She flipped the pages, allowing belligerence to ripen towards the entire academic establishment which she pictured, still, as crouching ready to find fault — and towards Dr. Lester Wildman, her ex-husband, in particular.
IT WAS ON THE night she’d learned for certain not only that her husband was sleeping with the doctoral student, but that she, Clare, had been bumped from the Amazon expedition and the student was going in her place, that Clare had created the painting of Circaea Livingston Philippiana.
She had already taken a leave of absence from the botany lab to prepare for the trip. Amazonia was hers; she refused to give it up. She’d lived in it, in imagination, for an entire year: canoed rivers teeming with piranha, trekked jungle paths braving all manner of poisonous snakes, waded swamps roiling with crocodiles, fallen asleep to the racket of howler monkeys. Indomitably, through heat and mud and teeming rain, she had crouched on sopping logs or in tippy dugout canoes to capture — to save! — likenesses of its creatures and its plants.
And I married you just to get there, she’d almost hurled at Lester Wildman, though this was far from true.
She’d set out to attract him long before she’d known he was hoping to put together such an expedition. He was not only head of the department, but he knew everything, talked beautifully, had travelled widely. A rangy, almost ugly, incredibly compelling man in his forties, old enough to be a father figure, the mentor she’d always longed for. Married, but she’d told herself the appeal was intellectual, not much more. At that point, Clare had still been reeling from the end of her off-and-on affair with her childhood psychiatrist. (To the psychiatrist’s credit, he was the one who’d given her the strength to make it as far as grad school.) She had decided to devote the rest of her life to recording and painting all the grasses of the world. Grass was so humble. It got so little respect. “In art I mean,” she’d explained to Lester Wildman when she visited his office to put the thesis topic to him. “Think of it, where do you ever see grass in paintings, except to be trodden underfoot, or to provide an anonymous carpet for some woodland scene? Take Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe. The herbe may get top billing, but even the loaf of bread gets more respect. Or Monet’s Field of Poppies, where the entire field is just a blur.”
Dr. Lester Wildman said, “All the grasses of the world! Would that leave you time for lunch?”
She had been with Lester Wildman for seven years, one way and another. Secret girlfriend, open girlfriend, marriage-breaker, wife; then just another in the string of his betrayed. When she learned that he had crossed her off the expedition, she threatened to make an enormous stink, to blacken his name with the university as a serial philanderer, go to the press, whatever it took. But what good would it do? If the university cut the funding for the trip, she would still be sitting there at home. She could see she’d scared him, though.
So she made the deal. She would write the book she’d intended to write, and she would execute a series of paintings of the endangered flora of the Amazon basin, as she’d dreamed of doing. She already knew the subject so well that she wouldn’t really truly need to be there, though it broke her heart. Eminent Dr. Wildman would supply her with the alternate resources she required. She got him to sign an agreement promising her access to herbarium specimens from collections across the continent. Beyond that, she would use photographs as reference, and botanical articles and any other source she chose.
THE PORTRAIT OF THE Circaea began as a doodle that same night, fuelled by rage. It was a version of deadly nightshade, which she’d read was a distant relation to the Amazonian plant that provided a basis for one of the recipes for arrow poison.
The painting took on a life of its own, as she began to combine implausible elements: giving the flower a rocket-like appearance, exaggerating the curled-back petals behind the pointed nose cone of the anthers, drawing in some darkly shaded fruits like tiny pomegranates with cracks opening to sharp-barbed seeds. Gorgeous, she dreamed it into life in botanical exactitude: side sketches of the root, some split-open fruits showing a larger view of the poison seeds. A mix of Paynes grey with ultramarine and magenta produced a virulent purple for those fruits.
So there it was, her first discovery on the expedition — named not in her own honour, no, but in that of the supposed revolutionary ancestor her aunt had often talked about.
