by Teresa Crane
‘Oh? What is it?’
He grinned, mischievous and affectionate, and once more her heartbeat quickened, treacherously. ‘Wait. I’ll show you later.’
*
‘There.’ He had pushed the remains of the meal to the far end of the table to clear a space in front of her.
‘What are they?’ She looked at the battered books he had laid before her.
‘Take a look.’
There were four of them, leather bound, with no legend on the spine, nor on the cover. Gingerly she opened one. It was handwritten in scrawled copperplate. On the first page there was a pencil sketch, very creditably executed, of the Villa Castellini. And beneath it the words Beatrice Johnstone. Her Journal. 1864
‘Leo!’
He smiled, watching her excitement.
She turned the pages. This was, she saw at once, no meticulous, day-by-day diary, but an erratic, lucid account, punctuated by. drawings and some small watercolours, of the eighteen-year-old Beatrice’s enthusiasms and discoveries.
‘We went up the mountain today. The weather was simply glorious, the air as intoxicating as wine. The flowers spread across the meadows like a perfumed cloak. “And ‘tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes” Wordsworth – and I take no credit; Leonard quoted it at me – of course—’
She turned another page. A small watercolour of a hill village, nestling on a vine-covered slope, was accompanied by the brief caption ‘6th June. Visited San Antonio. Most marvellous church. The Madonna made me cry. I wonder why?’ Then, in different ink, ‘Leonard says because of the tears she sheds for us. Perhaps he’s right?’
‘Leo – these are wonderful!’
‘Aren’t they?’ He pulled one of the journals towards him, opened it at random. ‘“9th September” — this is —’ he turned to the front of the book ‘1866. “Papa is here. He took us to Sierra. What a city it is! How full of ghosts, of violence and of beauty! Poor Leonard found it difficult. I loved it.” There’s a picture, look – isn’t it marvellous?’
Carrie had lined the books up, with the front covers open. ‘There’s one missing.’
‘Oh?’
He came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder. She could sense his excitement, his pleasure, sparking from hers. She resisted the all but overpowering urge to reach up and take his hand. She pointed. ‘1864. 1865. You’ve got 1866. And there’s 1868. Where’s 1867?’
He shook his head. Reached for the book inscribed as being the journal for 1866. ‘Perhaps she condensed two years into one book?’ He flicked through. Shook his head again. ‘No. This ends in early November ‘66. They went back to the London house for the winter.’
‘There weren’t any others?’
‘No. Not unless it’s been put on another shelf. We can look tomorrow.’ He moved away, set his glass on the table. ‘Well, I should be going, I think. Do you need some help clearing this away?’
She could not conceal her dismay. ‘You’re going? Already?’
He turned. Studied her, suddenly intent. Helpless colour flooded her face. ‘Yes, Carrie,’ he said, gently, ‘I’m going. You surely cannot have failed to realise what a very small community this is? I will not – will not’ he emphasised, ‘compromise you. Believe me, I know these people. They have nothing better to do with their time but to talk and to speculate.’
‘But we’re cousins! We’ve known each other since we were children. And no one even knew you were here!’
‘But they know now.’ He smiled, gentle still. ‘Don’t they?’
She nodded.
‘It’s best that I go. I’ll be back in the morning. When are you going to Lucca?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Right. If it suits you I’ll stay around at least until then.’
She fought, and won, the battle to prevent herself from pleading with him. ‘All right. Until Thursday.’
Two more days. At least two more days.
He picked up his jacket, shrugged it on to his narrow shoulders, tossed his hair away from his eyes. ‘Don’t forget. If you need me I’m at the bar, just down the way there. Don’t worry; you’re perfectly safe here.’
‘I’m not worried.’ She was surprised to realise it was nothing less than the truth.
She called him as he reached the door; just to see him turn, just, once more, to have the narrow, blue gleam of his gaze rest on her. She smiled, very brightly. ‘You haven’t chosen your keepsake.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow will do.’
