The Villa (21 page)

Tess took a deep breath. ‘But perhaps I do.’

‘It is nothing to you.’ The words seemed to whip out of her.

‘But Muma,’ Tess said, thinking of what had happened at the party, how she had felt. That clear and defining moment. ‘It is. And I need to go back there.’

‘Need?’ Her mother’s eyes were dark and unreadable.

‘Want. And need.’ Tess crossed the room and held her mother’s hands. They felt so thin and fragile. ‘I don’t want to upset you,’ she told her. ‘I really don’t. But I’ve been thinking about it. And I have to go back there.’

‘Why?’

Tess had expected anger or tears. But Muma just looked sad. ‘I just feel it.’ She shrugged. ‘I think it’s why Edward Westerman left me the villa. And I am half-Sicilian after all. Perhaps Sicily is in my blood too.’

Her mother hadn’t broken away from her hold. But she stared into space, and Tess hated that defeated look more than anything.

‘Tell me, Muma,’ she pleaded.

Her mother shook her head. ‘You have to find your own way,’ she murmured. ‘No one can find it for you, my darling Tess.’

But she could help, Tess thought. If she wanted to, she could illuminate the path a little.

‘When will you go?’ she asked. ‘What about work?’

‘I gave in my notice on Thursday.’ It still seemed a bit unreal, as if it might have happened to someone else after all. Perhaps it hadn’t sunk in yet.

Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘Because of this?’

‘Because they were unfair.’

They sat down together at the table and Tess explained what had happened. ‘And also maybe because of this,’ she admitted. The whole scenario had a sense of synchronicity. As if it were meant to be.

‘And Robin?’ Her mother curled her tongue around his name as if she could hardly bring herself to say it.

‘It’s over,’ Tess said. ‘Definitely over.’ She wondered how many times she would have to say it before she and everyone else believed her.

‘So you are decided?’ Something in her mother’s expression had changed. ‘You are determined to return to Sicily?’

‘Yes.’ Tess knew she had to. ‘With or without your support,’ she said. ‘Though I’d much rather you told me you understood.’

Her mother nodded. She seemed to hesitate and then come to a decision. ‘Wait here,’ she said conspiratorially, getting up and looking over her shoulder as if the Thought Police might suddenly appear to arrest her.

‘What …? ’

Two minutes later she was back. She grabbed Tess’s hand and opened her palm, shoving something inside.

Tess looked down. It was money: a roll of notes. She didn’t know how much money, but it looked like a lot. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s mine,’ her mother said defensively. ‘Not your father’s. I was saving it.’

‘What for?’ Tess stared at her.

‘For something like this,’ her mother said. ‘Take it. It’s yours. And I will try to understand.’

‘But I couldn’t … ’ So many thoughts were scrambling through her head. Like this would help her go back to Sicily and even stay there for a while – but why the turnaround?
And was she doing the right thing? What about Ginny …?

‘Ginny …’ she said.

Her mother raised an eyebrow. ‘Something is not right,’ she suggested, as if she already knew.

Tess told her the gist of the row. It had left her shaking. Where, she wondered, had she gone wrong? Her fun-loving daughter had somehow metamorphosed into a truculent teenager. But the worst thing was knowing that her favourite companion for as long as Ginny had been able to form words no longer wanted to spend time with her. And she definitely did not want to come to Sicily.

Tess felt herself wrapped in her mother’s arms – something that didn’t happen very often. She was almost afraid to breathe in case Muma let her go. ‘It will pass,’ her mother said. ‘It is natural and it will pass.’ She stroked Tess’s hair as if she were a child again. ‘Let Ginny stay with me for a few weeks. Go to Sicily if you must. Maybe it would do you both good to have some time apart.’

Tess swallowed back the tears. She’d felt so many new emotions over the past few weeks, she was in turmoil. The woman inside her was desperate to return to Sicily. Not just to solve the puzzle, but to have an adventure, to enjoy her villa, to live a little. But now that she’d been given permission from her mother, now that she had the means to do it, the mother in
her
was holding her back. She had taken the responsibility of bringing Ginny up alone and she should see it through.

