When he returned she was standing by the door, a puzzled expression on her face. Her dark green eyes were troubled, her full lips parted as if she would ask a question but seeing his expression, she closed her mouth and said nothing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I had a need of air. Shall we go?’
‘Of course.’
Although not a massive building, the palazzo was difficult to negotiate, for there were many corridors and different stairways. There were bedrooms situated over three floors, and six attic rooms; downstairs there was a library, a drawing room and various other rooms of varying degrees of comfort. At the rear of the palazzo he led her into a beautiful sun lounge. It was full of light and colour and comfortable chairs. ‘You did like to sit in here and read on winter days,’ he murmured. ‘If there is any sun, then you will find it here.’ Opening the long glass doors she saw there was to the right of them, a loggia. It went around the house and would offer cool shade on hot days.
He took her outside; there were stables and she was not surprised when he told her that she rode quite well. She went and touched the horses and found she was not afraid of them but oddly familiar with their feel and smell.
Close to the palazzo there was an indoor swimming pool. The pool though was empty and when she asked why, he merely shrugged and said no one used it any more. ‘Did I use it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, you were, are, a very athletic person. However you did prefer the outdoor pool. That is just along here and you will find that it has water — sea water actually.’ Adjacent to the building that housed the drained swimming pool was a dilapidated building that marred the palazzo’s perfection, like a flaw in a beautiful ornament. It had all the ornate features of the building that housed the swimming pool, but its windows were filthy and the roof tiles were in need of repair. Alva looked at her husband questioningly. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s used for storage but I have to do something about it. Sometime.’
Everything else was beautiful, the setting, the mellow stone walls of the palazzo, the shady terraces where vines crawled up pillars and there were terracotta pots of gaudy geraniums and other colourful blooms set out in haphazard fashion on black and white mosaic floors.
The swimming pool area was laid with blue and white tiles, there were matching striped loungers and umbrellas and the water glinted dark blue in the sunshine.
‘Even though there are two pools you used to like to drive down to the beach. It is not far, fifteen minutes and it is quite private. You enjoyed swimming there. You have a thing about the sea.’
‘Yes, I think I can already feel that. It’s quite beautiful, Conte.’
‘Why so formal? You can call me Luca when we are alone.’
‘I think we had better keep it formal,’ she murmured. ‘After all, I don’t know you — at least the me that I am now doesn’t. You’re a stranger to me.’
‘Of course,’ he said in a clipped kind of way. She gave him a careful glance from beneath her long curling lashes. He was tall and well-built, more so than she had first thought. He was a muscular man but one, she imagined, without an ounce of fat. How had she captured such a man — she was not rich, could not have been to have arrived in such a poor state and if no one else had contacted her, or wanted to look after her. That was why she had had to come here. What did that make her? An orphan — she had to have had no family otherwise she would not be here as a last resort. She could have stayed in England. However, she had no money, no address and no one had been looking for her. If it had not been for a journalist with a long memory she might still have been there but seeing her photograph in the newspaper, he had gone into its archives, because something about her niggled at him. It was he who had found their wedding photographs; this was no poor little lost girl, she was the Contessa Mazareeze, estranged wife of the Conte Mazareeze of Santa Caterina island.
‘May we sit?’ she asked, seeing a carved stone bench by the lily pond.
‘Yes, please do.’
‘Sorry, I do feel a little weak.’
‘Would you like me to fetch you something?’
‘No, I’ll be fine; really, it’s just that this has been a long day.’
‘Of course, perhaps we should not have walked so far.’
‘Oh no, I love it, I like being outside. Being confined to a hospital room is not my idea of heaven. I haven’t said, perhaps I should, it is very kind of you to have me come here. I’m sure I will get better more quickly by being here. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and surely a place like this will stir my memory.’
‘Perhaps it will. Anyway, what else could I do, Alva? You have no one else.’
‘I don’t? No one at all? Please tell me, Conte, I really know so little.’
‘Well there is not much to tell. Your parents died when you were fourteen years old. They were working in India and were caught up in a cholera epidemic … ’
‘India? Had they left me behind? Why were they there?’ Curiosity caused a dark flush to invade her neck and cheeks. There was a look of animation and it really wounded him to see it there; however a kind of hope withered inside him, her memory would not be restored just because he told her who she was.
When he had first heard about her and her condition he had thought she was lying. His suspicions were aroused because he had just that week ordered his lawyer to contact her and ask for a divorce. It seemed far too convenient for her to have lost her memory. Yet seeing her now he realized she was not lying.
She might be able to fool the psychiatrist he had sent to examine her, but she could not fool him. There was something so vague about her and things were different about her that made him realize she was not deceiving him at all.
‘As far as I know, they went to work at a hospital for the poor. Your father was a doctor and your mother was a nurse. They were very — I cannot think of the correct word in English — but perhaps compassionate will do? They gave their time to good causes when they could, and this opportunity came for them to be in India and so they went. You were at boarding school, I believe, so it wasn’t a problem. I think they envisaged that in the long holiday you would go out there to be with them but it never happened. There was an aunt and you went to stay with her, I think she was on your mother’s side, but it did not work out. She was not very kind to you, or so you said.’
