The drive from Fiumicino to Mongrifone was irrevocably lost to him. His chauffeur was a taciturn young Florentine who drove the big Mercedes so smoothly that Cavanagh slept all the way, from the image of Leonardo da Vinci at the airport to the portals of the Farnese villa in the Sabine Hills.
The chauffeur handed him over to a major-domo, an elderly white-haired fellow with courtly manners, who conducted him up a wide, circular staircase to a huge bedroom which opened out onto a terrace and a panorama of vineyards, farmlands, orchards, greenhouses and vegetable gardens, with misty blue ridges in the background.
The major-domo explained that the Principessa had left early in the morning for Rome, but that she would be back for lunch about one o’clock. Meantime, after so long a flight, the dottore would no doubt appreciate a bath and a sleep. If he had any clothes to be washed or suits to be pressed, they would be taken care of while he rested. Meantime, he would be pleased to unpack the baggage and draw a bath for the dottore.
As he worked he offered small sweetmeats of information. This was formerly the bedchamber of Prince Alessandro, dead these many years, but still remembered and loved in Mongrifone. That was the town over there to the right, on the crest of the hill. In the old days, the family had maintained its residence within the walls of the fortress; but in the nineteenth century they had moved out to this estate, which was called the Prince’s Villa. It was a large enterprise as the dottore would see; but the Principessa managed it with great skill.
The bathroom was large enough to parade a platoon and the bath itself was a huge porphyry tub with steps leading into it and dolphin heads for faucets. There was a dressing-gown hung behind the door, a rack of thick towels and an array of toiletries in crystal bottles.
On the bedside table was a note and a gift-wrapped package. The note, which carried Giulia’s personal escutcheon, read simply: ‘I lend to you what you gave to me. The tears are real. They are the tears of joy I shed when I knew you were coming. Te voglio, te penzo, te chiammo. Giulia.’ Inside the package was the tear-vial, mounted on a tiny gold stand, and stoppered with a gold coronet. There were indeed a few drops of liquid inside it. Cavanagh tested them on his tongue. They had a salt taste to them, just like those he had tasted on her cheeks the night before they parted.
The major-domo announced that the dottore’s bath was ready. When he was rested he should simply ring the bell and the pressed clothes would be returned to him. There was mineral water on the table. If he desired coffee, any other beverage, he had only to call. He wished the dottore ‘Buon riposo’ and went out, closing the door behind him.
Left alone, Cavanagh studied himself in the mirror and decided that what he saw was a mess. His skin was pasty, he had botched his shave on the aircraft, his tongue looked like the bottom of a birdcage, his brain – if there were anything left of it – must have turned to butter, because there was no gleam of intelligence in the dull, bloodshot and brutish eyes. So the whole toilet would have to be done again. He cleaned his teeth, washed his mouth, shaved with patient care, boiled himself in the bath for forty glorious minutes, dried himself on a fluffy towel as big as a bedsheet, then wrapped himself in the dressing-gown and slept until twenty minutes after midday.
When the major-domo delivered his freshly minted clothes, he asked what dress might be appropriate for lunch. The answer was instant:
‘The Principessa asked me to tell you, sir – very casual. There are no guests. You will be lunching on the terrace in warm sunshine.’
‘The Princess is back then?’
‘Yes, sir. She will pass by your room and pick you up in about twenty minutes.’
‘You must forgive me. I have neglected to ask your name.’
‘Bosco. Luca Bosco . . .’
‘You’ve been with the family a long time?’
‘Too long to think about, dottore. But if you have questions, I am to tell you that the Principessa wants to deliver all her news herself. She warned me that if I gossiped with you, she would have my head.’
Cavanagh laughed.
‘I believe you, Luca! She can be a very formidable lady.’
‘But not with you, dottore. Not ever with you!’
‘Why do you say that?’
The old man gave him a sidelong, mischievous grin and refused the bait.
‘You mustn’t tempt me, dottore. It’s my head that’s threatened, not yours.’
The next instant he was gone, leaving Cavanagh to make a momentous, solitary decision on what he should wear to lunch with Giulia the Beautiful and whether his gift to her was too trivial or too audacious in the memories it evoked.
He had found it in a small jewellery store on Madison, one of those expensive holes in the wall, which traded in estate jewellery and sold pieces on consignment for ageing or needy clients. It was a Victorian piece, quite small for that period, a golden salamander with emerald eyes and a pavé of tiny rose-cut diamonds down the spine. They had asked an outrageous price for it, but he had haggled them down to seven hundred and fifty dollars – which made him feel less guilty about buying a gift for an old lover, or on the other hand, about spending too much of the fee with which the said lover had endowed him. He took one last look at the piece, closed the little velvet box and laid it on the bedside table beside Giulia’s gift.
Clothes were the next problem. Hell! What was he? A teenager going out on his first date? An open-necked shirt, light fawn slacks, Gucci loafers – what else could you do with a sixty-five-year-old conseiller d’état, who was hard put to keep his belly reasonably flat and who could do nothing at all about his receding hair line. He was just making a final inspection of himself when he heard the knock on the door and Giulia’s announcement:
‘It’s me, Giulia.’
‘Come in,’ said Cavanagh, and watched in sudden fear as the door opened and Giulia stood before him.
Time had been kind to her and she had let it do its own work in peace. She was grey now, but still trim and firm-breasted. There were lines on her face; but they were not the down-drawn strokes of melancholy, rather the patterns of contentment and acceptance. Only her eyes had not changed, those big, dark, lustrous orbs that had charmed the heart out of him forty years ago. She wore a cream silk blouse and black silk slacks and low-heeled shoes, and her hair was tied back with a ribbon of black moiré silk. That was all he had time to take in before she kicked the door shut and came running into his arms, and time rolled back, in the wink of an eye, to their first breathless encounter on the dockside at Santo Stefano. As it had been long ago, it was Giulia who found voice first.
‘We’re always like this aren’t we? Nothing to say – and then I have to start the talking.’
‘You know me, my love, Cavanagh the dumb mick!’
‘Whatever else you were, my love, you were never dumb. Did you find my present?’
‘I did – and thank you.’
‘They’re real tears, Cavanagh.’
