‘I don’t care, Marco! After what you and Papa have done!’
Finally, the gate creaked open and I pounded through to his hut, whilst he shut the gate behind me. I noted his unhurried speed. It infuriated me even more.
Inside my eye darted across his shambles. Half spent candles, dusty votives, a large ceramic Madonna begged me for contrition. It made my stomach burn.
Marco closed the door behind me. Fear bristled up my spine.
‘Now, you going to speak like a human or keep shouting like a witch?’ he asked.
‘I am no witch for feeling the way I do! And if you and Papa think you can squeeze the dignity out of me you have another think coming. I have every right to feel fire right now. First, he threatens me on the beach, next, I have the police sniffing around the villa after you. For the second time!’
He watched, impassive, no meager flicker across his eyes, no admission of guilt or passionate declaration of innocence.
The vacuum made me panic.
‘What am I to think, Marco?’
His silence was a calm sea stretching beyond a horizon. I felt like I was spluttering in it, frantic jerks for air.
‘Say something! My mind is full of bees! I can’t carry on like this!’
He shook his head now. Smooth resignation. ‘There are a lot of people in this town, Santina, who can’t bear the life we’ve made for ourselves. You in the big house, nice employers, a good life. You see how they live on the vicoli? You know the hunger down there on the alleys? The one the tourists ignore? The one we see year round? Especially when the winter rolls in from the sea? And our sorry excuse for a father? He hates that we hate him. He’s an alcoholic. An angry man.’
‘And?’
‘And, what did he say to you?’
‘He says he knows things about you. Says he will talk to the police unless I pay him to move away.’
‘And you believe him?’
The question hovered between us. I saw the skinny little boy chasing me downhill, desperate to keep up. I saw the quivering lower lip of the child being taken from me. And beyond, a metallic shiver of pride, a genuine plea for truth.
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ I said at last, the hot energy of anger wheezing through me like evaporating steam, leaving me empty.
That’s when I saw his well-rehearsed veneer chip a little, imperceptible but to a person who had grown up registering his miniscule changes in humor.
‘I can understand that, Santina. I haven’t told you everything about my life, it’s true. But it’s to protect you. Have I been involved with the kind of people I wouldn’t want you to know? Yes. Are you or I in danger now? Of course not. Does our father want to get what he can from you? I think we can both find the answer to that, don’t you?’
I was tired, my fury fast fading to embers.
‘I’m sorry, Santina.’
I looked at him, hating myself for feeling forlorn.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Some relatives of Rosalia’s found this. Gave it to me for safe keeping, thinking I would see Rosalia before they would.’
He reached for a knife inside a leather case, nestled between some water-stained vases and a jar of rusting screws.
‘It belonged to Rosalia’s brother they said, thought the family would want it back.’
‘Why didn’t they give it to them then?’
‘I’m a gatekeeper, Santina. People do crazy things with me. They’re in the whirlwind of grief. Not so different from where you are right now. You feel totally let down by both of us. I’d be a clod not to understand that!’
I felt hot tears rise. I wouldn’t let them fall till I left.
‘And when people lose someone they do funny things. I don’t why they trusted me with it. Perhaps they felt safe. I’m not a man of the church, but I’m the last human on the way to heaven. That’s how they see it, I guess.’
I looked down at the thing. It was the knife I already knew. A prickle of doubt shot through me. This weapon had been here since the burial. Why had he waited for this moment to give it to me? Every fiber in me urged me not to take it. But my hand reached out. And as I clasped its handle I felt a great tear of guilt splice down my middle. The action was a pact of protection. I would deliver this to Rosalia, and then what? Assuage Marco’s possible guilt? It wouldn’t take long to trace it back to him, of course. It wouldn’t take long for Small and Tall to work it out, that my brother had a murdered man’s knife in his hut, and for this flimsy tale of having been given it by relatives to disintegrate.
