Fragile Blossoms (20 page)

The high-spot of this trip is the ease of conversation. Last year was the first on Italian soil. The Carringtons are experienced travellers and with Luke as passenger they toured the major cities. It was new and strange. Because of the familial connection he had hoped for a sense of belonging. What he got was an aching neck from gazing up at living history and the stupid brain-numbing exclusion that comes with not ‘understanding the lingo’ as Freddie puts it.

Magnificent though they are cities like Florence and Rome are not the Italy Luke came to revere. Earlier this year he came alone to Italy and to the Brenta Mountains and found a homeland. He’ll return again but alone. As far as he is concerned this trip is about trying to find freedom for Eve Carrington and Luke Roberts.

Their association is a mistake and their regret was mutual and immediate. Three years and still they struggle to like one another. If asked why it doesn’t work he’d say they were each and separately offered a gift that neither really wanted. They spend very little time together. So much work on hand, and little desire to be there, is seldom at Russell Square. Several building contracts on the go this trip is time away he can ill-afford. He can’t wait to get back.

Life with the Carringtons is noise. That’s it, noise. House-to-house and country-to-country they are forever on the move and they take their noise with them, a grating sound like rocks rubbing even when no one is speaking.

With the exception of Freddie’s pal, John Sargent, they feel no need to be still. Even when painting Eve’s moving and talking, ‘what does he think of this and what is his opinion on that.’ He used to respond to such questions but not now, his opinion scorned. Last night at dinner asked his thoughts on the Caravaggio
Boy with Basket of Fruit
he said the boy was unlike any child he knew but the fruit real, fungus and all. Evelyn had laughed. ‘That’s a typical snarl from a Wolf who only ever sees his lair as half empty.’ She was taken to task by Robert Scholtz, ‘Caravaggio was awful fond of pointing out a perceived defect, as it seems are you, Milady Carrington.’

Luke is not unduly bothered by criticism, Nan Roberts an expert at the game, compared to her Eve Carrington is an amateur. But constant nit-picking here in Rome - pointless since it is before servants who understand very little English- makes him feel like he is choking. Such noise and never alone! There are attendants, nameless and faceless, folding and pouring and carrying. Used to dealing for himself Luke finds it unnecessary. Under observation twenty four hours a day he drops a knife and a dozen elevated eyebrows stoop to pick it up. Same in the bedroom he yawns and a manservant asks what nightshirt he favours and how does he like his bath. He can’t blink without someone enquiring his need.

‘For the love of God back off and let a man breath!’

Grimacing, he kicked at a pebble. Miserable arse that he is making inventory of his woes! Albert would say, put up or shut up. He wants to call quits, wants to say goodbye Eve and thank you, but fettered by guilt he is a cripple waiting for a voice to say pick up thy bed and walk. Until he hears it he’s stuck.

Eve Carrington is a broken person. Things said and done these last years, the sharp tongue and slighting, the violence, most men would be long gone. He hangs on. After all you don’t throw away treasure because it’s damaged, you try using it gently. Trouble is you can’t be gentle with Eve; she recognises a curse rather than a kiss. So changeable he doesn’t know from one moment to the next who he’s with. She’ll give the coat off her back but then an inner voice from the past will see kindness as weakness and she’ll snatch the coat back and a layer of skin with it. Then there’s Freddie who is a drunk and spends his life running from the past. Sometimes he doesn’t run fast enough and wakes in the night screaming. Harm has been done to them both, terrible harm. It has made a counterfeit of Freddie, a poisonous albeit fragile blossom of Eve, and a coward of Luke.

Albert Roberts taught Luke never to lie. Now every day he lies if not to Eve then to himself. Below stairs he’s known as ‘Milady’s tame brute.’ Tamed he may be but he’s no brute thus he doesn’t know how to extricate his body while keeping his soul intact.

‘
Mister Wolf, please don’t leave me
.
I don’t know what I’ll do if you leave me.
’

This is her plea first thing in the morning and late at night, between times she rips at him heart and soul. In the early morning, a child knuckling her eyes, she seeks forgiveness nuzzling his neck and sighing, it’s the same before they sleep. There are times when he has almost escaped, when indifference has dulled his senses and his thoughts are so far from Russell Square his flesh may as well follow, that when her body does the talking.

That first night, the invitation tea-for-two, he came to her a virgin. It didn’t take her long to realise. Eyes flashing like those of a tigress she’d cried out. ‘You’ve not done this before! I am the first!’ With that she’d leapt from the bed returning to empty a bottle of champagne over his naked body.

Laughing she was, Jezebel, Queen of Desire. ‘I name this ship Invincible. God bless this barque and all who sail in him.’ She thought it exciting, and so for a while did he, but then what man would not be excited by that first exquisite touch of mouth and hand. Her mouth a pump applied to his loins, passion, a dry underground river these thirty years, rushed to the surface.

