The Night Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

says.
    ‘So early in the year?’ she says, but then remembers all the teams she saw from the train, their scythes moving with the steady rhythm of metronomes. She opens her mouth to say something about the lack of tractors, or harvesting machines, but shuts it again. The south is poor, she has been told. Everywhere is poor after the war, but the south was poor to begin with. They have gone from destitute to something less than that.
    In the rear-view mirror she catches the driver’s eye, flicking over her as though checking something. She shifts her weight and turns to smile at Pip. The car turns onto Via Garibaldi and drives down between the tall, ornate fronts of the best houses Clare has seen yet. Some might even be described as palaces, she thinks. Palazzi . Slowing, the driver sounds the horn, and a set of carriage doors in the wall of one building swing open for them to drive through. They pass beneath a wide, dark archway and into an open courtyard. ‘Oh, look!’ says Clare, surprised. Boyd seems pleased by her reaction.
    ‘A lot of the grander houses are designed like this – a quadrangle around an inner courtyard. But from the outside you wouldn’t expect it, would you?’ he says. The sky is a perfect bright square above them.
    ‘I had no idea that there would be places like this here. I mean …’ Clare pauses uncomfortably. ‘It’s obviously a very poor region.’ In the mirror, the driver stares at her.
    ‘The peasants are poor, the gentry are rich, same as anywhere,’ says Boyd. He gives her hand a squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, darling. I wouldn’t bring you to darkest Africa.’
    A few watchful staff appear around the cloistered edges of the courtyard, ready to take the luggage, and as the three of them exit the car Clare feels her heart bumping with nerves. Their hosts appear through double doors in the far side of the building – a couple, the man holding his arms out wide, as though to greet old friends; the woman with a smile to rival the sun.
    ‘Mrs Kingsley! We are so delighted to finally have you here!’ says the man. His hands come to rest on her shoulders, heavy and warm, and he kisses her on both cheeks.
    ‘You must be Signor Cardetta. How do you do? Piacere ,’ says Clare, using the Italian word self-consciously, uncertain of her accent.
    ‘Leandro Cardetta, at your service. But – you speak Italian, Mrs Kingsley? This is wonderful!’
    ‘Oh, hardly at all!’
    ‘Nonsense – she’s being modest, Cardetta. She speaks it very well,’ says Boyd.
    ‘Well, I hardly understood a word the driver said to the porter at the station. It was very disheartening.’
    ‘Ah, but they probably spoke in the local dialect, my dear Mrs Kingsley. Quite a different thing. To the peasants down here, Italian is as foreign a language as it is to you.’ Cardetta turns her gently towards the radiant woman. ‘May I present my wife, Marcie?’
    ‘How do you do, Mrs Cardetta?’
    ‘Oh, I’m Marcie – only ever Marcie! When people go around calling me Mrs Cardetta I don’t even know myself,’ she says. Marcie is striking, elegant, with the narrow hips and shoulders of a boy, and disproportionately full breasts sitting high on her chest. Her eyes are blue and her hair the colour of ripe barley, set in a wave that grazes her jawline. Her American accent is unmistakable and Clare tries not to show her surprise. ‘What – neither one of these fellas warned you I was a Yankee?’ says Marcie, but she doesn’t seem displeased.
    ‘Warned isn’t the word, but no – I had assumed you were Italian, Mrs Cardetta – Marcie. Do forgive me.’
    ‘What’s to forgive? And who is this highly distinguished young man?’ She holds out her hand and Pip shakes it, and though he is polite and confident as he does it, a touch of colour brushes over his cheeks. Clare thinks of the way she herself used to blush when shown the least attention by a man – or any new person – and feels a rush of tenderness towards