This person raised his head, hand clasped to his brow, which was marked with blood. Under it his dark eyes were narrowed against the sun.
‘I have come to tea,’ said Don Villarca.
He was all courtesy; with a handkerchief stemming the flow of blood from his brow, he apologised for his conduct. He had returned from a visit to friends, to find their letter, and was stricken with remorse. Nothing would do for him but to set out immediately, and without his stick, or hat, to repair the damage. The difficulties had not occurred to him until he stood without their villa; he did not know whether they were at home, or willing to receive him, the shutters were closed … he had not wished to intrude – he was not polite.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what do I do, in these circumstances? Announce myself, like any proper caller? Go away, and come back again another day, when I have answered your letter? No! I skulk in the street with my ear to your window, like a dishonest parlourmaid. Until Miss Hopewell,’ he bowed to her, ‘rewards me as I deserve, and brings me to my senses with a brisk blow to the head.’
Mary Hopewell was bemused by this rapid stream of confidence. A friendly, somewhat dandyish gentleman he seemed. Could he be the same man who had looked upon her so murderously? Yet the room shivered around her. The blood was scattered like rust across the purple velvet of his coat. His hand stroked the handle of his teacup. He was too vivid in the small room, his legs too long for the chair, his gaze too direct, too enquiring. It was not that he was tall, Mary thought, but that he occupied his space without apology. His voice was melodious, considered. His English was perfect and elegant. Only the faintest trace of Spanish lingered about his consonants. It hinted of another man beneath. He seemed at once both too easy and too menacing and she did not know what to think.
‘We have met, of course, Don Villarca,’ Mary said. ‘Although no introductions were performed.’
Don Villarca tipped his head to her, polite. ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘In London? I am mortified, Miss Hopewell, I cannot think.’
‘In your garden,’ Mary said. ‘I saw you in the garden, amid the orange trees.’
‘Miss Hopewell, I would never contradict so lovely a woman—’
‘You looked at me,’ Mary said, ‘as I stood at the window …’
‘—except to remark, that had I the great fortune to meet you before this, it would be graven on my memory.’
Miss Brigstocke patted Mary’s hand soothingly.
‘It was so very hot, my love,’ she said. ‘And you were not at all well.’
‘I am not mistaken,’ Mary persisted. ‘And I was perfectly well enough to trust my senses …’ Don Villarca was silent, and Miss Brigstocke looked at her kindly.
It was a small humiliation, expertly dealt. Mary’s face grew hot. The room spun. Don Villarca sipped his tea demurely. He raised his eyes: they met Miss Hopewell’s dazed ones; she saw the cold fire which gleamed in their depths.
Don Villarca filled the air with soothing nothings. He was so gratified to have made their acquaintance, although so tardily! If his dear Mama – vaya con Dios, God rest her soul, departed one year past – had she known that he had not even enquired after them, after their upsetting time … she, well, he would spare them the details. Suffice it to say that Mama was from Seville, they must understand, and Sevillan women are terrible when they are angry … On and on it went, an easy stream. All the while his cold eyes were on Miss Hopewell. The words of old tales flew through her mind, half remembered: of bargains and pomegranate seeds. By agreeing to take their lukewarm tea and stale cake (the much abused Gabriela having chosen today – of all days! – to take an unexpected afternoon off), in their stuffy room with midges darting in the corners, he meant something else …
‘Tell me, Don Villarca,’ said Miss Hopewell, alarmed by the pitch of her voice, ‘how precisely would she – excuse me, your esteemed mother – would she have punished you? For I am terribly stupid; it seems to me that you are a man full grown. Your mother still had nursery privileges over you? To give you a sound whipping? Is this your meaning?’
Don Villarca turned smoothly to her. There was no trace now of the savage face that Miss Hopewell had glimpsed in the garden. Yet she looked on him and trembled, as the puppy had, under his eye. It seemed to her that the dim room winked black; it was filled with the scent of the warm night land.
‘But no, Miss Hopewell,’ said Don Villarca. ‘Indeed she would never have done such a thing. That would not be fitting for me, or for her. No. She would have done far, far, worse. She would, very publicly, have cut me! But she cannot do it now.’ He smiled kindly. ‘Perhaps you did not mean to speak so, of the dead.’ Fear touched Mary then, gentle and cold.
