Clare starts at this, she can’t help it. Boyd covers her hand with his but she doesn’t look at him. His woman is dead. A dry breeze moves through the courtyard, reaches into the buildings and slams a door. The tablecloth flutters. Nobody speaks; they all wait for Leandro’s lead, and keep their eyes down, and suddenly Clare hates herself, and all of them, for their cowardice. She looks across at Leandro.
‘A serious subject for the breakfast table,’ she says.
‘The world is a serious place, Mrs Kingsley,’ says Leandro. She notices how rarely he blinks. But then he smiles. ‘But you’re right. These are not matters to be solved over morning coffee. At least the boy is healing; I’ve no wish to see him ruined. I offer him work here on the masseria – I offer it every time. But the annaroli are as bad as the proprietors, as far as the giornatari are concerned.’
‘What’s an annaroli? And what happened at the Girardi place?’ says Pip.
‘Annarolo means a man who works here all year round, in a permanent job – the overseer and the herdsman, the corporals. And never mind Girardi. Come – let’s talk of other things. I’ll speak to my nephew again today, and what’s between us is for us to untangle. Tell me instead about this play you’re devising.’
Clare wants to ask him about the woman who is dead, the woman who belonged to Ettore, but she doesn’t dare. Suddenly, it’s more important than Leandro’s past, more important than his hold over Boyd and the lies she’s been told. She concentrates on breathing; she can smell the cattle on the breeze, and a woody, fungus aroma she can’t place. She can smell the greasy dogs on their rusty chains. She gets to her feet, knocks the table and causes cutlery to chime against porcelain.
‘Clare, are you all right?’ says Boyd. She looks down at him, and it feels as though she’s looking at him from a long way away.
‘I’m fine. I think I’ll go for a walk; I need some fresh air.’ She knows this sounds absurd, since they’re sitting outside, but she doesn’t care.
‘I’ll go with you,’ says Pip, also standing and snatching up the last piece of bread from his plate. Nobody else offers and Clare is relieved. Pip is the only one she can be with just then.
‘Rehearsals when you get back, Filippo,’ Marcie calls as they go. She turns to Boyd and adds: ‘I’ve been wracking my brains, but I honestly don’t think that there is an Italian version of Boyd, I’m afraid.’ Clare doesn’t hear Boyd’s murmured reply.
Once Pip has stopped to greet Bobby, who barks slightly less but still fidgets at the end of his tether, they walk out through the main gates and around the back, past the trulli where some of the men sleep. One or two loiter there, simply standing, smoking. Clare feels their eyes following her and Pip. She looks over defiantly but one of them is Federico, and she looks away again quickly, but not before she catches that same questioning look in his eye, and perhaps Pip notices it too, because he scowls even as he gives them a small wave. The mule that was treated for lampas is standing in the stockade with its head down, a picture of misery. Clare says nothing, hoping Pip won’t notice it there.
In the distance the milking herd are grazing in a walled field, so they walk in that direction, glad for something to aim for, something to look at. Aside from the dusty road that leads away from the gates, there are no discernible paths. The road curves away and vanishes behind the shallow hill; Clare has no idea if Gioia lies to the north, south, east or west. She can’t exactly picture where she is within Italy, other than south; far south. This realisation frightens her – she is completely lost. Completely dependent on Boyd and Leandro.
‘You don’t like Mr Cardetta very much, do you?’ says Pip, with studied casualness. He picks up a stick from beneath an olive tree and starts to peel away the bark. Mr Cardetta, he says, not Leandro – just as she instructed. Clare wonders how stern she must look for him to suddenly do as she’s asked. She tries to soften her face but it’s not quite in her control.
‘I don’t feel I know him well enough to decide yet,’ she says, and this seems to trouble him.
‘But you like Marcie, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. It would be hard not to like someone like Marcie.’
‘That’s a reason to like Mr Cardetta, isn’t it? I mean, if somebody nice has married a person, I usually take it as a good sign about them. Don’t you?’
‘I suppose so. Sometimes. But people do change,’ says Clare. ‘He obviously loves her a great deal.’
‘Are you going to watch our rehearsal today?’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Yes, of course. Only it might ruin the play if you watch all the rehearsals. I mean, we’re planning a surprise ending.’
‘Well, I’ll watch until you come to something you want to keep secret, how about that?’
‘All right.’ He swishes the olive stick, makes it whoop through the air. ‘Have you seen any other ch-’ He cuts himself off, caught in the act of calling himself a child. ‘Young people here? At the masseria, I mean?’
‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t,’ says Clare, knowing how lonely and quiet it must be for him.
‘Good job I’ve got Bobby,’ he says stoutly. She puts her arm around his shoulders for a moment, and gives them a squeeze.
‘Do you know, my aunt’s old dog used to go bananas for toast crusts? Especially if there was a bit of jam on them. He’d do anything – turn circles, play dead, shake hands. Maybe toast crusts will be the key to Bobby’s heart,’ she says.
They stop at the edge of the cattle field and sit down on the wall for a while. Lizards scatter from their feet, darting out of sight; flies appear at once to buzz around their heads. The cows are browsing the wheat stubble and the dark, dirty weeds in amongst it. The herd leader’s bell has a sad chime, flat and in a minor key, and they all whisk their tails continually at the flies. A few of them have small calves at their feet, and the calves try repeatedly to suckle from their mothers. From a distance it’s hard to work out why they can’t seem to manage it, but as the herd gradually comes closer Clare sees the collars the calves are wearing – collars of long metal spikes, even longer than those that the guard dogs wear. Every time the calf gets close enough to reach for the udders, its mother gets jabbed, kicks out and moves away from it. The calves are bony and forlorn, they pick at the stubble while their mothers’ udders swell.
‘Why aren’t they allowed to drink?’ says Pip, and in an instant Clare knows the answer.
‘So we can.’
‘Oh. That’s so cruel, though,’ he says, and he looks across at them, scowling. Clare wants to get up and walk away from the pitiful spectacle, and try to distract Pip from this realisation, but something stops her. They both drank the milk at breakfast, and ate the fresh mozzarella the night before.