by Maeve Haran
‘Husbands don’t grow on trees at our age,’ she sighed. She took a sip of wine and brightened up. ‘I used to love that song “It’s Raining Men”. Completely untrue, of course, especially at our age, but cheering somehow.’ To the amazement of Immaculata, who had brought the pudding, Sylvie stood up and treated them to the rousing anthem in an impressively loud contralto.
‘I’ve always thought husbands were rather overrated,’ Angela announced as she helped herself to some chocolate and mascarpone cheesecake.
‘You may be bloody right.’ Sylvie took another gulp of wine. ‘God, I’m going to be the size of a battleship after staying here.’
‘I rather liked mine,’ Monica said quietly.
They all looked at her as if she’d sworn in church.
‘And then he went and died.’ Sylvie shook her head and looked as if she might burst into tears at the unfairness of fate. ‘You get one of the only good ones and then that goes and happens.’ She stared into space for a moment. ‘Tony and I used to have a lot of fun. Before the gym bunny came on the scene.’ She shook her head as if to banish the thought from her memory. ‘How long are we all going to stay here, by the way?’
The question had an odd effect on all of them, as if they didn’t really want to think about it.
‘Let’s see how it goes, shall we?’ Angela realized she was taking control again. ‘Lanzarella Women’s Cooperative. Do we all agree?’
They all raised their hands.
Immaculata appeared with coffee. Sylvie had another drink before the bottle disappeared. ‘There’s one thing wrong with this place. No minibar.’
‘Perhaps you could install one in your new room,’ Monica joked.
‘Now that, Monica, is a brilliant idea. You know one thing that I’ve wondered about. What do all the staff do when they haven’t got people like us staying? I wouldn’t have had Stephen down as one of the super-rich who keep their residences fully staffed just in case they’re going to grace it with their presence. As far as I can tell, Stephen never comes near the place.’
‘Giovanni says he comes in the summer. Maybe they’re ancient retainers he can’t bear to sack.’
‘Giovanni isn’t that old,’ Claire pointed out with a grin.
‘Now now, Claire,’ tutted Sylvie, ‘sorry, Chiara. Or is it his Nymph today? Just because Giovanni’s got the hots for you.’
‘If you ask me,’ Claire raised her glass, ‘the only person Giovanni’s got the hots for is Giovanni.’
They turned to discover the object of their humour, for some reason now dressed in skin-tight white jeans and a sweatshirt made of some sporting material that showed every line of his biceps and pecs plus what seemed to be permanently erect nipples. His black hair tumbled down to his shoulders and he completed the look with wrap-around sunglasses which he now removed to give them the full benefit of his wounded expression. ‘I come to ask if you ladies need the auto this afternoon. Otherwise I have request from Beatrice for some business in Maggiore.’ Maggiore was the next town along the coast.
Angela looked round to the others. They all shook their heads. ‘No thanks, Giovanni. Feel free to have the car.’
‘And we all know what kind of business it really is, dressed like that,’ pointed out Sylvie after he left. ‘Unless it’s a local Lothario beauty contest. He’d certainly win. By the way, underneath all the cute “I no understand” number, I bet Giovanni speaks perfect English. Beware. Right, I’m going up to start on the room transformation. The stuff has arrived, apparently. Anyone fancy giving me a hand?’
‘I’ve got to make that call,’ Claire announced.
‘I fancied a stroll around the gardens,’ said Monica. ‘I will later though.’
‘Not really my scene.’ Angela shrugged. ‘I seem to like my surroundings more neutral.’ She thought of her house and its curious absence of personality.
‘What rubbish! Your shops are lovely,’ Sylvie contradicted. ‘I mean, I never actually go into them because I go more for the ageing hippie look but they still look really inviting. I’d say you have quite an instinct for it.’
Angela looked at her, genuinely taken aback.