The ring alas! – was not to be found but Don Villarca would have them search the carriage, too. And may he offer the ladies such a carriage when they wished to drive? He kept one in Siena, which was not put to any use at all – a scandal in fact, and he would be obliged to them for justifying this woeful extravagance on his part. It was not right that they had no carriage, when the surrounding country was beautiful.
Miss Hopewell meant to rebuff his offers. She knew that they must not take these seeming alms, offered to the poor. But when her look met his, her tongue became as a stone. So she essayed not to look. It was impossible. She found herself again and again pinned by his eye – the lights in the brown depths, the long black lashes. The quality of his gaze, it reminded her of something, an animal … She mocked herself for her nervous fancy. He was of course foolish, overbearing – she reflected that it was common in vain men – she had borne worse. Mary felt herself recovered; and then she was drawn again towards the long dark tunnel of his eye.
Miss Brigstocke was speaking of Bristol, which she liked. ‘I cannot call it home,’ she said. ‘I do not believe I have the right to name any place such. No indeed. One must shift, as a governess, you know!’ Here she grew flustered. ‘Or rather, you sir would not know, and there is no earthly reason why you should. But there are places that speak to one, are there not?’
Mary thought of their mutual dream of Dante, of the imagined calm and sunny warmth of Italy, suffused with verse. She smiled a little. She and Hephzibah had indeed asked much of their new home. It was no wonder they were so sadly disappointed both by the place and by themselves in it.
Mary looked up to find herself observed by Don Villarca. He tipped his head towards her. The light slid on the graceful planes of his face.
‘And you, Miss Hopewell? Do you miss your native shores?’ His enquiry was so close to her current thought that she stopped a moment, to gather herself; she seemed to be scattering further and further apart as the conversation proceeded.
‘No,’ she said. ‘England itself I do not miss. You speak of places, Hephzibah, which call to one’s nature – I have been visited by such feeling only once. It was my childhood home. We were compelled to leave it when I was very young, and so my memories of it are few, but they carry with them a potency. The house was under a hill, and surrounded by wild moor, which covers much of that part of Devon. It was itself a wild place, with a name to fit it: Rawblood. But it was lost to us some years ago, and has been rechristened, I think. There was some family lore that if we stayed from Rawblood we sickened, and died … Nonsense of course, but … the heart yearns for reason, in tragedy. For we left, we Hopewells. And, save me, we are all dead.
‘It was a peculiar house, of granite and slate. Misshapen, and all the rooms the wrong shape, even to my young eye. But the scent of the air, and the curve of the banister …’ She was surprised at her own eloquence. Rawblood seemed to rise in dark shapes about her, its walls built on the air like mist … ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘I have seen, and lived in other, perhaps finer houses. But none have elicited in me the very particular sensation of being home. Even now, when I read a description of a view from a window in a novel, it is the view from my nursery in that house which comes to me. When I dream of a garden, it is always that garden, which was enclosed between the two wings of t
he house, as if held by two protecting arms …’ Mary started. The room settled about her again. She had slipped, for a moment, across a border.
‘It does not matter,’ she said. ‘That was very long ago.’ She stared at Don Villarca. Something precious had been pried from her without her will.
Don Villarca, for his part, was uncharacteristically silent, and it fell to Miss Brigstocke to ask him a question concerning the condition of the roads surrounding Siena.
He stayed perhaps an hour, and left behind him a void. It was at the moment of his departure that his effect on the women was most clearly felt. As the front door closed noisily behind Don Villarca (who was clearly unaccustomed to manipulating such things as latches by his own hand), Miss Brigstocke and Miss Hopewell looked at one another over the remains of the meagre tea, and then quickly away. They no longer knew themselves. Everything was twisted out of its proper form.
‘And he to lend us his carriage!’ said Miss Hopewell, sweeping cake crumbs from the table. ‘I wish you had said him no, Hephzibah. All those favours, conferred on us, de haut en bas; it is most improper.’ Miss Brigstocke stared at her, astonished.
