Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (82 page)

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he answered, but I saw his discomfiture, though he carried it off well enough. He walked through the french doors and raised a casual hand. “You play well,” he said. “I heard it, and couldn’t resist — ”

“It’s a glorious instrument,” I said. “It needs tuning, though. How about a drink?”

“Thank you, but I must get back. Another time, signorina.”

“My name is Barbara.”

“Yes, I know. I — ”

“It’s not all that important,” I said, annoyed and a little bit angered. “Signorina will do, if you can’t manage anything else.” I knew I sounded shrewish, but I couldn’t help it. Was I, then, a barbarian? An American outlander who merited nothing more than an impersonal “Miss?” Even though he had kissed me and put his arms around me? I was beginning to form a cold, crystal-clear picture of the Monteverdis. Snobs, whether you called them by title or addressed them simply as signore and signora.

He was backing out the french doors again. Smiling, with those long eyelashes, and looking more than a little embarrassed. I said, crisply, “Have a good evening.”

“Grazie, e lei”
he said, and was gone.

I could hear his soft footsteps over the grass. And looking out, saw him go through the dividing gate. Right after that there was the pop of a cork and pleased exclamations.

A party? It sounded like it. Apparently the Monteverdis were drinking champagne. Having a high old time. Poor or not poor, they certainly lived well.

I couldn’t account for the spleen that rose in me. That they were out there, on the other side of the gate, laughing and enjoying themselves. I just thought, after all this was my aunt’s villa …

But my aunt was dead. And the Monteverdis, apparently, weren’t grieving, to any great extent, about that circumstance. They seemed to be getting along just fine. And although there was no reason for it, it made me angry … and querulous …

After all, it was still the property of someone else. Of Elizabeth Wadley. The carnival atmosphere next door made me peevish, uneasy too, and even unhappy. I wished, at that moment, that my dead aunt could have risen up from her grave, to put them in their place. Pious they were, about what a fine woman Mercedes had been … but they had forgotten. And they made merry, while she lay in her cerements …

• • •

We sat once more at the table between the windows, looking out onto the purpling evening and eating a delicious dish of clams, crisp bacon, springy mazzorella cheese and delicate breading. It was fit for a king, and I told Elizabeth so.

She accepted my compliments with a pleased smile, and ate twice as much as I did. It was almost ten o’clock when we turned on the television, and I saw at once that she had spoken the truth. The reception was horrible. “It’s hopeless,” Elizabeth said at last, and admitted that, anyway, it was her bedtime. I said fine with me, that I really
had
to write some letters. “I must get some things from the shops tomorrow,” she said. “The larder’s running low.”

“May I do the shopping?” I asked. “If I can take the car … or we could both go. Whatever you say.”

“You wouldn’t mind going yourself?”

“I’d enjoy it very much.”

“Then I’ll make out a list,” she said. “Oh, my, I’m enjoying having you here so much, Barbara.”

She kissed my cheek. “It’s such a
blessing
having you here. I don’t really like being alone. It’s a difficult adjustment.”

“I’m sure.”

I left her at the door of her room and then went on to mine. Lucrezia reported at eight o’clock in the morning, so I didn’t bother to set my alarm. I sat at a table near the open windows, with a rosy lamp and my postcards, at last letting all and sundry know of my whereabouts and, rather elaborately, I fear, described the environs. There was much purple prose, for which anyone, under the circumstances, might have been forgiven. Let them know what they were missing.

I knocked off ten cards, wrote a long letter to my parents, brushed my teeth and went to bed. It was difficult falling asleep, because I was enchanted with my surroundings, intoxicated with the ineffable smells that wafted in from outdoors. I remember muttering, “Lucky, lucky girl,” and then I sank into a deep sleep.

I woke sluggishly, because someone was screaming, but it was difficult to orient myself. My eyes were tight shut, my body in a kind of mummy vise. But someone had screamed. You heard it, a part of my numbed brain said. A scream in the night … you must do something about it.

Yes, some part of me answered dutifully. I must certainly do something about it.

I sank into slumber again. But conscience was nagging at me. I had heard a scream. Therefore I must do something about it.

And my eyes flew open. Someone had screamed!

I was suddenly with it. Torpor vanished, and I sprang out of bed, listened. Then stopped hesitating and reached for my robe.

