‘You knew?’ she says.
‘Honey, I love you but I’ve got to tell you – you’re a bad actress. Really bad.’ Leandro runs his hands across his hair and down over his face, like he’s wiping something off. ‘Things haven’t gone quite as I planned them,’ he says, to nobody in particular.
After a few seconds of stillness Marcie takes out a handkerchief and starts to wipe her face, as if shocked into propriety. She sits up straighter and smooths down her hair, and beside her Pip watches her every move as if searching for clues or instructions. His eyes are bloated with tears; before long they start to slide down his face.
‘Pip,’ says Clare. She has the sudden clear image of him standing, shaking, pointing the gun at Ettore and pulling the trigger. She shuts her eyes. ‘Pip, come and sit with me,’ she says, holding out her hand; but Pip ignores her, like she hasn’t spoken. He turns his head slowly towards Boyd.
‘Father… it’s lies, isn’t it? Tell them it’s not true. My mother got sick and died. Just tell them!’ Pip’s voice turns shrill. Boyd shifts minutely, like something’s coursing through him, causing a ripple. But he doesn’t look up, and he doesn’t reply.
‘It’s not lies, Filippo. I’m sorry for it, and I’m sorry you’re hearing it now, but you need to. Your mother didn’t deserve what happened to her, not for the crime of falling in love. A man will be angry to be cuckolded, yes.’ Leandro glances over at Boyd, who doesn’t move a muscle. ‘Angry, yes. So divorce her if you want, or cut her off, but accept it. Life’s like that; the heart is like that. These things happen and we can’t help them – I don’t see why women should be expected to resist the strength of such feelings, any more than men.’ He looks hard at his wife again. ‘But seducing a boy, little more than a child, out of spite? Doing it with a cold heart, deliberately to wound me?’ His voice has risen to a bellow; Marcie flinches. ‘That’s low.’
‘I wasn’t trying to wound you, Leandro, I swear, I wanted to-’ she says, and breaks off, flicking angry eyes at Clare.
‘You did it to hurt Clare? Why? Oh… I see. Because Ettore fell for her, and not for you.’ Leandro nods. ‘That’s still vile, Marcie. It’s still vile.’
‘You made Pip tell you? About Ettore and me?’ says Clare. Marcie glares at her.
‘I knew weeks ago, you fool. I saw you two together – I saw you go into his room at night, in your slip. Before he had a chance to close the shutters! I’ve known all along.’
‘You saw me through the window? But… your room doesn’t look out that way.’
‘I wasn’t in my room, I was-’ Marcie stops short again, snaps her mouth closed.
‘Watching his window from some vantage point?’ says Leandro softly. Marcie’s cheeks redden. ‘Like a love-struck teenager?’ He shakes his head, wistful. ‘There was a time you held such a candle for me, Marcie. Do you even remember it?’
‘You brought me out here and left me to rot,’ she says, her voice trembling.
‘I brought you out here to love and support me! To be my wife!’ he shouts. ‘Woman, you make my heart sore.’ With a small, broken sound Marcie puts her hands over her eyes. Her mouth is a set, flat line and she’s no longer crying. Clare remembers her advice to Pip: If it bothers you to see, don’t look. She wants to tear Marcie’s hands away and open her eyes, but she hasn’t the will to move.
Leandro levers himself up and goes around with the brandy bottle again, topping up all of their glasses. Only Boyd doesn’t have one. ‘Drink it. All of you. We need to restore some fucking sanity here.’
‘You… you killed my mother?’ says Pip. His lips have gone ashen again; the skin around them almost blue.
‘Drink your brandy, Philip. You look ready to die of fright,’ says Leandro. ‘Yes, I killed her. A single shot to the head, as she walked home from her boyfriend’s house one night; and then I hit the boyfriend too, right afterwards. That’s what your father paid me to do. If I was the gun that shot your mother, then it was your father who pointed me and pulled the trigger.’
‘Leandro, that’s enough,’ says Clare. Pip is breathing far too fast; she can’t imagine what he must be feeling. She doesn’t try to imagine what she herself is feeling. All she knows is that when she’s able to feel anything again, she’ll wish she can’t. When she looks at the folded-up figure of her husband she realises that the nagging feeling she’s had all this time was right. She doesn’t know him at all.
‘The cat’s out of the bag already.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘And since my wife’s spent the last month making a man out of the kid, I guess he’s grown up enough to hear it.’ But he’s not, Clare knows. Pip is crying like a child; he can’t possibly be taking everything in, it’s too much. It’s too much for Clare.
Two young men come in from the courtyard, wearing the dark uniforms and peaked caps of the carabinieri. They sweep their eyes uncertainly over the room’s mixed and broken inhabitants. ‘You’ve rounded them all up?’ Leandro asks them in Italian.
‘Yes, Mr Cardetta.’
‘How many dead?’
‘Seven; and twenty-one wounded.’
‘And my niece?’
‘We have her, unharmed. Shall we take her in with the others?’
‘No. Have my men put her somewhere here for now, and keep watch on her.’
‘Paola?’ says Clare. Some thought nudges for her attention. ‘No… her baby. She must be allowed to get back to her baby.’
‘In due course,’ says Leandro, and his tone brooks no argument. ‘I want to talk to her first. But take that one.’ He points at Boyd. The carabinieri exchange a look. ‘Yes, yes – take him! He shot my nephew, Ettore Tarano, in cold blood, for a vendetta. We all saw him. He must be kept in custody, and sent to Bari for trial.’
‘Yes, Mr Cardetta.’
‘Please – you must at least send someone to fetch Paola’s child to her. He can’t be left all alone, he’s too little,’ says Clare.
‘Perhaps she should have thought of that before she came here to rob me!’ Leandro’s sudden bellow is shocking, but there’s a treacherous sparkle in his eyes. He glares at Clare but she isn’t cowed. Ettore is dead; she has nothing else to fear. Leandro relents. ‘All right. Have someone go to Vico Iovia; the Taranos have an apartment there, in the courtyard. Fetch her baby and bring him here.’ The carabinieri nod. ‘Anything you want to say to your husband before they take him?’ he says to Clare.
The two officers pull Boyd to his feet and he looks across at Clare. His face is shiny and flaccid, he’s as colourless as whey, his long body is limp. When he looks at her his eyes are quite empty.
‘You were perfect,’ he says. She can’t make out his tone of voice – it’s heavier than neutral; past calm, into somewhere else. ‘You were perfect. No man had touched you until… until you let that… peasant…’ He swallows convulsively, as though the very thought nauseates him. That’s what’s in his voice, she realises. Disgust; even revulsion. ‘No man had ever touched you. You were pure.’ Boyd shakes his head, and Clare understands what he means. Before, she’d wondered if they’d ever made love at all, given the barrier that was always between them. Now she knows they had not, and that this had been his intention – to keep her pure. That bitch, he called little Christina Havers, after their affair. That whore.
‘You dare to look disgusted with me?’ she says softly. ‘Ettore was twice the man you are. A hundred times the man!’ Her voice is rising; she wants her words to scar him. ‘I loved him more than I ever loved you! And I loved making love to him!’