Late Season

by Christobel Kent

  ‘When my grandmother died. I had to, then. Not just for the funeral; I had to tell Nonna, she had a grandson.’

  Paolo was silent. Then he looked up, and nodded. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘you did the right thing. What else could you do?’

  And she closed her eyes. ‘That’s it, then,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing more to tell.’

  ‘The sister?’ said Paolo. ‘His wife, and her daughter?’

  Anna sighed reluctantly. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They left Rome, after Luca died.’ She frowned, as though she was remembering something long forgotten.

  Paolo watched her face, and after a moment Anna went on, slowly, reconstructing an invisible scene from fragments of buried memory.

  ‘She came to see me – to see you, after you were born. Amalia.’ She spoke hesitantly, with reluctance. ‘I hardly knew she was there, really. I didn’t want to think about who she was. She brought a present–what was it? Something for you to wear. She brought the little girl with her. She’d grown; taller and thinner, I remember that. Amalia said they were leaving Rome, going north. That was the last time I saw either of them. Of course –’ Anna stopped, looked down.

  ‘She had no idea.’ She shook her head, still frowning at her hands, held out in front of her, and for a moment Paolo wondered about her just as he had that morning when she couldn’t think what to wear. ‘None.’ She looked up at him then. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Paolo took her hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry’

  Just then, both boys, Sam and Angus, rushed at them from the far end of the grove, hollering as they came like savages, holding something up they had found in the water. They tugged at Paolo’s sleeve; when he didn’t move, the younger, Angus, ran across to Anna and flung his arms around her legs, pulling at her. She pushed him away, laughing despite herself.

  ‘We’ve got to go back,’ Angus said, urgently. ‘Look, the rain’s getting worse.’ They turned to look, and they saw that he was right.

  For a moment or two they sat, irresolute, at the table, as the silent rain fell, soft and warm, on their cheeks, on their shoulders, and the dark spots on the tablecloth merged. Then Justine got to her feet, gathered up the tablecloth and the little jar of cyclamen, and suddenly they were all standing up, bumping into each other in their haste to get in out of the rain. Louisa hobbled inside with Tom supporting her gently.

  Il Vignacce seemed almost cosy with the lights on, the sound of the rain on the roof and all of them sitting around the dining table. The door was standing open but it was still warm, and one after the other they all sat around the table: Rossella, Martin, Tom and Louisa side by side, Lucien. Justine set down her bundle of damp linen and the flowers Lucien had picked. Wild flowers; thoughdess, really, although no doubt he had intended to charm them with the gesture. She sat down, directly opposite Rossella; the last at the table.

  ‘You met Evie – when?’ she said.

  Rossella sighed, as though this was what she had been waiting for. ‘My stepfather had known Evie’s father. They studied together in London; after the war, at the London School of Economics. Perhaps you know it?’ Rossella looked around the table, feeling awkward suddenly about what she had to say. Justine smiled at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we know it.’

  Rossella went on. ‘Her mother died, when she was very young. Twelve, or thirteen. A terrible age, I think.’ The image of Dido, standing waist-high in the river and frowning, came to Justine. A terrible age, not grown up, not a child. Impossible to comfort. She said nothing.

  ‘But –’ Louisa began to say, frowning, but Justine looked across at her and shook her head, very slightly.

  ‘Evie’s mother had a chronic disease; she had it all the time Evie was growing up, and Evie’s father took care of her. Evie too, sometimes. My father would talk about it to my mother; they corresponded, you see, he and Ted. It must have been very difficult. I listened; I was – I am a little older than Evie. Three years.’ Rossella stopped for a moment, her eyes clouded.

  They looked at her expectantly.

  ‘I began to write to Evie, then. Pen pals, you know.’ Rossella smiled a little awkwardly. ‘She was so – alive, in all that’ – Rossella made a sound of frustration, trying to find the right word – ‘all the sickness – like living in a hospital. She needed to escape from her life. From her home. So she wrote to me. When her mother died, she told me that she was relieved that it was all over. Then four years later her father killed himself. Perhaps he was waiting as long as he could, until she was almost grown. And then Evie was alone.’

