Tuscany for Beginners

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “Complement, you say,” says Belinda, her hand still over her mouth.

  “Absolutely.” Mary nods.

  “And that's good?”

  “Very good.”

  Belinda sits down on her striped lounger. “That's okay, then.”

  “Mum?” asks Mary.

  “Mmm?” says Belinda, licking her pink burnt lips with her equally pink and burnt tongue.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Not really, no,” she admits, putting her hot coffee slowly down on the terrace. “I didn't sleep very well. In fact, I feel a little odd.”

  “Why don't you go and have a lie-down?”

  “Do you think?”

  “Well, you have guests arriving in a couple of hours, so perhaps you should relax a bit before they turn up.”

  “I think you're right,” says Belinda, limply running her hands through her hair. “I think I'll go.”

  With her mother taken to her bed, Mary is now free to wander the house, poke through its four bedrooms, and leaf through her mother's things, trying to remember if anything has changed from last year. The two downstairs guest rooms in the old animal cantinas are exactly the same. Simple and white, with double beds, wooden chairs, and vases of dried sunflowers, they have their own separate entrances, almost en-suite bathrooms, and lower-level terraces with red geraniums in plant pots at each corner. Above on the next floor are the kitchen and sitting room area with french windows onto the other raised terrace— home to Belinda's lounger, binoculars, and various other assorted potted plants.

  Unlike the guests' area, this floor has undergone a myriad of little tweaks and changes. Her father's favorite armchair has been recovered in something more bronze, beautiful, and more befitting of Tuscany. The telephone has been upgraded to incorporate an answering machine, and there is a new silver-edged mirror in the hall. The computer and the sturdy computer desk are still the same, as is the large round café table on the patio to the left of the front door and right by the road, where Belinda serves all her guests' meals. The second floor appears less revamped. Belinda's quarters, a large purple bedroom with a terra-cotta-tiled floor and an expansive turquoise bathroom, have remained unchanged in the five years that she has lived at Casa Mia. In Mary's small white room, with a shower and basin in one corner, there is a new single bed with a springy mattress. Last year's complaints of backache and broken springs obviously did not fall entirely on deaf ears.

  Back outside, the air is warm and the strong morning sun inviting. Barefoot, Mary pads around the terrace, looking at the pots of pink geraniums lined up on the floor. She inhales the sweet scent of the yellow climbing rose that clings to the lattice on the side of the house, and watches the green lizards run into the cracks in the walls as she approaches.

  She walks down the stone steps cut into the side of the hill toward the small kidney-shaped swimming pool. Belinda put it in with only the most demanding guests in mind; she is not a great fan of swimming, and, as a result, the water is still unheated and in some serious need of maintenance. Mary dips in one foot. The water is not as cold as it looks. The heat of the sun has taken away the toe-curling chill. She sits down on the edge, her legs outstretched and her heels skimming the surface as she gazes at the valley below. The screaming sound of the Bianchis' giant saw drifts up the hill, and, if Mary half closes her eyes, she can see Franco and his older brother Marco slowly feed the trunks toward the whirling blade. Mary smiles. The curl of her mouth is mirrored at the corners of her brown eyes. Franco's naked chest is most certainly broader and more defined than his brother's. Not that it matters much because Mary hardly ever dares to speak to either of them. She has nodded and smiled at all the members of the Bianchi family, and even held the grandmother's shaking hand, but she has never engaged them in conversation. When Franco comes around to Casa Mia to help her mother out of some tight DIY spot, Mary always finds it easier to make herself scarce. Anyway, even from this distance, she finds it embarrassing to stare.

  She picks herself up and makes her way back to the front of the house. With its smart thick gravel drive and rampant stone lions mounted on pillars at the entrance, Casa Mia presents an awful lot of swagger to the road. Mary walks down the short drive, picking up stones between her toes. Standing at the gate, she deadheads the wild red rose that seems determined to grow up the garden wall. As she pulls off the hips, making way for more blooms, she hears the sound of an approaching car. Before she has a chance to hide, a blue Jeep slows to make the corner by the house. The smoked windows are closed, but the strong sun reveals two silhouettes, one in a baseball cap. Mary stands and waves. “The American,” she mutters, as she glimpses a hand wave back.

