The Soul Room (4 page)

For two days
after Amarena’s visit Sergio didn’t appear. I got on with my usual things,
gardening and swimming, but I couldn’t help feeling increasingly anxious. I
kept on thinking about the things Fabrizio had said. His arrogance and
assumptions infuriated me, but I also couldn’t shake the fear that he was
right. I spent over an hour on the phone to my dad, he didn’t want me to leave
Italy, or so he said. He didn’t want me worrying about Dan. Last time he’d gone
AWOL he was away for two weeks without calling and it turned out he’d been
living on a council estate in Manchester, researching his next book.

Eventually, just after lunchtime on the third day, Sergio appeared at the
gate. He looked hot and angry. He strode up to me and barely looking at me,
pulled me into the house. Once we were in the kitchen, he held my arms
painfully tight and started kissing me crazily on my neck and chest. He ripped
at my top.  A part of me
wanted
him to be rough. Somehow it assuaged my
guilt at not being able to give him what he wanted. I gasped and twisted away
from him but I didn’t say no, and I didn’t say stop. He took advantage of my
turning and pushed me down on the work counter. The shock of the cold tiles
against my face helped me come to my senses. ‘No Sergio!’ I felt him slacken
against me. We were both still and silent for a moment, our breathing slowing
and finally coinciding. ‘Not like this, not in anger.’

'I’m sorry Maddie, I’m sorry please forgive me’.

 I felt winded and my knees began to buckle. ‘Let’s have a drink.’ I felt
along the counter and poured us both a glass of wine and he sat beside me at
the big oak kitchen table, his face in his hands. I expected him to stay for a
while then make his excuses and leave.
‘So that’s it then.’
I found
myself thinking.
‘Despite all our good intentions this is how it ends, with
embarrassment and shame.’
But instead, Sergio did an extraordinary thing.
He knelt down and started to kiss me very gently on my bare feet. He carried
on, minutely, up my calf – opening my legs – lips rubbing gently round my knee
onto the inside of my thigh. As soon as he approached the top he started on the
other thigh – then again, before he reached the top he started on my arm – then
the other arm, then down my chest and between my breasts until I was writhing
and got up begging him to be inside me. He sat down and I straddled him and we
made love; but with such an exquisite, deep, gentle sweetness that by the time
I came I was trembling and cried, hugging his face hard against my chest.
Afterwards we climbed the stairs to my bedroom woozily, clinging on to each
other like shipwrecked sailors who have finally made it to land.

I think I
must be dreaming as I have the sensation of falling in the dark. Not quite
falling, actually, more like being squeezed through a substance I can’t
identify. The darkness presses against me, warm, thick, gently manipulating me
downwards. I’m not scared exactly, despite the feeling of being surrounded I
can breathe easily, but I am apprehensive. I can sense that I am being
transported somewhere and I am struggling with the anticipation. There is an
almost imperceptible change in the light; I look down and can now see a small
circle of floor approaching. It’s covered in a mosaic of glossy tiles in
maroons, deep blues and olive greens. As I sink nearer I start to see the
shapes of large exotic leaves and flowers emerging, like a William Morris
pattern…

I woke up to
find Sergio staring at me, his head resting in the crook of his arm, the muscle
of it taut against his cheek. I shook the remnants of the dream from my mind, I
still felt a little disquieted by it.

‘I tried to keep away Maddie, but it didn’t work. It drove me crazy to
think I wouldn’t see you.’ I propped my head up on my arm and smiled at him.
‘Why wouldn’t you see me?’

He sighed and lay back on the bed.

‘Because I thought it would be less painful to just stop than let it go
on and on and feel my heart break a little bit each day.’

‘Is that what your father thinks? That I’m breaking your heart?’

‘He told me he came to see you.’

‘He wants me to leave you alone.’

‘He had no right to say these things to you. He has never been able to
let me live my own life.’

‘If there is an end to come Sergio we should let it come when it is meant
to. If we force it we could both make wounds that never heal. Lets take it day
by day.’ He seemed cheered by that, though I wonder if it was my use of ‘if’
that was the culprit, rather than my unconvincing sentiment.

