The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  ‘Positano?’ She glared at me with distrustful eyes. ‘We didn’t go on a plane to get there before. Papa drove us.’

  ‘No, somewhere better,’ I said.

  She screwed up her nose. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  She swiped my bare knee with her open hand. ‘I hate surprises.’

  50

  An hour into our flight Francesca stopped whining, thanks to the hostess giving her paper and a pencil and saying, ‘Francesca, can you draw the faces of everyone on the plane, please? It will help me when I serve the tea and coffee.’ Grateful for the intervention, I used the peace and quiet to think of reasons I would give Oliver and my friends for leaving Naples without Matteo and Ben. I wasn’t ready to admit my failings as a mother and wife to myself, let alone to anyone else. Nor did I want to come across as melodramatic. I had to state the facts and go on from there as and when I felt capable of unravelling the details of this prolonged nightmare. Oliver would quiz me. I needed his support, not probing questions. He hadn’t answered the call I made from a payphone inside the airport. Served me right for letting months slide by without contact. I assumed that vital diplomatic commitments occupied him, otherwise he would be in touch. Unless he’d forgotten about me. Coming home might not turn out as well as I envisaged.

  At Heathrow I kept checking behind me in case we had been followed, and made it look as though we were heading for the carpark before quickly diverting to the taxi rank. I gave the cabbie the address of Oliver’s house in Dulwich Village, which he’d purchased the previous year and raved about in a letter. A mile or so from the property Francesca banged her shoes against the partition between the cabbie and us. He growled at her in a Cockney accent. She redoubled the kicking. I had to hold her legs to make her stop. She was in a sulk when we pulled up in front of a large detached Georgian house, double garage set back from the road and plenty of off-street parking. ‘Time to get out, Frannie.’

  ‘Why? Who lives here?’ she asked.

  ‘Our friend Oliver,’ I whispered in Italian, hoping the cabbie didn’t understand. The fewer people aware of my intentions the better. Ben might guess that I would turn to my oldest friend. Surely, though, Ernesto would think we’d go to my parents’ empty house?

  ‘No suitcase, right?’ the cabbie said.

  ‘We travelled light.’

  ‘Easier to manage when you have a kiddie like her in tow.’

  Francesca reacted to his comment like a starting device at a race. ‘Who’ll give my animals their supper? Why are we here? I want Papa. He’ll be mad if he can’t find me when he gets back from the exhibition.’

  ‘Glad she’s yours and not mine,’ said the cabbie.

  ‘She’s delightful, really.’ I handed him the fare and a generous tip, and stepped with Francesca onto a spotless pavement. No rubbish piled up on this kerb.

  The drapes were pulled on the ground floor, reinforcing the inkling I had that Oliver was out of the country. I considered ringing the front doorbell, but I didn’t want the neighbours peering at us from behind their lace curtains, manicured fingernails working the telephone dials. A less conspicuous route to the rear seemed wiser.

  A low brick wall and a clipped box hedge bordered the path; beyond were an expansive lawn, gardens, and a full-sized tennis court. I slowed my pace as we reached the terrace. If Oliver was on a lengthy mission, he might have rented out the house. I peered through the kitchen window and spotted a daily, scarf knotted at the front of her battleship-grey hair, polishing the chrome handle of the refrigerator. I smoothed the wrinkles in my dress and rang the bell.

  ‘Yes?’ said the woman, opening the door.

  ‘We’re here to see Oliver Bardsley-Dutton. I’m Julia Moretti. This is my daughter, Francesca.’

  The daily twiddled with the cloth in her hand.

  Francesca said, ‘I’m Papa’s daughter, too. Why isn’t he here? And Mattie.’ She yanked at my handbag, almost wrenching it from my arm.

  ‘Francesca,’ I said crossly, ‘stop, please.’

  The daily said, ‘He’s not here, dearie. But I recognise you from a photo on the mantel. Come in.’

  Francesca had hellish tantrums all week and my nerves were shot. I jumped at the merest sound, and spent hours staring through the windows monitoring any drivers who dared to park nearby. I wished I had been more involved with Ben’s London business so I would recognise his men should they turn up. I barely slept, hardly ate and watched Francesca obsessively. The daily must have thought me a basket case.