‘I know. I tasted them.’
‘Did they taste happy?’
‘I’m still wearing your pendant. I’ve worn it since the day we parted.’
She opened the buttons of her blouse to show him the golden medallion cradled in the cleft of her breasts. She drew it out and offered it to him to handle. It was exactly as she had described it in her letter, buffed and rubbed by forty years of contact with her body, but like the body itself, all the more precious for the defacements of time. He handed it back, and before she re-buttoned her blouse, he bent and brushed her breasts with his lips. He felt her flinch in surprise; but she did not withdraw. She smiled when he told her:
‘The last time, I promise!’
‘I’m glad you still want to touch me. Have I changed much?’
‘Like good wine, Giulia mia – only for the better. I brought you a gift too.’
He handed her the little velvet box and watched as she opened it. The light in her eyes and the smile on her face moved him near to tears. She kissed him full on the lips and thanked him in a rush of words.
‘I’m going to put this on now and wear it while you’re here. The salamander’s an animal that can survive in the hottest fire. We’re survivors, Cavanagh, both of us.’ She pinned the brooch to her blouse, patted it into place, looked at herself in the mirror and then, imperious as the Giulia of old, commanded him: ‘Take my arm, Cavanagh! My staff are dying of curiosity. Let’s give them a good entrance, shall we?’
They lunched under a pergola of vines that threw dappled shadows on the white napery. They were served by the major-domo, who poured the wine and ladled the food, a maid in a starched apron and cap who handled the plates, and a formidably large female cook, who presented each dish as if she were Brillat-Savarin himself. Giulia had to restrain her giggles until the cook left the scene and she was able to explain to Cavanagh:
‘We don’t always do things with this much style; but if I hadn’t displayed you to them they’d have gone on strike.’
‘They know who you are, Cavanagh. La vecchia fiamma della principessa! My old flame! They love the idea. Luca adores a little intrigue. He says this is the way it used to be in the Prince’s Villa. The women have even been gossiping about whether we’d sleep together while you’re here. I told Luca to knock that notion on the head immediately!’
‘You might at least have offered me the refusal.’
‘You wouldn’t want to play that game again, would you Cavanagh?’
‘I’d like to, my love, but I’m afraid I’d make a great fool of myself.’
‘Tell me about your life, your wife, your family.’
‘What’s to say, Giulia my love? I have a happy family and a successful practice. I’ve been a lucky man.’
‘So share the luck, Cavanagh. Tell me what you did after Ischia.’
‘We sailed straight to Antibes. We were supposed to drop Rodolfo off along the way; but he refused to quit. He wouldn’t leave Miss Pritchard. He was set on going to England with her. The last I heard they were dealing with the question of a passport and a visa and how he was going to get them. I paid everybody off, and handed the ship over to Glémot. We had a wild party in Cannes and went our separate ways. Then, I hitch-hiked to St Tropez where I met a girl, and then on to Toulon, where I met another girl and then to Marseilles, where I met several girls – and not a damn one of them can I remember; because you were always there, like a candle in the window, calling me home to a feast day I’d never enjoy again.
‘I’d wake in the night wondering where you were, what you were doing, how Molloy was treating you. Then I decided that the ports and docks and seaside girls were doing bad things to my spirit; so I went on to Paris, found myself a little mansard apartment on the Left Bank and started to write to the people to whom Galeazzi had given me introductions. The speed and the cordiality of the replies astonished me . . . I was so dumb then, I never understood what a powerful man he was. When I finally caught on, I decided to spend whatever it took to get myself to New York and London and Rome to meet Galeazzi’s friends in person.
‘The outcome was magical. Career opportunities opened to me on both sides of the Atlantic. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I decided to talk to Galeazzi himself. We arranged to meet on his next visit to Paris. We sat up half the night talking in his suite at the Crillon. He was very gracious and very open. He urged me to take a long-term view, to do post-graduate work in international law in America, in Great Britain, France, Rome and in Moscow itself, if I could bear it and if I could get a visa. He advised me strongly against making a career in the United States. His reason was curious, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. He said: “Remember always that the United States were built – are still being built – by Europeans in flight from their origins. You are not in flight, you are a young man surprisingly sure of his identity, who has come to discover his spiritual and intellectual roots. What you have found is a wasteland – a continent which has just seen the final sequelae of the Great Schism between Rome and Byzantium, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, the fall of monarchies and dictatorships, the tribal enmities that began with the great migrations across the steppes into Europe. But mark my words, Europe will recover, and slowly begin to see that its salvation lies in co-operative effort and some code of common belief and law. It might challenge you to be part of that process, a catalyst for change. If it doesn’t, then I think you would be wiser to return to your own country and make your career there.’
‘I thought about it for a long time and finally opted for the long haul, post-graduate studies in five countries, and a career in international law. I got myself a very junior job with a member of the International Commission of Jurists. I was half a step above an office boy, but the job enabled me to survive and study.’
‘Did Galeazzi tell you anything about me?!’
‘Nothing, except that you and Lou had a son. He made it clear that any further questions from me would be an unwelcome intrusion.’
‘But your career marched forward?’
‘It did, thank God and Galeazzi! Would you believe I now have a very distinguished woman client who pays me fifteen thousand dollars just to fly over to Rome and visit her! It’s a madness of course; but lawyers make their money out of other people’s follies!’
‘Cavanagh, my love, you haven’t even begun to earn your fee! Tell me about your wife. What’s she like? Where did you meet her? Are you happy – both of you?’
‘Yes, we are happy and I thank God every day of my life for the woman he finally gave me.’
‘That’s quite a testimonial.’ Giulia gave him a small, dubious smile. ‘Do you have any photographs?’
‘Of course.’ He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘Never travel without ’em. That’s Louise, with our two sons and our daughter and their respective spouses. These in front are our four grandchildren.’
‘That’s already a tribe, Cavanagh!’
‘Fortunately, none of them lives with us. They join us sometimes for holidays. And Louise is on permanent call as matriarch – which I tell her is crazy.’
‘Where did you and Louise meet?’
