An Italian Holiday

by Maeve Haran

  ‘It won’t be. You just wait and see. You’ll wake up and it’ll be a beautiful morning.’

  Stephen felt ridiculous. All this time he had visited the Villa Le Sirenuse only for brief moments, and with mixed feelings. Now that, finally, he had decided to go, and was feeling a childish excitement, what happened? His flight got diverted to Bari because of localized fog.

  Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to get a hotel room in Bari then hire a car tomorrow and drive to Lanzarella. But if Stephen Charlesworth was known for one thing, it was his determination and his occasional wild decisions that had a habit of paying off.

  So he didn’t do that. Instead, he got in a taxi and asked it to drive him the three hours or so to Lanzarella. Then he went to sleep.

  When they reached the villa, it was pitch-dark. The picturesque arches of the old convent and the square tower which housed the main rooms were shrouded in an eerie mist. There was utter silence apart from the call of an owl to its mate in the holm oak trees.

  Stephen thanked and tipped the driver and got out his key to the large back doors. The silence inside matched the total quiet outside. In the kitchen, he realized how starving he was and helped himself to ham and cheese from the fridge plus a glass of white wine from an open bottle.

  He took his meal through to the salon where an amazing sight waited him on the terrace. It was like the stage set of a country party. Thomas Hardy meets Glastonbury festival. Even Stephen, who didn’t aspire to be fashionable, recognized the trendy vintage vibe.

  Some people, coming back to their house and finding a large party about to happen, might have felt aggrieved. But Stephen was an exceptionally generous man. He was delighted they all felt at home enough to throw a party. He had told them to make themselves relaxed here, and clearly they had. Besides, Stephen liked parties, especially if he didn’t have to organize them. Finding him here would give them all a bit of a shock but it looked like they could find a space to fit him in.

  He sat down on the sofa, hoping the fog would lift for them. He noticed his own wedding photograph in its silver frame. Someone had put a single red rose in a bud vase next to it, probably Beatrice.

  He picked it up. ‘Time I started to love this place again, Carla,’ he confided to the photograph. Then he kissed it lightly. ‘I wish we could have had children, you and I. Though we were so crazily young they would have been middle-aged by now.’ The thought made him laugh. ‘Fancy having forty-year-old children!’

  Extreme exhaustion suddenly came over him. He washed up his plate – years of living alone had made him well house-trained – and picked up his carry-on bag. He always slept in the front room when he was here, the one his mother had slept in, she told him, when she’d stayed here. There were plenty of rooms to choose from now, Gwen had said, since Sylvie had done three up in her inimitable decorating style. He couldn’t wait to see them.

  The curtains were partly open in the room, lending that strange other-worldly sense, exacerbated by the owl. Why did owls always sound so mournful when it was just their normal cry?

  He threw his clothes off and climbed into bed.

  To his horror, he encountered a warm, sleeping body.

  The body sat up and took a swing at him.

  ‘If that’s you, Giovanni, you can bloody well fuck off!’

  Stephen ducked, just avoiding a black eye.

  ‘Actually,’ he explained apologetically, ‘it isn’t Giovanni. It’s Stephen Charlesworth.’

  ‘Stephen!’ Angela almost passed out as she snapped on the light. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Stephen, naked apart from the sheet, seemed to think the whole thing was extremely funny. He surveyed Angela admiringly. ‘God, Angela, you hardly look any different! And who’s Giovanni?’

  ‘Giovanni is your under-gardener. And the local stud. He’s been behaving very oddly and we all thought he might be up to something. Sorry I nearly hit you.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable when caught in a lady’s bed. We do have a slight problem. Neither of us seems to be wearing anything.’

  ‘I’ll put the light out, ‘Angela volunteered, ‘and then go and get my wrap.’

  ‘You always were delightfully practical,’ he recalled. ‘I’ll get my T-shirt and boxers. Maybe we could count to twenty before we put it back on.’

  In the disguising darkness Angela began to giggle. ‘This really is the most preposterous situation!’

  ‘All my fault, or rather my mother’s. She suggested I come and surprise you all.’

  ‘Well, you certainly did that. You can go back to bed. I’ll go and sleep in the Bride’s Room.’

