‘Yes. The steps from the church. You know, the front steps of the Chiesa Madre?’
‘Were you feeling faint again, my darling?’ A hand on the side of her face; stooping over her. Clare feels trapped, overshadowed; can hardly stand it. She shakes her head.
‘No, not really. I just lost my footing.’
‘Why didn’t you come here first? I’d have gone for a walk with you, happily.’
‘I… I thought you’d be working, darling. I thought I’d wait until lunchtime before I interrupted you…’
‘You mustn’t walk around on your own. Please promise me. You mustn’t any more. It’s not safe, least of all when you’ve not been well.’
‘All right.’
‘But why did you come into town at all, darling? Why are you here?’
Clare looks up at her husband. Pale face, scrubbed and clean-shaven; soft, limp hair combed neatly back; his lanky height, thin shoulders slumped so as not to tower over her. For a moment she can’t make her mouth open; can’t make her tongue move. There are too many things she can’t say.
‘I… wanted to see you,’ she says, and the words are so crabbed with duplicity she’s sure he must hear it. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Oh?’ His eyes search her face, worried now.
‘Yes, but I do have rather a headache now…’ She puts a hand to her forehead, as much to break his gaze as anything, but in truth her head is pounding as though there’s too much in it – too much blood and matter, too many thoughts and fears.
‘Of course. Leandro wants to see you too, but rest first. I’ll have them send up some fresh water and a cold drink for you.’
‘Thank you.’
He goes from the room as softly as he came in, moving as he always does – with steady grace, never sudden or abrupt. Sidling through the world as though he doesn’t want it to notice him. When the door clicks shut Clare sits down where she is – sinking to the floor with her back to the mirror. She needs a moment to try to think of any one useful thing, any one right thing, and she can’t seem to do it while she must concentrate on standing. Pino came. Pino came and saved her. Yet her thoughts are brimming with what might have happened otherwise – Federico’s parody of a kiss, one hand undoing his belt; the press of his erection against her stomach, and the tip of the knife at the base of her throat. I’m here, Ettore said, but then he wasn’t. There’s acid in the back of Clare’s mouth, cramp between her ribs. She can still smell Federico’s breath and feel the odd shape of his mouth on hers, his crooked teeth too prominent when he kissed her. Her stomach swims with nausea; sweat breaks out on her face.
At the end of the afternoon Clare goes downstairs because she realises that, more than anything, she wants to be out of Gioia. Her legs are unsteady and there’s still a strange taste in her mouth, at the back of her throat – a metallic kind of tang, like copper or iron. Almost like blood but different, cleaner. She finds Leandro on the terrace, studying a list of notes and figures in a ledger with a glass of wine held lazily in one hand. There’s no outward sign of her cut lip but a thin red line and a gentle swelling. Most of the damage is on the inside – caused by her own teeth when Federico crushed his hand over her mouth. Leandro puts down the ledger but doesn’t rise as she comes over to him. He crosses his legs and watches her, so unflinching and so knowing that Clare feels naked. She can’t keep her hands from shaking. Leandro sees this, of course, as he pours her wine and she gulps at it; he sees everything. The wine tastes odd – almost musty, but Leandro seems to find nothing amiss with it.
‘Somebody attacked you?’ he says mildly. Clare shakes her head.
‘I fell down…’
‘The steps of our Chiesa Madre, yes, your husband told me. Wide, even steps, and only a flight of three.’
‘I tripped.’
‘I would happily take action against the man who did this,’ he says, as if she hasn’t spoken. Again, she shakes her head.
‘Then I hope you’ll have the sense not to see him again. And not to come into Gioia by yourself to do so.’ Clare catches her breath, poised to defend Ettore before she realises that she can’t, any more than she can tell Leandro what really happened. Not without confessing her infidelity, however much she wants to denounce Federico. She can’t stand to think of him out at the masseria with Marcie, and Anna and the other servants; or in Gioia at night with the braccianti’s wives and daughters.
‘I came to see my husband,’ she says. Her voice is small and tremulous. Leandro grunts.
‘As you wish.’ He takes a swig of wine, always with his eyes on her. ‘I’m beginning to think I made a mistake in bringing you out here, Mrs Kingsley. You and the boy. I did it for a good reason, you must understand. But perhaps I’ve made matters worse. Perhaps it’s time I sent you home.’
‘Will you tell me why you brought me here?’ she says. Leandro pauses, and behind his unswerving gaze she can see the shifting of thoughts, the weighing up of things. He uncrosses his legs and leans forwards.
‘It might be hard for you to understand, or even believe, Chiara, but I brought you here for your own safety. I think you could be in danger.’
‘What can you mean? I wasn’t in any danger until I came here.’
‘Yes, I see that now. Ironic, in some ways. I must tell you, though-’ He cuts himself off as Boyd steps out onto the terrace. ‘Downing tools for the day?’ Leandro says smoothly, in the exact same level tone, and Clare has the clear impression that whatever he’d been about to tell her had been for her ears only. He shoots her a warning look as Boyd seats himself, and she bites back all the sudden questions she has for him, and all the sudden fear.
Anna comes to ask if Clare will be travelling back to the masseria with her that evening, but since she has told Boyd she wants to speak to him, and since he wants her to stay the night, she has to turn the offer down.
‘Federico can drive you tomorrow,’ says Leandro.
‘No!’ says Clare, too loudly, before she can stop herself.
‘No?’ Leandro echoes, watching her closely. When she returns to silence he doesn’t press. ‘Very well. I’ll drive you myself – all of us. We were heading back on Friday, anyway, for this party of Marcie’s. A day early won’t matter, and we can stay for a few days. I miss the clean air at the farm.’ Marcie’s party – Clare had forgotten all about it. A party on Friday night, and on Sunday night the farm will be attacked. It seems impossible. Did Ettore really tell her about it, and ask for her help? It has the same caste of dreamy unreality as everything else that happened that day before Federico. Marcie’s party; Marcie and Pip waltzing around an empty room; Pip taking the mongrel puppy from her wordlessly, as they stood opposite each other in the dark outside her locked door in that awful, bruising silence. Peggy, he’s named the puppy – after its spindly peg legs, and after he ascertained that she was a bitch. Clare’s eyes scorch with tears; she excuses herself before the men notice.
In bed, with darkness outside, Boyd curls himself around her. He seems too long, too soft, too awkward. There’s something loose but clinging about him, like the stifling drape of a heavy, heavy blanket. He doesn’t fit her neatly like Ettore does, and he doesn’t smell right. Clare stares into the shadows as he strokes a lock of her hair down over her ear. The shivers it gives her are the wrong kind.
‘Please don’t hold me so tightly. I can’t quite bear it,’ she says, and he leans away wordlessly, hurt.
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he says. Clare’s thoughts are fragmentary, jarring into the distant past, into recent happenings, into the future; alighting and then skipping on so fast she can hardly follow them. Finally, she chases her unease and all her unanswered questions right back to New York.