The young mayor made a speech about their ever-developing great city, and about clearing out corruption. Boyd paled as he listened. He radiated tension, and as the evening grew old he crossed the room to talk to the mayor, who was conversing with two other men. And then it was over. They went back to the apartment, and caught the boat home the next day, and a week later heard that Boyd’s building had been chosen, and would be built. He squeezed Clare tightly then, and for a long time.
‘Thank you, Clare. My angel, thank you,’ he whispered. ‘I wouldn’t have survived it without you.’ By that time, Clare was too exhausted and too bewildered to guess, or to ask what it was he’d survived.
Now she thinks she knows, at least in part, because it can’t be a coincidence that they have been called to Italy by a New York acquaintance Clare hadn’t known existed, and that Boyd is showing some of the same symptoms of stress that he had in New York. For the first time ever she’s angry with her husband for hiding things from her. For leaving her to guess at so many things that he won’t talk about. I won’t allow it, Cardetta said, and there had been no doubting that without his consent, she and Pip could not leave. The anger is as unfamiliar to Clare as the new wakefulness she’s felt since Ettore Tarano was brought to the masseria. She examines the feeling, noting the way it makes her move abruptly and create more noise than she normally would.
Everything that was muted is loud and obvious now. She’s fascinated by the feel of things. She runs her hands over the powdery plaster walls of the bedroom, the smooth dark wood of the bed frame, the rough stone blocks in the stairwell, the hard linen table napkins, shiny from pressing. She rolls splinters of bread crust into powder between finger and thumb; pulls her hands through long lengths of her own hair. The lines of grout between the white and red floor tiles press hard into the soles of her feet; grit gets into her shoes and grinds against the leather insoles as she walks; she hears the changing percussion of her heels on tile, stone, and dusty ground. Before, she could only smell the mess of the dairy cows, the cloying scent of their milk and the jasmine flowers. Now she can smell the stone itself, limey and hard; she can smell the guards’ sweat, built up over years in the fabric of their shirts. She can smell her own sweat, and Pip’s hair that needs washing again. She can smell Marcie’s face powder. She can smell the dust in the tasselled curtains.
Pip is determined to make a pet of one of the guard dogs. He spends two days studying and assessing them, decides which seems the most receptive and names it Bobby.
‘Bobby?’ Marcie echoes, when he tells them over lunch. ‘Shouldn’t he have an Italian name, though? It’ll be hard enough to tame him if he can’t understand you.’
‘It’s short for Roberto,’ says Pip, with a grin, and Marcie laughs.
‘You must be careful, Pip,’ says Clare. ‘Mr Cardetta warned you that they’re not the kind of dogs you’re used to.’
‘I know, but Bobby’s different. Come and see, will you? Can I take him the bones from my chops?’
‘Oh, sure, whatever you want,’ says Marcie. ‘Only don’t ask me to go and stroke the thing. I’ve never liked dogs.’
‘Bobby’s not a thing! Come on, Clare.’ The dogs start barking as soon as they appear through the front door of the masseria. Their feet churn the dust as they pace at the ends of their chains; their voices are deep and hoarse. Clare had expected lean, sparse, desert dogs to cope with the Puglian climate, like the dogs from the hieroglyphs on an ancient tomb; not these heavy, shaggy, white things. The fur under their bellies is filthy and knotted. Pip leads her to one, which she assumes is Bobby. It cowers and bares its teeth; it snarls even as it wags its tail; runs at them then sidles back. The animal has been driven half-mad by its tethered life and has no idea who or what it is, or how to behave towards a stranger offering food, and Clare both pities and fears it. Its confusion is dangerous; Pip can’t know what the dog will do next if it doesn’t know itself. She takes his arm, stops him getting too close.
‘Careful, darling. Please – I know you like him but it will take him a while to trust you, and if he’s frightened he might bite.’
‘He won’t bite me,’ says Pip, but Clare’s relieved to see he keeps himself at a prudent distance. Bobby refuses to come and take the pork bones, and in the end Pip has to throw them. The dog stinks; Clare can smell its breath when it barks. Its bewilderment pierces her heart. ‘He could be a good dog, don’t you think?’ says Pip.
‘He already is – he has a job to do here, and perhaps it’s not very fair to try and interfere with that,’ she says.
‘I’m not interfering,’ says Pip, hurt. ‘I’m only making friends.’
‘I know, darling. Come on – fancy a walk?’
Later, when Ettore joins them for dinner, Clare’s distracted by nerves. She can’t concentrate on the food or on Marcie’s chatter. She can sense Pip’s curiosity, and their hostess’s slight mania; she guesses that there is some family drama concerning Leandro’s nephew, yet to play out. Most of all she can sense Ettore’s indecision, his desperation. She sits forward, ready, not sure what she’s ready for. He gives her the same feeling as Bobby does – that she has no idea what he will do next; that he also has no idea. He eats like he hasn’t in a week and she wants to steady him in case he chokes. He is whip-thin, the muscles on his arms and shoulders are lean and hard; there’s nothing spare. Below his ribs his stomach is concave. When she speaks to him she hopes she is understood. Their rapid English, which they allow to pass him by, seems like an insult, and she hates it. She thinks hard, searching out the right words in Italian, and when she says them there’s the slightest easing of his tension, and she’s glad. She wants to know about his unusual eyes, but what can she ask? These things happen; the commingled blood of a thousand ancestors produces strange anomalies, now and then. She wants to tell him he is beautiful, but he wouldn’t want to hear it. He’s living through a crisis, she can feel it, and she couldn’t bear to make herself ridiculous to him.
Ettore keeps himself apart from them. The next day, Marcie and Pip start their acting lessons in the unused room high in the south-west corner of the masseria, which has windows looking out across the aia, and to the horizon where the sun will set. Clare goes up to watch, for something to do, because her mind is too full and there are no books to read, nothing to distract her, or to keep her eyes from searching him out constantly. The room is empty of furniture apart from a dusty old couch – sagging, dishevelled – which they drag in from a neighbouring room and position facing the dais where a bed would once have been, which will be the stage. On the wall above this platform are the faded remains of a large mural, painted into a shallow, half-moon alcove. There are traces of blue and red robes, the feet of a dog, faces blurred by time and the chalking of the plaster. One perfect brown eye remains, floating in strange clarity in the obliterated remains of a face. It’s wide and benign, but still it gives Clare an uneasy feeling, a sense of being transparent.
Marcie and Pip’s voices echo back at them from the lofty ceiling; the curtains have been taken down, the rest of the walls are bare. In the corner where the roof leaks there’s bat shit on the tiles and a swathe of algae and water stain creeping down the wall.