The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Thirty shillings for dinner?’

  ‘Yes. Come on. I haven’t got it.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I haven’t got it. We haven’t that much French money.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ask if we could just have one thing. Even soup.’

  ‘You have to have the whole dinner.’

  Caddie was desperate. ‘Couldn’t you say we are children?’

  The look Hugh gave her was annihilating. He got up, threw down his napkin, and rushed past the head waiter from the car. Scarlet in the face, staggering against the tables as the train rocked, Caddie followed him.

  They ate the refreshment-room sandwiches from the net bag. On the ship Caddie had laid it on the rail and the bread was sodden.

  Of the night Caddie remembered chiefly the long way through Paris from one station to the other; there had been glimpses of streets, some wide with trees, once one with pavé brightly lit; high houses with lighted windows, empty stations. It was like a train journey in a film. In an eternity of slow bumping motion and whining sounds, they sat silent in their corners, lights and shadows brushing their faces. Caddie fell half asleep and woke to a grinding stop. Everyone in the carriage was standing up. It was the Gare de Lyon and the middle of the night. ‘How shall we know which train?’ she had asked in a panic.

  ‘It’s that one,’ said Hugh, nodding opposite.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘People are going into it, but we can walk up to the front and see its number.’

  ‘Its number? What’s its number?’

  ‘519.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s on our tickets.’ Hugh was being patient. ‘Come on. Then we can walk down and find the right coach.’

  Once again, Hugh’s resource had filled Caddie with awe. He looked almost a little boy, red-eyed, his hair on end, dirt on his cheek, his shirt collar crumpled, but he had known what to do and the train opposite was 519.

  It was in the early hours that regrets had begun. We shouldn’t have come, thought Hugh. It was stupid. Typical Caddie! He looked at his sister on the seat opposite and almost hated her. Caddie, in those uneasy wakings, had thought it would have been better even to be in the flat. ‘It was silly, silly,’ the wheels seemed to hammer in her head. ‘Silly. We shall never get there.’

  Once she woke startled. ‘Hugh! Hugh!’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ growled Hugh, but Caddie only slept in snatches. A French girl in the carriage had stayed out in the corridor all night talking, a girl in trousers. So Philippa was right; they do travel in trousers. A woman at Dôle was sitting on a bench, a pile of luggage beside her. What was she doing there at three in the morning? They woke to a dawn of eerie daylight and snow, with the train standing still. They were at Vallorbe which Hugh said was the frontier. ‘Frontier of Italy?’ Caddie had asked hopefully.

  ‘No, you clot. Switzerland.’

  ‘But we did have breakfast in Switzerland,’ Caddie told Rob and Fanny. She thought well of that country ever afterwards.

  This time the dining-car had not looked so expensive; it had wooden and leather chairs, the tables laid with blue plates, each with a cup and saucer on it, the cups as big as Darrell’s bumper. A man came round with a basket of rolls calling: ‘Deux pour chaque personne. Deux.’

  ‘Only two,’ Hugh cautioned Caddie. Coffee and milk were poured into each cup and for each person, too, there was a miniature saucer of jam, two curls of butter. It was not much but it was good, and the whole world seemed curiously lightened. ‘They won’t turn us back now. We have gone too far,’ said Hugh. They sat side by side, breaking the crisp rolls – people were dipping theirs into the coffee, Caddie saw with astonishment – and drinking the good coffee and they felt almost happy, but the breakfast was inordinately expensive, three francs fifty for a cup of coffee and two little rolls.

  ‘And jam and butter,’ said Caddie.

  ‘A lick of butter, a spoon of jam. Nearly five shillings!’ Hugh had meant boldly to order another breakfast each, ‘but I hadn’t fourteen Swiss francs,’ he explained.

  The French girl left them at Brig, and now people got in and out for short distances; only Hugh and Caddie had seemed to be travelling on and on. Their pink papers had been punched so many times that they were soiled and flimsy. The country people were friendly, but their cigarettes smelled ‘Awful,’ said Caddie. ‘Pestilential,’ said Hugh. All the same when a man offered him one he smoked it right through with aplomb. ‘I often smoke at school.’

  The smell clung to him. Neither of them could wash because the water did not run in the lavatories.

