by Penny Feeny
She nodded, withdrew her hand and dipped it into the sea.
‘I won’t queer your pitch and you won’t queer mine.’
‘Am I right in thinking you have designs on someone?’
‘I want us to be friends, that’s all.’
‘Well, you needn’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll be the soul of discretion. Anyway, I’m not the slightest bit interested in what you get up to.’
‘You really mean that?’
‘I really mean that. And now I think we ought to get back.’
Jake rescued the oar and slotted it into its rowlock. He glanced over his shoulder at the picturesque cove and the two villas perched above it like nesting gulls. With a steady rhythmic pull he began to head back to the shore. The sun caught the ripple of the muscles in his arms, the clench of his knuckles and jaw, the demeanour of someone who knew his own powers of attraction. ‘Talking of falling on one’s feet,’ he observed after a while. ‘You haven’t done so badly yourself. Special subject: gold-digging.’
She lunged at him. ‘Fuck off! That is not the way to keep me sweet.’
‘I’m only teasing,’ he protested. ‘Just a bit jealous because I’m bunked in a stuffy little room above the club. The bin lorries wake me at seven every morning and, unlike you, I overlook power lines, empty crates and the hen house.’
‘My heart bleeds. What hen house?’
‘Didn’t you spot the tavola calda? They make their own pasta with the eggs. I live off it actually. It’s okay. You and your friend could join me for dinner one night.’
‘Thanks. We’ll bear that in mind when we get bored with our four course banquets.’
He shipped the oars for the fnal approach, as they glided towards the jetty. ‘I knew you’d come round eventually.’
The scene on the shore was peaceful. Liddy was sitting with her arms around Mimmo; the other two perched close by as if they were listening to a story. Helena stepped out and Jake moored the boat with much tying and retying of knots. A bird of prey hovered in the clear sky above them, casting a momentary shadow. Sara sprang up and ran to clasp Helena’s hand.
‘Hey, slow down,’ said Helena. ‘Piano. If you gabble like that I won’t understand a word.’
‘Mimmo!’ shrieked Sara. ‘È successo qualcosa.’
Helena whipped off her sunglasses and took long strides up the beach. ‘Liddy! What’s happened?’
Liddy was cradling Mimmo on her lap, smoothing his temple with a damp towel. On his shin was a nasty gash three inches long, a loose flap of skin, a thick rivulet of blood.
‘Mimmo fell.’
‘How? Where from?’
‘He and Bobo were messing about. They were on that ledge up there and he lost his footing.’
‘Oh Liddy . . .’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘They shouldn’t have been clambering around the rocks. Didn’t you see what they were up to?’
‘Do I have eyes in the back of my head? If you hadn’t gone swanning off –’
Helena gritted her teeth. As a friend, Liddy had many excellent qualities. She was a spirited and willing accomplice (she also provided a useful counter-balance to some of Helena’s more reckless enterprises), but she wasn’t much good at taking the blame. ‘Honestly! We were gone about ten minutes. I ask you to do one simple thing . . .’
‘Simple!’ exploded Liddy. ‘I didn’t even dare move him in case he had a fracture. I heard a story once of a kid who’d walked around on a broken leg for days. The bones set out of alignment and he limped for the rest of his life.’
Jake came to crouch the other side of Mimmo. ‘Shall I have a look?’ he said.
‘Why? What can you do?’
‘I might be able to tell if the ankle’s sprained or the tibia’s broken. At least the bleeding’s not too bad.’
‘So you’re a doctor now, are you?’
He nodded. ‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of! How can you be a sort of doctor? What, d’you mean like a vet?’
‘I studied medicine,’ Jake said. ‘But I didn’t qualify.’ His hands on Mimmo’s limbs were soothing and the boy stopped quaking. He asked him in Italian if any other part hurt, whether he’d banged his head when he landed. He bent the boy’s leg at the knee and probed the flesh delicately. ‘It feels all right, but he could have a greenstick fracture, which would still need a cast. I think he’ll be okay but he should get an X-ray to be on the safe side. Can you stand, Mimmo? If it’s really painful he won’t be able to put any weight on it.’
