26 January: Paris
Only the energy to scribble a few lines. Mr Russo and I are not alone. In the car with him when he arrived to pick me up at Tilda’s were two other people, a middle-aged woman called Mrs Harris and a young man called Kenneth. Tilda was relieved. But I know nothing yet about either of them.
*
The drive to Italy through France (quite an undertaking in those days, but Mr Russo was evidently a keen motorist) took a route via Dijon then down the Rhone Valley to Marseilles, but there’s not much in the diary, because Millicent is writing long, descriptive letters to her mother. All she notes in it are observations which she obviously feels she can’t make to her mother. Most of them concern Mr Russo, who seems to her a very strange man though she likes him very much. She speculates frequently as to whether he is attracted to her and whether she is attracted to him, deciding that if there is attraction, on either side, it is not ‘physical’. According to Millicent, he is not good-looking. Apart from being tall and too thin, he is very nearly bald and she cannot abide bald men. His complexion is sallow and he has a prominent Adam’s apple. But he is kind and chivalrous and has a quirky sense of humour which appeals to her. Sometimes they catch each other’s eye when Mrs Harris makes some ridiculous remark and she feels they share the joke. Mrs Harris, it emerges, is the wife of Mr Russo’s cousin and is going to stay with him ‘for a rest’, though a rest from what is not divulged. Millicent thinks her a snob, an overdressed and haughty woman, who ignores everyone but Mr Russo. The other passenger, Kenneth, is the son of an old friend. He is going to learn Italian and be initiated into the wine trade (Mr Russo’s business). Millicent sits in the front with Mr Russo, because Mrs Harris prefers the back, and thoroughly enjoys herself except for the headaches she experiences when Mr Russo sings songs from his favourite operas too loudly and for too long.
*
2 February: Pisa
Our first stop in Italy. We visited the Leaning Tower, which really does lean alarmingly, and Kenneth and I climbed the crumbling steps to the top. It was the first time we had been alone together and he took the opportunity, which shocked me, to call Mrs Harris a bore and to wish she was not in our party. I refused to agree. I am not going to be rude about anyone and I will certainly not let Kenneth think he can make an ally of me. He is rather a callow youth, though I suppose handsome in a very English way, tall and slim with floppy fair hair and very blue eyes. He is very curious about me, quizzing me all the time. I give nothing away, and let him think what he wants. He would like to take a turn driving the car, but Mr Russo was horrified at this suggestion. He loves his car, and is so proud of its performance, with never a hint of any mechanical trouble.
3 February: Rome
We are outside Rome, near a very ancient road called the Via Cassia, on a hillside, as I had seen in the photographs. The villa is beautiful, with glorious views of open countryside. My room, when I was shown into it, had the shutters closed, so it was dim and I could not see much but then when the shutters were thrown open, I gasped at the dazzling scene framed in the window. I had not realised that the villa was so high up above the surrounding landscape, which is flat, no, not flat, undulating and open, a great expanse of rolling green. In the distance this green is taken over by the deep, deep blue of the sky with a line on the horizon so sharp where they meet, the blue and the green, that it might have been drawn with a ruler. All this is far off, and in the foreground there are gardens sloping down from a stone terrace. There are not many flowers at the moment but many different shades of green. I stood there for ages, simply transfixed. There was a bell, tolling somewhere far away, and a donkey braying but otherwise all was still. Still enough for me to be startled when I heard a voice below. My room is large but very nearly empty, with only a bed, one chair, a desk, and a chest of drawers and a cupboard in it. The floor is tiled. The bedcovers are white, the chair has a white cover on it, the walls are white. There are no curtains or carpet. It echoes. I love it.
