An Italian Holiday

by Maeve Haran

  It was the oddest staff meeting Claire had ever been to. They sat on the terrace, amid the scent of jasmine, wallflowers and wild sage, with bees buzzing all around them and the odd butterfly landing on Angela’s laptop.

  Beatrice and Immaculata, Luigi and Giovanni all looked as though they’d been summoned to a firing squad. The two women and Luigi sat, heads bowed, as if they’d been waiting forever for this moment, while Giovanni was doing his Greek god number, head proudly erect, perfect profile much in evidence, buttons undone, showing the physique that seemed to be even more desirable than they’d hitherto suspected.

  Angela sat at the head, with Monica at her right hand to translate anything tricky. This was one occasion when absolutely nobody minded Angela, with her habit of authority, being in control.

  ‘I just wanted to start by saying what a marvellous, memorable time we’ve all been having and how grateful we are for your amazing care of us.’

  Immaculata attempted a smile but the air of the condemned cell persisted.

  ‘I’m sure you must have discussed many times what we are all doing here between yourselves, and what it is Stephen has in mind. The answer is, I suspect, that Stephen isn’t sure himself. He loves this place, but feels guilty about keeping it to himself. Also, I’m sure you know by now about the offer from the hotel chain who own the degli Dei.’

  Immaculata and Beatrice exchanged anguished looks.

  ‘We feel, for what our advice is worth, that this place is far too precious and unique, and that a hotel chain would only ruin it.’

  A loud round of applause drowned out her words.

  ‘You do realize, of course, that Stephen doesn’t have to listen to us. We’re not professionals, just friends and well-wishers who’ve fallen in love with Le Sirenuse. But we do have a plan. We believe that Stephen really cares about the villa and would like to keep it on, but it worries him that he uses it so little. But what if the villa were of use sometimes to the community? For example for weddings for local people? With Stephen’s permission’ – she looked beadily at each staff member to make sure they understood the subtext, no personal gain even if they gave half back – ‘we propose to hold a wedding and see if we can make the idea a success, and if it is, we’ll try and sell him the idea that he keeps on doing it. So in two weeks’ time, with all your help – and, of course, we realize you have done this before’ – the staff all looked nervously at each other at such a direct reference to their previous activities – ‘the wedding of Daniela di Agosti and Marco Moretti will be taking place here. Daniela and her family would also like to stay the night here.’ A slow, sexy smile appeared on Giovanni’s handsome face. Angela looked straight at him. ‘And she will be treated with the utmost respect appropriate to a bride-to-be. Is that clear?’

  Giovanni glanced around innocently as if any alternative would be entirely alien to him.

  ‘So, good luck to everyone. It will be very hard work.’

  ‘In bocca al lupo,’ added Monica, realizing that it wasn’t long since they’d wished the same to Luca.

  They laughed for the first time. ‘In bocca al lupo!’

  ‘And you’re going to need plenty of good luck,’ Tony suggested, when they recounted the meeting to him afterwards. ‘Two questions: how long are you planning to stay here to get this off the ground? And what are you going to do if Stephen suddenly decides to come and stay?’

  ‘Pass and pass!’ Angela collapsed with laughter. ‘I have absolutely no bloody idea. For the first time in my adult life I’m actually being spontaneous and it’s absolutely terrifying. But I’ll tell you one thing – I’m getting broadband installed tomorrow whether Stephen likes it or not!’

  It was Monica’s hairdresser who organized the meeting with Daniela and her mother the next day at eleven.

  ‘I think Sylvie should be in charge, since you’ll be doing most of the organizing,’ Angela suggested.

  Sylvie nodded. ‘Last night I was so nervous . . .’

  ‘The celebrated Sylvie Sutton nervous?’ interrupted Claire, amazed.

  ‘I do get nervous, as a matter of fact. Anyway, now I’ve looked at about a million YouTube videos on How to Organize Your Daughter’s Destination Wedding, I feel a lot more confident.’

  There was a palpable feeling of excitement among the staff as the pair arrived. Daniela, the belle of Lanzarella, was marrying the boss of a local factory and the fact that she was having the wedding at the villa instead of Lanzarella’s premier hotel was seen as a Major Coup.

