The Italian Matchmaker (19 page)

Sammy extended her hand. ‘Good to meet you.’ Her smile was white and wholesome. Maxwell metamorphosed into a different species. He shed his dull, beige skin and emerged a new man, as if he had been hibernating and had suddenly woken up.

‘Welcome. Can I pour you a drink?’

‘Give the kids something first,’ she said, sitting down. ‘Poor lambs, they’ve had a long journey.’

Suddenly Coco spotted Porci under the table. She summoned her sister with a cry of delight and both girls disappeared, falling on the unsuspecting pig who awoke with a squeal.

Maxwell poured two glasses of lemonade. ‘What will you have?’

‘Same, please.’

‘How long are you staying?’

‘A week, isn’t it great!’

‘You will love it here. Romina and Bill are exceptional hosts.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Too long! We have accepted Romina’s hospitality for weeks, using this as a base camp to explore the south of Italy.’

Ma watched with amusement as Maxwell flirted with Sammy though she seemed oblivious. ‘She’s jolly pretty. Maxwell’s going to make a fool of himself. The blunderer!’ Ma scoffed as Dizzy appeared in a diaphanous pink kaftan that barely covered her bikini bottoms.

‘This should be fun,’ said Caradoc, putting down his poetry.

‘Dizzy!’ said Maxwell, his voice rising a note. ‘Come and meet Luca’s children.’

Dizzy barely glanced at the girls before her eyes settled on Sammy. ‘Hi,’ she said tightly. She wasn’t about to shake hands with the hired help.

‘Nice to meet you. Right, girls. Time for a swim, eh?’ Dizzy stood behind her husband, picked up his glass of lemonade, and took a sip. She rested her hand proprietorially on his shoulder.

‘A good morning then?’ she asked.

‘Perfect,’ he replied, his eyes never leaving Sammy.

Ma gave a satisfied snort. ‘Dizzy should eat carbohydrates,’ she said without bothering to lower her voice. ‘Sammy’s as sunny as a continental breakfast.’

‘I predict trouble ahead,’ said Caradoc.

‘I think Maxwell’s in enough trouble already,’ said Luca, taking the chair beside Ma and picking up the thread of their conversation.

The drama continued to build over lunch. Dizzy found herself at the opposite end of the table to Sammy and Maxwell. Luca made eyes at Ma as Maxwell flirted over the heads of the children, who were between him and the object of his desire. He lowered his voice every now and then, sliding his eyes to the other end of the table to check his wife wasn’t eavesdropping. His sudden interest in the children, making his napkin into a water lily for Coco and a caterpillar for Juno, was very out of character.

‘I can’t imagine why he doesn’t have children of his own,’ said Romina.

‘Dizzy doesn’t want to ruin her figure, I should imagine,’ said Ma. ‘Anyone who cares that much about what she eats is bound to be body obsessed. Sammy is a picture of health and sanity. I raise my glass to her.’ The more Maxwell flirted the more enraged his wife became. The only person who seemed not to notice was Sammy. Finally, Dizzy raised her voice so her husband could hear and spoke to Romina across the table. ‘It is such a shame we have to return to Vienna.’

Like a salmon he rose to the bait. ‘Oh, darling, the lunch table is hardly the place to discuss our travel plans.’

‘But we cannot impose on our good hosts a moment longer,’ she said with a pout.

Romina made no attempt to encourage them to stay.

‘The trouble with you, Romina, is that you make it so comfortable one wishes to stay for ever.’ Maxwell gave a nervous laugh.

‘We have commitments in Vienna, darling,’ said Dizzy. There was an unmistakeable edge to her voice.

‘Well, we’ve loved having you,’ said Bill. ‘I toast your good health and your safe journey home.’

Maxwell bowed, recognising he was outmanoeuvred. ‘Thank you, Bill.’

After lunch, when Maxwell and Dizzy had retreated inside, Caradoc, Ma and Luca could hear the most monumental row through the open upstairs window. Ma raised her glass. ‘To Dizzy,’ she said with a wicked grin. ‘Not so dull after all.’

Luca changed into a pair of pale blue Villebrequin shorts and dived into the pool to play with his daughters. Juno, who still wore arm bands, squealed with laughter when he chased her pretending to be a crocodile. He picked her up and threw her into the air so that she landed in the water with a splash, emerging, wiping her eyes and roaring with delight. Coco was harder to coax. She sat on the side in a pretty Melissa Odabash bathing suit, dangling her legs in the water, admiring her pedicure. Finally, Luca ignored her protests and put her upon his shoulders, then jumped up and down until her sullen face broke into a smile.

