Chapter Nineteen #3
‘Carl,’ I said quickly, ‘what happened? The moment we arrived, your father beetled off to find the consultant, so I know nothing yet except that you knocked yourself out. Tell me what happened. Weren’t you wearing your safety helmet?
That’s probably how it happened if you weren’t.
You know you always must wear your helmet when you’re skiing. ’
‘I wasn’t skiing!’
‘What?’ I blinked.
‘I was not skiing,’ Carl repeated clearly and patiently. ‘And it wasn’t my fault at all. It was that dumb Francesca,’ he added crossly.
‘Francesca?’ I frowned. Francesca was Carl’s half-sister by Giancarlo’s first wife.
‘Yeah, and I’m really bloody annoyed with her.’
‘Carl!’
Luc picked this moment to sidle discretely to the door, saying he had to go and make a couple of phone calls.
We hadn’t talked much in the car for the latter half of the journey, what with finding a decent map of Milan on my phone – the Citroen of course being far too ancient for sat nav – and trying to sort out the easiest route into the city.
Even so, Luc had been calm and encouraging about everything, offering to keep out of the way when we eventually got to the hospital but agreeing immediately when I said I wanted him to come in with me.
I don’t quite know why, but I found his presence reassuring.
Now, as I sat down on Carl’s bed, I wished he hadn’t gone.
‘Listen, love,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened. I don’t get what Francesca has to do with it. Tell me what happened, if you can remember, that is.’
‘Oh, I can, I can remember nearly all of it. Okay,’ he said obligingly and, taking a deep breath, proceeded to explain.
‘You and Francesca were having a snowball battle?’ I cried a moment later. ‘A snowball battle?’ I couldn’t believe it. Since when has playing snowballs landed a child in hospital?
‘Yes, and it was all Francesca’s doing. She started chucking not just snowballs but huge great big lumps of ice at me.
’ In his blue hospital gown, Carl stretched his arms wide to indicate an iceberg fit to sink the Titanic.
‘I was dodging them like mad and must have slipped and cracked my head on something and, like, crashed and burned, and before then we had been just about to leave for my first lesson in the intermediate class and now I’ve missed it and I’m extremely furious with her. ’
‘I’m sure she didn’t mean you to get hurt.’
‘I bet she did.’
‘Don’t be unkind, Carl.’ I took his hand. ‘I expect she’s very upset about what happened.’
Looking mulish for a moment, he then capitulated. ‘Okay,’ he sighed, ‘but I’m sorry that you were worried, because I know you would have been, and that you had to come here and everything.’
‘Well, that’s very nice of you, my love, but don’t you worry.’ I patted his leg under the bedclothes and smiled despite the lump in my throat. ‘Actually, darling,’ I said, putting on an affected voice and waving an airy hand, ‘I was really simply frantic for a day out shopping in Milan.’
We both giggled.
Giancarlo came in with the consultant in tow, a man in his forties in a pristine white coat, immaculately coiffed hair, with a Hollywood suntan and speaking flawless English.
In the tatty old combats and frayed jumper I hadn’t had the presence of mind to change before leaving for Milan, I felt like a bag lady as we shook hands.
‘Signora,’ he said respectfully, with a tiny bow of his head. ‘I assure you there is no cause for concern. We have run all the tests, and your son is fine, a healthy, strong boy. There may be a very small, very mild concussion, but he has suffered no serious injury.’
‘Thank you. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.’
‘I’m so sorry, Alix,’ muttered Giancarlo, looking shamefaced. ‘It seems I overreacted. I… well, I panicked. I’m very sorry.’
‘No, no, no,’ the doctor contradicted him sternly. ‘Do not say this. You did not overreact. You did the right thing.’
‘I agree,’ I said with emphasis, throwing Giancarlo a sympathetic smile.
