by Lucy Foley
The Contessa turns back to him with a smile, barely out of breath herself. ‘It will be good for you. And think of the view from the top.’
Aubrey’s enthusiasm for the expedition, Hal learns, is his expectation of some photographic opportunities. ‘I have a vision of you,’ he tells Hal as they begin climbing, ‘standing atop a rockface like a Greek god, king of all you survey. And perhaps you could be, well, shirtless too.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Hal says. ‘I’m the journalist – what will you do with the photograph? It can’t go in the story.’
‘It could,’ Aubrey says, a little petulantly.
‘Not if I had anything to do with it.’
‘Fine. But I’m going to keep pestering you. You’re too good a photographic opportunity to pass up.’
‘I’d rather be – as you might put it – on the other side of the lens.’
‘I can see that, I think. You like to be alone. Your own man.’
‘I suppose so.’
Aubrey nods. ‘Me too. I don’t like all that mess.’
‘Mess?’
‘Well, you know. The heart.’
‘Ah.’ Hal can’t imagine Aubrey with a woman – he is fairly certain that isn’t the way the man would be inclined. And yet he can’t quite see him with anyone.
‘How long have you lived in Rome?’ Aubrey asks.
‘Five years or so.’
‘And your parents?’
‘Back in England. How about yours?’
‘England, too. Oxfordshire. Hardly ever see them, though. We don’t get along.’ He sighs. ‘My father has always thought what I do is quite ridiculous. I could make pots and pots of money from it, and he would look on it as ill-gotten gains.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, he doesn’t think it’s a proper vocation for a man. If I photographed conflict, say – well, that would be another matter. Though, come to think of it, that would probably still be a little artistic for his liking. Much better if I had a job in finance, or the civil service. Goodness, he’d probably prefer it if I emptied dustbins for a living.’
It is said with humour, but the archness doesn’t quite ring true. For the first time, Hal realizes that there may be more to it than mere affectation. He remembers certain men on board, always ready with some flippancy, who sobbed with terror when the cruiser came under fire.
‘Does anyone’s father approve of them?’ he says. ‘I know mine doesn’t.’
‘What’s your crime?’
‘Mainly that I enlisted with the navy, in the war. He’s army: a brigadier. I think he believes it was some act of rebellion on my part.’
‘Was it?’
‘No – or at least, not consciously. I enlisted as a rating – which I suppose was something of a revolt, as I knew he would have wanted to pull strings to get me an officer rank. But mainly because I’d always felt at home on the sea. I sailed a lot as a boy. I thought I might be better at it.’
‘Were you?’
‘Is anyone good at war?’
‘Not sure. I’m a pacifist.’
‘Ah. Well, it wasn’t quite like sailing dinghies in the Solent, that’s for certain.’
He thinks now that if he had joined the army, his way of seeing the sea would not have changed dramatically. Now, he sees death in it: death lurking beneath the surface, ready to blow him to pieces; death, readying to swallow men down into the dark. And then, suddenly, the shift will occur and he will see his hand, but smaller, a boy’s hand, skimming the surface as he leans over the edge of his boat. The water fracturing over his fingers into dancing beads of light.
‘Oh,’ Aubrey says, ‘thank goodness. We’re nearly at the top.’
The steps are indeed growing shallower, then petering out. The Contessa has got there first, and has found a great stone slab to sit on. Hal and Aubrey join her. Stella, who stopped to look at something at the edge of the path, is gaining on them now, moving with a weightless agility. Beneath her arms and at her neckline there are patches faintly darkened by sweat, her cheeks flushed dark red. It is a marked departure from her usually immaculate appearance, and Hal finds something fascinating in the transformation.
She stops a few feet away, and he moves along the rock. ‘You want to sit?’
‘Oh no,’ she says, quickly, ‘I’m fine standing.’ She turns to take in the view, and he looks with her. He is gratified to see how high they have climbed. The fishing boats are like specks of lint in the harbour and even the Pygmalion, which has not yet set sail, looks dwarfed.
Stella turns back to them with a smile. She seems briefly unfettered.
