The Silent Fountain

At the door, a man is holding two large boxes. He gets me to sign for them and then seems in a hurry to leave, rushing back to his van and disappearing down the drive in a cloud of chalk. I frown, examining the weight in my hands, and nudge the door shut with my foot. The boxes are plastic, sealed tight with lots of brown tape, and the contents labels are written in Italian. I see numbers and percentages, a warning in bold red type, and when I gently shake them, a force of habit born of a little girl’s fascination with her mother’s belongings (those delicately wrapped gifts my dad presented her with each Valentine’s Day; the soft leather purses she kept in her wardrobe, filled with mysterious things; the make-up bags she chided me gently not to play with, heavy with bottles and tubes that knocked against each other like boiled sweets), I hear a metallic rattle. The address is headed:

Sig.ra V Lockhart

I’m trying to figure out from where I know that name – some dim recess tosses it up as recognisable, Vanessa, Virginia, it’s on the tip of my tongue – when Adalina materialises behind me, relieves me of the boxes and says, ‘You must never answer the door. Only I answer.’

I’m about to reply, to object that I hadn’t known this because nobody told me, when, armed with the shadowy delivery, Adalina turns on her heel and vanishes upstairs to return to her charge, and I am left alone once more.

*

I don’t mean to go near the attic that afternoon, but I’m on such a roll come five o’clock that I decide to venture to that furthest corridor before calling it a day. From the windows, I can see right across to Florence. The Duomo shimmers against a golden sky, and the blue-green Arno snakes like a ribbon through the city. I can’t wait to be there: it’ll be like re-entering the world after weeks orbiting outer space.

I’ll start by getting online.

I tell myself it’s to contact Bill, to let my family know I’m well, but really I’m thinking of him, each hour that passes another hour in which he might have decided it’s been long enough, that we need each other, that he does still want me in his life. Then, buoyed by hope, I’ll have a sorbet in the Piazza della Signoria before strolling across the Ponte Vecchio and browsing the stalls. I’ll buy Bill a present, and my dad too, and then only when it’s late will I get the bus back to Fiesole and find my way up to the Barbarossa. Every day off will be like this, and, for the first time in a while, I feel as if I’m in the right place. As if maybe, just maybe, things might turn out OK.

The first thump takes me by surprise. But I’m not quite describing it right – it’s less a thump than a… drag. Like a heavy chair moving across floorboards.

It startles me and I sit back on my heels, listening, alert as a cat, my ears pricked to the slightest sound. The castillo is full of weird snaps and creaks, a maze of emptiness and silence compounding the effect, and I remind myself that just hours before, in the ballroom, I tricked myself into believing someone had said my name.

But then I hear it again. The same noise, louder this time. It is coming from above, and when I look to the ceiling, a patina of cracked, mottled stone, I hear it for a third time and am able to position it exactly. There is somebody in the attic.

I check behind, half expecting Adalina to haul me up and away, accusing me of breaking another law, but the corridor is deserted. I hear a bee outside the window, the pitch of its buzz lowering each time its body rushes against the pane. Slowly, I turn to the door at the end of the hall. Nobody goes. Your work extends to this point and not beyond. But Adalina didn’t say anything about other people being up there. If someone already is, won’t I be doing a service in exposing the contravention?

I advance. The door sits low, with a tapered hood, like those odd little accesses you see in churches. It strikes me that whoever once used this must have been short in stature, and I remember the abandoned sleigh beds. I press my ear to it, and listen.

No more thumps, no more drags, but I know what I heard. I push the handle, a coarse, rusted loop that leaves an orange stain on my palm. Puzzled at how something so feeble looking can be so robust, I resolve to apply my whole weight to the door, turning the lever as I do. It gives not an inch – except for a sensation of absolute cold on the shoulder touching the wood. I shake the lock, afraid to make too much noise, but I know that it won’t surrender. Never mind Adalina: this is its own gatekeeper.

Crouching, I notice a coppery tear-shaped flap. With some persuasion it shifts, exposing the keyhole. I press my eye to it. The cool hits me like a fan, and an old, musty smell emerges. The darkness is absolute. Whoever is up there is in the dark.

In the dark. In the quiet. Waiting.

I wait, too.

