The Runaway Visitors (6 page)

Further along the same terrace, another wide door led into the kitchen; a kitchen that delighted Victoria. No deep freeze here, not even a fridge that she could see; but simple, rough dark furniture, presses that she could only guess the use of, a dresser full of wildly painted Italian pottery and innumerable flowering plants in pots. ‘How aseptic and bare our kitchens look beside this one,’ she thought; and as if Giorgio had read that thought, he said:

‘Not much like Signor Duncan’s house and kitchen,
signorina
?’

‘No, indeed, but I love this one.’

Giorgio’s mother stood by beaming at the two pretty girls, without understanding what they were saying. She was, as almost all Italian mothers of families were, very plump; in her case, more than plump; wearing the customary black dress, her curling black hair worn quite long, her smile showing clearly where Giorgio’s came from.

‘Say it in Italian, please,’ said Giorgio; and Victoria repeated what she had said in Italian to his mother. Signora Beltoni’s smile turned into incredulous laughter; she answered in such rapid Italian that Victoria understood nothing, and for the next few minutes there was a wonderful, muddled interchange of polite cordialities, into which even Amanda was dragged so that she could prove she was learning Italian. The atmosphere was warm and filled with laughter. Suddenly, Victoria realised that this was the first time since they had left England that they had all been truly light-hearted and happy; and she turned towards Giorgio as if she would tell him, or show him, something of this. And he was looking at her, his eyes serious, and their glances met, and held; and for a moment or two, could not look away. It was Giorgio who roused himself first, asking his mother if there was not a glass of wine for the visitors; and immediately a bottle of wine was produced, in its straw-covered bottle, and several glasses. Chairs were unnecessarily dusted, they all sat down at the rough but well-scrubbed table, and Signora Beltoni produced small savoury rolls with caraway seeds on top, and home-made cheese to put into them, so light and so good that Victoria resolved she would ask for the recipe.

‘May I have wine, Victoria?’ asked Amanda.

‘Half and half,’ compromised Victoria, and Amanda drank half wine, and half water, happier than she could remember being in ages.

The spaghetti boiled over with a tremendous hiss, and the Signora leaped up with an agility surprising in one so fat, and went to see to it.

‘You could stay and eat with us,’ suggested Giorgio to Victoria, in English.

‘Oh no,’ she protested quickly. ‘Your mother isn’t prepared and lunch will be ready for us at home. ’

He agreed at once, and Victoria wondered if she had crushed him.

Quickly, she said:

‘We’d adore to, some other time.’

‘Really?’ he asked.

‘Really.’

‘Then we will arrange it, some other time. ’

‘How is it you speak such good English, Giorgio?’

‘I seem to have a talent for languages. I got on with it so well at school that I decided to keep it up. I speak French also, and a little German. I read books in these languages,
signorina,
so that I don’t lose them.’

‘Why don’t you call me Victoria? I call you Giorgio.’

‘Victoria. It is a pretty name. For a pretty girl.’

‘I used to hate it,’ she said. Her parents, she thought, would never endure anything too ordinary; so that Sebastien had endured his name all through school, and neither she nor Amanda had liked their names: but did anybody?

They realised, as they walked back along the lanes, that to-day it was going to be themselves who were late for lunch; but after the wine and those delicious small rolls, it didn’t seem to matter. Perhaps they were all slightly light-headed, for even the picture of an irate Charles Duncan waiting for them on their own terrace didn’t daunt them too much. He watched them approach through narrowed eyes.

‘Well,’ he asked, as they climbed the terrace steps to face him, ‘where the devil do you think you’ve been?’ And perhaps it was the wine that helped Victoria to answer him as she did.

‘We know quite well where we’ve been,’ she said coolly. ‘We’ve been having a drink with some friends.’

‘You know you’re late for lunch! ’

‘I don’t know why that should disturb
you.
You’re always late for lunch.’

‘Miss Jameson has been nearly out of her mind with worry.’ Victoria laughed, a clear peal of ringing laughter.

