“Good-lookin’ fellas they are too, ma’am. A credit to you,” Casler said.
“Perhaps, but I fear their appetite somewhat overrides their manners. I apologize. Do try this cheese, Captain, it comes from the Chirigoni farm!” She took the wooden board. “To die for!”
Mr. Curwin wandered over to them, handing out glasses of white vermentino. “When you get tired of my wife’s effervescence, Captain, I’ll do my duty and pretend I’m listening.”
Glasses clinked. More laughter. Agnes shot Carmela a look, which she ignored. Seymour was placed into her arms, and Carmela wandered under the shade of an umbrella to lay him inside his cot. He looked at her, perplexed, staring wide-eyed at the blue sky beyond the umbrella. Carmela was unaccustomed to laying babies down at the beach, or at all. Her infant cousins had always been appendages on her aunts’ bosoms till they collapsed into sweet, milky sleep. To tear Seymour away to a separate area while still wide-awake seemed peculiar.
At first he enjoyed the freedom of letting his tiny feet explore the air above him, his legs kicking invisible targets, then running with zeal to nowhere. The bright aqua of his eyes was lighter than his father’s but had the same open quality. Then his brows furrowed, and Carmela thought she could see the scowl of his mother. His tiny mouth opened wide. He let out a wail to raise the dead. She picked him up and held him to her chest, but his legs and arms flailed in rebellion. Cradling him, she began a hesitant move toward the group. Virginia stood at the water’s edge sipping her wine beside Casler.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Carmela said, tentative.
Kavanagh turned. On hearing his son’s cries he raced up to her. “What a lot of noise, sir!” he said, taking his boy in his arms. A droplet of seawater ran down Kavanagh’s temple, off his chin, and onto Seymour.
Virginia looked back for Kavanagh. “Joe? What are you doing?” she called up from the water.
“Where are the bottles, honey?” he shouted back.
“It’s nap time, Joe. No bottle.”
Virginia turned back to Casler, hanging on his every word, her green eyes fawnlike in the sun—something he appeared to be enjoying a great deal.
Carmela stood, waiting for direction, unsure how much of her own instinct she was expected to act on. If she were Seymour’s mother, she would sit upon a rock, her feet in the water, and let the hungry baby suckle at her bosom. She thought about her own mother. When babies from up the street were fussy and their mothers were out in the fields or too exhausted from broken nights, Maria would feed them. There were several adolescents who still called her their Milk Mother with affection.
Seymour’s face was red with fury now.
“Joe! Captain has a wonderful story you just got to hear!” Virginia shouted out, waving Kavanagh down to her. For a moment Carmela could see the lieutenant fighting his own instincts to cradle his screaming child. Virginia was not someone he made the habit of contradicting.
“He will be fine, Lieutenant.”
“Yes.” Something flashed in his eyes. Apology? Embarrassment?
“Joe! C’mon! No baby died of crying!” Virginia called.
He slipped off his shirt and ran down to the shore.
Carmela noticed the way his back muscles rippled.
“You’re to lay him down!” Virginia bellowed before she slipped her slim arm around her husband and placed a protective hand on his bare chest. Carmela hoped to enjoy Mr. Curwin’s anecdotes from where she sat, but nothing could be heard over Seymour’s wailing.
“Don’t worry,” Piera said with a grin as she reached her with an empty plate ready to be refilled. “In a little while you’ll be barking out orders to your own house girl. Franco will make sure you won’t have to wipe any asses, no?”
Carmela reached back and placed Seymour against her chest. She hummed a made-up tune. It didn’t take long for him to acquiesce to sleep in her arms, even if he put up a good fight. She listened to his galloping heartbeat and decided that if anyone would be feeling the thump of her own baby against their chest, it would be hers alone. Seymour’s fingers unfurled and then clasped around her forefinger. Was this how Franco had seen their lives? Had he planned to make her a kept woman? Produce babies for others to lull to sleep? They hadn’t spoken of this openly, and it wasn’t a thought that had crept up before today. She watched the party frolic in the shallows, her eyes on a brazen Agnes while she sat holding a stranger’s baby. An icy bolt of jealousy scored through her, followed by the bitter taste of guilt. She realized, at this precise moment, that there was only one of those women laughing by the shore whom she longed to be.
