The Silent Fountain

by Victoria Fox

  ‘He loved me,’ Isabella said, ‘in his way. He imagined that it was real between us. He thought that I wanted him… but I didn’t. And I decided that I deserved it. He told me I deserved it. It was my punishment for letting my parents die.’

  Vivien went to object, but Isabella got there first.

  ‘I know. Gio didn’t let them die, either – it wasn’t his fault. I’ve tried to tell him, but he won’t listen. Then I’m guilty for making him feel as if he can’t leave. And the worst part is that he can’t,’ Isabella searched her face, ‘because I couldn’t cope, Vivien, I couldn’t. There it is, the awful truth: I would fall apart. And I fought for my brother in the only way I knew – by trying to remind him of what we meant to each other, us against the world, like it had been for so long. I didn’t think of you. I didn’t care, pulling stunts like wrecking your wedding dress, which I know was mean and I’d say sorry until next year if I thought it would make a difference, and all the times I tried to upstage you with the staff and at those parties, it was pathetic. I didn’t think of him either, of what was good for him and what made him happy – I thought only of myself. Because what makes him happy is you, Vivien. You always have. I can’t compete with that. You’re his wife. He chose you. He never chose me: I was a given.’

  Vivien swallowed the ball of wire in her chest.

  ‘Did you try to hurt me,’ she asked, ‘that day on the stairs?’

  All else was spite, emotionally but not physically harmful. This was the one thing she could not move past – not until it was answered.

  ‘I think so,’ said Isabella thickly. ‘I’d remembered the ring box that morning, remembered that note I’d scribbled the night he first raped me. I’d got rid of it years ago, stuffing it as far down that ugly fish’s throat as I could, but it didn’t drown the pain and it didn’t make me forget. I went mad. I didn’t think about the consequences – all I knew was that Gio was about to have a family with you and then I’d be frozen out completely. I’m sorry, Vivien. I don’t deserve your pardon, but I’m hoping for your tolerance. It was a treacherous move born of loneliness, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I’ve wanted to apologise so many times but I’ve never known how, and everything I’ve said or done comes out wrong, when I only mean to make amends.’

  ‘You left me there for hours,’ said Vivien, ‘at the bottom of the stairs.’

  Isabella shook her head. ‘I didn’t. As soon as you fell, I realised what I’d done and I couldn’t bear it. I ran to Salvatore right away and he tried to get hold of Gio but Gio was in meetings and that was the reason for the delay.’

  It wasn’t possible…

  Was it?

  Vivien battled her judgement. What if Gio had been right? What if Isabella had meant well by commissioning that portrait, and had simply judged it wrong? What if her welcoming Gilbert now was an attempt at reconciliation, not antipathy? What if the glares and scowls had been shame, misread by Vivien’s fixation?

  In a gesture that would have been unthinkable a year ago, Isabella took Vivien’s hand. It was only a second before she released it, unable to help her impulse towards intimacy but ultimately unable to sustain it. Was Isabella telling the truth? Could she be a more complicated antagonist than the one-dimensional threat Vivien had taken her for? Yes, Gio had vowed that his sister was broken – but he didn’t know the half of it. Their parents’ deaths were so removed from Vivien’s personal experience; the episode was too grotesque, too alien, and as a result became something better suited to a fictional drama, the kind of soap opera Millicent might have watched at the wives’ houses in Claremont because Gilbert hadn’t permitted a television. But the idea that Isabella had been cajoled, abused, whichever word one called it, by a man in a position of power, chimed horrifyingly true. A swift shot of empathy towards Isabella, her most hated adversary, wound its way beneath her skin.

  ‘Please believe me, Vivien,’ said Isabella. ‘Now I know Alfie, I would never, ever put him in danger. I love him. I would never harm him.’

  ‘And me?’ said Vivien. ‘Would you harm me?’

  Isabella shook her head. ‘Those days are over. It’s you and me now, Vivien. We’re sisters.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Vivien, Italy, 1987

  The seasons passed and there was movement in the earth. The tides shifted, the axis tilted, and the sands that Vivien had been standing on these past years dissolved beneath her feet. For weeks she treaded water in that open sky, with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, before at last she discovered her wings.

