The Tuscan Contessa

by Dinah Jefferies

  He pushed the curling brown hair from his eyes. ‘I thought he must be meaning the village, here.’

  Sofia walked over to the man in the chair for a closer look at his face. The dogs, one step ahead, sniffed around him cautiously, but when he didn’t respond they lost interest and sloped away. The man’s eyes remained closed, his hair was matted, and an angry-looking gash had made his right cheek swell. Then she noticed his jacket caked in blood. When she asked him who he was, his eyelashes fluttered for a moment, after which he opened the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

  ‘Who are you?’ she repeated.

  He touched his throat.

  ‘Water, Carla. Get him some water.’

  Carla grudgingly filled a glass and brought it across to put to his cracked lips. As he swallowed, her thoughts spun. What if he was a German deserter? But then he surprised her by speaking in good unaccented English.

  ‘James,’ he said, his voice weak. ‘My name.’

  ‘Can you tell us what happened to you?’

  He closed his eyes. Had he fallen asleep?

  ‘I think he must be English,’ she told Carla.

  ‘That’s all we need. Like I said, he was mumbling when Aldo found him in the woodstore beyond the walls. Didn’t sound like German, Aldo said, but he couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘He needs a doctor.’

  Carla pulled a face.

  ‘I know. I know.’

  She stared at Sofia obstinately but then relented. ‘I suppose we can put him in Gabriella’s room for now. And she can come in with me. The door has a lock, so he won’t be able to hurt anyone. Aldo will sleep at Anna’s as usual. She likes the company.’

  Sofia smiled at her, understanding. At the beginning Carla had been a farmer’s wife, a massaia, who later came up daily to cook for them at the manor. But when her husband, Enrico, had taken ill and could no longer work, Sofia brought them both to live in four good-sized rooms, one on the ground floor which was now Gabriella’s room and three on the first floor of the partly unused side of the manor house with its own staircase. They’d been their previous housekeeper’s quarters, but she had married and moved into the village and her rooms had remained empty. All three children had come with Carla, of course, and Anna now worked as their part-time housekeeper, living out. Enrico had been a large, jovial man who hadn’t deserved to die young and for the year he was ill Sofia had helped nurse him. Then afterwards, because she and Lorenzo had been unable to have children of their own, she’d poured all her mothering instincts into Carla’s children, especially Aldo who had been devastated by his father’s death.

  Despite her sometimes-gruff exterior, the Carla they all knew was a kind and generous soul who could let her hair down when she wanted. The images from their celebration supper in September came rushing back. Lorenzo and Sofia had pitched in before the black clouds rolled over and at the end of the week, aching with exhaustion from the grape picking, they’d crawled back up to the house. Aldo, wearing a brilliant white shirt which emphasized the beauty of his olive skin, had laid out tables in the square and Carla had washed and ironed blue chequered tablecloths. In September, just before the Germans came, they still had plentiful prosciutto, mortadella, salami and sheep’s cheese to accompany the bread and wine. When someone began to play the violin, tiredness fell away and they danced beneath the star-strewn sky. Even Lorenzo, who, beaming with pleasure and heat and love, had twirled her round and round until she was dizzy. Carla, her laughter loud and free, danced longer than anyone, until Aldo had to scrape her from the ground and ease her indoors, the gentle charm of him enough to melt your heart.

  The memories dissolved and now Sofia glanced at the man in the armchair again. ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s likely to be hurting anyone or going anywhere.’ She ran through the options in her head but could tell that without help there was a chance he might die. Lorenzo would be in Florence for a couple of days so if they could find somewhere for the man within the next forty-eight hours it should be fine. She didn’t want to involve Lorenzo in this. He had enough on his plate and might not approve of her intervention.

  Carla gave her a wry smile.

  ‘About Gabriella’s room. Are you sure?’

  Carla nodded. ‘Aldo will help move him, won’t you, son?’

