‘Because I’ve given my word, Clare! Leandro asked me to come out here and work with him on this, and I agreed. I can’t go back on that.’
‘Why can’t you? I’m sure he’d understand – any reasonable person would understand!’
‘It’s not possible, Clare!’ he cries, standing in front of her, looking down, clenching his hands into fists. Clare stares for a long moment. She doesn’t understand him; just then she feels she hardly knows him. When she speaks it’s almost a whisper.
‘Why are you so afraid of him, Boyd? Whatever happened between you, in the past? Something did – something happened in New York, didn’t it?’ Boyd stares down at her, and tears spring up, shining in his eyes.
‘Nothing,’ he says roughly, and they both know it’s a lie. ‘That’s enough. You’re my wife and I… need your support. I have made my decision.’
‘But Pip and I don’t need to stay – I never gave my word to stay, and Cardetta can’t possibly expect us to. Come with us, Boyd,’ she begs.
‘Clare, no. You may not leave. I can’t bear to be here without you.’ Clare can feel the erosion of her resolve – the precise way in which it crumbles, from the edges to the core – but behind it is the thought of staying in Gioia for the rest of the summer, which causes a sickening lump to form, low down in her throat. She fights against her fear of standing her ground, of meeting him head on, unbalancing him.
‘I’m… going to go and see Pip.’ She stands gingerly, half expecting the floor to break beneath her feet, and leaves him there by the bed, buckled in on himself. She goes barefoot to Pip’s room.
Pip is sitting in the window again, wrapped up with his dressing gown pulled tight around him, as if he’s cold. There’s an untouched supper on a tray by the bed, and a cup of milky coffee that has dried into a saggy skin across the top. Pip’s face is ashy white, and Clare goes and hugs him, holding his head to her shoulder, until after a moment he puts his arms around her and she feels a single sob rock through him.
‘He wasn’t even trying to get away,’ he says, muffled and bewildered.
‘I know, darling.’
‘Why did they attack him like that, then? Why didn’t the police come?’
‘I don’t know, Pip. I don’t understand it either. We’ll be home soon, I promise. We won’t stay, you and I. All right? We’ll go home.’ There’s a thrill as she says this; she’s never disobeyed Boyd before.
‘All right. Good.’ Pip nods, and pulls away from her, and Clare runs her hands through his hair to straighten it, and tries to smile. His eyes are enormous.
‘I felt like I was part of it. I felt like I was as bad as them, because I just watched and didn’t do anything to help. That poor man. He wasn’t even trying to get away. Do you think those were the same men we saw the other night? Do you think they were on their way to do that to someone else when we saw them?’
‘Shh… Try not to think about it too much, Pip. There was nothing we could have done. It was… awful. It was just awful, I know. We’ll go soon, I promise.’
‘You promise?’ he echoes, too upset to be embarrassed about the tears streaking down his cheeks. Clare nods, kisses her fingers and presses them to his forehead. ‘You’re shaking,’ he says, and Clare smiles.
‘I can’t seem to stop. I’m like a bowlful of jelly,’ she says.
‘I threw up on Mr Cardetta’s shoes,’ he says tonelessly. ‘You know, the black and white ones, with the fancy stitching?’
‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ Clare murmurs, and is rewarded with a tiny glimpse of his smile. But her throat feels itchy and hot, and she’s aware of her heart beating, harder than normal, tight against her ribs.
In the morning Clare has coffee in her room, near the window so she can see the sky. She doesn’t want to go downstairs or eat, she doesn’t want to see Leandro Cardetta, and when Marcie comes to flutter around her, fussing and cooing in her fragile way, she is all but unresponsive. She can’t seem to find the energy for more because she keeps hearing the rattle of wire spectacles hitting the ground, and Boyd has sunk into the silence that she dreads, and she knows that she’s the direct cause of it. But she can’t bring herself to say she’ll stay; she’s as afraid of upsetting Boyd as she is of staying in Gioia. She’s torn, and hoping for him to tell her she can go home. She reads without absorbing a word, and jumps every time there’s a noise from the street. She was witness to a crime, so the perpetrators have reason to come after her – her and Pip. But then, there were plenty of witnesses. If witnesses were a worry to them, they would not have gone in broad daylight to batter the slim man with the wire spectacles. They had wanted people to see them at their work. Clare lowers her book as she realises this, and nearly drops it when there’s a knock at the door. She doesn’t answer, but a second or two later it opens anyway, and Leandro walks slowly over to where she’s sitting.
He stands and watches her for a moment or two, and Clare wishes she could read him better. She struggles to hold his gaze, when her own wants to slide away from him and hide. Eventually he sighs a little, and shakes his head.
‘Mrs Kingsley, I am so sorry.’ He waits, as if she ought to fill the pause, but she has nothing to say to this. ‘I’m well aware how distressing it must have been for you, and the boy, to witness such a thing.’
‘Thing? Mr Cardetta, that was not a thing. That was a murder.’ Her voice wobbles on the final word.
‘The man lives-’
‘For now, and by pure chance.’
‘I understand that you’re upset, but please, don’t be so quick to leave – not when you’ve barely arrived.’
‘It seems entirely inappropriate that we’re here at all, Mr Cardetta. There’s clearly some kind of… crisis going on here. Perhaps nobody wants to acknowledge it, but there it is. Pip and I have no place here, whatever my husband says.’ She takes a breath to steady herself; Leandro watches her carefully. ‘Who was that man? The man they beat?’
‘His name is Francesco Molino. He was – he is – an advocate for the reforms; a key voice in the peasant league.’
‘And the men who attacked him?’ At this Leandro pauses, and Clare can see him choosing what to tell her, how much to reveal. She holds his gaze.
‘Mrs Kingsley, you are quite right. There is a crisis here – in truth, there’s a war. Nobody is calling it that, yet, but that’s what it is. There is a war going on between the farm labourers and the men who own and run the farms. And I believe the tide is turning. After the Great War ended things went in the workers’ favour. There was so much anger and hardship, and the time was ripe for change. But the proprietors have a new weapon now.’
‘Those men?’ says Clare, and Leandro nods.
‘Members of the new fascist party – squads paid by the wealthy to… turn the tide back their way. To break strikes, and undermine the socialist movement. You have nothing to fear from them, of course. You’re not a part of this.’
‘How can you say that after what happened yesterday? And how can they just… do what they want like that, with no fear of arrest or censure?’
‘This is not Britain, Mrs Kingsley; this is not even Italy. This is Puglia. The local branch of the fascist party, begun here only in June, was founded by members of the police force.’
‘You mean… they may act as they please? They have official sanction – the law is with them?’
‘No. They have unofficial sanction, and the money is with them. That’s far more important down here.’
From the garden below the window Clare hears Boyd’s and Pip’s voices, echoing slightly, making a calm sound. Leandro pulls up a chair to face Clare and sits down.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ he says, lacing his fingers and watching her over the top of them. ‘Stay here in Puglia, but not here in Gioia. Not in town.’