‘You’re not coming?’
‘You know I’m not, Clare. I can’t go back there.’ Behind him, the shuttered windows of the villa stare down blindly. The sky has gone black and is brilliant with stars; the night is warm and kind, and it seems like a ruse. Now, at the moment of parting, Clare feels close to panic. It makes her dizzy, full of dread. She grabs at him, at his shirt, his arms, even as he tries to disengage her. ‘Stop. Stop it. You go with Guido. Go back to the masseria, and stay there. And try to find a way to leave this place.’
‘Ettore, I can’t.’
‘Do as I say.’ He kisses her face, her forehead, the bridge of her nose. ‘Please do as I say.’ Holding her at arm’s length, Ettore seems to think of something. ‘Wait here a moment,’ he says, and disappears into one of the stables. When he comes back he has something in one hand that he puts into Clare’s, warm and alive. She gasps. ‘For Pip. A better friend for him, perhaps,’ he says, and Clare looks down at the wriggling puppy, as it begins a sleepy examination of her arm – an examination with nose, teeth, tongue. ‘Take it back for Pip. Guido will only drown them all, otherwise.’
‘Say I will see you again. Say it, or I won’t go,’ says Clare, her voice fluttery with nerves. Ettore sighs, stares at her for a heartbeat.
‘Then I will say it. You will see me again.’
‘When?’
‘I’ll send a message,’ he says, and she knows he’s lying.
Guido, silent and unsmiling, saddles a tall bay horse, mounts and then kicks his foot out of the stirrup so that Clare can climb up behind him. Pino helps her, smiling and apparently unperturbed. Her skirt tears up the back seam as she straddles the saddle. The horse makes almost no noise on the dirt of the yard, or on the stones of Via Roma. When Clare looks down she sees that its hooves are wrapped in old sacking to muffle them. The puppy, limp and trusting beneath her arm, has gone back to sleep. Between its two pairs of spindly legs its belly is round, distended with worms; the skin shows pink through a smooth, copper-coloured coat. Clare watches the road behind them until Pino and Ettore are barely distinguishable against the darkness, and then have vanished into it. Still she watches, until her neck cramps and her head aches.
Once they’re out of Gioia Guido clucks his tongue and the horse moves into a jouncing trot. They cover the distance to dell’Arco in a fraction of the time it took Clare to walk and hitch. A baleful moon rises in the western sky, yellowish bright. Clare clings to Guido with one arm, to the puppy with the other, and lets misery smother her, almost corporeal. She feels older; she feels empty and bereft. And she feels sick again, the motion of the horse and the wrench of leaving Ettore are making her stomach judder and roil. She dismounts at the gates onto legs that shake, and Guido turns the horse back without a word, or any acknowledgement of her quiet thanks. Keeping her face as blank as she can make it, Clare ignores the gate guard’s black look and slow, suspicious movements. He keeps the rifle in his right hand, his finger on the trigger. Carlo lets her into the masseria with no apparent wonderment, and when she asks him the time she can hardly believe that it’s not yet even midnight. It feels like a year since she sneaked out in search of Ettore. With a grin, Carlo scruffs the puppy’s ears. It wakes up, looks around blearily and yawns – a wet, pink gape edged with needle teeth. Cautiously, Clare looks up at the terrace before she leaves the cover of the archway.
‘All are sleeping,’ says Carlo, in broken Italian, and Clare shoots him a grateful smile as she sets off across the courtyard.
Up the dark stairwell on feet as soft as she can make them, with the nausea making sweat break out along her hairline and prickle down her spine; with her knees spongy and weak, and all the fear and joy and sorrow of the past few hours making her long for darkness, and silence, and oblivion. Clare glances both ways at the top of the stairs then tiptoes along the corridor to the door of her room, reaching into her pocket for the key to unlock it. Then she halts, her stomach plummeting. The key isn’t there. She checks her other pockets, in vain hope. She thinks of the rough, urgent way she and Ettore made love; she thinks of hurrying through the dark to the villa on Via Roma; she thinks of the bouncing trot of the horse, all the way back. The key could be anywhere.
