Last Train from Liguria (2010) (12 page)

Amelia turns with a silent ‘shhhh’.

Bella notices then the chime of the tea tray in Grace’s hands and that for the past few moments neither cousin has uttered a squeak.

Now in the lower garden, the wrought-iron table shows etches of rust, and on the ground a chain gang of ants traipses across the droppings from a former meal. A book has been left out to rot in the grass, and on a windowsill a dirty glass holds a slurry of rain-soaked cigarette butts. Bella asks after Alessandro and is told he is playing tennis at the club. She asks what time he is expected home and is given a shrug and a change of subject. She asks what time dinner will be, and she is told, ‘It all depends.’

No sooner seated at the rusty table than nothing will do Amelia but wine. ‘Oh, you must forgive us - what can we have been thinking of!’ she declares, as if Bella has already made a strong complaint on the matter. ‘Tea? Forget it! It’s wine we need, to celebrate your arrival. To celebrate new friendship. Prosecco I think would be most appropriate. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s not champagne of course, but so what? Back home it’s against the law to drink alcohol - you’ve heard of Prohibition, right? Much too embarrassing to even discuss. It’s quite the novelty to be able to drink here. Well, without looking over one’s shoulder anyhow. Prosecco is easily my favourite - what do you say, Anabelle?’

Bella says nothing.

Grace waits a moment and then: ‘It’s probably a little early, dear. Oughtn’t we at least finish having our tea?’

The garden, the short clips of the villa she’s managed to spot on the way, the haphazard routine of the household, all lack the pull of Signora Lami’s domestic rein, so apparent in the house in Sicily. It isn’t a question of neglect as such, Bella decides, more a sense of carelessness. Like a household run by grown-up children. She is beginning to see what the Signora had meant in her letter, by her son ‘needing structure to his day’. And Bella feels easier in herself somehow, leaning back in her chair and looking around. At least now she has a function; a right to be here.

Overhead an umbrella of broad-leaved foliage, a scent on the air; deep, sweet. She thinks - almonds, a touch of thyme. She watches Grace chatter and serve, she watches Amelia smoke and sulk and gulp her tea.

A short while later Bella looks up to see a woman appear through the clearing. Her large frame - black hair, black clothes - pours like ink over a bright spread of mimosa. There is a basket of washing in her huge hands and she is walking in their direction, shouting. But her voice, which seems way too old and laboured for her big fresh face, is aimed somewhere above and beyond.

‘Ah, Elida,’ Amelia begins, the second she sees her. ‘Now. Thank goodness. What we need here is some wine, for Signora Stuart, you understand, to welcome her -
Pro-secco
. Chilled, of course. I happened to notice a hefty box of ice was delivered today and took the precaution of storing a bottle or two inside - don’t thank me, ladies, you’re welcome. And so
Pro-sec-co
.
Per favore
. Please.
Grazie
. And
pre-go!
’

Elida doesn’t acknowledge the cousins in any way, although she does allow Bella a little curtsey, and a laryngitic ‘
Signora
‘ before moving on, even as Amelia is still addressing her.

Grace begins to snort into her hand. Her sister, leaning back in her chair, continues to call. ‘Elida?
Prosecco?
‘ But Elida has already disappeared. ‘Well, I like that! Was she making a point of
ignoring
me?’ Amelia asks, laughing at the idea. ‘My God, that woman. Insufferable. Do you know what we call her? Queen Kong - that’s what.’

Then they are off again, chattering, screeching. Telling Bella things she has no business knowing, things she can’t help wanting to hear.

The music turns everything. Notes from a piano falling slow and cold, like first snow. There is something acrobatic about it, a touch of the circus ring anyhow, and for a moment she thinks it could be a piece by Debussy, although it turns out to be neither amenable nor decisive enough for that.

