The Fires of Torretta

by Iris Danbury

  “If I don’t make an effort now, I shall find I’m disinclined to start at all,” he told Rosamund when they were settled in his study for a morning’s work.

  She had already suggested that perhaps one of the best ways to use the vast Mandelli library would be to treat it as though it were a public one, from which to borrow two or three books a week.

  “I think I might get frightfully muddled if I’m surrounded with so many sources of information and conjecture,” she said.

  Stephen agreed and either he or Rosamund went to the Villa Mandelli to borrow or return the books at intervals.

  It was on one of these visits that Rosamund met Adriana in the Mandelli garden near the swimming pool.

  “Have you seen the Englishman lately?” Adriana asked.

  “He was here a few days ago.”

  “Perhaps he comes for Easter holiday?”

  Rosamund hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s possible, but he hasn’t told us.”

  When Adriana smiled her whole sombre face lit with a glow calculated to enchant almost any man within range.

  “He is more patient with my bad English than my brothers are,” said Adriana.

  Entirely natural, thought Rosamund, with such a fascinating pupil. Aloud she said, “Your English is more fluent.”

  Adriana flushed slightly. “That is because I have been practising in my room for no one to hear me. Signor Brent said it was a good way to learn. Also I have my books from convent school.”

  By now the two girls had walked towards the villa and Rosamund excused herself. “I have to return these books for Stephen and collect others.”

  “And you will tell me if Signor Brent comes?” Adriana queried.

  “Of course,” Rosamund promised.

  As she replaced the returned books in their respective shelves she reflected on Adriana’s interest in Brent. Was that yet another conquest? First there was Erica madly keen, if only for a limited time, on furbishing up Brent’s cottage. Now Adriana was studiously improving her English conversation on his instructions, although since he spoke fairly fluent Italian, there was no drawback to intelligible dialogue between them.

  Rosamund suspected that Adriana’s previous disinclination to speak English was part of her reserved manner and that she was competent enough when she chose to exert herself, especially if Brent were the listener.

  In the act of withdrawing a book on the history of the Aegean, Rosamund paused to examine the effect Brent had made on her. So far she had not bought a new dress or outfit to try to please him, his invitations had been casually thrust upon her without her seeking "and on several occasions when she had met him, she had been provoked to rude, or at least uncivil retorts.

  But these were only her defences in a potentially dangerous situation. In this thorny relationship between her and this unpredictable, often surly and cantankerous man, she was concerned to prevent him from realising the depth of her love for him.

  On Good Friday, so the Mandellis informed Stephen, there was a procession in Taormina not to be missed.

  “Then we must go to it,” Stephen decided quickly. “We may not be here in Sicily at this time next year.”

  “Oh, that’s a pity,” put in Erica. “I’m just beginning to like the place.”

  “The place?” queried Rosamund with a teasing smile. “Or could it be the company?”

  Erica grimaced. “Jealousy ill becomes you. Besides, you monopolise Brent when he’s here. No one else gets a look in. Next time he comes I shall monopolise him and laugh if you’re out in the cold.”

  Rosamund laughed. “Watch out that you don’t have a rival in another direction!”

  “Adriana? She’s not at all his type,” declared Erica.

  “His type? He doesn’t seem choosy over any particular type.”

  “Well, any man likes to cast his eye over an assortment of girls.”

  At this Rosamund exploded into hilarity. “You make us sound as though we’re in chocolate boxes, carefully graded, blonde, brunette, redhead or mouse, in our little crimped paper cases.”

  Niccolo drove the party into Taormina on Good Friday evening. At six o’clock the main piazza was free from traffic which had been stopped along the entire Corso Umberto. Children played in the wide paved space and a few bandsmen in uniforms stood idly around.

  Niccolo suggested that he knew some friends living in a house near the route of part of the procession. He led the way up a twisting dog-leg flight of steps just beyond the arched gate of the Corso and stopped at a door painted bright blue. After a few moments’ conversation with his friends, Niccolo beckoned to Stephen and the girls, with Adriana, to enter the house.

