‘You mean she offered them the job?’
‘No, she didn’t, but it wasn’t because of his hands, it was on account of his wife.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought that a gift like that could be inherited,’ said Toby seriously.
Madge, after some indecision, brought the tray of glasses and olives and little bits and pieces outside into what had become the front garden. A special feature of The Scampi was the box hedge along the terrace, hopelessly out of hand when they’d taken over, but Toby had put so much work into it. Now it was stout and close-twigged enough to bear the weight of a tray, if you put it down carefully. It made something to talk about when a newcomer arrived.
Beyond the outbuildings, the road to Lo Scampolo ran into fields. No-one came that way unless they had business with the Harringtons. There were no other sounds, of cars or scooters or even of mules or donkeys, to raise expectations, or even to disappoint them.
Toby went back into the house. After all, it was only half past one. Barney sat back, resting her feet on the box hedge.
‘I don’t think he could have made a mistake about the day,’ said Madge. ‘He was quite definite about it.’ She sat watching the pale, baked road.
29
Salvatore had accepted the Harringtons’ invitation, which meant an inconvenient rearrangement of his day, for one reason or rather one false deduction, only. Toby had mentioned when he telephoned that a young English girl would be coming, a friend of Chiara Ridolfi. Simply at the sound of the name Salvatore had assumed that it was a summons, practically an assignation and the whole thing had been contrived so that Chiara and he could meet again. He asked Gentilini whether this was not probably the case. Gentilini replied that he had very little to go on, but that as far as he could see the Contessina Chiara was extremely direct and frank in her actions and not at all likely to go in for anything so complicated. She had, if he remembered rightly, walked out of a concert with him although she had come with another party, and had subsequently come straight to Salvatore’s office, although for some reason that Gentilini couldn’t follow she had been asked to leave. ‘Try to behave with less calculation, ask yourself if you are doing what you really want to, for instance, whether you really want to accept this invitation from the Villa Harrington.’ Salvatore said that it was the last thing on earth that he wanted to do. Forty kilometres each way, the language difficulty, Signora Harrington whom he remembered only dimly, his paper work left undone, probable indigestion. He had consented to go only in order to show Chiara that he could not be treated casually. ‘I can’t see how it will show anything of the sort,’ said Gentilini. ‘However, I’m doing my best to follow you.’
‘What I mean is that I think it right to treat her with ordinary politeness. Incidentally, it’s struck me recently that in a non-medical sense you understand almost nothing about women.’
‘I understood enough to marry and produce four children, and I can’t remember noticing any particular difficulties.’
‘That’s precisely what I mean,’ said Salvatore, with forced calm.
30
At two minutes past the half hour a Vespa approached over the rise and the dip and the rise to Lo Scampolo, and stopped in front of the house. Barney saw a thin, dark, dark-suited male creature coming to rest, switching off, and sitting still for a moment as though getting the better of a vast impatience.
‘God, he’s Italian-looking!’ she said.
Mrs Harrington understood her perfectly. The two of them stood up, ready to support each other if necessary. At the same time Toby came out with a bottle under each arm.
‘Good show, doctor, nice that you could come. I’m going to ask you to help me settle a little problem about the wine.’
‘Doctor Rossi,’ Madge Harrington interposed, ‘this is the young friend from England who’s come to see us, Lavinia Barnes.’
Salvatore bowed.
‘Lavinia’s just on a visit from Florence, to the Ridolfis.’
He was still standing there.
‘By the way,’ said Barney, ‘if you’re expecting to see Chiara, you’re in for a shock. She won’t be here today. Non c’è,’ she added loudly and clearly. ‘Chiara no.’
31
It had been calculated that Barney would be back at via Limbo by about four o’clock at the latest. Chiara could hardly be expected to wait patiently with nothing to do. There was no-one in Florence who knew about her predicament, nobody, therefore, that she wanted to talk to. She was supposed to be passing the time by going to a lecture at the German Kunst-historisches Institut on the foreground details in three paintings formerly attributed to Belbello da Pavia. This had been selected by Barney from some list or other as being soothing, or at least not over-stimulating.
Two minutes after Barney left in the Harringtons’ Hillman, Chiara went, as she scarcely ever did, to look at herself in the large mirror which hung in the salone. The mirror was an old deceiver, the fine old glass had flattered countless arriving and departing guests. She looked intently at her face, slapped herself on each cheek in turn, pulled her hair behind her ears and let it go again. Then she went down to the courtyard and unlocked, not her own little Fiat, but her father’s Lancia.
Barney had never been in this car and if she saw it following, she would not recognize it. As a passenger, in any case, she wasn’t much of a looker-out or looker-round, more of a majestic recliner. Chiara caught up with the Hillman, without difficulty, in Viale Giannotti and followed it out to Ponte a Ema. Past the Ricordanza she slowed down, ready to wave or even to stop if Giannina or her husband happened to be at the front gate. No-one there, it looked deserted, and she picked up speed. At the turn-off to Lo Scampolo, the closed chapel of Sangallo and the little shop, she hesitated, then drove straight on to Valsassina.
