Saddle the Wind (57 page)

She gazed at him for a moment then turned to the window and stood gazing out over the street.

‘It’s all right, Alfredo,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Life has to go on, hasn’t it? Such things happen, but life has to go on.’

She thought of the child growing inside her. She had already made up her mind.

He stepped forward. ‘I’m glad you understand … You see – I have to return to Palermo in a matter of days. I was hoping, that you would – would return with me. But now …’ He shrugged again. ‘Is it – possible?’

‘My brother’s gone,’ she said. ‘Nothing I could do could help him.’

‘If you would –’ He took from his pocket a piece of paper. ‘In the hope that you would agree I – I’ve taken out a special licence. We could be married very quickly.’

Blanche did not answer. He added:

‘I know how you’re feeling now, Blanche, but you’ll get over your grief and I can make you happy, I know I can. If you’ll give me the chance.’

She turned to him, seeing the chance he offered. And what were the alternatives? They were too depressing even to contemplate.
I’m afraid for you, Blanche. I’m afraid you’ll let it happen to you too
. No, Ernie, no. But it was not only herself now, anyway, to
be considered. Soon she would have a child to think of as well.

With a little shake of her head she said, ‘There’s nothing for me here anymore, Alfredo. I’ve nothing to stay in England for.’ She gave him a grave smile. ‘So if you want my answer, then my answer is yes.’

Blanche and Alfredo, as man and wife, left for Palermo four days later. On the afternoon before their departure Blanche, much concerned about Jacko, who was refusing to eat or drink, had gone to seek him in his kennel in which, since Ernest’s death, he had taken to hiding away. Usually on going to him, when she would try to coax him to eat or drink something, he would simply raise his head and gaze back at her out of the confined, shadowed interior of his shelter and then lay his head on his paws again.

On this particular afternoon she called his name but got no response at all, not even the flicker of an eyelid. Crouching lower, reaching in and touching him, she realized that he was dead.

When she left Bath the next day with Alfredo she saw Jacko’s death as the breaking of her last link with the past.

‘Has Daddy gone, Mama?’

Adriana’s voice came from the open doorway as Blanche sat before her dressing table.

‘Yes, darling. He’s just left.’

‘I looked for him but I couldn’t find him. He didn’t say goodbye. What time will he be back?’

‘– I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘I wanted to talk to him.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Blanche could guess what it was about. Confirming Blanche’s belief, Adriana said:

‘I want to talk to him about Betta.’

Blanche said nothing. Adriana went on:

‘He’s always going away these days.’

‘Yes – but I’m afraid he has a lot on his mind right now.’

Adriana nodded, sighed, then: ‘Why was he shouting so?’

Avoiding giving an answer, Blanche said, ‘– Oh, was he?’

‘Very loudly.’ Adriana gazed at her. ‘Are you nearly ready to leave?’ Her tone now was a little impatient. She was wearing her coat and hat and carrying a paper bag given her by the cook: scraps of bread for the ducks.

‘In a moment, darling.’ Blanche’s tone gave evidence of her preoccupation as she turned her face to catch the light. As she did so her eyes were drawn to Adriana’s
reflection beyond her shoulder as the child came towards her across the room.

Coming to a stop at Blanche’s side, Adriana looked at her mother in the mirror. Blanche, her own eyes upon her, saw the child’s expression change to one of concern.

‘Mama, what happened?’ Adriana said. ‘Your face is swollen.’

Blanche covered her upper cheek with her hand to hide the swelling there, the emerging bruise. ‘It’s nothing, my dear. I just had a – a little accident.’

Adriana shook her head in an imitation of adult resignation and hopelessness. ‘You’re always having accidents lately.’

‘– Yes, I’ll just have to be more careful in the future.’

With her powder puff Blanche gave an additional light dusting to her cheek, then took out her loose hairpins and secured her hair where it had come loose. The growing strain of the past five years had taken their toll, showing now behind the smile she gave to Adriana, and in the tension that lay behind her eyes as they moved back to take in her own reflection, the weariness in her sigh as, gazing at herself, she gave a final touch to her hair and let her hands fall in a little gesture of resignation and despair.

