by Penny Feeny
She gulped. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘No? What was it like, then?’
For a moment Liddy wavered, then she opted for belligerence. ‘As if you haven’t done the same to me! Rooting about, borrowing my tights and scarves and things.’
‘Only when you were around. I’d never sneak your stuff if you weren’t there.’
‘I don’t sneak! It was Jake’s idea.’
‘Oh. How convenient. Blame someone else.’
‘If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask him?’
‘You know perfectly well that he’s gone. You’ve just said goodbye to him.’
Helena had manoeuvred her against the wall, next to a wooden shutter that was pinned back, and she clung to it as if it were a raft in a turbulent sea. Her tongue tasted sour and her eyes smarted. She didn’t want to spoil such a glorious romantic evening but she had no idea how to restore things to the way they were. She put up her hands and fumbled with the clasp of the necklace. ‘I can’t undo it,’ she said tremulously. ‘Can you help me?’
Helena twisted a hank of her own hair with a ferocity that suggested she’d like to be wringing someone’s neck. ‘Tough,’ she said. ‘You must have been wearing the damn thing for a couple of hours already. You might as well keep it on for tonight. What do I care?’
A noise, a snigger, a movement behind a pillar, alerted them. Liddy turned, expecting to see Bobo, but it was a sullen Cristina, released from the kitchen to dispose of some bones. When their eyes met, she had the distinct impression that Cristina had been watching the whole thing, relishing their argument. Snoop, she thought crossly.
Helena was more direct. She let her hair fall and went to accost the girl. ‘What do you think you’re doing, skulking around like that? Eavesdropping. It amuses you does it, to spy on people?’
‘Leave her,’ called Liddy. ‘She doesn’t understand.’
‘She understands a lot more than she lets on.’
Even without knowing the words Cristina must have grasped their intent, but she leaned against the pillar with her arms folded: irritating, implacable.
‘This is none of your business,’ Helena continued. ‘How come you’ve got so much free time anyway? You should have better things to do.’
‘Come lei?’ said Cristina.
Like you? The girl’s tone was soft but carried a sneer in it too. Liddy supposed she despised them because they were transient foreigners whereas she, with her broad hips and plump swelling calves, was rooted in the land. She’d still be here at the end of the summer.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but Helena’s face blanched and the insult whistled between her teeth: ‘Stronza!’ Then she whipped around and stalked off.
Liddy wondered whether she should be grateful to the girl for deflecting Helena’s anger, or whether she should apologize on her behalf. She left the shelter of her shutter and cleared her throat, but Cristina cast her a look of contempt. She hadn’t flinched when Helena called her a bitch and she wasn’t about to bother with Liddy. She picked up her empty pail and rounded the corner of the villa.
Back on the terrace, the record player had been rearranged so that its speakers faced outside and the Italian ballads had been replaced with the soundtrack from Grease. Liddy hadn’t yet eaten, but as she picked over the debris on the dining table, the son of Gabi’s pharmacist asked her to dance. He was only eighteen but considered himself to be blessed with the skills of John Travolta. When she finally agreed he tossed her around the dance floor as if she were attached to a length of string.
Some of the older guests had moved indoors to continue their animated conversations on the subjects of politics – what a casino; economics – where did all one’s money go; and sheer unadulterated braggadocio. Piero Baldini was giving an animated account of a fishing trip: ‘It was this long, I tell you, the very devil of a beast. I had to shoot three times to kill him, harpoons hanging from his wounds like San Sebastiano.’
Liddy began to enjoy the dancing. She’d drunk enough not to be self-conscious and she forgot she’d been feeling dizzy with hunger. Nevertheless, when she saw Helena standing beside the dying embers of the barbecue her hand rose to conceal her throat. Her enthusiastic partner whirled her like a spinning top. Mid-pirouette, her fingers became trapped in the rope of beads, which snapped and scattered blue balls of lapis like bullets.