  Aldo nodded and Sofia studied the man again. His hair, beneath the grime, looked fair so he certainly could be German. Large enough too. Funny how they were all so large. A race of giants. On the other hand, if he really was English, and not German, maybe he was an escaped prisoner of war. He looked so lost. Where did he come from? Did he have family? A wife? Children? She couldn’t help comparing this well-built man with her tall, fine-boned, aristocratic husband. This man’s clothing was so nondescript and filthy, it was impossible to see the colour, though probably it was a grey jacket and dark-green trousers. When she gingerly opened his jacket, his saturated shirt revealed such awful blood loss that she gasped.

  Sofia snapped into action, explaining what they needed to do. Carla tutted and muttered but Aldo, although only seventeen and not beefy, was strong and between the three of them they managed to carry or rather drag the groaning man across the main hall and through to the little bedroom at the side of the house.

  Carla pulled off her daughter’s bedclothes and spread an old blanket on the mattress and then Aldo and Sofia lifted the man on to the bed. He moaned but didn’t open his eyes.

  ‘Will Gabriella be all right with this?’

  She was puzzled when Carla didn’t reply but instead gazed down at the floor. Aldo gave her one of his sweet, apologetic smiles, the kind that had got him out of trouble as a child. How vibrantly the life shone out of those dark eyes, she thought. It always had. Then she saw him nudge Carla.

  ‘Tell the Contessa what happened,’ he said. ‘Tell her.’

  Sofia looked from one to the other. ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘It’s Gabriella,’ he said, concern and worry clouding his eyes. ‘We think she spent an hour with one of the Blackshirts who disturbed the women at Anna’s house the other night.’

  Carla glanced up at Sofia as if deciding before she spoke. ‘Now is not the time.’

  ‘Well, tell me later, but now, Carla, a bowl of hot water, please, and some clean rags,’ Sofia said as she knelt by the bed. ‘Aldo, can you help me undress the man?’

  ‘Contessa!’ Carla objected.

  Sofia twisted her head to look at her. ‘Don’t be so strait-laced, I have to know where he’s injured.’ Carla still looked affronted by the idea of her mistress doing the undressing and Sofia couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘I shall undress him,’ Carla said. ‘If you don’t mind fetching the water, Contessa. Clean rags are in the cupboard on the right of the sink.’

  By the time the water was heated, and Sofia had carried a jug of it through to Carla, the man was ready for her.

  ‘There’s bruising around his shoulder,’ Aldo said.

  ‘Only his shoulder?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. And a gunshot wound at the top of his arm.’

  Carla had covered his legs and private parts with another blanket that she now pulled a little further up his torso.

  Sofia laughed again. ‘So, you’ve checked?’

  ‘Nothing much to see,’ Carla muttered and then let out a cackle.

  Sofia examined the man. Carla fetched the brandy bottle and, when he opened his eyes a fraction, they attempted to help him drink. The bullet was still inside the wound so once he’d swallowed a little brandy, which Sofia hoped would dull the pain, she gritted her teeth and, with her heart in her mouth, made a start at removing it and then cleaning up the mess. Carla had offered to do it, but Sofia felt it had to be her. It had been her custom to help patch up their workers when injured, though nothing had been as bad as this. The man screwed up his face as she worked. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I’m sorry,’ and worried about his increasing pallor. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing but instinct told her they had to ge
t the wound clean. When it was done, Carla fetched some antiseptic and bandaged his arm to halt the bleeding.

  ‘He really needs stitches,’ Sofia told them as she straightened up.

  ‘You can’t ask the doctor.’

  ‘No.’

  They were in a difficult position. Their local doctor at Buonconvento, known to have Fascist sympathies, couldn’t be trusted.

  ‘What about the nuns at Sant’Anna?’ Aldo said. ‘Don’t they consult a doctor from Trequanda?’

  Sofia thought of the beautiful frescoed refectory of the convent and the kindly Mother Superior there. Convents were especially useful nowadays as their hidden passages were rarely discovered during a Nazi raid. And, because the Germans tended to ignore nuns, their habit sometimes served as a handy disguise. The last time she had seen the Mother Superior they had discussed a rebellious village girl who’d run away from her family and had been found hiding in the convent’s garden. The two of them had sat on the terrace, eating sheep’s cheese and drinking a little Montalcino wine while gazing west to the Crete Senesi hills, and together worked out what to do. She would surely help them again.

