by Jane Arbor
He allowed her the puny defiance of that. Releasing her, he said, ‘I agree I can’t, either by turning a key on you or by using brute strength, much as I could be tempted. But I think you know that to help Madrigna we need time, and if you are right that it would do her good to believe someone to be in worse case than she is, here is a ready-made outlet for her sympathy—you. She needs you—both ways. However, if you choose to inflict on her the double cruelty of your defection as well as Michele’s, you must. You can pack a bag tonight. But meanwhile I’m paying you the tribute of believing that you won’t abandon her so.’
Alix met his eyes. ‘Why do you think I wouldn’t?’ she asked.
‘Because,’ he retorted, ‘the day we first met, you took my dare—for pride’s sake, you said. And I’m pretty sure you’re of no lesser spirit now.’
She made a little empty gesture. ‘But we can’t go on like this indefinitely. Where is it all going to end?’
She saw that he read her surrender into that, for he smiled, though grimly. ‘As originally planned, I think,’ he said evenly. ‘That is, when Aladrigna is well enough to accept that there’s going to be no future for any romance between you and Michele.’
‘Since he is supposed to have jilted me, she must know that now,’ Alix objected.
‘But not that one has never existed—for her to believe in for a little while and perhaps even hope to mend. There’s a difference, and if we play our cards well, she may never need to know.’
Alix sighed. ‘I envy you your confidence that the cards are always going to be yours to play,’ she told him.
‘Well, “Master of my fate; captain of my soul”,’ he quoted. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing, I daresay, when it’s your own fate,’ she allowed. ‘But when it is other people’s?’
‘When they need taking in hand, yes. I tend to look at the likely hazards first, but once I’ve taken action I don’t willingly envisage failing.’
She agreed slowly, ‘Yes, that’s what Michele says of you.’
‘Indeed? And what does Michele say of me?’
‘That for you it’s all foreseeing and planning. That you don’t use the present for living in and enjoying; nor simply let it wash you along. You—you plot it like a chart with an eye to the future. Which isn’t a bit—Italian of you, he says.’
‘So I’m not fullbloodedly Italian?’ Leone laughed shortly. ‘You’d be surprised! What’s more, if I ever need advice on using my present or allowing it to use me, somehow I don’t think you will find me sitting at Michele’s feet, all ears!’ He paused, then held out his hand to her. ‘Will you come with me to Madrigna now?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Later Alix was to wonder what insight had told Leone that beyond her self-pity and the sense of her own cruel ill-usage by Michele, Signora Parigi would find compassion to spare for Alix.
For this proved to be so, and in the finding she seemed to grow a little more backbone, a shade more will; seemed to feel it good to believe herself needed.
On each of the first mornings after Michele’s desertion Alix had waked in dread of the new pitfalls which the day might open for her. But as the days became a week ... two ... more, she felt the danger recede as she and her hostess grew closer, almost into a mother-daughter relationship, without the link of Michele. And as Alix came to feel she was beginning to be valued in her own right, she now and then could believe that the Signora might even forgive her the brutal truth of her deception. Wishful thinking, that, she knew. But it eased her secret guilt to hope she might be earning the possibility.
They had spent the whole of that first evening alone together, neither needing to question aloud as to what errand had taken Leone back to Rome. They could only wait until he returned, his search for Michele as fruitless as all subsequent inquiries were to prove.
The janitor of the apartment house had repeated his story of Michele’s departure. Yes, he had been alone. No, he had never brought any girls to the flat, so far as the janitor knew. Pressed, but grumbling that Leone must take the responsibility, he had used his pass-key to the flat, from which Michele had removed all his personal things, leaving only his friend’s property intact.
Later Venetia remembered the names of one or two of his former girl-friends, but she did not know their addresses. Within a week Michele’s bank confirmed that his account with it had been closed, and about at the same time Leone’s inquiry was answered by the Milan student who had loaned the flat to the effect that its key had just been returned to him in a packet postmarked ‘Naples’.
