Birthright, p.21
Birthright, page 21
In the lowest of the three drawers, beneath a bulging yellow folder with ‘Documenti ’ written across the front, she found a parcel wrapped in bright-red paper and recognised it immediately. She took it out and held it in her lap for a few moments, burning with hurt, and then, recklessly, tore the parcel open to free the rag doll. ‘Hello, Fiona,’ she said. She hugged the doll to her, then crossed the room and lay on the bed.
She woke when her mother called her name. No, not her name. Maddy’s name. ‘I’m coming,’ she said, picking up the doll.
Her mother was in the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, filling her glass from the half-empty bottle. Fiona looked at her watch. Five o’clock. She’d slept for more than two hours on Maddy’s bed; she felt bizarrely rested. She held the doll out. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said. Her mother looked surprised, and then confused.
‘What on earth is it?’
‘It’s a doll,’ Fiona said. She wanted to add, she’s one of a pair, they’re identical, like twins, to see what might happen, but she didn’t dare.
‘What have I done to deserve this?’ her mother said, still puzzled.
‘Nothing,’ said Fiona. She shrugged, smiled. ‘Everything.’
Her mother took the doll from her. ‘Well, thank you,’ she said. She studied the doll for a moment, then gave Fiona a clumsy hug. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’
Fiona went out for more wine, some cheese, a loaf. The money was almost spent, but she still had just enough for two small chocolates filled with cherry liqueur. When she came back, her mother had put on a creased Laura Ashley dress and sandals with coloured glass on the straps, and combed her hair, and put on some eyeliner which made her look like a flower child, and Fiona almost cried with joy. They spent the rest of the evening watching television, some endless variety show on RAI. How many hours of television she must watch, Fiona thought, whole evenings passed like this, and she was furious with Maddy, who had let it happen.
She watched her mother fill her glass from the first bottle, and then unscrew the second, with a sly sidelong glance at Fiona, as if she expected to be told off or to have the bottle taken away from her, moved out of reach, and Fiona was tempted to do that, because she couldn’t bear to see her mother killing herself like this. She thought of her other mother, thousands of miles away from this dingy smoke-filled room, sitting alone in her tasteful home, a book on her lap, a glass of sherry on a nearby table. What would she think of this ageing, overweight hippie, this drunk, this single parent? What words of condemnation would she have for the bare bruised legs and unsuitable sandals? For the ashtray perched on the arm of the sofa, which needed to be emptied before it spilt over the cushions? Fiona started to get up to do precisely that, but her mother caught her sleeve. ‘Where are you going?’ she said. ‘You were doing so well.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her mother looked at her, a slow and appraising look that chilled Fiona to the core.
‘Nothing,’ she said. She patted the sofa. ‘Don’t leave me. It’s so nice to have you here beside me,’ and Fiona fell back.
‘I was just—’
‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ her mother said. ‘Everything’s all right. I’m not stupid, you know.’
Before Fiona could speak, her mother continued. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I haven’t had such a lovely evening for ages.’ She squeezed her daughter’s arm, clumsily pulled her in close enough to be kissed. ‘I’ve missed you.’
*
Ludovico liked to cook. Maddy sat in the armchair with a glass of wine, the heat of the fire on her legs, and watched him. She felt more at ease than she had in weeks. She was thinking about happiness and how there was no place in the world that made her happy, how her happiness was independent of place and whether this was a good thing or not, and she was on the point of saying this a dozen times, but something stopped her. He’d been putting some wood on the fire ten minutes ago and she’d seen a log slip and thought it might burn him. She’d grabbed the poker to push the log back into place and her arm had brushed the bare skin of his and she had felt its texture, its heat, as vivid and profound as a shockwave, a dry, resilient electric quality that had left her shaken, as though some alien element had touched her, burnt her almost, indelibly left its mark. She could feel it still.
‘Do you like avocado?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Because Italians can be very purist about their food.’
