She hurries into the mouth of the alley, into the cover of its deep shade, and feels slightly better knowing she can’t possibly run into Boyd now, even if he happens to be out on the streets. When she was at the house on Via Garibaldi he stayed indoors, or in the garden behind. He never wanted to explore; he never wanted to see. Much like Marcie. A knot of barefooted children scurry past Clare, erupting from a doorway like ragged birds. Some of their heads have been shaved, the hair growing back in ugly tufts; they look wiry and feral, swamped by their clothing. They scare up a pair of hens, who shriek and flap and make Clare duck instinctively. There are doors but few windows; flights of stone steps scooped out with wear; iron tethering rings hammered into the stone, weeping streaks of rust.
After a hundred feet or so the alleyway narrows further and then turns a sharp right. At the point of this elbow a small courtyard sprouts off, away from the thoroughfare, and here Clare halts. Twilight has gathered in the corners of the tiny square, and there’s a steady silence that seems watchful. From behind a ramshackle wooden gate comes the rumbling bleat of a goat, and Clare jumps. There are two other doors, each at the top of a short flight of stairs. Clare has a sudden clear notion of the risk she’s taken, of the encroaching night and her clumsy intrusion into a life she can’t know; of her own idiocy. If she doesn’t find Ettore she’ll be alone in darkness, in a town full of desperate people. Even if she does find him, her disappearance from the masseria might have been discovered already – they could already be searching for her, and she might bring as much trouble down on him as on herself. She almost turns and leaves again, as surreptitiously as she arrived, but with the last of her resolve she walks up the nearest steps, to the door above the goat stall, and knocks.
After a pause the door cracks opens a fraction to reveal a face inside, a glimmer of eyes, and for a second of lurching hope Clare thinks it could be Ettore. But the eyes are dark. The door opens wider and she recognises his sister, Paola, who came with him to the masseria the first time. Clare smiles, though she’s uncertain of her welcome – in spite of it all, she has come to the right house – a rotting doorway in a cramped courtyard; a nook in the maze of old streets. She swallows, and is about to speak when Paola pulls the door open further and says something Clare can’t understand, though her incredulity is all too plain. Her eyes are striking in her spare face, set deep beneath black brows; a sensual mouth is the only concession to feminine softness. Clare had thought Paola to be about her own age, but since Ettore calls her little sister she must revise this guess. Paola can only be twenty-two or twenty-three, though there are lines around her eyes, and between her eyebrows, and brackets from her nose to her mouth. She wears a faded grey dress with a high neck and long sleeves rolled up to the elbow, with an undyed canvas apron over it; her feet are in shapeless leather slippers, hair hidden beneath the ubiquitous scarf. When she speaks again it’s abrupt, accusatory, and Clare can only shake her head.
‘Ettore? I was hoping to see Ettore,’ says Clare, in Italian. Paola glares at her, and now she’s mystified, and Clare understands that Ettore has said nothing to his sister about their affair. With a click of her tongue and an anxious glance around the empty courtyard, Paola ushers Clare inside and shuts the door.
It takes some time for Clare’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. She pulls up short and looks around, confused, because it’s just one room – a single room in which a few pieces of furniture are carefully arranged, and a squat stove is making it far too hot. A terracotta jar on the stove top steams slightly, and smells of vegetables. There’s one bed, pushed against the back wall, and a single oil lamp on a tiny table with three stools pulled in around it. Clothes hang from pegs around the walls, and there are alcoves here and there where tools and pots and folded cloths are kept. Clare stares around in dawning realisation – that this cramped space is where Ettore lives, with his whole family. The air is rank. Gazing into a shadowed recess in one wall she realises that the dark shape there is gazing back at her. She steps back, startled, and her eyes pick out the creased face of a man tucked into blankets, lying still, not blinking. The man is not Ettore; she doesn’t recognise him. Embarrassed, Clare turns back to Paola, who has her arms folded and appears to be waiting for her to speak.
‘Can… can you understand me when I speak Italian?’ says Clare, and Paola’s frown of displeasure is answer enough. She replies in the dialect, and the only words Clare can pick out are Ettore and Gioia. ‘Where is Ettore?’ Clare tries, spreading her hands hopefully. Paola takes in a sharp breath through her nostrils, taps her fingers against the bronze skin of her forearms, and Clare’s heart sinks. She’s suddenly sure she’ll leave again without seeing him; she’s not sure that Paola would tell her where he was even if they could understand one another.
There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. Paola is in front of the door and when Clare smiles apologetically and takes a step towards it, she doesn’t move. Clare has no idea what to do or say next, no idea what Paola is thinking, what she might do, and she can feel the man in the alcove staring, watching, making the hairs stand up along her arms and her throat go dry. Clare does not belong, and she is not welcome. Then there’s a high-pitched murmur behind her, followed by a soft, curious squeal, and Clare spins around, spotting Paola’s baby for the first time, wedged into a wooden box on the bed.
All that’s visible of him are his arms, his hands and splayed fingers, waving in the air above him. ‘Oh!’ Clare exclaims. At the sound of her voice the baby makes another gargled noise, an inquisitive sound, and Clare goes over to the box. The little boy peers up at her, and she can’t help smiling. He has huge eyes, dark as molasses, and a shine of spittle on a tiny red pout of a mouth. ‘Oh, he’s just perfect,’ she murmurs. ‘May I hold him?’ She glances at Paola, whose expression has softened, though she still says nothing. Clare wriggles her fingers beneath the baby’s soft weight, lifts him and puts him to her shoulder, surprised by the density of him, the incredible heat his small body gives off. She turns her face to rest against the side of his head, and feels him take a fistful of her hair and pull. Free of the confines of the box, he kicks his legs with arrhythmic enthusiasm. Clare swings him gently, side to side, patting his back. He smells of sleep and milk and the oiliness of his scalp, faintly sour and animal but not the least bit unpleasant. Holding him causes Clare a pang of yearning, hot and painful as a cramp. She looks back at Paola, still smiling. ‘He’s perfect,’ she says again, and perhaps Paola understands this word – perfetto – because she can’t help but smile too, hesitantly, as if she’s not used to doing it.
‘He is Iacopo,’ she says, in Italian. Softly, Clare hums a small tune, something she can’t name, something learnt from her nanny in her own infancy. She’s still rocking the child on her shoulder, still singing quietly and being watched with calm bemusement by his mother, when the door opens again and Ettore appears.
One of his eyes is half shut, swollen from his fight with Ludo, and there are other bruises too. He looks more incredulous than surprised, and a question, half begun, dies on his lips as he absorbs this strange scene. His lover, cradling his nephew while his father and sister watch in silence. For a moment he only watches too, and a strange expression crosses his face like a ripple in water, and Clare, seeing herself through his eyes, almost laughs. But then he shuts the door behind him and shakes his head sharply.