A Funeral in Fiesole

by Rosanne Dingli

  I realized now how fortunate it was, from what I gathered after the death of a friend’s father, and the complications she experienced, that Mama never remarried. Now she was gone, and from how everyone’s expectation was building over the will, I wondered why she never did get married again. Was there never someone in the picture? We were so little when Papa died. Surely she would have met someone, or had some sort of relationship. It was strange I could not remember a single man with an interest in her. In any case – it was a good thing! Romance didn’t last, and brought complication.

  My wall god, Apollo, peeling and mouldy, speckled with mildew, held nothing of his old enchantment. His bare torso was flat and flaking. Neither handsome nor magical, as he was when I was a child – when I dreamed he would float off the wall, land at my feet and kiss me – he badly needed painting over. How I wished I had a great can of grey paint and a wide brush!

  I wandered all over the floors and the wing before and after dinner on the second day, while Lewis was walking Otto in long wet grass, which would have totally ruined my boots, and noted all sorts of things were missing. Paintings from the drawing room, several rugs on the ground floor, which were replaced, it seemed, by newer cheap ones, which had started to go funny – damp and rolling at the ends. What happened to all Papa’s old things Mama had always insisted were not to be packed away? The ebony and ivory chess set, the old phonograph, the newer Philips record player, large and grey … what else did I remember?

  I would have to speak to Paola. She was the one with the elephantine memory! Was it possible Mama gave things away, or sold items without telling anyone? It was of course her stuff! She could dispose of anything and everything any way she wanted to. Some parts of the house seemed intentionally stripped, especially of paintings. I seemed to remember different items in certain places.

  There was nothing I liked better than well-restored antiques against the sleek background of good architecture. Modern architecture, though, not this. We used to have pieces in the villa I could have happily taken away. Valuable pieces. Good English furniture! The perfect antiques. I wondered about it all.

  Nigel and Harriet found it necessary to replace things like the kitchen taps when they were here caring for Mama – such practical things were obvious and essential; something I would have done too, and without delay! But other things were either neglected, like the outdoor furniture and the terrace awnings; or had completely disappeared, like the lace curtains and … Goodness, where was the great big bookcase? The enormous antique bookcase in the passage to the wing had disappeared! I definitely had to ask Nigel about it.

  ‘Suzanna, calm down.’

  ‘I am calm! Haven’t you noticed some things are gone?’

  ‘Of course we have.’

  How annoying he said we in that way, like he and Harriet knew everything about the house and its contents. They did know, of course, but it needed no verbal confirmation. I waited for him to continue, hoping he wouldn’t say Mama had given it to them for their flat in London.

  ‘She gave some things to Donato and Matilde. Some things were a bit beyond repair, so she had them taken away. I think other things might be back in Cornwall.’

  ‘Oh! Could it be there, in that case? And the Cornwall house has been locked up … vacant for a while, am I right? We’d better have it seen to, or it will fall into disrepair too!’

  ‘I think there’s a tenant in it right now. Oh, Suzanna. This place isn’t so bad.’

  I gave him one of my boardroom glares. I thought he deserved it. ‘It would take several hundred thousand, Nigel – and you know it – to bring this place anywhere near acceptable. It’s close to being uninhabitable. My bedroom ceiling drips!’

  ‘It always has. Everyone’s does … a little.’

  ‘Much worse than when we lived here.’

  ‘We were always here in summer.’

  ‘It needs a bucket! A bright orange plastic bucket in the dead centre of my floor!’

  ‘Everything’s worse for you.’

  ‘Now don’t you start! Of course I have standards. It’s because of how we were raised. Mama …’

  ‘If it were the case, we’d all have the same standards.’

  Well. He practically told me off for my tastes and criteria. Shabby was shabby. Broken was broken. Drips were drips. Surely Nigel could see how the Fiesole house had deteriorated. I let him go. I watched him wander off to his precious kitchen, where he always ran in times of stress … and irritation. When we were young it was to get something to eat from Matilde. Now it was to drown his sorrows in cooking.

