The Villa (31 page)

She hurried along the platform. And people looked so different. The women were smarter, more colourful. There was still hints of wartime drabness, but these women looked as if they were going somewhere. As if they had some life, some purpose other than the home. She thought of her mother and the other women in the village; the black dresses and shawls, the darkness. Already, she had entered into a different world.

And now
she
was going somewhere. She steadied her breathing, quelled the anxiety which kept rising, despite all her good intentions. She mustn’t think about the bad things; she must focus on the positive. She must think about love. This was why she had come on this journey. For love. Because she would never find another love like this, she knew. It was a once in a lifetime thing. It was worth
the anxiety, the fear, this whole exhausting journey. It was her destiny.

And now she was heading for England. London, Victoria. There would be another ferry – but this time she would travel as a foot passenger; only first-class passengers would get a sleeper. Flavia didn’t care. Now, she just wanted to reach her destination. England …

‘What do you reckon?’ asked Brian, the manager of the pub. ‘You’re young.’

Ginny narrowed her eyes and scrutinised the guitarist more closely. ‘He’s a bit old,’ she said. At least forty. And he wore thick glasses and a permanent silly grin. Charisma was not the word that immediately sprang to mind.

‘He can play,’ said Brian, tapping his fingers on the bar. ‘And sing.’

‘Mmm.’ Ginny was non-committal. She hadn’t realised the job would require auditioning skills. The Ball was being a bit jumpy. It knew there was something bothering her.

‘But …? ’ enquired Brian.

The guitarist had moved seamlessly from ‘It’s not Unusual’ to ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’. ‘And I’ll soon be leaving too,’ he said into the mic. ‘Not in a jet plane, but in a clapped-out old Volvo … Ha, ha.’

Perishing pelicans, thought Ginny. ‘I can’t see him appealing to anyone under forty,’ she said. ‘Does he do anything else apart from ancient covers?’

Brian chuckled. ‘You’re a harsh critic,’ he said. ‘But you’re right.’

‘I want a younger crowd,’ he had told her when she came
in to work at 6 p.m. this evening. ‘I want this place vibrant and exciting. The place to be. The brightest night spot in town.’

‘Right.’ Perhaps Ginny had come along at a good time. Though she couldn’t help thinking that Brian was being a bit ambitious.

‘I’ve got three acts in tonight to play a few numbers. You can help me decide who to book.’

It seemed like a lot of responsibility to Ginny. ‘But I don’t even know how to pull a pint yet,’ she told him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with that later.’

‘OK, Ryan,’ he said now to the old guy, who on second thoughts could be fifty or even sixty, since he had a medallion nestling in the grey chest hair poking out of the top of his shirt. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m more interested in hiring a band.’

Act number two hadn’t turned up.

While act number three (a band, a young band) were setting up, Brian showed Ginny how the till worked. ‘The days are gone when you have to add up.’ He laughed loudly. ‘All you have to remember is what you just served ’em with. The till does the rest.’ He lit a cigarette even though there was a clear
No Smoking
sign over the door. ‘Think you can manage that?’

‘Uh huh.’ Smart arse …

‘OK, boys. Hit us with it.’

Hit us with it …?
Someone should remind him, Ginny thought, that he was over thirty.

They were good. Not great, not professional, not slick, but good. They were also loud and they were raw. They rocked. Even the Ball kept a low profile.

‘Well?’ Brian asked, after the first song – a cover of that Kings of Leon number. ‘Sex on Fire … ’

‘Fab,’ said Ginny.

Brian nodded. ‘I thought you might say that.’

They played a few covers – from the 90s and 80s as well as the noughties, and a few originals. Brian and Ginny both approved of the mix. There were four of them – a tall, skinny guy on keyboards with tattoos and a shaven head, a front man with floppy blonde hair, blue eyes and looks to die for, a lead guitarist with broad shoulders and spiky hair, and a dark, bemused-looking guy on bass. He looked kind of interesting in a moody sort of way and when he caught her eye during the third number, she felt herself blush. Blubbering buffaloes …

‘I’m off men,’ she had told Nonna and Pops this morning at breakfast. ‘I’ve become an anti-man zone. They don’t fulfil any need. I’m going to studiously avoid the male species for a while. I’m a mean, man-hating machine.’

‘Charming,’ said Pops.

