Daughter of Silence Page 6

  The change in the climate was immediate and startling and yet curiously hard to define. It was as if half the lights in the room had been switched off, so that they stood in a rosy glow of amiability. Ascolini became suddenly benign and Valeria took on an aura of prosy tenderness. The talk lost its edge and lapsed into comfortable digression. It was the kind of conspiracy which is practised on the ailing; the vague euphoria which is imposed on those for whom the impact of the world has proven too harsh.

  Carlo himself seemed unaware of it, and Landon was quite prepared to admit that his own perception might have been heightened by fatigue and that cautious suspicion which one brings to a new situation. The fact remained that from the last cocktail till the first cup of coffee he could not remember one single significant phrase or gesture. But when the brandy was poured and the servant had retired, Carlo Rienzi took the stage and light came up again to full glare.

  ‘With the permission of our guests I should like to make a family announcement.’ Valeria and her father exchanged a swift, questioning glance and Valeria shrugged her ignorance. Carlo went on, calmly: ‘I haven’t discussed this with either of you, because I felt it was my private decision. Now it is made and I hope you will accept it. I was called to the village today, as you know. The Mayor was murdered by a former village girl, Anna Albertini. It’s a long story that I won’t bother you with now. The end of it is that Fra Bonifacio asked me to undertake the girl’s defence. I agreed to do it.’

  Ascolini and Valeria watched him blank-faced. He waited a moment and then turned to Ascolini with the not ungraceful compliment: ‘I have served a long apprenticeship under a great master. Now it is time I made my own road. I’m resigning, maestro, to wait for my own briefs and plead my own causes.’ He fished in his pocket and brought up a small package which he handed to the old man. ‘From the student to the master, a gift which says my thanks. Wish me luck, dottore.’

  Landon felt a singular respect for him at that moment and prayed that they would be kind to his shortcomings. Whatever the basis of their tacit union against him, he had acquitted himself like a man.

  Rienzi waited, standing in a pool of silence while his wife and her father sat with heads bowed and eyes downcast to the table. Then he too sat down and Ascolini began to open the package with sedulous deliberation.

  Finally the gift was revealed: a small, gold fob watch of exquisite Florentine workmanship, hung on a dose-linked chain. Ascolini showed no sign of pleasure or regret, but held the watch in his hands and spelt into Italian the classic Latin of the inscription: ‘To my illustrious master, from his grateful pupil, this gift and my first case are dedicated.’

  Ascolini let the watch drop from his hands so that it swung like a pendulum from its intricate chain. His eyes were hooded, his voice a dusty contempt: ‘Keep it, boy – or send it to the pawnbroker. You may need it sooner than you think.’

  He laid the watch carefully on the table, pushed back his chair and walked from the room. Carlo watched him go, then he turned to Valeria and said, quite calmly: ‘And you, cara? What do you have to say?’

  Slowly she raised her head and looked at him with eyes full of condemnation. She said softly: ‘I am your wife, Carlo. Wherever you go, I must walk too. But you’ve done a terrible thing tonight. I’m not sure that I can ever forgive you.’

  Then she too walked out, and Landon, Ninette and Rienzi sat facing each other over the wreckage of the dinner party. Carlo cupped his hands round the warm bubble of the brandy goblet and raised it to the level of his lips. He gave them a small, crooked smile and said: ‘I’m sorry you both had to see that, but it was the only way I could guarantee my own courage.’ Then he added the saddest words they had ever heard: ‘Strange, you know…all my life I was afraid of being alone, and all my life I was alone and never knew it. Strange!’

  ‘All my life,’ said Peter Landon moodily, ‘I have dealt with sick minds. I don’t think I’ve ever been so shocked.’

  Ninette Lachaise laid a cool hand on his wrist and said calmly: ‘That’s your mistake, I think, Peter. These people are not sick, only selfish. Their whole life is a battle, one against the other. Each wants too much for too little. They’re entrenched like enemies in their own egotism.’

  ‘You’re a wise woman, Ninette.’

  ‘Too wise for my own good, perhaps.’

