Last Voyage of the Valentina

by Santa Montefiore

  “I shouldn’t think you’ll have much trouble, if they’re still there. It’s a tiny place. Only a couple of thousand people, I suspect.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone go there?”

  “Because there’s nothing to do. It’s sleepy. A forgotten little corner of Italy. It’s very beautiful, though. Quite unlike the rest of the coast. It’s meant to be enchanted.”

  “Carnations,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been told.”

  “And weeping statues. I’ve been there many times. If I want to be alone, I go there. It soothes the soul. If I wanted to disappear, I’d go there too,” he added with a wry smile. “I hope you don’t disappear.”

  “Remember your promise,” she said, her voice cold.

  “Look, if once you get there you find you need money to tide you over, I’ll lend you whatever you need. I’d give it to you, but I know you won’t accept. Consider me a friend in a strange place. I promise you can trust me.” He touched her naked arm. His hand was warm and unexpectedly reassuring.

  “Just take me to Incantellaria,” she said, getting up. His hand fell onto the table. Then she turned to him and her face softened. “Friend.”

  20

  I t felt good to be at the helm of a fast speedboat. The wind raked through her hair with cool, brisk fingers, taking her hopelessness with it. The boat jumped as it cut through the waves and Alba had to hold on to prevent herself from toppling over. There, with the sun on her face and an irrepressible sense of optimism burning through her chest, she had no cares in the world.

  Gabriele grinned at her, taking pleasure from this lovely stranger who had lost everything on his shore. He pointed out the sheer rocks that rose from the sea like the walls of an impenetrable fortress and explained that Incantellaria was a place entirely on its own, as if God had taken a small slice of paradise and placed it in the midst of this unforgiving terrain. “Its loveliness is quite unexpected,” he said as the boat passed cove after cove of hard gray rock.

  It was farther than Alba had imagined. She had thought it was literally around the corner from Sorrento.

  “If it doesn’t work out,” Gabriele shouted against the roar of the wind, as if reading her thoughts, “I’ll come and get you. You only have to telephone.”

  “Thank you,” she replied gratefully.

  Her unease was returning. Incantellaria was obviously cut off not only from Italy but from the rest of the world. The sun was obscured behind a solitary cloud and the sea darkened ominously, mirroring her own inner fears. What if her family had all died or moved away? She couldn’t bear to go home with nothing resolved.

  As Gabriele placed a reassuring hand on hers, the cloud moved on and the sun shone brilliantly again. The boat sped around a vast and solid wall of black rock behind which the coast opened up unexpectedly like the lid of a crude treasure chest, to reveal a glittering, verdant bay.

  For Alba it was love at first sight. It sucked her in and filled her spirit. The very shape of the shoreline was as harmonious as the gentle curve of a cello. The white houses glimmered in the dazzling light, their wrought-iron balconies dripping with red and pink geraniums. The dome of the chapel rose above the gray-tiled roofs where doves settled to watch the coming and going of fishermen. Alba’s body quivered with excitement. Surely there, in that little chapel, her parents had married. Without even setting foot on the shore she felt that their love affair was at last becoming tangible.

  She raised her eyes to the emerald hills behind, where pine trees twitched their spiky green fingers and the ruins of an old lookout tower stood proud and dignified still, after centuries of abandonment. She breathed in the aromatic scents of rosemary and thyme that were carried on the wind with the whiff of mystery and adventure.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Gabriele, slowing down the boat to motor gently into the harbor.

  “You’re right. It’s completely different from the rest of the coast. It’s so green. So vibrant.”

  “It’s only when you see the place that you realize its inhabitants probably thought little of the carnation miracle. It would be odd anywhere else in the world, but here, one imagines such things happen all the time.”

  “It’s already home to me,” she said in a quiet voice. “I feel it here,” she added, placing a hand on her heart.

  “It’s a wonder, really, that it hasn’t become a tourist trap with restaurants and bars and clubs. Of course, there are some, but it’s not exactly Saint Tropez.”

  “I’m glad it isn’t Saint Tropez, because it’s going to be my secret place.” Her eyes blurred with tears. No wonder her father and the Buffalo had never brought her here; they knew they would lose her forever.

