that her father was under the same roof like a knife to the stomach. She longed to speak to Gio but could not bring herself to ring him or answer his calls: she hadn’t a clue what she would say. Her confession sat like a toad on her tongue, threatening to leap out at any moment. If she came clean, it would cement her insanity as far as he was concerned. Essentially she had fabricated a childhood, made Gio fall in love with her under false pretences, having believed she shared with him this most poisoned chalice. There was no way out: every word speared her to the cross. Nothing she ever uttered again would hold any value. Vivien tossed and turned and tortured herself with images from the past. She heard whispers in the walls, echoes of Isabella’s laugh that couldn’t be real but tricked her as they ducked and swooped through the vaults.

  Gio’s side of the bed was empty and cold. In the crib next to her, Alfie’s gentle breath was undisturbed. She hated that Gilbert’s blood was in him, her lying, grasping father, who was no doubt here for a piece of the pie. He had fallen on hard times, that much was clear. Isabella and her golden welcome spelled the end to his troubles. Well, if he thought he could get his hands on Vivien’s son he was mistaken.

  She would administer Isabella’s poison in the morning. She would not fail. There would be no deviation. Vivien could talk Salvatore and Lili into keeping quiet about their unexpected guest – it was Isabella’s silence she had to secure. With the sister’s untimely death and the house in turmoil, Gilbert would be made to leave. His reappearance would never have happened. Her lie would be safe.

  Unable to rest, Vivien got up and washed her hands and face, just as she had done as a girl, as if Gilbert’s taint was dirt she could scrub off.

  As she was preparing to return to bed, she spotted someone outside on the drive. In between the cypress trees, by the stone fountain, stood a figure in white.

  Isabella.

  Was the sister sleepwalking? She drifted between light and shade like a spectre, as silver and fluid as water. In moments the figure was real; in others a phantom, something Vivien could blink away. Vivien watched as the vision trailed a hand through the still, sapphire pond surrounding that mottled fish, and then Isabella, or a version of Isabella, did something despicable: she raised her head and looked directly at Vivien. Vivien gasped and stumbled back from the window, unable to tear her eyes from the vile sight. She focused and refocused, losing Isabella then catching her, and Isabella’s horrid, beautiful features contorted into a smile.