The Night Falling (41 page)

‘There you are, Clare,’ says Marcie, seeming to think nothing of the way her husband deposits her there. ‘Have you ever been to watch the horse races back in England? I’ve never seen one – is it fun? Mr Centasso was just telling me about his new racehorse – a thoroughbred, no less! The
signori
here do love their horse races. Oh, do promise you’ll invite me to watch your horse run, Mr Centasso,’ she says. ‘And I promise I’ll bet on it.’ Clare watches after Leandro as he excuses himself and leaves the terrace.

A short while later Leandro draws her to one side again, and walks her to the far end of the terrace from which the
aia
and the main gates are just visible. He points, and in the wash of light from the farm a figure is visible, walking stiffly and fast, as if propelled. Clare recognises Federico at once.

‘Dismissed. From my service and both of my households. His father will have words with me; perhaps he’ll leave as well. But some things are rightly done, even if they make waves.’ He pats her shoulder gently. ‘You won’t see him again. I’m sorry that harm has come to you here.’

‘Thank you,’ Clare whispers. Leandro gives a weary grunt.

‘Don’t thank me. I brought you here.’

‘But you are kind. When you told me of your … old life, I thought that you couldn’t really have left it behind. I thought you must still be that way, and ruthless, and a … bad man. But you’re a good man, Mr Cardetta.’

‘Good?’ He shakes his head, almost angrily. ‘No, you mustn’t say that. You mustn’t think that. I don’t deserve to be thought of as good.’

‘Well, you’ve been kind to me. You knew of my … bad behaviour, and you didn’t inform my husband. And now you’ve dismissed a loyal servant, without question, on my behalf. I will always think well of you.’

‘Your bad behaviour?’ He smiles. ‘When I saw Marcie for the first time, up on stage in her sequins and feathers, she cracked open my chest and stole my heart right out of it. I was married at the time – I’d made promises I ought to have kept. But there are things we can’t foresee, and things we can’t help but do, where the heart is involved.’ He taps two fingers lightly on her chest, against the bone. ‘How can love be a sin? Hate is a sin, but love – never.’ Clare’s eyes are hot with tears. She looks down, struggles to hold them.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says.

‘Ah,’ says Leandro. ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.’

‘Please don’t send us away yet. Don’t send me away with my husband.’

‘Sooner or later it’ll have to happen.’

‘But not yet. I need … some more time. I need a few more days.’

‘Very well. But listen to me, Chiara. Nothing is set in stone. If you don’t love your husband, then don’t stay with him. It could be even more dangerous to do so than to leave him.’

‘Dangerous? You said that before – will you tell me what you mean?’ she says, but Leandro shakes his head.

‘Now is not the time – look, they’re bringing out the supper dishes. Try not to be afraid. Of any of it, Chiara.’

Anna and another of the kitchen girls have brought out platters of meat and vegetables, cheeses, bread and wine, and the table gleams with oil and silverware. A confusing mixture of Italian and English is spoken, and the red wine dulls their teeth as it brightens their eyes, and Clare feels a million miles from it. She hears herself answer questions directed at her, but minutes later can’t remember what she’s said. She’s aware of quizzical looks aimed at her, as though the guests aren’t sure if they’re misunderstanding her English, or her Italian, or simply her.

She never questioned, for a second, the rightness of the coming raid. She accepted it as part of the war, and that Ettore would choose to make war on his own uncle didn’t really register. But now she must question how well she’s repaying Leandro’s kindness by aiding the attack; by not warning him. But the choice is simple: she must betray Ettore, or betray Leandro – so it’s no choice at all. She thinks of the massacre at the Girardi place; she thinks of the unarmed peasants, shot down by men hidden safe behind high stone walls. Picturing Ettore in such danger makes her knees ache, her stomach swoop with fear.
He is here in Gioia
, Ettore had said, meaning his uncle.
It will go easier
. But Leandro was at the
masseria
, and still would be on Sunday. The raid would not go easy. When she realises this Clare jolts upright in her seat, wanting to run to Gioia, to warn Ettore, to make him call it off.

