by Fiona Neill
“Maybe I should get out now?” said Nick in a jokey tone, but in a way that suggested this wasn’t the first time he had mooted such an idea.
“You’re too young to keep bees,” said Bryony abruptly. “Why don’t you take a look at these?” She pulled out estate agent’s details for a couple of houses in Oxfordshire, the county where Foy had grown up. “I love this one. Thornberry House. It needs a lot of work, but it’s got forty acres and a swimming pool. It will be a great place for you to relax at weekends.”
“Looks great,” said Nick, barely glancing at the enormous Jacobean house.
“You know, I really think Sophia should think about getting another nanny,” said Bryony. “It complicates family relationships if they stay more than four years.”
“Forget the country, I really think we should consider getting our own place out here,” said Nick, as the vehicle turned into the long driveway up toward the Villa Ichthys. “I’m not sure I can face a week with Foy at the Villa Fish.”
“One more good year and we’ll be able to do both,” said Bryony, ignoring the way he facetiously translated the name of her father’s house into English.
• • •
“Welcome to the Château Chesterton,” said Foy exuberantly, as he urged them inside the house through an imposing eighteenth-century doorway that was the entrance to the original olive press. He closed the old oak door behind him, abruptly cutting off the shrill love songs of the male cicadas.
Tita stood in the hallway, pale and statuesque, one hand resting on a simple round wooden table. She put out her cheek to be kissed and allowed first Nick then Bryony to pay homage to its powdery surface. She didn’t bend down for the twins and instead let them kiss her hand, which they did with flourish, taken by the novelty of it all. She was wearing a pair of simple white trousers and a silk Liberty-print caftan that Bryony had given her for Christmas.
“Hello, Daddy,” said Bryony, hugging Foy. He was baked as hard and brown as the earth in the flower beds that flanked the road to the house.
“You look like a lizard,” cried Hector, rushing toward him.
“And you look like a stick insect, and lizards love eating stick insects,” said Foy, nuzzling Hector’s neck.
“You, on the other hand, look gorgeous,” he said, stepping back to admire his eldest daughter. Her phone rang. “Switch off that wretched thing. You’re on holiday.”
“I’m at the tail end of a huge deal,” said Bryony, glancing down at the number. “It’s only Felix. I can call him back.” Ali waited expectantly for Foy to question Bryony about the deal, to ask the name of her client, to discuss which newspaper had devoted the most coverage. “It’s the biggest takeover this year,” Bryony said hopefully. Foy didn’t take the bait.
“All well in the big smoke?” Foy turned to Nick. “Still shuffling all those bits of paper?”
Nick winced.
“What will you have to show for it all at the end?”
“I certainly won’t be able to claim that I introduced smoked salmon to the masses,” said Nick benevolently. “But I have in my own small way enabled millions of people to own their own homes.”
“Mrs. Thatcher was doing that a quarter of a century ago,” Foy said.
“Well, we all owe her a big debt of gratitude,” said Nick.
Bryony shot him a grateful look. When he was on his own territory Foy could be insufferable.
“I thought we would have a simple dinner tonight and save ourselves for tomorrow’s celebrations, when Hester and Rick are here,” said Tita, looking straight ahead at the door, even though it was now closed. She said Rick’s name as though she was spitting out an orange pip. “You don’t mind, do you . . . ?” Her voice drifted away.
“Sounds perfect.” Nick smiled agreeably.
Bryony’s attention swiftly moved to Jake, who drifted into the hallway wearing a pair of baggy swimming shorts with an improbably bright sea anemone print. His arm was around Lucy. They were sharing a towel across their shoulders. Bryony hugged him.
“You look like a piece of mahogany,” she teased him, patting his solid, polished torso. She then kissed Lucy once on each cheek. Lucy and Jake held hands throughout.
