by Liz Harris
He had picked up a little English along the way, no matter how hard he’d tried not to, he admitted with a shy grin, and he’d left school able to say a few words. But as he hadn’t spoken English since then, he’d forgotten just about everything he’d ever learnt.
However, with the Americans and English buying houses in Umbria, he knew that he really ought to be able to speak to them himself and not rely on the help of someone else, charming though that person might be, and he was going to ask Gabriela to help him. She would be staying with him at his place near Todi for the rest of the week so he could make a start at once.
So Gabriela would not be heading back to Florence the following day. Damn! Damn! Damn! She’d bet any amount of money that Gabriela planned on hanging around them for the rest of the week. Her chance of getting the lowdown from Tom about his affair with Zizi Westenhall was fast disappearing down the proverbial tube.
Her hand tightened around her glass.
There was a slight pressure on her arm. She looked up and saw Eduardo’s eyes on her again. He gave her a rueful smile, gently removed the glass from her hand, picked up his menu and indicated that she should do the same.
‘You were very quiet on the way home,’ Tom said as they sat over a grappa on the spotlit terrace of Il Poggio. ‘And you’re very quiet now. That’s most unlike you, Evie. Are you cold, ill or dreaming romantic dreams that would need to be heavily censored before they could be told to another person? If it’s the last of the three and it would help you to unburden yourself, I’ll mentally fortify myself and you can share the uncut version with me.’
That was a good opening, and she must rise to it. If only she didn’t feel quite so depressed.
‘The temperature’s just fine, thank you, Tom, and I’m in the best of health. As for relaying the content of my dreams, you can relax – I wouldn’t risk any damage to your delicate sensibilities, fortified or not.’
‘I’m not convinced that those sensibilities you rate so highly would be averse to a little bit of damage. Try me.’
She laughed. ‘Dream on. I’m afraid you’ll have to rely on your imagination to help you out with your masochistic tendencies.’
‘Masochistic, indeed! That’s a long word for this late at night.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So, tell me truthfully, Evie. Did you enjoy the evening?’
‘Of course, I did. Gabriela and Eduardo are both very pleasant and the food was great. What’s not to enjoy?’
‘I agree, it was a good evening. It was certainly better than I’d expected. Gabriela’s English is quite amazing. I can talk to her almost as easily as I can talk to you.’
And that was the problem in a nutshell. With Gabriela around to translate, she wouldn’t be needed in the same way, and that would make it much harder to get any closer to Tom. Frowning, she turned towards the dark hills outlined against the distant horizon. Why couldn’t Eduardo’s bloody sister have stayed in Florence?
‘What’s up, Evie? Please tell me.’ She turned back to Tom and saw that he was looking at her with genuine concern. ‘You’ve not been yourself all evening. I know you like Eduardo – even a blind man could see that – so is it that you don’t like Gabriela?’
‘Of course I like her. There’s nothing not to like. She seems very nice.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought.’
‘Which would be equally obvious to that same blind man. It must have been brilliant for you to be able to talk to an Italian without having to get me to translate for you,’ she hastily added.
‘I suppose you’re right, although I did rather miss you being stuck there in the middle of my conversation.’
‘How come? What would I have added to it?’
‘Tut, tut, Evie. Could it be that you’re fishing for compliments? You’re not prepared to indulge my masochistic tendencies, yet you expect me to fulfil your inner need for praise.’
‘Of course, I don’t.’ He raised his eyebrows to her, and she giggled. ‘That came out all wrong. Obviously I don’t mean that I expect you to fulfil my need for praise – I mean, I don’t need to be praised by anyone. Although now that you come to mention it, it’s not a totally bad idea. Go ahead, I’ll have that compliment after all.’
‘Well, then, here goes. While I enjoyed talking to Gabriela, who’s a clever woman, she can be quite intense, and to be honest, I rather missed the light-hearted touch that you would have brought into the conversation.’
‘Is that a lawyer-like way of calling me an airhead?’ she laughed. ‘If it is, you can try your hand at a second compliment. See if you can improve upon calling me thick.’
‘What I meant is, as you well know, that you’re quite good fun to be with. I think you’d accept that, wouldn’t you? In fact, you have to accept it – I’m the boss.’
‘Didn’t I read somewhere that the word “boss” has a second meaning? Doesn’t it also mean “stud”? Are you bragging?’
He leaned back against his chair. ‘I rest my case.’ They smiled at each other across the table, and their eyes met. Both instantly looked away.
‘What are we doing tomorrow, Tom?’ she asked after a short pause.
‘The beds are being delivered in the morning. We need to be there in good time to tell the deliverymen where to put them, and then I thought we could go and see something of the area. Perhaps we’ll drive up to Montefalco, which is about forty minutes from the house. It’s a really pretty little place, and it’s got some wonderful murals in the church there. Well, it’s not actually a church any more. It’s a cross between a museum and an art gallery.’
She pointed her finger to her head. ‘Airhead. Remember?’
‘And then we can get some lunch, accompanied by the thing that Montefalco’s famous for.’
‘Which is?’