After lunch she wandered up to her room and opened the doors to her terrace. Lanzarella really was an extraordinary place, seeming to hang in the air, leaning out vertiginously above a sparkling blue sea, and the Villa Le Sirenuse, at the top of the village, like a hidden gem. She wasn’t one for nature, apart from the walks with her dad in the Yorkshire dales; she preferred cities. She liked the modern lines of city living, and its anonymity. The chat over the garden wall wasn’t for her. What seemed like friendliness to some was busybodying to her. She supposed it came from the days of her mother’s breakdown, before there was all this caring and sharing, shrinks and daytime TV confessions. In those days mental illness was still a disgrace. She and her mother had to cope with it alone. And it had been frightening. The way her mother had regressed and become entirely helpless.
Suddenly, at the age of twenty-one, Angela became the parent to a mother who had never tried to earn her love and affection. Still, she told herself, enough of this whining. Plenty of children gave up their childhoods to look after an ailing parent, children far younger than she had been. Of course they hadn’t had to give up a place at Oxford. Once again, she pushed out of her mind the suspicion that her mother had never wanted her to go in the first place. That was too horrible to contemplate. And of course she’d also lost Stephen. But then, she told herself brutally, that would probably have happened anyway.
She looked around at the umbrella pines that were so characteristic of Lanzarella, gazed down at the bright geraniums and petunias planted round the house and breathed in the air full of the scent of apple blossom – and was that narcissus?
She would go downstairs right now and see if there was indeed narcissus growing and pick a big bunch for her room.
Angela headed straight for the garden where she was overwhelmed not with narcissus but with the scent of the wisteria draped over the pergola and the rose arches shaped like ropes. She walked round the side of the house near her terrace, but there was no sign of any narcissi. On the point of giving up she spotted a whole flowerbed of them and, getting out the scissors she’d taken from a drawer, she cut off an armload and carried them inside, together with some red banksiae roses.
On her way to the kitchen to request a vase she was intercepted by a screeching Immaculata. ‘No! No! Porta sfortuna to mix the red flowers with the white!’
Angela smiled to herself. This was just what her mother used to say. Red and white flowers signified blood and bandages and must never be brought inside. Immaculata and her mother would have got on famously.
She found a large milk jug and filled it with the fragrant blossoms.
Immaculata watched her depart, shaking her head in silent disapproval. She would have to visit the church and say some extra prayers or who knew what bad luck would fall upon the house.
The only question was how soon.
Monica loved gardens. She and Brian had visited famous gardens from Boboli to Great Dixter. Once she’d moved back to her parents’ house, Monica had put herself on the flower rota for their local church, not out of religious devotion but because she loved to arrange them. She had even earned a bit of a local reputation and to her mother’s amazement had been requested to do the odd trendy wedding.
Most of the other arrangers stuck to the well-loved favourites like roses and delphiniums but Monica had developed what she liked to think of as the Old Master style of arranging. A lot of people dismissed flower painting as something Victorian ladies used to do to pass their time but Monica had discovered that the old Dutch masters loved to paint flowers and did so with what Monica recognized as sly and subversive wit.
They filled vast canvases with gleaming oils of everything from peonies and blowsy full-blown roses and bearded irises in rainbow colours to striped tulips. But then they added the joke. The growing things that could never be flowering or fruiting at
the same time. A branch of blackberries would be merrily sitting next to early tulips or snowdrops, a drooping bluebell side by side with a late-flowering ruby-hued dahlia. And all before air freight from Kenya made any of this remotely feasible.
Sometimes they would add to the joke by inserting a red admiral butterfly, or a bird’s nest full of eggs, and once even a small cabbage. In one Monica had spotted a ripe fig, split open, which clearly had some sexual significance she didn’t want to think about.
Monica wandered on down the first level of terracing, all visible from the house, and was surprised to find separate areas to the right and left of the wide central paving, separated off by surprisingly thick and impenetrable hedging and to which she could find no obvious entrance. This ran the full length of further terracing, for four or five levels. Strange, because this was the sunniest area – and already as hot as the loveliest English summer. It was the kind of garden anyone at home would die for.