  ‘I’d love to see Hugo’s reaction when he hears what’s happening,’ confessed Angela with satisfaction. ‘In fact, this wedding had better be absolutely bloody perfect!’

  ‘Thanks for that reassuring encouragement,’ Sylvie said as she passed her to go and greet the bride-to-be.

  ‘Ciao, Daniela.’ Sylvie held out a welcoming hand, as she stood on the back steps.

  ‘Buongiorno, signora,’ she greeted Daniela’s mother, ‘let me take you through to the salon.’

  Daniela was one of those generously built Italian girls with soft, large bosoms and masses of glossy brown hair, wearing a slightly too-tight burnt-orange shift dress. She looked around critically, obviously comparing the unassuming villa entrance to the grand portico of the Grand Hotel degli Dei.

  ‘For the wedding, we will put up an awning and lay down a red carpet,’ Sylvie quickly reassured her, reading her mind. ‘The delights of the villa are like a woman who reveals her beauty gradually.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Angela whispered to Monica. ‘She’s beginning to sound like Giovanni!’

  ‘May we introduce ourselves?’ Monica steered the subject away from the villa’s slowly revealed beauty. ‘This is the celebrated designer, Sylvie Sutton, who is very well known in London; Angela Williams, who is a famous businesswoman, will manage the costings; Claire Lambert, who will do the catering. My name is Monica Mathieson and I am here to help with any translation you might like and also to take care of the flowers. I have done a few arrangements from the garden so you can see some different styles.’ She indicated various arrangements from the formal to the cottage-garden style she’d arranged earlier that morning.

  ‘We are all friends of the villa’s owner and we would like to welcome you to the wonderful Villa Le Sirenuse. Let us take you through to the salon and dining room. By the way, this is our proudest possession.’ She pointed to the fresco of The Annunciation. Daniela only glanced at it; she had clearly seen enough religious art to last a lifetime.

  Beatrice had laid out tiny coffee cups and a plate of equally tiny biscuits in the salon. They all sat down. Sylvie began proceedings. ‘The major question, Daniela, is would you like to be married in Lanzarella Church, or would you prefer to have the ceremony here at the villa?’

  Daniela was evidently a young lady who knew her own mind. Which was just as well as her mother was a colourless woman who seemed permanently amazed that she could have produced such a feminine yet feisty daughter who was definitely marrying up.

  ‘At the villa, of course,’ she stated, as if any other idea were slightly mad. ‘On the terrace next to the statues, with the sea behind me. That is the view that everyone will know at once. They will say, “Oh, Daniela is being married at the famous Villa Le Sirenuse!”’

  ‘Have you thought about the look of the wedding at all?’ asked Sylvie, knowing that every bride from Eve onwards spent all their waking hours thinking about nothing else. ‘As the house has such amazing art and history, I wondered about a medieval-themed wedding? I have done a few sketches to give you a possible idea.’

  She handed over a watercolour of a beautiful young woman in an embroidered dress looking like a Renaissance Madonna.

  ‘Assolutamente no!’ Daniela exclaimed, horrified. She turned a gaze on Monica that was starry-eyed and steelily determined in equal measure. ‘With you four ladies to help me, what I want is an English wedding!’

  She reached down into her voluminous handbag and produced a glossy maga
zine and an enormous folder of coloured photocopies.

  ‘Oh my good Lord,’ murmured Claire, trying not to catch Sylvie’s eye, ‘she’s only brought the exact blueprint for Kate Moss’s wedding!’

  Claire could almost feel Sylvie’s heart thud to the floor as Daniela handed over the reams of interviews with John Galliano about Kate’s Great Gatsby-inspired wedding dress created by hand out of gossamer-like silk, chiffon and tulle and thousands of sequins.

  She turned to Monica. ‘You are the lady doing the flowers?’

  Monica nodded.

  ‘I want only apricot and lilac roses in my bouquet. And for the tiara only ivy and flowers from the garden.’ She turned to Claire. ‘And you are the cooking lady? Then here is the menu. I have been on the Internet and found exactly what Kate had!’ she announced proudly. ‘Toro tartare with caviar . . .’