  From the flat roof it was possible to see both up and down the winding steps. Then from the top came the sound of faint music.

  “They are leaving the church at the top,” Niccolo explained.

  Soon a slow procession of women, black-robed and with black lace mantillas, appeared. Each carried a lighted candle inside a red lantern. Then followed the Children of Mary in white, shepherded by women holding long ropes threaded with large beads serving as guiding rails. Another large group of women carried the Holy Relic and then came two massive floats shouldered by seven women on each side.

  As Rosamund watched the first one of the Virgin Mary surrounded by masses of lilies and glittering candles being conveyed so precariously down the steep steps, she trembled in apprehension of a slip from a less sure-footed bearer. The second float, carrying the Saviour on the Cross, came into view and something of the physical strain of maintaining the precious burden showed on some of the women’s faces.

  Rosamund was filled with a reverent admiration, for all these women in the procession were not nuns, but the ordinary womenfolk and children of Taormina.

  The uniformed town band came finally, marching at a slow pace and now in the deepening twilight the scene was impressive. In the Corso below all lights in shop windows and the street had been extinguished and only small torchlights placed high on the walls stabbed the darkness. The black-clad women with their red lanterns, the children in white, the candle blaze of the floats, all made an unforgettable picture.

  The singing began to fade into the distance as the procession neared the Cathedral; along the Corso, as the last of the procession passed, shop window lights were switched on successively, so that a trail of light moved along the street.

  “What happens now?” asked Erica.

  “We could follow the crowds and probably see the floats being taken into the Cathedral,” replied Niccolo.

  But to Rosamund, jostling along the crowded Corso towards the Piazza del Duomo, the mystery and magic had evaporated. She joined Stephen and Niccolo and the others in the Cathedral square, but now the crowds were dispersing in different directions.

  Stephen suggested dinner at one of the hotels, leaving it to Niccolo to choose.

  “I could take you to a small restaurant I know where the food is very good. The place is not luxurious, but interesting.”

  It was not far away down a side street and the entrance was through an ornamental iron gate leading to a staircase and then out to a courtyard, where three or four tables were set.

  “You liked the corteo?” queried Adriana when she sat next to Rosamund. “What is the right word?”

  “Procession. Yes. I Was moved by the devotion and humility of it all.”

  “We have many other festivities,” continued Adriana. “Not always in Taormina, but in other towns on the island. In Palermo, they trudge up the mountain to Pellegrino and in Messina in August they have a lie of giants.”

  “I must try to see some of them,” promised Rosamund.

  “Don’t forget that in Taormina soon we have the Cart Rally,” put in Niccolo.

  “The Cart—?”

  “Yes. You have seen our decorated Sicilian carts with paintings on the sides,” he explained. “In the middle of April there is a gathering of them from other parts of the island and the people wear their
traditional costumes.”

  “Also there are days for flowers,” put in Adriana.

  “That’s a long way off yet—Corpus Christi,” her brother said.

  Stephen laughed. “Life here sounds like one long holiday, with saints’ days and carnival days and all the rest of it. I wonder if I shall ever get any work done, much less get any attention from Rosamund.”

  As Niccolo had promised, the food was excellent, starting with cheesecake served hot and followed by veal cooked with fennel. The sweet was a kind of cream horn filled with buttermilk curd and little lumps of chocolate and candied peel.

  Towards the end of the meal two young musicians came out to entertain with songs accompanied by mandolins. The walls of the courtyard were trellised with climbing plants, bougainvillea and clematis. Strings of fairy lights with an orange lantern here and there gave enough illumination to lend the shadows an air of mystery; overhead, the blue-black arch of night sky was spangled with a few faint stars.

  Across the courtyard a man and girl leaned across their table to whisper to each other. Rosamund, smiled. It was more the setting for couples than small family parties and, unbidden, her thoughts veered to Brent. She swiftly pushed those romantic ideas aside. In a moment she would be wondering if Brent knew this place—and who had been his companion.