  After checking on the eighth evening that Francesca was asleep upstairs I curled up in a high-backed chair in the snug. I was staring at the fire, wondering what Matteo and Ben were doing — might they be packing to follow us to London, or was Ernesto plotting to get us, or at least Francesca, back? — when a car glided to a stop in front of the garage. Wouldn’t Oliver drive straight in? Quaking with fright, I picked up a poker from the hearth. In stockinged-feet, I crept into the foyer and hid behind a grandfather clock.

  A key clacked in the lock, followed by the clunk of a metal-tipped umbrella hitting the bottom of a brass stand and the confident clip of classy shoes on the floor. I doubted that Ernesto carried a brolly and exhaled in relief, alerting whoever had come in that he was not alone. A light flicked on, illuminating the space. My hand tightened around the poker. I sprang from the recess, shouting, ‘Stop right there or I’ll bash you.’

  ‘Julia!’

  There was concern in Oliver’s voice, warmth in his eyes. I collapsed into his arms. He took me through to the snug, where I clung to him as he extracted a jumbled version of why I was here.

  ‘Did you give Ben a choice? Lay it on the line — his brother and the business or you and the children?’

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing of the sort.’

  There were tears and irrationalities as I accused him of being too caught up in his own life to care about mine. When I ran out of steam, he poured me a brandy and one for himself. ‘Tell me everything,’ he said.

  In this account, I was less emotional, outlining what had happened to make me fear for Francesca and letting him draw his own conclusions. We talked for hours. Utterly exhausted, I sprawled teary-eyed onto the sofa. Oliver placed a quilt over me and sat in a chair opposite.

  For the first time since landing in London, I slept through the night. I woke to the clink of plates and the smell of bacon coming from the kitchen.

  ‘Mamma left behind my pets,’ Francesca was saying to Oliver as I ventured into the passage. ‘She didn’t tell me we were coming home.’

  Oliver said, ‘I’ll drive you to a pet shop to buy a kitten.’

  ‘You’re the best,’ she said, then added, ‘after Papa.’

  You conniving little charmer, I thought, as I joined them at the table. You’ve learned from Ernesto how to flatter people to get what you want. Amid the toast and marmalade Francesca drew pictures of feline candidates in a loose-leaf pad.

  ‘Julia, I’ve applied to take three months off work to look after you and this dear girl,’ Oliver said, and blew a kiss to Francesca. ‘It should go through without a hitch. I’ve accumulated leave over the past couple of years. And I’ve employed a private investigator to run a check on that brother-in-law of yours. While we wait to see what he turns up, I’ll entertain Francesca so you can rest. You look shattered.’

  My half-hearted protest didn’t faze him. ‘You want to be in the pink when Matteo arrives, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, yes.’

  On fine days, Oliver taught Francesca to play tennis. When the weather turned foul, he tutored her indoors on the piano. At bedtime, I read her chapters from the The Jungle Book in which Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear seek to convince Mowgli to leave the jungle for civilisation. She slept with the tortoise-shell kitten that she had chosen on a trip to the shop curled around her neck. Not that it compensated for what she’d been through.

  Fo
r years afterwards, she accused me of separating her for selfish reasons from her papa, brother and animals. I kept quiet about the real reason until she was old enough to understand. When the day came, she looked at me with disdain. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Uncle Ernesto never interfered with me. It’s all in your head.’

  ‘What about the stomach aches you were having? What were they about?’

  ‘You and Papa not getting along, being too busy to spend time with me, everyone favouring Matteo because he was the son and heir, stuff like that.’

  She also berated me for my choice of bedtime reading on our return. ‘Really, Mother, ramming a story into me, night after night, about a child leaving what he loved most? What were you thinking?’

  I wanted to scream, ‘I was thinking of you!’ Instead I said contritely, ‘I apologise for not making the connection between Mowgli’s situation and yours, and separating you from Papa and Mattie. I thought I was acting in your best interest.’

  She walked off in a huff. Had it all been in my head, or had I removed her just in time? In those early weeks I was convinced I had saved her, but was I wrong, was I deluded?