  Justine thought of the silence Evie had kept with all of them, for all of those years; the alternative history she had constructed for herself to obscure this one, while all the time she smiled and listened, laughed and partied. Across the table Justine could see Louisa’s eyes, wide with shock, and Tom, his arm around her, steadying her. She looked at Lucien then, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  Beside Rossella sat Martin, his hand on her forearm, watchful. Waiting.

  Outside the rain fell relentlessly, slanting grey across the rectangle of light framed by the door. And Justine thought, they’ll be sheltering somewhere; let them stay away, just while we hear this. The whole story.

  Tom spoke, his voice rusty after a long silence. ‘So Evie’ – his voice faltered over her name – ‘she came to you, then?’

  Rossella nodded. ‘She lived with us for one year. In Florence. I think we helped her; she became happier, certainly. We are a small family – but not quite a regular family, you know?’ She was looking at Justine, who shook her head slightly, not understanding.

  ‘I mean – my real father had died, too, when I was very young, and perhaps that helped. With Evie, to know she was not the only one. It was just my half-brother and me, my mother, my stepfather, a small apartment in the city. Very crowded, with a little terrace, not even a garden, you know. An ordinary place. But,’ she sighed again, wistfully, ‘we loved her very much – my mother, always tried to cook something nice for Evie, to make her eat. My brother adored her. You know how Evie is. Was. You fall in love with her.’ She shrugged helplessly.

  Justine saw Louisa nodding, saw her mouth turn down at the corners and she realized that, despite Louisa’s briskness, her impatience with Evie’s unorthodox life, she had loved her as much as anyone.

  ‘Then she was offered a place at university in England. In London. She was so surprised; so happy. She had thought she would not be successful when she made her application, you see; there were – gaps. In her education.’

  Great glaring holes, thought Justine, Evie’s life was full of them. She found herself shaking her head.

  ‘And we never saw her again.’ Rossella put a hand to her forehead and slowly rubbed at her temple; she was not melodramatic, not the over-emotional foreigner they might have expected. She was dignified, composed, but there was grief in every crease and plane of her pale, freckled face.

  ‘Never?’ ventured Louisa. ‘She never came back?’ They looked at each other, she and Justine, thinking, We got her, instead. Landing on that chequerboard tiled porch in Evelyn Gardens with her busted suitcase. But we didn’t hang on to her, did we?

  Rossella shook her head. ‘No. She continued to write to me. Right up until – the end; I kept all her letters. All of them. But she never came back.’

  Martin cleared his throat and spoke. ‘She never wanted to come back to Italy,’ he said. ‘Whenever I suggested it.’ He looked lost, suddenly. ‘I couldn’t understand why; she never made anything of it, just always had a reason for suggesting somewhere else.’

  Rosella put her hand over his on the table. ‘I think – now, I think perhaps that it was because she had decided to begin her life again. Perhaps the new story – the one she told you, Tom told me this – seemed less tragic; just an accident. A car crash – no one would look at her and wonder –’

  ‘If she would go the same way?’ Justine finished the sentence for her.

 
; Rossella nodded.

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Rossella slowly, although it was clear she knew already.

  Justine felt everyone’s eyes on her as she spoke. ‘Did she go the same way? Did she kill herself, just like her father? Did she throw herself off that ferry because she had the same illness, the one that killed her mother? Did she write and tell you what she was going to do?’ Justine felt out of breath, suddenly, and she stopped.

  No one moved, not one hand shifted position on the table and the only sound was the softly whispering rain. They waited for Rossella to speak.

  ‘No,’ said Rossella sadly. ‘There was someone else.’

  The pasture was empty now; silently the cows had moved on to more sheltered grazing further down and the soft, ceaseless rain fell only on the coarse grass. The woods along the river looked darker now, and the gurgle of the water below was louder, more insistent as it rose. The rain fell on and on, but no one appeared in the gap between the trees that led down to the bathing place; despite the weather, it seemed that Dido was reluctant to leave her seclusion and return to the farm.

