The Cypress Garden

by Jane Arbor

  By the time you get this, Leone will know it all too. And if you are still in touch with the Villa, will you help Mama to forgive me and tell her I didn’t want to come back until I could hope to promise her something of Baptista and me and, in a way, of herself? A new Parigi to come. In the spring, if all goes well with Baptista. Our son, and Mama’s first grandchild. Be generous enough to be glad for us—please, dear Alix?—M.

  Alix finished reading to a silence that was eloquent of the Signora’s happy bewilderment at the news. It held until Venetia broke in with a tart ‘Well, well! The lad has involved himself beyond recall! But he says there’—her finger flicked towards the letter—‘that you know this—what’s-her-name—Baptista. You were with him when he first fell for her. So what is she like, for goodness’ sake? No better and no worse than any of his other odd pick-ups, I daresay—?’

  But before Alix could defend Baptista or Michele’s choice of her, his mother had cut in, her gentle dark eyes flashing and her tone sterner than Alix had ever yet heard it.

  ‘That will do, Venetia!’ she ordered the girl. ‘Whatever or whoever Michele’s wife is or was, she is one of our family now and Michele loves her. And if he can dare to hope for Alix’s generosity towards him and Baptista, he can surely expect as much of you, who aren’t even one of us except through your mother—’

  ‘Which does happen to be just a shade closer to you than Alix is,’ Venetia interposed pertly. ‘Anyway, what has Alix to lose by being generous? Now that Michele has spelled it out that he was on with his new love before he was off with his old, I’d say she is well rid of him. If she doesn’t want to, she needn’t ever meet his wife. At least she hasn’t the grisly prospect of having to accept her as a—’

  ‘As a what, if you please?’

  ‘Oh, nothing—’ Venetia muttered, making Alix wonder if the word on which she had been checked was ‘sister-in-law’. She repeated to Alix, ‘Well, what is the creature like, since you’ve seen her?’

  Alix said, ‘So far as I could judge—all that Michele says about her. Very young and rather sweet. But the thing that struck me most was her dignity. That day, she brushed Michele off like a young queen, and he never gave me a clue that he had fallen for her.’

  ‘Trust Michele to cover his tracks!’ Venetia scoffed. ‘Anyhow, I don’t suppose you’ll want to be here when he does bring her home, will you? Too embarrassing all round!’

  The Signora put in, ‘I think that is for Alix to decide for herself, Venetia. She knows that we shall understand if she can’t meet Michele, and equally that she is welcome for as long as she cares to stay.’ She turned to Alix. ‘And when you do leave us, dear, and when you are able to forgive Michele, you will come back again, won’t you? Often, please?’

  What could Alix say? For the moment the lie that gave her promise seemed kindest. ‘I hope I shall,’ she said.

  She wrote back to Michele a letter which Leone approved and of which the Signora said wistfully, ‘Love him as I do, I doubt if he ever deserved you, dear. And all I can hope now is that he has chosen as well this time as when he was courting you.’ But whatever her spoken doubts of Michele’s marriage, it was good, Alix found, to see the new brightness in her eyes and to hear her eager, anticipatory plans for the grandchild that was to come. Dora Parigi, Italian to her core, was able to live again in her happy present, without a backward look at the shadows of the past months or at the imagined ones of the future. She was cured now and it was time for Alix to go.

  But though she hadn’t to ask his mother to understand that she would like to be gone before Michele brought his bride home, she allowed herself to be persuaded to stay until they heard from him when he was coming. And then, on the day before he was due to come, her hand was forced in a way she least expected.

  From time to time during the summer and from various ports of call on her world cruise, Aunt Ursula had plied Alix’s Poste Restante address with picture postcards, though expecting no answers, as Alix had told Leone on her first night at the Villa. But that day Alix collected instead an air-letter which said that the ship’s cargo requirements had necessitated a change in its homeward route. Instead of sailing straight through to London Docks it would be calling at the Port of Naples; it would dock in mid-morning of the following day and remain berthed for five hours or so. So was there any chance of Alix’s being able to get to Naples to meet it, the letter continued. Aunt Ursula hoped so very much. No news of Alix for such a long time and such a great deal to tell her. ‘So please try to come, dear, won’t you?’ the letter concluded.

