Last Voyage of the Valentina Read online

  “I think we should eat,” said Thomas, straightening up. “Miranda, go and tell Cook that we are ready. If you can find Alba, tell her too. Let’s go into the dining room.”

  Miranda left the room and Margo gave Lavender her hand. Like most old people who refuse to accept that they are fading, she shrugged it off and pushed herself up with a great deal of effort. “Nothing wrong with me, I assure you,” she mumbled and hobbled into the hall. As she made her way to the dining room she was enveloped by a most delicious smell, warm, succulent, and foreign. She let it fill her senses with pleasure. “Figs,” she gasped with a sigh. “I haven’t had a fig in years!”

  “She’s getting worse,” Margo muttered to her husband. Thomas shrugged. “It’s most embarrassing. What will Fitz think? Of all the questions to ask!”

  “Alba’s very keen on him, isn’t she?” said Thomas. “It’s a good thing.”

  “It’s a tremendously good thing, Thomas. I hope Lavender hasn’t frightened him off.”

  “He’s made of stronger stuff than you give him credit for, Margo. Mark my words. He’s keen on Alba too.” Margo crossed her fingers, showing them to her husband.

  “Let’s just pray,” she said and walked out into the hall, her little dogs trotting after her.

  Margo made sure that Lavender was placed between Thomas and Miranda, putting Fitz and Alba next to herself. Cook served delicious lamb with roast potatoes and beans as a special treat because Alba had brought her new boyfriend. Lavender was chastened and picked at her food in silence but barely took her eyes off Alba. She didn’t stare in the same way that people on the bus stared, but with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy. Alba tried not to mind; after all, her grandmother was old. Once she had been lucid and had told wonderful stories of the people who had come into her life. Rainbows, she had called them. “If it weren’t for my friends, my life would be like a dull, empty sky,” she had often said. Then exclaimed heartily, “God forbid!” Alba wondered whether there were any rainbows left or whether she now existed in the empty sky that she had so dreaded.

  Fitz continued to charm her father and stepmother with his elaborate lies and boyish smile. Once or twice he forgot himself and the odd truth escaped to contradict the lies he had sown earlier, but he smoothed it over by stammering in that very English way and feigning vagueness, which was charming in itself. No one was any the wiser. Alba watched him with growing affection. He had followed her out onto the porch after her grandmother’s tactless remarks and they had shared a cigarette. If it hadn’t been for him she might very well have jumped into the car and driven back up to London. She never bothered to stick around when a situation upset her. Fitz had talked it over, made it into a joke. She had agreed to double-blink at him each time Lavender said something outrageous and rude. Now she waited, but Lavender said nothing.

  Cook bustled in with a large, steaming treacle pudding. Lavender raised her head expectantly then dropped her narrow shoulders in disappointment. “I thought we were having figs,” she said indignantly.

  “Figs?” said Margo with a frown.

  “Figs,” came the reply.

  “It’s steamed pudding,” Margo explained. “Why doesn’t everyone help themselves?” She nodded at Cook who put the plate on the sideboard.

  “I definitely smelled figs in the hall. Didn’t you?” She turned to her son.

  “No, I didn’t,” Thomas replied. But he knitted his eyebrows in bewilderment because in the last couple of weeks he could have sworn he had smelled that desperately familiar, fruity scent. It brought back memories he had shelved long ago. Of the war, of Italy, of a beautiful young woman and a terrible tragedy.

  “I’m most disappointed,” she wailed. “I haven’t had a fig in years!”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Lavender,” said Margo, her chest expanding in a deep breath. “I’ll find you a fig next time I’m at Fortnum’s. I promise.”

  Lavender placed her thin hand on her son’s but stared down at the table. “I did smell figs. I’m not losing my mind!”

  Alba double-blinked at Fitz and smirked. However, Fitz was no longer amused. The old woman’s confusion aroused nothing but pity.

  After lunch they settled into the drawing room, where coffee was served with little shortbread squares. Margo’s dogs lay down at her feet, but Hedge took his usual place of privilege on her lap. Lavender retired for a rest, and laughter once more returned to the group. Thomas suggested a rubber of bridge. Alba sat on the sofa smoking while Fitz settled down with her family. It was all part of the plan and, as much as she wanted to draw him away, she knew it would be unwise; after all, he was an excellent player and it was one of her father’s favorite games.

