A Funeral in Fiesole

by Rosanne Dingli

  ‘But she’s recovering. The will has meant a lot to her.’

  ‘What do you think she’ll do?’

  ‘Something tells me she’ll never go back to Australia. I mean – she might go back to finish off her life there … tie up all her ends. I don’t know much about writing – but can’t authors live anywhere, in fact?’

  ‘I think so. Suzanna – you’re freezing. Let’s go up to the big house and get Nigel to turn up the heating another notch.’

  I laughed. ‘Nigel and his notches.’

  ‘I found out what’s eating him, as you might put it.’

  We locked the door behind us. I knew Lewis would continue.

  ‘He lost his job.’

  ‘Ah. That’s it. Harriet kept talking about a struggle. She made a face whenever I mentioned the boat.’

  ‘They’re in a pretty cruel financial situation, with two kids in their most expensive life stage, all this travelling … caring for Mama, organizing the funeral. He’s had a lot on his mind, and is unquestionably frantic about finding a job.’

  I did not know what to think or say.

  Lewis did. ‘He should be in London seeking interviews.’

  ‘He should.’

  It was only a matter of hours before the day was done. Goodness knew what would happen when the notary came to the house again.

  I could guess Nigel was glad about Mama’s division of the ‘successione’ and would sign without a murmur, even though Harriet was woefully emotional about losing the Fiesole house. It might still be sold, no matter how cleverly Mama calculated the whole thing. Or would my brother’s wife sway him, and urge him to contest, so a ‘normal’ division would take place at some point, of everything divided equally into four parts?

  There was no mystery about what would happen to my plans if it happened; disaster. Mama’s plan was perfect for me. My little niggles of doubt about fairness had settled into acceptance. It’s amazing what an hour can do to one’s mind – and finding the bookcase added to my contentment. It was easy to let matters flow according to my mother’s astute proposal.

  It left Paola, of course. If Paola made up her mind about something, nothing and no one could move her. It’s what she was always like. Slow, steady, silent and stubborn! Mind you, I saw a distinct softening in her, a hesitancy I had never seen before. The end of a marriage could do that to a person. Couldn’t it? It was not easy to guess what it might do. I had seen various friends – male and female – through break-ups, but watching a sibling suffer is something else altogether. I thought I knew my big sister so well – and she became a bigger mystery since I saw her last.

  Which was when? Memory failed me. It was a shame we didn’t meet more often. We were flung to various distances, and geography can be a tyrannical – a despotic – thing.

  I knew what I had to do – make everyone promise we would have reunions every few years, and not leave the next meeting for another funeral! They would boo and hiss if I put it quite in those words. I must find the words.

  Paola

  Oranges

  I knew what it was; it came to me after a while. People changed. They changed very radically when their mother died. We all transformed into people other than ourselves; it might have been into our true selves, when Mama died. John said something like it once but I didn’t believe him. I never believed him when he made observations about the family.

  ‘Women whose mothers are still alive stay girls. You’re still a girl, Paola, even in your fifties. There’s always someone there you can run to.’

  I was annoyed with him for some reason at the time, but I had to admit now, while listening to the sounds of the others packing all around me, while I fidgeted with things in my funny little damp room – trying to make sensible decisions – that he had been right, all those years ago.

  Suzanna had mellowed, and more so since the funeral. Now she was going about telling everyone we should meet more, and not leave it until it was an emergency. She didn’t say, ‘Let’s not wait until somebody dies!’ But it was what she meant. Her exclamations echoed around the house. She moved with a bit more assurance and was a great deal more comforting than in the past, when all she wanted to be good at was out-doing everyone. She seemed a bit less confident her boat purchase would work. It was lovely to see her take advice from anyone who had anything to say about it.

