by Penny Feeny
*
Lily slept in the bedroom at Villa Ercole as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. Salt-laden dreams blew in through the open window, flapping around her like kites trying to become airborne, jerking her awake with sudden strong bursts of emotion. She’d register their sensations of grief or joy, despair or elation and then fall asleep again immediately. She hadn’t realised how shattered she was.
She woke in the morning to the pleasure of being cosseted by Dolly, no tomatoes to pick, no men to complicate matters. Then she remembered it was Sunday and that Marcello had talked of going to the beach. Was that what he’d called to her as he’d driven off? Not ‘In Roccamare, one day,’ but ‘In Roccamare, Sunday.’
No doubt she was being fanciful – and what was the likelihood that she’d bump into him anyway? Nevertheless, on the off-chance that coincidence would favour her twice, she dug out her swimsuit and borrowed a towel. Gerald offered to drive her but she said she’d rather walk; it wasn’t too far if you didn’t have a lot to carry. The beach was busier than it used to be. Sunbathing on the sand, she watched groups and families come and go. She was the only person by herself; everyone else was attached to at least one other companion. When she went to the bar for a drink, a gaggle of young men tried in turn to chat her up. All were lively, some were charming, none was Marcello.
She left the bar to wander along the shoreline. She kept tripping over racquets and balls, rubber armbands and small children. She hadn’t given up hope of seeing him but when she reached the end of the beach she didn’t turn around to search again. She continued into what, according to a newly erected noticeboard, was now a designated nature reserve. The strip of beach here was thinly populated; why would the day-trippers and holiday-makers leave the familiarity of the crowd? But Lily loved its wildness, the way the plants clung to their habitat. The land was low-lying at the mouth of the river, thick with succulent agaves and the feathery fronds of tamarisk, punctuated by silver poppies and golden buttons of santolina.
This was where she and Marcello had invented their private games. They used to wriggle their way through the bushes so no one could find them and emerge scratched and bitten and triumphant. This was where the old dinghy had been too, though she could see no sign of it. Rotted or burned for firewood, she supposed. If she shut her eyes she could recapture Marcello’s ten-year-old head poking from beneath it, like a turtle coming out of his shell. Then the grown, twenty-one-year-old Marcello took over, whispering in her ear: ‘Ancora cammina sulle mani, Lily McKenzie?’
There was no one about. Lily cartwheeled across the sand, relishing the exhilaration of whirling upside down, the whoosh of the air as her body sliced through it. When she had limbered up, she spun onto her hands again, flinging her legs upwards, keeping her back straight and her toes pointing to the sky. She managed six paces and lost her balance. She tried several more times. She was rusty, the knack of it didn’t come spontaneously, but she could improve. All it required was practice.
She returned to the villa in a buoyant mood. Over dinner, Dolly tried to establish how she had spent her day, puzzled that she hadn’t sought out the myriad people who would have been delighted to see her, nor stayed around long enough for the passeggiata.
‘But no one would know who I was!’ protested Lily.
‘This is not true! You don’t remember Nuncia, in the bakery, and how she give you little treats? Or Benito, who takes you to find sea urchins? Or Tonella who cuts the hair?’ She was away then, recounting the scandals she’d heard when she was in the salon.
Lily half listened, recalling Dolly’s own scandalous story. How could she reconcile this busy bossy matron with the sexy siren who had seduced (or been seduced by) a priest? How did the affair begin? Did he break his wrist and need help undressing? Did he stumble across Dolly sponging her ample breasts and find her irresistible? Did he creep into her bed or she into his? Afterwards, did she have to kneel and whisper her sins to him in the Confessional?
Dolly’s blackcurrant eyes narrowed, as if she guessed Lily was bursting with unasked questions, though she couldn’t possibly have known the slant of them. Then, out of the blue, she proposed a visit to Santa Margherita. She said, ‘I make promise to visit my friend Agnese Fantoni and you have opportunity to come also.’
