Saddle the Wind (62 page)

When their work was finished she and Adriana stood and gazed around them in delight and satisfaction. In her earlier years Adriana had been too young to appreciate the magic of Christmas but she was old enough now, and was much affected with the excitement of it all.

The next day, Christmas Eve, Blanche and Adriana spent the morning in the kitchen where they worked with Anna helping to prepare the Christmas fare. Alfredo had left the villa that morning – to work, Blanche assumed – and after luncheon, acting on a sudden whim and the need to get out into the air, she got Adriana into her coat and hat and, taking her by the hand, left the house to see something of the ancient city. And, wonder of wonders, Edgardo was not there to witness their departure, which, Blanche was sure, would be for him a matter of some regret. But let him fret,
she said to herself with satisfaction; let him wonder where she and Adriana had gone.

From the Via Varese they took a cab past the university to the main part of the centre where Blanche bought an inexpensive little illustrated English guide book. With its help, she and Adriana spent some pleasant hours wandering the streets in the mild afternoon air.

Blanche had read that in the past the city had suffered from a lack of society and a lack of concessions to society, and as a result had not been a popular resort for tourists. The situation was changing swiftly now, though. There were many tourists visible, she found – and many of them busy with their Kodaks. And, certainly, she soon discovered, there was no shortage of interesting and beautiful sights for new arrivals – herself and Adriana included – to see, although few of the artefacts were as old as the city itself. Messina had been destroyed so many times that few of its ancient sights and treasures remained. Over the centuries it had been ravaged by the most devastating wars, plagues and earthquakes, but from each disaster the city had miraculously risen, its survivors picking themselves up, burying their dead and rebuilding their houses, their churches. To Blanche, reading of the city’s past, it seemed to her to have a wondrous kind of indomitability of spirit. It had faced up to all the calamities with which man and nature had been able to assault it, and it had withstood them all.

Together, and enjoying the comradeship, she and Adriana wandered through the museum, looking at the paintings and the sculptures. Afterwards they strolled along the narrow streets, pausing once to drink hot chocolate and to eat wickedly rich little pastries at a small café before going out again into the December sunshine. There on the street they saw a young boy in a scarlet satin tunic performing impressive contortions,
standing on his hands and bending his lithe young body backwards until his feet almost touched the ground. As passers-by paused to watch and then applaud, the boy’s smiling father moved about with his open cap in his hand. Blanche gave Adriana a coin to give for the boy’s performance and then they moved on again. ‘Are you tired, sweetheart?’ ‘No, no, Mama.’

Blanche was aware of a light-hearted atmosphere in the air as all around them the citizens of the town hurried about completing their business in preparation for the coming holiday, moving in and out of the shops on final shopping excursions or, their work finished for the day, getting down to the serious business of beginning their revels.

Beside the Duomo Blanche and Adriana stood and looked at the beautiful Fountain of Orion while inside the ancient cathedral itself they gazed in awe at the rows of magnificent columns. It being Christmas Eve there were many who had come there to worship, to light candles and say prayers. Blanche joined them. On her marriage to Alfredo she had, as a concession to him, embraced the Catholic faith, and now she and Adriana each put a few centimes into the offering box and lit candles and offered up prayers. Sadly, Blanche felt that the little prayer she offered up – that she and Alfredo could find some kind of peace that would eventually save them – had no hope of fulfilment.

Outside the Duomo again they gave a few centimes to a blind beggar who sat on the steps, and then set off again, wandering along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. To their right beyond the shabby customs houses and the low buildings of the market lay the port and the sickle-shaped tongue of land that held the lighthouse; beyond these the waters of the Messina Straits stretched away to the distant shadow of Reggio di Calabria on the
opposite shore. The left of the
corso
was flanked by a uniform row of palaces with soaring colonnades, magnificent still in their grandeur, but squalid now from the constant assault from the rigours of the harsh and humble life of the port.

Reaching the area of the Palazzo Reale Blanche hesitated, briefly considering going on to call again on Marianne. But there was no time. They must start back. Besides which, Adriana was growing tired.