Whatever happens, however long he lives, memories of that first dazzling explosion will remain.

Luke knows he is nothing to her. Other lovers call at the house but as with him they are distractions. Her love-making is random. She’s on the outside looking in. ‘Don’t think you’re the only one,’ says Nan. ‘She’ll have others in her bed. You’re a sweetie to suck until she gets bored and spits you out.’ Freddie hints a similar thing. ‘Don’t get too close, dear chap, she’ll do you harm.’ It’s too late for warnings! Harm was done the day he walked out of the N and N Tea Shop with Eve on his arm. What more harm can she now do?

Nan asks why he stays, can’t he find a better way to live and a better woman to love. There’s no clear answer unless it is one of pity and he does pity Eve because when she is happy she ablaze with joy a magnificent soul emptying beneficence upon the world. Other than that it is one endless noise.

Lately the noise is inside his head which is why he stays away. If she misses him she doesn’t say, her questions are always of Norfolk, has he been there and did he see Julianna. It’s all about Julianna and always will be. When he does go home he avoids the Tea Shop and the Nelson, too many questions to avoid, and too close to the woman he’s never stopped loving. As for the Forge he misses that so much that often in sleep he follows his soul homeward aboard the cart, his good old horse, Betty, clip-clopping through the mist.

A ghost he does as he used to do, he feeds the horse and beds her down, and then a pale man naked as a babe he climbs the stairs to the loft and sleeps with the stars for an eiderdown.

Julia is at the Great Pyramid. Last night a booklet was dropped off at the hotel a scrawled note pinned to relevant pages. ‘Flinders Petrie, the famous archaeologist, offers his thoughts on the route to the King’s Chamber.’

‘‘...
a stairway cut into the rock but narrow and the only light carried by guides. It was not an easy climb our way was hampered by mounds of fallen debris and the air heavy with dust. For much of the way I had to crawl on my hands and knees, the ceiling scraping my scull. It was a daunting climb particularly to one is troubled by confined spaces. As I found it is worth the effort but only for the brave
.’

The note was a red rag to a bull hence they are here now inside the pyramid and climbing down. Like Mr Petrie Julia is not good with confined spaces and this inky darkness makes it difficult to breathe. The four of them, a guide up front, Miss Radcliff and then Julianna and a guide at the back, all shuffled down a narrow staircase. The forward guide carries a lantern to light the rough hewn steps. ‘Missy, you be careful,’ he says. The guide at back chews betel nuts and spits skins out into the darkness. Preoccupied with keeping her footing Miss Radcliff is thankfully silent. Back bowed Julia crawls on. That it is a perilous journey is obvious and yet the indifference of guides at the mouth of the tunnel suggests many tourists attempt it even foolish English ladies.

If it wasn’t so macabre it would be laughable. What am I doing, thought Julia? Am I trying to prove some damned silly point? What happens if I fall and break my neck? Do they bury me down here beside my poor Owen or do they haul me back up again as undeserving? Anger keeps her going. Miss Radcliff! Be damned if address her as Professor! She doesn’t deserve the title. I mean, who is she? Owen never mentioned her and he’d write every day when on a dig.

Last night Julia dreamt of him. She rarely dreams of Owen, it is always Matty who has tales to tell. In the odd dream she does have he is always kind. Last night he was not kind, he was an ogre with the body of a lion and head of a Jackal, Anubis, He was Lord of the Underworld. Once before she dreamt he sat beside the Sphinx. In this dream he was the Sphinx. ‘You have a question for me?’ he’d said, his voice of rolling thunder. A gag applied to her mouth she was unable to speak. He asked again. ‘Do you have a question?’ Desperate to know of this Radcliff woman and what she meant to him Julia tugged at the gag but could not get it free. With that he’d leaned down his eyes afire. ‘You cannot ask!’ he’d roared. ‘Such a question is unworthy of me and you!’

She woke knowing she must have faith. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says. Arrogance, stuffed pigs, and a brave Knight in an empty tomb might be Kitty Radcliffe’s memories but they are not Julia’s. They are not a cloak to wear nor are they shoes. She doesn’t have to wear them. The Owen Passmore she knew was honourable and kind and never known to deceive. That’s the man she knew and that’s the man she’ll remember.

*

Sighing and straightening his shoulders Luke entered the Villa.

‘Is that you?’ she called from the terrace.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re rather late.’

‘Not so much.’

‘What kept you?’

‘I met someone.’

‘Oh, who?’ Hair piled up and dusted with white powder she came through the doors walking in a jerky side-step the skirts of the crinoline gown swaying.

‘Ah hell!’ It was then he remembered. Tonight is the masked ball and he is to be her partner.