  Things did not change much. Nigel was still Nigel.

  And Paola was still Paola, it seemed. She mooched around checking everything and everyone, watching us in her typical silent way. Thoughts were plain on her face. I wondered she didn’t know every thought of hers was broadcast on her forehead, in those dark little eyes and around her shrinking mouth. She ought to find a better hairdresser, was the first thing I thought when we arrived. Her too-short cut, that severe parting, and desperately needing professional colour. Lewis never noticed. He mumbled monosyllables when I told him on the first night; everyone seemed the worse for wear and age.

  Paola was turning grey; skin, hair and even her eyes. Nigel was carrying the sorrows and problems of the entire world on his shoulders. A powder keg waiting to explode. Brod? Brod was smiling all over, but I could feel something was niggling on the inside. Besides, he now looked his age. His boyfriend was a far sight more attractive, and better groomed too. He should have taken a leaf out of Grant’s book – and shop where he shopped for clothes. He was in banking, but those trousers, that sweater!

  It was funny, because Brod always wanted what other people had. I’d have thought he would go for Grant’s dress style. That man, gay or not, was well-dressed. Then again; those amazing features would look good in a hessian sack.

  Pity about the big bookcase. It would have fitted perfectly in our hall. I would have liked to own it. As a matter of fact, I wanted it. Donato died years ago, but Matilde was still alive. She would be a hundred and six! Nigel said she was too old to come to the funeral tomorrow, but I would have to pay her a visit because she might know where the bookcase ended up. Prato, Harriet said. She lived in Prato. Lewis would have to drive us there and back. I would have to take along something in the way of a gift. Now what would an old Italian woman appreciate? How would I know? Lewis would have to put on his thinking cap!

  Brod

  Rain, rain

  ‘When the will is read tomorrow, Grant …’

  ‘I know, Brod. I know I’m not invited. I’m not family. Not yet, anyway. I have something else planned.’ Grant’s sincere expression was reassuring.

  I watched him, filled with a bit of awkward uncertainty, but relieved his supreme tact and discretion would get us both to where it was more comfortable to be. Strange as it might have felt, I was getting used to trust, so late in life. I used to think I was trustful to a certain extent, but having three siblings, being a twin, hardly remembering my father, and being queer were not the ideal recipe. School dashed any feelings of confidence and buried any trust I might have had. Schools, especially boarding schools, should be abolished. They were horrible, cruel places and taught little of worth.

  Anyway, it was years ago. Being with Grant was teaching me more than I could ever have got in high school, even though I had to admit I landed a perfectly good career in banking after university. I had to show everybody, didn’t I? I had to show Mama and everyone else they were wrong about me being indecisive and weak.

  There was something else on Grant’s mind though, something other than how strange it was to lodge in town when there was such a big house to stay in. He insisted on going off on his own to explore Fiesole while the will was read. To explore Fiesole – how strange it sounded to me after all those years. It was home more than any other place, and I knew its lanes and steep winding streets better than anywhere. Better than Cornwall.

 
; We drove up, to come to this house, Grant and I, flanked by those vertical masonry walls, rough hedges of unpruned laurel bushes and miles and miles of cypresses in ragged lines, and I could see he loved it on sight. He drove more slowly, and when we took a bend, gazed out over the valleys we rose above, gradually leaving Florence behind, leaving the densely-built parts, the narrow walled streets, the yellow-painted houses with green shutters, and ascended among the poderi – the vineyards and untidy olive groves. The greyness of grouped olive trees always meant home to me, but I only could name the feeling on the drive up. Strange. It was nostalgia. First time I noticed I was nostalgic.

  The smell, too, the dank heavy wet rainy smell coming from the soaked fields surprised me with its wallop of memory. We were always there in the summer as children, and it was mostly dry and dusty, but we often got a good downpour before we went back to school in September, so we could distinguish the smell of doused citrus leaves, the olive scent, the laurel fragrance rising to our windows at the house, and the musty subtle but unmistakeable smell of drenched grapevines.