Finally, after several attempts to penetrate at the lowest level, leaving her scratched and irritated, she broke through and stood in amazement looking up at serried ranks of flowers. If her arrangements were old masters, this was an Impressionist’s fantasy.
There were rows and rows of petunias, stocks, wallflowers, irises and the lovely pale-hued anemones she had only glimpsed in the hippest of London florists. And at the suntrap top corner, the roses! Even at this time of year there were highly scented old China roses, banksiae, Bengal and damask among a bed edged with early lavender.
It was amazing. The curious thought struck Monica that though there were flowers inside the house they were completely different – roses with no scent bought especially from the flower market in Naples? How very odd. Why would the gardeners be growing all this stuff if they didn’t even use it in the house?
Intrigued, she decided to see what was on the other side, behind the opposite hedge. Again this seemed as strangely impenetrable as a safety deposit box. How did anyone get to pick the flowers? Finally, she found a small space to squeeze through, scratching her arms as she did so.
This time she almost gasped. In a row of small polytunnels, hidden from view by a blossom-covered pergola, lettuces of different colours stretched in long rows to the far end and cucumbers grew on a trellis next to vast beefsteak tomatoes. In the next small tunnel were rows of zucchini, some still attached to their flowers, interspersed with rosemary and basil.
Monica stared at the profusion of vegetables and herbs, even more surprised. How could they possibly need all this for a house that seemed to be very rarely used? And then it hit her. The argument over the zucchini! This had to be some kind of scam. She wondered what on earth to make of it. Surely dear old ladies like Immaculata and Beatrice couldn’t be involved?
It was still only mid-afternoon so she decided to go and offer her services to Sylvie.
‘You look as if you’ve been in the wars,’ commented Sylvie from up a ladder.
‘Yes, I’ll tell you all about it later.’
Monica looked around the room. She could see now why people admired Sylvie’s style, though it was a million miles from her own. The room was large with windows at the back and front, both of which had shutters. Even so, Sylvie had hung curtains in a yellow-ochre silk with a tie-back in the same fabric at each. A pair of chairs stood each side of the largest window in matching fabric. Sylvie had sawn the wooden chandelier she’d bought that morning in half and had fixed it to the wall as a kind of coronet to hold the swathes of leaf-green silk which formed a glamorous canopy over the bed.
‘You don’t want it too matchy matchy,’ she said grinning down at Monica, who stood almost speechless at how much Sylvie had achieved in a couple of hours.
Sylvie climbed down. ‘It’s all down to this.’ She brandished what looked like a large metal hairdryer at Monica. ‘My staple gun. Forget men. This is the best tool of all time. With that and my trusty gaffer tape I can achieve miracles.’
She smiled round at the impact. ‘It’s all set dressing really. Like those TV makeover shows. It’ll fall apart in a month. Obviously, I don’t do this on a proper job, but it certainly gives you an idea. I had a look around the wings. There’re another fifteen rooms. The place is enormous!’
Monica leaned back to get the best look and knocked a card off the dressing table. It said: ‘Husbands come and go. Friends are for forever’.
‘From Gwen. I think she wanted to cheer me up. The thing is, since I’ve been here with you lot, I can almost believe it.’
Monica looked at her. She wasn’t even teasing. Larger-than-life Sylvie Sutton had implied that Monica was a friend!
‘Actually,’ Sylvie grimaced, ‘it’s my birthday. Sixty-two. You have to be a friend for me to admit that. That’s a state secret and yes, I know I don’t look it, but it’s still true!’ She looked at herself in the tarnished mirror. ‘No wonder Tony left me. I’m an old bag. I’m just like this room. Looks good from a distance but tacked together with staples!’ And to Monica’s horror Sylvie, who seemed as if she couldn’t care less what anyone thought, began to cry.
‘Oh shit,’ she started to rub her heavily mascaraed eyes, ‘what’s worse than an old bag? An old bag who looks like a fucking panda because her eye make-up’s run.’
She looked around her mistily. ‘I know,’ she brightened, ‘let’s have a drink. I haven’t got the minibar sorted but I’ve got a bottle of red somewhere.’
