‘Yes. I’m on my own.’
‘And you’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘No. I’m here for a week.’
‘Oh,’ he says, and there’s definitely some dismay here. ‘But Robert said—’
‘Yes. I might have given a misleading impression. I didn’t want to wait until Saturday.’
His nose emits a faint snorting breath – the sound made by a chess-player who finds himself temporarily outmanoeuvred by a weaker opponent.
He watches her as she surveys the room: she has the look of someone searching for clues. Her demeanour has something of her father about it – the aura of blunt efficiency, of a mind that reaches conclusions too quickly. ‘So,’ she says, patting her thighs. ‘This is where you live. It’s nice.’ The small smile is also evocative of her mother.
‘I like it,’ says Gideon.
She points to the painting of the naked woman on a mattress. ‘That’s yours, isn’t it? I mean you painted it, yes?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And that one and that one,’ she goes on, indicating the ruin and the bottles. ‘But that one isn’t you.’ She points to the man on the beach.
‘That’s right,’ he answers, as though commending a bright child’s observation.
Irked, she scans the room again. The mouth, he now notices, is like her mother’s, with its implication of obduracy, a propensity to sulk. ‘You’re staying at the Ottocento?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Room OK?’
‘Very comfortable.’
‘Had a chance to explore the town?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not much to see. That’s one reason we like it.’
‘We?’
‘Myself and Robert.’
‘Oh. Right,’ she says.
‘Not what you’re thinking,’ he tells her. ‘He’s my assistant. That’s all. Many people made the same mistake, when we first arrived.’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything,’ she says, which he can see, from the wavering of her eyes, is not true; she lacks her mother’s opacity.
‘You’ve hired a car, I take it?’
‘No.’
‘So how did you get here?’
‘Train to Florence. Bus to Colle whatever it’s called. Taxi to here.’
‘Well, we can lend you a car. You’ll want to explore the area. A day in Siena, certainly. Have you been to Siena?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, it’s just over there,’ he tells her, turning to the window. ‘If you look—’
‘Yes, I know. I have a guidebook,’ she says, a little more sharply than intended.
Gideon looks out of the window, but she can tell he’s not looking at what’s out there. ‘There are some nice walks around here,’ he goes on, still gazing out.
‘I’m sure.’
‘I can give you a map. A detailed one. For walking.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. She is about to say that there’s no need to find it right away, but already he is at a bookshelf. Within twenty seconds the map is in her hand. She thanks him again.
Looking at his watch, he says: ‘I have to go, I’m afraid. But do drop round tomorrow.’ And at this point the room’s other door, beyond the loudspeakers, comes open and in trots a fudge-coloured and curly-coated dog, the one she saw earlier. Gideon beckons the dog to his side and gives its head a vigorous stroke, glad of the distraction. ‘This is Trim,’ he says.
‘Nice dog,’ she comments.
‘A Lagotto Romagnolo.’
‘He’s beautiful.’
‘He is,’ says Gideon. He continues rubbing the dog’s head and then there’s a knock at the door and Robert enters, now wearing well-pressed chinos and a Prussian blue shirt.
1.7
‘Meet my niece,’ Gideon calls across the room. ‘Robert, this is Claire; Claire, this is Robert.’ The gestures would make you think that this was a little drama of his own devising, for the bemusement of his assistant.
‘Hello,’ says Robert; he stays by the door and raises a hand in greeting. He evinces no curiosity as to why her name should have changed; it’s as though he’s never seen her before, and has no interest in making her acquaintance.
‘Now,’ Gideon says to her, ‘have you eaten?’
‘I said I’d eat at the hotel,’ she says.
She anticipates an attempt to persuade her to cancel, but instead Gideon merely asks her to excuse him for a moment, before leaving the room by the door beyond the speakers.
She had stood up when Robert came in; now she takes a couple of steps towards the window. ‘Nice view,’ she remarks, which he affirms with a nod. It’s a pleasant landscape – nothing startling or luscious, but easy on the eye. ‘What’s that place?’ she asks.
