‘Her name was Chantal.’ Michel, now, was equally brusque. ‘But, Poppy, what on earth does she have to do with us?’
‘You’ve never mentioned her before.’
‘Because she doesn’t matter.’ His voice was lifted in exasperation. ‘I haven’t mentioned her because I haven’t thought about her. It’s as simple as that.’
She turned to face him, her head high. ‘But you did—’ she struggled for a moment ‘—sleep with her?’
He sighed, his irritation dying. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I did. But—’
‘And how many others have shared your bed?’ Poppy was scarlet with anger, mortification and a furious, and she knew totally irrational, jealousy. ‘Do you always dismiss your women so lightly?’
His anger was rising again. ‘As a matter of fact it was she who dismissed – as you put it – me. But I still don’t see it has anything to do with us. Good God, I’m nearly thirty years old! Do you expect me to have lived like a saint?’
‘Of course not! But I expected—’ She stopped, suddenly aware that if she spoke another word she was going to burst into tears. She flung away from him, clamping her lips against their trembling.
‘Poppy, you’re simply not being reasonable! It’s not the past that counts – it’s the future. Our future.’
‘Our future? How do I know we have a future? How do I know you won’t be standing with some other woman in a couple of years’ time talking about the girl you met in Italy, and what a fool she made of herself over you?’ She let out a small, miserable sound and bowed her face to her hands, shoulders shaking.
He came to her in bewilderment, putting an arm about her shoulders. She stood, rigid and shaking, in the circle of his arms. He tried to pull her into his shoulder, but she resisted, her face still hidden. ‘Poppy, Poppy!’ He shook his head. ‘The only foolish thing you’re doing is making a quarrel out of nothing. Yes, I did live with Chantal for a few weeks. Yes, I suppose we did believe we were in love. But we weren’t. We were too young.’
She lifted her tear-streaked face fiercely. ‘As young as I am, I suppose?’
‘Yes, as young as you are. But, my darling, you’re different—’
‘How, different?’ She had stopped crying, but her breath was still coming in hiccoughing sobs.
He smiled a little at her woebegone face. ‘Just different. I love you. You know I do.’
‘Then make love to me.’ The words were flung like a challenge.
He looked at her in silence for a long time. Then he shook his head. ‘No, Poppy. Not now. Not like this.’ His voice was quietly tender.
‘You see?’ Poppy’s own voice rose in a wail. ‘You don’t love me!’ But this time she made no move to prevent him drawing her into his arms, and once there, she stood still and quiet as he held her to him, stroking her hair. It was a very long time indeed before she said something, the import of which was muffled in his damp shoulder.
He bent his head to her. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m sorry!’ She would not look at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, less forcefully. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I know it’s none of my business—’
‘It is your business. Anything to do with me is your business. As anything to do with you is mine. It’s just that what’s past is past – there’s nothing either of us can do about that. It’s silly to be jealous.’
That brought her head up. ‘I’m not jealous!’ she flashed indignantly, and then, as he surveyed her with affectionately quizzical eyes, added with wayward honesty, ‘Well, only a little.’
He laughed. ‘There’s no need. And there’s no need to doubt that I love you either.’ He drew her close again.
She tilted her head to look up into his face. ‘Then why don’t you want to make love to me?’
‘I told you. Not now. Not like this. It wouldn’t be right. You surely know that?’ She nibbled her lip, her eyes on his. ‘To be truthful—’ she hesitated and then went on in a rush ‘—I don’t know anything. About – that sort of thing, I mean. I’ve never—’ She shrugged and did not finish the sentence.
‘All the more reason to take care. Poppy, can’t you see that it’s because I love you that I won’t do anything that might hurt you?’
She was playing with his shirt button, clicking it with her fingernail, eyes veiled by the dark sweep of her lashes.
‘I saw someone once. Making love,’ she said very quietly. ‘Accidentally, when I was a child.’ Her lashes lifted and dropped again as she glanced at him and away. ‘It frightened me.’