  Nigel was more distant. He no longer acted like master of ceremonies, the monarch of all he surveyed. It was almost as if he no longer had to make up for being the youngest. It might have been because he was the only one of us who was a parent. Raising Lori and Tad could not have been easy, but he and Harriet had reason to be proud. I could see my little brother was taking leave of Fiesole, going from room to room, and trailing through the long grass at the back, saying farewell not only to the place but also to his childhood.

  I wondered, while folding my coloured shawl for the third time, whether it was Grant who had transformed Brod. Poor Brod; he felt Mama’s death the most, and was most prey to his own emotions, but something had strengthened him. His face was the one of a man who had made an important decision. Mama’s apron strings were well and truly severed. I wondered how often he had consulted her on matters going on in his life. I knew he communicated often with her – possibly more than any of us. Now, he was down in the cellar boxing wine, all on his own, chewing at memories and happinesses and regrets. Communing with our mother’s ghost.

  Grant was still taking pictures of the back bedrooms, and the exterior of the scullery, with a real camera this time, not his phone. He worked slowly, and I had no doubt he would come up and show me. A month ago, when I was still so falsely strong and steady within what I thought was a permanent relationship, I would have found his behaviour overly sweet, a bit too charming. Today, I saw both Brod and Grant with different eyes. They worked well together; they calculated and analysed, and I liked that. I liked how they had an artistic bent, something aesthetic in the things they liked.

  Had I changed? Transformed into someone a bit harder; more capable of analysis … practical exploration of people and situations? Of course I had. It was less because John had left so suddenly, and without notice. And more because I felt I was completely autonomous at last. No one to look after; and no one to look after me. Even Mama was gone. The sensation was so overwhelming it took days to register properly. Since I surfaced, on my own, with John far away not only in sheer distance, but also emotionally, and intellectually, and practically, I could see my world, and my way through it, a bit more clearly.

  It would even come into my writing. I would experiment with other genres. I would write a contemporary novel with a realistic view into changing relationships; morphing marriages.

  One decision was set. I would stay on at the villa. There was no rush to get back anywhere. The house in Melbourne was secure, and in any case, it would only take a phone call to get a friend to see to things there. I booted up the laptop and sought maps and train timetables and fares. It was all of a sudden quite exciting to be making solo plans. Sitting with Grant and Brod at the kitchen table had opened up a whole new vista to me.

  ‘No more tea, please. Let’s have a glass of the Bramduardi wine.’ I diced some provolone Nigel had in the fridge, and slit open a vacuum-packed bag of spiced olives. The three of us sat around the round red table. It was still the warmest room in the house. Cosy, welcoming. It was easy to imagine Matilde making herself busy around us, cleaning the paintwork around the window shutters, her damp rag squeaking, everything smelling of yellow soap. She would pour herself a glass of Cynar.

  ‘Do you remember Matilde drinking Cynar?’

  Brod brightened.

  ‘What’s Cynar?’ Grant was curious.

  ‘It’s a powerful Italian liqueur made from globe artichokes.’ Brod laughed at his partner’s grimace.

  ‘Artichokes!’

  ‘It’s quite good. Surprisingly good. Matilde would douse it with a good spurt of soda water, squeeze in a twist of orange,
and sip it slowly, while she took on her evening’s chores.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Oranges from the stunted tree behind their house. Blood oranges from the south, she called them. I wonder if the tree’s still there.’

  ‘There was a little grove of all kinds of citrus trees. I remember the blossom. Donato would trim off branch ends full of blossom, and Mama would put them in the hall vase.’

  The memory of the scent was powerful in the warm kitchen. If Brod and Grant were not there, I would have lain my head in my arms and taken a nap in the imagined scent, on that table, as I had as a thirteen-year old, exhausted after reading all night. I mightn’t have changed at all.

  But Brod was excited, and wanted to discuss things once more. ‘Are you sure it’ll all work out, Paola?’

  I had to smile. The wine warmed me from the core outward; possibilities offered by the future warmed me from the exterior – from the whole villa – inward. What could I say? ‘I don’t know, Brod. I could crumble, like this place is bound to do if nothing’s done.’