  Naples. Tomorrow. The plunge back into reality; the cut direct that would sever her from the Villa for good. For there would have to be evasions to Aunt Ursula as to how Alix had spent the summer. If the Villa had to be mentioned at all the impression must be left that she had had some kind of job there, since Leone’s suggestion that she had spent nearly four months idling ‘with friends’ would tax Aunt Ursula’s credulity too much.

  Meanwhile the Villa had to be told why she was leaving so abruptly, and as soon as she got back from the city she took the letter to Leone.

  ‘I suppose I can get by train from Rome to Naples by mid-morning?’ she queried.

  He looked up from the letter. ‘You can. But you needn’t. I shall drive you,’ he said.

  Alix bit her lip. ‘Oh no, please—!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For—for the reasons I gave you when I came. I don’t want to have to explain you to my aunt.’

  He dismissed that. ‘Nonsense. Anyhow, I thought you said then you were averse to telling more lies than you need? No, I shall drive you there and back, and between then and now we should be able to think of some explanation of our relationship which should satisfy your aunt.’

  To that Alix’s unspoken, bitter reaction was, So we should. We’ve had practice enough in concocting half-truths, you and I. But aloud all she said was, ‘If you insist—there, but not back, please. I shall pack today, and if it is too late to get back to Rome after Aunt Ursula has sailed, I’ll stay in Naples for the night and come back to Rome by train the next day. Michele is coming tomorrow, and your stepmother is expecting me to want to leave before he comes. I shall arrange to get a room in Rome by telephone from Naples and—’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind,’ ruled Leone. ‘You will come back here with me tomorrow night.’

  ‘But Michele and Baptista will be here!’

  ‘What of it? Madrigna may have agreed for you to go before they arrive, but I haven’t. You know she will refuse to allow you to lose touch altogether. So as you’ll have to meet Michele again some time, what’s wrong with tomorrow?’

  Alix sought wildly for a reason; found a lame one. ‘Baptista might happen to mention that she and I had met twice, not just once,’ she said.

  Leone said, ‘I’ll ring Michele to see that she is warned not to. If that’s all you can muster against staying on for a decent few days while—if you must—you arrange some suitable rooms in Rome, then I’d advise you not to try. Let’s see—’ he paused to calculate, then told her the hour at which they ought to leave the next morning. She nodded agreement, bending to the force of his reason and his will as she had done so often before. But now for the last time, she told herself bleakly ... the last time, surely, of all?

  That afternoon, though the sky was cloudless, the heat seemed heavy with the threat of possible storm to come. But while it was still no more than a threat Alix walked down alone to the wild garden, remembering how, on her first night, she had seen it as a refuge she might need. Refuge from what? She hadn’t really known, nor had foreseen then how often since she would come down the long aisle of the cypress avenue to the fountain and the water-steps and so to the bramble-curtained recesses of the wilderness where it was possible to hide from all physical intrusion, if not from the ache of thought.

  Today, although she would be coming back, she felt she was saying goodbye to it. For after tomorrow it would no longer be part of
her present. After tomorrow she had even Leone’s agreement to her looking to a future in which, though he did not know it, she could not let the Villa Fontana share. He saw no barrier—why should he?—to her coming back to it as often as she was invited; to her keeping Dora Parigi as a dear, older friend; perhaps to making a new one in Baptista; to her being able to meet him himself without, in that future, there being any more need for intrigue between them. He might even expect her to be there at his wedding if and when he made that calculated, loveless marriage of convenience which even his stepmother expected, though without, as Giraldo Torre had done, naming Venetia as his bride.

  That was why, Alix was thinking as she trod the tinder-dry carpet of pine needles and broken twigs and sere leaves underfoot, she couldn’t make Rome her base for long after she left the Villa. As she had known as soon as she realized she loved Leone, she would have to escape from him into the anonymity of another city, or of another country, which would have to be England, though by now she felt it to be far less ‘home’ to her than was her beloved, magical Rome.

