The Villa in Italy

TEN

In the next compartment, George Helsinger wasn’t asleep. He preferred wakefulness to sleep whenever possible, only succumbing to slumber when tiredness simply became too much for him. For sleep brought dreams, and these were dreams he could do without. It was odd, that he, the least violent of men, should have become involved in the most violent act humanity had ever wreaked upon itself. And that even ten years later, his guilt and sense of moral failure should still haunt him in this way.

Pure science, that was what his life was about, so how had it ended up with nothing pure about it, and a bang that changed the course of the world? Nothing, now, would or could ever be the same again. He marvelled at how people went about their daily lives as though nothing were different, as though it had merely been another bomb among the tens of thousands, a bigger bomb, but still just death and destruction falling from the sky.

But it changes everything, he wanted to tell people. Only no one wanted to hear what he had to say. It was over now, past, history, what was done was done, and hadn’t that act of extreme violence brought an end to all the other violence, and wasn’t that a good outcome? And if they now all lived under its shadow and threat, well, wasn’t all life a risk?

He had found recently, as he lay in a state between wakefulness and sleep, a zone where the bad dreams and memories were kept at bay, that prayers from his youth came traipsing into his mind. He had, he would have said, long put the fathers and their rigorous, prayer-filled life behind him. He had become a man of science, had turned his back on God, had played God. Along with his fellow scientists.

Yet here were those words, filling his brain with their remorseless repetitions. The Kyrie: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Hail Marys—how long was it since he’d said a Hail Mary? Yet the words were there as though they’d never left him: Ave Maria, gratia plena. Blessed art thou…

Was he losing his wits? Was he going to end up in a mental asylum? He’d heard rumours about some of his fellow scientists, that they’d gone bananas; well, many of them were bananas to start with.

He didn’t notice the clean comfort of the sheets; he was moving in a world of bewilderment, in which French lawyers and Wagon Lits reservations seemed to be nothing to do with him. The meeting with the lawyer in England came back to him like the memory of an inexplicable dream.

‘You can go?’ Mr Winthrop had asked. ‘There’s no problem about leaving the country?’

George had stared at him. ‘There is a problem, for I have no money. And even if I had, the amount one is allowed to take out of the country is, I believe, quite inadequate for anything more than a few days in Ostend.’

‘Not quite as bad as that. Many people manage to go away for a fortnight or more on their allowance…However, that need not concern us. All your expenses will be paid, and the arrangements for onward travel from Paris will be made across the Channel.’

The late Beatrice Malaspina. Who was this mysterious woman, summoning him from beyond the grave, drawing him across Europe to he knew not what? The lawyer in England had been able to give him no details; the lawyer in Paris was working to precise instructions, he said. If he knew anything more, which George doubted, he was not going to pass on the information.

In the morning, he would be in Nice. Nice! Haven of artists and writers and aristocrats, a world away from his laboratory, from the dingy rooms he occupied in Cambridge, from rainswept, foggy England.

He could see the map of France unfolding in his mind’s eye. Down through the Loire valley, the railway line running alongside the great river, down through the heart of France and so into raffish Nice; raffish but at the same time elegant, that was how Nice had been before the war. He had spent a fortnight there in the languorous hot days of 1938, guest of a fellow scientist, unusual for being of a background and wealth quite unlike most scientists.

His host, he recalled, had gone on to enjoy a distinguished war, adviser to Churchill, honours, position.

And, no doubt, a sound digestion and a good conscience, and the ability to sleep at night. Any destruction he had wrought on his fellow human beings had been a remote affair, a matter of memos and committees and impersonal, reasoned decisions.

I should have been a biologist, George told himself. Or a botanist, what harm had botanists ever done to anyone? Would he ever have imagined, as a bony boy, that his passion for mathematics could bring him to a state of such despair? His first teacher had warned him how it might be. ‘Numbers will get the better of you, George; you will never be able to escape them. They will be the master, not you.’

Prophetic words, if only uttered to take a brilliant youngster down a peg or two.