  Following her conversation with Isabella, everything changed – more significantly than Vivien could have dreamed. The Barbarossa, for the first time, became a family home. After Gio returned from his trip, he was a different man. No, that wasn’t right: he was the same man, the man Vivien had met in a long-ago hospital suite, the man she had first fallen in love with. He took news of Gilbert courageously, listening as the women delivered their explanation, through shock then confusion then comprehension. ‘He was as good as gone to her anyway,’ said Isabella faithfully. ‘She only tried to do what was right.’ Vivien suspected Gio’s amnesty stemmed more from the newfound truce between his wife and sister than any pardon he was prepared to give: he had yearned for it, and it put all else in the shade. She should never have lied, but Isabella should never, by her account, have discouraged a confession. Gio didn’t know which to blame, if indeed he should blame either.

  ‘What happened,’ asked Gio, amazed at the women’s reconciliation, ‘for you to change your mind?’ Vivien told him that she and Isabella had called a ceasefire, simply that it was time ‘to let bygones be bygones’. Gio didn’t question it further. As far as he was concerned, females were cryptic creatures and their alliances could form and dissolve on the slightest wind. It had happened, and that was what mattered.

  Vivien was thrilled at the change in her husband. She realised what a strain her abhorrence of Isabella had put on their marriage, and saw now that it wasn’t so much Isabella herself that had been the sticking point as it was Vivien’s reaction to her. Why did I let her torment me? Vivien pondered. She’s just a person – after all, just a person. Each time Vivien looked at her sister-in-law, she felt a stab of rage towards Giacomo Dinapoli. She wished she could rain down her hatred upon him, representing as he did every man who had taken advantage of an innocent woman. Her bond with Isabella was separate to Gio; they were both privy to electrifying truths that he would never know about. Maybe this was and always had been key.

  When Vivien thought how close she had come to…

  No. Hate had driven her mad, had almost driven her to that most wanton, despicable act… Thank goodness Adalina had talked her out of it.

  Alfie turned two, and blossomed by the day. He blurted funny nonsense whenever Vivien was around, holding his fat arms out for a hug, and, at night, as she held him, she asked herself if she had ever seen anything so perfect and beautiful in her life. He was her eternal wonder. Now that she had made peace with Isabella, she began to allow Alfie to go to his aunt. It was a slow process and Isabella was careful not to take liberties, but once Alfie had spent an hour, then two, then three, then a whole afternoon, in her company, it was clear he worshipped her. Isabella was tender with him; she treated him as fondly as she would her own. Vivien looked on with astonishment and pleasure. The old Isabella seemed entirely vanished – that harsh, cold version so at odds with the warmth of her new incarnation. Gio volunteered that Alfie could soften anyone, and Vivien was inclined to agree.

  But the most fundamental change was in Gilbert. That, in a way, was the biggest surprise of all. Vivien hadn’t intended for her father to stay – she would never have envisaged given all eternity that they would find resolution. Even now, a year after he had first rung on her door, Vivien would find herself looking in the mirror and shaking her head at the bizarre nature of it all. To think how far she’d come. She had moved from having no one to having them all – a husband, a sister, a
father. Family, friendship and trust: that exotic, elusive triumvirate she had spent all her life pursuing.

  By the time Gio came back from his trip, father and daughter had already set out on the path to reconciliation. Vivien’s U-turn with Isabella made her believe in the impossible, that people could be misunderstood – or, failing that, could change. Adalina confirmed what a reformed man Gilbert seemed, and encouraged her to see past the religious fervour to the regretful heart beneath. At first Vivien reviled him, and wrestled her revulsion. ‘I’m not like I used to be,’ Gilbert said, over and over, and she replied, ‘Words mean nothing, I’ve heard too many lies from you.’ She battled his act, because surely it was an act, a game designed to trip her into taking him back. Vivien wasn’t ready, so she watched, she waited, and she expected him to fail.

