The door moans again as Boyd comes in. He has a way of moving, a way of standing slightly curled in on himself, that looks faintly apologetic. Clare smiles and crosses to him, to be folded into him, against the smooth fabric of his shirt and the slight give of flesh underneath. He is that much taller than her that her hair gets caught up with the sharp points and buttons of his collar. He has a faintly sour scent about him that she doesn’t remember smelling before. Or perhaps once before. It makes her uneasy.
‘I’m so happy to see you,’ he murmurs into the top of her head. Then he holds her out at arm’s length, studies her intently. ‘You didn’t mind coming?’ Clare shrugs. She can’t quite bring herself to deny it, not completely, because she did mind. She likes the unhurried habit of their home life in Hampstead, and taking Pip to their favourite places in London during the holidays. She doesn’t like to admit to herself that she’d been glad when Boyd announced he would be going to Italy, but it’s true nevertheless. It was better for him to be working, to be occupied; it was better for her and Pip that they had the house to themselves, and could keep their own hours and counsel. That they could make as much noise, and be as silly as they wanted. Say what they wanted. For a brief while the summer had stretched out ahead of her, wonderfully long and serene, until his phone call from Italy curtailed it.
‘I was surprised. You wouldn’t normally ask me to travel – not all this way. But I had Pip with me for the journey, so of course it was fine.’ This much is true, at least.
‘I know it might seem a bit peculiar. But Cardetta wants me to stay for as long as it takes to finish the designs, and I can’t… it’s too good a commission to turn it down. I mean – I’m happy to work on it. It’s an interesting project.’ He kisses her forehead, one hand on her cheek. ‘And I couldn’t bear the thought of so many weeks without you,’ he says. Clare frowns.
‘But when you first telephoned you said that it was Cardetta who wanted us to come out – Pip and me? Why would he? To keep Marcie company?’
‘Yes. Probably. Anyway, he only suggested it, and it gave me the idea. He had to offer the invitation first, of course. I couldn’t just ask and oblige him to accept.’
‘I see.’
Clare disengages herself from his arms and goes over to open her bags. It hadn’t seemed like that when they first spoke about it, soon after Boyd’s arrival in Italy. Even thin and buzzing along the telephone wire his voice had sounded tense and beleaguered, and almost fearful. She’d heard it in the clipped way he spoke, and straight away she’d felt the familiar dread sinking into the pit of her stomach, solid as wet sand. They’ve been married for ten years, and she is minutely attuned to the least sign of distress in him. She knows well enough what can come of it. It’s there now, of course – she saw it the first moment she set eyes on him, as he waved from the car. But sometimes it comes to nothing. She doesn’t want to acknowledge it too soon and risk it coalescing when it might not necessarily.
Born shy, the only child of parents who never raised their voices, never argued or ever spoke of their feelings, Clare longs for peaceful accord more than anything else; nothing jarring or unexpected, no awkwardness. Over the years, Boyd’s episodes have honed her fear of confrontation to a point of excruciating finesse. For days, weeks, sometimes even months, he is transformed; silent and precarious, unreadable. He drinks brandy at any hour, he doesn’t work, he doesn’t go out, he barely eats. His silence thickens like a black cloud around him, which Clare is too scared to penetrate. She walks on eggshells around him, dogged by her own inadequacy, her inability to bring him out of it. Sometimes, during such spells, the sight of her makes him collapse into violent sobbing. Sometimes days pass and he doesn’t seem to see her at all, and she remembers what happened when she persuaded him to go to New York, years before, and what might have happened, had she not prevented it. Then she can’t sleep or eat herself. She’s a prisoner to his mood, too frightened to make a sound. The relief when it’s over, when Boyd finally rises from his chair and sinks himself into a hot bath, and asks for a cup of tea, is so immense she has to sit until her breathing slows.
Boyd watches her as she hangs her skirts and dresses in the giant wardrobe that looms along the far wall of the room. He sits on the edge of the bed with one long leg crossed over the other, his hands laced over the uppermost knee.
‘I’m sure we could find a servant to do that for you – Cardetta seems to have hundreds of them,’ he says. Clare smiles over her shoulder at him.
‘I can manage well enough without a ladies’ maid,’ she says. ‘He must be very rich, then?’
‘I should say so. This is one of the oldest and biggest houses in Gioia – well, of those that he could get his hands on, anyway.’
‘Oh?’
‘Cardetta wasn’t always rich – and he was away in America for twenty years. I get the impression that the signori here – the upper crust – treat him as a bit of a Johnny-come-lately.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s understandable,’ she says. ‘Especially if he was away for so long. How did he make his money?’
‘In New York.’
‘Yes, but-’
‘Do stop that and come here,’ he says, with mock severity. Clare looks at the crumpled silk shirt in her hands, and the way the pale yellow of it perfectly mirrors the light-filled sky outside. She wishes she wouldn’t hesitate but she can’t seem to help it. But then she smiles and does as he says, sitting gingerly in his lap. He wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her chest, and somehow it’s not sexual, but as though he wants to hide. ‘Clare,’ he breathes out her name, and she feels the heat of his breath on her skin.
‘Is everything all right, darling?’ she says, trying to sound bright, trying for offhand.
‘It is now that you’re here.’ He tightens his grip until Clare can feel his watch digging into her ribs. ‘I love you so much, my dearest Clare.’
‘And I love you,’ she says, and just then notices how very dry her lips feel. Dry and miserly. She shuts her eyes for a moment and wishes that he would stop there, say nothing more. She wishes that his grip would loosen. But he doesn’t stop there, and he doesn’t loosen his grip.
‘I would die without you, you know. I swear it.’ Clare wants to deny it – she has tried to before. She has tried, in the hope that he will realise how onerous his words are. ‘My angel,’ he whispers. She can feel his arms shake from the strain of keeping hold. Or perhaps it’s she that shakes. ‘My angel. I would die without you.’ She wants to say, no, you would not, but when he says such things something gets hold of her throat and squeezes it, and no words will come out. She can’t tell if it’s guilt, or fear, or anger. She reminds herself that most women would be grateful for such devotion in a husband; she reminds herself to be grateful.