Signora Parigi ventured, ‘The police?’—a suggestion which got no encouragement from Leone.
‘Michele is an adult, with a perfect right to leave home. The police don’t concern themselves with such cases,’ he said to the sound of a distasteful snort from Venetia.
‘And just as well too,’ Venetia agreed. ‘For if he ever does decide to stroll back again—or creep back because he is spent out—what would it do to the precious Parigi image if his picture had been in the Police Gazette?’
During those first days Alix experienced some of her worst moments, parrying Venetia’s surprise that she had either chosen or had been invited to stay on at the Villa. Venetia’s questions were shrewd and frequently tipped with a subtle malice parading as sympathy.
What had Michele actually said in his note? (Alix had prudently destroyed it.) What did Alix hope to gain by staying on? Supposing Michele did come back, surely Alix had enough pride to show him there was nothing doing? Redly? Leone had actually asked her to stay for a while? Now why? Venetia wondered aloud. Oh, because Zia Dora seemed to like having her around? Was that all? Something along the lines of ‘losing a son and gaining a daughter’? Venetia had tittered and had appeared oddly relieved that it was only in Michele’s mother’s interest that Alix was staying.
For her part Alix was at a loss to understand the cause of a hostility towards herself which Michele’s disappearance seemed to have evoked in Venetia. Neither of them had taken warmly to the other on sight, she knew. But now there was a wary quality, as of a one-sided rivalry, in Venetia’s attitude; almost as if, with Michele gone, she suspected Alix of wanting to poach some guarded preserves of her own. And that this was so Alix believed was proved on an afternoon when she had walked down to the lake for a swim and was joined there by Giraldo Torre.
She was lying flat on the little beach, sunbathing, but at his eager shout of ‘Ah, there you are!’ she sat up and saw the disappointment which crossed his face.
‘Oh, it’s you. I was expecting to find Venetia here,’ he said. ‘Three o’clock, she promised. We were going to swim and then have a flip in the boat. Where is she, do you know?’
But Alix didn’t, and Giraldo flopped moodily beside her. ‘She said three,’ he repeated, as if that might conjure Venetia from thin air. Alix consoled, ‘Well, I expect she will be along,’ and then, knowing from experience that conversation with Giraldo was a thing of long pauses and diffident remarks, she lay back again, shading her eyes.
Giraldo vented his frustration by hurling duckstones, plop, plop, plop across the surface of the water. At last he said,
‘You never come to the Club nowadays. Since Michele—Well, for quite some time.’
‘No. I much prefer swimming here.’ That was the truth, though far from the whole of it. She had been shunning the inevitable gossip she would invite at the Del Lago and Leone had refrained from urging her there.
There was a long silence. Then Giraldo said, ‘Say if you would rather not talk about Michele. But I would like you to know people are saying what a fool he must be to walk out as he did. Considering his record, he was lucky to get a girl like you even to notice him; I know I’d give a lot to feel as sure of someone as I should think he could be of you.’ Another pause. ‘You know I mean Venetia, of course; the way she never lets me know where I stand with her.’
‘Don’t you?’ Alix meant her tone to discourage confidences, but Gira
ldo went on,
‘And that’s not true either. I do know she’s not in love with me. But today she will be quite sweet, and tomorrow just the opposite. If I looked at another girl she would manage to pay me out. Not that I’d dare risk losing the slightest chance with her, while one can’t know whether Leone wants to marry her, or whether she would accept him if he did.’
This time the ensuing silence was of Alix’s choice. At last she sat up, watching the heat haze shimmer above the lake. ‘You believe you could lose her to Leone?’ she asked. (Why were her lips so reluctant to frame the question?)
Giraldo shrugged and spread a hand. ‘That’s the way the gossip goes, though I doubt if either of them would pretend it would be a love match. If she accepted him, I think she would be seeing herself as a kind of child bride to him. She plays the tyrant with me, but the kitten with him, hadn’t you noticed? And as one can hardly see Leone losing his head over any woman, on his side it must be for the advantages he would see in it for himself.’
