‘A lot of what people do to animals is cruel. A lot of what people do to people is cruel,’ she says, surprising herself. She wouldn’t normally say such a thing to Pip, especially not after the brutal spectacle of the mule the day before. Not every cow has a calf, and she thinks of the veal they ate back at the house in Gioia. Pip stands up and turns his back to them.
‘Well, I think it’s completely unacceptable. They’re only babies! I’m going to ask Marcie – I bet she could get them to take the collars off.’
‘I don’t think you should, Pip. This is how the farm is run… It’s not up to you. It’s probably not up to Marcie.’
‘You always used to say I should stand up against injustice however I could,’ he challenges her.
‘Yes.’
‘Well then.’ He shrugs.
‘Pip-’
‘You said we were going to go home.’ He sounds petulant, younger than his age, so she knows how unhappy he is, and she’s hit by a wave of guilt; she puts her hand out to him.
‘I’m sorry. It’s… it’s not up to me.’ For a moment they’re silent. Pip ignores her hand, kicking at a rock the size of his fist, knocking it to and fro. ‘You do understand that, don’t you? Your father wants us to stay,’ Clare says.
‘How long for?’
‘I don’t know. Until he’s finished his work, I suppose. Mr Cardetta wants us to stay too, to keep Marcie company.’
‘Marcie told me we’re the first guests that have come to stay with them here – the first ones ever. Can you believe that?’
‘Well, it’s no wonder they want us to stay then, is it?’ she says. Pip shrugs, and nods. He kicks at the rock and lashes the olive stick to and fro, full of frustration. Clare looks to the horizon, across the vast stretch of land, dry as old bones, beneath a sky like hot metal. She thinks it no wonder that the Cardettas’ first guests have been compelled to come, and must be compelled to stay.
After that Clare walks a lot. She walks in the morning and late in the afternoon, when the heat is not as fierce. Even so, her face and arms begin to tan, and freckles appear across the bridge of her nose. Marcie exclaims in dismay at them, and loans Clare a white scarf to drape over the brim of her hat, but it’s too hot and Clare can’t stand it obscuring her vision, so she carries it but doesn’t use it. Boyd insists on accompanying her on one occasion, but after his attempts at conversation founder they walk in a silence that he clearly finds excruciating. Clare doesn’t mind it. Suddenly she has nothing to say to her husband, and there’s nothing she needs to hear from him. When he holds her hand sweat slides between their palms. After that he lets her walk by herself. Leandro suggests she takes Federico with her and she declines at once.
‘It’s really not necessary.’
‘I’m not sure you’re best placed to say if it is or it isn’t,’ he says.
‘I’d far rather walk alone.’
‘Then stay within the bounds of this farm. Please, Mrs Kingsley.’ He holds her hand in his two as he speaks, and squeezes it, and Clare catches her breath. His hands are large and there’s no give in them, like they’re made of wood.
‘Very well,’ she says.
But it’s hard to know where Cardetta’s land ends and the next farm begins. There are only fields, caught between stone walls, one after the other, on and on and on. Here and there are stunted orchards; here and there isolated trulli, some in ruins, some with smoke curling up from squat chimney stacks. Clare avoids them. She changes direction when she sees men working up ahead, ashamed to spy on their labours. Once she stumbles across a group of mounted men, their horses in a loose circle, their eyes down. There’s movement on the ground, at the horses’ feet, and Clare glimpses the shocking, incongruous flash of pale bare flesh. She stares. A man is on his hands and knees, pulling at the short stubble of wheat stalks with his teeth. He’s naked, and has lash marks on his back; he’s not young, he could be forty or fifty years old; his ribs have dark shadows between each bone. Shocked, Clare recognises Ludo Manzo, the overseer, as one of the mounted men; he has a long whip in his hand, hanging down like a snake. When they notice her they all look up – the mounted men, Ludo, the naked man on the ground. Clare expects them to stop, to scatter, to be ashamed and try to explain or apologise somehow, but Ludo only grins. He points to the man on the ground and says something Clare can’t understand, which makes the other guards chuckle. She looks down at their victim, and his expression of anger and humiliation is a mask over bare bones of despair. There’s a churned slick of dust and drool around his mouth, down over his chin. Clare can’t stand his gaze, she’s almost relieved when Ludo flicks the whip and the man resumes his slow grazing. Then she hurries away, sickened by them and by herself, and tells nobody of the scene. She has no words to describe it.
Returning from one walk as the sun is setting, Clare finds Federico in the courtyard; he’s rubbing the red car with a rag, and where he’s taken off the dust the sunlight roars on the paintwork. When he sees her he grins, and again she notices the way his mouth flattens itself out of its unusual shape when he does. The divide in his top lip is still there, his front teeth are twisted, but the smile is foremost. Clare smiles politely in reply and makes to walk past him but he reaches out and stops her with the tips of his fingers on her arm.
‘Signora, prego,’ he says. Clare looks down at something he’s holding out to her. Flowers – a small posy of spiked thistle flowers, pretty and pale blue amidst their thorns. She stares at them. ‘For you,’ he says, in heavily accented English. He makes her a small bow, still smiling, and Clare’s hand rises even as she feels a rush of unease. That look of his, the one he gives her. She still can’t decide if her aversion to him is wise or unfair. She lets her hand fall again.
‘Thank you,’ she says, in Italian. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t take them. I’m a married woman.’ At this he grins even wider.
‘I won’t tell him,’ he says. She looks closely at him, trying to read him. Then she shakes her head.
‘Thank you, but find a different girl to give them to.’ She turns away and goes inside, and doesn’t look back even when she thinks she hears him chuckle.
Before Boyd leaves for Gioia again he hugs Clare tight, and presses kisses onto her forehead.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he says, sounding hopeful rather than sure. Just then his lost look, his uncertainty, pricks at her. She thinks of Francesco Molino, dragged out and beaten in public, and reaches up to touch Boyd’s face. The hard, vulnerable ridge of his eye socket.
‘Get those designs finished so we can go home. And be careful, Boyd,’ she says quietly. ‘Do be careful.’
‘I will,’ he says.
‘I mean it.’
‘So do I – and the same goes for you. Why not let the servant walk with you? He can walk behind if you don’t want to talk to him.’
‘No, no. It would feel like being stalked. There’s no danger here – how can there be when I almost never see a living soul?’ Clare waits with Pip and Marcie as the two men climb into the back of the car and Federico drives them away. And she’s relieved – in one way or another, she is relieved to see the back of all three of them. When they’re gone and before the doors close behind them, Clare runs her eyes around the aia. She returns to the courtyard, looks up at the upstairs windows, the terrace. There has been no sign of Ettore Tarano that day.
‘He might come out of hiding now Leandro’s gone,’ says Marcie. Clare stops looking, glances questioningly at Marcie. ‘Our Ettore, I mean. I think he was just trying to make a point by keeping away. Men! Their pride is their own worst enemy, don’t you think?’