  At the Italian frontier, Domodossola – ‘What a name!’ – there were more passports and customs, but this time even Caddie was quite fearless and, ‘We’re in Italy. In Italy,’ she chanted as the train went on, but now tiredness was beginning to catch up with them, and the morning became a jumble. The journey seemed to be a pilgrimage of lakes; one of them was as Caddie had imagined Italy: houses, ochre-walled, dark-tiled; two islands in the middle of the water, flowers; magnolias, and what Caddie thought were roses until Hugh told her they were camellia bushes, growing as high as trees. ‘Is it Garda?’

  ‘No, we haven’t got to Milan yet. It’s Maggiore,’ and then, almost suddenly, they were in Milan under a domed roof like a hangar, crowds on the platform, shouting, hissing of steam.

  It was now that Hugh failed to change the ten thousand lire note. On the platform were trolleys, ‘Selling lovely things,’ said Caddie. ‘And the man wouldn’t take our note. He told us to go to the ticket office, to get change. The ticket office when the train might have gone any second, and we were starving.’

  Milan, Brescia. All the hot white afternoon the train bumped over a flat cultivated plain, by low mountains; in the distances were others, not low but high and hazy blue, disappearing into cloud. They saw what must have been a monastery on a hill, its cloisters arched; oxen were ploughing in orchards of blossom, there were little villages, then, ‘Tidy yourself,’ said Hugh. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  In the gravelled Desenzano station courtyard edged with begonias, a blue bus had been standing. Beside it a yellow notice-board was written in large letters. Hugh and Caddie spelled out the names: ‘Salò, Gardone, Limone, Riva.’

  ‘Not Malcesine?’ asked Caddie, stretched with anxiety.

  ‘This goes the other way round the lake,’ but Hugh’s quick eyes had seen another board laid down on top of others: ‘Sirmione. Garda. Malcesine. Riva.’ ‘That’s the one we want,’ he said.

  ‘But when does it go?’

  ‘It’s the next board, so it must be the next bus. They won’t change ten thousand lire either. I had better take our note to the ticket office.’

  It seemed an hour to Caddie, but in about twenty minutes a second bus rolled up and, sure enough, the board went up. ‘Sirmione. Garda. Malcesine.’

  They got in. It looked more like a coach than a bus, with its armchair seats in red leather, each with a picture let into its back, its silvered racks, and carpeted gangway.

  The conductor came round. ‘Malcesine,’ said Hugh and held up two fingers. He pronounced it Mal-see-ziny with an accent on the ‘mal’.

  ‘That teutonic bang,’ said Rob. ‘Mal-see-ziny,’ and the conductor did not understand. In the end Hugh had to show his map. ‘Ah, aah! Malcesine!’ said the man as if it were spelt ‘Malchesinay’, all the syllables even. Everyone in the bus laughed, and Hugh, who never blushed, went red to the back of his ears.

  It was a long way. They both went uneasily to sleep. There were fleeting impressions of houses and harbours, of roses climbing up trees. ‘Can that, too, really be true?’ Of swinging away into the mountains, away from the lake, of stopping and going. People jostled and pushed into the bus; Caddie was surprised at the black pinafores of the schoolchildren, even big girls; Hugh winced at the guttural German of the tourists, his head was hurting. Only once did they wake right up; when an English woman who had come nearly all the
way from Desenzano with them ate the pork pie and offered Hugh, who was sitting on the outside, a piece. ‘I thought she was going to give you one,’ he told Caddie. ‘Or I shouldn’t have bolted it like that.’

  ‘You were starving too,’ said Caddie feelingly.

  At last, ‘Malcesine. Malcesine,’ the conductor called out. They got up, but their legs were so stiff that they almost fell; the bus was not as comfortable as it had looked. Hugh lifted down the grips, Caddie brought the coats and bag and they were left standing on a dusty road bordered with shops. ‘You got out at Malcesine,’ said Fanny. ‘My poor darlings! Why, the bus goes past our gate. The villa is two kilometres from there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Hugh. ‘We know, because we walked.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Fanny when it was all told out, ‘what I don’t understand is where you got the money. You had a few French francs, some Swiss ones, and the notes. You say you put your school money in the desk for compensation – I think that was very honest of you – but you had to pay your fares and in English money. They must have been nearly twenty pounds.’

