The Cypress Garden

by Jane Arbor

  Alix breathed, ‘Oh, thank goodness for you! What on earth happened to Venetia? She—’

  ‘Nothing happened to Venetia. Or it hasn’t yet.’ Leone’s voice was grim. He reached down into the dinghy for a holdall which Alix saw to be her own. ‘Dry things,’ he said. ‘Put them on.’

  She took the bag. ‘On? Now?’

  ‘Don’t be so mock modest. On,’ he reiterated. ‘I expect to find you changed by the time I’ve filled up.’ He bent to the tank.

  In the grip there was a towel for her wet legs, her thickest-soled sandals, and the woolly feel of the sweater and the warmth of the slacks he had brought her were a bliss of comfort. By the time she had thrust away her sodden dress and slip the engine had sparked to life and Leone was ready to turn for the shore. On the way there was little time for more than his cursory question, ‘How long since Venetia left you?’ and for her calculation, ‘About two hours now.’ Then they were beached and he was helping her out, taking the holdall from her.

  As they went up to the house he said, ‘You’ll want to change again, I daresay. But I’d like you to sit in first on a necessary appointment with Venetia. Though I don’t expect to find her very co-operative, after having been locked in my study until I brought you back.’

  Alix halted. ‘You—locked her in? Then you think you know she left me deliberately?’

  His hand, gentle but firm at her elbow, moved her on. ‘Don’t you know it?’ he countered.

  ‘Ye-es. That is, I began to suspect it when she was so long away. But I could hardly believe it. For one thing, it seemed such a silly, petty thing to do that there seemed no reason for it.’

  Leone said drily, ‘I could make a guess at her motive, I think. I know my Venetia well enough to know that where her primitive emotions—love or hate or envy—are engaged, she is apt to react as a child or a savage might. Doesn’t it occur to you that something like jealousy of you could have inspired this bit of spite?’

  (‘I know my Venetia’. The assured tolerance of that!) Alix suppressed a shiver. ‘Jealous of me?’ she echoed. ‘How can Venetia think she need envy me anything?’

  Leone looked down at her. ‘No? Then has she never given you reason to suppose she could?’

  ‘Of course not. Or—well, she did once accuse me of flirting with Giraldo; once when she was late for a date with him and he was only filling in time with me, talking—about her. It was all completely absurd, as I told her and as he must have done. No.’ Alix hesitated. ‘Anyway, do you think it’s the best way to treat her—like a child confined by force and told to wait to be scolded?’

  Leone spread an expressive hand. ‘When she chooses to behave like a child, she must take the consequences.’

  (And you can speak so of the girl you are cold-bloodedly grooming for marriage to you? What a prospect!) Aloud Alix asked, ‘Even if they involve her humiliation before a third person—in this case, me?’

  ‘Even then—Besides, I want you to be there. She owes you an apology. I want you to come.’

  They found Venetia stretched full-length on the padded window-seat in his first-floor study. Her clasped hands made a pillow for her head; her gaze was on the ceiling and she studiedly ignored their arrival.

  Leone said, ‘Well, now I’ve found Alix none the worse, though no thanks to you, I’d like you to offer her an explanation. Not the one you tried on me at first—that you had entirely forgotten leaving her stranded, but your real reason for doing just that on purpose.’

  Venetia swung her feet slowly to the floor and sat up. ‘And supposing I have no reason, do I concoct one?’ she challenged pertly.

  ‘If you’re no better at pure invention than you are at lying, you needn’t trouble,’ he advised. ‘But you will still apologize to Alix.’

  The black eyes flashed temper. ‘I’ll do nothing of the kind!’

  Imperturbably, ‘You will. Meanwhile we’ll settle for drawing our own conclusions as to your motive.’

  Venetia said nothing. She made a business of tracing the edging cord of the long cushion with a thumbnail. Then she glanced obliquely up at Leone. ‘Aren’t you being masterful? Are you always going to take this strong-arm line with me when we—? If so, do you know, I think I may rather enjoy it?’