‘Sergio.’

‘Yes?’ He looked up at me, his eyes so wide and questioning that I
suddenly had a strong memory of him as a little boy.

‘Your father told me something…about your health.’

‘You know? I thought you might do.’

‘I heard my parents say something in an argument about it, not long after
you were born, and Rosa, talking, when I visited that time.’

‘I don’t need to talk about it, death could come to any of us at any time
in a million different ways. I am not really that different.’

There was more I wanted to say but he leapt out of bed, suddenly full of
energy. ‘There is someone very special that I would like you to meet, someone
you haven’t seen for over twenty years!’ His compact wiry body was taut and
expressive.

‘Who? A friend?’ I didn’t feel up to meeting anyone, and I didn’t want
him to build up his expectations either.

‘Oh no, more than just a friend.
Nonna
Edera Lazatti
;
La
Regina dei Folletti
– my grandmother and Queen of the Trolls!’

As we followed
the dusty little lane that led to Nonna’s house, Sergio explained to me that
her home had once been a small water-mill, and parts of the old wheel were
carefully embedded in the pink soil amongst Thyme and
Rosemary
bushes. I knew I had been here as a little girl, and seeing the house again
stirred memories of crouching in a dusty yard with new-born chicks running
between my feet. Nonna was obviously a keen gardener. I admired a handsome
Jacaranda, waves of heavy blue-purple blossom cascading from its branches and
clashing gloriously with the red stems and yellow flowers of a Nerium Oleander.
A shout, cracked at the edges but clear as a bell, burst from inside the house
and shook me out of my horticultural reverie.

‘Sergio! Sergio!
Entra
!’

‘
Vengo!
’ Sergio shouted back, smiling and pulling me towards the
house. The sun was directly behind us and sent a great square beam of light
into the little kitchen ahead. It lit up the shiny back of what looked like a
Macbook, propped up on the table amongst a pile of onion skins. A small
dark-scarved head looked up from behind the screen, showing a pair of twinkling
black eyes peeking through deep brown wrinkles. She studied me carefully.

‘Sergio! My favourite boy!’ she said in almost accent-less English, ‘
Vieni
qui
! I have just been talking to your poor aunt Karina in LA. She has had
her hip operation. The silly woman never ate enough, no wonder her bones are
like bread sticks.’

‘
Buon Giorno Nonna
!’ He went over and gave her a hug. She held him
tightly, burying her wizened face in his neck. He was clearly a favourite. He
disengaged himself. ‘Nonna, this is Maddie, you remember Maddie?’

She came over
and took my hand. She barely came up to my chest and my overwhelming impression
was of some kind of Mediterranean Beatrice Potter character - a mole or
hedgehog in rough dark cotton. She held my hand tightly and gave me a shrewd
look.

'It is good to see you again Maddie Armstron
g.
Do you remember me?'

‘Yes, I think so. You were a little different
then though.’

‘You are being very diplomatic. I am old now,
and you have grown tall
e
bella
!’
She
let my hand go at last and went over to her fridge. It was one of those huge
American affairs with double doors and a drinks dispenser and it dominated the
small rustic kitchen. She caught me looking at it. 'I am an
anacronismo
my dear. As you get to know me better you will find out why. Now I know it’s
not quite lunchtime but you will join me in a little spritzer
si
?  My
neice, she brought me some Aperol last time she visit from the North.’  Taking
our silence for acquiescence she poured a little Sonnetto into three tall
glasses, added a little sparkling water and a shot of the bitter red Italian
aperitif – which turned the drinks into liquid sunsets.

Nonna, or Edera
as she was called, was a singular woman; half Gypsy Rose Lee and half Anita
Roddick. Her talk switched seamlessly from the movement of the planets to how
her shares were performing on the stock market. Not prepared to be left behind
by technology, she had gone off to Rome to do an intensive IT course, and was
now so good that she did many of the accounts for the Amarena estate and had
even developed her own programme for the automated on-line ordering of
essential materials like fining agents and preservatives. She was also a
wonderful cook, and after a lunch of thyme-marinated chicken, and a couple more
spritzers, we sat, sated and contemplative, on her quarry-tiled veranda
listening to the singing of the crickets. I felt myself nodding off so shook
myself and started to stack the plates.

