The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  It was difficult to believe that it could have been worse, because Philippa and Hugh had quarrelled incessantly. ‘It never used to be like this,’ said Caddie, but then Fanny had been there. She must have been more of a shock absorber and buffer than they had known. In the flat there was continual jarring; Philippa was high-handed, even with Gwyneth; Hugh was rude, and Caddie babyishly tearful.

  Another difficult thing had been that there seemed to be no room. At Stebbings Philippa had had the attic room which Fanny had converted into a bed-sitting-room, so that Philippa could have her friends up there. ‘Girls giggling, with the gramophone blaring its head off,’ said Hugh. ‘Girls kicking off their shoes, throwing chocolate papers about, girls always in the bathroom or on the telephone.’ They had been all over the flat; Caddie was ordered out of the sitting-room and had to stay in the kitchen. Hugh, disgusted, had to go out. At Stebbings he had had a work-bench in the garage, his room was his own, but in the flat the only place big enough for setting up his telescope was on the dining-room table. No sooner had he started work than someone wanted to lay the table. ‘But we must have meals,’ said Gwnyeth.

  ‘Why can’t we have them in the kitchen?’

  ‘The Colonel in the kitchen!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gwyneth said in that case she would have to eat off a tray in her bedroom. ‘Why can’t you eat with us? Too high and mighty,’ said Hugh.

  Gwyneth’s eyes, that were the colour of her own Welsh peat streams, and as clear, looked hurt. ‘It isn’t that, dear.’ She had never known how to deal with Hugh.

  Nor did Darrell. ‘Darrell to rhyme with barrel,’ Hugh used to say, which was palpably nonsense; Darrell was stocky, but still ‘A fine figure of a man,’ Gwyneth said.

  ‘Especially in uniform,’ said Hugh. ‘Then you don’t see him so much.’

  ‘He doesn’t wear uniform now,’ said Caddie. ‘Not for his Messenging.’

  ‘He does for all those dinners – scarlet and blue and gold, all hung with medals. Bloody handsome,’ jeered Hugh.

  That had been too much for Gwyneth’s Welsh temper. To her Darrell was only one less than Fanny from the stars and, ‘I’m ashamed of you, Hugh,’ she said. ‘Your father’s an officer and a true gentleman. I have never known anyone more … more upright.’

  ‘Oh, Father’s upright, outside and in,’ Hugh had to concede that even in his bad temper. Caddie, and Gwyneth, knew too that Hugh was proud of Darrell, and fond of him as they all were. ‘He’s us,’ as Caddie would have said, and ‘Yes, upright, outside and in,’ Hugh had to say. So could he be when he wanted, but now he deliberately chose not to. ‘In every way,’ said Caddie.

  ‘It would have been much, much better if Father had let Mother have Hugh,’ said Philippa.

  He was, as Darrell said once when driven to lose his temper, both precocious and abominable.

  ‘Sit up!’ Darrell would rap out at last.

  ‘Really. Really. You have just told me to sit down.’

  Yet Darrell had never been more kind, even indulgent, ‘Trying to be father and mother,’ but even Hugh could not mock about that. Darrell stayed away from his club, took them out to lunch to save Gwyneth, gave them tickets for matinées, tried to show them London. ‘He’s trying to make up,’ said Hugh.

  ‘He can’t,’ said Caddie. Darrell knew he could not, especially when Hugh chose to stay in and work on his telescope. Then Caddie’s heart ached for Darrell as it had for Hugh and Philippa.

  She tried to do things for him; creeping into his small bedroom – he had given her and Philippa the largest room – every night she turned down his bed and laid out his pyjamas. He had come upon her looking at a hole in one of his socks. ‘Give it to Flip to mend,’ he said, but Philippa, Caddie knew, was too busy getting ready for Paris. ‘I will give it to Gwyneth.’

  ‘No, don’t. She has too much to do now.’

  ‘I can try to darn it, but I’m not very good.’

  ‘No, never mind. You have your own things. Tell you what,’ said Darrell. ‘I will buy some new pairs,’ and he had stuffed the socks into his pocket.

  ‘You can’t go out with socks in your pocket.’

  ‘It’s only so that Gwyneth shouldn’t see. I can drop them in a litter basket,’ and Caddie had suddenly flung herself at her father and hugged him.

  Caddie herself had never been as rubbed up against her family. Day after day was bleak, angry, miserable, and empty. ‘She’s missing her mother,’ Gwyneth said, but it was not Fanny that Caddie missed.

