by John Harvey
Fornaci de Barga.
The road climbed with caution, crossing from one side of the river to the other without apparent reason. Garish wayside signs advertised hotels and pizzerias but the towns themselves were already quiet, closed off for the night; the only life briefly sputtering from small bars where men in work clothes sat and drank, illuminated in a spool of yellowing light. Behind Sloane the dog licked and snuffled in the dark, and all further attempts at conversation were met by Valentina with feigned or real incomprehension.
At Castelnuovo di Garfagnana she relented, following a cobbled street until it opened out into a broad square with cafés on three sides, chairs and tables set outside. Valentina chose the quietest of the three and soon had the young waiter scurrying to and fro with bottles of San Pelegrino, bread, one plate of olives, tomatoes and grilled peppers, another with several different salamis, sliced sausage and wafer-thin ham.
Sloane quickly understood that most of the food was for him; Valentina drank water, nibbled at a crust of bread, tasted one black olive and smoked. She fed sausage to the dog.
‘You don’t approve,’ Sloane said. ‘Jane contacting me. You don’t think …’
‘It is not of my business.’
‘Surely it is.’
Tilting her head backwards, she released a plume of smoke. ‘This thing, whatever it is, between you. It is the past.’
‘Yes, but I’m here now.’
‘Yes.’
Sloane looked across the square as first one scooter, then another noisily circled round before coming to a halt by a group of youths sitting outside one of the other cafés. Shouting and laughter.
‘You have to understand,’ Valentina said, ‘her mind … she is sick, she does not always know where she is. When she wrote to you her mind was clear. It was a long time ago.’
‘She may not know who I am. Is that what you mean?’
Valentina shrugged and stubbed out her cigarette, almost immediately lighting another. Beckoning the waiter, she ordered coffee. ‘Sometimes she does not even know me.’
‘How long have you been together?’ Sloane asked after an interval.
For the first time since he had met her Valentina smiled. ‘She was visiting Montpellier with friends, from Paris. One day they came out to Frontignan, it is near. I had a studio there. That was twenty-one years ago. We came here to Italy, to Verrucole, twelve years ago this May. Almost thirteen.’ She finished her espresso in a single swallow and rose to her feet. ‘Come. We must go.’
Several villages on they were entering the main street of Camporgiano, at the far end of which they turned right down a steep, winding road. A quarter of a mile along Valentina steered off between wrought-iron gates and past the edge of a small vineyard, coming to a halt outside a single-storey building with a large barn to one side, louvred shutters across windows and door.
When Valentina got out the dog stayed in the van. ‘This is where you will sleep tonight.’
Sloane shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. I thought we were nearly there.’
Valentina took a pace back and pointed towards a small scattering of lights faint in the darkened hills. ‘Up there is Verrucole. In the morning you can see Jane. It is her best time.’
‘And this place?’
‘It belongs to a friend of mine. In the summer it is for visitors. Now it is for you.’ Unfastening the shutters, she pulled them back and unlocked the door. ‘There is a bed made up. Coffee in the kitchen. A few other things. Sleep well. I will collect you tomorrow.’
Sloane stood on the broad circle of grass, listening to the sound of the van’s engine until it had faded to nothing and all he could hear were the echoing call of an owl and the wind shuffling stiffly along the branches of the trees.
7
Sloane woke a little before six, close to the furthest edge of the bed. Most of the covers had slipped or been kicked to the floor. He sat up slowly, his head thick and heavy. Opening the window, he unfastened the shutters and pushed them back: breathed in cool air. Birdsong. Hills hazed in violet mist. Pale blue of the sky. His hair, his skin seemed to smell of cigarette smoke; last night’s journey less than real. His body ached.
The water in the shower was tepid at best, the towel rough. In the kitchen he found a small espresso pot by the stove, ready-ground coffee in a paper bag, milk in the fridge. Half a crusted white loaf, butter, cherry jam. He heated water in a pan, filled the coffee pot and set it on a low gas while he shaved. When the coffee was ready he poured it into a bowl, steaming and black, added warmed milk, then carried it outside.
