Season of Storms (29 page)

iii

“
WICKED
bloody weather,” Nicholas complained, crossing the stage to gaze blackly out over the dripping wet landscape through the cascades spilling down around the edges of the high roof overhead.

We’d had a solid week of this, cold days and bitter nights and rain that came and went and came again, relentless. Rupert, keen to move us out of the rehearsal room and onto the stage, had been hoping for a break, and when this morning had begun with sun and lightly scattered cloud and all the signs that it might be a nicer day, he’d wasted no time in transporting us down here, to Galeazzo’s theatre-in-the-round.

But the thunder had come on suddenly around eleven, with heavy rain that fell straight down and bathed the green surrounding hills in thick rain-forest mist. It didn’t stop us from rehearsing—the roofed area over the audience seats was more than wide enough to give sufficient shelter. But the thunder added unexpected drama to what was meant to be a quiet, poignant scene, and the chill wind that whipped round my skirts now and then made me lose concentration.

After nearly two weeks without my script in hand I’d managed to regain my earlier confidence, but this morning I’d found myself once again asking for lines. It wasn’t entirely my fault. This morning we’d been doing scenes from Act Two, between Nicholas and me—the scenes in which we, having been reunited by the medium for one brief hour, discussed the details of his death, the nature of the afterlife, the morality of war . . . The dialogue, plagiarized from Sophocles or not, was beautifully written and rich with emotion, but Nicholas had an unfortunate habit of editing his lines to suit himself, which not only confused me at times but occasionally had the effect of making
my
next line sound out of place, as though I weren’t responding properly to what he’d said. And that confused me more.

Normally, when one of us got a line wrong, Den simply made a note of it for later and the rehearsal went on uninterrupted. Rupert only rarely stopped rehearsals to correct us in our speeches. But this morning for the first time I had seen him losing patience.

Like the weather, he’d gone on watching for a time in an increasingly brooding silence, and then as the first clap of thunder had rolled overhead he’d exploded as well. At least, to me, who’d only seen him lose his temper on a handful of occasions, it had seemed like an explosion. Den and Nicholas would probably have deemed it rather tame: a quick slamming down of his pen on the clipboard, the order to break, and the slamming again of his clipboard down onto the seat in the front row beside him as he’d risen to his feet. Striding firmly up the aisle he’d stopped beneath the overhanging roof to stand, hands clasped behind his back.

Knowing that meant he was cooling his temper, I had prudently stayed silent, taking the opportunity to stretch my tense shoulders while Nicholas had moved to where he now stood at the far edge of the stage, head bent to light a cigarette.

The tone of rehearsal, I thought, was always different without Madeleine. She hadn’t needed to be called this morning, naturally, because she wasn’t in the scenes that we were working on. Other times all three of us were needed; sometimes only Madeleine and me. The curse of my particular part was that I was onstage the whole time, from beginning to end of the play. While the other two actors got breaks from rehearsing, I didn’t.

Mind you, I still had it better than Rupert and Den, who in addition to their long days at rehearsal had to make time for production meetings afterwards some nights, and deal with the technical people and everything else. They’d had a production meeting last night that had gone on till all hours, and the strain of that was showing a little on Den’s face this morning.

He normally broke the silence of a break by whistling or telling jokes, but this time he stayed quiet like me, making notes as he lounged in his front row seat, feet propped casually on the rail that encircled the stage.

The stage looked much the same as it had on the first day I’d stood here, except that now the furniture was in place—the chairs and table underneath a gorgeous reproduction gas-lamp with a red glass shade, suspended like a rare jewel by a cable from the lighting bar above.

I was looking up, examining its structure, when I heard Rupert’s footsteps returning down the aisle towards us.

“Nicholas,” he said, “I’d like a word.”

I knew that tone. Its measured calm spelled trouble. And though part of me wanted to stay and watch Rupert put Nicholas in his place, experience had taught me that the best thing to do was to duck out of range for a few minutes. Catching Den’s attention, I said, “I’ll just be . . . you know.” I nodded at the gangway leading backstage. “Back in two ticks.”

“Oh, sure, no problem.” As I started off the stage he called after me, “Be careful using water in this thunderstorm—don’t keep your hands under the taps for too long.”

“I won’t.”

“And watch your step back there. The workmen aren’t quite finished.”

He was getting every bit as bad as Rupert, I thought, worrying about my health, though with our opening performance scheduled for Saturday week I supposed it was part of his job to be cautious. Losing any one of us to illness or to injury would mean, at best, delays, and lost tour revenue for Alex.

Accordingly, I watched my step going down the gangway.

The passage was dim, lit by what little natural light filtered in from the stage, and at its farther end by a single wall-mounted fixture that showed me a rough concrete floor whose downwards slope carried me several feet under the seats overhead. Here the gangway ended in a broad semicircular passage that followed the curve of the stage, its plain block walls painted an unlikely pink.