  ‘Father, may I speak to you? What … what is going to happen to Topaz?’

  ‘Well, we can’t keep him in London, can we?’ The false heartiness in Darrell’s voice made Caddie’s heart sink like a stone.

  ‘Do we have to live in London?’

  ‘It’s the easiest, Caddie, for the most people. I have to come and go. Soon Philippa will start training. Besides, we couldn’t manage Stebbings without – Mother.’

  ‘Couldn’t you …’ Caddie sensed where she was treading but she had to say it. ‘Couldn’t you make her come back?’

  ‘Because of Topaz?’ Darrell tried to make his voice light but did not succeed.

  ‘Topaz – and other things. Everything!’ said Caddie in a burst of misery.

  ‘I wish I could, Diddie, but …’ He used her baby name and it was the first time Caddie had ever seen big, powerful Darrell helpless. He looked as if he, too, might cry. Father cry? thought Caddie, stunned. Indeed he could not look at her, he seemed to have a mist in his eyes, and he drew clumsy men with sticks for arms and legs on his blotting-paper. ‘You have done very well with that pony,’ he said. ‘Do you know that Will Ringells says he will give you twenty-five pounds for him?’

  ‘I don’t want twenty-five pounds,’ said Caddie.

  ‘Then one day, when perhaps I can arrange for you to be in the country again, you could buy an even better pony.’

  ‘I don’t want a better pony.’

  ‘I see,’ said Darrell. ‘Well, we’ll leave him where he is with Ringells for the present, shall we? He’s happy there.’

  ‘It’s three guineas a week,’ whispered Caddie.

  ‘We can run to that for a little while, then we can see.’ Darrell’s voice had been very kind but it was a knell to Caddie. ‘They will do it, sell Topaz, when I’m away at school.’

  School was getting near, only a few days, when Darrell had had to make one of his sudden absences. ‘An undivulged errand to an unknown destination,’ mocked Hugh.

  ‘You ought to be proud to have a father who is a Queen’s Messenger,’ said Gwyneth. They were proud, even Caddie often boasted about it, but the excitement had become familiar; it really only meant that Darrell was away, more often than not. ‘Conveniently, as it turned out,’ said Hugh.

  There had been trouble over Philippa’s going because she had wanted to travel in trousers. ‘Trousers!’ Lady Candida had been horrified.

  ‘Girls all do, nowadays,’ said Philippa.

  ‘All girls don’t, and you most certainly will not.’

  In the end Philippa had to give way because Lady Candida threatened to withdraw the twenty pounds she was giving her as a parting present. All the same, Lady Candida would not come up to see her off – ‘She thinks that’s a punishment,’ said Philippa – and there were only Hugh and Caddie at the Paris train, ‘In a horde of girls,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Not a horde, there were only eight,’ said Caddie.

  ‘I never heard such a din in my life.’

  Hugh and Caddie had stood side by side at the carriage door, but Philippa had taken little notice of them, ‘Except to guy us,’ said Hugh.

  ‘This is my little brother, Hugh. This infant with the freckles is Caddie.’

  ‘That’s what we get for coming. Let’s go,’ Hugh had said, but Caddie insisted on staying. ‘Flip’s showing off. You know she always has to show off,’ said Caddie, ‘and she must have someone to wave to. All the others have fathers or mothers, fathe
rs and mothers,’ said Caddie.

  They had come back to a flat that seemed darker and more desolate than ever and found Gwyneth worrying about their school clothes. ‘The Colonel asked me to do them but I just don’t know,’ said Gwyneth helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Your mother has always seen to these things.’

  At Stebbings, three times a year, the house had rung with: ‘Has anyone seen my Larousse.’ ‘Oh, Moth-er! Not name tapes even on handkerchiefs.’ ‘Those tennis balls are mine.’ ‘Caddie, only two pounds of sweets.’

  Packing for the summer term was particularly elaborate: thick things, thin things: cricket flannels and boots, white sweaters, white socks. Tennis shorts. Balls in nets, bathing-dresses.

  ‘Do you have to have all these things?’ asked Gwyneth.

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Yes,’ said Caddie.

  ‘If I could have gone for one week,’ Fanny had said to Rob, to the solicitors, finally to Darrell. ‘Just to get them ready.’ But in his one interview with her, Darrell had treated her as a stranger. ‘Which is nonsense,’ Fanny had cried. ‘Guilty, yes, but I can’t be a stranger.’ It was Darrell who was the stranger; Fanny had not known he could look as old and drawn. Rob had said, ‘Don’t see him. It’s kinder.’

