Inside, the house was not so fragrant. Its plumbing arrangements were more primitive than I had become accustomed to in London, though the lack of a bath with running water concerned me less than it did Aidan. Unlike in Haverth, the bathroom was inside the building here, and it was not such a trial to bring hot water from the kitchen stove no more than two yards away. The lavatory, which was a lean-to in the courtyard, was shared with the tenants of the flat downstairs. It smelt, rather. I resolved to buy some bleach.
“So…” Aidan opened the door next to the bathroom and peered in. “Yes, this must be your room, the one with the view over the sea. And don’t worry, I won’t be on the sofa. There are two bedrooms.”
“But the other one does not look over the sea?”
“Not according to the landlady. But both my Italian and the telephone line were weak, so don’t bet on it.”
I nearly reached out to touch his hand, but resisted. “Thank you, Aidan. Thank you so much for bringing me to this place. I shall be a good housekeeper, I promise. I will keep both rooms, and the rest of the apartment, perfectly clean.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, smiling.
“But it would make our story more convincing if we do not employ a maid, wouldn’t it?”
“It would.”
“Then I shall be the maid,” I concluded with satisfaction.
Castiglioncello was as Aidan had described. Fashionable hotels catered for fashionable visitors who walked with their small dogs or small children, or both, by the sea and through the pine-shaded gardens. Flocks of swifts wheeled in the sky and settled on rooftops. Around the bay nestled private villas. Secretive, mostly hidden by greenery, it was only when the sunlight flashed upon their windows that they could be seen. When I asked who lived there, Aidan said simply, “Millionaires.”
“Like the director of your film? What’s his name again?”
“Giovanni Bassini.”
“And how do you know him?”
“Through his son, Stefano. He and I were at school together. They live partly in London and partly in Italy, you see.”
He seemed in a loquacious mood, so I continued my questioning. “So he gave you this part even though you were sacked from Innocence?”
“Thanks for reminding me, dearie.”
“A pleasure, dearie.” I was learning to speak to Aidan in a way I had never spoken to anyone else. He had the knack of freeing his conversation from polite restraint while remaining inoffensive.
“Well,” he said, “I came out to their place here a couple of years ago for a holiday, and when Giovanni heard I was an actor he said he’d keep me in mind the next time he was casting. I didn’t think anything would come of it, as in this business people promise you things all the time, but I received a telephone call from the casting director just after Christmas, so I did a screen test for Giovanni and you know the rest.”
Aidan himself could have rented a villa or stayed at one of the expensive hotels. But he had taken the modest apartment for the same reason he wished me to attend Italian lessons. Verisimilitude. Not attracting attention. An ordinary actor and his unmarried female cousin with too much time on her hands. We did not eat in well-appointed restaurants or visit the bathing stations. We were not there for a holiday – Aidan did not need to remind me.
Although we were further south than Lerici, Italy’s north-western coast was exactly as the picture in the book had shown. Every day the air was sweeter, the sun higher, the ocean warmer than the day before. Each morning a cheerful driver called Angelo would arrive to collect Aidan, who would climb into the car, his camera swinging on a strap round his neck, and he and Angelo would roar off, spraying dust and small stones behind them. Aidan was never without his camera. When I questioned this, he asked, “How can anyone not wish to capture this enchanting landscape?”
“But in photographs everything looks grey,” I protested.
He gave me an exaggeratedly exasperated look. “Spoken like a true philistine, who cannot see art when it is under her nose.”
I tried to remonstrate, but his next words silenced me. “What do you think the art director, the cinematographer and the lighting designer do while a film is being made? Sit and eat chocolates? And do you think you are any less riotously beautiful on the screen because you appear in tones of grey, as you say?”
And then there was the language school itself. Its proprietor was nothing like Signor Lingo; Signora Carro turned out to be a petite, unassumingly charming woman of about forty who spoke English and French well – she had studied in Paris and London, she said. I was assigned to the beginners’ conversation class, which took place each morning at eleven o’clock. My fellow students were well-to-do ladies of several nationalities. The wives, I concluded, of the millionaires. We sat in a circle and, guided by Signora Carro and our textbook, began very soon to communicate with one another in almost-recognizable Italian. It was so interesting that I was sorry I would not be there long enough to learn the language properly. But when I asked Aidan how long we would be here, he shrugged, smiled sunnily and said, “How long is a piece of string?”
In truth, I did not care. A feeling of predestination had descended upon me in Castiglioncello. Whatever happened would happen. Aidan, Giovanni Bassini, his son Stefano, my dear mam and da, Frank and his framed cells, Florence and her perceptiveness – everyone who had shaped the events of the past few months must play their roles. Italy, I knew without question, would provide a dramatic, perhaps even the most dramatic, scene in the story of us all.
“What if David doesn’t come?” I asked Aidan after three weeks had passed with no sign of him.
“He will.”
“But what if he doesn’t? I mean, supposing he’s ill, or working on another film, or—”
“Clara, will you stop worrying about things that have not happened, and may never happen?”
“But that is what worrying is! Once something’s happened, there’s no point.”