On the north wall of the front yard the climbing viburnum reached serenely outwards to the farthest corners, unperturbed by shadow or sun, and covered with many thousands of flowers, a population of white flowers which looked as though they could never grow less. This wasn’t the time of day for their scent, and in any case the air was tainted with the smell of burning sulphur which meant that someone was disinfecting the old wine casks. To catch the viburnum’s scent you had to wait until dusk, until the moment when the greenish-white flowers of the garden release their fragrance and only the shapes of white things are visible. The years when the viburnum flowered repeatedly like this were supposed to be lucky. Chiara could remember waiting as a child and then in September it had not flowered again and she had been bitterly disappointed. This year then, nineteen hundred and fifty-five, must be her lucky year. It was lucky, for instance, to find Cesare at home in the middle of the day.
He was standing in the yard. She had never seen him hurry, and he didn’t now, but walked slowly over to the car.
‘I’m sorry, Cesare, I ought to have let you know I was coming.’
‘No, that wasn’t necessary.’
‘I interrupted you.’ Since he had been a small boy he had had a habit of standing quite still whenever a problem struck him until he was satisfied that he had solved it or, for the time being, couldn’t.
She got out of the car into the autumn sunlight.
‘You’re looking older,’ he said.
‘Well, I am older. When was I last here?’
‘Last summer.’
‘What were you thinking about just now?’
‘The wholesale price for the 1955.’
‘Are you going to put it lower?’
‘The Association will.’
‘And do you agree with them?’
‘I don’t know, because I’m not thinking about it now.’
The cousins walked into the house together.
‘Bernadino will want you to go and see the rabbits and doves.’
‘No, he won’t,’ said Chiara. ‘He’ll see at once how much older I am.’
The rabbits and doves were kept in a stone building about half the size of the one in which the f
armworkers had their lunch, though as a building it was probably much older. You could see the tiled roof of the columbarium from the house. It was closed by a solid wooden door which opened in two separate halves. Inside there was a semi-darkness, peacefully reeking of birds and animals. The squabs muttered from their loft overhead, feathers strayed down through the patches of light and back into the dark, the broadly palpitating rabbits drowsed in their pens below. Both the doves and the rabbits were white. There was no feeling whatever of their fate in store, only a companionable peace, as though the whole crowded enclosure was breathing in unison, every creature deeply satisfied with its frowsty living-space. To children the place was instantly attractive.
All this livestock really did belong to Bernadino, who had sole charge of buying, selling, breeding, slaughtering and collecting the combings of the angoras. This, probably, was the origin of his delusion that the whole of Valsassina should by rights be his.
‘Will he be disappointed if I don’t go?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cesare.
Chiara cried: ‘Cesare, I can’t stay. I have to know what’s happening at the Harringtons’.’
‘You mean at Lo Scampolo?’
‘Yes, at Lo Scampolo, the Harringtons, you know them.’
‘I’ve spoken to them,’ said Cesare. ‘You should have taken the right-hand road at the Sangallo chapel.’
‘Yes, but that wouldn’t have done. I wanted to be as near as I could without actually going there. And besides that I thought it would be peaceful here, and we could go out to the fields and talk about next year’s prices, and I could stop my mind gnawing away at me.’
‘You’re very fond of these English people?’
‘I’ve never met them.’
‘It seems to me that you’re not going the right way about it.’
‘But it isn’t them I want to meet at all. I’ll try to explain, because after all it’s quite easy to understand. There’s somebody there, a guest, at this very moment, and all I really want to know is whether he’s there or not.’
‘In that case I still think you should have turned right at Sangallo.’
Cesare said this without any hint of reproach. His was a judicial nature, not a critical one. ‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked.
‘Of course you’re right, it was a stupid mistake, I’ll do what you suggest, I’ll go there now, straight away, now.’
‘No, that isn’t what I suggested.’
‘Can I go by the field roads?’
‘They’re dry, but they won’t be good for my uncle’s car.’
Chiara kissed him warmly and drove back out of the main gate and up the track between the vegetable trenches and the nearest olive groves. The ruts in the road, made first by ox-carts and then by small tractors, were not adapted to the car’s wheelbase and it bounded from one side to the other, as though in pain.
Bernadino, coming out of the wood store, appeared delighted. This was because the Contessina had come and gone so quickly and had stayed such a short time and was driving so dangerously up the field road. Then she pulled up and stuck her head out of the front window.
‘You were right, can I leave this here and take the camioncino?’
‘Yes,’ called out Cesare.
‘You’re sure you won’t need it?’
‘Of course I shall need it.’
‘Well, if someone brings it back this evening?’
‘Yes.’
Bernadino thought he’d seen something like it at the Cine Rex, where he went every other Sunday. First the Lancia, then the camioncino! Why can’t she make up her mind? What did she come for if she didn’t want to stay? Long after Cesare had gone back on foot to the vineyards Bernadino was still laughing.