  Fortunately Stephen had decided that it was time to go and was now paying the bill. Erica groaned with disappointment as they left the restaurant.

  “We could have gone dancing somewhere,” she complained mildly to Rosamund.

  “Have a heart! Poor Niccolo would have to split himself in three to partner us all in turn.”

  “My father isn’t all that old that he can’t do a few steps.”

  “No, he isn’t. But he just doesn’t like dancing.”

  In the car going home, while Erica chatted happily to Niccolo and Stephen was improving his Italian by conversing with Adriana, Rosamund speculated on some of her employer’s aversions. His distaste for modern dancing she could well understand, but she was curious to know why such a cultured man in other respects should deliberately shun the theatre. He was firmly opposed to visits to opera, ballet or drama of any kind. Possibly his antipathy had been the cause of his opposition to Hugo and other actor friends with whom Erica had become acquainted.

  Stephen had arranged to invite all the Mandelli family to dinner on Easter Sunday, so on the Saturday Maria was extra busy with preparations. Even though she had the young Lucia to help her, Rosamund offered to do anything she could.

  “The flowers for the table,” Maria suggested. “Tomaso will gather them tonight. Then you will have time to arrange them tomorrow.”

  Rosamund realised that she was being allocated the task of flower-arrangement to keep her out of Maria’s way. She smiled and took the hint.

  When she returned to Stephen’s study her employer was examining a large fancy cardboard box. He took off the lid and peered inside.

  “Well, well! Is this really intended for me?”

  Rosamund joined him and saw amid a nest of fine shavings three large Easter eggs wrapped in decorative foil.

  “They must be for you and Erica,” he said.

  “No. There’s a card addressed to you,” she pointed out. Stephen picked up the small oblong. “With compliments and friendly wishes from Signor Augusto and Signora Francesca Bernarda Mandelli.”

  “What a charming gesture!” Stephen handed her the box. “You and Erica will enjoy them more than I shall.”

  But when Rosamund went to her room later she found an even larger box addressed to herself and containing five gorgeously wrapped chocolate or marzipan eggs. A similar card of good wishes from the Mandellis was enclosed.

  Erica, too, was delighted when she discovered her Easter present.

  “Who brought them here? Niccolo?” she asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Rosamund went to the kitchen and asked Maria, who answered that one of the menservants from the Villa Mandelli had brought all the boxes an hour or so ago.

  “See! Here is mine. One also for Tomaso.”

  Rosamund glanced at Lucia’s pale bleak face. “And Lucia?” she asked Maria quietly.

  The older woman shrugged. “They do not know she is here, perhaps.”

  Rosamund guessed that was the explanation, although if Stephen had elected to employ a dozen servants in his villa, it was hardly to be expected that the Mandellis would cater for them all.

  “Lucia can have some of mine,” Maria offered.

  “Not yet.” Rosamund smiled at the young girl. “Come with me, Lucia.”

  In her bedroom, Rosamund asked the girl, “How many children in your family?”

  “Four.”

  “Younger than you?”

  Lucia said she was the eldest. There were two brothers and two sisters, counting the baby who was one year.

  “That’s five altogether.”

  Lucia shook her head. “Not me. I am not now a child, but a woman, for I work.”

  “Never mind. For Easter you must also be a child.” She handed Lucia the box with the five eggs. “Take them home tonight. But first I will find one more for your mother.” Stephen could well spare his gift and Rosamund took the largest egg out of his box and added it to Lucia’s.

  The girl’s face lit with such pleasure that Rosamund felt her own eyes prick with tears. Then Lucia knelt swiftly and kissed Rosamund’s hand.

  “Always I shall remember your kindness,” she whispered before she fled with her precious box downstairs and along to the kitchen.

