The Cypress Garden Read online

  Michele corrected, ‘If I remember, I said, “regard”, not “use”—two very different things, no? As for the rest, Mama’s depression isn’t exactly stimulating to live with, as you’ll find. Even he must find it a bit daunting to come home to. Or it could be he means me to dance to his tune. Just a hint of the expert puppet-master about brother Leone, I’m afraid.’

  Alix suddenly shivered, though she was not cold.

  A few kilometres back they had turned off the Appian Way and had begun to climb. At a single-track level-crossing Michele bandied jokes with the gatekeeper until a train had jogged past. As their road mounted in a series of hairpin bends, here and there were glimpses of a spread of water far below. Slightly back on their tracks and downward for a few hundred metres, and there, not so distant now, was the great sapphire-blue stretch of Lake Albano.

  Along the road, parallel to it and above it, they passed one or two villas standing in their own grounds. Then Michele turned in to an avenue leading to a white pantiled house whose frontage was a series of colonnades flanking a wide archway which shadowed the main door. This stood open and awaiting their arrival under the arch stood Signora Parigi, shading her eyes with one hand while the other nervously knotted and plucked at the long amber necklace she wore.

  She came forward, fretting, ‘Michele mio, why have you been so long?’ To Alix she opened her arms in an expansive gesture of greeting and kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘Welcome, dear, to Michele’s home,’ she said. ‘Now that you are here, perhaps I shall see more of him. Something of a truant, this boy of mine, with more use for his raffish friends than for his mother.’ She held Alix off from her. ‘Alessandra—it’s a lovely, gracious, Italian name. But you like best to be called Alix, Michele says?’

  ‘Please, signora.’

  ‘Signora? Oh no, child! I hope you already think of me less formally than that. I have so many names. For Leone I am Madrigna; for Venetia, Zia Dora. I am Mama to Michele; perhaps Suocera to you one day, one hopes?’

  Suocera. Mother-in-law! Alix moistened her dry lips and managed to stretch them into a smile.

  ‘Perhaps. And when you know so little of me yet, I think you are very kind to tell me you hope so,’ she said.

  This was the beginning of duplicity. Where might it end?

  CHAPTER THREE

  The room Alix had been given was at the back of the house. When a maid showed her into it its shutters were closed against the sun, but the girl threw them and the casement open, saying with a smile, ‘From here the garden shows itself, signorina. E hello, no?’

  Alix looked out. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she agreed of the lovely scene. Immediately below was a border of flowering shrubs; to the right a formally bedded garden, its circles, crescents and squares intersected by paths paved in mosaic. Beyond the shrub border, velvet lawns sloped gently away towards the distant music of falling water and the cypress avenue Leone had described.

  She lingered on at the window after the maid had left. The fountain and the cypress! How prodigal Italy was with them! All those fountains tossing and dancing in Rome, and how many countless cypresses, lonely on hillsides or man-ranged in avenues, spired to their native sky in neat conical silhouette? For Alix they spelled the country’s magic as nothing else did.

  Italy was so much more. Eccentric plumbing and dark-eyed children with shy smiles, and plaintive music and talk that owed quite as much to gesticulating hands as to words. But its cypress trees seemed to be its individual signature, and as Alix turned from the window she was wondering whether this particular aisle of them would always in the future stand for her memory of a garden which she had had no right to know.

  She bathed and changed and went downstairs, led towards a terrace beyond french doors by the sound of pop music coming from a transistor radio. At sight of her Venetia d’Anza, full-length in a sun-lounger, flicked the switch to silence.

  ‘So you’ve come,’ she said. ‘I suppose I was out riding when you arrived. Help yourself to a drink if you want one. Who brought you up—Leone or Michele?’

  Alix poured herself a tall glass of lime juice and soda and found a chair. ‘Michele did,’ she said.

  ‘I asked because I thought Leone might have done, from the way he was organizing the whole operation.’

  ‘The operation?’