They took an omnibus along the Corso Cavour, and not too long afterwards were back at the villa.

That evening there was no difficulty in getting Adriana off to bed and shortly after Blanche had returned downstairs from tucking her in, Alfredo returned.

Over dinner he said that he had invited a business associate and his wife for dinner on the 26th, and asked Blanche to make the necessary preparations. She said she would, adding that she had sent a message to Marianne declining her invitation. He merely nodded. A little later, as she anticipated he would, he got dressed and went out for the evening, as usual not saying where he was going or at what time he would return. Blanche did not care; she was glad of his absence, relieved to know that he was no longer in the house.

She spent the evening alone, first packing the gifts she had bought, and then trying to read. From time to time she would hear the sound of revellers going by on the street. Once, moving to the window, she drew back the curtain and looked out at them as they went straggling by, laughing and singing, the intermittent cries of
‘Buon natale’
ringing out in the cold night air.

That night as she lay awake in the silence of her room she thought back to her meeting with Marianne, and how she had unburdened herself to her – something she
had never intended to do. And in doing so she had wept – wept not only at the misery she felt in her situation, but from frustration at her inability to change it. For she was sure now that it would never change.

Christmas Day dawned chilly and dull with a light rain falling.

Soon after breakfast Blanche discreetly sought out Betta, Anita and Anna and gave to them the little gifts she had bought for them. She was touched by the warmth and sincerity of their thanks, while her happiness at bringing them each a little pleasure was blunted by the sadness of her conviction that come next Christmas not one of them would be serving in the household. At the rate that Alfredo’s fortunes were diminishing, by the time next Christmas came it was unlikely that she and Alfredo would have any servants at all.

Alfredo remained at home for most of the early part of the day, and for Adriana’s sake appeared for a while to make an attempt to relax. Anita had lit a fire in the sitting room and Adriana sat on the rug before it and played with her doll and cradle, her story book and her crayons and drawing pad. Delighted with her gifts she had thanked Blanche warmly and now went to Alfredo where he sat in the opposite chair. Reaching out to him she put her arms around his neck.

‘Thank you, Papa.’

As Alfredo warmly returned Adriana’s embrace he glanced up and caught Blanche’s gaze over the top of the child’s head. Their glances held for a moment and then his eyes fell away and he patted Adriana on the shoulder and released her. Blanche, also lowering her gaze, thought how sad, how strange it was, the obvious restraint that was within him.

At luncheon, which was accompanied by a mixture of Sicilian and English traditions, Blanche tried to create something of a spirit of brightness and – for Adriana’s sake – some feeling of camaraderie. Whether her efforts worked as far as the child went, however, she could not tell. She doubted it. Alfredo made very little effort towards creating any kind of jollity on which they might build and Blanche soon found her own light laughter sounding hollow in her ears, while her attempts to bring him into any casual, everyday conversation very swiftly sounded meaningless and false.

When Alfredo eventually left the house after dinner that evening to go to his club she relaxed for the first time in the day.

When she herself went to bed shortly before eleven she lay awake while from the street came the sounds of horse-drawn cabs and the cracks of whips, the occasional motor cars and noisy, homeward-bound revellers. She thought back to past Christmases, seeing herself as a child again, with Marianne, or with her mother, brothers and sisters. She saw herself decorating the tree with Marianne at Hallowford House; at the cottage playing games of bob-apple and blind man’s buff; Ernest and Agnes laughing; songs around the piano with her mother playing and Agnes’s sweet voice floating on the air. She knew well that distance lent enchantment to her memories, but there was no denying her present unhappiness. It couldn’t continue, and the situation now seemed to be growing worse by the day.

At last she slept. At what time Alfredo came into the house she had no idea; at least his return was quiet and did not awaken her.

Blanche stood before the cheval glass in her room and gazed at her reflection. Her evening gown was almost
three years old. As Alfredo’s assets had diminished so her clothing allowance too had shrunk to the point where now it didn’t allow her to buy much more than the merest essentials.

