A Rather Lovely Inheritance (33 page)

I looked at Jeremy. “Well?” I said. “Are you satisfied, you big ape? There are lots worse ways to grow up than being loved and cared for by everybody in sight.”

Jeremy looked startled. “Why do you always turn on me where Mum is concerned?” he said.“I go along thinking you’re ‘for’ me, and then bang! there you go.” Aunt Sheila studied him, then broke into a giggle.

“Jeremy, stop it. She doesn’t know that you’re teasing her,” she said.

“Oh, I’m used to taking his abuse,” I said theatrically.

“Mum,” Jeremy asked cautiously, “how much do you know about my real dad’s family?”

Aunt Sheila said, “Quite a bit, actually. Tony’s mother’s name was Rose, and his father’s name was Domenico. They met in America; both left Italy because of World War II. Domenico’s father, Giulio, was killed in that war, actually.”

I could barely contain myself. “And did Aunt Penelope ever tell you the name of the man that
she
loved, who died in World War II?” I asked. Aunt Sheila shook her head.

“No, I don’t believe so,” she said. “Why?”

“It just so happens that Aunt Penelope’s lover was also named Giulio,” I said, fairly bouncing on my chair cushion with excitement as I hauled out my diagram of the family tree and slapped it down on the table. Aunt Sheila looked mystified.

“What’s this chart?” Jeremy said, glancing first at it, then at me. “Crib notes? On our family? Good God. Detective Penny Nichols strikes again.”

“Yeah, right,” I said defiantly. “And don’t think it was easy, either. Just when I thought I had you people all figured out, new secrets came popping up.” They both peered at it.

I pointed to the trail down the middle, leading from Aunt Penelope’s lover, Giulio, to Aunt Sheila’s lover, Anthony, and in the end, to Jeremy. At the center of it all was Domenico, whom I saw as the key to all this.

“Aunt Penelope’s lover, Giulio, had a son, Domenico, who got stranded in Italy when Giulio died in the war,” I said.“Aunt Penelope managed to get Domenico to London. But his American mother took him back to the States. That’s why Domenico grew up there, and
he
had a son named Anthony.That’s your Tony, Aunt Sheila,” I said.

“Tony,” Aunt Sheila repeated, turning so pale that for a moment I thought she was going to faint. “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, my God.” She caught her breath and glanced away.

I turned to Jeremy. “And Jeremy, that little boy Domenico who went to America is actually
your
grandfather.” Jeremy had a stony look on his face, and at first I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, but then he frowned and I knew he had. I realized that, while all this was a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to me, for Jeremy it was his whole identity, up in the air.

I turned to Aunt Sheila and said encouragingly, “Aunt Penelope was keeping tabs on Domenico because he was Giulio’s son.And when she heard that Domenico’s son,Tony, died after serving in Vietnam, she wanted to help you, Aunt Sheila—so, by putting you together with her nephew—Uncle Peter—she found a way to take you and Jeremy under the protective wing of her own family. My family.”

Aunt Sheila, still stunned, had fallen silent, listening closely. She looked as if she were going over her whole past in her mind. “Well,” she said softly, “that explains quite a lot.”

Cautiously I asked,“What became of Domenico? That is, Jeremy’s grandfather?”

Aunt Sheila, still trying to absorb it all, glanced up as if in a dream, and said, “Domenico? Why, he lives in Italy now.”

“See that, Jeremy?” I said triumphantly. “Your grandfather is still alive! Where does he live?” I asked in excitement.

Aunt Sheila answered, “In a little town not far from here, actually. Tony and I used to look in on him occasionally. I still do, whenever I come here.”

We both stared at her in amazement.“You do what?” Jeremy asked in a choked voice.

Before he could roar at her I said hurriedly, “Do you have an address for him?”

“Of course, darling,”Aunt Sheila said.“I can call ahead and let him know you’re coming. If you want to, of course.”

