Miles felt a wave of white envy sweep across him, followed by sheer horror. This was surely not happening. Tell him it was impossible. Ross and Dawn could not, repeat not, become their neighbours for a second time.
33.
It was a point of pride for Miles that every August the Strakers took a month-long family holiday in Italy. ‘One small thing I’ve learnt in life,’ he liked to tell people, ‘is the importance of completely switching off once a year. I find it takes me ten days for the internal machine to wind down, when one’s been running it as hard as I do. And you return to work buzzing with energy and new ideas.’
He then added, ‘Of course I take all my ruddy gizmos with me, so I’m never out of communication with the office. In fact, I find I often end up working harder than ever on the terrace at the villa. Fewer distractions.’
At a company in which a two-week-maximum rule was strictly applied to staff holidays, it was Miles’s privilege, as chairman and chief executive, to broadcast the benefits of taking a full month.
For seven consecutive summers, the Strakers had rented the same terracotta-painted farmhouse overlooking the sea close to Porto Ercole. It stood halfway up a hillside above a rocky cove, two bays along from the five-star Il Pellicano hotel, which for Miles was a good part of the attraction since he liked to play tennis on the courts at the resort, and sometimes to eat there as a change from dining at the villa. The villa itself, with its wide bougainvillea-fringed terrace, nine bedrooms and rustic olive press converted into an outside dining room, was the luxurious property of the Conte and Contessa Manfredi and Irene Rusculli, aristocratic Romans who were able to maintain their seaside home for the entire year upon the August rental from the Strakers.
Having leased the house for so many summers, Miles had come to regard it almost proprietorially, along with the Italian cook and housekeeper, and the two ladies who came up from the town on Vespas to change the beds and deal with the laundry, and the surly Sicilian, Fabulo (‘If only he was!’) who tended to the swimming pool and olive grove on the hillside above them. ‘If I ever sat down and worked out what I’ve paid the Ruscullis over the years to take this place, I’m sure we could have bought it twice over,’ he liked to declare to the stream of Straker Communications clients who came to the villa for lunch, or sometimes to stay, over the course of the holiday. ‘I think of this place as our third home.’
Despite his many boasts about taking a full month’s vacation, which flattered his status and powers of delegation (‘I think they ought to be able to rub along without me at the office for twenty-eight days’), the fact was that Miles valued his August as a time for enhanced networking. ‘If you’re going to be anywhere near Porto Ercole, you must come and see us,’ he told the managing director of Trent Valley Power 4 U. Hearing that the chief executive of Eaziprint would be on a family holiday near Amalfi, he’d say, ‘That’s no distance at all, Martin. I insist you bring, er, Ros and the children over to us for lunch.’ Other weeks were set aside for the entertainment of politicians. Their constituency MP, Ridley Nairn, generally flew down for a few days with Suzie, as did the party Deputy Chairman Paul Tanner and his third wife, Brigitte. As a matter of record, Paul had been a frequent houseguest at the villa with his second wife, Hetta, but this was no longer referred to. On one memorable occasion, James and Laetitia arrived for lunch by chartered yacht, which they’d moored out in the bay, and that visit had been a triumph of civility and corporate bonding. Miles was confident that, should they ever challenge it, he would have no trouble justifying the villa as an entirely legitimate business expense to the Inland Revenue.
Settling into the master bedroom with its infinite views of the deep blue Aeolian Sea, Miles could hear the sounds of his family moving into their respective bedrooms around the villa. Instantly he was made irritable, because all four children had been annoying him in different ways before they’d even left England. For several weeks, Archie had been asking whether he really needed to be in Italy for the entire month, since he’d been invited to Corfu and to Rock by friends and really wanted to go there instead. Miles considered Archie extraordinarily ungrateful, considering how expensive the villa was, and no way was he forking out for air tickets for him to buzz off to Corfu. Anyway, he considered Archie indispensable when clients came over, being both handsome and sociable.
Peter, of course, could only get two weeks holiday from his job, so would only be with them for the first part of the holiday, and he too had been half-hearted about coming. He mentioned a tentative plan to go travelling to Cape Wrath in Scotland and maybe crossing over to the Orkneys. Miles vetoed that idea at birth, telling Peter he was certainly required in Porto Ercole. ‘Zach Durban and his Mauritian girlfriend might be driving over from Florence for lunch, so you’re on duty.’
