by Jane Arbor
‘But now it was all for nothing? He is refusing to come back?’
‘So he says.’
‘And so he means, I think.’ Beppo ran a finger thoughtfully across his handlebars and back. ‘And if you are as kind as you seem to be brave, you won’t turn the big guns on him just yet to force him back. Because I’ve an idea that the great ugly ragazzo knows very well what he’s about and that he’s just beginning to grow up. A pity, that, in a way. I liked him as he was. But—’ a shrug—‘these things happen to boys, and suddenly they are men. And who knows—one of these days it may happen even to me!’ With which Beppo kicked his engine into life, lifted a hand in farewell, adroitly curvetted round the car which was signalling its turn into the drive, became a cloud of dust and a fading noise and then was nothing at all.
The car completed its turn and stopped. It was Leone’s, and again, in uncanny repetition, Alix’s hope of reaching the house unseen was frustrated. He waited for her to come up with him and she had to join him.
He moved off. ‘Your friend seemed in a great hurry. I don’t think we know him, do we?’ he commented.
‘No. His name is Brindisi. He is at the University, and I happened to meet him again by chance in the city.’
‘Why didn’t you bring him in to be introduced?’
‘Because he was in a hurry,’ Alix was forced to lie. ‘He wanted to show me the paces of his scooter, so I went for a pillion ride with him, and he brought me out instead of my having to catch the bus.’
She was acutely aware of the glance Leone sent at her scarlet shoulders and flaming face. ‘Was that very sensible—in this heat?’ he asked tersely, and as she shivered in a sudden unexpected onset of gooseflesh, ‘You know perfectly well it was sheer lunacy!’ he exploded. ‘Look at you—nothing on your head; no scarf for your shoulders and careering about the countryside in a temperature of around thirty-five Centigrade.’ He drew up at the house with an angry jerk of brakes and put a hand to her burning forehead. ‘That shivering—do you realize you’re asking for a bout of heatstroke?’ he accused. ‘Come along. You’re going straight to bed with your blinds drawn and if you’re not better by sundown I shall call the doctor to you.’
Alix nodded in dumb acquiescence. She was longing too much for the dark and comparative cool of her room to argue. Besides, once alone there, she could escape further questioning as to the wherefore of her trip with Beppo.
But by evening she was past craving anything but some relief from the fever which engulfed her. Her temperature soared, yet she shivered in the cruel clutch of an ague. She knew that a doctor came to her and that gentle hands continually administered ice-packs which turned dry and hot within minutes of being laid to her burning flesh.
She remembered nothing of the night which followed, except resisting someone’s efforts to urge her to drink. Whoever they were, they spoke only in Italian, and for the moment she had lost touch with any language but her own. They said, ‘Bevi, carina, per favorer and supported her while they held the feeding-cup to her lips. But she could not always grasp what they wanted of her and they did not press her beyond endurance.
In the morning, though she was more aware of her surroundings, she was still in the grip of fever. She knew that the doctor came again; that Leone joined him and that they discussed her over her head. She knew that neck and shoulders and face were thick with calamine; she even threw a thought to what a clownish fright she must look to Leone, to whom it couldn’t matter in the slightest how she looked ... And more than once she roused fully to the comfort of seeing Signora Parigi sitting beside her bed, precluded by the room’s darkness from sewing or reading; just sitting there, hands in lap, for the reassurance of someone who might like to see her there when they awoke.
That night Alix was eager to drink whenever she was asked. She slept more normally and in the morning her temperature was down. She was not allowed to get up, but until she slept once more in the afternoon, her hostess was there with her again, asking no awkward questions and meting no blame; just warmly glad to see her almost well again.
‘That first night, you really gave us trouble!’ she pretended to scold. ‘Leone and I took it in turns to be with you all night long. But would you do as you were told? You would not, though we tried all we knew to make you! Once, when I came back to take over from Leone, I even heard him calling you ‘mia bella’, and that, from him, is real extravagance. In fact, I doubt if he has called anyone “his love” for years for any purpose at all,’ the gentle raillery concluded as Alix turned her face into her pillow to hide the springing tears of weakness which she must not shed.