‘’Cept you,’ Ginny reassured him.

But since then, she’d had three texts from Ben, ranging from, ‘Hey, where did you go?’ to, ‘What’s with the disappearing act, baby?’ to, ‘Still on the planet – or what?’

She struggled to interpret these. Did they mean he cared? Ginny fingered the mobile in her pocket. She was glad he’d
bothered. But, ‘I’ve gone to look for something special,’ she texted back. ‘See you.’

He could take that how he wanted. She was going to find another hairdresser.

‘Any reason?’ Nonna had enquired, following Ginny’s dismissal of the male species.

‘They prefer their mates to their girlfriends,’ Ginny told her. ‘They’re boring. They don’t know how to have fun.’

Her grandmother smiled.

‘It’s one rule for boys and another for girls,’ Ginny went on. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘It never was, my darling,’ said her grandmother. ‘It never was.’

‘All right, boys, you’re booked,’ said Brian, when the applause from the half a dozen customers in the bar had died down. ‘Every other Saturday night do you?’

Ginny looked up. Just as Dark and Bemused gave her a particularly bewitching smile …

They took the boat into the turquoise waters of the nature reserve, and once the motor was switched off, the silence was broken only by the lap of the water, and the occasional cry of a seabird. It was two-thirty and the sun shimmered over sea and mountains with a white light that was almost blinding in its intensity.

Lazily, Tess trailed her hand in the cool water. It was so clear, she could see a shoal of small bream swimming in formation just below the surface and the flat broad rock and pebbles of the seabed below. Already, she felt, she was getting to know this place – above sea level and below.

Tonino seemed at peace for almost the first time since she’d known him. He had lost his perpetual half-frown, his mouth was not set, but easy and relaxed, his eyes lightened by the sun when he pushed his sunglasses on to his head.

He looked across at her, smiled and let his hand rest lightly on hers. His palm was dry and the pressure firm; she could sense rather than feel the strength in him. There was something of the stone he worked in about this man. As if he were part of the Sicilian landscape, embedded in the rock itself. Then the water touched their hands in a slippery caress and his skin softened, her hand slotting more surely into his.

‘Here is the cove,’ he said.

Tess followed his gaze. He had allowed the boat to drift around the headland and in front of them now curved a semi-circle of fine white sand dotted with red and cream rocks and bands of seagrass washed upon the shore. As she watched, a solitary butterfly – a Red Admiral – flapped its gorgeous wings and skimmed the shallow aquamarine water.

Tess realised she’d been holding her breath. ‘It’s a very special place,’ she said. But what she really meant was … This is special, this moment, this experience with you in this boat, in this bay. Whatever he was – and she still wasn’t sure – she only knew that she was drawn to him like an insect to honey. It might be impossible to resist – even if she wanted to.

He stripped off his T-shirt, stood up in the boat and dived in an arc into the water. The boat rocked and she held on to the sides and laughed. She watched his dark head go under first, the rest of his body following in one fluid movement. Like a seal, she thought. Please, not a shark. She thought of Robin. But less and less, she realised. Less and less.

A small pink jellyfish floated across the rippling circle where Tonino had dived in. She smiled. And as she watched, he emerged crisp and wet and grinning.

Tess laughed once again. She wanted to be in there too. She was wearing a bikini and a sarong, which she untied without further ado, so that she was ready.

He pulled the boat further in and moored it, tying the rope to a crag of rock. The boat gave a small sigh and a scrape against the pebbles and then was still. Tonino offered her his hand.

‘
Grazie
.’ She smiled.

‘
Prego
.’ He bowed playfully and hand-in-hand they waded through the water, out towards the open sea rather than to dry land.

‘Shall we?’

She nodded, reached out her arms and slid into a slow breaststroke. The water was cool on her hot skin, silky and intoxicating. She turned over and floated on her back, the sun burning against her closed eyelids, sending a kaleidoscope of red and golden images into her vision, into her head. These were the colours of Sicily, she thought. Red earth, golden sun … Red tomatoes, yellow durum wheat …

‘This is like paradise,’ she called across to him. Worlds away from family feuds, thefts, betrayals and murder … Not to mention the Mafia.

‘Correction.’ The water was dripping from his black hair. He stood up and ran his hand through it. ‘It
is
paradise.’