  Mary turns and, clutching her round bosom in one hand, her shoulders hunched, her eyes concentrating on the ground, she picks her way through the stones, goes into the house and on up the stairs. She knocks on her mother's door. “Mum?”

  “Mmm?” A groan travels under the crack below the door.

  “Hi, Mum, it's gone ten,” says Mary.

  “Mmm,” replies Belinda.

  “I think I saw the American drive past a moment ago,” says Mary, and waits for the reaction.

  “Wha-a-at?” Belinda squawks, like a turkey that's just heard about Christmas. “Wha-a-at?” she repeats, and swings open the bedroom door. Dressed in a crumpled white nightdress that comes to her calves and her dark hair standing to attention; the whole look is post-election-victory Cherie Blair.

  “Yep.” Mary nods. “Just now. They drove past. I waved.”

  “You waved?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “I was trying to be friendly.”

  “Friendly? Why would you want to do that?” Belinda scratches her head. “Which direction was the car headed?”

  “They were off down the valley to the house.”

  “What do you mean ‘they’?”

  “There were two of them.”

  “Two Americans?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “Two,” says Belinda, grimacing as if she has just encountered a terribly unpleasant smell. “Two Americans … I think I'd better get dressed.”

  Five minutes later, Belinda is back on the terrace in her navy blue easy-on trousers and floral shirt, binoculars at the ready, scouring the slopes of the valley. “Well, you were right,”she announces to Mary. “The blue car is there and I can see three or four more men moving around. I wonder which one he is.” She is trying to focus more tightly.

  “Shall we go over and say hello?” suggests Mary.

  “Absolutely not,” says Belinda, her small blue eyes round with horror. “Pop in? Unannounced? What do you think I am? Desperate?”

  “It was only a suggestion.” Mary shrugs. “We could take them something.”

  “Don't be so ridiculous,” says Belinda. “Anyway, we've got …” Her voice trails off, her ears are straining. “Oh, shit … Did you just hear a car?”

  “A car?”

  “Yes,” says Belinda. The dull thud of a car door shutting comes down the hillside. “Oh, Jesus bloody Christ,” hisses Belinda, her small eyes narrow. “Don't bloody tell me the bloody Belgian guests are bloody early, because I will bloody— Oh, hello!” Belinda's service-industry smile shoots into place. “Hello there!” She waves at a thin man standing at the wrought-iron gate near the top of the drive. “You're early!” she informs him, with a little light laugh. “Really bloody early!” she mutters, under her breath.

  “I am very much sorry,” says the thin man. “There was simply no traffics from Pisa.”

  “Go-o-od,” says Belinda. “What, no traffic at all?”

  “No traffics at all.” He grins.

  “Well, that really is … excellent.”

  “Shall we come here?” asks the thin man, pointing toward the front door.

  “Yes, yes.” Belinda nods. “In through there.” She smiles. He turns. She sighs, and her shoulders collapse at the remembered
wrist-slitting tedium of it all. “Here goes,” she says to Mary. “Happy faces until the end of the September.”

  “Yup.” Mary nods. “Happy faces.”

  “For God sake, Mary,” adds Belinda, glancing at her halfnaked daughter, “go and put some bloody clothes on.”

  Belinda walks briskly off the terrace and into her sitting room, trying to head the Belgians off at the pass. Like an assertive guard dog marking out its territory, she arrives at a trot, arms cocked and, fixed smile in place, circles the room rapidly closing drawers, doors and cupboards, occasionally standing in front of the limited happy snappy family shots.

  The tall, thin Belgian and his equally tall, thin, limp-limbed wife appear oblivious to Belinda's corralling as each one of their forays into the sitting room and kitchen areas is blocked by their seemingly ebullient hostess. In a fine-tuned, well-practiced, two-pronged maneuver, Mary appears (now dressed in a pair of shorts and a smaller T-shirt) and takes their luggage downstairs, while Belinda escorts her guests on their one and only sortie to her terrace.

