The Soul Room (17 page)

‘Yes, I heard, it’s a shame, but we’ve had a
lovely time haven’t we.’ I know this is only the first of many many lies that I
am going to have to tell from now on. I feel like a part of me has died.

I look through
the hall window out at the street. It’s raining hard, the sky is impenetrable
and dark, raindrops play the roofs of the parked cars like drums. Dan comes out
of mum’s room. His face is tight and pale.

‘How was it? What did she say?’

Dan shakes his head vigorously. His mouth is clamped shut. He seems
squashed, as if there’s something heavy on his shoulders that I can’t see.

I lay my hand on his arm. ‘Come on, what is it? She was really sweet with
me, just told me how much she loved me, that I had to follow my passions…that
kind of thing.’

‘I can’t tell you Maddie, not for ages. Please leave me alone.’

Dad shouts up the stairs, his voice ragged, ‘Come on kids, lunch is on
the table, this is the third time I’ve called you.’

A month later we
find out Mum’s got pneumonia. They said it might not be the cancer that gets
her in the end, that something might sneak in before it, and it has. Mum’s
hands lie limply, either side of her, on top of the old Habitat duvet cover
with the little pink roses on.  Her head is almost bald, just the odd wisp of
hair. Her face is sunken and gaunt, the skin waxy and slightly yellow in the
warm light of the lamp on the bedside table. Her eyes are slightly open, but
the Macmillan nurse says the pneumonia has starved her brain of oxygen, so we
don’t know if she’s aware that we’re in the room or not; her iris’ look out
blankly from underneath her lids. A drip is going into her right arm, she’s had
a big dose of Morphine. Her breathing fills the room, fills all of us, and the
space around us. It’s regular but laboured, each breath seems like a life’s
work and there’s a faint rattle behind it.

Dad has hold of mum’s right hand and I have hold of her left. Dan is laid
down beside her, his head in the crook of her arm, face on her narrow bony
chest. His masculine teenage bulk makes her look tiny and fragile in
comparison. It’s hard to believe that he once came out of her. We talk in
whispers, sometimes we chat to her, stroke her face, tell her how much we love
her. It’s difficult to pin down how I feel. It’s all too real, too raw, it’s
taking all my energy and concentration just to exist in this moment, to deal
with what’s happening. The nurse has told us that one thing we can do for mum
is wet her tongue, it’s blackened and dried as she’s not been able to swallow
properly for ages, her mouth slackly open. I gently stroke inside her mouth
with a wet cotton wool pad held in tweezers. ‘There you go Mum, is that
better?’

Mum’s breathing suddenly changes, calmer, slower, deeper.

‘She sounds better! Maybe she can get through the Pneumonia after all?’
Dad looks hopeful, almost excited, like a little boy. I know what it means
though. I can feel it deep inside me.  I’m right. She does one last, deep
breath, about four seconds in and four seconds out, and then she’s silent.

‘No mum, No!’ Dan’s wail fills the room then spills out into the house.

Dan’s gone over
to a friends for a sleepover, he says he can’t bear to be in the house tonight.
Dad’s sat out in the garden, on the bench by the patio, staring into dark
spaces. His knees are drawn up under his chin and he has a half-pint glass in
his hand, full of what looks like red wine. He moves his head unsteadily and
turns to look at me. His face is puffy, his eyes half closed with crying.

‘You’re drunk Dad.’

‘Of course I’m fucking drunk.’ He says quietly.

I don’t feel like drinking myself but I don’t want him to finish what I
can see is a second bottle, all by himself. ‘I’ll go and get a glass.’

When I return he is sat on the edge of the bench, his face in his hands.
It’s not that warm tonight and I shiver as I pour myself a glass of wine from
the half-empty bottle. ‘Are you all right Dad?’

‘I did love her you know Mads.’

I put my hand on his back. ‘Of course you did.’

