“Yet it’s stayed with you.”
“I wouldn’t have thought about it again if you hadn’t mentioned my dad.”
“But you said what you said.”
“Only because I was trying to get you to think seriously about seeing Hal.”
With a small sceptical grunt of dissent, Marina stepped away into a place where the moonlight outlined her otherwise shadowy figure. The others must have fallen silent, or gone inside without our noticing, for there came only the sound of water running through the darkness. Out of nowhere it brought back the time when Marina, Adam and I had made a midnight hike through the crag below High Sugden. We had followed the river for much of that night, and by dawn all three of us felt almost as freshly minted as the breaking light of day, on the edge of a future vast with possibilities. Now, with more than thirty years of anger and pain between us, I stood in Umbrian moonlight, observing the sheen of Marina’s hair, listening to the sound of water, aching with loss.
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s the real point. I think you should go and see Hal. He’s old and broken and lonely.” I glanced up in what felt like a final appeal. “And we’re all fallible, aren’t we? All in need of forgiveness? Isn’t that about as close as we can get to love these days?”
But if she had an answer I didn’t get to hear it, for at that moment both of us were startled by the urgent sound of Larry’s voice high in the darkness.
“Marina, where are you?” he called. “I think you should come. It’s Adam. He’s in rather a bad way.”
She had lifted her head at the call, now she turned it from side to side as if trying to get her bearings. In her haste to reach the door at the foot of the stair she bumped into the edge of the marble table. I heard her small gasp of pain before she hurried on with one hand held out before her as though fearful that the night might be filled with obstacles. I followed her through dappled moonlight to the door and heard her footsteps climbing quickly beyond the turn of the stair. When I came out into the courtyard she was confronting Larry with an urgent demand to know where Adam was.
“Orazio and Fra Pietro are helping him in,” Larry answered. “He seems quite dazed. There was blood on his head. I’ve no idea what he’s been up to. And look at you, for goodness’ sake, wandering about down there in the dark. We could have ended up with both of you hurt.”
“Don’t fuss me!” she brushed past his offered arm, making for the house. “I’m perfectly all right.”
Larry glanced at me reprovingly, then shook his head. “Well, I suppose it can’t make that much difference to her.”
“What doesn’t?”
“The dark of course. Surely you’ve realized?” he said. “She’s quite blind.”
Then he was gone from my side, following her into the house, and I was left standing like a stone in the midnight garden.
As I walked back towards the house, the sound of a heated exchange came through the open door to one of the rooms. From the shadows of the terrace I saw Larry Stromberg and Fra Pietro sitting alone, each with a couch to himself.
Shoulders hunched, his big hands held open in mild protest, Fra Pietro was saying, “This may be so. You have known him longer than I have, but for me Adam is looking for his life still. His true life. The life that will bring rest and satisfaction to his soul.”
“To the best of my knowledge,” Larry retorted, pouring himself more brandy, “Adam already has perfectly adequate spiritual resources of his own.” Looking up from the decanter, he saw Fra Pietro glance shiftily away. “You have the look of a guilty thing about you, Fra Pietro,” he accused. “Do you know more about this than you’ve been letting on?”
Both men were so intent on their altercation that neither was aware of me. Larry’s voice was cold, and his eyes were sharply fixed on Fra Pietro, who lifted his doleful donkey head to study the painted ceiling as though some glimpse of divine guidance might be found there. “We have talked a little, he and I,” he prevaricated.
“About?”
“Many things. For example, about a member of our order who was canonized some years ago. Also about the nature of sacrifice, and such matters.”
“Such matters indeed!” Larry peered over the rim of his glass. “What else?”
“About the Poverello, of course, and how he received on his body the marks of the stigmata when he was alone on La Verna.”
“I see.” Larry narrowed his eyes in accusation. “Have you been trying to convert him, Fra Pietro? Have you been urging poverty and chastity on him, and obedience to the Pope’s authority? Do my senses entirely deceive me or is there a distinct whiff of Creeping Jesus in the air?”