‘In Paris. She was studying at the Conservatoire, cello and composition. She and three other students had formed a quartet which played each night in a little boîte on the Left Bank. They were all classical players, but they had developed a comedy act, skits and musical parodies, which went down well with the audience. I dropped in there most nights and – God help me! – I conned them into letting me join their act as a vocalist. After that, I conned Louise into letting me be the man who walked her home. Et voilà!. We married. We settled in Paris. My career started to prosper. We bred a trio of our own musicians!’
‘Very romantic! Now tell me what your Louise is really like. I can see she’s beautiful. I expected that. You always had good taste in women, Cavanagh. But tell me the rest of it.’
‘The rest of it so simple you’ll laugh at it.’ Cavanagh stared out across the sunlit land towards the misty hills. ‘With Louise, life is always and only “now”. She refuses to brood on the past. She tells me I’m so good at worrying about the future that she doesn’t have to bother about it. She says to our children: “All you have is this moment. Make the most of it!” Nothing frightens her . . .’
‘I might, if she knew I was back in your life.’
‘I doubt it. Besides, this is a weekend visit, not a sojourn.’
‘Are you going to tell her about the visit?’
‘She already knows I’m here in Rome.’
‘But you haven’t told her about me?’
‘No. It’s an agreement we have. I don’t bring my business home. We entertain only our friends. Besides, you’ve paid me a fee. You’re a client. I have no right to discuss you or your business.’ He cupped his chin on his hands and studied her face. Then he challenged her: ‘Why are you playing this game, Giulia?’
‘Because, suddenly, I’m jealous.’
‘You have no cause to be.’
‘You mean I have no right to be.’
‘Put it either way, it’s true!’
‘I know. I had first offer on you, Cavanagh. I turned you down. I shouldn’t have any complaints.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’m teasing you, Cavanagh.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I won’t do it again.’
‘You’re forgiven. Now, I want to hear about you.’
‘It’s a long story. I don’t know where to start.’
‘Start where it ended for us.’
For a woman at once compulsive and calculating, she seemed to have great difficulty in framing a simple narrative. Cavanagh waited in silence, until finally she found the opening phrase:
‘After we left Ischia for Rome, everything happened in a rush. Everyone seemed to want the wedding over and done with. I did myself; that would force me to go forward, instead of looking back all the time. As soon as we got to Rome, Molloy was summoned to a private audience with His Holiness at Castelgandolfo, where he was created a Knight of St Gregory. It was really a trivial occasion, as Molloy was quick to realise. He got a scroll and a medal and a papal blessing – and fifteen minutes’ conversation with the Pontiff, mostly about the Communist plot and the defects of US policy in Europe. The Vatican, like the British monarchy, makes much use of these old-fashioned honours, which cost nothing but a little paper and metal and coloured ribbons but keep the illusions of monarchy alive. After that Lou demanded a very quiet wedding, which papa and I were very happy to give him. By the time state and church documents were ready, another month had passed. Lou and I were married in Mongrifone with the local bishop celebrating the nuptial mass for a small congregation of close relatives and friends and a church full of local townsfolk. We were all glad when it was over. The wedding party was held here at the villa and we spent our honeymoon night in the Royal Suite at the Grand Hotel in Rome. The day after that, we left for America. There, the money men laid out red carpets for him everywhere. Back in Europe, the old families and our European cousins ignored him as much as they dared; but Lou did a better job of ignoring them, and I had to acknowledge his courage.’
‘But the marriage itself, how did all that work out? Or would you rather not talk about it?’
‘I need to talk about it, Cavanagh, if you are to understand why I asked you here. The truth is that I was totally unprepared for what happened on my wedding night. I was expecting – how shall I say it? – at least a vigorous encounter, possibly a violent one. I wasn’t afraid of that. You know what I’m like in bed – or used to be! I was even looking forward to the experience. If the sex was good, life with Lou would be at least half-way tolerable. In fact the night was a disaster, not because he wasn’t potent – he was as strong as a bull! – but because he was so tender and caring and protective! The last thing I needed was protection for the innocence I didn’t possess. It was a laughable situation, but I didn’t dare laugh. I couldn’t confess to my past, while he was trying to shield me from his. So I pretended. I went on pretending that I was getting what I needed, that Lou Molloy, the penitent Don Juan, was conducting me gently through the rose gardens of love. All the time I was hating him and trying to dream you back into my bed; but you just drifted further and further away and all I could feel of you was the medallion between my breasts. Lou used to complain about it and say it got in his way when he fondled me, but I refused to take it off and made up some fairy-tale about a love spell which great-grandmother Farnese had attached to it. I tell you, Cavanagh, I was not a happy bride or a good wife, but Lou didn’t deserve what I inflicted on him, because for those first twelve months at least he was really trying to be a good husband, and a better man. However, in my own defence, I do have to say I was pregnant. I had a lot of minor ailments. I developed some kidney problems and in the end the baby was delivered by Caesarean section in Professor Peroni’s private clinic. Lou was travelling a lot at that time and he was in New York when Sandro was born.’
‘Sandro?’ Cavanagh was intrigued. ‘I can’t imagine Molloy giving up his naming rights to the first-born.’
‘Oh, he didn’t surrender them easily, by any means. The original nuptial agreement specified that the child, if a boy, should be named by him, without prejudice to the child’s rights to continue the Farnese name and any titles that might devolve to him. So, because papa was ailing, I worked hard on Lou to have him agree to naming the baby for my father. Lou argued a lot but finally consented. The baby was baptised Alessandro Aloysius Molloy Farnese. When you meet him, he’ll tell you himself, it’s a large mouthful to cope with. He prefers to call himself Sandro.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s in Rome. He’ll be here for dinner tonight.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a diplomat, well advanced in his career, too.’
‘How old is he now?’
‘Work it out for yourself. He was conceived in the summer of 1952.’
‘That makes him thirty-nine or thereabouts. Whom does he take after?’
‘The Farnese, I’m glad to say, though he does have a lot of his father’s mannerisms and an occasional expression round the mouth and eyes. But looking at his photographs, you’d swear, boy and man, he was a Farnese.’
‘How did Lou take to him?’