‘When I first met her I couldn’t believe my luck. Couldn’t believe that
you could find someone who was beautiful
and
funny
and
clever
and
kind. In the early days I kept thinking she’d leave me, that I wouldn’t be
enough for her…’

‘Oh Dad!’

‘Shhh!’ he raises his hand, but doesn’t look at me. ‘Please, just listen.
I don’t know if I can do this if you talk. Please.’

I feel a sudden sick tightness in my stomach. I say nothing.

‘I didn’t really believe she was happy with me until we had you. Then I
knew she was staying. She loved you so much, she loved being in a family. She’d
never got to do that as a girl, an only child, her dad off working all the
time. And she learnt to love me a bit more, as a father. It rounded me off in
her eyes. But after a few years I started to feel anxious again, to feel that
she wasn’t satisfied. We talked, she said there was something missing in her
life but she wasn’t sure what it was, swore it wasn’t me.’

He wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand, smeared it
unthinkingly on the leg of his jeans. ‘And then we went to Italy, do you
remember?’ He looked up at me, I nodded mutely.  ‘It was a beautiful summer,
you loved it there; and she, she was a different person, lively, vivacious, full
of fun. I thought perhaps we’d reached a crossroads, that all we needed was a
bit of adventure every now and then. I vowed that I’d try to give that to her,
I’d make sure we had some weekends alone, we’d travel. I’d surprise her with a
trip to Paris on her birthday…’

He stops for a moment, tries to suppress a sob, which turns into a
horrible kind of gagging in the back of his throat. He shakily refills his
glass, I down the last inch of mine so I can re-fill my glass, finish the
bottle, and stop him being able to have another.

‘But when we got back from Italy it was even worse. It was like she was
mourning something. And then she found out she was pregnant with Dan, and we
were thrown back into the relentlessness of looking after a baby. Paris never
happened, at least not for five years. Life just seemed to slip through my
fingers.’

‘But you and mum seemed fine,’ I say pleadingly, ‘me and Dan have always
felt so safe.’

‘Oh God.’ Dad groans and his head sinks deeper into his hands. ‘I don’t
know if I can do this.’

‘You’re scaring me Dad, please just tell me. Whatever it is I’ll still
love you.’

‘I had an affair Maddie.’

‘What?!’

‘How can I get you to understand? You’re so young, you see everything in
black and white.’

‘You had an affair? With who? When? How long did it go on?’

‘You say we seemed fine, but we weren’t always. Not underneath. I felt
lonely Maddie, deeply lonely. After we got back from Terranima it was like your
mum switched off.’

‘How do you mean? I never felt that.’

‘She didn’t with you, it was in a way only a husband would know.’

‘You mean she didn’t want to…’

‘More than that, it was like the intimacy went. That she was holding
something back.’

‘I don’t know that I want to hear this Dad, why are you telling me this?’

‘I have to tell someone, I have to tell someone who loved her, I don’t
think I can go on if I don’t.’

‘Why me? Isn’t there someone else you could tell? I just want to remember
the good things. I want to remember her for being loved!’

‘I did love her! That’s why it hurt so much that she switched off from
me. That’s why I couldn’t resist it when someone showed me some affection and
desire, why I had to take it!’

‘I’m sorry Dad, I love you and I know you’re a good man; but I can’t hear
any more of this.’ I get up jerkily, knocking over my glass, it smashes on the
patio, releasing its deep-red contents over the stone like a blood-spill. It
feels like the world has ended and I am lost, floating in nothingness, full of
pain and totally alone.

I staggered down
the cool narrow hall into the bathroom and threw up. I had always felt wary of
Fabrizio. Now I knew I was right to, he was a dangerous, arrogant man. He had
raped my mother and now he wanted my child. Even being in the same country as
him filled me with disgust, let alone being in his home. How could I possibly
let him touch me or talk to me now I knew the full extent of his self-interest
and need for control? My poor mother. What must it have done to her? To hold
that secret in. I knew what it had done, the realisation crashed inside me; it
had given her cancer. And now I had real suspicions that somehow, Fabrizio was
behind my brother’s disappearance.