Helena didn’t leave her spot by the balustrade, didn’t move to collect a single rolling stone. Everyone else did. All the other partygoers chased the beads across the terrace flags and the living-room rug. Gabi, who had been in deep discussion with the doctor, finally broke off to see why her guests were crawling around as if involved in some new parlour game. Various among them were tipping their finds into Liddy’s cupped hands. Maresa had been orchestrating the recovery. As she rose from her knees, her upswept hairdo began to wobble. She patted it steady and said, ‘We need a bowl so they don’t end up all over the place again.’
Gabi fetched a glass dish from the kitchen and carried it over to her.
‘I think we got all the pieces,’ Maresa said with her customary confidence. ‘But they should be strung on stronger thread next time.’
Gabi gazed in puzzlement at the contents of the dish. ‘But this is my necklace.’
‘What?’ Liddy stepped sideways, knocking over a glass of red wine. ‘No, no, it can’t be.’
‘It is,’ said Gabi. ‘I know my own jewellery. How did you come by it?’
‘I . . . I borrowed it.’
‘You borrowed it? When?’
‘Today. I . . .’
‘This is not borrowing,’ said Gabi. ‘This is stealing.’
‘I didn’t know it was yours. I . . . I just found it.’
‘Where?’
After a few moments’ silence, she gave an indefinite sweep of her hand. ‘Outside, on the path. I can’t imagine how it got there unless one of the children . . .’
‘You didn’t ask if it belonged to anyone? You simply put it on?’
Fabrizio entered the room and boomed: ‘Attenzione! It’s midnight and we are ready for the freworks.’
‘I wasn’t thinking . . . I’m truly sorry.’ Liddy proffered the bowl to Gabi but she rejected it.
‘There is no time for this now. We will discuss it later.’ With an eloquent shrug, as if she were overburdened with inferior jewellery, she returned to her hostess duties, ushering her guests outside again.
Fabrizio lit a taper and set off the first firework against the backdrop of the sea. It exploded in a stutter of bursts like gunfire and shot skywards in a dazzling magnesium flare. The rest were similar: some stars, some stripes, all noisy. As the company stood around watching – and shrieking at particularly violent explosions – Liddy went up to Helena. ‘You knew,’ she said.
‘Knew what?’
‘That it was Gabi’s necklace.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Why was it hidden away then, like you didn’t want anyone to fnd it?’
‘I don’t believe this,’ said Helena. ‘Are you trying to accuse me of stealing the bloody thing?’
‘Well, that’s what Gabi’s just done to me.’
‘And you think it was undeserved?’
‘Yes I do!’ She stalked away in a show of indignation and took shelter from the fireworks beneath the colonnade. In the intervals betweenexplosions she heard a clatter and raised voices; her attention was drawn to the bright rectangle of the kitchen window. She peered in. Rosaria’s arms were plunged into the foamy washing-up in the deep stone sink. An unforgiving light shone on the table, still littered with carcasses of one sort or another because Cristina’s duties had been interrupted. Her hands were fluttering in a parabola of uncertainty and denial as Gabi, a whip-thin streak of scorn and condescension, interrogated her. Liddy couldn’t hear the words and wouldn’t have been able to follow them anyway, but the scene itself was consoling.
5
The treasure hunt was Jake’s idea. The b
ounty wasn’t hard to source: boiled sweets and toffees were the currency of the island. Every time the girls took the children into a bar and ordered ice creams and cappuccino or bought postcards or stamps or sun cream, every time they handed over crumpled thousand lire notes, the till would spring open to reveal an assortment of pick’n’mix. There were no coins in the loose change compartments, only a handful of gettoni for telephone calls and lots and lots of coloured paper wrappers containing fruit jellies, mints, chocolates, or powdery tablets tasting of violets or roses. They’d grown used to the sight now. Indeed, the children expected it: whywouldn’t you prefer to be given an edible treat as change for your shopping?
The best spot for the treasure hunt, according to Jake, was a beach they hadn’t been to before. It was further along the coast than the little coves they usually frequented, a twenty-minute trip with the outboard motor. They only used the oars for the final approach. When they struck sand they helped the children out and waded with them to shore, then pulled up the boat and fastened it to a stake. The sheer cliffs enveloping the beach were scarred with narrow fissures and a few larger crevices through which a man might squeeze. Some of these openings widened into grottoes containing shallow pools, silent except for the slow, steady splash of water dripping down the walls.