  They were sitting in her car, half a mile from the gates of the villa where three separate lights burned yellow in the blank walls and the moonlight shone cold on the spear-points of the cypresses. When Carlo had left the dining-room, Landon had felt suddenly stifled by the atmosphere of hostility, and with unaccustomed humility he had begged Ninette to lend him her company for a while before bedtime. She had agreed calmly and driven him out along the winding road to a spot where the land fell away into a pool of darkness and the hills climbed steeply towards the late, faint stars.

  He felt no need of caution with this woman, and she made no drama of this first intimate nocturne. He was thankful to her and he sensed in her quiet talk a return of this gratitude of the lonely. It gave him pleasure to open to her a thought that had puzzled him for a long time. ‘You know the rarest thing in the world, Ninette? A man or woman wise enough to look the world in the eye and accept it, good or bad, for what it is at that moment. When people come to me or when I am summoned to them in prison or hospital, it’s because I am the last milestone in their long flight from reality. Their flight is a symptom of sickness – and the sickness is the subtlest one of all: fear! They’re afraid of loss, of pain, of loneliness, of their own natures, of the obligations which any normal life lays on them.’

  ‘And what’s your cure, Peter?’

  ‘Sometimes there is no cure. Sometimes the mechanisms of the mind seize up or refuse to work except in a psychotic groove. For the rest, I try to take them by the hand and lead them back, step by step, to the moment of primal terror. While I am doing it I try to rebuild their courage to face it. If I succeed, they begin to be well again. If I fail …’ He hesitated a moment and sat staring out over the dark valley where a sparse huddle of lights marked the village of San Stefano ‘… If I fail, then the flight begins once more.’

  ‘And where does it end?’

  ‘In nothingness. In the ultimate negation of being, when the world contracts to the dimensions of a man’s own navel, when there is no splendour, no profusion, and even a capacity for love is destroyed. There are times,’ he added softly, ‘when I wonder if I am not destroying in myself what I’m trying to build in others.’

  ‘No, Peter!’ The warmth in her voice surprised him. ‘I watched you tonight with Carlo. You were careful of him. You had the grace to be gentle. So long as you keep that, you needn’t be afraid.’

  ‘But how do you renew in yourself what you spend on others?’

  ‘If I could be sure of the answer to that,’ said Ninette softly, ‘I would feel safer than I do now. But I think – no, I believe – that the spending is the growing too, that the flowers fall to make the fruit grow, and that this is the way it was intended to be from the beginning.’ She laughed lightly and withdrew her hand. ‘It’s late and I’m getting sentimental. Go to bed, Peter. You’re a disturbing man.’

  ‘May I see you again?’

  ‘Any time. You’ll find me in the phone book.’

  ‘I think I may leave the villa tomorrow.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘If it weren’t for Carlo I’d go back to Rome. But I’ve promised to help him with his case and I can’t retract now. I’ll probably get myself a room in Siena.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ said Ninette Lachaise simply. ‘It gives me a little hope, too.’

  She turned and kissed him lightly on the lips and when he held her to him she pushed him away gently. ‘Go home, Peter. Golden dreams.’

  He stood watching a long time as her rickety car clattered down the hillside; then he turned away and trudged back to the iron gates of the villa, where a sleepy gate-keeper bade him a tru
culent goodnight.

  He slept badly that night and woke, stale and sour, to raw summer in Tuscany. A shave and a bath refreshed him, but he could not shake off the burden of being a guest in a hostile house. He wished fervently that he had not obliged himself either to Ascolini or Rienzi; but the damage was done and he had at least the comfort of a partial retreat. He packed his bags for a swift departure after breakfast and then walked out to take the early morning air on the terrace.

  To his surprise he found Valeria Rienzi there before him. There was more than a hint of embarrassment in her greeting. ‘You’re up early, Peter.’

  ‘I had a restless night. And it is a beautiful morning.’

  She made a rueful mouth and said quietly: ‘I’m glad to find you here. I want to apologize for last night. We behaved very badly.’

  He was in no mood for a fencing match, so he shrugged and said boldly: ‘I don’t need an apology. This is your house. You’re free to behave in it any way you want. But I think Carlo deserved better.’

