The Man Who Went Down With His Ship by Hugh Fleetwood Page A

was around the house, he became a man of virtually no words at all, and while remaining as courteous and kind towards his wife and daughter as ever, expressed his courtesy and kindness only in a series of melancholy, strained expressions and the occasional gesture that was made not as if itwere natural to him, but as if he were forcing himself to make it.
    A state of affairs which both Maria and Elisabetta commented upon, but which Giuseppe simply shrugged off, telling them, with an air of desolation that made nonsense of his words, that he just felt like being quiet at the moment, and wanted to dress up.
    ‘But in the summer, Papa?’ Elisabetta asked, laughing and throwing her black hair back, and looking beautiful in a bright orange and yellow dress. She stroked her father’s grey hair with her sun-brown, pink-nailed hand. ‘And anyway, even in the past you’ve never been this quiet.’
    Event number two consisted of Gisueppe’s telling Maria, one night in bed when she asked him again why he had been so silent of late, that he was very sorry and he knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t bear the idea of losing Elisabetta; whose marriage and subsequent transferral to Cagliari were fast approaching .
    ‘I mean, I know Piero is a very nice boy and we couldn’t hope for a better son-in-law. I’m sure they’ll be very happy together. But she’s so beautiful, isn’t she, and so alive, and being our only child and … Oh, you know.’ Of his telling Maria this, and of his starting to behave thereafter not just as if he were the possessor of some sad secret, but as if he had suffered some unendurable blow and were mourning a loss for which he would never be consoled.
    His mourning took the form of his going every day now to The Villa, to work on what would remain of the garden after the new apartment house had been completed, or, in contrast to his silence at home, to spend hours standing under a tree talking to Amelia Cavalieri about, Maria gathered, English gardens, his coal-mining father, the way that Santa Teresa was changing and the way the world was changing. Talking to her, it occurred to Maria when she saw them together, as if Amelia alone understood the nature of loss; and as if Amelia alone,just by understanding, could at least give him the scent of consolation, even if she couldn’t present him with the flower itself.
    Event number three of that confused and turbulent summer consisted of Giuseppe’s telling her, the very evening of Elisabetta’s wedding-day—a wedding-day throughout which, after all, he had seemed to be in the best of spirits and had made Maria think and hope that he was starting to come to terms with his daughter’s departure from the family home—that he had been in great pain the whole afternoon. ‘All my jaw,’ he said, ‘and the inside of my cheek and nose. I think if it isn’t better tomorrow I’d better go to the doctor.’ Of his telling her this, and of his being told by the doctor—an opinion that was soon confirmed by a specialist in Sassari—that he had a rare and malignant disease of the membranes of his cheek and nasal passages. A disease that, though treatable, was incurable, and while it would go through periods of remission, would ever more frequently cause recurrences of the pain he was feeling at present, and would slowly and inexorably, as it ate away the bones of his jaw and nose, disfigure him.
    And events numbers four and five, after the shock of this news, consisted of Giuseppe’s not quite announcing to Maria that he had lost his faith, but of his making her understand it anyway; and of Maria’s coming to realise that she too, in a funny sort of way, was ‘in love’ with a member of the Cavalieri family.
    But first: Giuseppe’s loss of faith.
    Maria herself was a reasonably devout Catholic, and either because of this, or because she was temperamentally inclined to accept rather than reject, and make the best of a situation, however wretched it was, she