‘Red wine. While we’re there, we’ll get a few bottles to take with us when we go up to the house in the evening to see the tower and pool lit up. We’ll play it by ear as to whether we go to the house tomorrow night or on Friday.’
‘I can’t believe how quickly the week’s gone by. It’ll soon be Saturday, and that means England. What about Friday? Is there anything else we have to get for the house before we leave?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Friday’s rather been taken out of my hands, I’m afraid.’ His words came out on a rush. ‘Gabriela’s going to show us Perugia on Friday, and Eduardo’s coming, too. Believe me, I’d have liked to have got out of it if I could have done, but they mean well and I don’t want to upset them.’
Oh, hell! Yet another lost opportunity for her and Tom to do something on their own.
‘I expect we’ll have a nice time,’ she said flatly.
‘I’m sure you’re right, but that’s not how I would have chosen to spend our last full day. However, Gabriela was very insistent. I’ve promised to help her with any problems in London and she wants to say thank you by showing us Perugia, which she loves. She went to university there.’ He paused a moment. ‘Are you sure that’s all right with you?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Look on the bright side – it may be a bit of a hectic way to spend the last day, but at least you’ll have another full day with Eduardo.’
‘I think I’ll go to bed.’ She stood up. ‘Goodnight, Tom.’
‘Goodnight, Evie. Sleep well.’
He stared into the black night beyond the terrace.
What on earth was the matter with him? He’d just spent the evening with a charming woman, who was exactly the sort of woman he chose to go out with in London – beautiful, smart, sophisticated; not someone he’d ever fall in love with, but someone he would, under normal circumstances, have found a stimulating companion – yet instead of thoroughly enjoying every minute of the evening, he’d spent the whole time trying to do what women always did - listen to more than one conversation at the same time.
Despite knowing that he wouldn’t understand a word of what Evie and Eduardo were saying to each other,
he’d rather hoped to be able to pick up some idea about their mutual feelings from the tone of their voices. But he’d been singularly unsuccessful in doing so, and that was entirely because his conversation with Gabriela had continually got in the way.
They had obviously spent some of the time talking about places in Italy. He’d picked up the words Lake Garda more than once, and he’d wondered if Eduardo had been suggesting that he go with Evie to visit the places she’d got to know when she worked there. That was fair enough – they were free agents, after all.
So why did that idea irritate him? Because irritate him it clearly did. Evie was a pleasant employee and Eduardo was excellent at his job. Good luck to them both, was what he said, or what he should have been saying.
And there was something else. He was mystified as to why he’d missed her contributions to the conversation that evening. Yes, she was amusing, but he could listen to any of his Billy Connolly collection if he felt the need of a good laugh, so why had he found himself wishing that he was talking to her and not Gabriela?
He really couldn’t understand himself, but his mood was disconcerting. Whatever the reason was for the way he felt, he very much hoped that it would soon pass and he could get back to his normal state of pleasant detachment.
Unfortunately, getting back to normal in the immediate future was a bit of a forlorn hope. The next morning, for example, could be tricky, given the funny mood he was in.
The beds were going to be delivered in the morning, and he and Evie would be at the house by themselves when they arrived. The fact that they’d be alone shouldn’t matter at all.
As they were leaving the restaurant after dinner he’d actually thought about suggesting Eduardo come up to the house before the beds arrived , but in the end he hadn’t done so. Thinking back on it now, though, it might have been a sensible thing to do. Once the beds had arrived, he and Evie could have said goodbye to Eduardo and gone off to Montefalco on their own.
It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d asked Eduardo at such short notice – it had already been agreed that he would be at their disposal for the week. He had no doubt that Eduardo would have readily come and joined them, if for no other reason than that it would have been a chance to spend more time with Evie.
True, being a minute longer than was absolutely necessary in Eduardo’s company wasn’t an attractive proposition – far from it – but for reasons that he wasn’t clear about, he rather felt that the advantages of having Eduardo there outweighed the disadvantages.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to ask Eduardo. Obviously it was too late to ring him that evening – and Evie had gone to bed, anyway, so she wasn’t around to do the talking – but he could ask her to ring Eduardo at breakfast the following morning and suggest that he get to the house for ten thirty. Yes, that’s what he would do. It had been stupid not to have sorted this out earlier on, but at least it wasn’t too late to do the wise thing.
He stood up. He felt better already.
Chapter Nine
And so to beds …
‘That’s done, then.’ Evie stood under the porch in front of the house, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun as she watched the green delivery van gradually disappear behind the trees lining the dusty track that ran down the side of the mountain.
‘Many thanks for your help, Evie,’ Tom said, dropping the last piece of cardboard on to the pile of used packaging that was heaped up in the corner of the porch. ‘It couldn’t have gone better. It all looks very good now.’
‘Just think, the next time you come to Italy, all the other furniture will be in place, too.’
‘I’m glad you said that. It’s reminded me that I need to make sure Eduardo knows where the furniture’s got to go when it gets here – after all, he’ll be the one who’s here when it arrives. We’d better do a rough plan that we can give to him in Perugia tomorrow.’
‘I half wondered if you’d ask him to come along this morning, just in case there were any problems.’
