by Karen Swan
She tipped her head to the other side and wondered whether Vito would come to her tonight. She hoped not. It was a Thursday. He didn’t usually visit her bed on a Thursday – Tuesday, Friday and Sunday was his preferred pattern – but he’d been growing concerned about her continuing inability to fall pregnant and had surprised her recently with some ad hoc visits, surprising her yet further with some new positions, claiming it was perhaps the fact that she didn’t climax that was hindering conception. Nothing to do with the fact that she was now almost thirty-seven.
Had Vito chosen the wines yet for the dinner they were hosting a week Saturday? she wondered. The cook couldn’t prepare a menu without knowing the wines they’d be serving and the food would need to be ordered by tomorrow. Seventy-two for dinner couldn’t be done off the hoof.
And how had they left it about Cannes? If they couldn’t get the yacht round in time from Mustique, then really what was the poin—?
Like a dog sniffing the wind, she suddenly caught a trace of something. She turned her head fractionally. What was it?
On stage, the silly girls flirted with their suitors, but she couldn’t hear them. It was as though silence had been turned on to max and was blasting around the auditorium. All her other senses dialled up – colour became almost painfully intense to her eyes, she could feel the individual fibres of the velvet pile of her chair against her leg, the appley tang of the prosecco still lingered on her tongue, she could smell Shalimar and Poison, cigarettes; dual notes of leather and cinnamon drifted to her nose.
She stiffened, understanding immediately, her body responding sightlessly, wordlessly. She could feel his stare as though it was a hundred fingers on her skin, in her hair.
The door opened again, Vito quietly shuffling into his seat, which was set slightly behind her, coughing discreetly into his fist. Always so proper. Always so considerate.
She didn’t move her head, her eyes raking the crowd in the dim light for the face that she dreamed of seeing again, even though she saw it every day. The face she had loved at first sight and then second.
He was sitting in the dress circle, not quite opposite them, his eyes burning into her. She saw it all – his anger, his lust, his despair that even now, a year and a half later, it was quite clearly exactly the same as it had been then. Nothing had changed. The sacrifice had been worthless.
He was deeply tanned, Elena noticed. A blonde woman in navy chiffon sat to his right. She leaned over, whispering something in his ear, forcing him to break eye contact, and to Elena the sudden release felt like being dropped from a great height; her stomach felt hollow, panic gripping her. They were at an impasse, the two of them simultaneously held together and forced apart by a gravity that would not ever let them go.
Because she was the reason he’d left.
And he was the reason she’d stayed.
‘Darling, you’re burning up.’ Vito’s hand was cool against her skin.
‘I know, I’m . . . I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He leant down and kissed her tenderly on her parched lips. ‘It’s not your fault. We can go anytime. I’ll call and rearrange. They’ll understand.’
‘No!’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I mean, you go. There’s no need for both of us to miss out on the fun. I’m sure he’s got plenty of stories to tell. And it’s been so long since you saw each other. You know Aurelio, there’s no telling when he might disappear again. See him while you’ve got the chance.’
Vito sank onto the edge of the bed. ‘But I hate leaving you like this.’
‘I’m fine. I’ve got Maria to look after me.’
‘Well . . .’ He looked uncertain. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Besides, you need to report back on his sexy new girlfriend. Although don’t you go falling in love with her too,’ she joked.
He chuckled. ‘As if I could ever have eyes for anyone but you.’ He kissed her forehead again.
‘Do you think it’s serious between them?’
Vito sighed. ‘Perhaps. He’s certainly never been bothered about introducing any of his women to me before. Who knows? Maybe she’s tamed him. I guess it had to happen at some time or other.’
‘Can tigers be tamed?’ she quipped.
He patted her hand and rose, looking as elegant as ever in his pale-grey Zegna jacket and navy trousers, a navy spotted handkerchief tucked in the breast pocket. ‘I won’t be late.’
‘Take your time. I’ll be asleep within the hour anyway.’