  Even the purple hills in the distance, the terracotta tiled roofs of the farmhouses, and the straggly trees which seemed to lean over and hold the roadside banks from tumbling to the bitumen had their own special mental smell for me, depending on when we drove those roads.

  ‘Turn your window down,’ I said.

  ‘What, in this rain?’ But he did.

  ‘See? That scent.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  An end-of-summer smell, or a beginning-of-autumn scent, which spelled the end of weeks of lounging around, reading. Wishing for a swimming pool; or wishing the house was somewhere closer to the sea.

  Through Grant’s eyes I could see we had a magical privileged childhood, the four of us. But time had passed. We no longer were Silent Paola, Angry Nigel, Greedy Suzanna and … did they think I was still Hesitant Broderick? Indecisive? Dithering? Irresolute?

  I wished some of us were less bitter, less inclined to remember the self-indulgent juvenile tendencies we had than the real people we evolved into in the end. The end … well, it was the end for Mama. How cruel it was that I could not be here. Grant was right when he tried to reason with me, but there would always be the feeling I could have been present. I hoped the funeral itself would eventually give me some sort of closure. I realized I didn’t definitely need to be at the New York conference, but I did go. How was I to know? Now, I needed closure. A cliché, if ever there was one.

  ‘Brod, Brod – the bookcase is missing!’ Suzanna was flustered. Impeccably turned out, but flustered. Her exclaimed words tumbled out.

  ‘Oh – now I remember it. Yes. Ask Nigel … but I know what he’ll say. Riddled with woodworm and had to be burnt.’

  She tossed a perfectly coiffed head.

  Now I had a few grey hairs, she didn’t, and I had great sticky-out ears, and so did she, but she appeared like she jumped straight out of a fashion … no, a business magazine. She would not have seemed out of place up in the boardroom at my bank.

  She tossed her head again. ‘Incinerated? The beautiful Chippendale … it had glass doors and everything!’

  ‘What you remember best is getting on a chair and tracing the glass frames and mullions with your little fingers. Matilde would ask you to be careful not to fall, and not to get sticky fingerprints on the glass.’ I could feel what was forming in her mind. She wanted it. She wanted the bookcase badly. Suzanna was like that.

  Well, I could want it too. Not as badly as she did. I certainly wanted something from this house – to remember it by. What did I remember liking? All I could think of was tracing the design in the library rug, tracing the pattern as I lay on my stomach, listening to Mama read. I did it so long I still remember the border pattern. I was mad about those rugs, but it was too late. They had been replaced by others. Cheap synthetic ones without a nice pattern, which refused to lie flat.

  Surely we could all find something nice to take away. Value was not an issue, although it would be nice to have something whose quality would endure. I saw my sister still stood there, waiting for an answer. ‘Isn’t that what you recall, Suzanna?’

  ‘No it’s not! I don’t remember any such thing!’

  I had to distract her. ‘So Matilde would lure you into the kitchen for a biscuit with almonds in it.’

  ‘A biscuit! I don’t eat biscuits.’

  I laughed. I had to laugh. ‘You did in those days. Don’t you remember what she called us? Gemelli golosi.’ The memories came to me in sensations, in my head. I could smell the almond biscuits, feel the kitchen warmth, remember the way Matilde swept both fringes off our foreheads at once – a hand each, raking our hair back as if we were little ponies. ‘Greedy twins, she called us.’

  ‘I was never greedy, Brod.’

  But she saw her inquiries about the bookcase were starting to give that impression. ‘And the books …’ Her words petered out. She raised thin arms and dropped them limply by her sides, and started to turn away.

  ‘The books would never have been thrown out. You know how Mama was. They’ll be crammed in with all the others in the library.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She paused, hooked a dark wisp of hair behind an ear and quickly loosened it again; conscious of the impression she wanted to strike. ‘Brod, it was a lovely, lovely piece of furniture. I wouldn’t mind so much if Mama gave it away, but I’d hate to think it was burnt!’