Helena helped Mimmo to rise. Liddy was shaking her head. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘First you’re an actor, then you’re a disc jockey and now you’re a medic. I mean, how can that be?’
‘You’ve got it the wrong way around,’ said Jake. ‘First I was a medic. Only I flunked my exams so I dropped out. I’m not proud of failing, but I was doing the wrong subject. My parents are both doctors and it didn’t occur to them I might have different ideas.’
‘I didn’t think acting was something you could just walk into either.’
He grinned. ‘It isn’t. It’s bloody hard to crack. But, you see, I’m shameless.’
‘How the hell,’ said Helena, unable to decide which of them she was more annoyed with, ‘are we going to get him up to the villa?’
‘I’ll carry him I suppose,’ said Jake. ‘If you’ll lift him on to my back.’
The ascent seemed steeper than ever, each flight an obstacle which Bobo and Sara greeted with shrieks of dismay. When their straggling procession finally reached the terrace, they found Gabriella reclining on her steamer chair with a glass of orange Aperol and a copy of Italian Vogue. She was wearing a fine cotton kaftan with concealing sleeves, and her head was wrapped in a turban which accentuated her thin, arresting face. Gabi exuded the sense that, despite all her privilege, she was trapped in a life that didn’t suit her; she had no energy for the demands of husband and son. She turned reproachfully: they had come back too soon, she hadn’t fnished her magazine, and she wasn’t yet ready to be disturbed. Then she saw Mimmo’s condition and leapt up. ‘What have you done to my baby?’
‘Gabi, I’m really sorry. He’s had a fall.’
‘Come? How does this happen?’
‘He was playing with Bobo on the rocks and we didn’t realize. We didn’t see . . .’ Helena hated sounding so ineffectual, but she could only report what Liddy had told her. On the way up Mimmo had clutched Jake’s neck and occasionally yelped with pain. Now he sat on one of the wrought-iron chairs clasping his knee and dripping on to the terrace tiles. His face was ghostly with shock.
‘You were not watching him?’
‘It only takes a minute. We tell them not to climb, but –’
Gabi peered at Jake, his shirt smudged with blood. ‘And who is this?’
‘An English friend. Jake Knight.’ There was no law against them socializing, no need to apologize for his presence.
‘There were three of you,’ Gabi said, ‘and nobody noticed what they were doing? You were amusing yourselves in some other way perhaps. You were –’
At this, Jake stepped forward. His Italian was better than Helena’s and with charm and fluency he depicted their sojourn on the beach: the bathing, the games, the construction of spas and saunas and pirate ships and army barracks; how Mimmo’s tumble was an unforeseen unlucky accident; that the damage was probably not as bad as it looked.
Gabi said, ‘I shall take him at once to the clinic.’
Helena said, ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
Gabi pulled her sleeve over a flaking patch of dry skin. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your friends should leave. Sara and Bobo must go home. I shan’t need help. You may do as you please.’
What Helena would have liked to do was go for a long walk, up into the dense wooded mountainside where wild boar still rooted for sweet chestnuts and tawny owls nested, where she might find shade and tranquillity, but she was concerned for Mimmo and didn’t want to loo
k callous. Nor did she want to spend any more time with Liddy and Jake. Liddy worried at issues like a terrier: the afternoon would be analysed and dissected and gnawed at until she could find an explanation that satisfied her. She was never prepared to acknowledge that some things were just random. So Helena slung her beach bag over her shoulder, retired to her room and drew savagely on her cigarette. She sat on the bed and kicked her espadrilles, faded, salt-stained, the heels downtrodden, to the far wall. She picked up a book and began turning the pages without reading them. That poor kid. In her mind she could see him suspended in the air, the slow-motion crash, the damage that could have been so much worse . . .
When the knock came it startled her, interrupting her drowsy stupor. The visitor didn’t wait for a response. Fabrizio Verducci strolled through life helping himself to whatever he fancied: a wealthy aristocratic wife, building projects underpinned by money and connections, the best view on the hillside. The weekend before he had relieved his son of the cone of nuts he’d been holding and tossed them one by one into the air. ‘See if you can catch them in your mouth,’ he’d said. Mimmo couldn’t. Fabrizio could. So he ate all the nuts.