‘It’s no wonder you’re exhausted. You’ve taken on far too much lately. You’ve been a woman possessed.’
‘Yes, well . . . Lesson learnt.’
The door clicked behind him and she listened to the sound of his footsteps retreating down the long, long corridors. She could tell from the number of silences as he crossed the rugs exactly which gallery he was in, until eventually the extended silence told her he was gone.
She stared up at the ceiling – a fresco of cherubim frolicking on pink clouds. She’d always hated it.
She turned away onto her side, facing the windows that gave onto the courtyard and the blank windows of the west wing, which had remained defiantly dark for three long days now. He had kept his presence at the opera a secret from Vito, disappearing straight after the performance and making no contact, no sign he was in town at all, until he had breezily telephoned yesterday to suggest dinner at the Aventine Hill apartment of his new love, Milana Novelli. She was a twenty-something starlet currently riding high on the back of a well-received supporting role in the latest Fellini film.
Elena closed her eyes, a single tear dropping from her lashes onto the Frette sheets. Did he really think she would have gone there tonight, to sit across from them at the table as new love shone in their eyes, Milana’s slim, unlined hand on his thigh?
Probably not. She knew what it was as well as he – a glove on the ground, a statement of intent. Milana was the most beautiful of diversions, a buffer, there to enforce the necessary distance between them. And he was right. He had to do it. She wanted him to do it. They both needed him to do it.
But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Rome, August 2017
Slowly but surely, Cesca was working her way through the thousand rooms of the palace. Today’s interview was taking place in a hitherto unknown space – Elena’s private sitting room. It was set just off from the grand space of the white sitting room, which, she now learned, was merely for ‘entertaining’.
It was clear they were in the inner sanctum here. The room led directly to Elena’s bedroom – an exquisite dometented Napoleon bed was just visible through the crack in the door – with views of the courtyard and the west wing. It had been decorated in a discreet, restful chinoiserie with duck-egg-blue silk walls, pale-grey curtains and blush sofas. Cesca thought it was like sitting in a dream. Old-fashioned roses from the garden sat in a Lalique crystal bowl, black-and-white photos were arranged in dense clusters in silver frames and a large round tasselled ottoman was carefully stacked with coffee-table books on Richard Avedon, the Royal Gardens of England, Bulgari jewels, Delft stoneware, modern apartments of Paris . . . The room stood as apart from the palazzo as the white room did: more a statement of Elena’s personality than the building in which it was contained. It was a room that could just as easily have been found in London’s Chelsea or Manhattan’s Upper East Side – tasteful, discreet, gentle, it lacked the almost brutal lavishness of the rest of the palazzo. Cesca felt she could breathe more easily in here – that the secrets she felt pulsating behind every tapestry, every statue, every portrait, had been stopped at the door.
Elena was arranged on the sofa in cream slacks and a soft jumper, a cashmere blanket draped over her legs, even though it was almost thirty degrees outside. She had come down with a heavy cold – ‘one of the great bores of getting older, this falling ill at the drop of a hat,’ she had muttered as Alberto served the
tea.
‘So, where are we?’ she asked, glancing only vaguely at the photographs Cesca had fanned out for her.
Cesca smiled. ‘Vito.’
Elena inhaled deeply and sank back into the cushions, a radiant smile on her face. ‘Oh, my darling Vito. Finally. When my life began in earnest. Everything that preceded it was just a dress rehearsal.’
Cesca sank back into her chair, too. She could hardly believe she was getting paid for this – tea and a chat. It felt almost wrong to accept the money. ‘Tell me about how the two of you met.’
‘Well, formally, it was on Christmas Eve, 1980, at a drinks reception here. I know it was 1980 because Yves had just shown his Diaghilev collection and I bought pretty much the entire thing.’ She shook her head disdainfully. ‘I’m not usually so extravagant.’
‘You always talk about him as the love of your life.’
