The Runaway Visitors (2 page)

There was no sign of life, although the door stood open. They got out of the car, the younger ones looking to Victoria for guidance. She marched boldly forward and rang the bell, which clanged somewhere at the back of the house. There was no immediate reply and they looked into a hallway which staggered them; for only the shell of the house was centuries old, and inside was a modernity such as they had never encountered. The marble-floored hall led straight to a living room, with low, soft couches, glass tables, marble shelves which ran the length of the room and could be used as seats or tables, pieces of sculpture in several places, modern art on the walls. From one corner of the room ran a narrow corridor; from another corner steps ascended into another room which subsequently proved to be an extremely modern dining room. Although the windows were small, the general effect was of lightness and whiteness with coloured glass which glowed and marble which shone, and ceilings which were domed and archways beautifully curved.

As they stood together, slightly awe struck, a tall, slim figure emerged from the corridor. Her hair was grey and her face looked uncompromising. She wore a dark blue dress and a white apron and had obviously just been cooking as she was still flour-sprinkled and was still rubbing her recently dried hands together. She stopped facing them and looked from one to the other.

‘So you’re here,’ she said. ‘You’ll be the Fenn children.’

‘Yes,’ said Victoria. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘Children! Nobody could call you a child!’ She looked at the tall Sebastien. ‘Nor you.’ Her glance passed over Amanda. ‘Well, well, you’ll be a surprise, I warrant, to himself when he gets back.’ There was a touch of malice in her expression. ‘I’m Jeanie Jameson,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be answerable to me while you’re here.’

‘How do you do, Mrs. Jameson,’ and Victoria held out her hand.

Reluctantly, it was taken and dropped.

‘Miss
Jameson,’ she corrected. ‘Miss Jameson to you at all times, remember. Where’s your luggage?’

‘In the car. We’ll get it.’

‘Right. Then I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’

She stood and watched while everything was brought from the car. They had been travelling for several days and there were considerable odds and ends as well as the bags and the picnic gear.

‘Well, you’ve brought enough litter with you,’ commented Miss Jameson. ‘I’ll thank you to keep it in your own rooms and not to be scattering it all over the house.’

‘Oh, we won’t,’ promised Victoria at once.

They struggled after her along the corridor with their own luggage and as much as they could carry. Miss Jameson did not offer to help them. She threw open a wide door into what proved to be a small guest house. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a terrace on to which both bedrooms opened, which looked out over olive groves to Florence in the middle distance, with its imposing Cathedral, soaring campanile and the tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.

‘Is that Florence?’ asked Amanda of Victoria, but it was Miss Jameson who answered.

‘Firenze,’ she said, with a great rolling of the ‘r’. ‘Nobody will know what you’re talking about if you call it Florence.’

‘Firenze,’ Amanda repeated.

‘It’s all very beautiful,’ said Victoria, speaking of their rooms and

their view and everything.

‘Ay, well, I daresay you’ll make yourselves comfortable. Your supper will be at seven, but if you want a cup of tea I’ll be making one in the kitchen in half an hour.’ And she went out of the main door, closing it firmly behind her.

‘That,’ said Sebastien, when he was sure she was out of earshot, ‘ is what you call a warm welcome. ’

‘Perhaps she’s got a heart of gold,’ said Victoria, and suddenly they were all laughing because it seemed so unlikely that there was a heart of gold inside all that dourness. They were laughing, in fact, to relieve their tension, and when they stopped they explored their new quarters.

‘Well, you must admit it’s handsome,’ said Victoria.

It was handsome accommodation. The large bedroom would be shared by the sisters, the smaller was Sebastien’s. The bathroom was in travertine, beautiful and cool, with everything a guest could possibly want there. The terrace had a table, sitting up chairs and two lounging chairs.

‘I expect it usually has much more important guests than us,’ Sebastien said.

‘I suppose Mr. Duncan isn’t at home,’ Amanda said.

‘She said something about when he gets back . . .’

‘He must be very rich . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ said Victoria, realising that she knew nothing about him but that he was a sculptor and a friend of her parents.

‘Are you going to the kitchen for a cup of tea?’ asked Amanda.

‘Do
you
want to?’

They discussed it and decided it would look friendlier if they went, so they appeared at the end of half an hour, refreshed and in clean clothes, in Miss Jameson’s kitchen.

This room, which seemed vast to Victoria after her neat, small kitchen in London, was a strange mixture of the old and the new. It had refrigerator, deepfreeze and electric cooker, but it retained the floor of terra-cotta tiles, its old baking range, numbers of deep, dark wooden shelves from which strings of onions, garlic and herbs were hanging, and an interesting selection of old pots and dishes. The well-scrubbed table would have seated eight farm hands. At the moment, on a cloth spread across one end, it held three thick mugs and plates, a dish of scones, butter and jam. ‘Schoolroom tea,’ thought Victoria, wondering anew what her position in this house was to be.

Miss Jameson brought the teapot and poured out the tea.

‘Sit yourselves down,’ she said, ‘and help yourselves,’ and went back to the sink where she was preparing vegetables, stopping occasionally to take a sip from her own cup beside her.

Her silence dampened down the spirits of the newcomers. In silence they helped themselves to scones, butter and jam and drank their tea. It became oppressive after a while. Victoria glanced at Amanda, and Amanda looked dolefully back.

‘Tired, honey?’ Victoria asked.

‘Only a bit.’

‘You must have an early night to-night after all that travelling.’

Another silence. Victoria looked out through the kitchen door, through a riot of bougainvillea, at Miss Jameson’s attempt at a vegetable garden, then the hills rising above the house, dotted with olive trees and the tall, thin spires of Italian cypress.

‘You have a lovely view from your kitchen, Miss Jameson,’ she ventured.