‘See what a choice I have for hiding-places,’ said Jake. ‘Only you mustn’t watch where I go or finding the treasure won’t be a surprise.’
Mimmo glanced from left to right. ‘There are people here,’ he said.
This was true. A tortuous path zigzagged uphill through shrubs and scree to join the road. A handful of other holiday-makers had parked at the top, struggled down and laid out their rattan beach mats.
‘Well, yes. So?’
‘So they will eat our sweets.’
Over the past few days the temperature had been building to torrid heights. The sunbathers lay sweltering and lethargic in the sultry afternoon. ‘Trust me,’ said Helena. ‘They won’t be interested.’
Liddy slipped out of her dress and said to Sara, ‘Come on. Let’s go swimming.’ She pitched into the limpid water and rolled on to her back, sculling lightly with her hands, kicking her feet, demonstrating to Sara how to float. Jake went off with the sweets. Bobo and Mimmo began to dig in the sand, turning their backs as instructed (although Bobo kept peeping under his armpit).
Helena lay down. She hadn’t forgiven Liddy for the incident with the necklace, even though Gabi had eventually found her own undisturbed and been persuaded that any similarity was coincidental. It was an alarmingly near miss and it didn’t help that things were getting heavy with Fabrizio. For months it had been a game, an aberration, a taste of forbidden excitement that she couldn’t confess to anyone. Now it wasn’t enough: they both wanted more. She’d broken off from him once already – that misjudged interlude with Jake – but it hadn’t worked. She was having difficulty imagining the end of the summer, leaving him for a tame return to her old life – but then she was having difficulty concentrating on anything. Although she tried to run alternatives through her head, she felt sluggish and indecisive.
She thumbed through her paperback novel (How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong), but couldn’t find her place. The print blurred in the white-hot light. The air was stickier than usual, and she was thinking how the chance to nap would be bliss when the others converged again: Liddy shaking her hair so that a cascade of droplets danced around her shoulders; Jake with his empty bag; Sara wrapped in a brown and orange towel like a chrysalis. She put aside the unread book and looked up.
‘Picnic first,’ said Jake. ‘Games after. That’s the deal.’
Helena handed around panini rosettes filled with slices of salami and Provolone. The children bit into them with relish. Bobo dropped his on to the sand and had to be given another; then he demolished the first one anyway. She pulled a watermelon from her basket along with a knife. She laid it on a slab of rock and plunged the knife through the thick, dark green rind. Juice spurted and showered them all and Sara screamed.
‘Here,’ said Jake. ‘You’re doing it all wrong.’ He took the watermelon from her and carved it neatly into a dozen slices.
Mimmo collected up the seeds and arranged them into a pattern, a spiral that began by winding tightly around itself, but then grew into wider circles and ended with an arrowhead pointing towards the entrance to one of the caves. ‘This way to treasure,’ he said.
‘Don’t go into any of the caves by yourselves,’ said Liddy. ‘They’ll be very dark inside and dangerous and you might get lost.’
‘I swear,’ said Jake, ‘that I haven’t hidden the sweets anywhere you can’t get to easily. I’ll wait here by the boat while you see what you can find. When you come back I’ll be able to tell you whether you’re doing well or whether there are any more hidden. Don’t forget to take a bucket.’
‘We’d better split up,’ said Helena to Liddy. ‘I’ll take the boys if you like.’
They headed for the rocks, passing a circle of young men playing cards and two or three extended families also sharing a picnic. A couple writhed in the privacy of a low-set parasol. The boys stared in fascination at the bare gyrating feet as if they recognized them – and indeed, something about the solid shape of the girl’s calf rubbing against her boyfriend’s hairy shin put Helena in mind of Cristina – but when Bobo reached out mischievously to prod their soles, she quickly led him onwards. For the best part of an hour they rummaged under boulders and pushed aside clumps of tough scrubby daisies, filling their buckets.
