Last Voyage of the Valentina

by Santa Montefiore

  “When I was a young man one certainly didn’t see a woman’s thighs until one was married,” he said. Alba giggled that provocative laugh of hers. Low and husky like chimney smoke. Cook was appalled at her flirting.

  “I would have hated to be so restricted. Besides, these boots make me feel on top of the world. I stride about as if I own it,” she replied. “They’re Italian suede, you know.”

  “I’d like a pair of boots like that. How do you think they’d look beneath my robes?”

  “I don’t think it matters what you wear underneath. You could be wearing nothing at all and no one would be any the wiser.” They both laughed.

  Cook glanced across at Mrs. Arbuckle, who was talking to Fitz. Now, he was a charming man. Sensible, gentle, kind. He had even come into the kitchen after dinner the night before to thank her for such a “sumptuous feast” as he had so sweetly put it. She noticed the reverend take four potatoes. Not only an eye for the ladies but a very healthy appetite to boot. In her day vicars were men of moderation and modesty. She sniffed her disapproval, drawing the dish away before he helped himself to a fifth.

  Captain Arbuckle complimented Cook on the lunch. She was very fond of the captain, had known him most of his life. When he came back from the war with that tiny baby in his arms, it broke her heart. How could he possibly cope on his own with such a small creature? The grief had distorted his features. He looked like an old man, not the glossy young boy who had been the rebel of the family. A character he had been, always up to no good, but with the charm of a monkey. He could smile his way out of anything, that Tommy, as he was known in those days. Not when he returned from the war. He had changed. Despair had changed him. If it hadn’t been for the little girl he held in his arms so possessively he might have lost the will to live and faded right away. That happened. Cook had heard. They had talked about Valentina in hushed voices, as if to mention her name at such a sad time was in some way to denigrate it. Beautiful, she had been. An angel, they said. Then the new Mrs. Arbuckle came on to the scene and Valentina’s blessed name was never again mentioned in the house. Not directly. It wasn’t a surprise that Alba had rebelled. Cook snorted her displeasure and the captain, thinking it was on account of his having taken too many potatoes, discreetly put one back.

  Cook moved on to Fitz. He smelled of sandalwood. She could smell it above the aroma of her cooking. She liked Fitz. Though they did make an odd couple, he and Alba. They were clearly fond of each other. Fitz made Alba laugh. That was the way to her heart, though Cook wasn’t sure that he had got there. He knew where it was, he aimed straight at it, and yet, as with all the young men Alba entertained, he didn’t quite penetrate it. She could see it in Alba’s eyes. Fitz might get there in time, if he persevered. Though Alba didn’t have a good track record. She wasn’t a long-distance runner, as Captain Arbuckle had put it. She had heard him talking to his wife one evening, lamenting the lovers Alba took, her decadent lifestyle, longing for her to settle down. She was getting on, after all. As Fitz served himself the last potato, Cook didn’t mind a bit.

  It was later in the afternoon when Cook just happened to be wandering through the house to tell her employers she’d left cold meat and salad in the fridge for supper that she stumbled upon Alba rootling around in her father’s study. Cook stood in the drinks room, spying on Alba through the crack in the door, unable to contain her curiosity. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t restrain herself.

  Alba carefully opened the drawers of his desk, lifted papers, sifted through them, scowling all the while. She obviously couldn’t find what she was looking for. She kept glancing up from under her brow at the door to the hall, afraid someone might walk in and catch her. Occasionally she’d pause and stiffen like a startled cat before relaxing with relief and resuming her search. Cook was fascinated. What could she be searching for?

  Suddenly Cook stiffened too, as a shadow was thrown across the room. Mrs. Arbuckle stood in the doorway, her large frame obscuring the light that came in from the hall. Alba stood up abruptly and gasped. For a moment they simply stared at each other. Mrs. Arbuckle’s face betrayed a seething yet controlled fury. Now Cook couldn’t leave even if she had wanted to. The slightest movement would most certainly have given her away. Her skin bristled with apprehension.