‘Yes, hell indeed!’ she said patting the gown. ‘If you think I’m laced into this horror for the joy of it you’re wrong. The carriage is due and you have exactly ten minutes to be dressed and ready.’

‘I’m sorry. It slipped my mind.’

‘You’re sorry and so am I. I don’t know why I bother. You’re never interested in such things. It’s always a chore. You’d sooner be plastering walls in Wapping or laying drains in the Manchester mud.’ She called Jamieson, the ever constant manservant who accompanies them everywhere, to lay out the costume Luke is to wear, ‘a raspberry pink silk embroidered cutaway coat and a frilled jabot in keeping with the character.’

‘And what character is that? I mean, who am I meant to be?’

‘Whoever you choose! It’s that kind of an evening.’

‘In that case if you don’t mind I’ll go as myself.’

‘Yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, you can’t do that. We don’t have a wolf skin handy. You can settle for a mask. After all it’s your identity you’re to conceal not your true nature.’

‘As you wish.’ He walked into the dressing room. As always she followed. He surveyed her in the glass. ‘And so you dressed as Madame Pompadour? Is that a reflection of your true nature?’

‘I hope not.’ She picked up a bottle from the wash-stand. ‘I don’t see myself as Pompadour. I am more a
religieuse
a la
Madame de Montespon, beloved of the Sun King, though I doubt anyone tonight will know the difference, one Madame from another, and why should they, they were all whores.’

Such was fizzing scent of gunpowder Luke refrained from comment.

She dabbed cologne behind her ears. ‘I confess to dithering between the two Louis, the later gowns are so much prettier. But in the end, sensible woman that I am, I settled for Montespon and exile sooner than lose my head.’

‘Did any of those women fare much better?’

‘Do you mean did they see old age?’

‘Well, something like that.’

‘Of course not! Courtesans aren’t meant to grow old. They are meant to dazzle and die. They are as Roman Candles a burst of glory and a dark pit.’

Luke unbuttoned his shirt. ‘And from pitch of this conversation I’m assuming you are already in the dark pit.’

‘What do you mean already? I am never out. I was born in a dark pit. Now do make haste and at least try to look divine if nothing else.’

His shirt was taken up and borne away. Jamieson appeared with jugs of hot water and then another with fresh towels, the raspberry pink cutaway over his arm. It was a large dressing room but what with servants and Evie’s brooding anger it felt real crowded.

Tipsy, a couple of upturned wine bottles in a cooler, she leant again the mirrored wall and was replicated over and again, a porcelain doll in a white powdered wig. ‘Who was it that kept you?’

‘Kept me?’

‘You said you met someone.’

‘Oh, some chap in one of the squares.’

‘What sort of a chap?’

‘Just a chap.’

‘He must have been a fascinating chap to keep you so long.’

‘He was.’

‘And what was the fascination? I mean apart from the fact that it kept you from doing your duty to me.’

‘He was architect.’

‘Ah, ceiling elevation and joints and things, a case of like attracting like.’

‘It was exactly that.’

‘Was it Roman ceiling elevation you discussed or the more mundane?’

‘We talked of flying buttress and Westminster Abbey.’

‘Westminster Abbey!’ She smiled. ‘My word a high elevation indeed! And in this discussion were you able to hold your own?’

‘I hope so.’

‘
Lei ha parlato in Italiano
?’

‘
Si, nella mia lingua madre
.’

‘Well good for you, though I hardly think it is your mother tongue. Our Nanette is a little too much from up t’North to chime with that.’

Luke walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He should never have mentioned Lucca Aldaro. At the time Eve heaping gifts upon him he’d wanted to give her a gift and told how his real father was Italian. Big mistake! That he should have a history other than that of a plumber from Bakers End was not what she wanted. He had mystery now where once was ordinary and she didn’t like it. Now everywhere they go she scratches the secret hoping to wound. ‘Do you think your real Papa ever supped here?’ she said in Venice, in St Mark’s Square where an ice-frappe costs a millworker’s yearly wage. Then on the train from Florence; ‘Look at that dear little hut nestling among the hills! It has your name of it, Senor Roberts. What say we buy it as a summer home? We can plant vines and sit and drink wine in the sun.’

In those moments he hates her. She knows and smiling waits his response. So far he’s managed to swallow anger. To remain impassive is the weapon of choice. Confounded by silence she loses her temper and boxes his ears. Last time she drew blood. Freddie goes crazy. ‘What’s wrong with you, Evie?’ he shouts. ‘Why so cruel? Keep on like this and one day you’ll be knocked from pillar to post and it won’t be Luke that does it. It’ll be one of those you prize higher, some moronic Lord with a rustic title and hefty fist.’

