The Villa (25 page)

She paused by the stall selling herbs and spices, inhaled the fragrance of dusty, drying clumps of oregano, thyme and wild fennel. Behind the stall were sacks of chickpeas and lentils with metal scoops and an ancient pair of scales for weighing. In some ways – in the traditions of the ordinary folk – Sicily was probably still much as her mother had lived it. Cetaria certainly hadn’t entered the new millennium, let alone the twenty-teens.

Tess ducked to avoid the bruised purple garlic, plaited and hanging in ropes from the canopy of the stall. And came to the fruit and vegetables … courgettes with golden flowers, shiny peppers of flame and yellow, lacquered red chillies and fuzzy yellow peaches. She picked up a
melanzane
and stroked the slick skin with her thumb – the aubergine was sleek, dark and yet luminescent – the colour of Sicily perhaps, she thought with a smile.

She would eat in tonight, Tess decided, on impulse, and she bought half a water melon whose juice was practically bursting out of the wrapping, some fruity cheese, a small loaf of delicious yellow Sicilian bread, some tomatoes and black olives. A feast.

As she paid for the olives, she saw a woman on the other side of the market stall smiling at her. Tess instinctively smiled back. The woman was small and had a pixie face framed by dark hair cut in a perfect bob. She was wearing bold, deep-red lipstick and somehow didn’t look Italian. Had
they met before? Tess was just wondering whether or not to approach her, when she saw a familiar face only a few metres away.

She manoeuvred a path through the people around the stall. ‘Santina?’ What a piece of luck. But she might have guessed Santina would be here on market day.

The old lady turned, muttered something in Sicilian and glanced quickly around her. She grabbed Tess’s arm and pulled her to one side, where they were half hidden behind a canvas canopy.

Once there the old woman reached up to take Tess’s face in her hands. ‘You are back,’ she said, her toothless grin revealing her pleasure.

Tess smiled back at her. ‘I couldn’t stay away,’ she confided. ‘I wanted to find out more – about my mother and why she left Sicily.’ She leaned closer. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me?’

Once again, Santina got that faraway look in her dark eyes. ‘Why, she fall in love,’ she said in her thick accent. ‘Flavia, she fall, quick, like this.’ And she feigned a swoon.

Tess grinned. ‘Really?’

‘Ah, yes.’ Santina nodded energetically. ‘She was …’ She counted on her bony fingers. Fixed Tess with an intense gaze. ‘Seventeen.’

‘Only seventeen?’ That was younger than Ginny. ‘Was it a Sicilian man?’ she asked. ‘What did her father say?’ Though she could imagine. Santina had already hinted at what life was like for women in Sicily when her mother was young. She couldn’t see it going down well.

But Santina shook her head. ‘Eenglishman,’ she hissed.

‘Englishman?’ Of course, she had mentioned an Englishman before. ‘She met an Englishman here in Cetaria when she was seventeen?’

Santina shot another look from side to side and Tess looked too. But what were they looking for – and why on earth would anyone else be interested all these years later? ‘Flavia find an airman,’ Santina said, rolling her r’s and flinging her arms in the air. ‘She find him and she take him home. She save his life. Yes. They fall in love. He promise her the world.’ She clutched her breast dramatically.

Tess could only stare at her. She was already filling in the details, making sense of Santina’s broken English. An English pilot – injured presumably – discovered by a Sicilian girl – a girl who was already rebelling against the life that had been planned for her, a girl who wanted to see the world, who wanted to be free; she could work out the dates … It didn’t take a genius. ‘What happened?’ she whispered. Around them the jostle and hum of the market dimmed to nothing and Tess was back there with her mother in wartime Cetaria when Flavia fell in love.

‘Flavia’s father – he send him away,’ Santina told her in hushed tones. ‘He have other plans for his daughter, another man …’ She crossed herself. ‘In Sicily we marry to make friendships strong. You understand?’

Tess nodded. She understood. Family alliances. Power. ‘Who was she supposed to marry?’

Santina chuckled. ‘My cousin Rodrigo Sciarra,’ she said.
‘My father – he always want alliance with your family. He need Flavia’s father’s help against his enemies,
sì
?’

‘And isn’t your cousin Rodrigo—?’