  Finally Mrs. Arbuckle spoke in a very quiet voice. “Are you looking for something, Alba?” Cook, who could only see Alba’s profile, was able to detect a sly grin across Alba’s face. She leaned across her father’s desk and lifted a pencil out of his pen holder.

  “Found it,” she said flippantly. “Silly me. It was in front of my nose all the time.”

  Mrs. Arbuckle watched in disbelief as her stepdaughter flounced past her out of the room.

  At last Mrs. Arbuckle moved. She walked calmly across to the desk and began tidying it. She closed the drawers that were left ajar and put her husband’s letters back in a neat pile on the blotter. Her capable hands moved slowly and carefully, and she didn’t stop until she was satisfied that all was as it should be. The captain was a fastidious man. His years in the navy meant that he liked his things to be orderly. Then her hand hovered over one of the drawers. She chewed the inside of her cheek as if deliberating what to do. It was as if something within pulled at her. Was she perhaps looking for the same thing as Alba? After a long moment she withdrew her hand and walked out, closing the door softly behind her.

  When Cook found Mrs. Arbuckle in the sitting room, she was perched on the club fender talking to Caroline as if nothing had happened. She smiled at Cook, thanked her for lunch, and bade her good night. Cook was intrigued. The animosity between Alba and Mrs. Arbuckle was well known, but she now realized that no one really appreciated the full extent of it.

  Cook walked home to find a message from Verity. Could she telephone her? Cook snorted self-importantly. That Verity, she thought intolerantly. She’s after my recipe again. I shan’t give it to her. I absolutely shan’t.

  Alba and Fitz left not long after Cook. Thomas kissed her temple and shook hands firmly with Fitz. “I hope to see you again,” he said.

  “So do I,” Fitz replied. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Now I’ve met Alba’s parents I know where she gets all that charm from.”

  Thomas chuckled. For a moment he felt the young lieutenant laughing inside the heavy skin of the old captain. He had forgotten how good it felt. He patted Fitz on the back and suddenly it was Jack’s face that grinned back at him. He blinked the image away. He hadn’t spoken to Jack since the war. He didn’t know where he was, if indeed he was at all. He turned to the porch and remembered climbing those steps, holding little Alba, his world in shreds. Yet, hadn’t that small bundle in his arms represented hope and light when all around him was hopeless and dark? He watched her climb into the car. They waved and then were gone.

  In the car Alba vented her fury. “He’s hidden it!” she exclaimed. “I looked in every drawer in that desk. He’s either hidden it or destroyed it. I wish I had never given it to him. I’m a fool!”

  “I don’t think he’d destroy it, Alba. Not after the way he talked about her last night.” Fitz tried to soothe her. Besides, he genuinely liked her father. He wasn’t an old duffer at all. He was a relatively young man. Should have been in his prime. Yet, like many who survived the war, his experiences had robbed him of his youth. “Did you ask him for it?”

  Alba looked surprised. “No,” she replied. “We don’t talk about her. Every time I have brought her name up in the past we’ve had a terrible row, all because of the Buffalo. I suspect he’s hidden it somewhere safe where he can take it out and look at it every once in a while in private. He’s hardly going to leave it in his desk. Margo would find it in a second. It should be something that we can share,” she said in a quiet voice. “She belongs to me and Daddy. Not to the Buffalo, Caroline, Miranda, or Henry. It should be something that we can talk about by the fire, over a glass of wine. It could have been so special. But because of the Buffalo it’s a dirty
secret and I feel unworthy because I’m the product of that secret.”

  They drove on in silence, each trying to find a way through the terrible muddle that Valentina had unwittingly created by dying. The sun was setting behind them, turning the sky a brilliant gold, and pale pink clouds wafted across it like goose down. Sprout slept peacefully in the back.

  “I’m going to go and find her myself,” Alba said, sliding down the seat and folding her arms. “I’m going to find Incantellaria.”

  “Good,” Fitz replied. “I’ll help you…”

  “Will you?” she interrupted before he had finished his sentence. “You mean, you’ll come with me?” She sat up happily.

  Fitz chuckled. “I was going to offer to help you find it on a map!”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed.