I’m reluctant to call out, because I don’t want Adalina to hear. It isn’t anything to do with the whistling anxiety that I might get a response, an anxiety that gathers pace by the second like a breeze on a moonlit lake; it’s that, contrary to all my logical sense, I’d be summoning someone or something I really don’t want anything to do with. I know that dragging sound was not friendly.

I replace the flap and return down the hall.

By the time I reach the stairs, I am running.

CHAPTER NINE

Vivien, Los Angeles, 1976

His name was Jonny Laing, the man with the Midas touch. He introduced himself as if she ought to recognise the name, and Vivien was embarrassed that she didn’t.

‘It’s OK,’ Jonny said, with a cagey sort of delight, like a fox eyeing a chicken coop. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. It’s one of the many things I like about you, Vivien. You’re… how should I put it? Uninitiated. Innocent. Unspoiled.’

Vivien had never considered herself to be unspoiled; her father had done a pretty good job of putting paid to that. But she liked that Jonny imagined her to be so, because he was smart and successful, and if he thought there was a scrap of purity left in her then maybe he was right. As she listened to him explain what he did for a living – ‘I’m in the movie business, and I know a star when I see one’ – all she could think was: I’m dreaming. This is a dream. Here was the answer to her desperate prayers, bam! Straight into her life, just like that. It couldn’t be happening, but it was.

He took her for supper at a restaurant downtown, and told her his plans: this project, that project, she would be perfect for them all. Was it really so easy? Or would she wake in a few hours’ time and realise she had imagined the whole thing? Vivien found herself confiding in him about where she had come from, about Gilbert, the thrashings, the escape, all the demons from her past and the parts that made her vulnerable, ugly. She braced herself for his criticism, to be told to pack up and go back to Claremont like a good girl. But Jonny didn’t treat her like a girl, he treated her like a queen. He was kind and generous and exciting. And, contrary to Vivien’s expectations as she stumbled home on a cloud, he was true to his word.

The next morning, a sleek motorcar arrived outside her crummy apartment. For the second time in her life, Vivien bundled her belongings into a canvas shell and prepared to embark into the wild unknown. Hollywood: the ultimate prize.

The following weeks and months were a storm. Vivien barely had time to think. If Jonny hadn’t reminded her to eat and sleep, if for nothing else than to preserve her ‘extraordinary’ beauty, she would have forgotten that too. Every day was a hurricane of photo shoots, magazine interviews, power brunches, castings and read-throughs. Jonny didn’t allow her a moment’s rest. The beachside condo he set up for her was exquisite, but she never spent any time there. She dined in the finest bistros, she had a wardrobe from the most exclusive stores, she was thrown in with the most influential movers and shakers in the business and she drank it up like nectar from heaven. Not any heaven Gilbert Lockhart would recognise, of course. If her father could see her now – his chaste, belt-lashed little girl – if he could see the things she had done to get here… To hell with you, Daddy, she thought. I’m through.

It wasn’t long before Vivien Lockhart’s name was on the lips of every major player in Hollywood. Her days at Boudoir Lalique seemed another world, the long, high dive board from which she feared she would never spring. Jonny was her saviour: he had flung her into the blue. She couldn’t thank him enough, not just for the promise of her career but also for restoring her faith in friendship. She had all but given up trusting anyone and then he came along, the friend she had yearned for, showing her that good could affect a life as tangibly and irreversibly as bad. There didn’t have to be a catch. Jonny had seen a light in her and fanned the flame. Over time, her soul began to lighten and heal. She reached out, full of hope.

Vivien savoured every moment of her rebirth with a grateful and open heart. She passed through LA awe-struck at her luck, marvelling at the glass buildings where Jonny and his partners forged fortunes on a lunch break. LAING FAIRMOUNT PICTURES, his sign read. She thanked every star in the galaxy for its existence.

And then Jonny had news.

‘Burt Sanderson’s asked to see you,’ he told her, arriving at her condo unannounced one evening. It was unlike Jonny to be flustered – but Burt was major league. If Vivien worked with the famous director, she was going stellar. Jonny knew it; she knew it. They had worked hard for this, getting all the pieces into place. Jonny likened it to engineering a racing car: you built it, you honed it, you polished it – then you just needed the track on which to see it fly. Burt Sanderson was that track.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I’ll see you there.’