  Carla looked worried. ‘What if she asks who he is? We don’t want to get the nuns into hot water. I mean, it’s dangerous to harbour an Englishman.’

  ‘We don’t need to move him yet. I will pop in and out, and if he speaks again I should be able to tell.’

  ‘You understand the English, Contessa?’ Aldo asked.

  ‘Certainly, my parents insisted I learn English, German and French, and I spent nearly a year studying in London.’

  Aldo dipped his head and reached into his trouser pocket then held out something. ‘I found this inside his jacket.’

  Sofia glanced at the booklet and flicked its few pages, but none of it made sense, so she decided to hide it for now and leave them to it.

  It was too cold to paint outside, especially at the crenellated top of the tower where the wind could be furious, but Sofia had completed a few new sketches over the summer. She’d drawn the tower so many times in the past, from a seat on the wall surrounding the cistern in the middle of the square and from the windows of her home. She’d also drawn the view from the very top of the tower, which you accessed by a steep inner staircase. Before the war she’d envisaged transforming the top room of the tower into a studio, but Lorenzo insisted it stood a greater chance of being bombed so she never had. Maybe later. For now, she made her way through their large hall where several of her own small canvasses were displayed, and into a little studio with French windows overlooking the rose garden. Roses still flowered, even this late in the year, and the sight of those few blooms lifted her heart. Sofia favoured working on landscapes in soft muted colours but instead of painting the tower she would carry on with her latest canvas, a portrait of her mother, Elsa.

  Whoever the injured man was, she hoped to find out for certain before they needed to move him and before Lorenzo discovered he was there. If not, she’d have a lot of explaining to do. Lorenzo wouldn’t condone her putting herself at risk or placing anyone in the village in the path of danger.

  6.

  That night Sofia dreamt of spring, of voluptuous pastures so newly green they shone as if lit from within, and she dreamt of vivid red poppies again and silver olive trees and the beautiful, curving Senesi craters and the tall, dark cypress trees marching across her eyeline in the Val d’Orcia. She saw the verges of the tracks lined with swathes of purple iris, yellow field marigolds, pink rock roses, white daisies and blue hyacinths. And, as she dreamt of long lunches spent in Pienza eating stuffed artichoke hearts and roast lamb, she could smell the fragrance of fresh rosemary and wild mint and see the common blue butterflies floating in the air. Occasionally she dreamt of eating Tuscan flatbread and home-made cheese while sitting on a rug on the grassy lawns of the gardens of San Quirico d’Orcia. Hunger drove her dreams. Hunger, for good food, yes, for variety, but it was more hunger for their lives to be whole again. Sometimes she dreamt of long afternoons of love-making and carefree happiness where there were no sides to choose between and life was less complicated, but it was an illusion because for the last twenty years there had been Mussolini.

  She half woke, hearing someone in her bedroom. She heard them moving about and instantly thought of the blue-eyed man. Had he been pretending to be asleep? But no, he was locked in, wasn’t he? She reached for the light switch.

  ‘Leave the light.’

  It was Lorenzo, back sooner than expected.

  She shifted over in the bed and reached for him lazily as he climbed in beside her. Her beautiful, complicated husband wrapped his arms around her, and she felt his heart thumping against her own. The occasionally distant figure her husband had become vanished when they made love. As they embraced, they became whole again and not the uncomfortable versions of themselves they’d lately adopted. He kissed her neck and, still half in dreams of spring and sex and love, she arched her back, cat-like. He ran his hands over her breasts, her stomach, her legs, ending at the top of her thighs. He rubbed, searching for the right spot, and in her sleepy, defenceless state, she orgasmed quickly. He rolled on top of her, spreading her legs, and holding her arms above her head, he entered her body.

