An Italian Holiday

by Maeve Haran

  They drank the Aperol, which didn’t taste as bad as it looked, and went inside again.

  ‘And now. My studio. Are you ready?’

  Monica nodded. She was actually feeling quite excited.

  The space was extraordinary. How, in this house, Constantine had created a vast studio with the magical artist’s north-facing light was amazing. Monica was fascinated to see that the walls were lined with easels on which were ranged a series of huge outlines: faces, figures, landscapes, a large blue Moroccan-style gateway.

  ‘I copied that from Matisse,’ Constantine admitted. ‘Not a bad painter in his way.’

  ‘But why are they all just outlines? Does it signify the emptiness of the soul?’

  Constantine cracked with laughter. ‘My sweet Monica! I have done it so I can just fill them in when the market needs another work by Constantine O. Or if I need the money. It’s my response to ageing. Once I lose my inspiration or my abilities, I will just take an outline and fill it in with my celebrated electric colours. The critics and collectors will fall over themselves to praise my authenticity of vision and my simplicity of design. Everyone’s happy.’

  ‘I’m tempted to call you less a towering genius of the twenty-first century than an old fraud.’

  ‘Dear girl, they’re often the same thing. Besides, I’m damned if I’m going to end up like poor Matisse doing cut-outs like some kid in kindergarten! This way I can keep going till I’m gaga.’

  ‘Right,’ he clapped his hands, ‘time to get your clothes off. And if you’ve any qualms, remember, you’re not in Great Missenden now, and besides, I’m mostly interested in your outline. As it happens, you have a very interesting outline.’

  ‘Do you know, Constantine,’ Monica began to undo her shirt buttons, ‘that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a very long time.’

  The curious thing was, Monica, the university librarian, who had always made it her business not to be noticed, found she wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe it was her familiarity with The Joy of Sex, but she felt surprisingly unashamed of her body. This was art, after all, not some hideous catwalk or indeed any kind of contest. She liked Constantine and, in a funny way, trusted him.

  ‘If you could sit over there,’ he pointed to a chair draped in an orange blanket, ‘and put this on.’

  It was a sort of kimono in grey with bold midnight-blue flowers decorating it. She sat in the chair.

  ‘Now undo the wrap so that your body is revealed.’ Without the slightest shame, Monica did as she was bid. ‘Now lean back, and put one leg over the arm of the chair.’ The pose revealed Monica’s fluff of pubic hair. She smiled, thinking how embarrassed she’d been growing up, how she’d never shown her nakedness to anyone but Brian and now she really didn’t care.

  ‘That’s it,’ Constantine shouted, ‘keep that smile! Sweet and sardonic, it’s perfect for what I want.’

  Monica tried to hold the smile, thinking back to how horrible her classmates had been to anyone shy or even slightly different, and bookish clever Monica had been both. Yet her new image, this one created by Sylvie, had released something in her, something she felt comfortable with. With a sudden shock, she realized that, in spite of her age, she really felt rather sexy.

  ‘Monica, Monica,’ Constantine shook his head when he stopped three hours later. ‘Who would have thought it? You are a natural model! It’s not just that you hold the pose; you give something of yourself, something essential and eternal!’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ the brisk librarian Monica was back, ‘because I can’t sit here all day with my clothes off. How much longer is this going to take?’

  ‘Come and see.’ Constantine smiled.

  Monica came round the other side of the easel and gasped. Constantine had produced an almost finished painting. ‘How could you have done that?’ Monica demanded.

  ‘I told you, Monica darling, I prepare all the backgrounds beforehand so that all I need to do is tweak the outlines and capture your expression. The rest I can finish alone.’

  She studied it again. The whiteness of her body had the polished sheen of a pearl next to the dark shadow of her pubic hair. But it was her expression that made the painting so arresting. I am opening my body to you, it seemed to say, but I am not inviting you in. This is my body alone.

  The painting was not yet finished but the essence of it was there.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘It makes me think of Whitman. I Sing the Body Electric.’

  ‘You mustn’t intellectualize. Art is about feeling.’

