by Teresa Crane
And then they were in Italy, chugging through the dusk across the flat, green valley of the Po towards the mountains that guarded Tuscany.
They arrived in Bagni, as Carrie had on that first occasion, that seemed now so very long ago, in full darkness; but this time it was the warm darkness of early summer. The hotels and bars were lit and noisy. People sat in their open doorways, calling to each other. Leo deposited Carrie and their luggage at a table outside one of the quieter cafés. ‘Have a cup of coffee or something. I’ll go and organise some transport.’
He was back fifteen minutes later, with driver, cart and a brown paper bag.
‘What’s that?’ Carrie asked.
‘Supper. Bread. Ham. Wine.’
‘You don’t want to eat here? Before we go up the mountain?’
He waited until she lifted her face to his. Then ‘No, Carrie,’ he said, very firmly. ‘I don’t want to eat here. I want to eat at the house. Later. After we’ve made love.’
She opened wide eyes that were suddenly very bright. ‘Leo! We’ve just been travelling for twenty-four hours. I’m exhausted.’
He swung her case up onto the cart. ‘Then all I can say is that you’d better get some sleep in the back of the cart, my darling. I’m tired of hotel beds and thin walls and holding hands on the night sleeper. We’re home. I’m going to prove it to you. And if you don’t get a move on—’ the quick grin flickered in the lamplight, ‘then I’m going to kiss you, here and now, in full view of at least half the village. How long do you think it would take Mary Webber to hear about that?’
Collectedly Carrie stood, smoothing her skirt. ‘About three and a half minutes, I’d guess. All right, you bully. I’m coming. Did I say I wanted dinner?’
*
They made love in their room, the tower room, and drank wine that made them sleepy. Carrie woke to a pearl-pink sky and a smiling face above her. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she murmured, lifting her arms, ‘don’t you ever give up?’
*
It took two full days for the fact to sink in; the house was hers. The cases could be unpacked, the rugs laid back on the floors, the pictures put back upon the walls, the books on the shelves. And the garden! The garden too was hers, and no longer a sad heritage of neglect but a joyous challenge, a hope for the future. Why should it not again become what it had once been? She could not get used to the fact that there was no longer a time limit on her life in the house; it was truly hers. She could live here. No one, now, could order her back to England.
Leo, discreet to the last, booked his old room at the bar in San Marco, but in fact spent very little time there. He too was the one who came up with the practical answers to the different set of problems that now faced Carrie.
‘You need help. A woman to clean the house before we set it back to rights. A couple of young men to do the heavy work in the garden.’
She frowned a little. ‘I’m not sure I can afford it, Leo. I’m getting rather short of money. Until everything’s settled I’m not certain—’
‘It will cost next to nothing. And anyway, don’t worry about money.’ He laid an arm across her shoulder and turned her to face him. ‘I have a little. A small allowance. It’s all we need.’
‘No. Leo, I couldn’t possibly—’
‘Only until everything’s sorted out.’ He was soothing. ‘Then you can pay me back. just don’t worry. Everything will be all right, I promise you.’
And so the days were spent in cleaning and reorganising the rooms and planning the work on the garden, and the nights in the tower room making love, sleeping, making love again. The only thing that marred those first days was that twice Leo woke, shaking and pale, from a nightmare, and on each occasion he disappeared down into San Marco the next day for hours on end. When he returned each time he was nervy and in too high spirits and the smell of wine was heavy on his breath.
*
So busy was she that it was almost a week after her return before Carrie found time to pay a visit to Maria; and the old woman’s first question threw her entirely. She asked not about Arthur, nor the journey to England, nor the funeral, nor Carrie’s plans for the future. She asked, simply, ‘You have read the journal?’
Carrie looked at her blankly.
Something like anger flickered in Maria’s eyes. ‘The one I brought to you. The one you wished to read.’
Read it well. And understand.
She had forgotten the journal entirely. From the moment that Leo had walked through the door behind her that day she had forgotten everything but the fact that he had returned to her. And then there had been the news about Arthur. She could not for the moment even remember what she had done with the book.
‘You have not read it,’ Maria said.
‘Maria – I’m sorry – but truly, I haven’t had time. The news about my husband – you must surely understand? There has been so much to do.’
The old woman leaned forward in her chair, hand clenched upon the knob of her walking stick. ‘Read it!’ she said.
*
When Carrie returned to the villa it was empty, windows and doors standing open to a cool mountain breeze. One of the lads who had begun to help her in the garden was digging on the terrace above the house, whistling cheerfully. He waved and called a greeting.
Carrie walked into the house. Already it was beginning to look like a true home; she had brought a rug from the drawing room and laid it upon the hall floor, there were flowers on the table and
a smell of polish in the air. The kitchen, too, looked different. Isabella, the plump and cheerful woman who came from San Marco each morning, had helped Carrie rearrange it and had then spent two full days scrubbing and cleaning. The tiled floor positively glowed, the wooden table had been scraped almost white, even the squat black stove shone smugly in the corner. Carrie stood in the middle of the room looking around. She had been inspecting the journal here, on the table, when Leo had come back. At some point it must have been moved; and presumably Isabella had tidied it away. But where?
