by Rumer Godden
Rob, Celestina, and Giulietta were united in worrying in case she was uncomfortable, cold, depressed. Here Fanny was first and for years she had always been last; the last to be served – ‘Because I did the serving’ – the last to go to bed, unless Darrell were at home, but first to get up in the morning, she thought wryly. She was last on every list and automatically the one to give up everything, to stay behind, to go without. ‘Well, mothers are like that,’ she would have said. ‘Some mothers,’ said Rob.
Now Rob made her stay in bed for breakfast and Celestina panted up the stairs with relays of coffee, while Giulietta, strong and nimble as a goat, carried up the breakfast table so that Rob could eat with Fanny. In the sitting-room Giulietta built a big fire of olive wood that gave out its warm incense: Rob and Fanny sat by it, reading, talking – or dreaming, thought Fanny, and idling. ‘I’m not going to do any work for three months,’ Rob had said. They had drinks before lunch which always began with one of Celestina’s pastas, gnocchi, canelloni, ravioli, or with shrimps, fresh caught in the Adriatic, or the new season’s asparagus. Afterwards Fanny rested, Rob wrote letters, and then, in raincoats, scarves, thick shoes, they would walk down to Malcesine to buy stamps and get English papers, or up the mountain into the storm, past dripping terraces of olives and vines and steep peach orchards where the pink blossom shone in the rain. The farms seemed to be of goats and bantams. ‘I haven’t seen a sheep or a pig, scarcely any cows,’ said Fanny. Perhaps the cows were not let out yet to graze in the meagre pastures. Fanny and Rob came in soaked, battered, but glowing, and Fanny made tea; there was no kettle in the villa but she went into the kitchen and used a strange little electric pan of Celestina’s that held only a cupful of hot water at a time. Rob, she discovered, was fussy about tea. It had to be China, his special brand of Lapsang Souchong; she began to appreciate its fine and smoky taste.
At teatime the post came and this was a dangerous moment; there was scarcely ever a letter for her but Rob read his aloud. ‘You must begin to understand,’ he said. Now too they read the papers, ‘From a far-off world,’ said Fanny. Then Fanny went up for a bath; the hot water trickled so that she had to allow half an hour for it to run in, but she would fill the tub, add the pine and balsam essence Rob had bought for her and lie soaking. She would dress leisurely and come down to find the fire heaped up, drinks ready on a trolley and she and Rob would talk again until Giulietta, who was as sudden as Celestina, would burst open the glass doors and call, ‘A tavola,’ and they would dine at the round table, with its bowl of stocks, ‘and eat far too much,’ said Fanny.
The villa had no radio, television, or telephone. ‘You will have absolute quiet and peace,’ Renato had said, and after dinner Rob read aloud. He had bought a case of new novels and biographies, but now he read Fanny a fifteenth-century manuscript he was bewitched with, a story of Saladin that he hoped one day to make into a picture. ‘I see it as a film opera,’ he said – Margot had told Fanny he always wrote his own scripts. ‘I have been trying to get backing, and so has Renato, for three years.’
It had always been Fanny who had read aloud, endlessly, she thought; now she sat idle, gazing into the olive fire, listening to his voice against the storm.
The dark came early and they went early to bed, leaving the fire burning. Its warm smell would drift up the stairs, seeming to warm the bedroom if they left the brocade door open. In the night the wind and rain, battering and shaking outside, only lulled the house further into sleep.
The Villa Fiorita had opened a new world to Fanny with its chosen antique furniture, the tapestries, and brocades hung on the walls. ‘I didn’t know everyday houses had them,’ Fanny said as Caddie might have done. There were endless bibelots; glass bowls, goblets, and tear-bottles; snuff-boxes, family portraits, two especially that Fanny loved, a man and woman, Huguenot in their primness, with dark clothes and ruffs. There was the pair of angels that were to impress Caddie. Fanny’s bedroom with the gilt and brocade bed, the pink and cream furniture, was for someone feminine, loved, thought Fanny, and precious. She had never thought of herself as precious before. It was as if the frontiers of her old world had been opened, giving a bigger view of a wider world, at the same time more cultivated and more careless. ‘But … isn’t there an inventory?’ she had asked, bewildered. All this valuable china and glass, pictures, silver left to strangers.