4 February
Mr Russo said I must regard today and tomorrow as a holiday and if I wish he can arrange for me to visit Rome, but I said I was happy to get to know the house and garden and of course his daughter first. This seemed to please him. Francesca was not what I expected. I had imagined a girl much like Grace, from the shadowy photograph which I had seen. But Francesca must have grown since that photograph was taken. She is much taller than Grace, which means I am not so very much taller than she is, being small myself. She is what Mother would call well covered too, quite heavily built and, again, since I am so slight, it had the effect of making me feel somehow at a disadvantage. She is nothing like Mr Russo so she must take after her mother. Her mother has never been mentioned. I asked Mrs Harris if she knew what had happened to Mr Russo’s wife and she looked offended, or maybe it was alarmed, at any rate she looked uncomfortable, and said that was for him to tell me. I felt I had shown vulgar curiosity, but surely it is natural to want to know how my pupil comes not to have a mother.
5 February
I woke this morning bewildered, quite unable to decide where I was. The sun was coming through the slats in the shutters, casting lines of light across the tiled floor, and I lay there for a while feeling somehow out of myself, as I sometimes have the habit of doing, as though it were not really me in the bed. Opening the shutters, when I did get up, gave me the same shock I think it always will, the shock of the sheer difference from what I have been used to. I cannot get enough of it, all that glow of sun, all this colour. I saw Mr Russo walking on the terrace in a dressing-gown, smoking, but he had gone by the time I had dressed and made my way there. Perhaps it was just as well. He might not have liked being approached when he was in his dressing-gown. He might have thought me too bold. The custom in the morning is to breakfast on the terrace. Coffee and fresh rolls and fruit are brought out and set on the white-painted iron table. The coffee is poured into beautiful blue cups and the rolls come in baskets covered with blue linen napkins. Kenneth joined me, complaining at the lack of a real English breakfast and wishing there were at least eggs on offer. I did not respond, except to say I thought the breakfast delightful. Privately, I was thinking this was absolute heaven.
8 February
I love waking up here: early morning is quite the best time of day. I try now to walk through the gardens before I go to the terrace for breakfast. Sometimes I see Mr Russo watching me. He waves, but never joins me. In fact, I hardly see him all day, though we all eat together in the evening. He asks me how I am getting on with the teaching but always in front of Kenneth and Mrs Harris and this inhibits me. I just say quite well, thank you, and that we are making progress, and this seems to satisfy him. Perhaps next week I will have the opportunity to talk to him in private and then I can confess that I am finding Francesca perfectly obedient and ready to learn but somehow hostile. I had better not use the word hostile. It is not quite what I mean. I mean that she has no interest in me as a person and looks at me blankly and refuses to be friendly. She never smiles. She is unlike any 8-year-old I have ever come across. Is she unhappy? Is this blankness something to do with her missing mother?
11 February
It rained today, positively poured. I woke feeling cold, and there was no light in the room. The lack of sun changes everything. No breakfast on the terrace, and I am told it is not usual in any case to have it there before the middle of March but that this year there has been an exceptionally early and warm spring. We breakfasted instead in a small room beside the schoolroom. Luckily, Kenneth was late up, and Mrs Harris always has breakfast in bed, so I had it to myself and nobody saw me shiver. The schoolroom was cold too, but I had by that time put on a jacket and some thicker stockings. It is the tiled floors and all the marble surfaces which make the rooms seem colder. This villa is built for sun and doesn’t know what to do about cold.
12 February
Today we had the most delicious meal, starting with what Mr Russo told me was farce a raviolis. It looked so pre
tty on the green plate, and tasted heavenly. I asked what the stuffing was, and Mr Russo asked Sofia and then translated her answer: spinach, onion, herbs, white wine and lean veal and raw ham! So I have eaten meat and loved it and can no longer call myself a vegetarian. But then, if meat was in any dish that tasted like the ravioli, I would never have stuck to being a vegetarian. I hardly feel ashamed at all.