  Gabriele steered the boat into the harbor. As it nestled against the walls of the quay, a little boy hurried up to secure the rope to the wharf, his round face bright with excitement. Gabriele threw him the rope, which he caught with a triumphant squeal, shouting to his friends to come and join in the fun.

  “They obviously don’t get many visitors,” said Gabriele. “I think we’re going to cause a bit of a stir.”

  Alba disembarked and stood, hands on hips, gazing about her with pleasure. Up close it was even more charming, like stepping back in time to a slower, quainter age. Fishermen sat in their boats, chatting to one another as they mended their nets and emptied the day’s haul into barrels. They cast wary glances in her direction from under furrowed brows. A group of young boys had now congregated around her, shuffling their feet, nudging one another, giggling behind grubby hands. Women stood gossiping outside the shops and a few people drank coffee beneath striped awnings that shaded the bars and restaurants from the sun. They all watched the young couple curiously.

  Gabriele jumped onto the quay and put his hand in the small of her back. “Let’s go and get a drink. Then we’ll find somewhere for you to stay. I can’t leave you to sleep on the beach.”

  “There must be a hotel, surely,” she said, gazing about her.

  “A small pensione. That’s all.”

  One by one the faces of the fishermen froze at the sight of the chillingly familiar beauty of the young woman who had stepped onto their shore. Like old tortoises, they craned their necks and, one by one, their chins dropped to reveal toothless mouths gasping in wonder. It didn’t take long for Alba to notice. Even Gabriele felt uneasy. A silent ripple seemed to reverberate through the town.

  Suddenly an old man, as squat and fat as a toad, emerged from the dark interior of Trattoria Fiorelli and stood in the doorway, scratching his groin. His heavily lidded eyes fell on Alba and the dull wall of cataracts shone with unnatural brilliance. He let out a whispery wheeze, from deep down at the bottom of his chest, and stopped scratching. Alba, frightened now by the strange hush that had come over the town, took Gabriele’s hand.

  “Valentina!” the man exclaimed, fighting for air.

  Alba turned and stood staring back at him as if he had just breathed life into a ghost. Then a man of about sixty with brooding looks and a formidable physique stepped out from behind him. He came down to where Alba stood, her legs trembling. He walked with a slight limp, but this did not slow him down. His expression was dark, as if the sun had been obscured by a cloud.

  When he reached her, he seemed unsure of what to say, and it was Gabriele who spoke first. “Where can we get a drink around here?” he asked. His eyes shifted from the man to the fishermen, who had all climbed out of their boats and were now forming a ring around them.

  “My name is Falco Fiorelli,” said Falco in a low voice. “You…you…” He didn’t know how to say it. It sounded absurd. “A drink, of course.” He shook his head, hoping to dispel the phantom that he was now sure only played with his mind and did not, as he had hoped, stand before him.

  “My name is Alba,” said Alba, her face as white as the doves that sat on the gray-tiled roofs. “Alba Arbuckle. My mother was Valentina.” Falco’s weatherbeaten cheeks glowed and he heaved an almost painful sigh of relief and joy.

/>   “Then I am your uncle,” he said. “We thought we had lost you.”

  “I thought I’d never find you,” she replied. A murmur rose up from the band of fishermen.

  “They thought you were the ghost of your mother,” Falco explained. “A drink for everyone,” he shouted heartily, raising his hand to a cheer from the crowd. “Alba has come home.” Ignoring Gabriele, Falco took his niece’s hand proudly and led her up the steps to the restaurant. “Come, you must meet your grandmother.” Alba was overwhelmed. Her uncle was like a powerful lion, his hand so large that hers disappeared inside it. Gabriele shrugged helplessly and followed.

  Immacolata Fiorelli was now old. Very old. The numbers had gotten confusing around eighty. Eighty-one? Eighty-two? She hadn’t a clue. She could be one hundred for all she knew. Not that she cared. Her heart had died after losing her precious Valentina. Without a heart to keep her young she had slowly withered away, literally shriveling. But she was not yet dead, which was what she prayed for, so that she could be reunited with her daughter.

