Lucy Gordon: A Family For Keeps

His eyes were very bright. 'It's as good a name as any. Like Julia.'

'Yes,' she agreed.

The cold remedy drink made her feel better and she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes. Her throat and her forehead were still hot, but she was determined to get up, if only for a while.

It was mid-afternoon and since the light was good she went out of the little room into the great reception hall and began to look about her.

The pictures might be gone but the frescoes painted directly onto the walls were still here. She studied them, until she came to one that stopped her in her tracks as though it had spoken to her.

It was at the top of the stairs, and showed a woman with long fair hair flying wildly around her face like a mad halo. Her eyes were large and distraught as though with some ghastly vision. She had been to hell, and now she would never really escape.

'That's Annina,' said Piero, who had followed her.

'It's Annina if we want to be fanciful,' said Vincenzo's voice.

He had come in silently and watched them for a mo- ment before speaking.

'What do you mean, "fanciful"?' she asked.

He came up the stairs, closer to her. She watched him with hostile eyes, angry with herself for being glad to see him.

'We don't know if that's what she really looked like,' he explained. 'This was done a couple of centuries later, by an artist who played up the drama for all it was worth.

'See, there are prison bars in one corner, and there's a child over here. And this man, with the demonic face, is Annina's husband. Count Francesco, his direct descendant, didn't like having the family scandal revived. He even wanted the artist to paint over it.':

Scandalised, Julia spoke without thinking. 'Paint over a Correggio?'

She could have cut her tongue out the next moment. Vincenzo's raised eyebrows showed that he fully appreciated what she'd revealed.

'Well done,' he said. 'It is Correggio. And of course he refused to cover it. Then people began to admire it, and Francesco, who was as big a philistine as Correggio said he was, realised that it must be good after all. So it's stayed here, and people take their view of the story from this very melodramatic picture. Naturally, the ghost looks just like her. Ask Piero.'

His smile showed that he knew exactly the trick the old man was playing to scare off intruders.

'I'm sure I don't know what she looks like,' Piero said loftily. 'I've never seen her.'

'But she's been heard often,' Vincenzo observed. He clapped Piero on the shoulder. 'I've left a few things for you. I may see you later.' He pointed a commanding finger at Julia. 'You-into the warm, right now.'

She returned to the little room with relief. Her brief expedition had lowered her strength, and when she had eaten something she curled up again and was soon asleep.

It was after midnight when Vincenzo reappeared. When he was settled he became sunk in thought. 'How many people,' he asked at last, 'could identify a Correggio at once?'

'Not many,' Piero conceded.

'That's what I thought.' He glanced at the sleeping Julia. 'Has she told you anything about herself?'

'No, but why should she? Our kind respect each other's privacy. You know that.'

'Yes, but there's something about her that worries me. It could be risky to leave her too much alone.'

'But suppose she wants to be left alone?'

'I think she does,' Vincenzo mused, remembering the desperation with which she had cried, 'I don't need anyone's help.'

Nobody said it like that unless their need for help was terrible.

All his life he'd had an instinctive affinity with need creatures. When his father had bought him a puppy he'd chosen the runt of the litter, the one who had held back timidly. His father had been displeased, but the boy, stubborn beneath his quiet manner, had said, 'This one,' and refused to budge.

After that there had been his sister, his twin, discounted by their parents as a mere girl, and therefore loved by him the more. They had been close all their lives until she had cruelly repaid his devotion by dying, and leaving him bereft.

He had loved a woman, refusing to see her grasping nature, until she'd callously abandoned him.

Now he would have said that his days of opening his heart to people were over. No man could afford to be like that, and he'd developed armour in self-defence.

He made an exception for Piero, whom he'd known in better days. There was something about the old man's gentle madness, his humour in the face of misfortune, that called to him despite his resolutions.

As for the awkward, half-hostile woman he'd found sleeping here, he couldn't imagine why he'd allowed her to stay. Perhaps because she wanted nothing from him, and seemed consumed by a bitterness that matched his own.

Suddenly a long sigh came from the bed. As they watched she threw back the blanket and eased her legs over the side.

Vincenzo tensed, about to speak to her, but then something in her demeanour alerted him and he stopped. She stood for a moment, staring into the distance with eyes that were vague. Slowly Vincenzo got to his feet and went to stand before her. 'Julia,' he said softly.

She made no response and he realised that she was still asleep. When he spoke her name she did not see or hear him. After a moment she turned away and began to walk slowly to the door.

She seemed to know her way as well in the darkness and in the light. Without stumbling she opened the door, and went out into the main hall.

At the foot of the stairs she stopped, remaining still for a long time. Moonlight, streaming through the windows, showed her shrouded in a soft blue glow, like a phantom. She raised her head so that her long hair fell back and they could both see that her eyes were fixed on the picture of Annina, at the top of the stairs.

'Can she see it?' Piero muttered.

'It's the only thing she can see,' Vincenzo told him. 'Nothing else exists for her.'

She began to move again, slowly setting one foot in front of the other, climbing the broad stairs.

'Stop her,' Piero said urgently.

Vincenzo shook his head. 'This is her decision. We can't interfere.'

Moving quietly, he began to follow her up the stairs until she came to a halt in front of the fresco showing the distraught Annina. It too lay in the path of the moonlight that entered through windows high up in the hall.

'Julia,' Vincenzo said again, speaking very quietly.

Silence. She was not aware of him.

'Dammit, that's not her real name,' Vincenzo said frantically. 'How can I reach her with it?'

'There's another name you might try,' Piero murmured.

Vincenzo shot him an uneasy glance. 'Don't talk like that, Piero. Enough of superstition.'

'Is it superstition?'

'You know as well as I do that the dead don't come back.'

'Then who is she?'

Vincenzo didn't reply. He couldn't.

A soft moan broke from her. She was reaching up to touch the picture, beginning to talk in soft, anguished tones.

'I loved him, and he shut me away-for years-until I died-I died-'

'Julia,' Vincenzo said, knowing it would be useless.

Instead of answering she began to thump the wall.

'I died-' she screamed. 'Just as he meant me to. My baby-my baby-'

Abruptly all the strength went out of her and she leaned against the wall. Vincenzo grasped her gently and drew her away.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I'm here. Don't give in. Stay strong whatever you do.'

She looked up at him out of despairing eyes, and he knew that she couldn't see him. For her, he didn't exist.

'Let's go,' he said.

She shook her head and tried to pull away. 'I must find him,' she said hoarsely. 'Don't you understand?'

'Of course, but not tonight. Get some rest, and later I'll help you find him.'