Christobel Kent - A Darkness Descending

Gloria shifted on the velvet stool and Luisa saw with unease that she’d lost weight recently. When had they last seen the Cavallaros? ‘Well,’ said Gloria, ‘I don’t know. She’s been different for a month or so. She didn’t want to come away with us to Elba last month.’ The curly, faded red head bobbed down again. ‘She’s never done that before, never, she’s got so many friends there, you know? The whole gang of them, every year since they were born practically, going to the beach together, out for pizza.’

She was almost crying again. ‘But, Gloria,’ Luisa tried lamely, ‘it does happen eventually, you know. Children leave, in the end.’ She felt uneasy, because it was something she’d consoled herself with, childless as she was; she might have had a child but by now the child would be long gone. She didn’t really want to trot it out for poor Gloria, as if they were both in the same boat.

But the expression on the face Gloria raised to hers was not what she’d expected. The tears were drying, the mouth set. ‘But moving in with a — with a boyfriend? At her age? She’s nineteen. She’s my baby. I don’t even know him.’

Luisa noticed her determination. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘I know. I suppose — I suppose I’d be worried too. But you’ll meet him?’

‘I don’t even know that,’ said Gloria, her mouth trembling. ‘She said she’d come and get some things this evening. She didn’t say he’d be coming with her.’

In the silence that followed Luisa could hear the hushed, happy voices of the men upstairs, exclaiming in their soft foreign accents over something nice Beppe had shown them. Was that why she stuck this job, enjoyed it even? The little pulse of pleasure observed, the satisfied customer, the sly smile when a woman or man was pleased with the way they looked? It didn’t seem much, sometimes. That with such things a life was kept stable, until you found a lump in your breast, or your only child upped and left.

‘You asked?’

Gloria sighed. ‘She got — angry. Said she wouldn’t bring him for inspection.’

Luisa could imagine Pietro, pacing the room with this — boyfriend in front of him, interrogating him, reading him the riot act. She wondered what the law said. If Chiara was nineteen — well, she was an adult. Although when Luisa had been a girl, she could have got married, had kids at nineteen, that had been how things were done then. In fact they’d lived with her parents for close to a year after they’d got married — that had been how things were done then, too. And like Gloria, she thought of Chiara as no more than a baby still, unformed.

She tried another tack. ‘What do her friends say?’

‘They came around in Elba, asking for her. They didn’t know anything about this — this boyfriend. Well, I didn’t either, not then. But they had just assumed she’d be there, like every year.’ Gloria got to her feet, distractedly. ‘I should go. You’re — you’re-’

‘I’m not busy, Gloria,’ said Luisa gently. ‘Sit down.’ But Gloria stayed standing.

‘You’ve talked to Pietro?’

Gloria looked down at her hands. ‘I tried his number, left a message.’ She fumbled in her pocket in a sudden panic and got out a battered little phone. Gloria had never been one for gadgets. ‘No signal in here. He might have-’

‘Calm down,’ said Luisa. ‘Half an hour won’t make any difference.’ She took Gloria’s hands in hers. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Go home, make the dinner, breathe deeply. When Chiara comes to pick up her things, be normal. Don’t panic, don’t get hysterical, give her a chance to prove to you, calmly, that she knows what she’s doing. She might see sense, you never know. If you give her the chance.’

Chiara had always been a sensible girl, that was the thing.

Gloria gazed at her as if hypnotized. ‘And Pietro?’

Luisa puffed out her cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Try and get him to see it the same way. Failing that, tranquillizer dart? Or just keep him out of the way.’ Was this the right advice? In the pit of her stomach Luisa felt unease stir. But what else could they do?

‘I’ll talk to Sandro,’ she said. Clinging to straws. ‘OK?’

Hesitant, Gloria clutched her bag. They stood, facing each other: it didn’t feel as though anything had been resolved. Just move forward, one step ahead: it was Luisa’s only strategy.

They crossed the shopfloor. ‘Will you do it?’ said Gloria, her hand on the door.

‘Do what?’

Pale-faced, Gloria nodded down at the careful folds of Luisa’s silk blouse. ‘The breast,’ she said. ‘Do you want it back?’

And Luisa opened her mouth, fully intending to say, robustly, ‘No, no, I’m fine as I am, all fine,’ but the way Gloria had phrased it meant she found she couldn’t say anything at all.

On the crowded terrace of the restaurant Sandro prodded despondently at his salad.

Luisa had her mind on something else, too. ‘Why did you order it then?’ she said with distracted impatience. ‘You hate salad.’

Sandro forked it into his mouth. Insalata Fantasia was what they’d called it: it had lumps of rubbery cheese and maize kernels in it, and he chewed with stolid disgust. He had wanted pici with hare sauce and some beans in oil followed by a slice of cake, but had decided that he needed to look after his health. He put the fork down, pushed the big gaudy bowl away and stared into the soft warm dark of the Piazza del Carmine.

This square, the breadth of it, still as untidy and car-choked as it had been when he’d been a boy, the grand palazzi along one side with their ornate balconies, faded and crumbling, the big church with its jewel of a chapel: he loved it, if pushed to admit it. But the restaurant was a mistake. It had been a favourite once upon a time, an old-fashioned place with excellent food, but it had embarked on a half-baked programme of modernization that involved uncomfortable aluminium seating and neon and loud music. The menu was now too long, the quality of the food too patchy.

This was the problem with eating in restaurants, he thought gloomily as he forked a piece of cheese into his mouth — worrying about the cost. Their few weeks in Castiglioncello, it seemed to Sandro now, had only lulled them into a false sense of carefree security, persuaded them that they were the kind of couple who could do things spontaneously. Or perhaps it was just the day he’d had.

It had been Luisa’s idea: she’d called that afternoon and said perhaps they could go out to eat. He’d had the impression then that she had an agenda: his head full of Niccolo Rosselli and what his mother had said in that strange, dark untidy lawyer’s office, he’d thought, why not?

A distraction. The whole situation was a mess, all right: he didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for the Frazione Verde, not since this afternoon and Maria Rosselli’s revelation.

Had he known what she was going to say? An inkling, just like Giuli said she’d had when Niccolo Rosselli had stopped talking and swayed on the stage. From the moment the door opened there’d been an unusual dynamic between the two people, the lawyer and the fierce old woman, that had made Sandro stop and observe and wonder. Giuli had looked at them, bewildered by the strange, crackling energy Maria Rosselli brought into the room with her. Of course, thought Sandro to begin with, the old woman’s known this lawyer since he was a kid, coming round to play with her son, of course there’s a lack of respect, of course she still sees him as the overweight, bumbling child struggling to keep up with her odd, sharp, determined Niccolo.

He didn’t even know where these thoughts came from. He could be quite wrong about all sorts of things, and Carlo Bastone might have been a skinny child. But there was something else, too, something else consuming the woman; he could see that right from the beginning, and it infected their host. Carlo Bastone had looked from his new visitor to Sandro in a pleading panic.