It silences the American cousins anyway. It lures other sounds out into the open. A water tap running in a nearby garden; a motorcycle lowing on the street outside. Crickets, birds, insects. She can hear them all now. The sip of tea on Grace’s bulbous lips; the fidget of Amelia’s fingers on the sail of her arm sling. And the notes, dripping through the overhang; individual, abstract, each one perfectly formed and independent of the other. Each one desperate to reach the one that went before it, to escape the one coming from behind.

‘Who was that?’ Bella asks when it stops.

‘That? Oh, that was the English maestro. Edward King,’ Grace says, glancing at her sister.

When Elida comes up from the rear of the garden, she is swinging the empty washing basket in her hand. She resumes shouting, pitching and forcing her voice, head lifted towards the place where the music has been playing. Her words struggle and crack as if they are crumbling in her throat. Bella feels like standing up and shouting on her behalf, whatever it is Elida seems to want to shout so much.

’
Maestro? Maestro? Aspetta Alesso
.’

After a moment a man’s voice comes back. ‘
Arrivo
,’ it says. ‘
Arrivo subito. Elida, cara mia. Arrivo. Arrivo. Arrivo!
’

When Elida passes again, she is smiling.

*

She leaves them in the garden, the cold sweat running off their bottle of Prosecco which, in the end, Amelia has to fetch herself. Grace doesn’t appear to mind too much. Amelia, on the other hand, seems to take it almost personally.

‘I should really be going,’ Bella says, closing her hand like a lid over her barely touched glass.

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Oh yes. It’s lovely, really. But I’d like to meet Alessandro.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s at tennis, I told you.’

‘Yes, but still.’

‘Grace - will you please explain? Edward will be going to pick him up soon. Unless he’s gone already - has he? I mean I didn’t notice him come out, or anything - did you?’

‘He most likely went the other way. That door in the back wall? Well, it’s been fixed up.’

‘Oh? You never said.’

‘Was I supposed to?’

‘Of course not.’ She glares at her sister for a moment, then returns to Bella. ‘Where was I? Yes, they almost always stop for ice cream. They may even go and listen to a band on the promenade, they often do. Could be at least an hour. More. You’ve got plenty of time. We can all have a cosy dinner later on together, you’ll meet him then. Edward too. He won’t go anywhere without Edward by the way, except to his precious tennis lesson. Why not relax, help yourself to a cigarette.’ A box of Turkish gold-tipped is pushed across the table.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Goodness - but how you do show us up!’ Amelia pulls the box of cigarettes back and redirects the neck of the bottle from her own glass to Grace’s, then back again.

Grace says, ‘Of course, we understand if you’d prefer to freshen up, Anabelle. You must be quite exhausted. All that travelling! Would you like me to go with?’

‘No, please stay. I’ll find my own way. I need a rest, and to unpack of course before Alessandro—’

‘Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want. But you know Amelia is quite right. They do take their time coming home. Edward prefers to walk now, while the Italians are taking their
passeggiata
- which is what they call this before-a-dinner walk thing they do, in case you don’t know. The English tend to come out a little later and he says they give him a headache with their constant twittering. Isn’t that amusing, not to say a little unpatriotic?’

Amelia looks up. ‘He said that? When did he say that?’

‘Oh, he mentioned it to me once.’

‘Really?’

Bella begins to rise from her chair. ‘Just the same. I should… First day and all that.’

‘And all
that
,’ Amelia sneers, her eye following the latest surge of Prosecco expanding in her glass. ‘By the way, he’s called Alec.’

‘I’m sorry - who is?’ Bella asks. She waits for Amelia to take another pull of her cigarette.

‘His mother prefers if we call him Alec. Not Alessandro, which she thinks an ugly name. And I must say, I quite agree. He’s called Alec. Al-ec. Not Alessandro.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know.’

‘Well, you do now, Miss Stuart.’

*

Whatever he is called, he’s a beautiful child. Much more striking than the photographs in Sicily had allowed. And yet if she were to attempt to write his face into words, it would make for plain reading. Eyes: smallish and slanted, an unusual turquoise colour. Mouth: full, the top lip having a lift to it, shows the first squeeze of grown-up teeth through his gums. Hair: dark blond, thick and all over the place, despite the obvious efforts that have been made to control it. Face: full, cheeks pinkish, dashed with tiny freckles; skin lightly tanned. He might have been just another cute little boy. Except for his eyes. They are not the eyes of a child, but they are what make him beautiful.