  ‘I know that.’ She accepted the reproof without protest. ‘I hurt him very badly. I’ve told him I’m sorry.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing more to be said. The rest is private to you both.’

  ‘You’re very angry, aren’t you?’ Her hand imprisoned his against the stone balustrade and she turned on him the charm of a very penitent smile. ‘I don’t blame you. But Carlo took me by surprise. I’m sorry that you had to be involved.’

  ‘I’m not involved and I’m not angry. Not now. But I think it’s better that I leave after breakfast.’

  She made no attempt to dissuade him but nodded assent. ‘Carlo told me. I can understand how you feel. He told me, too, that you had promised to stay a few days in Siena. I’m grateful for that. He needs a friend just now.’

  ‘I think he needs his wife more.’

  She flushed at the reproach and turned away, covering her face with her hands. Landon waited, half guilty, half glad, staring over the cypresses to the distant crags of Amiata. In a little while she was composed again, but there was a winter in her voice and her look was sombre when she turned to him. ‘Perhaps I deserved that. Perhaps, for Carlo’s sake, you have the right to say it. But now will you do me a favour?’

  ‘What sort of favour?’

  ‘Walk with me in the garden. Talk with me a while.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She took his hand and led him down the broad stone steps that gave on to the garden walks. By the classic contrivance of the old gardeners they followed the contour of the land, winding imperceptibly downwards through ranks of pines, rose arbours, banks of flowering shrubs and pergolas trailing the purple blossom of wistaria. Sometimes the house was hidden, sometimes the walk was screened, as if for the privacy of old lovers, but always the valley was in view. There was no sound but the buzzing of insects, the occasional chitter of a bird and the brisk rustle of a lizard from the leaves to a warm rock.

  ‘Sometimes at night,’ said Valeria, ‘we hear nightingales in the garden. Father and I come out very softly and listen. First one starts, then another, until the whole valley seems full of singing. It is so very beautiful.’

  ‘Lonely too, sometimes.’

  ‘Lonely?’ She looked up at him in mild surprise.

  ‘For the one who sits inside playing Chopin in the dark.’

  ‘Carlo?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘I’d like to, but I don’t have to. After all, it’s not my affair.’

  ‘Carlo has made it so. And I’d like to explain myself.’

  ‘Listen to me, Valeria!’ He stopped pacing and faced her under the branch of a grey fig tree where a robin surveyed them with a beady, critical eye. ‘Understand who I am and what I am. I’m a healer of sick minds. I spend the best part of my life listening to other people’s troubles and getting paid for it. If I extend myself outside the consulting-room I give myself no chance at all of a normal life. I’m often touched by people’s misfortunes, but I can’t be obliged because I have so little to give. By the same token, you owe me no explanation, even if you choose to do hand-springs on the roof of the Duomo. Now, if that’s understood, I’ll listen. If I can help, I will. After that – basta! Enough for me, enough for you, too.’

  ‘I wish I had half your detachment.’ Landon was startled by the bitterness of her tone. ‘But you’re right. There are no claims on you. I talk; you listen; you go away. Basta! But you’re not half so cold as you want others to believe.’ She took his hand again and made him fall into step beside her while the robin flirted cheekily along the fringe of their progress. He found himself admiring the assurance with which she entered on subjects and issues that earned her no credit at all. She did not minimize or attempt to make a drama. There was an essential simplicity in her which was damnably disconcerting. She said first of all: ‘I know, Peter, that you find something unnatural in my relation with my father. It colours what you think about my marriage with Carlo.’

  ‘Let’s settle on another word – “unusual” – and start from there.’

  ‘Very well – “unusual”. You’re more courteous than some of my friends.’

  ‘It’s the way of the world. People gossip. They love the smell of scandal.’ It was a banality, but she thought on it gravely for a few moments, then asked him: ‘Do you find it scandalous, Peter?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m a doctor, not a censor of morals. I take the clinical view. Find out all the facts before you make a diagnosis.’

  ‘Then here is the first fact, Peter. For a long time I lived only in one world and I found it very satisfying. I had no mother, but a father who loved me tenderly and who opened the world to me door by door. Each new revelation was a kind of wonder. He denied me nothing, yet somehow managed to teach me the disciplines of enjoyment. He did what most fathers cannot do – taught me to understand what it means to be a woman. He answered every question I ever asked and I never found him out in a lie. Was it unnatural that I should love him and be glad always to have him near me?’