32
Giancarlo had told his daughter the truth when he said that his visit to Rome had been arranged for some time. Unlike most of his acquaintances he had no business matters to attend to and no-one of influence at the Ministries to whom he might drop a hint. He hoped to congratulate one or two very old friends, with whom he had served in the cavalry, on their being still alive and able to attend their club, but primarily he had an engagement to see his late sister-in-law’s brother, Monsignor Gondi. This had been Gondi’s idea, and Giancarlo had no objection.
The Monsignore had a journalist’s temperament, mastering the given subject rapidly, never knowing more than was strictly necessary and tabulating it in his mental recesses where it would be to hand always. He could hardly conceive, even after all these years, how much Giancarlo Ridolfi avoided knowing in the interest of leading a tranquil life. The daughter, Chiara, was, as he was aware without consulting any reference, nearly eighteen. Her father and her aunt, who were responsible for her at this crucial time, seemed to him like an old gossiping country couple, with the additional disadvantage that they didn’t much care for the country. This was in spite of their upbringing. They seemed to lose, rather than gain, from life’s successive stages. At Valsassina his nephew had to keep things going without advice (beyond what he occasionally had time to send himself). The current low wine prices for home and export were a catalogue — one might call it a litany — of young Cesare’s difficulties. Now with that powerful but awkward element, a very young woman, to launch into the family’s history, Ridolfi and his sister were totally left behind by Italy’s forward movement into the leadership of style and European culture. What they needed, really, was dusting off and rehabilitating, a recall to the present from the fading afterglow of old Florence. He distinguished, of course, between the two of them. Maddalena had been written off by the Gondi memory as an unpredictable old woman, or perhaps something rather less sane than that, whereas Giancarlo’s amiable and unperturbed conduct of life from day to day seemed beyond classification. If he heard Ridolfi mentioned, and that wasn’t often, it was always as ‘delightful’. ‘He was delightful.’ What an epitaph, in the middle of the twentieth century, for the head of an ancient house! Giancarlo had been a student, a political idealist, and an officer, but there was an almost total incompetence in making the correct moves in the world’s game, which, admittedly, was harder than most work, but just as much a matter of duty. Who else, in his position, could have married an American and been left worse off than before? Who else, for the matter of that, but Maddalena could have taken her niece to Parenti’s and come away without a rag to wear? There was a certain carelessness, he supposed, which would once have been considered noble, but it was carelessness still. How had Maddalena come to lose those two fingers?
Giancarlo, for his part, accepted that he hadn’t much to offer, beyond the doubtful accomplishment of being a Count who looked like a Count, and an old father who behaved just like one. In place of information he could only offer instinct and experience, and he admired the infallibility of Giuseppe Gondi. At the same time he pitied him. Gondi would never be created Prefect of a Congregation, yet he was unable to understand why. Capable of grasping so much, he couldn’t see, or perhaps believe, that his virtue, hard work, relentless flow of accurate reports and genius for middle management would keep him for ever a Monsignore. Irreplaceable at his own level, he could never rise. Many small honours had been conferred upon him, but he was too useful to promote. The Secretariat commended his work, slightly altered his conclusions, and left him where he was.
During his career Gondi had sometimes been housed in some building or other in Rome itself, temporarily acquired and made officially part of the Vatican City. This depended to some extent on the changing views of the Secretariat on the importance of the various Congregations. At one point he and his staff had been moved out to a block among gasworks and tramlines where the Pisa railway crosses the Via Ostiense. Now, happily, he was back at the Vatican itself.
The Ridolfi family had never had any special rights of admission to the Vatican. Giancarlo took the 77 bus to Piazza Risorgimento, and feeling somewhat tired already, passed through the Bronze Door to make his enquiry in the reception room. While they telephone
d through for him he tried to collect his thoughts, but was conscious only of mild images of reproach, tempered by the well-being of sitting down, even on a hard chair. Monsignor Gondi’s office was now, it seemed, on the third floor. Giuseppe himself came forward to meet him as the lift doors opened.
‘You’re too kind, Beppino.’
‘Not at all, in the end this saves time.’
Gondi was a solid man, but compact and rapid, as though designed by a committee for all-round heavy-duty use. His eyes and his long, delicate nose were a little like Cesare’s but what could one tell from that?
‘Giancarlo, I’ve arranged for a few people to meet you, to put you a little bit more in the picture, not of course a party during the illness of His Holiness, let us call it a conversazione. Before that we shall have time for a talk together here, simply about family matters.’
‘How good of you.’
‘That was what I meant about saving time. It’s always possible for me to find half an hour out of the day if I know it will be profitable. In this case it will be in fact twenty-eight minutes, as you were a little late at Reception.’
In the office he dismissed the two secretaries. He would be back to sign his correspondence at half past seven.
On the desk was a crucifix and a blotter, on the wall a painting in acid mauve and orange of the Seven Sorrows by a Czech refugee and a graph showing the annual attendance of pilgrims at the world’s Catholic shrines. The room was furnished like a respectable hotel of the second category. The blinds were half down over a view of the city where no work can be done for personal profit, and no washing can be hung out in the open.
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