Mollie, meanwhile, annoyed him by arriving at the airport with two plastic bags full of school textbooks, which she said she had to read and note for next term. All had dull academic front covers and looked unsuitable for poolside reading. In Miles’s world view, daughters on holiday should be draped across sunloungers wearing pretty micro-bikinis, smelling of sunscreen and reading chick-lit. Mollie, he suspected, had brought no pretty bikinis with her, just an old swimsuit, and was intending to defile the poolside scene with sociology textbooks and yellow post-it stickers.
Normally, he could at least rely on Samantha to enhance the holiday mood. In past summers she’d arrived with several Heath-field friends, and these luscious, lithe-limbed girls had looked gorgeously decorative, sunbathing and lightening their hair with lemon juice, and chattering away pleasingly at meals. This summer, it had been a struggle to get Sam out to Italy at all. She declared, very late in the day, that she’d be spending August with Dick Gunn on his new motor yacht, Gunnslinger II, cruising the Med from St Tropez to Sardinia. Miles had been instantly opposed, resenting the idea of Dick owning a yacht when he didn’t have one himself, and wanting Sam at the villa, most attractive of his offspring.
In the end, after a furious paternal ultimatum and lots of behind-the-scenes diplomacy from Davina, Sam consented to join the family holiday, but a deal had been struck. Dick Gunn and party would sail over to the villa in the third week of August for lunch, and meet the Straker parents for the first time. Miles made a big thing of resenting the intrusion (‘Are you sure your young blade will be able to manage the steps up from the beach?’) but secretly he was pleased. For his own reasons, he wanted to meet Dick and this was the ideal opportunity.
Meanwhile, Samantha had arrived at Gatwick late and grumpy, having been dropped off at the terminal building by Dick’s driver. She spent the flight hiding behind Tatler and muttering how boring the holiday was going to be with no friends to talk to.
It was true that, for the first time, the Strakers had not encouraged their children to bring friends along. In past years, they had been allowed to bring two or three each, though generally it had been Archie and Samantha who’d invited the most. Peter and Mollie never seemed to have any available friends, or friends that could afford the airfare.
This year, however, Mollie surprised them by saying she wanted to invite along Debbie Clegg.
When Davina told Miles, he exploded. ‘No way. Absolutely not. We are not having any Cleggs on holiday. I forbid it.’
Davina reasoned with him. ‘It would be so nice for Mollie to have a friend. She didn’t last year. And Debbie’s a very sweet, bright girl.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not discussing this. It’s not negotiable. Davina, this holiday in Italy is my only proper holiday of the year, I am not having it polluted by Cleggs. For God’s sake, don’t we see enough of that damn family? I can’t look out of the window at either of our houses without being reminded of them. They’re bloody well everywhere. I’m surprised you’re even suggesting it, you know how cross I am they’ve bought in Holland Park Square. If I’d realised that boarding house was on the market, I’d have bought it myself. They’re like stalkers, these people. I’ve half a mind to refer t
hem to the police.’
‘Darling, you really are being rather silly. Dawn didn’t even know we live on the square. She was as surprised as we were.’
‘Of course she knew. We’ve been there for years, for heaven’s sake. Just as we’d been at Chawbury for years before they turned up there.’
‘Well, actually, they didn’t know. You’ve never allowed me to invite them to the London house. It’s so embarrassing, they’ve never actually been to either of our houses, not to a lunch or dinner party, because you won’t let me.’
‘Nor will they come. Not after the way their daughter behaved with Archie. What was her name? Sharon? Donna? Gemma, that’s it. We don’t want them anywhere near us, none of them. Which is why this friend of Mollie’s isn’t welcome on holiday. You’re going to have to explain to Mollie she isn’t suitable, that’s all there is to it.’
