by Maeve Haran
‘I can see things would be easier for you, and for God, if Graziella just disappeared. But how long are you going to wait – and keep Martin waiting – to find out if she will?’
Claire’s answer was to burst into tears and run from the swimming pool up to her room.
OK, Monica said to herself, you’ve been upfront with Claire about Martin. How about taking on your mother next?
The question was, how best to do it so that her mother realized once and for all that something had happened to her daughter – she had finally found self-confidence and couldn’t be bossed around any more.
She decided to go and see how Immaculata was surviving her mother’s onslaught and found Gwen, smiling and gracious as the Queen, attempting to counteract any serious damage that might have been done.
‘My dear,’ Gwen explained, ‘Immaculata seems to have conceived the idea that your mother thinks her cooking is a little bit provincial. I can’t imagine how she could have got that impression.’ She winked at Monica. ‘I have said I am sure it’s all an accident of translation. Perhaps you could pour some more oil on troubled waters. Especially as I very much need Immaculata’s help for a little luncheon party I am planning for tomorrow.’
Monica followed the unmistakable sound of her mother’s voice into the kitchen where she found the tiny Immaculata positively quailing under Mariella’s verbal assault.
‘Buongiorno, Immaculata.’ Monica then reeled off a lengthy greeting in her perfect Italian. Immaculata was suddenly all smiles.
Mariella listened suspiciously, unable to understand a single word. ‘Tell me exactly what you’ve said to the woman, Monica,’ she commanded.
Monica turned to her mother. ‘I thanked her for hearing you out and informed her that you can’t cook at all yourself and that’s why you can’t resist criticizing anyone who can and that she must pay absolutely no attention to anything you say.’
Mariella stood looking at her daughter, for once entirely lost for words.
‘Excellent!’ Gwen jumped straight in. ‘I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out. Right, Immaculata, we’ll keep things simple: asparagus with shaved parmesan; your wonderful pumpkin ravioli; saltimbocca and French beans; for dessert orange polenta cake. Perfect!’ She turned to Monica. ‘Could you speak to Beatrice about drinks and table settings. Inside, I think. White linen and fresh flowers. Let’s not show Stephen up. If everyone can come we should be ten. Would that be all right?’
‘Well done, my dear girl,’ she whispered to Monica as they all trooped out of the room. ‘I rather think your mother had that coming.’
The mystery guests turned out to be an elderly couple called Castellini, and they were by far the most popular they’d ever had at the villa. Everyone seemed to be waiting for them and came in to pay their respects, from Immaculata to Luigi and Giovanni. After the seemingly endless enquiries about their health, their new home and their daughter, Beatrice finally came round with a bottle and poured them a glass of wine.
They were, Monica guessed, in their mid-sixties. Both were grey-haired and not particularly smart or well-dressed yet they exuded welcoming charm and seemed far more interested in Sylvie, Angela, Claire and Monica than in talking about themselves. They were fascinated by the different careers they’d followed and sounded equally impressed by all of them. Monica found herself instantly warming to them when they congratulated her on her wonderful choice of being a university librarian, as if no other career option could have been quite as compelling and useful. Sylvie’s interior design company sounded amazingly creative, Claire’s cooking little short of perfection and as for Angela’s fashion label! To build it up from nothing and sell it was staggeringly amazing! She must be like Miuccia Prada!
It was fascinating to watch how the others unbent in the sunshine of such attention. Sylvie told hilarious and very naughty stories Monica had never heard about her Russian clients and how one wanted special hand-holds so that they could have sex in the shower! Claire entertained them with tales of her most trying clients and Angela recounted the story of the tiny Hong Kong tailor who had introduced her to the soft material on which she based Fabric and insisted on stroking it – with Angela inside.
They had all but finished lunch when Angela asked the Castellinis what profession they’d been in.
There was an instant’s silence and they both glanced at Gwen.
‘Signor and Signora Castellini used to own my favourite hotel in Lanzarella, the Bellavista. You, of course, all know it as the Hotel of the Gods.’
