by Sara Craven
Polly had gone down to the town and visited the marina several times, but this was the first time she had been driven up into the mountains behind Comadora, and she was too tense to take real stock of her surroundings.
After the rain, the air was clear, and the creamy stone of the jagged crags, heavily veined in shades of grey and green, seemed close enough to touch. It was a landscape of scrub and thorn, stabbed in places with the darkness of cedars. Above it a solitary bird wheeled, watchful and predatory.
She found she was shivering slightly, and broke the silence. ‘Is this the road to Sorrento?’
‘One of them.’ He did not look at her, and she could see his hand was clenched on his thigh.
I’ve made him do this, she thought bleakly. Made him confront whatever demons are waiting in this desolate place, and he’ll never forgive me.
They had been travelling for about ten more minutes when the chauffeur began to slow down. The car rounded a sharp bend, and Polly gasped soundlessly as she saw that immediately beyond it the ground fell away, and she was looking down into a deep gorge with a glimmer of water far below.
They pulled over to the rough verge on the opposite side of the narrow road, and stopped.
Sandro turned to Polly, his face expressionless. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘if you wish to see.’
After the fuss she’d made, she thought wretchedly, she could hardly tell him it was the last thing she wanted, so she followed him out into the sunlight. In spite of the heat, she felt cold.
Sandro’s face was rigid, the slash of the scar prominent against his dark skin. Alberto Molena came to his side, talking softly, encouragingly, and eventually he nodded curtly and they crossed the road together, and stood looking down into the depths below.
She did not go with them. Her eyes had detected a flash further along the road, as if the sunlight was being reflected back from glass. She could see a smudge of colour too, and guessed this was the shrine that Sandro had mentioned.
There was nothing unique about it. Polly knew that they were seen all over the Mediterranean where bad accidents had occurred. But none of the others had carried any meaning for her.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, she went to face one of her own demons. Bianca had indeed been a beautiful girl, her face heart-shaped, and her eyes dark and dreaming. The only jarring note was struck by a set, almost hard look about the mouth, but Polly supposed she could not be blamed for that.
Knowing the man you love feels nothing for you in return can do that to you, she thought sadly.
Also in the elaborate frame was a small plaster figure of a saint, with an unlit votive light in front of it, and a vase of slightly wilted flowers.
She heard a step, and, glancing round, saw the contessa approaching, leaning heavily on a cane.
‘Get away from here.’ The older woman’s voice was harsh, almost metallic. ‘You are not fit to breathe the same air that she did.’
She turned and stared malevolently at Sandro, standing motionless on the edge of the drop, only yards away. Polly’s heart missed a beat, and she was just about to cry a warning when they were joined by the nurse, who took the contessa’s arm gently but firmly, murmuring to her in a soothing tone.
Polly crossed the road and stood at Sandro’s side. She said in a low voice, ‘Coming here may have been a bad idea. I think your cousin’s getting agitated.’
‘She has been here many times before,’ he said stonily. ‘Unlike myself.’
She looked at him, shocked. ‘Is this the first time—since the crash?’
‘The first, and I hope the only time. We came here solely to meet Giacomo Raboni, so that you could see what happened at this place through his eyes.’ Sandro paused. ‘He speaks little English, but Alberto will translate for you—if you can trust his accuracy,’ he added with a touch of bitterness.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I can.’
She looked down. Just below the edge, the ground, littered with rocks and boulders of all sizes, sloped steeply away for about a hundred yards before reaching a kind of rim, beyond which it disappeared into infinity.
The kind of drop, she thought, that nightmares were made of, and shuddered.
She said, ‘Will Signor Raboni be long? I’d like to get away from here.’
‘It has always been a bad place,’ Sandro told her quietly. ‘But it is part of the truth which is so important to you.’ He paused. ‘And you will not be detained here much longer. Giacomo is coming now.’
She heard a rattle of stones behind her and turned. A man was coming down the hill, half walking, half sliding, an elderly dog scrabbling beside him.