She stood for a long time, leaning against the table, watching the door that had closed very quietly behind him. Then, briskly, she turned, looked first at the dirty plates, then at the journals.
And with no qualms at all settled down to read.
Chapter Four
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Carrie said, next morning at breakfast. ‘The missing journal – it’s from the year Leonard died. I wonder if that’s significant?’
‘Significant?’ Leo sent her a quick, questioning look. ‘In what way?’ He looked tired, she thought, his thin face drawn and oddly shadowed, as if he had not slept well.
‘Well – doesn’t it strike you as at all strange?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really. Have you looked for it?’
Carrie finished her mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘Yes. I spent an hour or so this morning, before you came, going through the bookshelves in the drawing room. It isn’t there, that I can see.’
‘Perhaps it’s in another room? There are books all over the house.’
‘Could be. Perhaps it will turn up. I hope so.’ She put her elbows on the table, pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘You must read them, Leo. They’re fascinating. It’s as if—’ she hesitated, ‘well, I know it’s a bit fanciful, but it’s as if Grandmother – Beatrice – is talking to you. She’s eighteen years old, and full of life. Full of questions. Full of happiness. Devoted to Leonard – she obviously adored him – cosseted by Maria. It must have been a quite marvellous life. She loved this house so much, even then. You can see why she finally came here to live.’ She got up from the table, wandered to the door, stood, hands linked in front of her, looking out towards the mountains. Morning mist wreathed them, rolling down into the valley, cloaking the woods and hiding the rooftops. The sun shone from a sky of patchy, spacious blue and billowing cloud. ‘I’m much afraid that I’m coming to love it myself,’ she said, very quietly.
She heard his movement behind her, sensed as he came to stand beside her, but did not turn. His silence was sympathetic. They both knew there was nothing to be said.
‘Here be dragons,’ Carrie said, softly, after a moment.
‘I’m sorry?’
She smiled. ‘Here be dragons. They used to write it on maps in ancient times. The mysterious and perilous edges of the world. Places of enchantment. Here be dragons.’ She pointed to where cloud wisped about the high rock. ‘Don’t you think it looks as if there might be dragons up there in the mountains?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It does.’
She turned. He was standing very close, their faces almost level. She was suddenly aware of her heartbeat, steady and strong, a drumbeat he must surely hear. His eyes, half closed as he looked at her, were blue as the sunlit skies. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that there were such things. As dragons, I mean.’
He smiled a little, the disturbing eyes still searching her face. ‘You haven’t changed, in all these years, you know that? Not a bit.’
She managed at last to tear her gaze from his. Looked down at her hands. ‘You mean I was odd then and I’m as odd as ever now?’
His narrow hand moved to tug her hair lightly, teasingly. ‘Something like that.’
She lifted her head, spoke quickly. ‘Leo – please – will you come to Lucca with me tomorrow? You needn’t come to the lawyer’s with me if you don’t want to, but I should so like your company.’
He hesitated for the briefest of moments. Then he smiled, the intent look
gone from his face. ‘All right. If you want me to.’
‘And – you won’t leave just yet? You’ll stay and help me?’
The hesitation was longer this time.
‘Leo? Please?’ She did not care that she was pleading; it came to her suddenly that she had never wanted anything so much as this. ‘Please stay for a while. I’ll never manage on my own.’
‘I’m sure you would. Whatever you may think it strikes me that a girl who contrives to travel halfway across Europe on her own and then laugh about it wouldn’t be put off by this—’ he waved a hand, indicating the house and its contents, ‘but—’ In that last precarious moment’s hesitation she held her breath, ‘but, all right. If you really want me to, I’ll stay. For a little while anyway.’
*
They spent the morning in the drawing room, making lists, gathering like items together, dusting and cleaning glass and silver and intricate little statuettes.