The next time she woke she was still not alone. But it was not Dora Parigi who was there with her. It was Leone, and the curtains and shutters were open to the evening light.
She sat up, thrusting back her hair, and without being asked Leone rose and-brought her hand-mirror to her from the dressing-table.
‘Don’t worry. You look much less like a boiled lobster now!’ he assured her as she gasped at what she saw in the mirror. He took it firmly from her, replaced it. ‘You’re to be allowed up tomorrow, so you can prink then,’ he told her. ‘Meanwhile, you should have learned to respect our Italian sun. But you’re much better now, aren’t you? Well enough perhaps, while we find ourselves alone, to tell me why and where you went on that pillion ride with your friend Brindisi?’
Alix swallowed hard. She should have known this lay in wait for her, but she merely pleated the sheet in nervous fingers and said nothing.
Leone waited for a full minute. Then he queried, ‘No? Then you’d prefer that I told you? Very well. For at a guess I’d say the “why” of your going was because you felt you must, and the “where” was out to Bracciano and back. A hundred kilometres or so, the round trip—hatless and bare-shouldered in baking heat.’ He paused to shake his head in disbelief. ‘No, you’d never have been as foolhardy as that without real cause. And the cause—Michele? To be found at Bracciano. Am I right?’
He met her start of utter surprise with level, unrelenting eyes. ‘Yes, I thought so,’ he confirmed. ‘Brindisi, a mutual friend who was able to give you news of Michele, offered to take you to see him, so you went? And at another guess, you lied to me by omission because when you did find Michele, he laid it on your loyalty that neither his mother nor I were to be told where he was?’
Alix breathed in bewilderment, ‘It’s ... not possible! You aren’t guessing. You can’t be. You—know!’
Leone dipped his head in assent.
‘But how? And how long? ’
‘A few weeks now. As for how—I did some deductions which might or might not lead somewhere. I argued that, having sacrificed his allowance from the firm, Michele would need to earn his living as soon as his bank account got in the red. So what was he likely to try? Almost certainly no indoor job. He is trained for nothing. What then? Well, the thing he does best and does it superbly is to ride. Therefore, possibly a job with horses, in which there is plenty of money in the season. So I took a radius of a hundred and fifty kilometres round the city for a start; put on a couple of agents to comb the area for every riding school and hacking stable it contained; and awaited the result. It was a long shot, of course. But it paid off. There was Michele at one of three schools serving Bracciano.’ Leone paused. ‘It wasn’t, however, until I made some more private inquiries of my own that I found he was also married,’ he concluded.
Alix drew a long breath. ‘You know that too? And who his wife is—was?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘Yes. Her name is Baptista, and I happened to be with Michele in the city when they first met and he tells me he fell for her on sight. She was a ballet student, getting the odd dancing job and earning for her lessons by flower-selling on the Spanish Steps. Her family are working people and her home is in Naples.’
‘And—?’
‘And—’ Alix echoed firmly, ‘she seems a lovely person. Simple and completely natural and with a kind of—of dignity
I can’t describe. It isn’t self-assurance. Perhaps poise is a better word. Yet she looks such a child and she owes nothing at all to clothes. I’ve seen her in an overall to her knees and a sarong to her shoulders, and she managed to look like a young queen in both. They seem so much in love, and I think she manages Michele with a fingertip, though she is so far from the type he always claimed to admire that it’s just not true. But you—you’ve known nearly all this for some time and yet you have made no move to bring Michele back?’
‘No. Nor do I mean to.’
‘But why not? I don’t understand! His mother—’
Leone said firmly ‘Madrigna is well enough and content enough for the moment, thanks to you.’
‘She still needs news of Michele—at least to know where he is and that he’s happy—to make her better still.’
