‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You’re making a point, obviously. Even though we probably won’t find them, and even if we did find them we wouldn’t be any help. And the food –’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Martin, coldly. ‘You and your bloody food.’
Lucien shrugged. ‘I didn’t hear you complaining before,’ he said. His face was white. ‘I think something’s burning.’ He turned on his heel and walked into the house.
Martin turned to look at Anna, sitting at the table, and she smiled at him, her face pale in the shadows, before turning to look down towards the river, in the direction from which the others should come.
And as she looked, Justine appeared, framed by the trees; pretty girl, thought Anna, automatically, at the same time unable to suppress a reflexive disapproval of her dusty dress and tangled hair. But there was something about her, as she climbed she seemed full of energy and determination, an antidote to the palpable negativity between the men left behind. Anna stood, and behind Justine she could see her son, with the fair girl in his arms.
It didn’t take Justine long to see what Anna had seen between Martin and Lucien as she climbed towards the house; their faces were barely in focus but her heart was already sinking. What’s the matter with them now, she thought, fired up with adrenaline and fierce impatience by their trek through the woods, triumphant at the success of their rescue mission. Lucien walked towards her, his face full of concern; Martin walked past her towards Louisa.
‘Is she all right?’ Lucien asked.
Justine looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think she’s fine. Sprained ankle. Would you believe we were rescued by an orthopaedic surgeon? At least I think that’s what he is. He’s been – very helpful.’ She stopped, glancing across at Paolo, who was lowering Louisa on to a chair. ‘He happened to be passing.’ Lucien raised his eyebrows reflexively, but she wasn’t sure he was listening.
‘What’s been going on here then?’ she asked.
Lucien shrugged. ‘Nothing much.’
She couldn’t tell whether his air of unconcern was affected or not.
‘I’m making lunch,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping the oven doesn’t let me down.’ He grimaced theatrically. ‘It’s hardly high tech. The kids have gone down to the river – Dido wanted to take the boys. Said she’d look after them.’
‘Right,’ said Justine, impatient suddenly with Lucien’s gloss on events. ‘Have you had a row with Martin?’ she said, before she lost her momentum, allowed him to smooth things over.
Lucien raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it was like High Noon when I walked up the path. You were glaring at each other.’ She looked across the fence at the cows, heads blithely down in the grass now, a big creamy cow nudging her calf affectionately as he butted her flank.
Lucien laughed, but she wasn’t convinced. ‘We were just a bit anxious, probably. To be quite honest, we weren’t quite sure what had happened.’ He nodded at Paolo’s mother, sitting at the table, her hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘Your surgeon’s mother doesn’t speak English.’
Slowly Justine nodded, but she wasn’t sure she believed him, that nothing had been going on. She turned to look for Martin. Louisa was sitting on a chair at the table, looking paler than usual but composed, almost cheerful, as the two men knelt at her feet. Paolo, the doctor, was saying something, demonstrating something to do with the working of the joint, using Louisa as his patient exhibit, and Martin was listening intently, absorbed. As though he could tell she was looking at him, the doctor looked up, but did not smile.
‘You’ve made lunch,’ she said, ‘the table looks lovely. Will there be enough for – everyone? These two – Paolo and Anna? – they really helped us out back there. It would be nice to be able to invite them.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Lucien with a shrug, but he didn’t look too happy about it. ‘I’ll put the pasta on.’ And he went back into the house.
22
Paolo had disliked Lucien the moment he saw him. After he’d made sure Anna had recovered from her mercy dash – she’d looked a little pale to begin with, but the colour seemed to be returning to her cheeks – Paolo sat at the table with the other one – Martin? – and talked about the injury – Louisa’s sprained ankle. He seemed intelligent and knowledgeable, and Paolo told him what to do; an ice-pack, elevate the ankle, rest it. He had assumed Martin was Louisa’s husband to begin with, he took such an interest. But then they had a discussion, over Paolo’s head, literally, about when someone called Tom would be back, whether it would be in time for lunch, and it became obvious that Tom was her husband. All this Paolo absorbed without really listening, while he watched Justine and Lucien, standing between the table and the door of Il Vignacce, talking.
