The Villa (29 page)

‘Well, she must do what she thinks is best.’ (That was Pops.) ‘It’s her life.’

‘Yes,’ said Nonna. ‘It is her life. But she is also stepping into mine.’

And Ginny knew they were talking about her mother and the mysterious house in Sicily. And again she wondered –
why had that old man left it to her? What would she do with the place? And why did Nonna mind so much?

She fell asleep that night thinking of her mother, who in her dreams had mellowed from acid-lemon and acquired much more of a honey glow. Tomorrow morning she would wake up and she was beginning to think there might be no Ben. The Ball might start getting a bit too big for Its boots. But …

There would be a new job, and if she started saving, maybe a sort-of direction. It was as if she had started getting the faintest, merest glimmer of where she wanted to go …

Two days later, Tess was scrambling over the hillside behind Cetaria – according to the guidebook she’d bought in Palermo, this was supposed to be a rocky trail, but there was an awful lot of rock and not much trail – when she saw Tonino Amato. He was working on some stone in a little glade just ahead of her. She had only seen him from a distance these past few days – the day before yesterday she’d spent in Palermo and yesterday she’d been busy in the villa. Edward Westerman’s belongings would have to be given away or sold, some of the furniture was redeemable, some definitely not, and other household effects needed to be sorted into what she was keeping and what she was not.

Tonino’s head was bent in concentration and he was using a small hammer and a kind of metal chisel to tap into the rock.

‘
Ciao
,’ she said, half-wanting to turn and run – in the opposite direction.

He didn’t even look up. ‘
Ciao
.’

‘For
Cola Pesce
?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps.’ He continued hammering.

OK … She could see now that he was extracting thin
slivers of slate – presumably to use as a backing for some of his mosaic collages; she’d seen them in the studio. She sat down under an olive tree on a rock near to the one he was working on and stretched out her legs. It was very warm and very still and the thin grass was scattered with wild clover. She could hear the buzz of insects and the occasional goat bell from further up the trail. And Tonino’s
tap, tap, tap
. What should she say – do you come here often? Might as well come straight to the point, she thought. ‘You wouldn’t be avoiding me, I suppose?’ she asked.

Finally he looked up. His gaze was searching but brief. ‘Why would I?’ He didn’t seem to require an answer.

Why indeed? He was, she thought, perfectly self-contained in this place, with his stones and mosaics, with the sea and his sadness. It was terrible to lose a friend. But shouldn’t everyone move on – sooner or later? She thought of what her new friend Millie had said about shadows. This man was all shadow – and yet the work he produced screamed for the light. Didn’t mosaics always work best in sunlight?

‘I’m not involved with Giovanni Sciarra,’ she said, hugging her knees. Just in case that was his problem.

‘None of my business.’
Tap, tap, tap
.

‘Maybe. But I’m not. I wanted you to know that.’

‘I’ve seen him hanging around Villa Sirena.’ Tonino’s lip curled. ‘You should be careful.’

Once again, Tess was exasperated. ‘He’s been very helpful, actually,’ she said. ‘The villa was left to me by Edward Westerman, and … ’

Tonino shrugged.

‘And he’s been advising me what to do with it.’

‘What will you do with it?’ He glanced up at her again.

‘I don’t know yet. But the point is … ’ She sighed. ‘I’m not romantically involved with Giovanni, OK?’

Tonino shrugged again.

Well, she had tried. Tess got to her feet and felt the soft, silvery leaves of the olive tree brush against her hair.

It was true that Giovanni had come round yesterday. He had offered her a personal loan – an investment, he called it. The terms sounded fair – ideal even, since she’d have nothing to pay back for the first nine months, which would give her time to get things going in the villa. After that, there would be interest to pay, of course, but not at an unfeasibly high rate. He had brought her some papers to look at – wanted her to sign on the dotted line there and then, but Tess was a little wary.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she’d told him. She’d talk to her father first. Maybe even get some legal advice from England.

She started to walk away.

‘Why did you come back to Cetaria?’ Tonino asked abruptly.