As always this is about Julianna. Eve can deride his beginnings and his trade. She can scoff at him not knowing a Caravaggio from a Ruebens but it is his love of Julianna she’s getting at. ‘You’re with her, aren’t you?’ Out of the blue the question will come. He’ll be walking along the street or in a carriage and she’ll pull on his arm. ‘It’s Ju-ju! You’re thinking of her!’ Nine times out of ten she’s right, and if it’s not Julianna he remembers it’ll be her son.

Matty is constantly in his head. So much does that little boy occupy mental space he might be here right now sitting on the wash-stand. At times it’s a natural situation like a child today feeding pigeons in the square. But is it natural to see Matty here in the Villa as he did last night. It was only a moment, a second maybe, and then the smiling child became a jar of dried grasses. Then there’s Thursday and Matty and his dog crossing the San Carlo Bridge, Kaiser wagging his tail!

It’s this place! It’s Italy. Here among the dusty magic the imagination runs mad. Who in Rome cannot dream of the beloved? Every day when writing to Nan he asks if Matty is well, knowing that if he is well then so is Julianna. Luke told Eve of his father but didn’t tell of the visit in May and how he learned he had family in Madonna de Campiglio, Aldaro aunts and uncles and a grandfather. In Rome as in Florence and Venice the spirit reels under the weight of the Italian History. Luke’s body is a weather vane turning to the future. He returns to England but doubts he will stay. He’s for the mountains and silence, and if God be willing he’ll take Matty and Julianna with him.

The evening went surprisingly well despite Eve’s need to spoil it. A harvest moon low in the sky and lanterns hanging from the trees they dined al fresco, food brought from the kitchens to tables on carpeted grass. A group of musicians under a marble folly played, couples danced on the Long Terrace light flashing on jewelled masks and fabulous clothes. It was not so much a Masked Ball as a picnic, which is as well the Villa Borghese a beautiful place filled with magnificent works of art but rundown and stinking of mould.

Luke sat unmasked at a table his mind a thousand miles away. Robert Scholtz was amused. ‘Mr Roberts, sir, I believe I know what you are thinking. This is fine building filled with fine things but you wouldn’t want to live here.’

‘I would not.’

‘It’s not exactly home sweet home, is it?’

‘Can such a place ever be thought of as home?’

‘Perhaps to a Papal Lord but not to me,’ said Robert. ‘I’m a well travelled man. My wife, the original Baedeker, says we must learn of other cultures and continually hikes me from one country to the next. I am glad to go and more glad to return. This place, the Villa Borghese, needs constant managing and without the money and time to do it will quickly fall into ruin. I’ll make you a bet. This time next year the Italian government will have bought the family out. It’s the only way the Villa and its treasures can survive.’

A cultured man Robert Scholtz owns an art gallery in New York and collects fine art. First and last a businessman his gaze is everywhere assessing and evaluating, his wife too, though a quiet lady, knows the state of the dollar and down to a cent the best rate of exchange. Luke likes them both. Robert Scholtz is the man behind the Scholtz Imperial Hotels that decorate the East Coast of America. For the last three years he’s been in England looking to buy, and for the last two years has sought Luke’s advice.

Robert tapped his cigar. ‘You know in Boston a man of your talent and integrity would do fine. You’d have so much work you’d be able to buy that mouldering heap of marble and have change. I am hard pressed these days to find men worthy of hire especially in aspects of trade that need urgent action like building and plumbing. Come home with me and Mamie! I could do much for you.’

‘Thank you, you already have. It was you put the hotel in Harrogate my way.’

‘Yes and I was happy to do so. I saw what you did with the Winthrop place in Derbyshire. Talk about a Phoenix from the ashes! You turned a ruin into a home of real comfort and you saved my pal, Bernie, a lot of trouble from his ulcer. I hear you’re looking into electricity?’

‘Not me personally. I pay a couple of apprentices to learn the trade but won’t be taking it on. I don’t need another string to my bow. I’ve too many as it is.’

‘Sensible! A man should be master of one talent and not play with many. But remember what I said about Boston. I’d be happy to put business your way.’

The two men talked. Luke was not at all put out by the company or the occasion. It’s mad. Every day Eve seeks to undermine him but can’t undo the good she’s already done. He has confidence in his life and choices and much of it brought about by the Carringtons. Three years of travelling and of listening to men like Robert it can’t be any other way. Knowledge rubs off and polish is acquired whether one wants it or not. Luke is in debt to Eve. Whatever their personal regard for one another from a business angle she opened up the world. A master-builder he was doing A-okay, as Robert would say, yet the name of Carrington opened doors that were hitherto locked. Though he’s never used her name nowadays he works with beautiful houses for people with open minds and generous purses. That connection alone creates an obligation he cannot forget.

Robert Scholtz leaned closer. ‘Talking of Harrogate and hotels I believe we have a mutual acquaintance in Mrs Julianna Dryden.’

Luke skin prickled. ‘I am acquainted with the lady.’