Clare shuts her eyes, sways on her feet. She has no idea what to do. After a minute or two she creeps further along the corridor to the door, with the vague, desperate idea of trying the handle anyway, of the possibility that she hadn’t actually locked it. The puppy whines a little, and squirms, and she realises she’s holding it too tightly. Her dread is the opposite of panic – her heart seems to have slowed down, almost to nothing; it feels like it’s being crushed. Then she stops again. There’s a figure leaning against the door to her room, hunched and instantly familiar. She has a puppy she can’t explain; she’s locked out of the room she is supposed to be in; she’s filthy dirty, smelling of sex and sweat and Ettore, and Pip is leaning against the door, staring at her through the dark with angry eyes.
Chapter Twelve – Ettore
There’s only acquasale for dinner – boiled stale bread with a little salt and dried chilli, not even any mozzarella now that Poete no longer works at the cheese factory. After the month he spent at the masseria, Ettore’s stomach contorts and yammers at him, begging for more, for better. The money Marcie gave him, and his wages, have been spent on the settling of Valerio’s debts, on a new blanket for Iacopo, new soles for Ettore’s and Paola’s shoes, their rent arrears and some supplies of dried beans, pasta and olive oil that Paola is hoarding ruthlessly for the coming winter. She eyes him across the tiny table as he guzzles down the thin soup, scraping out every last drop.
‘Remembering what hungry feels like?’ she says unkindly. Valerio, well enough to rise from his shelf, continues to spoon in his soup with tremulous care, and pays no attention to his offspring.
‘I never forgot. Only my belly did,’ says Ettore. Paola grunts.
‘In a man, mind and belly are one. Mind and body are one. Mind and cock are one.’ She curls her lip in disdain and gives the last ladleful of soup to Valerio. Ettore bristles.
‘Is that was this is about? Is that why you’re being such a shrew?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Why should I be angry to learn you’ve been screwing another man’s wife all this time I thought you were working and suffering and in terrible pain? When I thought you were grieving?’
‘I was working! I was in pain! I am grieving.’
‘No, I don’t think you can wear your black band any more, brother. And you were fit enough to fuck her so hard she came all the way into town for more!’
‘Paola,’ he says, and pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration, embarrassment. Valerio has stopped eating and is staring at him now, his face wholly without expression. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘How was it, then? And if her husband finds out? If he doesn’t know yet he soon will – if she keeps coming here like that, bold as brass.’
‘I’ve told her not to come again.’
‘And you really think she’ll do as you say?’
‘I don’t know, Paola! Stop breaking my balls!’ he shouts, and throws his spoon into his empty bowl with a clatter. On the bed, Iacopo wakes and makes a small noise of alarm. He starts to wail and Paola gets up to settle him, shooting a venomous glance at her brother.
‘Idiot,’ she mutters as she passes.
Ettore turns away from his father’s gaze and stares at remnants of the plaster that once covered the walls; centuries old, so flaked and patchy it looks like a rash on the stone’s skin. He tries to picture Chiara there again, in that very room, the room he has lived in since he was a boy. It’s almost impossible, like it was almost impossible that she had been standing there, holding Iacopo. Hard to believe it was real, then and now, which explains the feeling he got – peculiar and shocked and also quite like happiness. The image of her there, that impossible scene, caused that same little softening he’s felt before; that same pleasant sinking, like letting go. And now he has a nagging fear that he doesn’t need; there’s an extra complication, an obligation he doesn’t want, but can’t avoid. He is afraid for Chiara. Gingerly, Valerio gets to his feet and goes back to his alcove, where the blankets are rank with the smell of him and his sickness. By the bed, Paola rocks and sings to her son, as his cries dwindle into sleep.