‘Who? Yves?’ Elena laughed, enjoying her little joke.
‘Vito,’ Cesca grinned. ‘Was there an immediate connection between you?’
‘Oh my dear, it was love at first sight! We were married within weeks. We eloped to Venice, you know; we just couldn’t wait to be man and wife.’
‘You eloped? Wow. He really did sweep you off your feet! Where did you honeymoon?’
‘On Mustique. Lord Snowdon was a friend and very generously lent us his villa as a wedding present. So sweet.’
Cesca frowned a little. ‘Hmm, I don’t recall having come across any of those photos, though, and I think I’m up to about 1985, 1986 now.’
‘That is odd. I’ll ask Alberto to do another search.’ Elena frowned. ‘The archivist may have filed them separately for some reason, although I can’t really think why . . . Oh, I do hope they’re not mislaid.’
‘I’m sure not. And I’ll double-check the boxes again. I could have overlooked a file. Your archivist really was incredibly thorough. Everything’s dated in separate envelopes.’
‘Well, he was certainly paid enough for it.’ Elena closed her eyes. ‘Honestly, Francesca, it was exhausting. I had to give him lists of every place we’d been, every year. Can you imagine?’
For a globetrotter like Elena? No! ‘How on earth did you manage it?’
‘I had to go through all my old diaries. Mother used to be very particular about it, it was one of the few things she insisted upon – that I simply had to record my day on paper. She said it would be a historical record one day, although I fear she was rather overstating our family’s importance.’
Cesca’s ears had pricked up. ‘You’ve got diaries? But that’s brilliant—’
‘Oh heavens, no, you can’t use those!’ Elena said, heading her off at the pass. ‘You’d die of boredom, they’re just the scribblings of a lucky little rich girl who became a princess.’
‘Precisely!’
‘No, no, you flatter me, but people don’t want to hear me moan about whatever mundane trivialities I may have had going on. People like me aren’t allowed to complain, Francesca. We’ve already got the lion’s share of luck. It’s poor form to be ungrateful.’
Cesca could see she had a point – no one was going to feel sympathy if they ran out of milk on the yacht. Nonetheless, they needed some sort of balance, the text was going to need some body, otherwise it was going to read like a puff piece, stroking Elena’s ego and with no credibility whatsoever. Once they were through with the photographic interviews and she had established this preliminary timeline of Elena’s life, she intended to knuckle down to the next stage of some serious fact-checking and research, and those diaries could be invaluable for providing a bit more tone for the events as they happened. The problem with hindsight and recollecting events in posterity was that everything tended to be viewed through rose-tinted spectacles.
‘I really do think it would be worthwhile me having a quick scan of them, at least. I’m sure there must be all sorts of anecdotes you’ve forgotten, which could really add colour to the book.’
‘Trust me, I’m doing you a kindness, Francesca. They wouldn’t add anything of note.’
She was smiling – but there was steel in her eyes, and Cesca knew better now than to try to force the issue. Still, the kernel of another idea began to present itself in her mind. If they couldn’t use the diaries for the book, could this be the exclusive for her blog she’d been looking for? She had no doubt her readers would love nothing more than the edited diary extracts of one of Rome’s most noted socialites.
Biting her tongue, knowing now wasn’t the time to moot the suggestion, she pointed instead to a photo of Elena and Vito sitting on the bonnet of a silver Ferrari. Elena was sitting slightly behind her husband, her chin nestled in his neck as they both looked to the camera. She was wearing flared jeans and a navy t-shirt, a headscarf covering her long hair. She did indeed look truly happy, her eyes shining. Vito was more relaxed, one foot propped up on the fender, and a hand clasping the arm that she had slung lovingly around his neck. They looked as if they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
‘You made such a beautiful couple.’
Elena reached forwards for it, staring at it with misted eyes. ‘Thank you. Love does that, doesn’t it? You just . . . glow, from the inside out. We were travelling to Positano that day. He’d just picked up the car from Maranello. Always such a little boy at heart.’