  She sat down for a while, then took a path which led to the lake. Out there on the little beach it was very hot. Not a breath of wind stirred and there was an oddly oily look to the lake water. She walked down to its gently lapping edge and threw an idle pebble or two before turning to go back. As she did so, however, someone else was coming down the beach—Venetia, whom Alix hadn’t heard coming through the wild garden, but who couldn’t have been far behind her.

  They had not met here since the afternoon when Venetia had accused Alix of trying to appropriate Giraldo and their relations had been cool since then. In no mood for a verbal skirmish today, Alix merely said, ‘Ciao. Are you going to swim?’ But Venetia said, ‘I don’t think so. It’s too sticky on land even for drying-out after a swim. What about our taking out the boat?’

  Surprised by the invitation and not anxious to accept, Alix glanced at the shed which housed it. ‘The motorboat? I thought Leone didn’t let you take it out alone?’

  Venetia assumed an air of patience with stupidity. ‘If you were with me I shouldn’t be alone, should I?’

  ‘But Leone would have meant himself or Michele or Giraldo or someone who could handle it if anything went wrong. I shouldn’t have a clue,’ Alix demurred.

  ‘Well, who would expect you to, considering you can’t even drive a car, can you?’ Venetia retorted. ‘I’m perfectly capable of handling the thing myself, as Leone knows very well. It’s simply that he stipulated I must have someone along—it doesn’t particularly matter who. But if you won’t come, I can’t go. If I did, I could trust some nosy telltale to see me from the Club terrace and pass it on. So are you coming or not?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Alix gave in. ‘Do you want help in getting the boat out?’

  ‘No. She’ll just slide down the rails. Wait here. I may need to fill her up.’

  Venetia ran alone to the boathouse and ten minutes later they were out on the water, making for mid-lake, then across to the far shore, then skirting the perimeter, passing the Club terrace, their own beach and out again for a second round.

  Venetia handled her craft as expertly as she drove a car, rode, swam, danced, and Alix was just thinking that it could only be Leone’s concern for her as a valuable asset which had dictated a precaution that, on the face of it, seemed unnecessary, when suddenly the boat’s engine checked, coughed, picked up again; sputtered feebly once, then stalled completely.

  ‘Well, what do you know? She was going so well—’ murmured Venetia. Alix watched as she went through the motions of re-starting several times without response from the engine, and it was Alix who pointed to the fuel-gauge. The pointer registered 0. ‘I thought you filled her up before we came out?’

  ‘Tch! No, I didn’t after all. I thought we should have enough. She must be eating the stuff,’ frowned Venetia.

  ‘I thought that was what engines were supposed to do.’ Alix couldn’t resist the small sarcasm. ‘And so what happens now? Do you carry any spare?’

  Venetia shook her head. ‘Not a drop.’ They were far out of unaided sight from the Club and though nearer their own shore, a long way from it. They seemed to be the only craft on the water.

  ‘Well, oars or something?’ questioned Alex vaguely. ‘Only in the dinghy, and I didn’t bring it along. No, the only thing is to swim for it.’

  ‘Swim?’ Alix’s eye measured the stretch of water between them and the beach. ‘I doubt if I could do that distance. Besides, I didn’t bring a suit.’

  ‘Then it’s as well I did, isn’t it?’ Venetia was unzipping her sunflower-yellow shift to reveal a swimsuit underneath.

  ‘You’re going over to bring back some fuel? What do you want me to do in the meanwhile?’

  ‘Just sit here. What else can you do? You may drift a bit, but there isn’t a breath of wind to bother you. Though if you think you can do better by raising a distress signal you could always wave—that.’ Venetia kicked the small heap of yellow she had discarded. ‘They say that colour shows up better than most, and you never know—some gallant from the Club might spot it and dash over to your rescue. And you’d prefer that, wouldn’t you, to being beholden to me? Ciao!’ She plunged and was gone, with just the small flurry of her feet and the rhythmic thrust of her arm to disturb the water.