  ‘The Bride’s Room?’ Stephen asked, stunned. ‘Is one of you getting married? Not Monica, surely?’ He paused a moment. ‘Or you?’

  ‘It’s a girl called Daniela. Lanzarella’s wedding of the year, if only the bloody fog lifts. It’s a long story but basically we wanted to show you how the villa could be useful to the village – by holding a local wedding.’

  ‘I look forward to being convinced.’

  ‘Goodnight, Stephen. I’ll try not to wake you when I come and get some clothes, only as you can probably imagine, we’re going to be pretty busy.’

  ‘Any way I can help, I’d be delighted. I’m just pleased the house seems happy again.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful place. I think we’ve all fallen in love with it.’

  ‘Fingers crossed for sunshine.’

  Angela had to move the wedding dress off the chaise longue where Sylvie had draped it so that Daniela could change into it tomorrow.

  She looked at it as she did so. It was a real work of art. Weddings were ridiculous events, really. The expense, the mad planning, all for one day that had little relationship to the life that would follow. All the same, there was a part of her that felt sad she would never be a bride herself. There were rites of passage she had denied herself. As Drew had pointed out, even owning a dog. ‘But I’m not some frosty old maid,’ she reminded herself. ‘I have friends!’

  As she tucked herself uncomfortably underneath a bolt of unwrapped fabric, all that she could find that was remotely like a bedcover, she smiled. Stephen was here and instead of being livid he seemed to think the whole thing was funny. The last image she had before she closed her eyes was Stephen, his long frame covered in only a sheet, grey eyes twinkling with humour at finding himself in bed with her again after all these years.

  The next thing she knew it was morning. ‘Angela, what on earth are you doing here? Where’s the dress?’

  ‘On the back of the door. Sylvie, the weirdest thing, Stephen arrived in the middle of the night. He actually got into my bed.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Sylvie panicked. ‘He’s not going to call off the wedding?’

  ‘Actually, he seemed to think it was quite a good idea.’

  ‘Why did he get into bed with you?’

  ‘He didn’t think I was in it, obviously. In fact, I socked him one. I thought he might be Giovanni. You know how weirdly he was behaving yesterday.’

  ‘Forget about Giovanni, we have a bigger problem on our hands.’

  ‘Not the fog still?’

  Sylvie threw open the curtains and brilliant sunshine streamed in.

  ‘We’ve lost the bride.’

  ‘What do you mean, we’ve lost the bride?’

  ‘Her mother’s downstairs having hysterics. She went out with her girlfriends last night and hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Angela leapt up, ‘you’re not imagining anything sinister?’

  ‘I very much doubt it. She messaged one of the bridesmaids at eight a.m. this morning not to forget her gold stilettos.’

  ‘Well, then, she has to be somewhere. You don’t think she’s had second thoughts?’

  ‘I’d be extremely surprised. Now if he’d had second thoughts, it’d be much more credible.’

  ‘We’d better start playing Hunt the Bride, then.’

  ‘Angela . . .’

&n
bsp; ‘Sylvie . . .’

  They both had the identical idea at the same moment. ‘Giovanni!’

  ‘Oh my God, surely he wouldn’t be that stupid?’

  ‘Do you know what, that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do. Where the hell is he? He’s supposed to be up with the lark picking wildflowers with Monica.’

  ‘Maybe Daniela’s gone with them,’ Sylvie suggested hopefully.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, a major war seemed to have broken out. Daniela’s father was screaming at his wife that Daniela was a puttana, a whore, and it was all her fault. Claire, ignoring them, was up to her elbows in dough; Beatrice was weeping quietly in the corner.

  ‘Luigi,’ Monica tried to introduce some calm, ‘please start picking in the upper garden. Anemones, wild irises, and ivy. Where is Giovanni?’

  Luigi shook his head. ‘He arrive with me to pick flowers then he disappear.’

  She slipped into the shed where she was keeping all the precious roses, and picked up the large baskets to fill with wildflowers for the headdresses and bridesmaids’ bouquets. She was about to leave when she heard a sound coming from behind the stacks of pots.

