The Villa (12 page)

After she’d cleared away, she made her way down to the water for a morning swim. Mosaic-man was stomping in and out of his studio.

‘
Ciao
.’ His expression was somewhere between scowl and smile. ‘You go in the sea now – so early?’

‘I certainly do.’ She paused. ‘Do you work here every day?’

‘Work. And eat. And sleep.’ He nodded inside. ‘I have rooms at the back.’

Tess realised the studio must go further back than she’d thought. She was intrigued. But did she want to go into the dragon’s lair? Probably best not. But, ‘I heard you this morning,’ she couldn’t resist saying. ‘You sounded angry.’

His eyes flashed fury. ‘Fools,’ he said. ‘They go out to sea, they have nets that are torn and they throw them overboard. Just like that.’ He made a motion. ‘No thought for the danger.’ He tapped his head. ‘
Loccu. Stupido
.’

Tess nodded. She understood what he meant. Anything
could get caught up in a torn fishing net; it was lazy and it was irresponsible. But so far in Sicily she’d very much got the impression that clearing up their own litter wasn’t high on anyone’s agenda. It spoilt the landscape. Around every beautifully scenic corner was a pile of someone else’s rubbish. Sicily, she was beginning to realise, was a land of contrasts. Beauty with ugliness. Light with darkness. Romance with danger.

And hadn’t Mosaic-man overreacted just a little? She regarded him curiously. The scar on his face was an old one – maybe even from childhood, and it lent him a slightly piratical air. But that wasn’t all. There was a sadness only half hidden in the shadows around his eyes. It made her want to reach out to him. Something or someone had hurt him. And badly.

‘It is not of importance.’ His look contradicted the words. ‘It is nothing.’ He swept whatever it was away with a gesture of his hands. ‘Take five.’

‘Take five?’ Tess enquired.

‘
Prendere cinque
.’ He grimaced. ‘A Sicilian custom. Every day we must take five minutes and let off steam.’

Tess smiled. ‘Sounds like a good idea.’ She could think of a few people in England whose stress levels might benefit …

‘Enjoy your swim.
Ciao
.’ And he was gone.

A sensitive soul, she thought, as she swam across to the rocks. Or something. She could see now why they had appeared so silvery – because of the wild grasses and thyme clinging to their sides.

Her thoughts wandered to last night’s conversation with her mother.

‘Of course I remember Santina Sciarra,’ her mother had said in answer to Tess’s question. ‘She was my best friend.’ Her tone softened. ‘She’s still alive then?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Will you send her …’ she seemed to hesitate, ‘… my warmest thoughts?’

‘Yes, Muma.’ There was no mistaking the affection in her mother’s voice. ‘What were the rest of the family like?’ she asked.

‘Her father thought I was a bad influence.’ She snorted with laughter.

Tess smiled. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What did you—?’

‘Enough, Tess.’ Her mother’s voice grew stern. ‘Let it be.’

Reluctantly, Tess stopped probing. But she couldn’t let it be. And there was no doubt about it. If Muma had confided in anyone, it would be Giovanni’s Aunt Santina. She was the person Tess must talk to. So today she must get hold of Giovanni – if he didn’t find her first.

Suddenly, she was aware of some bubbles near her arm, and before she had a chance to snatch it away, she felt the sting of the jellyfish. Damn it. She swam in, her upper arm aching.

Mosaic-man was cleaning and sifting some stones. Beside him was a mosaic about thirty centimetres square on a transparent glass base, half completed in bright greens and golds. She couldn’t make out the subject – yet.

Tess put her hand over the telltale red weal on her arm so he wouldn’t see.

‘They caught you, hmm?’ He didn’t even look up. ‘You want coffee?’

‘Is that a cure?’ She took her hand away. Clearly, he didn’t miss a trick.

‘Only one cure.’ He looked up. To her surprise he was grinning. ‘What do you call it in English?’

‘Oh. Ammonia.’ She grinned back. It might be quite difficult to pee on her own upper arm and she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to.

Instead, Tess looked down at his mosaic. ‘It’s lovely. What are the stones?’

He picked up some frosted fragments, wafer-thin. ‘Turquoise, malachite, sea glass,’ he said.

‘You mix the semi-precious stones with glass?’ She picked up one of the wafers and ran a fingertip over its fuzzy surface.