‘I can imagine
that,’
she said. ‘She doesn’t care two hoots about us.’

‘She knew Sebastien had been out on a motor bike. She thought there might have been an accident. She’s never known you to be late before.’

‘Perhaps we’ve been too good,’ suggested Victoria. ‘Perhaps we should take a leaf out of your book, Mr. Duncan; then, if she never knew when to expect us, she needn’t worry. ’

He looked at her keenly.

‘I believe you’re tight,’ he said disapprovingly.

‘No, I’m not tight, though I have been drinking Chianti. I’m just feeling happy, Mr. Duncan.’ And she sat down at the table: on the terrace, waiting for her lunch, wondering if there might be some truth in his words, for she had been extraordinarily glad to sit down; and she noticed that Sebastien and Amanda were glad to sit down too.

Charles Duncan watched them all for a few moments, then he turned away and went to the kitchen to tell Miss Jameson they were back.

‘I like that! ’ said Amanda. ‘He can be late whenever he likes, but we can’t be late once.’

‘I don’t see that it affects him,’ added Sebastien. ‘It isn’t as if we kept
him
waiting. We eat separately anyhow.’

‘I suppose he feels responsible,’ said Victoria, and said no more as Miss Jameson appeared then with their food.

The fact that Charles
did
feel responsible emerged only too clearly a day or two later.

Giorgio had kept Victoria to her word, and invited the three of them to lunch at the farm, an invitation which they all had pleasure in accepting. An hour before they were due to set out, Giorgio appeared at the house to tell them he was going into Firenze before lunch and to invite Sebastien to go with him. Sebastien was delighted, and the two of them went off on the motor bike, leaving Victoria and Amanda to walk to the farm at their leisure.

This they did, trying to time their arrival to coincide with the return of Giorgio; and in fact they had been waiting only a few minutes when he returned with Sebastien, who was windblown, flushed and excited.

‘Gosh,’ he said to his sisters, ‘we simply flew along! Giorgio was showing me just what the bike could do.’

‘I hope Giorgio won’t run any risks,’ said Victoria, giving the young man such a severe look that he promised immediately he would not run any risks, for her sake and Sebastien’s, but also for his own. ‘I like life too much to want to be dead,’ he said, laughing.

Giorgio’s father came in for lunch which was laid out on the terrace. For this day, the rough table was covered by a crisp red and white cloth, and a pretty vase of Italian pottery held a bunch of mixed flowers. The great dish overflowing with spaghetti was covered lavishly with a mixture of meat and tomatoes and herbs so savoury and so good that the Fenn family allowed themselves to be persuaded to eat too much; and it was followed by cheese and by peaches juicy and ripe.

Afterwards, when Giorgio’s father went back to his work and his mother to her kitchen, refusing all help from her guests, Giorgio walked with them over the farm, to show them what was produced on it and how it differed from England. It was after four o’clock when they said their goodbyes, nearer five when they arrived back at Charles Duncan’s house, pleasantly tired, still talking of their delightful day. They went through the garden and on to their terrace, dropping on to the chairs.

‘What wouldn't I give,’ said Victoria, ‘for a good English cup of tea,’ and as if in answer to this remark, Miss Jameson appeared from inside the house. But not with tea, nor any offer of it. She regarded them with a cool, dispassionate glance.

‘So you’re back,’ she said grimly.

‘As you see,’ said Victoria.

‘And I hope you enjoyed your lunch. ’

‘Immensely. All of us. Thank you.’

‘Spaghetti, I’ll be bound. That’s all they know how to do.’

‘Yes, it was spaghetti and it was delicious.’

‘That’s why they’re all so fat,’ said Miss Jameson with a spark of malice. ‘You’d better watch it, you girls, or you’ll get like them.’

Victoria made no answer to this.

‘Well, what I came out here to tell you was that Mr. Duncan wants to see you in his studio.’

‘All of us?’

