by Victoria Fox
Today, she didn’t wait to find out. No sooner were they inside than she ran upstairs to her bedroom. Her father was mad. Crazy mad. She’d seen it in his eyes on the drive back, their pearl-grey Cadillac bouncing along the dirt track, how he glanced at her every so often in the rear-view, cold, threatening, a Just you wait kind of glance.
She wished she had a lock on her door. Instead, Vivien hauled a chair to lever against the knob. She pressed her ear against the wood. No footsteps yet. She focused on slowing her racing heart, safe now in her room, where no one could get her.
Downstairs, she could hear his booming voice, and her mother’s answering one, frail and meek, conciliatory. The weak attempt Millicent would make at dissuading him from his wrath, but as soon as he struck her the fight would go out of her. Vivien balled her fists. She had known at church that it would end this way, but even if she could go back and do it differently, she wouldn’t.
I don’t believe what he says, she thought. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God – she didn’t know what she believed in, it was too early to say – but she didn’t for one moment accept any kind of creed whereby a man could be a saint to his congregation, could spout about good and evil and fairness and forgiveness, then beat his wife and daughter black and blue the second they were out of sight. That wasn’t a religion Vivien was interested in. She couldn’t lie for him. She couldn’t lie to herself.
Opening her closet, she stared at the bag inside. Take it. Go.
It was everything she needed, enough to get started. Over the past year, sitting cross-legged on her bed, deep in the deep, dark night, when the house was quiet and the only light left on in the town was the light of the moon, it had given Vivien solace to choose these belongings, fingering the hem of a blouse or the edge of a pin. I will leave this place. I will get away. I will, I will… She had almost been able to forget the stinging welts across her back, like paint slashed on a canvas, slowly drying.
Vivien knelt to the bag. In the front pocket was a crumple of bills, money she had collected from girls at school for completing their homework. What else had she to do with her time? While girls like Felicity and Bridget were taken dancing or to the pictures, Vivien was made to study every hour she wasn’t in class. Once, she had completed her Math prep early and asked to be excused; Gilbert branded her a liar, smacking her and telling her she would never be clever enough to finish so quick, and she could forget about leaving the house until she had. From then on, Vivien resolved to take her classmates’ work home, too. Gilbert told her she wasn’t allowed a job, wasn’t allowed to earn, because money gave women ‘ideas’. Ironically, it was he who facilitated her first transactions, and he who had set her in the direction of escape.
From downstairs came the sound of china smashing… followed by silence. Vivien slammed the closet shut, diving to the security of her bed.
Something crackled beneath her head. Carefully, she slid her hand beneath her pillow to withdraw the folded paper, before with reverence she flattened it out. It was like looking through a window into another universe. Someone’s sister in the top grade had had the poster pasted up inside her locker. Vivien envied it, seeing it in the corridor; she had never clapped eyes on anything so glamorous and stylish, a beautiful woman in a mini-skirt, and a man gazing on with a look in his eye she was too young to pinpoint but that promised something sweet and strange. Vivien had paid the girl a week’s earnings, and the girl, about to chuck the wrinkled old thing away, accepted. Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal a Million – that impish beehive, a thousand miles from Vivien’s own constructed ponytail, promised fun and naughtiness and freedom; and her daringly exposed knees, never to be seen in Claremont Town, at least not without a slap on the thigh that bloomed humiliated-red. The poster had fed her appetite for Hollywood, as had a cherished photo she’d found in last month’s paper of Marlon Brando (was it possible that people that handsome existed? They certainly didn’t in Claremont) and a glossy print of Sophia Loren, so exotic and dangerous.
The impulse to conceal them had been instant. There was no place in her father’s world for such things. Vivien could hear Gilbert’s words without needing to provoke them: Hollywood was a filthy breeding ground of vanity and wickedness. Money and fame were for sinners; they held no value in the eyes of the Lord. Anyone who followed that road was heading for disaster – that way the Devil’s arms opened.