I wiped the bitter bile from my mouth and looked up into the blemished
old mirror above the sink. I saw a new face. My lips were pressed together
tightly, my eyes clear and bright, my skin pale in the moonlight. It was a
determined face, a face that said that living with fear was no life at all. It
was clear now that Dan had come to Terranima to confront Fabrizio. That he had
read Mum’s diary, read that the mother he had worshipped had been used and
discarded in the most repellent of ways. I could only hope that Amarena wasn’t
capable of the most terrible act of all, and that somehow Dan was still alive.
I felt that he was, I felt in the core of me that he was still in the world.

I was going to play Fabrizio at his own game and find my brother. I was
going to shame him and revenge my mother and I was going to make sure that he
never, ever had any control over my son. Fabrizio was already using the claim
of blood over his grandson, but as far as I was concerned my boy only had the
Italian blood of his wonderful father and grandmother, with all the mysteries
and heritage that gave him; and the blood of my kind, intelligent father and
sensitive and creative mother, and the blood of his uncle – my dear irascible,
wry, talented brother. The brother I was going to get back. But not right now,
the revelation in mum’s diary had overwhelmed me on every level, processing it
had left me wrung out and suddenly unable to keep my eyes open. I collapsed
back into bed, the diary still open on the bedside table beside me.

My descent
was a little quicker this time, as if the quality of the darkness had changed,
lost some of its viscosity. He ran up to meet me and we were both dangerously
close to embracing, but he managed to stop just in time and teetered at the
edge of the circle of tiles that marked the end of the descent.

‘Oh Mum’ he beamed. I’ve missed you! I thought maybe you wouldn’t come
again!’

‘Of course I will always come, I’ve just been so tired that I think
I’ve been sleeping in the wrong way – too lightly or too deeply. I’m always
here, remember that, always thinking of you.’

‘Come Mum, come and see what I’ve found.’

‘OK sweetheart.’

He looked at me keenly. ‘Are you ok Mum?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look OK, something’s happened, something really bad,
something that changes everything. You
know
now don’t you?’ He looked
grave, his smooth forehead temporarily creased.

‘Yes.’ I faltered. ‘But another time, I can’t talk about it right now,
I’m sorry. I really am OK. What was it you wanted to show me?’

He gestured happily and skipped off to the far side of the gallery. I
was touched, and strangely sad to see that he had created a little nest for
himself in a corner – cushions pulled off the sofa, the pile of the story books
I had loved as a child. I had often wondered what he did when I wasn’t there –
did he emerge like a genii when I slept or dreamed, or did he wander around by
himself, waiting? The nest made it look like the latter, but for some reason I
didn’t want to ask him. I hated the thought of him here, lonely, filling the
hours and days between our dream visits.

‘Look Mum, look at this.’ He sat down cross-legged in his pile of cushions
and opened up a book. ‘This book is all pictures.’ He signalled for me to sit.
He bent the book so I could see it – like parents do when they are reading to
their children, looking at me earnestly as he turned the pages. ‘Look, they’re
all different.’

They were photographs, vivid, detailed, luminous. There was one of a
seascape – tall black jagged cliffs outlining a huge bay of sand, struck white
by moonlight. There was a ginger kitten, caught mid-wash, a tiny tongue
sticking out from impossibly thin pink lips. There was a close-up of a man's
hand, his fingers thick but shapely, his long veins casting shadows across his
skin like a mountain range glimpsed through an aeroplane window. There was a
sleeping child’s face, breathtakingly sculptural and luminous in the half
light, eyelashes resting on his cheeks. There was a panoramic sunset; an
oak-leaf skeleton crystallised with ice; an ancient brass sword handle, inlaid
with the tiniest jewel-like pieces of semi-precious stones. Some of the things
and people I recognised, others I didn’t.

‘I think…’ I stammered.