Dizzy emerged mid-afternoon, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses, and lay listening to her music without a word to anyone. Sammy lay on her stomach watching the girls, her curvaceous body clad in a discreet yellow one-piece bathing suit. Luca drove his mother and daughters down the hill to the town. Sammy didn’t fit in the car and remained by the pool, reading Sophie Kinsella. The children giggled in the back while Luca and Romina discussed the episode at lunch.

‘I think it’s high time they went home,’ said Romina. ‘For the sake of their marriage.’

‘Don’t you resent people staying so long, sponging off you like parasites?’

‘Not if I like them. Caradoc and Ma are family now, I’ll be broken hearted when they leave, which they won’t, as long as I keep producing large bowls of pasta!’

Luca parked in the square and led the children down the hill to the quay. Juno held his hand while Coco walked beside her grandmother, her eyes peeled for pretty shops. There had been plenty of shops in St Tropez. When they reached the
trattoria
, Rosa was on the terrace to greet them. ‘
Buona sera, ragazze,
’ she said to the girls
.

‘These are my daughters, Coco and Juno,’ said Luca. ‘And my mother.’

‘Welcome,’ she said cheerfully. ‘When did they arrive?’ she asked, showing them to a table by the geraniums.

‘This morning.’ He followed Rosa across the flagstones. She was wearing a pink dress the colour of Coco’s toenails.

‘What can I get you all?’ She winked at Luca and added huskily, ‘Well, I know what I can get
you
.’ Romina shot her son a disapproving look.

‘I think ice-cream and freshly squeezed orange juice for the girls,’ interrupted Romina. ‘Black coffee for me and . . .’

‘Coffee for your son, with hot milk on the side,’ said Rosa.

‘She’s nice,’ said Juno.

‘She’s also unsuitable,’ said Romina in Italian so the girls wouldn’t understand.

‘I’m not looking,’ Luca replied. But he hoped Cosima would emerge with their order.

As they sat down, Luca’s attention was drawn to the other end of the terrace where a sultry looking woman with scarlet lips was smoking over coffee with a silver-haired man. He recognised her at once as Maria Friscobaldi. Sensing she was being watched, she raised her eyes. When she saw Luca, she smiled seductively, pausing her conversation a moment. Juno tugged at his shirt. ‘Daddy . . .’ she began. Maria acknowledged his daughters with a little shrug, took a drag of her cigarette, then rested her gaze once more on her admirer. Luca turned back to his daughter.

Soon Rosa came out with a tray of ice-cream, juice and coffee. She chatted to the girls in English, telling them about her children, inviting them to play if they got bored of being with their father. Coco admired her pink nail varnish and jewellery. Juno liked the smell of her perfume. ‘Yves Saint Laurent, Paris,’ she said. ‘One day when you’re a big girl, your daddy might buy some for you.’

‘How’s your cousin?’ Luca asked, tapping his teaspoon on the table absent-mindedly, trying not to look too interested.

‘Better,’ Rosa replied briskly. ‘It was good of you to come.’

‘How dreadful for you all,’ interjected Romina sympathetically. ‘I hope she is recovered.’

‘She is, thank you,’ Rosa replied politely. ‘Your son is a hero.’

Romina’s smile was genuine. ‘I know. I am so proud. I would expect nothing less of him. He is very instinctive for a man.’

‘Is she coming in today?’ Luca sipped his coffee.

‘No. She’s feeling better, but not up to working. Now, isn’t that a surprise!’

‘Oh dear, I sense a little jealousy.
Sta attento, Luca
,’ Romina warned. As Luca swallowed his disappointment he was distracted by a movement outside one of the small boutiques. It was Francesco.

‘Excuse me a minute, Mother. There’s someone I need to see.’

Luca strode to where Francesco stood playing with a yoyo. He was about to speak when Cosima stepped out of the shop. It took a moment for him to recognise her in a dress imprinted with little yellow flowers. She walked straight through Francesco.

‘Luca,’ she exclaimed in surprise.