‘He adored him. Whenever he was home he would croon over him for hours, insist on being present at his bath, caress him, answer to his slightest cry. I was surprised at first, and always touched, when I saw how much he loved the child.’
‘Didn’t that make any difference to your relations with him?’
‘You’d think it would have, but it didn’t. All my attention was focussed on Sandro. I had a nurse, of course; but I wanted to rear him myself. I breast-fed him, I changed diapers, I played with him and laid him down to sleep. Lou once told me that was the best image he had of me: “a happy peasant, with a boy child at the breast”. The sad thing was that when we bent together over the cradle, there was always a wall between us, a transparent wall that we could see through, talk through, even smile through, but never reach through to touch each other. Now, perhaps, you will understand why I had a moment of jealousy about you and your wife.’
‘Perhaps,’ Cavanagh suggested gently, ‘perhaps you should finish your pasta and let me tell you something about this Lou Molloy whom you met for the first time on your wedding night.’
‘How can you possibly know anything about him?’
‘He told me himself, when he came aboard the Salamandra in Ischia to give me my sailing orders. I’m not quoting you the exact words, but I’ll guarantee the message is authentic. He said he needed to talk. He was talking to me because I had been taught the same doctrine as he, about sin, guilt, repentance, new beginnings. He said he had tried to make a confession to Cardinal Spellman in New York, but Spellman had recommended he use another confessor. He shied away from that. He said all he wanted to do was make a clean start with you and found a family that could be proud of Lou Molloy. For God’s sake, Giulia! You have to give the man full marks for trying.’
‘We’re talking about a marriage, Cavanagh, not a dog show!’
‘Nevertheless, the marriage did last until he died!’
She put down her fork very carefully, wiped her lips with the napkin, then signalled to Luca to clear the platters away and absent himself for a while. Then with more than a touch of impatience, she told Cavanagh:
‘There were a number of very good reasons for our staying together. First, my father’s position at the Vatican; second, Lou’s long and important connections with Cardinal Spellman; third, the terms of the marriage settlement, which would have robbed me and Sandro of millions if I initiated divorce or annulment proceedings against Lou – and in those early years there was no divorce in Italy anyway. The only solution was a civilised live-and-let-live arrangement, which Lou himself proposed.
‘He was sitting there, where you are now. We had just finished coffee; Lou told Luca to leave us and asked: “Giulia, why don’t we end this sad comedy and give ourselves and the boy a chance?” Of course, I had to make a little scene and demand to know what sort of an ending he proposed. He shrugged and told me he didn’t want to play games, just to keep some dignity and peace in our lives and give Sandro some sense of a united family! I was tempted to make a sharp reply, but the look in his eyes frightened me. So, we talked quietly and agreed to rearrange our lives on live-and-let-live terms, broad enough to keep the domestic peace, preserve the social hypocrisies and spare young Sandro any experience of conflict in the home.
‘After that, the going was easier for all of us. Lou travelled a great deal and spent much time in New York. He had bought an apartment on Park Avenue and installed a housekeeper to run it . . . You’ll remember her of course: Lenore Pritchard from the Salamandra.’
‘My God! I wonder what happened to Rodolfo?’
‘God knows!’ Giulia waved an indifferent hand. ‘After our break-up, I never stayed in the apartment. I had nothing to do with her, beyond asking her to pass messages to Lou. If I went to New York to see Sandro, I always stayed at the Pierre.
‘The fact is, that I was gradually opening up my own social calendar. I had some affairs, not enough to cause a scandal, just enough to keep my confidence up and my skin looking good. Then, a few years before Lou died, I formed a serious attachment with a son of one of the old papal families. He, too, was married, so there was no question of breaking up two homes. We took an apartment in Rome, furnished it to our taste, hired a maid to keep it, and spent our times of liberty there. What Lou’s arrangements were I didn’t ask and I didn’t care. Sometimes I heard gossip. I shut my ears to it. This was the time of La Dolce Vita. Everybody was playing. Nobody cared.’
‘What about your father?’
‘He died in the early seventies. He and Aunt Lucietta were killed in a car accident on the autostrada. I missed them both terribly; but having a stable love life helped a great deal.’
Cavanagh poured himself some mineral water. The Farnese wine left a sharpish after-taste on the palate. His comment was non-committal.
‘It sounds like a very civilised arrangement.’
‘It was. The only hitch came when Lou insisted on the agreement that Sandro should go to college in America and afterwards complete his university education there.’
‘Not unreasonable, one would have thought.’
‘Not unreasonable; but I still bitched about it on principle, until I realised that it would make my own Roman affair much easier to manage.’
‘No. I grew out of it and he found someone else. But he did pay me handsomely for the apartment.’
Cavanagh reached across the table and imprisoned her restless hands in his own. He asked softly:
‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Daubing yourself with penitential ashes. Lent is long over. Give yourself a break for pity’s sake. Lou’s dead and gone and I’m sure he was never so bad they couldn’t find a small corner in heaven for him – which he’d have made twice as big the moment he got there. Your son’s a middle-aged man. You’re still a lively woman who has had a very good life and is now the chatelaine of the Farnese and Molloy estates, which must be worth a mint of money. Nevertheless, you’ve got a problem. You think I can help. You’ve paid my retainer, I am now your attorney and legal counsellor. Please, Principessa, let me have your instructions!’
She pulled away from him abruptly and stood up.
‘Let’s go for a walk. I’ll choke if I eat another mouthful. I never believed it would be so hard to say a few simple words.’
He offered her his arm and let her lead him down the gravelled driveway and across a green lawn to a sunken garden with a pool tiled with mosaics. At either end of the pool, there was a stone bench, and around the sides gardens full of tulips and narcissus in full bloom. She made him sit down while she herself remained standing, a little to his right between the water and the flowers, against a background of blue hills and fleecy clouds. It was a very conscious piece of staging, which reminded him of the old Giulia, posed carefully on the afterrail aboard the Salamandra. He smiled his approval, but made no comment. She made a tentative beginning:
‘. . . Just so you have the time elements right. My husband died in 1980. He was sixty-seven years old. Sandro, my son, was born in 1953, which means he was 27 at the time of my husband’s death. Lou died alone in his New York apartment. I was here at the villa. Sandro was in Rome working at the Secretariat. I heard the news first: Lenore Pritchard called me. The next day Sandro and I flew to New York.