The house, in the darkness, gave me to pause. I stood for a second, trying to get my bearings, and then groped my way, bumping into a few pieces of furniture, to Elizabeth’s room. Because who else was in this house? Just the two of us. So it must have been Elizabeth who had screamed.

“Elizabeth?” I called, and then reached her bedroom. The door was open and the moonlight poured in. She had stopped screaming and was now swearing softly. I heard a couple of very explicit four letter words, uttered with feeling, and I went over to where she was sitting up in bed.

“What is it?” I asked, “what is it?”

She gave vent to a particularly expressive Anglo-Saxonism and then said, “It’s all right.”

“But what
happened?
”

She stopped muttering. “Oh, I’m so
very
sorry,” she said at last. “I was sleeping too soundly, and I turned over to my right side. I didn’t think I could move. I was paralyzed. It’s so … damned painful.”

“Oh, poor dear,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Yes, I understand, you told me about it. Your hip. Are you a little better now?”

“Yes, of course. Oh, I do so hate being old! I think sometimes I should be strapped down, like someone in a madhouse. So that I don’t turn the wrong way. It’s such a cross! And it does hurt so …”

She put a hand to her mouth. “My dear, I apologize. I suppose I was screeching and keening. Mercedes was used to it. She simply ignored it, and so, my dear, must you.”

“Let me make you some hot tea. Or rather a brandy?”

“Please don’t bother. Except … you could fetch me my pills, dear. They’re on the bottom shelf of the cabinet. Would you mind? The medicine chest. They’re sleeping capsules … red and green.”

I groped my way to the bathroom, found the light switch and then, opening the medicine chest, found the sleeping caps. There was a plastic glass on a shelf; I filled it with water from the tap and brought the vial and glass to her. By this time she had turned on a bedside lamp.

She swallowed one of the pills, drank the water, and handed the lot back to me. “You’re a good girl,” she said. “I’m sorry to have woken you. Everything will be all right now. I’ll sleep well, and I won’t turn. My mind is obedient now. I’ll be fine. Thank you. Now go back to your bed.”

I bent to put my lips on her cheek. “Barbara, you’re a lovely girl,” she said tremulously, and I shushed her. When I left she was lying on her “good” side, her left. Her nightgown was a grannie gown, a soft fleece, in a pale shade of yellow. Somehow, in spite of her years, she looked like a little girl, being put to bed by Mother. It caught at my heart. You grew old … but you wanted help, and succor … and love.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, rubbing my cheek against hers. “Remember, I’m not far from your room. If you should need me, I’ll be there. Count on it.”

The faded blue eyes looked up at me. With gratitude, with trust. “Thank you, my dear,” Elizabeth Wadley said. “Thank you so very much.”

I turned out the light and went back to my own room. I was wide awake. I lit a cigarette, went to the windows, and looked out onto the beautiful gardens, lit fitfully by the light of a sickle moon. Thoughts were churning in my mind. The handkerchief that had belonged to my great-aunt. Stiff and crumpled with the dark residue of blood. But Mercedes hadn’t bled. She had broken her neck … otherwise there was no sign.

Then what about the stained handkerchief?

And then a really electric thought came to me. The cookie. In Eleanora’s basket. In the pocket of one of my jackets now … with the cambric handkerchief.

My God, I thought. My God! I had taken only a taste of one of Eleanora’s cookies and shortly thereafter had been violently ill. Vomiting, nausea, a horrendous headache. Just from a tiny taste.

Most of it I had spit out. I hadn’t swallowed more than a grain or two.

And the dog, Paolo, dying with a blood-specked muzzle …

Gianni had said, “He must have gotten into some weed-killer.”

Weed-killer?

An animal didn’t eat grass, or flowers. Except for a rabbit, or a rat. Dogs had a better intelligence. Dogs, who lived in the country, didn’t die from weed-killer. They knew better. They knew
better.

I turned away from the windows and went to the jacket I’d worn that morning. Pulled out the cookie I’d taken from the little girl’s basket and looked at it.

I sniffed.

It simply smelled stale and old. I put a finger to it and then put the finger in my mouth. There was a bitter taste, a horrid taste.