She stopped walking. He seemed to have forgotten their conversation at Segesta, that almost-kiss. Of course it would have been simpler not to have come back – to have got an estate agent to put the villa straight on the market, or even to let Giovanni supervise its refurbishment without interference from her. But there was more – her mother’s story for a
start. She had been thinking about what Santina had told her, imagining her mother’s desperation to be free, picturing the young Flavia in love with an English pilot who was a million miles away from what her family wanted for her – Rodrigo Sciarra, for heaven’s sake. What else could she have done at seventeen in a country at war? She couldn’t have followed her pilot back to England – not then, anyway. Tess looked down beyond the dwarf palms, olive trees and terraced vineyards criss-crossing the slopes. There was a good view of the village, the mountains beyond, and the open sea. This afternoon the water was glazed as if with steel. And even her mother’s story wasn’t the half of it, she thought. ‘Something in this place … ’ she said.

‘But you have a life in England,’ he said. ‘A family?’

She had her parents. And that was another thing. She had always thought of Muma and Dad as being
the
love story. Unquestionably. So where did this English pilot come into the equation? ‘I’m not married.’ She had thought he would realise this since she didn’t wear a ring. ‘But I have a daughter.’

He raised his head and looked at her. Dark, dark eyes.

‘She’s eighteen. She’s staying with my parents at the moment.’ She thought of Ginny. How could you be prepared for the moment when your child walked out of the life you’d created for her and entered the rest of the world – the scary world, the world you had no control over? How could you prepare yourself for how you’d feel? Tess had the notion that she ought to at least start making a stab at it.
Because it might not be long coming. Ginny had a job and she wanted to save enough money to go away, for who knew how long. They had been so close. And yet now Tess doubted that Ginny even missed her. She certainly didn’t show it. When Tess called, she couldn’t wait to get off the phone.

‘I was never married to her father,’ Tess told Tonino, who seemed to be waiting for her to continue. ‘He left before she was born. He wasn’t the marrying kind.’

Tonino nodded. He didn’t seem shocked – or even surprised. ‘Since then,’ he said, ‘you have been in love, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Tess sat down on the rock again and fished her water bottle out of her bag. She took a deep drink and then passed it to Tonino, who nodded his thanks and did the same. Yes, she had been in love, but not often, for a woman in her late thirties. The occasional fling, the occasional more than fling, the times when she had thought – yes, this one perhaps. And then Robin. She eyed Tonino squarely. ‘And you?’

He offered a half-smile. ‘Not married, no,’ he said. ‘There have been women from time to time, of course.’

Of course.

‘And once, I loved someone.’

She watched him and waited. How much would he tell her? How much did he trust her? ‘It didn’t work out?’ she asked.

‘She was with someone else,’ he said. ‘Someone who … ’ He tailed off.

Instinctively, Tess knew who he was talking about. ‘Was it your friend?’ she asked. One look at his face told her she was right. ‘The one who died?’

‘Yes.’ He put down his tools. ‘All the time they were together – it was impossible.’

Tess traced a pattern in the dusty earth with the tip of her walking boot. “But she knew how you felt?’

‘Of course.’ He prised apart a piece of slate and shot her another look. ‘Women always do.’

Tess wasn’t so sure, but she’d let that one go. ‘And after he died …?’ Though she could guess.

‘It was even more impossible.’ He sounded angry. ‘Helena – she did not think so. But yes, still impossible.’ He began filling the canvas rucksack at his feet with his tools and some stone and slate.

Tess guessed that people weren’t supposed to randomly collect bits of rock from places that were probably protected conservation areas, but men like Tonino wouldn’t care about those sorts of rules. To them, the land and the sea were there to help man make a living. They used what it offered and took care not to fuck it up for themselves.

Tonino got to his feet, slung the bulging bag over one shoulder and held out a hand to her.

Tess took it. ‘So she left Sicily?’

‘Yes, she left.’ He paused as if he wanted to say more. ‘The day my friend died … ’ He tailed off.

‘What happened?’ Though from his expression she could hazard a guess.

‘I was having coffee with Helena.’ He met her gaze then looked out into the distance over the hills. ‘It was not what you think.’

Tess shook her head. ‘What then?’