By the time she gets to meet him it’s past eight o’clock. He is waiting for her on the terrace just off a room Elida had called the library, although apart from an atlas, a few French fashion magazines and an ancient German-Italian dictionary, there is little to merit the description. It’s across the way from Bella’s bedroom, which is a manageable rather than small room, with a good window seat, an accessible English bed and practical furniture. There is also a small balcony with a view over the lesstended side of the garden.

The library, by contrast, is a large, silent room of polished wood and honey-coloured walls. Light comes down from three high windows. More light falls in by the large balustraded terrace. The furniture is of a high, if incompatible quality, as if over the years the room has been used as a last resort for unwanted pieces. It gives it the look of a bric-a-brac shop. Around the walls, hideous oil paintings: bug-eyed women in eighteenth-century dress, men with long wigs and improbable chins. Bella likes it in here. She likes the shape and the sense of space, the parquet floor that seems to suck in, then dribble out, reflections from all quarters. And she likes especially the brand new Philips wireless set in the corner - the single nod to the modern world.

‘The library,’ Elida hoarsely announces. ‘Here is the room of the work. Your room with Alesso.’

‘Thank you, Elida, that’s lovely.’

‘Only for you and Alesso.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘And for I also too. And Rosa.’

‘For you also?’

‘In the English lesson.’

‘Am I to teach you English, Elida?’

‘Yes, the Signora is say it. And Rosa.’

‘Oh? She never mentioned it to me.’

‘The Signora is say it,’ Elida repeats, this time a little defensively.

‘Of course, I’d be delighted.’

‘Not for the misses. This room.’

‘The misses?’

‘The misses America. Not for them.’

Alec is holding a view of the sea on his shoulders; the blue grey light of an endless twilight. Behind him the dark outline of a fisherman’s church, and beyond that a headland jutting into the sea. She can see the flicker of citronella candles along the shelf of the balustrade, down in the garden, on the terraces and windowsills of the houses below. She can taste it, as the mosquitoes might taste it, sourly on the air.

He is dressed in a formal little man’s suit of white linen, a soft white cap which he removes as soon as he sees her, the hair beneath popping on release, his eyebrows and eyes lifting as if to follow the course of each tuft. Later she will recognize this as the moment, the gesture, that made her love this little boy.

Bella holds out her hand to him; he looks at it warily, then nods.

’
Piacere
,’ she says, returning the nod. She notices his eyelids flutter. ‘
Mi chiamo Signora Stuart
.’

He is staring at her, or through her, a funny expression in his eye. What they are expressing Bella couldn’t guess. Arrogance, she thinks one moment, shyness the next, a mixture of both it seems to her then. Maybe he is just being inquisitive. She wishes he’d at least say something.

’
Sono di Londra, Inghilterra
,’ she continues.

He looks down at his feet.

She is slightly irked to find herself so unnerved by this six-year-old child, with his formal, if not necessarily good manners. Somewhere in the back of her mind there is a stored snippet of advice: an ignored child will eventually come around. She decides to pay no attention to him, to act as if all is exactly as it should be. She walks over to the balustrade and, pulling in an appreciative breath of evening air, gestures at the view, which is fast filling up with an absurdly extravagant sunset of saffron and rose. ‘
Che bella questa vista - e vero?
’

He winces.

’
Non e vero?
‘ she persists.

He opens his mouth as if he is going to say something but almost at once closes it again.

She turns her back to him and waits. Soon it will be dark. Specks of electric light are already breaking out, down the hillside, over the town and in a carnival string along the part of the seafront which is visible from here. A tornado of evening starlings against the horizon fall in and out of formation. From the palm trees, fingers of shadow across one corner of the terrace. She can hear them fidget and wag.