After dinner they go down to the sitting room. The music starts and Marcie dances with each of her guests, and with her husband, time and again. She laughs, and flirts, and smiles, smiles, smiles. Such total abandon that Clare finds it bewildering, as though Marcie is a language she can’t pick up. More and more, it bothers her.
He’s a dirty peasant
. Pip watches Marcie with a cautious kind of smile, and takes his turn dancing with her, and also dances with the doctor’s daughter. She’s a year older and a head taller than him, but it’s the daughter who blushes, and Clare tries to see Pip through her eyes – a handsome young man, not a boy; least of all a child. Surely he wouldn’t disappear from her life if she disappeared from Boyd’s? Not now, when he is so grown. Not unless Clare stayed in Puglia with Ettore. She has to remind herself that Ettore has made no such invitation, and then she thinks that perhaps he might, when he hears about the child. Her thoughts pace around in this circle, again and again; she’s like the
aia
dogs at the ends of their chains, dizzy and tired. The party is a kind of madness; they’re laughing as the ceiling cracks, dancing as the ground falls out beneath their feet.
Madness
. Clare declines several invitations to dance until one comes from Pip – a wordless, almost shy extension of his hand, a declaration of peace.

The dance is an old-fashioned waltz, and though Marcie and Leandro are spinning, filling the floor, Pip leads Clare cautiously, holding her as if she might break. His face is flushed from the heat, the dancing and the wine; a stubborn lock of hair has escaped the oil he’s combed through it. Clare tips her head back to see him clearly, and then smiles slightly.

‘You’ve got taller this summer, you know. You’re growing so fast I can almost see it happening.’ Once he would have been pleased, but now he frowns a little. Clare needs to weed out the things she said to him when he was a child, and find a new way to talk to him. ‘You made the doctor’s daughter blush,’ she says, and at this he looks pleased.

‘I don’t know why, it was only a dance.’

‘I think she’d like another,’ she says, and smiles again. Leandro turns Marcie too close to the gramophone; she shrieks in dismay as her heel bumps the table leg and jolts the needle from the groove. There’s a loud, awful tearing sound, and laughter. Clare flinches from the noise, and then the sudden silence.

‘Clare, what’s wrong? I mean … there’s something really wrong, isn’t there?’ says Pip.

‘Oh, Pip …’ She shakes her head.

‘You
have
to tell me what it is – you promised.’ He sets his jaw when he’s said this, and for a few moments Clare says nothing. The music restarts and the dancing with it. Beneath her hand Clare feels Pip’s shoulder sag as the tension, the fake belligerence, leaves him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ he says helplessly. ‘Please, Clare. I can’t stand you not saying … don’t you trust me?’

‘Darling, of course I trust you. You’re … you’re my best friend. I want you to know you’ll be safe. Whatever happens, you’ll be safe.’

‘What do you mean, whatever happens? What’s going to happen?’

In that moment Clare has another choice – to keep her word to Ettore, and say nothing of the raid, or to win back Pip’s trust and keep him safe when the trouble begins. She hesitates, but she has to warn him. The thought of him hearing strange sounds on Sunday night and blundering down into danger is too dreadful.

‘Swear to me you won’t repeat what I’m about to tell you to anybody. Swear it,’ she whispers. Shocked, wide-eyed, Pip nods. ‘Swear it, Pip?’

‘I swear it.’

‘There’s going to be a raid. Here, at the
masseria
… you know what we saw in Gioia? The gangs, and the beatings? It’s a war, Pip, and … and Ettore is one of the people fighting it.’

‘He’s going to attack his own uncle?’

‘No, no – he’s not leading it. I think … I don’t think he likes the idea. But raiders will come, and he will be one of them. They don’t want to hurt anybody – it’s very important for you to understand that.’ She thinks of Ludo, of the other guards laughing as he flicked the whip at the naked man, making him graze. Ettore wants to kill Ludo Manzo. ‘Not you or your father, not Marcie or Leandro. In fact, Ettore thought his uncle would be in Gioia, out of the way …’

‘Then why would they attack this place?’ Pip’s voice is tight with nerves. ‘We have to warn Marcie and Leandro!’

‘No! No, you promised me, Pip – you
swore
you wouldn’t!’ She grips his arms so hard that cramp starts in the heels of her hands.

‘Ow! All right! But … what do they want? If it’s not to hurt anybody?’

‘I … I’m not sure. Perhaps they only want to show that they can do
something
. Perhaps they only want to be heard – and treated better.’

‘What … what should I do?’ He swallows convulsively, fearfully.