‘No, no.’ Sergio jumped up and took the dishes from me. ‘You rest. I’ll
clear up.’ He went off into the house and we heard the tap start running. Edera
leant across the table very suddenly and took my hand.

‘I know you must leave him. It is OK, you don’t need to be scared. It
really doesn’t matter
Tsoro
. You have changed him and that is enough.
You have helped him taste freedom and his right to live his own life and that
is a gift he will not lose. I also know your heart is bruised – perhaps it
still bleeds fresh in some places – for example I see a
bambina
about
ten years old. This girl makes you very sad.’

Angrily I tried
to pull my hand away. She had clearly picked up a lot of information from
Sergio over the last few months. However, she just held me even tighter, and
transfixed by her little ebony eyes I couldn’t speak.

‘She is singing to you – I don’t know it – a French song maybe - and you
are laughing. But now I see a road, there is blood on it and you are crying and
there is a man, he is silent, he stands at the window his hands by his side.
And I feel your guilt. It is a demon on your back. I wonder that you should
carry him about for so long. He must be very heavy.’

Some kind of convulsion wrenched my hand away. ‘How dare you!’ I felt
violated. She looked at me, a little dazed.

‘My dear! Don’t be afraid!’ She reached over and stroked my face. The
skin of her hand was soft and floury. ‘There is no need to be afraid of what
has gone! Why do you hold on to it?’

‘You have no right.’ I said tightly. ‘Don’t touch me.’

She took her
hand away and smiled at me. There was something wonderfully motherly about her
shrewd, kind little face, and I was reminded with a jolt of how much I missed
my own mother. There was a hissing in my ears like the sea as it sucks back
across the shingle, and then a great pulse of sorrow convulsed me and I retched
and then started to cry. She stroked my back, I hid my face in my hands.

‘Sometimes when you look at the sky, or the sea,’ she said softly, ‘you
feel so overwhelmed by the beauty of it that you find you can’t breathe. When
you were a
bambina
you crawled after a friend’s tortoise that escaped
from their garden and your
mama
and
papa
couldn’t find you for an
hour. Sometimes you rescue worms from the pavement and put them on the grass
because you chopped one up as a little girl and still it makes you feel bad’.

I looked up at her, I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I felt
light-headed, insubstantial, as if everything that had previously anchored me
to the world had suddenly lost its mass and disintegrated.

‘You don’t get angry very often,’ she continued, ‘but when you do it is
devastating and you are scared of it. Once, a little boy who had got lost in a
shopping centre came to you to ask for help because he said you had the kindest
looking face. When you were a young woman you trained yourself to listen to
people by counting in
uno, due, tre
in your head before you spoke.’

I sat up, she’d shocked me out of crying, but my face was still slick
with tears.

‘I could tell you a hundred things my dear –
un mille
even, and it
wouldn’t help you in the task ahead. All you can do is look inside and be as
strong as you can be. You can only learn by living.’ She paused and looked up
at the throbbing topaz sky. ‘He is a wise boy,’ she said at last, under her
breath.

‘I know.’

She looked at me
strangely, but then the wise boy himself came out onto the veranda and the
spell was broken.

‘
Amore, perche piangi
?  Have you been crying!’

Nonna patted Sergio’s arm. ‘It’s all right. We were just talking about
Maddie’s
mama
. I am sorry my dear that it has upset you.’

Sergio set about
getting our things together and then put his arm around me protectively. ‘Come
Maddie. It has been a long hot day. Let us go home now.’ I leaned gratefully,
exhaustedly into his shoulder. Edera dashed back into the house (very
energetically for a woman of her age) and returned with a wonderful long plait
of onions and garlic. ‘Here my dear, from my own garden.’ She took my hand. ‘
Ciao
Maddie. I will see you again.