‘Advantages—such as?’
‘Well, say he doesn’t need money, but his ambition for Parigi Cameos could use a lot. Venetia will be a rich woman as her father’s heiress, I think. Then a wife as decorative as she is wouldn’t exactly be a handicap. And—sons.’ Giraldo threw Alix a sideways glance. ‘We Italians make rather an importance of sons, you know.’
An echo there, surely? Yes ... of Signora Parigi’s quiet ‘When he does marry now, I think it will not be for love.’ Two verdicts on Leone from two people who knew him. Alix had listened then as she was listening now. Listening... not wanting to agree. Even fearing to, being suddenly and blindingly aware that the very fact of her fear was her moment of truth.
For the fear was there because the ache was there; the crying within her that was part loving without hope, part jealousy, part a proud, childish denial that she felt either. But she did. She had made self-deception an armour for too long. Now she must learn to live with the truth that all her craving to ‘belong’ had merely been cover for her need to belong to Leone; to love and be loved by the one Parigi in whose hands she was only an instrument, the means to an end he intended to gain.
Nor had it happened overnight. As soon as they had met as strangers she had been drawn by his magnetism; telling herself she was immune, yet unable to resist it. And since, whenever he had persuaded her, asking and expecting her compliance, her own will had yielded ... melted to his ... needed to acknowledge his mastery, making of her surrender a tribute which, if he loved her he would have the right to ask.
But he did not love her. By no turn of hand or eye or by any word had he ever given her hope of it. And though gossip often overstepped itself, in this gossip, she felt, were the seeds of fact. For she had seen his indulgence of Venetia, had heard his acrid opinion of women as a sex, had warmed to his gentleness with his stepmother, and it all added up. Leone Parigi could feel both compassion and tolerance where he chose, but made no pretence to love. And that hurt—hurt far more than if she knew him to be caught up in passion for one woman which shut every other one out. He had loved so once, they said. What had his Contessa been like? Alix wondered. What beauty or quality in her had he loved? The loss of something about her must have been cruel enough to kill his ability to love again. But if she came back into his life now, Alix knew she would find that easier to bear than the cold-blooded calculation that proposed to make prestige and heirs a second-best substitute for love.
She looked about her. Nothing had changed. The sun blazed; lake wavelets lapped on shingle; birds dipped and wheeled and Giraldo at her side, scooping a fistful of sand, was absently trickling it with hourglass slowness on to her instep.
She answered the last thing he had said. (How long ago? Probably no more than a minute or two in time, though for her an aeon of self-knowledge.) ‘Yes, I see,’ she told him. ‘But if you say you know this about Venetia and—and Leone, mightn’t you be wise to cut your losses and forget her?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know it for certain. She doesn’t mean that I should. And while I only have to fear it, well—’ he shrugged again and dusted the little sand hillock off Alix’s foot—‘well, when one loves, one lives in hope and forgives and tries to understand. Haven’t you found it so?’
When you love you understand! Do you? Do you? With all her heart Alix envied the simple faith which saw that as a truth, that before she had to answer Giraldo again there was a sound behind them which turned both their heads and brought Giraldo scrambling to his feet. From the shadowed wilderness behind them Venetia had come out on to the beach. Sidestepping Giraldo’s eager movement towards her, she halted and removing her sunglasses, swung them idly from a flange.
‘What a cosy little scene! Do carry on snogging if you want to; I can wait,’ she said.
Alix stood up and gathered her things. ‘I’m going,’ she said shortly. ‘Giraldo has been waiting for you.’
Venetia widened her eyes. ‘Oh, has he? How over-punctual of him! It isn’t nearly half-past three yet.’
‘You said three,’ Giraldo reminded her.
‘Half-past, dolt,’ she dismissed curtly, but she had not done with Alix.
‘You know, you really puzzle me,’ she drawled. ‘If I hadn’t been able to keep Michele interested and needed another man to put in his place, I think I should do my hunting where the choice was good. Say, at the Club, where most girls have to fight them off. I don’t think I’d save myself trouble by trying to seduce someone else’s!’