Lily was jolted from her reverie about Father Rondini – did he wear pyjamas or a nightshirt? – to exclaim, ‘Agnese Fantoni’s still alive!’
‘Agnese is strong,’ said Dolly. ‘She survives more than an earthquake.’ There followed a long list of maladies, many of which were a mystery to Lily, but she readily agreed to go. It was one of the reasons she’d travelled to Sicily in the first place.
The excursion was fixed for Wednesday. Over the next couple of days Dolly insisted on taking Lily into Roccamare and parading her to all the locals who’d known her as a little girl and wanted to see her grown into a fine young woman. There were so many encounters they became jumbled in her head. The chief one to make an impression was Nuncia. She described laughingly how Lily and Marcello would run into her shop to beg for crusts of sfincione because they were always hungry; then she made a casual remark about the Campiones opening up their villa for the summer holiday.
‘Do the family still come every year?’ said Lily. But of course they did! How could she have forgotten: Marcello had talked of joining them when he left his cousins. ‘When do they arrive?’
‘Per Agosto,’ said Nuncia. ‘Altre due settimane.’
Another two weeks. Lily didn’t know if she could stay that long. She had a sneaking suspicion that part of Jess’s mission was to bring her back to England. She must stop thinking about Marcello; she should focus on tomorrow’s trip, though it was a daunting prospect. (Not just because of the enormous significance of reconnecting with her roots, but because the image she carried of Agnese Fantoni, the wicked witch, made her shudder.)
She didn’t mention this to Gerald or Dolly and was glad she hadn’t, because when they arrived and entered Agnese’s stuffy little apartment, she was surprised to find a harmless old granny sorting through her Mass cards. There were even a couple of grandchildren, or maybe great-grandchildren, crouched on the floor, helping her. Agnese was swathed in black like a badly wrapped parcel and her hair was drawn into a severe bun, but she was smiling indulgently and humming. The cage hanging from the window held a pair of chirping lovebirds and the view beyond them wasn’t as barren as before. There was a lot of scaffolding but there were new buildings and proper roads too. Agnese offered the visitors a drink and they all shared the pastries that Dolly had brought.
Out of politeness for the company, the two women were speaking in Italian and not Sicilian. Lily heard Agnese drop the name, Galetti, into a sentence and stiffened.
‘She is here this week?’ said Dolly.
‘Yes,’ said Agnese. ‘The aunt of her husband died, they came for the funeral.’
Gerald said, ‘Would that be Carlotta? Do you know where we can find her?’
Lily gasped. This was not what she’d anticipated. ‘Carlotta’s here too?’
Gerald patted her knee. ‘She’s talking about the real Carlotta Galetti, my dear,’ he said.
33
Jess rose at dawn for the early flight to Palermo, a charter carrying sun-seekers to a large hotel near Cefalu. She stood in the queue for check-in, shuffling her suitcase forward with her toe. She and Toby had arranged their tickets separately, since they were leaving from different locations. She wasn’t concerned, initially, when she didn’t see him, but once the flight was called and the crowd milled towards the departure gate, she began to panic.
Since most of the passengers were on a package holiday, they were well organised and orderly. The tourist rep was ticking off their names on her clipboard and ushering them into the gangway. A few stragglers came down the turquoise-carpeted corridor. Jess gave a pleading smile to the flight attendant at the desk. ‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she said.
‘We’ll make a tannoy announce
ment,’ the girl said. ‘If they’ve checked in. What’s the name?’
‘Toby Forrester.’
She studied her computer printout. ‘There’s no Forrester on this list.’
‘Are you sure? We got standby tickets. Could that be why? Am I on there? Jessamy McKenzie.’
‘Let me see…’ She ran her finger down the list again.
Jess, raking the corridor one last time, saw a figure loping towards her, jacket flapping behind him, not running exactly, but moving with quick light-footed leaps. ‘Alex!’
‘Alexander McKenzie?’ said the attendant. ‘Yes, his name’s here, above yours. Your husband?’