  ‘No, not unnatural, but perhaps unfortunate.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ For the first time he caught an edge of anxiety in her voice.

  ‘Because, generally, it is the shortcoming of parents which forces a child to find wholeness elsewhere-in a wider world, with other people, with other kinds of love. It is not your relationship which is unnatural, only that you should find it complete and sufficient. Your father’s a very remarkable man, but he’s not all men nor all the world.’

  ‘That’s what I found out,’ said Valeria Rienzi quietly. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I told you I had never found him out in a lie. Until recently that was true. It dawned on me quite slowly. Always he had told me that all his care and counsel was directed to my well-being. Instead I found that my well-being was a fund set for himself. I was a capital he had created to replenish the youth he had lost.’ Her face clouded and she stumbled, shamefaced, to the conclusion. ‘He wants me to be all the things I can’t be – wife, mistress, son…and a mirror image of Alberto Ascolini!’

  ‘And what do you want to be, Valeria?’

  ‘A woman! My own woman.’

  ‘Not Carlo’s?’

  ‘Anybody’s who can give me the identity my father has taken from me!’

  ‘Can’t Carlo do that?’

  For the first time he heard her laugh; but there was no humour in it, only an unhappy irony. ‘You feel so much for Carlo, don’t you, Peter? He’s a boy! A passionate boy! And when you’ve lived with a man all your life, it isn’t half enough!’

  ‘He looked very much like a man last night,’ said Peter Landon flatly.

  ‘You didn’t go to bed with him,’ said Valeria Rienzi. He was still digesting that sour little morsel when she offered him another one. ‘What’s your prescription, Doctor, when a girl wants to be kisse
d and tumbled in the hay, and all she’s offered are chocolates for breakfast!’

  Then, because he was challenged in his own manhood, because he was sick of playing the wise owl while others played ‘baciami’ in the bushes, he took her in his arms and kissed her and tasted the sweetness of her mouth mixed with the salt tang of blood.

  ‘Charming!’ said Doctor Ascolini with dry good humour. ‘Quite, quite charming – if a trifle indiscreet.’ Landon broke away roughly and saw the old man standing in the middle of the path, his pink face bright with merriment. ‘I must disapprove on principle, but in the circumstances I find it a commendable diversion for both of you.’

  ‘Oh – go to hell!’

  Sick with anger and humiliation, Landon pushed past Ascolini and hurried away. The rich actor’s laugh followed him like the laughter of a child delighted with the antics of a painted clown.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN LANDON reached the terrace, breakfast was already laid and Carlo Rienzi was working through coffee and a stack of morning newspapers. He greeted Landon with grave courtesy, passed him a cup of coffee and a dish of warm country bread, then told him calmly: ‘I saw what happened, Peter. It was almost as if it were contrived that I should.’ He pointed down into the garden where Ascolini and his daughter were clearly visible through a gap in the shrubbery. ‘You understand now, perhaps, what it is that I have to fight.’

  Landon felt himself blushing under a new humiliation. He said awkwardly: ‘It was my fault. I’m sorry it happened.’

  Rienzi waved aside the apology. ‘Why blame yourself? It’s happened before. It will happen again.’

  Unreasonably, Landon was angry with him. ‘Then why are you so damned complacent about it? Why don’t you punch me on the nose? And if my wife were unfaithful I’d break her neck, or walk out!’

  ‘But she is not your wife, Peter,’ said Rienzi in a flat voice. ‘She is mine – and I am half responsible for what she is. You’ve known her for a few days. I’ve lived with her for years. You judge her as you would judge any other wife who wants to play hot cockles in the summertime. But in her this is a kind of childish wilfulness in which her father has indulged her for his own purposes. She is never wilful with him, you see, although she often resents it. The pattern of order and authority has been set, as it would have been set with us in a normal marriage. Outside the pattern Valeria recognizes no claim, no obligation. The world and all the creatures thereof were made for the sole use and benefit of the Ascolini family.’