‘I should go and check on Pip,’ she manages to say, sometime later.
When the sun has set they join their hosts for a drink in the garden, at the long table beneath the vine-covered veranda. A silent girl with her black hair parted in the middle, wearing an old-fashioned, high-necked blouse with a frill, brings a tray of glasses and a jug of some dark drink, and begins to pour. Small round fruit plop out into the glasses with the liquid, like soft pebbles.
‘Oh, good – amarena,’ says Marcie, clapping her hands. ‘This is just the thing you folk need after your long trip. Wild cherry juice – we can’t always get them, but when we do, one of the kitchen girls mixes up a batch of this stuff. She keeps the recipe all to herself, mind you – she absolutely refuses to show me! There’s some herb she adds that I just can’t put my finger on. She says it was her grandmother’s secret. Isn’t that just hilarious? To guard something as silly as a recipe?’
‘It’s not silly at all,’ Leandro tells his wife serenely. ‘She has precious little to call her own.’
‘Well, fine then.’ Marcie doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Try it – go on. There’s sugar there if you want it, but I think it’s delicious as it is.’ She beams at Pip, and he does as he’s told. He’s changed into a clean shirt and tie and his stone-coloured linen blazer with its matching waistcoat, but somehow his clothes still look wrong in their surroundings. He looks like a hastily spruced schoolboy, when at home he’d worn the new outfit into town with the hint of a proud swagger in his step. As if he realises, Pip stays at the edge of his chair and looks embarrassed. Clare sips her drink.
‘It is delicious,’ she says automatically, and then realises that it’s true. She steals a long glance at Leandro Cardetta.
He looks to be approaching fifty; he has copious iron-grey hair, swept back from his temples and from a high forehead, deeply lined. He is certainly not beautiful, but perhaps he’s almost handsome; his face has a certain gravitas, a kind of heft to the sculptural features – jaw and nose and brows. His skin is bronze and has the thick, smooth look of good leather. There are deep creases at either side of his mouth, and pouches under his eyes, and those eyes are so dark it’s hard to see the pupil against the iris – it looks instead as though his pupils are enormous, dilated far beyond the norm. Perhaps it’s this that makes his resting expression one of warmth and approachability. He is not overly tall, not nearly as tall as Boyd; his shoulders are strong and square, ribs like a barrel; a slight paunch, a mark of good living, fills out the space behind his shirt. He leans back in his chair, the small glass of amarena held in the fingers of his left hand with surprising delicacy. He is watchful without being disconcerting; elegant not but effeminate.
Catching Clare’s surreptitious gaze, he smiles.
‘Whatever will make your stay with us more comfortable, you must only ask, Mrs Kingsley,’ he says smoothly.
‘Unless it’s music or shopping or cinema, or a blaze through a casino – in which case you’re bang out of luck!’ Marcie declares.
‘Marcie, cara, you must not make it sound as though Gioia is completely devoid of fun. We have a very fine theatre – do you care for the theatre, Mrs Kingsley?’
‘Oh, very much so. And Pip too – he is proving to be a fine actor, in fact,’ says Clare.
‘Philip – is it true?’ Marcie leans across and grasps his forearm, staring avidly.
‘Well, I…’ Pip’s voice breaks and he clears his throat, flushing. ‘I was in a play last term, and people said I did well. I was Ariel in The Tempest.’
‘And you were quite brilliant, actually,’ says Clare.
‘But – I’m an actress, didn’t you know? Well, I was, back in New York. Not much call for it here. But, oh, I love the theatre! I love acting… It’s something in the blood, don’t you think – it’s a calling you can’t ignore. Do you feel that, Pip? Does acting make your heart soar?’
‘Well, I… I do think I should like to be in another play, certainly,’ he says. ‘But it’s not something one can really make a career out of, is it?’ These are Boyd’s words, coming out of his mouth, and they give Clare a sinking feeling. Pip’s heart did soar during that play. She saw it happen.
‘Well, why ever not? I did.’
‘Pip’s a good scholar. He’ll go up to Oxford, and then to chambers,’ says Boyd. He sips the crimson drink then rolls his lips back slightly.
‘Add some sugar, if it’s too sour,’ says Leandro, passing him the sugar bowl. Boyd smiles thinly without looking at him, and spoons some into his glass.
‘Chambers? You mean law? Ugh, why not say mausoleum? Poor boy!’
‘Not at all. My father always intended me for the law, but I hadn’t the mind for it. Pip has. It would be outrageous to waste such natural good fortune.’
‘And what about what Pip wants?’ Marcie asks this lightly but Clare can see Boyd taken aback to be challenged; she wishes Marcie would drop it.
‘He’s only a boy. He can’t be expected to know what he wants,’ he says. Marcie pats Pip’s arm, then gives him a jaunty wink.
‘I’ll work on them, don’t you fret. What’s the law compared to applause?’ she says. Clare is relieved when Boyd chooses not to reply to this question.
Dinner is an array of dishes, some of which arrive together, some on their own after a suitable pause. Fresh white cheeses, breads, vegetables dressed in lemon and oil; pasta with broccoli; rolled strips of veal; soft focaccia bread oozing olive oil and the smell of rosemary. Pip eats as though he hasn’t for days, but even he is defeated in the end. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and Leandro laughs – a deep, sudden bark.
‘Philip – I should have warned you. Forgive me. In this house they will keep bringing food as long as you keep clearing your plate.’ Pip has had a glass of wine, and looks far more relaxed.
‘I think I shall be very happy here,’ he says, and Leandro laughs again.
‘Perhaps a short walk, to look at the town and to let the meal settle before bed?’ says Clare. She too has overeaten; the smell of the fresh food woke a hunger gone dormant from being so long ignored. Marcie and Leandro share a quick glance between themselves. ‘Isn’t that the thing to do, here in Italy? La passeggiata?’ says Clare.
‘Yes, Mrs Kingsley, that’s so. However, here in the south we take our passeggiata earlier in the evening – around six, as the sun is setting. The gentlefolk, I mean. Now, this late, the streets are… more for the working men, lately back from the fields. There’s no law, of course, but perhaps tomorrow, at an earlier hour, might be better for you to walk,’ says Leandro.
‘Oh. I see,’ says Clare. Leandro inclines his head smoothly at her acceptance, and she wonders about the black-and-whiteness of this, the idea that people are either peasants or gentry, with none of the middle strata to which Clare and Boyd belong at home.
Marcie suggests a tour of the house to Clare instead, when the food is cleared away. Boyd and Leandro stay at the table, drinking a bitter fennel liqueur that Clare can’t stomach, and that makes Pip grimace. Leandro fills and lights a long pipe, made of some pale wood and banded with ivory. Its blue smoke hovers in the air like a phantasm. Pip dithers for a moment, half out of his chair. He’s not child enough to follow the women, not man enough to want to stay with the men. His eyes are pink and sunken with fatigue.