“They’re actually glued together,” joked Foy. “We haven’t yet seen either of them without the other. They leave their billet together in the morning and retire there together at night.” Everyone laughed. Lucy had tied a sarong around her hips, and everyone was doing their best to look away from her white bikini top.
“Shall we go back in the pool, Lucy?” Jake suggested.
“I was hoping you might show Ali around,” suggested Bryony. Jake winced.
“Hector and Alfie would probably find it less of a chore,” he said.
“We want to go in the pool,” they protested.
“If you point me in the right direction, I’m sure I’ll find my bearings,” said Ali awkwardly. To her surprise, Tita offered to give her a tour.
• • •
“I’m a member of the Mediterranean Garden Society,” said Tita, as she led Ali into the garden. “I’ve tried to stick to as many indigenous plants as possible. My only weakness is for Chinese jasmine. Its smell is enchanting.” She pointed to the front of the house, where the jasmine ran unfettered up the entire right side, infusing the area around the front door with its heady, sweet mustiness. Tita closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nostrils. It was a curiously unself-conscious gesture from a woman whose personality was defined by what she held back. Out of politeness, Ali did the same, keeping one eye open to make sure that Tita wasn’t waiting for her.
Ali understood at once that although Foy might talk more about the Villa Ichthys than anyone else, its soul belonged to Tita. It surprised her, because Tita mentioned Corfu less than even Nick. Perhaps her silence was a way of keeping the relationship secret. The best love affairs were clandestine, thought Ali wistfully.
Tita referred to the plants like old friends, “the oleanders, my dear myrtle, sweet arbutus, stoic salvia,” occasionally reaching out to touch a leaf or a flower. Otherwise, she didn’t say very much, a trait that Ali appreciated because it allowed her to form her own relationship with the landscape.
“Jasmine is used in ayurvedic medicine to calm the nerves and heal anxiety,” said Tita, “so if Hector and Alfie are playing up and you need to unwind, then come here to relax. I’ve planted it around the terrace beside the pool, too, but there are always so many people . . . Go to the bench at the front of the house. No one ever thinks to sit there.”
Her sentence drifted into the air, and Ali was once again unsure whether she had finished. She opened her mouth to say something, but then Tita started up again. “You wouldn’t guess to look at it, but jasmine is related to olive. They’re all from the Oleaceae family. Like forsythia, privet, and lilac.”
“I’d never seen an olive tree before today,” said Ali.
“Well, you’ll see more than your share here,” said Tita. “Some of the trees have been here since the twelfth century. When Corfu was occupied by the Phoenicians, they paid people for every olive they planted. The Corfiotes could even pay taxes in olive oil.”
Tita stopped for a moment to describe the layout of the garden. Ali would have felt guilty for removing her from the relative cool of the house into the midday heat, but she quickly realized that the tour was for Tita’s diversion, not her own. Tita continued. There was an orange grove at the bottom of the house, away from the pool. They were picked daily and squeezed to make juice. To the left of the house was a large courtyard covered in vines, where most meals were eaten. There was a more formal terrace at the front and a parterre with a mirror sculpture by Barbara Hepworth at the center.
“She came to stay after it was installed,” said Tita. “Just before she died.”
“I’ve seen this be
fore,” said Ali.
She realized that during a visit with the twins to Foy and Tita’s house she had spent some time staring at a large landscaping plan framed on the wall. It was drawn in black ink, with small symbols to indicate different shrubs and plants.
“You notice everything, don’t you,” said Tita. Statement not question, decided Ali quickly. “I planned it all myself, and then Christos the gardener followed my instructions. We had to ship in fourteen thousand cubic feet of soil from another part of the island to encourage the roots to grow. Plants need to feel sure of the soil beneath them to flourish. Like humans, really.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Ali, suddenly feeling thirsty.
“Do you feel sure of the ground beneath your feet?” Tita asked. “I used to think I did, and now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s because every day another part of me is slowly disintegrating.” She laughed.
“A garden is a good legacy,” said Ali, pleased to find the right words for once.
