Last of the Summer Vines

by Romy Sommer

  We ate crostini with a summer vegetable stew and washed it down with creamy pistachio gelatos which we ate in the Piazza Cavour, a neat and colourful little garden at the bottom of one of the main roads, where there were benches and a fountain.

  ‘This is my favourite place in the town.’ Beatrice sighed happily, watching people idling by and stopping for a gossip. ‘The tourists seldom make it this far from the main part of town. They come in their big tour busses, visit the fortezza, taste a few wines at the enotecchi, then they leave. They miss all the best parts of the town! Over there—’ she pointed across the garden ‘—there are displays of art in the municipal buildings.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why you wanted to live in London, when you have all this.’ I waved my arm to take in the town and the landscape beyond. I mean, I liked London, but if it wasn’t the centre of the finance world, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to live there.

  Beatrice blushed, not looking at me. ‘I left for the usual reason. I went there because of a man.’ She shrugged, a uniquely Italian gesture that said I care, but I want everyone to think I don’t. ‘It didn’t work out.’

  The usual story, then. And since I’d hate anyone poking around in the ashes of my own love life, I didn’t press her for more. Instead, I licked the last of the sticky ice cream from my fingers. ‘Everything in Italy tastes so much better!’

  ‘We’re not still talking about men, I hope?’ Beatrice winked. ‘But whether you’re talking men or food, I think you’re right – everything here tastes better.’ She raised her eyebrows hopefully. ‘Maybe if we find you a nice Italian man, you’ll stay longer than the summer?’

  ‘No chance! I have a really good job to get back to.’

  ‘I thought you worked in a bank?’ Beatrice wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Not just any bank. An investment bank. We specialise in corporate finance.’

  Beatrice didn’t look any more convinced, but she smiled. ‘You can’t blame me for trying! I like having happy customers. And I like having someone to shop with.’

  I smiled. ‘I like having someone to shop with too.’ The one time I’d dragged Kevin around Borough Market, he’d been so bored I’d had to leave him in a pub while I browsed the stalls.

  Beatrice wiped her fingers clean on a paper napkin. ‘How is Tommaso?’

  Her gaze was steady, and I couldn’t detect any blush that suggested my new friend harboured an ulterior motive for asking. Instead, it was I who looked away. ‘Fine, I guess. He’s so gruff and moody all the time, it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘Now there’s a man who would benefit from a woman in his life.’

  ‘You and he never…?’

  Beatrice laughed. ‘Oddio! Never! Tommaso and I are just friends.’ She shrugged, imbuing the gesture with regret. ‘Sadly, we have no chemistry, because he is exactly the kind of man my brothers would approve of – he has wine in his veins. But no, he’s not my type, and I’m definitely not his.’

  ‘He has a type?’ I resisted the urge to clap a hand over my mouth. I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t care. Well, maybe I cared just a little … we had been friends once upon a time.

  ‘Tommaso’s type is any woman who doesn’t stay long enough for things to get complicated.’ Beatrice dropped her voice to a stage whisper. ‘Daniele says he’s a hot favourite with the female tourists.’

  I rolled my eyes. Clearly Tommaso had even more in common with my father than I realised.

  Beatrice waggled her eyebrows suggestively. ‘But since you’re not staying, maybe you and he…’

  My look of horror made Beatrice laugh. ‘Okay, so he’s not your type either.’

  I shrugged. ‘He’s not at all like the kid I remember from my visits to my father.’

  Though Tommy hadn’t exactly been a kid that last summer we’d both spent here. He’d filled out those broad shoulders, and his face had been all golden angles and planes. If I could have guessed then what he would look like when he was older, I’d have guessed he’d turn out more like Luca.

  At the thought of Luca, I dug my mobile out of my bag. There was signal! I switched on my mobile data, and my inboxes were immediately flooded with Facebook messages, emails, texts, including one from Luca. I didn’t pause to read any of the messages – that would be rude – but I smiled. It was good to know I was missed and that people cared – and that Luca was still interested.

  I stashed my mobile back in my bag, but not before Beatrice raised an eyebrow in curiosity. ‘And that look? Is there a man in your life?’