  Downstream, Anna and Paolo were toiling slowly up the hill from the waterfall, while the two boys ran ahead, hiding behind trees and in scratchy clumps of gorse, apparently oblivious to the rain. The forest dripped around them in the silence, but they were largely sheltered here. Il Vignacce’s red roof appeared, then the stone façade of the farmhouse rose on the brow of the hill. The shutters had not been closed and electric light spilled out of the open door, but no one was to be seen, only one more car was parked there. Anna paused, to catch her breath.

  ‘We might need to beg a lift back, in this,’ she said, looking across at the distant dirt road and an erratic, milky stream of rainwater running down, gathering dust from the surface, to form a swelling puddle by the gate. Paolo nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. They stood all together in the shelter of the trees, contemplating the house and the stretch of grass wet with rain that they must cross to get there.

  26

  They stared at Rossella, at her pale face downlit by the lamp that hung over the table.

  ‘Someone else?’ said Louisa faintly.

  Justine looked across at Martin; at Rossella’s words his head had dropped, and he was looking down at his hands on the table. She wondered if he was prepared for this.

  Rossella nodded. ‘She wanted to escape; she wanted a new life. Again. She met someone. Fell in love with someone.’

  Martin’s head was still bowed; Justine saw a movement in his throat. Dido, she thought suddenly, and looked around in panic, out of the window at the fading light. Where’s Dido? She could hear something, over the rain, behind the pattering on the roof and the sighing of the wind. They’re coming back, she thought, calm down, but she felt distracted, unsettled; unwilling suddenly to turn back to Rossella and go on listening. She was talking now, in her soft, deliberate English.

  ‘She described him to me, not just once, but in many letters she wrote. She couldn’t see him very often – he was married. Is married.’ ‘Rossella hesitated. ‘She said – ‘She put a hand out to Martin, touched his arm. ‘Martin?’ she said. ‘Do you really – ?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice oddly stifled. ‘Go on.’

  Rossella nodded calmly. Justine looked at her serious, open face, the repository of Evie’s secrets, and she could see why Evie told her everything.

  ‘She wanted to be young, again, to feel – light. When she became ill. Allegra – you know, light-hearted. She always said that Martin was so close to her – so intense. She could never hide anything from him.’

  At this Martin made an involuntary sound, and Justine reached out her hand across the table to him, but stopped halfway. She could feel Lucien’s eyes on her, and she wondered what he was making of all this.

  ‘So,’ said Rossella, with a sigh as though it was more difficult than she had thought to explain all this, ‘she needed someone else. Someone who took things – more lightly. He was beautiful to look at, she said.’ Rossella shrugged a little, as if to say, how could Evie help herself?

  ‘He made no demands on her; he ignored her illness, or at least perhaps he allowed her to pretend it didn’t exist. A creative man, clever. With – charisma. And I think – I think she actually fell in love with him. With Evie, I think, love was everything, at the end, anyway. She thought love would make it all all right.’ She looked anguished; it was as though she was trying to defend Evie to them, and it did ring true. She had been a romantic.

  Justine dared a brief look across the table at Louisa; she was frowning a little, biting her lower lip, and Justine knew what she was thinking. Tom. She’s talking about Tom. She was reproaching herself for having ceased to think of him like this; not creative, not sensitive, for allowing Evie to appreciate him. Poor Louisa, she thought. Tom himself, though, sitting at her side, seemed completely composed and at the same time intent, as if had been waiting for this. Outside Justine could hear the sound of the boys’ approach quite clearly; shouting at each other to run.

  Rossella went on. ‘She had made a decision. In her last letter, the very last one, she said that she had planned everything. She was going to leave. With him.’

  ‘Leave her family?’ asked Louisa, slowly. ‘Leave Dido?’

  Helplessly, Rossella spread her hands. ‘She thought she had to do it. Can you see? She thought it would be better for Dido, not to have a sick mother, and for herself, she thought it was her last chance at life. She said – she knew Dido would understand. She – she was going to write. I think she wrote to tell me because she couldn’t make herself tell them. Martin and Dido. She couldn’t face it.’