“J
ESUS,” JEREMY SAID. “DID YOU HAVE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND ask for the address? I have no memory of this Tony bloke, even if he is my real father. So why on earth would I want to meet
his
father? I don’t know these people. I have absolutely no desire to do this, damn it.”

“ ’Cause like it or not, the old guy is your gramps,” I said.We were sitting in his car outside Aunt Sheila’s rented villa, and Jeremy looked as if he’d suddenly forgotten how to drive.

“What is it about women that they always want to control a man’s life?” he fumed.“First Aunt Pen, thinking she could play God, matchmaking and all. Then Mum, keeping her little secrets and then heypresto, she arranges for me to meet my so-called grandfather, just like that. And you, going right along with it.”

“And isn’t it funny,” I said, “that out of all those women, I’m the only one you’re hollering at? You certainly never would have hollered at Aunt Penelope, and you were very well-behaved with your mother, but with me you just explode like Vesuvius.”

“I suppose that’s a slur on my Italian ancestry now,” he said darkly. “And I’m not hollering. I do not holler. I merely raised my voice to impress upon you—”

“Come on,” I said coaxingly. “I’ll go with you.”

“That’s just what I’m afraid of,” he said. “With you by my side, I know I’m guaranteed to get into more tight spots. Car chases. Casinos and international art theft.What’s next?”

“Your mother told me more stuff while you were bringing the car around,” I said eagerly as he started the car and descended the drive.Within minutes we were bumping along the narrow side streets of Rome. “And you’d better listen,” I continued, “because it’s about Domenico’s American mother.You know, the lady who snatched him back from Aunt Penelope—well, she was from an old Boston Brahmin family, and her name was Lucy. She died of tuberculosis not long after she brought Domenico to Boston. Once she was gone, the Boston relatives were rotten to Domenico and treated him like a servant, which is why he ran away to New York. Where he married an Italian-American girl, Rose—your grandmother—and together they ran a little grocery store. And they raised Tony—your father—as an American kid, and he went to university in New York. After Tony graduated, his parents moved back to Italy, but Tony came to London, to be part of the rock-and-roll scene. He had a band, Jeremy, just like you. And Tony—your father, kept in touch with his parents right up until . . .”

“He died,” Jeremy supplied.

“Right. Rose—your grandmother—died here in Italy in the early eighties,” I said. “Your grandfather Domenico still lives with her relatives. He’s probably in his mid-seventies now.” I paused. “He’s known that you existed, but he and Rose didn’t want to interfere while Uncle Peter was alive. He’d like to see you.You don’t have to go and see him, but personally I think you’ll be sorry about it your whole life if you don’t.”

“For Christ’s sake, Penny,” Jeremy said with a sudden burst of desperation. “Will you just shut up for two minutes so I can hear myself think? Just when I imagine I’ve heard it all, you come up with more. You haven’t stopped chattering since we crossed the border!”

Now that was unfair, even if it was true, which it wasn’t, not really. At least, I didn’t think so. Even though Aunt Sheila had given us beds to sleep in and bathrooms to wash in and some food, I still felt punchy, sleep-deprived, and high on adrenaline from chasing Rollo across the freaking border and finding out that we’d got hold of a possible Leonardo worth gazillions. I mean, Jeremy could have cut me some slack. But no, there he was, using THAT TONE with me again, a scant day or so after kissing me. I don’t see how a man can kiss a woman like that, then turn around and use tones of pure sarcasm bordering on contempt.

We’d just come to a lurching halt at a traffic light. So I did what any self-respecting, slightly punchy woman would have done under the circumstances to salvage her wounded dignity. I said, “Fine!” and opened the car door, stepped out, slammed the door behind me, went plunging off into the city, walking as rapidly away from him as possible—and I promptly got lost.

Look, it’s easy to do in Italy. Go down one cobbled street, turn a corner, cross a piazza, and there you are. Lost. Suddenly you can’t remember which end is up and which way is south and where the hell you were when you started. That’s what I did, and I really didn’t mean to, but he annoyed me so much that I wasn’t looking at street signs. The city was waking up from its post-lunch slumber, so the shops were flinging open their doors, the cars were suddenly zooming around and honking their horns, and I was thoroughly exhausted and utterly disoriented, not knowing where to turn first.