A sudden silence filled the room as they all took in the significance of this information.
‘My dear Angela.’ Gwen had become acutely aware of how embarrassing their answer might be to her. ‘Perhaps you and the Castellinis might continue in private?’
‘There’s no need for that.’ Angela looked at her steadily. ‘Sylvie, Claire and Monica are my friends.’ Angela turned to them in her usual straightforward way. ‘You might like to tell us how you came to sell the hotel.’
‘We never intended to sell it,’ blurted out Signora Castellini. ‘We loved the Bellavista. We lived there for forty years, since our marriage, and ran it together. It was our daughter Caterina’s idea. Caterina was not an easy child. She never liked any man who liked her. So she got to forty-five and was still single. Everyone else was married, they have children. And then she fell in love. And this man, a little older, his family was in the hotel business.’ They all tried not to look at each other as they began to see where the story was heading. ‘So she told us, Mama, Papa, it is a marriage made in heaven! Like us they can run the hotel together. We were getting older. We hoped for grandchildren. So we sold the hotel to this man’s family.’
Signora Castellini stopped and sighed as if she couldn’t go on with the story.
Her husband took it up. ‘But once his family had the hotel they wanted to make so many changes; they wanted it to be grand international hotel. He and Caterina, they started to quarrel, and the fighting got so bad that one day she came to us and said she was leaving, she couldn’t run the hotel with him, she was going to Rome. But they were not married yet, so she had no rights, and now we have no hotel.’ He patted his wife. ‘Maybe it is the way of modern life. Maybe our hotel was too old-fashioned.’
They all listened silently, not sure what to say.
‘And what about the price you were paid?’ Angela asked tonelessly.
‘We have found since that it was much too little.’ Signor Castellini shrugged, with a remarkable lack of bitterness. ‘They said they must spend a great deal to make it a luxury hotel and could not afford more. We thought our daughter would benefit. It is not about the money. We are sad for Caterina. Now that she is in Rome we hardly see her. I think she is humiliated. She says people in Lanzarella think she was tricked. That this man did not want Caterina, he wanted the hotel, and now she will not come here.’
Angela got up from the table.
She nodded to Gwen. ‘I think you’ve made your point. I’m going to my room. As a matter of fact, I’m probably going back to London. I’ve been here much too long already.’
The atmosphere in the room was distinctly strange, as if the barometric pressure had instantly dropped.
Mr and Mrs Castellini got to their feet, looking anxious, and announced they must go, that they hoped they hadn’t created trouble.
Gwen thanked them and went with them to their car at the back of the house.
Claire, Monica and Sylvie looked on, shell-shocked.
‘I think we’re all being unfair to Angela,’ Claire insisted eventually, thinking of Luca. ‘There might be more to their relationship than Hugo wanting her to influence Stephen to sell.’
‘Like wanting to get his hands on the art?’ Monica couldn’t help being truthful. ‘Sorry, but I just don’t trust him.’
‘I was thinking of love, genuine liking,’ Claire replied.
They glanced at Martin, obliviously studying the different cheeses with a view to ma
king a selection.
‘What do you know about art anyway?’ Mariella reminded them of her presence with a dig at Monica.
‘Not a lot,’ conceded Monica, to Sylvie’s annoyance. ‘But, fortunately, I have a friend who does.’
‘Come on, girls,’ Claire suddenly announced. ‘This calls for a wander in the garden. We’ll leave Mariella and Martin to explain to Gwen. I think she’ll understand.’
‘Well, I think it’s very rude,’ announced Mariella.
‘I know, Martin,’ Claire smiled at him unexpectedly, ‘tell Mariella about your movie poster collection.’
He looked at her sharply but she seemed to be entirely genuine. Forgoing the delights of the cheeses he launched into a chronological analysis of his collection while the three women disappeared onto the terrace.
‘Oh God,’ Monica whispered, ‘how awful for Angela. And somehow the fact that it was Stephen’s mother who invited them, it seemed more pointed somehow.’
‘And Angela’s so proud,’ Sylvie pointed out.