‘Nonetheless,’ the doctor continued, ‘we will keep your son here under observation for tonight, purely to be on the safe side, you understand, but tomorrow he can go home. However, I wish him to be kept quiet for twenty-four hours, again purely to be on the safe side.’ He turned to Carl.
‘So, no skiing for you tomorrow, young man. You must wait until the day after.’
‘Oh no,’ Carl began to wail, but I silenced him with a fierce look.
The consultant and Giancarlo exchanged a few words in Italian, then Giancarlo turned to me.
‘Alix, I have to go and sign some documents, for Carl’s treatment, you know?’ He indicated the door. ‘Mandeville is waiting outside. Would you like me to ask him to come in?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Mum?’ said Carl the moment they’d gone. ‘This is stupid. I’m perfectly all right.’
I sat down again on the bed. ‘Yes, you are, thank God. But you’ve had a nasty little accident, and you have to do what the doctor says. You’re only missing one day’s skiing after all.’
‘Two. There’s today as well.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’
Carl sulked.
‘What’s up?’ said Luc, coming in. He perched himself on the other side of the bed. ‘Your father tells me you’re fine.’
‘I am fine,’ Carl said petulantly. ‘That’s the whole point. But they won’t let me ski tomorrow.’
Luc gave a low whistle. ‘That’s rough, I know how you feel. I’ve had the same thing happen to me.’
‘Oh, do you ski then, Mr Mandeville?’
‘Call me Luc. No, this was playing rugby. I was selected for a first team match – for the first time ever, in fact – and the day before I twisted my ankle jumping over a suitcase.’
‘Jumping over a suitcase?’ Carl’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘Why were you jumping over a suitcase?’
Luc raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Oh, don’t ask.’ He was talking to Carl exactly as he would to a man of his own age. ‘Like so many things in life, it seemed a good idea at the time.’
Carl laughed. ‘I know just what you mean. I was having a silly snowball fight.’
‘There you go,’ Luc agreed solemnly. ‘But it means you’re stymied. However, the doctor’s just said you can dressed now if you want.’ He indicated Carl’s blue gown. ‘I bet you feel a berk in that.’
‘Too right I do. Thanks, Mr Mandeville – I mean, Luc.’
Luc stood up. ‘I’d better go and put some more money in the parking meter. It eats euros. You wouldn’t believe it, would you?’ he said to Carl. ‘Forget being injured, these days hospitals are only interested in ripping you off for parking your car. They must be coining it. Back in a bit.’
Carl watched him go before turning to me. ‘He seems an okay guy, Mum. Are you going out with him?’
‘Certainly not!’ I cried as if the idea was positively outlandish. ‘I’m working for him. I told you – he’s my boss.’
‘That’s never stopped you going out with a guy in the past.’
‘Carl, please!’ Getting to my feet, I looked properly round the room for the first time.
It was very swish, more like a good-quality hotel than a hospital, with a television fixed to the wall, an en-suite bathroom, a couple of rather good abstract paintings on the walls and a very stylish, Bauhaus-type armchair with a footstool.
Private, of course. No NHS here in Milan, but then, being a teeny bit of a hypochondriac, Giancarlo was health-insured up to his teeth – and doubtless them as well – and told me he had done the same for Carl.
‘Where are your clothes, love? Let’s get you dressed and then you can sit in that swish chair and feel more yourself.’
‘They’re in that cupboard over there,’ he said, pointing but adding rather hurriedly, ‘except, it’s okay, Mum. I can manage. In fact, you can go if you like. I’ll be all right, really I will.’
I opened the cupboard and withdrew a pair of black-and-white salopettes and a bright-yellow top.
With moon boots on the floor of the cupboard and a matching puffer jacket on another coat hanger, they were all printed with the name Marc Jacobs in big letters and looked very chic and expensive.
I could imagine Carl felt a million dollars in them.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me or something?’ Putting the top on the bed, I shook out the salopettes by their braces, whereupon something fell on the floor with a clunk. I picked it up and looked at my son.
‘Carl, what is this?’