‘We found Lou had left everything very tidy for us. His instructions were precise. He wished to be buried beside Giorgios Hadjidakis in the cemetery of the Greek Orthodox Community in Boston, where, years ago, he had bought the grave site. He asked that the final dismissals be given in the Latin and the Orthodox rites. When we arrived in New York, the body was already on its way to Boston to await our arrival. I confess I was shocked and insulted. I said some bad things to Lenore. Sandro had to intervene. Afterwards, he scolded me harshly: “Funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Lenore was his lover long before she became his housekeeper. Giorgios Hadjidakis had been papa’s closest friend. His widow and his children were my friends too – my only family indeed, while I was studying here. For papa, their house was a refuge when the black moods came on him. He knew he didn’t have much life to gamble on. He died of lung cancer. Lenore nursed him almost to the end. So your abuse of her was quite brutal! You owe her an apology. Papa was not an easy patient. Sometimes he was weighed down with guilts about what he saw as his failed marriage to you and his unorthodox parenting of me. I used to tell him neither of you was to blame and that I loved you both. But mama, it’s time you learned to be kinder to people. I think he deserved better than you offered him!”
‘My son’s reproach was a harder blow than Lou’s death. It made me feel small, mean and very guilty. It made me understand that Lou was a bigger and wiser man than I had taken him for in his lifetime. The funeral was another blow to my pride. The Farnese slept in their marble tombs, while my husband was being buried, by his own choice, in a suburban plot beside the son of a Greek peasant. Lenore was there, with the Hadjidakis family and a few – a surprising few – of Lou’s old business friends. I was the outsider, and I knew it. Sandro, my son, was protecting me; but the Hadjidakis family were helping him to bear his own grief and purge it in their embraces, not mine. I had no grief to purge, only a relief that I could not share, and hardly dared admit to myself.’
Cavanagh held out his hand to draw her down beside him, but she rejected the gesture abruptly.
‘No! Please don’t touch me. I have to get through this, before I fall apart.’
She gathered herself again, like an athlete making a final leap, then launched herself into the story.
‘When we got back to New York, there were the usual conferences with lawyers and accountants, the normal, interminable routines of probate. Before we left for Rome, each of us was handed a sealed envelope. We were told that they contained Lou’s last communications. On the outside of each envelope was written: “Please open this when you are alone and private. Lou.”’
Giulia put her hand in the pocket of her slacks and brought out a folded sheet of notepaper which she thrust at Cavanagh:
‘This is why I called you here, Cavanagh. Read it!’
Cavanagh took the note, unfolded it and read it. He looked at Giulia. She had turned away and was staring at the bright, mosaic images under the water: octopods and dolphins and Proteus guarding them all. Cavanagh felt a cold hand closing around his heart. The words he uttered were more visible than audible, a frosty whisper of despair:
‘Dear Mother of God! You got this letter in 1980, twelve years ago! Why did you leave it so long? Why didn’t you do what Lou asked?’
She did not answer. She stood mute and still as a stone image, her hands clasped about her breasts.
Cavanagh was locked in his own solitude. He read and reread Molloy’s letter, understanding every syllable of every word, but not yet able to grasp it as a coherent whole.
I’m not prepared to die with a lie between us. Sandro should not embark on the life he has chosen with any part of the truth untold.
All the documents I have signed over the years affirm that Sandro is my son. There is no evidence that can, or should, prevail against them.
But you know, and I know, that when you married me, you were already pregnant and that the natural father of the child was Bryan Cavanagh. I didn’t know it at the time. I was too preoccupied with my business affairs, too eager to make a happy marriage with you. If you had told me the moon was made of cotton candy, I would have believed you.
Afterwards – what can I say? – I loved the boy so much, I would have killed anyone who told me he was a bastard. In fact, no one ever did, directly. When you and I separated and Lenore came to look after me, it was she who, one night in bed, told me of your affair with Cavanagh. After that it was a simple matter of mathematics.
My attitude to Sandro never changed. I still loved him and treated him as a son. When I judged – rightly or wrongly – that he should be told the truth, I told him as much as I knew or guessed.
Now, I believe it’s your turn to fill in the gaps. If you could bring him and Cavanagh together without starting a war, it might be the best solution of all. But you must at least talk to Sandro. His life will be out of balance until you do.
I wish I could say I love you. I tried, believe me. Let’s at least have the grace to forgive each other.
Lou
Cavanagh folded the letter and handed it back to Giulia. She took it without a word and thrust it deep into her pocket. Cavanagh stood up and took her arm.
‘Why don’t you show me the rest of the place?’
A long time later, while they were walking silently, hand in hand under the orchard trees, Cavanagh asked:
‘What does Sandro say about all this?’
‘Nothing. He has never told me what Lou wrote to him. Until recently, he had never asked me a single question about the matter. It is my guess that Lou told him the simple facts and said that it was my right to explain the rest of it in my own time. There was a great bond between those two – a kind of special chivalry in which I had no share.’
‘But why have you decided that this is the time? What’s special about this day, this week, this month?’
‘Because it’s an important moment in his life, in his career. I wanted to give him a gift. I asked him what he would like. He said: “If it could be arranged, without hurt to anyone, I should like to meet my natural father.”’
‘And just like that, I’m paid to come here and meet with him – no warning, no preparation! My God, Giulia, you really are an incorrigible bitch! All I know about this man is his name and the fact that he’s a thirty-nine-year-old diplomat and you’re about to slam us in each other’s faces. Not good enough, Principessa! Not good enough by half! If you’ll excuse me now I’ll go and pack. You can either call me a taxi or have your chauffeur drive me back to Rome. If my son wants to see me, he’ll find me at the Hôtel de Ville! . . .’
‘Please, Cavanagh! I beg you, don’t go like this. It doesn’t help. It just drags everything out. Your son – our son – will be here at six tonight to say an evening Mass, talk to you and then have dinner with us.’
Cavanagh stared at her, gasping like a grassed trout.
‘You told me he was a diplomat?’
‘He is, in the Vatican Secretariat of State.’