‘Giovanni’s father,
sì
.’

Tess’s mind went into overdrive. The plot thickened. And the enemies Santina spoke of no doubt included the Amatos.

‘Ah, but it was not to be.’ Santina looked sad.

‘And Flavia …?’ Tess asked.

‘Flavia – she has a broken heart. Yes, this is true. I think she has a broken heart for ever.’

Two days later, Peter left for the hills.

Flavia had begged her father not to send him away. ‘I love him, Papa,’ she said. ‘If you care for me at all, you will show some pity … ’

‘What do we know of him, my daughter?’ her father replied. ‘Nothing. Your place is here, understand that. Your place is not with him. And this … this feeling you imagine you have … It will pass. Believe me.’

Nothing she said, no amount of tears could move him.

As he left, Peter took Flavia’s hands in his. She was trying very hard not to cry.

‘I will write to you,’ he said. ‘And you have my family’s address, don’t you?’

She nodded. Written on a piece of paper and branded on her heart.

‘I will come back for you, my dearest,’ he said. ‘Will you wait for me?’ He was standing by the door, bathed in the warm evening light. But behind him, never far, were the shadows of night-time.

‘
Sì.
’ She nodded.

‘Even if it takes me a long, long time?’ He studied her face.

‘Even if it takes for ever,’ she said.

In the doorway, she saw Papa with his stern expression. She didn’t
care. They would find a way. ‘For ever,’ she repeated. ‘I will wait for ever.’

There were many bandit gangs in the hills, dealing in contraband grain and other commodities, and Flavia feared for Peter’s safety.

Papa had kept his word and given him supplies and a contact in Palermo where he would be safe until he could undertake the next stage of his journey. They heard that he had made it to the city. But she remained anxious. Although there were men like her father who had sympathy for the English, for many others – since 1940 when Mussolini had got off the fence and supported Germany – England had become their country’s enemy. There were informers everywhere. How could a man know whom to trust? Separatists … fascists … Mafia … Flavia was not political, but she listened to the men’s talk when she could; she always had. It was the only way you could find out anything about what was going on. No one would tell you.

Now, Flavia sighed as she re-read the words she had written this afternoon. Had she captured any of it at all? The fear? The desperation? The longing? The love?

Once again, she picked up her pen. If she had known how hard it would be, she might never have begun.

But – she had waited for Peter, hadn’t she?

The war ended. Signor Westerman returned to Cetaria in 1946 – just after Enzo’s brother Ettore disappeared, and after the awful falling out between Papa and Alberto Amato. This had rocked the
village and torn the two families apart. ‘I cannot believe it,’ Papa had cried, close to tears. ‘That he would do such a thing to me.’ And yet he had believed it.

Flavia waited. There had been no letters, and they said the post was still unreliable. But surely Peter would come for her now?

Months passed and life after the war resumed some semblance of normality. Maria and Lorenzo were reunited. But Flavia refused any suitors her parents presented for her. She heard nothing and yet she waited. She listened to her father – ranting and cursing – and waited. She wrote to him, and still she waited.

Most people remained very poor – but the Farros were better off than most, with the patronage of Signor Westerman and the contacts of Santina’s father Enzo. Flavia had never liked or trusted Enzo and he made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of Flavia – disobedient daughter that she was – and of any influence she might have over his daughter Santina. But Enzo had become increasingly important to Papa – Flavia saw that – even before the falling out between Papa and Alberto. And now Enzo was smug. One day she saw him and Alberto in the village square, shouting, almost coming to blows there in front of a watching crowd. She heard people talking – about how the families had always fought; over their land, over a woman, even over their family positions in the local cemetery … It took the roadsweeper Nico to break them up this time. Flavia shrugged and went on her way. She was sorry that Alberto no longer came to their house, but it was not her concern.

Flavia also learnt to cook. In
la cucina,
pounding and mixing, kneading and rolling, she found solace for her grief; a way of finding
the patience required, even a deep sense of comfort. She watched Maria marry and become the woman she, Flavia, would not be. And she waited
.

Until – at last – she could wait no longer.

