‘Buona sera, Dottoressa,’ he said obediently.
I returned the greeting, and then silence fell. Luigi continued to fondle his grandmother’s hand, running a delicate thumb over her bony fingers, almost in the manner of a lover.
‘You look tired, my treasure,’ she said. ‘What have you been doing? You must conserve your strength, you are growing.’
‘I am well, Grandmother.’ He smiled at her. ‘You know that to work is for me the highest pleasure.’
She shook her head anxiously.
‘You work too hard, my angel.’
He didn’t look overworked to me. He’d have been a howling success as a pop-music star, setting the little girls shrieking, if he hadn’t been so clean.
‘What sort of work do you do, Luigi?’ I asked. Then, as he held out those expressive, stained young hands, I said, ‘I’m sorry, I forgot. What sort of painting do you do?’
It was badly phrased. Most young painters imitate one style or another, but none of them like to be reminded of that; they all think they are innovators. Before I could repair my blunder, Pietro let out a sneering laugh.
‘His style, do you mean? It is of the most modern school, Vicky. Totally without form or sense. Blobs of colour smeared on a canvas.’
The boy’s eyes flashed.
‘I am still experimenting.’ He spoke directly to me, ignoring his father. ‘To me art is a very personal experience; it must flow directly from the unconscious onto the canvas, do you not agree, signorina?’
‘How could she agree?’ Pietro demanded. ‘She is a scholar, a student of art. Did Raphael allow his unconscious to overflow onto the canvas?’
‘Well, now,’ I said, remembering the etchings, ‘that might not be so far off as – ’
‘No,’ shouted Pietro. ‘Form, technique, the most meticulous study of anatomy . . . Vicky, do you not agree with me?’
I was about to give some light, joking answer when the tension in the room caught me. They all stared at me with fierce, hungry eyes – the boy, his father, the old woman. I realized that we weren’t talking about art at all. This was an old feud, a basic struggle between father and son. I also realized that I would be an idiot to commit myself to one side or the other. Looking around for help, I caught John Smythe’s ironical eye. Get yourself out of this one, he seemed to be saying.
‘I’m not a critic,’ I said modestly. ‘As a medieval scholar I appreciate form, naturally, but I do feel that one’s approach to art must be basically visceral. I couldn’t comment on your work without seeing it, Luigi.’
It wasn’t a bad answer; it could be interpreted according to the predilections of the hearer. Luigi’s face lit up. Goodness, but he was a handsome boy!
‘I will show you,’ he said, starting to rise. ‘Come now and we will – ’
‘Luigi!’ The dowager tugged him back onto the stool. ‘You forget yourself, my child. It is almost time for dinner.’
‘Tomorrow, then.’ The boy stared at me.
‘It will be a pleasure,’ I said.
‘It will be a great pain,’ said Pietro rudely.
I am probably the only person in the whole world under thirty who knows all the words to ‘Lover, Come Back to Me.’ It isn’t my fault, it’s the fault of my idiot memory, which retains all the meaningless facts it has ever encountered. Granny Andersen used to play the songs from the old Romberg and Victor Herbert operettas on the piano. God help me, I know them all.
On this occasion the knack proved to be useful. After dinner, when returned to the drawing room, Pietro and I sang along with Nelson and Jeanette, and by that time I had drunk enough wine to ignore Smythe’s hilarity in the background.
After we had listened to ‘The New Moon,’ Pietro passed into the belligerent stage and challenged Smythe to a duel. I forget what brought on the challenge; some fancied insult or other. As I might have expected, Smythe accepted, and the two of them pranced up and down the salone whacking at each other. There weren’t any swords handy, so they used umbrellas, and even the dowager was reduced to helpless laughter as she watched them. She went to bed then, and Pietro showed us card tricks and produced a very fat, very indignant white rabbit from a top hat. Apparently the rabbit had been asleep – in the hat or elsewhere – and was annoyed at being disturbed; it bit Pietro, and was carried off by the butler while Helena fussed over her wounded lover and bound his wounded thumb up in a long gauzy hankie. I enjoy slapstick, but by then I had had enough; I said good night and went to bed.
A long cold shower shook some of the wine fumes out of my head, and instead of retiring I went out onto the balcony.
It was the kind of night you wouldn’t believe. Full moon – a big silvery globe caught in the black spires of the cypresses, like a Christmas ornament. The bright patina of star points made me homesick for a minute; you only see stars like that out in the country, away from the city lights. In the pale moonlight the gardens looked like something out of a romantic novel, all black and silver; the fountains were sprays of diamonds, the roses ivory and jade. My knees got rubbery. It might have been the wine, but I don’t think so. I slid down to a sitting position among the potted plants, my arms resting on the low balustrade, and stared dreamily out into the night. I wanted . . . Well, I’ll give you three guesses.
Then a figure came drifting out of the shadows, across the silver-grey stone of the terrace. It was tall and slim, with hair like a white-gold helmet moulding its beautifully shaped head. It stopped under my balcony, flung up its arms, threw back its head, and declaimed, in the bell-like tones common to Shakespeare festivals and the BBC:
‘Sweet she was and like a fairy
And her shoes were number nine . . .’
I picked up a flower pot and let it fall. It missed him, but not by much; he had to leap aside to avoid the spattering fragments. I could hear him laughing as I ran inside.
Like rats and hamsters, Pietro was a nocturnal animal. Knowing he seldom arose before noon, I figured that morning was the best time to explore. So I was up at eight, bright and shining and ready for action.
What was I looking for? Well, I had had an idea. Smythe had been a little too anxious to assure me I wouldn’t find anything at the villa. Ordinarily you would assume that a gang of crooks wouldn’t bring a suspicious investigator to the scene of the action, but Smythe was just weird enough to be trying the double fake. It’s an old adage, that if you are trying to hide from the law you go to a police station. Maybe the criminals were carrying on their nefarious activities under my very nose. There was one activity that would damn them for sure – the workshop of the craftsman who was manufacturing the fake jewellery.
Breakfast was set out in the small dining salon, on silver salvers and hot plates in the English fashion. I ate alone, and then started to explore.
I got lost several times. The villa was a huge place, and I couldn’t be sure I had seen it all even after I had been poking around for some time. The cellars were the most confusing part. Some of the rooms were carved out of the limestone of the hillside itself. It seemed to me that this would be a good place for a hidden workshop, so I explored the underground regions as thoroughly as I could without a plan of the place, but I didn’t find anything except a lot of spiders and cobwebs, plus a wine cellar with hundreds of bottles.
It was with considerable relief that I left the dank darkness of the cellars for the sunny warmth of the gardens. Faint music accompanied me as I wandered – the splashing of fountains, the singing of birds, the rustle of leaves in the breeze. But after I had walked for a while I began to get an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades – the feeling you get when someone is watching you.