‘I think it’s the most beautiful things in your life. Only some of
them have happened and some of them haven’t.’

‘Yes – yes I think you’re right.’

He flicked back to the page with the little boy’s face. ‘So d’you
think that’s me?’

When I woke up
in the morning I felt strangely calm. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Mum’s
diary again just yet, although I was brimful with agonising curiosity as to
what had happened next. Had she told Dad in the end? Or Rosa? Had she ever seen
Fabrizio again other than that time he had come to the house after her
diagnosis? What had he come for then? Had she wanted a final confrontation? To
shame him? But he wouldn’t have come just for that, he would have stayed away
as he had all the years before. There must have been something, something that
she had used to get him there.

 I thought back to my childhood, to see if I had any memories of the
holiday that would suggest anything, give any clues, but there was only a vague
memory of the sudden departure on that first trip, and of my constant,
undefined unease around Fabrizio.

I shook my head – she couldn't have told anyone, or Dad would not have
recommended me to Fabrizio in the first place. I imagined some modicum of friendship
must have been maintained – Christmas cards and the occasional call – even if
it was pretence on my mother’s part. How else could she have concealed that
something had happened? Or perhaps, once Fabrizio raped her, possessed her in
the way he wanted (I shuddered as I thought of it) his interest in my family
had waned – though he had gone along with the minimum amount of involvement so
as not to have raised suspicion.

I could hear
Nonna singing to herself as I headed downstairs, and that, accompanied with the
smell of fresh coffee and steamed milk instilled an unavoidable sense of
contentment. However, my mind was busy, debating and weighing up - a slightly
feverish layer of activity below my surface calm. I found Nonna bent over the
stove, I went over and kissed her on the cheek. As I straightened up she
turned, took my face in her hands and looked at me keenly.

‘Much has happened.’ She said. At times her black eyes were as benign as
a hedgehog's, today they were as shrewd as crow's. ‘Yes much has happened
indeed – but you are looking well, Maddie, and you are strong. Remember you are
strong.’ She clucked and raised her eyebrows light-heartedly. ‘There I go
again! Sit down,
Tsoro
, and I’ll get you some breakfast.’ She started to
busy herself; little sweet cakes, and plates of thin ham and fruits appeared on
the table. I felt my stomach grumble and the baby kicked in approval.

‘Nonna, that first time that my family holidayed here, back in about...’
I made some mental calculations, ’...1977, 78?’ 

Nonna looked up as she put a dish of butter in front of me. ‘Only
un
poco
.  I didn’t live here then. I lived in Rome with my husband.’

‘So you remember nothing, nothing at all?’

‘I remember meeting you as a
bambina
, you were a very lovely
little girl. Sergio loved you. But I was here only a couple of days. Until I
inherit this place I was a city woman though you wouldn’t believe it now! As I
get older I see myself slowly returning to the soil.’ She inspected her brown
and gnarled hands. ‘One day when my time has come, I will go out and..’ she
gestured with her hands, ‘poof! I will turn into a pile of red earth.’ She
smiled and folded her hands again and put them in the capacious pocket of her
apron. ‘My father was a lot older than my
Mamma
but he outlived her by
fifteen years. He left me this house and I move here twenty years ago, and I
would stay here when I visit. I never felt comfortable in the big house.' She
looked up, crossed herself and laughed. ‘My
Papa
, he was a hundred and
one when he died.’

‘Wow. I hope that gene passes on!’