She sighed. It wasn’t so unusual for Ginny to have stayed
out (though she was banned from doing so during exams). Teenagers seemed to sleep willy-nilly round at each other’s houses; it didn’t mean they were all indulging in rampant sex, just that they couldn’t be bothered to come home. And even if she was having rampant sex, Tess told herself, Ginny was eighteen. So long as she was using condoms, did it really matter? (Yes, actually. Of course it mattered.) But she always sent Tess a text to let her know where she was – that was the rule.

And when Tess had finally got hold of her on the home phone this morning, Ginny hadn’t even said she was sorry. Tess knew it was no use getting angry – and getting angry wasn’t her style. But at times like this she wished that David had not been such an absent parent. She didn’t know what to do.

Perhaps Muma was right, perhaps it would do both Ginny and Tess good to have a time apart. Ginny loved and respected her grandparents; there was no way she would misbehave with them. Perhaps Tess couldn’t do it alone after all. She thought of the money her mother had given her. It would certainly be enough to live on for several weeks while she made up her mind what to do next. What to do …? It was a big question. But … She didn’t want her and Ginny to grow any further apart. ‘I’m still not sure I’m doing the right thing,’ she confessed.

‘Do not misunderstand me, Tess.’ Her mother was looking her straight in the eye. ‘I do not want you to go. But I see that you have to.’ She nodded. ‘And I see that you need a
break.’ She put a hand on Tess’s shoulder. ‘You are not the Wonderwoman, my darling. You have brought that child up alone and you always, always have worked too hard. Now you have no job and a villa in Cetaria. So you can go away and think about it. Whatever
it
is.’

For the second time that evening, Tess considered how remarkable her mother was. Strong, unselfish and understanding. She felt as if she should still be protesting. But on the other hand …

‘Do not worry,’ her mother said. ‘Just go, sort out your thoughts and then it is finished.’ She opened the oven door where their dinner was bubbling nicely. ‘Now,’ she said, with her first smile of the evening. ‘Call your father and let’s eat.’

So there it was, Flavia thought. Tess wanted to return to Sicily. She needed to return to Sicily. Perhaps it was her destiny.

Flavia sat in the room where she liked to do her writing, because it had a view of the garden and because the afternoon June sun streamed in and warmed her. She watched Lenny in the garden, clipping haphazardly at the hedge. She had known from the first moment she heard the news of Edward Westerman’s death and his bequest to her daughter, that this was only the beginning. She was an old woman – how could she fight the pull of Sicily?

So … She had let her go. And she had made it easier for her. Why? Well, because Tess was her daughter and because she was so stubborn, she would never stop until the thing was resolved. Very well then. So be it. She would try to understand.

She picked up her pen, stretched out her aching fingers. And she would do her part. A little every day. She would get there.

Sicilian cheese:
il frutto
– the fruit of the milk. This was something Flavia had missed, at first, more than most things Sicilian.
She remembered the local shepherd from the mountainside; his craggy face and the wooden staff he carried, his strong thick-soled boots.

Pecorino
, the cheese from the sheep,
caciocavallo
from the cow, goat’s cheese. And ricotta – made from the whey of other cheeses; not a cheese, not really; simply ricotta.

She used to watch the ricotta-making in the village; stand with Mama in the hut with the blackened walls, while the cauldron of milk was stirred and stirred growing hotter and hotter until it began to separate. She could still smell the sweet creamy fragrance of the wet curds, the pungent olive wood smoking and sparking beneath the pot.

There were many recipes with ricotta which Flavia could include. Ricotta complemented the
dolce
, spinach, red peppers … It could be cubed and served with olives, sundried tomatoes and salad leaves. It could be drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with parsley or mint or black pepper. Most of all, it was a taste of the mountainside, a taste of history, a taste of everyone’s beginning. She wanted to give that to Tess.

Flavia heard him cry out – as if even in sleep her ears were attuned to him.

Soft, like a cat, she slid out of bed, wrapped her robe around her and ran light-footed over the flagstones into his room.

‘Hush. Hush,’ she murmured to soothe him.

‘It’s so damned hot,’ he muttered. ‘I’m burning up.’

Yes, he was sweating. She fetched a cold flannel. Laid it on his brow.