  When they arrived in Cheyne Walk Fitz pulled up beneath the street lamp. He didn’t know what to expect. They no longer had a role to play. Normality could be resumed. Would he go back to his bridge nights with Viv, only to gaze longingly through Alba’s windows and suffer her suitors’ walking up her gangplank with armfuls of roses and self-satisfied smirks?

  “You’ll get a ticket if you park it here,” she said.

  “I’m not staying,” he replied.

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  Fitz sighed. “I don’t want to share you, Alba.”

  “Share me?”

  “Yes, I don’t want to share you with Rupert or Reed of the River or any of your other friends. If I’m with you I want to be with you exclusively.”

  She laughed happily. “Then you’ll be exclusive, darling Fitz. You can have me all to yourself.”

  Once again Fitz felt that uncomfortable emptiness. Her tone had been flippant. It was all too easy. “You mean you’ll stop seeing anyone else?”

  “But of course. What do you think I am?” She looked hurt. “Haven’t you thought that I might not want to share you, either?”

  “Well, no,” he replied, baffled.

  “Then park the car in your clever little place and let’s go and have a bath together. Sprout can watch if he’s good. There’s nothing I like better than a glass of wine in the bath and no, in case you’re wondering, I haven’t shared a bath with anyone before. It’ll be a first with you and a first with Sprout.”

  Fitz felt guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  “Apology accepted.” Then she laughed that infectious laugh that bubbled up from her belly. “To think that we’ve turned into the couple we’ve been pretending to be all weekend. Isn’t life funny?”

  13

  A lba did as she had promised and told all the other men who enjoyed the warm excitement of her bed that she now had a boyfriend and would no longer be able to see them. Rupert was heartbroken. He turned up at her boat, with armfuls of flowers and a long, unhappy face, begging her to marry him. Tim shouted at her down the telephone, hung up, and then sent a gift from Tiffany by way of an apology, hoping that she’d accept it and marry him. James, usually so mild-mannered and gentle, came around one evening drunk and, with the rifle his father had given him, shot at the squirrels on the roof of her boat until the police, alerted by Viv, arrived to take him away. Alba shrugged it off nonchalantly, poured herself another glass of wine, and took Fitz upstairs to make love.

  Fitz ignored Viv’s warnings and blindly pursued the object of his love. He spent most nights on the Valentina for Alba hated to be alone. She relished the nights when they didn’t make love, when she could curl up against him, his arms around her, his breathing brushing her skin and his voice murmuring into her ear. He was more than her lover; after all, lovers were two a penny. He was her friend. She had never had a friend like Fitz.

  Alba took him shopping at Mr. Fish in Beauchamp Place and persuaded him to buy new shirts. “Your clothes were in the Dark Ages,” she said when he wore one to lunch at Drones. “Really, you fitted in much too well at Beechfield Park for my liking. I bet the Buffalo was sizing you up for Caroline. I won’t burn the old shirts, just in case.” Fitz didn’t like her teasing. Didn’t she know she was going to marry him?

  They went to Andy Warhol’s exhibition of pop art at the Tate and, in an effort to be trendy, Fitz bought her Led Zeppelin’s new LP which contained her favorite song, “Stairway to Heaven.” In the evenings they went to Tramp or Annabel’s and danced until dawn. The only thing that kept him dancing into the early hours was Alba’s new pair of hotpants. It was all right for her; she didn’t have to get up in the mornings, although Reed of the River often came calling at dawn, remaining obediently downstairs. Fitz, on the other hand, had a job to do. Viv was pestering him about her book tour, which looked like it would encompass more than just France. He also had to get up early to take Sprout for a walk in Hyde Park.

  “You look tired, Fitzroy,” Viv commented, dealing the cards.

  “I’m shattered,” he replied. Viv couldn’t help but notice his mouth curl up at the corners smugly.

  “It won’t last,” she said caustically, flicking ash into the green dish.

  “What do you want to play?” asked Wilfrid. “Weak or strong, no trump?”

  “Weak,” said Viv with a sigh. “I still see that Reed of the River dropping by in the mornings.”