From halfway across the room he peers past her shoulder. ‘The one on the near horizon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cásole d’Elsa.’
‘Anything to see there?’
‘Castle, now the town hall. Handful of churches. Nothing remarkable.’
‘And Siena is where?’
‘Ninety degrees to the right. Out of range,’ he answers. The dog, having followed Gideon out of the room, comes back; it butts Robert’s leg with its muzzle and receives a couple of pats on the rump.
‘Trim – is that as in “trim the grass”, or is it short for something Italian?’
‘As in “trim the grass”.’
‘Odd name,’ she comments. The dog buffets her shins, so she gives its back a stroke; the fur is as soft as a lamb’s fleece. ‘We were in contact last year,’ she reminds Robert. ‘I emailed.’
‘I remember,’ he says. This may or may not be true; it’s not possible to tell if he knows anything at all about her. He’s not so much morose as absent.
Gideon returns, wearing a linen jacket that has a dozen creases to the square inch. ‘Friendly chap, isn’t he?’ he says, pointing at the dog; perhaps this is a jibe at his assistant. ‘Ready?’ he asks Robert.
‘Let’s roll,’ says Robert, with as much enthusiasm as an undertaker getting ready to drive the hearse. He leads the way down the stairs.
Gideon tells her they are going in her direction, so they’ll walk with her as far as the hotel. Out on the piazza he pauses for a moment and looks around, as if to ascertain that everything is as it should be. Two old men are crossing the square arm in arm, and one of them raises a hand to Gideon; a dozen starlings, after wheeling around the church’s weathervane, fly overhead and alight on the parapet of the tower. Gideon squints up at where the birds have settled. ‘That’s the Saracen’s Tower,’ he informs her. ‘Thirteenth century. Roman foundations. All of this used to be a castle,’ he explains, with a whirl of a hand, encompassing the piazza. A small man with a flattened nose passes them, and he shakes Gideon’s hand, barely breaking stride. Gideon resumes his speech, as though Claire has come to Castelluccio to make a documentary about him. He loves the spirit of this place, he tells her; he uses the phrase genius loci. When he was a young man, he used to think that an artist shouldn’t be at home anywhere, but Castelluccio has made him change his mind. He takes a deep breath, as if the street were exuding a heady vapour, like a fifty-year-old malt. They have almost reached the hotel. A priest, walking down the centre of the road, nods crisply at Robert and is repaid in kind.
‘Prettier than where I live,’ says Claire.
‘And where’s that?’ Gideon enquires.
‘Stockwell.’
‘Ah,’ says Robert; it’s the first time he’s opened his mouth since they left the apartment.
‘You know it?’
‘Been through it,’ he answers.
‘It has its good points,’ she says.
Outside the hotel, Gideon stops. ‘So, tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Do you want to come round for lunch? I take a break at one.’
‘Sure.’
‘One o’clock on the dot,’ he says.
‘On the dot,’ she agrees.
‘See you then,
’ says Gideon, departing. Robert shakes her hand, making it seem that he’s doing it on behalf of his employer.
1.8
Most visitors to Castelluccio enter the town by its northern gate, the Porta di Volterra, because the main car park is situated there, as is the bus terminus. Via Matteotti rises gently from the Porta di Volterra to Piazza del Mercato, which is still the location of the weekly market, currently held on Wednesdays. The Torre del Saraceno, the highest structure in the town, rises over the northern side of the square, where parts of the fortress’s walls have been incorporated into a number of the buildings. On the west side of the piazza stands the Loggia del Mercato, formerly a shelter for the market traders, and on the opposite side you’ll see one of Castelluccio’s four functioning churches, Santissimo Redentore.
From the southeast corner of Piazza del Mercato, Via dei Falcucci leads to the eastern gate, the Porta di Siena; halfway along Via dei Falcucci, Via San Lorenzo curves down to the derelict church of San Lorenzo. The main street of Castelluccio, Corso Garibaldi, runs from the southwest corner of Piazza del Mercato to the central square, Piazza Maggiore, 250 metres to the west, passing two significant buildings along the way: Palazzo Campani, the largest private residence in the town; and the Teatro Gaetano, a nineteenth-century theatre, now defunct. On the corner of Corso Garibaldi and Piazza Maggiore you’ll find the Caffè del Corso, which opened for business more than a century ago. Castelluccio’s most important church, San Giovanni Battista, shares the southern side of Piazza Maggiore with its most important secular structure, the Palazzo Comunale, or town hall.
