Outside in the echoing marble-floored corridor she hesitated for a moment, uncertain which way to go, but then she managed to remember which way she had come with the maid, and after that it was a simple matter to retrace her steps until she came to the graceful curve of the staircase. There, however, she stopped, for just below her, in the echoing entrance hall, two people were talking, and somehow she sensed immediately that their conversation was of a sort which it could be embarrassing to overhear.
“Marco...” It was the Contessa’s voice, and it was husky with a kind of urgent appeal. She was speaking in Italian, rapidly and anxiously, and she was obviously making a considerable effort to be both persuasive and soothing. Hesitating at the head of the stairs, Candy looked over the gilded iron balustrade and saw that the actress was standing just below her, her dark head gleaming like burnished ebony in the light from the chandeliers. She had changed into a little gold lame suit which bore the unmistakable stamp of one of Rome’s topmost fashion houses, and as she moved her slim hands in a series of expressive gestures they flashed with the dark green fire of emeralds.
The man beside her was about the same height as herself, and his hair, which once had obviously been very black, was tinged here and there with streaks of silver. He was probably, Candy thought, about fifty, and undoubtedly Italian. His dark grey suit was very well cut, and although he was possibly a little over-weight on the whole he looked rather an elegant figure. To Candy it seemed that there was something decidedly familiar about him, and as she stared down at the top of his head she suddenly realized what it was. He was remarkably like the Conte di Lucca.
Suddenly, somewhere, a bell rang—evidently the front door bell, for a uniformed maid came hurrying to answer it—and the Contessa checked herself in what sounded like the middle of a sentence. The man, who didn’t really seem to have said very much, shrugged and moved a little away from her and as he did so a man and a girl were ushered by the maid into the circle of light cast by the great central chandelier, and the woman known to the world as Anna Landi advanced to meet them with both hands outstretched.
When, several minutes after the hall had again emptied itself, Candy at last found the courage to descend the staircase and rejoin her hostess and her fellow-guests in the salotto with the green velvet hangings she found, more or less as she had expected, that rather a daunting little gathering had assembled in her absence. The Contessa was perched on the arm of a sofa, engaged in an animated if one-sided conversation with a pretty black-haired girl in a long fluttering dress of eggshell, blue voile, and beside the girl, on the same sofa, a massive matron in black velvet seemed to be her mother was placidly monopolizing the Conte. John Ryland, temporarily a little lost, was standing alone in front of the fireplace, staring into the rosy-hued cocktail in his glass as if it were a crystal ball, and the Italian with the greying hair whom Candy had seen with the Contessa was also alone, gazing through one of the uncurtained windows into the clear, starlit night. The couple whose arrival had interrupted his conversation with his hostess were there too, and just as Candy entered the room the man moved purposefully over to the Contessa, with the evident intention of attracting some of her attention to himself. He was tall and lean, with a slight stoop, and an American accent which could probably have been heard easily on the other side of the heavy oak door. The girl who had arrived with him was left sitting alone and looking rather bewildered, and as she glanced at her with mild curiosity Candy realized that she was from the East—possibly from Japan. She was wearing a romantically beautiful evening dress of heavy, gleaming silk in which glowing reds and golds blended luxuriantly, and everything about her small, neat figure was almost unbelievably delicate and doll-like.
On impulse, and partly because of a subconscious feeling that they were both in a sense outsiders, Candy sat down beside the little silk-clad shape and smiled at her. It didn’t seem to her to matter that they hadn’t been introduced, for if she was not simply to run out of the house in an agony of unhappiness and embarrassment she had to talk to somebody, and she saw nobody else to whom it would be possible to attach herself.
The girl smiled back, revealing extraordinarily pretty teeth, and in precise, slightly accented English she murmured something formal and predictable about the beauty of the room, and the excellence of the Contessa’s central heating. And then to Candy’s astonishment and horror, her slanting brown eyes suddenly filled with tears, and her small mouth puckered. The tears overflowed and began to roll down her cheeks, and then she started to sob audibly ... little, subdued, choking sobs that despite their unobtrusiveness had a powerful and immediate impact on the whole of the room.