‘No, just you; and he’d like to see you straight away. ’

‘Then I’ll go as soon as I’ve washed my hands and tidied myself up,’ said Victoria, trying not to be put down by this grim-visaged woman.

When she set off for the studio, she wished she had pocketed her pride to the extent of asking Miss Jameson the way. She thought that disobliging lady might have volunteered the information, for she found herself in a part of the house she had not, so far, been invited to see. She had seen the studio from the garden, because the slope of the hillside had caused the house to be built on several levels, all of which Charles had taken advantage of when he restored it. It meant that, whenever he chose, he could enter or leave his studio on the top level. From inside the house, however, Victoria was at a loss to discover it. She opened one or two doors, to discover a spare bedroom, a small room stacked with materials Charles had a use for in his work, and then a third, which proved to be a library-living room. She looked round this, her hand still on the knob, and thought what a beautiful room it was; still very much in the modern manner, but lent comfort and cheer by the deep sofas, the warm colours, the shelves upon shelves of books.

‘You’d better come up,’ said that unmistakable deep voice, and Victoria lifted her gaze considerably higher, to see that a gallery ran across one end of the room, protected by a wrought-iron railing, approached by a delicately wrought iron stairway. Charles was looking down at her from what she now realised was his studio, clad in a clay-smeared smock from which he had cut the sleeves to give him greater freedom of movement, leaving the cut edges frayed.

He did not look pleased or welcoming. It had been on Victoria’s lips to say: ‘What a lovely room this is,’ or: ‘So this is the studio—how interesting.’ But such polite phrases did not seem in keeping with his forbidding expression, so she remained silent, but went across the room and carefully up the narrow stairway. Even at the top, she had no opportunity of seeing just what the studio contained, for he started right away by saying: ‘Now look here, Victoria, I gave you credit for being a person with a modicum of common sense; but if you do have common sense, you’re not using it right now. ’

‘I don’t understand you. In what way am I not being sensible? Are you angry because we went out to lunch?’

‘Of course not. If you want to tangle with the local peasantry, I’m not going to stop you, as long as you know what you’re doing . . .’

He got no further before Victoria interrupted him. She could not endure the patronising way in which he spoke of a family that had been so kind.

‘There’s no need to be so condescending,’ she said hotly. ‘The Beltonis are a very nice family—farmers, not peasants. And Giorgio is certainly not a peasant. He is educated and speaks several languages . . .’

‘ And is as handsome as the devil . . .’

‘That has nothing to do with it,’ exclaimed Victoria.

‘No? I should have thought it had a great deal to do with it. Just remember this, Victoria, a lot of these young Italians have had a great deal of experience; and quite a number of them have the idea that English girls are there for the taking. No doubt, the invasion of holidaymakers has something to do with that.’

By this time, Victoria’s temper was aroused.

‘And you choose to think I’m one of them! ’

‘I think nothing of the sort. I’m giving you a friendly warning.’

‘It doesn’t sound very friendly to me. And I can only think you have a very low opinion of me, if you think I haven’t my own standards of behaviour. If you brought me here simply to give me a lecture, you can save your breath. ’

‘That wasn’t what I brought you here for. You started that by jumping down my throat in support of the Beltonis . . .’

‘Because you were patronising about them . . .’

‘All right, all right. I understand that you want young company; company of your own age. That’s not what I want to talk about. The subject under discussion is Sebastien.’

Victoria sighed.

‘And what has Sebastien done?’

‘It’s more what Giorgio Beltoni has done with Sebastien. How long has Sebastien been riding round on the back of that powerful motor bike?’

‘He’s had a few trips. Why?’

‘Well, he’d better not have any more,’ said Charles with implacable firmness. ‘I was coming back from Firenze this morning when they passed me like a streak of lightning, and as far as I could see, Sebastien wasn’t even holding on. If Beltoni wants to risk his neck, that’s up to him. Sebastien is a different matter.’ Victoria remembered Sebastien at lunch time coming back into the farmhouse with Giorgio, flushed and delighted and windblown.