The Night Falling (10 page)

‘The peasants, you mean?’ says Marcie. ‘I guess they like it because it doesn’t show the dirt. They don’t seem too keen on washing all that often.’

‘Marcie,’ Leandro rebukes her, gently enough, but his eyes are hard. ‘It’s not an easy life. These people are poor, they haven’t enough to eat; they can’t afford doctors. Their children don’t thrive. And now, so soon after the war … they wear black because they are in mourning, Mrs Kingsley. Most of them have lost somebody.’

‘I see,’ says Clare, and senses Marcie’s discomfiture beside her. She makes a point of not looking at her.

After lunch Leandro takes Pip down to the courtyard, and the big coaching doors swing open, and another car pulls in with its engine coughing and growling. Leandro stands with one hand in his pocket, his shoulders in a comfortable slouch. He watches Pip, and Clare sees his delight in Pip’s reaction – the way Pip asks to see the engine, and runs his hand over a leather seat, and stands back, head cocked, to admire the overall proportions of the machine. She herself can see no real difference between this car and the other, apart from that this one is black, and the other red.

‘Would you like to drive it, Philip?’ says Leandro. Pip’s face breaks into incredulous joy, and Leandro laughs. ‘I can take that grin for a yes, I think?’

‘Isn’t that rather dangerous? He’s really not old enough,’ says Boyd.

‘Not dangerous at all. I’ll drive us out of town, where there are fewer things to run into, and then he can have a go. Well, lad – are you keen?’

‘Absolutely!’

‘Then let’s go. But – gently, to begin with. If you crash into any trees or walls, I’ll patch up the damage with your hide.’

‘I won’t crash,’ says Pip eagerly. He waves to them as he climbs in, and Clare wonders at the ease with which Boyd’s note of caution was swept aside, his permission not sought. As the car pulls away Boyd’s cheeks turn an angry red.

In the silence after the engine noise there’s the creak and thump of the doors as Federico closes and locks them again. Clare turns her back to him before he finishes the task, and goes back up to the veranda with Boyd. There’s a small sofa and Boyd sits down beside her so that their shoulders and hips and thighs press together, in spite of the heat.

‘Mr Cardetta likes your designs?’ asks Clare, and Boyd smiles, and the tension of the moment before disappears. He rests his elbow on the back of the couch, trails his fingertips through the hair at her temple.

‘Yes. I think so. He wants something more, though … I’m not quite sure what. He told me a lengthy tale about an abandoned castle near here …’

‘The one in the centre of town?’

‘No, another one, called Castel del Monte. But it was built by the same man. It has eight towers, each with eight sides, around an eight-sided courtyard. It has no kitchens, no stables, no discernible function … and yet it has obviously been designed with tremendous care and attention, using rare and expensive stone. It’s high on a hill so it can be seen from miles and miles away in clear weather. But there’s no sign of anyone ever having lived there.’

‘It’s a folly.’

‘It’s an enigma. And that’s what he wants.’

‘He wants octagonal towers high enough to be seen for miles around?’ says Clare playfully, but Boyd barely smiles. He is thinking now, his mind has gone back to the problem.

‘He wants symbolism. He wants people to look upon his works, and wonder.’

‘But whatever for? Isn’t it enough to be fashionable, and … display his largesse?’

‘He wants something that will make all those people in town who think they know everything about him think again.’ Boyd shakes his head.

‘To show that he’s different to them, and not afraid to be so?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘And can you do that? Can you design him an enigma?’

‘Let’s hope so,’ says Boyd, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head. ‘Or we’ll be here an awfully long time.’ He smiles, and Clare laughs a little, but they know without saying that he’s only half joking. There seems to be no question of refusing Leandro Cardetta anything he asks for.

They sit for a while, and the only sound is the occasional rattle of a passing cart, the clop of hooves and fall of booted feet. Boyd sighs, and curves his body towards her. He puts his hand on her knee then runs it higher, to the top of her leg, the outside edge of his little finger touching the crease between her thighs. With his other hand he tips her head back and kisses her neck. In that position it’s hard to speak, but when Clare tries to lift her head he holds it there, with one hand on her forehead, her throat as bare as any sacrifice. Just for a moment. She has a sinking feeling, and shuts her eyes to ignore it.

‘Darling,’ she manages to say. ‘Not here. Someone will see.’