“It’s taken years,” said Tita, staring over Ali’s head to the sea beyond. “Before Foy retired I used to spend quite a lot of time out here on my own.”
“It must be nice for you to spend more time here together, then,” said Ali, knowing even as she said it that it wasn’t true.
“As you can imagine, Foy isn’t good at pottering,” said Tita, with a vague smile. “You know a bit about gardens, don’t you?”
Ali couldn’t remember Tita ever asking her any questions about herself, and felt shy about responding. “I’ve seen you deadheading the roses in London.”
“My mother gardens,” mumbled Ali. “It’s difficult by the sea. The salt and sand take their toll.” Tita ignored her response.
“Lavandula pinnata, looks lovely but smells of nothing,” Tita said, thoughtfully addressing another plant. “A plant of no substance. A bit like Lucy.”
They walked silently down a winding path flanked by olive trees at the back and lines of santolina at the front. Every step took them closer to the sea. At the bottom of the path the landscape opened out to a swimming pool that overlooked the ocean.
It was enormous and pleasingly unsymmetrical. At one end, built into one of the original terraces, were a couple of artificial waterfalls. The pool was painted cobalt blue to match the Ionian Sea. There was a covered pavilion with a large marble table at its center, where people could have lunch.
“It’s a saltwater pool,” said Tita. “The waterfalls block out the sound of the traffic on the road below. It can get quite busy in the summer.”
“Nick mentioned the cars,” said Ali.
“And probably nothing else,” murmured Tita. “He resists the lure of Corfu. It’s probably Foy’s fault. Most things are.”
“What’s that?” asked Ali, pointing to a small building to the right of the pool, built in the same style as the main house.
“The changing rooms,” said Tita, waving her hand dismissively. “I never go in there.”
Tita sat down at the table. She put the palms of her hands on the flat marble surface. Her hands were large, totally unlike Bryony’s. They were starting to twist with early arthritis, and their gnarly appearance reminded Ali of the corkscrew hazel that her mother had in the garden at home. Tita stared silently out to sea. She explained that Ali’s bedroom was in the annex built on the side of the building that housed the original olive press. On the third floor, opposite the twins. Her voice had shrunk to a whisper.
“Go back to the house now,” she instructed.
“Can I get you a drink of water?” Ali asked.
“I’m happy here,” said Tita, smiling at her. Her face was lit by the late-afternoon sun creeping across the sky, and for a moment Ali wondered whether she might simply float, Chagall-like, into space.
• • •
Ali heard voices from the olive-tree path and decided to return to the house on the route Tita had pointed out through the orange grove. The front door was still open, and the hallway blissfully cool with its stone tiles. On the left was a small cloakroom with bundles of hats, tennis rackets, and walking sticks hanging on old oak pegs. Ali went in and washed her face with water, drinking thirstily from the tap.
She went past a sitting room and saw Nick on the phone through the half-open door. It was an old-fashioned phone with wires, which meant he couldn’t pace up and down the room as he did normally. So he sat on a white sofa, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He was delivering instructions to someone.
“We need to get this on by Tuesday,” he repeated a couple of times down the line. “Tuesday, not Thursday, otherwise we’ll be too late. Have you got that, Ned?”
They must be working together on a deal, thought Ali, as Nick gently pushed the door shut with the tip of his foot.
12
Ali sat on the terrace, eating breakfast with Hector and Alfie. They had insisted she should join them at the far end of the huge marble table at the center of the open-air pavilion, even though no places were laid there and all the food was set out in a picturesque arc of baskets and ceramic bowls at the opposite end.
It was a quirk that would irritate Bryony if she appeared, because she would see it as part of Hector and Alfie’s desire to be separate from everyone else. The fact that Ali not only was invited to join them but had been asked to position herself between them would also be viewed with suspicion, as though she condoned their eccentric behavior. But Bryony never seemed to emerge before eleven and it was too hot to argue, so they sat in a neat row, contentedly glued to one another’s thighs with a viscous mix of sweat and suntan cream.