  “This is my terrazzo, ” she explains slowly and pleasantly, like she's communicating with the aurally challenged. “And down there are your terrazzi, those two small, currently shaded areas over there. This is my private area that you are not allowed to enter. Or you may only enter at my invitation.”

  “Oh, very good,” says the thin Belgian woman, nodding keenly, then peering over the edge. “Very good.”

  “Good.” Belinda smiles. “There are a few other little house rules that I will quickly run through before you go to your bedroom. The pool is open between ten and six for swimming, at your own risk, of course.”The Belgians nod. “No wet towels on the lawn—there is a special line for guests. I will do laundry, but only if I have to, and, of course, no smoking and no children are allowed anywhere in Casa Mia. You may use the telephone, but only if it is prearranged with me at a time convenient to me. I will not take messages except in an emergency.”

  Belinda inhales. “We provide meals at certain times, which are listed on the piece of paper on your bedside table. No sanitary towels down the lavatory and, of course, use water sparingly. We are in the countryside here. But if there are any questions,” she reaches for her pleasant service smile, “do feel free to ask.” She pauses and claps her hand to indicate that the talk and tour are over. “So welcome to Casa Mia.”

  “So to check, yes to orderings supper this evening?” asks the tall Belgian man.

  “Yes.” Belinda sighs. The sheer exhaustion of it all is getting to her already. “You have asked already.”

  “This is a sympathetic valley,” says the thin Belgian woman, optimistically.

  “Yes,” agrees Belinda. “Below is the Val di Santa Caterina, which is owned in part by the Bianchi family, whose farmhouse you can see over there.”She indicates with a pink-tipped nail. “Down there to your left is our local ristorante, where you will find molto local delicacies.” Her voice is beginning to take on the tone of a tour guide: facts and figures gather a nasal pitch as they roll out of her mouth. “I have been living here for five years, my daughter comes out and helps every summer, we are twenty minutes from Serrana, our local Etruscan town, but if you need something difficult, like a doctor chi parla inglese, then Poggibonsi isn't far away.” She stops, smiles, and covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh, but you won't be needing one of those, will you?” She laughs. “Being francesi !”

  “Yes,” agrees the tall Belgian man.

  “Right … anyway,” says Belinda, placing her palms together. “I'll leave you to unpack in your room.”

  “Yes,” says the tall Belgian man, not moving.

  “Good,” says Belinda, after a short pause. “So off and out … straightaway … after you've unpacked?”

  “Pardon?” asks the Belgian woman.

  “Out of the house? Sightseeing?” asks Belinda, nodding away as if it is a tremendously good idea. “Poggibonsi?”

  “Oh, no.”The Belgian woman smiles with equally tremendous enthusiasm. “We stay here.”

  “You're staying here?” says Belinda, making no effort to disguise the annoyance, irritation, and lack of humor in her voice in any way at all. “Oh,” she says. “What? Here? All day?”

  “Oh, yes,” says the Belgian man, with a smile. “All day here.” His bony finger points toward Belinda's terrazza by way of emphasis.

  “Oh,” says Belinda, remembering her pleasant smile. “No lunch for you two, then,” she says, wagging her finger. “I'm afraid we simply never do guests lunch! Ever. At all. And there are no exceptions.”

  “Oh, we know.” The Belgian woman smiles, indicating the plastic bag in her husband's hand. “We have a picnic.”

  “A picnic?”

  Belinda is so bowled over by the fantastically rude concept of someone actually picnicking in her own house that she does not quite know what to say. Her teeth clench and her eyes water. She stands with her arms straight, gently tapping her frustration into the side of her legs as she watches her new guests make their particularly Belgian way down to their room. Everything—from her short, jaunty principal-boy haircut to his small leather lady bag, which he seemingly carries everywhere with him—annoys her. As they disappear in their “his and hers” polo shirts in pink and pistachio, all Belinda can do is let out a frustrated moan from the depths of her chest. “This is going to be a ba-a-d day,” she says.

  Standing on her terrace, she has no idea what to do, or where to put herself. The presence of the munching, crunching continentals on the floor below is deeply unsettling: not only are they using her facilities when they should be out on a nice long day trip to the medieval Manhattan, San Gimignano, or at least Poggibonsi, their presence in her house all afternoon means that Belinda is unable to get on with her usual afternoon chores.

