Barbara Lambert The Whirling Girl (retail) (epu

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.)GEOFFREY HAD HELD HER on his knee when she was little and told her tales of distant lands; she’d known she was the light of her uncle’s life.Such imaginary travels they’d escaped on — to the great lost cities of the Amazon, now overgrown with trees so tall that if you were a jaguar, stalking, you would move through constant deep and leafy gloom.He’d promised he would take her there.He would take her to far-off Italy too, to the lands of the powerful Etruscans who had left behind incomparable treasure in their lavish tombs.Safe on his knee, safe and loved, the lost civilizations rose again and beckoned, conjured by his words.The Italian hill town of Cortona was older than Troy.That was another of his stories.Long ago, the local ruler’s wife had borne the child of Zeus, and the scandal had driven the boy to seek his fortune in Asia Minor.When he lost his hat in battle, on that spot he founded Troy.The autostrada rolled under the rented jeep’s wheels no matter how Clare sped or slowed.Somewhere to the north, behind that ancient city of Cortona, her uncle had bought a house and olive grove, where he made a life that she’d known nothing of.Castled towns rose and fell in the near distance.Red ploughed fields glistened against other fields that were not parched and umber, as she had expected, but a wild lush green.The wind held a hothouse softness too, though mixed with freeway fumes.After the dreary week of her stopover for research in London, this late spring fullness was a hopeful sign.She sped past exit signs for Tarquinia, Tuscania, Orvieto, hilltop cities where once those great Etruscan strongholds loomed.To my niece Chiara Livingston, with forgiveness, the will had read.Not just the immense and shaming gift — a gift clearly designed to shock — but the twisted offer of forgiveness.She had been left a house, a Tuscan house, a piece of Tuscan property, the stuff that dreams are made on.She would not allow ancient grief to spoil this.She forced her concentration back to the work she planned, the research she’d already undertaken during her week in London; she had in mind a lavish book that would delve into folk witchcraft, the so-called “old religion,” rumoured to have survived from Etruscan times.It would be illustrated with her botanical paintings, giving it the same scientific imprimatur that had garnered praise for her Amazonia book — and this time it would be a piece of work that no one could possibly look askance at if they peered too closely.Perhaps this would be the one to make her moderately solvent.She would be able to hang on to the Tuscan property, hire wily Italian solicitors to outsmart her uncle’s widow’s lawyers.She took her eyes from the perils of the autostrada long enough to steal a glimpse of her reflection in the rear-view mirror.A young woman in a serious hat, entering a new chapter of her life.She tugged the brim of the hat lower.An Italian tour bus swooshed past.Her rented jeep shuddered in the rush of wind.Clare Livingston, reputed Amazonian explorer, tried to pull a lightly spangled veil over the dark matter of the journey, the bequest, even the druggy sense, as the road pulled her closer to his house, that he would meet her there.The exit sign for Chiusi flashed by.“Choosy,” she said aloud; big mistake.A shutter in her head flew open and there it was, his voice: No no, Chiara, it’s pronounced Keee-oo-see with a k-sound, as in your own name.We will go there.We will hunt for the lost tomb of Lars Porsenna! We will look for scarabs in the jeweller’s field.She skidded onto the verge, blind with sudden tears, spraying gravel, choking back all she’d been holding off, an ache so deep that she was again tainted and helpless, exactly what she had been to make him flee.Traffic buffeted the jeep.You were not supposed to stop here.Then the crunch of gravel as a car pulled in behind.She thought of the Carabinieri at the airport with their shining boots and tidy submachine guns.They would find the ashes.She would be lost in the great jungle of Italian rules and regulations, maybe carted off to prison, maybe never seen again.She looked up to see a 1950s model cream-coloured Mercedes.A young man was getting out, his profile reflected in her side-view mirror like a face on a coin — grand high-bridged nose, determined chin.Now he was coming forward as if she knew him, as if she would be glad, his hair blowing and then falling straight in the wind of passing cars, his linen jacket hunching up around his shoulders with the urgency of what he had to say.She felt a rush of recognition, of idiotic joy, even of rescue, as her eyes locked with this unknown person in the mirror.She rolled down the window.She shoved the stick shift into gear, rammed her foot to the floor; and when she saw his startled look, she tore off her hat and hurled it up over the top of the car.In the mirror she saw it hovering for a moment, flapping, before a gust from another passing tour bus sent it soaring towards the roadside field.Her hair fizzed out around her, spun the mirror full of gold.Italy is DangerousALONG THE NARROW TWISTING road that led from the autostrada, Clare passed olive groves, meadows, red fields with shadowed furrows.A stretch of umbrella pines floated like obedient clouds.No further sight of the cream-coloured Mercedes.What cheap force had flooded up in her back there? She felt another light-headed rush and then another.Italy was dangerous.She’d been warned of that by jealous friends before she left.The place was rife with handsome roadside mashers.She’d been quite right to flee.But what an idiotic thing to throw away her hat, which she had rediscovered in a trunk and decided would be a talisman of sorts; it had belonged to the dear old relative in Vancouver who’d taken her in as a runaway when she was just thirteen.She brushed back her wild hair [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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