Behind the Palazzo Comunale you’ll find another square, Piazza della Libertà, which fronts the southern gate, the Porta di Massa, from where Via dei Pellegrini and Via Santa Maria, following the arc of the best-preserved section of the old town walls, sweep westwards to the western gate, the Porta di Santa Maria. Adjacent to the gate is the church of Santa Maria dei Carmini. The small Piazza dei Carmini marks the terminus of Corso Diaz, which extends eastwards for 150 metres to Piazza Maggiore, and of Via Sant’Agostino, which shadows another intact section of the walls as it climbs to the fourth of Castelluccio’s active churches, Sant’Agostino. The town museum, the Museo Civico, is to be found a short distance beyond Sant’Agostino, and from the museum it’s a brief walk north to the last of the gates, the Porta di San Zeno. A public garden overlooks the Porta di San Zeno and the nearby Porta di Volterra; at the top of the garden there’s a terrace that gives a superb view of the countryside to the north of Castelluccio, with Volterra visible in the distance, on a fine day.
1.9
The restaurant of the Ottocento is not, this evening, a relaxing place for a woman on her own; Claire tries to concentrate on her book, but is repeatedly distracted by glances from other tables – from families, couples, groups of men. In the corner of the room, sitting with three friends, is a lean-faced man of fifty – he has an air of failed marriage, but clearly still fancies himself – who smiles at her three times, perhaps with interest, perhaps with commiseration. A child – a boy of nine or ten – stares at her as though she has green skin and antennae. Within an hour she has finished her meal, but she stays at the table for ten minutes more, doggedly reading, taking sips from her glass of water. It’s not yet ten o’clock. She decides to go for a stroll.
On Corso Garibaldi a teenaged boy, sitting on a scooter, is talking to a lad on crutches, who is holding the hand of a girl who’s talking on her phone. There’s nobody else on the street. She passes the café on the corner of Piazza Maggiore; a man is standing at the bar, staring into a glass of wine; he’s the only customer. The façade of the church on Piazza Maggiore glows under a floodlight that’s bolted into the pavement at the foot of the steps; a figure of Christ, above the main door, grimaces into the light; a bat skims the wall of the church repeatedly. Claire watches the aerobatics of the bat, thinking mostly about her uncle: he fits with what little her parents had told her; there is something stagey about him as well, and almost seedy. She remembers, around the time of her grandmother’s funeral, her father referring to his brother as a big child, and her mother adding: a big child who thinks he’s a great man. He had thought he was a great man from about the age of twelve, her father said: Gideon had signed the drawings he did at school, ostentatiously, in rehearsal for his inevitable years of fame. In a drawer in the living room there was a small drawing of their mother, done when Gideon was fourteen, and the signature in the bottom corner was the same as it is now: a G and a W strung on a line, with a couple of posts – the double ‘l’ – at the far end. It was a very good drawing; astounding for a fourteen-year-old.
She asks herself: Why have I come here? She was curious, above all – curious about the uncle, the well-known artist, whose name had come to be unmentionable at home. She has never known anyone famous, nor any artists. And she is in need of a holiday: she had thought it would do her good to see some places she had never visited before. It was a risk, coming here, but doing something bold might be good for her, she’d thought. She has never taken much of a risk with anything before; she wishes she had done, though she can’t think, offhand, of any occasions on which a risky decision might have made a difference. Nevertheless, she is feeling a sort of unspecified regret, as well as a regret that has a clear location: she should have gone somewhere else; Gideon is dislikeable and he has no interest in her. Tomorrow, perhaps, she will give him what she has to give him and then she’ll leave, maybe for Siena, maybe for Florence, if she can find a place to stay.