‘Oh, Leo – just look at this. Isn’t she gorgeous?’ Carrie held up a figure of a girl, less than six inches tall. The figure, a jug in her hand, bent gracefully as if to a pool of water, her hair swinging about her face. ‘Oh, I must keep this! I couldn’t let her go. Leo?’ She looked up, realising he had not replied. ‘What’s that you’ve found?’ She scrambled to her feet, wiping her hands on her skirt and, still holding the little figurine, joined him at the table where he was bent over a sheaf of sketches, studying them intently. ‘Oh, Leo. They’re lovely.’
‘Aren’t they? Bakst I would guess.’
‘Who?’
‘Leon Bakst. He’s a Russian artist – designs costumes and settings for the Ballet Russe in France – you must have heard of him?’
‘Vaguely.’ She bent beside him, looking at the pictures. A few lines, the odd, violent splash of colour and a figure moved upon the page, the essence of dance, savagely beautiful in a barbaric costume of bright-patterned fabric that served to emphasise rather than to hide the elegant, athletic, oddly androgynous grace of the body of the dancer. Leo touched the sketch gently with a long finger. ‘Nijinsky,’ he said, ‘I think this must be Nijinsky.’ There was a note in his voice that was almost reverence.
She smiled. ‘Even I’ve heard of him.’ She looked at Leo with curiosity in her eyes. ‘You like the ballet?’
‘Oh, yes. I’d go so far as to say I love it. As a matter of fact I once actually saw Nijinsky dance – in Paris, just before the war. L’Aprés-Midi d’une Faune. It was an utterly unforgettable experience. His problems since have been tragic, for the world as well as for himself; the man is undoubtedly the greatest dancer who’s ever lived. I wonder how these came to be here?’
‘Knowing Beatrice, this Bakst person probably gave them to her himself,’ Carrie said, only half joking. ‘Keep them. Please keep them.’
He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘You must. I want you to. You obviously love them. I insist. You said you wanted a memento.’
He looked at her with that sudden, unguarded smile that so transformed his face. ‘May I?’
‘Of course. And anything else you see. Leo – I told you – you’re as entitled to these things as I am.’
He folded the portfolio carefully, tied the ribbon that secured it. Shook his head. ‘No, Carrie. That wasn’t the way Beatrice saw it.’
Thoughtfully Carrie rubbed a thumb over the grubby porcelain of the small figure she still held. ‘I wonder why? I wonder why she so hated your father?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s old history. They’re both dead. We’ll never know.’
‘I suppose not.’ She flexed her shoulders at little. ‘Gosh, I’m stiff. Time for a break. Lunch? I think it’s warm enough to eat outside.’
‘Wonderful idea.’
‘Carry on the good work in here. I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready.’
They lunched on the terrace outside the kitchen, a small sunny corner shaded by a large pear tree and with a view across the valley that was nothing short of breathtaking. They talked, easily and companionably, touching on one subject and then another, interrupting themselves and each other with laughter. Leo argued against her concern at the Fascist ideas that were taking such strong root in Europe, especially in Italy and in Germany. She took him to task for his views on the bright young women who were, in small but growing numbers, making their mark on a world that had finally been forced by war to admit to their capabilities.
He toasted her with a half-empty glass. ‘But a woman’s place, surely, is in the home, isn’t it?’ he asked, innocently, lazily smiling.
She pulled a face at him. ‘You sound like Arthur.’
He looked at her for a long, pensive moment, the smile gone. ‘That’s bad?’
She had splashed wine onto the table. Absently she dipped her finger in it, drew a circle on the table-top. Raised her eyes to his, frankly and defiantly, aware that perhaps she had drunk just a little too much of the tongue-loosening stuff. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is. Very bad indeed, actually.’
The silence was thoughtful. She drew a square with her wet finger, avoiding his eyes now, too aware of them upon her. Too aware that she had broken on to perilous ground. Her cheeks grew warm.
‘Carrie?’ His voice was soft. ‘What is it?’
She shook her head, nibbling her lip. In all their conversations until now she had, as far as was possible, avoided talking about Arthur.
He leaned forward in his chair, looking down into his wine. His straight, fine hair fell across his eyes. He tossed it back with a sharp movement of his head, an unconscious, habitual, somehow nervy gesture. ‘What’s he like?’ he asked after a moment, an edge of real curiosity in his voice.