‘And Michele needs even more to work out his own fortunes and reappear on our scene when he sees fit, not before.’
Alix doubted her hearing. ‘That sounds strange, coming from you,’ she said slowly.
‘Yes, doesn’t it? ’ Leone turned abruptly and crossed to the window. He went on over his shoulder, ‘I even surprised myself when I saw it for a truth I’d got to accept. Namely that, though I’ve the right to plot my own destiny as I choose, I’m not entitled to chart other people’s out of hand. Your own words, Alix—I’m quoting you. I think you were wiser than you knew when you accused me of it, but you’ll appreciate that I don’t particularly relish admitting in so many words that you could be right? ’
Alix glowed to the reluctant humility of that. What must it have cost him? She said quietly, ‘Don’t you think you should let Michele know you are leaving the decision to him?’
Leone turned. ‘Do you think I should?’
‘He would value it, I think. And I’m still worried for his mother—’
But Leone shook his head. ‘You needn’t be. No, I counsel a bit more patience, for I feel Michele’s prodigal son move—if he makes one—must be wholly and spontaneously his own.’
He came back to stand by Alix’s bed. ‘Do you realize that I can’t remember when I last discussed policy with a woman or allowed one to sway me—?’ He broke off to smile tautly. ‘But you’d call that generalizing, wouldn’t you? Playing the cynic of whom you can’t approve?’
After he left her without waiting for her reply Alix lay back on her pillow, strangely content, in spite of that cryptic leave-taking. Not until later did she realize that they had both avoided arguing the issue of her own exit from the Villa, which must be the inevitable aftermath of Michele’s homecoming, if and when that happened.
CHAPTER NINE
It was to happen sooner than Michele had allowed her to expect. One day the Villa telephone rang for Alix. It was Leone, speaking from his city office, telling her that he had had a telephone call there from Michele.
‘He told me all I already knew—his whereabouts, that he had a job and was married, and proposes coming home to see his mother and bringing his wife with him,’ Leone told her.
Alix said, ‘So you were right—about leaving him to make his own decision to come. I wonder what pushed him into it? But you agreed?’
Leone said drily, ‘Well, thanks for the small acclaim. It was a gamble that he ever would, but it seemed worth trying for a while. Yes, I agreed, of course, though I stipulated that I must choose his timing and that I should meet his wife first.’
‘Do you mean to break the news to his mother, or just let him arrive?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘That needs thought,’ Leone said. ‘For instance, how would you regard the idea that the telling should come from you?’
‘From me? Oh—!’
‘Through, say, you getting a letter from Michele,’ Leone went on, as if thinking aloud. ‘If he had really jilted you and had a belated conscience about you, it would be a likely move for him to make—to confess to you that he had married another girl and to beg you to be happy for him, if you felt you could. Yes—’
There was an echo there of the Leone who laid his own plans, brooking no argument, but Alix dared an objection.
‘If Michele and I had had no contact since he left home, he wouldn’t write to me here. He would expect me to have left long ago.’
Leone said, ‘Full marks for reasoning! But Michele could mention in the letter that he hoped you would receive it—that we should send it on to you, wherever you were. He would sound naturally anxious about his mother; ask how she was before you left the Villa; would tell you that he meant to show up again, and say that he hoped you could meet him again with any rancour—some day. I’d see that it was a letter you could show, or at least read in part, to Madrigna as it stood.’
Alix said in distress, ‘More deception between her and me? Oh, please—!’
‘Even though it could be the last I’d ask of you and that carrying the thing through to its logical conclusion could mean that you and she could remain friends afterwards for as long as either of you choose? Doesn’t that count with you at all? Or when you leave, will you merely be shaking our unwelcome dust from your feet?’
‘You ought to know I shan’t,’ said Alix, meaning it more deeply than she dared betray. ‘And of course I want the Signora to think kindly of me after I have left. But—’
‘Then try to believe, will you,’ Leone cut in, ‘that this idea of Michele’s letter to you could best ensure that? Meanwhile, leave it to me. No one has overheard us talking?’