The front of the house was pink with terracotta tiles, the shutters recently painted dark brown. Immediately in front of the door, where Sloane now stood, was a narrow paved area which led to a small well and beyond that a broad expanse of grass with a vineyard to its right and, front and left, two lines of fruit trees coming into blossom. Apple, Sloane wondered? Plum? He thought the corner tree with darker leaves might be quince.
What was certain, now that the light had brightened, the mist all but dispersed, was the beauty of the surrounding hills, folding back one upon another in undulating circles, the varying shades of green and brown broken by sudden outcrops of volcanic rock and, here and there, small clusters of houses, white-walled and red-roofed, each village, however small, with its own church tower.
Only days ago his horizons had been foreshortened by prison guards, prison walls; now they were boundless, the rest of his life a clean slate, a fresh canvas, ready primed.
Except the reason for his coming, the fact that in the midst of all this beauty Jane Graham lay dying.
He was drinking a second cup of coffee, finishing his breakfast of bread and jam, when he heard the van approach. The dog bounded out, showing an energy that took Sloane by surprise, and sniffed good-naturedly at his legs before trotting off in the direction of the vines.
‘You sleep okay?’ Valentina asked.
‘Fine.’ He wondered if she were wearing dark glasses against the brightness of the light, or to disguise the tired puffiness around her eyes.
‘How’s Jane?’ he asked.
‘Rested a little, I think. But come, you will see.’
‘She knows I’m here.’
‘Of course. She is expecting you.’
Valentina whistled the dog, which came at second bidding. Sloane fetched his jacket from inside the house, locked the door and, after a moment’s hesitation, pocketed the key. Valentina reversed into a parking bay beyond the barn, then paused at the gates as a tractor went slowly past.
‘There is a shop, a small supermarket, just back into Camporgiano, at the top of the hill. Later you can get what you need.’
Sloane thanked her and hung on as she accelerated sharply into the road and sped down the hill, as if suddenly aware they were wasting precious time. At the bottom of the valley the road levelled out, bridging a broad, slow-moving river before climbing steeply through a series of tighter and tighter bends. Between the trees – stands of dark fir mixed with beech and sweet chestnut – Sloane saw the ground was enmeshed with patches of brightly coloured spring flowers, yellow, blue and vivid orange, none of which he could name.
At San Romano the road angled to the right, before rising again towards what Sloane could clearly see were the ruins of a substantial fortress, open to the sky.
‘The Fortress delle Verrucole,’ Valentina said, preempting his question. ‘Built by the Estensi in the fifteenth century.’ She glanced across at him. ‘You know history? The history of my country?’
Sloane shook his head. A few staples aside, like Harold and the arrow and the princes in the Tower, outside of the twentieth century Sloane was pretty shaky on his own.
Valentina accelerated again, drawing a protesting whine from the engine: one more incline and, when the road they were following veered off sharply to the right, Valentina swung the van left and they had arrived.
Dwarfed by the fortress, the tiny village of Verrucole lay clustered in it
s shadow. To one side of the road was a skimpy general store and bar; on the other the scarred stone of a medieval bell tower and a small more recent church alongside.
‘Here,’ Valentina said, pointing towards a square building, separated by a flagged path and low stone wall from the church, which it faced.
From the outside the house was large and, Sloane thought, ugly; the green-shuttered windows on both floors the sole relief from flat plastered walls painted a paler, fading green. Left and right of the steps leading to the main door, a pair of semi-abstract figures faced one another across a gravelled courtyard, thick-limbed, life-sized, stone arms outstretched in combat or reconciliation.
‘Remember, she is very sick.’ Dog swerving between her legs, Valentina went swiftly into the house, leaving Sloane to follow.
