The Secret Legacy

by Sara Alexander

  I bristled off the look he shot me.

  ‘I’m sure Paolino is a different bucket of anchovies, though. Seems like he’s got ambition. Vision. I’ve watched the tourists flock to him. Quite the set-up. Signorina is going to be quite a wealthy woman, no, signore?’

  The Major’s smile was clipped. It made the sweaty man understand that the lemonade didn’t invite conversation or comment on my personal affairs.

  ‘Are you finished here, gentlemen?’ the Major asked as they took a final gulp.

  The fleshy policeman loosened the second button of his shirt. A little more chest hair clawed out for air. ‘I’d say so. I’ll leave my card for you, signorina. If in the next few days things jolt into your memory – it happens that way sometimes, you know? – I’m not saying your brother had anything to do with this, we just need to understand the exact timing of things, you can understand that, no?’

  I nodded. Any possible words cleaved to the sides of my mouth.

  A clatter turned us toward the kitchen.

  A soaked Elizabeth looked over at me. Passata traced the entire front of her apron, the odd chunk of tomato hanging onto the fabric. Her face was smeared red.

  ‘Looks like you have your hands full over there, signorina,’ the officer commented with another unwelcome observation, just as her wailing erupted.

  I reached her whilst the Major led the officers back onto the street. Half the passata from my bowl had also tipped onto the tiles. It ran in tangents across the decorative yellow and turquoise swirls, trickling into small rivers of wasted food. On another day I might have kept my patience in check.

  ‘Santina – see to the child. I’m happy to help you here.’

  ‘My brother had nothing to do with this!’ I blurted before I had a chance to clamp the thought.

  ‘I never mentioned anything of the sort.’

  ‘But that awful man did. Marco’s a loner, yes, sarcastic, yes, rubs people up the wrong way – I see that. I know he’s no angel. But this? I’m supposed to sit and listen to someone talk about my family like that?’

  His face eased into a quiet acceptance, his eyes warm, seeing through me.

  My embarrassment crushed my cheeks red. They matched Elizabeth’s.

  I lifted her up in one brusque swoop. ‘Let’s go and clean ourselves up, yes?’ I asked, masking my indignation with a forced breeze I knew the Major saw right through.

  I reached the doorway and paused. I turned back to apologize.

  The Major had already gone.

  CHAPTER 23

  The next morning Elizabeth and I left the house soon after watering the vegetable patch. The artichokes stretched up their proud crowns, their purple dipped leaves reaching out to the sun. Before Adeline had been with us, the Major and I would have collected them together, judging the ones ready and those we’d allow a few more days to mature. Now I did the task alone, my employers on my periphery, muttering by the cavolo nero, sometimes harvesting the lemon trees. This morning Adeline chose to sit beneath the vine that sprouted overhead along the entire length of the lower terrace. The late summer sun beat down. She insisted on laying upon the ground, much to the Major’s frustration. From her prone position she babbled through a stream of consciousness, which she then channelled through the charcoal that charged across her notepad with vengeance. The Major sat with her for a while. As she lost herself deeper into her drawing, he withdrew to the quiet sanctuary of his garden. It teetered at the height of maturity. The proud geometry of the romanesco cauliflowers stood to attention, zucchini lengthened, the chard splayed its foliage, a peacock fanning for attention. The patch was a celebration of our efforts, ablaze with color and inviting produce.

  I let Elizabeth run down the vicolo ahead of me a little, noticing how her limbs were no longer rolled with tender baby fat but muscular, lithe with our daily climbs up and down these steps. Her body looked longer too, beginning its stretch toward childhood, leaving her toddler days to fade like a receding shadow. It wouldn’t be long before the Major began preparations to send her to England to begin her formal education. The thought was like bruised petals between rough fingers.

  We wove down the alleys, Elizabeth counting the steps as we did as far as her first ten numbers of Neapolitan would allow. We reached Paolino’s shop, and she ran in to greet her old friend. I followed soon after. I found her resting up on his hip as he showed her off to unsuspecting customers.