He shrugged. ‘Who decides value? Another man like me perhaps. The glass from the sea may have been someone else’s rubbish once upon a time. But that was then. This is now.’

She nodded. Sea glass … ‘Do you wonder where it all came from?’

He smiled. ‘It is for you to choose.’ He picked up a frosted peardrop of worn ice. ‘A shipwreck?’ He put his head to one side. Picked up a softened triangle of amber. ‘A midnight picnic on the beach?’

‘And can you tell how old it is?’

‘More or less.’ He delved deep and came up with a bead of green so dark and pitted and rounded it was almost black. ‘This one, he is ancient as the hills.’

‘And this?’ She selected a clean droplet of primrose yellow.

‘As young as springtime,’ he said. ‘Translucent. You can see right through.’

Tess could see why he liked the sea glass. Each one could tell a story. Each one had a colour and a shape unique to itself; each one had come a different way.

‘It has been on a long journey before the waves bring it to me,’ he continued. ‘It will never break. And it has a light – you see? – coming from within.’

He handed her a bubble of green glass, fresh as a cut lime, and yet pearlised, as if lit up by the moon. ‘Yes.’ She could see exactly what he meant. ‘And what else do you use in your mosaics?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I use what I find. Some I buy, yes, if I have a commission, but most are already here in the stone, in the rocks around us, in the sea.’

Tess looked around at the rocks from which the
baglio
must have been hewn. The stone was sliced with minerals, she could see. And the cliffs beyond, were …

‘Marble and limestone,’ he said. ‘Coral too. Amber and agate. Many stones.’

Stone was important here. From the bedrock stone of the ancient
baglio
, to the honey-yellow sandstone of the buildings. Tess looked up at the pink villa – imposing on the cliff top. There was so much energy in its very core that at certain
times of day and night it seemed positively to vibrate, almost humming with life.

‘But what made you do it?’ She was curious. ‘Why did you want to make mosaics from the glass and stone?’

‘As a process it is slow but rewarding,’ he told her. ‘It is a soothing activity. Therapeutic.’ He paused. ‘And the mosaics – they are part of Sicilian history.’ He got to his feet, dusted down his hands on his shorts and headed for the studio. ‘Sicily itself is a jigsaw.’

‘In what way?’ There was nothing left for her to do but follow. And besides, dragon or not, she was curious.

‘The most beautiful mosaics are in the duomo at Monreale,’ he said. ‘You should visit. They date from the Byzantine period. Byzantine tesserae are very special, very reflective. The gold and silver leaf is pressed in layers of glass. So.’ He made a movement with his fingers.

‘Really?’ Tess looked around the studio. It was small, but light filtered through the narrow windows at the side and flooded in from the front. There was a workbench cluttered with tools, adhesives, sponges, sheets of glass and metal; pots filled with different coloured stone and glass, some already shaped, some unpolished and uncut. In the corner was a small stove and out the back she could see another room with a bed and a settee.

‘The Greek mosaicists – they were famous.’ He filled a small percolator with water and fixed the filter. ‘And Palermo’s Norman kings, they encouraged the art.’

Tess watched as he took the top off a small canister and
spooned out coffee. She caught a whiff of its fragrance, like burnt embers: nutty, woody – a scent of darkness. Mosaic-man didn’t seem too dangerous now. More like a history teacher really. He fixed the percolator together and put it on the stove.

‘But you don’t use cut tiles the way most mosaic makers do,’ she pointed out. His materials came from the natural world; there was no gold leaf here.

He lit the stove, his back to her. ‘Most mosaicists, they use the
smalti
,’ he explained. ‘It is a special intensely coloured glass, not a tile. It is cooked in a furnace then cut.’

Very different from his method, she thought. Sea glass and natural stone.

He turned to her. ‘Stones, they have long, slow lives,’ he said. ‘They do not die.’

Tess wasn’t sure how to reply to that. She knew what he meant though – it was uncannily like what she had just been thinking.

He opened a cupboard, took out a small tube of cream and brought it to her. ‘This may help.’ He took hold of her arm and massaged in some of the white cream. It was an intimate gesture and took Tess by surprise. But his touch was gentle, just a few strokes and it was done.

‘
Grazie
,’ she said.

‘It is nothing.’ He smiled, and in the dim light she could barely make out the old scar.