Jane Graham lay on a white bed at the centre of a white room, dwarfed by everything around her. White sheets, white pillows, slack and sallow skin: sepulchres, Sloane thought, shrouds. An oxygen mask, cylinder close by. Coiled tubing. Water jug and glass. A needle taped inside her arm. One of her own paintings, purple and mauve, hung from the facing wall. On a pedestal between the bed and the far corner of the room, almost mockingly, stood a bronze of the dying woman in her prime, the work of Valentina’s hands. The smell of sickness hung sweet and heady in the air.
As if aware of their presence, Jane’s breathing changed and slowly she raised her head and opened her eyes. Her voice when she spoke Sloane’s name was barely above a whisper, faint and harsh.
Valentina lifted her gently, easily, rearranged her pillows, settled her back down and stepped away.
Leaning forward, Sloane rested his lips, lightly, upon Jane’s forehead and then her cheek. Her skin was damp and coarse, and patched with sweat. Most of the hair had gone from her head. The backs of her hands and wrists were spotted with dark ruptures of blood.
‘You came.’
Sloane opened his mouth but the words stalled on his tongue.
She smiled, the vestige of a smile, and there were tears in her eyes. She patted the sheet, summoning him to sit, and when he did so seized his fingers with her own. ‘I may not be able to talk for long, so you must listen. Please. Let me say what I have to say.’
Sloane nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘When I first came to Europe, all those years ago …’ She turned her head aside to cough and Sloane realised that Valentina had slipped from the room, leaving them alone.
‘When I left for France, left you, left New York and all my friends, I was pregnant with your child.’
Low inside Sloane’s stomach something kicked and turned. The backs of his legs like sudden ice.
‘I was going to have an abortion, in Paris, that was what I thought. It just … when it came to it …’ She broke off as the coughing resumed, harsher than before. Sloane poured water from the jug and held the glass as she sipped. Her breathing steadied and she reached for him again, her fingers like twigs against the back of his hand. ‘Connie was born in April. April the third. Forty-two years ago.’
Now it was Sloane who was finding it difficult to breathe. Pushing himself from the bed, he took three paces towards the door and stopped; strode towards the wall and stared at the face reflected back at him from shuttered glass.
‘Please, don’t be angry. Please.’
‘Then what? I mean, what the fuck …? Why’re you … I mean, does she know me? Does she even know who I am?’
‘No, she doesn’t know …’
Sloane slammed his fist against the wall.
‘She doesn’t know who you are.’
‘Then why now? Why tell me fucking now?’
‘Because this bloody disease … Because I’m going to fucking die.’ She cramped forward, creased by a sudden blade of pain.
Sloane had scarcely noticed Valentina coming back into the room. Now he stood and watched as she eased Jane back into a comfortable position and fitted the mask over her face, adjusting the flow of the oxygen. ‘Go for a walk,’ she ordered Sloane. ‘Clear your head and then come back.’
Sloane crossed the dusty street towards a statue of the Virgin Mary and gazed down into the other side of the valley. Jane’s words raced headlong round his brain. Forty-two. A child. Perhaps you’ll be in Paris soon yourself. You’ll look me up. Another world. Another life. Another life other than his own. Connie, was that what she’d said?
At the bar he ordered a brandy and stood out on the terrace while he drank it, unable to sit down. What was he supposed to believe? What the hell was he supposed to feel? He drained his glass and set off back towards the house. Fresh flowers had recently been placed either side of a marble slab attached to the tower wall. Verrucole Ai Suoi Caduti In Guerra. 1915–1918. 1940–1945. Eight names remembered, eight dead. When he looked up towards the fortress and the hills beyond the exhilaration of their beauty had faded, his freedom no longer untrammelled, but laid siege to by his past.
Valentina had lifted the mask away, readjusted the pillows, wiped Jane’s mouth and dried her eyes. When Sloane reappeared in the doorway she spoke reassuringly into her ear, kissed her on the mouth.
‘Listen,’ she said to Sloane. ‘This is not all about you.’ A long, warning look and she withdrew.
Sloane hesitated, uncertain what to say or do.
‘Please.’ Jane’s fingers tapped the sheet. ‘Come back and sit down.’
This time he took her hand, cautious lest he press too hard.