  ‘I’m only excited because I finally have mobile reception.’ I patted my handbag. ‘The signal at the castello is non-existent.’

  ‘But the cellar must have Wi-Fi? It is a business, after all.’

  I should have thought of that. And since I didn’t want to admit that in the week I’d been in Tuscany, I hadn’t yet visited the winery, I changed the subject. ‘Why did Luca Fioravanti not tell me his father and mine were neighbours?’

  Beatrice leaned back, her arm looped over the back of the bench, as if settling in for a good story. ‘There has been rivalry between the two farms for as long as anyone can remember, long before your father even came to live at the castello. Luca’s grandfather offered to buy the vineyard from the old marchese who was the last of the Sant’Angelo line. The old man had no heirs, and though he was too old to run the place on his own, he refused to sell even one hectare to the Fioravantis. By the time your father arrived, and made a much lower offer, the vineyard had fallen into terrible disrepair. Since the marchese would do anything to spite Luca’s grandfather, even sell to an outsider, he accepted your father’s offer.’ She broke off, looking embarrassed. ‘Scusa! I do not mean that we did not grow very fond of your father, but—’

  ‘But my father wasn’t Italian. I understand. But surely there can’t still be a grudge between the two families? My father lived here in Tuscany for more than forty years. That was all so long ago.’

  ‘People have long memories here. Over the years, Luca’s father made offers over and over again to buy the vineyard, but your father always refused. And then when your father died, Tommaso refused too. Perhaps Luca thought it best not to let you think there was a conflict of interest. He is a good lawyer, you know.’

  He hadn’t pressured me to sell to his father, and hadn’t appeared partisan in any way, but what if Luca had invited me here to deliberately upset Tommaso’s plans, as a punishment for refusing his father’s offer?

  I shook my head. No, I couldn’t believe Luca would be so underhanded. He seemed too open and straightforward for that kind of spite.

  ‘You said something about visiting a furniture store?’ I prompted, rising and dusting off the seat of my tailored trousers.

  Beatrice rose too. ‘Yes, we should go. The shop will be closed now for the afternoon, but Bernardo will be excited to meet you.’

  We walked back up through the streets of the town, quieter now, with many of the stores closed against the afternoon heat.

  ‘Early evening is the best time of day here,’ Beatrice said. ‘When the air cools, it is passeggiata, the time when everyone comes out for an evening walk.’

  We knocked on the shuttered door of the furniture store, and Beatrice introduced me to Bernardo, a trim, middle-aged man whose face did indeed brighten at the invitation to visit the castello to look at the furniture.

  Then Beatrice drove me home, Taylor Swift once again providing the soundtrack to the lush scenery rolling past the car’s windows.

  ‘It has been wonderful getting away from the trattoria for a few hours, and having a girls’ day out,’ Beatrice said. ‘Can we do this again next week?’

  ‘I would love to. It’s a date!’

  Beatrice helped me unload the bags of fresh fruit and vegetables, then I waved her goodbye before heading back into the kitchen with its delightful aroma of cinnamon and baked bread. Alone at last, I clicked open Luca’s text and warmth blossomed in my chest.

  I wasn’t some
gullible tourist to be seduced into a holiday romance, but that didn’t mean I’d say no to letting a handsome man take me out to lunch. In the interest of restoring neighbourly relations, of course.

  Chapter 10

  A tavola non si invecchia

  (At the table, one does not grow old)

  My second week in Tuscany flowed past surprisingly quickly. Maybe I pushed myself a little harder than I needed to, and certainly harder than Cleo would approve of, but staying busy kept at bay thoughts of work, and everything I was missing back home in London.

  In the mornings, I baked bread loaves, scones, fruity crostata pies, ricotta cheesecakes, and semelle rolls, experimenting with recipes I found in a cookbook of Nonna’s that looked as if it had never been opened. After the Rossi farm driver collected the day’s contribution for the trattoria, I ate an early lunch on the terrace, soaking in the view and the sunshine, before getting stuck into cleaning. Room by room, I worked through the downstairs, sweeping, washing, vacuuming, dusting.