That had been the original colour, so Alex had said. Apparently pink had been a favourite of Celia the First, and Galeazzo had, after all, built his theatre to please her.

The washroom was pink, as well, beautifully restored with lacquered white stalls and gilt-rimmed mirrors over twin pedestal basins. I dawdled as long as I could at the basin, although remembering Den’s warning about thunderstorms and water I only washed my hands one time, and quickly. I was watching my reflection in the mirror, testing various expressions, when something flickered at the corner of my vision.

I turned my head, but the impression vanished. Nobody was in the room but me. Still, when the thunder crashed above a second later and the lights went out and plunged the washroom into total darkness, I leaped for the door as if a whole army of ghosts was in pursuit.

The passageway was dark, as well, but at its end where the gangway came down from the stage there was light of a sort, filtered daylight, dim and mist-like, but enough to guide me out. At least, it would have been, if I hadn’t been frozen in place by a sense of sheer terror; a feeling . . . no, more than that, really—a sudden
certainty
that I was not alone.

No imagined ghost, this time, but a living, breathing, solid human being. Close behind me. The stirring of the air, the hint of warmth, the faintly sweaty smell, these were no more imagined than the prickling rush that climbed my spine to settle like ice at the nape of my neck. But still I couldn’t move.

Ahead, from the gangway, Den’s voice called me. “Celia?”

I wanted to scream to him: “Here! I’m down here!” but my vocal chords weren’t working, either.

“Celia?” He was in the passage, now. I saw his outline, grey and uncertain in the dimness, looking small and quite far off. He was holding a torch, beam pointed to the floor to help him find his way. “Are you all right?”

Again the air behind me warmed as though with someone’s breath, and with a giant effort I wrenched myself free of the paralysed stance I’d been locked in and, aiming myself towards Den, I began to run.

For the second time in as many weeks, I nearly knocked him over. Only this time, instead of struggling to break free, I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung, face buried in his chest.

“Hey!” He stood in surprise for a moment. Some men, I suppose, might have misinterpreted the embrace, but not Den. When his own arms finally closed around me, slowly and uncertainly, they offered only comfort, nothing more. “It’s all right, nothing to be scared of,” he assured me. “The storm’s just blown a power line down, somewhere. It’s—”

“There’s someone there,” I whispered, panicked, into his shirt-front.

“What? Someone where?”

“Outside the washroom door. A man, I think. I felt him standing right behind me.”

His hand moved at my back as he angled the torch to shine it down the passageway, sweeping the darkness from side to side. “Nothing there now.”

Still clinging to him, cowardly, I turned to look, and as I did the lights flickered on again all down the long curving corridor, showing us nothing but empty pink walls and the bare concrete floor.

“See?” said Den. Raising his free hand he lifted my chin and dropped a quick kiss, reassuring, on top of my head. “No one’s there. You were only imagining things.”

A small cough interrupted us.

Standing halfway down the gangway, Rupert looked from Den to me, expressionless. There was absolutely nothing sexual in the way Den was holding me—I might have been a child as young as Poppy; younger, even—but from where Rupert stood I knew he wouldn’t see it that way.

Aboveground the storm rumbled on and I could feel a corresponding swell of tension rise between the two men, trapping me between them. And then Rupert simply told us, “When you’re ready.”

And without another word he turned and walked back out onto the stage.

iv

“
YES,
I know, but—” A truck rumbled by and I set my back to the door of the call-box, trying to shut out the worst of the street noise behind me as I cradled the receiver to my shoulder and begged the international operator to try the line again. “Just once more, please. He’s always home by now.”

I could almost hear her sigh as she complied.

I was telling the truth, though. Bryan’s routine could be timed by the clock: he always walked home from the office and came through the door of the flat at precisely ten minutes to seven; by ten minutes past he was sitting in his favourite chair with bottled beer in hand, deciding what to do for dinner. Even on the rare nights he decided to eat out, he never left the flat till eight. Which meant he should have been, at seven-thirty, sitting in his favourite chair and finishing his beer, beside the telephone.

The ringing, though, went on and on, unanswered, at the other end, until the operator told me I should give it up. She said it rather more politely than that, of course, but this time I could hear the firmness in her voice. I didn’t argue.

“Right,” I told her. “Thank you.” Replacing the receiver, I pushed open the door of the call-box and stepped out, defeated.

I wasn’t having any luck at all today, I thought. The afternoon’s rehearsal, even with Madeleine there, hadn’t gone any better than this morning’s—while the weather had improved a little, Rupert’s mood hadn’t, and by the time we’d ended everyone had been a bit on edge. I’d longed all day to tell him that he’d misunderstood what he’d seen between Den and myself, but there was no point in trying to talk to Rupert when he got like this. He didn’t listen, not to me. Only one person I knew had learned the knack of reasoning with Rupert in a mood, but that person was miles away in London and I couldn’t get in touch with him.