‘I’ll take it to her,’ I said. My words fell flat, a thud of dough on floured marble. It was unthinkable that he was asking me to dispose of a weapon, surely? Perhaps I ought to receive the gesture at face value, proof of innocence.
Outside, the garish white light was the unforgiving glare of brutal honesty. The beauty of the carved tombs, marble archangels, blanched so my eye saw only the sweat and toil of the sculptor, not the suspension of their winged mid-flight, the sea-salted dust roasting in the still air.
I turned to him, desperate to think of a parting sentence that would heal this rift. None surfaced.
We walked to the gate in silence.
I ought to have said goodbye. I ought to have looked into my brother’s eyes and committed his expression to memory. I might have seen the truth there.
A lifetime would pass before I ever saw that face again.
My father never came for his money.
CHAPTER 26
The burnished summer faded, and with it came the termination of my duties to Elizabeth. As we edged toward autumn, I watched a wan lady slip the child’s hand into hers, a porter behind her with several cases. Elizabeth turned back toward me. Her expression was a painful echo. I was back at my family’s hut, a small Marco pleading with me to turn the direction of events, feeling the brutal sting of being unable to do so. Her big blue eyes filled with tears.
I noticed my hand reach for the door, to steady myself and hold firm to the spot rather than dash after her for a third time. The tug knotted deep inside me, and, as the three of them turned the corner, out of sight, my mind floated behind them, recording every nook of the walls on either side, the long step she liked to jump down, the three cobbled steps toward the end of the steepest part where she would sometimes stop to count the ants. I hoped the lady would hold her hand tight as they reached the last curve, where sometimes the donkeys would cut in too close to the wall and, if Elizabeth ran that section, she risked crashing into one. I hoped the car to the port wouldn’t be too hot, but that they wouldn’t open the window too far and let the draught spike a cold. I prayed for easy train rides through France and a smooth crossing to England. I tried to picture her school, her bed, her new friends, but the images lit up and faded, paper fast burnt, whipping into ashes.
I heard the door close.
‘It’s the best thing, Santina. For Elizabeth. Not for us.’
I looked over at the Major. I watched grief streak across his face, tumbling clouds over a fast-moving sky. Then he straightened. I recognized the shift; he craved solitude.
‘You’ll excuse me now. Don’t mistake it for brutal coldness. I just need to sit with my thoughts. We will talk later.’
The abandoned terrace stretched out. The grapes overhead had begun to purple. Streaks of juicy promise patterned their green flesh. The large begonias in my prized terracotta pots were still lush, stretching higher each month. The wisteria rambled up the columns and over the high arches. But my garden was bereft. A noiseless place. No one would play under its canopy any more.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Marco since I’d confronted him. I’d visited the cemetery. He was conspicuous by his absence. A week later I found his hut open with another custodian setting about clearing his dishevelled collections within. He told me Marco had been placed elsewhere. He refused any more information, shrugging his shoulders to the heavens.
I tried to ignore the fact that I was expecting a note to shunt beneath our doo
r any day, an explanation, an apology. None came. Elizabeth was gone, now my brother. Mild disorientation filtered in at my periphery, the confusion of stepping into a room and at once forgetting what you had entered it for. I held on to the belief that at some point my brother would, of course, turn up, surprise me, clang the bell. I would open the door to his crooked smile, a sarcastic raise of his eyebrow, a relax-my-fretting-sister shrug, a sardonic shuffle across the terrace. And all would be, almost, as it was. But September sped onwards, uninterrupted by unexpected guests in its glow.
October was marked by celebrations. I longed for them to lift me up from the shifts in my life. I had my wedding to look forward to, and, with diminishing responsibilities at the villa, I had more time to spend with Paolino. But the month unravelled around me like a paper cut-out. Rosalia’s wedding marked the victorious end of the grape harvest. After Mass at the cathedral the couple wandered down the streets, myself and her sisters holding out her train as the petals cascaded from overhead houses and terraces, and the car horns blew, and the people sang and shouted and cheered, and our town shook with noise and blasts of happiness. My best friend was luminous, and her light was enough for the both of us. It eclipsed the start of a retreat I felt inside.
