by Maeve Haran
He found that he was smiling. As his mother had pointed out, they’d have to see how Lanzarella affected them all. It was certainly a place you could fall in love with.
An old London barge glided past his window, its dark red sail flapping gently, leaving a small wave spreading across the river in its wake. Watching it, Stephen felt a rare stab of loneliness. Normally, he filled the void with work, sometimes concerts and a busy social life, but the thought of Lanzarella brought back memories of Carla and what they might have had together if she hadn’t died so unexpectedly.
Maybe he should sell the place after all.
He decided to go for a walk and watch the theatregoers straggling over the Millennium Bridge, the mudlarks with metal detectors on the riverbanks when the tide went out, and his favourite view of all London, St Paul’s Cathedral, which his mother accused people like him of obscuring with their horrible modern buildings. Just the sight of it made him smile.
‘You look happy, Steve,’ Sam, the Big Issue seller outside the Swan pub greeted him. He was the only person who ever called Stephen ‘Steve’.
Stephen duly bought his Big Issue, even though he’d already bought one from another seller. Ridiculous really, as his mother reminded him; he should just hand over a tower block to the homeless instead of buying surplus Big Issues, but the banks who funded him might have a word to say about that. He did his bit to make sure the social housing he provided as part of his schemes wasn’t just on noisy major roads, but overlooking some gardens, much to the annoyance of the financiers, but it hardly made him Bill Gates.
‘You need to fall in love again,’ Gwen was prone to remind him.
Most men who lost their wives seemed to get over it remarkably quickly in Stephen’s view, as if a wife was just someone who made the house tidy and welcoming, but he’d really loved Carla.
And Carla had loved the Villa Le Sirenuse. As he walked back along the river, Stephen saw a woman waiting to go into the Globe Theatre. She was leaning against the river wall, reading a copy of The Times.
Angela’s face stared out at him from under the headline ‘Work is the Way I Relax’, and he felt glad she was in lovely Lanzarella.
Everyone told him that Lanzarella had a way of changing your perceptions. Everyone’s except his, it seemed.
He wished for the briefest moment that he were there with them all.
Maybe it could finally change his as well.
The table in the dining room of the villa could seat forty but to be cosier, Beatrice had laid it just at one end. Unfortunately, she had put one person at the end with the other three organized round them. To maintain some ceremony she had added white linen napkins, flowers and candles.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world Angela sat herself down in the prime position. Monica looked nervously at Sylvie, who flounced her skirts as she placed herself at Angela’s right hand. Claire and Monica took the seats on either side, exchanging a look of unspoken solidarity that neither of them cared where they sat.
Beatrice appeared with the wine and compounded the situation by showing Angela the label in unconscious recognition of her status.
‘She thinks you’re the boss,’ Claire joked.
‘Or a man,’ Sylvie added under her breath.
The first course appeared, a fragrant pumpkin ravioli with fresh tomato sauce.
‘Delicious,’ savoured Claire, trying to break the ice. ‘Immaculata is a terrific cook.’
Angela took a sip of her wine and looked round. ‘Maybe I should put my cards on the table,’ she announced. ‘I don’t really do women friends.’
Claire willed her to stop. She’d come to like Angela once she’d got to know her a little, and saw that this was the best way to antagonize everyone.
‘More wine, Angela?’ she tried to offer as Sylvie muttered, ‘I’m not bloody surprised.’
‘But as we seem to be here under rather surprising circumstances maybe we should say a bit about ourselves. I’m Angela Williams. I own a chain of dress shops called Fabric.’
‘I’ve got a top from there,’ Monica threw in.
Angela raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘I would never have guessed it.’
‘And I do the TV series Done Deal.’
‘As the ball breaker, surprise, surprise,’ contributed Sylvie in a low voice.
‘Recently the company was taken over against my will.’
‘How awful,’ Monica sympathized. ‘I didn’t know they could do that.’
‘It’s commoner than you’d think. I wanted a bit of a break to get away from the publicity.’