My first thought had been to e-mail Bryan, asking if he’d please ring Rupert this evening and talk him round, only I hadn’t been able to find Alex, or anyone who knew where he might have gone, and I couldn’t very well use the computer without Alex there. Or the telephone.

So I’d come here, instead, to the call-box at the bottom of the hill, where the long road winding down from Il Piacere met the busier thoroughfare leading from town.

The walk down the hill wouldn’t have been too bad, actually, if it hadn’t started raining halfway down, and if I hadn’t had to pass the spot where Giancarlo had died. The rain had eased and finally stopped while I was in the call-box, but now that I’d come out it started up again, colder now and hard enough to make me draw up the hood of my raincoat.

Across the street, a man and woman stood locked in a passionate embrace beneath the shelter of an awning-covered doorway. It was envy more than anything that made me notice them to begin with—envy because they were dry and quite clearly enjoying themselves, whereas I was sopping wet and feeling wretched. But my initial glance across at them was followed by another, longer look; a growing sense of recognition. Not that I could see either of them very clearly. The man’s back was to me, and his body blocked a good part of the woman’s. Still, he had a curiously heart-shaped bald patch on the crown of his dark head, one I fancied I had seen before. And when the woman moved and raised her head to look at him, I knew for certain.

So, I thought, Daniela’s man from Venice was in Mira, now—the man I’d seen her with at the basilica, and later, at the restaurant. I’d thought her brazen to fool around with Nicholas under Alex’s nose, but apparently she was even more of a risk-taker than I’d given her credit for. I was tempted to call over to them, wave hello, and let her know I’d seen her, but the rain was already beginning to soak through my shoes and in the end I decided it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

Turning, I started my long uphill trudge, head tucked down, keeping close to the hedge to stay out of the way of the cars. I was passed only twice, but both times the spray of water from the speeding tyres arced up and caught me squarely in the side. Dejected and drenched, I squelched up to the great iron gates of Il Piacere and pressed the buzzer for the intercom.

The temporary housekeeper answered. She started out suspicious, and she wasn’t good with English, and the fact that my name meant nothing to her didn’t help. “No, no,” she said, and severed the connection.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I buzzed a second time.

She came back on. “No,
no,
” she told me firmly, as though sending off a salesman, and again the line went dead. She wasn’t going to let me in.

“I don’t believe this.” It was raining harder now, and when I moved my head the water from my hood sluiced down my neck. I buzzed again with a force that must have alarmed the poor woman, because there was a long pause before anybody answered; then a different voice said, “Celia? Is that you?”

Alex. I felt a small rush of relief. “Yes. Let me in.”

“Where on earth have you been? We’ve been—”

“Alex,” I told him, “it’s
raining.
Please, just let me in.”

The latch clicked as the gate began its inward swing. “Don’t use the main steps, they’ll be slippery,” he warned me. “Come round by the terrace.”

Apparently he didn’t trust me to follow instructions—he met me at the bottom of the drive, with an umbrella. I must have looked a sight. I saw the concern in his eyes change to quiet amusement. “So, where have you been?” he repeated his question, holding the umbrella out to cover me as he walked with me round to the back of the house, past the garage.

“I went to use the call-box.”

“The call-box?” He lifted an eyebrow. “But why? We have phones at the house.”

“It’s a long story. And anyway, I wouldn’t have needed to go at all if you’d been here, so instead of asking me where
I’ve
been you might tell me where—”

“Milan,” he cut me off, remaining admirably calm in the face of my temper. “There was something that I needed to arrange.” Starting up the terrace steps, he slanted me a quick look of apology. “I must have gone straight past you, in the car. I’ve only just got back myself.”

At least his car hadn’t been one of the ones that had splashed me—those had both been older cars, not like anything I’d seen in his garage. Relenting a little, I said, “Yes, well, I was probably in the call-box at the time, so you wouldn’t have noticed me.”

I sloshed across the terrace, pausing inside the door while he shook out the umbrella and reached to take my raincoat. “Here, I’ll hang these up to dry,” he said.

It was then I heard the laughter from the dining room. Laughter! And Rupert’s voice mingling with all of the others. It didn’t seem fair, I thought. Here I’d gone and risked pneumonia trying to find a way to pull Rupert out of his mood, and he’d managed to do it without me.

The laughter came again, more raucous this time, and I frowned and started walking past, preparing to go upstairs to change out of my wet clothes.

“Celia!” Rupert called me as I passed the open doorway of the dining room. “You’re back, how lovely. Look who’s here.”

I looked.

The man beside him looked me up and down and grinned a welcome. “Angel, looks like you could use a hug,” said Bryan, rising from his chair to give me one.