  ‘What is Toro tartare?’ whispered Angela. ‘Is it something to do with a bull?’

  ‘Some kind of sushi, I think,’ Claire whispered back.

  ‘Longhorn veal with grilled peaches, strawberry granita dusted with gold leaf, wine from Sesti and champagne. Oh, and a cake where every layer is a different flavour!’ she added, and sat back smiling contentedly.

  ‘That is a young lady who knows her own mind!’ Angela announced, impressed, when Sylvie had led them off on a tour of the house and garden.

  ‘There’ll be a lot more on her list, you wait; Diptyque candles at seventy quid a pop,’ Monica smiled, ‘love birds in cages, white butterflies—’

  ‘Not unless Kate had them,’ Angela giggled. ‘But doesn’t she realize Kate’s wedding wasn’t exactly happy-ever-after?’

  ‘Daniela’s the determined type who doesn’t give a hoot,’ Monica shrugged. ‘She just wants the fairy-tale dress and all the trappings. And good luck to her, I say.’

  Sylvie joined them after Daniela and her mother had left. She looked exhausted.

  ‘That young lady should be running a multinational company! What an eye for detail. I suppose it’s just as well, given how little time we’ve got. One thing, though. I am definitely trying to talk her out of Kate Moss’s wedding dress. It was made for a waif and Daniela is built like a sofa.’

  ‘Talk that young lady out of her dream dress?’ The others laughed till tears ran down their faces. ‘Even John Galliano himself couldn’t manage that.’

  ‘But she’d look so much better in something that flatters her size!’ Sylvie wailed. ‘It could take a stone off her at least. If she copies Kate Moss, she’ll look like a fat auntie borrowing her little niece’s clothes!’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to make a bouquet – out of apricot and lilac roses – so big it hides most of the damage!’ Monica suggested. ‘Besides, I like her. I just wonder if the bridegroom knows quite what he’s in for!’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t find out before the big day, then.’

  ‘Well, my job’s easy – all I have to do is source toro, whatever that is, longhorn veal and gold leaf! To think I was hoping for asparagus, rare beef and strawberries!’ Claire picked up one of the photographs Daniela had left. ‘Look at the veil, though. That could hide a few curves. See how clever it is. It has a short part that goes over the face like a mantilla for the ceremony that gets tied back by those little rose clips after the kiss, but the long part is about nine feet! Enough to cover three Danielas!’

  Just in case life might have got dull, Monica spotted Constantine and Spaghetti, the former thankfully no longer dressed as a cardinal, appearing out of the bushes.

  ‘Causing trouble again, ladies?’

  ‘Constantine,’ protested Angela, ‘can you not call us ladies? It makes us sound like the committee of a golf club in Guildford.’

  ‘Girls, then?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Golden girls?’

  ‘Definitely not!’

  ‘Anyway, in what way are we causing trouble?’

  ‘Your bride has been tweeting away. Guido brought it to show me. She has been showing off about the new venue for her English country wedding. The degli Dei were rude and old fashioned as well as outrageously expensive, she says. Your friend Hugo isn’t going to be happy about that. Weddings are his number-one earner. In fact, if rumours are true, about his only earner.’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly our problem,’ Angela pointed out. She didn’t want to think about Hugo. It was still too raw.

  ‘But why – if his hotel isn’t doing that well – would he have been making an offer for this place?’ Monica asked, puzzled.

  ‘That’s the way capitalism works.’ Constantine shrugged. ‘If your business is doing badly, you buy another and hope that it will rescue it. Usually with other people’s money. I expect Hugo Robertson can be extremely persuasive.’

  Angela got up quickly. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  ‘Angela . . .’ Sylvie began, ‘what if Stephen sees it?’

  ‘I think that’s pretty unlikely. And Gwen said we should do what we want, that he would appreciate any efforts we made.’

  ‘Right. Good.’ Sylvie got up, suddenly all decision. ‘Well, I’d better go and think about how to turn an eleven-stone bride-to-be into a Pre-Raphaelite wood-sprite. Easy peasy.’