‘Oh, Poppy, Poppy!’ Eyes and voice were soft as he hugged her to him. ‘Don’t be frightened. There’s nothing to be frightened of, I promise.’
She flashed another quick look up at him, and this time he was relieved to see a glint of the old subversive amusement in her eyes. ‘From what you’ve just told me,’ she said, a little tartly, ‘you should know. Though, come to think of it—’ with a sudden change of mood as swift and complete as the one that had precipitated the silly quarrel she laughed and took his hand, turning to walk on ‘—it’s a good job that one of us knows what they’re doing, I suppose!’
*
In the event, Eloise and Peter stayed away for almost a week. The first Poppy knew of their return was when she glimpsed Eloise in the distance, walking from the Tenuta back towards the village. There was no mistaking the tall, decisive figure. Poppy had been out in the woods, hunting early blackberries for a pie. Hot, sticky, her forearms scratched and welted and her fingers smeared with juice, she was not sorry that their paths had not crossed; Eloise always managed to make her feel like a graceless and slightly tiresome child as it was. In this state she would have been at a greater disadvantage than ever.
Isobel was sitting in the shade of the courtyard, her feet up, an almost empty glass in front of her. On the table beside it lay a large and decorative box tied with a silken red bow. She looked round with a start as Poppy came around the corner of the house.
Poppy dropped a quick kiss on her sister’s cheek. ‘Was that Eloise I just saw?’
‘Yes. They got back last night. Had a lovely time, apparently.’ Isobel saw Poppy’s eyes on the box and added brightly, ‘She brought me a box of chocolates from Rome. Wasn’t that kind?’
‘It certainly was. Is that lemonade? I’m so dry I’m spitting sawdust.’ Poppy picked up the glass and finished its contents in a swallow. ‘I’ll get you some more. Would you like me to take these inside out of the heat?’ She leaned across the table to pick up the box and, as she did so, exclaimed in surprise. ‘Good Lord – how many chocs are there in here?’
In the same breath and with almost the same movement, Isobel had leaned forward to take the box from her. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s all right. They’ll take no harm here. But, yes, I should like some more lemonade, please.’
Poppy grinned. ‘Lemonade and chocolates. Yum.’ Her sister shook her head. ‘You’ll just have to wait. I don’t want to open them yet. The box is so pretty, don’t you think?’
‘Please yourself.’ Cheerfully Poppy swung into the kitchen to get the lemonade. ‘They’re your chocolates.’
*
Poppy could not but guess that there was some conspiracy afoot regarding her birthday, which fell on the fourteenth of August, just two days before the August Palio. It so happened that Isobel had an appointment with a doctor in the city for a check-up on the tenth, just a month before the baby was due. It came as no huge surprise to Poppy when Michel announced his intention of going into Siena on that day with the Enevers, on business entirely of his own. To be truthful, much as she tried to deny it to herself and to everyone else, Poppy was beginning to look forward to the event. It was, after all, a milestone. She had marked it in her mind as Independence Day. This very year had seen the introduction of equality in the British voting system; women now were enfranchised at twenty-one, as had always been the case with their brothers. ‘Grown up at last,’ she had said to Michel, and yes,
it was true. After August the tenth she would have to ask permission for nothing. Including marriage. Whenever the thought occurred – which it did rather too frequently to be comfortable – she very sensibly dismissed it. Who in the world had suggested marriage?
‘We’ll take Robbie with us,’ Kit said. ‘He needs some new shoes. So you’ll have the entire day to yourself. Do what you like. Do nothing. You certainly deserve a day off.’
Poppy shook her head. ‘I’m going to have to do some washing. We’re all running out of things to wear! But apart from that, perhaps I will put my feet up.’
As it happened, on the day of the trip the hot, still weather had broken. A blustery wind blew, and there were a few clouds scudding across a sky that for the past couple of weeks had been resolutely clear and blue. Poppy, far from being disappointed, found the change refreshing; lovely as the settled southern weather was, she occasionally found the constant heat wearing. For a day or so a fresh wind and cooler temperatures would be welcome.
