The Night Falling (31 page)

‘But
why
? How did he become so cruel? And why is he allowed to do such things?’

‘He is a product of this place and all the hundreds of years of hate in its blood. There’s no other
why
. Many men have tried to kill him, but he has a knack for staying alive. The luck of the devil, some say. Davide – Paola’s lover, who was killed at the Girardi farm – once got a knife to his throat in the dark of the night, and yet the blade slipped in his hand somehow, and didn’t go deep. Davide said it was like some black magic protected him.’ Ettore jerks up his chin, and Clare can’t tell if he accepts this idea or scorns it.

‘No wonder you are angry.’

‘Angry?’ Ettore shakes his head. ‘Wasps are angry. Spoilt children are angry. What we feel is much bigger. Much worse.’

‘Do you think it was Manzo who shot Davide at Girardi? Do you think he recognised him, and … shot him deliberately?’

‘What are you saying, Chiara?’

‘I asked Leandro about what happened at Girardi … He said that Ludo was there that day, that he was one of the men who fired—’ She breaks off as Ettore lurches forwards. He pushes her away from him, holds her at arm’s length, eyes snapping.

‘He said that – Ludo Manzo was at Girardi that day? You’re sure?’ His fingers are digging into her properly now, painfully. She nods dumbly. Ettore is on his feet in an instant, and stalks away towards dell’Arco without another word.

Clare watches him helplessly, fearfully; she can’t go after him directly, and be seen. She waits in agony for a few minutes and then sets off on a different route, frantic with the feeling of having mishandled something fragile, and done irreversible damage. In the end she has no choice but to go to the main gates, even if she is tellingly close behind him. The wall around the vegetable garden is too high for her to climb; the walls around the
aia
are lower but in full view of the
trullo
by the gates and the guards on the roof. And what would look guiltier than scaling a wall, anyway? But just as she has her hand on the flaking metal she hears male voices, raised in anger, excitement; there’s a
whoop
like a rodeo cry, and whistling. Clare, compelled by foreboding, jogs around the
aia
to the rear of the complex. The off-duty corporals are all there, gathered, watching. There’s a rising cloud of dust, and between the onlooker’s bodies Clare glimpses sudden frantic movements.

She edges forwards, already knowing what she’ll see. There’s a shout from behind her, and she glances up at the guards on the roof who are lined up, watching. At the centre of the dust cloud Ettore is fighting Ludo Manzo. He’s astride him, snarling, struggling to free his arms from Ludo’s grasp, to be able to hit. There’s blood in his teeth; the pair of them are covered in Puglia’s gold-brown dirt, barely recognisable. Ludo’s face is murderous; a rictus of total fury. On the edge of the circle his son stands watching, arms loose at his sides, fingers twitching with desire. The tendons in Ettore’s neck stand out in hard ridges; he claws at the older man’s face, leans all his weight forwards and gets his hands around Ludo’s scrawny neck, shaking with the strain.

Clare watches with the others. She can’t move or speak; there’s a clenched fist in her chest that makes it hard to breathe, and the shouts from the others are in the dialect she can’t decipher; she feels removed, helpless. Ludo is older but taller and full of vicious malice; Ettore younger but smaller, still weak in one leg, and reckless with anger. With an inhuman growl Ludo throws Ettore off and is on his feet in a heartbeat, fighting for breath, rubbing his throat. He darts forwards and kicks Ettore’s damaged leg as he tries to stand; Ettore roars in pain and falls to his knees, and Ludo catches his hair in one hand and lifts his chin to take the full impact of a crunching blow of his fist. Ettore rolls away, gets to his feet but staggers, shaking his head to clear it. Ludo is grinning now, like he’s heard a good joke; blood drips freely from his nose, clagged up and gluey with dust.

‘I’m going to take your head off for you, boy,’ he says, his Italian so contorted with some accent that Clare can barely understand him. He jabs a finger at Ettore. ‘Then none of this will bother you any more.’ He kicks Ettore viciously in the stomach and puts him back on his knees, retching, heaving for breath.

‘Stop!’ Clare shouts. Ettore gets back to his feet, still reeling, bent over, off balance. ‘Ettore!’ She wants him to look up, wants him to see how close Ludo has got to him, how he’s coiling himself up, wiry as a snake, to deliver the next kick. Her voice is lost in the din, she tries to push forward but an arm appears across her chest, keeping her back. ‘Ettore, look out!’ she tries again, but there’s no hope of him hearing. But then Ludo freezes.