She looked at him. This was her only living relative. The closest thing she had to a brother. Why shouldn’t she confide in him? What had Arthur ever done to deserve her loyalty? ‘Arthur?’ She forced herself to keep her eyes upon his face. ‘He’s respectable, ambitious, and very capable. He’s also humourless, prudish, parsimonious. Meanspirited.’ She could not sustain her defiance when those eyes lifted to hers so suddenly. She turned from him, wiped fiercely at the wine stain on the table. ‘And cruel,’ she added, very softly.
The silence was long, and awkward.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, at last. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘There’s no earthly reason why not, if it’s true.’
‘It’s true.’ The terrible bitterness rang in her own ears like a knell.
‘Why did you marry him?’
She leaned back in her chair, drawing a long breath, looking up into the fresh-budding branches above her. ‘Leo — you can’t know what it’s like to be young and not very brave, alone with an ailing mother, no money and no prospects. Living from hand to mouth. The pawn shop – oh, how I hated the pawn shop! There was an old man,’ she shook her head, grimacing. ‘It was horrible. And mother was so demanding – and sick – I was worried about her all the time—’ her voice trailed to silence. She discovered that her fingers were tangled fiercely in her hair. She disentangled them, flinching a little as she pulled sharply at her scalp.
He waited in silence.
‘When Arthur came along Mother simply pounced on him. Leo, I was eighteen years old! I couldn’t hold out against both of them. I couldn’t. He’s older than me – a good deal older. And for Mother a gift from heaven. As I said, he’s respectable – a bank clerk—’ she smiled, totally without humour, ‘I beg his pardon. A chief bank clerk. One day he’ll be manager.’ Her eyes flickered to his and away, ‘That’ll be nice, won’t it?’ Something very strange was happening; and it had, she was certain, absolutely nothing to do with the wine. She felt a sudden, subversive sense of release. Not once, in five years of misery, had she spoken like this; there had been no one to speak to, no one to care. Any protest had been so comprehensively and brutally dealt with that she had simply, and quickly, stopped protesting. She had taken herself at Arthur’s own valuation of her. Weak-willed. Submissive. A co
ward. It had taken distance to change the perspective. ‘I think I hate him,’ she said, pensively, the words brutal in the tranquil day. ‘I truly think I do.’ She had never admitted as much to herself before, let alone to anyone else. She felt an unpleasant stirring in the pit of her stomach at the shock of it.
He reached a hand to hers. ‘Carrie. I’m so sorry.’
She shook her head, shrugged. ‘A self-inflicted injury,’ she said. wryly. ‘You aren’t supposed to feel sorry for them, are you?’
He laughed a little. ‘You know something?’
‘What?’
‘You underestimate yourself. All the time.’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, yes. I recognise it all too well. I saw it during the war. Often. It wasn’t the gung-ho lads with the loud voices and the bravado who were the heroes. It was those who recognised fear, and faced it. Who knew their own weaknesses and overcame them. The ones who wanted to run, and didn’t. They were the brave ones.’
‘And were you one of them?’
Blue, oddly secretive, veiled again by the curling lashes, his eyes glinted with wayward laughter. ‘Oh, no. I enjoyed it. Ask anyone.’ He reached into his breast pocket for his cigarette case.
She watched him. ‘I’m not sure I believe that.’
‘Believe it.’ His voice was cool.
‘You were wounded, weren’t you?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Blue smoke wreathed about him. ‘Twice. You couldn’t get through the whole show without getting scratched occasionally.’
‘Were you never afraid?’
Again the flash of laughter, almost, she thought, of excitement. ‘I didn’t say that. Did I?’
‘No. You didn’t.’
He stared across the valley. The high sun filtered through the branches and turned the air to gold about them. ‘Funny thing, war,’ he said, very softly.
‘That’s putting it mildly, I would have thought.’
In the silence a bird sang above them.