‘I always wondered,’ she said, ‘if I should have told you at the time.’ Her voice so quiet he had to lean forward to hear. ‘But you were just a boy – no, it’s true, you were – just starting out, you didn’t want that sort of responsibility …’
Sloane shook his head. ‘How can you say that? How could you know?’
‘Maybe I couldn’t, you’re right. But I thought I did. And later, telling Connie, when she was old enough to ask, it didn’t seem to make sense.’
‘You brought her up alone?’
‘Yes, more or less.’
He glanced towards the door. ‘Then Valentina …?’
‘We didn’t meet until later. Connie was well into her teens.’ She smiled with her eyes, remembering, then frowned. ‘It made for a rocky patch, I can tell you that. Ended with Connie going to New York. To sing. That’s what she does. Or did, at least. There was this big row, ten years ago. I haven’t seen her since.’
‘Or heard?’
‘A few letters, asking for money. The last was, oh, a long time back.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Jane’s fingers made a fist inside his hand. ‘I want you to find her. Talk to her. Make peace between us. All of us.’
Sloane’s head was starting to throb.
‘Say you’ll do it, please. Promise me.’
‘I don’t know.’ He could no longer look her in the eye.
‘She’s your daughter, for God’s sake.’
He stared at her then, not knowing what to say, what he wanted to believe.
‘Please.’
Again he looked away. ‘Okay. All right. If I can.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Thank you.’ He could barely hear the words. A smile brushed her face and again her fingers stirred inside his hand. Turning her head into the pillow, she closed her eyes. Within moments, exhausted, she was fast asleep.
8
For the remainder of the day Jane drifted in and out of consciousness, and Valentina, more relaxed in her own surroundings, offered to show Sloane around. Her own studio, to the rear, was a jumble of tools and sketches, pieces of unworked stone; Polaroids of finished projects were tacked haphazardly to the walls, a slab of pink-hued marble, newly worked, dominating the centre of the room. A film of opaque dust lay over everything.
Jane’s studio, on the first floor, was not so different from Sloane’s own. The same bottles filled and refilled with white spirit, similar cans stuffed with brushes of all sizes, tubes of paint and sticks of
charcoal, sketch pads and pencils, curled sheets of paper, globs of colour crusted on to table top and floor. The wall behind her desk had been filled with postcards of other painters’ work, pages torn from newspapers and magazines, photographs of herself and Valentina in Venice, others taken in a city which might have been Rome; one, alone, of Jane as Sloane had first known her – a young woman standing on a New York street, white blouse, dark skirt, feet set firm upon the sidewalk, one arm raised pointing at the camera, mouth open in a smile.
Sketches and preparatory studies, often little more than overlapping bands of colour, were pinned, one above the other, along the remaining walls. Stretched in a position where it got most light, recently started, a large canvas had been covered evenly in silver grey, a single slash of vermilion like a cut above the mid-point, quick and clean.
Elsewhere in the house – living room, dining room, hall and stairs – other paintings and sculptures sat easily among the high-backed chairs, the oak tables, the low settees.
When the tour was over and Valentina left him to check on Jane, Sloane went back to the trio of abstracts hanging opposite the marble fireplace in the dining room, each canvas no more than 60 centimetres by 45. Abstract, yes, but now that he had seen where Jane had lived the last years of her life, Sloane could see in them not just the colours, but the shapes of the mountains, the surrounding hills. He was still standing there when Valentina returned.
‘You like these?’
‘Very much.’
‘The work she did here, these last years … She was content, more calm.’
Sloane thought about the unfinished painting in Jane’s studio, that brilliant tear of angry red. Something that beat inside her still, unquenched.
They had lunch in the walled garden at the back of the house: pasta e fagioli, all the better for being made the day before; roast aubergines and peppers steeped in olive oil, bruschetta and blue cheese. Red wine.
‘You meant what you said?’ Valentina asked. ‘To Jane. Before. Connie, you will go and look for her?’
Sloane studied her for a moment across the table. ‘It’s what I said.’