  ‘Of telling Zia Dora she ought to ask you.’ Venetia went to refill her own glass. ‘Not that the poor dear needed convincing, but she would only have dithered, if Leone hadn’t forced her hand. She can’t decide anything for herself these days—hardly even which dress to wear. I hope to goodness Michele has warned you what she is like. If not, I’m doing it, for you’ve probably no idea of the drag it is, chanting “Cheer up!” and “Count your blessings!” to someone who never, never does.’

  Alix was silent, warned that her companion’s flippancy might have small sympathy for news of her own first-hand ‘idea’ of just what it was like. Besides, she still shrank from sharing with anyone her memory of those last poignant months of her father’s life; of hour after hour and day after day when he would not be comforted. Until he had died at last, officially of a physically worn-out heart, but really, as she and his doctors knew only too well, of frustrated, empty-handed loss of the will to live. Of hopeless mourning for the wife for whom he had had to do so much, yet who now needed him no more.

  He had not been an old man and Alix had still had need of him. But he had gone away from her, knotted in his own private despairs, long before he died ... No, she could not hear herself telling this girl, ‘But I do know. My father was much the same—’ Some day she would tell—someone. Someone she could trust to understand. But not Venetia d’Anza. Not today.

  Instead she said, ‘I should doubt if there is ever very much future in arguing cheerfulness to someone who is depressed. You probably might as well order a patient with a fever to bring their temperature down. Is your aunt having any treatment at present?’

  ‘Some, though tranquillizers don’t seem to do much for her. It isn’t, either, as if she had anything to worry about, for Leone takes charge of everything—money, the house, the staff—you name it and he has it in hand. He even does his V.I.P. business entertaining in the city instead of out here, and when he needs a hostess, I stand in. His guests are only a lot of stuffy buyers, of course, but he’s always good for a new outfit for me every time.’ Venetia paused to look Alix over. ‘Where do you shop for clothes yourself? Do you know Pietro in the Via Condotti? Or that new salon near Trinita dei Monti? Or Luigi?—though, unless Leone is paying, I can’t afford him.'

  Fortunately the sounding of a gong spared Alix the admission that for the most part a couple of modest side-street dress-shops and the chain stores served her. Venetia rose and stretched.

  ‘That’s dinner,’ she announced. ‘I must say you let Michele get away with some casual manners. Why isn’t he here to take you in?’

  In the white panelled dining-room shining rose-wood, china, silver and flowers were lighted by candles in cut-glass sconces the length of the table. Michele had changed into an embroidered evening jacket and Leone, faultlessly groomed in a pale grey suit of heavy slub silk, told Alix, ‘Welcome to Villa Fontana’ before putting her at his right at table. He drew out her chair and waited for Signora Parigi to sit before taking his own place. Michele sat on Alix’s other side and Venetia opposite to them.

  The meal was served and attended by two parlourmaids who left the room when they had put the dessert on the table. Signora Parigi spoke very little, seeming to have withdrawn into herself; Michele and Venetia discussed riding and Alix realized after a while that she was being shielded from any awkward references, not now by Michele but Leone, who kept their small talk to general subjects or to describing the Alban neighbourhood to her.

  Then into a small silence Michele announced, ‘I thought I’d take Alix down again for the evening. If we do a film and have supper afterwards we may be late back.’

  His mother roused and
turned troubled eyes on him. ‘Oh, Michele! Tonight? I’d hoped—’ Her voice quavered as Leone cut in.

  ‘Not tonight, if you please,’ he ruled curtly. ‘Alix has had a full enough day, getting ready to come to us at short notice. And surely just one evening spent at home isn’t too much to expect, when we haven’t been honoured with your company for at least a week?’

  Alix, glancing at Michele and seeing the mutinous set of his lips, was prepared for his explosive retort. But he contented himself with an ostentatious twiddling of his thumbs and a murmur of, ‘We Have Spoken. Let it be done. Bring out the patience-cards and the lantern slides of A Day On Capri, and after that we’ll all have a nice early night,’ which brought from his mother a hesitant, ‘Well, perhaps, Leone, if he really wants to take Alix out—?’ but from Leone, no comment at all.