‘And actually a little bit lonely,’ Claire said softly.
‘Do you really think so?’ Sylvie tended to take people at face value. ‘She seems so confident and organized.’
‘I think that’s a bit of a cover.’
‘Oh God, so Hugo really was a bit special.’
‘She’s a rich woman. If Hugo turned the villa into a hotel, maybe she would have run it with him, even put some money into it. It would have given her a whole new life,’ Claire said. ‘We’ve got to stop her going,’ she announced, suddenly passionate. ‘I can’t bear both of us being unhappy. And besides,’ she voiced a thought hanging unspoken in the air, ‘if Angela went, then we’d have to ask ourselves what any of us are still doing here.’
Sixteen
They sat on the bench under the pergola and looked around at the place that in a short time had become so real to them, that seemed almost more vivid than home. Could a place really possess a kind of magic? Through its light, its beauty, its remoteness, had Lanzarella woven a kind of spell? The villa was, in its way, a fairy-tale castle.
Yet, Sylvie thought wryly, there did seem to be a little problem with princes. Hers, the erring one, had gone missing. Luca belonged to someone else. Hugo was a false prince, it seemed, who might only want the keys to the castle rather than to win the princess.
Yet, Sylvie knew, she didn’t want to go home yet, to face an empty flat and force herself to take up the reins of her business. Somehow demanding Russian clients seemed as weird a species as three-backed toads when you were somewhere as lovely as this.
Monica felt she’d come alive here, changed, been valued. ‘I’ve stopped being passive,’ she realized, ‘I haven’t been mousy Monica, dressing to be invisible. I even stood up to Ma!’
Claire knew that in leaving she would be renouncing her passion for Italy and all that she’d found here.
‘I really don’t want Angela to go,’ Sylvie announced with sudden vehemence.
‘Neither do I,’ seconded Claire. ‘I’m really fond of her. You don’t get many chances at our age to make proper new friends, and coming here, that’s what we’ve done.’
‘And we’re all so different!’ added Monica.
‘Yes, but isn’t that great?’ Sylvie grinned.
‘And as Claire says, isn’t it partly that if Angela goes, we have to ask ourselves why we’re still here?’ Monica, the realist, had to agree.
‘Yes,’ Sylvie conceded, ‘but it’s not just that. When she came she was a controlling cow and now she’s . . .’
‘One of us,’ offered Claire.
‘But how on earth are we going to stop her?’ Sylvie asked. ‘I mean, she’s a pretty determined person.’
‘Actually,’ Monica stunned them, ‘I do have an idea, but I just have to give a little more thought as to how it might work.’
‘You’d better hurry up.’ Claire shrugged. ‘I bet you she’s booking her flight right now.’
But actually, Claire was wrong.
On the floor above them Angela sat on a flat roof, hidden from the ground, but with an amazing view of the sea. From her secret eyrie Angela realized they were talking about her. Bitching, no doubt, remembering her need to organize everyone around her, relieved that she was leaving, feeling sorry for her, maybe even laughing at her.
Her mobile was in her hand ready to reserve a flight when, by straining her ears, she came to the amazing conclusion that far from wanting her to go, they were trying to think of ways of persuading her to stay!
She leaned forward, behind a chimney stack, and had to brush away a tear. She’d actually told them she didn’t do women friends and by some miracle it seemed she’d acquired three of them.
And Monica had even dreamed up some scheme to get her to stay. She smiled at that, wondering what it could be.
In the distance, she could see someone walking towards the villa along the narrow path through the holm oak copse and she watched as Constantine burst dramatically through, still wearing his Russian fur hat.
‘Ladies,’ he announced, ‘I come bearing an invitation. I am having a show.’
He placed a small painting on the stone table in front of them with the details scrawled on the back.
‘But this is an original!’ Sylvie insisted. ‘It’s probably worth a lot of money.’
‘Quicker for me to knock them off, darling, than go down into Lerini and order a load of invitations.’
‘Haven’t you heard of email, Constantine?’