Jess nodded. Even through the girl’s mask of make-up, she could see her thinking: So where does Toby Forrester fit in?
‘Alex,’ she said again, when he was within earshot. ‘What are you doing here?’
He pulled a crumpled boarding pass from his pocket and bestowed a charming smile on the confused young woman. ‘Did I hold you up…’ he flicked a glance at her name badge ‘… Fiona? Many apologies. It was the queue in the duty free.’ He flourished a houndstooth box containing a bottle of Diorissimo.
Jess was surprised; he was not normally a perfume-buyer. ‘Who’s that for?’
‘You don’t want it?’ He held it out with his boarding pass. ‘What about you, Fiona?’
‘We can’t accept gifts and you have to board in the next three minutes,’ she said, though not as primly as she might have done.
‘What is all this about?’ said Jess as they settled into their seats.
‘Actually I bought it for Lily,’ said Alex, stuffing the scent bottle carelessly into his pocket. ‘She’s at an age now, isn’t she, for that sort of thing? And this one smells of lily-of-the-valley.’
‘I know.’
‘So what you’re really wondering, is why the late substitution? Where’s Toby?’
‘Yes, I am. Go on, explain yourself. How come you’re here?’ The plane began to taxi down the runway. The atmosphere was buzzing with anticipation for the good times ahead. Fiona was demonstrating safety procedures, her gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance. ‘You’ve been incommunicado for weeks.’
His face was solemn. ‘That’s because, in Romania, Ceausescu’s closed down all the media outlets and it’s a nightmare trying to make a phone call. I tell you, Jess, grinding poverty doesn’t begin to describe it. People have to queue for the most basic foodstuffs. Much worse than Russia. The great socialist ideals are lost, totally. It’s soul-destroying to see that kind of dictatorship in action.’
‘Isn’t there any opposition?’
‘It’s building. Things can’t go on the way they are.’
‘When did you get back?’
‘Sunday. A quick turnaround, but I did manage to wash and change if that’s what’s bothering you.’ A trolley was inching down the aisle dispensing breakfast. Fiona hovered over them with a jug of coffee. ‘Right on cue,’ he said. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’
Jess asked for tea. Accepting the plastic tray and the steaming polystyrene cup, she said, ‘I hoped it might ease things with Gerald if Toby came along.’
‘Whereas I’m persona non grata?’
‘How would I know? I also thought it would be nice for Toby to have an actual holiday in Sicily, instead of squatting in the blistering heat, brushing dust from fragments of human remains.’
‘What, drag the man from his passion? What did he say?’
‘That he was supervising some postgrad students who were up against a deadline, but he’d do his best to get away.’ She sighed. ‘He was never going to come, was he? But I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me himself.’
‘You know Toby,’ said Alex, prodding his scrambled egg and watching it bounce. ‘He hates to let people down, but he can’t help being a workaholic.’
‘And you were fancy-free, nothing else to do?’
‘I have to collate my notes and write my article, but I can do that anywhere. And, Christ, Jess, I wanted to come with you. She’s my daughter too. What’s the problem?’
She considered. ‘It’s because I had no warning. It makes me think you’ve been cooking up all sorts of plots with no reference to me. Like I don’t count.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I confess. I talked Toby into it and asked him not to tell you. I wanted to spring a surprise. But as for not counting, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.’
‘You bullied him into swapping?’
‘Toby’s his own man, as you well know. And I’m not a bully.’
This was true; though Alex’s persuasiveness was of a kind that was hard to resist. She gave him a sharp look, which he ignored. He pushed his breakfast aside, reclined his seat and shut his eyes. He’d always had an enviable ability to doze in any circumstances and didn’t wake until they began the descent to Palermo.
At the airport they hired a Fiat Uno. Alex, refreshed from his nap, was the driver. It was a journey they knew well, the familiar landmarks still in place, but for Jess there was one trip in particular that stood out. ‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘Do you remember our quest for Carlotta Galetti? Those scary back-streets and suspicious glances: who were we and what were we after? They set my teeth on edge. And that was only the beginning! It was a dreadful day.’
