Roberto went to the bar, stood a few feet away from the group of men and said ‘whisky’. If the intention had been to sound tough, Gilbert thought the Italian, who was shorter than the other three men, hadn’t been very successful. The man behind the bar looked at Roberto, then at Gilbert, then back to Roberto again. Without saying a word, he put two glasses on the counter with a clunk, uncorked a bottle and poured some whisky into them. Roberto left the whisky untouched but turned towards the two men along the bar.
‘That your wagon out in the alley?’ he asked, indicating the side street with his head.
Gilbert’s eyes widened. He wasn’t sure which was greater – his surprise or his fear.
‘What’s it to you, mister foreigner?’ said the man nearest to Roberto.
‘Because it looks very like my wagon.’
‘You people spies?’ asked the second man, taking a step away from the counter. ‘Because it looks to me – from what’s in that wagon – that we should be handing you two over to some army so that they can hang you both as spies.’
Roberto took a step forward and then, before Gilbert’s disbelieving eyes, he lashed out with his right foot and connected with the first man’s groin. Simultaneously – Gilbert thought he had imagined this but he hadn’t because he saw the empty glass rolling on the counter – Roberto threw the contents of one of the glasses of whisky into the bartender’s eyes.
The man whose groin had been kicked held himself in his hands while Gilbert saw the second man’s right hand move towards his gun. Roberto caught the first man by the lapels, lifted him – again Gilbert could not believe what he was seeing – and slammed him into the second man. The second man stumbled as the first man fell against him. Then Roberto’s right arm shot out like a piston and his forked fingers appeared to bounce off the first man’s eyes. He screamed and tumbled onto the floor, wailing and with his face in his hands.
The second man had recovered his balance but Roberto was already up against him, driving him back to the wall of the room. They slammed into it and Roberto pinned him there with his left forearm across the man’s throat. The next thing Gilbert saw was that somehow, the gun was in Roberto’s hand and the man was staring down the barrel. The sight at the end of the barrel was rammed into the man’s nostril. Out of the corner of his eye, Gilbert saw that the barman had managed to clear his vision, had turned and was reaching for the shotgun on the wall.
‘Roberto ––’ was all Gilbert managed to say.
As he did so, Roberto reversed the gun, grabbed the barrel and banged the second man neatly on the head with it. There was a dull thud and the man slid unconscious to the floor where his colleague lay groaning, still clutching his face The barman had his back to the bar with his hands raised. He had lifted the shotgun off the two hooks that held it there and was in this position when Roberto leveled the gun at him.
‘That would not be a good idea,’ he said.
The barman gently replaced the shotgun and with his hands still raised, turned round. Still holding the gun level, Roberto relieved the groaning man of his pistol. Now he had both revolvers pointed at the barman.
‘Now, here’s what’s gonna ‘appen,’ said Roberto. ‘My friend ’ere is gonna come behind your bar and take that gun. After that we leave and take our wagon. Oh and my friend will pay you for the whisky. That okay, boss?’
Scarcely able to believe what he had just witnessed, all Gilbert could manage was a sort of strangled, ‘sure’.
While Gilbert retrieved the shotgun, Roberto sank the second glass of whisky. Then Gilbert placed a coin on the counter and went outside into the alley. A heavily armed Roberto was waiting for him, along with a horse that looked pleased to see them.
15
It was eleven o’clock before he finally decided that she wasn’t coming.
He had come to Willard’s early and sat in the lobby in the same seat he had been in the day they had first kissed. The minutes crawled. Every time the doors opened he hoped he would see her coming through them and every time he was disappointed. Later he would discover that the Battle of Bull Run had been fought that day. He was unaware of it as he made his way back to the studio. Mocking voices talked to him in his head. Now all the illusions are gone, they said, and you must face the future alone. He felt his heart was going to break. He tried to find reasons for why she hadn’t shown up. Had she not gotten the note? Was she on holidays? He feared that it was neither of these things.