‘You speak as though you weren’t Italian,’ she said.
‘I’m Italian when I need to be.’ He waved his knife at her.
‘And wouldn’t it be a good idea to be Italian now?’
‘Because I’m preparing a meal for a beautiful woman, you mean.’
She laughed, amused, flattered. Is that really what he sees when he looks at me? she wondered. A beautiful woman? She didn’t see herself as a woman, not really. Heather was a woman, Fiona’s mother – whoever she was – was a woman. She felt untested, unsure in comparison. ‘No. I just meant, here we are, in Italy, in the grounds of a papal villa, drinking some very good Italian wine.’
‘In that case we can both be Italian,’ he said. ‘Or we can pretend to be, which is just as good.’ He put down the knife and raised his glass to her. ‘Allora, parliamo italiano?’
She raised her glass back. ‘Va benissimo.’
When they had finished eating and Ludovico had opened a second bottle of wine and they had already drunk more than half of it, he reached across the table and took her hand.
‘I like your ring,’ he said. ‘I noticed it when you came round for dinner.’
‘You can’t have done,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have it then.’
‘Really? I could swear I’ve seen it before. Are you sure?’
She corrected herself. ‘Well, I did have it, in a way, but I didn’t know I did.’
‘You’re being mysterious.’
She shook her head. ‘My mother had it made for me when I was a child but for some reason she’s only just given it to me.’ She shrugged. ‘My mother’s strange.’
‘I’d realised that.’
She looked at him. ‘What do you know about my mother?’ she said, more sharply than she intended.
He looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I said that. Your mother is none of my business.’
‘That isn’t what I asked,’ said Maddy. She pulled her hand away. ‘I asked you what you know about her.’
He tried to take her hand back but she wouldn’t let him. She reached for the packet of cigarettes, lit one from the candle Ludovico had put in the centre of the table.
‘Nothing,’ he said, hopeless.
‘Fiona’s talked to you about her, hasn’t she?’
He sighed. ‘Do we have to talk about Fiona?’
‘Not if we don’t have to talk about my mother.’
‘It’s a deal,’ he said. He poured her another glass of wine.
‘She’d love this place,’ Maddy said.
‘I thought—’
‘Don’t be so pedantic, Ludovico,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a beautiful woman’s prerogative to change her mind as often as she liked.’
He acquiesced with a nod.
‘It’s got a hippie feel to it,’ she said. ‘She’d like that. A bit run-down. In the country, but not really in the country, so she wouldn’t have to walk too far to get a drink.’
‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about your mother after all.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ She paused. ‘Because she really would love it. Why do I always spoil things?’
‘You haven’t spoilt anything for me.’ He reached out once again to take her hand; this time, she edged it towards him.
‘Why have you brought me here?’
‘To show you where I work.’
‘No, seriously.’
‘Because I like you very much. Because I want to know you better. Because I think you’re beautiful. Because I’d like to make love to you.’
So you must think she’s beautiful as well. You must want to fuck her – sorry, make love to her – as much as you want to fuck me. Maddy bit these words back, but she could taste them in her throat. Why do I always spoil things? she repeated to herself. She looked at him, his eyes so dark they seemed all pupil, the shape of his face, his lips. She looked at the way his hair fell over his forehead, at his neck and the ‘V’ of hair on the pale skin where he had left his shirt open. The room was warm and she was suddenly tired. She picked up her glass with her free hand and rested it for a moment on the back of his, then drained it and put it down, her eyes still on him. When he walked round to her side of the table and took her shoulders as if to lift her, she stood up, her head swimming slightly, and put her hands on his waist. She raised her head for him to kiss her, and he did, and she was on the point of crying – with relief, with fear, because she was a little afraid, with desire, perhaps with love – when he turned and led her across the room and into another room she hadn’t seen up to now, but had always known would be here, had always known would be where the evening ended.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sunday morning, Maddy woke up alone. Her first thought – before panic, or loneliness, or resentment – was that she was sore. Her hands reached between her legs and the memory flooded back of Ludovico’s gentle lips and tongue against her, inside her, and the unexpected roughness of his beard, and her dread that he would ask her why she flinched and tensed and moved away a little despite his gentleness. But he didn’t ask; he just slowed down, his touch even lighter than before. How sweet he was, she thought, how tenderly he treated her, so that everything that had followed had been right. There was no other word for it.