  Since their arrival she hasn't had time to telephone Barbara to thank her for last night's dinner, or even think about contacting Franco about his tidying away some flagstones or the remains of the drystone wall that runs alongside the terrace. The tension in the air makes her a little snappy. Couple this with the comings and goings down at the Casa Padronale, and Belinda is so overcome with nervous exhaustion that she has to take a gentle lie-down on her lounger to gather her thoughts.

  But she is unable to keep still, and while Mary works away in the kitchen preparing supper, Belinda leaves her lounger at regular intervals and tiptoes to the edge of her terrace, peering over at the guests below. Performing a rather complicated and, indeed, athletic form of a yogic stretch, she leans, one leg in the air, her toes pointed, holding her breath for fear of alerting them to her voyeurism. Sadly, all she glimpses is a pair of puffy pink feet and a yellowed set of toenails that last saw the sun on a week's winter break to Marrakech in December last year.

  After about half an hour Belinda's curiosity gets the better of her. She walks inside to the kitchen to find Mary, pink-cheeked and sweaty, doing battle with a hefty Polyfilla of a sauce.

  “Oh, God, hi,” says Mary, looking up from her bowl. Her long dark hair is separated into sweaty strands under the strain of catering. Her cheekbones glow. Her forearm beats a vicious circle. “I think this might be a little thick.”

  “Mmm,” agrees Belinda, her mind most certainly on higher things. “Water it down,” she says, with a small domestic wave. “I would help, dear, only I have an awful lot to do.”

  “Fine,” says Mary, nodding. “Water it down, water it down,” she mutters and walks toward the tap.

  While Mary adds cold water to her cheese sauce, Belinda is upstairs in her room, leafing through her wardrobe for something suitable to garden in. Her purple bedroom with its terra-cotta-tiled floor is a complicated mixture of eclectic styles. The wardrobe is a large, square MFI affair, inherited from the divorce. Originally white with a carved filigree border around the double doors, it represents one of Belinda's least successful DIY moments. Streaked and smudged with swirls of blue and lilac paint, the botched, blotched, rag-rolled look is a l
ong way from the lapis-lazuli effect she was after. The bed, however, is more successful. With long sheets of swooping pale green silk tacked to the ceiling with a combination of drawing pins and nails, Belinda has created the effect (when viewed not too closely) of a glamorous four-poster bed. The same silk covers the dressing table and its accompanying chair, giving the whole room a suitably coordinated feel.

  Belinda stands on a small square of matting that declares itself to be a rug, and flicks her way through her hangers. The black gypsy look from last night, the floral dress, her drawstring trousers, her blue nylon A line, which somehow made the journey from the U.K., and a cream rayon blouse that sets her teeth on edge when she touches it. Eventually she finds what she's looking for: a pale blue cotton artist's smock that came free with a magazine on watercolor painting that she once subscribed to. She pulls it over her head and ties it up at the sides. She finds a red-and-white-spotted man's handkerchief in one of her drawers and knots it under her hair. With a glance at herself in the mirror in her turquoise-tiled bathroom to ensure total artistic effect, she wafts back past Mary, announcing something along the lines that she has urgent pruning to do.

  h, hello there!” says Belinda, sounding surprised, as she smiles her way through a lavender bush with a small pair of secateurs in her hand. “I wasn't expecting you to be on the terrace sunning yourself.” She snips. “Do carry on.”

  “Hello there, Mrs. Smith,” says the thin Belgian man.

  “Oh, do call me Belinda.” She comes alongside the lavender for a better view.

  “Okay, Belinda, my name is Bernard and my wife is Brigitte,” says Bernard, smiling from his deck chair.

  With a luminously white body, Bernard is sitting in a pair of diminutive beige swimming shorts gently reflecting the sun. His body hair is sparse, and what little there is coats his arms and legs in the shape of fun-fur rubber gloves and knee socks. The rest of him is almost entirely bald, save for a circle that trims each nipple like furniture fringing. His arms are thin, his stomach concave, and his legs so wide apart that through the right leg of his shorts sprouts the small string bag that contains his balls.