There is both humour and poignancy built into Sicilian cuisine
, she wrote. And so it is in life. Like
Pasta du Maltempu
. Bad weather pasta – originating from those times when the fishermen were unable to go out in their boats. It was sad, but it could make you smile. Bittersweet …

Always, there was the pasta. In Sicily it was made from semolina flour from the yellow durum wheat, but here in England, often not. Flavia was proud of the fact that she still made her own fresh pasta, even now. Dried pasta, naturally, was not the same.

Make a heap of flour with a hole in the middle, like a volcano. Pour in the lava of the eggs and mix in with your fingers. When it is the right consistency, knead the dough with your fingers and the balls of your hands
. Tess had watched her mother do this often enough, she should know.

Aim for a quiet rhythm. Let the rest of your body be still while the hands work. Fold, knead and twist the dough into a supple, elastic ball. Now put your back into it. Throw the dough on to the counter to release the tension
. Flavia chuckled. Could be the tension of the pasta or the tension of the cook.

Repeat this process for at least fifteen minutes. Let the dough rest. The rest is as important as the work. Roll into sheets, flipping and
flouring to prevent it from sticking. Roll and stretch and roll until it is as thin as daylight in winter. Dry and cut. Boil for two or three minutes in a large pot with lots of water. The pasta needs to swim in the pan … Remove when it is
al dente
to the taste. Introduce it to tomatoes
…

Broken heart for ever …?

But before Tess could question her further, Santina glanced behind Tess, and she saw a sudden flicker of fear in her eyes. Furtively, she touched Tess’s arm before scuttling away.

Frustrated, Tess turned around to see what had spooked her. She saw the woman with the pixie face. And felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘Tess.’

She gave a small start and turned back. ‘Hello, Giovanni.’ Didn’t he have a habit of turning up unexpectedly …?

They kissed on both cheeks. He smelt of limes, she thought. Clean and crisp with a bit of a zing. He was dressed smartly – in a dark suit, but didn’t seem in the least overheated. He must be cold-blooded, she thought. Or just accustomed to Sicilian weather?

‘I heard you were back,’ he said, steering her away from the market and the woman with the dark hair and pixie face. How, she wondered? It seemed that nothing got past Giovanni.

‘I was on my way to see you,’ she told him, trying not to mind his guiding hand on her arm. He was deferential
though, she noted, to the matrons of the town, weaving a pathway through the women and market stalls with a ‘
Prego, Signora
,’ here and a ‘
Grazie, Signora
,’ there. Santina was nowhere to be seen.

‘Ah, good. Coffee?’ he said smoothly and before she knew it, they had left the market and emerged into another piazza she hadn’t seen before. Or
piazzetta
perhaps, as it was so tiny. There was a church too, a little chapel with an iron bell and an old wooden door; in front of it stood an olive tree and a stone bench.

‘OK. Why not?’ She could always use more coffee.

He stopped at a bar and led the way inside. In contrast to the church and
piazzetta
, it was all chrome and mirrors and abstract art. Tess blinked. A sudden intrusion of modern Sicily – how bizarre.

They sat down at a table by the door and Giovanni ordered two espressos with a tiny jugful of hot milk. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You cannot stay apart from us,
no
?’

Tess stirred a little of the milk into her coffee. ‘Cetaria is a beautiful place,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘This is true. And you talked with your mother when you went home?’

Tess sighed. ‘I think I told you, Giovanni, that my mother doesn’t like to talk about Sicily. So if there is something hidden somewhere, I can assure you that I know nothing about it.’ And she didn’t want to know. There were enough mysteries here already.

Giovanni shrugged, not looking in the least convinced.

Irritated, Tess leaned forwards. ‘Tonino Amato told me the reason for your family feud,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re such enemies.’

Giovanni sipped his coffee. He didn’t seem remotely concerned. ‘And that reason is?’ he enquired.

Tess took a deep breath. It was too late to back down now. She’d wanted to ruffle his feathers, hadn’t she? ‘Your family murdered his uncle.’ It sounded like quite a reason to her.

‘Luigi Amato?’ He looked furious now. He loosened his collar. Well and truly ruffled. ‘You should get your facts right, Tess. That man died of a heart attack. And he got what was coming to him. He was a coward, a thief and he did not pay his debts. The feud …’ he almost spat, ‘you speak of began long before Luigi’s death.’