  She looked at it again. ‘I think it’s a very good painting.’

  ‘So do I, Monica, so do I.’

  Monica stared at it once more. It brought back her husband more powerfully than anything since he’d died. Neither of them had possessed physical beauty, but looking at this, Monica saw the body he had enjoyed and had treated with tenderness and sometimes with startling passion.

  ‘I miss you still,’ she murmured to herself.

  Constantine seemed to understand.

  ‘Thank you, Monica. This is a body that has loved and is happy to tell the world so.’

  ‘Let’s hope the world appreciates it. And now I really must go.’

  ‘By the way,’ he added with one of his most impish smiles, ‘Guido has had his ear to the ground and found out about your scam. It’s really rather endearing and positively un-Italian. The staff insist on returning half the profit to the kitty for the upkeep of the villa! They worry that Stephen might find the place too expensive since he’s hardly ever there. Isn’t that just too dear? They try and keep it a secret. It would shock the village if it got out. The black economy would grind to a halt, probably the whole country, if everyone behaved so honourably to their absent employers. So you won’t have to denounce your white-haired grannies after all.’

  Monica thanked him and hugged the information to herself as she headed back. It would be an enormous relief to everyone.

  Claire held the yellow plastic basket and helped Luca fill it with the huge fragrant lemons the area was famous for. All around them was the scent of lemon blossom and the only sounds they could hear were the rushing of water down the hillside, the joshing of Luca’s labourers and the very occasional hoot from a car. It was hard to believe that this little bit of paradise was only a half-mile from the centre of the town. The baskets were filled into a larger container and then weighed using a curious bronze scale that looked as if it had survived from the medieval era so that each was exactly fifty-seven kilos. They were then carried down the hillside on the labourers’ backs.

  ‘Are you volunteering, Chiara?’ laughed Luca.

  ‘No thanks. Would you like me to help with the lunch? I am a cook after all.’

  ‘But you’re on holiday,’ he reasoned.

  ‘I can’t just sit here and watch you all working. I’ll see what I can rustle up.’ It charmed her that right in the middle of the lemon gardens there was a large terrace with an outdoor kitchen bigger than the one she had at home. She found prosciutto, olives grown here among the groves, burrata, tomatoes, and some hard cheese she didn’t recognize but which smelled delicious, plus some old, hard bread. Using the tip she had learned as a student she doused it in water and placed it in the outdoor oven turned up to high. Meanwhile, she mixed tomatoes with garlic for a bruschetta.

  By the time the men came down with Luca and his father it was all laid out appetizingly on the big table with water and some of their home-grown wine. They all grinned gratefully and got stuck in to the bruschetta but when she produced the hot bread they looked at her as if it were a transformation akin to the loaves and fishes.

  She enjoyed the praise and didn’t admit it was the oldest trick in the cook’s book.

  While Luca organized the washing-up and his dad snoozed under a tree, Claire realized again that she was genuinely worried for Luca and the continuation of this way of life. She didn’t see how, without some more genuine miracle, it
could ever work. They were making far too little money, and none of the schemes to expand sounded possible without investment. She wondered if Angela would have a look; after all, she was a successful businesswoman who had actually worked at the sharp end of buying and selling.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked a soft voice. Luca was standing behind her with a tiny cup of espresso. He put the cup down and suddenly stroked away the line of worry from her forehead. ‘You are worrying about me,’ he said, and before she could agree or deny, she felt his arms go round her and his lips, soft and dry, on hers. ‘Do not worry about me, Chiara mia. We will be all right somehow. I am not going to let all this history just die out.’

  She smiled back, and then suddenly, assailed with guilt, was overtaken with the idea that she ought to admit she was married.

  As if Luca sensed a protest he put his finger gently on her lips. ‘One thing, Chiara.’ A line of worry rippled across his forehead. ‘Alfredo, who works for me, saw your friend Angela get into a boat with Hugo Robertson.’

  Claire nodded.

  ‘He is not a good man. Tell her to find out about the family he cheated who owned his palace of a hotel before he bought it. Many people around here know the story. Tell her it is better not to trust him.’