‘Are you nearly ready, Mama?’

‘Almost.’

Her eyes moved back to the child. Adriana was four-and-a-half now, small and thin-legged, a little bird of a child. The blue of her eyes was Blanche’s own, but the set and shape of them Gentry’s; Gentry’s too the glossy black of her pigtails and heavy lashes.

In a sudden demonstration of love, and her own need for closeness, affection, Blanche wrapped Adriana in her arms and hugged her. The child suffered the embrace for a moment then said, ‘Mama, are we going?’

‘Yes, we’re going right this minute.’

Blanche released her and got up from her seat. When she had put on her own hat and coat she and Adriana left the room and started down the stairs. They met Betta, Adriana’s nurse, on the way up. The plain face of the eighteen-year-old girl was puffed with weeping, while her eyes showed such sadness that Blanche could hardly bear to look at her. We make a good pair, Blanche said to herself. Last night the girl had pleaded with her; did she
have
to go? she had asked. Was there nothing that the signora could do? Blanche, though, had been able to say nothing that was of any comfort.

Blanche went on down the stairs. Reaching the hall she was not surprised to see Edgardo, Alfredo’s valet-
cum
-butler, emerge from an ante room near the front door. How he always managed to be so close never ceased to surprise her. In his early fifties, he was a short, lean, swarthy man. Now as Blanche and Adriana crossed the hall his already bent body bent further in the faintest bow, a gesture touched with an insolence that was echoed in the touch of his mouth and the lift of his brows. In his heavily accented English he said, ‘The signora wishes something?’

His question came from no feeling of solicitousness, Blanche was well aware, but simply from a wish to know her intentions – where she and Adriana were bound.

Raising a hand to cover – casually – the left side of her face, Blanche replied, ‘No, thank you.’

Her tone was cold. She had learned very soon after her initial arrival at the villa that any pleasantness she showed the man was very swiftly construed as a sign of weakness. With the realization she had tried to backtrack, to make up the lost ground, but the damage had been done, the mould set, and she knew that she could never win. The situation had been the same now for the
years she had lived in the house. He was always unfailingly polite to her, but she always discerned behind his politeness a thinly-veiled contempt that discomfited her and put her on the defensive. At the beginning she had spoken to Alfredo of Edgardo’s manner towards her, but he had scoffed at her words, saying that it was all her imagination and paranoia. She knew better, though. Also, she had learned since that it would do no good to make any further complaint about the servant. Edgardo was without question Alfredo’s man; devoted to his master, and implicitly trusted by him, there was no doubt where his loyalties lay.

‘If the signore should return … ?’ Edgardo said.

‘You can tell him we shan’t be long,’ Blanche said. ‘We’re only going to the park.’

‘The park?’ Edgardo opened the door, frowning slightly at the English word, feigning non-comprehension. Blanche said shortly:

‘The
Giardino Inglese
– you know very well where I mean.’

‘Ah – yes, signora.’

Blanche ignored the faintly mocking inclination of his head. As she and Adriana moved down the curving flight of stone steps she could feel Edgardo’s eyes upon the back of her head. Their feeling of antipathy was quite mutual.

The villa, large and spacious, stood on the southern side of the Via Catania. Reaching the corner where in the spring the flower-seller stood surrounded by his banks of brightly coloured flowers, Blanche and Adriana turned to the left onto Palermo’s main
corso
, the Via della Libertà. Hand in hand they walked along the pavement, past the shops – all open-fronted to all winds and weathers – while beside them along the
corso
the motor cars and motor omnibuses – the latter a recent
innovation – fought for space with the old horse-driven cabs and the donkey- and mule-carts and carriages.

How different it all was from England, and what a place of contrasts. Palermo, a bustling, dusty city, boasted an opera house that was said to be the largest in the world, while the peasants who lived outside the city’s boundaries dwelt in caves and empty tombs. For Adriana, of course, the Sicilian way of life was the only way of life she had ever known, and no part of it seemed to her to be remarkable, but where Blanche herself was concerned she occasionally thought she would never cease to be surprised at the city’s ways.

