The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (15 page)

Connie was quiet. In contrast to the machine gun of Mrs Cleat's views, her uncle reminded her of a sniper, his words picking off their target, square and precise.

‘Sketches aside,' he continued, ‘be interesting to see what they actually get on the walls of that church.'

Aunty Bea and Mrs Cleat emerged from the hall, their heads inclined conspiratorially. ‘I see those two are on talking terms again,' Connie said, indicating the two women to Uncle Jack. He began to bring the roller around in a wide arc. The ladies fussed with their hats at the door, then disappeared together down the high street. In the months of planning for the mural scheme, Connie had heard in excruciating detail both sides of the heated debate over fine art for St Margaret's. She quite understood why Mrs Cleat, with her operatic predilections, should prefer the dramatic stories of the Bible for the murals. But Connie found it quite odd that Aunty Bea, for all her fervent faith, wanted a series of memorial scenes of the war. The committee had finally taken a vote. Aunty Bea had lost by one count. For a while the village had held its breath: there threatened to be a schism among the Christian Ladies, the tremors of which were felt as far away as the Green Man, where villagers who couldn't tell a Raphael from a Rout's Cider had been heard professing their views on the matter. But the price of making a stand was too much even for Aunty Bea to bear. She reunited with the Christian Ladies, much to the delight of Reverend Stanton, who told Connie he thought his sermon on ‘Holy Spirit, Community Spirit' deserved the credit. She suspected, though, that her aunt couldn't stand to miss out on further decisions concerning the murals.

‘Why d'you think Aunty Bea was dead set on war scenes anyway?' she asked Uncle Jack. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, but remained silent. ‘In the shop the other day, Mrs Livesey was going on about Uncle Bill and Monte Cassino,' she added casually, hoping she might trick her uncle into some kind of unguarded disclosure. But he only straightened and squinted across the green.

On the far side, partially obscured by the shade of the great oaks that edged it, a figure was sitting. She narrowed her eyes: it was Lucio Onorati. He was leaning back on a tree trunk, one forearm propped on his raised knee, the hand hanging across his body as if to shield the other, which worked hurriedly, secretly, across the pages of his journal folded back along one thigh.

‘Looks like you're being watched,' Uncle Jack said at last. She caught herself peering, her mouth open, and she closed it quickly.

‘I
am
not.' She prodded Uncle Jack in the arm. ‘Might have spoken to him a couple of times, that's all,' she conceded. ‘He hardly knows anyone here. Don't tell Aunty —' He shook his head to stop her. Uncle Jack wasn't one for explanations. It worked both ways — she hadn't really expected he would offer any answers about Uncle Bill either. It was his habit to avoid difficult questions, changing the subject or immersing himself in some task at hand, like he hadn't heard a word. This selective deafness infuriated Aunty Bea, which was perhaps the intention, and it often frustrated Connie, particularly as she got older. Nevertheless, she had grown up accepting that it had its benefits at times. So when she reached onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, she was surprised to hear him speak again.

‘There's summat you should know. You might hear the wrong thing, see.'

‘What?'

‘It weren't Cassino. You know, Uncle Bill. It were after, in the Liri Valley …' His eyes were restless, as if searching for the quickest route possible to what he needed to say about his brother. ‘The Italians, they was on our side by then, most on 'em. But in your aunt's mind they'll always be no better than Nazis. I 'spect it's easier to blame someone, see, than accept the lame truth of it.'

Connie waited, but he didn't go on. Eventually she asked, ‘What do you mean? What lame truth?'

He drew up the corner of his mouth in an impatient shrug at the words. ‘Strafing. It was strafing, from American planes. That's how Bill died. Just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Not much glory in that, is there?' He ran a cuff across his dry lips.

‘Uncle Jack,' she began, but he tilted his chin at her, signalling she should go and meet her friend. She bent down for her shoes on the grass and walked backwards a few steps, watching her uncle as he went inside the clubhouse. When she turned and began to walk towards the great oaks, Lucio Onorati was already gone.

The harvest-festival service was held in the memorial hall. Reverend Stanton had decamped all worship there so that Mr Swann could prepare the walls of St Margaret's for his murals.