‘So unsettling a countenance,’ said Miss Hopewell crossly, blowing a strand of hair from her face. She stilled, and went a little pale. ‘I have it,’ she said. ‘It is a snake. His gaze is that of a snake.’
He called often, twice a week or more. He brought them small jars of honey, and paints, and a songbird in a cage. He drove them out to see fields of wildflowers, and the churches, which he thought would interest them. Very well, these were no greater liberties than they had extended to Reverend Comer. But Don Villarca would not be content: he inundated them with proposals for their entertainment, always touched with the slightest hue of the improper. It was never quite possible to discern where the impropriety lay, but they felt it most strongly.
He vowed to obtain a balcony for the palio that August that they might watch that delightful and violent spectacle together. The shining hide of the horses, the hard clamour of hooves as they raced in the streets … it was most stirring. And some years, no one died at all! If that was not agreeable, perhaps he might be permitted to escort them to Rome, for Holy Week? Or he would engage a new bathing machine at the beach. Or he himself would hold a dance for them, perhaps, for twenty couples, with them as hostesses!
Each time they gainsaid him, flustered. Still Don Villarca importuned. At Miss Hopewell, still he smiled with white teeth. He could not be in her presence without falling victim to amusement. As for Miss Hopewell, she felt a great pressure within her, a hand tight about her heart. She lived those weeks as if in a fever, her judgement and her wits disordered. She felt that she behaved like a zany. And yet she followed still as if drawn by a string. Miss Brigstocke enquired of Mary, did she not like the man? This reserve, which then gave way to bursts of impropriety, of temper, this immoderate behaviour – it was so unlike her.
‘It is like one of those old tales,’ Miss Hopewell replied. ‘One has conjured the djinn; one now must accept the consequences.’ With this gnomic utterance Miss Brigstocke had to be content for Miss Hopewell would say no more.
The three sat in a row on a balcony at the Palazzo Chigi Saracini in Siena. Don Villarca’s midnight-blue satin arm was flung carelessly across the balustrade. His diamond-studded cuffs sent particles of light across the hall. The night was warm. In the crowd below fans waved gently like the white caps of the rolling sea.
The interval had not come a moment too soon for Miss Hopewell. The brightness of the lamps and the movement of bodies seemed dazzling. She shivered in her cheap cambric. The singers were shrill and out of tune, the story incomprehensible and crudely told. She feared she had the migraine. Don Villarca asked her if she were well.
‘Quite well,’ she answered, then could not help but add, ‘All of this town has the odour of hot dust. The place is so dry. It makes its way in at the casements, into the clothes, and the food … You cannot exclude it. I feel it in my eyes, and in my throat.’
‘It is a particular thing about Siena, this dust,’ said Don Villarca in his pleasant voice. ‘But dust is not dust, is it? Not in truth. It is the earth, which is composed of many things, caught up by the wind. For instance: Senio and Ascanio, sons of Remus, who founded the city; the Medici Popes; and Signore Pisano who built the duomo; they do not perish, but remain; all are buried here in the earth, and that earth has in time grown dry and lifted into the air, moving from place to place, settling and rising, whirling round us and under our feet! Do you see? This –’ he sniffed the air – ‘is that painter who lived with his mistress and died disappointed at Fiesole! And this –’ he wiped his finger down the curtain that fell beside them, and showed it to Miss Hopewell, where it bore a dusty mark – ‘is a little girl who sees visions, and was burnt at the stake in the square. This is the plague that killed two thirds of the city in 1348. This is a loyal hound who dragged his master from a burning building during the battle of Montaperti, and this—’
Miss Brigstocke, who had followed this exchange with interest, broke in with a laugh. ‘But how gruesome, Mr Villarca! You speak of breathing in old bones!’ She patted Mary’s hand and turned to the stage. ‘Ah, I believe that we are going to begin again. See how that lady appears! Large people are so fond of red satin. It is mysterious …’
Don Villarca turned to Mary, his eyes narrow, lit windows in the night. He held her gaze as he licked the dust from the tip of his finger.
She rose from her seat, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Don Villarca rose also. He moved to where Miss Hopewell stood at the back of the balcony.
‘Miss Hopewell?’ Don Villarca said. He paused. ‘You do not like the work?’