  From the small exchange it was clear to Alix that both Venetia and Michele had the measure of Leone. There was no doubt, she agreed, whose was the hand that ruled this house. But when Venetia voiced her plans for the evening they were more leniently received.

  ‘Well, I’m going dancing at the Club Del Lago,’ she said. ‘With Giraldo, if anyone wants to know.’

  ‘Giraldo Torre? May she—?’ her aunt appealed to Leone.

  ‘As long as he calls for her and sees her home.’ Venetia jerked her lovely chin. ‘Well, of course he will. He knows better than to treat me like a shoppie or a cafe pick-up.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘He’s due now. Yes, that’s his car—’ As she rose from the table she looked across at Alix. ‘You’d better come and meet Giraldo. He’s a neighbour of ours. He’s a bit dim, but I find him useful.’ They all left the dining-room with her and in the hall Alix was introduced as ‘a rather special friend of Michele’s’ to a plump young man with the gentle violet eyes of a young calf.

  Venetia bullied him, ‘Come along, Giraldo. Do you know you were late?’ They went out together and the others moved across to the room which gave on to the loggia where Alix and Venetia had met before dinner.

  Coffee was brought to them there and they watched television for an hour. Then Signora Parigi rose, saying she was tired. She kissed Alix, promising, ‘We must talk to each other tomorrow. I shall look forward to it,’ and appealed to Michele, ‘Perhaps you’ll come up to me for a while, dear? I don’t seem to have had you to myself for so long.’

  ‘Of course, Mama.’ After she had gone he smoked another cigarette, then excused himself to Alix and followed her.

  Leone switched off the set and crossed to the french doors. ‘It’s not fully dark yet. If Michele hasn’t shown you the gardens would you care to walk round them now?’ he asked.

  Alix joined him. ‘I’d like to. I’ve only seen as much as I could from my bedroom window.’

  He looked her over. ‘Do you need a wrap?’

  ‘Oh no. It’s still warm, isn’t it? That’s the difference between English and Italian nights—they seem to cool so little after sundown.’

  On the loggia Leone flicked a switch. ‘Floodlighting for the fountain,’ he explained, and when they reached the far end of the cypress aisle Alix halted to exclaim at sight of the rainbow-glinting cascades which arced up and outward as from the many spokes of a fan before each stream fell to water the steps of a stone water stairway which led down to the secret shadows of trees and what looked like untended undergrowth in sharp contrast to the perfection of the lawns and the geometric precision of the garden beds near the house.

  ‘That’s a wilderness where we allow brambles and wild flowers and self-sown saplings to riot as they please,’ said Leone. Near the fountain, just outside the range of its spray, he indicated an ornate stone seat with a view back along the avenue and down the stairway. ‘Sit, if you won’t be cold,’ he invited.

  For a little while he left Alix to silence and the endless fascination of falling water. Then, as she feared he would, he broke into her brief illusion of peace.

  ‘So far, so good,’ he said. ‘But we have to discuss some mechanics of the situation. At the moment you are too one-dimensional—with no background to speak of. Tell me, if not at the English Club, where did you first meet Michele?’

  She realized he meant to know. But pride stung her to retort, ‘If I tell you, it will destroy even the little background you say I have.’

  ‘Not where I’m concerned. For instance, I know already that your father wasn’t a banker, that you’ll need to earn your own living, and to quote you, you judge you’re “not on the Parigi social level”. So you can tell me the rest. Well—?’

  ‘We met in a trattoria near the Ponto Garibaldi.’

  ‘You let Michele pick you up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Glancing up, she caught the merest flicker of Leone’s heavy lids and guessed that he was remembering, as she was, the sneer of Venetia’s ‘cafe pick-up’. But all he said was, ‘Why?’

  ‘He was rather—persistent. And I was lonely.’

  ‘A year in Italy, and you’ve no art of dealing with importunate young men? And throughout the same time, making no friends?’

  ‘I’d seen Michele pretty regularly at this cafe where I lunched, and there didn’t seem any harm in letting him buy me an ice. And I was too busy being my father’s companion and nursing him to get to know anyone of my own age very well. I have only a few acquaintances in Rome, no real friends.’