  ‘Sixteen pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence,’ said Caddie.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  There was a silence. Hugh looked at his feet. Caddie sank lower and lower in her chair until her face was hidden. At last, ‘Caddie sold Topaz,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Sold Topaz!’ It was a cry from Fanny.

  ‘He had to be sold,’ said Hugh. ‘She couldn’t keep him in the flat.’

  The last time he had said that had been in the flat itself. Caddie had been surprised at Hugh’s indifference to the money part of their going. Twenty-three pounds, single by air, which was forty-six pounds for the two of them; ten pounds four shillings for Hugh by cheap train, half for herself, at the very least fifteen pounds six shillings, and it mysteriously came to more than that. ‘Where shall we get so much?’ she had asked innocently, never dreaming of what was coming until, ‘I know where,’ said Hugh.

  He was so clever in planning every detail that there had been no escape. ‘Dear Mr Ringells,’ Caddie had written in the script that St Anne’s enforced. ‘My father says you would like to buy my pony, Topaz …’

  ‘I can’t, Hugh. I can’t write it.’

  ‘… for twenty-five pounds,’ dictated Hugh, and he said, ‘You must – it must be in your writing, because Topaz is yours.’

  ‘As we have to live in London now we think it would be wise …’ There were big blots on the page, but Hugh let it go; perfectionist though he was, even Hugh did not make Caddie write it twice. ‘My brother and I will come down and see you on Friday about twelve o’clock. My father has asked me to write this letter.’

  ‘Sign it,’ said Hugh. ‘Yours sincerely, Candida Clavering.’

  ‘Yours sincerely, Candida Clavering,’ wrote Caddie, and Hugh dictated: ‘N.B. Would you be able to pay me in cash as I want to buy a tennis racket and a bicycle.’ But Caddie would not write that final treachery. Hugh had to copy her script and write it himself.

  He had everything planned: ‘We will tell Gwyneth I’m taking you down to Whitcross to say goodbye to Topaz before school,’ which was true, except the ‘before school’. It was so reasonable that Gwyneth even gave them the money for their tickets.

  Topaz was in a stall. Mr Ringells had brought him in, ‘So your sister can see him,’ he told Hugh, and he said, ‘Nice little pony.’ Nice little pony!

  ‘His legs are muddy,’ Caddie whispered to Hugh.

  ‘They were muddy at Stebbings,’ but there was no denying Topaz was not the shining little pony he had been under her care. His coat was rough, his ears dusty. ‘I didn’t leave a speck of dust on him.’ His feet were filled with caked mud and dung. ‘He will get thrush,’ she said severely to Mr Ringells. He had water and hay and was quite plump, but, ‘Do you ever give him carrots?’ Her eyes searched Mr Ringells’ face as if they would rake out of him what kind of man he was. ‘Apples or sugar?’

  ‘He gets plenty of petting from the children. Never you fear,’ said Mr Ringells, but Caddie did fear. ‘He will be a riding-school pony, not anybody’s own,’ she said.

  She spoke once in the train on the way back. ‘He’s used to being loved. What will he think?’ and Hugh gave her a piece of advice. ‘For people, it’s much better never to think what animals must be thinking.’ Then he did something that Caddie had only known him do once before; he put his arm round her and squeezed her. Long ago, on the day he went to that first school, suddenly turning from the car, he had run back and given Caddie a violent wordless hug. The small faraway Caddie had been filled with love and wonder. In the Whitcross train she felt nothing at all.

  Now, on the villa terrace, it was Fanny who was weeping. She had jumped up. ‘Caddie, we must get Topaz back, make Mr Ringells sell him back to us. Rob and I will have a house soon and probably in the country. We will buy Topaz back, wherever he is, and keep him for you. I promise,’ but the figure bowed in the chair at the end of the table never moved and Rob stopped Fanny, ‘I should leave her alone just now.’

  ‘But you don’t know what this means, Rob.’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘Hugh, how could you? How could you?’

  ‘What do you mean, how could I?’ Hugh’s head came up. He looked fierce. ‘It wasn’t I who made Caddie sell Topaz,’ he said. ‘It was you.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Rob before Fanny could cry out. They were getting into a tangle of emotions and he made the words brisk. ‘All the same, we mustn’t promise what we can’t do. By the time we find a house, Caddie may be too big for a pony and …’ but Fanny could not bear the way Caddie sat silently bowed in the chair.