  ‘I can’t be kind. I must fight for the children.’

  ‘It’s no good, Fanny.’

  ‘If he would let us have them, even half the time.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Rob.

  ‘He must,’ but Darrell was adamant. ‘You choose,’ was all he said.

  ‘I didn’t. It chose me,’ but this new Darrell was deaf to anything that she, this importunate stranger, might say. ‘My children,’ said Darrell deliberately. ‘Philippa, Hugh, Caddie.’ Being Darrell he had to be fair, conscientiously fulfilling the judge’s orders. ‘They can visit you sometimes. Short visits.’

  He liked adding that, thought Fanny, and she could understand it.

  She had had a letter from Darrell, written in the midst of the proceedings, a letter she would never forget and could not answer. ‘If I had answered, I should have gone back,’ because there was not a reproach in it, only a desperate plea. ‘It’s not only myself I am thinking of, it’s of the children. No, I am thinking of myself,’ wrote Darrell. ‘You are my wife. This other man …’ To Darrell, Rob would always be ‘the other man,’ the intruder. ‘You can’t jeopardize a whole world.’ ‘It isn’t jeopardized,’ Fanny wanted to cry. ‘It’s gone.’ But, ‘Won’t you come back? Can’t you?’ wrote Darrell. ‘I will try not to touch you. If I had understood …’ and the letter ended: ‘Please. Please. Please.’

  Fanny did not know what had given her the hardness to tear it up, and the hardness to carry on the fight.

  ‘Philippa’s over sixteen. You can’t stop her,’ she had said.

  ‘I think Philippa will decide to stay with me.’

  Will she? With Rob in films? Fanny wondered. She knew her Philippa and she was sure that presently Darrell would be stabbed by Philippa too. Hugh? ‘Nothing – nothing you can do can separate Hugh from me,’ she had flung at him. That was foolish. It gave him his opportunity. ‘Nothing I can do,’ he had said. ‘You forget something. They may not want to visit you.’

  Fanny could only try to comfort herself. ‘If I had died,’ thought Fanny, ‘they would have managed, and Gwyneth is there.’

  Unknown to Darrell, Gwyneth had come to the airport to see Fanny off to Milan. At the last minute, Fanny had put her arms round the familiar figure, though looking unfamiliar in a London coat, grey gloves, black handbag, and black straw hat with black hat-pins, her face unrelentingly stiff. ‘Thank God they have you,’ Fanny had said as she kissed her, and, desperately, ‘Gwyneth, make Hugh take his warm pyjamas, it’s still cold at the beginning of term. Tins of sausage and ham in his tuckbox, not all sweet things. Send him a cake now and then.’

  Tears had run down Gwyneth’s face. ‘I will do my best.’

  ‘Caddie’s old enough to help sew on name tapes now. Hugh …’

  ‘I will do my best.’

  ‘Write to me.’

  ‘I’m not much hand at writing,’ but Gwyneth wrote.

  Now, ‘Three regulation gingham dresses,’ she read out from Caddie’s list. ‘Regulation blazer …’

  ‘Why does everything have to be regulation?’ Philippa had always flared.

  ‘Because girls have ideas,’ said Hugh.

  ‘I have found the dresses,’ Gwyneth went on, ‘but they will need letting down. Oh dear! There isn’t much time.’

  ‘I can wear them short,’ said Caddie miserably.

  ‘And be all legs.’

  ‘Hush, Hugh. Two cotton dresses …’ Gwyneth’s finger came down the list as she faithfully read out every word. ‘Own pattern for wearing in the evening. Have you those, Caddie?’

  ‘Grown out of them,’ Caddie muttered. She seemed in a state of growing out of everything.

  ‘We must get them then,’ said Gwyneth. ‘You had better shop tomorrow.’

  ‘By myself?’ asked Caddie in terrible alarm.

  ‘We can ask Lady Candida if she could come up.’

  ‘Not Gran,’ groaned Caddie. ‘She talks about Mother to everyone. You come,’ she begged Gwyneth.

  ‘I wouldn’t be any use, not in shops like that. Philippa ought to have helped you before she went.’

  ‘Too busy with her own clothes,’ said Hugh. ‘One thing about Flip, she won’t try to be a little mother to us. No fear,’ and with one of his sudden turns of sweetness he had said, ‘Don’t worry, Diddie. I will choose your clothes.’