Alix was in no mood for doing battle with such empty malice, but she had to defend herself. ‘Meaning Giraldo? He simply found me here. Don’t be silly,’ she advised.
‘But of course Giraldo! Who else? Or did you think I supposed you were making a tilt for, say, Leone? My dear, you’d be wasting your time! But Giraldo—well, he has rather made it public that he quite likes being my property, though if you hadn’t noticed the fact, I’m so sorry,’ Venetia finished smoothly.
‘So am I—that you can possibly be so petty,’ Alix snapped. As she left them, without Giraldo’s having said a word, at first she despised him for a tolerance of Venetia which had sapped his spirit to break free, then she felt ashamed. For Giraldo had come to terms with the toll which love demanded of him. Knowing Venetia for what she was, he still loved her against all sage, slick advice; even against all wisdom and hope.
Which perhaps—Alix had to grope for the truth she sought—was what love had always been ... would be. When self-preservation shouted ‘Run!’ you stood your ground; accepted the price of loving and even hiding it; kept faith. As she must not run from Leone’s indifference, nor from the pledge she had tacitly given him that she would stay until he had no more need of her. And that was something else about love, she supposed bleakly. You had to give of your best to the beloved, even though you broke your heart in the giving and he might never know! When one loves one forgives and tries to understand. Yes, she told Giraldo silently, I suppose I have found it so.
It was good to witness Signora Parigi’s courageous efforts to fill the empty days which brought her no news of Michele. At first listlessly, then with a dawning interest which now and then became enthusiasm, she began to take up some of the reins which she had dropped so spiritlessly and which had passed into other hands since.
On most days now she walked round the garden in the cool of the morning, suggesting changes she would like to see and choosing the flowers for the house. There came a day also when she told Leone that she suspected a good deal of waste in the kitchen. She was to blame. She had let matters slide for too long, and it was true that the best of servants were only as good as the mistress they had. So if he and Venetia; and Alix would bear with her taking over the ordering and a watch on the household books again, she thought she would like to try.
Encouraged by Alix (by the innocent ruse of asking how a certain stitch was done by machine) the Signora produced her own electric, scarcely-used model and gave a demonstration. Alix made a h
am-handed trial run of the same stitch; was patiently and gently corrected and shown the right way. From there they explored together all the near-magic of the machine’s capabilities; the long hours of a wet afternoon ran away unnoticed, and after that sewing was a frequent topic between them, with Alix the tyro and the Signora the eager teacher.
Not that all was progress and success, of course. There were still times of flagging spirits, days of enforced rest and prescribed tranquilizers and nights of insomnia, marked by morning weariness and traces of secret tears. But slowly, it seemed, the Signora was taking grasp of a life which still lacked Michele, but in which she was beginning to find the small, satisfying rewards of the everyday.
One of Alix’s essays in dressmaking under her hostess’s eye was a dress for herself in thick cream linen. They had gone together to choose the material; the Signora cut it out expertly and insisted on details of finish for it which would take it out of the amateur class.
Alix tried it on and was delighted with its fit. But the Signora frowned over it, a finger to her lips.
‘It needs something,’ she mused. ‘Gia, bimba mia, I know you want to keep it simple. But just one detail which will catch the eye, you understand? Ah, I have it! We were wrong to give it the self-material belt of the pattern. It needs instead one of the wide, wide belts—so—in soft kid and an important buckle, which are today’s fashion, you say. Yes, that is the note it should have, and tomorrow, if I feel well enough, we will go to Luigi to choose one.’
She would have none of Alix’s demur that there were less expensive shops for belts than Luigi’s salon. ‘It is a present from me,’ she said, and accordingly they went to Luigi the next day.
The belt was chosen and they were invited to coffee in a cool ante-room. Then the great Luigi himself pressed the Signora to see a small collection of French clothes which had just arrived.