CHAPTER 11
The following morning, the Curwins’ residence reverberated with the cacophony of departure. Antonio loaded the last of the cases into, and on top of, his cab. The boys dashed around the house, a final marking of their territory. Once Mrs. Curwin had organized her vanity for the third time, she returned to powdering her nose in the hallway mirror. Mr. Curwin, an island surrounded by frenzied waters, stole a moment of solitude in the bright morning sun by the back table on the terrace, savoring his final espresso, breathing in the hot, fruity air.
“Buon viaggio, Mr. Curwin,” Carmela said, clearing the remaining dirty dishes.
“Yes. Thank you,” he answered, placing his cup down onto his saucer with a sigh. “And there it is. Another year, gone. Sardinia has seduced once more. She’s like a mistress you simply cannot live without, costing one a small fortune to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed.”
“I am glad.”
“Back to the real world.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose this is all too real to you.”
Carmela let his words hang, unsure whether he was enjoying the wistful rhetoric or inviting conversation.
“Once again, you and Piera have been astounding.” He stood up, returning to business.
“Thank you,” Carmela replied.
“For the two of you,” he said, handing her a small envelope.
Carmela always felt a twinge of embarrassment at the ritual, unchanged in all the years she had worked for the family. “Signor Curwin, there is no need.”
“Certainly,” he replied, placing the envelope inside her palm. She knew that inside there would be half a week’s pay, enough to buy most of the fabric for an entire trousseau—or partway toward an airplane ticket, perhaps? Mr. Curwin turned on his heel and walked toward the front door. Carmela stood for a moment, listening to the chorus of crickets and the echoes of the Curwin family’s voices from inside, bouncing off the stone walls and terra-cotta tiles. Heels approached. Carmela turned. Mrs. Curwin stepped out onto the terrace, radiating elegance in her crisp, white linen suit. Carmela felt like a barefoot farmhand.
“The next time I see you, you will be a beautiful newlywed.” Mrs. Curwin placed her hands on Carmela’s shoulders. “I wasn’t nervous in the slightest before I married Marito. Goodness knows how many tried to push me up that aisle before him. But once I met Sam, everything was clear. And that’s the way. Enjoy each other, Carmela.” She seemed to search Carmela for something. Carmela bowed her eyes, embarrassed by the maternal outpouring.
“And laugh,” Mrs. Curwin added. “Promise me you’ll laugh!”
Carmela met Mrs. Curwin’s eyes again, willing the feeling in the pit of her stomach to be something closer to excitement. “Of course.”
Mrs. Curwin planted a polite kiss on each of Carmela’s cheeks, her lily of the valley cologne stronger than usual. “Arrivederci, then!”
“Sì, arrivederci, Signora.”
Mrs. Curwin turned back to Carmela. “You will be a radiant bride. You’ll hate me saying this, I’m sure, but your beauty is something rare. It’s like a light. Pure. Bright. Utterly irresistible, as far as I can tell! And the best thing about it, Carmela dear, is that you won’t believe a word of what I’ve just said”—she gave a breathy laugh—“and I’m not being flippant about my invitation to work for me in London, you know that, d
on’t you? Just say the word.”
Carmela, embarrassed by Mrs. Curwin’s outpouring and invitation, could but smile in reply. It seemed like Mrs. Curwin wanted to impart a further nugget of bridal wisdom but then thought better of it, much to Carmela’s relief. They looked at each other, unspoken thoughts hovering, until Mrs. Curwin turned away, and Carmela followed her and the rest of the family to the door. Piera left the stripping of the beds upstairs to join them. The sisters stood on the stoop, waving the clan farewell.
“I’ll be back for you two,” Antonio yelled to them as he walked around to open his taxi doors for the Curwins.
“Thank you, Toni!” Carmela called back.