  Alix sat becalmed. She saw Venetia stand upright a few metres from the beach, wade ashore from there and run up to the boathouse.

  She was inside for a few minutes, then reappeared and made a loudhailer of her cupped hands to shout something Alix couldn’t hear. She gesticulated too, pointing up and backward towards the trees of the wild garden, and then, as if satisfied that Alix had taken her meaning, she went back up the beach and was lost to Alix’s sight.

  Alix had picked up the yellow dress and as she smoothed and folded it, she pondered the probable message. Venetia had found no spare petrol in the boathouse, so had had to go up to the house garage for some. That meant a longer wait, though not too long. All the same, Alix could have done with more shade for her vigil than she had. For under the pitiless brass of the sky the little cockpit of her craft was a veritable trap of heat from which she could not escape.

  However, she must have dozed. For it was certainly sleep from which she came to with a start, to a sense now—absurdly!—of chill; of much time having passed, and of acute suspicion that she had been duped.

  The chill was genuine, for while she slept the brass had turned to overcast grey and the silence above the great bowl of the lake was punctuated by intermittent thunder from behind the surrounding hills. The passage of time was also real; her watch told her that more than an hour had passed since Venetia had left the beach for the house. And the suspicion? Yes, that too had grounds, even though it had taken her subconscious, not her reason, to tell her so. For—no fuel for the servicing of the boat stored in its own housing—especially when Venetia claimed she had rejected the idea of filling up? Anyway, why had she not filled up when, before they set out, the gauge must have shown perilously near the zero it reached very soon afterwards? And the odd fact of Venetia’s swimsuit at the ready for action under her dress, when she had said earlier she hadn’t gone down to the lake to swim! A small point and, taken alone, probably without import. But along with the inexplicable time-lapse and the rest, didn’t it show that from the afternoon’s outset, Venetia had gone down to the shore—might even have followed her, Alix—with the express purpose of making it difficult for her to refuse to go out in the boat and then of marooning her in it at some whim of malice which almost defied belief?

  At that moment of her annoyance Alix was ready to credit Venetia with even having foreseen the coming storm; of having calculated how a thorough wetting would add its quota to her chagrin at the shabby trick. And though she did her best to suppose Venetia innocent of the silly intrigue and delayed through no fault of hers, somehow the uglier image persisted and held.

  At first the storm was ‘dry’—the intermittent
jags of lightning followed at lesser and lesser intervals by the drums of the thunder in the hills. But the rain could be seen to be nearing in a curtain of mist, and presently the first huge drops began to fall with almost the impact of flung stones into the water round the tiny craft.

  Alix huddled, a tarpaulin lap-sheet over her knees, another piece of waterproof sheeting tied by the belt of her dress hoodwise over her head and shoulders. On the thickness of the lap-sheet puddles formed and she had to bale these off with maddening frequency. Water swished and plunged beneath her feet and the fog of the rain was so thick that she doubted if she could sight or be seen by any other passing boat unless it came close alongside.

  She was cold and soaked and wretched, but she was more angry than apprehensive until she began to look ahead in time to when the darkness of storm would begin to be the darkness of twilight and then that of full night. But to fear that was ridiculous! Whatever Venetia’s spite or whatever had delayed her return in that first horn, she must do something about it as soon as the storm abated! In any event, as soon as it did there would be other craft out on the lake. Her own would be sighted, or the sodden heap which was Venetia’s yellow dress might come in handy yet. It was absurd to dread the onset of night until it happened and she was still out here adrift in her cockleshell and still alone...

  After a long while the rage of the storm did lessen; the rain almost stopped and the visibility cleared, though not until it was time for early lights to be seen winking on the shore and from the villas in the hills. Now—surely? And yes, thanks be, that was a dinghy coming out from the Villa’s beach ... coming over, oared by expert hands. But not by Venetia’s. A few minutes more, and Leone was shipping oars, securing the dinghy and stepping aboard the speedboat, jerry-can of petrol in his hand.