14 February
The sun is out again, thank goodness. I had letters from home today, from Tilda and from Mother, and a sweet note from Grace. I suggested to Francesca that she might like to write to Grace, to have her as a pen-friend. She did not seem to understand that term but when I had explained she showed little enthusiasm. That’s the trouble with Francesca in general, she never shows enthusiasm for anything. She has so little vitality, never shouts or screams, never runs or rushes about. She is a self-contained, silent child but not placid. She pays attention to my teaching and does her work conscientiously but she is too dutiful. It’s not normal. I never thought I would think of our twins nostalgically, but suddenly I long for their ebullience and some of the high-spirited chatter they indulge in so endlessly. I asked her today what she does in the afternoons. We finish school at midday and I never see her after that, or hear her. She told me that after siesta she rides some days, with an instructor. She has no children at all to play with. If I were her father, I would make more effort to find playmates for her. She will find America a shock, I am sure.
20 February
I’m trying hard to learn some Italian with the help of a dictionary and a teach-yourself book I brought from London. I have no need of the language to converse with Mr Russo or Francesca or Kenneth or Mrs Harris; indeed English is the language of the villa with even the servants speaking a little, but it is because of them that I wish to learn Italian. Drifting round the villa as I often do, when I’m unsure how I might spend my free time, I hear Maria and the others talking volubly and I long to know what is being said. And, besides, it occurs to me that the servants must know about Mrs Russo and it would be easier to ask them than Mr Russo. I dislike not being able to speak to people, and dislike even more not understanding them. Passing the open kitchen door as I walked round the villa this afternoon, I heard a man’s voice shouting and realised it was coming from a radio. I could not make out a word except for ‘Italia!’ repeated over and over again, but the whole tone sounded furiously angry. I asked Maria later to tell me who the voice belonged to and what it had said, but she shook her head and said it was ‘il Duce’ and she didn’t know what he had said. How ignorant I am of what goes on in this country.
25 February
My first day in Rome. I have resisted the lure of the city for three whole weeks, mostly because I wanted Mr Russo to see that I put his daughter before my own pleasure. But three weeks has been long enough, I think, to establish my credentials and really I longed to see Rome and could resist the temptation no longer. I knew Mr Russo’s manservant, Giorgio, who seems to do all sorts of jobs as well as act as chauffeur when required, was to take Mrs Harris to tea with a friend of hers who lives near the Piazza del Campidoglio. So I asked for a lift and arranged to be picked up two hours later at the same spot.
Two hours is not long to see a city like Rome and I have barely touched a quarter of it, and been inside no churches or art galleries, being determined to stay outside and get a feel of how the city looks, but it is a start. I have written a long letter to Mother describing what I have seen. I have asked Mother to keep my letters, though I am sure she would anyway, so that I will have a record of my time here. What I don’t put in my letters, because it would alarm Mother, is anything about the strangeness of Mr Russo and Francesca. I just say that Francesca is a good little girl and a willing pupil and that my job could not be easier. I don’t pass any comment on Mr Russo, except to remark that he is rarely around but pleasant enough when he is. I make sure to bring Mrs Harris into my letters, knowing Mother will find her presence reassuring. I wrote nothing, though, about the gangs of young men I saw everywhere, strutting about and looking like soldiers, but I don’t think they were soldiers. People were wary of them. I noticed they stepped aside to let these swaggering young men pass. I must ask Mr Russo about them.
1 March
For the first time I feel comfortable here. I am part of the routine of the villa and accepted as such, more, I can tell, than either Kenneth or Mrs Harris are. The day runs smoothly at last. I get up, walk in the garden, breakfast on the terrace, then go to the schoolroom where Francesca is waiting and spend the morning teaching her, always making sure that I am varying the work. At 10.30 Sofia brings in fruit juice for us and I make a point of us taking it outside and drinking it on the terrace so that it feels like a proper break. We have a little exercise before we go back, sometimes with a skipping rope I brought from England. I had to teach Francesca how to skip. She thought it most peculiar but has grown to enjoy it. Then we continue lessons till midday. Francesca has something to eat in her room and then sleeps, or rests, till 3 p.m. This seems to be a custom that cannot be broken though, since the weather is not at all hot yet, I cannot see the sense in it. I am brought a tray of food, delicious ham or cheese and always a plate of fruit, and then I set off and walk for an hour, returning to read until Mr Russo and Kenneth return. I bathe before drinks on the terrace and then we dine. Dinner takes a very, very long time. It is a lazy life. I never do anything except teach Francesca. My clothes are washed for me, my room is cleaned, I am waited on as though I were a guest like Mrs Harris. What Mrs Harris does all day is a mystery. She stays mostly in her room and when she emerges complains constantly of exhaustion. She rarely speaks to me. She thinks of me as one of the servants. I can’t say I care.
