by Penny Feeny
‘Surely black is what people wear for funerals?’
‘For every big occasion. Black is smart. When you only have one good outfit it needs to be black.’
‘Actually,’ confessed Lily, ‘my one good outfit is orange.’
‘That will be perfect!’ said Carlotta. ‘Because when we have the photographs I will be like the sunrise and you will be like the sunset.’
‘Are you sure you want a stranger at your wedding?’
‘But you are not a stranger…’ Warm air breezed through the open window, intensified the scents of all the flowers in the room, the jasmine and stephanotis, the phlox and the lilies. Suddenly it seemed the most important thing in the world that her daughter should join her, that the celebration should be doubly joyful. ‘I hope it’s not too much to ask? I understand it’s a long way for you to travel. And you won’t know any of the other guests. If you would like to bring someone, your fidanzato perhaps?’
‘Fidanzato?’
‘It means boyfriend.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Is he not… Marcello?’
A small stifled giggle. ‘Okay, thanks. I’ll ask him. I’ll think it over and let you know.’
Carlotta tried to keep the longing out of her voice as she said, ‘Oh, Lily… I would love it so much if you come.’
37
Jess took breakfast alone on the terrace at Villa Ercole. Dolly flapped around her, bringing pots of coffee, a jug of warm milk, a bowl of fruit, bread rolls and three kinds of jam. ‘This is not right,’ she said. ‘You should not be by yourself. Where are they? Your husband? Your daughter?’
Last night Lily had gone out dancing with Marcello Campione. Jess hadn’t been surprised when she didn’t come back to the villa to sleep. Alex had offered to stay on in the pensione to give her more time to think over their future. To Dolly, she said, ‘Alex didn’t want to take Gerald’s hospitality for granted. He was being tactful.’
‘Tsk!’ said Dolly. ‘That is not a reason. He must move here today.’
‘And I’m sure Lily will be back soon.’
Dolly muttered and grumbled. Gerald sauntered out briefly with a coffee and a greeting and offered Jess a two-day-old English newspaper. She flicked absently through the pages, through news that seemed distant and irrelevant. She pushed it aside and watched the sun climb above the vines and the almond trees. She watched the Dutch family pile out of the annexe and into their estate car to set off on a sightseeing trip. She thought they must have forgotten some essentials when she heard the crunch of tyres returning, ten minutes later. But then Lily and Alex rounded the corner, their faces cheerful, their voices animated. The sight of them revived her, made her heart swell and glow.
‘We’ve come to take you to the beach,’ Alex announced. ‘Dolly too. She deserves a day off.’
‘I’m going to change first,’ said Lily, who was looking distinctly crumpled.
‘Where’s Marcello? Isn’t he with you?’
‘He had to return the car to the Campiones. Alfredo will give him a lift back. The other guys might come too so there wouldn’t be room for an extra passenger. But it doesn’t matter because I thought, since you’ve come all this way for me, I ought to spend the day with you anyhow.’
‘Oh, that’s good to hear! Did you have a nice time?’ Jess was aware of the inadequacy of her question as soon as she asked it. Lily simply grinned and twirled and skipped into the house for a shower.
Alex spread a roll with mulberry jam and munched it. He looked searchingly at Jess; she held his gaze. Neither of them spoke. At length he said, ‘I’m going to complete my peace treaty with Gerald. I’ll meet you and Dolly by the car in, what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? I know it takes her an age to get stuff ready but we’re not leaving her behind.’
Jess underwent uncanny flashes of déjà-vu as Dolly filled two baskets with equipment and provisions. ‘Are you sure we need all this?’ But Dolly insisted. And Gerald, despite the fact that he had his arm around Alex, gave the distinct impression he couldn’t wait for them to go and leave him in peace. The three McKenzies were ready and waiting when Dolly scurried back indoors for the beach umbrella. She opened it up for inspection and the fabric, rotted by salt and sun, fell in tatters from the frame.