  ‘My favorite customer right here, signora! Look at that face!’ he announced, taking her little chin in his two fingers and giving it a wiggle. ‘An English girl from the hill, but Positanese through and through.’

  The customer twisted round to see who she presumed was the mother, but my dark hair and eyes threw her into confusion, a world away from the red-headed beauty of the child in Paolino’s arms. My polite smile was well rehearsed. The customer left with several paper bags loaded with Paolino’s fresh sliced meats and cheeses.

  ‘So my beautiful signorinas! What can I get for you today?’

  ‘We’re just taking a walk, getting some air before it’s too hot.’

  ‘Mamma has spoken to the priest. We’re to see him this evening.’

  The statement landed with a pebble’s plop.

  ‘This evening, Paolino? I’m to be at home.’

  ‘Once signorina is asleep you come and join me at the Chiesa Nuova.’

  ‘I can’t just announce I’m leaving for the evening. My day off is not until Sunday.’

  ‘So bring her if you have to, I’m sure Don Vincenzo won’t mind.’

  ‘Why the urgency?’ I asked, a prickle at the back of my throat.

  He looked at me and cocked his head. ‘Why the questions?’

  The beads tapped the entry of a new customer. Paolino sprang into action. He was so at home in his spotlight. I watched as the new tourist succumbed to his honeyed patter. It made me feel proud and foreign at the same time. I was so comfortable not seeing another soul but for the Major, Elizabeth and Adeline for days at a time. Paolino craved company, this incessant performance. Brilliant as it was, I felt a sudden hesitation as to whether I would ever be able to maintain his stamina before a crowd.

  ‘See you after seven, Santina!’ he called to me as Elizabeth and I left his shop. I reached for her hand; the crowds were already forming at this time of day. My cut smarted. At once I was back in the bathroom, fixed in the ardent gaze of the Major. I knew he would let me go to church this evening if I explained why I needed to return to town after Elizabeth was asleep. I could also picture his expression: a genteel masking of his disappointment, a tender fight to hide his feelings. He’d look at me from under his hooded gaze, a half smile in spite of the inappropriate pact we had made, two people reading the same page of a book in silence, waiting whilst the other completes a paragraph before turning for the next. My marriage would go ahead, whatever illicit daydream we had drifted through. The feelings clung to me like the sticky strands of a tiny web, invisible to the eye yet spidering the skin nonetheless.

  ‘Of course you may leave this evening,’ the Major replied after I’d broached the subject. Adeline had retired to her room straight after the meal, as always. The Major liked to enjoy the temperate gold of the late summer evenings. ‘I understand that Catholics must perforce breach an insurmountable length of confession before committing to their partners. Isn’t that so?’ He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back on his chair a little, his eyes streaking past the terrace and out toward the sea.

  ‘Thank you. I won’t be long.’

  I brushed away a few last crumbs. Off his expression I paused before I returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Santina,’ he began, meeting my eye, ‘my sarcasm is a feeble mask. You of all people know that. A lifetime of British habits die hard. You’ll forgive me.’

  I mirrored his grin. ‘I might.’

  As I closed the main doors behind me, I saw him turn to look toward me, a figure framed by his vines, flanked by the tall, smooth columns of the
terrace; someone half remembered from a moth-eaten dream.

  The vestibule was smoky with remembered incense. I watched the dust motes dance in the shafts of light flinting through the high arched windows. Paolino looked over at me and reached for my hand. I slipped it in his.

  ‘You’re freezing, my love. How’d you manage that?’

  ‘This place reminds me of Adeline’s hospital.’

  Perhaps it was the stone floors, the pallid yellow of the plaster or that vague sense of impending procedure about the space. The clock pendulum marked every breath, echoing its summons. At last Don Vincenzo walked in, a flight of robes behind him. We rose to shake his hand. He had a kind face, welcoming even, but his smile was distracted, like an unnecessary indulgence.

  ‘Buona sera, youngsters. Please, do sit down. Thank you for coming this evening.’

  He took a breath, but before he could launch into what felt would be nothing short of a sermon, there was a knock at his door.

  ‘Si?’

  ‘Don Vincenzo, it’s Paolino’s mother!’ we heard Signora Cavaldi call from the other side of the wood.