‘Hello, Cosima.’ The boy had simply melted into thin air.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine. You look . . . beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’ She lowered her eyes and Luca noticed how long her eyelashes were. ‘It feels a little strange, to be honest, not wearing black. I feel very conspicuous. It is better that we talk in private. Do you want to join me on the bench?’ She pointed to one that was empty. They sat in the sunshine, looking out over the little blue boats that bobbed about on the water. ‘Francesco would not want me to wear black all the time. He loved yellow.’ She lifted the fabric of her dress. ‘He’d approve of this.’

‘I don’t blame him.’ He wanted to tell her that it was because of Francesco that he had hurried to the boutique, but he hesitated.

‘Are you here with the professor?’

‘I’m with my daughters,’ Luca replied, pointing back at the café table.

‘You have daughters?’

‘Two.’

‘How old are they?’

‘Four and seven.’

‘Are you married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘I should say that I am sorry, but I’m not.’

‘I’m not sorry either,’ he said. ‘Not sorry at all.’

 

Luca brought Cosima back to the
trattoria
. The children had almost finished their ice-creams and Romina was telling them a story that had them enraptured. ‘Mother, this is Cosima.’

Romina’s face crumpled with sympathy. ‘My darling girl,’ she said. ‘I hope you are feeling better now. What a drama. You are so beautiful and young. It would have been a terrible waste!’

‘I made a mistake,’ said Cosima.

‘Those who don’t make mistakes make nothing at all,’ said Romina. ‘The professor told me that.’ Sensing something going on, Rosa swept out of the restaurant.

‘Cosima, what are you doing here?’

‘I was passing and bumped into Luca.’

Rosa looked stony. ‘You’ve barely touched your coffee,’ she said to Luca. ‘It’ll be cold now.’

‘Why don’t you get him another one?’ said Cosima.

‘You should both come up to the
palazzo
,’ said Romina, attempting to defuse the situation.

‘Of course,’ said Cosima. ‘I’m curious to see what it is like.’

‘Now, your father is Panfilo Pallavicini?’ Romina asked Rosa.

‘One and the same,’ Rosa replied proudly. That was something Cosima couldn’t lay claim to.

‘Why don’t you sit down and join us?’

‘Some of us have to work,’ said Rosa, making a face at her cousin.

‘Then I’ll get Luca another coffee,’ said Cosima calmly. ‘It’ll be my pleasure. Would you like anything else,
signora
?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Romina.

Romina and Rosa sat chatting together for an hour, their heads almost touching. The girls ran around the quay with the other children who played there. Luca wondered what Claire would think of them mixing with the locals. Cosima brought his coffee but was unable to join them, as people needed to be served. Rosa deliberately left her cousin to take all the orders. It was about time she pulled her weight, she thought. Toto appeared for the evening shift, a spring in his stride because his daughter was restored to him. His eyes took in her new radiance as if he had never seen anything so beautiful.

The girls had found a couple of skinny mongrels and were chasing them up and down the waterfront. Cosima weaved gracefully through the tables, smiling at the locals, accepting their compliments with poise as they told her how pretty she looked now that she was no longer wearing black. Every now and then she turned and caught Luca watching her and her eyes softened. He was grateful that Rosa was distracting his mother, so he could savour those moments.

‘Come to the
palazzo
with your father when he photographs it,’ Romina urged Rosa. ‘It would give me such pleasure to show you around. Bring your mother, too. I would love to meet her.’

‘I don’t think
Mamma
will ever step foot in that place again. She said it gave her the creeps.’

‘Oh, all that was a long time ago, surely. Do ask her.’

Romina called the girls and they got up to go. Luca’s eyes lingered on Cosima a moment then he was gone, taking her smile with him.

The following morning Cosima attended Mass. She took comfort from the embracing walls of the church and the invisible presence of God among the flickering candles and iconography. Was Francesco there, too, as he had apparently been during the Festa di Santa Benedetta? He’d be nearly ten now, not the little boy he had been when the sea had swept him away. She couldn’t imagine him with big feet and long legs and a deep, gravelly voice. In her memory his skin would always be silky, more familiar to her than her own, his hair smelling of vanilla, his eyes gazing at her as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world. He used to stroke her face. ‘
Mamma
, you smell nice,’ he would say, winding his arms around her neck and nuzzling her like a puppy. Her body ached with yearning to hold him again, to bury her nose in his neck and inhale the scent of his hair, to hear his laughter bubble up from his belly. She remembered the white feather he had been playing with on the beach and the wind that had whisked it away. She remembered him wading out to retrieve it. She’d never forget the moment he had lost his balance . . .