‘Don’t be frightened, Pip, and don’t do anything. Stay up in your room. Does the door lock? Then lock it. Don’t come down no matter what you hear, and you’ll be safe. Promise me you’ll do as I say! And please, please, say nothing. If the guards know they’re coming …’ It’s Clare’s turn to swallow, because her mouth is dry, her throat in a chokehold. ‘If they’re ready for them, then people will die. Do you understand?’

Dumbly, Pip nods, and Clare sees him glance around and realise that they’ve stopped dancing even though the music is still blaring. He looks at Marcie, at Leandro, at the doctor’s pretty daughter making eyes at him from across the room. She can see him trying to assimilate what she’s said, struggling to continue with real life now that he has this unreal knowledge; now that the stakes have changed so drastically. ‘If only we’d gone,’ she murmurs, too quietly for him to hear. ‘If only we’d gone right after what we saw in Gioia, like I wanted to. Before any of the rest of this happened, and we came to this point.’ But though she’d do anything to keep Pip safe, she can’t regret Ettore – can’t regret loving him; can’t regret the child now planted in her. She holds Pip tightly, subtly leading him to the end of their dance, and realises that Sunday night, when she opens the door to the
masseria
, might be the last time she ever sees Ettore. She and Pip dance on, woodenly, disjointedly, as if they can’t hear the music.

Late in the evening Clare walks out under the archway to stand by the doors with Boyd and the Cardettas and see off the last of the guests. Pip has gone to bed; he didn’t seem to enjoy himself much after Clare spoke to him, even though Marcie jollied and cajoled him, and looked hurt when he didn’t respond. The Centassos’ little trap pony spooks at the
aia
dogs as it trots past them, and Clare takes a lungful of the night air, which somehow tastes different to that within the
masseria
. There are few stars and no sounds of night birds or insects; there’s a preternatural stillness, hunkered down like a stalking animal. Movement catches Clare’s eye and she sees a fragile curl of ash, drifting down from the sky like a dirty snowflake; then she notices the tang of smoke, and turns to glance at Leandro. He’s staring northwards, where an ugly orange glow is smudged along the sky, and at once they’re all uneasy; at the colour of the fiery sky, and the fixed way Leandro stares at it. The fire isn’t close, but it’s on his land.

‘Marcie, take our guests inside,’ says Leandro. She’s still waving after the Centassos, though they haven’t turned to see. ‘Marcie!’ he barks. She starts, turns to him. ‘Go inside.’

‘What’s up, honey?’ she says. But then Ludo Manzo appears through the gates on his horse, cantering towards them. He has his rifle in one hand, his face is streaked with sweat and soot and has a murderous look. When he reaches Leandro he yanks the horse’s mouth to halt it and unleashes a violent burst of his accented Italian.

‘What’s he saying, Clare?’ says Boyd, at her side. Clare shakes her head.

‘I can’t follow it.’ Her heart is racing with nerves – that this is somehow related to her, to Federico’s dismissal.

Ludo and Leandro talk for a short time, then the overseer wheels his horse around and rides away fast. Leandro turns to them, and his face is set and grave. But he doesn’t look at Boyd, or at his wife – he looks at Clare. And Clare goes cold.

‘What is it?’ she says, not caring if Boyd wonders at her question. Leandro’s face twists then; he sucks in a breath. ‘What is it?’ she says again, with an edge of panic on the words. ‘Tell me!’

‘I must go. I have business …’ he says, still looking at Clare. ‘Go inside. Stay there.’

‘Sure we will, darling,’ says Marcie. ‘Come on, Clare. And you, Boyd – whatever this is I’m sure Ludo and Leandro can handle it … Do come on. It’s best to do as he says when there’s trouble on the farm.’ She’s still glimmering in her finery, fluttering her hands to herd them. Leandro turns and starts to follow his overseer, but Clare runs after him. She takes his arm.

‘Is it him? Is it Ettore? Tell me!’ she whispers. In the distance the sky glows with steady menace, and smoke blooms upwards like some vast tree. Leandro stares down at her; she sees anger, pain and something else in his eyes – something intractable.

‘Go inside, Chiara,’ he says, so adamantly she has no choice but to obey. Boyd puts his arm around her shoulders when she reaches him. Clare’s head feels detached from her body; she stumbles, letting Boyd steer her.

‘You understood more of what was said than you’re letting on, didn’t you?’ says Boyd. ‘What were they saying, Clare?’ The
masseria
door closes behind them with a thump, and Clare can’t bring herself to speak. She has never been more afraid.