But it was something. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him. She couldn’t go on thinking of him as Mosaic-man. Giovanni had told her his family name, but …

‘Tonino.’ He stretched out his hand. ‘Tonino Amato.’

‘Tess,’ she said. ‘Tess Angel.’ He had a strong grip and a dry palm.

‘Angel?’ He was also holding her hand for much longer than necessary and fixing her with a look that made her feel uncomfortable. As if – like Giovanni – he wanted something from her.

‘So where do you get your inspiration, Tonino?’ she asked. ‘For your work, I mean.’ She could hear the percolator beginning to bubble on the stove and the air was filling with the smoky and beguiling fragrance of good coffee.

He smiled. ‘Stories.’

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Sicilian fairy tales, myth, legend, call it what you want.’ He spread his hands. ‘We have a history of pillage and rape and poverty, you know this? It is part of the jigsaw I told you of.’

Tess nodded. It seemed impossible to have a light conversation with this man. Everything he said or did was imbued with intensity.

‘The stories – they are of courage and compassion,’ he said. ‘Of oppression, theft and betrayal.’

There it was again. Theft and betrayal. It seemed to be a recurring theme. Could Giovanni Sciarra possibly be right about this man? He had a temper – she’d seen it; but there was also an honesty about him that she liked.

‘And the subjects you choose …?’ She touched a fish mosaic. The fish was silver-grey and yellow, and emerging
from a pearly white sea. The fish mosaic had been constructed above a mirror and above that sat a row of delicate yellow fins. Tess smiled. Ginny would love it. It would be perfect for their bathroom at home. But she didn’t want to ask the price, didn’t want him to think she was just another tourist, just another customer to flatter. ‘They are images from the stories?’

‘Exactly.’ He began to pour the coffee into tiny white cups. The coffee was thick and black, the
crema
hazelnut brown.

‘So the fish …?’

‘It is from the story of Ciccu,’ he said. ‘He rescues the fish from death and is rewarded when the fish returns a gold ring that he has been commanded to find by the King. Without it, he too will die.’ He put the coffee pot back on the stove. ‘Courage and compassion are rewarded, you see?’

Tess nodded. Was her family being rewarded – with Villa Sirena? ‘But they’re only stories,’ she said. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘Perhaps.’ He came to sit beside her and she was conscious of the warmth of his skin, very close, almost giving her goosebumps. ‘But the stories give a voice to those that are repressed. The poor, the peasants, those without power … ’

‘I see.’ Tess thought of what Giovanni had told her about the poverty in Sicily. Her mother’s family must have suffered too – at least until they were employed by Edward Westerman. And she remembered some of the bedtime stories her mother used to tell – about journeys and ogres and wicked princes. Were they too derived from Sicilian
folklore? Had they been handed down, like recipes, from generation to generation?

‘Freud – he believed that old fables and myths were accurate descriptions of the working of the human mind,’ Tonino said.

Tess stared at him. He was a revelation. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Tell me another story, will you?’ She let her gaze drift around the mosaics until she came to the green bird. Its head was bent as if it had just spied an insect, its beak bright yellow and parted. The wings were lifted, and the forked tail was upright and poised for flight. Its mosaic feathers glittered and gleamed, jade and emerald in the sunlight flooding through the window. ‘What about that one?’

‘The green bird is really a prince,’ he said.

Tess sipped her coffee and settled back to listen. Kings and queens and magic spells … It was like going back to childhood. She felt safe and sleepy. The coffee was delicious. It was richly roasted and true to its fragrance, it tasted of charred fires, chestnuts and night-time. It caught at the back of her throat and yet there was a sweetness there too that lingered like tobacco.

While they drank their coffee, he continued to work and talk, and Tess listened and watched, half-mesmerised by the movement of his hands as he sorted the stones, as he washed and cut and polished and placed, laying out the pieces and assembling the pattern of his design. He began in one corner and then worked his way out, leaving gaps – for grouting she supposed – constantly changing his mind
and replacing stone for stone, his fingers fast and sure.

‘And so the princess, she learns that too much humility will work against her,’ he said. ‘And that she must defend herself against abuse.’

‘And the green bird learns that true beauty comes from within,’ Tess added.

‘Exactly.’

‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘Do you?’

Silence. She realised that the jigsaw of the pieces he was working on had formed the tail of a serpent. Amber and green. A serpent … Good and evil, she thought. Another Sicilian contrast. Temptation.