  For several evenings, while Francesca was in bed, I provided Oliver with further details about Ernesto’s manipulations, including how he had plied me with wine, Ben’s moodiness, the tension between me and Matteo, Ilaria’s role in our escape, my dire financial situation.

  A couple of weeks passed. Oliver and I were in the snug beside a dying fire. It was late. Francesca had been asleep for hours when Oliver said, ‘You were right about Ernesto. According to my informant, his fingerprints are on every dodgy deal going in the region. If I’d paid more attention to what you and Ben didn’t say on the phone or write in your letters we might have salvaged the situation before it reached this stage.’ He thrust the poker into the embers and stirred them. The last log caught alight. ‘I let you down, Julia.’

  ‘It’s a ghastly mess, but I’m responsible, not you.’

  Oliver slumped in his chair, ran a thumb and forefinger across his brow. ‘I wanted to believe you were happy.’

  ‘I should have been frank. Pride stopped me.’

  ‘Do you think it was the same for Ben?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. The more pressure that was piled on him, the faster he descended into the doldrums. His moods worsened after his mother died. Even if I’d thought to suggest he consult a doctor, I doubt he’d have gone.’

  Unloading to Oliver, and making long-distance calls to Ilaria, brought me fleeting relief. She intended to intercept Matteo as he walked alone to school and offer him a lift. In her handbag she carried a letter I’d posted to her from me to him, explaining how Oliver and I would be waiting at Rome airport with his passport and one-way ticket to London. In our absence, Oliver’s daily would care for Francesca. Once Matteo was home, Oliver would instruct the investigator looking into Ernesto to ascertain whether it was worth encouraging Ben to return. While I waited for news, I mulled over what to tell Clinty, Marsha and Diann when I felt up to contacting them.

  I also went to see the family solicitor with Oliver. Between them, and I assumed with Ben’s agreement, although his name never came up in the conversations and I was too nervous to ask, they arranged to release funds on a monthly basis from my parents’ trust fund to support Francesca and me; Matteo too, when he joined us. Three weeks after I signed a couple of documents, money appeared in a bank account in my name. Receiving my own chequebook felt like a huge step towards financial independence.

  51

  To stay abreast with the news from Naples, and watch for Matteo’s name in the football results, I had taken out a subscription to Il Mattino, the paper Ernesto and Ben read. Coming across a photograph of Ilaria as I flicked through the pages of a late January edition jolted me out of the usual morning lethargy that ensnared me after I dropped Francesca at the school she attended as a day pupil. Everything went cold and still. There had to be a mistake. Ilaria couldn’t be dead. She was more than a friend: she was my lifeline to Matteo. I read the article in disbelief.

  The report described the brakes on Ilaria’s car failing on a bend as she travelled from the city to Ravello. Yes, Ilaria drove with zeal, but she made regular trips along the coast road. They were part of her professional life. She knew every curve, every tight corner. I had firsthand experience of her quick reactions. She kept her car in good order. Her eyesight was perfect. Something else was at work, something with tentacles.

  Images mushroomed in my mind. I closed my eyes to block them without success. Imagination took care of the rest. Ilaria pumping the brake pedal, the car skidding off the road, tumbling down the cliff-face, water swallowing the vehicle, windows and doors jammed shut, screams fading to gasps, lungs flooding, blackness.

  If Ilaria had died in London, Queenstown or Dunedin, I’d have contacted a senior police officer and voiced my suspicions. In Naples it wasn’t so straightforward. There were civil and military police, and blurred lines between them. It was common knowledge that corruption operated in both forces. Ilaria had heard of officers with links to the Camorra. She had warned me never to seek their help. Had I put her in harm’s way? Was she dead because I had nagged Ben into taking the children and me to his birthplace? Was this Ernesto’s first step to stop me reaching Matteo? Would his next move be to snatch Francesca and take her back?

  Overwrought, I phoned Oliver on his private work number. He had ducked into his office to pick up some papers he wanted to check before passing them on to a colleague. Although he said all the right things he sounded distracted. Five minutes into the conversation, I asked if there was another person in the room.

