Ring For Champagne

GIANNI’S MOTHER HAD REDONE the dining room to celebrate the estate’s mythic roots, the walls papered in a design of Celtic knots set around Scottish scenes: a piper on a hill, a moon dancing on a rill, a stag at bay. She was explaining to the Barbareschi that the silk tartan table covering had been especially woven at Como. The napkin rings were amethyst and silver, each set with a rabbit foot.

Ralph Farnham put a hand on Clare’s elbow as he pulled out her chair, murmuring ,“Welcome to the higher echelons, old dear. Didn’t I once tell you that nothing could ever be good enough?” He looked pleased to have a fellow traveller on that road. “Just thank your glitzy little American stars that you’re the girlfriend,” he added, “and not locked in like some of us.” Federica shot a scowl mirroring the stag’s head on the wall.

Gianni was seated across from Clare, but not directly opposite.

A new arrival, Nunziata, had been put beside him, a woman of a certain age, making every effort to fend it off. Succeeding, too. Mulberry hair in wild curls. Green eyes. All the lines and wrinkles falling gracefully into place, under a toffee glaze of sun. How was it possible, also, to wear so few inches of very bright green silk and still signal elegance and class?

Nunziata’s husband was in Zurich. There was laughter around this. With Nunziata’s arrival, the tide of language swept into fast Italian.

“You must forgive us,” Nunziata said, leaning in Clare’s direction after another burst of laughter, offering cleavage down which Tomasso was sadly staring. “This is all my fault. I do not to speak your language very well.”

But Clare was glad to be left out. Since Gianni’s declaration, her ribcage had turned metallic too, like a true cage, so much racketing around inside.

Gianni’s bold pronouncement was sure to evaporate — that much came clear, as the nonsense in her chest settled down. Maybe he had written to his wife, but hadn’t posted the letter — or if an email, he’d neglected to press “Send.” He was making stiff conversation with Nunziata now, glancing Clare’s way from time to time, and she tried to telegraph him the message Don’t worry. I know it was just another lovely dream. She smiled. He looked more worried still, perhaps mistaking her smile for excitement at his supposed decision, imagining she’d taken him seriously, believed?

Carolina and Egidio were in fine form, tackling their antipasto with rapid tiny bites, and more than once bursting into snatches of song. Was this their concept of noblesse oblige, an attempt to keep the party lively and at the same time to cover up what they might now be thinking had been their insensitivity?

Gianni looked increasingly pale and tense, and Clare wondered if she hadn’t wished those overreaching wishes earlier today, would he have spoken as he had, and landed himself in such a pickle now?

Look what I’ve brought on him, she thought. She remembered him listing all the butterflies gone from the world, how he’d made those names into a poem. He’d battled the terrible sadness of extinction by saving what he could — even to the point of a defiant faith in things that never could be what he thought. Like the unicorn. Or her.

The consommé arrived. Carolina and Egidio turned to Clare. “In America, you have such soups!” they said. “We heard the jingle everywhere.” Egidio raised his spoon. “Mmmm good!” Carolina chimed in with the tune. The others laughed and clapped.

“Signora Livingston,” Carolina said. “In truth, you must be just a little homesick for your great country. Eager perhaps to return?”

Gianni pushed back his chair.

“Signora Livingston has no intention to leave. This evening I have asked my dear Clare to be my wife.”

The stag’s head bobbled on the wall, the rabbit feet skipped across the cloth; Clare had no idea how long it was before it all rearranged itself. If she had been prepared for this, she would have expected argument, outrage. But Gianni’s mother was looking at her, for the first time, with piercing interest. Even Tomasso had emerged from his protective detachment to nod across the table at his stepson, wearily, as if to say Welcome to the club. Everyone indeed seemed to quicken at the coming scandal, which would in a manner absolve them all by being even more notorious.

But little was said.

“Tomasso. Ring for some champagne,” Gianni’s mother ordered. “We must acknowledge this interesting news.” Gianni was beaming, as if all his earlier tension had been about finding the right moment to make his announcement. Tall crystal glasses were raised, though no one proposed a toast. Even the Marchese and his little grey mate seemed unable to rise to the correct ebullient protocol. The meal continued. Talk became general again. Carpaccio followed. Then quail. Clare found herself studying Mammà, the fatal trout, trying to calibrate Tomasso’s feelings for the woman who had cost him so much, and who was telling the story once again of her origins as a citizen of France, tossing her thin ringed hands, batting her bluerimmed eyes at Aldo now. Clare decided that Tomasso didn’t feel indifference to the once-fatal beauty after all, no. What his restrained expression revealed was pure and intensely loyal hate.

The air in the room began to solidify. Clare imagined herself in distant years, at this table, repeating for the fifth time some story of her own past, and Gianni looking at her in that same way, everything long ago hardened between the two of them, the way the silver scene had earlier. He is the endangered one, she thought; but how skittery the truth was. She watched it dart round the table, thinking that for once she had to catch it, make it talk. Instead, she saw the Roman garden Gianni had promised he would build for her inside their dream villa, the garden where she would sit and paint, and he would watch: the beautiful place, walled up brick by brick, by that watchful love.

Gianni was giving minute attention to the many tiny bones of his quail, looking ravenous, relieved, subsumed by happiness. Clare got up from the table, intending just to find the powder room, but as she passed under the gaze of the little angels on the ceiling of the San Gimignano room, her meadow paintings called out in the semi-gloom. She gathered them together, slid them into Gianni’s portfolio, carried this with her to the arched front door as she went out to breathe the air.

Across the gravel court the musical iron gates were singing. It was like a dance, as she took one step down the marble staircase, and another and another, one flight to the right, doubling back to the left. She passed the fountain with the spouting dolphin, and kept going.