I asked Mr Russo at dinner tonight about the gangs of young men I had seen. He said they were fascists, members of the Fascio di Combattimento, headed by their leader, Mussolini. He gave me a little lecture on what was happening now in Italy and I was grateful to be given the chance to learn.
4 March
I had a meeting with Mr Russo today, which I was glad of. He had requested it, at the unusual time of before breakfast. It was a glorious morning and we sat on the terrace, but round the corner of the main terrace, in absolute privacy. Mr Russo often sits there, in a little bower constructed out of wrought-iron screens up which buds of purple and pink bougainvillaea have begun to climb. It seems to be generally known that when he is there he does not wish to be disturbed. He asked if I was bored. I said certainly not and stressed how much I loved the villa and the whole atmosphere of it and what a pleasure it was teaching Francesca instead of a large class of children. I hoped that would lead into a discussion about my pupil, but it didn’t. Mr Russo went on to comment on my youth and the lack of company. I said I had always been of a solitary nature and did not crave company and that I was twenty-three and not so very young. He smiled, and said, Twenty-three, in a tone of mock-awe, I felt, and then, You are certainly very mature for your age, if I may say so. A wise head, I think, on such young and very pretty shoulders. Well, I know I’m not especially pretty, but men think it such a compliment to say one is pretty, and Mother was always telling me I should accept it as such and be glad, but I never feel glad. It makes me suspicious, somehow. At any rate, I ignored it and turned the conversation, saying Francesca seemed so very withdrawn and would not respond to friendly overtures. He said, Ah, and got up and lit a cigarette and stood, not quite with his back to me, looking down the garden. There was a silence. Francesca, he began, and then there was another pause, before he went on, Francesca had a shock. A very great shock, a year ago, when she found her mother dead. I am afraid she was alone with . . . she was alone with her for some time. She is much better, but still suffering. It will take time. Sadly, there is no mother substitute, no one who can begin to take her mother’s place. I was paralysed with the shock of what he had told me and yet instantly my head was full of questions as to how Francesca came to be alone with the dead body of her mother. I aske
d none of them, hoping Mr Russo would continue, and enlighten me. But no. He didn’t. I managed to whisper how very sorry I was to hear this, how shocked, how I felt for Francesca. He acknowledged this with a bowing of his head, and terminated our meeting by pushing his chair into the table and gesturing that we should walk round to the main terrace.
I felt quite shaken, and later, when I went to the schoolroom, I was sure Francesca saw a difference in my face. She must have seen that I looked upset and my distress made an impression, without her knowing the cause of it, and she responded to it. Her expression changed. She looked not quite so blank. I wondered if I should say something but decided it would be a mistake. We went on as usual. I was ashamed to think I had begun to be impatient with her refusal to respond to me and realised that perhaps the fault was mine, that I had been too distant. At any rate, at last I felt a subtle shifting of the relationship between us, but maybe that is fanciful. I suppose my new knowledge made me compassionate and that I relaxed more and so the tension between us evaporated a little. I don’t know. She is only 8. When this awful thing – but what, what exactly? – happened she was only 7. It is too awful to imagine myself, or even Grace, at 7 being alone with the dead body of Mother. It was dreadful enough being with Father when I was 17, and I was never alone. I cannot get it out of my mind.
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Page 12