Alex leapt out of the car and bundled Dolly onto the back seat beside Lily. ‘Stuff your excuses,’ he said. ‘Forget the umbrella. You’re coming with us now. Capisce?’
‘You’re being rather bossy today,’ observed Jess.
‘Somebody has to take control,’ he said, grinding the gears. ‘No more dithering.’
‘Is that a dig at me?’
‘Why would you think that?’
Jess didn’t reply, conscious of the audience behind them – although Lily would be too wrapped up in her own new relationship to care about her parents’.
Alex parked on the edge of town and they found a clear spot on the beach to decamp and spread out their towels. Lily and Jess discarded their clothes but Dolly did not undress. She sat on the folding chair Alex had carried down in her black linen blouse and skirt. As a concession to the temperature she’d taken off her stockings and her cardigan, but she didn’t look happy.
While Jess creamed her legs, Alex took Lily aside and conferred with her. Then he said, ‘Right, Doll, you win. We can’t have you uncomfortable. I’m going to buy you a new umbrella. Do you want to come and help me choose it?’
Dolly beamed and took his arm. They made an odd couple as they shuffled through the hot sand, she squat and bustling, he shortening his stride and bending to her ear. Jess wondered if this was a deliberate ruse so that she could talk privately to Lily about her plans and she was impressed that he’d thought of it. Except, it turned out, it was Lily who was the interrogator. She squirted sun lotion onto her palm and massaged it into Jess’s shoulders. Jess relaxed and closed her eyes.
‘I asked you yesterday,’ Lily said, ‘if you were getting back together.’
‘Mmm, you did.’
‘And you denied it.’
‘Well, it’s early days.’
‘So it might happen? You’re not seeing anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Nor’s he.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, darling.’
‘Yes, you would.’ The rubbing stopped. ‘He’s been upfront. He’s told you how he feels.’
‘Jesus, Lily!’ Jess sat up abruptly. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘From Alex, of course. We met for breakfast in the Caffe Centrale and then Marcello had to get off and I asked Alex why he’d come out here. Was he really so worried about me because he shouldn’t have been, I didn’t need rescuing. And he said no, he wasn’t worried but he was glad you’d overreacted—’
‘I didn’t overreact. You’d gone missing and been arrested!’
‘Because it gave him the chance to join you. And he said he’d grabbed it at once, because you were the love of his life.’
‘Did he really say that?’
‘Well, not in those actual words.’ A brief, dramatic pause. ‘What he told me was that if you walked into a room full of people he simply wouldn’t see anyone else. They might as well not be there because you were the one and only person who lit up the room for him.’
Jess burst out laughing.
‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ said Lily. ‘I thought it was a wonderfully romantic thing to say.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Jess. ‘I suppose it is. And I was the one who said it.’
‘You did?’
‘About Alex.’
At which Lily began laughing too, until the pair of them were breathless with giggles and wiping away tears. ‘What an operator!’ said Jess, recovering herself. ‘It was years ago when I was trying to explain the effect he had on me to Toby. Obviously, Toby told him and he squirreled it away for later, when it would suit his purpose. He relied on you to report it back to me this time.’
Lily didn’t seem to object to being used as a
go-between. She said, ‘Seriously though, it’s true, isn’t it? Neither of you has met anyone else who could hold a candle to the other. You know if you love someone, don’t you? You just know.’
Jess smiled. ‘Are you saying this is what you feel about Marcello? So soon?’
‘We’ve been working together,’ Lily pointed out. ‘We were friends before that. And we had a few near misses before last night.’ She blushed deeply beneath her tan at the recollection of whatever had happened last night. Jess felt a surge of warm blood through her own veins at the memory of the first time she and Alex had lain in bed together, embarking on their mutual journey of discovery. Lily continued, ‘That’s why I don’t want to go back to England with you next week. I’m not ready. You don’t mind, do you? I’d like to spend the rest of the summer here in Roccamare. Dolly says I can help her with getting the annexe ready for visitors and with the harvesting too, so I’ll be pulling my weight.’