‘My aunt either leaves everything or puts everything away,’ Renato had explained. There was a compliment in that, but he did not add that in any case the inventory was there, in Celestina’s head. Every article in the villa was listed there and who would dare to dispute with Celestina? Not even the German generals who had occupied the villa in the war, not even the Egyptian prince whose servants had been light-fingered. ‘Twenty thousand lire compensation they had to pay,’ said Celestina.
Madame Menghini’s bookshelves made Fanny feel a schoolgirl, books in French, German, Italian, English. Many of them were written in by the authors, some of them were dedicated to Madame as well. There was a rich abundance of books as there was of flowers: pot plants of begonias, crimson, salmon, lemon yellow, white; begonias by the dozen, azaleas, hydrangeas. There was a new vista, too, in Celestina’s cooking, the meals arranged with grace, and simplicity, thought Fanny, and she thought of all the years she had spent in endless, and what seemed here needless, cooking: porridge, bacon, and eggs for breakfast – though, as she soon learned, no meal is more envied in Italy than English breakfast – but all those puddings, thought Fanny, daily potatoes, cakes and scones for tea, and all the other tea; early-morning tea, kitchen elevenses, tea for workmen come into the house, tea, tea, tea; no wonder at Stebbings there was never any time; but, though the villa was a revelation, Fanny was still Fanny and a subtle change began to come over it; the chairs no longer stood stiffly round the centre table; two were by the fire, a rug moved between them, a table of books pulled out beside them. Fanny would pick up the cushions and throw them back in the chairs after Giulietta had set them in careful triangles. Papers and books were left undisturbed and the flowers were grouped, not set in rows. The small gauze curtains that had been stretched across every window, shutting out the view, had come down, and the crocheted mats that Celestina felt should be under every vase, ashtray, and ornament disappeared. It was as if Fanny had shaken the villa into comfortable living, and Rob looked round and said, ‘I don’t know what you have done, but it’s different – as I am.’
That was true. How could such a difference come in so short a time? But it had. Rob looked as if he had been … crowned, thought Fanny.
‘Well, this is the first time I have ever had a woman of my own,’ said Rob.
‘Someone on every picture,’ Margot had said. Fanny could disregard, now, the pang that that had given her. She knew it was not true. ‘Most film people are very much family men,’ Rob had said. ‘I was the exception.’
‘You had Lucia,’ Fanny said, remembering that far-off girl wife, whom Rob had only talked about once, and briefly.
‘Lucia was a child. She made me feel guilty.’ The moodiness came back, the look that had made Philippa say Rob looked melancholy and Margot declare he was unhappy, a hollow look. Then his face cleared. ‘I ought to feel guilty about you but I don’t. I can’t.’ The hollowness had gone; he looked fulfilled; his eyes had a spark, not only of amusement but of a happiness that spilled over. And I have done that, thought Fanny.
They had been ten days in the villa when they woke to a new silence. For a moment they did not know what it meant; the wind had dropped; there was no blustering round the house; the shutters were not rattling and from the garden came only the sound of waves lazily lapping. Fanny jumped up to open the windows; the lake was a deep iridescent blue, the mountains so clear that every town and village showed; their blue and pumice heights were lit with sun, their caps of snow shone. Now, so early in the morning, the sky arched pale; presently it, too, would be that postcard Italian blue and soon the sun was steaming across the lake. It wa
s now, when they could have been outside all day, that Rob started to work.
It began with a telegram from Renato: Telephone me, Milan 22306. ‘I can guess what that is,’ said Rob.
‘A picture?’ asked Fanny.
‘Yes, but I can’t do anything about it.’
‘But, Rob, if it’s Saladin, you must.’