  He rose once again and turned the metal handle. She blew in.

  ‘Do accept my apologies, Don Vincenzo, I had so many things to attend to before coming here. Staff is not what one pays for, let me tell you that, but you, man of the cloth, know more about the human condition than I. Those tourists, bless them and their ways, but if you watch them long enough, you soon come to understand the world and how it’s changing. One sauntered in to our shop in her bikini this afternoon. I kid you not. Did you see her, Paolino? Course he did, couldn’t miss that figure of a woman. Whole town is talking about it still.’ She patted her sweat, but not long enough for anyone to eschew a response. ‘The world is changing. That’s why I told Paolino, if you’re serious about the orphan girl then there is no sense in waiting for the second coming. I mean, another girl would expect all sorts of fanfare, but not Santina. She’s a good girl, Don Vincenzo, simple life – I should know, I was the one who mothered her when hers died. I’m sure you’ve talked through all of this already, no?’

  ‘Mamma. We just sat down. Let Don Vincenzo say what he needs to.’

  ‘Nothing needs saying. We’re here to book in the earliest date.’

  We turned toward the priest, willing him to fill the silence before she whipped back up.

  ‘Signora Cavaldi, may I get you some water? You look like the world has taken its toll.’

  She blushed at that. I admired his artful card, then found myself guessing which tack he’d operate on us? Condescension toward the young lovers perhaps? His expression told me that he guessed her insistence on speed was due to my being pregnant. It hadn’t occurred to me till that moment. Did she think that too? This was the first I’d heard about a simple, hurried wedding. I felt my skin heat with indignation.

  We watched Don Vincenzo pour her some water from a glass carafe. It silenced her for several gulps. He was a man who knew how to take charge of a room. With Signora Cavaldi present it was no small feat.

  ‘So, fanciulli. Jesus has shown you the art of loving one another. Over the next few weeks we will meet to teach you the ways to bring him into your marriage. For there is three in your marriage now, young lovers.’

  Three? I willed every fiber to stay rooted in the room, but my imagination raced the steps, each of the four hundred and forty that led from the sea to the villa. I darted every nook, skipped two at a time, tireless climber, Cavaldi’s mountain goat, till I reached our garden, slipped onto the chair beside the Major. Till he and I gazed at the languid reflection of the dying sun, beckoned by the horizon, swallowed by the water beyond Capri.

  ‘Do you agree, Santina?’ Paolino’s voice hooked me back to the surface.

  ‘Do I agree?’ I stalled.

  ‘Don Vincenzo suggests the same time each week and an early winter wedding. Mid-December is the earliest he can do.’

  I watched the priest slit his eyes over to me, expecting some resistance no doubt, in view of my supposed pregnancy.

  ‘That sounds beautiful,’ I said, a little too quick.

  ‘It’s not a spring wedding,’ Cavaldi strode on, looking at Paolino, ‘but it will be festive, no? And less tourists squeezing the streets.’

  She was redder than before. Perhaps the stress of an impending celebration brought out the claustrophobia in her too.

  ‘December is my favorite month,’ I said, reassuring the room.

  Paolino looked over at me. His face was dazzling against the pallid walls behind him, a sunbeam streaking the dark wooden shelves aching with bibles and maudlin oil paintings of sneering priests peering down their noses at us.

  ‘Simple and small is perfect,’ I added, feeling Paolino’s hand squeeze mine and glad for it.

  At last we were granted leave. Outside the peeling bells announced the late Mass. I nodded to several of the older women I recognized from Paolino’s shop as they waddled by me, clutching their rosaries like cherished memories.

  Signora Cavaldi appeared behind us. ‘So that is that. Don’t waste time with intricate details. What’s the use of that? You’ve known us all your life, Santina. I feel blessed that I know my daughter-in-law as well as I do. I’m practically your mother already.’ I couldn’t decide which was more disconcerting, her sudden tirade of possessive love or her vociferous disdain. ‘My children!’ she cried, wrapping her arms around the both of us and squeezing us into her bosom. I smelled salt, oil, violet and a wince of garlic. She lifted my chin. ‘You’ve done all right for yourself, mountain kid. Thanks to you know who,’ her eyebrows raised into a smile, ‘we’ve come to your rescue again.’