  When Sofia woke to the sun streaming through the window, she reached out, but Lorenzo’s side of the bed was empty. She patted the sheet. Cold. Had she dreamt him? But then she saw his clothes thrown across the sides of a wing-backed chair. Not a dream then.

  Lorenzo believed Sofia should be like his mother and her mother before her. The stately Corsi ladies of the manor. He liked her to maintain dignity while showing gracious concern for the families who relied upon them. He didn’t have the same easy-going ways as she, nor did he openly endorse her sympathy for the partisans. He believed it would be safer for her to remain neutral and her safety was what most troubled him. So, she didn’t tell him everything. He had fallen in love with the way she embraced life, her joie de vivre he used to call it during their honeymoon in Paris. He said he loved her grace, her elegance, and the way she’d been brought up to have beautiful manners. He loved that she smiled, that she radiated happiness. She smiled less these days.

  She hated having to be cautious around him but knew he’d worry, and, really, she wasn’t doing much herself, although she knew what was going on and didn’t say. She knew about the women knitting for the partisans and said nothing. She knew where the partisans were and said nothing. She knew Carla was cooking for them in their kitchen and said nothing. And now she knew about the injured blue-eyed man, who could be anyone. And still she said nothing.

  Lorenzo was watchful, observant. He went along with what couldn’t be avoided and, at the start, like others, he had truly believed Mussolini would be good for the country. Mussolini built roads, got the trains to run on time. But when he gagged the free press, tolerated Fascist squad violence and otherwise consolidated his grip on the country … things worsened. And then, after he declared himself dictator of Italy in 1925 and built up the secret police, they all began to understand what was really happening. As the power of the judges and the courts weakened, and political opponents were arrested and frequently given the death penalty, they learnt the full truth. Too late. Far too late. Friends in England asked how they could have let it happen and they said because people were fooled and manipulated, and they needed someone or something to believe in. And they warned the English to beware. For if populism, division and hatred could happen in Italy and in Germany, it could happen anywhere.

  So, now Lorenzo had been recruited to pass information to the Allies – an incredibly dangerous undertaking as the ministry he worked for was controlled by the Nazis. She and Lorenzo didn’t talk as frequently as they used to, so she didn’t know much. It was no one’s fault, but the war got in the way. She felt each of them had been forced to dive down into their deepest soul, something you could only do alone. When you didn’t know if the person you loved above all others in the world would even be alive t
he next day, it made you love them more, made you want to hold on even more tightly, but you could not. It also made you want to protect them, but to do that you had to let them go just a little bit. Close off a little bit. Give them space to do whatever they had to do. Clutching too tightly to Lorenzo would only cause him pain when he had to go. Better he should believe she was all right, that she was safe.

  7.

  As Sofia unlocked the little bedroom door and pushed it open the pervasive smell of illness overpowered her, and when she examined the man and felt the back of his neck, she realized his fever had worsened. She pulled the blanket away and instructed Aldo to soak a cloth in cool water, then she wrung it out and dabbed repeatedly at the man’s face, neck and head. Finally, she told Aldo to lay two damp cloths across his chest. Despite James’s grave condition, if that really was his name, they had to find a way to take him to the convent. And, unless she wanted to include Lorenzo in the plan, it had to be right away.

  When they returned to the kitchen Aldo watched Giulia, the maid, preparing the coffee and cake for breakfast. Giulia had not worked for them for long. She was a village girl who used to live with her grandmother in Pisa, but since the war she had come back to be with her mother. Sofia wasn’t convinced by her reliability but had given her the benefit of the doubt.

  Aldo shot Sofia a confused look. ‘Two coffee cups. You have a visitor?’

  ‘No. Lorenzo is home.’

  He couldn’t prevent his surprise. ‘Ah.’

  ‘I was the one who saw him,’ Giulia boasted. ‘He rang for breakfast.’

  ‘Will Conte Lorenzo be staying?’ Carla asked as she entered the kitchen from the garden.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sofia replied then moved across to whisper to Aldo. ‘Can you wait for me here? I could do with a hand to move the man.’