He wondered if she was testing him – to see if he would just give up and let it go. He remembered what she had said. ‘I had to get to know you – to see what you were like.’ Is that what it was? Did she intend him to come after her? Eventually he wrote her another letter – would she mind if he sent her a present. He wasn’t sure what he had in mind. Maybe a photograph he had taken – or another painting. What would her response be? None? Go to hell? Don’t contact me any more? Yes?
And this time he got a reply. The letter he got was strange, jumbled. It talked about the suffering that she had endured. It said that he had nothing to offer. It repeated how she might want to get married and asked whether he was he ready for that? (What – had she thought – were the vows that he made in his first letter, if not a proposal of marriage?) This is all too soon, she said. You need to give me some space.
Had he been able to think objectively, he might have considered how strange the letter was; indeed how strange her whole behavior had been. Months afterwards, when he was fully involved with her, he occasionally paused to reflect on the world of bizarre conversations and actions that he had become a part of. But that was all to come. Right now he was just so thankful to be in touch with her again.
He wrote a reply.
‘You said in your letter that I have nothing to offer, but you’ve experienced what I have to offer, both the good and the bad. And if you can find better than the good any place else then you should go there. But I know that what I experienced with you was quite literally the most amazing time of my life.’
The note she sent back was one line. ‘I’m working towards seeing you in the Fall.’
16
In the alley, Roberto stood over a horse trough and emptied the chambers of one of the revolvers into it. He repeated the procedure with the other one. With a nod and a grunt he indicated that Gilbert should do the same with the shotgun. Gilbert just did as he was told.
‘Now the guns,’ said Roberto.
They dropped all the guns in the trough. Roberto climbed up onto the wagon and took the reins. Gilbert stood dumbfounded.
‘You coming?’ asked Roberto.
Gilbert climbed up and they began to return the way they had come. There was no sign of the three men from the bar. At length Gilbert said, ‘So are you going to tell me where you learned to do that?’
‘Sure,’ said Roberto, turning to him with a grin. ‘After I come to Washington and you give me job, I don’t have nothing to do in the evenings. You always drunk and so I am alone in the studio. One evening I go out. I meet a man who tell me that there is Chinese man who teaches unarmed fighting. I think hey, that would be a useful thing to learn. So I learn. But that was really the first time I try it for real. I did okay, you think?’
Gilbert nodded admiringly.
‘That would be one way of describing it.’
‘What you say, boss?’ asked Roberto quizzically.
‘Yes, yes, you did okay. You did really well.’
‘Thanks boss,’ said Roberto cheerily. Then he asked, ‘How you feeling now, boss?’
‘My body still feels pretty awful. Having to walk after you seemed to do some good. First bit of exercise I’ve had in about four months. I forgot my bottle of whisky – left it back there – but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s better if I’m not corned all the time.’
‘Corned, boss?’
‘Drunk.’
‘Ah.’
‘I been thinking, boss. You remember ’ow you used to call me Leonardo?’
&nb
sp; ‘Look, I said I was sorry about that.’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that, boss. I think why don’t we call the ‘orse Leonardo?’
‘Yeah sure, why not?’ said Gilbert. Then, as he thought about it, he said, ‘Yeah, I like it. It’s a great idea.’
They fell into a companionable silence.
Gilbert’s thoughts returned to Sarah. She had eventually met him in the Fall as she had said. An afternoon in October. They had met in the lobby of Willard’s. She looked as beautiful as ever.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she said, as he kissed her on the cheek.
They ordered afternoon tea and made small talk until it came. After she had put sugar and milk in her tea, she sipped it, put down the cup, looked at him and said, ‘I’ve decided I want to try with you. I want you in my life. I want you to be my man.’
Gilbert was overwhelmed and after that they talked and talked and talked.
‘I want you to astound me,’ she said and he vowed that he would. Maybe, he suggested, when the War was over, they could buy some land and build a house. Maybe near Manassas, if she’d like that. She said that she would.