When she signed the painting, she added the little stick figure too, half-hidden among the leaves, which she later added to all the paintings for the book. During the rest of the work, which took her two years, she kept Circaea Livingston Philippiana near for inspiration. She had not intended to include it in the package she sent off to the publisher; but, somehow, it got in with the rest — perhaps a subconscious desire to bring the whole project to a halt before it was too late? Though to be fair, nowhere in the written text had she stated that she, personally, was the one trekking through the swamp and rainforest. She’d merely phrased things in a careful — if extremely lively and first-hand — sort of way. And, during that two-year imaginary trek, she had become convinced of her ability to convey truths with a clarity and perspective that might have eluded her if she had actually been battling the rigours of remote Amazon travel while experiencing the urgency to record as much as she could of the botanical riches of that endangered part of the world. Terrible, if by this one piece of egregious self-indulgence, the whole work might be smeared with disrepute.
Still, when the art director wrote and asked for details of the imaginary plant’s find spot, struck by the weird beauty of it, asking for clarification that this was a new species Clare herself had discovered — at that point she could have made an excuse to withdraw at least that one painting, couldn’t she? Instead, stubborn bravado kicked in. She’d written back to say it had been found almost hidden by the spray of the cascade that plunged from the lost world atop Mount Roraima, a waterfall of such height that it was lost in mist before it reached the ground.
AS CLARE STARTED INTO the bathroom alcove in the semi-gloom, her toe struck a solid rock-like thing. It was a large chunk of brain coral, intended as a doorstop she supposed, now bloodied from her wounded toe.
She limped across and started running hot water into the tub. She’d be turning up at this gathering of Etruscan glitterati not only dressed in jeans, but lame as well.
Lame, but very cautious and well behaved, she told herself. She would not let her nervousness propel her to that extra drink, especially with Ralph Farnham’s Italian brother-in-law who knew all about the Amazon there. She was a serious woman on a serious academic quest. As the bath filled, she stared into the steamy mirror, traced the face there, leaving a cartoon outline: the too-wide-apart eyes, the sharp cheekbones. The off-kilter mouth of a bad angel.
Chiara, my angel girl.
SHE HAD TO CLUTCH her gut. A pain, sharp as fire, ran up from her insides into her throat.
How could she have imagined — here, in his house — that she could keep all that tamped down?
She reached for the brain coral, in an urge to smash that pretendoblivious face in the mirror. Then she heard Marta start the motorino. Marta, who peered and pried. What had she been up to down here when the vacuum was whining? Had she peered into Clare’s things? Had she tried to pry into the case that held her uncle’s ashes?
That obscene request of his.
The plastic case was where she’d left it, squat and ugly, in the other room on the floor. She’d better find somewhere safe for it, till she came to terms with what to do about its awful contents. How could he have requested this of her? Who was he, anyway, who had he become? That obituary. Had he thought it terrifically clever, that Shakespearean echo, leaving his wife his second-best regrets? Clare thought of the desperate sparked cleverness he’d had, and how her aunt had always cut him down. Did he have to die to get the last word in? Was that why he went back to the States to die? To get the last word in? In all the years since his disappearance, what could he possibly have known about the girl he’d abandoned to th
e aunt and the grandmother and the ancient doctor on the night the evidence was scraped away?
How could she have acceded to his request about the ashes; refusing to think about it, except as part of an adventure, popping the cremated remains into the plastic makeup case, telling herself she’d been clever when the customs guy in Rome shook the heavy case and she’d given him her best smile and said, “Makeup. I need a lot.”
She began tearing books from a shelf to make a hiding place.
So many books.
Did you read all these? she wanted to scream.
And why why why did you bring me here?
In her half-blind state, she dropped a large volume; it landed on her damaged toe. She let out a howl.
The villain this time was Ancient History, with Revised Edition appearing below the title in gilt letters on the cracked-leather spine. Ancient history, revised. Something appeasing in that thought. When she flipped the book open, the old pages released a soothing smell of knowledge long contained; a sweet druggy feeling stole in, of drifting back to a distant time, beyond her bad time, beyond the good time that had preceded it, to a time where she could disappear or become another person altogether, a priestess casting enigmatic divinations, a warrior queen. She turned the pages, admiring the etchings set into the text. A page came loose in her hand. She tried to work it back so that it rested firmly against the binding, and in doing so caught a glimpse of an etching on the second side.