‘Oh God! A priest in the family! And himself born on the wrong side of the blanket! Now there’s a comedy for you!’
Suddenly, he was laughing, a dry, hiccuping sound that brought tears to his eyes and had no merriment in it at all.
‘He’s a bishop, Cavanagh. He was consecrated last week to the titular see of Trajanopolis in Phrygia! He expects to be sent abroad very soon as legate, to one of the new East European republics.’
‘And I’m to be his going-away present!’ Cavanagh was not laughing now. A slow, sullen anger was building up inside him. ‘The Farnese don’t change, do they? Last time, it was your father handing me to you, to keep you sweet and compliant until you were safely wedded to Molloy. Now with no warning, with no shred of proof, you endow me with a bastard son – complete with mitre and crozier – and you expect me to crush him to my bosom and shout “God be praised!” You have to do better than that, Giulia mia! Why in Christ’s name, all those years ago, didn’t you tell me you were carrying my child? I wasn’t running away from you. I was begging you to marry me!’
‘Because I didn’t know . . . I just didn’t know!’
‘Remember when we talked this out in Sardinia? I said I wanted to make a child with you . . .’
‘My thought was the same, Cavanagh. I loved you. I wanted your child, not Lou Molloy’s. If I didn’t marry you, I’d always have part of you to keep. So I took the risk; but don’t you see, I didn’t know I was pregnant until you were gone!’
‘A week after we left Ischia, I missed my first period. I missed the next one too, which was due the week before we were married. So this child would make a scandalously early arrival. I talked to Aunt Lucietta. She talked me out of my panic: lots of women had premature babies. We would certainly make this one look premature, by having a Caesarean. The big, heart-stopping gamble was whether the baby would look like you, with those blue eyes and that ruddy complexion. On this question I had to talk to papa. He laughed at my fears. All newborn babies looked alike. Once Lou had registered the birth, as father of the child, its paternity would be beyond challenge.’
‘He was right,’ said Cavanagh. ‘In Italian law the document prevails. Your father had really done a thorough job on this marriage. You were all lucky the boy looked like a Farnese. You were also lucky Lou loved the child – and loved you enough to swallow the shame you put on him.’
‘That’s a brutal thing to say!’
‘I’m afraid, Giulia mia, you’re the brutal one. Everything in life has to be tailored to your demands!’
‘And why not? I paid more than enough for the privilege of being Giulia Farnese!’
‘What about Sandro? Why didn’t you do as Lou asked and tell him our side of the story?’
‘What was there to tell? I fell in love with a man I couldn’t have. All I had left of him was a baby with Molloy’s name and a medallion the baby used to grasp as he suckled at my breast. Now you’re here, you can explain it all to Sandro!’
‘No way! No how! I’m leaving!’
He turned on his heel and began striding through the orchard trees back to the house. Giulia followed him, running, and then barred his way, a tiny, imperious figure, formidable in her anger.
‘You accepted my retainer, Cavanagh. You asked for my instructions. I have given them to you. Since they are legally and morally reasonable, it seems to me you have a clear duty to carry them out! Mass will be celebrated in the villa chapel at six this evening. Luca will conduct you there. All the staff will be present. You and Sandro will have time to talk before we dine together at eight. I cannot believe that you will fail your son or me!’
The next moment she was gone, fleeing back to the villa. Cavanagh made no move to follow her. Instead he walked slowly back to the pool, squatted by the edge and dangled his fingers in the water, trying to attract one of the fat carp which swam lazily above the images of another age.
At five minutes to six Luca, the major-domo, came to his room to conduct him to the chapel. Luca was garrulous now. This was a special thing for the family and the household, a Farnese bishop saying their house Mass. He was so young for such an honour: not yet forty! It was not impossible that, in twenty years or so, there could be another Farnese pope. At least he would have to get a cardinal’s hat . . . This Sandro was a man full of surprises. Before he left for America, he had been a wild boy, hard for his mother to manage. But, once in America with his father, he had settled down beautifully. He had been a fine sportsman: a tennis player, a sailor, a runner. He had graduated in philosophy and humanities: summa cum laude. Then, suddenly, poof! He was out of it all and enrolled in the diocesan seminary in New York. Ordained there, he came back to Rome for further studies at the Gregorian University, from whence he was co-opted straight into a position at the Secretariat of State in Vatican city.
Luca’s eulogy had to end there, because they were already at the door of the chapel, a small vaulted chamber designed into the villa edifice itself and decorated in a subdued Palladian style. Giulia was kneeling at a prie-dieu on the left of the nave, with members of the household, maids, gardeners, farm folk, ranged on both sides behind her. The celebrant stood alone at the altar, vesting himself for the Mass. Luca led Cavanagh to a prie-dieu on the right-hand side of the nave, level with Giulia, then walked up to the sanctuary to lay out the altar vessels and serve as acolyte.
Cavanagh knelt down and looked at the man whom he had begotten and who was as remote from him as a creature from Mars. However, there was no doubt he was a Farnese. He had the long face, the high forehead, the beaked nose and the full lips of his grandfather and of their ancestor, Pope Paul the Third, brother of Giulia the Beautiful.
Cavanagh noted with detached approval that he seemed not yet to have acquired the sleek and corpulent look of the desk-bound cleric. He was still slim. His movements at the altar table were measured and precise, his recitation of the vernacular prayers simple and unmannered. The focus of his gaze was somewhere in the centre of the room and not on Cavanagh or Giulia. It was an old preacher’s trick, to collectivise an audience, but Cavanagh was grateful for it. He was even more grateful when, after the ritual summons to ‘offer each other the sign of peace’, Sandro stepped down and embraced each member of the small congregation, who then exchanged the salute with each other. Giulia crossed to Cavanagh, embraced him, and, as their cheeks touched, she whispered: ‘Please, Cavanagh! Let us make peace.’ Cavanagh’s anger died. He squeezed her hand in a silent consent and a moment later stood by her side to receive the consecrated bread and the wine from the chalice. Then he returned to his place, buried his face in his hands and prayed as he had not prayed in years. He was still there when the worshippers had gone and the bishop, divested of his hieratic garments, stood beside him and said formally:
‘We have to talk, Doctor Cavanagh.’