Recklessly, I bit off a tiny piece of it, rolled it about on my tongue. Why was I doing this? I didn’t know. I felt the crumb melting in my mouth and, suddenly scared, went to the bathroom and spit it into the bowl. But of course it had mixed with my saliva. I kept spitting and then swallowed a glass of water. Wild imaginings came naturally to me, and I was imagining at a great rate.

I faced myself in the mirror, told myself to calm down, and went back to bed, snapping out the bedroom light and then the lamp in my room. The sheets, once again, felt cool and delicious, and I drifted off.

Sweat, between my breasts and beading my forehead, woke me. I rolled over, groaning. The knot in my stomach was tying me up so that I could scarcely move. I lay, gasping for breath, the nausea flooding through me in waves. My head felt as if a pile-driver was bludgeoning it.

I fell off the side of the bed, landing with a thump, but I didn’t feel the hurt of it, only that ghastly nausea, the blurred vision, and my head pounding, throbbing.
I had to get to the bathroom …

Somehow I did. And once again, crouching on the tiled floor, leaned over the bowl. The contents of my stomach found their way into it. I thought I’d expire with the pain in my head: my eyes were tear-filled. They felt bloody.

Poisoned, I thought, sagging back, my head against the wall. Poisoned …

Like the dog.

And then I leaned over the bowl again. It was so excrutiating, so horrible. It was terrifying. It was agony.

I don’t know how long I sat there, on the cold tile, waiting for the next seizure. Perhaps an hour. When I was able, at last, to drag myself back to bed, I was as
limp as a sick cat. And now, I thought, as I lay in bed again, I knew. The cookies that lovely little girl had carried in her pretty little basket had been lethal. She hadn’t taken them from the family table, but had found them on the grounds somewhere. There had been someone who intended the dog, Paolo, to eat them, and then die. But Eleanora had found some of them too, and had “saved” them, along with her other “secrets.” Damn it, I thought, writhing with the stomach ache … hadn’t that awful person, whoever he or she was, realized that a child might come across them?

If that beautiful little girl had indulged herself … in her innocent greediness, eaten one of the cookies …

She would have died in agony, beyond help, beyond salvation …

Who could have done this horrible thing?

I had a childish thought.
I
want my mother.

No, I thought tiredly, trying to sleep. It’s too late for that. I was grown up now and, anyway, she was too far away. I was on my own. No longer a child. My battles were my own, from here on in.

I turned, and sighed. I was so tired, so damned tired. And because of that, at last I slept. My limbs relaxed and my eyes closed. Until the bright sun, streaming into my room, snapped my eyes open.

Warily, I moved a bit. I was weak, but my headache was gone and so was the nausea. Mainly, there was anger. Why should anyone have wanted to harm a little dog? For what reason, to what advantage? I remembered Paolo’s glassy eyes, the foam of blood on his muzzle. It could have been me too. It could have been that lovely little girl. Or anyone.

But why, but why?

When I was dressed I hunted up Lucrezia, who was coddling eggs in the kitchen, and told her that I had a recurrence of my “tummy trouble.” Thereupon I was given some more entero-vioform, another dose of Fernet Branca and inside half an hour was feeling considerably better.

After breakfast, in the garden with Elizabeth, we discussed the household needs and, as she had said she would, had made out a list. She gave me the address of a
drogheria
, a grocery, where I would find fruit and vegetables, and that of a shop which sold meat and fish, both on the Via Cerretani. Then she gave me the keys to the little blue Lancia.

I had my map with me, but first I had to drive down that precipitous, winding road. At least
I
was driving, and could go at my own pace. I was ultra-cautious, particularly when the road opened up, where there were no houses, to show the plunging descent far, far down below. There was only a two-foot road barrier, of stone, between my car and the seemingly bottomless chasm below. But there were no other cars, though I honked warningly at each curve, and then I was at the foot, on terra firma, going through the old city wall, breathing normally once more.

I crossed the river at the Ponte delle Vittoria, drove along the Lungarno and found myself heading for the Via Tornabuoni, close by. I had made a quick decision … impulse, perhaps, but on the spur of the moment I decided to talk to Signore Predelli about the things that were puzzling me. I had, yes, a vivid imagination, was well known for it … but it hadn’t been imagination that had made me deathly sick after a taste of a cookie given to me by a small child.