They faced the door that led back into the house from the terrace as though willfully ignoring the more obvious and spectacular view out to sea. Hector and Alfie each picked out a croissant and a pain au chocolat from the basket carried from the other end of the table by the elderly Greek housekeeper. They took a bite out of one, then the other, their movements as rhythmic as a metronome. Ali ruffled their hair and put an arm around each of them, and they snuggled into her ribs.
“What shall we do today?” she asked.
“Palanguyan,” said Hector immediately.
“Yes,” agreed Alfie, “palanguyan.”
“Pool it is, then,” confirmed Ali, who had compiled a list of more than a hundred words and phrases for the educational psychologist, who had seen them the month before. They reached for their glasses of orange juice. Ali tried to break the pattern by holding down Alfie’s arm as Hector struggled to stretch his small fingers around the glass. But Alfie, generally the more malleable of the two, roughly shook her off and muttered something incomprehensible to his brother.
“Please try and do things at different times,” pleaded Ali.
“Why?” said Alfie.
“Because it upsets Mummy,” said Ali, choosing her words carefully. “She’s worried that as you get older if you keep doing everything at the same time then you’ll be different from other people.”
“We are different from other people,” protested Hector.
“We are genetic clones,” agreed Alfie, repeating a phrase he had heard the educational psychologist use.
“She wants you to learn to do things on your own because one day you’ll each meet a girl and fall in love and you’ll have to learn to live apart,” explained Ali.
“We’ll fall in love with the same girl,” insisted Alfie.
“And live in the same house,” added Hector.
“Maybe we’ll marry you,” said Hector.
“Then you won’t ever leave us,” said Alfie, leaning back into his seat as though he had resolved some great conundrum.
“I’m not going anywhere for a while,” Ali reassured them, “and the more you do things apart from each other, the longer I’ll be able to stay.”
• • •
Ali had recently
sent a carefully worded e-mail to her tutor, asking to defer her place at university for another year. She had pleaded continuing insolvency and the chance to earn enough money to graduate without any debt. Will MacDonald had immediately sent back an e-mail agreeing to her request. It seemed a simple negotiation. But the truth was as gnarly and twisted as the raspberry plants that Tita was growing below the terrace.
Katya, clearly suspicious, had questioned Ali closely when she brought Thomas and Leo to play with the twins. They had sat in the playroom and talked while the children watched television. Ali explained to Katya that she wanted to stay with the Skinners because life with them was more entertaining than life without them. She was too attached to Hector and Alfie to leave suddenly. Bryony needed her. And she didn’t want to become embroiled in her sister’s problems again.
She told Katya how she had overheard Bryony on the phone telling someone that she couldn’t run her life without Ali. Katya pointed out that the Skinners had managed their affairs perfectly well before Ali’s arrival and would probably do so after her departure.
Ali dismissed Katya’s comment as jealousy. Perhaps she even wanted Ali’s job. The widely held view among the nanny community was that Ali had landed the plum but lacked the credentials to endorse her as its rightful owner. Then Katya had hugged her and said that she was delighted Ali was staying but wanted to make sure she was doing it for the right reasons.
“You mustn’t live your life through another family,” Katya warned her.
“You do,” Ali retorted.
“That’s because I have no choice,” said Katya.
“Well, this is my choice,” said Ali.
Ali would have liked to tell Katya the truth, but she worried it might have weakened her resolve. Besides, she was pretty sure that Katya had secrets of her own and would forgive the deceit. So she mentioned nothing of the lust-fueled, hurried entanglements in pitch darkness in the back of Will MacDonald’s Volvo station wagon after babysitting his children. She had never told anyone about their relationship, not even Rosa, not because she feared their disapproval but because she wasn’t convinced by it. It reinforced Ali’s sense of being an observer to life rather than someone in charge of her own destiny.