A face on a coin.
For a moment she was back on the autostrada, catching the profile of that man in her mirror, the grand furrowed brow, the high-bridged nose, the up-thrusting chin. She shook her head, remembering her idiotic reaction: rolling down the window, then zooming off. The startled look on his face — she remembered that clearly, too; how it had said, Come back, come back, you’ve got it wrong. Our meeting like this was fated.
No, I didn’t get that wrong, she thought now; that’s exactly why I ran away.
The mouth on this coin-face held a hint of petulance. And so it might. This was Mithridates of Pontus, scourge of the Romans in the East; a man who had been determined to get what he wanted for a long time, even taking a small dose of poison every day of his life in the hopes of holding death at bay.
She slid the page firmly back, then cleared a space on the shelf and hid the case that held the ashes behind Ancient History and other books.
TWO
Nightingale Hill
A RED ALFA ROMEO came to a stop at the bottom of the arbour steps. A man in a panama hat got out, tripped, recovered, saluted and clicked his heels together at the door, knocking his hat askew.
“Ms. Livingston, I presume! Ralph Farnham at your service.”
He sailed in on a gust of gin, peering at her with eyes wobbly but sly, taking in the shirt, the jeans, the belt with the silver goat’s head buckle, even the ring with the fire opals on her wedding finger. She was glad she’d pulled her hair into a stern knot.
She explained that her suitcase had gone missing, and he said that was not a problem. A gap-toothed grin. “But tell me — would I gather from that western-looking belt you are wearing that you are an equestrian type? My good wife will set aside every antipathy if that is so!” Happy messenger, then; the man explained that his wife, with what he called rather an Italian sort of failing, still regarded a considerable chunk of the land that Clare’s uncle had fenced in as being hers, and in fact had been conducting a legal dispute for years. But Clare needn’t worry! Now that she was actually here, her lawyer, who as luck would have it was also his wife’s lawyer, would set things straight before the matter got to court, where, goodness knew, it could take years. The basis of the problem had to do with family pride, nothing more.
“Never marry an Italian, dear girl!” he added. “Not only will you never be good enough, but you will marry countless generations of ancestors, too.”
He began to stride around the room, his old-fashioned jodhpurs flapping over his skinny hips, as he peered at everything high and low, even giving the Romulus and Remus lamp a whistle.
“Mysterious chap, old Kane. Kane the Shadow, I’ve heard him called. Though I maintain that your good uncle was entirely in his rights to publish articles about his rambles among tombs and ruins, despite never bothering to make contact with the local archaeological pooh-bahs. Hurrah for him I say, for thinking his own thoughts, publishing his own annoying lay conclusions. Quite delicious, really, the way he managed to get up academic noses.”
He peered out the window. “Hang on — I don’t see the Lamborghini.”
Clare was still trying to take in what he’d said before that. Kane the Shadow. Was that some clubby British jest, and would it turn out Farnham and her uncle had been best pals? Was the Lamborghini reference part of that? No. It seemed that her uncle had been a sort of local joke, the sight of him cruising the lanes and byways in a vastly expensive yellow car whenever he made it up from Rome.
“Did he sell it before he left for the States?” Farnham asked, giving Clare another of those ferrety looks. “He must have been a very fond uncle, all the same, to leave his Tuscan property to you.”
Clare walked to the door. The man was every bit as loathsome as she’d anticipated, but she was damned if she’d show how close that hit had come. “We’d better get going.”
“I do hope you’re not nervous about meeting some types who are not exactly fans of your uncle’s work.” His eyes made another trip from head to toe. “I’m sure a girl like you, who’s trekked the far reaches of the Amazon and Orinoco, is not likely to be phased by a swarm of waspish academics.”