There’s a gunshot, shockingly loud, close at hand. Before the echo of it has cracked off the
masseria
wall the men have fallen silent and gone still; the fighters included. They stand facing one another, poised; chests heaving, eyes alight with hate. Leandro Cardetta lowers his rifle and points it casually right at them. He walks forwards slowly, and says something in dialect that Clare can’t understand. She itches with frustration, but her relief is far greater. She edges back behind the wall of young men, dipping her head, not wanting to be seen. Ludo says something in his hard, emotionless voice, also in the dialect. He jerks his thumb at Ettore, and Leandro asks something of his nephew that Ettore answers, eventually, with a single reluctant nod. Ettore starts to speak, and Clare understands the word
Girardi
, before Leandro cuts him off with a bark. Keeping the rifle trained on the two of them, Leandro asks a question, but neither man will answer. Clare glances across at Federico, and doesn’t like the gleeful smirk on his face. Ettore wipes one hand across his face and spits a gobbet of bright red saliva into the dust. He doesn’t speak again but turns and walks out of the circle of men, away from his uncle and the huddled, fearful figure of his lover.

He limps away towards the road and doesn’t look back, and Clare wants to shout, to tell him to wait, to know where he’s going. But she knows already – he is leaving. She can’t run after him; she has no choice but to remain amongst the crowd of men, who are deflated now, cheated of the spectacle, and mutter as they move away. Soon she will be obvious, she will be exposed, but still she can’t move. She watches Ettore’s retreating back, and longs for him to turn. He walks stiffly, one hand pressed to the ribs where Ludo’s kick landed, but he doesn’t pause. When she’s alone, standing pointlessly on the vacant patch of dusty ground, Clare can feel Leandro looking at her. She turns to meet his eye – she can’t help it.
I did this
, she thinks.
I did this
. The warm breeze sets to work, erasing the marks of the fight from the dusty ground, and Clare can only tolerate Leandro’s hard, questioning gaze for a moment before she too has to turn, and walk away.

At dinner Leandro is subdued, thoughtful, and Clare can’t put food in her mouth. The meal glistens on her plate – thin shavings of donkey meat, rolled and cooked in a thick red sauce; focaccia bread oozing oil, studded with nubs of sickly green olive. The mozzarella has wept out a puddle of whey, and the
primitivo
wine smells acid-sour. Anna poured some for Pip at the start of the meal, and he’s drunk it all; Boyd puts his fingers discreetly over his son’s glass when the girl returns with the jug, and Pip shoots him a rebellious look. Clare would normally be the one to do it but she hadn’t even noticed. She glances up now and sees that Pip’s cheeks are pink, and his eyes are shining and bleary. But she can’t react; she can’t find any words to say.

‘So he just went off without a word, our Ettore?’ says Marcie. ‘That’s a little rude after all the time he’s spent with us … But, these Italian men! Nothing if not passionate. Am I right?’ She looks at Clare first as she asks this and Clare flinches. But Marcie’s expression is simply puzzled, slightly injured. Clare nods once.

‘Yes, it would seem so,’ she says. Marcie puts her hand over Leandro’s and leans towards him.

‘Look at my poor husband, so sad to see him go. And to go in high dudgeon like this … What on earth were they fighting about, him and Ludo?’

‘What the
giornatari
and the
annaroli
have been fighting about for a hundred years.’ Leandro flicks his eyes at Clare and it feels like a slap.

‘What’s the matter, Clare? You look weird,’ says Pip. The wine has made him blunt, clumsy.

‘Yes, I’m not feeling terribly well,’ she says, and as she says it she realises it’s true. Her stomach quivers and then lurches up to the back of her throat, as though the terrace is pitching beneath them. The back of her neck feels cold and clammy; saliva drenches the insides of her cheeks; her fingertips tingle. She wants to go somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, somewhere she can be alone to feel this wretched, but she doesn’t think she could move without throwing up.

‘You have gone awfully pale,’ says Marcie.

‘Darling, are you all right?’ says Boyd, reaching for her.

‘Yes, please don’t—’ Clare waves her fingers but can’t finish the sentence. She shuts her eyes so she won’t see all of theirs, watching.

‘Is it the heat? Or the donkey meat? It
is
quite rich – I can only stomach a tiny taste of it,’ says Marcie, but all Clare’s attention has turned inwards; their voices recede into the distance, booming like a far-off sea. She hears the air rushing into her lungs and soughing out; her thudding heart and her blood moving with a seething sound. The world tilts, and goes dark.

She wakes to a room lit by a single lamp in a far corner, so that there’s no harsh glare in her eyes. She’s still dressed, lying on her back on the bed with a strange weight on her forehead. She puts her fingers to it and finds a cool, damp cloth. Pip is in a chair by the bed, and he’s finally past halfway through his dog-eared copy of
Bleak House
.