‘We were talking about us. About how it could not be. About how we could not hurt him. That is what we were doing.’ He clenched his fist until the knuckles showed white. ‘At the time when he … When he … ’

He was unable to go on. Tess put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It still wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘You were doing the right thing.’

‘Helena – she never got it,’ he said. ‘She never saw why afterwards we could not be together.’

‘No.’ Tess could imagine how it had been. Helena, heartbroken, turning to the other man who loved her, the one who was supposed to understand – because he had loved his friend too. And Tonino’s guilt. He must have felt as if he’d killed his friend in order to have her. Some men, she knew, would have grasped the opportunity and the girl, but not Tonino. He was far too intense a personality to shrug off the guilt. He’d be swamped by it; it would make him unhappy for the rest of his life. ‘And since then?’ She echoed his question.

His hand closed more tightly around hers. ‘Women,’ he said. ‘But not love.’

When he kissed her this time, it was quite different. Before, it had been no more than an exploratory brush of the lips, almost accidental. But as he turned, as he held her face in
his hands, as he bent his head towards her, as his lips pressed against hers, she knew that he meant it. And as the sun warmed her face, she gave herself up to the feeling and kissed him back unreservedly. She wanted to. She had to. Giovanni Sciarra might be right about him, but just for that moment, Tess simply didn’t care.

Back at the villa that evening, Tess was churning with the unexpected emotions of the afternoon. She hadn’t thought that after Robin, she would leap into another relationship. And yet here she was. Leaping? Well, yes. Maybe.

She decided to make herself some pasta with a simple Gorgonzola sauce and some salad for dinner. She wasn’t sure that she could eat at all. And she would have an early night, she decided. She needed to think – and maybe even allow herself to look forward to tomorrow.

After the kiss – and she almost dissolved when she hit the playback button – they had walked for maybe an hour in the olive grove.

Tonino had a great respect for the olive, he told her, touching the gnarled, twisted bark in a way that made her curl up with something that felt like a cross between jealousy and desire. ‘It is hardy,’ he said. ‘And yet responsive.’

‘Responsive?’ Her voice caught in her throat. Good God …

‘To water. To food. To love.’

He’d better stop right there, Tess thought, before she hit boiling point.

‘It has a remarkable grain when carved and oiled,’ he said. ‘It burns quickly, and the fragrance … ’

‘Yes.’ She knew that scent; she’d smelt it the first time she came to Cetaria.

‘The olive – she is wise. And the olive grove – it is a still and tranquil place.’ Tonino splayed his fingers across Tess’s head, almost as if she were a statue he was working on, she thought, his fingertips lingering on the base of her skull, on her neck.

Tess closed her eyes as she recalled the sensation. How could anyone put so much sensuality into a touch? Even someone who was a craftsman, who used his hands to create every day.

She crumbled some cheese on to a plate, and began to prepare the sauce. Butter and flour first, mixed into a paste, then hot milk, added gradually.

As they walked, he had told her much more about his family and background. About his father, the tunny fisherman and his mother, small and fierce and endlessly loyal. They had both died young: his father from a heart attack – Tonino blamed the type of work he did, out in all weathers, desperately trying to put food on the family table.

Tess remembered what Giovanni had told her about Tonino’s Uncle Luigi dying from a heart attack. She didn’t want to think that Tonino had lied to her – but she wouldn’t bring it up now. It wasn’t the right time – or place. ‘And your mother?’ she asked gently. ‘How did she die?’

‘He was the love of her life,’ he said. ‘When he died she had nothing left to live for.’

‘She had you,’ Tess reminded him. Again, she heard the echo of Santina’s words.
Flavia has broken heart forever
…

He laughed – but the laughter barely reached his mouth, let alone his eyes. ‘I was not around most of the time,’ he said. ‘I went away. I studied in Palermo and I went to the mainland for a while – to Naples. That is where I began to dive.’

Tess was surprised. She’d seen him as being always fixed in Cetaria; he’d seemed so rooted here. ‘What did you study?’

‘History,’ he said.

She thought of the folk myths and fairy tales, his obsession with the past. History. That made sense.

‘Also I did some carpentry and some sculpting.’ He shrugged. ‘I became interested in the mosaics and returned here to Cetaria when my father died.’