Paolino filled the gaps left by the interminable silence of the villa and the disappearance of my brother with his usual effervescence. It rippled over me, water meeting oil. Signora Cavaldi revelled in my apparent virginal acquiescence to her endless tirade of plans and projected feasts, engagement festas and an endless list of people who would or would not be invited.
It was in the freezing mists of late November, when Positano boarded itself up against ebbing tourism and weather, that my fog rolled in. As I sat in that stark doctor’s office in Sorrento, having made my excuses to both Paolino and the Major, the walls of my tiny life began to crumble. Sea-weathered damage, a salty corrosion at the borders.
I was carrying a child I knew could not possibly be Paolino’s.
That evening, I returned to the shop. Signora Cavaldi, event coordinator extraordinaire, was in full swing, lighting up the stone room with detailed pictures of our perfect wedding celebration. I listened in on the plans, sat around that kitchen table above the shop, and the conversation waved over me like radio signals from another room. And still I smiled, participated, at once the marionette and puppeteer, judging truthful tugs on the strings to affect the most convincing performance. I was deft at the job. And it terrified me. I held a scientific grasp of what I expected of myself. And I crafted Santina to perfection that evening; with humor, grace, a sprinkling of mischief even. Paolino was enrapt, his mother had a daughter, and all was well with their world.
December clawed down from the cliffs. Mist twisted down the alleys. We made our pilgrimage to the Christmas presepe during the early darkness of that month, surrounded by the town and its children, hymns warming the air above us, humming with hope and the delicate sanctity of new life. The abyss before me widened.
Paolino and I lay our own terracotta model house amongst the others, at the indent of the rock, a symbol of the homestead that one day would be ours, lit with candles. I felt only dread. The town gathered around the vast ramble of tiny houses surrounding the manger and a ceramic family of saints gazing at the holy child. The little children held their candles and warbled harmonies of holy silence and new beginnings. The darkness enveloped us.
The Major insisted we deliver hampers to our neighbors. I’d dried the surplus fruits throughout late summer and autumn. The kitchen was burdened with halved peaches, apricots, plums and figs, browned and sweetened with the autumnal sun, piled upon parchment across the countertops. And with each fruit I split, with each almond I spliced to the center, my mind chased an escape. I lay neat rows inside the baskets, alternating the fruits in pleasing patterns. Perfect lines of our gardening devotion surrounded me. I covered them in thin linen and tied wide ribbons around each.
I knew Paolino would be here to help me deliver them soon enough. I knew that each day my abdomen ripened a little more. The Major and Adeline were at a regular doctor’s appointment that afternoon. I decided that when Paolino arrived I would take him to my room. I wouldn’t insist we waited till we were married any longer.
A knock. I creaked the door open. Paolino’s face was ashen.
My first thought was that something dreadful had befallen Signora Cavaldi.
‘Tesoro, what’s wrong?’ I asked, bristling with dread.
He removed his woollen cap, shook his head. I stepped back to let him in.
We walked into the kitchen in silence. I placed a coffee pot upon the stove and lit the ring, as I always did for him when he came to call.
He sat by the fire. I joined him.
‘Santina, my love,’ he began. Then he stopped, stumbled over his thoughts and fell silent.
I waited. The fire’s orange shadows danced across his face.
‘I don’t know how to do this,’ he whispered.
I watched his fingers tighten around his hat.
‘Paolino, just say whatever’s troubling you.’
He shook his head. That’s when his tears came.
I stood and wrapped my arms around him.
He looked up at me, reached around my face.
‘What’s the matter, my darling? Is your mother all right?’
‘When I look at you, everything is well, Santina. Please, just kiss me.’
Our lips met. Hungry.