‘The rest of the summer,’ repeated Jess, suddenly afraid that she would lose her daughter, that her native land would reclaim her.
Lily said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come home in September and finish my course. Marcello’s a student too, so we’re not rushing into anything.’ Reclining on her towel in her skimpy bikini, one hand tousling her curls, the other resting on the curve of her thigh, she looked like a Renaissance Venus. Her smile was beatific. ‘I want to have a good summer.’
‘Of course you do, my darling!’ She hesitated. She couldn’t not mention the event. ‘Does that include going to Carlotta’s wedding?’ Lily had relayed the phone conversation with details of the invitation and Jess had tried to keep her own opinion neutral.
‘Oh, God, that’s a tricky one.’ Much trickier, evidently, than her feelings for Marcello Campione. ‘I still can’t decide…’
Jess rolled over, reached out and grasped Lily’s hand. ‘She wants you there, doesn’t she? Basically, I think you should avoid doing anything that would cause any more pain. Either to yourself, or Carlotta…’
‘Or you?’
‘I know you’d never hurt me deliberately, but for her, I guess, it’s different. You’ve misunderstood each other in the past so you need to be clear now. It wouldn’t be fair to keep her dangling. Or let her down.’
‘I don’t want to be paraded among her new family like a specimen from Lost and Found.’
‘Why d’you think that would happen?’
‘I don’t really. I’m picturing the worst-case scenario.’ She bit her lip. ‘Which is cruel of me, when she’s just lost another baby…’
‘You’re scared she’s got too much invested in you,’ said Jess. ‘I can see why.’
‘Alex says sometimes you have to take the risk.’
‘And he’s probably right. But we can’t tell you what to do. You have to make up your own mind.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Didn’t she suggest you could bring Marcello too?’
Lily nodded.
‘Well, that would help, wouldn’t it?’
Jess was feeling magnanimous. How could she not, basking under a blue sky, wrapped in the warmth of the day? Carlotta Galetti might have been partially responsible for the fracturing of her family and the break-up with her husband, but, God, the woman had suffered and Jess would never choose to cause further suffering.
A large blue and red umbrella was approaching, swamping the couple beneath it. Alex was holding the handle and keeping Dolly well shaded because she was carrying four ice-creams. Once they’d joined them, he ploughed the umbrella into the sand and she handed round the cones. For a few moments they were all too busy with their tongues, licking the melting flavours of pistachio, nocciola and stracciatella, to make conversation.
Then Jess said, ‘It’s a lovely umbrella, Dolly. Are you pleased with it?’
Dolly nodded and consulted her watch. ‘Is nearly midday,’ she said. ‘We were long time to find the best one.’
Alex said, ‘We had to try practically every brolly in the shop before she was happy.’
‘There’s no hurry for anything, is there?’ murmured Jess, lying back on her elbows with her knees drawn up.
‘Midday, you need to check out,’ said Dolly.
‘What’s she talking about?’
Alex glanced at Lily, who gave a quick dip of her head as if answering a question he hadn’t asked aloud. He said to Jess, ‘About Pensione del Sole. And whether I keep the room or not.’
‘You mean whether you come up and stay in Villa Ercole instead?’
‘Yes.’
Lily was studiously licking her ice cream, as if it required her full concentration.
Jess had been enjoying idling on the soft sand, but now she rose, slipped on her flip-flops and pulled her sundress over her head. ‘Come on, then.’
‘Come on, what?’
‘Let’s get over there and fetch your bag. Stick it in the back of the car.’
Alex scrambled to his feet. ‘Does it need the two of us?’
The glare of sunlight in her eyes obliterated the company around them. There might have been no one else on the beach, no swimmers or sunbathers or picnickers, no children, no families, no Dolly, not even Lily. Only Alex, a heartbeat away. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it does.’