‘Yes, poor you, it must have been awful,’ Sylvie threw in with a sardonic tone. ‘All that money they gave you.’
The irony was lost on Angela. ‘Yes, vile. Then I got this offer to come here and see if the house had the potential to be a hotel.’
Beatrice, arriving with the main course, stopped a moment in her tracks so suddenly that a plate slid from the tray she was carrying. ‘Scusi! Mi scusi, signora!’
Claire rushed round to help pick up the food from the floor as Beatrice, still flustered, took the dish back to the kitchen to replace it.
‘I wonder what’s got to her,’ Claire mused. ‘She poured the wine on the carpet earlier. Something a bit odd going on.’
‘So.’ Angela sailed on as if nothing had happened. ‘Tell us about you, Claire.’
‘I’m very ordinary. No hostile takeovers or TV shows. Though sometimes a hostile takeover sounds rather tempting. I run a catering company. Very small scale. Birthdays, anniversaries, funerals. It just about washes its face with a little bit over, but mostly I love it. And it gets me away from my husband.’
Sylvie laughed in mutual understanding.
‘I came to see about the catering possibilities if this were to be a hotel.’
‘Sylvie?’ asked Angela.
Sylvie looked at her coldly; she supposed she had to join in this stupid charade. ‘I’m Sylvie Sutton. I run a successful interior design business with my husband.’ She hesitated, wondering how much she was prepared to give away. ‘I’ve been working too hard recently and needed a break.’
Angela looked at her, tempted to say something. She had been shown the email of Tony and Kimberley caught in the act by a business associate and thought it was hilarious. But if Sylvie chose not to mention it, that was up to her. It must have been seriously humiliating after all.
With perfect timing Immaculata filled the awkward pause by arriving with veal saltimbocca and crispy potatoes. ‘That smells wonderful!’ Monica enthused. ‘Is Beatrice all right? Sta bene Beatrice?’ She surprised the entire room with her perfect Italian accent. Pronouncing Beatrice not like the rest of them in the English manner but ‘Bay-ah-tree-chay’, as it should be said.
‘Impressive,’ congratulated Sylvie, who had lived in enough countries to recognize a flair for languages.
‘Au pair in Florence.’ Monica shrugged. ‘I don’t recommend it. Underpaid slavery. But then I did get to study in Rome for a term when I was at university. That was fun.’
‘Monica obviously has hidden depths,’ Angela commented.
‘Just as well, since there’s not much on the surface.’ Monica blushed.
‘You’ll have to learn not to be so self-deprecating, Monica. People accept the image you give them,’ Angela corrected.
‘Except in your case, Angela,’ Sylvie said sweetly. ‘I gather they wanted a new image for your company.’
They all waited for Angela’s reaction but she simply looked scathingly at Sylvie. ‘Anyway, Monica, you haven’t told us about you.’
‘I’m Monica,’ Monica announced, loathing the confrontation and wanting to head it off, but hating drawing the attention to herself. ‘This’ll probably make you laugh, people always do for some reason, but I used to be a librarian.’ No one laughed but they were all watching her. Angela refilled her own glass. Not the others’, Sylvie noted. ‘I worked for forty years at the University of Buckingham. That
confuses people because they don’t know Buckingham has a university, but it was wonderful. I was the university librarian. I met my husband Brian there and we were happily married for twenty-five years. Sometimes people are surprised about that.’
‘Monica!’ This was a step too far for Angela. ‘Stop putting yourself down!’
‘I wasn’t actually.’
‘What happened to Brian?’ Claire asked, hoping he hadn’t run off.
‘He had a massive heart attack about a year ago. For some reason my mother likes telling people that.’
‘What a mother!’ Sylvie shook her head. ‘Why would she like telling people that?’
‘Because she thinks I’m a failure to have chosen someone with poor health.’
‘But mothers are supposed to be supportive!’ Claire exclaimed, thinking of how she couldn’t stand her daughter-in-law yet she was her son’s choice and she ought to be nicer to her.
