Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

Adam was beginning to doubt the picture of the man he had painted for himself when he witnessed the one other wobble in Maurizio's performance. It occurred toward the end of the evening, just before Antonella left.

Signora Docci mooted the theory that Federico's murder of Flora and her lover, enshrined in the garden, had acted as some kind of curse on the family, coloring the fortunes of the villa's occupants, consigning the Doccis to centuries of ill luck, violence and tragedy.

Her words cast a momentary pall over Maurizio's features, a sadness tinged with a telling self-pity. "That's very interesting," he said.

Chiara threw her husband a curious look and said in Italian, "Since when are you superstitious?"

Since the moment it exonerated him of his own crime, thought Adam; since the moment it allowed him to view himself as a victim of some grander design set in motion by a murderous ancestor. Maurizio had leapt too readily at his mother's wild theory. That had been his mistake, and it shored up Adam's flagging suspicions.

Only as Antonella was leaving did Adam realize he'd paid her hardly any attention. She'd gone to a lot of effort to make the meal a special occasion, buying two magnificent fish, which Maria had cooked to perfection, and he had barely acknowledged the fact. Worst of all, he wouldn't be seeing her again until the party. No one would. Something had come up at work. She hoped to get away early on Friday if at all possible, but she couldn't promise she'd appear much before the first guests arrived. These were about her last words before she disappeared into the night.

Maurizio and Chiara followed suit soon after. Adam noted that they stopped and kissed each other as they made their way across the parterre. When Signora Docci announced that she too was ready for bed, Harry told her to wait a moment, he had something for her. He disappeared inside the villa, promptly returning with his scuffed leather shoulder bag. From it he produced something wrapped in a paint-bespattered piece of cloth. He laid the object carefully, almost reverently, on the table in front of him. It was about a foot long, not too thick—like a slender log.

"I was going to give it to Adam. But it's for you, a thank you. If you don't like it, give it to Adam. And if he doesn't like it. . . well, I'll shoot myself." He let out a nervous laugh.

That's when Adam realized that one of Harry's own creations lay swaddled in the old rag. Maybe he should have guessed sooner, but he'd never seen anything by Harry on this scale. All the other works had been at least three or four times the size, considerably more in the case of the "giant mechanical penis."

This moniker, coined in relative innocence by Adam, had almost brought the two of them to blows right there in the Bath Academy sculpture studio at Corsham during Adam's one and only visit. Welded together from "recovered pieces"—Harry's fancy phrase for scrap metal—the work in question was part building, part machine, and, in Adam's firm opinion, blatantly phallic.

For a horrible moment it occurred to Adam that the thing on the table, the thing about to be unveiled by Harry and handed to Signora Docci, might actually be a maquette for the same sculpture, a preparatory "sketch" in miniature.

It wasn't. It was the first figurative piece by Harry that Adam had ever seen. And it was good. He knew it was good the moment he set eyes on it, because his very first thought was that it had almost been his, and now it never would be, not unless Signora Docci didn't like it. But he could see in her eyes that she did.

It was a creature, almost a man, but not quite. Mounted on a slate base, it had long spindly legs of welded steel that climbed to a thick barrel chest, redolent of an insect's thorax. There was no skin as such, just an irregular mesh of slender steel struts, each no thicker than a matchstick, which reached to the heart of the creature, leaving you in no doubt that it had been built from the inside out. The head consisted of two shapeless steel protrusions. The arms, like the legs, were skeletally thin, and were raised above this stumpy nonhead and crossed at the wrists.

Somehow, the little insect-man was both robust and delicate, noble yet fragile, brave yet cowardly.

"It's made of mild steel. Do you like it?" Harry asked tentatively.

"Am I allowed to like him?" replied Signora Docci. "I want to, but I'm not sure he wants me to."

Harry beamed, happy with her reply. His head crept around to Adam.

"Well done."

"Really?"

"Harry . . . really."

Signora Docci held the sculpture up to the candlelight. "He's so sure of himself but so frightened." She paused. "I see Mussolini at the end, before they strung him up with piano wire in Piazzale Loreto."

"That's good," said Harry.

"Maybe it's the way the arms are crossed above the head, but I see you and me in the Anderson shelter down the end of the garden in Kennington when the bombs were coming down."

"That's good too," said Harry.

"Thank you," said Signora Docci. "I love him and I will live with him for the rest of my life."

Before carrying her prize off to bed with her, she told them that they needn't worry about what to wear to the party; something had been sorted out for them. She also told them that she'd be heading down into Florence in the morning with Maria for the final fitting of her dress. They both declined the offer of a lift, though for different reasons.

Adam knew that Maurizio and Chiara also planned to be away in the morning—they were dropping in on some friends who lived to the south. The timing was good. An opportunity for a snoop around the top floor of the villa was shaping up nicely.

"What's the matter?" asked Harry, the moment they found themselves alone together.

"Nothing's the matter." "Come on . . ."

"I wasn't lying, Harry, I love the sculpture."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"I'm fine, I'm just tired and a bit drunk."

"It's Mum and Dad, isn't it?"

He felt bad snatching at the line Harry had thrown him, but it would keep his brother happy. And it did. They chatted some more about the situation at home. Meanwhile, Adam's head was on another matter altogether. He was thinking about the morning and how to shake Harry off before visiting the top floor.

The counterintuitive solution came to him as they were making their way upstairs to bed.

"Do you want to have a look around the top floor?" he asked.

What could Harry say? Adam had already told him enough of the story for it to be an intriguing prospect. By the time he'd ladled on some of the more graphic details gleaned from Chiara, Harry was raring to go.

SIGNORA DOCCI AND MARIA LEFT FOR TOWN SOON AFTER breakfast. Harry was all for making a move there and then, but Adam was more cautious. It seemed like an eternity before Maurizio and Chiara's top-of-the-line sedan glided past the front of the villa and down the driveway.

The key was exactly where Antonella had said it would be: in a hidden drawer in the bureau in Signora Docci's bedroom. It was smaller than Adam had imagined it to be, but it worked. It fitted the door at the top of the staircase and, with some judicious force, turned the mechanism.

The first impression was disappointing.

They found themselves in a stark, square hallway with two corridors running off it. This was about all they were able to discern until Harry applied his cigarette lighter to the gloom. They found the light switch and Adam twisted the ceramic knob. Nothing. Hopefully it was just the bulb.

The flickering flame revealed a tall door leading off the hallway toward the rear of the villa. It was locked, although the key was in place. They located the light switch on the other side, but that didn't work, either.