  His hard glance did not leave her face. ‘Then perhaps you’ll begin by enjoying doing as I ask now—by telling Alix that you know you were guilty of a piece of idiotic folly that could have had fatal consequences, and if I don’t insist on an apology in so many words, that you’ll have to look to her to be generous enough to forget it. Well?’

  Venetia’s lip curled. ‘Beg her generosity? I’d rather die first!’

  ‘Very well. A straight apology instead—’

  But Alix, sickened, had had enough. ‘Oh, please leave it,’ she begged Leone. ‘It was silly and unkind, but it doesn’t merit all this argument. Even if Venetia did it deliberately, she only meant me to cool my heels for a bit until she came back for me. She couldn’t have foreseen that storm.’

  Venetia rounded on her furiously. ‘Oh, couldn’t I? That’s where you’re wrong. Do you think I can’t read the signs when thunder begins to build up in the hills? Oh, I’d have come back for you some time if Leone hadn’t turned up, wanting to know where you were. But I meant to leave you until you’d had enough of a wetting and a scare to teach you that you’re not wanted here. Anyway, why are you hanging on still? May I guess? Just so that perhaps you can say to this new girl of Michele’s something like—“So he jilted me for you? But I had him first. And maybe I’d still try to take him from you if I hadn’t begun to set my sights a good deal higher. But don’t worry, cara mia—Michele is in no danger from me. Now on the other hand—” ’

  As Alix gasped, Venetia flung herself back on the window-seat, crossing her legs high. Addressing the ceiling, not Leone, she said, ‘Perhaps you’ll let me know when you decide to unlock that door? Because as I shall be leaving tonight, I shall need some time to pack.’

  There was a long moment of silence. Then Leone said, ‘The door isn’t fastened now. You can go to your own room when you please. But let us understand each other, may we? You are not leaving this house tonight.’

  ‘And who says I’m not?’

  ‘I do. If necessary, I shall co-opt the whole staff to prevent it and I shall immobilize your car.’

  Venetia laughed. ‘Sorry, but it has saved you the trouble. I had to put it in dock this morning. But there’s always Giraldo. Poor pet, he’ll jump at the chance to take me anywhere I ask him to. However, as it might be rather late to set out after I’d packed, I don’t insist on tonight. Giraldo can drive me in the morning. Or you can—’ she turned a brief, provocative glance at Leone. ‘Just to make sure I get there, hm?’

  Granite-toned, ‘Get where?’ Leone demanded. ‘You can’t go home to Amalfi—your house is still closed, and your father made Madrigna and me responsible for you while he is away. So where did you propose to go from here?’

  ‘To Bologna. To the Massimos’ again. They’ll welcome me con brio. And think, shan’t we have fun? Five hundred kilometres of driving and you scolding me deliciously all the way!’

  Leone said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m driving Alix to Naples in the morning. But I’ve no objection to your going to the Massimos’. I’ll ring them to ask them to expect you, and you can make your own arrangements with Giraldo. You’ll need to start at first light if you’re to do the journey in a day and I shall charge him to see that you do go to the Massimos’ and nowhere else.’

  Venetia sat up very slowly. She looked disconcerted for the first time. ‘You mean you’re letting me go—just like that? You—you don’t care if I do?’ she asked.

  ‘I think,’ he told her crisply, ‘that as long as I know where you are—with family friends and with Giraldo to escort you—it’s the best thing that could happen for all of us at the moment.’

  Her eyes widened. She tried a last defiance. ‘And if I do go, how do you know you’ll ever be able to get me back
? I might refuse to come. Giraldo—’

  Leone went to open the door for her. ‘May we leave that in the lap of the gods?’ he invited. ‘All I ask of you at the moment is that you appear at dinner tonight as usual and that you allow your aunt to hear nothing of all this. Leave anything she has to hear to me, please. You understand?’

  Giving him no sign that she did, Venetia glanced briefly from him to Alix and went out. Leone turned back into the room, but Alix could only glance at him and away.