Were they married? From where he sat Justine’s left hand was not visible; he could see her hair coming down from a knot, heavy and dark and slippery, the nape of her neck and the smooth pale curve of her bare calves. It was obvious that they were together, though, from the way they had separated themselves off from the rest, from the angle of their bodies towards each other. There must be a critical proximity that denotes intimacy; the point at which you can detect the other’s body heat, perhaps. But in their case it wasn’t, he thought, a relaxed intimacy; something seemed to be wrong. Paolo wondered what it could be.
What are we doing here? Paolo asked himself, not for the first time. He felt as though his life had been overturned. After all his careful preparations, his imagining, his waiting and coaxing, his mother had told him the truth. His father was Luca Magno, a man he had heard of, and had read about; a minor figure perhaps, a historical footnote, but a man whose death had been the subject of speculation and public mourning. And now he was here, among foreigners whose lives should be of no interest to him; he should bid them a polite farewell, he and his mother should walk back up the hill, but he found himself curiously reluctant to do any such thing. And so he just sat in the humid shade, watching the girl. He smiled when he was addressed and accepted their invitation to stay and eat; Anna, he thought, could do with the rest.
He couldn’t remember seeing a ring on Justine’s finger, when they were alone down there by the river, but then he hadn’t looked. He’d been looking at her hair, her mouth, the pale soft skin on the inside of her elbow, her profile as she gazed along the river.
Paolo didn’t trust Lucien but grudgingly had to admit that he could cook. He had almost laughed at his mother’s look of alarm when they’d been invited to lunch; she didn’t believe for one moment that a scruffy group of English holidaymakers would be able to prepare anything palatable. They sat beneath the tree; the day was overcast, the air hanging warm and heavy with moisture in the clearing. There was no wind now to dispel it down in the valley where they sat, cocooned by the forest, the trees around them absorbing any breeze. Paolo looked down the table, and for a moment he thought Justine was looking back. But then she turned away quickly, and he couldn’t be sure.
Justine stared down at her plate, where a swirl of red peppers still lay in their puddle of oil, electric orange and spicy. She reached for her glass, cold, yellow white wine, and drank to cover her confusion.
It was quiet without the children, and from a distance the table of holidaymakers and locals beneath the tree must have looked festive; the kind of scene adorning an expensive travel guide, or an account of idyllic, harmonious expatriate life. Martin sat at the centre of the table like a dark, serious paterfamilias, radiating authority. The food was delicious, and Lucien had presented it beautifully, as usual; the salad as pretty as a bouquet with red and green chicory, peppers slippery and bright with oil, a rich, dark glaze on the meat.
As was becoming the rule at their communal meals the drink was being consumed more enthusiastically than the food, and for once Lucien appeared to be drinking as much as anyone else, filling his glass steadily. Down the centre of the table a surprising number of wine bottles were ranged, som
e empty, plenty still to be drunk, threading their way like a procession in and out of the dishes and the smeared glasses.
Louisa, well mannered as ever, was having a friendly, if halting, three-way conversation with Paolo and his mother, involving considerable good-natured translation and some lengthy pauses. Justine listened, sitting back in her chair so as not to attract attention. It drew her in, Anna’s story; Justine found herself piecing it together from the snippets translated by Paolo; it sounded romantic told in this way. She wondered what the war could have been like here, in such isolation, and what it must have been like to move from here to Rome. She wondered how Anna’s father had died; she hadn’t said.
‘So you work in Rome?’ Louisa was asking Paolo.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A specialist orthopaedic hospital.’
He sounded weary, suddenly, and serious. Grown-up, thought Justine.
‘Should we save some food for the boys?’ asked Martin, suddenly, interrupting.
Justine looked up.
‘I thought I’d make them a sandwich,’ Louisa said, wearily. She looked pale. ‘They don’t really – they probably wouldn’t eat this stuff. What about Dido?’
Martin’s brow clouded slightly. ‘Perhaps I should – but she likes to look after herself. And she hardly eats anything, anyway.’