  Caroline arrived once the game was over. Margo and Fitz were enjoying a detailed postmortem, analyzing where they had gone wrong and what they should have done. She hurried in with a large grin. “Oh, it’s so lovely to be home,” she enthused, kissing her parents and patting the little dogs excitedly. She hugged Miranda and Alba and extended her hand to the stranger.

  “I’m in love!” she beamed, flopping into a chair and crossing her legs beneath her long skirt. “He’s called Michael Hudson-Hume. You’ll love him,” she gushed to her mother. “He went to Eton and then Oxford. He’s very bright. Now works in the City.”

  Margo looked pleased. “Darling, how lovely. When are we going to meet him?”

  “Very soon,” she replied, flicking the hair off her shoulder with a pale hand. “His parents live in Kent. He goes there most weekends. He’s a terrific tennis player, Daddy, and is going to teach me to play golf. He says he can already tell that I’ll have a good swing.”

  “Good,” said Thomas, chuckling good-naturedly.

  “Is his mother Daphne?” Margo asked, narrowing her eyes and mentally placing Michael Hudson-Hume in a nice tidy box with Proper Person written on it.

  Caroline’s eyes widened, as did her smile. “Yes!” she enthused. “And his father’s William.”

  Margo lifted her chin and nodded. “Daphne was at school with me. We did pony club camp together. She was a terrific horsewoman.”

  “Oh yes, she still is. She’s an eventer,” said Caroline with pride. Margo didn’t feel it appropriate to mention that Daphne had also been very keen on the boys and had acquired the nickname “Lapin” because, as they crudely put it, “she went like a rabbit.”

  “I do look forward to seeing her again.”

  “Oh, you will,” said Caroline. “Very soon!”

  Alba sensed that Michael was about to propose. Knowing the Hudson-Hume type he would drive down to ask her father for Caroline’s hand. He would do the right thing as he had no doubt done all his life. Just like Caroline and Miranda. She inhaled her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a long puff, while her eyelids grew heavy with boredom. She was jolted back to wakefulness by Fitz squeezing her hand.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested in a low voice. Before they ask me if I know the Hudson-Humes, he thought, knowing that he’d find it irresistible to lie and say that he did, brewing up all sorts of trouble for the future. Then he frowned. If he succeeded in giving Alba what she wanted they wouldn’t have a future, not together at any rate.

  That evening while he changed for dinner Fitz realized, as he tried to subdue his windblown hair, that he wasn’t charming the Arbuckles solely in order to dupe them, but because he sincerely wanted them to like him. It wasn’t an act at all. So he had lied, which had been fun, and played with the Buffalo’s weakness for surrounding herself with people from her own world. But he genuinely wanted them to think well of him. He wanted Alba to think well of him too. A part of him hoped that by helping her discover her mother he would make it all right with her father and that she would reward him with love.

  He was hopelessly smitten. He was unable to withdraw his gaze without a great deal of effort, so compelling was she. Her sisters only confirmed what he had always suspected—that she was unique. Their veins shared Arbuckle blood and yet they poss
essed none of Alba’s beauty or her mystery. God had broken the mold after creating Alba. He stared at his reflection. Could she ever grow to love him? Didn’t she know how much she tormented him? Would his heart ever recover? Would he be left analyzing his moves like he did after a rubber of bridge? Wondering that perhaps if he had played a little better, with a little more cunning, he might have won?

  At dinner he was seated between Miranda and Caroline. As he listened to them he was reminded of bread sauce and how bland it was without salt. Miranda and Caroline needed a good deal more salt. But as he and Alba had discussed on their walk, the likes of Michael Hudson-Hume didn’t want spunky women. Spunky women frightened them. They lacked salt themselves. He gazed across the table at Alba. She looked tired, or bored, her strange eyes paler in the light of the candles and more shadowy than ever. She sat beside her father and yet they barely talked. It was imperative that he succeed tonight.