‘That’s exactly what Gwen says.’ A mischievous smile crept across Monica’s face, transforming it from ordinary to engagingly gamine. ‘Gwen says my mother’s a complete bitch and that’s why she made her son invite me here.’
‘How funny!’ Sylvie’s smile was genuine this time. ‘After I accepted, Gwen rang me and said my husband was a complete bastard and she’d persuaded her son to invite me to his house in Italy to get away for a bit!’
They both laughed at the coincidence and how like Gwen it was, while Claire smiled and Angela looked annoyed.
A delectable dessert of tiramisu arrived, served by Beatrice, who seemed to have recovered her usual calm.
‘Would you ladies like coffee in the salon?’ she enquired.
‘Fresh mint tea for me, if you have it please, Beatrice.’ Sylvie wasn’t going to attempt the Italian pronunciation.
‘So who is this mysterious Gwen you all seem to idolize?’ Angela asked.
‘Gwen Charlesworth,’ Sylvie replied. ‘She was our neighbour. And my lifesaver. My parents were always away, and disinterested in having a child when they were at home. Gwen sort of rescued me.’
‘Me too,’ Monica smiled. ‘I haven’t known her as long as you have, but she’s always been incredibly kind.’
Angela was struck silent for once and sat staring into her empty wine glass.
Suddenly she looked up. ‘You’re not telling me that Gwen Charlesworth is the mother of Stephen Charlesworth? And that this house belongs to Stephen Charlesworth!’
‘I think we are,’ Sylvie stated, studying her. What the hell was the matter with her? All at once bossy bloody Angela had lost her confidence and sat there looking like a deflated balloon.
‘But I know him! I mean . . . I went out with him for the first year at Oxford and then I had to leave because my mother had a breakdown, a really bad one.’
‘You poor thing,’ said Monica with genuine sympathy. She’d seen enough students to know how hard that would be just when you’d started enjoying university life.
‘So do I!’ Claire grinned, equally amazed. ‘Well, I mean I know him too. I went to a ball with him. I was in Oxford as well. Not at the university, obviously. The Ox and Cow!’
‘Is that a pub?’ Sylvie asked, having difficulty keeping up with all these revelations.
‘The Oxford and County Secretarial College,’ Claire announced with a flourish. ‘Everyone called it the Ox and Cow. Aspiring mothers with dim daughters sent them there in the hope that they’d nab a posh student.’
‘My God!’ This was a closed world to Sylvie, who’d left school at seventeen and got a job straight away. ‘It sounds like Jane Austen.’
‘Except it was the Sixties. Lizzie takes a trip. Mr Darcy on ganja.’ Claire giggled.
‘You didn’t go out with Stephen too, did you Monica?’ Claire asked.
‘Thanks for the compliment. No. We played together when we were kids.’
‘So did we,’ Sylvie remembered. ‘He’d never wear a tutu.’
‘But this means we all know Stephen Charlesworth!’ Angela pointed out, clearly agitated.
‘What’s so odd about that?’ Sylvie shrugged. ‘It’s his house!’
‘Yes, but two of us haven’t seen him for years and didn’t even know this was his house. I think it’s seriously weird.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Sylvie shook her head, ‘you’re making far too much of it. I suggest we skip the salon and all go to bed. Maybe tomorrow the rain will have stopped.’
The revelation had achieved one thing at least, Sylvie noted. Bloody Angela Williams had stopped behaving as if she owned the place and they were just her guests. And as for not doing women friends, who had asked her to be their friend anyway?
Claire was the first to wake; she’d always been an early riser and often leapt out of bed leaving Martin to sleep. She padded over to the window and threw open the shutters. The sun hit her eyes with such force that she had to stand back and shade them. But as soon as she was accustomed to the sunlight she leaned out of her window. The vista unfolding in front of her took her breath away with its loveliness.
The terrace beneath her window was decorated with urns overflowing with pale pink geraniums which gave way to trees of bright, new spring green and below that a dazzling cobalt blue sea. A single fishing boat ploughed its way across her vision, heading inland with its overnight catch, leaving a white trail from its motor.