‘A Swiss Army knife,’ he muttered, avoiding my eye.
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Carl said desperately.
Actually, it was in a way. Solid and heavy in my hand and silky smooth to the touch, the shiny white enamel casing bore the red cross of the Swiss flag crisply emblazoned on one end. Pity such an impressively crafted object could be lethal.
‘What I meant was, what is a knife doing in your trouser pocket?’
‘It’s only a penknife, Mum. Papa gave it to me.’
‘I’m going to have a word with your father.’
‘Oh no, Mum, don’t, please!’
I sat down again on the bed. ‘Carl,’ I said seriously. ‘You are eleven years old. You are not having a penknife or any sort of knife now – or at any age for that matter. I don’t know what your father was thinking of.’
‘It’s only a titchy little blade, Mum, so it’s not really a knife. It’s got, like, twenty-four functions! So it’s got, like, a screwdriver and scissors and a tin opener and pliers – and there’s a pick, for getting the stones out of horses’ hooves!’
‘Yes, well, the day a horse moves in with us I’ll reconsider the situation.’
‘It’s even got a corkscrew,’ he persisted sneakily, ‘which would be handy for you when you’re always losing ours.’
Oh, the little devil. ‘Very well,’ I said, relenting slightly. ‘I won’t throw it away and I won’t mention it to your father, even if he has got a lot to answer for, but only on the strict understanding that the knife stays with me.’
Brooding a second, Carl nodded acquiescence, if gloomily.
I slipped the penknife into one the leg pockets of my combats, of which there were many because they were actually genuine army desert camouflage trousers purloined from my father years ago.
They’re the only combats I’ve ever found that are long enough in the leg for me.
High street ones are always at half-mast. My height is courtesy of Dad; he’s got a lot to answer for, too.
‘But when I’m arrested for being in possession of a weapon on the plane home. you’ll have to come and visit me in Wormwood Scrubs.’
‘Nobody would ever arrest you, Mum. You look far too nice.’
We left the hospital around eight in the evening, leaving Carl up in his trendy ski clothes but getting sleepy by then with the excitements of the day.
Outside it was dark and cold with freezing rain threatening to turn to snow.
However, the weather must have discouraged everyone because the traffic was much lighter, so before long we were pulling into the first service station on the motorway to get something to eat.
As we started on a remarkably good lasagne – well, we were in Italy – Luc asked me for the umpteenth time whether I was sure about going back to the Villa Matisse tonight.
There was still time to stay over if I wanted to see Carl tomorrow.
I reassured him. There was no point, and I’d just be in the way.
Once Carl was discharged in the morning, Giancarlo had said he would be taking him straight back to the mountains, principally, I suspected, to avoid his mother homing in like a carrier pigeon with a pantechnicon of pasta.
That would finish Carl off. Besides, I reminded Luc, there was his dinner party tomorrow evening.
‘I’ve cancelled that.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not just for me.’
‘I didn’t,’ he said in his forthright way. ‘I cancelled it yesterday. I was going to tell you this morning before events overtook us. I cancelled… I put a stop to… a stop to everything yesterday… everything.’
He spoke so haltingly but with such an oddly aloof air that I wondered what he was really getting at but didn’t feel I could press him, especially as he rapidly and very definitely changed the subject.
‘Giancarlo seems a decent man,’ he remarked.
I nodded. ‘He is; he’s a good father to Carl and kind to me.’
‘Why then, couldn’t you…’ he began and stopped.
‘Why then couldn’t I what?’
‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’ He wiped his lips on a paper napkin. ‘I was being prurient.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘If you were going to ask me why then Giancarlo and I couldn’t get it together, I don’t mind telling you.’ I finished my lasagne. ‘I don’t really talk about it these days, but it’s no big secret.’
‘Tell me in the car,’ he said, pushing his empty plate away. ‘I very much want to know, but we’d best get moving. We’ve a long way to go.’