‘It won’t be Saladin, and this time belongs to us. I deserve a rest,’ said Rob. ‘Eleven months on Haysel to Harvest, seven in Africa and Rome with Diamond Pipe, and more to come on that. It’s slavery. I am spending this time with you, and only you.’
‘But you can’t if it’s something interesting.’
‘Indeed I can.’
‘You said that in your life you have to take what comes when it comes,’ said Fanny. ‘You said one can’t dictate to work. We are going in to Malcesine to ring up Renato.’
The café public telephone was behind the harbour in a narrow busy street, where the traffic made it difficult to hear. The woman behind the bar dealt with the numbers; she put Rob through, while he waited by one of the booths, patiently, but tapping his foot and talking to the cafe children while Fanny sat at one of the tables. She avoided all children: indeed she had asked Rob to tell Celestina that the trattoria children were not to play in the garden. ‘Proibire ai bambini di venire qui!’ said Celestina. The Signora, so kind and gentle, not to like children! Not to want Beppino and Gianna!
But now in the café she could not help watching these two. The eldest was a boy of Hugh’s age, proudly playing with his tiny sister. Fanny watched his rough head bent over the little dark one as he teased in a voice that squeaked suddenly on a high note and went down; a breaking voice always made them seem more vulnerable, thought Fanny, and hastily turned away. Even the little girl had shades: Philippa at that age had none of the melting sweetness of this little Italian, but had been direct, fierce, with a fall of golden hair, clearly marked eyebrows, and an imperious mouth. She still had them. My beautiful Flip, thought Fanny. Hugh … the thought of him followed though she tried to shut it out. Often to her, Hugh was still at the fledgling stage that little boys go through when they have big downy heads, skins more delicate than a girl’s, long lashes; but Hugh was as old as this boy now, at the thorny, unmanageable stage. She could imagine how difficult he was being and Fanny hastily turned to think of Caddie. Caddie was always her right age more or less, more or less because she was in the nebulous incognito of ten to thirteen when a girl might be any age – or anyone, thought Fanny, and Caddie was surely more nebulous than most because she was so hopelessly shy – as I was, thought Fanny. Yet Caddie was braver than her mother; she had not been at all shy over Topaz, for instance. She was to have ridden him in Risborough Show, thought Fanny. The letters from Dartmoor had been all about that, nothing of Caddie, only of Topaz. His first show … Here Fanny had to tell herself to sit up straight, drink her coffee. How absurd, with all the major things she had left undone, to feel such a pang over Caddie’s pony. It was better, much better, not to think of the children, not to look at the cafe children. She got up sharply and went into the booth with Rob.
She listened to the short quick sentences. ‘No, I can’t. I told you. Nothing at all for three months. Damn it all, we agreed, Renato.’ She could hear the loud Italian voice crackling and talking on the other end, it sounded both urgent and excited.
‘It is Saladin,’ said Rob to Fanny.
‘Saladin! Oh Rob!’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Rob into the receiver. ‘Yes, I did. I have always wanted to. I went over it all with Herz last year, as you know. Does it have to be now? Then it’s “no”.’
‘I am going to spend this time with you,’ he said again to Fanny.
‘You have wanted to do this for years, and I won’t run away.’ Fanny was calm and decided. In spite of everything Rob was saying, she could feel his excitement and she took the receiver from him. ‘Signor Menghini.’
‘Yes. Is that …’ He doesn’t know what to call me, thought Fanny, nor did she know what to call herself. ‘Yes. This is Fanny,’ she said. ‘Signor Menghini, Rob is to do this picture.’
‘You say so?’ There was approval as well as amusement in his voice.
‘Yes,’ said Fanny.
‘They want a breakdown by June,’ said Rob. ‘That’s almost impossible.’
‘You can do it,’ said Fanny and down the telephone to Renato, ‘He is standing beside me waiting to talk reasonably to you,’ and she gave the receiver back to Rob.
The call went on. ‘No, I’m not coming to them. No, of course they can’t come here. They can wait. It will take a month, at least, to get an outline. No I won’t. Not even to Milan.’