‘Ay, it’s well enough,’ was the terse reply.

Victoria gave up. Tea was finished in silence. She gathered the cups and plates together and took them to the sink.

‘Shall I wash them?’ she asked.

‘No. Leave them.’

‘Well, thank you very much for the tea,’ said Victoria, and beckoned to Sebastien and Amanda to follow her from the room. They went back through their rooms, on to the terrace and down the steps that led into a paved garden with a small fountain in the centre of it. They sat down on the edge of the fountain’s basin.

‘Well, what do you think of it?’ asked Sebastien.

‘Too early to judge,’ answered Victoria.

‘She’s
a bit of an old stick,’ he said.

‘I think she’s horrid,' said Amanda.

‘Don’t take too much notice of her, honey. We’ve always got each other, just the same as if we were in London. ’

‘Each other and nobody else,’ said Sebastien sombrely, thinking of the friends he would have gone to camp with.

Each other, and nobody else, thought Victoria. Well, it wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last; but there were times when she, too, felt a need of somebody else

That evening, Amanda went to bed soon after supper, tired out. Victoria stayed in the bedroom with her, tidying away their unpacked clothes, knowing that Amanda was feeling strange, unwelcome and lonely; and only when Amanda was settled down did she go into Sebastien’s room, which had been the sitting room of the guest flat until it became necessary to make a bedroom of it for him.

‘I think I might go to bed, too,’ he said, ‘ and read for a bit. All right with you, Vicki?’

‘Of course. I won’t be too late myself. I’ll just take a walk round outside and get some fresh air. ’

She went out on to the terrace. It was now quite dark, a lovely, soft warm night. In the distance, the lights of Firenze twinkled like a star duster, and the lights of solitary houses sparkled here and there among the darkened hills.

She had been to Italy before two or three times, with her mother and Sebastien and Amanda: always at beach resorts in rented villas, usually with crowds of people on the beaches. This was not the Italy that Victoria was interested in seeing. Florence was a different matter, so rich in art treasures that it would take her longer than the summer to see them all. If only they could settle here without too much disturbance or any awkwardness, she felt that she would enjoy Florence.

She had wandered round the side of the house and found there a darkened patio, spacious and furnished in modern Italian style. There was enough reflected light from one or two sources in the house—the hall, Sebastien’s room, the kitchen?—to show her that climbing plants clung to the walls of it, and that pieces of sculpture were placed here and there. There was also a large piece of sculpture in the garden and she went carefully down a flight of steps to see it better. Here, although there was some light on the sculpture, she herself was in darkness. She sat down on a stone bench to rest in the gentle night, relieved to have reached their destination after the days of travelling; glad to be rid of the driving (in a year or so, Sebastien would be able to take his turn at the wheel), of booking into hotels, of shopping in the markets, of speaking French and then trying to speak Italian.

The headlights of an approaching car swept searchlights through the air above her head, then she heard its engine as the car came towards the house. Silence for a moment, then car doors banging and cheerful voices through the night as several people made their way into the house. It occurred to Victoria that Charles Duncan might have other house guests. A few moments later, brilliant light flooded out over the garden from the patio, intensifying the darkness in which Victoria sat.

‘God, what bores those Borgliascos are! ’ said a woman’s voice. ‘But what a marvellous cook they have!’ replied a man’s.

‘It was an Epicurean dinner, wasn’t it?’

‘Well now, what are you all going to have?’ asked a fresh voice. Another man, with a fuller, deeper voice than the first one. ‘ Black coffee for everyone? and liqueurs?’

‘Lovely, Charles. Oh, this is perfect here.
So
relaxed and comfortable. And how beautiful Firenze is from here! ’

So that was Charles, thought Victoria; the host, sounding very assured. It occurred to her that she ought either to go away (but she was not at all sure of her way), or make her presence known (but she felt far too uncertain and shy to appear for the first time before his friends, who did not sound quite her kind of people, anyway). So she stayed where she was, while Charles went on:

‘James, you get the drinks while I ask Jeanie to make us pints of black coffee.’

Jeanie! Victoria had to smile in the darkness, to think of anybody calling that gaunt and forbidding female Jeanie. The conversation above and behind her went on casually tearing these Borgliasco people to pieces until Charles apparently returned and began to supply his friends with coffee.

‘When is it you get your invading army, Charles?’ asked a lazy, slow contralto voice.

‘My invading army? Oh, you mean the children.’

‘The children, yes. I really can’t imagine you with a houseful of children.’

‘They were due to-day. I suppose they’re all safely tucked up in their beds.’

‘Whatever are you going to do with them?’

‘Leave them to Jeanie as much as I can.’

‘Who brought them here?’

‘They drove down themselves.’

‘Drove
down? But you said they’re
children
! ’

‘God, yes, of course one of them must be old enough to drive. That would be Venetia—no, what was it? Vivien? No, Victoria, that’s it. Victoria. She’d have to be seventeen, wouldn’t she, to be able to drive. I don’t know how many years it is since I saw her. She was quite a little girl, Margarita.’

‘Little girls grow up, you know.’ Margarita’s voice was suddenly cool, and somehow more aware. It had lost some of that slow, lazy drawl.

‘You may find,’ said James’s voice, sounding amused, ‘that she won’t consent to being left to Jeanie. Charles, old friend, you’ve taken on some responsibilities, I can see.’

‘Well, it wasn’t of my choosing,’ said Charles.
‘You
know Paul and Barbara Fenn, James. Charm the birds out of the trees. Charm a man out of his common sense. I did offer once, in an expansive moment, to take their children off their hands if they were in a jam; but I had the shock of my life when they took me up on it.’

‘Weren’t you furious, Charles? I know how you hate your work schedule being upset.’ That was Margarita.