This is the first time I have made love, she thought. This is the first time I have been in a real bed with a real man, and the first time I have made love. She moved her hand across beneath the covers to see how long he had been gone and found the sheet still warm. She lay there, feeling her skin against the sheet, her body new to her. She heard a noise in the next room, of cups and cutlery, and it comforted her. She was not alone – but she knew that already. She raised her hand to her heart and felt it beat and remembered doing exactly this to Ludovico during the night, the covers pulled back, propped on one elbow, her hand as light as she could make it, letting it settle on his chest, feeling the whisper of hair beneath her palm, and then the life of him, regular, potent, the indomitable pulse of his blood beneath her touch, available only to her.
He opened the door with one hand, a tray in the other. ‘Coffee?’ he said. He was wearing a dressing gown that was too small for him, which left his legs bare, and made him look both boyish and virile.
‘Lovely,’ she said, sitting up, moving a pillow behind her. She had a slight headache from the wine of the evening before, but that would pass.
He put the tray down on the table next to the bed, then stood beside it, hesitating.
‘You should come back to bed,’ she said. ‘You’ll get cold.’ She paused. ‘In your sweet little dressing gown.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I’ve had it since I was fourteen, which makes it half as old as I am. It is a bit – what’s the word? Skippy?’
‘Skimpy,’ she said, laughing.
‘Skimpy, skippy.’ He shrugged. ‘You know that if I get back into bed I can’t be held to account for what I do.’
‘I’ll take that risk,’ she said.
This time he asked her if he had hurt her.
‘Just a bit,’ she said, because there was no point in lying.
‘Oh Maddy. I didn’t mean to,’ he said, concerned.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and, because she was not prepared to tell the truth, she added: ‘I’m fine. I borrowed someone’s bike a couple of days ago, that’s all, and I slipped and—’
‘Maybe if I kiss it better?’ he said.
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’ She laughed. ‘It didn’t work last time, did it?’ She sat up, stroked her arms. ‘I need a shower.’
‘Is that something we can do together?’
‘I don’t think we’d better.’
‘In that case, I’ll prepare some breakfast,’ he said. He picked up his dressing gown, then decided not to wear it. She watched him leave the bedroom, naked, the paleness of his back in contrast to the dark hair of his legs. How beautiful he is, she thought.
*
Sunday morning, Fiona woke up in Maddy’s bed. She lay there, confused and shivering in her bra and panties, beneath a rucked-up blanket and bedspread that had half slipped from the bed. The noise of crates being moved beneath her window had woken her. She’d gone to bed without closing the shutters, without brushing her teeth, her clothes were thrown across the chair. She hadn’t planned to sleep here, although she had known she would if she had the chance. She lay still, getting her bearings, holding her breath until she realised what she was doing, and sucked in air. The last thing she remembered was hoisting her mother up from the sofa, and then both of them falling back onto it in a sniggering heap. She sat up and looked around. There was a book beside the bed she hadn’t noticed the evening before. She picked it up. Sophie’s Choice. Oh, my God, she thought. She put it down again.