‘What were you looking at?’ the Contessa asks. ‘By the path?’
‘Oh.’ She points nearby, to a white bloom that looks like a child’s drawing of a flower. ‘This – I think it’s called cistus. I haven’t seen them for a long time; since my childhood. They’re all along the path here.’
‘Bring some with you if you like,’ the Contessa says. ‘I’m sure we have a vase on the yacht.’
‘Oh no,’ Stella says, ‘it’s all right. I like seeing them like this, growing.’
Once they have all recovered their breath they continue, picking their way along the path, which is wider in places, then narrowing to a foot across in others. Hal is just behind Stella now. He likes watching her quick plimsoll-clad feet. There is no hesitation in her movements when they come to a steep drop, a thin and knotty piece of path.
It is only when he hears Aubrey call his name from some way off that Hal becomes aware of the gap they have opened between themselves and the other two. He turns and sees them some thirty feet away.
‘What is it?’
‘An injury,’ Aubrey calls. Hal sees that they are on one of the thinnest parts of the path. He can’t see the Contessa, and for a horrible second he imagines that she has fallen. But as he jogs back towards them he sees her, sitting on the verge.
‘What is it?’
‘Oh,’ she says, quite cheerfully, ‘I stepped badly and turned my foot.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t see,’ Aubrey says, sheepishly. ‘I was taking a photograph.’
‘Shall I take a look?’ Hal is no expert, but has played enough sport to know the signs of a sprain.
The Contessa manoeuvres herself onto a nearby rock, and pulls up her trouser leg a little. The ankle beneath, Hal notices, shows no sign of swelling compared to its twin. But the Contessa is elderly, and no doubt frailer than she appears.
‘We should get you back down,’ Hal says. ‘I don’t think you can carry on like this.’
‘Ah, no no.’ She waves a hand impatiently. ‘I will be fine in a few minutes.’ They continue, at a much slower pace than before. Yet only a few minutes into the next leg of their journey she shakes her head. ‘It is a great shame, but I cannot continue.’
Hal turns back. ‘We’ll all go—’
‘No,’ she says, quickly. ‘I can go alone. Or … Aubrey, you will help me, yes?’
‘Of course.’
The Contessa gestures to Hal and Stella. ‘You two must continue.’
Both begin to object simultaneously.
‘Please,’ the Contessa says, firmly. ‘I will be upset if you do not. Someone must do the walk.’ She sighs. ‘I have to accept that I am so feeble now that I may never do it again. So, please, do it in my stead?’
‘Fine.’ Hal holds up his hands. ‘I give in.’ Stella nods, with evident reluctance.
The Contessa smiles. ‘Thank you.’
Aubrey has the Contessa brace an arm around his thin shoulders, and they begin their slow return back towards the town. Stella and Hal watch them until they are out of reach. For a few moments, a strange new quiet descends. Then Stella says, ‘Do you think they’ll be all right? Just the two of them?’
‘I hope so. Either way, we weren’t exactly left with much choice in the matter. There isn’t any disobeying our leader.’
‘No.’ And then, to his surprise, she laughs.
*
<
br /> The wildflowers are incredible. As they pass these clouds of colour Hal asks Stella if she can name them. She lists them for him, pointing out each variety as they pass. Wild garlic, more white bursts of cistus, pale yellow dandelions. The occasional bright flag of a poppy.
‘Where did you learn all this?’
‘It interests me. We had a garden when I was young.’
‘You don’t have one now?’ Hal asks. He finds it hard to believe that a man as wealthy as Truss would not.
‘Oh, that’s different. It’s managed by a tribe of gardeners. If I had the chance to plant my own it wouldn’t be like that. I would not want that rigidity, that show. I would want it to look as though it had simply flowered from nature.’
He is confused by the fact that she talks about her own garden as though it didn’t belong to her. ‘Could you not recreate that yourself? Explain to the gardeners how you would want it?’
She hesitates. ‘No.’
Hal looks at her now with her hair in disarray, her face bare and gleaming. He thinks of the other version of her: pristine, finished. He thinks he can guess which of these is to her husband’s taste.