  ‘Mama guessed we’d sit here and debate things. She must have pictured us making tentative plans, a matter of days after Dottor Ugobaldi read us her will.’

  I thought of her sitting in the brown chair down the steps, looking out upon the view between treetops, taking a breather before she took on some other task, or before getting us together for a board game. ‘Of course she knew. She planned it … and we’re all promptly doing what she planned for us.’

  ‘You – all of you – examined it and turned it all up, down and sideways, though. You all had doubts.’ Grant made his point.

  ‘She knew it too.’

  Mama didn’t know I would attend her funeral alone. She could not possibly foretell what would befall me on the day Nigel called. She could have no suspicion, no doubt, no idea my greatest desire, if I had one at the time, would change so radically. Coming back to the house we called home, coming back to her, was coming back bereft emotionally.

  There were things Mama could not predict.

  Nigel

  A diamond ring

  We came here full of hesitation and sadness. Harriet had talked the entire way about how nothing would be the same at the villa without Mama.

  ‘She was at the hospice a long time, Harriet – we looked after things for months.’

  She had to agree. It was in her eyes. ‘Yes. Just us – I sometimes get rather angry about it. Apart from the odd visit, your brother and sisters did next to nothing. But you’re right, it all ran like she wanted it to run. Remember – we even asked her about the kitchen and scullery taps. We had to describe what we were going to install. She was intrigued by the gooseneck thing, and said how she’d have liked such a useful appliance, to rinse out pots and spray olives ready for pickling … or whatever.’

  ‘She planned everything. She stayed in control … but was she controlling? I don’t think she was controlling, Harriet.’

  Now, in the house, getting ready to leave, she made me wonder what magic Mama put into play, to make things go the way she imagined was right. Was she controlling?

  ‘No. Even as children, she let us come to our own conclusions without pushing us. Simply showing us.’

  ‘Was it what the will did? Did it show us?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Most of my hesitation was gone. To follow Mama’s plan for me was the most sensible and functional option. My precarious financial situation could be wrested into some sort of equitable position without much bother, and Harriet and I could redress our future. The kids were becoming independent, and I could see us enjoying ourselves in a couple of years or so.

  ‘We can fix most things, Harriet.’

  ‘Most things. I’m starting to regret selling my engagement ring.’ Her eyes met mine in a tentative gaze.

  It did not suggest a quarrel was coming on, so I took up the thread. ‘It was an impetuous thing you did, Harriet.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But well-meant. You were scared of the pickle we were in. You thought a few thousand would fix it. All I could feel at the time was what the ring meant to you … how we chose it together, how we planned and saved. Years of … whatever.’

  She swallowed. ‘We had such an enormous row about it.’

  ‘Well – I was offended and surprised … look, I’m sorry I hurt you.’

  ‘You always said every little bit helps, so I sold it, and it hardly made a dent in our debt.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I wanted to help.’

  ‘You know something?’

  She rotated awkwardly away from the window.

  ‘You did help. You did.’

  ‘No – nothing helped, Nigel. You were so angry – so upset.’

  I took her hand to examine the little diamond ring I had replaced it with, on impulse, trying to fix small things and big things with one quick purchase. ‘I guess this little thing means a lot to us now.’

  ‘We threw good money after bad, I think.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘No.’

  We embraced, in front of the enormous glass windows in the brown room. ‘Let’s walk down to the little house.’ She dug her chin in my chest, as she would so many years before. Now, the hesitation and sadness we arrived with were dissolving into something else I could not quite define.

  Many things had changed, but some things stayed the same. Harriet and Paola would only ever tolerate each other. I was used to it. Suzanna would always be self-centred and over-confident.

  Although everyone was saying the funeral went well, I could tell they were grateful I organized everything, because it saved them the bother. So I supposed it did go well, despite my horror at the details I could not control. Now it was behind me, sadness enveloped everything to do with it, and I knew sorrow would be the prevailing emotion, not resentment.