And she had half wondered, while at the same time she’d hoped like mad with the other half that he wouldn’t.
There was no point in her spending any more time with Eduardo. He knew perfectly well that she wasn’t interested in him in a romantic way. If she’d needed any more proof than the sympathy she’d seen in his eyes the night before – sympathy that was obviously based on his misreading of the situation – she had only to think back to the moment when he’d said goodbye to her as they left the restaurant.
They’d all stood and waited while he bent very low over her hand, but only she had seen that when he raised his eyes to her face, he’d lowered one eyelid in an unmistakable wink.
It was so unexpected that for an awful moment, she’d thought that she was going to break out into a fit of giggles. Fortunately, she’d managed to smother the urge. At that moment, she’d known for sure that her relationship with Eduardo had definitely morphed into a non-romantic friendship, and she was really pleased about that – it felt more honest.
But much as she hadn’t wanted Eduardo there with them that morning, she was surprised that Tom hadn’t asked him to join them. And it was funny how when she’d mentioned Eduardo earlier on, he’d gone into a sudden frenzy of activity. What was going on in his mind? she wondered.
She stood and watched him move around the pile of discarded cardboard, lining up the corners of the flattened cartons so that they were even. Could it simply be that he thought she fancied Eduardo and felt guilty that he hadn’t asked him to join them for the day so that she would have more time with him?
But how likely was that!
She was only an employee, after all. And as Tom had said in a different situation, she was meant to be thinking about his needs, not the other way round. But if that wasn’t the reason, it was hard to see why Tom was suddenly fussing around with the leftover packaging and why he looked so uncomfortable whenever she mentioned Eduardo.
‘Actually I did intend to ask you to call him,’ he said abruptly, and he stopped what he was doing and straightened up, a piece of corrugated cardboard paper in his hand. ‘But in the end I forgot about it in the rush to get here before the furniture arrived. And as it so happens, we didn’t need him after all, did we?’ He indicated around him and dropped the cardboard on to the pile. ‘We managed all right, just you and me.’
More than all right, she thought happily. He hadn’t mentioned Gabriela so much as once all morning.
‘We certainly did. We made a great team. So what now, partner? We’ve unpacked the lamps, but we left them in the corner of the hall. If you want, we can go round the house and put one on each bedside table. Then we’ll really be finished, or at least we’ll have done all we can do for now.’
‘Your enthusiasm for hard graft is commendable, Evie. However, I think we’ll settle for putting a lamp in the main bedroom, and leave the rest for another time. We’ll do a quick sketch of where the furniture has to go, and then we ought to set off for Montefalco.’
‘Righteo.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s a bit later than I thought. We’ll have to do the plans very quickly. If I remember rightly, the art gallery closes for lunch at twelve thirty or one. By the time we’ve finished here and driven to Montefalco, there probably won’t be sufficient time to do it justice this morning. However, it opens again at about five, and I suggest that we go to Montefalco as planned, have a leisurely lunch followed by a walk around the village, and then go to the gallery when it opens again.’
Thank you, God, for the ultra long Italian lunch hour! With luck, by the time he’d had lunch and a stroll around in the sun, he’d be far from wanting to look at any paintings.
‘What a shame.’ She congratulated herself on the note of regret in her voice.
He burst out laughing. ‘My word, you said that as if you really meant it. Your talents are quite wasted on secretarial work. You ought to be an actress. Right, then, dissembler – the lamp first, then the furniture plan, then Montefa
lco, food and wine. If it turns out that we get there too late to feed our minds, we’ll just have to settle for feeding our stomachs instead.’
She stood still, her mouth open, watching him go into the house. Dissembler! Didn’t that mean fake and hypocrite? It had come up once in a Shakespeare play she did at school. Could that mean Tom had seen through her secretary ruse?
But no, of course it couldn’t – he’d been smiling as he’d gone into the house. She closed her mouth and followed him into the hall.
He’d taken two of the bedside lamps from the cluster that stood on the hall floor and was carrying them up the wide stone stairs to the master bedroom. She hurried after him and reached him just as he was lifting the bedroom latch and pushing the door open. Hot on his heels, she followed him into the shuttered room.
A thin beam of white light shone into the dark room from a tiny window high among the rafters, falling on to the floor in a pale circle at the foot of the bed. Silvery specks of dust danced in the column of sheer light.
Tom handed her one of the lamps. ‘Will you put this on the table on the other side of the bed? I’ll do the one this side, and make a start on a quick sketch of the room.’
‘Sure thing.’ Turning round the corner of the bed a fraction too soon, her toe hit the foot of the iron bedpost. ‘Fuck!’ she cried out in sudden pain, and dropped the lamp on to the bed.
‘Why, Evie! Surely that’s not another invitation for us to share a bed, an invitation that’s rather more direct in nature than the last?’
‘Huh, dream on! I stubbed my toe on the bed and it’s absolute agony. It really hurts.’ She sat on the bed, kicked off her sandal, bent over and began to rub her toe.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, coming over to her side and sitting down next to her.
She heard a trace of anxiety in his voice. Her spirits lifted – could it be that her pain and suffering were going to come up trumps?
She gave a little whimper. And another.