But this was too much for Fra Pietro, who got up, gasping, “Basta, Lorenzo, basta!” and headed for the door. He blinked to see me standing there, then brushed past me, saying “Excuse, excuse” as he took a fresh cheroot from his wallet and went out onto the terrace muttering to himself in Italian.
“Ah, of course!” Larry sighed as I walked through into the room. “You’re still here!” From the tone of his voice I might have wilfully neglected a convenient opportunity to take a flight out of Italy that evening. Then he must have seen from my face how shaken I was, because he glanced away uncomfortably and said, “I suppose I’d better fill you in with what’s happening.”
He told me how a man had driven up to the villa and startled everyone by shouting for attention. He was a hill farmer who claimed to have found Adam staggering down a remote mountain road several miles away. At first he’d thought him drunk and would have swerved his van past him, but when he noticed the bloody shirt and the wound on Adam’s temple, he’d stopped to pick him up. Blurry but resolute, Adam had insisted that he be taken not to hospital but to Gabriella’s villa. Between them, Orazio and Fra Pietro had helped Adam from the van. His clothes smelt of sheep and his face was white, but he was smiling vaguely as if amused by his own condition. Mumbling that he was all right, he told them they were not to worry, he just needed rest. Gabriella had arranged for him to be put to bed at once and then telephoned her doctor. The farmer had left just a few minutes before I came in, having refused all reward except a glass of wine and Fra Pietro’s blessing.
Still dazed myself, I said, “Did Adam take a fall or something?”
“I don’t know. Nothing’s quite clear yet.”
“What was he doing up there in the mountains on his own anyway?”
“As you may remember, Adam is sometimes a law unto himself.”
“So why are you giving that poor monk such a hard time?”
Larry frowned into his brandy snifter. “He’s not a monk – he’s a friar – and I rather fear he’s been poking his nose where it don’t belong. I do hope you’re not going to do the same. I’ve got too much on my plate as it is just now.”
“Too much to warn me about Marina’s blindness evidently!”
“Yes, well, your feelings don’t rank very high on my priorities. Besides, I’m sure I recall saying something about what a formidable figure she’s become.”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
Larry heaved another impatient sigh. “Why don’t you go home, dear man? Go home and tell Bully Brigshaw that his daughter is blind and his son has just cracked his head in the mountains, so neither is in much shape to visit his sickbed – even if they had the remotest desire to do so.” He knocked back the last of the brandy. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are things I must sort out with Gabriella,” he said, and left the room.
Hearing Fra Pietro’s lute strumming a wistful little tune out on the terrace, I poured myself a brandy and tried to come to terms with the intolerable thought of Marina’s blindness, and of Adam in much the same state of confusion and dishevelment as he had been when I had found him on King’s Parade at the time of his breakdown at Cambridge.
Freezing sleet had been blowing about the streets on that winter night, shortly after the start of a new term in our second year. Adam had come back to college a week early after a di
sastrous Christmas vacation at High Sugden. I hadn’t returned until later, so he must have been brooding on his own for days before he cracked and went out wandering the streets. With some difficulty I got him back to his room, where I lit the gas fire to warm him up. Ignoring the cup of coffee I brought him, he sat at his desk, shivering, vaguely shaking his head when I tried to make him talk. He seemed resentful of my efforts to help him. When I saw I was getting nowhere, I decided to let him sleep. Telling him that I’d call in the next day, I cycled back to the hostel across the river where I was living at that time. But I’d lain awake most of the night, worrying over what was happening.