I stepped back and lifted my sweater over my head. I let it drop to the floor. I unbuttoned my shirt. I loosened the catch on my skirt and felt it skim down my thighs. I eased my stockings down then stepped out of my underwear. I unclasped my brassiere.
I stood before him. Vulnerable, free. A moment of sanctified clarity. And the light of the fire swirled over my body, and I felt warm for the first time in weeks. And the frigid fog I’d carried with me dissipated.
His eyes lit, then darted to the door. Fear slit through desire.
‘No one is here,’ I said.
His breath quickened.
‘Be with me, Paolino.’
He stood and squeezed me to him. I felt him tear himself out of his coat, heard the snap-slack of his belt. His naked legs were against mine now. I think I creased his shirt away. He sank back onto the chair and pulled me down onto him. The sting of guilt gave way to a deep softening. I felt him inside me.
Then his hands drew to a sudden halt.
‘I can’t do this,’ he murmured.
I tasted the vanilla-salt of his neck. I licked his tears.
He prized my face away.
‘Santina, we have to stop!’
My body froze. His hands were around my waist. He lifted me off him.
I stood motionless. Like the thud of a stone dropping to a river bed, ripples of rejection shuddered up from my middle, my nudity at once brutal.
He picked up my underwear and handed it to me. A log spat.
We dressed.
I sat. ‘Please tell me what is happening.’
He snatched a breath. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like I do you.’
I didn’t reply. My hands were cold. I told myself my cheeks were hot with the fire, but I knew it was the scorch of embarrassment.
‘What I’m about to do will feel like the cruellest act a man has ever done. And I want you to really hear me when I say it makes me ache more than I will ever be able to explain.’ His head dipped into his hands, muffling the jagged sentences with sobs. ‘And I want you to understand that it is the best for you. You will hate me. For a long time you will wish me dead. But what I have to say means that you will be safe.’
‘You’re not making any sense,’ I said, feeling the words slide out across ice.
He looked over at me, his dancing eyes sullen, as when gathering clouds dull our emerald sea to shale grey.
‘I can’t marry you, tesoro.’
A silence. It rippled over the strewn counters, that haze of red and blue ribbons, those baskets
of good cheer. It snaked through me, leaving nothing but an acute awareness of my feet upon the stone, the spit of the fire, my wordlessness.
‘Say something, Santina.’
I couldn’t.
‘Please.’
The ringing hush wouldn’t let up.
‘What are you begging me for?’ I said at last. ‘None of what is happening is making any sense. I don’t know who is sat opposite me.’
His tears escaped.
‘Is there someone else?’
He raced over to my knees now, leaking onto my hands, begging for forgiveness. ‘No, Santina, of course not, I meant every word I said. You are the only person who would have made me the happiest man in town. But our marriage would bring you only grief. I have to leave town. I don’t know when I can get back. But I’m doing all of this for you, Santina, I can’t say why now, but you have to trust me. Please, just hear my promise.’
‘You’re promising me nothing. I stood here naked. I wanted all of you. Now you run away like a scared boy.’
His sobs shuddered deeper now.
‘Maybe that is what I am, yes! But I am choosing this because I love you. And if you marry me your life will be nothing but sorrow. I love you, Santina!’
His head dipped onto my lap. My skirt streaked with his tears.
‘I want you to leave.’
It was the biggest sacrifice of his life, he insisted, ignoring my request. His hands clasped around my thighs. I think he blubbered something about the greater good, about returning when he could, about situations beyond his control. But I had stopped listening. I could hear only the hum of stillness, the hiss of the coffee pot scorching the grounds, the distant call of a ship.
There were more words. I had the sensation of watching it all unfold from above, a snatched glance at a harried sketch, the outline of an ending.
At last he left.
I watched the dance of flames, twisting licks of light fighting against the dark.
I sat there until white ashes dusted the grate.
I placed the Major’s morning coffee upon the ceramic pot holder. He dipped the edge of his paper down and thanked me over the top of it.
The Secret Legacy Page 30