  ‘Do you remember hiding in the big bottom drawer?’

  Her eyes flashed.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘It was where Papa kept his collection of records. Now where do you think all those vinyl records went?’

  ‘I hope they were given to Donato. Matter of fact, I think the collection did go to him a few years after Papa died … or we’d never have been able to hide in there.’

  She seemed to have a selective memory. With her mouth in a straight line, and a spine equally rigid, she tip-tapped on high heels towards the kitchen.

  ‘What was that about?’ Grant came up behind me. He knew, but didn’t want to appear like he had eavesdropped on the entire conversation.

  ‘Stuff. We remember different things.’

  ‘You mean you remember the same things in different ways.’

  I laughed. ‘Or not at all.’

  ‘Hm. Brod, come and look at the front.’ His beautiful eyes were excited. ‘The mishmash of architecture of this place is quite …’

  ‘Quite what? Mama adored it.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. It’s a very happy conglomeration of additions …’

  ‘… and annexes and restorations and extensions, yes!’

  ‘Over such a long time. How can you not want to ever live here again?’

  I punched him in the arm. ‘Want or wish, Grant? You know it’s impossible.’

  ‘You said it yourself. You said you’d miss this place.’

  ‘I …’

  He led me to the front and we stood under a leaden sky and a torn awning. I could see what he saw. The fanlights, balustrades, the terraces, the way the land fell away at the back to show such a splendid view past the terracotta roof of the wing, and the way the wing sprawled away from the ancient scullery, whose rough-mortared buttresses seemed to crumble before our eyes.

  ‘And you did say your bank has a Florence branch, which would be happy to have you. You could work down the road.’

  I started to see the germ of an idea in his eyes. ‘Grant – please! It would mean buying the other three out. I could not possibly do it. The whole place would have to be gutted, restored … practically rebuilt in places.’

  ‘Money, money, money.’ He pushed the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows. ‘Think of the fun, though.’

  ‘Don’t start rolling up your sleeves – you know it’s financially impossible. Plus – what would you do in Fiesole? Think!’

  But the glimmer in his eyes, and the way he squeezed my shoulder, told me it was not the end of the conversation.

 
; ‘Anyone hungry?’ Nigel shouting from the kitchen summoned us all from all parts of the rambling mansion.

  ‘How much Italian do you speak, anyway?’ I asked Grant as we drifted to the kitchen followed by Paola, who had a finger inside a clutched book, as usual.

  ‘Tantissimo molto.’ Grant’s eyes danced with mirth as he uttered the mangled phrase.

  We all laughed with him. I did not know what I would have done without him to break the hard layers of ice forming after the initial polite warmth that lubricated our first hours there. It wasn’t only Suzanna’s questions that stumped me.

  In the dining room, eating Nigel’s delicious saltimbocca, examining the labels – which seemed familiar – of two bottles of wine at either end of the long table, and waiting for the chatter to settle, I saw Paola and Harriet were barely speaking.

  ‘Is your room all right, Auntie Paola?’ Lori too had felt the chill, and seemed anxious to build bridges. ‘Does the music disturb you?’

  Sweet child. She didn’t inherit pleasantness from her mother, who sulked and placed herself with some deliberation as far as she could sit from Paola.

  My older sister smiled. Paola can be nice, I had to concede. She was nice and measured, knowing accurately and incisively how much sweetness to inject into a sentence when it was needed. ‘What, your cello? Of course not, it’s wonderful to have music in the villa. I’m glad you came up from the back house – it must be freezing down there. When Donato and Matilde lived here they had the great sistema going.’ She examined each face. ‘Does anyone remember?’

  ‘Il sistema riscaldamento! Donato talked about it all the time.’ Nigel grinned. ‘He tinkered and tinkered with the central heating, even in the height of summer. I wonder how it went in winter.’

  ‘It’s going now.’ His wife eyed him pointedly. ‘We’d all be frozen to the core if it weren’t.’