Lulled by the steady rhythm of the train, George slept despite himself, overcome by sheer exhaustion. And for once his sleep wasn’t trampled on by the hobgoblins of the past; he slept soundly and dreamlessly, and awoke to find the sun straining through the blind, and the conducteur rapping at the door to tell him that they would soon be arriving in Nice, and that petit déjeuner was being served in the restaurant car.

‘Take your passport with you, monsieur. It is not far to the border.’

There was something about borders, Marjorie told herself as she made her way along swaying corridors to the restaurant car for her petit déjeuner. Red and white poles and no man’s land and customs and officials, and the knowledge that you were passing from one country to an entirely different one.

The restaurant car was surprisingly full; who would have thought there would be so many people travelling to Italy at this time of the year? A waiter hurried forward, shrugging deprecatingly. Madame would sit here, if the gentleman permitted, a fellow English traveller…

Marjorie looked at the seat, where a tall, balding man in round spectacles was staring out of the window. The waiter coughed, and the man turned his head, looking at Marjorie with dark, intelligent eyes.

George saw the nervous, bony face of a woman whom he would have known anywhere in the world for an Englishwoman. He half rose, made a little bow. ‘Of course, please…’ with his usual courtesy, although he would have preferred to have his table to himself, not to share it with a woman who would doubtless feel obliged to make conversation. It was odd how English people had reverted to their old habits of reserve and suspicion after the war. Conversations with strangers at bus stops and on trains, being invited in for a cup of tea by neighbours you had never spoken to before, the very unEnglish sense of camaraderie—all of that had vanished. While queues and saving string and old envelopes had stayed. It was very odd.

Marjorie was eyeing the basket of croissants and brioches and fresh rolls in a hungry manner. ‘Please,’ he said, passing Marjorie the basket; she took a croissant, and sat back to allow the waiter to pour her coffee.

How long would he be staying in Italy? The lawyer had been vague. ‘In fact, Dr Helsinger, I have to admit that I know little about Italian legal procedures. It might be a few days, or perhaps longer. There are other interested parties who will be arriving at the Villa Dante, one of them is an American, and of course I have no idea as to his movements or time of arrival. Since the late Mrs Malaspina specified that all the beneficiaries of her will should be brought together at the villa, we must abide by the conditions she laid down.’

‘Then there are other people going to Italy from England?’

The lawyer’s face had taken on a shuttered look. ‘I think I can say yes, but of course under no circumstances can I divulge any details of anyone else named in the will. That would be most improper.’

‘No, indeed, quite improper,’ George said, at once annoyed with himself for being drawn into the kind of language this stiff-necked lawyer used.

‘Delicious,’ Marjorie said. ‘One has forgotten how food should taste.’

They talked in a polite and distant way about France, France before the war, Paris in the thirties, when George had been a student there, Paris now, as they had glimpsed it during their brief time in the city.

‘I, too,’ George said, ‘was only able to stay one night and I should have liked to stay longer. To revisit old haunts, although of course nothing will be quite the same as it was. It is impossible that it should be.’

‘Are you travelling on business?’ Marjorie asked.

She had torn a roll apart—why did the English rip at their bread, instead of dissecting it neatly with a knife?—and was spreading it liberally with butter.

‘Personal business,’ he said.

‘Not work. You don’t look like a businessman.’

He was startled. What did he look like? He was wearing a suit, a concession to the purpose of his journey. What was there to mark him out as different from his fellow men?

‘You look as though you lived by your brains. I see you in a laboratory. Not smells, though, or germs. Too much equipment around you. Are you a scientist?’

Now he was even more startled. ‘As it happens, yes. But I find it strange that you can tell. Have we perhaps met…?’

‘No.’ She was quite definite. ‘I’d remember it if we had. Although during the war one met so many people, nearly all of them strangers.’

‘So, then, there is something about me that marks me out as a scientist. What would that be?’

Marjorie added a spoonful of raspberry jam to her roll and took a mouthful.

George waited.