Davina was accustomed to extreme and unreasonable outbursts from her husband. They had always been a staple of their marriage. She had learnt when to acquiesce, knowing the moment would pass, and when it was important to take a stand. Today, she said, ‘Miles, I’m sorry, but actually I’m not going to tell Mollie that, or anything like it. I refuse. Debbie’s a lovely girl. Mollie rides with her all the time, and Dawn has been endlessly kind to Mollie. Always having her over when I’m up in London helping you, going with you to all those ghastly parties you so love. I couldn’t possibly tell Mollie that Debbie isn’t welcome in Italy. I can’t and I won’t. And if you try to make me, or try to disinvite her yourself, I’m not coming on the holiday myself. And that really is final.’
The only compromise they could come up with was that no childrens’ friends would be invited this summer. Miles let it be known he was stepping-up his business entertaining, and regrettably there would be no space for anyone else at the villa, including Debbie Clegg.
Miles was seated at the marble-topped breakfast table on the terrace, all alone, feeling irritable. Despite the perfection of the holiday scene, he frequently felt dissatisfied in the mornings, and this summer was worse than usual.
He surveyed his surroundings—the tall Cyprus trees framing a view of the blue sea—and the surprisingly cold swimming pool, shaded by firs, at the far end of the garden. It irritated him he was sitting here in solitary splendour with nobody to talk to, since his wife was taking a long bath and the children fast asleep, and would doubtless remain so for several hours more. This business of nobody getting up in the mornings was getting to him. Neither Archie nor Sam were seen before lunchtime, and Peter seldom appeared before eleven. The only one who surfaced at a halfway decent hour was Mollie, and that was hardly a consolation. In fact, he hoped Mollie wouldn’t appear, until after he’d finished breakfast at any rate.
There was something lugubrious about the whole breakfast procedure. When he arrived on the terrace, as he did every morning at nine o’clock, he found a dozen slices of melon cut into narrow strips, arranged on a plate beneath a muslin cloche. Next to it were two wicker baskets of hard Italian bread and rusk-like biscuits, some in wrappers. A yellow and blue ceramic platter was crowded with pots of jams, honeys and lime preserves, the same pots every day, their surfaces pitted with the bodies of dead wasps which had somehow crawled inside. Each morning it annoyed him that there was no sign of Maria or Immacula, cook and housekeeper, so he had to find them in the kitchen to announce his arrival for breakfast, and ask for a cup of coffee. This took forever to arrive, twenty to thirty minutes, while Maria boiled up milk and dealt with the process of grinding coffee beans. Was it too much to ask that a cafetiere of hot coffee be awaiting him on the breakfast table, every morning at nine? He had discussed this—frequently—with Davina, whose role it was to liaise with the domestic retinue, but she seemed incapable of effecting it, explaining the Ruscullis liked it done this way.
It annoyed Miles his Italian was not better. The fact was his languages were poor. Davina, however, spoke rather good Italian. As a child, she had partly grown up in the embassy compound in Addis Ababa, when her father was posted as a diplomat to Ethiopia, and most of the indoor staff there had spoken Italian. Consequently, it was Davina who undertook the necessary conversations, not just with Maria and Immacula about menus and housekeeping details, but restaurant bookings, boat charters, car hire and everything else. Miles resented the loss of control, and felt that his wife, given her command of the language, frequently failed to achieve what was required.
He brooded at the table, drumming his fingers, waiting for Maria to bring the coffee. Needles had dropped from the umbrella pines during the night on to the surface of the swimming pool, and he wished Fabulo was there, scooping them out with his net. Where was Fabulo? Didn’t he begin work at eight? And what time had the older children arrived back from that nightclub, he thought he’d heard car doors slamming at three o’clock in the morning, and a Vespa backfiring. This summer, Peter, Sam and Archie had taken to going out after dinner, down to Porto Ercole or further afield, taking the second car Davina insisted they needed, or the moped or both. So they rolled back in the small hours, waking the whole house and then lay in bed recovering next day.
Alongside his plate lay his cell phone, an additional source of irritation. Probably the only serious drawback to the villa was the telecom signal, which didn’t reach the breakfast table. If he wanted to speak to the office, he must either use the landline or stroll to the end of the garden, beyond the swimming pool, where the signal was strongest. He glared at the impotent device, blaming Davina. Had he not asked her, summer after summer, to contact the Ruscullis and insist they install a booster?