Everyone looked round as swiftly as if the girl had stood up and screamed, and one by one they all stopped talking. In the silence the two Italian women on the sofa stared across incredulously at their fellow-guest—the elder with mounting disapproval in every line of her heavy-jowled face, the younger open-mouthed and fascinated—and the men froze where they stood.
Only the Contessa remained in command of the situation. A bare half-glance had evidently been enough to allow her to take in what was happening, and once she had taken it in she tactfully avoided looking a second time. Instead, she glanced with very slightly upraised eyebrows at the girl’s husband, into whose sallow cheeks a dull red flush was slowly creeping, and muttering something the American left her and walked over to his wife.
“Listen, stop it, will you?” Candy didn’t want to listen, but she couldn’t help overhearing the half whispered words. The man had so placed himself that he was between the weeping girl and most of the other people present, and only Candy, who for some reason hadn’t thought of moving away, saw the look in her eyes as she lifted her distorted face.
“I can’t bear it!” The girl’s soft voice was hoarse and choked. “I can’t—not any more! Not any more, Lester. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Okay, okay.” He seemed to be keeping his temper in check with an effort. “Just let’s get out of here. Where’s your coat?” He put out a hand to pull the small, hysterical figure to her feet, but as he did so she pushed him away, and the next instant she had jumped up and almost literally flown at him, first pounding on his chest with her tiny clenched fists and then actually tearing at his startled face with her sharply pointed, silvery finger-nails.
“Why don’t you get a divorce and marry her?” Her voice, thin and piercing, rising almost to a shriek, echoed around the room. “Why don’t you? Why don’t you? Why don’t you get a divorce...?”
It seemed as if the awful repetition would go on for ever. Her husband had grasped her hands in self defence, but she seemed to be going from bad to worse. And then suddenly someone stepped forward and gently grasped her shoulders. It was the Italian to whom the Contessa had been talking in the hall, and the interference of a stranger had an instantaneous effect. All the tautness went out of the Japanese girl’s body, and her hands dropped to her sides. She looked like a sleep-walker who is slowly waking up and returning to normality, and in the shocked silence that had fallen she allowed herself to be guided out of the room. Her husband ran his hands through his hair, looked at the Contessa and muttered something that sounded like a muffled apology, then followed the girl through the door and out of sight.
The silence they left behind them lasted about fifteen seconds. Then the Contessa spread her hands in a delicate gesture that would have done credit to one of her screen performances, and looked around at her remaining guests with the merest suspicion of a smile on her scarlet lips.
“Mario tells me dinner is ready. Let’s go into the sala, shall we?”
Dinner was immensely formal, and it went on for a very long time. Shortly after the arrival of the third course Candy’s head began to ache, and she wished more than anything that she could have been allowed to call a taxi, slip quietly back to Signorina Marchetti’s flat and go to bed, John Ryland was seated on the Contessa’s right, and they were obviously absorbed in one another—or at least
, John was absorbed, and it was quite clear that the Italian beauty was very much attracted by him. Her son, Michele, discharged the duties of a host with a well-schooled courtesy which fell a little short of concealing the profound indifference with which he seemed to regard everybody and everything, but the mother and daughter who had been placed on either side of him quite obviously found him fascinating. There was little doubt that the elder of the two entertained certain hopes where her daughter and the Conte were concerned, and although Candy had no means of knowing what sort of basis she had for those hopes she did feel that if she had been the Italian girl she would have found Michele’s air of polite abstraction disconcerting, to say the least.