*

Despite her nerves running off the scale, in the end it wasn’t so different to her gigs at the Lalique. Fixing her smile, saying the right thing, working to elicit this reaction or that. Burt and his panel were inscrutable to begin with, but then, as Vivien warmed to the part, channelling her character, a girl from the slums who makes it big, it occurred to her that she wasn’t acting at all. She didn’t need to. She was this person.

When Burt called the next day, Vivien was beside herself. Sitting in Jonny’s office in a sun-drenched window, she watched him replace the receiver.

Jonny met her eye. He looked at her strangely, his expression indecipherable.

She didn’t move from her chair. ‘I didn’t get it, did I?’ she said in a small voice. Never mind, it had been a long shot. It would probably go to Ava, or Faye. They deserved it. She was just the new kid on the block; she couldn’t expect to just—

‘He wants you,’ said Jonny.

‘What?’

Jonny’s face broke into a grin.

‘Honey, he wants you. We got it. You got it.’

Vivien blinked. A buzzing sound galloped through her ears.

‘Do you hear me, Vivien?’ Jonny held his arms out. ‘The part’s yours! Burt frickin’ Sanderson – do you understand what this means?’

Rapture struck. Vivien’s hands flew to her face. She leaped up and ran into his waiting embrace. ‘Oh, Jonny!’ she cried. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’

He held her, kissing her hair over and over. ‘You did it, Viv,’ he murmured.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Tears swam to her eyes, happy tears, elated tears, but she contained them because she was an actress now and she had to start as she meant to go on. Besides, she had nothing to cry about any longer. Jonny had rescued her: she need never cry again. He had transformed her life, this wonderful, brilliant man. She could kiss him! For a crazy second she thought she would.

Then, without warning, Jonny beat her to it. Before Vivien could protest, his lips were on hers. But instead of playful brevity, that impulsive kiss she had considered bestowing on him a moment ago, he lingered. His mouth pressed too hard.

She pulled away, laughing uneasily.

‘It’s swell, Jonny,’ she said. ‘I’m thrilled.’

He grabbed her again; his breath was hot in her face.

‘How thrilled?’ he rasped.

Vivien put her hands on his chest and pushed. He was as excited as she was, that was all. This was a huge deal for both of them.

He kissed her again. This time she did break free.

‘I have to go,’ she said, spots of confusion bursting behind her eyes. The balance that had sustained their companionship was suddenly off. She felt indebted to Jonny, his advance an open palm waiting for payment – and her pockets were empty.

‘Where?’ Jonny demanded.

‘I have a lunch date,’ she said meekly. It was a lie, the quickest one she could come up with. It occurred to her that she had never lied to Jonny before.

‘With who?’

‘A friend.’

‘Can’t you call it off?’ For the first time, a glint of menace appeared in Jonny’s eye, a petulance. She took a step back. ‘We did this together, Vivien,’ he said. ‘We secured Burt Sanderson together. We should celebrate… together. You and me.’

‘Like I said, I have plans.’

The next part happened too quickly to know what came first. Vivien opened the door, but in the same movement it was slammed shut. Jonny came at her, turned her against the wall, and then his hands were hitching up her skirt.

All at once Vivien realised she’d been fooled. This had always been the price – just like at Boudoir Lalique. There was no such thing as a no-strings contract.

‘C’mon, baby,’ he murmured, ‘you know you owe me.’

Vivien fought back with all her might but it was impossible; he was too strong. ‘Get off me!’ she screamed. ‘Get your hands off me!’

‘You want it too. You’ve wanted it from day one.’

‘Jonny, please—’

‘This is what you’re good at, isn’t it, baby?’ His greedy hands crept round to her breasts. No, she prayed, no, no, no. This can’t happen. I won’t let it.

‘All those men you went with at the club…’ Oh, God, she had told him too much, trusted him with her darkest secrets. How could I have been so stupid? ‘Just a sweet whore at heart, aren’t you? So, come on, it’s my turn now; I’ve earned my right. I’ve waited long enough. I’ve paid you more than any of those jocks…’

It took all Vivien’s might to free her arms, but once she had, the rest followed. Throwing her weight against him, she scraped her heel down his shin, at the same time digging her elbow high into his diaphragm, winding him. Jonny staggered back. Vivien grabbed his shoulders and brought her knee into his groin, making him howl.