The taxi started down the driveway. A few minutes later, all that was left of the English and their summer of 1952 was a cloud of sun-toasted dust.
“I’m almost done upstairs, won’t take me long,” Piera said, shuffling inside.
Every year, the Curwins’ departure would herald the onset of a brief melancholy, soon followed with the excitement of the summer that would follow. This year it was different. Next summer, it was likely Carmela would receive the guests as mistress of the house. She couldn’t imagine that Franco would allow her to work for them once she became his wife. His honor would prevent him from allowing her to do so, in his own uncle’s villa. “Pie’, do you ever think about London?”
“What do you mean?”
Carmela billowed a dust sheet and watched it land over one of the armchairs. “I mean, do you wonder what our lives would be like somewhere else?”
The cold truth of her thoughts chilled her. Once she was too young to chase after her dreams, and now, watching the Curwins for the last time as a young bride-to-be, it was likely she would never get the chance to explore any other life beyond her own in Simius.
“I think people are happy when they’re on holiday,” Piera said.
“You really think they would be so different over there?”
“Tie your shoes tighter.”
“What?”
“They keep itching your feet. Don’t suppose you’ll be planning on dancing the polka at your wedding?”
“Of course. Naked. While I howl up at the moon.”
Piera cackled.
The white sheets draped over the furniture formed the craggy angles of a mountainous, foreboding land. “I just want to know if you think about it, Pie’, that’s all.”
“No one feeds a family on dreams.”
“But you do think about it, don’t you?”
“I can just picture Franco now, leaving all this behind to go wash Mr. Curwin’s car every weekend,” she answered, flippant, but there was the spark of sincerity in her eyes. Carmela forced a smile and covered a second chair. Another pang of sorrow. What was this dull ache? The fact that she would be sharing a marriage bed soon, no longer curled alongside her sister as she had been for the past twenty-one years? Why, this morning, did ripples of uncertainty rise and fall, like the ebb of a wave as it creeps up to gloss the dry sand on the shore? Carmela waded in these new and uncomfortable sensations, a sea of silenced, wordless doubts. Trying to decipher or articulate the foreign feeling, even to herself, was futile. The more she tried, the quicker the thoughts spiraled away, like water down a drain.
Carmela tried to convince herself that these feelings were rooted in the fear of how her relationship with her sister would change after she married Franco. Then the gray mist of doubt clouded her thoughts. Once married, London would be a pipe dream after all. These fluttering conversations with Piera would never happen again. A sadness swelled inside. In her heart she couldn’t say that she had ever truly longed for a life elsewhere. But at the same time, she didn’t truly long for a life in Simius either.
Kavanagh’s work proposal had confused her. It was the first time somebody had treated her as an adult and offered her a responsibility unrelated to whatever she had done before. It was exhilarating, more so, even, than becoming a married woman. Those responsibilities now felt overwhelming, crushing. It was time to grow up, but all of a sudden, watching the Curwins leave, the adult Carmela had decided to become seemed like a cold stranger. That dull, nagging feeling had resurfaced. Her thoughts broke off in tangents, sprouting new questions and doubts. She had never hidden anything from her sister before now. It felt wrong. Worse, even, than allowing the whispered second-guessing of her marriage to spiral in her mind.
“And if I did think about it,” Piera answered, finally, “I’d picture you by my side.”
She ran up the stairs, closing the conversation before Carmela could reply.
The beady eyes painted on Franco’s great-grandmother’s portrait pierced Carmela from across the room—a gaunt, stony-faced matriarch wearing pearls and a high-buttoned, dark shirt. Who could blame her for despising her great-grandson’s choice of wife?
By the time Antonio returned, the heat had reached midday ferocity. The beds had been stripped, the sheets boiled, scrubbed, wrung and hung to dry, starched in the sun, folded, and stored in the linen closets. The shutters were locked tight.
Carmela hesitated before climbing into the cab. “You two go on ahead, I need to take a walk.”
Antonio’s and Piera’s eyebrows rose.
“You’ll be prosciutto by the time you get back,” Piera said.
“She’s right, Carme’, let me take you uphill,” Antonio offered.