‘Tell me about your garden – the one you had before.’
‘There were orange trees,’ she says, tentatively, ‘below my bedroom window. In the spring I would wake up to the scent of their blossom. And there was the vegetable patch, close to the house. A vegetable patch and a fig, and at the bottom of the garden—’ She stops, abruptly. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
He is certain that she hasn’t. ‘Was this in Spain?’
‘Yes.’
Beneath them the ground falls away sharply on one side for a stretch, so that it feels they are a grass stalk’s breadth from plummeting into the blue below. Hal feels again that strange, almost irresistible pull towards the void. It is hard to believe that one would be dashed to death at the bottom in a place so serene as this. Surely one would merely soar, like the gulls he can see circling, scanning the waves for their prey. He hears Stella catch her breath. She appears to be leaning towards it – so much so that for a second he considers reaching out and catching hold of her, to prevent her from falling forward.
‘I think this is how I imagined it,’ she says. ‘How the sea would look, when we saw it.’ He waits for her to explain, particularly that use of ‘we’, but she seems to have retreated to some private place, far from him.
As they continue to walk the breeze dies away and the heat begins to build – though, unlike the mugginess of a warm day in the city it is a clean heat, and without the ferocity of a summer sun behind it.
Suddenly she says, in a kind of rush, ‘There were beehives, at the bottom of the garden.’
‘Oh?’
‘My little brother looked after them. He taught himself, from a book. The honey they made was …’ she pauses, and he turns to see that she has shut her eyes, as though invoking the memory, ‘I haven’t tasted anything like it since. I suppose it was because it came from particular herbs, flowers.’
There is such longing in the way she says this that he wishes he could find some of it for her, this impossible, lost-to-time taste.
‘Of course,’ she says, ‘it’s hard to know whether you remember things as better, or more special, than they actually were. Do you think that could be it?’
‘Perhaps.’ He remembers now a particular cake his mother makes: a bright yellow sponge, made with polenta and lemons. It is an Italian recipe – and he has had it, since, in Rome. But never have any of these versions, however expertly baked, tasted quite the same. ‘I think there’s something about the person behind it, too,’ he says. ‘If it’s someone you love.’
Immediately he is embarrassed. He feels he has revealed too much feeling, too much of himself, in this.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think you’re right.’
Then, as if some vault of memory has been thrown open, she tells him, too, of sleeping under the stars with the sounds of frogs and the light of fireflies; of a life lived barefoot beneath a warm sun, a town of red-tiled roofs and green fountains, of olive trees stretching in their marching lines as far as the eye could see. And looking at her as she is now, with her sweat-damp brow and her flushed cheeks, he can suddenly see the girl she might have been then.
‘It sounds like a heaven.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Because I had to.’
‘Your father?’
‘He died, at the beginning of the war. He insisted on going, to fight for the Republic.’
‘Is that why you don’t go back? Because—’
‘There isn’t anything to go back for.’
‘Tell me.’
16
Her
December 1936
‘Can we take the bees?’
‘We can’t take the bees, Tino.’ And before he can protest, ‘I’m sorry – but they’ll be all right on their own. You’ve always told me that they are good at taking care of themselves.’
I can see him make an effort to be brave. And then he asks: ‘Señor Bombón? Can we take him?’
‘Well …’ I think. ‘I suppose there’s no reason not to.’
‘And Aunt Aída will be pleased to see him.’
‘Yes. I’m sure she will.’
We have to leave. The war is coming here. We can hear it, only a few miles away. At times it can be seen, too: a whitening on the horizon like false lightning. The planes see us now. We have become a target. Two days ago a bomb fell near the centre of the town, killing a young woman not much older than myself, and an elderly man too far gone in years to have anything to do with war. Even if Tino wanted to run outside to watch them, I would not let him – the thought is unthinkable now. He does not, though. In a few months, he has become a different little boy. His face has altered. I am not feeding him enough, I know – there is not enough food – but I do not think it is just that. It is the change that this war, and Papa’s death, has wrought in him.