  ‘That was too ... cruel,’ she said. And followed Venetia out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At the toll-booth to the autostrada the clerk gave a throaty rendering of ‘O Sole Mio’ and winked suggestively at Alix as Leone paid the toll-fee and took his ticket. Once through the station, the three-abreast queue of cars thinned out to Indian file; the horns of the speed-merchants yelled their impatience to be away and the soulless stretches of the motorway between Rome and Naples invited them all.

  Early as it was, the sun’s strength was intense. Far ahead there was a constant heat-mirage as of the road surface’s appearing to be blackly wet, and as if the precious shade of every overhead bridge had been booked for the purpose, the sanctuary of each one was occupied by cars being rested to cool their engines while their passengers sprawled on the bridge-copings and watched their fellow travellers race by.

  Leone drove fast, speaking very little. The heat and the unvarying speed were soporifics, but Alix fought against yielding to them. To defeat them, she sat stiffly upright against her lapbelt, concentrating on the road mirage and usually only speaking when Leone said something to her. The tensions of the previous evening—when everything spoken at the dinner-table and later had seemed to carry double meanings and overtones—had not eased yet. Venetia had left the Villa very early indeed with Giraldo. Alix, sleepless for hours, had heard them go. But she had contrived to leave her mischief behind, and by contrast with intrigue Alix found she was thinking gratefully of Aunt Ursula—sturdy, dependable Aunt Ursula, sidestepping briefly on to Italian soil before being committed to London Docks and home.

  Meanwhile Leone must have forgotten his promise to have ready a plausible explanation of Alix’s circumstances. For if not, surely he would ask her agreement first? However, when he gave no sign of doing so, tiredly she rehearsed her own story—that she had been free to come to Naples because she was between jobs at the moment; that she hoped to have something lined up very soon; that Leone was the friend of a friend who had been good enough to drive her to Naples—and offered it for his approval.

  He nodded briefly. ‘I shan’t contradict that,’ he said, and then, ‘I gather you didn’t care much for my handling of Venetia last night.’

  Alix stared ahead. ‘In the circumstances—no.’

  But when she made a small shrug her reply to that he did not press the question.

  Now they were off the autostrada, through dingy suburbs and into the thick of the baffling traffic of Naples. Through the city and down to the docks, where Alix stayed in the car while Leone went to check at which pier the vessel was berthed.

  He came back. ‘She’s not in. She has been delayed and isn’t due now for another three hours, which means we’ve time to kill.’ He got back into the car. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  Three extra hours alone with him, and her tension almost at breaking-point now! Alix said, ‘While we are waiting? But need you wait with me? If you would like to drop me somewhere, I could come and meet the boat alone, and we could arrange for you to collect me after she has sailed.’

  ‘I’m waiting. I’m looking forward to meeting your aunt,’ he said, and switched on his engine. ‘We have to lunch and I know a little place in the woods above Cuma which the tourists haven’t yet discovered. It’s not too far a run out of the city and you’ll like it, I think.’

  The way took them back along the great curve of the Via Caraciolo skirting the Bay, and then inland through woods that were loud with the hum of crickets and generous with deep shade. At the clearing in front of the gardens of the Sybil’s Cave there were cars and coaches, but a kilometre beyond and above it Leone turned in to the deserted white-walled courtyard of an inn whose open doorway, flanked by stone urns cascading flowers, gave on to a tunnel of hall, lighted at its far end by the sunlight which streamed in from another door open to a garden.

  The proprietor came out to greet Leone like an old friend.

  ‘It’s a long time—too long—since you have visited us, signore! Luncheon? Volentieri—a pleasure! Where will you take it? In the Sala da pranzo? On the piazza? In the garden?’

  Leone chose the dining-room. ‘We may like to explore the garden later,’ he told the man.

  Alix was glad they were to lunch lightly on rose-fleshed melon and sartii, the rice dish typical of the region. They chose fresh fruit for dessert and when the proprietor himself served their coffee he said with random interest, ‘We are quiet today. It seems there is no one enjoying our garden just now. A pity—when it is so peaceful there. Very private too.’

  Leone laughed. ‘Meaning you think we should adjourn there before we go?’

  The man cocked his head. ‘Well, it’s not for me to say, signore, but if I, a fat old fellow, had the privilege of the company you have—!’ His face creased in a wide grin as he poured their coffee, then took himself off.