She told him No, but she had something else to ask of him. ‘Be kind to Michele’s Baptista when you meet her, won’t you?’ she begged.
‘Kinder, you are implying, than I was to you?’ he queried.
‘Well, more tolerant. Less—demanding, perhaps.’
He laughed shortly. ‘I thought so. But don’t worry. She is a Parigi now, and I have no choice but to accept her as I find her. As for “demanding”—do you know, in my craft I always expect the best of any material I’m handling—agate, onyx, glass, gold, common pebble—the lot? Equally I never ask more of them than my experience tells me they are capable of giving. That way, none of them—repeat, none—have ever let me down. So I wonder—could that perhaps help you to forgive “demanding”?’
She said a little shakily, ‘I think so, if you mean you’ve found me equal to anything you’ve asked of me. Though I’d say it was the first time I’ve ever been called someone’s “material”.’
‘And you find that chastening? But I included gold in my list.’
‘And so?’
‘Simply that gold allows itself to be fashioned and moulded and worked on, but it still comes out of the melting-pot as inviolate and indestructible as it went in. No, you’ll survive the treatment, I think, Alix. As I’ve told you before, your flair for self-preservation will see to that. Unless, of course, just once you allowed your Italian heart to overrule your English head and—’
‘And suddenly began to throw things, I daresay?’ She was stung to the retort.
They were on the same beam of thought, for he took the reference at once. ‘Exactly,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Though I ought to warn you, I might cope drastically if you did decide to go berserk to the point of throwing things and tantrum-tears.’
‘Indeed? And how would you cope?’
‘Why, as any man in his senses should, given the moral courage to risk a slapped face!’ he countered. ‘Not that I think you’re likely to tempt me to a demonstration. It would be entirely out of character. No, you’ll remain all gold to your core and unspent to the bitter end.’ He paused. ‘Unfortunately—’ he added, and rang off.
Unspent! Unspent? If only he knew how pitifully wide of the truth that was!
Visualizing the arrival of Michele’s planned letter, Alix has supposed she would have the chance to read it in private before breaking its ‘news’ to his mother. So that she was completely unprepared when Venetia came out on to the piazza where she was sitting with the Signora, and tossed it into her lap.
‘For
you. By post. Michele’s writing. I must say, he has taken his time about it, hasn’t he?’ Venetia sneered.
‘For me? From—Michele? ’
‘Alix, dear! He has written to you—at last?’ The two exclamations, the false and the genuine, clashed as Alix took up the letter in pretended surprise touched with dismay. ‘It—it’s postmarked Bracciano. That’s—?’ She looked up at Venetia, playing for time.
‘A place north-west of here. On Lake Bracciano. He didn’t bother to run far, did he? But what is he doing there? Aren’t you going to read it and find out? I mean, presumably Zia Dora has a right to know, and it can’t exactly be a love-letter after all this while, can it?’ Venetia taunted.
‘No,’ Alix returned stonily. ‘As you say, it can’t be private. I shouldn’t want it to be.’ Pitying the hungry question in Dora Parigi’s eyes, she turned to her. ‘Michele ought to have written to you, not to me. But may I read it aloud to you, please? Or would you rather read it for yourself?’
‘Why, no. It’s your letter. Take it to your room, dear, if you would rather. All I ask is to hear that Michele is well and happy. That is, if he still means to stay away—’ The Signora’s voice broke a little as Alix slit the envelope and said, ‘Please—I’d like you to hear what he says—whatever it is.’
The letter’s wording was so close to Leone’s suggested outline for it that Alix thought he must have dictated it to Michele. But it read naturally and convincingly as a piece of contrition for his jilting her and the manner of his leaving home, and as his mother listened in silence, except for a sharply-drawn breath at the news of his marriage and his job, Alix had to concede that once more Leone had proved right. Only the postscript to the long screed held surprise for Alix. Michele had written:
