He limps away towards the road and doesn’t look back, and Clare wants to shout, to tell him to wait, to know where he’s going. But she knows already – he is leaving. She can’t run after him; she has no choice but to remain amongst the crowd of men, who are deflated now, cheated of the spectacle, and mutter as they move away. Soon she will be obvious, she will be exposed, but still she can’t move. She watches Ettore’s retreating back, and longs for him to turn. He walks stiffly, one hand pressed to the ribs where Ludo’s kick landed, but he doesn’t pause. When she’s alone, standing pointlessly on the vacant patch of dusty ground, Clare can feel Leandro looking at her. She turns to meet his eye – she can’t help it. I did this, she thinks. I did this. The warm breeze sets to work, erasing the marks of the fight from the dusty ground, and Clare can only tolerate Leandro’s hard, questioning gaze for a moment before she too has to turn, and walk away.
At dinner Leandro is subdued, thoughtful, and Clare can’t put food in her mouth. The meal glistens on her plate – thin shavings of donkey meat, rolled and cooked in a thick red sauce; focaccia bread oozing oil, studded with nubs of sickly green olive. The mozzarella has wept out a puddle of whey, and the primitivo wine smells acid-sour. Anna poured some for Pip at the start of the meal, and he’s drunk it all; Boyd puts his fingers discreetly over his son’s glass when the girl returns with the jug, and Pip shoots him a rebellious look. Clare would normally be the one to do it but she hadn’t even noticed. She glances up now and sees that Pip’s cheeks are pink, and his eyes are shining and bleary. But she can’t react; she can’t find any words to say.
‘So he just went off without a word, our Ettore?’ says Marcie. ‘That’s a little rude after all the time he’s spent with us… But, these Italian men! Nothing if not passionate. Am I right?’ She looks at Clare first as she asks this and Clare flinches. But Marcie’s expression is simply puzzled, slightly injured. Clare nods once.
‘Yes, it would seem so,’ she says. Marcie puts her hand over Leandro’s and leans towards him.
‘Look at my poor husband, so sad to see him go. And to go in high dudgeon like this… What on earth were they fighting about, him and Ludo?’
‘What the giornatari and the annaroli have been fighting about for a hundred years.’ Leandro flicks his eyes at Clare and it feels like a slap.
‘What’s the matter, Clare? You look weird,’ says Pip. The wine has made him blunt, clumsy.
‘Yes, I’m not feeling terribly well,’ she says, and as she says it she realises it’s true. Her stomach quivers and then lurches up to the back of her throat, as though the terrace is pitching beneath them. The back of her neck feels cold and clammy; saliva drenches the insides of her cheeks; her fingertips tingle. She wants to go somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, somewhere she can be alone to feel this wretched, but she doesn’t think she could move without throwing up.
‘You have gone awfully pale,’ says Marcie.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ says Boyd, reaching for her.
‘Yes, please don’t-’ Clare waves her fingers but can’t finish the sentence. She shuts her eyes so she won’t see all of theirs, watching.
‘Is it the heat? Or the donkey meat? It is quite rich – I can only stomach a tiny taste of it,’ says Marcie, but all Clare’s attention has turned inwards; their voices recede into the distance, booming like a far-off sea. She hears the air rushing into her lungs and soughing out; her thudding heart and her blood moving with a seething sound. The world tilts, and goes dark.
She wakes to a room lit by a single lamp in a far corner, so that there’s no harsh glare in her eyes. She’s still dressed, lying on her back on the bed with a strange weight on her forehead. She puts her fingers to it and finds a cool, damp cloth. Pip is in a chair by the bed, and he’s finally past halfway through his dog-eared copy of Bleak House.
‘All right there, Pip?’ she says. ‘You might actually get that thing finished on this trip.’ She pulls the cloth from her head and sits up slowly. For a moment the blood thumps in her ears again, but then it fades.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps by the time I’m thirty,’ he says. His voice is heavy, his eyes hooded. The alcohol has worn off and left him sluggish. ‘Don’t faint again, will you?’ The look he gives her is that of an anxious child, just for a second.
‘I’ll try not to. Did I make a scene?’
‘You took the tablecloth with you when you went.’
‘No! Not really?’
‘Partly.’ Pip smiles. ‘You made a bit of a mess. Marcie screamed – I think she thought you were dead.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You did look awful,’ he says, and it’s almost an accusation. She frightened him.
‘Sorry, Pip. I’m fine really. I don’t know what came over me. Where’s your father?’
‘After Leandro carried you up here they went off into the sitting room with brandy. I think they’re talking about his drawings.’
‘Oh,’ says Clare. She knows the decision they might be making, and it causes her a spasm of panic.
‘Father was very worried about you, though. He looked very worried,’ says Pip, mistaking her tone.
‘I don’t want him to worry.’
‘Why did you faint?’
‘I’ve no idea, Pip.’ She smiles. ‘Women do, sometimes.’
‘You never have before.’
‘Then it must have been my turn. Honestly, Pip, I’m quite all right now.’ But all she can see is Ettore walking away, bloodied, with one hand pressed to his ribs. Gone, and she knows he won’t be coming back to Masseria dell’Arco. She tries not to think about it; she can’t let herself break down and cry in front of Pip.
‘Is this… was it because of Ettore Tarano?’ says Pip, sitting back in the chair and rubbing one thumb over the dry scabs of the dog bite on his hand. Clare is instantly afraid of his studied disinterest, the way he pretends the question is idle.
‘What do you mean?’ she says abruptly, before she can stop herself. Pip glowers.
‘You were out for a walk when the fight happened… did you see it? Was it… was it as bad as what happened in Gioia?’ Clare breathes carefully, and nods.
‘Yes – that is, no. It wasn’t as bad as what happened in Gioia. I hope nothing ever is. But I did see it. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps that’s what it was. It was horrible – they… they were in deadly earnest.’
‘And then when Marcie started talking about it at dinner it made you think of it again,’ he says, and Clare realises he needs to explain what happened; he needs to understand it, so he can know if it will happen again. She nods.
‘Yes. That’s probably it.’
‘This-’ he starts to say, breaking off, frowning down at his hands again. ‘This is all real, isn’t it? Only it doesn’t seem it. Not the way home and school and London seem real. But this is real too. More real and less, at the same time.’