  Rosamund remained motionless for a few moments, remembering Lucia’s pale, pinched face transformed into radiant, clear-cut beauty. How small a gift or service was needed to bring happiness to such a child! Lucia was certainly no more than fifteen, if that, and already counting herself a woman. Rosamund wondered how she could help the family in a discreet manner without offending them or seeming to patronise.

  On Sunday morning as Rosamund was arranging flowers for tonight’s dinner-table, Erica said casually, “No signs of Brent this weekend?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware.”

  “There! See what you’ve done! Offended him so much that he won’t even come to the cottage.”

  Rosamund laughed. “Perhaps he’s apprehensive of what new schemes you might want to start. Raise the roof or add a new wing for him.” After a pause she added, “I suppose it doesn’t occur to you that he might have girl-friends in quite a variety of places and that he’d already promised Easter to one of them?”

  “Could be,” admitted Erica. “Father doesn’t think he’s that kind. Steadfast and true and all that, he believes.”

  “Has he ever asked Brent? How does he know?” demanded Rosamund.

  Erica sniffed at a vase of carnations. “Men sum each other up.”

  As Erica went from the room, Rosamund called, “I’ll let you know if he comes and I see him. Where will you be?”

  “On the terrace, perhaps.”

  “Good. I also have to let someone else know,” Rosamund added slyly.

  Erica turned back. “Oh? Who?”

  “Adriana. She’s also going to be disappointed if he doesn’t turn up.”

  Erica made a grimace. “You’re making that up to tease me.”

  “No. Honest! Would I be so cruel as to tease you?”

  Erica came into the room and up to the table where Rosamund was placing the flower bowls. “Do you really think he’s a bit gone on her?”

  “Ask him. I can’t tell you.”

  “Adriana!” murmured Erica softly. “Who would really believe it? So beautiful, I know, but so mournful and solemn.”

  “Perhaps she’s been waiting for someone like Brent to come along and lift her out of her sorrow, whatever it may be.”

  Erica made an impatient noise and dashed out of the room. “I think that’s his car.”

  But apparently she had been deceived, for at lunch served on the terrace today, there was no sign of B
rent or his car.

  Then, late in the afternoon when Rosamund made a last tentative visit to the kitchen to check final preparations, there was Brent lolling in a chair near the stove.

  “Happy Easter!” he greeted her.

  “Felicitations!” she replied.

  She turned away to ask Maria a question or two, but now she was concerned as to whether to invite him to dinner. Stephen would be vexed if he learned later that Brent had apparently been cold-shouldered.

  “Have you an engagement tonight?” she asked Brent tentatively.

  His grey eyes challenged her to inquire too closely into his personal dates. “No. I expect to have a simple meal and then spend some time reading.”

  “The Mandellis are coming to dine with us. Would you—?”

  “Oh, you’re offering me a counter-attraction?”

  “I’m inviting you on Stephen’s behalf,” she said crisply.

  “M’m. Maria told me about the feast she’s preparing. Yes, of course I’d like to be a guest at your table, although I’d still be perfectly content to eat here with Maria and Tomaso.”

  “Please yourself,” she snapped. “But I’d like to know your decision when you see fit to tell me. I have the places to arrange.”

  He stood there, his hands thrust into the pockets of his tan leather jacket, his shirt open at the neck and on his face an expression that might almost be called insolent.

  “By all means, madam, I am delighted to accept. I trust my intrusion won’t spoil your table plan?”

  His ridiculous hauteur was so exaggerated that now she was forced to smile. “You’ll have to take pot luck in the matter of partners. Please excuse me.”

  Maria lifted the lid of a pot and inspected the appetising contents, then gave Rosamund an unexpected smile. The young girl Lucia was diligently washing a stack of plates from a service that was not used for everyday.

  Rosamund was relieved that neither understood English, but they were both aware of the peppery tones of voice and the expressions on Brent’s face as well as her own.

  To her surprise, Brent followed her out of the kitchen and along the corridor that led towards the main staircase.