Lean and lanky with a commanding presence, he was the kind of man who made a room seem smaller. As Helena stirred and uncurled her toes, he ducked through the doorway and sat at the end of her bed.
‘Where is everybody?’
Her vision was bleary. ‘What time is it?’
His watch was expensive, a bold face in a gold link chain. ‘Not long after seven. Too early for bed.’
‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Have I got the day wrong? You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Facio un ponte.’ The season was full of religious holidays, which could be bridged into long weekends. ‘I’ve only just arrived. See. I haven’t even had time to change.’ He was wearing a light-coloured linen-mix suit, workday shoes.
‘Were you expecting us to meet you? Gabi didn’t say.’
‘No, I took a taxi. A surprise for you.’ He grinned and moved much closer; his hand lingered at her thigh. Downy brown hairs escaped his starched cotton cuff. ‘I missed you,’ he said.
Helena’s mouth was dry as ash. She picked up the bottle of mineral water she kept by her bed and swigged it. ‘You did?’ Her breathing was swift and shallow.
‘Of course. You should have stayed in Rome. Then I could see you every day.’
‘You wouldn’t though. You’d’ve kept cancelling me for more important appointments. Anyhow, we’ve been through this. It was getting so hot in the city. Everybody else was leaving and I had to find work or I’d have been under pressure to go home. And this way I can get to know Mimmo. You already told me Gabi won’t care: you have your “arrangement”.’
She knew he considered her too close for comfort, but he couldn’t deny the added frisson of danger that made the sex so exciting. His hand inched up her leg and he bent his head to nuzzle her throat. Although she could feel herself arching her spine and stirring her hips in response, she pushed him away.
‘But we are alone, yes?’ he said.
‘They might come back any minute.’
He mimed an exaggerated sigh. ‘Va bene. But now, I have something for you.’ He patted his suit jacket and pulled a slim rectangular box from his pocket.
Helena squirmed. ‘You don’t have to give me anything. You know that.’
‘I’m tired of seeing that old shoelace around your neck.’
She called it her lucky charm: a leather thong threaded through a lustrous green pebble she’d found on the beach at home. Fingering its smooth cool surface, she accepted the gift with her other hand but didn’t open it. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
He was quick to react to her tone, his playfulness dissipated. ‘What?’
‘The reason Mimmo and Gabi aren’t here is because they’ve gone to the doctor.’
‘Porca miseria! What for?’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Helena kneeling on the bed so that her eyes were level with his. ‘This afternoon on the beach Mimmo hurt his leg on the rocks. He was play-acting with Bobo and slipped and lost his footing. It was a stupid accident. Gabi’s taken him to get the wound dressed and X-rayed. I’m truly sorry.’
‘He’s not badly hurt?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’
Fabrizio jumped up. He ran his fingers through his hair. He began to pace the room, his shoes ringing like blows on the marble tiles. He wanted every detail. ‘You are sure there was no concussion? No bones are broken? There will be a scar?’
‘Well, that depends whether he needs stitches . . .’
‘This should not have happened. It is not a good omen.’
Helena should not have been tempted by the boat. ‘I guess I’m useless at this lark,’ she said. ‘Gabi was really cross; she wouldn’t let me go with them and I don’t blame her. I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off him for a second. But you must know that I would never deliberately . . . I mean, I’m really fond of Mimmo.’
‘To be fond,’ he said, ‘is not the point. The point is to be responsible. This could have been a disaster.’
‘Yes, I realize that.’
‘You should have stayed in Rome,’ he said again.
‘Look, if you don’t trust me to look after your son you can fire me. I’ll understand.’
He held her face between his hands, clamped his mouth on hers in an impatient kiss. After pausing for breath he said, ‘Is that what you think I should do?’
‘It’s up to you.’ She held out the box he had given her. ‘You’d better take this back, anyhow.’
‘Che cazzo dici? Why?’
‘Because I cocked up and you’ve probably spent far too much.’
‘It’s no good to me.’
‘You could give it to someone else. Gabi.’
