Mark pushed open the door. He held up his hand. He was shaking.
‘Who …’ he began, but could not continue. He breathed in and out twice, then started again. ‘Who left this bloody note for me?’
We looked at each other. For just a second, I felt as bewildered as the rest. I had left a note, but surely he must mean some other note, some more offensive missive?
His voice was almost a whisper. ‘Who left this note in my room?’
I cleared my throat.
‘Erm. I did? Sorry. I mean, sorry, I didn’t mean to go into your room without permission. I just couldn’t think of where else to leave it and your mother seemed so insistent that …’
He stared at me, as if I was an enemy he’d underestimated.
‘You? You spoke to my mother?’
The others were staring at me. I couldn’t imagine what they thought I’d written to Mark. I began to wonder if I’d had some sort of psychotic break and instead of ‘Mark, your mum called, she’s coming to visit next week’ I’d written ‘Mark, your mum called, she’s a filthy whore’, and smeared it with excrement.
‘The phone was ringing,’ I said. ‘When I got in the phone was ringing so I answered it and —’ I looked around — ‘all it says is that Mark’s mum is coming to visit.’
‘Oh,’ said Jess mechanically. ‘That’s lovely news, isn’t it, Mark?’
‘Ahm,’ said Mark, and dropped the hand holding the note to his side. A few drops of blood rolled stickily down his hand and splashed on to the pale green carpet. They made perfect round circles. Mark looked down at his hand and then at all of us. His eyes were afraid, dumb and desperate.
‘Oh!’ said Emmanuella. ‘Mark, you have hurt yourself!’
Mark did nothing. He stood in place and the blood rolled down his arm, dripping on to the carpet.
It was Jess, at last, who stood up and took him by the hand to the bathroom. It was Jess who cleaned his arm and dressed his wounds, not commenting on the five perfectly regular lateral scores across the inside of his upper arm. It was Jess who, afterwards, when he was quiet and peaceful, pulled back the sheets and put him to bed and gave me the razor to put in with my shaving kit until we came to some decision. It was Jess who did these things: the things a good person does.
7 First year, June, seventh week of term
It is striking to me now that it did not occur to any of us to telephone Isabella and persuade her to put off her visit. These days, if she were to call the house in San Ceterino, Mark would be cool and formal. He insists on speaking English with her, claiming that his Italian is too rusty to understand the rapid shower of her syllables. This is a lie; his Italian is perfect, far better than mine. But English slows her, brings her into a world of politeness, where she cannot quite bring off certain of her particular effects.
We did not think of our parents in this way though, not then: not as problems to be managed or contained, not even as entities quite separate from us.
So she arrived, as she had said she would, wearing a cream trouser suit and a wide-brimmed hat and carrying two turquoise suitcases. The wicker bag slung over her left arm, which appeared at first glance to contain a teddy bear, turned out on closer inspection to be a dog-carrier with the head of a little terrier puppy peeping incongruously out, like a gruesome experiment in dog-bag hybridization. She was still recognizable as the woman from the photographs — older, of course, the skin creased around her eyes, her hands beginning to mottle with liver spots — but nonetheless this was the woman whose half-naked form was displayed in a variety of poses on the walls of one of the small sitting rooms. I was reminded, suddenly, of Franny’s horror at having heard Dr Rufus McGowan in bed with Mark. For all that we were here to learn, it was possible to have too much knowledge.
‘Oooof!’ She mimed wiping the sweat from her brow. ‘It is so hot. And not a drop of water for me to drink.’
‘You should have called from the station, Mamma,’ said Mark. ‘I would have come to get you.’ He spread out his arms to embrace her.
‘Momento,’ she said, hoisting her bag. ‘I must let Colonel Felipe out of his bag. Poor he, he has been so good.’ She swung the bag round, released a hidden clasp and lifted the dog out. His legs waggled as she held him up. She deposited him on the terrace and he swayed slightly, before skittering off towards the rose bushes.
‘I named him Colonel Felipe after my great-grandfather,’ she said. ‘He was a colonel in the army of Pavia. Seven hundred men were lost owing directly to his order to advance to the left, facing right. He meant to say, “To the right, facing left”. Or —’ she waved a hand uncertainly — ‘perhaps it was the other way. The poor man felt such shame he attempted suicide but owing to a defective pistol was unable to finish the task. He shot his right ear off instead. Is it not terribly sad?’
‘Mamma …’ began Mark.
‘Marco, do not stand there doing nothing. Bring some water please in a bowl for Colonel Felipe. He is thirsty.’
Mark backed away a pace or two, then turned and hurried through to the kitchen. While he was gone, Isabella introduced herself to us all. We tried to call her ‘Signora Ranelli’ — or, in my case, ‘Mrs Winters’, momentarily forgetting that Mark’s parents had been divorced for many years — but she brushed off these attempts at formality.
‘Isabella, please. Call me only Isabella. No Mrs,’ she continued, ‘no Signora. Isabella. Like one of your friends.’
As Mark returned from the house, carrying a deep pudding basin of water for the dog, Isabella frowned at him.
‘No, no. Can you not see that this is too deep for poor Colonel Felipe? He will not be able to reach with his little head! Or he will drown! Bring a smaller bowl.’
Throwing a look of loathing at the dog that made me suspect he rather hoped to drown it, Mark went back into the house. We stood awkwardly in silence on the terrace until he returned a few moments later with a soup plate of water.
Isabella looked at him suspiciously.
‘You do not look well, Marco. You do not speak. Do you sleep? Has he slept well?’
She looked around at all of us, frowning. We nodded eagerly, although it wasn’t true: he hadn’t slept well for days before her arrival.
‘Good. You must learn to take care of yourself, Marco. Now give Colonel Felipe his water please.’
Mark, moving clumsily, put down the dog’s water. It took a few eager sips, then stopped, its head cocked to one side, waiting. Isabella looked at it fondly and as if this, only this, had reminded her, she spread out her arms to Mark.
‘Marrrrco, how good it is, how good to see you.’
She wrapped her glittering ring-coated fingers around his shoulders and pulled his face down to hers. She planted kisses on his cheeks, one two, one two. Then, quickly, she muttered something in Italian, too low and too fast for me to catch even if I had been able to understand it. Mark flinched. He took two rapid steps backwards.
‘Now, my darlings,’ she said, ‘you will forgive me. I am so tired and it has been such a long way. Do you, perhaps, in all of this big house, have a chair?’
‘Mamma …’ murmured Mark, but Emmanuella was already leading Isabella through the open French doors to the garden room. Isabella swung back and laced her arm through Jess’s, who allowed herself to be taken through. Simon shrugged, picked up the turquoise cases and followed.
On the terrace, Colonel Felipe had finished his water and relieved himself on the terrace, and was now attacking a small privet bush, snarling and making little runs at it.
Franny reached out a tentative arm and touched Mark between the shoulder blades. He did not shrug her off.