‘Don't let it be said that the people of Leyton can't accommodate the artistic nature,' Mrs Cleat told the Misses Penny on the steps of the hall afterwards. ‘An artist of Mr Swann's calibre needs absolute quiet and the freedom to work whenever the creative urge calls.' What she had neglected to say, Connie knew, was that Mr Swann had made a contractual demand that no one enter the church while the murals were being painted. His frescoes were to be viewed by the commissioning committee only at key stages of their completion. Connie suspected Mr Gilbert's hand in this: it was his attempt to keep a lid on the inevitable gossip and village politics the paintings would provoke.

‘Oh yes, of course,' Grace Penny said, agreeing with Mrs Cleat. ‘And Mr Swann is working so hard. Fossett told us he'd cycled past St Margaret's well after last orders at the Green Man —'

‘— and he'd seen the lights still burning in the windows —' Hope Penny broke in.

‘— glowing like a divine visitation,' Grace finished. Her sister giggled. The Misses Penny habitually spoke over each other, until their timorous voices sounded as one. Connie imagined it was both the gift and the curse of sisters who had lived together for more than sixty years. She always listened to them with a fond fascination, as well as a pang of loneliness.

‘Stage lights,' Mrs Cleat said in a raised voice, evidently pleased with the chance to show off her insider knowledge to the wider congregation vacating the hall. ‘No miracles yet, Miss Hope. Mr Swann has brought his theatre lamps up from the West End. Artists must have their light, you know, particularly if the muse is inclined to visit at night.' In unison the Misses Penny gave their girlish laughs, but behind them Connie could hear more excited voices gathering around the figure of Mrs Stanton, who had hurried from the hall after Mr Gilbert. The reverend's wife, in her enthusiasm, had backed the schoolteacher into the memorial cross and was thrusting a roll of thick paper under his nose. Mrs Cleat's face stiffened: she could sniff out a drama at fifty paces, and Connie knew she would not be excluded from it for long. The shopkeeper broke away from the old ladies, parting the villagers with her intimidating purpose. Connie walked the Misses Penny to the gate and then skirted behind the memorial garden to offer Mr Gilbert what rescue she could.

‘Well, who else could have done it?' Mrs Stanton was saying as he unscrolled the paper. ‘It must have been Mr Swann. No one else in Leyton can paint like that.' She tapped the underside of the sheet as he studied it. Mrs Cleat intercepted Connie just as she was positioning herself at Mr Gilbert's elbow to take a look over his arm. Aunty Bea had already planted herself firmly on his other side.

‘Perhaps he left it with the harvest donations last night before he went back down to Town,' Mrs Stanton added.

Mrs Cleat gave a tight cough and raised her chin somewhat grandly. ‘Mm,' she mulled, considering the painting again, of which Connie could see nothing but the grubby margins where the paper had been taped to a board. ‘Well, I expect you're right, Ivy. Mr Swann's obviously donated it for us to sell at the fair,' Mrs Cleat said, as if disappointed her opinion aligned with Mrs Stanton's. ‘No doubt it'll raise a rare sum at our auction. Even more if we'd had the time to get it framed.' She tutted. ‘Very generous of Mr Swann, no less. Very generous indeed.'

Mrs Cleat placed a hand on her hat and proceeded to weave through the departing congregation, eager to disseminate the news. Mrs Stanton sighed and took her place at Mr Gilbert's arm. Connie tried to peer around her, but the rouged netting of Mrs Stanton's hat obscured her view even more.

‘Nice enough, I 'spect,' came Aunty Bea's voice from the other side of Mr Gilbert. ‘Mind, I'm not one for hanging pictures of dead creatures over me mantel.'

‘It's a still life, Beatrice,' Mr Gilbert said vaguely, engrossed in the artwork.