Nonna patted me on the cheek. ‘
Si si
.  Most who have the gift and
use it well live long.’ She glanced out of the window absently. ‘But poor
Sergio, for him it was no protection. It is not magic
sfortunatamente
.
But you know Maddie, people who use it
malvagio
, to punish, to make
money; they get ill. For them it becomes like a cancer.’ I looked at her,
hoping she would go on. She went over to the sink, started to rinse out our
cups. ‘You are a gardener, you understand. Inside we are like the earth. If we
look after the earth, have sunlight and water – many things will grow – many
beautiful and useful things. If we leave the earth, do not tend it - we get
wild-flowers, but chaos also. If we pollute the earth, have only darkness – then
we get weeds and disease.’ Nonna stared distractedly out of the kitchen window,
wringing the dish cloth tightly until the thin bones in the back of her hands
stood out like twigs. Finally she came out of her reverie and turned and smiled
at me brightly. ‘It is a beautiful day
Tsoro
. You should go and walk
before the sun is too hot. The family are in town today and will not be back
until dark so you have the estate to yourself. Go out, breathe in the air,’ she
took hold of my hand and squeezed it, ‘have a good think. It will be good for
you.’

‘You’re right, it will. And it will be good to go and look at the
garden.’

‘And later when you return, rest and then we shall eat together and share
some Sonnetto.' She winked. 'And I shall mix yours with grape juice so you can
drink more and keep me company for longer.’

I went over and held her tightly. She might not have been my blood
relation, but I loved her no less for it. And I could feel the bond between
her, and Sergio and my son – invisible but tangible. Running through me, and
about me, and around this place like a living, trembling thread.

She was right,
it was a beautiful day. The rains had finally come in the night (though I had
slept through it in the end) and the earth smelt sweet and the air was bright
and washed clean. The full heat of the day was yet to come, but you could sense
it like a force, loitering near the horizon, waiting for the sun to reach its
zenith. August was the hottest month, but even in June it could top 35 degrees
and I was wary of overheating. I wandered aimlessly, appreciating the
opportunity to analyse and sort my thoughts. I walked through the vineyards,
occasionally stopping to weigh a bunch of juvenile grapes, smooth and intensely
green in my hand.

Inexorably I found myself heading towards the main house, with the vague
idea of having a proper look at the gardens. I had to take it slow, as the
weight of my belly was considerable now, and it was easy for me to get out of
breath. I found a fallen branch and made myself a staff. It helped to have
something to lean on, and with it I managed to maintain a comfortable pace, and
soon reached the guest house. The garden was maturing nicely, the
Jasmine
Officinalis
had almost completely covered the west-facing trellis by the
pool, and the
Phormiums
had grown half a metre at least since I had
planted them. I felt a swell of satisfaction, the beauty of plants had always
had the power to move me, whatever else was going on in my head. 

I carried on westward and twenty minutes later I was approaching the
perimeter of the grounds of the main house. There was a more direct route,
following the compacted earth track that Fabrizio had used to take me to
Nonna’s, and which joined the road about half a mile east. But it was steep, so
I took a flatter if more circuitous route west, where you could see the back of
the house and grounds, tumbling in lush terraces down to the vineyards. I
followed a little path that had sprung up after a clump of Olive trees,
delicately silver against the dark leaves of a huge old Magnolia. It led around
the base of the hill, and I hoped to find some path or gate that might lead to
the lower grounds of the house. Sure enough, after about ten minutes, traces of
a very old stone wall emerged, and eventually I came to a wooden door, half
rotted, but still working on its hinges. I pushed it open gently and stepped
into a small clearing.

It looked as if it had once been cultivated – a kitchen garden perhaps –
as there were ragged woody Rosemary and Lavender bushes here and there, and the
traces of raised beds. I pottered through it, brushing my hands over the herbs
and breathing in the scent from my fingers. The air was still and breathless
and I felt a momentary thrill of peace.

Then the baby started to squirm. I put my hands to my belly, feeling
knees, and elbows and back pressing, turning against me. ‘What’s up with you
little one?’ I said, stroking the tautening skin. Instinctively I looked around
– and then I saw it. Half-hidden behind a huge Chinaberry tree and crowd of
untended Viburnums, there was another door. It reminded me of Tolkien’s
sketches of Bilbo’s hobbit hole, because it appeared to be set in the side of
the bank. I went over to take a closer look – the baby pressed his back so
firmly against the inside of my womb that I could almost feel the bones of his
spine against the palm of my hand.