Giacomo Raboni was of medium height, and stout, wearing ancient flannel trousers, a collarless shirt and a cap pulled on over curling white hair. He had a mouth that looked as if it preferred to smile. But for now, his expression was faintly grim.
He gave the contessa a measuring look, then turned his head and spat with great accuracy, just missing the dog. Then he turned shrewd dark eyes on Polly, telling her without words that she wasn’t the subject of his whole-hearted approbation either.
He took Sandro’s offered hand and shook it warmly. He said gruffly, ‘You should not be here, excellenza. Why not let the dead girl sleep?’
Sandro’s voice was harsh. ‘Because, my old friend, she still poisons my life as she did when she was alive.’ He paused. ‘You agreed to keep silent to protect the living, and spare them more grief. But my father can no longer be hurt by what you saw, and the Contessa Barsoli has tried to use your silence to damage me, and my marriage, so she is no longer worthy of my consideration.’
He threw back his head. ‘But my wife is a different matter, so it is time to speak, if you please, and tell her what happened here. And slowly, so that Signor Molena can tell her what is said.’
Giacomo Raboni gave a reluctant nod. He said, ‘I had been on the hill that day, looking at my goats. A neighbour had told me that two of them seemed sick. As I came down the track, I heard the sound of a car. As it came round the corner, I recognised it as the car which belonged to the Signore Alessandro. But it was being driven strangely, swerving from side to side, and I could see why. There was a passenger beside him—a girl, but not in the passenger seat, you understand. She was leaning towards him—clinging to him, it seemed.’
He stared at the brink, frowning. ‘At first I thought it was love play between them, and that they were fools, bringing their games to such a dangerous road. Then I realised that the marchese was not embracing her, but struggling, trying to push her away, and control the car too.’
He turned his head and looked steadily at Polly. ‘At that moment, vossignoria, I knew that your husband was fighting for his life. Because she was not reaching for him, but trying to grab the wheel. I think, also, she went for his eyes, because he flung up an arm to defend himself, and in that instant she turned the car towards the edge of the cliff.’
‘Oh, God,’ Polly said numbly. ‘Oh, no.’
‘As it went over, I heard her scream something. Then there was the sound of the crash, and I ran.
‘I saw that the car had hit a rock, but glanced off it and continued down. It had reached the brink, but there it ran into a dead tree so it could go no further.
‘But the marchese had somehow been thrown clear. I climbed down to him and realised he was badly injured. There was much blood and his pulse was weak.’
He paused. ‘I realised too that the girl was still in the vehicle, and that the engine was running. The tree was a spindly thing, old and brittle, with shallow roots. It could not hold the car for much longer, so the signorina was inches from death.
‘I went down to her, careful not to fall myself. The driver’s door was open, and she was lying across the seat. She too was terribly injured, but I reached in to her, tried to take her hands to pull her free before the tree gave way.
‘I spoke to her—called her Signorina Bianca, but she seemed barely conscious, and it was plain she did not know who
I was. In her pain, she looked at me with eyes that saw nothing, and whispered something.
‘She thought she was speaking to the marchese—that he was with her still, and she repeated the same words she had used before.’
His own voice was hushed with the horror of it. ‘She said, “If I cannot have you then no one will.” And with her last movement, she put her foot on the accelerator and sent the car over the edge.’
Polly stood rigidly, her hands pressed to her mouth. Then the contessa’s hoarse voice broke the silence. ‘You’re lying,’ she accused, her face twisted. ‘The marchese has paid you to say these terrible things.’
He drew himself up with immense dignity. ‘The marchese has paid me with nothing but his regard. All this I would have said at the inquiry, but he knew the distress it would give his father, who loved the Signorina Bianca and was already a sick man. For his sake and no other, we allowed it to become an accident. And, for the honour of the Valessi, I have kept my silence until now.’