  ‘Daniela,’ Monica said coldly, ‘your mother is hysterical and your father says you are a puttana. I imagine by now word will have got back to your bridegroom that you are missing. You had better think very fast of a convincing excuse or all our hard work will be very much in vain.’

  ‘Che cazzo!’ Daniela pushed Giovanni off her with impressive speed. ‘Fucking hell!’

  Giovanni, who, like many promiscuous men, was shocked at women using bad language, looked away primly.

  ‘I can handle Marco,’ she announced with more confidence, in Monica’s view, than the situation warranted.

  When they arrived in the kitchen, Marco, his mother, and the best man had all arrived and were all standing round Claire yelling at each other and at Daniela’s parents. Marco was insisting that the wedding was off.

  ‘Marco,’ Daniela adopted an impressively queenly manner, ‘have you lost your mind? I went out to the shed simply to choose the loveliest roses for my headdress.’ She looked modestly down at the flowers she had had the presence of mind to pick up.

  Monica had to admit she was good.

  ‘And that prick helped you, I suppose?’ Marco glared at Giovanni who, for once in his life, had the sense to look innocent.

  Into this melee strode Tony. He quietly announced that his wife would like some coffee on the terrace, then carried Marco away from the maelstrom of family accusations.

  ‘Look, Marco, give her the benefit of the doubt. Giovanni tries to pretend that every woman in the world is after him. Daniela wouldn’t fall for that cheap routine of his; she’s much too classy, especially when she’s marrying a proper man like you. I mean, let’s face it, Giovanni is the gardener and you own a factory. And Daniela loves you. Look how she gave up her dream of getting married here and agreed to having the ceremony in church to please you.’

  The logic of this seemed to be making an impression on Marco, who valued himself quite highly.

  ‘È vero, this is true,’ he conceded.

  Marco, Tony quickly decided, wanted to be convinced.

  Marco suddenly looked at Tony suspiciously. ‘You believed her story about the flowers?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ lied Tony.

  ‘Perhaps you are right. She did go and look for flowers.’

  If he believed that, he’d believe anything, but that was love for you. Tony himself had believed Kimberley thought he was wonderful.

  ‘I will go and talk to her.’

  In the kitchen, Tony went straight up to Daniela. ‘Go upstairs to the bride’s room. Put on your beautiful dress. I’ll send Marco up in ten minutes. The rest’s up to you.’

  ‘But if the bridegroom sees the dress on the day of their wedding, it will bring bad luck,’ pouted Daniela.

  ‘If the bridegroom catches his bride with the under-gardener on the day of the wedding, it is much worse luck, I can tell you!’ Tony replied unsympathetically.

  Tony was as good as his word. He dispatched the bride’s and bridegroom’s parents off back to their hotels for coffee and sent Marco upstairs.

  There was absolute silence. They all waited for war to be declared and objects thrown.

  But the sounds that emerged five minutes later were reassuringly conciliatory. As well as extremely noisy.

  ‘Oh my God, her dress!’ wailed Sylvie. ‘When I think how long it took me to alter it!’

  ‘You can mend the odd rip for the sake of marital harmony.’ Tony slipped a reassuring arm around his wife. ‘I hope that stupid girl has learned her lesson. I rather like Marco.’

  ‘Whether it works or not, thank you for trying.’ Sylvie kissed him gratefully. ‘You’ve probably saved the day.’

  ‘And sentenced a nice man to life with a trollop. Oh well, that’s marriage for you.’

  ‘I hope you’re not drawing parallels with me,’ Sylvie teased.

  ‘More with myself actually.’

  ‘You know, I think I’m going to rather enjoy today. Wedding or not.’

  Angela could see that Sylvie and Tony’s reunion was looking like more and more of a success. ‘Oh my God, that reminds me,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘I’d better go and wake Stephen.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Claire demanded.

  ‘Today, of all days,’ Angela announced, ‘our mysterious host has decided to join us!’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Claire anxiously. ‘And we hadn’t even told him about the wedding! What on earth will he think of us?’

  ‘The funny thing is, he seems quite happy.’

  ‘It must be really weird for him, coming back into all this.’ She gestured at the festive tables, flowers and candles. ‘I mean, the last wedding here he went to might have been his own.’