‘Indeed we do.’ Cavanagh got stiffly to his feet.
‘I fear,’ said the bishop, ‘I am something of a shock to you.’
‘And I am an embarrassment to you.’ Cavanagh managed a weary smile. ‘Now may we cut the formalities. I need a drink – a strong one!’
‘I, too. Let’s go to grandfather’s study.’
As they walked out of the chapel, Cavanagh groped for another line with which to begin a dialogue. He was not very proud of what he produced.
‘Your mother tells me your full name is as much of a mouthful as mine is. So call me Cavanagh. Your mother always did.’
‘And I’m Sandro, like my grandfather.’
In the study, rich with old leather bindings, dark wood and ancestral portraits, a tray was laid with liquor and glasses and ice. Cavanagh settled himself in a deep leather armchair. Sandro poured a large measure of scotch for each of them. Cavanagh raised his glass:
‘To the truth. Let’s have it out between us and be done with it.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Sandro the bishop.
They drank. Cavanagh said:
‘That’s a hell of a title you’ve got yourself: Bishop of Trajanopolis in Phrygia!’
Sandro laughed. It was an open, cheerful sound. ‘A big name for no place at all. There’s a whole list of these titular sees in the Pontifical Almanach.’
‘Who picks them for “the new boys” like you?’
Theoretically, His Holiness, but in practice, some prelate from the Congregation for Bishops. I’m told you can ask for a vacant title, but you never get what you ask for. It’s very Roman. All through your life in the ministry someone dishes out these little pinpricks just to remind you that you’re a man subject to authority. Now tell me, Cavanagh, which of us is going to begin?’
‘Well,’ said Cavanagh, ‘mine’s the shortest and the simplest story. But you’ll save me some breath and yourself some boredom if I know how much Lou Molloy told you about me.’
‘Quite a lot.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘You were a smart-ass Australian – his words, not mine! You had a good war record and a new law degree and you knew how to run a boat.’
‘So far, it’s an accurate report.’
‘He said you had a good Jesuitical mind, which would either land you in gaol, or at the top of your profession. He also said you had an easy way with women and were a rough man to fight with. He admired you, Cavanagh. Sometimes I used to think he was reading me the specifications for the son he wanted me to be. That didn’t make me like you very much, especially when I learned you’d seduced my mother!’
‘When did your father tell you all this?’
‘When I informed him I wanted to enter the seminary and become a priest. He wasn’t well at the time. He became very agitated and told me I shouldn’t do it. We both got very heated. Then he told me I couldn’t do it anyway because of some old provision in canon law that illegitimate sons were barred from holy orders.’
‘That was a hell of a way to break the news!’
‘It was, and it nearly broke me. I just didn’t know who I was any more. I’d come to terms with a lot of things: a divided family, my mother’s love affairs, my father’s aberrant lifestyle. This was one blow too much! I went crazy for a while. I hit the bars. I hit on all the girls I knew and a lot I didn’t know. I spent money like water. Lou let me run until I’d exhausted myself and my allowance – which was a very generous one. Then he apologised and tried to explain that although he loved me dearly, he was tired of living a lie – a whole pack of them in fact. He wanted the record straight between us. I still wasn’t sure I understood his motives, but at least we were friends again. He’d gone a step further and asked for a ruling from some canonist or other and had come back with a clear decision: my certificates of birth and baptism, all my life history, confirmed that I was the legitimate son of Lou Molloy.
‘However, we were still left with a couple of problems. Lou had to explain how my mother had become pregnant by you. I had to work out how my wild weeks of indulgence matched with my aspirations to a life in the ministry of the gospel.’
‘I’d be interested to know how you worked out both problems.’
‘That’s not easy to explain, because you have to understand where Lou’s life was heading at this time. These were the early seventies. Lou was in his late fifties, a rich man, an active man, stuck in a timewarp from which he couldn’t escape. The America of the fifties had changed beyond recognition, but he had been so busy with his own affairs at home and abroad that he was insulated from the impact of events. He read them only as shock-waves on the graphs of financial analysis. His Church had changed too – according to him, for the worse. Pope John XXIII had opened the door to the Left. The Vatican Council had shaken all the old certainties. His marriage was a wreck beyond salvage. Most of his old business associates were dead or retired. Now that I was going into the Church, he felt he had nothing on which to build a new life.
‘Lenore, who kept house for him, said to me one day: “My heart breaks for him, Sandro. He’s so desperately lonely. Because of your mother, he’s lost his trust in women and his taste for them too. He hasn’t even got a steady man-friend any more. He’s talking of building a new boat, so he can go cruising with these young fellows he brings into the house when you’re not around. I don’t know what will happen to him when you’re gone . . .” I didn’t know either, Cavanagh.’
‘Did you ever try to talk to him about it?’
‘Yes, I did, several times. He only got angry and told me to keep my nose out of his life. One day, I got angry too and shouted that his life was my life, because I loved him and I hated what he was doing to himself! Finally, it was like breaking through a wall to a prisoner, and finding him huddled in fugue. I coaxed him. I bullied him. I did everything possible to make him talk. Eventually he told me about himself and Hadjidakis. He opened his safe and brought out Hadjidakis’ journal. He knew I’d studied Greek and Latin in my humanities course, so he handed me the book and told me: “. . . You’ve had a small taste of hell recently, Sandro. Now read this and see what a real hell looks like. While you’re reading it, and making all the judgments that you can’t avoid making, write this little note on your shirtcuff: ‘Even when I was in hell, I thought it was heaven, because I was sharing it with a loving friend.’ If that makes a grain of sense to you, you’ll probably make a good shepherd of souls. If it doesn’t, give up the whole idea and go join the bandits like Sindona and Gelli, who are playing games with the Vatican’s money; just like the Colonna and the Borgia and the Farnese did in the old days . . .”’
‘So,’ Cavanagh asked: ‘You read the journal?’
‘I read it several times. I was hypnotised.’
‘But what did you feel about it?’