‘I’d love to travel with you,’ she said. ‘To Paris, Venice. See the capitals of Europe. Stay in fine hotels.’
He said that they would. They ate dinner in Willard’s and she invited him to dinner at her house the next evening. He floated home on a cloud.
He had thought the whole thing was resolved. But he remembered now as the wagon trundled along how that had only been the beginning. What had followed had been a succession of blissful spells spent together followed by rows where her temper would suddenly erupt, sometimes biblically so.
He remembered how he had tried to understand where these rows came from but they were so random, so unexpected. ‘I don’t trust you’ she would suddenly say or ‘the birds woke me at five thirty and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep’ or ‘you haven’t asked me about myself’ or one day which they had spent in bed together, she suddenly said, ‘I think you seem a bit blasé about the whole thing’. A huge row had followed. She had screamed at him that he was arrogant, invasive, a hypocrite, that he had nothing to offer. This was often an accusation that she made. They had fallen asleep. But then sometime during the night she had slipped her hand into his and everything was fine again.
He remembered an endless round of breaking up followed by getting back together again. After one particularly savage row, she had said that they should rebuild slowly. It seemed like a good idea. She invited him to dinner at her house. He was in the process of leaving, standing on her doorstep after a wonderful evening when they had talked and laughed.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.
He kissed her on the cheek. He hugged her. But then they had kissed. Really kissed. She began to cry. He cried. She whispered ‘stay’. He stepped back inside and she closed the door.
The next few days he had lots of work to do and he didn’t see her. But he didn’t have to see her. It was enough just knowing that she was in his life and that things were good between them.
A never-ending procession of soldiers continued to come into the studio and money carried on pouring in. He noticed that it was almost always newly enlisted soldiers. It was very rare for him to get a veteran. On those rare occasions when he did they had a strange light in their eyes. He knew what it was. They had been in a place where most men had never been – and nobody should have to go. On these occasions he felt guilty about not being in uniform but he sometimes felt he was fighting his own personal war with whatever it was that took over Sarah.
New Year’s Eve came round and she said that the New Year, 1862, should be all about them having ‘endless fun’. Within days it had all gone wrong again. He was so weary of it by then that he remembered thinking that this was the end and that maybe he didn’t care any more. But a week or two later she was saying to him that she was glad they had sorted everything out.
In early March the Confederates withdrew from Manassas and later that month Gilbert and Sarah were able to go back to a place they both loved. It was not as it had been, though. The marks of the battle and the Confederates were everywhere. A lot of the trees had been cut down for firewood. Most that remained were artillery-shattered stumps. There were blackened ruins and chimneys with no houses and crudely marked graves. The litter of the departed army was everywhere. Fences had been demolished and fields of crops trampled into great swathes of mud. Along Bull Run they found some clumps of trees that were still intact and it was in one of these that they made love against the tree.
‘Uh oh,’ Roberto said.
Gilbert broke out of his reverie.
‘We got trouble,’ said Roberto and Gilbert saw that they did.
Ahead of them, a few hundred yards away, a group of riders was emerging from the trees. Gilbert counted eight, nine, ten, before he stopped counting. Several had drawn rifles from their saddle holsters. All of them wore gray uniforms.
17
‘So here they are, eh?’ said Roberto. ‘The slave owning bastardos.’
Gilbert glanced across at Roberto as he slowed the wagon. There was a look of fury on the Italian’s face.
‘Maybe I should do the talking,’ said Gilbert.
Roberto stopped the wagon a few feet away from the group of riders who completely blocked the road.
‘Afternoon,’ said Gilbert tentatively.
The man who replied wore a lieutenant’s bars. He was young – looked far too young to be leading a squad of cavalry. Gilbert thought he had the face of a student.
‘Afternoon, gentlemen,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Mind if I ask where y’all are going and what your business might be?’
‘Bastardos,’ Roberto muttered under his breath.