  After dinner his moment came. Thomas put his hand on Fitz’s back and suggested they go into his study for a glass of port and a cigar. Fitz managed to double-blink at Alba, but although she blinked back, her expression was one of defeat.

  “I’ve had enough of the company of women,” Thomas said, pouring them both a glass of port. “This is rather good,” he added, handing the glass to Fitz. “A cigar?” He opened the humidor and pulled one out, passing it under his nose and sniffing it. “Ah, the sweet smell of a cigar.” Fitz thought it would be rude not to smoke. Besides, this was his one chance to befriend him.

  They both spent a good few minutes preparing their cigars. “I smoked so many cigarettes in the war,” said Thomas, “that afterward, when the beastly business was over, I took to cigars instead. Didn’t want to be reminded of it. You know.”

  He sat down in a worn leather chair. Fitz did the same. The lights were dim. He looked about the room, at all the books in their glass bookcases, most of them old, beautifully bound, inherited no doubt. After a good ten minutes of chat Fitz cut to the chase.

  “My father was in the war. It changed him. He was never the same after that.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Italy.” Fitz noticed Thomas’s forehead crease into deep furrows. He paused for a long moment, swirling the port around in his glass.

  “Where?”

  “Naples.”

  Thomas nodded grimly. “Terrible business, Naples.”

  “He says he’ll never forget the poverty. The despair. Human beings sunk so far, such depravity. The indignity of it. He’s still haunted by what he saw, even now.”

  “I never got as far as Naples.” Thomas took a swig of port and swallowed loudly. “I was in the navy.”

  “Ah,” said Fitz.

  “I captained an MTB.” Fitz nodded. He had once read an article about the motor torpedo boats. They had harassed enemy coastal convoys in the Channel, the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Adriatic. “It was quite a unique feeling to cut through waves at forty knots. We’d be in and out in seconds before our targets knew what had hit them. Bloody marvelous,” he continued, then drained his glass. “I don’t like to think of it these days. Haven’t been back. It’s a closed chapter. A man should suffer his pain in private, don’t you think?”

  “I disagree, Thomas,” said Fitz boldly. “I believe a man should suffer his pain only in the company of other men. We fight together and we smoke together. There’s a good reason why women leave the dining table at the end of a meal. Leaves the men free to show their vulnerability. There’s nothing shameful about that.”

  Thomas puffed away, watching with dewy eyes the man who seemed to have tamed his daughter. “I never thought I’d see Alba with a man like you.”

  “No?” Fitz chuckled good-naturedly. “Why not?” He wasn’t acting now.

  “You’re a sensible fellow. You have a good head on your shoulders. You’re intelligent and driven. Have a proper occupation. Come from a good family. Why would Alba go for someone like you?”

  “I don’t know the sort of man she usually goes for,” said Fitz, trying not to take offense.

  “Men who can satisfy her in the short term, not a runner like you.”

  “She’s a lively girl,” said Fitz, surprised that her own father should allude to her promiscuity, however obliquely. “Not only is she beautiful, Thomas, but she’s colorful, vibrant, mysterious. She intrigues me.” He sighed heavily and drew on his cigar. “She’s unfathomable.”

  Thomas nodded knowingly and chuckled. “Like her mother,” he said and it was as if Fitz was no longer there. “She was mysterious too. That’s what I first noticed about her, her mystery.” He poured himself another port. It was clear that he was drunk. Fitz felt a momentary stab of guilt. It wasn’t fair to pry into the man’s past, to take advantage of his vulnerability. But Thomas continued. It was as if he needed to talk about it. As if the drink had facilitated a deep and aching desire.

  “Every time I look at Alba I see Valentina.” His mouth twitched and his face sagged and turned gray. “Valentina,” he repeated. “The mere mention of her name still has the power to debilitate me. After all these years. Why now the scent of figs? My mother isn’t mad, you know. I smelled it too. Sweet and warm and fruity. Figs. Yes, Alba is her mother’s daughter. I try to protect her…” He raised his eyes, now watery with tears. “She was legendary. For miles around everyone knew her name. Her beauty had spread much further than that small bay of sorcery. Valentina Fiorelli, la bella donna d’Incantellaria. Strange little cove, Incantellaria. Incanto means “charm,” you know. It was charmed, bewitched, like someone had cast some sort of spell. We all felt it, but mine was the only heart that suffered. Oh, that it had been otherwise…War does funny things to people. That sense of transience, of opportunity, of suspended reality, it gripped me too. I had always been reckless but Valentina made me forget myself entirely. I was a different man, Fitz.”