‘It just came into my head that was what you are,’ she said eventually, giving her mouth a determined wipe with her napkin. ‘It sometimes does. Are you at a university, or do you work for a company? Or are you that mysterious thing, a government scientist?’

The habit of secrecy was so ingrained in George that he found this impossible to answer. ‘I do scientific research’ sounded lame, but it was the best he could manage. ‘And you, are you travelling for pleasure?’

‘Hardly likely or possible, with the sum the government allows us for travel. No, I, too, am here on personal business.’

‘Are you going to Rome?’

‘No, I shall leave the train at a place called La Spezia. Do you know Italy? Is it a pleasant town?’

‘A naval port, I believe. Heavily bombed during the war. I have never been there.’

Marjorie seemed to lose interest, her eyes focusing on the scenery outside the window. ‘It’s very pretty along here. The hills and the sea. Very dramatic. I’m not staying at La Spezia, so I’m not really interested in what it’s like. One just says these things, in a conversational way, does one not?’

She picked up her handbag from the seat where she had laid it. It was, he noticed, very shabby, but once it had been an expensive bag. Crocodile. He guessed that she wasn’t in comfortable circumstances; there was something of a child with its nose pressed against a shop window about her. She did not look as though she were accustomed to travel of this kind.

Well, she would get off the train at La Spezia, as would he, and vanish to catch her train or bus, or be met by an aunt or a friend, and he would not see her again.

She was holding out her hand. ‘Thank you for letting me share your table. Goodbye.’

She was walking away; too thin, and why didn’t she hold herself straighter? Then she stopped and looked back at him, a faintly puzzled look on her face.

‘Does the name Beatrice Malaspina mean anything to you?’

He was so surprised that he dropped his cup back on to its saucer with a crash that made heads swivel.

Marjorie came back to the table and sat down again. ‘I can see it does. Are you named in the will as well? Is that why you’re here, on the train? Because, like me, you’re on the way to the Villa Dante?’

ELEVEN

Mrs Wolfson was no one’s idea of a typical American grandmother. She was sharp and bohemian, a townee to her fingertips, and she had never baked an apple pie in her life.

Lucius Wilde had always loved her and had always been in awe of her. It didn’t matter that he was a successful man in his thirties; Miffy, as she was known to friends and family alike, still provoked as much respect as affection in him.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he told her, after he’d kissed the beautifully made-up cheek offered to him.

‘I shall miss you,’ she said. ‘I’ll order martinis.’ She rang the bell and a maid appeared almost at once. ‘In the library,’ she said, and led the way up the beautiful curved staircase to the first floor.

Mrs Wolfson lived in a brownstone in Boston and had done so since she came to the house as the bride of Edgar Wolfson. Twenty years older than her, he had been a dealer in fine arts, had made a great deal of money, and had acquired for his own walls a large number of paintings, not to mention the sculptures and bronzes and porcelain and rugs that filled every available space.

Lucius loved this house. He loved the paintings, especially the twentieth-century ones, for his grandfather had had a progressive outlook and bought modern paintings long before the artists became fashionable or expensive.

The martinis came, and Miffy attacked hers with gusto. ‘I just love the first cocktail of the day,’ she said. ‘Paris, and then London?’

‘Paris for a couple of weeks, and then I’m going to visit some friends who live near Nice, before going on to England.’

‘Nice? To stay with the Forrests, I suppose. Will Elfrida be there? Wasn’t she staying with them in Long Island when you met her?’

‘Yes, and yes.’

‘I wonder why you didn’t bring her to meet me.’

‘You know why. We became engaged on the eve of her return to England.’

‘Bookings can be changed. You’ll bring her back to America for a visit as soon as you’re married? By which time, of course, it will be too late for you to discover whether I like her or consider her right for you.’

‘Come on, Miffy, a man in his thirties is allowed to choose his own wife.’

‘A man of any age can choose wrong. It alarms me that your parents are so pleased about the engagement. They say she’s just perfect for you.’

‘And so she is.’