Just a week
after our lunch with Nonna I returned home to Hove on a sparkling October day.
I leant my head against the window of the train and watched daggers of sunlight
move across the rolling downland of Haywards Heath. I was still in a kind of
dream-state. England felt alien and ethereal. I’d had a call from my Dad saying
they still hadn’t heard anything from Dan. He was trying to sound like he
wasn’t distressed, but I knew all of his vocal ticks and mannerisms too well to
be fooled. Dad was still trying to hope Dan’s absence was no different to all
the other times, but although he had taken a small suitcase, his laptop and
some clothes, on this occasion he hadn’t had a row with his boyfriend,
Nicholas, and that was often the catalyst of his short disappearances. On top
of that, his thirtieth birthday was coming up and he wasn’t one to miss out on
a birthday, especially a big one. After a few days of no contact Dad had called
the police.

I felt nauseous with worry for my brother, but also resentful at being
dragged away from Sergio and beautiful Terranima; and that made me feel guilty.
The only consolation was that I seemed to have come back to a clear, sunny
Autumn.

Walking into my flat heightened the disorientation. I wandered through
the vaguely familiar rooms, trying to suppress the sensation that I was
trespassing on somebody else’s life, like a detective inspecting a crime scene.
At times like these necessity is your salvation. The need to restock your
fridge, to unpack, to open windows, to sort through your mail and messages. I
busied myself for a few hours, then made myself a cup of coffee and remembered
that I had promised to call Sergio as soon as I was settled.

My flat was on the third floor of a huge detached Regency mansion house
on a grand but now slightly shabby avenue. They had managed to get 12 generous
flats out of the one house, and I often marvelled at what on earth even a very
wealthy early 19
^th
century family could have done with all these
rooms. The lucky people on the ground and first floors had squares of garden,
but the extent of my outside space was a small ledge above a bay window from
which, if you sat out and craned your neck, you could see the sea. I sat there
now, next to a charming roof Gargoyle, my coffee sending little puffs of steam
out into the rapidly cooling evening air. It was strange to hear Sergio’s rich
warm voice in the one ear, and feel the cold English October air on the other.

‘Already I miss you.’

‘I miss you too little prince.’

‘You are going to come back to me Maddie?’

‘Of course, as soon as we find out where Dan is, and can be sure that
he’s ok.’

‘Because I’ve been thinking about it
mio Tsoro
, you love
Terranima, we love each other, and we can have a future.’

‘But what would I do Sergio? I couldn’t stay in the big house with your
family, it wouldn’t feel right, and your father will be renting out the
farmhouse soon.’

‘This is part of what I’ve been thinking about. We could rent a little
house in the village, there are some beautiful ones.’

‘Owned by your father?’

‘Well yes, but my
famiglia
really.’

‘But what would I do with myself, my time? Now I feel better I want to be
useful, no more moping around, I want to make a difference, to do things.’

‘And you could. The garden you do at the farmhouse is so wonderful,
people will want you to do their gardens. We would just need to advertise.’

‘But my Italian is still awful.’

‘I can help you with that, you will soon learn.’

‘But what about, you know, what I told you about myself. What if I can
never give you a child?’

‘And I told you, I don’t care.
Perche ti amo,
Maddie, that is all
that matters.’

‘Well I care, even if you don’t.’ I put my coffee cup down and pressed my
fingers to my eyes, I felt like I might cry. It was so confusing to be home, I
was almost afraid of it, of what it could bring. We didn’t say anything for
seconds, then Sergio broke the silence, his tone attempting to be light.

‘What is that screeching
Tsoro?
’

I laughed. ‘It’s the Herring Gulls.’

‘Erring Gulls?’

‘
Herring
Gulls. They’re like seagulls but twice the size. They can
be aggressive too, especially when they have babies.’

‘They sound scary!’

‘You get used to them. But they do make a hell of a mess when the bin
bags are put out.’

‘We have that problem with goats.’