  ‘Mass has started, Mamma!’ Paolino called, stretching an eager arm toward the door. He knew better than to tell her to stop. She gave her brassiere a stiff yank and waddled into the crowd within.

  Paolino took my hand and kissed it. His eyes tipped up to me. They were laughing.

  ‘Is this all a ridiculous game to you, Paolino?’

  ‘You want me serious? I can be serious. You’ll be bored after a month or two, but I can do serious!’

  He began a pantomime, walking down the church steps and back up again like a gormless clown. People started to look at him.

  ‘See! Look how serious I am, Santina!’ He pulled an exaggerated mimic of sadness. The people watching started to giggle. He took a bow and they moved on, then he bounded back up to me, hooking my arm around his.

  ‘Now, let’s think about what other serious things we can do this evening. How’s about a serious trip on my cousin’s row boat? Cool off after my mother?’

  A laugh bubbled out before I could cork it.

  ‘Santina – little saint – even she finds my mother almost tolerable. That’s what catechism is all about, my love. If you can weather the mother long enough, the partnership has a future.’

  ‘You should wipe that grin off your face this moment, Paolino Cavaldi.’

  ‘Why? Only I know what I’m dreaming up this moment.’ He stopped and took both my hands in his. ‘I want to give you the world, my love.’

  ‘I don’t want the world. I want you.’

  ‘Same thing, no?’ His face creased into a dancing grin I could no longer resist. He took my hand in his and we strolled down toward the shore.

  ‘I should get going, Paolino. I’ve already been longer than I said.’

  ‘Isn’t the baby asleep?’

  ‘She’s not a baby. And yes, she is.’

  ‘So stay with your lover!’ he replied, scooping both my feet off the shale, cradling me in his arms before I could stop him. Tourists lined the outside tables at Buca di Beppo, clinking another day of relaxation.

  ‘What are you doing? People are looking!’

  ‘Course they are. Most beautiful woman in town in my arms!’

  His feet crunched toward the water. He stopped and sat me down in one of the smaller boats. Then, as I made to stand, he gave it a shove and it slid into the water. I
gave out a cry. He lifted himself in, took the oars in his hands and began rowing us away from the shore.

  ‘Paolino what on earth do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Taking my bride to my favorite place,’ he laughed.

  My Positano sank into the near distance. His face glowed against the backdrop of my grey rock, houses clutching to the climb, the powder pinks, blues, bougainvillea reds and primrose yellows dipping toward early evening. And with each lap of the wooden oar, more lights came on, till all that was left of our town was a cluster of color and twinkling lights, a terracotta model in the presepe at Christmas.

  Paolino led us south of our bay and past the first pride of cliffs that rose out of the water. I looked up as we swayed on the sea, catching the final glimpse of our villa before he turned, following the craggy bend in the rock. We rowed a little way more, but at the first opening beside us Paolino twisted the row boat to face the entrance and began rowing us under a concealed archway.

  The oars eased through the water. We floated into a cave. The echo of slurping waves arched overhead. The sun’s farewell streaked in like hope through the narrow entrance, reflecting through the blue beneath us, an electric cerulean, as if illuminated from below. The swells of light danced across his face. He lifted the oars. We rocked in choppy silence for a moment, only the sound of the water sloshing up the sides of the wooden edge percussed the air.

  ‘Paolino, this is magnificent,’ I whispered, hushed by the magical age of the place, an imposter on antiquity, trespassing the hidden caverns of this mountain.

  ‘I’ve wanted to bring you here since I met you.’

  We swayed for a breath or two. Then he ripped off his shirt, his trousers, and leapt into the water. The boat rocked with a little more momentum off the force of his leap. I gripped the sides, searching for his silhouette gliding beneath the surface. He bobbed up with a splutter.

  ‘Come in with me, Santina!’

  My face dropped.

  ‘There’s no one here! All the tourists are on the shore now. Come on! The water is so warm.’