Gilbert spoke loudly.
‘We’re photographers, lieutenant. We follow the army and take pictures of the men. We’re heading up here to see if we can find some soldiers.’
The lieutenant considered the answer.
‘So if I were to look in back of that there wagon, all I’d find’d be photographic equipment?’
‘Go ahead and look, sir.’
‘Vaffanculo figlio di puttana,’ said Roberto, a little louder than the last time.
‘Don’t mind my friend, lieutenant. He’s a little upset just now. We had a disagreement. Would you like to see?’
Gilbert made an after-you gesture with his hand.
‘Sergeant?’ said the lieutenant.
A sergeant slid from one of the horses and Gilbert accompanied him round to the rear of the wagon. He untied the flaps and threw back the black canvas. The sergeant peered inside.
‘You’re welcome to climb in and take a look,’ said Gilbert.
‘Naw, I can see pretty well from here.’
Next minute, Gilbert heard Roberto’s voice.
‘So why you fight so you can keep slaves, eh?’ said Roberto.
The question was loud and it was aggressive. Oh Christ, thought Gilbert.
‘Excuse me, sergeant,’ he said.
Gilbert hurried round to the front of the wagon in time to hear the lieutenant’s answer. He spoke as though he were explaining the solution to a problem in mathematics.
‘Well, I guess I don’t keep any slaves, mister. I’m just fighting for my state – the place I was brought up in and that I love.’
‘Pezzo di merda,’ said Roberto.
He spat onto the ground.
‘Roberto, will you shut up,’ said Gilbert.
‘I guess your friend’s a little upset about the Confederacy’s war aims.’
‘Don’t pay him any heed, lieutenant,’ said Gilbert.
‘Fotti tua madre,’ said Roberto.
‘Roberto, will you shut up,’ said Gilbert.
‘Eez mother – puttana,’ spat Roberto.
Just then the sergeant returned from having inspected the wagon.
‘They got food, sir – bacon, coffee, flour.’
‘Well, I’m afr
aid we’re going to have to relieve you of your provisions, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘After that, you’re free to go on your way.’
The sergeant ordered two men to go and get the provisions.
‘Vaffanculo pezzo di merda,’ said Roberto.
It seemed forever before the supplies were brought round and distributed amongst the cavalrymen’s saddlebags. Roberto continued to mutter. Finally, as the cavalrymen were getting ready to leave, the lieutenant said to Gilbert, ‘Ever been to Italy, sir?’
Gilbert felt a spike of grief.
‘No,’ he said. ‘My wife and I used to talk of going there but we never did.’
The lieutenant’s face took on a dreamy expression.
‘Beautiful country. Lived there myself for a couple of years. Was living there when the war broke out. I can still taste the food. And the wine. Like velvet. Anyway, good day to you gentlemen and we’re mighty grateful for the provisions.’
He tipped his hat to Gilbert and then to Roberto, adding in a perfect Italian accent, ‘Buon viaggio e buona fortuna’. Then he turned his horse and the troop of cavalry galloped off in a cloud of dust, heading northwards.
18
When things were good between them, Gilbert and Sarah more or less lived together. In the evening, after he closed the studio, instead of eating by himself in some local establishment, he made his way across town to her house. He would always bring something – wine or flowers or oysters or some game bird that he had picked up in one of the markets.
Even though they hadn’t known each other in childhood, the idea that they should have done, had taken hold. As a result, when she answered the door, Gilbert would sometimes say, ’is Sarah coming out to play?’
‘Maybe you’d like to come in and play with Sarah,’ would come the reply.
She would sometimes be cooking dinner when he arrived or else she would suggest that they went out to eat. He would generally know, because she would either meet him at the door wearing an apron or else she would be in the midst of getting herself ready – her hair would be wet or she would be half dressed or mending something. Whatever happened, there would be a ‘hello darling’ but the kiss depended on whether she was ‘having a crisis’ or not.
Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2) Page 8