Every night before sleep, Vivien would look at her pictures, these faraway people, and remind herself that they were real, that this life did exist, many miles from here and who knew how many risks beyond, but it did. It did.
And maybe, one day, she would find the courage to follow.
In the meantime, it gave Vivien pleasure to keep a secret from her parents. They fundamentally outnumbered her. How she yearned for a brother or a sister! Once, she had thought there was a chance. Vivien had prayed for an ally, a friend, and her father always told her that God answered prayers – but He hadn’t answered this one. There had been a time, years ago, hazy now in her memory, when Millicent had brightened, blossomed – then one night, when the stars were silver-bright, she and Gilbert had driven in a rush to the hospital. At dawn, her mother had returned pale and ruined, and Vivien had found a pair of bloody knickers in the laundry basket. Later, when she finally plucked up the mettle to ask after a possible sibling, she had been slapped hard round the cheek and the subject had never been raised again.
Thump, thump, thump… The footsteps made her wait longer than usual, but when they came they were unmistakeable. A slur to his gait: he’d been drinking, hence the delay. What was it the Bible said about abstinence? Gilbert Lockhart chose which orders to obey. More often, he made up his own. The belt was one of them.
Quickly, Vivien bundled the poster back under her pillow. She watched the door until, sure enough, the brass knob began to rattle. There was a brief quiet, then a shove, and the chair began to shake. Then there her father was, a glorious rageful vision, red-blotched and a fire in his eyes, his hands like rocks at his sides.
‘You stupid girl,’ he spat. ‘You know what happens when you disobey and yet still you do it. You got your mother into trouble as well. Are you happy now?’
I’m not happy. I can never be happy here – with you.
But still Vivien could not bring herself to say sorry, when there was nothing to be sorry for. She sat completely still, taking her mind away to a place he couldn’t touch, a place that was hers alone. She imagined she was Audrey Hepburn or Sophia Loren. Like a golden light, fantasies of a glittering Hollywood encircled her, a life in the sunshine, by the sea, with a man who loved her. The bag in the closet shone in her heart like a beacon, its promise mere feet from where her father stood but utterly invisible to him. He was the stupid one, the blind one. He always had been.
‘Showing me up like that,’ he seethed. ‘You deserve to be punished.’
As Gilbert drew his belt from its buckle, Vivien knew what she had to do – kneel on the floor, lean over the bed, just like she was begging – and it was easier not to fight. Physically, she would always lose. She had to be cleverer than that. And as the first stroke stung the backs of her thighs, that hot, searing pain she knew so well, she prayed. Not to God, or any god her father recognised. She prayed to herself – to be strong, and to do what she must. I will get out of here, she vowed.
Tomorrow, I’m running away.
CHAPTER FIVE
Italy, Summer 2016
‘You must be Lucy.’
I am greeted at the door by a woman, her hair scraped back in a bun, not unfriendly looking but at the same time I’m hesitant to call it a greeting because it’s distinctly lacking in warmth. She introduces herself as Adalina, ‘personal maid to Signora’. As she ushers me over the threshold, her manner is one of a hostess at a dinner party, obliged to show guests around but with her mind perpetually on some other distracting matter: if everyone’s glasses are filled, who is mingling with whom, if the canapés are running low. I smile,
deciding friendliness is the best approach.
It’s impossible to hide my surprise as I step into the hall. Adalina glances at me with satisfaction. Working here every day, she must forget the impact the place has on new arrivals. For a moment, I’m stunned.
‘It isn’t what you expected,’ says Adalina.
I gather myself. ‘I’m not sure what I expected.’
There is one word for the atrium in which we are standing – enormous – and the word echoes in my head, those round, open vowels, just as it might around the ceiling’s frescoed vaults. A shaft of sunshine spills from a circular window in the cupola, warming the flagstone floor. It’s church-like, and breathtakingly beautiful – but at the same time somehow tragic, and I stare up at the painted figures on the arched ceiling, angels and terrors, weeping and clasping, a maelstrom of human experience. In an alcove by the door, a finely painted Madonna in Prayer kneels, her hands together and head lowered, in blessing or mourning for visitors, perhaps both.