Alva shot him a look as if suspecting he meant it as a criticism, but she folded her lips tightly together and said nothing.
‘When you left school you went to university and there was no need for anyone to look after you. You studied politics and languages and after university you went to work for a politician. I had some business with him since he was something to do with trade and industry. That is how we met, at a meeting of delegates from your country and mine. You were with your boss because he could not speak Italian. He was an obnoxious fellow but it was a job, you said.’
She mused on what he had said for a long moment, she toed the ground, moving the tiny pieces of gravel about with her foot. Nothing of this came into her mind. No pictures of her kind and altruistic parents. Alva could not see herself at university, being a carefree student, nor in the exciting society of political power. Her memory bank was empty.
At length she asked. ‘I wonder why he did not see me in the newspaper then, if I worked for him. It might have given him some good publicity.’
‘Believe me, he would have been pleased to have been in the headlines. However, he disgraced himself over some affair or other and went to live abroad. The States I think.’
‘Oh, really.’
‘He was very unpopular with everyone. I should not be surprised if they had not set him up just to get rid of him.’
‘Laws!’
‘He rather liked you though. He thought you gave him class but that is something that you cannot get from someone else.’
She looked at him — he had class while she — well what was she? Well, hardly an honourable something or other.
‘But the aunt did
not come forward,’ she murmured.
‘Well, she probably wouldn’t. I think she disliked you as much as I disliked the politician but for different reasons.’
‘I wonder what those reasons were.’
‘You were beautiful and clever and all the things she could not be. Also you married an Italian. I hardly think she approved of that.’
‘How silly and spiteful that was. I mean leaving me there, not knowing anything, and having to trouble you.’
‘It is no trouble, Alva. You are obviously not faking this illness.’
She turned furious eyes on him. ‘Did you think that I was?’
He saw that she still had her essential spirit.
‘I am afraid I rather suspected you might do something like that.’
Her expression was one of puzzlement, her brows pulled down, as she tried to visualize the woman she had been. She did not feel inside herself that she could fake this kind of thing but how did she know that she could not. It was impossible to know anything. Yet even if she had faked her illness, why would she? What benefit could she gain? They were parted; surely it had been an amicable parting.
‘But why would I want to do that?’ she asked.
He shrugged ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, yet instinctively she knew that he was lying. He had meant what he said but now he wanted to back away from his statement. ‘You might have wanted to forget … things.’
Alva shivered as a wind drifted by them; it caused the trees to rustle, yet it was a scented breeze. ‘What things would I want to forget?’
Ignoring the question, he commanded, ‘Come, you are cold, we should go back.’
‘The clothes I came in?’ she asked, deciding to let the matter of the things go for now.
‘Your clothes were ruined in the accident. I offered to send some clothing to you but they said they would find you something to wear. That is why they are a bad fit.’
‘Goodness, where was I living? I had to have some clothes, surely?’
‘You had been staying at a flat that belonged to some friends who are abroad travelling. You do not remember where it was.’
She shivered again. She was not particularly cold, it was the way he had said that she would fake her illness that disturbed her more than anything else he said. That was the thing that stayed in her mind, teasing her. She hated the implication, yet she sensed, again from something deep inside her, that he would not be drawn on the matter. She would let it go, for now.
‘What is that dome?’ she pointed to a white dome peeping over the cypress trees.
‘It is a summerhouse. You can see it tomorrow. Come, Alva, I should not like you to take cold.’
‘All right.’ She stood slowly. She looked up at him, he was so good-looking, and it was incredible that this man, who had everything, had chosen her to be his wife. ‘I don’t know how I can thank you, Conte, I really am so grateful.’
‘It is the least I could do.’ His reply was stiff and formal.
They turned to walk slowly back to the house. ‘Renata is here but I doubt you will see her.’
‘Renata?’ she queried.
‘My daughter.’
She stopped in her tracks, gazing up at him, puzzlement clouding her eyes.
He said at once. ‘Not your daughter, Alva. Renata is my daughter by my first wife.’
‘Oh, you had a previous wife? Before me I mean.’
‘Yes I did. She was killed in a road accident. Renata was with her and has somehow never forgiven herself for being the one that lived.’
‘How tragic,’ she murmured, her heart filling with sympathy. ‘The poor girl.’
‘Well, yes, Renata has quite a few problems. I may as well tell you Alva, that you two never did get on.’
‘Oh dear, we didn’t? Was she jealous that you married me?’
He stiffened, pulling himself to his full height, his face set in haughty lines of barely concealed contempt. ‘My daughter had been through a very bad time, Alva. Perhaps if you had been less critical you would have earned her respect.’
‘I was critical of her to you?’ she asked.
‘Oh no, not to me. Alva, I do not think this is the time to discuss the pros and cons of anything.’