He put his hands over his eyes. ‘It’s the lights. They’re blinding me …’

Sometimes it was the lights, sometimes the noise, often both. Flavia laid a cover over the lamp by the bed. They left it on, because darkness too was a problem. She knew that he was dreaming. He had had this dream many times since he had been with them. It was a dream – a flashback – of the moments before his plane had crashed; she recognised the signs.

‘You are safe,’ she murmured in English, as she always did, so that he would understand. ‘You are here, in the house in Cetaria, with me.’ It was still dark and apart from her whispers, the house was silent.

Over the past weeks he had taught her more English, and she had taught him snippets from her mother tongue so that he could converse a little with her father. This seemed important.

He began to spend time outside – always close to the house. And as he walked around the terraces and the
ortos
his walking began to improve and his leg grew stronger.

Her father came in to see him every evening before dinner, bringing a glass of wine, asking how he was and looking grave.

‘ Bene,
’ Peter would say to him
. ‘Grazie, Signor.’

‘But still very weak,’ Flavia would add. Of course she wanted him to get better, but she did not want him to leave. His wound had healed and the shrapnel had all been removed. He was making good progress. But he was not ready to go and she was not ready to see him go. She could not bear the thought of parting.

From his dreams and from what he’d told her, Flavia knew that the English airman’s objectives last July – the aim of the gliders’ mission–had
been to seize a bridge outside Syracusa and hold it until troops arrived by sea to capture the town. She knew that he had been carrying a gun and much ammunition (and assumed that Papa and his cronies had taken this – in Sicily you never knew when such things would be useful). She knew that he had flown that night from Mascara in the Atlas Mountains, and that he had been unable to hold his flight position, that he had been blinded by the searchlights and lost sight of the coast.

‘Steady on, old man,’ he muttered now, his voice rising. ‘We’re going too fast. We’re going to—’

She held his hand. She knew what was coming. Crash. Blackness. Oblivion.

‘Peter,’ she whispered.

He gripped her hand. Squeezed it hard. She didn’t flinch.

‘Flavia.’

A different voice intruded from the doorway. ‘Go to bed, Flavia.’ Her father.

‘But, Papa … ’ No one else could calm him like she could. No one else could feel what he felt.

‘Go.’ Her father had the look on his face that meant he must be obeyed.

So although she could hardly bear to leave him, Flavia took one last look at Peter, and ran back to her room.

Their voices continued rising and falling way into the night. Once, Flavia crept back and stood outside the door to listen.

‘You will leave the house,’ she heard her father say in Sicilian tongue.

She flinched. Clutched at the stone wall for support. But there was
no comfort there. Soon it would be winter. She had known it was coming. But … She didn’t even know if Peter understood.

‘I will give you assistance,’ said her father. ‘But I will not give you my daughter.’

Hot tears ran down Flavia’s face. She wanted to fling open the door and shake her fists and scream at them, but she didn’t dare. She could not be forbidden from seeing him completely. She could not be locked up like an animal that could not be trusted.

‘I love her,’ she heard Peter say. ‘I love Flavia.’

Her heart almost stopped beating. He loved her.

‘No,’ said Papa.

All her life she had heard this. Papa’s ‘no’ which brooked no argument.

Back in her room, Flavia cried tears of frustration. Before Peter her life had been nothing. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to long for, no hope for change. All she could see, the most she could expect for her future, was to find a man who was kind, who would look after her. She would be in his bed, have his children, be tied to
la cucina.
Like Mama. He would go out with his friends – to Bar Gaviota to drink grappa, to the corso to see the dancing. She would be stuck inside. Entrapped. Church, market
, la casa.
She would rather die
.

What else was there?

‘What else is there?’ She would demand of Santina. But Santina would do what her family required of her. She could not give Flavia an answer.

And then Peter.

Flavia lay flat on her back and stared up at the ceiling. There was
a sliver of white-pink light creeping through the half-closed shutters. Dawn. Peter had fallen into her life – literally – like a star from the sky and everything – everything– had changed.

She drew her knees up to her chest and flung her arms out wide. Peter loved her.

It wasn’t that he was alien, unknown, exciting – though he was. It wasn’t that he could take her to another place, a new place, one that she’d already been told about by Signor Westerman, where she knew her life could be different. Though that was part of it too. It was Peter himself. The touch of his skin, the beat of his pulse. Flavia loved him. She loved him with all her heart.