‘No one will see. The servants have all gone to rest, like Marcie.’ His voice is deep, and his hand on her thigh grips tighter. Such ardour in the daytime is unlike him and she wonders if it has its origins in someone or something beyond herself. In the corner of her eye she catches a movement, down by the courtyard doors. She’s up in an instant.

‘That servant is watching; the driver,’ she snaps, and changes her tone when she sees Boyd’s face fall. ‘Really, there’s no privacy here.’

‘Of course there is. But we’ll go inside, if you like,’ he says, standing up. ‘Who do you mean – the fellow with the harelip?’ He takes her hand, glancing over his shoulder at the empty courtyard. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m not sure that I like him. He …’ But she can’t say why, exactly. Only that the thought of him watching them together curdles her stomach. Boyd loops his arm around her waist and pulls her closer. ‘Anyway, darling, I’m not sure I’m in the mood,’ she says, in a rush.

‘But it’s been such a long time, Clare.’ The difference in their heights makes it difficult to walk so close together; their steps mistime. ‘Haven’t you missed me?’

‘Yes, of course I have.’

‘Well then. What’s the problem?’ Clare smiles and shakes her head, and some small part of her loathes the readiness of her capitulation.

Through glass doors off the veranda is a library, with a large desk at its centre that Boyd has been using for work. His pencils and pens are all there, lined up neatly in their boxes. Clare goes to look, to run her fingers across them, and the hard leather of the desk top. She does this sometimes – touches things before sex, to waken her senses. From behind, Boyd holds her, kisses her, pushes hard against her. She tries to mirror his passion but she can only think how strange it is that it’s daylight, and they are not shut away where they should be. But when he puts his fingers into her, and his tongue deep into her mouth, and he undoes her blouse and pulls her bra down over her nipples, she clings to his shoulders and arches herself towards him, because this is a different kind of love-making to their norm, and that’s at once alarming and welcome. And perhaps it is this kind of love-making – spontaneous and urgent – that makes a child, and they will look back in years to come, when that child does something silly, and smile fondly and joke in private that the baby was bound to be wild, since it had such wild beginnings. But Boyd stops with the head of his erection not quite touching her. Almost, but not quite. He shudders between her thighs; his eyes are rapt and he’s breathing hard, but he stops.

‘Wait here,’ he says, as he hurries to do up his trousers. Then he leaves the room.

Clare is left with cold touches of his saliva and her own arousal smudged here and there on her skin. She crosses her arms over her chest and listens to her pulse slowing down. He has gone for the rubber sheath, and when he comes back he finishes the act with the barrier between them, and with all traces of her own passion lost Clare suddenly notices the thinning of his hair as he hunches over her, and the way the desk cuts into the backs of her thighs, and that he keeps his eyes tightly shut the whole time. He climaxes without a sound; she only knows it’s happened because he stops breathing for the space of three heartbeats, or four – her slower heartbeats, not his rapid ones.

Afterwards, Boyd insists that they go and rest in their bedroom, though Clare wants to dress and sit outside in the shade. He uses water from the ewer to rinse the sheath in the wash bowl. Clare used to hate the sight of the thing. Once she thought about sabotage – she held it between her fingers, pinching it, assessing its strength and noting how easy it would be to put a few holes in it with the pin of a brooch. Now she feels that that would be cheating. If she’s to defeat the thing, and be rid of it, she must do so fair and square, by convincing her husband. But she has less and less heart for the fight – the fire has gone out of her hatred of it; it’s more a kind of detached dislike now, a resigned antipathy. The implications of that aren’t lost on her, and they worry her. She doesn’t want to be ready to give up yet. She pictures life at home with Boyd, in years to come, when he has retired and won’t go out to the office every day; when Pip has left home, and will call when he remembers to. She pictures the slow march of time like this, and the terrible weight of her impending solitude. Letting these thoughts coalesce steels her to speak up again.

When the sheath is hanging next to the linen towel, drying, Boyd comes to lie beside her, like spoons.

‘How do you find Gioia, really?’ he says.

‘It scares me,’ says Clare. ‘It felt like we shouldn’t be here. Like it’s no place for tourists.’

‘We’re not tourists.’

‘What are we, then?’ she says, but he doesn’t reply. ‘Marcie hates it here,’ she adds.

‘You think so?’

‘I’m certain of it. Boyd,’ she says carefully, ‘will we never have a child? I so very much want to have one.’

‘We have Pip, don’t we?’

‘Yes, but … it’s not quite the same. Not for me. I’m not Pip’s mother.’