  “I trust her,” said Fitz confidently. “She’s perfectly entitled to have friends.” Fitz would have liked to explain that she had only slept with men out of loneliness. Now she had him, she didn’t have to feel lonely anymore.

  “I have plenty of female friends and Georgia doesn’t mind, do you, darling?” interjected Wilfrid, sorting his cards and rubbing his chin.

  “I bet none of them are like Alba,” said Viv. Georgia was offended; as much as she would have protested otherwise, she would secretly have loved to have friends like Alba.

  “I’m not going to discuss her over the bridge table. It’s not gallant,” said Fitz defensively. “One diamond.”

  “You’ve changed your tune.” Viv was put out. “No bid.”

  “One heart,” said Georgia.

  “No bid,” said Wilfrid with a sigh.

  “Three no trumps. I respect her,” said Fitz.

  Viv snorted. “People aren’t always what they seem, Fitzroy. Being a writer I observe people all the time. Alba’s used to being different things to different people. She’s an actress. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know who she is underneath all that bravado.”

  “Is she going to go to Italy to find her mother?” Georgia asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Fitz replied.

  “What is she hoping to find?” asked Wilfrid, who, having only picked up the odd remark, was confused about Alba’s mother.

  “That’s a very good question. I don’t think Alba’s really thought it through. We’re talking thirty years ago. A lot can happen in thirty years. Her mother’s family might have even moved away. But I suspect she’s looking for memories, anecdotes, to be reassured that her mother loved her. She’s never felt she’s belonged in her stepmother’s family. She wants that sense of fitting in, of looking at her relations and seeing her features reflected in theirs.”

  “You’re an incurable romantic, Fitzroy. Are you going to go with her?” asked Viv, narrowing her eyes as Georgia won the trick.

  “No,” he replied. “It’s something she has to do on her own.”

  “I don’t imagine she’s ever done anything on her own,” added Viv.

  “Where is this place?” asked Wilfrid, who flattered himself he knew Italy, having studied history of art at Oxford.

  “About an hour or so south of Naples, on the Amalfi coast. We’ve already found it on the map. She’s going to break it to her father this weekend.”

  “So you still have a role to play in this drama?” said Viv.

  “It’s no longer a drama, Viv,” retorted Fitz. “It’s life.”

  That night at Beechfield Park, Margo and Thomas were undressing for bed. Outside it was raining heavily, large icy drops that fell like stones against th
e window panes. “Bloody cold for spring,” said Thomas, peering through the curtains of his dressing room. When he managed to see past his reflection to the dark garden below, wet and glistening in the light that escaped from the house, he suddenly recalled the night he had returned with little Alba. It had rained then too.

  “I hope there’s not a frost; it’ll kill all the little buds that have just begun to sprout,” Margo replied. “It’s been so warm lately, and now this. One never can tell in this country.” She stepped out of her skirt and stood in her petticoat, undoing her necklace. “Did you remember to tell Peter to have a look at Boris’s foot? I notice he’s limping.”

  Thomas pulled himself away from the window and closed the curtains.

  “He’s probably done it chasing those sows around the pen all day,” he said, folding his trousers and placing them on the chair. Suddenly Jack’s face appeared in his head, with Brendan alert and playful on his shoulder. Jack was laughing at his joke, his cheeky smile wide and infectious.

  “What did you say?” Margo let her petticoat drop to the floor.

  “Nothing, darling,” he replied, undoing the buttons of his shirt.

  “Do you know Mabel telephoned to remind me to do the church flowers this Sunday? As if I’d forget!” She took off her pants and bra and slipped into her white nightie. Then she sat in front of the mirror and combed her hair, now almost totally gray. Margo didn’t seem to care. She rubbed some Pond’s cream into her hands, wiping the excess onto her face. “Really, Mabel’s such a busybody. She should run for mayor or something. Put that nosy talent of hers to good use. Alba’s coming down with Fitz,” she added. “That’s three times this month,” she went on when he didn’t respond. “I think Fitz’s a bridge over troubled water, don’t you?”