  ‘I see. Then for the record you still met at the English Club. Now what other stage properties do you need? Do you ride? Drive a car? Swim?’

  ‘Only swim.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Rome? Out at the Lido.’

  ‘With the tourists. I must make you a member at the Del Lago, our all-purpose Club on the Lake. People swim there and dance and meet for drinks, and there’s a floor-show at week-ends. If we can persuade Madrigna to come, we might make up a party for Sunday night. It should give her pleasure to introduce you to some of the people whose tongues have been busiest with Michele’s latest indiscretion. For the rest, how are you placed for adding up to her and Venetia’s idea of where and how an English banker’s daughter should shop and dress and spend her time? For instance—’ Leone’s glance was coolly appraising—‘where do you have your hair done? It’s the kind of thing that Venetia, at least, will want to know.’

  Alix flicked a nervous forefinger under the fall of her hair. ‘I shampoo it myself and I drop in anywhere to have it cut when it needs it,’ she said shortly.

  Leone said again, ‘I see. Well, perhaps in the interests of your image, you should remedy that. Also, feminine dress-snobbery being what it is, we ought also to see that you’re in a position to match Venetia’s exclusive name-dropping when the two of you are talking clothes. Yes—’

  But at the dispassionate, filed-for-future-reference sound of that ‘yes’, Alix exploded.

  ‘You’re asking the impossible!’ she protested wildly. ‘Making me pretend to a background I’ve never had. I mustn’t admit to meeting Michele at a cafe counter, and from the way you said, “With the tourists”, I gather no one in your set ever swims at the Lido. I’m supposed to go to—to Rossi or someone for my hair, and I must never have bought my clothes off the peg. Why has it all to be so false, so calculated, so—arranged? Why can’t you accept me for what I really am? And even if you want Michele’s mother to believe our affair is genuine, why must I keep up the rest of the masquerade?’

  ‘For one thing, because you and Michele hatched the makings of the masquerade, and to admit now to Madrigna that you lied might cause her to question the truth of the rest. She needs to believe in Michele’s good faith and in her present impression of you. For another, I’m afraid Venetia tends to accept people more for what they have than what they are, and I’d prefer that she shouldn’t think she is entitled to patronize you. Does any of that reasoning make sense to you?’ Leone concluded.

  ‘I suppose so—some,’ Alix grudged.

  ‘Enough, I hope, to help you to get into the skin of your part and to stay there. There’s
also one other thing—I think you have relatives—an aunt?—in England? What current news about you will she be expecting to hear?’

  Michele was right. This man thought of everything. ‘She won’t,’ Alix told him. ‘That is, she won’t be surprised if she doesn’t hear anything from me just yet. She—Aunt Ursula—is a teacher. She was much older than my father and she retired at Easter. She had been saving for years to afford a world cruise, and she sailed last week for a three months’ tour. She knows I have had no settled address since I had to give up our apartment, so she will only be writing to me Poste Restante until she comes back, and we agreed it might not be much use my trying to catch her at any of her ports of call.’

  ‘Where will she be calling first? You wouldn’t care to cable or write her there, giving her this address?’

  ‘I certainly shouldn’t. How could I explain what I was doing here?’

  ‘You feel you would owe her details which you would find difficult to give? Yes, you make your point—However, I warn you, I’m accepting no time limit. One month. Two. Even six—your pact with me lasts until its object has patently succeeded—or failed. So mightn’t you be well advised to tell your aunt now where you are, rather than later?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You could explain that you were staying with friends.’

  ‘No. I’m not telling any more lies than I need.’

  Leone shrugged and stood up. ‘As you please, though I could hope you didn’t see that as a lie,’ he said. He began to walk away down the sward beside the water-stairs. About to follow him, Alix rather deliberately took the other side, but still had to rejoin him at the bottom.

  He said there, ‘If you’re willing to face the hazards of our wilderness, we’ll go back to the house that way. I must give you a lead, though. Some of the paths are tricky and too narrow for going abreast. This way—’