Chiara, even if all this had been explained to her, would have found it beyond her comprehension and even beyond her imagination. The Ridolfi family were so constituted as not to feel jealousy and as a result they never suspected it. This was a serious fault in them, as it would be in anyone.
19
‘Cha, have you seen that handout they’re giving out at the Turismo, well, they’ve got that story different.’
‘Barney, where are you speaking from?’
‘The way they’ve got it down here, the little girl gets away quite all right and it’s your family that’s left on the wrong foot, did you know that?’
‘Barney, are you in Italy?’
‘Yes, I am, I’m in Florence. I’m in a telephone box actually. I got this leaflet thing in via Tornabuoni.’
‘But where are you staying? Why aren’t you staying with us?’
‘You haven’t asked me, and I take it that means your husband doesn’t like me. Probably he’s not keen on any of your friends.’
‘He will be, please give him time. But anyway there’s via Limbo, why didn’t you tell us, why didn’t you go there?’
‘I got on all right with your father, I think, but I had to tell that housekeeper of yours, remember, that she was poisoning us, and if I went there I might have to put her right again in some way and that might make for an unpleasant atmosphere.’
‘But Barney, you never used to mind about the atmosphere.’
‘Quite likely I’m changing in some ways.’
‘Are you in a hotel then?’ Chiara could hardly bear the thought of this.
‘No,’ said Barney. ‘I’m staying with the Gentilinis.’
Chiara hesitated.
‘But is there enough room?’
‘Not really, but they’ve put the two little girls on a kind of sofa thing in the living-room, I mean you’re supposed to be able to turn it into a proper bed, but it doesn’t, quite.’
‘I didn’t know they’d invited you,’ said Chiara forlornly.
‘They didn’t exactly, but the Signora kept writing, because she’s taken a great liking to me.’
‘Barney, why?’
‘On account of something that happened at your wedding, I might tell you about that later, but the point is that these letters of hers always ended, “We think of you with affection and trust to have the pleasure to see you again one day.” Well, now she has the pleasure. I shan’t stay long because there’s no bath, only a shower.’
‘When can I see you? When?’
‘You can see me now, that’s actually what I’ve come for. You can come straight away and pick me up from this telephone box.’
‘Yes, of course, but where would you like to go first?’
‘I want to go out to the farm.’
‘To Valsassina?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Barney, there won’t be much to see out there, the weather’s been so wet. There ought to be wild tulips out there now, and wild asparagus in the ditches but I don’t believe we’ll find any.’
‘I don’t like asparagus,’ Barney said. Chiara could hear her putting another gettone in the box and giving it a good hard blow.
‘Well, we’ll go out if you like, but Cesare won’t have time to speak to us, they’re so busy.’
‘He’ll have to speak to us.’
If he doesn’t she may stab him with a fork, thought Chiara. She said she would pick Barney up immediately.
20
‘I’ve got my licence now,’ said Barney on the way out to Valsassina, ‘so I’ll probably be able to make suggestions as to how you can improve your driving. But it’s a bad thing to have a licence in one way, because now I have to drive my grandmother about. I have to put her off near the back entrance of Harrods and leave her there and collect her, as if she was a dust-bin. I like cars, though. I like heavy vehicles. Did you tell Salvatore you were going out for the day?’
‘He’s at the hospital. I don’t want to interrupt him unless it’s really important. I’ll tell him this evening,’ said Chiara. She appeared a little bewildered, and looked pale. Barney was unmoved.
‘Well, come on, tell me everything, how’s the marriage going?’ she asked. ‘Is it wonderful?’
‘It’s wonderful.’
Barney stared straight in front of her. As they had sat together the evening before, the guileless Signora Gentilini had discoursed upon everything, the good and the bad together, including what she had witnessed of Chiara’s marriage, never unkindly, but rather as if she was repeating (as she frequently did) the plot of the last film she had seen, and always ending with a word of praise for Doctor Rossi. There were always disagreements at the beginning of matrimonial life, because you couldn’t have love without quarrels, any more than a child can learn to walk without falling. And then, a man as clever as Salvatore Rossi had worries which ordinary women like herself couldn’t guess at. Things might upset him which simply wouldn’t be noticed at all by the rest of the world. While she talked and the radio hawked and crackled the Signora worked at some very elaborate table mats in pale green nylon which seemed unlikely ever to be used. Her hands and her voice moved together hypnotically.
Barney marvelled at her own restraint in not mentioning any of this now to Chiara. ‘I was telling you I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘The nuns thought so when I last went back to the convent. They noticed that I was less noisy. Well, what do they expect? They kept asking after you, by the way. Some of them are coming to Rome to fix something or other with the mother house, and they told me they might be passing through Florence, they’re always rioting about these days, no image of tranquillity now. Anyway, they thought I was different. Perhaps it’s that my sympathies are getting broader. That can happen, you know.’
‘Marriage is wonderful,’ Chiara repeated. ‘Mine is, anyway.’
Her failure in hospitality depressed her immeasurably. There was no explanation she could give that wouldn’t make Salvatore appear cruel and idiotic, and herself idiotic, possibly weedy, and incapable of standing up for herself.