  He didn’t. With each sun that rose and fell, Gilbert continued to toil, clawing his way back into her favour with tireless love and devotion that her mind told her to repel but her soul found hard to resist. He transpired to be an attentive grandfather to Alfie, spending time with him, playing with him, gentle and kind, and it wounded Vivien in a painful, deeply buried place – a place that still desired, in spite of the years, to be a child cared for and fussed over by her father. She loathed what he had done, but she still craved his affection and his approval, and wished they could go back to Claremont and do it differently. Seeing that love lavished on Alfie was impossible to dismiss. Seeing how happy her son was with him, the way his little face lit up the moment Gilbert came into the room, promising to read him a story, to help him build a tower, to take him to plant his vegetable seeds, slowly, drop by drop, a chamber at a time, her heart began to thaw. This was a side to her father that she had never seen. ‘I wasn’t like this, then,’ he explained. ‘God has shown me a better way. I wasn’t fair to you or Millicent – but God forgives, and in time I’ve forgiven myself.’

  After a cool reception, Gio, too, fell under her father’s spell. He watched Gilbert’s devotion to Alfie – the only grandparent the boy would have – and how every minute of the day he was attempting to make peace with his daughter. ‘You can’t fault his resolve,’ said Gio. ‘He’s found his second chance and he’s taking it.’

  That was the clincher – if her husband accepted him, surely Vivien could learn to. She had never considered pardoning her father. But seeing him with Alfie, her past and future tied together, offered her a rebirth she knew would come around only once. After years of hurt, this was her chance to make things right. She would never forget the wounds he had inflicted on her and the injustices she had suffered at his hands, but perhaps she could move past them, if not for herself then for her baby.

  As the weeks and months rolled on, Vivien’s resistance wore her out. She felt she was swimming against a tide so strong and inevitable that eventually it would engulf her, and to go with it would carry her to the pleasure island on which everyone else seemed to have washed up. Revelation followed revelation and her astonishment grew, until the day arrived that she left the house for a city visit and on impulse she hugged her father goodbye. She hadn’t even done that when she was a girl.

  ‘Darling,’ said Gilbert, his eyes pricked by tears. ‘You won’t regret this.’

  For a while, the five of them existed in comfortable kinship, and whenever Vivien took a step back and analysed it all as the queerest of outcomes, she saw how good it was for her son: Isabella, his loving aunt; and Gilbert, his caring grandfather. It was so much better for him to have people around, and what was more to have parents who were no longer adversaries. As Vivien released her paranoia, or rather it released her, she started to cherish every moment of the day. ‘We feel like us,’ Gio said to her, as they strolled through the gardens at dusk. ‘We feel like us again, Viv.’

  She should have known it was too good to be true. That life didn’t work that way – it wasn’t a romance, it wasn’t one of her movies, it wasn’t happy ever after.

  Hadn’t she learned as much? Hadn’t she learned anything?

  For, as winter drew in, draping the Barbarossa in freezing mists and thick black shadows, a menace descended. Vivien felt the chill approach like a living thing, the cypress trees outside her window dipped in white, like paintbrushes obscured in water. She woke on edge several mornings in a row, having dreamed she was being chased through an emerald forest, but when she turned there was nobody there, just an echo of her persecutor, like a footprint washed away by the tide.

  *

  On the day it happened, Gio’s voice woke her. He had taken Alfie downstairs to enable her to lie in, and now her eyes snapped open with the sound of his shout.

  As ever, when her baby was out of the room, Vivien leaped to action, dashing down in her nightdress. ‘What is it?’ she demanded, when she met him in the hall. ‘Where’s Alfie? What is it – is he OK?’

  She could already see that he was, nestled in Gio’s arms. But Gio wore an expression of dread, his face ashen. ‘It’s Gilbert,’ he said. ‘He’s gone.’

  Vivien’s mouth went dry.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’

  ‘He’s left. With everything.’

  Vivien reached out to hold on to something, but there was only empty space. A series of images rushed through her mind: of Gilbert with Alfie, of the embrace she’d given him that day she left, of his smile and his promises, his kindness…

  Of the way he’d clasped her hand when he arrived.