Adalina rings a large, heavy bell, one that brings to mind wake-up calls in boarding school dormitories, and an old man appears at the foot of the stairs. He wears a faded blue cap and frayed dungarees, and has the weathered features of someone who spends all day outdoors. ‘Take these to the east wing,’ instructs Adalina. ‘The Lilac Room.’ She motions to my bags and dutifully the man nods. His age suggests he’s less equipped to take the cases than I am, but, as I reach to help, he hauls the load on to his shoulder and I can picture him working the surrounding land, carrying hay bales or injured calves across his back as lightly as a satchel.
‘That’s Salvatore,’ Adalina says, when he’s gone. ‘Don’t waste your time with him.’ She taps the side of her head with her finger. ‘He’s not right. Hasn’t been for thirty years. Signora keeps him on out of pity.’
My interest must be visible, because Adalina assesses me for a moment before saying quite mildly: ‘Remember, Lucy, you are here to keep this house in order. Any questions you have about the building, the village, the city, you may ask me. Any questions you have about the people who live here, keep them to yourself. Do you understand?’ There’s no threat in this, just curiosity, as if Adalina is getting the measure of me, as if this is an extension of that bizarre interview.
‘Of course.’
‘Discretion is everything,’ says Adalina. ‘Now, come, I will show you the rest of the house, but be aware it will take time to familiarise yourself. We have just two rules. One,’ she says, gesturing to a closed door, leading, I surmise, to that part of the mansion I saw was covered in strangling vines, ‘the west wing is out of bounds. Two, so is the top floor. I will show you when we get there. It will not be hard for you to obey these rules – those parts are always locked so you will know if you trespass.’
Trespass. The word conjures Biblical transgression. Sin. Forbidden fruit.
I think of him.
‘This way, Lucy.’
Adalina leads me through the hall.
We embark up a grand staircase, burned-amber sandstone with an ornate banister, where we pass a series of portraits. ‘Who’s that?’ I ask, forgetting Adalina’s warning, transfixed as I am by the image of a man wearing a red blazer. One of his eyes is black and the other is green. He is standing against an emerald forest and the light of mischief dances in his stare, a light so convincingly caught on the canvas that I’m certain in the real world he is dead. Adalina watches me sideways.
‘We are in the process of covering these up,’ she says carefully, and beyond I spy several further frames draped in dustsheets. Reluctant, I follow her. Off the first landing, she shows me a series of bedrooms, unused but all the same needing care. One houses two rows of wooden sleigh beds, hospital-like, intended for children.
‘It was a sanatorium, last century,’ explains Adalina, a little too quickly.
The first thing I’ll do is air the rooms, I think, making a note of tasks I can begin in the morning. I’ve decided quickly that this is not a place in which I can allow myself to grow idle – partly because that road leads to him, and partly because I’m already resisting temptation to tease open drawers, to explore inside cabinets, to force rusted locks… to fling pale shrouds off portraits and read the names beneath.
The upper three floors are the same. There’s an old library, books caked in powder with spines cracked, and a mezzanine looking out over the garden. I want to climb up but Adalina tells me the steps are dangerous. ‘They haven’t been used in years.’ There are dressing rooms, reading rooms, water closets; pantries, larders and butteries; boudoirs and cabinets, storerooms, undercrofts and cellars; spaces left empty and who knows what they were once used for. The whole impression is one of a labyrinth, winding and never-ending, deliberately confusing where one space resonates almost exactly another. If I were alone, I’d already be lost.
We come to a door at the end of a corridor, and stop.
‘This leads to the attic,’ I say, and take the wooden handle in my palm, as if I’m testing it, as if Adalina might be wrong and it will swing open unaided. It doesn’t.
‘Nobody goes,’ confirms Adalina, and I understand this is the out-of-bounds top floor. ‘Your work extends to this point,’ she says, ‘and not beyond.’
I take my hand away.