Every part of her shook – with fear, with adrenalin, with victory. She didn’t know where her strength came from. Perhaps it had always been there, buried inside.

‘Never touch me again,’ she said, her voice quavering. She wanted to weep – with shock, with disappointment, with sadness at the innocence she had lost, the friendship she had watched blow to ash before her eyes. Would she ever meet a man who would care for her and put her first? Would she ever know love without pain, without expectation, without betrayal? Would she ever be able to trust a living soul without that nagging voice telling her: You’re safer on your own? Would she always be frightened, lonely, damaged… the eternal outsider? Something hardened within Vivien in that moment: something liquid turned to stone. ‘I owe you nothing, Jonny,’ she said, ‘do you get it? You found me. You offered me this. It never came at a price.’

She straightened her clothes and willed her trembling legs to carry her into the corridor. As she stepped out, she heard his voice ring out from behind.

‘I’ll get you for this,’ Jonny choked. ‘You’re nothing without me, Vivien. I’ve given you everything – and rest assured I can take it away just as fast.’

I’d like to see you try, Vivien thought, lifting her chin.

I’m stronger by myself. I’m stronger than you know.

CHAPTER TEN

Italy, Summer 2016

We speak, finally, on the Friday. Adalina tells me: ‘Signora isn’t able to see visitors; she’s unwell. But if you go to her room at midday she will talk with you.’

I’m curious as to how this encounter will unfold, and when I reach Signora’s room at the appointed time it’s all I can do not to laugh, because Adalina wasn’t joking. There is a chair parked outside the woman’s door, and the door itself has been left ajar. A shaft of light seeps from the mysterious bedroom, but nothing else is visible. Gingerly, I sit. Nothing happens. Finally, I venture: ‘Hello?’

The space is so quiet that to move the chair would be startling. Instead I adjust my position, so that another inch of the room creeps into view. Rugs. Drapes. Heavy furnishings, gold and black… There is the edge of a mirror, in which I think I glimpse a fraction of the woman’s reflection. The back of her head, her shoulders, perhaps. It’s like turning an abstract picture, trying to make sense and finding none. I realise I am desperate to see her. I imagine her as tall, her pale hair secured at the nape of the neck with a velvet clasp, her shoulders broad and her jaw firm, still crisply defined despite her years, her lips full and wide… I draw her not as pretty but as handsome: someone whose face, having seen it once, you will not forget.

When she speaks, I recognise immediately the person I talked to on the phone.

‘Lucy.’ Her voice is distinctive, deeply mellow, like plums in autumn on the verge of rot. It comes from a place much closer to me than the mirror would imply, and a chill skitters down my spine at the prospect that she is closer to me than I think, and that she isn’t the person in the bed, if indeed that is a person.

She says my name as if it tastes bad, her tongue splicing it in two.

‘Yes,’ I answer.

‘You’ve settled in?’ It isn’t a polite enquiry; there is no warmth or friendliness, more an impatience. I hold my hands together in my lap.

‘Yes,’ I say again, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress’s office, waiting for punishment. Only in this case, I have no idea what I’ve done wrong.

‘We wished to avoid hiring,’ the voice says shortly, rudely. ‘But the house won’t look after itself – and I can’t very well expect Adalina to do it.’

I’m unsure how to react. ‘I’m glad you decided to,’ I say, and before I can stop myself I’m babbling, eager to please and it emerges as over-share. ‘It came at the right time for me. I was looking to get out of London. This was too good to pass up.’

Stop talking. She doesn’t need to know.

‘Oh?’ comes the voice.

‘Family stuff,’ I say quickly. It sounds weak, a quick step back – and, though it’s impossible, the silence that follows is so loaded that I start to wonder if by some miracle she knows my story. What would she think of the crime I committed?

‘As you’re aware, I rarely take company,’ she says, and I’m relieved to move off subject. ‘You might view this job as an escape clause, or a frivolous holiday, but this house is my home and I will protect it with all that I have. If it’s equal to you, I would ask that we stay out of each other’s way wherever possible.’