  He had, and, ‘They were the prettiest dresses I ever had in my life,’ said Caddie, ‘and he helped me to buy a dressing-gown and a bathing-dress. He was nice to everyone and everyone was nice to us.’ It had almost been happy until it came to the shoes.

  ‘Regulation summer sandals,’ said the list and, ‘Good Lord!’ said Hugh when they appeared. ‘Your feet can’t be as big as that!’

  ‘Not in your size,’ the assistant in the first shop had said. ‘Try Daniel Neal’s. They go up to sevens there.’

  ‘I’m not a seven, I’m only a five,’ Caddie had wanted to say, but even in fives the sandals looked like boats. ‘Boats? Barges! Flats!’ said Hugh. It was not only their flatness, it was their childish shape. ‘Girls my age shouldn’t be made to wear shoes like that,’ she had wanted to cry passionately. If Fanny had been there she would have found a way out, a compromise between Caddie and the school, but Fanny was not there and Hugh was tiring. He certainly would not be dragged to any more shops, and anyway, she, Caddie, was due at the dentist’s for a pre-school check-up. ‘I will drop you,’ said Hugh. ‘You can come home by yourself, can’t you? I want to get on with my telescope,’ and he had paid for the sandals which were already in a bag. I shall have to wear them, thought Caddie. With them and the too-short uniform dresses she would be what Hugh said she was, all feet and legs, knees, elbows, and freckles. Fanny would have shed a ray of hope: ‘It’s only a phase. Your feet will shrink. Philippa’s did,’ and the dresses would have been let down. Fanny would have gone with Caddie to the dentist, and after it they would probably have had hot chocolate or an ice, but Fanny was in Italy and suddenly, there in Daniel Neal’s, Caddie had rebelled.

  It was such a violent storm of rebellion that it visibly shook her. It was hatred of her sandals, of the dentist, of going back alone to the flat, of Fanny’s absence, of Mr Quillet, Darrell, and all grown-ups; such hatred and despair, confusion, and misery that she cast her parcels on a chair and, ‘Let’s not have it,’ said Caddie in a choking voice. ‘Let’s refuse.’

  ‘Refuse?’

  ‘Absolutely refuse.’

  ‘My good child, what are you talking about?’ Hugh had looked calm and slim, leaning back in the shop chair waiting for his change, in his grey flannel suit, his hair brushed, his shoes shining. Beside him, Caddie felt shabby and tousled. It was strange that while this impact with adult life had ma
de Philippa romance and tell lies, it had thrown Caddie into truth, and the truth was very dreary, particularly about herself. ‘It’s just that you are at the awkward age,’ Gwyneth tried to tell her, but Caddie was convinced she was hideous. ‘Hideous!’ she had said in despair. Now she was so angry that she did not care.

  ‘Let’s refuse to allow Mother to go away like this. Just not have it. Refuse.’

  ‘How?’ but Hugh had sat up in his chair.

  ‘Refuse to go to school,’ said Caddie. ‘To go to school or stay in that ghastly flat. Refuse to live with Father alone.’

  ‘You can say refuse, but.…’ began Hugh.

  ‘Not say it. Do it,’ said Caddie.

  ‘But how do we do it?’

  ‘We won’t go back to school,’ said Caddie breathlessly. ‘We will leave. Run away,’ and then she had had her inspiration. ‘Let’s go to this place in Italy and fetch her.’

  6

  ‘But how did you find out where it was?’ asked Fanny. ‘How did you know how to get here?’

  ‘Asked,’ said Hugh, but it had not been as simple as all that.

  They knew the address. Darrell had given it to them; in fact it was then that Lady Candida had really ‘Clinched it,’ said Hugh.

  ‘You must write to your mother,’ Darrell had said and printed for them, ‘Villa Fiorita, Malcesine-sul-Garda, Prov. Verona, Italy’. ‘You can write to her there.’

  ‘No thank you, sir,’ Hugh had said. ‘I’m not going to write.’

  Darrell had looked astonished, even grateful, as if Hugh had given him a tribute, but he was always fair. ‘Don’t think too hardly of your mother. It was my fault too. She was lonely.’

  ‘I do think hardly of her,’ said Hugh.

  ‘And one can understand it,’ Lady Candida had put in. She tried to smooth Hugh’s hair but he jerked away at once. ‘It’s always the children who suffer most,’ said Lady Candida. ‘They are the victims.’

  ‘I won’t be a victim,’ Hugh had said when he was alone with Caddie. ‘A victim,’ as if it stuck in his teeth.

  ‘Then, don’t,’ said Caddie. ‘Don’t let’s be. Let’s go.’