  She emerged with the help of a stick, like a mangy little bat, unaccustomed to the light. Her gray hair was piled on top of her head, her face peering through a smoky black veil.

  Alba stood before her, the image of Valentina, but for the unnaturally pale eyes that exposed the stranger within the unbearable likeness. Immacolata’s own eyes filled with tears and she lifted her hand, trembling with age and emotion, to touch the young woman’s soft brown skin. Wordlessly her fingers touched the living part of her daughter. The part she had left behind. The granddaughter who had been taken across the seas, lost, as good as dead. Thomas had never brought her back as he had promised. They had hoped. They had nearly died hoping.

  At the sight of the old woman’s tears, Alba’s eyes misted. The love on her grandmother’s face was so intense, so painful, she wanted to wrap her arms around her, but Immacolata was too frail and small. “God has blessed this day,” she said in a soft, childish voice. “Valentina has returned in the form of her daughter. I am no longer alone. My heart is stirring with life. When I die, God will receive a happy, grateful soul and Heaven shall be a better place for it.”

  “Let’s go inside where it is cool,” Falco suggested. Remembering Alba’s companion he turned and nodded. “Forgive us,” he added.

  “Gabriele Ricci,” he said. “Alba has come a long way to find you. I won’t stay. Just give her this.” He pulled a white card out of his pocket and handed it to Falco. “She can call me if she needs anything, but I don’t think she will need to.”

  Although curious, Gabriele knew he was out of place in this family reunion. He slipped away without any fuss, longing to kiss Alba goodbye, to encourage her to get in touch so that they might see each other again. He turned, hoping she would run out to thank him, but the restaurant was teeming with people and he was alone on the quay. Only the little boy skipped toward him to help him with the rope.

  Inside the restaurant, drinks were poured and celebrations ensued. Lattarullo sat with Immacolata like a parody lady-in-waiting, pleased that it had been he and not il sindacco who had been there to welcome Alba home. Il sindacco was not long in arriving. He didn’t look a day over fifty. His hair was neatly parted and combed, still jet black with only a few gray hairs around the temples. He was dapper in a pair of olive green trousers, belted high on the waist, and a pale blue shirt, perfectly pressed. When he entered the restaurant, his perfume filled the air so that everyone knew the most important man in town had arrived and they all parted to let him through.

  When he saw Alba, seated with Immacolata, Lattarullo, and Falco, his closely shaven jaw dropped and he let out an audible gasp. “Madonna!” he exclaimed. “The dead do indeed rise!” For a town used to miracles, the resurrection of Valentina was not beyond the realms of possibility. He pulled up a chair and Falco introduced them.

  “Is this coincidence?” he asked. “Did you just happen to wander into Incantellaria?”

  “God has brought her to me,” said Immacolata.

  “She came to find us,” Falco interjected.

  “I’ve been longing to find you since I was a little girl,” said Alba, delighted by all the attention. She had now forgotten the humiliation she had suffered in Naples and her lost bag, even Gabriele.

  “You see,” said Immacolata, her voice sweet and happy like her daughter’s had been when Tommy returned at the end of the war. “She didn’t forget us. You even speak Italian! You see,” she turned to her son, “Italy is in her blood.”

  “You will stay with us,” Falco instructed in his deep, gruff voice. He had moved back into his mother’s house with his wife and son after Valentina’s death. Now Toto lived there too, with his own six-year-old daughter, Cosima; they had moved in when Cosima’s mother had run off with an Argentinean tango dancer.

  “She can have Valentina’s old room,” Immacolata stated gravely and the air seemed to be sucked out of the little group. It was well known that Immacolata kept Valentina’s room as a shrine. For twenty-six years she had lovingly cleaned it and cared for it, but no one was allowed to use it. Not ever. Not even Cosima.

  Alba sensed the significance of the gesture and thanked her grandmother. “I will be honored to have my mother’s room,” she said sincerely. “I feel I am beginning to know her through you. It is what I have longed for all my life.”