‘I laughed. I cried. I wanted to puke. I was shamed. I was angry. Sometimes I wished I had been there to share the sexual adventures with them. Sometimes I had nightmares from which I woke sweating in the darkness about all the spoiled lives and all the brutal tyrannies of the underworld, which had been my father’s playground and was becoming so again. Looking back, I think the book confirmed me in what I saw as my vocation, to bear some of the human burden, some of Lou Molloy’s burden, on my own shoulders.’
‘Did you tell that to Lou?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I thanked him for letting me read it.’
‘And . . .?’
‘I put my arms around him and cried. Afterwards, we tore the book apart, put it through Lou’s shredder, then dumped it down the furnace chute. Next day we drove to Boston to visit the Hadjidakis family. And that,’ said Sandro firmly, ‘is enough about Lou Molloy and me.’
‘More than enough. I’m grateful for your telling of it.’
‘So now it’s your turn, Cavanagh. What was it between you and my mother?’
‘It was love – on my side, at least – on hers too I believe. I was young. She was vulnerable, because Lou Molloy wasn’t handling her very well and she was just beginning to understand what this marriage might cost her. So when Molloy left the ship to go to Naples and New York, we became lovers. Giulia’s father and her Aunt Lucietta joined in a conspiracy to keep Giulia happy until Molloy returned and led her to the altar.’
‘I can understand that.’ Sandro the bishop frowned unhappily. ‘It’s all in the grand family tradition! Please go on.’
‘I asked Giulia to marry me. I promised her and I promised your grandfather that if she accepted me I wanted nothing from the family and I would deal with Molloy. If she refused me, I was ready to walk out of her life and create no problems for anyone. Giulia didn’t want to make a decision until the last moment. I accepted that too. In the end, she opted for Molloy; but believe me, if I’d known she was pregnant, I’d have fought the whole of the heavenly host to keep her with me!’ He shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of total defeat. ‘What more can I say? Your mother’s story is her own to tell; but there’s one thing I can swear: You, my Lord Bishop of Trajanopolis in Phrygia, are truly a lovechild. You were begotten in love, even if you weren’t always nurtured in it. I’m just sorry it’s too late in the day to give you back a little of what you missed.’
‘I don’t think I missed too much.’ Sandro poured another shot of whisky for both of them. ‘What I had was different, that’s all. I often wonder whether my mother didn’t fare worse than any of us.’
Cavanagh permitted himself an ironic smile at the notion. ‘I’d be interested to hear you explain that pastoral thought, Sandro.’
‘I know it sounds like a paradox, because now she’s free as the birds in the air, with both the Molloy and the Farnese trusts firmly under her control. I’ve asked her to administer my share along with hers until I can choose the right cause to spend it on. But what I’m really trying to say is that you were the big love of her life, the one hope of happiness she had; she lacked the courage to grasp it. So all her other affairs, short or long, were pale station lights in a long dark night of the soul. You, I understand, have found another love and made a happy family together. So, it is as I said: Mama is left alone.’
‘Are you blaming me for that?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Giulia still has you.’
‘I’m afraid she doesn’t. I’m in servitude now, to God and to the Church. You know that’s not a fiction. I go where I’m sent, do as I’m told. The Farnese line ends with me. The Molloy line, too. Perhaps it’s just as well. In today’s world, dynasties are out of date. To attempt to revive them or create them is to put new monsters on our planet, which already we are turning into a moonscape.’ He was silent a moment, hesitating over his next question. He was not smiling when he asked it. ‘Tell me, Cavanagh, are you still in love with my mother?’
‘You’d have made a hell of an inquisitor, Sandro!’ said Cavanagh with grim humour. ‘And you’ll probably want to burn me for the answer I’m giving you. No! I’m not in love with your mother. Being in love is a transient state, a malady of youth. You should be over it by your fifties. If you’re not, you’re in real trouble. Ask me, however, if I love your mother? Yes, I do. The world still lights up a little when I look at her, or think of her. We can still strike fire when we’re angry with each other, as we were today. When I thought she was in trouble I came instantly to her call . . . So I guess you could say I love her.’
‘Would you, if you had the chance, take her back into your life?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. There’s no more room left in my heart, in my house, or in my life; but I’d rather not have the pain of telling her that.’
‘She knows it already, Cavanagh.’ Sandro smiled at him over the rim of his glass. ‘Just don’t let her seduce you into a discussion about it.’
‘Which brings me to my last question,’ said Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh. ‘Where do you and I go from here?’
Alessandro Aloysius Molloy Farnese looked very much the churchman as he put his fingertips together, pursed his full lips and pondered the question. His answer, when it came, was clear as spring water.
‘I don’t think we go anywhere, Cavanagh. Time, geography, history, are all against us. There is no place for me in your life. There is none for you in mine. I know something about women, a lot about my dear mother. She’s a perennial maker of small mischiefs and I doubt if even a seasoned attorney like yourself could cope with her. So, here is what we do. From tonight, the book is closed, shredded and burned; but you will think of me sometimes, as you think of my mother, with love. I will remember you with my mother, every day in my Mass, which is a sacrament of love. That way, I think we’ll all have the best of it – and none of us will be a nuisance to the others.’
Cavanagh was near to tears. As always, he tried to conceal his emotion with a joke: ‘Do you think your mother will agree to that deal?’
‘She’s the one who constructed it, Cavanagh. In the best Farnese tradition, it’s the women who rescue the men, from debt collectors, irate husbands and the public executioner. You will, however, have to perform a small service for my mother.’
‘Which is?’
‘To resign as her attorney. That way she dispenses with you, not you with her. Also, it may suit you to leave tomorrow instead of Monday . . . With my mother’s permission of course!’
‘I hope I’m up to all this,’ said Cavanagh with weary humour. ‘I’m getting too old for grand opera!’ He raised his glass in a final toast:
‘To my son; too lately come by, and the mother who bore him! Slàinte!’
‘To my father, well met, at last!’ said Sandro. ‘Hail and farewell!’
As they drained their glasses, the sound of the dinner gong echoed through the halls of the Prince’s Villa.
Sandro stood up first. He offered his hand to Cavanagh. With surprising strength, he heaved him out of his armchair into a long, silent embrace. Then they walked together down the tiled corridor to dine with Giulia the Beautiful.