Louisa bit her lip, but passed no comment. ‘How long have they been down there?’ she asked instead, smiling brightly. It looked to Justine as though she was trying not to seem a fretful mother. ‘I’m losing all track of time.’
‘They went just before you got back,’ said Martin. ‘An hour and a half, maybe two?’
Louisa nodded, apparently unconcerned. There was a silence; over their heads the tree moved a little as a breath of wind sighed down from the hills around them, and the faint shadow of its leaves shifted on the tablecloth.
Anna said something to Paolo, who turned to Louisa, smiling. ‘Your husband is visiting Grosseto, for business? As a restaurant critic?’
Louisa hesitated; before she could say anything, Lucien spoke.
‘He’d had enough of us,’ he said, cheerfully drunk. ‘He wanted to be alone. Going through a difficult time.’
Justine saw Paolo look at Lucien, frowning, and felt uncomfortable. She wondered how much Lucien had had.
Louisa spoke.
‘He’s fine,’ she said, her voice shaking slightly, looking hard at Lucien before turning to Paolo. ‘He’s gone to look at an organic farm in Grosseto,’ she said firmly. ‘A vineyard and a restaurant. Maremman cattle.’
Lucien went on. ‘Things haven’t been too easy for Tom lately. Have they? Terrible shame.’ He gave Louisa an attempt at a sympathetic smile and sipped his wine.
To Justine’s surprise, it was not Louisa who responded this time, but Martin.
‘I wouldn’t worry about Tom, if I were you, Lucien,’ he said, smiling.
Lucien raised his eyebrows, looking around the table for support.
Martin went on. ‘I had a long chat with him last night. It sounds like a beautiful place – the vineyard he’s gone to see; I encouraged him. It’s for sale.’
Across the table Justine saw Louisa frown as if she might be about to say something, but she didn’t.
Lucien, however, sat up in his seat. ‘For sale? Tom wants to buy it?’
He sounded sober now, and incredulous, almost angry; it was exactly the kind of thing he’d like to be doing himself, thought Justine, he’s angry because someone’s on his territory. It was as if, today, she saw Lucien through someone else’s eyes; someone who was not all that well disposed towards him.
‘Or I might,’ said Martin, casually. ‘We talked about Tom managing it. Maybe it’s just one of those things – a fantasy. But I thought it could be interesting. Might cheer him up.’ And Martin looked at Lucien, head on one side, as if daring him to argue with the idea that Tom might need cheering up.
‘Long way to go for a fantasy,’ was all Lucien said, looking around at the table with a rather forced smile. Justine didn’t feel like smiling back at him.
‘Well,’ said Martin, ‘I don’t think he saw it that way. And anyway, there’s something else – an errand he’s running for me on the way back. Picking something up.’ And he leaned for his glass, putting an end to the conversation.
Well, thought Justine. Well, well.
Lucien opened his mouth, then closed it again. Far beyond them, on the edge of the pasture, the cows looked up as two tiny figures appeared from out of the trees, running towards the house.
23
Down by the river the flat sunlight was leaving the bathing place as the shadow of the great cliff lengthened. The water was black in the shade, and beside it, on the dusty ground, sat Dido, her knees drawn up to her chin, hunched over the little rucksack in her lap. Now that she was alone she was thinking of her father, and Lucien, the sound of their voices echoing around the valley in the scalding, humid air and the name hanging in the air between them. Dido rested her cheek carefully against her knees, trying not to make any sudden movement that would disturb the delicate equilibrium inside her head, and she thought of her mother. Not Evie, Mum. Leaning down to say good night.
Dido’s eyes felt hot and dry, but she didn’t blink and she didn’t cry; it seemed to her that it was all about to end. She felt sick. The river was a wavering silver line across her vision, and she was finding it difficult to focus. The air seemed thick around her suddenly, alive with dust and tiny insects, the heavy mineral scent of the river and the woods’ slow decay. Slowly she got to her feet, still holding her head as though it might break, and unsteadily she walked into the water.