‘All right there, Pip?’ she says. ‘You might actually get that thing finished on this trip.’ She pulls the cloth from her head and sits up slowly. For a moment the blood thumps in her ears again, but then it fades.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps by the time I’m thirty,’ he says. His voice is heavy, his eyes hooded. The alcohol has worn off and left him sluggish. ‘Don’t faint again, will you?’ The look he gives her is that of an anxious child, just for a second.

‘I’ll try not to. Did I make a scene?’

‘You took the tablecloth with you when you went.’

‘No! Not really?’

‘Partly.’ Pip smiles. ‘You made a bit of a mess. Marcie screamed – I think she thought you were dead.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You did look awful,’ he says, and it’s almost an accusation. She frightened him.

‘Sorry, Pip. I’m fine really. I don’t know what came over me. Where’s your father?’

‘After Leandro carried you up here they went off into the sitting room with brandy. I think they’re talking about his drawings.’

‘Oh,’ says Clare. She knows the decision they might be making, and it causes her a spasm of panic.

‘Father was very worried about you, though. He looked very worried,’ says Pip, mistaking her tone.

‘I don’t want him to worry.’

‘Why did you faint?’

‘I’ve no idea, Pip.’ She smiles. ‘Women do, sometimes.’

‘You never have before.’

‘Then it must have been my turn. Honestly, Pip, I’m quite all right now.’ But all she can see is Ettore walking away, bloodied, with one hand pressed to his ribs. Gone, and she knows he won’t be coming back to Masseria dell’Arco. She tries not to think about it; she can’t let herself break down and cry in front of Pip.

‘Is this … was it because of Ettore Tarano?’ says Pip, sitting back in the chair and rubbing one thumb over the dry scabs of the dog bite on his hand. Clare is instantly afraid of his studied disinterest, the way he pretends the question is idle.

‘What do you mean?’ she says abruptly, before she can stop herself. Pip glowers.

‘You were out for a walk when the fight happened … did you see it? Was it … was it as bad as what happened in Gioia?’ Clare breathes carefully, and nods.

‘Yes – that is, no. It wasn’t as bad as what happened in Gioia. I hope nothing ever is. But I did see it. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps that’s what it was. It was horrible – they … they were in deadly earnest.’

‘And then when Marcie started talking about it at dinner it made you think of it again,’ he says, and Clare realises he needs to explain what happened; he needs to understand it, so he can know if it will happen again. She nods.

‘Yes. That’s probably it.’

‘This—’ he starts to say, breaking off, frowning down at his hands again. ‘This is all real, isn’t it? Only it doesn’t seem it. Not the way home and school and London seem real. But this is real too. More real and less, at the same time.’

‘I know exactly what you mean, Pip. I really do,’ says Clare. She reaches out her hand to him, and when he doesn’t take it she stands, and bends down to wrap her arms around his head and shoulders. ‘We’ll go soon.’ The words bruise her as she says them; she swallows tears again. ‘We’ll go soon.’ But Pip pulls away, gently but insistently. He stands up and closes his book.

‘You should probably rest,’ he says, as impersonal as a stranger. ‘They sent for the doctor to see you but he hasn’t turned up yet.’ Clare sits back down obediently, powerless to prevent the ways in which he’s changing.

Hours later Boyd enters the room quietly and comes to kneel by the bed like a penitent. Up close he is all eyes, pale and wide and anxious. His skin has a waxy look and the sour smell is back, faint but unmistakable. Clare shuts her eyes.

‘Please don’t fuss me, Boyd. I’m fine. The doctor looked most put out to have been called for,’ she says, but Boyd doesn’t try to fuss her.

‘Cardetta wants me to redraw my designs. He’s not going ahead now, but he wants the plans ready for when he does. We’re going back to Gioia tomorrow, he and I,’ he says, in a deadened tone. Clare opens her eyes, hoping he won’t be able to read what’s in them. ‘I’m so sorry, Clare. I asked him to let you and Pip set off ahead of me, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He says you oughtn’t to travel alone. I suppose he’s right. And Marcie has her wretched party next week.’ Boyd takes her hand and presses his lips to it. ‘We’ll go soon,’ he says, unknowingly echoing the words she said to Pip earlier, and Clare feels Pip’s exact urge to retreat, to pull herself away. ‘I promise we’ll go soon.’ He lays his cheek to her hand and she tries to feel for him what she would once have felt – tenderness, if not love – but it’s gone. Only ashes of it remain, burnt out by the fire of Ettore.