38
After two weeks of false starts Lily and Marcello were impatient. Impatient, inventive and insatiable. They made love in the sand hollows in the nature reserve, in the shallows of the sea after dark, in his bed, in her bed, beneath the branches of an old olive tree, between the beanpoles in the kitchen garden, even in the larder of Villa Ercole one time, when they went in search of Dolly’s preserves. The air was laced with spirits and vinegar, honey and spice, as if they were cloistered in a cupboard full of aphrodisiacs. Off they went again: licking and tasting and sampling, unbuttoning their clothes with sticky fingers, eager for the warm jolt of flesh into flesh.
Lily was totally absorbed in her romance, living each delicious moment in the present tense. She pushed Carlotta’s invitation to the back of her mind – she needed to mull it over, she told herself – until suddenly Jess and Alex were leaving. As she waved goodbye to their bouncy Fiat Uno, Alex said, ‘Let us know how it goes.’ And she understood she couldn’t defer her decision any longer.
She lay with Marcello in their favourite spot in the nature reserve, shielded by vegetation, but with a splendid view of the sea. ‘I have to tell Carlotta whether or not I’m going to her wedding,’ she said. ‘I can’t carry on putting it off.’
She was stretched out on her front; he was trailing a hand between her shoulder blades. ‘I don’t understand what is the difficulty.’
‘Apart from anything else, there isn’t time to do the DNA test and get the results. Suppose it turns out later that I’m an imposter?’
‘That’s Carlotta’s problem, isn’t it?’
‘She didn’t think it was necessary in the first place. Because of my belly button, apparently.’
‘Your what?’ He laughed and rolled her onto her back and they tussled until he was sitting astride her. He scooped up a handful of sand and scattered it over her stomach; some grains fell into her navel and he examined it closely. ‘It looks normal to me.’
She pushed him off and sat up. ‘Yes, but when I was little it stuck out. It was what you’d call an identifying feature.’
‘Allora!’
‘And then there’s the hassle of getting there. To Rome, I mean. It’s a long journey.’
‘You could take the sleeper, no?’
‘Would you come with me? You are invited.’
‘I am?’ A slow smile spread across his face. ‘If we book a couchette for two, imagine the fun we could have!’
She hadn’t expected him to be so willing. But the sleeper had brought them together, hadn’t it, so how could the prospect of a return trip not be enticing? ‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. I might regret it forever otherwise. I’ll call her tomorrow.’
When she rang t
he next morning, another woman answered and said Carlotta had gone to the clinic for a check-up. Lily had hoped to speak to her herself. ‘Should I try again later?’
‘If you like, I can take a message.’
‘Oh, all right…’ And that was it: she was committed.
The train left Palermo at nine, crossed the straits of Messina at midnight, and was scheduled to arrive in Rome the following morning. Lily and Marcello pulled down the blind between their carriage and the corridor and tested the top bunk and then the bottom. Everything about the trip was thrilling: holed up in their tiny private space as the world rushed past their window, mysterious and invisible in the night. They reached Naples at dawn but remained dozing, her head on his chest, their arms and legs entangled, until the gentle light leaking around the edges of the blind became strident. Then the train jerked to a halt. Roused by the clash of brakes, they unravelled themselves and went in search of coffee.
The attendant in charge of the espresso machine had no idea why they had stopped. No one did. In the buffet car they looked out over a swathe of fields and, in the distance, eroded but majestic, a fine Roman aqueduct. The train remained in the field for an hour. When it lurched forward again it never quite gathered its previous speed.
‘Oh, God,’ said Lily, beginning to panic. ‘What if we’re late? We should have come up yesterday.’
‘We agreed it would be better to spend time in Rome after the ceremony, remember? But it’s okay. We won’t check into the pensione. We’ll take a taxi directly from the station to Piazza Venezia. We’ll make ourselves ready now, in the carriage.’
And it was fun, if challenging, to wash and change and prepare themselves in such a cramped space. Marcello drew up the zip of her one good dress; he fastened the clasp of her bracelet and brushed her hair into submission. She tied his tie and kissed a fleck of shaving foam from his cheek and shook out the creases in his jacket. When the train chugged into the station and they stepped down onto the platform, a glamorous, head-turning young couple, they felt ready for anything.