Monica was on the point of saying that she didn’t usually drink at five in the afternoon but decided it would come out prim and disapproving and not at all what Sylvie’s friend would say.
‘Where’s the corkscrew?’ she enquired instead.
They found it under a pile of fuchsia taffeta. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have glasses. See what you can find.’
Monica unearthed two painted vases that looked as if they’d come from Pompeii and hadn’t been used since.
They clinked their earthenware. ‘Bottoms up. Except that mine’s been going south for some time now. Do you know, I thought you were a bit dull when you arrived. Vicar’s daughter type. Straight-laced.’
Monica toyed with telling Sylvie that she and Brian had bought The Joy of Sex and tried every position, but decided it might shock her as well as making her start missing Tony again.
‘People can have more in them than you see on the surface,’ she said bravely. ‘Sorry if that sounds like a bumper sticker.’
Sylvie looked out of the window. ‘Sometimes I think I’ve got less.’
‘Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ Monica grinned, surprised at her bravado.
They clinked their vases happily.
Claire went out to the garden, looking for the famous asparagus bed. There seemed to be a lot of hedges you couldn’t see over but finally she located it round the corner at the side of the villa. The cook in her noted how it was almost time for it to be picked. Even the earliest British asparagus wouldn’t be ready for weeks. What a wonderful climate it was here.
Someone had thoughtfully put a bench next to the bed. Was this the phone-signal bench? She noted a statue of Mercury nearby and wondered if this was someone’s little joke, Mercury being the messenger of the Gods and thus the inspiration for the naming of numerous telecom companies. She decided the joke was a bit beyond Luigi or Giovanni. In fact, she had a strong inkling that Giovanni wouldn’t get the joke, even if you explained it to him. But what about the mysterious Stephen?
‘You’re putting this off, Claire,’ she chided herself. ‘What if it’s a genuine emergency?’ But she had an instinct born of long experience that it was probably just Martin. She guiltily acknowledged that the reason she’d kept her phone off and he’d had to call her on the landline was to try and discourage him from ringing her every five minutes because he’d lost his socks.
She dialled the home line and waited. Maybe he’d be out.
Naturally he wasn’t.
‘Claire, hello. How’s life in La Bella Italia?’ He had his jovi
al voice on, the one he usually used when he wanted something.
‘Great. Hard work,’ she lied since so far she hadn’t had to do a hand’s turn.
‘How’s the weather?’
‘So so, pouring with rain when we got here.’ That was true as far as it went. Why was she painting such a dour picture? To emphasize that this trip wasn’t a scam or holiday in disguise?
His next question answered that for her. ‘It’s lonely here without you. Evan and Belinda have started going out a lot for some reason.’
Oh dear. She could imagine why.
‘The thing is, I’ve been looking up some flights to Naples and they’re incredibly cheap. Everyone seems to be taking their kids skiing or to Tenerife. Naples isn’t much of a holiday destination at this time of year. So I was thinking I might pop over and see you.’
Claire could already imagine him looking up bus timetables to Lanzarella and shuddered.
‘Actually, love, that wouldn’t really work. It’s just us four women here working and no one’s brought a partner.’
‘It’d only be for a couple of days,’ he wheedled. ‘I’d make myself useful. Not lie around the pool or anything. And I see you’re not far from Pompeii. I’ve got a wonderful book called Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum out of the library.’
Oh God, he really was taking this seriously, and when Martin got an idea, he was like a terrier with a tennis ball. ‘The pool isn’t even filled yet,’ she lied. ‘And we’re really busy.’
‘Maybe I could run up some nice meals for you all. Jamie Oliver’s got a good book on Italian cooking. Give you a bit of a break.’
‘Well, actually, there’s a cook here.’
‘What are you doing there, then?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Sussing out what catering facilities would be needed if it became a hotel. I told you,’ Claire snapped.
‘Well, if you don’t want to see me . . .’
‘Of course I want to see you, but this is business, Martin.’
‘If it’s business, why aren’t you being paid?’ The terrier wasn’t letting go that easily.