Having seen the others off, she hummed about the house collecting and sorting clothes to be washed, putting a great pan of water on to boil, setting the washboard up in the sink. The wind that rattled the doors and windows would make short shrift of drying the washing. She picked up the basket and went upstairs to Robbie’s room, stopped as she passed his parents’ bedroom door. As always, it was untidy. The clothes that Isobel had promised to sort to give to Poppy were tossed on a chair; some had slipped to the floor. With a small, exasperated smile she pushed the door open further and went into the room. As she straightened from putting the clothes into the basket, her eyes fell upon a bright splash of colour protruding from underneath the unmade bed. Curious, she slid it into the open with her foot. It was the box of chocolates that Eloise had brought from Rome. The ribbon had been taken off, and it had obviously been opened. Poppy, a little piqued, bent to pick it up. It seemed hardly necessary for Isobel actually to hide the things – she stopped. This time, with the box fully in her hands, it was perfectly obvious that it must contain something other than chocolates. It was far too heavy, and as she had moved it, something had clearly chinked. She stood for a moment, looking down at it; then, on impulse, opened the lid.
There were no chocolates. Several small phials lay snugly on a silken bed. Two were empty, a third had been opened. A sickly sweet odour drifted from the box.
And this time, on the instant, Poppy recognised it. For a moment her head swam with it. She smelled again those headily scented flowers that she had hated and that her mother had so loved, and then the smell of her sick-room as she had lain victim of the brutal illness that had wasted her to death. The two smells – that of the hothouse flowers and that of the medicine that her mother had had to take in ever-increasing doses to give her relief from the savage pain – had become inextricably entwined in the memory of the child who had watched her mother die.
Had this, then, been Eloise Martin’s ‘business in Rome’?
Very slowly Poppy took one of the phials from the box, put the lid back on and dropped the box on the bed. It took a moment for her to realise that of all the emotions her discovery had stirred the predominant was anger; sheer, scorching anger. An anger that could not wait. Still holding the phial, she slipped from the room, ran down the stairs, paused only to take the pan from the stove and then went out into the wind, banging the door behind her.
Chapter Fourteen
‘From the expression on your face, my dear,’ Eloise said coolly, ‘it seems to me that you know exactly what it is. It’s laudanum.’ Dressed in silken soft-cut pyjamas of a pale green that almost exactly matched her eyes, she was seated at a small table upon which stood a mirror, a hair-brush in her hand, her shining cloak of hair spread about her shoulders. The room into which Poppy had unceremoniously burst a couple of minutes before was almost clinically tidy. A photograph of young Peter stood beside the bed, a small collection of creams and lotions and a glass jewel-box were neatly aligned before the mirror.
‘Laudanum that you brought from Rome.’ It was a flat statement rather than a question.
‘Yes.’
‘For my sister.’
‘Yes.’
‘How dare you!’ Poppy was raging; it was only with extreme effort that she kept her precarious grip on her temper and did not raise her hand to slap the lovely, supercilious face.
Eloise laid down the brush and, still seated, turned to face her fully. ‘But, my dear, she asked me to.’
‘If she asked you to pick up a gun and shoot her, would you do it?’
‘Let’s not be melodramatic, darling. And do try to keep your voice down.’
Poppy’s control snapped. ‘To hell with keeping my voice down! Not content with tormenting poor Kit because he survived the war and your precious Peter didn’t, you’re now turning his wife into a junkie! Well, that wife is also my sister! And I’m going to stop it, you hear?’
There was a small, thoughtful silence. Then, ‘Well, well,’ Eloise said, ‘so that’s what he’s told you, is it?’ Poppy stood watching her, breathing heavily, saying nothing. In her temper she had broken her promise to Kit not to mention to anyone what he had told her. Who knew what mischief this woman might try to wreak now? Too late, she realised where her fury had led her.
‘Poppy, I think we need to get some things straight. First, your sister is a sick woman. She needs medication—’
‘Not like this! Not in these quantities!’ Poppy flashed back. ‘And not when she’s a month off bearing a child!’