Through the door, Fiona could hear her mother’s breathing, heavy, irregular. Her room overlooked the street, the trattoria. Fiona wondered how she could sleep there. She had helped her to bed the evening before, helped her out of her dress and knickers, and into some men’s pyjamas she’d found on the bed. Hold your arms up, she’d said, and her mother had sleepily obeyed. She knew more about her mother’s body after a day than she did about her other mother’s after twenty years, she knew the creases and folds, the full soft breasts, the stretch marks she and Maddy had made, the last real thing they had done together. She’d kissed her mother good night on the forehead, the way a parent kisses her child, reassurance that she would still be loved when she woke, that she would not be alone. Her mother had murmured something into the pillow that might have been ‘I love you’, or might not, but that didn’t matter; whatever it was, it would do. Fiona had been acknowledged, and maybe more than that. What had Heather meant when she said, I’m not stupid, you know? Had she been on the point of recognising Fiona, had she understood? Why hadn’t she said so then? Fiona lay in bed until she felt cold and then pulled on her clothes from the night before, because she had no other clothes to wear, apart from those that belonged to Maddy, and the thought of wearing those – of lying, because that is what it would amount to – revolted her. She would never lie again, she told herself.
Now, on this first morning of her new life, she went into the kitchen and searched out coffee, unscrewed and refilled the coffee pot, washed cups and spoons. She opened the door to the terrace and looked up at the surrounding buildings. I could be happy here, she thought, her head thrown back, staring at the handkerchief of cloudless blue sky far above her. I belong here. I won’t let anyone take this from me.
‘You’ll get cold out there,’ her mother said. Fiona turned round.
‘I’m coming in now,’ she said. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this happy.
After their coffee, Fiona convinced her mother to leave the flat. They walked until they reached the cemetery, where her mother came to an abrupt halt. ‘This place depresses me,’ she said. She pulled away from Fiona, her tone querulous now. ‘I want to go home. I’m tired.’ Fiona, filled with guilt, hugged her mother to her. All she had wanted was to make her happy. How stupid she’d been to bring her to a place of death. Death is so far away, she’d thought. A flash of memory carried her back to the graveyard she’d visited with Patrick, but she pushed it to one side. The last thing she needed now was to worry about Patrick.
Home in the flat, her mother said, ‘Why are you treating me like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘As if I mattered. What I want. What I feel. As if they mattered. After all I’ve done to you.’
Fiona was thrilled. What a monster Maddy must be. You’ll pay for this, she thought. But who did Heather think she was talking to?
‘You do matter,’ she said. ‘You’ve done nothing.’
‘Well, you don’t always behave as if I do,’ her mother said, looking carefully at her.
‘I will from now on,’ Fiona said. ‘I promise.’
Her mother nodded. ‘Come over here next to me,’ she said, patting the seat of the sofa. ‘I want to tell you something.’ When Fiona hesitated, she tapped the seat a second time, playful but impatient. ‘Get a move on, before I change my mind.’
As soon as Fiona was beside her, she took her daughter’s hand, held it almost too tightly. Then she loosened her grip and touched the ring.
‘I had this made for you a couple of weeks before you were born,’ she said. ‘I was enormous, like a beached whale.’ She smiled. ‘I went to visit a friend of mine near Bristol, on the coach. I filled two seats, I remember, and the driver asked me if I’d be all right and when was the baby due, and I told him not to worry about it. My friend had a cottage just outside town, she sent someone to pick me up in a clapped-out old car and I thought I was going to fall through a hole in the floor of it, it was so rusty. I only went all that way because this friend was amazing at making jewellery. She was older than me, an artist. I hadn’t known her that long, we shared a squat when I first got to London. I was your age.’ She paused. ‘Twenty years old, and pregnant, and all I could think of was getting these rings made for you. I must have been crazy. I didn’t even have any money.’ She said ‘rings’, thought Fiona, oh my God, she said rings. ‘She kissed my hands and gave me these little velvet pouches and I tried to give her what I had in my bag, which was almost nothing but I couldn’t not try, could I? She wouldn’t take it, she wouldn’t take a penny. She said I should save my money for you. She said she’d made the rings for you, and that they were special because you were special.’ She opened her eyes. ‘I wonder what she’d say if she could see us now. If she could see you.’ She clutched Fiona’s hand even harder than before, then let it go with a sigh. Her eyes filled with tears.