Later that
evening I collapsed onto the sofa, put my feet up and decided to reacquaint
myself with the marvellous quality of British TV. Italian television simply
isn’t worth watching, even if you learn the language. It’s an example of all
that is bad and cheesy about macho traditional culture. After ten-o-clock all
the channels switch over to banal porn. I once watched three women inexplicably
do an identical strip routine, next to a fire engine. The only variety was the
women’s hair colour. Perhaps that partly explained the effect I had on Sergio.
I would pass young women ten times more beautiful than me in the village every
day – but somehow for him I think I embodied a freedom, a cynicism, a humour
that many of the young women around him felt unable to express. That was
probably why he was so close to his Nonna. She obviously saw in him a humility
and gentleness that wasn’t often encouraged in young Italian men, especially
the sons of successful businessmen. He saw in her a free spirit, who as soon as
the children and husband had left in their various ways; grasped her remaining
decades with great energy and wit.

I suddenly felt very far away from the life I had led for the last five
months. At least in physical terms I seemed to have slotted back in seamlessly
in less than 24 hours. Even the neighbour’s cat had materialised within five
minutes of my return, meowing behind my door. Now she had sprawled across me,
her purr rumbling comfortingly against my ribs. But even in her blissful sleep,
she was still aware of her temporary status, and my dad’s knock sent her flying
into a corner of the room as if she’d been discovered ‘in flagrante’.

I was unprepared for how I felt, seeing him after all those months. I
hadn’t realised how much I missed him until I hugged him. He smelt exactly as I
remembered, of warmth and rolling tobacco, but I was shocked by the tiredness
that left a smudge of darkness under his eyes; he clearly hadn’t been sleeping
well. We both cried a little, and he said how well I was looking. I realised
(and not with displeasure, even in the circumstances) that I must have looked a
damn sight better than when I’d left him.

‘Well Dad,’ I said ruefully, ‘you lose one, and one comes back.’

He sat down and rubbed his face. ‘Maddie. Don’t ever be a parent. It can
be agony.’

‘No need to worry on that score Dad.’

‘Sorry Maddie, I didn’t mean...’

‘Don’t be daft.’ I went over and rested my hand gently on the shiny
warmth of his bald head. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Yes thanks love. I would.’

I went to the kitchen, the little cat following and emitting hopeful
staccato mews. I gave her a saucer of milk and went to get a bottle of wine. I
rested my forehead against the fridge for a moment, comforted by its cool
solidity. Did having a child make you braver? Did your drive to protect them
give you some kind of superhuman strength? How else could dad have survived my
mother’s illness and death, my brother’s irresponsibility and my depression?
And not only did he survive, he
kept living
. He still wrote short
stories, and played cricket. He still went on holiday. He still laughed and
hoped and planned, even though he hadn’t chosen to have a new partner. Perhaps
the very thing that made his life hard was also the very thing that kept him
going. I felt sad that it was something I’d never get to experience for myself.

I went back into the living room and handed Dad his drink. He took a deep
gulp and sank back in the chair. The cat immediately jumped up neatly and
settled on his thighs. ‘This wine’s nice. Is it Amarena’s?’

‘Yes, the
Sonnetto
. I allowed myself one case as excess baggage.
God knows what I’m going to do when it runs out!’

‘I’m sorry you had to come back. I know it was doing you good.’

‘I could have stayed there for ever if this hadn’t happened. But now I’m
back, I don’t know, I’m beginning to think it’s possible to have too much of a
good thing.’

Dad rolled a cigarette expertly, his arms resting gently on the cat’s
stripy back. ‘Why is it so ridiculously hard to allow ourselves to be happy?’

‘It’s not that so much. It was exactly right for me at
that
time,
but maybe all that sun, and perfection and quiet is ultimately somebody else’s
vision of happiness and not mine.’

‘So here you are back to the pebbly beach, the drug addicts, the tourists
and the family crisis.’

I laughed. ‘Well if you put it that way…’

‘It’s so good to see you laugh Maddie, so good. I didn’t know whether or
not to tell you about Dan. I knew you were getting yourself back together and I
didn’t want to land you with something you couldn’t handle. You know the last
thing I’d ever want to do is…’ He trailed off.