  Everyone felt calmer and more resigned to things as they were. There was no more talk of refraining from signing the document. Dottor Ugobaldi would soon sit in the very same place where he’d read the will.

  The prim, precise notary had given us un paio di giorni, a couple of days, to make our decisions, without a doubt knowing there was no wiser way than our mother’s to divide what was in effect indivisible. So one of the last things we would do before we all left on our separate ways was sign. Paola, Suzanna, Brod and I, signing a piece of official paper for the sake of convention, convenience, Italian bureaucracy none of us wanted any part of, but which governed almost every aspect of our lives at the house, and Mama’s.

  She insisted on drawing up an Italian will. It must have been important to her. So here we were, all willing to partake in her meaningfulness whether we understood it or not, for her sake, who had done so much for us. Even if it was days after we’d learned how she wanted it to go.

  ‘I never understood her completely, Harriet – you became closer to her after all the years.’

  ‘Mama understood you four perfectly well. She was vague and muddled towards the end, but it didn’t take away her understanding of all of you. Not as the children, all in one lump or clump. Individually – even Brod and Suzanna.’

  ‘Especially Brod and Suzanna. She never bundled them together, as some people do with twins.’

  The little citrus grove behind the little house where Donato and Matilde lived was overgrown and neglected. Fallen fruit and leaves formed a mushy mat underfoot, and the unpruned trees appeared twiggy and plaintive against the grey sky.

  ‘Lemons, mandarins, blood oranges …’ Harriet pointed at the trees, stepping hesitantly between them. ‘Look at all this wasted fruit. Lovely plump winter lemons … and do you remember eating oranges and mandarins Matilde had somehow preserved? How did she do it?’

  I tried to remember. ‘I don’t think we ever thought about it. She’d call us down to the grove, spread out an old blanket, sit us down, and hand us each an orange or mandarin wrapped tightly in paper. Waxed paper. I remember its smell and how it crinkled, and
how Brod would ball all the pieces up and we’d have a paper ball fight.’

  Harriet smiled. ‘She must have delayed picking as long as she could, and carefully wrapped each fruit, packed it all tightly …’

  ‘… in crates. Yes, I remember. Crates – and she’d hand us each a fruit every day.’

  ‘You had two mothers, in effect, you lucky thing.’

  I saw she was thinking of her own disadvantaged childhood, brought up by a distracted aunt after a road accident robbed her of both parents in one night.

  ‘They welcomed you with open arms, Harriet – both of them, Mama and Matilde.’

  ‘Yes. Lovely, comforting. I did feel welcome, of course I did. But I was twenty-one or something. I’ve missed a lot in life. No one ever gave me a wrapped orange, or drove me all over the place to pools and things as a child. Or woke me up early on a Sunday with specially made pancakes. Gosh – you lucky thing!’

  ‘You did it for our kids.’

  Her smile was priceless. ‘Of course. Lori’s pancakes with blueberries, and Tad’s with honey and lemon juice … I learned such a lot from Mama.’

  I knew what she meant. For a minute, we were both quiet, no doubt contemplating the same thing; aspects of Mama’s care, attention and thoughtfulness.

  ‘The statue we saw at the cemetery - a beautiful woman with her face lowered into her hand.’

  ‘What a splendid sculpture.’ Neither of us had seen it before.

  ‘Yes – but I imagined it was Mama, feeling sorry she had to leave. Silly, but it was what I felt.’

  ‘I thought it was a bit like Matilde. She didn’t come to the funeral. She grieved at home. She wanted to remember Mama as she knew her. No cypresses, no hearse, no burial.’ I tugged at an orange from the few left on the low branches around us, and peeled it quickly. A blood orange. Its red segments came apart easily. The taste was magic. A throw-back to sunny summer days of hastily shed waxed paper, oranges shucked of their orange hide, and Matilde watching, with an expression on her face which was indecipherable to children.