  Claire bit her lip. Angela would not be an easy person to interfere with, she suspected. So much for asking her advice about the lemon groves.

  She had a feeling this was not a good omen.

  It was so hot that Monica and Sylvie decided the only solution was to lie by the pool. It was, like so much at the villa, a particularly beautiful pool, its water green-tinged and enticing.

  ‘I hope it isn’t green for the wrong reasons,’ speculated Sylvie, looking into the deep end. ‘Algae or something.’

  ‘It’s just the tiles,’ Monica reassured her. ‘It takes the colour from them, like the sea does when the sky’s blue. Look how lovely they are. They’re painted all around the edge with a wave pattern.’

  ‘So they are.’

  Monica looked around at the glorious garden, the roses out in wild profusion, pink against the clouds of morning glory. ‘God, this place is beautiful. I just don’t get why Stephen doesn’t come here more.’

  ‘Too busy, I suppose.’

  ‘And now he wants to sell it or turn it into a hotel.’

  ‘You sound rather sad.’

  ‘I suppose I am a bit. Do you think it could work as a hotel?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Sylvie was more enthusiastic. ‘If they opened up the wings and turned the hall into a reception. I just hope it would be a lovely boutique one, not some ice palace.’

  ‘By the way, Constantine’s come up with the answer to the disappearing zucchini. The staff sell it and put half back towards the running costs. I suppose secretly they’ve been worried that something like this might happen.’

  ‘Yes, poor things. They’ve all worked here so long. It would be a real shock for them. Let’s hope it never happens.’

  Monica began to undress down to her stylish Toast swimsuit. Sylvie watched her, head on one side.

  ‘Monica, you really are full of surprises. I thought it was my magic touch that created the new Monica, but even I couldn’t have found a swimsuit like that.’

  Monica laughed. ‘Thank you.’ She wondered what Sylvie would make of the fact that she’d just taken all her clothes off and posed naked. The unshockable Sylvie would probably be quite stunned. But then Monica had no intention of telling her.

  ‘Hello, you two,’ Claire’s voice called to them. ‘I’m in the kitchen experimenting with cocktail recipes. Trying to save Luca’s lemon groves with an exciting new cocktail. Do you remember how no one had heard of Aperol, then the whole world seemed to be drinking the stuff? He needs something like that.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘Would you like to try my latest?’

  They both nodded. Who cared about it only being four o’clock?

  Sylvie leaned towards Monica’s sunbed. ‘She’s getting pretty involved with Luca and his lemons, isn’t she?’

  In a moment Claire was back with two long glasses which she handed to each of them.

  They sipped their drinks. ‘Nice. What’s in it?’

  ‘It’s part limoncello, part Prosecco, and a dash of spritz, but it needs a mystery ingredient to make it different from all the other drinks that use limoncello.’

  ‘The reason Aperol is so successful,’ Sylvie sipped her drink, ‘is because it’s very low-alcohol. It’s only eleven per cent proof. How much is Luca’s limoncello?’

  Claire slumped down onto a spare sunbed. ‘Thirty-two per cent! Though Crema di Limoncello is lower.’

  ‘You’ll have to get him to make some low-proof stuff. Now who do we know who knows about cocktails? I’ll have to ask Alessandro. His friends are all party people. And you’ll need a name that will catch on with the YouTube generation.’

  ‘Aperol isn’t that catchy,’ Claire protested.

  ‘The Women’s Cooperative will have to brainstorm it,’ Sylvie suggested.

  ‘Sylvie, you’re brilliant! By the way,’ Claire looked embarrassed, ‘Luca says we ought not to trust Hugo Robertson.’

  ‘The man who’s just whisked Angela off in a speedboat?’ They all looked at each other. ‘And you’re going to be the one to mention it, are you?’

  Sylvie’s phone beeped, an unfamiliar sound since none of them could get a signal.

  Sylvie checked who it was. Her assistant Amelia. She’d told the office not to contact her unless it was an emergency. Bugger. Might as well get it over with.