‘She already has one similar. In fact’ – he gave a wry smile – ‘it would be better if you don’t wear it in the house. Now, let’s forget this nonsense. Go on, open the box.’
On padded white satin lay a strand of rich blue beads. Helena lifted it out with an admiring gasp. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said.
‘Lapis lazuli. The colour of your eyes. Make sure you take good care of it.’ He covered her hand with his own and looked at her sideways the way Mimmo did sometimes when he’d been mischievous.
‘Don’t worry, I will.’ And she stowed the necklace in the drawer where she kept her contraceptive pills and her cigarettes, beneath an innocent pile of knickers and T-shirts, where she assumed it would be safe.
3
Three upturned espresso cups were aligned in the centre of the table, one of them covering a fifty lire piece. Small change was like gold dust in Italy that summer. Once obtained, coins of twenty, fifty or a hundred lire were rarely relinquished, but Jake had persuaded Liddy to supply one for his conjuring trick. She and Helena were supposed to be guessing which cup it was hiding under. Jake sat back and folded his arms as if he had all the time in the world, though his break from the turntables was more than half over. He had already baffled them with card tricks, with the transfer of aces from one pile to another. ‘Go on,’ he’d say. ‘Cut. Now, cut again.’ And each time, there it was: the ace of hearts. The fifty lire piece had travelled too. He had found it beneath the ashtray and inside a matchbox. At one point he’d bent down and retrieved the coin from Liddy’s shoe.
Staring at the cups she said, ‘Whichever I choose will be wrong.’
‘Actually,’ said Helena, ‘you’ve got a thirty-three per cent chance of being right.’ She’d seen these tricks before. Not so often that she knew how they worked, but enough to know that she didn’t really care now that she was on her fourth gin fizz.
‘Well, I’m going to go for the least likely.’ Liddy pointed. ‘That one.’
With a smirk of complacency he lifted the cup.
‘You cheated.’
‘How? How did I cheat?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Never,’ he said,
shaking his head, ‘give away the tricks of the trade. Try again.’
Liddy was wrong the second time too. She picked up the third cup and snatched back her money. ‘You’re pretty good. Did it take ages to learn?’
‘I’ve spent an awful lot of my life hanging around, that’s all.’
‘You could go professional.’
‘Yeah. I could be one of those guys you see on street corners, plying their trade at a little folding table, drawing the punters in.’
‘Or a magician? Or a children’s entertainer?’
He flicked back his fringe, a mannerism that gave his face an edgy profile in the lambent outdoor lighting. ‘Thanks, but I don’t know whether I should set my sights so high.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause offence.’ An embarrassed silence settled on the table.
Helena spun her empty glass; she crossed and uncrossed her legs, scarcely disguising the fact that she was bored. Evenings at the Vesuvio were quite different from what she was used to. The clubs at home in Liverpool – fetid cellars awash with spilt beer and tight black leather – had a raw energy quite missing here. Young men and women swayed together under the coloured lanterns, dancing languidly, as if the heat of the day had induced a torpor that couldn’t be shaken off; even the smoke from their cigarettes drifted in lazy spirals. When they needed privacy they slunk into the corners of the courtyard and hid among the pots of passion flower and jasmine; in the dark, hot tongues probed, moist hands strayed.
She pushed back her chair. ‘Off to the loo,’ she muttered. ‘I’m sure Jake can spin a few more tricks while I’m gone.’ She didn’t add – although she felt like it – anyway, three’s a crowd.
In the dankness of the ladies’ toilets she splashed water on her face. Then she wandered through the main entrance out on to the moonlit street. A brick wall extended at right angles from the premises. A haphazard collection of scooters and motorbikes sprawled against it as randomly as if they’d fallen from a great height. A couple of young men in tight shirts and tighter trousers were admiring a Suzuki 500: its polished chrome chassis, the fat, red belly of its engine. Something in their manner made Helena wonder whether the bike actually belonged to them, even though they were brazen enough to be hauling it from its station in full view of the road. The snap of her lighter alerted them and one of the pair strutted towards her. He had a slight cast to his eye and a golden medallion blazing on his sternum; his cheap aftershave was already overlaid with grease and petrol.