She squinted towards the mountain, outlined against a cloudless azure sky. ‘Can you get to this bay by the path in the nature reserve?’ She could just make it out in the distance, a band of red earth winding through palm trees, tamarisks and prickly pears.

He shook his head. ‘It is only accessible by boat.’ Once again he grinned. ‘Lucky us, do you not think?’

‘Lucky us.’ But the water – or something – was making Tess shiver so she waded out of the water and on to the beach, dropping on to the white sand. The red mountains rose around the pocket of the cove, their lower slopes
scattered with rock roses, wild spikes of rosemary and sweet yellow broom.

He joined her a few minutes later. He had brought the rucksack from the boat and a huge blue towel. He spread this out and she sat up as he unpacked the rucksack. Fizzy water and – mmm – Prosecco, both bottles wrapped in cool bags, Serrano ham, ricotta cheese, tomato salad, thick yellow Sicilian bread and oranges.

‘It looks delicious,’ she said.

And it was. They ate hungrily, drank Prosecco from the glasses he had also brought along. ‘Never drink good wine from plastic glasses,’ he said. ‘No, no, it is not the thing.’

Slowly, he peeled an orange, letting the rind fall into a spiral around his brown fingers. He took a segment and offered it to Tess.

She took a bite. ‘Sweet and warm,’ she said. ‘Like the sun.’

He nodded. ‘The orange is a daytime fruit,’ he said. ‘The lemon, she is of the moon.’

‘Lunar,’ said Tess. The colour of moonshine. And the scent of night-time.

Finally, replete, they lay on the towel, Tess almost dozing.

‘You are very different,’ he murmured, after some minutes had passed. ‘To what I imagined.’

Oh yes? She became attentive. ‘And what did you imagine, exactly?’ She propped herself up, looking down at his tanned body, at the dark tendrils of hair that curled over his flat stomach. She didn’t dare look further.

He didn’t open his eyes. ‘Another tourist.’ But she heard
the contempt in his voice and tried not to be hurt. After all, she wasn’t another tourist – she was half-Sicilian herself. And why shouldn’t he resent the tourists that came and plundered the beaches and towns and temples of Sicily with their brashness, their noise, their mountains of rubbish? Well, because the tourists gave him the food on his table, for starters, she thought. If not for the Germans, the English, the wealthy Italians from the north, who bought his glittering mosaic tableware, his inlaid furniture, his mirrors and tiles, then how would people like Tonino make a living?

But … Vanity won out. ‘How am I different?’ she persisted. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted to touch the hollow in his neck under his Adam’s apple. How much she wanted to trace a path with her fingertip past his sternum and his ribcage, down to his navel. And down … Her gaze was drawn to the waistband of his close-fitting black trunks that fitted him like a second skin. And …

‘You are a beautiful woman.’ His voice was husky and she realised that now his eyes were open and he was watching her watching him.

Tess felt the heat on her shoulders and in her breasts. But she had a feeling it was coming from inside rather than from the sun this time.

‘Lots of tourists are beautiful women,’ she pointed out – though somewhat shakily. This was dangerous ground. She had seen them posing in white bikinis on the decks of flash yachts and sailing boats, all with improbably dark golden tans and blonder-than-blonde hair. Much younger than her too,
she thought, looking down at her stomach and legs – which were, OK, well-toned, thanks to all the swimming and diving she did, but perhaps not as trim as they’d been when she was twenty – or even thirty.

‘Your hair … ’ He trailed a hand through it; twisted a tendril between thumb and forefinger. ‘It is like a weed of the sea.’

Tess laughed. She’d had smoother compliments. Still … ‘Seaweed?’

He nodded. ‘Like a mermaid,’ he said. ‘Yellow and brown and red and amber. Like jasper.’

She had seen those mottled stones in his studio. They looked like the stones you often saw on the bottom of the ocean; dappled by sand and moss. ‘You still haven’t told me the mermaid story,’ she teased. ‘The story of Villa Sirena.’

‘You must be patient,’ he said. ‘I will tell you when it is time.’

Right. But when would it be time?

‘Your eyes are blue violet,’ he went on. ‘Very rare in Sicily. Very rare in sea glass.’

‘Sea glass?’ She had been propped up on one elbow, now she collapsed down on the sand again next to him. He certainly had some inventive chat-up lines.