‘You aren’t in love with her.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…’ Exasperating woman, but of course she was right. She had always been able to see through him and out the other side. ‘You’ll like her. She’s lively and forthright…’

‘Organising, so I’ve heard. And determined. I’m sure she’ll be a great asset to your career, a woman like that can take a man even to the White House.’

That made him laugh. ‘I have no political ambitions.’

‘You have no ambitions of any kind, not of your own. All the ambition in your life is provided by other people. Have you ever thought about that?’

‘Miffy, do lay off.’

‘All right. Now, you’ve told me your plans, which I already knew: France, then a position in the English branch of the bank. That’s not why you’re here. Come clean, Lucius. What’s on your mind?’

‘Did you ever know someone called Beatrice Malaspina?’

The light was fading fast outside the windows, and Lucius didn’t notice the watchful light in his grandmother’s eyes. ‘Because I’ve had an extraordinary letter from a firm of lawyers. I went to see them, in New York. They told me I’m named in the will of this Beatrice Malaspina.’

‘Was she an American?’

Lucius shook his head. ‘An Italian, I should think, judging by the name. The firm here are acting for her Italian lawyers. She has—had, I should say—a house on the coast somewhere in the north of Italy. Liguria. The terms of the will state that I must go there, to her house, the Villa Dante, to be able to collect this legacy.’

‘Which is?’

‘Haven’t a clue. Could be a bundle of worthless lire, a set of spoons, her father’s stuffed tiger—your guess is as good as mine.’

‘How intriguing.’

‘So you don’t know her?’

‘I’ve never met a Beatrice Malaspina. Of course, you’re curious, and wills are wills, and if you’re going to be in the south of France it won’t be much of a detour—only you don’t want to go to Italy.’

She said this as a simple statement of fact; it wasn’t a question.

‘Not really, no.’

‘It was all more than ten years ago. And it was wartime.’

‘It was wartime,’ he agreed. ‘Even so…’

‘Don’t you think it might be time to lay that particular ghost to rest?’

‘How can I?’

‘By not dwelling on it. Wars happen. These things happen. And your parents have done you no favours by blotting it out of their consciousness and never talking about it.’

‘On the contrary, the last thing I want is for them to talk about it.’

‘You went to Dr Moreton, but he didn’t help.’

‘Yes, I did, and no, he didn’t.’

Which might be, Lucius reflected, because he didn’t tell him the truth. He never had told anyone the truth, not even Miffy, although he wouldn’t be surprised if she had guessed a good deal of it.

‘Dr Moreton always was a fool. Your mother thinks the world of him; she’s never been any kind of judge of character or professional competence. She hasn’t learned that a shiny brass plate and hair going grey at the temples don’t amount to a row of beans.’

‘So.’ Lucius leant forward, his hands dropped between his knees. He was looking at his feet, shod in shiny black Oxfords; how he hated polished laced-up shoes.

‘So, do I think you should go? I don’t deal in shoulds, Lucius, you know that. Have you asked your father if he knows anything about this departed person?’

‘No.’

‘And you don’t intend to. Very wise. Any hint of an inheritance, and he’ll want to take over.’

‘I did ask Dolores. Whether she knew anything about Beatrice Malaspina.’ Dolores had worked for his father’s firm for more than thirty years, and she knew all the company’s and partners’ secrets. ‘And drew a blank. She said it meant nothing to her.’

‘You’re going to Italy, in any case,’ said his grandmother. ‘You haven’t come for advice.’

‘No, not really. I thought at first that the lawyers had made a mistake, but no, correct down to the last detail, who I was, where I lived and worked.’

‘They wouldn’t tell you about Beatrice Malaspina?’

‘Clams could learn a thing or two from them. Just acting on instructions from Italy, that’s all they’d say. I asked if Beatrice Malaspina had lived to a ripe old age. I mean, she could have turned out to be my contemporary, who knows?’

‘And?’

‘They did tell me that she had lived to a very good age. And that was all they’d give away.’

‘Naturally, you thought you’d come and ask one old relic if she knew another one.’

‘Perhaps she was a friend of Grandfather’s. That’s what I wondered.’

‘As I said, I never met anyone of that name.’