‘Is it now? A still life?' Aunty Bea spoke with the superiority of someone who understood that a life study attracted the same dust and cobwebs as any other type of picture when framed and hanged. Connie prayed for her to stop there. She had heard Aunty Bea's views on art at the Big House when she helped at spring-cleaning. ‘Who wants to stare up this enormous old goat's nostrils on the way to bed, I ask you?' Aunty Bea would declare, standing on the stepladder to clean the portraits along the wide staircase. To her aunt, the merit of an artwork always seemed in inverse proportion to its size, and the intricacies of its moulded frame where dirt could harbour. ‘Least it's small,' she offered over Mr Gilbert's shoulder. Connie bit the inside of her cheek. How Aunty Bea could have ended up on a committee making decisions about church murals was one of Leyton's many ironies. Mrs Stanton moved to take her aunt's arm, and the two stepped around the memorial cross to search out Mrs Cleat, finally allowing Connie to see the painting in Mr Gilbert's hands.

It was an oil-on-paper, finely detailed and textured. She had read enough art books, and studied their plates, to know that it was in a realist style, not unlike some of the Pre-Raphaelite studies she had seen in catalogues in the Reptons' library. The subject was a large hare laid upon a hessian sack, its head at the unnatural angle of dead quarry, its orange eye the focal point of colour in the scene. Arranged about the hare, and bound coarsely with twine, were the hedgerow fruits of the summer's end: the drooping heads of elder, heavy with overripe berries; rosehips starting to shrivel; and the hearts of hazelnuts browning on the branch among brittle leaves. At the table's edge, the loose folds of a cloth were gathered under a skinning knife, soiled from use.

‘My God, it's beautiful,' Connie said. It was true, but she also felt a creeping sadness work its way over her as she admired the study.

‘Apparently it was left tucked among the corn dollies,' Mr Gilbert said wryly. ‘It's not Swann's. I'm sure of it.'

‘How do you know?' she asked, even though she was already certain of the painter.

‘There's no signature. Swann signs everything, even his sketches, and these days he doesn't so much as pick up his brush without knowing he'll get paid for it. He doesn't
donate
.' He smiled at her. ‘His artistic ego as much as necessity demands it, I suspect.'

She examined the hare again, the way the artist had caught the variations in the fleck and sheen of its coat, the veins of its translucent ears, the eye that was dead as a pebble.

‘Besides, this is … it's not Swann's style … quite remarkable …' he continued, as if to himself. She waited for him to explain.

Mr Gilbert let out a guilty laugh. ‘It's just that it's too good to be Swann's. Still, what's the harm, I suppose?'

‘The harm?'

‘In allowing them to believe it's his, letting them auction it at the fair. Swann won't care, especially if it helps pay his fee.' Again he held up the painting at arm's length and studied it, frowning. ‘I can't think who could have done this.'

Without answering, she ran to the gate and took up her bike from the wall.

‘Connie?' she heard him call, but she only held up her hand to him as she pedalled away, along the high street and out towards Bythorn Rise.

She kept a lookout for Lucio on the gate at the bottom of the hill, sitting in the spot that she'd begun to think of as his. She trusted he would appear eventually, either from the farm or from the copse of trees down by the brook. The sun shone on her face with surprising heat for once, as if summer had saved all its energy for a last struggle with autumn.

When she finally spotted him, he was approaching from the bridge, his clothes dripping and his feet bare, his boots strung over his shoulder. She found herself unexpectedly filled with a childish envy. He'd been swimming in the brook, while she had spent the glorious morning suffocating through the harvest service in the memorial hall. He came up to the gate and hung his boots over it, then climbed to sit beside her. With his wrist he pushed away his thick, wet hair. It stayed back from his forehead for once, making his face seem boyish and vulnerable.

She already knew enough about him not to expect small talk, so they sat together, listening to the chatter of insects in the tall verge, to the liquid song of a skylark in the stubbled field behind them. At last she tapped the rolled journal, dog-eared and grimy, that poked from his back pocket.

‘You going to show me, then?'

He didn't move and she thought perhaps it was his way of saying no. But a second later he jumped down from the fence in one clean twist, took the rolled folio from his pocket, and handed it to her with no more thought than if it had been last week's newspaper. He leaned his back against the gate, letting his elbows rest on the top rung. She watched him close his eyes and angle his face up to the sun, just as she had done. She wondered whether she would ever know what was going on in his head.