Naturally what I did was turn down a blind alley, which was scary. It was, actually, like a bad dream, where you’re running down one street that looks like another, but the closer you think you are to where you want to be, the farther away you keep getting, and then you hear someone calling your name and you call back but you can’t tell where they are, and they can’t tell where you are, and you keep fruitlessly calling out to each other . . .

“Penny!” Jeremy shouted. I could hear his footsteps and the panting of his breath as he came running closer when he saw me. “Why the hell did you
do
that?” he demanded angrily.

“To get away from you, you beast,” I said wearily.

“You are
impossible
!” he exclaimed in exasperation, taking me by the shoulders and giving me a shake.“I thought you were kidnapped! I pity the man who marries you—because you will be nothing but trouble for him for the rest of his life!”

I really, truly hate it when men say things like that. “Well, I pity the woman who marries
you
,” I shot back, “because you think you can just
holler
any old time you want to, and say the most sneery, snide things in a tone you wouldn’t use for a
dog
, much less someone you love.”

I broke off and we stood there looking at each other, breathing hard.Then something dawned on each of us at exactly the same time, because the anger on our faces turned to surprise. I was also aware that he was still holding me by the shoulders and hadn’t let go.

“Is that so?” he said lightly, under his breath. His tone dropped deeper, and some of the old note of teasing crept back into his voice, but there was something more to it this time, something a little more serious. “Now just who said anything about . . . love?” I didn’t answer.

He took my hand and said softly, “I am sorrier than words can say for the miserable, wretched way I treated you just now, even though you
are
a bit of a chatterbox. But I would rather listen to you than any other person on the face of this earth. Except that thanks to you and my mum, I have to go and see about a grandfather right now. So will you please come with me? Because I’m absolutely terrified.”

J
EREMY’S GRANDFATHER LIVED IN A SMALL TOWN OF TERRACED HILLS and stone farmhouses ringed by fields with rows and rows of beautiful olive trees that had their dusty-green-leafy arms outspread as if they utterly worshiped the sun.The street that we pulled into was dotted with umbrella pine trees that looked exactly like their name—like the generous shady evergreen parasols of the gods. We stopped at a pretty white and pale peach house.

“That’s it,” I said, squinting at Aunt Sheila’s scribbled address. When we reached the front door, it was opened by a little girl who had to stretch her arms straight up to reach the doorknob. She had long, luxurious wavy dark hair, and wore a pink-and-white-checked dress, and she stared at us with enormous round brown eyes. Jeremy bent down and said,“May we come in?” She broke into a wide smile that made her cheeks even rounder, and she nodded shyly and led us down a dark corridor.

The house was a cool stone affair that echoed our footsteps slightly as we walked past an open, large parlor furnished with heavy old furniture and white lace, and then a few other closed doors, and then we ended up in the kitchen at the back of the house, where Domenico’s sister-in-law, a stout elderly woman, was busy at the stove but smiled at us encouragingly.

Jeremy spoke to her, surprising me when he managed to come up with enough correct Italian words to make a few comprehensible sentences. He and the older woman in the kitchen exchanged understanding looks as they spoke. She turned to the little girl, and must have told her to take us into the garden, because the girl called out to us,
“Venite qui,”
with sudden authority. She led the way out the back door and across a lawn to a pebbled sitting area under a pear tree where an old man was seated on an iron lawn chair and cushions.

As we went outside I said to Jeremy,“I didn’t know that you speak Italian.”

“I understand some of it, especially the—melody of it,” he said. “When I was very young I got bronchitis for three winters in a row, and I had an Italian governess who took care of me and taught me my sums and kept me up on my homework. She slipped in a little Italian vocabulary when I got restless. I thought she was teaching me a secret language.”