Eloise ignored her. ‘Second, your darling Kit is a liar. A liar and a murderer.’ Her voice was perfectly controlled. Outside, the wind whistled and buffeted about the house, the trees beyond the window bowing and tossing turbulently.
Poppy was staring at her. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, flatly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Eloise had picked up the phial and was turning it thoughtfully in her long, pale fingers. ‘Have you never noticed,’ she asked after a moment, ‘that when an honest person – let’s say an honest man – lies, he does it extremely well? Simply because we don’t expect a lie, we believe what we hear. Oh, how he has fooled you, Poppy.’
‘I don’t want to hear any of this. I just want—’
‘Oh, but you’re going to, whether you like it or not.’ The pale eyes glinted with a sudden deadly rancour. ‘You think him the injured party? You think me the villain of the piece?’ Her soft laughter was wholly unpleasant. ‘Just tell me – what did he tell you?’
‘He told me about the war. About you and him. And about how Peter came and took you from him.’
She nodded, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on Poppy. ‘And did he tell you how Peter died?’
‘Yes. He was killed behind enemy lines, trying to reach a truck to get away in. Kit said it was pure bad luck; it could just as easily have been him.’
‘He lied,’ Eloise said.
‘He told me that you believed he had deliberately abandoned Peter.’
‘Oh, no, he didn’t abandon him. At least, not until after he was dead.’ Eloise leaned forward and suddenly her face was blazing. ‘He killed him. Kit killed Peter.’ She spaced the three words deliberately apart, speaking very clearly and calmly, only the faintest tremor in her voice betraying her.
Poppy stared at her. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Believe me. It’s true.’
Poppy lifted a challenging chin. ‘How do you know? How can you possibly know? You weren’t there.’
‘No. But someone else was. Someone Kit didn’t know was there. A wounded German, hiding in the loft of one of the barns. He saw it all. Peter wasn’t killed as he ran towards the truck. He couldn’t run. His knee had been shattered by a bullet. He was waiting for Kit to bring the truck to him. Kit did. He drove it straight at him. Ran him down, and left him there in the mud. Peter hated the mud,’ she added sombrely, her eyes distant. ‘He always hated it.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Poppy whis
pered. ‘I won’t believe you!’
Eloise, coming out of her reverie, shrugged.
‘How did you – how did you get to hear this story?’
‘Peter was dead by the time the German reached him. The man went through his pockets – looking for cigarettes, he said, though I think he probably took more than that. Anyway, he found my photograph and a letter with my address on it. A year or so after the war he was still in hospital. I don’t know, perhaps in an attempt to make amends to the man he had robbed, he wrote to me and told me the story. He had no idea, of course, of who the man driving the truck was. But I had. Oh, yes, I had. I went to visit the German, but by the time I got there he, too, was dead. I decided there and then that I would find Kit. That I would make him suffer, as he had made me suffer.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Do you blame me?’ she asked, hideously reasonably.
Poppy had taken a step away from her, shaking her head. ‘I still don’t believe you.’
‘I have the letter.’
‘That’s no proof. You could have forged it.’
‘True. But didn’t.’ Eloise turned her head sharply as a sudden gust of wind caught a door in the house and slammed it. She sat listening for a moment, but there was no sound but the wind. ‘I didn’t,’ she repeated quietly.
‘What do you want?’ Poppy asked into the quiet.
Eloise answered promptly. ‘Revenge. Peter haunts me. I haunt Kit, in his name. It took me a long time to find him. I won’t give up so easily now. I told you – I want to see him suffer for what he did.’
‘So you started by making my sister dependent upon laudanum,’ Poppy broke in bitterly.
‘It was part of the game to begin with, I admit, but—’
‘Game!’ Poppy repeated, aghast. ‘Eloise, it isn’t Isobel who’s sick, it’s you!’
‘I was about to say that I have truly grown to like poor Isobel. She’s not stable. You must know that. And the laudanum does help her.’
Poppy pursed her lips fiercely, but said nothing.
Siena Summer Page 20