‘Oh, but I do.’ She stopped, standing looking up at him, not put off by his glacial expression. ‘You seem to imply that I am some kind of monster stepmother.’
‘I implied no such thing,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I should stay here,’ she whispered, a hand now folded against her throat. ‘Renata obviously has issues with me and I don’t want to cause her unhappiness.’
‘You won’t. She won’t be here; she’s going back to university in the morning.’
‘University? Then Renata is not a child?’
‘No, she is nineteen.’
‘So she was not a little child when I came here.’
‘She was fifteen.’
‘I see,’ Alva murmured. A troubled teenage girl, only eight years her junior, no wonder they had had problems. She had hardly been in a position to understand and help a girl who was suffering so many traumas. She could see how difficulties would have arisen. This lifestyle would have been new to her, she would have been finding her way and it would have been testing even without a resentful teenage girl on the scene.
She looked up at the man she had married. His stare was cold and haughty; it seemed impossible to believe that they had been intimate with each other, that he had kissed her and trembled in her arms. Had he done that? Perhaps it had been a cold marriage, yet instinctively she knew it could not have been. She was not a cold person. As she tried to imagine what it would have been like, she felt a faint stirring of pleasure deep inside her. Hastily she looked away from him.
‘I think I need to rest,’ she murmured.
‘Of course, I’ll take you back to the house.’
CHAPTER TWO
Alva wakened early. She sat up in bed, running her hands up to her temples and massaging the flesh, trying to remember … something, anything. For a moment she felt confused, uncertain as to where she was. Struggling out of the tangle of bedding and leaving the bed, she went to the window, throwing back the wooden shutters to look out on a scene of misty whiteness.
Thin streaks of sunbeams speared the pale mist that clung to the tops of the trees. Everything was glistening damply. There was the sound of birds but little else, just above the swirling mist she could see the very blue ocean. Of course, it was Santa Caterina. She was staying with her husband, Conte Mazareeze.
The view was so perfect and yet somehow, deep inside her, there was a feeling of — what was it? She sought to describe it — discontent? She shrugged the thought aside; the feeling came from her momentary confusion and nothing more.
Turning from the window she saw her cast-off clothing and without thought, she pulled on the jeans and the cashmere sweater. She had to get out. The room seemed to stifle her, the scarlet and green, the overripe maidens and cherubs on the ceiling were too sensual and, at the same time, suffocating.
The house was silent; she passed through it quietly. From somewhere she could smell the delicious aroma of fresh bread and coffee. Her stomach gurgled a little with pleasure but ignoring it, she flung back the great door and stepped on to the tiled terrace.
She headed swiftly for the domed building she had seen yesterday. Reaching it, she saw it was as the conte had told her, a summerhouse — a classical, white portico building, quite exquisite. She peered inside through the glass doors; it was furnished with the kind of furniture that would not have disgraced a sitting-room. Trying the door she found it locked. There was something about this spot that awakened an alien feeling inside her. She could not comprehend what kind of feeling it was, was it fear? Or was it sadness? She could not sort out in her mind how she felt, but that she felt something was evident. Her spine felt as if cold fingers were running along the bones.
It made no sense and yet she wanted to run away from the place.
<
br /> Spying a path running to the back of the building she ran towards it, taking it at a fast pace, wanting to get away from the summerhouse and whatever it was that had once happened there to make her feel so strange.
The path twisted through a copse of trees, spiralling downwards. Eventually after about a mile, she came to a wrought-iron gate. She opened the gate and found herself on a rutted road. The road was steep but she took the downward slope. On one side of the road were olive groves and on the other was the high, honey-coloured stone wall that encircled, she assumed, the palazzo.
Unsure of where she was going and what she was doing, she nevertheless followed the road as it twisted and turned. The walls of the palazzo were gone now and in its place were vineyards. The waves of white mist drifted by her like a wraith, yet never obscured the way.
At last the road levelled out; the first red-roofed house appeared and then another and another, until at last there was a cluster of houses, the road became a cobbled street and she found herself in a small village of brightly painted houses. There were passages between the houses — some were broad cobbled steps — but she kept to the main road. Eventually the road opened up and she found herself in a square. There was a church, a baker, a bar and a shop that appeared to be a general store.
Four men were sitting at a table outside the bar. They had cups of coffee and had been chatting loudly when she first came into the square then, seeing Alva, they stopped talking and stared at her.
After hesitating, she walked on, as she neared them she murmured, ‘Buon giorno.’
To her surprise, the men stood — three were wearing caps and these they removed, bowing their heads lightly. ‘Buon giorno, Contessa,’ they said.
Nervously she smiled, and then hurriedly crossed the square. She needed sanctuary — wanted to be alone, to think. What had she done? Was she running away? She could not think what had made her follow the road, what impulse had driven her to do something so foolish. It had not occurred to her that people would know who she was, that it would be impossible for her to remain anonymous. She looked different from the Caterinians, being so fair. She ought to have realized she would stand out.
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