Wandering without paying attention to where she’s going, she has arrived at another church, unlit, and a gate in the town walls. She passes through it, and finds a panorama of dark hills, speckled with house lights and streaked by headlights flashing through trees. The town at her back is as quiet as the countryside; she hears an owl, but the cry comes from behind her, from the houses. Not as tired as she wants to be, she meanders along the alley that flanks the church and arrives at a courtyard in which a TV set grumbles in a room above her head. Looking up, she sees a square of deep indigo sky, with a dozen fat stars in it; and there is the owl again. She goes on, down an even narrower alleyway, which turns one way and then the other before opening onto a street she does not recognise. She turns left, sure that this is the way back to the main street, and instead sees the town walls in front of her; she follows the walls, and in a minute is back at the gate; she wouldn’t have thought it possible to lose one’s bearings in so small a space. For a few minutes more she looks towards the hills; the quietness is beginning to make her drowsy.
She walks back along Corso Diaz and sees, silhouetted against the floodlight of Piazza Maggiore, Robert hurrying across the road. She stops until he has gone, then hurries herself, concerned that she may come across Gideon between here and the hotel. But she gets back to the hotel without seeing anyone other than the waiter in the empty café, and the boy with the crutches and his girlfriend, who are kissing on a doorstep.
In her room she takes from her case the interview with Gideon that she had printed from a website the night before she left. She reads a paragraph or two.
1.10
Teresa Monelli, née Emidia, was born in Castelluccio and has lived here for most of her thirty-six years. She works for Gianluigi Tranfaglia’s property agency, in an office in Palazzo Campani; she has been there for almost four years, which is too long.
At the university of Florence she studied architecture, as did her husband, Vito. They married shortly after graduation; their daughter, Renata, now thirteen, was born a few months later, and Teresa stayed at home to raise her to school age, while Vito worked all hours at an architectural practice in Siena, his home town. They lived in Castelluccio, three streets away from her parents, who helped out with Renata whenever necessary; Vito would call on his parents in Siena two or three times each week, after work. Though home and office were some distance apart, and often he did not get back to Teresa and Renata until late in the evening, Vito was happy in Caste
lluccio, or seemed to be. He liked the scale of the place, its modest fabric, its setting. They had a plan: within ten years Vito would set up his own office, with Teresa, and they would gather their clients from the Castelluccio area, where properties were regularly bought by outsiders who needed an architect to improve their new residence or holiday home. Vito and Teresa cultivated the goodwill of Gianluigi Tranfaglia, and were soon rewarded: as a freelance project, Vito designed a music studio for Albert Guldager, the composer, whose house outside Radicóndoli had been bought through the Tranfaglia agency.
Other commissions came Vito’s way: he rebuilt a farmhouse at Mensano and another near Monteguidi. Ahead of schedule, he opened his own office in Siena, where he planned the conversion of a dilapidated villa into a hotel. On the back of this project, he was commissioned to produce an extension for the Ottocento in Castelluccio. The council consulted him with regard to the possibility of finding a new use for the Teatro Gaetano. Thanks in large part to the recommendations of Gianluigi Tranfaglia, private clients were in more than sufficient supply: he restored and rebuilt a farm and its outbuildings at Paganina; a Roman couple bought a derelict house in Castelluccio, on Piazza San Lorenzo, and hired him to turn the husk into a hi-tech dwelling, no expense spared; he was entrusted with the conversion of the old candle factory in Via Santa Maria; and he designed a house near San Dalmazio, built on land that had once been an orchard, for a wealthy Dutch woman, divorced, called Carice van Kapelleveen, who had made a lot of money as a fund manager in London and now, disenchanted with city life, had decided that she would withdraw to the depths of Tuscany and get closer to nature, while maintaining a healthy revenue stream by marshalling the investments of a select roster of clients. Whether or not Carice van Kapelleveen succeeded in getting closer to nature is not known; she did, however, succeed in getting closer to the architect of her dream house. Vito came home one night and informed his wife that he had to leave; so unsuspecting was Teresa that she thought for a moment that he was talking about a business trip.
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