As the meal wore on, the grouse imported from Scotland gave way to a long and slightly wearisome procession of gateaux, fruits and cheeses Candy found herself wondering more and more about the Japanese girl. She supposed that most of the other people present were wondering too, and she was a little surprised that the incident had not had a more noticeable effect upon John, The girl had obviously been jealous of the attention being paid by her husband to the beautiful Anna, and everything she said and did had suggested that there was more than a passing flirtation involved. It was true that the Contessa herself had appeared to be supremely indifferent to both of them, and it was also true that the man had not really seemed to be on very close terms with his hostess. But there had certainly been something ... Didn’t John feel even a twinge of curiosity—of resentment? Candy was surprised to find that she could now take a kind of detached interest in analysing his feelings, and she looked at him. He was gazing into the beautiful dark eyes so close to his own with a smile on his face that she had never seen before, and. it occurred to her that he closely resembled the object of an experiment in hypnotism.
“You are very silent, signorina.”
It was the middle-aged Italian who had been so successful in sorting out the explosive situation in the salotto, and she turned to smile at him. Although they were seated side by side they hadn’t so far talked very much, for she had a strong feeling that, like herself and the Conte, he wasn’t really in the mood for conversation, but now she supposed that it was time she made an effort.
“I was thinking what a wonderful room this is.” It was partly true, for the Contessa’s marble dining-room was everything her green salotto led one to expect.
“You think this house is beautiful?”
“Of course—very beautiful.”
“You should see the Palazzo Lucca. It is one of the bright jewels of the Renaissance.” He glanced along the table at Michele. “Unfortunately, it belongs now to my nephew...” So that was it. She had realized he was a relative, but not that he was the Conte’s uncle. “He is young and unmarried, and has use for nothing but a corner of it, so the rest is shut up. Tell me, signorina, don’t you think my nephew should marry?”
She hesitated, for some reason finding the question faintly embarrassing. “Well, yes ... of course. But I don’t suppose it will be very long—”
“No?” he interrupted. He glanced at the girl in pale blue voile, whose slanting sloe-like eyes were fixed on Michele’s face as if her life depended on not missing a flicker of his eyelids, and automatically Candy looked in the same direction. “That one, do you think? Her father is a Milanese industrialist, with more money than even her mother can find a use for, and she has had the very best education.”
“Well....” Candy said again, and her companion laughed and tilted his wine glass to admire the glowing crimson of its contents.
“Don’t listen to me, Miss Wells. I have drunk too much this evening, and before I go home I shall drink more ... a lot more. I am—how do you say it?—the black sheep of the di Lucca family.”
She turned to look at him with interest. As far as she knew she had never met a ‘black sheep’ before, and she wasn’t really in a position to judge, but she wouldn’t have said, if she had been asked, that this ageing, benevolent Italian looked at all the type.
“I don’t think you’re very black,” she said, and smiled.
“Thank you, my little one.” Her hand was lying on the table, and he put his wine-glass down and patted it. “You are undoubtedly the princess in the fairy-story who turns frogs into princes ... a refreshing addition to my sister-in-law’s weary circle of friends.” He turned his head away from her, and she saw that he was gazing at John Ryland as if he felt that some other recent additions were rather less refreshing.
After dinner, back in the splendid green salotto, John continued to monopolize his hostess more or less completely, and the Italian mother-and-daughter team continued to occupy the Conte. Marco di Lucca disappeared, and all at once Candy found herself quite alone. She walked over to one of the high windows, and cautiously parted the curtains. Outside the night was clear and starlit, with just a trace of light wind to shake the rustling palm fronds and stir the dark heads of the cypresses. It was beautiful and romantic, and it made her want to cry. Behind her in the room, she could hear John’s voice talking to the Contessa—during the whole of the evening he had scarcely addressed a word to her, Candy—and the desolation which she had thought she could put behind her by absorbing herself in her new work and ambitions came rushing over her again, swamping her with misery, flooding her entire being with an abject dejection that actually seemed to drain her strength way—to rob her of the energy she needed to cope with life. Enormous tears forced their way beneath her eyelids and cascaded silently down her cheeks, and but for the fact that her sense of utter isolation made her feel almost that she was alone in the room she would have been paralysed with horror. As it was, it simply didn’t occur to her that someone might suddenly decide to find out what she was doing with herself, and when all at once a voice just behind her spoke her name her heart jumped very nearly into her throat.