‘Oh, talking of little boys,’ Cesca said, suddenly remembering something. Their interview had been cut short the other day. ‘You said Vito was a twin?’
‘That’s right. His brother was called Aurelio. Younger by fourteen minutes.’ She tutted, shaking her head. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? They spent nine months together in the womb, yet by dint of Vito coming out first, he inherited the titles, the estates . . . just everything. Those fourteen minutes changed the entire direction of both their lives.’
‘What did Aurelio do? I assume he didn’t need to work?’
‘No, but it rarely benefits those who don’t. Ah, now there’s a question. What did he do? Well, let me see – latterly he worked as a banker in Hong Kong, but before I met Vito, he had spent some time as a racing driver for Alfa Romeo, and then he worked as a stunt man on a film set. Vito had employed him to run the vineyards up in Chianti for a while but he took off after a year or so. And by the time I met Vito, his brother was running a safari business in Kenya, although by all accounts that mainly involved sitting on a deck drinking gin and having affairs with his friends’ wives.’
‘Nice,’ Cesca said, thinking precisely the opposite.
‘Oh, they were all at it; you know what it’s like in the colonies. He ended up leaving when one particularly irate husband shot him in the chest.’
‘Good God.’
‘Yes,’ Elena sighed. ‘He was lucky to survive.’
‘Was the husband who shot him prosecuted?’
‘Heavens, no. Reli understood the poor man was perfectly within his rights.’
‘To shoot him in the chest?’
‘Of course. He’d been having it off with his wife, what did he expect? It was par for the course. That was Reli all over, really – he had that sort of dangerous glamour.’
‘So, it wasn’t a one-off then?’
‘Lord, no. He’d been smuggled over the Argentinian border by the time he was nineteen for getting involved with the daughter of one of the druglords. Potato van, I think they used; he never ate another potato again.’ Elena smiled affectionately. ‘He somehow lived a larger life than other people.’
‘Did you get on with him?’
‘On the whole, although he could drive me crazy; well, me and Vito. He was arrogant and selfish. I guess that’s the problem with people like that – the usual rules don’t apply. Poor Maria, our housekeeper at the time, he drove her around the bend. He was incapable of hanging up a shirt; she said his bedroom always looked like a scene of mass destruction.’
‘Were he and Vito close?’
‘They didn’t live in each other’s pockets or finish each other’s sentences, i
f that’s what you mean. In fact, they were like chalk and cheese in many ways. Vito had to become himself, if you see what I mean; he wasn’t in a position to choose the direction of his life, whereas Aurelio had the freedom to live as he chose. It didn’t seem very fair to me. Their mother always used to say they were one face but two hearts. But for all that, you could sense the bond between them: it was like a velvet rope, connecting them. There was no question they loved each other more than anyone on the planet.’
Cesca arched an eyebrow. ‘Even more than you?’
‘Oh, absolutely. I was a distant second.’
‘Was that hard for you?’
‘Well now, coming third I would have taken issue with,’ she laughed, retrieving a handkerchief from her sleeve and gently dabbing her nose with it. ‘But no, that’s twins for you. You could say you almost have to love them both. They come as a package, really.’
Cesca stared down at the only photograph she had seen of both the twins together. There were two scooters – Elena riding pillion on an aqua one with Vito in front, a blonde girl straddling the red one beside it. Aurelio stood to the side, ankles crossed as he leaned against a bollard. The girls and Vito had ice creams; Aurelio was smoking and not looking to the camera, glancing over at his brother and Elena instead.
Even after scrutinizing it, Cesca couldn’t find any discernible difference between the twins – both seemed to be the same height and build, their hair worn in a traditional barber’s cut. Perhaps, at a push, Vito’s eyes were slightly more elongated? But then, that could have just been because he was laughing. Aurelio, possibly, had a slightly more louche air? But then, that could just have been because of the cigarette dangling from his fingers.
