‘Luna told me you were here but I hardly believed her. Chiara, what in God’s name are you doing? Do you have any idea… do you have any idea?’ he says. Paola steps forward and holds out her hands for her son, and Clare gives him up reluctantly.
‘I needed to see you,’ she says. The recumbent man in the alcove speaks for the first time, something low and hoarse that Ettore answers curtly.
‘You can’t just come here like this!’ he says to Clare.
‘Is that what your father just said?’
‘It’s what I’m saying!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Without Iacopo to hold Clare doesn’t know where to put her arms and hands, or how to stand. Three days away from the masseria and Ettore looks grimy and tired; she can’t tell if the shadow under his good eye is another bruise. ‘I wanted to say sorry – if I hadn’t said anything about Ludo being at Girardi you wouldn’t have fought him, and you wouldn’t have had to leave…’ Ettore raises one hand to silence her and shoots Paola an anxious glance. Paola looks tensely from Clare to her brother and back, as though something in these words disquiets her.
‘Stop. Have you said anything to my sister of these things?’
‘No, I haven’t, we-’
‘Good. Do not.’ He puts one hand to his mouth, cups his chin the way he does when he’s thinking, worried. ‘It was high time I left my uncle’s farm. We’re almost strangers to each other now. I’d stayed too long.’ He looks up at her as he says this, and she can’t tell if he’s angry or tender. With a sigh Ettore turns, cracks open the door and looks out, then raises his hand to her. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘It’s not good for me to be here.’ Paola asks him a sharp question, and Ettore gives a soothing answer, but there are no more smiles from her as Clare nods goodbye. She is closed off again, frigid, her squirming son held tight in her arms.
The courtyard is deep grey, lit only by the gauzy evening sky, but it’s still brighter than it was inside. There’s an argument nearby – two women, shrill with anger, their words an incomprehensible tumble. Ettore takes Clare’s elbow and leads her out of the courtyard in the opposite direction that she came in. Their route twists and turns, then passes beneath a stone archway three metres thick, with rooms above it, into a larger courtyard crowded with overhanging upper storeys and stairs and doorways. Ettore tows her into the shadows beneath one overhang, in a far corner away from the street. He turns and holds her briefly, and she grabs onto him tightly, so that he winces. He has a sharp smell of sweat on unwashed clothes; she thinks back and realises he’s wearing the same clothes as when he left the farm. There’s a tidemark of dirt along his hairline, and ground into his cuticles, and for some reason this brings a lump to her throat.
‘Sorry. You’re hurt,’ she says.
‘I think that bastard cracked one of my ribs.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’ At this Ettore only smiles, a little sadly.
‘You can’t come here. You know it’s not safe.’
‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ she says, and swallows against the tightness in her throat, the oncoming ache of tears. ‘I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.’
‘I will never go back there. Not until…’ He leaves the sentence hanging, shakes his head.
‘Then you would have just not seen me again, if I hadn’t come to Gioia? It would have been that easy for you?’
‘Nothing is easy. Only necessary,’ he says bleakly. But then he relents and brushes his thumb across her cheek. ‘You knew this was not reality.’
‘It could be – I want it to be! I want…’
Clare takes a deep breath. She sounds like a child; like a spoilt child when she wants to tell him that she can’t imagine not being with him, can’t imagine going back to London and living as she lived before. She wants to say that he has changed everything; he has changed her. That everything from before seems as flat and distant as a photograph. She has the sensation of a huge wave building up behind her, higher and higher. She has no idea what will happen when it breaks, and can’t put it into words. ‘I can’t bear it,’ is all she says, closing her eyes. Ettore puts his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her head to his chest.
‘You can bear it. You have to,’ he says quietly. ‘When I saw you earlier, holding the baby… For a moment it seemed…’
‘It seemed like what?’
‘Like… you belonged there. But you don’t. You mustn’t come here again. It’s not safe. There are men here who would kill me if they could. Do you understand? This is what’s real – this danger. I daren’t even stay in my own home, in case I cause them to come looking there again. If we are seen together, if they know that we are… close. Do you see? Being foreign will not protect you.’
‘That servant knows. Federico, with the rabbit’s lip. The one you told me was a fascist.’
‘Harelip.’ Ettore’s voice is dead flat. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He… he hissed at me. When I came back from meeting you one day.’
‘You listen to me, now. You stay away from him. Do you hear me? I don’t care what you have to do, you stay away from him.’
‘But if he’s at the farm, how can I? He’s here in Gioia now, though. Leandro and Boyd came back here three days ago. They had a terrible argument over the designs. Your uncle is making him start again. We could be here for weeks more, you see,’ she says, smiling. But Ettore doesn’t smile.
‘Goddamn it,’ he murmurs, hanging his head for a moment.
‘Ettore, what is it?’
‘Can’t you go? Can’t you just go home, to England? You and the boy.’
‘Well, no,’ says Clare, stung. ‘Not until your uncle says so. And I want to stay. I want to be near you.’
‘But can’t you just go? Never mind my uncle.’
‘Ettore, what is it? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘I…’ He shakes his head. His eyes are lost in shadows now; she can only see the outlines of his face. ‘You are not safe there. At the masseria. I don’t understand what he’s doing, keeping you here. I don’t understand at all.’
‘Nobody is safe anywhere, from what I have seen. I could… I could come back to the house here in Gioia. All I’d have to say is that I was missing Boyd. Perhaps your uncle would allow it? Then we could meet more often, and-’
‘No! That would be worse.’
‘Ettore, I… I don’t understand.’ Clare waits, but he keeps his face averted and his thoughts to himself. ‘Who was the girl I spoke to?’ she says. ‘The girl who told me where you live?’
‘Luna, Pino’s wife. I have stayed with them, and with other friends, since I left the farm.’
‘Couldn’t you stay at your uncle’s house here? Wouldn’t you be safe there? Why do men want to kill you?’
‘Because that’s what happens in a war, Chiara!’ He gives her a small shake, and she feels childlike again. ‘I will side with my uncle no longer.’
‘I wish you would. If you’re in such danger.’ To this he only shakes his head, and watches her steadily, and doesn’t try to explain, and she is helpless, hopeless. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit pleased to see me? Even a little?’ Ettore smiles then, a sketch of a smile, more in his eyes than on his lips.
‘I could have stayed where I was when Luna told me you were here. I didn’t have to come to find you,’ he says.
‘Then I’m glad I did. I’m glad, if this is to be… if this is the last time.’