  ‘A friend has popped in,’ he said. ‘We met at a party. You’ll like him, Julia. Everyone does.’

  The giddy ring to his voice threw me. I had expected sympathy, not frivolity. However, I knew that shock could affect people in irrational ways. Hadn’t we turned the kitchen at the villa into a football venue after Alessia’s funeral? But still. ‘Come home soon,’ I urged, ‘and be careful.’

  ‘I’m tied up until late.’

  There was stifled laughter in the background, a muffled exchange of words. Oliver said into the phone, ‘We’ll talk in the morning, Julia.’

  I hung up, shaking. If Ilaria had been murdered, anyone connected to me could be in danger. Thankfully I hadn’t been in the right headspace to contact my London friends. I checked all the locks and windows in the house, cut out the article and scrubbed every surface in the kitchen and laundry. I suppose I wanted to rid my conscience of culpability, although I wasn’t aware of this at the time. Insight hangs out in shadows. After my cleaning purge, I buried my face in a cushion and screamed and screamed. I was almost hoarse when Oliver arrived home.

  He sought to console me, though nothing he said convinced me that Ilaria’s death was an accident. I kept the clipping with me day and night, whether I was arranging flowers, shopping for groceries, ferrying Francesca to and from school, or seeing her headmistress to impress on her that no one but me or Oliver was to collect her.

  While I was in her office, the head raised another concern: ‘Francesca is a wilful child. If she didn’t possess a first-class brain, I’d expel her. Whenever another pupil beats her in a test, she gives the victor a vile tongue-lashing.’ I thought of Alessia at her worst. Was there an element of her in Francesca? ‘This sort of behaviour has to stop, Mrs Moretti. Otherwise …’ She tapped her pencil on her desk.

  Oliver and I agreed to buy Francesca another pet of her choice at the end of term if she behaved during school hours. We also encouraged her to bash a tennis ball against a wall of the house whenever she needed to let off steam.

  At night, I slept fitfully with the clipping under my pillow. On waking, I would pretend I’d had a nightmare, that Ilaria was fine. But as the fantasy faded, I would reread the article and face the cold, hard fact that I no longer had a reliable means of contacting Matteo.

  Oliver suggested we telephone Ben.
I was reluctant. He had made no attempt to contact me through the solictor or Oliver. I had thought my absconding with Francesca would compel him to book tickets home for Matteo and himself. On reflection, I don’t think he fully appreciated my reason for removing Francesca from the villa. I’d been circumspect in the letter I left in his jacket pocket, not wanting my accusations to sound too disturbing in case he wrote me off as crazy. I had also lost perspective of Ben’s worth as a person. I only agreed to the call on the off-chance that I might speak to our son.

  Saturday evening, 8.45 p.m. Francesca was in bed, Oliver and I in the front reception room. We figured that if Ben hadn’t altered his habits, he would be playing chess with Matteo in the drawing room, close to the phone in the hall.

  Oliver dialled the number. There was a short wait for the connection to go through. He held the receiver out from his ear so I could listen in. Preoccupied with what to say to Ben, it took me longer to identify the disconnected ringtone. As the reality hit, I swept a candlestick off the mantelpiece onto the hearth.

  Worried that I was falling apart, Oliver summoned a doctor, who injected me with a drug that rendered me incapable of climbing the stairs unaided.

  I woke with a thumping headache, so similar to the ones I’d had at the villa that I had to wonder whether Ernesto had filled my glasses with more than wine. All this speculation and uncertainty left me questioning everything, even the jangle of crockery coming up the stairs as Oliver brought a breakfast tray into my room.

  ‘I’m concerned about you,’ he said. ‘Here’s the name of a psychoanalyst with rooms in Hampstead.’ He handed me a card.

  ‘I can’t talk to a stranger.’

  ‘No arguments,’ he said. ‘I’ve made an appointment for you.’

  I stared at the news article that I had retrieved from under the pillow.

  He took the clipping from me. ‘Where’s the photo, Julia?’ He meant the one I had popped in my handbag as I left the Vomero. ‘If I put the clipping with it,’ he said, ‘there’s less chance they’ll get damaged or be misplaced.’