She wandered round opening cupboard doors, poking in drawers, but the book was nowhere to be seen. She was on the point of giving up, intending to ask Isabella the next day – they had of necessity swiftly managed to evolve a laughter—provoking but relatively efficient means of communication, involving much hand-waving and an idiosyncratic mix of English and Italian words – when she noticed the small stack of books that was being used as a doorstop. The journal was on the top. With an exclamation of satisfaction she picked it up and carried it out onto the terrace.
*
Read it well. And understand.
At first she did not. As Carrie dipped into it, the journal seemed little different from the others, a clever and entertaining diversion chronicling the brother and sister’s happiness at being away from cold England, their always-busy parents and from the constant company of others and back in the Italian house for the summer with Maria, their books, their poetry, the garden and each other. Most of all, each other. There was an account of another trip to Pompeii, of a visit to the picturesque high mountain village of Montefegatesi, of walks, and picnics, of conversations and inventive and complicated games, all, as always, illustrated by sketches and snatches of poetry.
And then she found the pencil sketch of Beatrice.
It was pasted into the journal under the date 20th June, 1867 and signed by Leonard; a delightful study, lovingly executed. He had made his sister beautiful; wide of eye, soft of cheek, a small, secret smile on her lips. And beneath the sketch, in what Carrie immediately recognised as Leonard’s writing, a quotation from the Song of Songs:
‘A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse;
A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.’
She spoke the words aloud, softly. Beneath them Beatrice had capped them with:
‘This is my beloved, and this is my friend—’
And then again, in Leonard’s hand:
‘I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my
beloved that knocketh, saying; Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled—’
She had come across this game before, in the other journals. But never these words. Never quotations from what surely must be the greatest love songs ever written.
Pensively, frowning a little, she touched the smiling lips of the portrait with her finger. ‘Open to me, my sister, my love—’
Read it well. And understand.
Slowly she turned the page.
The sun was westering to the mountain rim and the breeze had dropped by the time she read the last dark and terrible entry, the last anguished piece of verse. She sat for a very long time, looking into space, her hands loosely linked upon the closed book and its harrowing secret. The words Beatrice had written, sprawling and tearstained across that last page spoke themselves in her head, and she could not stop them. No Song of Songs this time, but the plea of a desperate, desolate child:
‘Oh.’ Call my brother back to me!
I cannot play alone:
The summer comes with flower and bee—
Where is my brother gone?’
To his death. By his own hand.
Because Beatrice, his sister, his love, his dove, his undefiled, had quickened with his child.
Henry. Poor, demented Henry whom Beatrice had loved and favoured all of her life over her other children, who had lived out his blighted existence here in the very house in which he had been conceived in illicit and incestuous love.
And if the punishment falls on another? Maria had asked her.
Moving like a sleepwalker she found herself climbing the stairs, pushing open the door to the tower room. She had not yet made the bed. The sheets were rumpled, the pillows tumbled. She and Leo had made love that morning, as they occasionally did, with a ferocity, a violence almost, that had left her bruised and aching, and begging him to love her again: she and Leo had made love that morning, as they had from the start, in the very bed that Beatrice had shared with Leonard.
The bed in which their love-child – their punishment – had been conceived.
The bed in which Leonard, unable to face the consequences of their sin, had died, of a self-administered overdose of laudanum; the bed in which his sister had found him, too late to save his life. ‘Oh! Call my brother back to me! I cannot play alone—’
Tears ran down her face, and she made no attempt to stem them. ‘The summer comes with flower and bee – Where is my brother gone?’
She walked to the mantel. The little bust, serene and inscrutable, gazed into the distance. Gently she picked it up, cradled its weight in her hands. ‘Poor Beatrice,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Beatrice. How very much you must have loved him. And how very long you had to live without him. Knowing he had killed himself because of you. Because of your love. Knowing the agony of his spirit when he died. And then, Henry; how did you bear it? How did you survive?’ Very carefully she set the bust back upon the shelf, stood gazing at it with eyes still burning and blurred with tears. ‘Leo isn’t my brother,’ she whispered at last, the words echoing in the quiet room. ‘He is my cousin. It’s different. It is different.’
She walked to the window. Leo, straight and slight, hands in pockets, neat, bare head bright in the sunlight, was running up the steps to the kitchen terrace. As always the mere sight of him stirred her; she was helpless to prevent it. ‘He is not my brother,’ she said again. ‘It is different. It is!’
*
‘My darling, my darling. Don’t upset yourself so!’ Leo cradled her, rocking her gently and soothingly.
‘But, Leo – it’s such a horrible, horrible thing. I can’t bear it! They loved each other so much. Oh, I know it was wrong – of course it was wrong – but there was something so beautiful about them, so different! And for it to come to such an end – it’s so terribly cruel.’
‘Life is,’ he said.