‘I don’t hold with that sort of thing. Anyway, what’s more likely to get them flocking here? A free picture or an email?’
‘I have to say,’ Sylvie conceded, as Monica led him inside to meet Gwen, ‘that man’s a natural at self-promotion.’
‘I think he’s lovely.’ Claire grinned. ‘Except he does smell a bit.’
‘It’s probably the hat. Do you think he wears it in bed?’
Gwen seemed to rise above the smell and also his sartorial shortcomings. She and Constantine instantly bonded and dug up numerous mutual acquaintances, most of whom neither could stand. Monica saw a happy friendship and healthy respect emerging built upon the despised corpses of most of their acquaintanceship.
The deal was sealed when Constantine carried Gwen off to his eyrie for afternoon drinks and to meet Guido and Spaghetti. The invitation was not extended, Monica noted, to the infuriated Mariella.
‘Who’s that frightful old scarecrow Gwen’s gone off with?’ her mother demanded.
‘Constantine O’Flaherty, or more commonly known as Constantine O,’ Monica replied. ‘As a matter of fact, he’s one of the most celebrated painters in the world.’
‘A painter, oh well,’ dismissed Mariella as if that settled the matter.
‘And he’s very kindly invited us all to his show. His house is absolutely amazing.’
‘I’m not sure about that. Standing around talking about art isn’t exactly my idea of a pleasant experience.’
‘I think you’d really kick yourself if you didn’t come to this.’ Monica tried to suppress the laughter that threatened to overtake her. Her mother was in for a surprise. ‘We could always find a seat, if it was too much for you.’
‘I may be ninety but I have the energy of a woman half my age, thank you very much! Probably more than you, lying around doing nothing. Anyway,’ Mariella didn’t like Monica’s tone, ‘what have you been doing lying around here all this time? It cost us five hundred pounds to have the dogs looked after. It’s high time you were thinking about coming home and making yourself useful.’
Monica saw Martin gesticulating at her from the other side of the salon and slipped across to see what the matter was.
‘I can’t bear listening to her any longer,’ he almost spat. ‘You’re an amazing woman. You should be giving as good as you’re getting from that old cow.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Monica whispered, touched. ‘I’ve got a little plan to show my mother I’m not just a
biddable daughter.’
She turned to her mother, guessing that without Gwen to distract her she would soon be up to some mischief. ‘I’m just going down to Lerini on the bus, Ma. Do you want to come and look at the famous cathedral?’
‘I don’t like foreign cathedrals. So dark and smelling of incense.’
‘There are some nice shops,’ she lied.
The home-made crafts and created-on-the-premises jewellery she’d seen in Lerini wouldn’t be at all to her mother’s exacting tastes. On the other hand, she’d probably have a great time comparing them unfavourably with the products from Debenhams in Amersham.
Monica was pleased when the first bus to arrive was the open-topped one because it would give her mother a much better view of the landscape on the way down to Lerini.
How short-sighted of her. Instead, it gave Mariella the chance to brand the countryside as ‘savage’, the Americans three rows in front as ‘coarse’, and Monica herself as deeply selfish for not having considered her mother’s hair, which would be ruined by the buffetings of the foreign wind.
By the time they got to Lerini, Monica was exhausted and suggested that maybe they should have a cup of coffee in the piazza.
Monica had just placed the order and waited while her mother went off in search of the Ladies’ (probably another bad idea) when someone grabbed her arm.
‘Tony! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Didn’t Claire tell you I was still here? I suppose I did ask her not to.’
‘That would explain it. Where are you staying? Not still at the degli Dei?’
‘God, no. I’m renting a flat via Airbnb.’ He wrote down the address.
‘But why? Sylvie thinks you’ve gone off somewhere. As a matter of fact, I think she’s missing you.’
‘She won’t for much longer.’
Monica noted Tony’s wild-eyed look for the first time. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘It’s Kimberley. She’s threatening to sue for sexual harassment.’
Monica had been about to commiserate, but thought about it for a moment. ‘Tony, that’s terrific.’