‘Do you know what happened when Lily went to see her?’
‘Not really. Do you?’
‘How could I? Like you said, I’ve been incommunicado.’
‘She told me she wasn’t welcomed, which was all the information I got. I worry that we shouldn’t have encouraged her – it was too risky a venture.’
‘You have to take risks,’ he said. ‘You can’t spend your life avoiding them.’
‘Well, then, we should have been on hand to support her.’
‘Isn’t that what we’re doing now?’
When they reached Villa Ercole there was no one at home. They rang the bell and knocked on the windows. They went round to the back of the house to try the French doors, which were rarely locked, but couldn’t gain access. They sat on the terrace to wait. Alex strummed his fingers on the table top; Jess turned her face to the sun, feeling drowsy. After a while, he got up and prowled the premises, past the nut trees and down to Dolly’s kitchen garden. He peered through a window in the old barn and noted the clothes draped outside on the portable drying rack.
‘I think there’s a family staying there,’ he said. ‘But no cars to be seen. I’m guessing everyone’s gone out for the day. I don’t think we should hang around.’
Jess had been in transit for eight hours; she didn’t want to move. ‘Where are we going to go?’
‘Into Roccamare.’ Alex never had any trouble taking decisions. ‘We’ll book a room.’
‘What for?’
‘What for, Jessa-mine, what for? So you can get some sleep. You look bushed.’
‘I did have an early start…’
‘Well, then? We’ll come back here after the siesta and you’ll be fresh as a daisy.’ He chivvied her out of the chair and into the car and she hadn’t the energy to object.
Since the holiday season was under way there was pressure on the local accommodation. The better quality hotels were fully booked, but the third pensione they tried had a room free. It was at the back of the building, overlooking a yard decked with empty gas cylinders, a desiccated rosemary bush, a three-legged stool, two mangy but four-legged cats, an old pram and a lemon tree in a pot; the lemons glowed with sunny good health amid the detritus. The landlady apologised that there wasn’t a sea view available.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Alex. ‘We want to sleep.’
The room and the double bed were both small. There was a basin, a chest of drawers and not much else. Jess subsided onto the bed. Her original plan, which had involved herself and Toby arriving at Villa Ercole and being greeted affectionately by Gerald and Dolly and Lily, had been hijacked. This was the primitive kind of place she and Alex had stayed in decades ago when t
hey’d first met and gone travelling together. Alex, she reflected, wasn’t much concerned with personal comforts. He and his fellow journalists would congregate wherever they could get a drink, setting up camp in the bar and lowering the tone. Toby, on the other hand, was used to the high standards of life as a Cambridge don.
‘What are you going to do now?’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll go for a walk.’
He fastened the shutters to darken the room and closed the door softly as he left. Jess lay basking in a sensuous heat, permeated with the tang of lemon and the drying spikes of rosemary.
When she woke up she was disorientated. She’d no idea what time of day it was or why Alex was lying beside her, naked. He was on his front, his face hidden so she couldn’t tell if he was sleeping. She poked him lightly in the ribs. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
He was awake. He raised himself onto his elbows. ‘Keeping you company. Stifling, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you went out.’
‘I did. Got myself a beer and a panino and won two free games on the pinball. High score: six and a half million.’
‘Why did you get into bed with me?’
‘I’m not in bed,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m on the bed. And I’m here because I want to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘No, but I’ve got my suspicions. And I’m not happy about whatever you and Toby have been up to. I’m not a piece of property to be passed between you.’
‘We don’t believe in ownership,’ Alex reminded her. ‘That was one of our ground rules.’ It was why neither of them had ever worn a wedding ring.
Jess swung her legs to the floor, the tight strip of space by the window. ‘Did you touch me?’
‘When?’
‘When I was asleep and you were lying next to me.’