  Angela dived into the green depths of the villa’s pool and tried to think only about the feel of the enveloping water and the beauty of the sunlight splintering the surface above. When she was a child, she used to spend hours at the local pool, amazing her father with her determination to swim faster and faster. While other children splashed about, Angela competed with herself.

  She knew it was a dangerous emotion; despite her efforts, she was feeling sorry for Hugo. She knew he didn’t really care about her, probably never had done, but he had penetrated her defences and for the first time in years, she had imagined a proper life together in this beautiful place. But maybe her dreams had been no more solid than Claire’s when she had fantasized about leaving Martin for Luca and his lemon groves.

  She had got to like Martin. He seemed different from the man Claire had described. Were they all mad, thinking they could still make crazy choices at their age? It was something their parents’ generation would never have considered. Throwing everything up and starting again at over sixty; instead of being happy with retreating to the man-shed and bowling club, they still thought they could start whole new lives.

  How wrong she’d been. Pathetic even. Duped.

  She pulled herself out of the pool and shook the wetness from her. Drying herself briskly she made herself think of practical things. They needed a budget and Daniela and her mother were going to have to sign it.

  A happy bustle took over the kitchen at the Villa Le Sirenuse the next day as Claire, with Immaculata and Beatrice to help her, surveyed the tableware, glasses, serving platters and candelabra. Daniela had invited a hundred and forty guests and they would have to order a lot of stuff in. Nevertheless, the villa possessed some very fine artefacts which would make perfect showpieces.

  Immaculata, Claire noticed, was quietly weeping as she polished a silver rose bowl which would look lovely with a centrepiece of the bride’s apricot and lilac roses.

  ‘Immaculata, what’s the matter?’ Claire enquired gently. She’d become very fond of both of them over their stay here.

  ‘The last time we use this bowl is for the wedding breakfast of Stephen and Carla.’

  ‘Oh dear, that’s sad.’ Claire sat her down and produced a glass of water. ‘You’re very fond of Stephen, aren’t you?’

  Immaculata nodded. ‘He is very good man. He say to us we can always work here. You do not think Stephen would sell his house to be a hotel?’

  Claire realized what a terrible shock it must have been to someone who had worked here most of her life.

  ‘We hope not, no. Let’s make a big success of this wedding and show him he should hang on to it!’

  ‘I think the sooner the wedding happen the better with that one.’ Immaculata nodded ominously towards Daniela and her mot
her, who were sitting in the salon.

  Trying not to think what this pronouncement might mean, Claire started to draw up some costings. ‘Toro’ or ‘O toro’, she discovered rather to her dismay, is the fatty part of the Bluefin tuna – naturally the most prized and expensive bit. And then there was the caviar, all of which would have to be sourced at the fish market in Naples. She thought longingly of all that free asparagus in the gardens and wondered whether to have another go at persuasion. The veal, she suspected, would be a lot easier as Daniela probably didn’t know what Longhorn Veal was. She’d only got this information from the Internet. It probably wasn’t what Kate Moss had anyway. Claire would do her best and Daniela would have to lump it.

  Strawberry granita she could manage, but where the hell did you get real gold leaf? A browse around the cook’s friend YouTube told her a list of suppliers and, amazingly enough, it wasn’t that expensive. Maybe it could help fund the tuna.

  The wedding cake she could also manage. The biggest challenge would be dreaming up seven different flavours and finding enough lilies of the valley to decorate it like Kate’s in the time they had to do it.

  While Immaculata and Beatrice sang and polished, it struck Claire again how sad it had been that Evan and Belinda hadn’t asked for her help with their wedding. Evan would have, she knew, but had Belinda sensed Claire’s hostility and thought screw you? Here was a wedding she was helping to organize for a complete stranger and already she felt that it was going to be enjoyable because it was a shared venture. Maybe if she had been nicer to Belinda, Belinda would have wanted to ask for her help.

  Claire sighed. Too late now. Much too late. But when she went home she would make a deliberate effort. And she must stop right now thinking of Belinda as her ‘difficult daughter-in-law’. She started to hum without realizing it was ‘Blowing in the Wind’.

  ‘You sound happy,’ Martin commented. She’d joined him out on the terrace in the sun where he was doing the crossword.