Even so, the dress looked well on her. Of a creamy white satin, with draped bodice hung with a wide satin bow, its heavy, trailing hem and hanging sleeve drapery were trimmed with net frills and ribbon. Betta had helped her to arrange her hair, which as usual Blanche wore swept up; this evening she dressed it with a tiny ribbon of black velvet.

Alfredo’s guests were expected around seven and well before that time Blanche had gone down to the kitchen and the dining salon to check that everything was going well. Alfredo had said nothing of his reasons, but it was clear from his edginess that the occasion was important to him. It was some time since they had entertained at home, and Blanche inferred now that he was hoping that the coming evening would be instrumental in the furtherance of some business negotiation or other – though at what it was he never hinted; nor did she make any inquiry.

The guests, a couple visiting from Catania, were a certain signor Francesco Marino and his wife Elena. The man turned out to be short, heavy-set, in his early fifties, with a paunch and a pock-marked skin. His loud laugh was matched by the tones of his waistcoat. His wife was a mousy little creature in her forties who looked incongruous in her ultra-fashionable gown of lavender silk crêpe-de-Chine. Without knowing anything about her, Blanche felt a certain sympathy for her, while for the woman’s husband she soon felt a growing antipathy.

Of course she hid her feelings, however, and for the sake of Alfredo (and her own comfort which was so dependent on his mercurial moods) did her best in her
duty as hostess to make the evening a success. One thing she was very relieved to find, and that was that Marino and his wife spoke English to a degree. Even so, she found the evening a long and tedious affair, the dinner itself stretching out interminably during which time both she and signora Marino were effectively excluded from much of the conversation – which for the early part dwelt on discussion of the olive and citrus trade but later degenerated into a general review of various, and somewhat risqué, theatrical performances which, it appeared, signor Marino had appreciated at different times on his travels.

Later, over coffee, as a result of Blanche’s being English, the conversation somehow got round to the subject of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers, the suffragettes who, members of Mrs Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, were constantly in the news – even at times in the Italian press – on account of their violent demonstrations in the cause of women’s suffrage.

Signor Marino, having recently returned from a trip to England, was able to give something nearer to a firsthand account, and he proceeded to regale the company with reported stories of some of the more recent scandalous actions of the women. Blanche, failing to see any humour in his loudly-delivered anecdotes, sat silent.

Alfredo, turning, catching Blanche’s cold expression, said with a laugh and barely-hidden curl of his lip:

‘Oh, dear, my wife, I’m afraid, my friends, is obviously not amused. But there, as we all know, the English are not known for their humour.’

Signor Marino joined uncertainly in Alfredo’s laughter, laughter which Blanche brought to an end as she said, her voice heavy with contempt:

‘I wish I could say that you surprise me, Alfredo – but I can’t.’

She knew well that with her words she was skating on thin ice, but she could not remain silent. Alfredo, after the barest moment’s pause, tried to make light of the situation and save face. He leaned across to Blanche.

‘Don’t take it all so seriously,’ he said; he spoke as if she were a child. ‘You must learn to laugh, my dear. Dear God, if you cannot see the humour in such goings on then there’s no hope for you that I can see. Come on now, try to relax.’

As he finished speaking he raised his hand and gently patted her on the head. Blanche, infuriated at his words and at the humiliating gesture, flung up a hand and violently slapped his own hand away. The sound of the slap rang in the room. ‘Don’t you patronize me!’ she said sharply, the words ground out between her tight lips.

There was a sudden silence. And then Alfredo laughed into the quiet, but it was a laugh that was too loud and only demonstrated to Blanche his own sudden anger and feeling of humiliation. For once, though, she remained untouched by it.

‘You must excuse my wife.’ Alfredo turned expansively to the guests. ‘Obviously she has not yet learned how to behave in company.’ Then to Blanche he added, hardly bothering to disguise his sneer, ‘Do you think your background fits you for such superiority, my dear? Do you think you’re above us? Would you be more content in different company? Perhaps you would be happier being chained to some railings in London somewhere, would you?’