  “Time doesn’t heal pain, Thomas. It only makes it easier to live with.”

  “One would hope. There are things that will haunt me for as long as I live. Dark things, Fitz. I can’t expect you to understand.” He puffed a moment on his cigar before continuing. “A man is the sum of his experience, you see. I can’t shake off the war. It plagues the subconscious mind. I dream about it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I hadn’t dreamed of Valentina for years. Then the other night…it’s that picture, you see. I dreamed about her and it was as if she were alive.”

  “You still have Alba,” said Fitz.

  “Alba,” Thomas said with a sigh. “Alba, Alba, Alba…You’ll look after Alba, won’t you? One mustn’t live in the past.”

  “I’ll look after her,” said Fitz, longing for the chance.

  “She’s not an easy girl. She’s lost, you see. Always has been.” His eyes began to close. He willed them open, fighting sleep. “You’re a good man, Fitz. I thoroughly approve of you. Don’t know about this Hamilton-Home or Harbald-Hume…” He cleared his throat. “But I’m sure about you, Fitz.”

  “I think I’ll go to bed, if you don’t mind,” said Fitz tactfully, pushing himself to his feet.

  “Please. Don’t let me keep you up.”

  “Good night, Thomas.”

  “Good night, m’boy. Pleasant dreams.”

  Fitz returned to the drawing room to find the women had gone to bed and the lights had been switched off. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece: the silver hands shone in the moonlight that spilled in through the windows. It was one in the morning. He hadn’t noticed the time. It had gone so fast. He was sorry that he had lost precious moments with Alba. However, he had accomplished his mission. He now knew where Valentina came from. It wouldn’t be hard to find Incantellaria on a map. With a little tenacity he could very easily find out the rest.

  He went outside to check on Sprout. The sky was black, studded with stars and a bright, phosphorescent moon. When he opened the trunk Sprout raised his ears and wagged his tail, but he was too tired to lift his head. Fitz patted him fondly. “Good dog,”
he said softly, in the voice he reserved for his old friend. “If only you knew what it was like to lose your heart, then you could give me a few words of advice. But you don’t, do you, Sprout?” Sprout let out a loud and contented sigh. Fitz covered him with a warm blanket and, with a long and affectionate look, closed the trunk.

  He walked slowly up the stairs, his heart growing heavier with each step. Soon the weekend would be over and Alba would no longer need him.

  He made his way down the corridor. He would have liked to have knocked on Alba’s door. To tell her what he had discovered. But he didn’t know which room was hers and the house was so big, he couldn’t begin to guess. He opened the door to his room and turned on the light. Alba stirred in the bed. “Turn it off,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

  “Alba,” Fitz gasped, switching it off. His initial thought was that he had blundered into her room by mistake. Perhaps he was as drunk as her father. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said sleepily. “Come to bed.” Then she giggled into the pillow. “It is your bed after all. The Buffalo would be appalled.”

  “Ah,” said Fitz, puzzled.

  “You’re not going to turn me down again, are you?”

  “Of course not, I just thought…”

  “Don’t think, for God’s sake. Thinking never got a man anywhere. Least of all into my bed. Do be quick, I’m cold. Your pajamas are under the pillow.” She yawned loudly.

  Fitz slipped hastily out of his clothes and, when his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he pulled his pajamas out from under the pillow, put them on, and got into bed. He was just deliberating his next move when Alba spoke.

  “If you hold me, Fitz, I promise I won’t bite.” He shuffled over and pulled her toward him. Her body was slim and warm beneath a brushed cotton nightshirt that had ridden up her legs. He felt his blood grow hot, but he controlled his impulses and wrapped his arms around her. She sighed happily. “What did you find out, darling?” She had never called him “darling” before.