‘I tell you this because of the girl we let go before you,’ says Adalina. ‘She did not heed my advice and Signora had no choice but to dismiss her.’
‘Will I meet her?’ I ask, and it hits me then that no one has told me her name. She. Her. Signora. The woman of the house…
‘Soon.’ Adalina’s gaze flits away. ‘For now I will show you your quarters.’
*
The Lilac Room, as it turns out, isn’t lilac at all. It is painted cream, with high, corniced ceilings and a four-poster bed swathed in thick red fabric. Crudely painted olive trees adorn one wall, just above the skirting, drawn, I’d wager, by a child.
Adalina wasn’t lying when she described this as my quarters, for, like the rest of the Barbarossa, it’s extensive. There is an adjoining bathroom, a little rundown but I’m not about to complain (I don’t relish the thought of getting lost out there in the middle of the night in pursuit of the loo), a writing desk, a couple of armchairs by a handsome fireplace (a peep up the flue tells me it’s long been blocked) and a mahogany wardrobe several times the size of the one Bill and I share back in London. Below the window, whose panes reach to twice my height, is an embroidered chaise.
Alone now, I can appreciate the full spread of the estate. Once upon a time the lawns would have been neatly landscaped, descending in tiers separated by stone to a pink- and peach-strewn rose garden, but the steps now leak into each other, the walls peeling and draped in vines, the grass overgrown. Beyond the roses, light catches on glass, where an old greenhouse is bursting with plants, and etched into a screen of brick I detect the subtle outline of a door. It reminds me of a book I read as a child, or maybe Mum read it to me, because the memory is accompanied by the mellow tang of cloves, but then I realise the window is ajar and it could just as easily be the cluster of herbs whose scent swims in on the breeze. I want to step outside and go towards that door and turn the rusted key. You will know if you trespass.
Further still, the lemon groves and the track I came in on, and, to the west, where the sun is gently setting and flooding the sky with orange and gold, there is a pergola, majestic on its mound of grass, as perfect as the curve on a paperweight. Against the bloodshot sky, twin swifts dip and dive their dusk-hour acrobatics.
There is one thing I’m omitting from this view, the thing I came past earlier and that I’m reluctant even now to acknowledge. The fountain by the entrance, set amid a dozen cypress trees, appears gloomier now the sun has fallen. I don’t know why it’s such a horrible thing. The protruding shape I detected earlier is an ugly stone fish, eyes bloated, scales crusted, its open mouth gasping air, fossilised mid-leap as if cast under a terrible spell. The trees don’t help either, standing guard, their spea
rs raised – and perhaps that’s all it is, the notion that there is something cosseted within that requires protection, something beyond the decaying stone and stagnant water…
I turn away and fumble in my bag for my phone. There is a message from Bill, asking if I got here OK, but I must have picked it up in the city and then gone out of signal, for there’s no reception here at all. The thought of asking after Wi-Fi is anachronistic. Back at home, I’d have panicked at being off radar, but here it seems natural. Nobody except Bill knows where I am. Nobody can find me. I think of the bomb waiting to detonate in London – Natasha triumphantly handing my name to whoever’s interested, whoever wants to destroy it – and it seems impossibly far away.
Only when I lie on the bed and close my eyes does it occur to me that no contact means no him. What if he needs me? What if he has to get in touch, and can’t? I reassure myself with a plan to get connected in the city: soon, soon.
In the meantime, there is a pinch of pleasure in the thought, however unlikely, that he might be trying to reach me, that he might be the one seeking me out, instead of my repeatedly glimpsing a screen that gives me nothing. For once, I’m unavailable.
I’m gone. Nobody can catch me.
In minutes, I’m asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Vivien?’
The maid knocks gently then steps inside. It’s rare that Adalina addresses her by her name, and Vivien knows it is because they are about to share a confidence.
‘What is she like?’ Vivien asks. It isn’t what she really wants to ask, but she cannot ask that yet. It will seem too desperate, too close to the bone.
‘As we expected,’ says Adalina. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘You told her…?’ Vivien glances away. ‘How much did you tell her?’