  She broke away from Rob, and went to Caddie, kneeling down by her. ‘Perhaps we can’t buy Topaz back,’ she said. ‘But I shall never forget, never, what you have done to get to me. To sell Topaz.’ Fanny’s voice was broken. ‘And that long long journey.’ She held out her hand to Hugh. ‘Oh my darlings, if you knew what it means … that you ran away to me.’

  Hugh was silent but Caddie raised an indignant face. ‘We didn’t run away to you,’ said Caddie. ‘We came to fetch you.’

  7

  The silence that greeted Caddie’s words was like a challenge: nobody answered her, nobody commented; Fanny got up and went back to her chair. Rob’s face was expressionless, but presently he asked, ‘Your father should be back today?’

  ‘He was supposed to come last night.’

  ‘Then he should have had my telegram.’

  Fanny turned in sudden alarm. ‘Rob, what did you say in it?’

  ‘That I was putting Hugh and Caddie on the plane at Milan this evening.’

  ‘This evening? No, Rob.’

  ‘Yes. There’s a plane that leaves Milan at 6.25. It’s not that we don’t want you,’ he said to Hugh and Caddie. ‘Of course we do and we hope you will come back, but, you see, it has to be with permission.’

  ‘Rob!’ It was a wail. ‘After all that?’

  ‘After all that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘When it was so brave and enterprising.’

  ‘It was enterprising.’ Hugh was glad that Rob dismissed the bravery. ‘Enterprising, but wrong, legally and morally, and we mustn’t encourage it.’

  ‘Hugh looks ill, Rob. Not fit to travel.’

  ‘One more night won’t hurt him. It’s a short flight.’ At Fanny’s unhappy face he softened. ‘We made a bargain, dear.’

  ‘I didn’t make a bargain.’

  ‘You did when you let the divorce go through,’ and he said more gently, ‘We must leave at 3.30. You must have them ready.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You must.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then I must. Caddie, you had better get that dress ironed again, and are your shoes clean? If not, Hugh can …’ but Hugh had got up, his hands clasped to his stomach. He gave a moan, took two or three uncertain steps, then rushed to the balustrade and began to retch. Bef
ore Fanny could reach him, he was violently sick, ‘All down the roses,’ said Caddie.

  ‘Are you sure he’s not malingering?’

  Darrell’s faraway voice on the telephone was curtly hostile – naturally, thought Rob. That the children should run away too must have been a cruel cut. Rob could imagine the chagrin was worst over Hugh; even though he was at odds with Darrell, males should stand together. Run to his mother! Darrell, of course, did not know the reason.

  ‘You are sure he’s not malingering?’

  ‘I don’t think he could malinger as seriously as this,’ said Rob. ‘He has food pois …’ but he was interrupted.

  ‘I am always suspicious of Hugh.’

  Rob was suspicious too, but, ‘The doctor says …’ he began.

  ‘He can twist his mother round his little finger, I warn you. She is foolish about that boy. Wrap him up and send him back all the same.’

  ‘He can’t travel.’

  ‘They look after you very well on these planes; Caddie is with him and I can meet them.’

  ‘He can’t travel,’ said Rob more loudly.

  ‘Why not?’ and Rob almost shouted, ‘He’s being sick. He has diarrhoea and fever.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You ought to be here,’ said Rob.

  The whole Fiorita had been turned upside down. Rob and Fanny had got Hugh upstairs, Celestina and Giulietta running after with basins and towels, exclamations, and confused orders, while Caddie waited, pale with fright, on the stairs. It was like convulsions; Hugh’s light body seemed torn apart with retching, then doubled up with the spasms of diarrhoea. Fanny had been calm and efficient, and as fierce as a tiger, thought Rob. Giulietta had been told peremptorily to be quiet, Celestina to help hold Hugh, Rob to go over to the hotel and telephone the doctor – they used the Hotel Lydia for local calls.

  ‘Doctor Isella is coming. He will be here in a few minutes.’

  ‘Doctor Isella?’ and Fanny, to whom Italy had become all that was good, turned unexpectedly insular. ‘Isn’t there an English doctor? Or at least an American?’

  ‘Italian doctors are among the best in the world,’ said Rob, but he could see she did not believe him.