The Battle of the Villa Fiorita – Rumer Godden (1963)

My final read for July, was by Librarything author of the month Rumer Godden; The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, which transported me to Italy while I myself travelled to Paris.

One of the things I have come to appreciate in Rumer Godden’s novels for adults, is the way she writes children and young people. She always seems to fully understand their view of the world, the way they feel the hurts and disappointments that force them to grow up.

In The Battle of the Villa Fiorita we meet Hugh (14) and Caddie (almost 12) – they have an elder sister who they speak about from time to time, but who we never actually meet. As the novel opens, Hugh and Caddie have just arrived in Italy, following a long, arduous journey mainly by train from London. They have run away.

“She and Hugh were both gilded in sun; the things they held, the grips, coats, and net, had edges of light as had Hugh’s bare head, Caddie’s panama. Light bathed their tired dusty faces, their clothes which were crumpled and dishevelled as only clothes that have been slept in all night can be; it lay on their hands and legs, their dusty shoes, a light more warm and gold than anything they had known, but, ‘It’s Italian,’ said Caddie as if suspicious of it.”

They are on a mission to win back their mother – return her to their father and the family home. Their mother Frances (usually called Fanny) Clavering has recently been divorced by their father, following an affair with a film director, who she met whilst he was filming near to the family home. Now, Fanny has left England with her lover Rob Quillet. They are staying at the Villa Fiorita near Lake Garda, planning to get married in the near future.

The viewpoint is not always that of the children, Fanny is a woman whose life had seemed perfectly happy, married to dull, frequently absent Darrell Clavering. While she hadn’t been able to claim that she was miserable, meeting Rob, awakened something in her, showing her what her life had actually been, and what it could be instead. The narrative takes us back to when Fanny first met famous director Rob Quillet, their attraction to one another – and the tentative beginning of their affair. Fanny was torn, recognising the danger signals she tried to back away, pulled back by her feelings, which were so strong and so unexpected. Despite this, she attempts to carry on with her life, forget about Rob, concentrate on running Stebbings with seamless efficiency, socialising with other local country wives and keeping her mother-in-law Lady Candida happy. However, in time, Fanny begins to realise she can’t exist without Rob, and two of her friends are suspicious after one of them spots her in London with him.

Hugh and Caddie have had their world turned upside down, while they had been away at school the grownups silently got on with managing the scandalous situation. By the time they knew anything, it was practically all over. Stebbings; the loved country home, that is so familiar, has been closed up, a modern flat in London is where they will live with their father and the housekeeper/nanny Gwyneth. The pony, Topaz, which Caddie won in a competition, and is almost her sole reason for living, is stabled in the country, and Caddie doesn’t know when or if she will be able to see him. All they want is for everything to go back to normal, stunned by a kind of grief, they have been unable to see Fanny as being anyone other than their mother – they are only just seeing that she is also a woman in love.

“At the top of the walk Fanny and Rob stopped, dazzled by the sun after the shade. Because of the brilliant light, and because his eyes were so tired, Hugh could not see them clearly; the whole garden and the lake had become a blur, but, standing in the flood of evening light, framed against the green leaves and the spirals of mauve flowers, they looked illuminated, glorified. ‘A couple,’ Hugh thought before he could stifle the thought, not his mother and Rob Quillet but a man and woman close together.”

We can’t help but sympathise with the children, it is bad enough when parents’ divorce, but Hugh and Caddie have been abandoned by their adored mother, everything they took for granted has altered and they don’t quite recognise this new world they are being asked to live in.

There is a selfishness to childhood which we only really recognise when we look back on it. I admit, that while I sympathised with the children, I got very annoyed by their blind selfishness too. Hugh and Caddie want their mother back, and they go all out to get her. Fanny is happier than she has ever been in her life, on some level the children recognise this – but easily discount it. Fanny is already beset with terrible guilt for what she did to her former husband, and especially her children, and having them appear at the villa – just as she and Rob are about to go out to dinner – shakes her resolve. Rob is apparently made of sterner stuff – and starts to arrange for the children to be returned immediately. However, things don’t go quite according to plan, as Hugh is struck down with food poisoning and Rob, allowing Caddie to get under his skin – she reminds him so much of her mother – can’t bring himself to send her off alone. It is arranged that the children will stay for a fortnight – when their father will have returned from a work trip. Once it has been agreed that the children will stay, Rob sends for his own daughter Pia – an impossibly stylish ten-year-old brought up by her grandmother. Pia is immediately dismissive of sad, scruffy Caddie, who can’t help admiring Pia despite her unfriendliness. Hugh, meanwhile who has been stomping around the villa in confused fury for days finds himself rather drawn to the little girl.

With three unhappy children in the villa, banding together, the battle lines are drawn, but will the children realise that their actions have consequences before things go too far?

The Battle of the Villa Fiorita is an absorbing novel, I loved the children and their fiendish plotting, and while I felt for them, I also felt for the adults, whose future happiness or unhappiness lies in the hands of their children. I was left with mixed feelings about how Godden ended her novel, and found myself thinking about it for several days after I had finished.