My mouth is dry. Relief turns to surprise, then shock. ‘Of course,’ I say.

‘You may go now.’

The end of the meeting, if it can be called that. I’m debating the correctness of saying goodbye, surely too formal but then it’s hardly as if she’s set any other tone, before the door in front of me closes abruptly, a swift sharp snap then silence.

*

That evening I take the bus into town. Florence is coming to life on the cusp of night as only a city can: twinkling lights dance on the river, couples stroll through cobbled piazzas, the scent of burned-crust pizza fills the air along with a heady tang of wine.

I turn on my phone. It seems to take an age for it to switch network, find a signal and connect to 3G. I wait. The moments pass. Each time a message beeps in from my new server, my heart leaps then dives. There’s one from Bill, another from our landlord. Tilda WhatsApps from a Barbadian beach, wishing me luck, lots of smiling emojis. To my shame I’m not waiting for them. I wait for anything from him, an email, a text, a missed call, anything. I blink back tears: of course there’s none. What would Tilda think of her reliable big sister, the person who put her to bed and cooked her tea and waited up each night she went out, being responsible for…?

I can’t say it. I can’t think it.

Shoving my phone back in my bag, I head to the library, so focused on the distraction it will give me that I almost trip up the steps to the entrance.

It’s open late, quiet, studious, deliciously private. As I settle into a booth with a stack of archives, I turn my phone to vibrate, and read Bill’s message again:

Spill, then – who is she? What’s she like? Xxx

Today’s encounter with Signora has set me on edge. Horrible, I start to write back, horrible and rude and weird. Why did I come here? Why did I let you convince me? But I delete the draft. I don’t want to admit the truth to Bill – that the woman I spoke to is hard and cold, cruel and dismissive, but that for some insane reason I’m drawn to her, fascinated by her, and I feel connected to her in a way I can’t express. I need to know who she is. I need to know why she’s cut herself off.

Just like me.

I’ve become protective of my quarantine. Connecting to the outside world makes me panic that I’m about to learn drastic news. It’ll be Bill, or one of my sisters, or my dad, or some random on Facebook I haven’t spoken to in years, emailing me about the exposure at home. I can see it now; rehearsed the way it might unfold so many times. Lucy, what the hell? Is it true? Or perhaps, simply: It’s started.

As ever, temptation lingers to check the websites, Google his name, his wife’s name, see if anything new has cropped up, but I have to trust that Bill would tell me first. She doesn’t reference it, doesn’t even mention it, and I know she’s being kind. She’s trying to help me forget. How could I forget? I can’t. I decide to click the phone off altogether, instructing myself instead to the task at hand. In this, at least, I can distance myself from my plight. However challenging I’ve found the Barbarossa so far, it’s at least proved a change of scene – and however obstructive its owner, she’s given me a diversion. Something happened at that house. I sense it in the walls, the shadows and the dark. From Adalina’s secrecy and Salvatore’s madness. From the voice behind the door; from the noises in the attic, the cold and the quiet…

Something happened.

I begin by looking up the castillo on the library’s bank of computers. A quick search reveals nothing of its possessor, but the local records surrender more. It’s all in Italian so I run a quick translate – the rendition isn’t perfect, but it’s enough, and soon the story is forming. I scan the text, tracing reports back to the earliest point I can find: 1980, when she moved here from America. Her arrival had caused a stir.

Tuscany welcomes home its son, renowned doctor Giovanni ‘Gio’ Moretti, and his wife, Hollywood actress Vivien Lockhart, to the Castillo Barbarossa in Fiesole. The pair married last month in a romantic ceremony in Los Angeles and now return to Italy, according to their spokesperson, ‘to begin family life in a more peaceful setting’. Moretti will be engaged in a top-secret research project, for which he was privately selected, while Lockhart is said to be taking a break from her movie career…

So that was she. Of course it was. Vivien. Seeing the name in front of me, it seems obvious. Her fame was before my time, a bright brief spark in the seventies, but I’m sure Mum had her films on video when I was growing up, and in my mind’s eye I catch a flash of what she used to look like. Even the sound of her voice, lilting, seductive, embroidered with heavenly promise. It doesn’t match the voice I heard today. That voice was coarse with suffering. As if a demon had got inside her…