‘There’s no excuse for bad manners. And I suppose I… I’ve never…’
‘Been at the sharp end of it?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t stand to have to associate with such people.’
‘You would stay away, and let them win? I have a thick skin, Mrs Kingsley – it’s impossible to get anywhere either here or in New York without one. But I don’t forget these slights.’ He taps one finger on the side of his head. ‘One day Cozzolino might regret talking down to me the way he does. Or perhaps you think he’s right? You think high society is no place for an arriviste like me?’
‘No,’ says Clare, nervous of the edge in his voice. ‘No, I don’t think that at all.’
‘In a small place like Gioia, this is how politics works, Mrs Kingsley. It’s all about who you know, and who you pay. Imagine if I ended up in city hall one day! Then I could really make a difference here. But it’ll only happen if I make myself one of them, at least outwardly. It’ll be a long process, and perhaps a distasteful one, but every game has a set of rules.’
‘Ought democracy be a game?’ says Clare.
‘I didn’t make the world.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘Politics was ever a dirty business.’
‘Then I think I’d rather not be involved at all.’
‘But, Mrs Kingsley, that’s no solution! Women may vote in your country, now – isn’t that so? Don’t tell me you don’t exercise that right?’
‘Once I turn thirty, I may vote. But I won’t have the first idea who I should vote for. I suppose I’ll take Boyd’s lead on it. Politics has never really interested me, truthfully. Better that I leave it to those who understand it,’ she says. Leandro grunts. He walks with his hands linked behind him, studying his fancy shoes for a while.
‘For you, politics is something that happens in the newspapers. Decisions made at a distance to you, which have no obvious effect on your life. Is that not so? Easy to ignore it, then. Here in Puglia, politics is something that happens on your doorstep; it’s something that happens to you, whether you’re interested or not. Politics can take food out of your mouth, and impoverish your family. It can make you unemployable, and land you in prison. It’s not possible to ignore it, to be uninterested.’ Feeling his rebuke, Clare says nothing; the silence is awkward.
‘I hope you do get to be mayor,’ says Pip, and Clare is grateful. ‘Then that man won’t dare to be rude to you.’ Leandro chuckles.
‘Wouldn’t it be funny, watching him try to be civil?’ He flashes Pip his lupine grin.
Just then there’s a commotion in Piazza Plebiscito, immediately up ahead. They are at the edge of the square and a loose ring of people have stopped to watch; they shift on their feet, nervous, uncertain. Wearing the peasant black, these could be the same aimless men Clare noticed before; one or two of them call out words in the dialect, but the men they’re watching don’t pay them any attention. These others are three men in black shirts, with batons in their hands, standing every bit as poised but with none of the uncertainty of the onlookers. A fourth is putting his shoulder to the door of a house that opens onto the square; his teeth are gritted, snarling, and he grunts each time he drives himself into it. With the other people whose evening strolls have brought them unexpectedly on this spectacle, Clare, Pip and Leandro stop still, paused in the act of turning away.
‘Are they the police? Are they going to arrest somebody?’ says Pip.
‘We should go,’ says Clare, and finds that her throat has gone dry, but Leandro neither moves nor speaks. He watches the scene with an unreadable intensity. So Clare and Pip watch too, and she’s sure that whoever the men are, they’re not the police. With a crash of splintering wood the door gives way and the men are inside. Somewhere above, a woman shouts incomprehensible words; there’s the scuff and thud of footsteps on wooden stairs. The ring of onlookers take an involuntary step forwards, as one, but again, something stops them. They are afraid, Clare realises. They are horribly afraid. We should go.
Thirty seconds later the men in black emerge, bringing another man out between two of them. The man is middle-aged, his neat beard shot with grey. He has round, wire spectacles; he’s slightly built, and they have messed up his hair so that it flops onto his forehead. He walks with a certain reluctance but offers no real resistance. He is dignified, and Clare exhales a little, thinking the worst is over.
‘Do you know who that…’ she begins to ask, but then words abandon her. Once they are clear of the house the man’s arms are released. He reaches up and straightens his spectacles with the index finger of his right hand, then one of the men in black raises his baton and strikes him viciously around the side of his head. It makes a horrible sound, meaty and oddly hollow. The man’s spectacles fly off as his head cracks around; Clare hears them rattle as they hit the ground. The man falls down, boneless; there’s a spray and spatter of blood. His left eye socket looks odd and collapsed but he must still be awake because he curls himself up and tucks his elbows in, as if that will protect him as more blows fall, the four batons rising and falling, again and again, clenched in white-knuckled hands. They kick him too, driving their booted feet into the soft parts of his body for a long time after he has stopped moving; they are breathing hard when they finish. Clare doesn’t see them go – she doesn’t see if they saunter, or run away like guilty men. She can only see the crumpled, broken man on the paving stones, and his ruined little spectacles next to him. And then she sits down, without blinking, as if she owes him her undivided attention, and Pip throws up beside her.
Boyd wakes her hours later, with darkness outside the shutters. He turns on the bedside light and it sends a stabbing pain into her skull.
‘How are you now?’ He takes her hand in one of his and brushes the fingers of the other over her cheek.
‘I want us to go.’ Clare sits up carefully. She’s finding it hard to think because the world is a different place than it was before – it’s dangerous and unknowable; there are killers in the shadows. She suddenly knows, in way she didn’t before, how breakable she is. How easily she might die. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on for the passeggiata, and when she looks down she expects there to be blood on them. A shudder courses through her. ‘All of us, you, me and Pip. I want us to go home.’
‘Clare-’ Boyd shakes his head.
‘Please, Boyd. There’s something terrible going on here, and I don’t want to be here while it happens… I don’t want Pip to be here! For pity’s sake, Boyd – your fifteen-year-old son just saw a man beaten to death!’
‘He’s not dead, apparently. He was still alive when he was carried-’
‘Is that somehow supposed to make it better?’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘Well. If he lives, then… then I’m glad. But it changes nothing, Boyd. We don’t belong here.’ She wishes she could stop shaking but the tremors seem to come from the very core of her, rattling up from her bones implacably.
‘We can’t leave, darling.’ Boyd shakes his head, calmly regretful. The lamp lights him from below, and puts deep shadows under his eyes. He sits down on the edge of the bed, his spine a long curve, his shoulders collapsing around him. Clare wants to shake him, the way she has been shaken.
‘Why not? You’ve had time to get to know this building… You could work well enough from Bari, or Rome. Or from London – from home, Boyd.’
‘That’s just not possible.’ He stands up and drops her hand; walks to the end of the bed and then back again.
‘But why?’