“Candida!” It was the first time Michele had made use of her Christian name, and despite the horror of the moment she rather liked the way he said it. But the next instant all she was conscious of was a bitter shame and confusion that seemed to emanate from her soul.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said foolishly.
“Would you like me to go away?”
“N-no. Of course not.” She hadn’t looked at him, and it occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t noticed her damp cheeks yet—perhaps, if she were careful, he wouldn’t notice them. But the next instant this idea was shattered.
“You can’t cry here,” he said quietly. “That is”— a whimsical note entering his voice—“some people, of course, can and do, but I think you would rather be somewhere else. Come and see my mother’s music-room.”
Meekly, like a child, she let him usher her out of the salotto, and she didn’t think anyone even noticed their departure. He took her along a wide, carpeted, softly-lit corridor leading towards the back of the house, and then they turned out of the first corridor into another. Finally they arrived at a pair of double doors made of dully gleaming mahogany, and as she entered the room that lay beyond them its warm tranquillity came to meet her, actually causing her to stand still and draw a shuddering breath, as if something vital inside her were relaxing.
“Would you like me to leave you here?” The Conte’s voice had something curiously gentle about it, but it also sounded essentially matter-of-fact.
She shook her head slowly, and turned to look at him, now, without caring in the least that her cheeks were still wet and her make-up probably smudged. She even managed a slightly shaky smile. “I’m not going to cry any more. But thank you for getting me away from ... all those people. This room makes me feel better. It’s got a wonderful atmosphere.” She hesitated. “But I think I’d like to go now—if you don’t mind. If you could call me a taxi—and say good-bye to—to your mother for me...?”
He looked into her face with a kind of dispassionate curiosity, and then he lightly touched her shoulder.
“I won’t keep you here if you would prefer to go, but I thought—perhaps you might
like to stay for a while.” He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again it was almost as if he were bringing the words out with difficulty. “Sometimes—when one is suffering—music draws out the sting ... relieves the pain.” He stopped again. “For me it is so, and I thought that perhaps for you to....”
She looked at him, and this time it was her turn to feel curiosity. His face, had a hollow look, and his mouth was set in lines of inexpressible bleakness. She remembered that the weary melancholy in his eyes had been the first thing she had noticed about him, and, suddenly jolted out of herself, she found herself wondering what it was that had etched those marks in his face, and whether, whatever it was, it now lay buried in the past. Or whether, perhaps, it was still being endured.
“There’s my mother’s piano,” he was saying. “And there are hundreds of records. I’ll leave you here ... you might be able to amuse yourself.”
“No...” She hesitated. “Please don’t—there’s no need for you to go.” On impulse she added, “I’d love to hear you play something.” If he had been any other man she couldn’t have said it, but with him, at this moment, she had no feeling of self-consciousness. Only an awareness that in this room, and in his presence, there was immeasurable peace.
For several seconds he said nothing, merely looking at her. And then, still in silence, he walked over to the beautiful, dark, gleaming grand piano at the far end of the room, and started to sift through a pile of music. Candy sank into a chair, and, relaxed, set her senses free to absorb the room’s rather sombre, old-fashioned charm.
The carpet was a dull crimson colour, and so thick that every sound was muffled in its velvety depths. The curtains were crimson, too, and they hung in thick, heavy folds before unseen windows that she supposed were as tall as those in the salotto. The ceiling was very high, but efficient central heating kept the whole room warm, and there was an extraordinary cosiness about it. All the furniture was of dark mahogany, and wherever the walls were not obscured by shelf after shelf of records and sheet music they were covered in crimson brocade.
Song Above the Clouds Page 8