I leant forward in my chair and touched his arm reassuringly. He smiled,
a tired but tender little smile. ‘I think to be honest Fabrizio wanted me gone
anyway.’

‘Why on earth do you think that?’

‘Because of Sergio, I don’t think I’m the kind of woman he has in mind
for his one and only son!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You must remember from the past, how important the Vineyard is to him,
the family name, that it’s respected. I know he wants Sergio to be the one to
take over from him, and I also know that Sergio desperately doesn’t want to
step into his father’s shoes.’

‘And you weren’t going to encourage Sergio to capitulate?’

‘No, not like some local girl would. Most women in Terranima would give
their right arm to get into that family. That’s the kind of daughter-in-law
Fabrizio wants.’

‘I always got the impression Fabrizio liked feisty woman. He always
seemed to be drawn to it in your mother.’

‘I think it’s ok from a distance, something he can admire, as I know he
admires me for my skills, but I don’t think it’s a quality he wants within his
family, I get the impression he likes to be in control.’

‘I never did understand why your mother suddenly turned on the Amarenas.’

‘I think someone must have said something to her, something that pricked
her pride. About money, or about you.’

‘I can’t imagine what.’

I shrugged. ‘Look Dad, you and Terranima saved my life. And now it’s
saved, and I’m still here I want to keep going, to fight.’ I stopped for a
moment, floundering, ‘Dan’s my brother. I love him and I’m going to help find
out what’s happening. It’s my duty too.’

Dad lurched forward in his chair spilling the cat and scattering the
contents of his ashtray. ‘For god’s sake don’t Maddie!’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Just don’t do it again!’

‘Do what again? Dad, I don’t understand!’

‘You have to take responsibility for
everything
and if you don’t
learn to stop doing it you’re going to make yourself ill again! Just like Alan and
Stephanie – it has to be
your
fault! Christ! What did your mum and I do
to you to make you so neurotic?’

I felt my eyes prickle. ‘Alan was supposed to pick up Stephanie from
school, she decided to walk home herself because he was late, and got hit by a
car. She wasn’t concentrating, she had her iPod on. Her father was late because
I
was feeling a bit low in confidence at the time and picked a fight
with him. Over something so stupid that minutes after he’d gone I couldn’t even
remember what it was. What would that do to you?’

‘You were feeling a bit angry and wanted to get stuff off your chest; you
loved
Stephanie, you were a second mother to her, the last thing you
wanted to do was hurt her!  Shit happens Maddie, shit happens all the time to
thousands of people all over the world and a lot of the time it’s nobody’s
fault!’

I was trembling now and had to get up and walk about. ‘Don’t you think I
know that dad? Don’t you think I’m totally and utterly fed up of thinking and
analysing and inspecting how I feel all the fucking time? Of
other people
thinking and analysing and inspecting how I feel all the time? I’m so fed up
of…’ I floundered, ‘ME! I just want to get on with things, to help! I want to
help find Dan because he’s my brother and because I love him. Not because I
think it’s my fault!’ I sat down and took a deep breath. ‘Maybe it is a little
bit about
me
dad, but only to the extent that it’ll give me something
to
do
other than being in my own head!’

He stayed till eleven but I had become so intensely tired that I had to
turn down my dad’s suggestion of opening the second bottle of wine, and go to
bed. There was no need for either of us to apologise. He’d held back from
saying anything for so long it was no surprise that some of it had come out.
And anyway, he was pretty much right; though I didn’t quite get around to
telling him so.

The next day I
set off on the lovely walk from my flat, along the seafront to Kemp Town where
Dan and Nicholas lived. The three mile route took you from the tasteful and well-maintained
lawns and beach-huts of Hove promenade, past the decaying remains of the West
Pier, through the bustling bars and stalls of the tourist section, the lights
and noises of the Palace Pier, to the relative quiet of the Eastern beaches
before the Marina. This part of the seafront was used by everyone from
fisherman: whose tattered and colourful nets littered the pebbles, to nudists:
who showed-off their toned and oiled bodies on a section protected by raised
walls of shingle (also identified through the shrieks of children who had
climbed them unaware of what was on the other side!).