He looked at me in exasperation. We were dawdling along the main street, our arms full of loaves of bread and tomatoes and cheese from the market. It was past one o’clock; the sun was getting strong. I had on the hat from which I refused to be separated, and a thin dress. My legs were already so tanned I had no need for stockings. Mam, who was of the generation that favoured pale skin on legs and everywhere else, would stare when she saw them. But Florence and Mary would be delighted. Mary always looked much better when her face caught the sun and her freckles emerged, and she knew it. She never wore a sunhat.
“Why are you dreading David’s arrival?” asked Aidan accusingly. “Everything will be perfectly all right!”
“Will it? Supposing he doesn’t go along with what I suggest? Supposing he’s contrite, and falls to his knees or something? You can’t predict what he’ll do.”
“Clara, stop worrying!” We had reached the courtyard. Aidan shifted his packages and fumbled in the pocket of his trousers for the key. “Don’t think about what David will or won’t do, or whether he’ll even arrive in the first place. Think about what you are going to do, which is much more important. You always show more concern for other people than yourself.”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh as we began to climb the stairs. “I have been told that I have a tendency to do that.”
“Look.” He put the shopping down and reached for his cigarettes. “After lunch we’ll do a proper rehearsal, all right?” He searched his pockets for his lighter. “Just like we used to do on Innocence. I’ll be David, and we’ll try to cover every eventuality. Does that make you feel better?”
I did not answer.
“Where the devil’s that blessed lighter? Oh, these’ll do.” He took the kitchen matches from the shelf, lit his cigarette and threw the spent match into the sink. He caught sight of my face and his expression changed. “What’s the matter? You’re not going to get cold feet at the last minute, are you?”
I was not going to get cold feet. My gratitude to Aidan would not allow
it. Into my darkest bewilderment he had shone a light. But his words about being David had struck me. “No, I don’t think so. It’s just…”
“What is it, Clara?” He was not impatient, but his breath had shortened and he was watching my face nervously.
“It’s stupid,” I confessed. “You’ll laugh at me.”
“I will not.”
“Um … well, you said that you would be David, but that just seems, you know, odd. You being David. I mean playing David.”
He went on looking at me, his eyes expressionless. I swallowed and went on.
“You see, I had never known any man before David. No one had ever taken notice of me, and courted me, and bought me things, and so on. And” – embarrassed, I began to slice bread and unwrap cheese – “well, you are a man, Aidan, but you are not David.”
I did not look at him. When he spoke, his voice was stifled. “So you are saying that it is difficult for you to imagine me as David.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Because you are in love with him and you are not in love with me?”
A thick silence fell in the small, old-fashioned kitchen. My heart beat fast. I laid the bread knife on the board, afraid that my hands were trembling too much to cut another slice. I raised my eyes to his. The blank look had been replaced by one so intense I could almost imagine the camera was rolling. Yet it was not Aidan’s “acting” look. Something darted through me from my head to my toes, as suddenly as a bullet. Something that warmed me and made my cheeks blaze.
It was unexpectedly difficult to say his name. “Ai…” I began, then changed my mind and began again. “I only know,” I said as steadily as I could, “that if what I felt for David was not love, then I do not know what it was. But I do not know what I feel for you.”
His gaze fell, and he took several quick puffs on his cigarette without blowing much smoke out between them. “Is that the honest truth?” he asked.
“That is the honest truth.”
“You do not despise me?”
“Despise you? Oh…”
My face still felt very hot but, propelled by a feeling stronger than embarrassment, I went and embraced him. He made no attempt to pull me closer to him; he barely even moved, as if he hardly noticed that I was there. But something inside my brain released itself, like a knot untying. I felt my scalp and neck muscles relax. Perhaps the time would come when I could do ordinary things again. Perhaps I would walk down some street with some man, laughing and talking. I had been unaware of the tension in my body, but now my attention was drawn to my physical presence. It was as if I had opened a door and seen myself standing there in the kitchen, and glimpsed the future.
“If I despised you once,” I told him, “that is because I was an ignorant child. Now I am no longer ignorant, and no longer a child, though you must make up your own mind what I am.” I stood back and, bashfulness getting the better of me, turned back to my bread and cheese.
“I know what you are, Clara,” he said to my back. His voice was low, and full of forgiveness and relief. “You are far too good for me.”
A sound like the drone of a thousand bees awakened me, though I barely knew I had been asleep.
Then Aidan’s footsteps crossed the courtyard and hurried up the stone stairs. He found me sitting on our narrow balcony, as I did every afternoon when it was too warm to go out walking, and crouched in front of my chair. Through a still-sleepy haze I looked at his sun-touched face and unruly hair. He looked younger than usual, less like an actor and more like an excited boy. I had to stifle the desire to take his face between my hands. “What was that funny noise?” I asked.
“Noise? Oh, never mind about that, that’s just my motorcycle. The point is, David’s arrived!”
“Oh! Why have you got a motorcycle?”