  Within a week, with the exception of the mouldy library, I’d completed the ground floor. All the excess furniture I piled in an ever-growing mountain beneath the stairs, crowning the tottering heap with moth-eaten drapes, threadbare rugs, broken lamps and chipped ornaments, all destined for the skip I needed to arrange. The activity tired me out in a way that fourteen-hour days at the office had never done, but the results were deeply satisfying.

  I hadn’t seen Tommaso in days, though I sometimes heard his car leave at dawn and return late at night. He worked even longer hours than I had at the bank.

  I was balanced on the rickety stepladder, polishing the drawing room chandelier until it sparkled, when next I saw him. He announced himself by calling through from the kitchen.

  ‘In the drawing room,’ I called back, instantly regretting it as I glanced down at myself. I’d spent the afternoon on my hands and knees polishing floors, and my jeans were dusty, with spots on the knees where I’d knelt. My T-shirt was even worse, and since my hair kept escaping from its bun, I’d wrapped a scarf around my head. I quickly pulled it off and tried to tuck away the wisps which had come loose.

  I needn’t have bothered. Reassuringly, Tommaso looked even more unkempt than I did. Clearly he wasn’t the sort of boss who sat around in an office all day.

  He paused in the wide doorway, filling up the space with his presence. ‘Ciao.’

  ‘Hi.’

  He held out a hand to help me down from the ladder. ‘The place looks good.’

  ‘It’s just a few rooms so far.’

  ‘It’s a start. The house will sell better if it is cleaner and less cluttered. And maybe if you find a buyer, you can leave.’

  My thoughts exactly.

  ‘Have you had dinner yet?’ he asked.

  I hadn’t thought of food in hours, but now that he mentioned it, I was starving.

  ‘I have a beef stew I can warm up,’ he offered.

  My stomach rumbled loudly, and Tommaso laughed. His laugh was nothing like Luca’s. Not open and unrestrained, but low and warm, as if it came from deep inside. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

  I climbed down from the ladder and moved to the door. He stood aside, and even as wide as the door was, I brushed past him, the unexpected contact stirring a nervous flutter in my stomach. Or maybe that was just the hunger speaking.

  Increasingly self-conscious, I wiped my hair back from her cheek, and his gaze followed the movement. Oh great. Had I smeared dirt across my cheek?

  I ducked my head, but Tommaso only smiled, reaching up to brush the smudge away. It was nothing more than a small half-smile yet it transformed his face.

  I was surprised to find that it was already dark outside. ‘How late is it?’

  ‘Past seven o’clock.’

  No wonder I was hungry. I’d worked solidly for hours, stopping for nothing more than a sandwich and cup of tea for lunch.

  ‘You’re home early this evening,’ I observed as we crossed the yard to the cottage. ‘You’re usually home much later than this.’

  Then I realised it might sound as if I’d been stalking him, but Tommaso wasn’t the least perturbed. He held the cottage door open. ‘Why come home when there’s still work I could be doing? It’s not as if there’s anything to hurry home for.’

  His words stung, leaving me oddly breathless, and it was a moment before I realised why. My father had said the same thing many years ago. ‘Why hurry home when there’s still work to do?’ I’d only been ten, and I’d wanted to cry and say, ‘But I’m here, Dad.’ I’d wanted to, but I hadn’t. Not then or since. Maybe that was when he’d stopped being ‘Dad’ and become ‘John’ to me.

  Tommaso’s cottage looked exactly as it had in Elisa’s time. The downstairs area was open-plan, with a terracotta-tiled floor and low, beamed ceilings. The kitchen with its familiar pine table opened into a living room where a large flat screen TV was the only new addition. Upstairs, I remembered, were two small bedrooms, tucked in under the eaves, and a compact bathroom squashed between them.

  We washed our hands at the big kitchen sink, then Tommaso moved to the stove to warm up the pot of stew, and I set the table. We worked silently, not needing words, as if from long practice, though it had been nearly twenty years since we’d shared a meal in this kitchen.

  I’d grabbed a crusty bread loaf on our way through the castello kitchen, and now I sliced it while Tommaso poured us each a glass of wine, then we sat on either side of the pine table to wait for the stew to heat.

  ‘This is one of our own,’ he said, nodding to the wine bottle.