‘Barney, why don’t we turn off and go back to Florence. You haven’t even seen where we’re living yet. We could go to the flat and have some coffee. It’ll be dismal at Valsassina, the roof leaks and they’ll be having to retie the vines and if we’re not careful we’ll have to help.’
‘Have you ever done that before?’
‘Yes, often.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Very dull. Not as dull as labelling by hand when the machine breaks down, but dull.’
‘We’ll go on.’
They found Cesare in the fields. He received them without surprise, and told them that if they wanted to stay they had better help to retie the vines. The rains seemed to be occupying his thoughts completely. His old dog stood watching him with a martyred expression. She would not consent to sit down, having tried it once or twice and found that the earth was not warm enough.
The vines were still in flower and stood bound with plastic to their wires, their subsidiary branches straggling down, some even broken. With the perseverance of all climbing plants they had begun to turn their light green flowers, as soon as they touched the crumbling earth, up again and towards the light. But the effort was too much and the vinestocks were like massed rows of stunted patients, each waiting for a few minutes’ attention. Higher up, men and women were moving diagonally to and fro against the threatening sky.
Barney and Chiara, assigned to a row, began to work on the plants alternately. Chiara was very much quicker than Barney, and had to stand waiting for her. Cesare came down the slope and told them it was going to rain again and asked them if they would like a couple of sacks for protection.
‘My coat’s quite good, I got it in London, in the sales,’ said Chiara. ‘And so is Barney’s.’
‘They don’t look it,’ said Cesare, who shared the delusion of all Italian farmers that sacks are waterproof.
‘We don’t want sacks,’ Chiara told him.
‘If it’s going to rain, we want you to go to the house and tell them to see about some coffee.’
He walked away, neither fast nor slowly. ‘Come on,’ said Chiara. Barney doggedly snipped off her last length of plastic.
‘I don’t mind doing this now I’ve got the hang of it,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t what I came here for. When we get indoors I’m going to tell your cousin that I’m in love with him.’
Chiara looked at her distractedly.
‘I don’t want you to think you’ve got to go away, Cha. I’m perfectly willing for you to hear what I’ve got to say.’
‘But Barney, you never said you were going to do this. You’ve made me bring you out here on false pretences.’
‘I can’t see the objection. All these friends of yours, these Florentine females you asked to be bridesmaids, they’ve had years and years to have a go at him and they’ve simply missed their chance.’
‘But I didn’t know you were in love with him. I never even thought about it.’
‘You didn’t have to think about it and you don’t now. After all, I’m going to do the talking.’
‘But it may be a mistake, Barney, another disaster, like at Painstake.’
‘My God, if you’re going to throw that in my teeth.’
‘It’s just that I’m not quite sure that Cesare is like the men you meet in England.’
‘You don’t know whether he is or not. You’ve never met any men in England. You don’t know anything. You’re just an innocent who hopped into bed with the first man you saw when you got out of the convent.’
‘Well, but I’ve known Cesare all my life. He taught me to add up — two grapes, four grapes. He taught me to ride a bicycle. You don’t know him at all.’
‘I know him better than you knew this Rossi man,’ said Barney. ‘As a matter of fact, I got to know him at your wedding.’
‘It seems to me that more went on at my wedding than I bargained for.’
They turned down towards the house, Barney walking resolutely a couple of paces ahead.
‘What did he do at the wedding?’ Chiara called out. ‘What did he say?’
Barney answered over her shoulder. ‘He said, “Brava Lavinia.”’
‘Was that all?’
‘How would you translate that into English?’
‘I don’t think you could.’
Cesare was not in the dining-room, and seeing that even Barney’s courage was failing, Chiara summoned up her own. She found him in one of the sombre bedrooms at the top of a ladder. From the ceiling above his head, from the four corners of the room and beyond it, could be heard the relentless regular full-toned drip from roof to floor, the voice of the rainy season.
‘It’s a matter of finding tiles the right size. They’re all graded, the smallest at the top.’
‘Cesare, I want you to stop thinking about the roof, and don’t worry about coffee, we can have some at the cantina at Sangallo on the way back. I want you to come and sit down.’
Cesare came back to the dining-room and sat down, as though he had heard those two words only. Chiara sat opposite him and gazed at him frankly, as though this cousin and this old table, heavily marked and scored, both of them known to her for nearly twenty years, were about to change into another table and another man.
Thank you both for your help,’ he said.
‘We didn’t do very much.’
‘No.’
‘Lavinia has something to say to you. That’s why she asked me to bring her out here today.’
Cesare turned his mild glance, the courteous attention of a busy man, on Barney. He laid both his hands down flat on the table.
‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ said Barney. ‘It won’t take long, because I know exactly what I want to say. I’ve been thinking it over for some time. As far as I can see, all Italian men get married, unless they’re . . .’ she hesitated and Chiara, who was still looking steadfastly at her cousin, supplied the phrase ‘uno di quelli’. Barney nodded. ‘Right, well, as far as you’re concerned I’m prepared to marry you right away. I’ve got a little money, or anyway I will have when my grandmother dies, and that’ll be useful, I expect, because I know the whole family’s a bit short, and I’m quite sure that when I’ve had a really good look at this place I shall be able to help you a lot, particularly with the machinery side of it, and the staff, they need a woman’s hand. Possibly you think I’m getting desperate because I’m twenty-one next year and my youth will pretty well be over. That isn’t it, though. I’ve had people after me and I still have. Now I’m getting to the real point. I want you to listen to me carefully. I’m in love with you. I love you.’
‘Yes,’ said Cesare.
There he sat with his hands on the table, as though locked to the wood. He looked, not away from Barney, but straight at her, as good manners demanded. The long nose, the mild grey eyes, the usual tender but distant expression. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ cried Chiara, jumping up, outraged. Cesare could be seen to be making an honest, even painful attempt to think of something more to contribute, but nothing came. ‘She’s my friend. She’s come over from England, she’s come all this way simply to tell you this.’
‘Yes,’ said Cesare.
‘We’ll go straight back to Florence.’
‘Yes.’
He went out with them to the cortile and looked into the car to see that a dozen bottles of wine had been put in for Chiara, as usual. As he shut the door he said, ‘But I don’t want you to go.’ Chiara looked at him in uncomprehending reproach and let in the clutch.
The drive back was less awkward than Chiara had feared, because Barney talked at great length, not resentfully, but out of the injury she had done herself. She acknowledged, with gloomy generosity, that she ought to have taken a warning, and Chiara felt as she had felt at 23 Carlisle Gardens, that something quite indispensable threatened to give way if Barney, accustomed to command, was forced to retract. How could Cesare simply take it for granted that she was in love with him, Barney said. He couldn’t have even given it a moment’s thought before.
‘He might have been thinking about it in the evenings, when he’s sitting alone by himself,’ said Chiara, and as she said it the words acquired a certain resonance, as though reminding her of something without defining it.
‘Perhaps he was taken aback,’ Barney went on. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to say I could help him run the place, after all it’s his and although it certainly does need money putting into it he’s not managing it too badly.’
‘A twelfth of it is mine,’ Chiara put in without knowing why she did so. She was relieved when Barney took no notice.
‘He never actually said he didn’t care about me. Do you think that’s a hopeful point?’
‘Oh, yes, it might be, yes.’
‘And then he said he didn’t want us to go.’
‘Yes, he did say that.’
‘Would you say there’s a bit of hope there?’
‘Oh, yes, probably.’
‘There isn’t though,’ said Barney. She then returned to her first point, how could Cesare have accepted it so calmly when she said she loved him? The discussion was in the form of a sad arabesque, always, as the figure came back to its starting point, taking a slightly new direction. After a few times round Barney asked whether Cesare ever wrote letters. ‘Does he write a lot of letters to you?’ she asked. Chiara, frantic to console, searched her memory, but couldn’t think of a single one. ‘Do you think that’s a hopeful point? I mean, if he’s never written any letters before he might take to it once he got started.’
‘I shall have to get some petrol, Barney, I’m sorry. Perhaps you’d better mop up a bit.’
‘I haven’t been crying,’ Barney said.
‘No, but you look as though you’ve been facing a firing squad.’
Outside the garage where they filled up there was a tiny café. The proprietor was bringing his chairs out onto the shining pavement. It must have been raining here, C
hiara said to him, although where we’ve been, out beyond Sangallo, it’s been quite dry. The man said that he hoped to get rid of his wooden chairs this season and buy plastic ones which could stay out in all weathers. Who, these days, has any use for a wooden chair? Barney, during these remarks, stood by with an expression of blank disbelief. It was as though she was unable to credit that such things could be discussed.
They sat down, and Chiara asked the proprietor to bring a café corretto, which Barney swallowed, first that one, then another. Against the grinding din, a few feet away, of cars coming and going from the garage, she intoned to the traffic and the blue evening light
‘No game was ever yet worth a rap
For a rational man to play,
Into which no accident, no mishap
Could possibly find its way.’
‘It’s the brandy,’ she added. ‘That was poetry. Normally I don’t think about poetry ever. It’s quite interesting. It’s the effect of the brandy.’
‘I know, but I thought the coffee was supposed to slow it down.’
‘Have you got any money?’
‘Oh yes, I can pay.’
It suddenly came to Chiara that Salvatore might have come home early from the hospital — this had happened before, though only once — and found nobody there. The thought that she might have caused him bewilderment or loneliness was like the edge of a sharp knife.
‘I shall have to go home now,’ she said.
‘Right, what’s stopping us?’
‘I may have to be sick.’
‘Don’t give way,’ said Barney, beginning to reassert herself. ‘Incidentally, I can guess what you’re going to say next.’
Chiara had wanted, as some kind of compensation for the disastrous day, to offer the most precious confidence she had. Even Aunt Mad hadn’t yet been told. ‘OK, so you’re pregnant,’ said Barney sombrely. ‘But you needn’t worry, Cha, it won’t be any trouble for you, you’re Italian, or half. Italian women produce them just like rabbits.’
Innocence Page 20