“Because I’m fed up with waiting for that scoundrel Angelo to drive me around. He’s always late, and he’s a worse drunkard than I am. But don’t you want to hear my news? Giovanni told me today that David and some companions have arrived for a stay at his villa. Stefano, Giovanni’s son, is coming from Rome, too, so there is bound to be a party, to which I will be invited. I’ve mentioned ‘my cousin Sarah’ to Giovanni on several occasions, and he’s always looking out for a nice girl for Stefano, though Stefano wouldn’t know a nice girl from a hole in the ground, so I don’t think it will be difficult to get you an invitation too.”
As he talked, I watched his eyes. “The eyes have it” was the popular phrase to describe good acting, a pun on the pronouncement of a triumphant bill in the House of Commons: “the ayes have it”.
Aidan’s eyes had more “it” than I had ever seen, except when he was acting. There was a light in them, an alertness, a desire to move ahead and get something done.
“So we have to do it at this party, or never?”
He nodded. “No rehearsals and no script, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll be so nervous!”
He stood up. In the small balcony space, his body obscured the sun. I could not see his features, but his voice was determined. “Tell me something, Clara. Do you think you could learn to ride a motorcycle?” He was leaning against the balustrade, arms folded, with the smallest of breezes lifting the forelock of his hair. There was a question in his eyes, but excitement too.
“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “I can already.”
He was very surprised. “Really?” he asked eagerly. “That’s wonderful! But how come a girl … well, you know…”
“Because of my brother,” I told him. “My film-mad, motor-car mad brother.”
Aidan was interested. He sat down on the floor in the narrow space, braced his feet against the house wall and lit a cigarette. “So he had a motorcycle, did he?”
“No!” I tried not to sound scornful of the idea. “He had a bicycle. But one day during the war, when he was about twelve, a soldier stopped at the Lamb and Flag for a drink of water. All the boys wanted a ride on his motorcycle, of course. The poor soldier had to fight them off. And ever since that day, Frank went on and on about getting a motorcycle.”
“And he never did?”
I shook my head. “But he did rent one. He said Bobby Pritchard’s father let him borrow his motorcycle, but I knew money had changed hands.” I paused, remembering. “It was an ex-army 1915 Triumph Model H.”
Aidan laughed. “Not many girls know things like that! So did you ride it too?”
“Of course. I told Frank if he didn’t let me, I’d tell Mam and Da that he was paying Mr Pritchard out of the money he got from Da for doing farm chores and was supposed to be saving.”
“And how did it feel to ride a motorcycle?”
Vivid memories arose. After repeated attempts to start the motorcycle and hot-faced frustration, the machine had begun to respond under my hands and feet. I’d flown down the hill with Frank running after me, screeching. “Marvellous,” I said.
“What happened then?” asked Aidan, reaching up to tip ash over the balcony. “Did you get goggles and a scarf, and roar round the village like a lion on two wheels?”
“Well, I rode the motorcycle enough times to understand what to do and what not to do. But the following year Mr Pritchard’s business hit a bad patch and he sold the Triumph, and that was that. I hadn’t even thought about it for years.”
Aidan was still looking amused. In that moment he seemed more carefree than I had ever seen him. His longed-for opportunity to atone for his mother’s unhappiness was near. The plan hatched that day on a bench in Hyde Park was at last underway. Now David had arrived, there was no turning back.
I got to my feet. “The clapperboard’s come down, Aidan, hasn’t it?”
Giovanni Bassini’s villa was exactly as anyone would imagine an Italian film director’s villa to be. It occupied a high spot, with a sea view on three sides. It had a shady verandah and a sunny garden. The floors were marble and the ceilings heavily decorated. Tall glass doors opened from the ballroom onto a terrace, where the danc
ing continued. Parked on the driveway was a line of sleek cars. Lights hung in the trees; waiters scurried about with trays of champagne. A year ago I would have been astounded by the opulence, but when Aidan and I stepped out of the car to be welcomed by Giovanni’s butler, the only surprising thing was how unsurprised I felt.
It was as staged as a film set, and I had seen enough film sets to be weary of them. I had no desire to see what the women were wearing, or which man was or was not attractive, or how expensive anyone’s jewels were. I was so tense that the headache that had started at the back of my head before we left the apartment was now creeping over my entire skull. And I was uncomfortable in the gown that Aidan had picked out for me from a shop in Castiglioncello.
“I don’t like it,” I had protested. “It shows too much of my legs. And it’s too low in the back. What will I wear underneath it?”
“Very little,” Aidan had said. “But it doesn’t matter whether you like it. David’s got to like it.” I had on a pair of French knickers, with suspenders and stockings, but nothing else under the dress, which was made of thin knitted silk. The straps were so narrow I worried that at any time they would fall off my shoulders, and the skirt was so short, I resolved not to sit down for the whole evening. I clasped my evening bag to my chest as I followed Aidan into the party, feeling exposed as never before.
Aidan took hold of my arm and we crossed the room, ducking between dancing couples until we reached the open doors to the terrace. But before we could take another step, Aidan was stopped by a young man. “Allan, no, I should say Aidan! There you are!” he exclaimed, greeting Aidan with an Italian-style embrace.
101 Pieces of Me Page 14