As usual, he longed for an English newspaper. These could be obtained from a kiosk in Porto Ercole, but did not arrive until noon and were anyway a day late. An International Herald Tribune was brought up for him by the cleaning ladies, but this did not appear until ten o’clock, and anyway he found the IHT unsatisfactory. The girls in his office compiled and faxed a daily digest of the British newspapers, but London was an hour behind and it would not be ready for a while yet.
All these petty irritations compounded to sour Miles’s morning, as he sat at the table spreading hard bread with apricot jam.
Mollie arrived on the terrace, weighed down with books. She placed a stack on the breakfast table, and Miles flinched at their spines: psychotherapy textbooks written by lefty whingers. Why couldn’t Mollie teach a proper subject like history? It was one of Miles’s bugbears that traditional English history—kings and queens, dates of battles and so forth—was barely included in the state sector curriculum. At the education committee on which he sat, he championed a return to ‘real’ history: ‘Alfred burning the cakes, King Canute, the British Empire which wasn’t all bad by any means. Not the ruddy Corn Laws and Tolpuddle Martyrs and Victorian chimneysweeps every time.’
‘Morning, Dad. Did you sleep ok?’ There was always a wariness in Mollie’s conversation with her father. Miles was wondering why his daughter wore black or brown t-shirts on holiday, on a beautiful sunny day.
‘I was sleeping ok, until I was woken by confounded car doors slamming. You weren’t out nightclubbing with the others?’
‘No, I needed to be up early. I’m blocking out next term’s course-work.’
‘No sign of your brothers and sister, I assume?’
Mollie shrugged. ‘They won’t be up for hours. Peter might be though. He said he’d give me a guitar lesson this morning.’
Miles grimaced. Peter’s guitar was another curse of the holiday. Each afternoon, when trying to take a siesta in his bedroom, he could hear Peter in the garden below, strumming away. Or, worse, singing. Yesterday at the end of lunch, Davina had actually encouraged him, and they’d all had to endure a dirge about Cornish herring fishermen. It annoyed Miles the way Peter rolled his eyes upwards when he sang, a gesture of sincerity.
With nobody except Mollie about, and no guests staying, Miles found mornings at the villa a challenge. Easily bored, needing perpetual stimulation, time weighed heavily. He
considered walking down the 240 cliffside steps to the jetty, for a dip in the sea, but couldn’t face the climb back up afterwards. How the Ruscullis could live here without a lift, he didn’t know; if this was his own place, he’d have installed one. He considered swimming in the cold pool, but knew the proximity of Mollie and her textbooks would spoil the experience. Instead, he carried his cell phone to the far end of the garden, where he made his calls, ringing first Serena, then the office.
Following the exposure of her treachery with Dawn, his relationship with Serena had deteriorated. Miles found the thought of her helping his sworn enemies, behind his back, difficult to forgive, and he was inclined to blame Serena for introducing them to Holland Park Square too. For several weeks he refused to speak to her, and their affair was in abeyance. But recently, driven by boredom of the family holiday, Miles resumed ringing her again. Serena was full of remorse, and frisky on the phone.
‘Tell you what, darling,’ Miles said. ‘If I come up with a pretext for being in Rome for a night or two next week, can you be there? I need a break from the joys of family life.’
She accepted like a shot.
‘Splendid. I’ll have the girls organise transport.’
The remainder of the morning he spent speaking to the office, having every piece of post and every invitation read out to him, and dictating long, aggressive memos to his people. Then he said, ‘Oh, I may need to head over to Rome for a couple of nights for a client thing. Next Monday and Tuesday. Book a suite at the Russie. And Mrs Harden will be joining me. Facilitate it, please.’
Davina delayed coming outside for as long as possible. First she would take a long bath, which was out of character but helped fill in the morning. Then she liked to discuss menus with Maria and Immacula in the kitchen, and practise her Italian with them. If Peter was down, she’d have a cup of coffee with him in the drawing room with its terrazzo floor, which was cooler than sitting outside, and hear what was on his mind. Since he’d begun the job at Straker Communications, which she knew he hated, Davina felt she was losing touch with her eldest, favourite son, so it was an opportunity to chat about folk music and ecology and his other enthusiasms. If they heard Miles (‘Maria! We need ice’) they both jumped.
Pride and Avarice Page 25