The boys were out of breath by the time they reached the adults, but they were laughing. Justine was struck by how brown they’d become, already, their skin startlingly dark against hair bleached almost white. Leaves and twigs stuck to their bare legs, damp still from the river; they looked like wild children, nurtured by wolves in the forest, returning to civilization. The heavy silence that still hung over the table underlined even further the division between adults and young, and for a moment or two each looked at the other with something like incomprehension.
The boys shuffled, bumping against each other and giggling, awkward with all eyes on them. Anna said something to Paolo, smiling and gesturing towards the boys; it sounded soft, like an endearment. Justine thought, how un-English a response it was to the presence of children.
Then Louisa sprang up, and hurried around the table towards her sons as though they might escape if she didn’t pin them down.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked, brushing leaves from Sam’s shoulders then putting her arm around him and pulling him against her with awkward tenderness. ‘Where’s Dido?’
‘Starving,’ said Sam, looking up at her. ‘What is there?’ He eyed the food on the table suspiciously.
‘She sent us back,’ Angus said. ‘She said she wanted to sunbathe.’ He rolled his eyes and took a piece of bread from the table.
Martin was frowning. ‘Perhaps I should go and get her?’ He looked at Louisa, appealing for advice.
Louisa hesitated, considering Martin. Justine felt sorry for Dido, consigned either to over-protective adults or small boys for company.
‘No – no,’ said Louisa finally. ‘Leave her alone, for a bit longer anyway. Don’t you think?’
Slowly Martin nodded. Then Louisa turned her attention to the boys, taking each of them firmly by the shoulders and sandwiching them between her place and Paolo’s at the table. Paolo looked down at them kindly.
‘It’s good, the meat,’ he said, smiling and pulling the plate towards them. They looked first at the dark remains of slow-roasted pork with juniper and then at Paolo with transparent distrust and he laughed.
‘Do you like this river?’ he asked, pointing across the pasture. ‘When I was a boy, like you, this is where I came, with my friends. Of course this’ – he gestured at the house – ‘it was rovinato. Ruined. With ghosts.’ He pulled a fac
e and then they laughed; behind him Anna shook her head at his imitation of a ghosdy howl.
Martin spoke. ‘You must know all this very well,’ he said, gesturing at the silent hills around them. Outnumbered, thought Justine, gazing at the acres of undulating, uninhabited forest and thinking how it might look from above, their tiny group around the table, and all those trees.
Paolo nodded his head a little from side to side, equivocal. ‘Quite well,’ he said. ‘Not as well as when I was a boy. But yes. There is another bathing place, further down there.’ He indicated to the left, upstream. ‘A waterfall, where you can dive. Not far.’
At this the boys, who had been industriously refuelling on meat and bread, both looked up at once.
‘Cool,’ said Sam, cautiously. ‘A waterfall? Will you show us where it is?’
He made as if to set off straight away, one foot already planted on the ground, but firmly Louisa pulled him back into his seat.
‘Eat first,’ she said.
Paolo smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘If you want. If your mother thinks it will be all right?’ He looked at Louisa. ‘My mother and I can take them, after they’ve eaten? And you can rest the ankle.’
Helpless, Louisa capitulated, but Justine could see that she was grateful. Although it did occur to Justine, a fleeting qualm she tried to ignore, that it was only the presence of the Italian visitors that was keeping the atmosphere between the rest of them even superficially civilized.
Lucien, perhaps to speed things up, stood and offered coffee to Paolo and Anna. ‘Caffe?’ he pronounced, carefully, smiling as he offered up his Italian accent for criticism, but Justine was weary of his charm, and just shook her head. She saw Paolo look at Lucien, considering him in silence; it was like seeing a couple of strange dogs eyeing each other up.
‘Thank you,’ Paolo said, eventually.
The coffee was drunk in contemplative silence, the heavy warmth of the afternoon slowing their movements. Overhead a light aeroplane aimlessly described circles in the hazy sky, its thin high engine sound rising over the silence. With a sigh Justine rose to clear away the remains of their lunch; Martin sprang up to help. Lucien didn’t do washing-up; he cooked, and he stayed at the table, sitting with a kind of immovable satisfaction, working his way through the remaining wine.
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