  Leone laughed again. ‘Almost on royal command level, that,’ he commented. ‘But perhaps you’d like to see the garden? We’ve plenty of time.’

  When they were ready to go out, to Alix’s surprise, he took her hand and held it lightly until they found a seat in the garden when, as casually as he had taken and held it, he let it go. Behind them was a screen of dipped yew and overhead sunlight dappled through the tangle of an old vine that was crutched on two gnarled trees.

  Leone sat sideways on the narrow shelf of seat, supporting himself by his arm along its back behind Alix. ‘Tell me,’ he said, as if the subject had never been dropped, ‘why should I have to defend myself to you over that scene with Venetia?’

  Alix looked down at her hands, loose in her lap. ‘You don’t have to,’ she told him. ‘It’s no affair of mine.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, that won’t do. You made it your business when you said I had been cruel. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘I thought you had had no right to humiliate her as you did in front of me.’

  ‘And why not in front of you? Weren’t you the injured party of her idiotic trick?’

  ‘Even so, however angry you were with her about it, you still owed her the dignity of taking her to task in private.’

  ‘Dignity!’ Leone laughed shortly. ‘Caprice, provocation, nursery tactics, if you like. But “dignity”—why, the word isn’t in the silly child’s vocabulary!’

  ‘Then it ought to be in yours—towards her,’ Alix insisted doggedly. ‘If she can’t look to you for gentle handling, where can she? You—you’ve always allowed even me the—the decency of waiting until we were alone to criticize me, and does Venetia deserve any less than that?’

  He did not speak. They both watched a bold sparrow who darted to pick at a decaying grape on the path at their feet. Then he said slowly, ‘Venetia—deserve less at my hands than you do—of anything I have to give? Of anything at all? Oh, come, surely you know the answer to that ... Alix?’ His use of her name, a new, strange note in his voice, bewildered her. She looked up at him quickly—and then defensively away from the unreadable something in his eyes.

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to say!’ she protested. ‘That it seems to me wrong and cruel of you to deny Venetia the kind of—of chivalry that you accord me, when our relationship is as prosaic as it is, and when you and she—’

  ‘Yes? When Venetia and I—? Go on?’ he invited.

  To avoid answering she made to stoop to throw another grape to the sparrow, but the hand which had lain along the seat-back darted suddenly to her shoulder, held her fast and turned her to face him. ‘And wha
t do you know—or think you know—about Venetia and me?’ he asked. The pressure of his hand became heavier; near to pain. ‘Well, what?’ he insisted.

  She had to say something. It came out as, ‘I don’t think you should need telling, should you? For it’s not only in what people say of you—people at the Club, Giraldo Torre, even your stepmother. It’s in Venetia’s attitude to you too. Her—her confidence in handling you; even in her provoking you just so far; taunting you, as she did last night, knowing that, however angry you are for the moment, she can get away with—with murder because you—’

  He cut across her reluctant, trailing words. ‘Because I’m in love with Venetia? Is that what the gossips say of me? What you say Madrigna believes of me? What Venetia’s spit-and-purr kitten tactics have led you to think? Well, is it?’

  Alix shook her head. ‘Not exactly that.’

  ‘ “Not exactly that”!’ His echo mimicked her tone. ‘Then what—about Venetia and me?’

  ‘Well, not that you are necessarily in love with her, nor ask that she should love you. But that you will probably marry her for—convenience’ sake when it suits you. And that she will marry you because it suits her, with neither of you bringing much heart to it. Just—expediency, that’s all.’

  She hadn’t meant to make a barb of the word, but momentarily his heavy eyelids flinched. His grip on her shoulder slackened; his hand fell away. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you claim that Madrigna said this of me—and of Venetia?’

  ‘Not the Signora, no. She only told me that you had once loved disastrously; that she doubted if you had loved any of the women there must have been for you since. She said, I remember, that she thought you saw to it that you were always the one to say goodbye and that if you did marry one day it was unlikely to be for love, though I don’t think she was thinking in terms of Venetia.’