‘You’re as good as a mother to him. You’ve raised him.’ He kisses her hair. ‘And made a splendid job of it.’

‘You know what I’m asking, Boyd.’ She takes a steady breath to keep hold of her nerve. ‘Why don’t you want us to have a baby?’

‘Haven’t we been over this, darling?’

‘No, not really. You’ve told me you’re afraid – but what’s to be afraid of? I’ve waited and waited … I thought in time you’d be ready. But it’s been ten years, Boyd. I’m almost thirty … There’s not that much time left for it. You can’t still be afraid, surely?’

‘Clare, darling …’ He trails off; she waits.

‘Did … was Emma damaged by childbirth? Is that it? Did she … not quite recover from it?’

‘No.’ His voice is rough with strain. ‘No, she was never the same afterwards. It was never the same afterwards. I … I started to lose her the day Philip was born, and I … I couldn’t bear to lose you in the same way.’

‘I’d be fine, I know I would. And I—’

‘No, Clare,’ he says, and now his voice has a hard edge. ‘No. I just can’t allow it.’

‘You can’t
allow
it?’ she echoes desperately. But Boyd says nothing else.

Through the closed shutters Clare stares at incandescent bars of sky, and it seems wrong to banish the day. With a sudden itch of claustrophobia, she longs to be outside, even in the heat and the sunshine, because the air in the room feels stale and used up. She’s hot beneath Boyd’s arm; sweat blots her blouse in the small of her back, and his breath on her neck is stifling. She worms away slightly, shuffling her head across the pillow, but Boyd’s arm tightens.

‘I think I’ll go out for a walk. Just a short one,’ she says.

‘A walk? Now? Don’t be silly – it’s the hottest part of the day. You can’t.’

‘But I don’t feel like lying down.’

‘Nonsense. You need to rest.’ He kisses her hair, tugging a single strand that sticks to his lips. ‘Why did you marry me, Clare?’ he asks. This is another of the things, heard a hundred times before, that she wishes he wouldn’t say. There’s self-loathing underneath it, which turns the question into an accusation. She knows the answer she must give and says it quickly, to have it done, because silence won’t do.

‘Because I loved you. I loved you straight away.’

Perhaps it’s only half a lie, really. She did fall in love with him – a tall, handsome, older man with an air of sadness, and a hunted expression. At once she wanted to ease his pain. She wanted to be a reason for smiles, and optimism. Her parents introduced them at an afternoon tea in the back garden of their modest Kent home, on a fecund late June day when the borders were alive with bees and white butterflies; she’d already been told about Emma, and warned of his grief. As though that was the only thing about him worth mentioning. It seemed to Clare that he was a man who had lived one whole lifetime already; a man with a wealth and depth of experience that made him steady, and safe. His age reassured her. He struck her as kind but sad, and she wanted to make him happy; and in making him happy, she would make herself happy. His grief was proof of sensitivity, and she wanted to mend his broken heart. He was not overtly demonstrative but she came from a family of undemonstrative people, and she admired the quiet restraint of his grief, and the tender way he looked at her. Her father told her that Boyd wanted a young woman as his second wife; he wanted somebody untouched by grief, unscarred by life. Someone clean of heart and mind with whom to start afresh.

She hadn’t found out about Pip’s existence until after Boyd had proposed and she’d accepted. When she was told that Emma had died in childbirth, she’d assumed that the child had also been lost.
You needn’t have anything to do with him, if you really don’t want to
, said Boyd.
I’d understand; and he has his nanny, after all
. Clare had been so terrified at the idea of instantly becoming a mother that she hadn’t time to be upset with Boyd for not telling her about him sooner. She thought about pulling out of the wedding, though it had already been announced in the newspaper; she suddenly, and for the first time, had the feeling of being rushed into something, of careering headlong with her eyes shut. But when she met Pip, sitting down to tea in a hotel in Marylebone, all her fears vanished. Aged just five, Pip said nothing, kept his eyes on his cake and ate it a crumb at a time. Clare had been certain he would hate her on principle, but there was none of that. He looked so frightened and lost that on instinct she reached under the table and took his hand; his expression mirrored exactly what she herself was feeling. She simply couldn’t bear the thought that the small boy should be afraid of her, or of what her intrusion might mean for him. Pip didn’t snatch his hand away, he looked at her in silent confusion – and immediately she wanted to stay with him; with them. She felt an instant affinity with him, and also sensed the gulf between him and his father, and she decided that she would bridge that gap. It all clicked into place, and she relaxed.