  Too hard. Too tight. Vivien, my child – let me in.

  She already knew. How could she not? All along, that latent suspicion that never quite went away. That little worm-head that burrowed into her conscience and asked: Is this really happening? Shouldn’t you know better than this?

  ‘He’s taken the contents of the safe,’ said Gio. His eyes flashed, one green, one black. Alfie began to cry. ‘All that money, Viv, it’s gone with him.’

  Vivien ought to be shocked, or at least appear shocked; she owed her husband that. But now the outcome was here, in all its grisly, depressing predictability, she could not feign surprise. She remembered her father’s shoes when he had turned up on the doorstep. Of course he had robbed them. He had inveigled his way into their lives and hearts and taken full advantage of their trust. The safe had contained all of Gio’s savings through his work; everything they had set aside for Alfie’s future; Gio’s mother’s pearls, and his father’s wristwatch. It was sentiment as well as fortune.

  ‘Gio, I…’

  ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘I’ll find him.’

  ‘How?’ Gio spat his words. ‘That twisted, evil bastard! I’ll kill him, I’ll—’

  Vivien took the baby while Gio reassembled himself. The hallway spun, that godforsaken portrait of her father dancing in her vision. How could she have been so senseless? She should never have believed his lies, never! She should have trusted her instincts and turned him away, bolting the door behind him. Her weakness had failed her, her readiness, her need to trust. Gilbert’s treachery was wicked, as impossible as it was inescapable. ‘How could he?’ she forced out. ‘Gio, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  Gio had his palms on the wall, his head hung between his arms.

  ‘How did he unlock it?’ he rasped. ‘How did he get the code?’

  Vivien went to say that she did not know. Then a fleeting idea occurred to her, just a glimmer of a shadow of one, an idea she might once have had but she’d learned better since then. Duly, she quashed it. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said.

  ‘He must have known to look inside the portrait.’ Gio turned to her. ‘I move the code every six months. Its latest place was sewn into the back of your picture.’

  How ironic: the image of Vivien and her father together.

  ‘Does anyone else know where you hid it?’ she asked.

  A flicker crossed Gio’s features – or had she imagined it? ‘No,’ he said.

  He sank down the wall and put his head in his hands. ‘Viv, we’ve lost so much. Everything was i
n there: our savings, our life.’

  She could scarcely fathom it. ‘I was a fool,’ she said.

  ‘It was Alfie’s,’ Gio said emptily. ‘All of it was for Alfie.’

  ‘Then we’ll make more for Alfie,’ she spluttered. ‘Gio, there are ways.’ Already she was grasping at unlikely straws – she’d go back to Hollywood, she’d find work there, they couldn’t have forgotten about her completely; there’d be a way in…

  In the hall, they held each other, Vivien and Gio and their baby in between. Tears flowed and hands held. At least they had each other.

  From the shadows, Isabella saw it all. She watched for a while, interested, like somebody studying ants in a jar, before she turned and disappeared into the dark.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Italy, Summer 2016

  We stop at the market on the way back to Max’s to pick up spaghetti, wine and seafood – apparently he’s going to make me the best marinara I’ve ever tasted. The moonlit streets carry us along. I’m so content that passages of time go unchecked – the walk from the river back into the city, the stroll hand in hand that we take across the piazza – as if I am being transported from one instant to the next, so wrapped up in conversation and the warm glow of our union that the real world ceases to exist.

  I guess I’m still in this frame of mind when we first see her, so it takes a moment to rationalise that she’s not a stranger loitering on a street corner; she is known to us, more, she is waiting for us. She is dressed heavily, a long dark coat with a collar, so that it’s difficult to see her face clearly. Yet, I would know it anywhere.

  ‘It’s Adalina,’ I say. The bubble containing our day is pricked.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Max stops. ‘It looks like…’

  ‘It’s definitely her. I’ll handle it.’ Max goes to take my hand but I’m too quick. I’m done with running. I’ll deal with this head-on, I have nothing to hide.