Exclusive Extract from The Italian Romance by Joanne Carroll.
One thing I know for sure is that whoever she is, this woman who knows my family, I do not want to meet her in full view of a voracious pack of strangers. I get up. I must have lost my balance, for whatever-his-name-is has grabbed my arm to steady me. I pull away without a word and walk towards the gardenia bed. It’s a quiet spot, partly shaded by the overhang of the roof. The bed separates the flagged stone terrace from the miraculously green lawn. I could lie down on that greenness, and feel its dampness on my cheek.
“Lilian,” I hear Margaret say, “where are you running off to?” She is behind me. “I’ve got her,” she says. I turn slowly. Margaret is flushing from an infill of wine. I am trying to keep my gaze directly on her, to examine the left side of her neck which has caught the sun a little too much today, a little redness, a little rawness. I raise my sight so I can be abhorred by the tidal swim of her eyes, always her dead giveaway even as she manages to walk erect and in a straight line.
I can hear the other woman’s breathing. Her presence is so overpowering that I feel my own chest crushed by it. I now attempt to look at her. I can manage, with a laboured forcing of sinews in my neck, to take in the bodice of her dress and above it the pale honey skin married by a few, not many, large freckles. So terribly familiar. I know it. I know it in my bones. I feel a silence falling on me like rain. I am silenced, and sure, and standing in front of her as naked as Eve. There isn’t another thing I can do.
She says, “I am Francesca.”
And with her words, I am pinched into awareness. I realise that she is the scared one. Her voice tells me. I have such a desire to reach out and hold her, to say, “There, there” to her, to make the bad people go away and not hurt her any more.
And she says in a stronger voice, maybe a violent voice, “Bernard Malone’s daughter.”
“I know who you are,” I say. I don’t know how I sound to her, or to Margaret. Do I sound tender, or hard? How can Margaret not see?
I look to the chin raised against me, the clench of the jaw. She is everything at once to me, middle-aged woman as she undoubtedly is, rebellious youngster, frightened child on her first day at school. And my baby. My precious, precious.
“I am sorry not to have contacted you. I only knew it was Rome. I didn’t have an address, of course,” She sounds so like me. So bitter.
“Of course,” I reply. Is there something else I should have said? Yes, I think so, for she looks at me with acid in her gaze. I am burned by her. It is a long time since I have been so unsure of my footing. I am quite sedate usually, smooth as a swan.
Fairly fluent, too, on a good day. She is avoiding my eyes. I have the chance to indulge myself and I take it. I stare hard at her, the eyebrows which lack distinction in the same way as mine but which, for some reason, I find in her overwhelmingly and vulnerably lovely. She oozes sweat on the mound of her chin, tiny bubbles, and beside her nose are two moist wings. She is nervous.
And now she rubs her arm. Thank God I didn’t do it first. She is protecting herself, one arm across her chest. She is brave. Braver than I am. I am proud of her.
I smell a waft of Margaret’s need to swim in our private sea, not just ours of course but anyone’s, anyone’s apart from her husband’s and more cogently her own. She is growing agitated with the delay. I wish I had the balls to tell her what to do with herself.
Francesca also wakens to Margaret, and I watch her slide a disdainful glance towards the poor creature. I touch Francesca’s elbow. The slightest and most embarrassed, most aware of touches, and only with the tip of my finger. I don’t want to offend. But it is sufficient signal to her, and we both turn away from our unwelcome partner. I take one step, and so does she. We each walk another five or six paces. Margaret is cast adrift.
“I’ll give you my address,” I say. “Where are you staying?”
“Off the Via Veneto,” she says. I note she with-holds the name of the hotel.
“My card is in my bag.” I restrain an urge to point to it, lying somewhere under the tablecloth.
“You must give it to me before I leave,” she says. Now we have both spoken to each other as business contacts might, and I am appalled at my gaucheness, just as she, from the looks, is delighted with hers. One shot across the bow.
I feel so awkward, so off-balance that I want to walk away from her. That is my nature, I suppose.
She beats me to it. “I have to leave early, actually. I’ve got a busy evening,” she says and she doesn’t even bother to look at me before she simply wanders off.
She has retained her figure. Good for her. She sits down at Dora and Vincenzo’s table on the higher terrace. I think she knows I am staring at her. Her back is ramrod straight on the chair. She quickly lifts a glass of wine. She probably needs it.
It is only now that my legs shake. I don’t know how to make it back to my table. I even hope for Margaret to reappear, but it is not she who rescues me. My knight is the man originally and partly from the bush, who wanders up to me holding a plate of rare steak. The lump of meat is enormous. He has an appetite, this boy.
“You lost?” he says.
“Who are you?” I say. “Where am I?”
“Just follow me, you poor old thing.” As we walk, his arm bumps my shoulder, deliberately I presume, and I take hold of it. I like him. He doesn’t need to be explained to. How I’ve longed for that, for these ten less than funny years.
He doesn’t pry, either. He doesn’t ask, “Did you meet the woman from home? Who is she? Why do you look a hundred and ten suddenly?
I sit down silently. I’d like to say something smart, to put everyone off the scent. I can’t think of anything smart.
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