  ‘Hi, Amelia, what’s up?’ Sylvie had to psych herself up. Lanzarella might be on the same continent as London but it felt as if they were on a different planet. ‘Has Mr Riskov changed his mind?’ Sylvie teased. ‘I know, the Queen’s invited us to come and remodel Buckingham Palace?’

  ‘Nothing like that. Everything’s going pretty smoothly. It’s Tony.’

  Sylvie almost choked on her drink. ‘What about Tony?’

  ‘He says he’s coming back to work in a few days. And we all wondered, is that all right with you?’

  ‘No! For God’s sake, don’t let him in!’

  ‘That’s what we thought. Don’t worry, Sylvie, it’ll be over our dead bodies!’

  ‘You don’t have to go that far,’ Sylvie smiled, ‘maybe just change the locks.’

  ‘We’ll get right on to it. Bye, Sylvie, and don’t worry, everything’s fine here.’

  ‘New developments,’ she told the others. ‘Tony wants to come back into the business. I’ve told them to change the locks.’

  Monica sipped her drink thoughtfully. How stupid of him. He should have laid low here and kept up his campaign. She liked Tony, and she was usually right about people. Her nimble brain began to turn over ways that might improve the situation.

  Eleven

  Hugo dropped Angela back at the quay in Lerini and blew her a kiss as he steered the boat to its mooring.

  The thought of going back to the villa and being pounced on by the others made her shudder. She’d never been one for sharing personal information and she certainly didn’t want to share what she thought of Hugo Robertson.

  So she sat in a cafe in the piazza and ordered a coffee and wondered what she did think of him.

  If she was honest, she’d liked Hugo a lot from the moment he’d sorted out a corn plaster for Sylvie. Hardly a romantic gesture, yet its very practicality had appealed to her. It was true he was the smooth type, but under that there was a certain self-deprecation that had won her over. He could laugh at his own image. And they’d had more fun than she could remember having in a long time.

  The trouble with putting the business at the centre of her life was that it hid a void that she’d never before wanted to face in herself. Drew had touched on it, but she’d refused to acknowledge the truth in what he’d said and just felt angry.

  Now she’d lost the business what was she going to put in
its place?

  She tossed back her espresso, dismissing all thought of Hugo from her mind. For God’s sake, was she building a schoolgirl fantasy on one day together?

  She hailed a taxi from the rank and dozed for the fifteen-minute ride up the hill to Lanzarella. Half expecting a reception committee, she was relieved to find only Sylvie in the salon.

  ‘How was the divine Mr Robertson?’ Sylvie enquired.

  ‘Remarkably down to earth.’

  Sylvie considered her. In Angela’s book that was high praise. Maybe this wasn’t the time to mention Luca’s accusation that he’d cheated the old owners of the Grand Hotel degli Dei.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Angela enquired. ‘Claire is presumably off with Luca the lemon grower. She seems to spend every waking minute with him.’ Angela paused. ‘By the way, Hugo says Claire should be wary. Luca isn’t quite the simple saviour of his family business he seems. She should ask him why he gave up being a lawyer so suddenly.’

  Sylvie almost wanted to laugh. First Luca had warned Claire about Hugo. Now Hugo had sent a warning about Luca. ‘And you’re going to tell her?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Angela hesitated, surprised at herself. She didn’t want to hurt Claire. ‘I’ll just go upstairs and freshen up.’

  ‘Angela . . . maybe let me tell Claire?’

  ‘If you think it would help.’

  ‘I do. The thing is . . .’ This time it was Sylvie’s turn to hesitate. ‘I know this sounds a pretty ironic situation, but Luca told Claire something about Hugo.’

  ‘What?’ Angela flushed angrily.

  ‘That he acquired that hotel of his unfairly. Luca said everyone in the village knows it.’

  ‘What complete rubbish!’ Angela stormed.

  ‘Quite probably. But that’s what he said.’

  ‘Tell the others I won’t be coming down to dinner. I’ll see them all tomorrow.’

  Sylvie sighed. Now she had to tell Claire what Hugo had said about Luca. And to think she’d come here to get away from emotional trauma.