  Immacolata, exhausted by the excitement, ordered Lattarullo to take her home. “I have given the people of Incantellaria a public celebration; now I would like to celebrate alone with my family.” Alba was excited to be going to the very house where her mother had lived, to sleep in the bed she had slept in. If she had known it would be as magical as this she would have come years ago.

  “Where is your suitcase?” Falco asked Alba as they walked out into the evening sunshine.

  “Lost,” she said casually. “It was stolen, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Good gracious, where’s Gabriele?” She turned to look about her, ashamed that she had forgotten him.

  “Oh, he left.”

  “He left? I never thanked him!” she exclaimed, disappointed. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” She turned to look at the harbor as if by some small chance he might still be there, waiting beside his boat.

  “He gave me this to give to you.” Falco handed her the little white card. It was engraved with Gabriele’s name and telephone number.

  “How smart!” she said, slipping it into her handbag.

  “So you have nothing?” Falco said incredulously.

  “Nothing. If it hadn’t been for Gabriele’s generosity, oh, and the unwitting generosity of the Italian railway officials, I wouldn’t have gotten here at all!” She climbed into the back of the car and leaned against the hot leather, warmed by the sun. Falco climbed in beside her. Immacolata sat in front, eager to get back to the quiet sanctuary of her home and the relics of the deceased. Lattarullo drove.

  The ride up the hill was a bumpy one: the road was little more than a dusty track. “They tried to tarmac it about ten years ago but ran out of money, so it’s smooth for about half a mile out of town and then this!” Falco explained.

  “I think it’s charming,” Alba replied. To her, everything about Incantellaria was charming.

  “You wouldn’t think so if you had to drive up it every day!”

  Alba had rolled down the car window in order to wave goodbye to the townsfolk celebrating her homecoming. Now as they neared the house she stuck her nose out to breathe in the woody scents of the countryside. From up here on the hill she could see the sea, shimmering blue in the soft evening light. She wondered how often her mother must have gazed upon that very same view. Perhaps she had seen her father motor into the bay in his MTB.

  They climbed out of the car to walk down the grassy path to the house. The track had been extended in the last few years so that it now almost reached the front door. Suddenly Alba was struck with a sweet, succulent smell. “What is that?” sh
e asked, sniffing the air like Sprout did. “It’s divine!”

  Lattarullo looked at her. “Your father asked me that very same question when he arrived here for the first time.”

  “He did?” she asked brightly.

  “Figs,” said Immacolata gravely. “Though I defy you to find a fig tree!” Alba looked inquiringly at Falco.

  Her uncle shrugged. “She’s right. It’s always smelled of figs.”

  “It’s intoxicating,” she said, heaving a sigh. “Magical.”

  She followed them into the sand-colored house, almost entirely obscured by heavy clusters of wisteria. Her grandmother led the way through the tiled hallway into the sitting room. There, in the corner, burned three shrines. One to Immacolata’s husband, one to the son she had lost, and the third, which appeared to blaze brighter than the other two, to Valentina. As Alba walked nearer she saw the black-and-white photograph of her grandfather in uniform, standing proud and erect. His eyes were full of zeal for the cause he naturally thought to be just, and his mouth was set in a determined grimace, not unlike Falco’s. The photograph of his son, Alba’s uncle, was also in black and white and showed him in uniform. Handsome, with the cheeky face of a prankster, he smiled out from under his cap. When her eyes settled on her mother’s shrine she caught her breath. There was no photograph. Just a portrait. Done in the same pastels as the one she had found beneath the bed in her houseboat. Valentina and Alba 1945. Thomas Arbuckle. Now my love is twofold.

  She picked it up and walked over to the window so that she could see it better in the light. This one was even more extraordinary than the first, for it depicted her mother gazing adoringly upon the baby feeding from her breast. And that baby was herself, Alba, no more than a few months old. Valentina’s expression was soft with tenderness and she radiated a fierce, protective love that seemed to extend beyond the paper and pastels and reach her now, where she sat alone by the window, twenty-six years later.

  “She loved you intensely,” said Immacolata, hobbling over to sit beside her. “You symbolized a new beginning. The war was over. She wanted to start again, be someone else. You were the anchor she needed, Alba.” Alba didn’t understand, but it sounded nice.