Lucius finished his drink and stood up. ‘Thank you, Miffy. I’ll write and let you know how I get on.’

‘Mind you do. I’m intrigued. I shall be keen to hear what is the secret of the Villa Dante. And what Beatrice Malaspina has left you.’

‘If it’s silver spoons, I’ll share them with you.’

‘Like I need silver spoons. Find yourself a clear conscience, Lucius, then you can send that back to me. We can all do with one of those.’

ONE

The mattresses of Delia’s girlhood had all been uncomfortable. Her austere father was a great believer in very firm mattresses; he slept with a sheet of wood beneath his own mattress; and urged the rest of his family and staff to do the same. ‘With a hard bed, the body relaxes, not the mattress.’

The mattresses at her Yorkshire boarding school had been thin, lumpy and set on a sagging mesh of strings; those at Girton College, Cambridge, were likewise meagre and designed to keep your mind on higher things than bodily comforts.

Which had left Delia a connoisseur of mattresses, and the one on Beatrice Malaspina’s bed was perfect, neither too hard nor too yielding; hooey to her father and his theories of relaxation. Nothing could be more relaxing or comfortable, and when she awoke to the sound of birdsong outside the windows, and saw sunlight filtering through the shutters, it was after a deep and untroubled night’s sleep, a rarity for her this winter, cursed as she was with bronchitis.

She slid out of bed and padded across the smooth dark red tiles to the windows: long, double windows stretching almost from the ceiling to the floor. She pulled them open and struggled for a few moments with the shutters before she found the catch and pushed them back against the walls.

Warm air drifted in as she stepped out on to a small terrace. The searing wind had gone, leaving only a slight breeze to make ripples on the red sand, warm and scrunchy under her bare feet.

Delia blinked at the unaccustomed brightness. It was too early in the morning for the sun to be high or hot, but there was a dazzling quality to the light that made her catch her breath. She looked out over a garden, once formal, now sadly overgrown, and saw a silvery gleam in the distance. It took her a few seconds to realise what it was. The sea! So the villa was on the coast.

Crashing sounds came from next door, and Jessica’s tousled head looked out of an adjacent window. ‘I say, you’ve got a balcony,’ she said.

Her head vanished, and then she was calling out to Delia from the door of her room.

‘Come out here, quick,’ Delia said. ‘You don’t want to miss a minute of it.’

They stood together, leaning on the stone balustrade and gazing out at the green and blue and silver vista.

Jessica let out a long sigh. ‘Heaven,’ she said. ‘Pure heaven. And can you hear Chanticleer out there?’

The vigorous cock crows mingled with the sonorous dong of a bell marking the hour.

‘Was that seven strokes? Oh, the air is so fresh it almost hurts to breathe.’

‘I do so hope this is the Villa Dante,’ Delia said. ‘We might find we have to decamp to a crumbling old house with no view and bedbugs in the mattresses.’

‘I hadn’t thought about bedbugs,’ Jessica said. ‘Still, no itchy bits this morning, and the bedrooms are quite up to date. It could have been all decayed fourposters with mouldering curtains, instead of which we get stylish art deco.’

‘The villa is old, though. Eighteenth-century, wouldn’t you think?’

‘Don’t ask me. Could be that, or older, or built fifty years ago. I think Italians, having found the kind of house they like, just go on building them. I’m going to get up, and let’s see what we can do about breakfast.’ Then, suddenly alert, ‘What’s that?’

Delia, lost in the view, came to. ‘Did you hear something?’

‘I think it was the gate. Hang on, we should be able to see it from one of the other rooms.’ She vanished, then called across to Delia. ‘A stout party in black coming up towards the house. At a guess, I’d say a servant.’

Delia didn’t want to greet the new arrival in her nightclothes, so she hurled herself into the bathroom that led off her bedroom, a huge and marbled affair, with, however, no more than a trickle of water coming out of the substantial taps. Five minutes later, she was washed and dressed and running down the stairs, clutching a red clothbound book. She caught up with Jessica, who was still in her pyjamas.