  They were all quiet for a moment, thinking about Stephen’s young bride and all the hopes and dreams she must have had in this house.

  In the silence they noticed that the noisy reconciliation between bride- and bridegroom-to-be had also gone silent.

  ‘I hope she hasn’t completely wrecked her dress. The hours I spent on it . . .’ Sylvie protested.

  ‘Ripped lace could be the latest look for the boho bride,’ laughed Angela. ‘Very Kate Moss. Just tumbled out of bed in my wedding dress could definitely catch on. Where’s Monica, by the way?’

  ‘Out picking wildflowers.’

  The kitchen doors opened and Monica came in followed by Luigi and his little grandson, carrying baskets of ivy, pale-coloured anemones, irises and wild clematis. ‘OK, who’s up for making the headdresses? The bridesmaids will be here in half an hour. Thank God we did the pew-ends and the big church arrangements last night. By the way, I sent Giovanni home. He’s caused enough trouble already today. God knows what would happen if he met the bridesmaids, even if they are only ten.’

  They were all busy twining ivy with the wildflowers when Stephen arrived in the kitchen. Monica, who hadn’t been warned, almost fainted. Beatrice and Immaculata both screeched like mating owls and threw themselves at him.

  ‘Stefano, santa madre di Dio! You did not warn us you were coming!’ Immaculata couldn’t decide whether to weep or cover him in kisses.

  ‘But your room!’ Beatrice was beginning to realize the full horror of Stephen’s unexpected arrival. ‘Signorina Angela sleeping in your room.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen smiled, ‘it was quite a shock when I tried to get into my bed.’

  ‘And not just for you, I can tell you!’ Angela agreed.

  Sylvie, Monica and Claire looked at each other and then back at Angela.

  ‘Shut up, you lot!’ Angela commanded.

  ‘Did we speak?’ asked Sylvie. ‘Did we make the slightest implication?’

  ‘You didn’t need to. I understand the post-menopausal harpy brain.’

  Stephen listened to them, amazed. ‘Women are wonderful,’ he marvelled. ‘If men talked to each
other like that someone would get hurt.’

  ‘We’ve spent quite a lot of time together, thanks to you. Besides, it’s a reference to something the delightful Hugo Robertson said.’

  ‘He sounds charming, I must say.’

  ‘So charming that we’d go to any lengths to stop you selling him the villa. Including holding a wedding to show you why you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Right,’ Sylvie announced. ‘I’m going upstairs to repair the bride.’

  For some reason all the others fell about.

  Tony held out his hand to shake Stephen’s. ‘Time we left them to it. I’m Tony, by the way, Sylvie’s husband.’

  ‘Right.’ Stephen tried not to stare at him since the last time he’d seen him it had been in the infamous email attachment.

  ‘I know,’ Tony smiled ruefully, ‘I’m famous. Thank you for letting us stay in your beautiful house. It’s been quite an adventure one way or another.’

  ‘So it seems. I’m beginning to wish I’d been here too.’

  There was a sudden eruption of small girls as the gaggle of bridesmaids made their appearance.

  ‘Andiamo!’ Monica adopted her librarian persona. ‘Upstairs! Everyone pick up one of these headdresses on the way.’

  There were whoops of delight as each little girl grabbed a flowery crown and dashed after Monica.

  ‘Right,’ Claire insisted, ‘less of the mini-Glastonbury. I need a clear kitchen! Thank God we’ll have an hour for all the last-minute stuff while they’re tying the knot. I love that man Marco for insisting on a church service.’

  Once Sylvie had appeared upstairs the bridegroom took himself off as fast as possible, much to general relief, since the bride’s parents had reappeared.

  ‘This is going to be a classic wedding,’ murmured Sylvie, ‘everyone hates each other already.’

  But when Daniela descended from the Bride’s Room with her little bridesmaids in tow, wearing the ingeniously repaired dress and a headdress of ivy and wildflowers, all they could do was watch in admiration. She even managed to convey, with the help of her nine-foot veil and the strategically placed lace inserts, which played down her ample chest, a surprising air of maidenly modesty.

  ‘And given what she’s been up to this morning that’s quite an achievement,’ Sylvie whispered.