I knew that things had been going badly for him at home. He and his father had been at loggerheads since Hal came to speak at Cambridge (‘Does Freedom Have A Future?’ had been the title of his talk) and I’d been caught uneasily between them. By the time of my New Year visit to High Sugden, they were no longer speaking to each other, and both were shaken by a row so bruising that neither would speak about it to anyone else. Marina was too taken up with the hectic complexities of her life at art school to show much interest in Adam at that time, and Grace had already begun to retreat into drink as a refuge from her own pain and loneliness. So I found Adam holed up in his room, preparing for an early return to college.
Typically, he sought to hide his feelings with the same dry nonchalance with which he’d concealed his occasional fits of depression at Cambridge. I tried to talk to him about those black moods once, but he fobbed me off with the bleak, deliberately excluding remark that no one with any sense of moral decency could be happy in times like these.
When I went back to his room the morning after his crisis, I found only his bed-maker there, sorting out a muddle of smashed crockery and books. It was she who told me that Adam had been taken for observation to the mental hospital at Fulbourn. Later I learnt that Grace had driven down urgently from Yorkshire, but I saw nothing of her while she was in Cambridge. Within the week she had taken her son home to recuperate. Adam did not return for the rest of that term. When I saw him again at Easter, he still wouldn’t talk about what had happened.
Thinking how that might have been Adam’s first breakdown but certainly not the last, I was drawn by the sound of Fra Pietro’s lute to the door of the terrace. I saw the tip of the friar’s cheroot glowing where he sat propped against the pergola. Unaware that he was observed, he stopped playing, carefully stubbed the cigar, put it back into his wallet and gave himself over more intently to fingering the strings. Moments later I heard a soft chuckle from further down the terrace, and the plump figure of a woman in black bombazine flowed from the gloom into the moonlight as though she were an eddy of the night. When the light fell on her thinning silver hair, I recognized Fra Pietro’s friend from earlier that evening: Angelina, the cook, who must also, it now occurred to me, have been the source of Larry’s story about the Revenant of Fontanalba. I was wondering whether some crazy notion about that legend might have driven Adam to take off alone into the mountains, when I saw Orazio come out onto the terrace. He stood beside Angelina with one hand gently resting on her shoulder, both of them evidently entranced by the music, which seemed to still the whole night to a state of tranquil attention.
After a time I became aware of Allegra standing a little behind me. When I made way to give her a better view, she moved to stand at my side. Moments later the piece came to an end. Fra Pietro glanced away shyly from the applause before Angelina engaged him in conversation.
“Doesn’t he play beautifully?” Allegra said quietly.
“Almost as beautifully as you sing.”
“Thank you.” The response was neither coy nor casual. With one hand she pushed back her hair. When I asked her how Adam was, she said, “The head wound doesn’t look too serious. More of a graze than a knock, I think. He’s asleep by now, I guess. He was quite exhausted.”
“Is the doctor on his way?”
“Not till tomorrow. He seemed to think a night’s rest was the best thing.”
“Not just for himself, I hope?”
“Gabriella wouldn’t have let him get away with that. It’s just precautionary. We need him in good shape for this weekend.”
“For the gathering you mentioned this afternoon?”
“Yes. We’re expecting a number of people. I just assumed you were one of them.” The sound of banter between the three Italians drifted on the air. Angelina chuckled merrily again; then Allegra turned to me and said, “So how did your conversation with Marina go?”
“It got better, I think, towards the end. Your singing helped. But I would have appreciated it if someone had thought to warn me that she’s lost her sight.”
“You didn’t know?”
“How could I? Apart from anything else, she hardly looked at me all evening. How long has she been like this? How did it happen?”
Allegra considered me a moment and took in my distress. “It was a few years ago,” she said. She was walking the hills with Gabriella when she looked up and thought it was snowing. By the time they got back she was blind. It’s a disease. A deterioration of the cell structure in the retina. She must have known something was wrong before then, but she was working on a big mural at that time and she did nothing about it. Afterwards she said she’d been frightened, of course, but she was determined to finish the painting.” Allegra’s pragmatic tone of voice was matched by a philosophical shrug. “That’s my mother for you!”