  ‘She never wrote to tell you,’ said Justine, looking at Martin; it wasn’t quite a question, she knew Evie hadn’t written because if she had, Martin would have told the police and there would have been no mystery. At least until the body was found. But somehow Justine couldn’t believe that Evie would leave without saying goodbye, at least to Dido. Something stirred in the recesses of her memory, but she couldn’t reclaim it, whatever it was, not yet. She turned back to Rossella.

  ‘Where was she going to go? They. Where were they going to go?’ Who could he have been, this man? Justine tried to imagine Evie meeting a married man in a wine bar, making secret phone calls, excuses. A new life. She couldn’t summon up such a picture. What kind of man could it possibly be, to be good enough for her?

  ‘They had planned everything. Or perhaps – perhaps it was Evie who did the planning.’ Rossella hesitated. ‘They were going to travel in Europe, a boat to Spain, Bilbao then Seville, drive to Provence, Venice.’ She pronounced each name in the Italian way, and the destinations sounded alluring, exotic. A grand tour, late in the season. ‘They were going to come to Florence.’ And then she stopped, her grey eyes focussing on something far away.

  ‘But they never arrived,’ Justine finished for her, bluntly.

  Rossella shook her head. ‘No.’

  Justine sat very still, dizzied for a moment by the new information whirling in her head, waiting for it to settle. Then she saw Evie, that fuzzy outline on the security camera in the windswept foyer of a ferry terminal. A slender, indecisive figure standing there alone, looking out for someone; waiting for her last chance at life. Poor Evie.

  The boys were in the doorway behind her now; Justine could hear their ragged breath, but she didn’t turn her head. She looked straight at Rossella, holding her gaze, and she could feel the others’ eyes on them.

  ‘You know who he was, don’t you,’ she said, almost in a whisper, and very slowly Rossella nodded. Justine felt Louisa’s eyes following her, and she met them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rossella, and beside her Justine felt Lucien shifting his position, the tiniest movement. Justine held Louisa’s gaze, as though they had a pact.

  ‘Lucien,’ said Rossella, looking at Justine, her eyes full of anguish. ‘It was Lucien. It was your husband.’

>   27

  Justine continued to look at Louisa, as Rossella’s whispered words hung in the air between them; she couldn’t move. It was in Louisa’s face that Justine read the truth; she could see relief that it wasn’t Tom’s name hanging in the air between them, and shock. But also, in that fraction of a second, she could see Louisa believed it, and Louisa wasn’t good at deceiving herself. Justine felt sick.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ she heard Lucien bluster by her side, but still Justine didn’t turn to look at him.

  And then everything began to unfold in front of her as though in slow motion. Numbly Justine looked around the table at their faces, at all the faces except one, and they might as well have been strangers; they pitied her, and the thought filled her with horror. She stood up, and heard herself make a sound, an inarticulate cry that fell on her ears as though from somewhere far away.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Lucien said, standing too, taking her arm. She stood there, the endearment ringing utterly false in her ears, the warmth of his fingers like a brand on her arm, and with what seemed like a terrible, paralysing slowness the implications of what Rossella had said unfolded inside her head. She forced herself to turn towards him, although all she wanted to do was run for the door and take a great gulp of fresh air.

  ‘You were in Wales,’ she said, slowly, thinking of those forty-eight hours after Evie’s disappearance when she’d tried to get hold of Lucien. ‘On that course. Weren’t you? Did you –’ She stopped, thinking frantically. ‘Were you with her all the time? Did you meet her? Did you –’ And she stopped, unable to articulate the thought that had just occurred to her, and focussed on Lucien’s face, at last. He was looking fixedly into her eyes, as though trying to stop her looking away at the others; his face was pale beneath the tan, and there was no trace of his cheerful smile.

  ‘No!’ he said, urgently. ‘No – I never – you’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with – nothing – I was in Wales, all the time. I can prove it.’ But she had turned away; her stomach churned at the sound of his voice.