The conversation on the bouncing back seat of the car was a long coda to the conversation in the garden. Sitting on the pedestal of one of the statues, Mauro had looked up squinting against the light and asked Luisa to marry him. The answer, of course, was no, although Luisa could not have said why the ‘of course’ was so immediate and definitive. She liked Mauro. He was always entertaining in his silk shirts and boots, declaring things. He was ardent, about her, about Italy. But there was something she was sure she should have felt that she didn’t. It was a kind of terror that she wanted to feel, her solitude broken open, a fiery golden tearing into the centre of her by the man who would then have the right to marry her, and that she had never felt.
In Palermo, Mauro had sent messages to the apartment in the palace where she stayed with her cousins (the Prince having long since rented out his Palermo residence to his nephews). She had replied only insincerely, with jokes and exhortations to courage. She had met the usual people and done the usual things in an atmosphere now effervescent with the closeness of war. Until, that is, being there had bored her and she’d left.
Arriving home, the driver got out, trotted around and opened the door for Luisa. The guard waited and walked behind. Luisa saw Angilù walking from the main door towards the wing of estate management rooms. He stopped where he was and lifted his hat, almost as though he was showing her his balding head, a little surprise he kept for her. Angilù wouldn’t have understood this comical thought, he was always so serious and hard-working. The Princess waved at him, allowing him to walk away.
Into the lion’s mouth, the echoing hallway where the dogs came out to greet her, claws scrabbling on the tiles. She rummaged briefly among their furry necks and sides, their warm, damp breath, before walking through to her father’s study. Presumably Angilù had just come from there. The image of him standing outside, subordinate, his hat uplifted, stuck in her mind for some reason. She found him a frustrating man. He’d been working with her father, around the house, for almost twenty years and he always kept such a pious distance from her. Only once, when she was a girl, she remembered, he’d treated her like one of his own children. Luisa used to follow him around, pursuing him at his work. She was playing outside with some kind of seeds that he needed, tossing them onto the ground, and he’d grabbed hold of her, handling her roughly, and scolded her. She had been so shocked and outraged at this unprecedented behaviour that she had wailed with scarlet anger. She could still see the fear that had appeared in his eyes, the desperate effort to placate her before anyone else saw. After that assertion of her will, Angilù had kept away. When she followed him, he ignored her respectfully. Luisa felt at odd moments abandoned by him still, his veneration of her a kind of denial. She would have liked to talk to him sometimes, she imagined he knew interesting things, but he was mute. She could have asked him questions and he would have been forced to answer, but it was not the same.
Her father was sitting in his red armchair with the wireless on, his gaze resting in midair, a slightly foolish look of cogitation on his face. Cigarette smoke was rising slowly along his arm and up from his head. It rolled with turbulence when he saw her and moved. ‘Ah, my dear.’ He stood up. ‘One moment.’ He went over to the wireless, a waist-high cabinet elaborate with honey-coloured grilles, and switched it off.
The Princess approached and kissed the Prince’s proffered cheek.
‘Well,’ he asked, sitting back down on his armchair, the leather cushions huffing and crackling. ‘What news on the Rialto?’
‘They’re scared, Father. They think Sicily is next and that the Germans are about to arrive in force. Rumours. I think Mauro might be making plans to escape.’
‘Doesn’t that rather suggest he won’t marry you?’
Luisa laughed quickly, dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t have married him.’ Mauro appeared to her mind’s eye the way he always did, his pretty features like an illustration in a children’s book, a simple, impertinent face.
‘That’s a relief. A few years ago I suppose you might have got away with it, when things were different for them. Now I would certainly forbid it.’
‘Yes, Father. But there’s no need. I’ve already forbidden it.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m going to change. I want to ride before dinner. Any news here?’
‘I just had Angilù in here.’
‘Yes, I saw him.’
‘There’s a lot of news coming back from cousins in America. Certain people who left a long time ago are apparently helping the Americans. Which suggests that the news in Palermo may be correct. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
‘Nobody does.’ The Princess thought her father looked very old in his chair, the way his long, narrow thighs jutted out and converged weakly at the knees, his bony hands on the armrests. He had worked very hard for the estate. Prince Adriano was a rare eccentric: a Sicilian landowner who liked the land.
2
Walking home, Angilù caught sight of the witch of Montebianco in the distance. Perhaps she’d been visiting someone in the house, the servant Graziana maybe. Short, dark, she moved with a rapid skimming walk, a small bag hanging from her right hand. Angilù wondered what she knew. For himself, he preferred the church now and again. He should go soon to get a blessing. He pictured the holy sparkle of it descending on him, protecting him.
He walked up through the whispering avenue of olive trees and into his home, into the blue shadows of his whitewashed hallway with its smooth, cool smell of plaster dust and paint. For two years, Albanese’s widow had remained in this place. After two years, she had moved back in with her mother in Sant’Attilio and later, when she’d married again, into Silvio’s house. The Prince had invited Angilù and Rosaria, then pregnant with their first daughter, to move in. The house frightened both of them at first. It was so large and quiet and still. And Albanese had lived there. His presence remained. The families in Sant’Attilio who were friends of the Albaneses, those of them who remained, watched Angilù as he passed in the street. Angilù had the house blessed. Holy water flashed into every corner. And then the baby was born, a new blossoming of loud life, and Angilù forgot; the place became their house.
He could hear Rosaria in the kitchen, the melody of her talk to Mariuzza, their youngest daughter. Walking in, he found Mariuzza sitting on the counter, kicking her soft legs. Rosaria was pouring olive oil into the bottom of a smoking pot. Beside her were heaps of sliced vegetables. Angilù put his hand on the back of her neck, a strong, thick neck, a mother’s neck. Always that distance he crossed in himself to reach out and touch her, still at heart a shepherd and far from everything. He kissed the ticklish damp hair on her nape as she picked up a handful of silvery onions and dropped them into the pan. ‘Hello, little bird,’ he said through the sudden noise of frying.
‘Yes, yes. You need to move.’
Angilù caught hold of one of Mariuzza’s swinging feet. He held it, straightening the girl’s leg, and bent to kiss the dimpled knee.
3
Graziana had unpacked Luisa’s things by the time she went upstairs. She put on a riding dress and stepped out to fetch a field guard from their office to accompany her. The first flames of evening were in the sky. Luisa chose to ride Ezio, sharp-boned and volatile, a horse that tended to fidget and sidestep and yank at the reins. The guard subdued him in the stables then bent down to offer his hands to Luisa. She stepped up into the saddle. The field guards were always so strong — the man’s knitted fingers felt like a stone step. In the courtyard, Ezio tried whirling on the spot. Luisa sat on the beast, imposing herself. She spoke at him and patted his neck. Ezio calmed, stalled finally under her, breathing and thinking. Luisa kicked. She rode out. The guard followed after.