‘You could open a shop,’ said Helena, when they emptied their finds on to the mat and began sorting and counting them as if the toffees and fruit caramelle were indeed real currency.
A fight broke out between Bobo and Mimmo, the latter accusing the former of stealing some of his sweets. Bobo’s cheeks were too bulging to reply. They started to attack each other: a vicious barrage of punches landing wherever they could make an impact. They kicked and thumped and clawed, but Bobo’s mouth was too full for him to bite. It was Jake who finally pulled him off. He carried him to the water’s edge and dunked him in the sea. The other holiday-makers watched in amusement as the child, coming up for air, spewed out a stream of boiled sweets. Helena retched.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Liddy. ‘You look a bit green.’
‘I’ve never been able to watch people throwing up, that’s all.’
‘Put your head between your knees then. Anyway, he isn’t being sick. He’s just getting his comeuppance for being such a greedy little monster.’
‘Jake encourages him. He makes him worse.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s fair . . .’
Twelve curved strips of watermelon rind were scattered around the picnic basket, like unattached smiles, a legacy of teeth marks in their pink gums. Liddy began to gather them into a plastic bag along with the empty cans of Fanta and hundreds of sweet wrappers. Every now and again she gave a little tut of impatience. Helena lay down again on her stomach and closed her eyes.
‘Elena, Elena!’ A small sticky hand was pulling off her sunhat, tweaking her jaw. She moved her arm lazily and tickled the barrel of Mimmo’s ribcage. At the shoreline she could see that Jake and Bobo were still engaged in their mock water fight and Liddy had gone to join them.
‘Play with me,’ said Mimmo.
‘First let’s have a little siesta.’
‘Hide-and-seek.’
‘Haven’t we done enough seeking today?’
‘Please, Elena.’ He rolled off her and rested his chin on his knees, above the livid red gash on his leg. He infused his voice with passion and persuasion just as his father did and it made her laugh.
‘Oh, all right then. I’ll count to a hundred very slowly and you must be very clever. Hide somewhere that won’t be easy for me to find.’ She watched him run off and then buried her face in her arms.
She’d started to count; she remembered when she woke with a jolt that she’d got to 59. The trouble
was she didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. Not long, she decided, spotting Sara behind her, rearranging Mimmo’s pattern of melon seeds. ‘Dài, Sara,’ she said, raising herself on her elbows. ‘See if you can find Mimmo for me.’
‘No,’ said Sara. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘I’ll buy you gelato.’
‘Only for me? No one else.’
‘No one else,’ Helena promised.
She had just settled herself comfortably again when Liddy and Jake returned, swinging Bobo between them as if auditioning for an ad for seaside family holidays. Helena cringed.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Liddy, dropping on to a beach mat.
‘Mimmo wanted a game of hide-and-seek. I said I’d count to a hundred.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘I’m not sure, I think I dropped off, but it’s okay, Sara’s gone to look for him.’
Jake screwed up his eyes against the sun. ‘She seems to be coming back.’
Sara was weaving and looping in a dance she’d invented, twirling her imaginary skirts and an imaginary baton. She thought the faces turned in her direction were admiring her; she curtsied.
‘Well. Did you fnd him?’
‘Who?’
‘Mimmo, of course.’
‘Oh . . .’ She pursed her lips. ‘Where’s my gelato?’
‘You only get the ice cream if you find him.’
‘But I’m thirsty. Can I have a drink?’
‘We haven’t any drinks left.’
‘Looks like you can’t get out of it now, Hel. You’ll have to go after him yourself.’
‘Ouf, he’ll only be behind a rock or something.’
‘You don’t think he’s lost, do you?’ said Liddy, shifting the straps of her bikini so she wouldn’t get white lines marring her tan.
‘How could he have got lost? There’s nowhere to go.’
‘Isn’t that what we’re always saying about Bobo? How on earth could he have done this, smashed an unbreakable toy or got a bean stuck up his nose or whatever?’