“No, really, if it’s all the same with you, I need a little time alone.”
“Our cousin was the same a month before her wedding. Started writing poetry and everything,” Piera quipped.
Her teasing landed flat.
“Take some water, at least,” Antonio said, handing Carmela his leather pouch flask.
“Thank you, Toni. I won’t be long, Pie’.”
Carmela headed toward the trickling fountain by the gate to fill up the flask. The cool water was soothing, but did nothing to silence the thoughts racing through her head as the car pulled away.
“Is Lieutenant Kavanagh expecting you?”
“Yes,” Carmela lied, marveling at the tight platinum wave of the receptionist’s hair.
“Take a seat.”
Carmela wandered over to the plastic seat by the glass doors. The cool of the waiting area was a welcome relief to the inferno outside. A small bead of sweat trickled down her temple. Her heart raced. What if she had walked all this way for nothing? What if Kavanagh found her bravado at turning up uninvited, unannounced, inappropriate? How had she become the kind of woman who tricked receptionists? She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief, pretending not to notice the tremble of her hand.
“May I use the bathroom?” Carmela asked.
“Certainly,” the receptionist answered.
Inside the gray-tiled space Carmela splashed her face with cold water. Her reflection gazed back at her. The same strong jaw, wide shoulders, and smooth, olive skin, but a change flickered in her eyes. A steel she had not noticed before. The naked ambition she saw yesterday was not Virginia’s after all. It was her own. It was she who longed for promotion from her own life. Carmela smoothed the mass of her wavy hair, which did little to tame its rebellion. The image of the portrait back at the house floated into her mind again. It had eclipsed her thoughts the entire walk while the sun beat down on her. It had felt like the entire army of Franco’s ancestors had wafted behind her, spying her every move, hovering in her thoughts and haunting her. And yet, her feet kept walking. The sea below beckoned her onward.
She didn’t expect Kavanagh to be waiting for her by the time she came out of the bathroom. The expression she read was of pleasant surprise. It put her somewhat at ease.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” he asked, his face widening into a warm grin.
Carmela’s eyes snapped to the receptionist, hoping she hadn’t heard.
She took a breath. “I can start the job.”
“The job?”
“I’m ready to help you.”
His pause seemed to la
st an age. Had he changed his mind? Chosen Agnes? Why had she waited so long to give her reply? Had she been so terrified of her feelings from the moment she had met him? Of course she had. Kavanagh blew through her like the maestrale wind from the north. He whipped up the dust and debris of her life, sending shards of habits and memories swirling. But unlike the maestrale, he didn’t leave destruction in his wake. Unlike Franco, he didn’t seek to contain or control her. She thought about Agnes, imagining her jealous sneer, recalled her barbed whispers telling Carmela that Kavanagh paying for her services was no different to the better known skills that girls offered soldiers. The imagined insult hovered for a moment, soon overtaken by the image of Kavanagh’s smiling eyes when he’d hear her acceptance. His face would light up with bright warmth, openness, and a generosity of spirit that never had been showered on her before. At no other time had she felt this exhilarating pull between earthed safety and liberty. Since that night in the hospital the little girl inside her had not stopped careening down her hill with abandon. Kavanagh propelled her into the world, forced her to see beyond the confine of her own expectations. Was it possible not to fall into the person who offered you the most precious gift of all: freedom? Kavanagh ignited a fire that Carmela had allowed Franco to keep sheltered, embers of possibility starved of air to whip up into flames. The room tilted.
“Well,” he began.
What? No, thank you? Go home? Don’t ever come here again?
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
Excitement rippled up her spine. “When do we start?” she asked, impressed by the way her voice came out without the tremor she felt in her abdomen.
He smiled. “Seymour has taught me a lot in a short time—teachers come in many different sizes, you know? I’m going to take a leaf out of the little fella’s book—how’s about right now?”
“Now?” Carmela said, eyes wide, a child at Christmas.
“I was just on my way out to a farm nearby. Signor Bacchisio Lau is the name.”
Under a Sardinian Sky Page 14