She turned her tearstained face to his. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘Then what of us? Leo, what of us? Will we be punished? Maria thinks we will. That’s what she’s been trying to tell me. Or will the punishment fall on someone else? Has it? Leo, what of Arthur? Did he die because of us?’
He took her firmly by the shoulders. ‘Carrie, stop this. Now you’re truly being silly. You’re overwrought. Arthur died because the time had come for Arthur to die. It was an accident. Accidents happen. How could it possibly have had anything to do with you and me?’
‘I don’t know. I’m afraid; perhaps I willed it to happen,’ she whispered, remembering. ‘I wished him dead. I did!’
His hands tightened. ‘Stop it! You’re talking nonsense – sheer, superstitious nonsense – and you must know it. Darling, I know you feel guilty; I even understand why, though I don’t think there’s any reason in the world why you should. And now this damned journal has upset you and made things worse. But Carrie, Beatrice and Leonard have nothing to do with you and me, can’t you see that? Look at me – will you look at me? I’m not your brother.’
‘But your father was my mother’s brother. And Henry – poor half-witted Henry – was brother to them both.’ She rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘Oh, it’s all so muddled.’
‘No,’ he smiled a little, ‘it’s you that’s muddled. And I want you to do me a favour; I want you to get unmuddled just as quickly as possible.’
Sniffing still she could not help but return his smile. ‘Why?’
He gathered her to him. ‘Because,’ he said quietly into her hair, ‘I want you to marry me. And it seems to me that the last thing a fellow needs is a muddled wife.’
Chapter Eleven
She was adamant; she would not marry him. ‘We mustn’t,’ she said, time and time again. ‘I just know that we mustn’t. I can’t explain it.’
And time and again, at first with patience and at last, inevitably, in anger he argued with her. ‘Carrie, my darling, you aren’t making any sense. Why shouldn’t we marry? We’re both free. We love each other. For God’s sake, we’re more or less living together already. What’s the difference? Why won’t you marry me?’
Still, stubbornly, she stuck to her guns. ‘I can’t. Leo, I’m sorry, I just can’t.’
‘You don’t want to,’ he said one day, angrily, ‘that’s it, isn’t it? You don’t love me. You think you’ll tire of me—’
‘No. No! How can you say that? You know how much I love you.’
‘Then marry me!’
‘Leo – please. Why do you keep on about this? Why can’t we just stay as we are?’
‘Because I want you as my wife, that’s why. Can’t you understand that? It’s very simple. It’s what people do when they’re in love.’
‘Not necessarily,’ she said very quietly. ‘I married Arthur, remember?’
‘And now I’m to be made to suffer for it? Does that make any sense?’
‘Leo, we’re cousins—’
‘Ah! Now we come to it. It’s those damned diaries, isn’t it? Beatrice and precious bloody Leonard. Poor benighted Uncle Henry. And that blasted old witch in the village with her superstitious nonsense about bad blood and punishment. Use your head Carrie, for Christ’s sake. It isn’t against any law for cousins to marry; the upper crust do it all the time.’
‘Give me time. Let me think about it.’
‘What will thinking change?’ He picked up his jacket, slung it over his shoulder.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Down to the bar for a drink.’
She bit her lip. ‘You’ll – Leo, you’ll come back?’
‘Later.’
It was indeed much later when he returned; Carrie had already gone to bed. She went downstairs the next morning to find him, still fully dressed, asleep on the sofa in the drawing room. ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he said, unsmiling, when she questioned him at breakfast.
She put a hand on his. ‘Leo – please – don’t let’s quarrel like this. It’s hateful.’
He regarded her levelly. �
�There’s a simple way to stop it. Marry me.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Perhaps it’s just too soon.’
‘The grieving widow,’ he said, coldly. ‘The role hardly suits you.’
*
‘So,’ Maria said. ‘At last. You read it.’
Carrie nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And now – eccolo! – you know.’
‘Yes.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘It was a dreadful thing to happen,’ Carrie said.
‘Si.’
‘You were there? On the day that Leonard – on the day that Beatrice found him?’ Carrie spread her hands.
‘Si,’ the old lady said again, softly, ‘I was there.’
‘It must have been terrible.’
‘It was, it was, odioso.’ The single, whispered word was disturbingly self-explanatory.
Carrie wandered to the window, and perched on the sill. ‘Maria, what happened next? How did Beatrice come to marry Grandfather Swann?’
The old woman shifted a little in her chair, rested her cheek upon her hand. ‘She – my bambina – she shut herself into her room, their room, for three days. She would not speak, even to me. She did not eat. She did not sleep. She grieved. And I believe she considered—’ Maria stopped.
‘Following her brother?’ Carrie asked, softly.
‘Yes. But then they were different, those two. Different. She was the stronger, always. Even though she tried, she could not will herself to die. And she had the new life within her. She would not, could not, destroy that. She came from the room. And she wrote to your grandfather. He was an old and much loved friend. He used to come to see the children – Beatrice and Leonard – often. She trusted him. He saved her. He married her, protected her. He loved her. I think, perhaps, he had always loved her. I think she knew it. I think that was why she turned to him.’