After a few minutes walk they entered the public park. There, freed from the confines of the house, and with space about her, Adriana let go Blanche’s hand and dashed away, Blanche quickly calling after her not to run too fast in case she should fall. At Blanche’s words Adriana came to a halt and turned.

‘I want to see the fish and feed the ducks,’ she said.

‘Wait for me, then. They won’t go away. We’ll go together.’

Adriana paused for a moment then ran back to Blanche’s side. Hand in hand they strolled on. This early December Saturday morning, with the bright sun reflecting off the cobbles, the weather for their walk was perfect. Before Adriana had started school that past autumn they had taken the walk in the
Giardino Inglese
almost every morning when the weather allowed. Now, however, their excursions were limited to the weekends.

In one corner of the gardens a group of old men congregated – as they always did when the weather was fine – to play chess and backgammon and to talk of the past. Adriana paused in her step as she and Blanche went by, her eyes as always drawn to the scene.

The two continued on, eventually making their way
to the edge of the wide pond, where Adriana took the scraps of bread from the paper bag and tossed them into the water. There was at once a little flurry of activity as the nearby ducks converged on the spot and snapped up the scraps. As the ducks slowly swam away again Adriana straightened, her blue eyes focusing on the stone statue of the two children who, crouching on a rock near the pond’s centre, bent eternally over the water, hands reaching out to the golden fish that darted in the shadows beneath their outstretched fingers.

After a while, Adriana asked, turning to her mother, the stone children momentarily forgotten, ‘When shall I invite Licia and Paulo and Tonio to the party?’

‘Oh, we’ll get that done in a day or two,’ Blanche said. ‘Christmas isn’t for nearly three weeks yet.’

‘D’you think Papa will be here?’

‘At Christmas? I should think so. We’ll have to see.’

Nothing was certain these days where Alfredo’s movements were concerned. He was going off on his various trips more and more frequently of late. Apart from the fact of his absences, though, Blanche knew very little about his movements; of the purpose of them she knew even less – except, she was sure, that their outcome would not be to the good. Where he was at that moment she had no idea. After the scene following breakfast that morning he had left the house, slamming out of the door, giving her no indication of when he would return. And she had known better than to ask; after what had transpired she didn’t want to risk his further anger. He might be still here in Palermo; he might have gone to Messina. Wherever he had gone there was no knowing when he would return. He might not be back for three or four days. As far as she was concerned, she thought bitterly, he could stay away for ever.

There was a vacant bench near the edge of the pond
and Blanche sat down upon it. Act in haste; repent at leisure; the words went through her mind. True. And how hastily she had acted. How swiftly everything had happened. The marriage at the register office; the painful goodbye to a shocked, somewhat stunned George – for Clara, who had still been in Weston-Super-Mare, there had been no goodbye at all – and then the departure for Sicily and Alfredo’s villa here in Palermo. And now, that December of 1908, Blanche had been in the city for over five years. Five years. It seemed a great deal longer. And as far as her relationship with Alfredo went, the course of that time had been increasingly downhill.

The pain on her cheek where Alfredo had struck her had now subsided to a dull ache. Perhaps when he returned he would apologize. Not that she cared much. She had long since realized that his apologies made no difference, that they were meaningless – an awareness that even seemed to have touched
him
of late; expressions of contrition from him in recent times were very few and far between.

Thinking about him, about the events of that morning, Blanche thought again how astonishing it was that one could be so deceived by another person – by someone whom one thought one knew. Not that she had ever consciously believed that she had
known
Alfredo – but at the same time the little she had learned about him had never prepared her for what was to come. Though perhaps the signs had been there, she sometimes reminded herself; it was just that in her need for the solution to her own problems she had simply not seen them.

In any event, nothing had turned out the way she had hoped it would or expected it to. Everything had turned to ashes, all of it destroyed by one thing or another: most of their material assets had been gambled
away, while any affection that she and Alfredo had ever felt for one another had long since been destroyed by his intolerance and his jealousies.