‘I do not know,’ she said, truthfully. ‘I cannot think. I cannot recall its title. I do not—’
There arose some protest from those sat at the balcony, and Miss Brigstocke glanced back reprovingly. Don Villarca drew Miss Hopewell further into the shadows and regarded her. She thought that in this light his skin had a fine sheen, which was like the surface of water, silken. Miss Hopewell looked away and coughed, hard and long, into her handkerchief. He waited beside her, quiet as a cat. When it was done she looked up with weeping eyes.
‘I cannot bear that you should look at me, and speak to me so,’ Mary said. She lifted the handkerchief from her mouth. ‘As a man who knows nothing at all of suffering; you speak of it like a game. As one to whom everything has been gifted, never earned; never valued. You do not fear to be turned to dust because you love nothing. You seem an empty man; a man made of paper. Pouf!’ Mary made a fluid gesture, showing the paper man rising, like the dust, in the wind, but then she blanched and swayed, her handkerchief at her mouth. ‘Silliness,’ she said.
He reached forward and grasped her elbow. With his other hand he touched her handkerchief with the tip of a nail. ‘My character gives offence,’ he said. ‘It is not the first time.’
Mary’s eyes were great in her face as she looked on him. ‘No, that would not make you offensive to me,’ she said. ‘Despicable, perhaps. A rich fool. But it is not so. You are guarded all about by luxury, true. Yes, you are armoured by money. The silk, the jewels … You parrot the lines of a spoiled man. It is adept silliness. It is a guise. You care nothing about it. No, sir – do not protest. For I see you for what you are. I glimpse what lies beneath all your seemings. It is ruthless. You cannot deceive me as you do others. I saw you in the garden, that day. I saw you truly. I have seen your heart and it is cold.’
They looked on one another. Music cut through the air about them. Lights moved in the depths of his shadowed eyes.
‘What have you done, I wonder?’ said Mary Hopewell. Dark, the scent of sage and night earth filled her senses. ‘What is it? I am not deceived.’
Don Villarca gazed at her. ‘What a great pleasure,’ he said, ‘lies in the condemnation of others.’
‘You are wrong, sir. I take no pleasure in it.’
‘You are lying
, Miss Hopewell, and not well. It will be your undoing.’
She stared. Her heart was a drum. ‘Slander,’ she said. ‘Despicable, ineffectual – and mere slander. If you are to do evil here you must try harder than that.’
‘If you are at home tomorrow, in the afternoon,’ said Don Villarca, ‘I will come and do evil by appointment.’
‘There is nothing to be said between us two,’ she said.
His finger rested on the linen in her hand, a hair’s breadth from her own. He stroked the cloth gently, as one may stroke a small soft animal. On the white could be glimpsed small flecks of blood.
‘I will come,’ he said. ‘You cannot prevent it.’
Miss Hopewell shrugged. She hid her fear. ‘It makes no odds to me,’ she said, making her voice bright with dislike.
They turned as one and went to their places on either side of Miss Brigstocke; they resumed their seats. Mary Hopewell’s face was smooth. She placed all her attention on the play. Don Villarca lounged back on his seat and chewed at his thumbnail in a truly uncouth fashion, his eyes lidded. Miss Brigstocke soon felt that the opera was not good, that the evening was late. There was no demur from the rest of the party and the carriage was so summoned.
When the sun rose the next morning it showed Miss Hopewell’s pillow to be touched once more with crimson. She looked at it for some time, and then summoned Miss Brigstocke to her chamber.
‘I must rest,’ she said. ‘I will rise at noon. Will you give me the camphor basin, and ensure that my straw-coloured silk is pressed?’ It was not a habit with Miss Hopewell to ask for concessions in this fashion. She did it awkwardly.
Miss Brigstocke embraced her. She would do all that was necessary. For Mr Villarca was coming to call that afternoon, was it not so? (Mary suppressed her habitual spurt of irritation at the incorrect address – Hephzibah refused to use Don Villarca’s title, which she thought unnecessarily foreign and full of airs.) Well, they all enjoyed his visits! Such quaint things he said. Miss Brigstocke would fetch her the moment he arrived. She could be comfortable, and rest until then.
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