His voice became deeper, more resonant. ‘But I, Giacomo Raboni, I tell you that the Signorina Bianca tried to murder the Signore Alessandro. And I saw it all.’
There was a terrible keening noise from the contessa, who had sunk to her knees in the dust.
‘No,’ she was moaning. ‘It cannot be true. Not my angel—my beautiful dove. She never harmed anyone—or anything in her life.’
‘No,’ Sandro said, harshly. ‘That is the real lie. There were stories about her—rumours of cruelty from the moment she came to Comadora. A dog that belonged to one of the grooms tied up in the sun and left to die without water or food because it left paw-marks on her skirt. The pony my father bought for her which threw her, and mysteriously broke its leg in its stall soon after.
‘And the convent school she attended. Did you know that the superior asked my father to remove her? Or how much he had to give to the chapel-restoration fund for her to be permitted to remain? He insisted of course that the nuns were mistaken.’
He shook his head. ‘All I knew was that she’d repelled me from the first. And nothing my father could have said or done would have persuaded me to make her my wife.’
The contessa was weeping noisily. ‘It cannot be true. She would never have harmed you. In spite of your cruelty and indifference, she loved you. You know that.’
He said grimly, ‘I knew that she was obsessed by me. And that she was determined to become the Marchesa Valessi. Between you, you forced me away from my family home, and drove a wedge between my father and myself. Unforgivable things were done at your instigation.’
‘No,’ she moaned. ‘No, Alessandro.’
Polly said softly, ‘Sandro—she’s in real pain. No more, please.’
He looked at her sombrely, then went reluctantly to the contessa, and lifted her to her feet. He said more gently, ‘Just the same, I would have spared you this knowledge, as I did my father, if you had not started your insidious campaign against my wife—the whispers at the party you organised with such kindness, the rumours among the staff, all stemming from you.
‘But Paola emerged triumphantly from each trap you set for her. How that must have galled you. But it is all over now. There are no more secrets, unless you choose to keep from Emilio what you have heard today. Can you imagine what a feast he would make of it—what the headlines would say about your beloved Bianca?’
A shudder went through her. She looked up at him, her face suddenly a hundred years old. ‘I shall say nothing,’ she told him dully. ‘All I can ask, Alessandro, is a little kindness.’
‘There is the house on Capri,’ he said. ‘You have always liked it there. Alberto will examine your financial circumstances and make suitable arrangements for your comfort. Now he will escort you back to Comadora.’
She nodded with difficulty, then took his hand and kissed it.
Polly watched Signor Molena offer his arm, and lead her back to the car. Saw it turn carefully, then go back towards Comadora.
Leaving her, she thought, to travel alone with Sandro. She stole a glance at him, and saw that he was staring down at the crash site again, his eyes hooded, his face like a mask.
He said quietly, ‘There is nothing there. No sign that anything ever happened.’
Only that scar, she thought. The one you will carry forever.
She wanted to go to him. To take his face in her hands, and kiss the harshness from his mouth. To offer him the healing warmth of her body.
But she didn’t dare.
I made him face this, she thought. I made him remember the unthinkable—the grotesque. The fear and the pain. And how can he ever forgive that? How can he ever forgive me?
She swallowed. ‘Sandro—shall we go home?’
‘Home?’ he queried ironically. ‘You mean that huge empty house I visit sometimes, that stopped being home after the death of my mother?’
‘But it could be again,’ she said. ‘It has to be—for Charlie.’
His sigh was small and bitter. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At least I have my son.’
He walked away to where Giacomo Raboni waited. They spoke quietly for a moment or two, then embraced swiftly, and the old man, whistling to his dog, went back the way he had come.
On the journey home they sat, each in their separate corners, the silence between them total.
At last Polly could bear it no longer. She said, ‘Is the chauffeur’s glass partition soundproof?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Completely.’
She hesitated. ‘Then may—may I ask you something?’
‘If you wish.’ His tone was not encouraging.