I am convinced that if we stay we will wake one morning and find it here, on our own doorstep. I have explained as much to Tino as is necessary.
‘But I thought you said that they wouldn’t harm us, because we’re children?’
‘No.’ There is talk on the radio of the bombing of schoolhouses. ‘But it doesn’t hurt to be sure. And Aunt Aída and Uncle Salvador are waiting for us, in Madrid.’
This isn’t quite true. I have sent them a telegram. No reply – and no time to wait for one. No way of telling if it has even reached them. In his telegram, the one in which he told me that Papa had been killed, my uncle told me to stay put. Madrid no es seguro. But it is not safe here any more, either. And the truth is, I’m not sure that I can protect Tino properly. Not on my own. I’m not sure that I want to try.
In our cases: clothes, a little food, and supplies for Señor Bombón, put together at great pains by Tino. Also several colouring books for Tino, and a collection of various books about pirates: his latest obsession, perhaps because we have never seen the sea. When all of this is over, I think I will take him there.
It is very cold when we leave the house, and a freezing mist hangs low over the ground. We walk for an hour, as far as the main road to Madrid. As we reach it, a fine rain begins to fall and then, gradually, worsens, sweeping over us in curtains. Through the hush of its falling comes the occasional staccato of gunfire, somewhere in the west, somewhere near. Every so often, there is a yowl from Señor Bombón’s cage, and Tino crouches down to whisper words of encouragement to him.
‘Be brave,’ he says, ‘be brave.’
We wait for an hour, trying to shelter beneath the branches of an old olive, which seems to have wandered out of the marching lines of its compatriots to stand here beside the road. I am beginning to wonder if I have made the right decision. There is nothing going towards the capital – though we have seen several trucks pass in the opposite direction, carrying soldiers.
We are waiting on the main route
from Valencia to Madrid – I had thought it would be easy. But this is the first time I have left the town and its surrounds since the beginning of the war. The scope of my own ignorance frightens me.
Finally, just as I am starting to calculate the journey home, and whether Tino will make it – or if I will have to carry him and Señor Bombón – there is the sound of an engine. Several engines, in fact. In the distance a black mass grows larger. They are going in the right direction. We crouch behind the olive, and watch, until I see the flag. Only then do I step out into the road, raising my arm. The first truck graunches to a halt: there are three others behind.
The driver leans from his cabin and shouts: ‘What are you doing? I could have hit you!’
‘Please,’ I walk towards him. ‘We need to get to Madrid.’
He frowns, wipes sweat from his brow. ‘Why, child? Others are leaving fast as they can.’
‘I know. We have nowhere else to go. We have family there.’
He looks from me to Tino, shakes his head. ‘Vale. Fine, OK. You can climb in.’
I lift Tino into the driver’s cabin next to him, our small bag, Señor Bombón – protesting furiously – in his cage. I scramble up beside them.
We have joined a convoy of supplies to Madrid. In our truck, foodstuffs. In the two behind, weapons.
‘Better stuff now,’ the man – Luis – tells us. ‘From the Russians. Up until recently, our lot have been fighting with guns twenty years old.’
‘Why?’
‘England and France sold us down the river. So the government will buy anything: second-rate planes with the faults plastered over, rifles that backfire, or don’t fire at all – that haven’t been used since the eighteen hundreds. All sold to them at the highest possible price, by charlatans, because they know that we’re desperate. Straight into the pockets of criminals.’
I think of my father, who had to my knowledge never fired a gun, trying to use one of these useless weapons against a trained soldier. Was that how he went?
In the thick air inside the truck the smell of the supplies form a powerful, not entirely pleasant fug: a petroleum tang combined with the distinctive sweetish hum of meat that has spent too long in the warm. I pull Tino close to me, and press my nose to the top of his head. Normally, he might wriggle away from me: he feels he is getting too old for such embraces, I know. But since Papa’s death he has been different. He remains where he is, in my arms. Gradually, lulled by the heat and the sway of the truck, I let my eyes close.