“I married one. I carry anti-venom.”
He laughed. “And you’ll find an antidote, in any case, in the presence of my botanical brother-in-law. Gianpaulo is a great favourite with the ladies. Word has it the lad’s rogered every pretty girl from here to Timbuktu.”
FARNHAM KEPT UP A stream of talk as the red Alfa raced down the rutted road, then up a narrow valley at the base of the hill with the ruined tower. He gestured down a lane.
“That’s where your hermit lived. Down there.”
“My hermit?”
He explained that a few hundred years earlier an artist had fled the intrigues of the royal court of France and settled in a cave to devote himself to studying the native flowers of this area. Clare could save herself hours of tramping through the woods by going up to the museum in the town, where several volumes of the hermit’s plant illustrations were kept in the archives, available for study.
“The archaeologist who’s out here on behalf of your good friend, Harold Plank, lives down that lane as well,” he said.
Your good friend. She caught the prurient tone. Was that what people here thought, all those she’d meet tonight, just because Plank had taken such an interest in helping her? Well if it helped with her work here, why not? Reluctantly, she noted a familiar slippage, picturing herself moving through her time in Tuscany half-obscured by a swarm of glinting little lies, which might at least serve to deflect attention from the larger untruth about her Amazonia book.
They flashed through a settlement of stone houses, then past young fields collecting the last of the sun in emerald spikes, then on up a very twisting road.
“A word about your friend Plank’s archaeologist chap,” Farnham added. “I fear you’ll find Luke Tindhall to be one of those rougher sort of Brits, not averse to showing off the chest hair. Probably a secret Scot at heart.” He chuckled and repeated the phrase, as they hurtled through a set of broken pillars and crunched to a stop in a gravelled courtyard surrounded by stone buildings linked by archways and roofed passages. “So here we are. Poggio Usignolo. Nightingale Hill.”
TWO MEN IN IDENTICAL Hawaiian shirts were decanting wine from a carboy into pottery jugs, in a breezeway just ahead. “Our two resident archaeology types,” Farnham told Clare in a carrying whisper. “We call them the mollusks. They’re quite attached. Though I believe recently there’s been a little flurry ...” He f
anned the spot where his own heart might lurk.
An alarmingly handsome blonde youth turned. This was Anders Piersen, from Denmark. “Out in Tuscany doing his doctoral project,” Farnham said as he introduced them, “Though lately I’m told this consists of Anders here zooming off on his Vespa to go field walking in Umbria, following close behind our illustrious Dr. William Sands.”
The other man straightened. He was gigantic both in girth and height, with a craggy, much-furrowed face.
“And Carl!” Farnham feigned surprise. Talking over the big man’s scowl, he told Clare that Carl was a well-known architect from Berlin, where no blame had been attached regarding the collapse of a new bridge across the Spree. “All the same, Dr. Bernhoff has decided to devote himself to the study of Etruscan dental appliances now — trading one sort of bridge for another, what?”
He sidled off into the kitchen.
“He is a shit,” Anders Piersen said.
“Pish tush!” The German turned to Clare, as if consideration of Farnham wasn’t worth the bother. He told her how they’d picked up the wine that very afternoon, at a cantina where you pulled up in your car and pumped a carboy full of it, “just as though you were pumping petrol.” He filled a glass and held it to the light. “This has travelled well.” He handed it to her with a smile.
She took a long sip, then another. “Well-travelled indeed. Prosit!”
He nodded in appreciation of the toast; they both drained their glasses. As he was refilling them, a tall man with a white ponytail came out of the kitchen door and shouldered past without speaking, lost in thought. “William!” the Danish youth called after him. Then in a loud voice, “No matter. Soon I will be Doctor Anders Piersen of Aarhus. This will happen despite the reluctance of the illustrious Doctor Sands to read my dissertation.” The white ponytail disappeared into a side passage without turning.
The Whirling Girl Page 4