  ‘A Brunello?’

  He shook his head. ‘We make the Brunello, of course, but this wine is a blend your father and I worked on together, the Angelica. It’s good, but not quite where we want it yet.’ He took a sip, rolling the flavours around his tongue before swallowing. ‘The tannins on this vintage were still too overpowering. This year’s bottling will be more subtle.’

  I breathed in the bouquet, then took a tentative sip, closing my eyes to concentrate on the taste. I had no idea what a tannin was, but he was right that there was a little too much of something. Not in the initial mouthful, but a slight bitterness in the lingering aftertaste.

  He slathered the thick slices of bread in creamy butter, which looked very much like the farm butter Beatrice sent me, and took a large bite.

  ‘Hmmm. This is good. You bake really well for a banker.’

  Financial analyst, not just a banker. But I didn’t correct him. I was too busy willing away the heat spreading under my skin at the compliment. I looked away, busied myself with buttering my own slice. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think to check if you’re gluten intolerant, or on a no-carb diet.’

  Tommaso laughed his deep barrel laugh again. ‘I eat anything. And even if I had time to worry about a diet, I wouldn’t need one. I’m not a desk jockey. I work on a farm all day.’

  I cast a surreptitious glance his way. He wore a dark grey button-down shirt in a tough fabric that was clearly designed to withstand the rigours of manual work rather than to show off the body beneath it, completely unlike the crisp designer shirts Kevin favoured, but Tommaso had rolled up the sleeves just enough to reveal tanned and muscled forearms. I wondered what the rest of him would look like, and quickly stopped that thought before it could take root and grow.

  When the stew was heated, Tommaso spooned it into bowls, and we ate in silence, both too absorbed in the food for conversation.

  ‘This stew is good,’ I said at last. ‘Really good. And I’m not just saying that because I was hungry or because you complimented my bread.’

  Another laugh. ‘Like with you, Nonna taught me to make it. My mother wasn’t much of a cook. She could just about handle macaroni cheese, and bacon and eggs, but cooking was just a chore to her. When she was sick, I used to cook for her. She loved that.’

  ‘My mother’s attempts at cooking aren’t much better. Baked beans on toast is her speciality. I took over the cookin
g as soon as I was able.’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Teaching English at some beach resort on the island of Koh Lanta in the Andaman Sea.’ Where she’d hooked up with a Swedish dive instructor, according to her last exuberant postcard.

  Tommaso’s eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘Still jaunting around the world?’

  ‘As always.’ I glanced away, looking around the homely little kitchen. Crocheted curtains hung at the windows, and Elisa’s religious paintings still hung on the wall – pictures of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Lorenzo, the patron saint of cooks, and there was a faded picture of a former pope in a gold paste frame on top of the heavy wooden dresser.

  Tommaso’s gaze followed mine. ‘I haven’t had much time for decorating. The winery takes up too much of my time.’

  Exactly what my father would have said. But John had Nonna to look after his home. Why didn’t Tommaso have a girlfriend? Why the penchant for women who wouldn’t get serious? Beneath the scruffy beard, he wasn’t a bad-looking man. In fact, he might be rather attractive without the facial hair. He had the most unusual eyes, when they weren’t frowning at me, and he still had those beautiful, full lips.

  To cover the blush rapidly firing my cheeks again, I mopped up the last of the stew with another slice of the fresh bread.

  I needed to think of something serious, the mental equivalent of a cold shower. Ah, that would do: if I had my way and sold the castello, this annexe would no doubt be sold with it.

  For a wild moment I wondered if I was doing the right thing. John hadn’t left any of this property to me, so why was I even contesting the will? Forcing Tommaso to buy me out would either prevent the winery from clearing its debts or leave Tommaso homeless.

  ‘We can make it a condition of the house sale that you can stay on here at the cottage,’ I offered.

  His cool gaze met mine and he shrugged. ‘It’s just a place to stay. I can always live in the rooms above the cellar.’

  No sentimental attachment here, then. Losing his Nonna’s home was nothing compared to losing the vineyard. He didn’t need to say it out loud for the thought to hang in the air between us, growing like an invisible monster. My heart hardened.