Claire looked at her watch. Only seven. No one else would be up. And she knew she just had to be outside.
She quickly changed into jeans and a T-shirt, scrabbled around for her trainers and sneaked out through the silent house.
In the gardens that tumbled down the hillside it wasn’t just the light that amazed her but a heady perfume she didn’t recognize. As she rounded the corner at the side of the house she came across a pergola, half hidden by a mass of purple wisteria, with two chairs placed underneath it. She sat down and breathed in the glorious scent, but it was too lovely to sit for long. At the back of the house almond, cherry and apple trees waved their pink and white blossoms in the morning breeze and she could hear the sound of bees buzzing from one flower to the next.
On the next level down, a small fountain trickled beside a half-hidden grotto with a fresh-water pool built into the rock face. Claire almost clapped her hands in delight. On the edge of the pool a life-sized marble nymph kneeled, staring into the water, an expression of longing on her face. The quality of the carving was extraordinary. This was not the work of some local stonemason. It had to have been chiselled by the hand of a master.
An irresistible temptation overcame Claire. She glanced furtively around, then, satisfied that she was alone, stripped off her clothes down to pants and bra. Oh what the hell, she thought, the nymph is naked, why not me too?
The water was icy cold and clear as gin, but country-bred Claire just held her breath until she got used to it.
She found a small ledge where she could support herself and stared again at the statue. ‘Is it your lost lover you’re searching for?’ she enquired of the stone maiden. ‘Banished under the water by some jealous goddess?’
The only answer was a laugh.
Claire swung round to find Giovanni pushing a wheelbarrow, his shirt undone even further than Simon Cowell’s, though Giovanni’s chest could not have been more different.
‘Due ninfe.’ He smiled with that sly sexy smile that seemed so characteristically Italian. Two nymphs. One nymph and a crone might have been more appropriate. Casually Claire slipped an arm across her breasts, conscious that if she let go of the ledge to protect her modesty she would disappear under the water. She must carry this off with confidence as if English ladies took naked dips every morning. The terrible thought struck her that Giovanni was looking straight at her body through the crystal-clear water.
‘Febbre di primavera. The fever of the spring,’ he stated as if this was a perfectly acceptable explanation for finding a nude woman in a fountain. ‘Nobody can resist.’
And then he walked onwards, whistli
ng.
Claire waited until he was safely out of sight and then climbed out. She didn’t even have a towel. She pulled her T-shirt on over her wet body, realizing it only drew attention to her freezing nipples, and scrabbled into her jeans, the dampness of her body making her almost fall over as she tried to yank them on.
She glanced back at the pool.
From where he was standing with the sunlight illuminating the water, she would have seemed as naked as Lady Godiva minus her famous hair.
She wondered for a moment how Martin would have reacted if he’d come upon her nude in a pool. Probably wouldn’t have noticed. Or maybe he’d have said: ‘For God’s sake, Claire, what the hell are you doing? You’ll catch your death.’ Certainly not called her a nymph. To give him his due he was from Cheltenham.
Angela drew back one of her extravagant devoré curtains and stepped out onto her large balcony, so large that it was really a terrace. For a moment she didn’t notice the beauty of the day, still preoccupied with the fact that this was Stephen Charlesworth’s house.
She remembered when they’d said goodbye as clearly as if she were still in the moment. He had been so kind when the father she loved so much had died and had even driven her home in his ancient black Austin Healey to take care of her mother. They had both been grateful that for once it hadn’t broken down. How he’d loved that car.
And then he’d kissed her goodbye and they’d both promised to keep in touch, but she’d known it was a lie. He was twenty-one and had just found his feet at Oxford. He was attractive and, now that he’d lost his initial shyness, charming. He would be devoured alive by some clever, pretty girl who came from a background like his own, not a council house in Nottingham.
Angela had tried not to resent her mother, to accept that she had always been fragile, but there had been some small part of her that thought if she had been in her mother’s place she would have done anything to avoid ending her daughter’s brilliant university career before it had really begun.