‘What was Bianca doing in your car that day?’
‘You imagine I invited her for a drive?’ he asked bleakly. ‘I had just had a bad interview with my father—one of the worst. He had done something I could not forgive, and I needed quickly to put it right. Bianca must have been listening at the door as she often did, because when I went out to the car she was there in the passenger seat, waiting for me.
‘I told her to get out—that I had no time for her little power games—but she refused. I had no time to argue, and to put her bodily out of the car would have been distasteful, so I had to let her stay. Although I warned her that I was not returning, and she would have to make her own way back to Comadora alone.
‘She began bragging to me almost at once about her power over my father. Said that I could run away, but in the end he would make me marry her or strip me of my inheritance. Leave me with an empty title. Then she became amorous—said she would give me pleasure in ways I had never had before. She even described some of them,’ he added, his mouth curling in contempt.
‘I was fool enough to let her see my disgust, and she began to get angry in a way I had never seen before. She began to talk about you—said filthy, obscene things, becoming more and more hysterical. Finally she was screaming at me that I belonged to her. That she would kill both of us rather than lose me to another girl. That was when she began trying to seize the wheel.
‘Even then I did not realise she was serious, may God forgive me. I thought she was just being—Bianca. The one that only I seemed to see.’
He shook his head. ‘I was shouting back at her—telling her I was going to throw her out of the car if she didn’t stop.’ His mouth tightened. ‘That was when she attacked me with her nails, as Giacomo said. And the rest you know.’
Polly said in a small voice, ‘Do you think she was mad?’
He shrugged. ‘I have asked myself that a thousand times. If so, she hid it well with everyone but me.’
‘Yes.’ Polly swallowed. She said with a touch of desperation, ‘Sandro, I’m so sorry—for everything.’
‘There is no need,’ he said. ‘The contessa had nursed her delusions for too long, and it was time the truth was told. So do not blame yourself.’
He sounded kind but remote, and her heart sank.
But she mustered a smile. ‘Thank you. That’s generous.’
‘Is it?’ he
asked, an odd note in his voice. ‘But then, Paola, you ask for so little.’
And there was silence again.
Back at the palazzo, there was an air of shock that evening. The contessa had gone by private ambulance for a few days’ rest at a clinic, and it was apparent that she would not be returning.
Alberto Molena stayed for dinner, and, although conversation was general over the meal, it was clear there were pressing matters to be discussed. So Polly was not surprised when courteous excuses were made over coffee, and the two men retired to Sandro’s study, and remained closeted there.
Polly listened to music for a while in an effort to calm herself, then went upstairs to her room and sat by the window. She had plenty to think about. Questions that still remained unanswered, but which could be more complex than she’d believed.
Sandro had been on his way back to Sorrento when the accident had happened, she thought. And he’d spoken of some ‘unforgivable’ action of his father. What had the old marchese done to prompt such a reaction? she asked herself.
And why was Sandro coming to her, if he intended to end their affair? It made no sense. Especially as Bianca was clearly convinced that their relationship was still a threat to her, and Sandro had not denied it during their fatal quarrel.
The man who had visited her, scaring her with his oblique threats and offering her money to leave—who had sent him? Was it really Sandro, as she’d always believed? For the past three years, she’d looked on it as the agonising proof of his cruel betrayal. Now, suddenly, that certainty was shaken to its foundations.
I have to know, she thought. I have to put the last missing pieces in place—even if I don’t get the answers I want, and all my worst fears are confirmed. But I can’t just barge in, asking questions.
Somehow, she knew, she had to bridge the distance between them. And there was one sure way to do that, she thought, warm colour rising to her face.
How did they manage these things in the old days? she wondered, sending the huge bed a speculative look. Did the then marchese announce over dinner that he would be visiting his wife later? Or did the marchesa send a note to her husband, requesting the pleasure of his company in bed? Or was there simply a look—a smile—any of the covert signals that lovers had always used?