‘And he went to Milan and stayed three days,’ said Fanny.
Rob had taken the small south bedroom as his study; shut away behind the loggia that led from Fanny’s room, it made a cell, sunny and quiet. ‘Don’t you want a view?’ asked Fanny. ‘No, I want four walls,’ said Rob. ‘A desk?’ Fanny had looked round Madame Menghini’s furniture. In the drawing-room there was a desk of walnut inlaid with painted wood and gilt. It did not look a desk for work but, ‘There isn’t another,’ said Fanny.
‘I don’t want a desk, I want a table,’ Rob had said and had taken the kitchen table that was to shock the children. It shocked Fanny too. ‘Because it looks incongruous?’ asked Rob.
It was not that. To take the kitchen table was, for Fanny, to upset the whole order of a home. ‘Quite hopelessly domestic,’ Margot used often to say of Fanny. ‘I like being domestic,’ Fanny had countered unperturbed and now, ‘What will Celestina do?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘Buy another table,’ said Rob. It was part of the new carelessness; order, as Fanny knew it, had vanished. ‘Don’t call me for lunch,’ he said.
‘But you must eat.’
‘I will have something when I have finished.’
‘You could go on after lunch.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Rob. ‘To start once is bad enough. To start twice would be murder.’
‘But don’t you want to work?’
‘Of course,’ said Rob. ‘Why not?’
‘You must have something to eat, all those hours.’
‘Giulietta can bring me a panino’ – a panino was an Italian sandwich, a cut roll with ham or salami clapped inside it.
‘Giulietta, not you,’ said Rob.
‘That’s not very flattering.’
‘It is. I don’t notice Giulietta. Fanny, if you love me, leave me alone.’
It was the first time that Fanny had come to be closely bound with work that was first, before anything; before eating or drinking, before sleeping. She had thought Darrell, in the army, and as a Messenger, had worked hard; but he had hours, defined times, time when he left off, was free – though of course he had sometimes to fill in for other people, leave unexpectedly. Often Rob would work the whole day through shut in the study, though sometimes he was restless and needed to rove; he would spend an hour standing on the point, looking into the ripples, or sending pebbles skimming across the lake; he would pace in the garden. Fanny learned not to speak to him or notice him. She kept herself apart.
‘But what about you?’ Rob had asked when he started on the breakdown. ‘What will you do alone for hours?’
‘What you told me to do,’ said Fanny. ‘Nothing.’
She had all this time flagged behind Rob; she could not get over her tiredness. ‘Well, I have been packing ever since Christmas,’ she might have said. First the children to school, packing them for the last time; I knew that though they didn’t. Then Stebbings, when only Gwyneth understood the reason. ‘Giving up Stebbings? For a flat in London! Fanny, you are mad,’ Margot and Anthea had cried. They knew now what lay behind Fanny’s quiet, ‘It will be easier for Darrell.’ Then up in Scotland packing up Aunt Isabel’s cottage, the small bleak grey stone house with its dark eyes. It was strange that it should all have come together, thought Fanny: Aunt Isabel’s where I had lived
as a child, that was my home up to my marriage; Stebbings, and the children. I was packing my whole life away. No wonder I am tired.
Rob had been shocked by her thinness. ‘I was shocked at yours,’ said Fanny.
‘I have always been thin. You should be plump, and I haven’t dark hollows under my eyes.’
Every morning before he went up to work, Rob would carry out a long chair and cushions on to the terrace and Fanny would spend the morning there, lying in the sun, growing together again, thought Fanny, as one can grow no matter how one has been torn.
After Renato had left them in the garden that first evening, Fanny had gone across the grass and wonderingly touched one of the old olive trees. Its roots had lifted lumps of earth in the grass; it was split halfway up its length, twisted out of shape, the trunk showing dry and pale where it was holed, but it still bore its crown of leaves, the olive leaves that blow now green, now silver in the wind and that she would come to love. The old damaged tree would have a crop of olives, year after year, silently fruiting, and – I have been making a clamour, thought Fanny suddenly.