I questioned her more closely. Was the condition really irreversible? Surely something could be done? Weren’t there specialists in the field? But the best eye surgeons had been found, they had done everything that could have been done, and Marina’s sight was gone. “She accepted it a long time ago,” Allegra said, “and now she copes so well that it’s not surprising you didn’t notice.”
“But painting was her life.”
“Yes. And now there are other things.”
“God knows how I’m going to break this to Hal.”
“You’re his friend, aren’t you? And isn’t it your job – bringing bad news to the world? Isn’t that what you’re good at?” But she must have seen the pain in my face. “I’m sorry,” she added. “It must have come as a shock.”
“I keep thinking of her shut up in the dark this way.”
“But she’s not. She’s not shut up anywhere. In fact, my mother is one of the most alarmingly free people I know.”
I was still trying to gauge the force of that adverb when Allegra said, “Look. I think Angelina’s going to sing for us.”
The cook was standing on the terrace with her hands clasped at her bust. She took a deep breath as if inhaling the fragrance of the night, and gave her whole big body over to unaccompanied song. In contrast to her earlier merriment, the refrain was filled with plaintive lament, and as her voice faded on the air, the others responded to its sadness with audible sighs. Then Angelina opened her arms, tilted her head, jiggled her index fingers to change the mood once more, and led them into the chorus of a jollier song. Orazio took up the first verse in his husky baritone and, after a repetition of the chorus, Fra Pietro grinned his way into the second, before Angelina brought the song to its climax. Allegra joined in the final rousing chorus and clapped her hands in delight as it came to an end amid laughter and mutual congratulation.
But my own feelings were still too bewildered to share their levity. Glancing at my watch, I said, “It’s late. I should be getting back.”
“What’s the hurry?” Allegra asked. “Why not stay here tonight? Gabriella wouldn’t mind, and you could talk to Marina again tomorrow. She might have second thoughts.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, what about me? You’re part of my past too, aren’t you? I find that interesting. I think you know things I need to know. And didn’t you say you wanted to know more about me – things that you could tell Hal?” Our eyes met in a stare of mutual assessment, from which I was the first to glance away. “I’m puzzled by you,” she
said. “You seem very nice, but everyone keeps warning me against you. Are they right?
“If they were, would I say?”
A capricious glint brightened her eyes. “Tell me,” she asked, “were you and my mother lovers once?”
After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “A long time ago.”
“I rather thought so. Did you break her heart?”
Again I paused before speaking. “Yes, I think I did – though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. And in the process my heart got damaged too.” Then with a quick ironical smile I added, “I don’t think it ever quite recovered.”
“She was your first love?”
“My first real love, yes.”
“Ah, this is interesting. So now there are two reasons why you might be here!”
“You know why I’m here. I told you this afternoon.”
“I know why you came,” she said, “but not why you’re still here. After Marina’s outburst at dinner I thought I knew. I thought it must be out of guilt. Guilt over something you’d done a long time ago perhaps. A guilt that you came here hoping to expiate in some way. The bad history you talked about earlier, right?”
She eyed me shrewdly, waiting for a response. When none came, she said, “But now it looks more complicated. I think maybe you’re still in love. But not just with Marina. With the whole family. With Hal certainly, otherwise you would never have come at all. But with Marina too? And what about Adam?” Without giving me room to reply, she added, “You’ve never been able to let go of any of them, have you? Why should that be, I wonder?”
“I do have a life, you know. A rather full one, as it happens.”
“With the woman you were speaking to on the phone this morning? Is she your wife?”
“No. There’s not a lot of room for a wife in the kind of life I live.”
She tilted her head from side to side, as though examining a portrait, looking for flaws. “Being the intrepid reporter, you mean – wandering the world in search of violent action? So what happens for you personally? In your emotional life? When you’re not dodging bullets and bombs? Do you just get it together with someone for a time and then move on?”
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