The Villa (7 page)

She parked in a side street, got out and stretched. It was
warm, she fancied a stroll and it would be far easier to find the house she was looking for on foot. She’d been told to collect the key from a Signora Santina Sciarra who lived in via Dogali, number fifteen, and who was a friend of the family. Which family, she wondered. Hers? Was this someone who had known her mother?

‘Is the villa very dilapidated?’ she had asked the solicitor dealing with Edward Westerman’s will on the phone before she came here. She was determined to be practical. What had promised to be an adventure with Robin might prove daunting when faced with it alone. But he had assured her it was just old, tired and in need of some TLC. Old and tired, Tess could cope with. Crumbling ceilings and leaking pipes, she could not. She was trying to be strong. But her relationship with Robin had reached a cliff edge. And she wasn’t sure whether or not to jump.

Leaving her bags in the car, she walked to the corner. It was dinnertime. She could smell the fragrances of tomatoes, herbs and roasting meat drifting through open windows, down from balconies and terraces. In the next street, she saw an old woman dressed in black, sweeping her front step, her back bent.

‘
Scusi
,’ Tess said. Was that right?

The woman peered up at her with black, inscrutable eyes. She did not speak.

‘
Sera
. Er …’ That was most of her Italian used up. And besides, Sicilian was a completely different language – one that her mother hadn’t chosen to share with Tess when she
was growing up. ‘Via Dogali?’ She showed the woman the slip of paper she’d written the address on. Sicilians were bound to understand Italian; no doubt most of them spoke it to the tourists who regularly invaded their island.

The woman grabbed the slip of paper from her with brown knobbled fingers, peering and clicking her tongue. She was clutching a thick black shawl around her head, despite the warmth of the evening. She let loose a torrent of Sicilian, in which Tess thought she caught the name Santina.

‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘Santina.
Sì
.’

The woman placed a bony hand on Tess’s arm and gripped. Hard. She was speaking very fast. Was she asking who Tess was? She thought so.

‘I am Flavia’s daughter,’ she said clearly. ‘Flavia.
Figlia
.’ Was that right?

Another torrent. The woman turned and beckoned. ‘
Sì, sì
,’ she muttered. ‘Come, come.’

She hobbled quickly along the skinny street, her heavy black shoes clomping over the uneven cobbles. Tess scurried behind. How old was this woman? Seventy? Eighty? A hundred? It was impossible to tell. She was bent almost double and her skin was lined, brown and weathered by the sun.

They couldn’t be far away from Santina’s; nothing was far away. And this was where her mother had grown up. Tess felt a thrill of excitement. Had her mother walked down these same streets, smelt these same smells – delicious cooking, yes, but interlaced, she had to admit, with a more dubious smell of stale sewage, or rotting food perhaps; a
scent of decay. The steps of the houses they were passing were clean enough, but the walls were grimy, the paint peeling to reveal the underbellies of the houses themselves – the stone core. Had it been like this back then, she wondered. For Muma? Everyone probably knew everyone in this town. And their business. This woman had, no doubt, lived here all her life. She would know everything that Tess wanted to find out – if Tess could only talk to her ….

They came to a road that descended steeply towards the sea. Tess caught sight of what looked like a small bay surrounded by rocks, a brightly coloured fishing boat pulled up on the quay. But even as she craned to see more, another tall stone building obscured the view. The woman was still muttering to herself and she caught the name again – Flavia – then
l’inglese
, then Maria and Santina. At one point her unlikely guide even crossed herself. What could her mother have done?

Tess nodded vaguely in response to her words. But her mind was in top gear. She couldn’t wait to find out. And maybe Edward Westerman had wanted her to discover her mother’s story, which was why he’d made coming here a condition of the bequest. Though … How would he know she hadn’t been told the story already? She hurried to keep pace with her guide. Still. He wanted her at least to … she hesitated …
get involved
with the place. For some reason.

The old woman was still nodding and beckoning and scuttling over the cobbles like a black widow spider. Tess nodded
back at her and smiled encouragingly – it was all she could do. There must be a puzzle; otherwise why would Muma not talk about those days? The puzzle was a part of her journey. And the past was here – in the grey cobbled streets and high shuttered houses. The past. Sicily, she was beginning to realise, was the kind of place that could haunt you.

They stopped outside a door with a rusty iron grille. Number fifteen. The paint was flaked and green. The woman knocked three times, still muttering.

Tess smiled weakly and waited.

After a few minutes, another old woman – also dressed in black, Tess noted – answered the door, cautiously, peering round first, before opening it a bit more. She nodded to Woman in Black mark one, but her eyes widened when she saw Tess.

Tess smiled again and nodded energetically. It probably looked mad, but it seemed to be the way forward.

The two elderly women greeted each other warmly, carrying out a rapid conversation accompanied by much clicking of tongues, shaking of heads and looking at Tess as if she were an interesting specimen in a zoo. Didn’t they have English tourists here? Was Tess different – a house-owner, a potential new neighbour? Or was it because she was Flavia’s daughter?

After a few more minutes of this, she began to grow exasperated. She had come so far and she was so near. Dusk had crept up behind her and the light was beginning to dim. She wanted to see her house, damn it. She didn’t want to be
standing here on some stranger’s doorstep listening to endless prattle she didn’t understand. ‘Please,’ she said.

They both looked at her; both stopped talking as if they’d been switched off at the mains.

‘Do you have the key?’ She addressed this to the second woman. ‘For Villa Sirena?’ She made a gesture of turning a key in an imaginary lock. ‘Please?
Grazie
.’

The second woman gripped her arm in much the same way as the first woman had done earlier. Then the other arm. She pulled Tess forwards, and Tess, taken off balance by her surprising strength, was propelled into an unexpected embrace. She felt the woman’s bristly chin as she kissed her resoundingly on both cheeks. Goodness.

‘Santina,’ the woman said, pointing at herself.

‘You have the key?’ Tess asked, not willing to be deflected from the task in hand. The name meant nothing to her – why would it?

At this, Santina practically dragged her over the threshold into a dark, dingy hallway, painted blood-red and covered in framed photographs and religious paraphernalia. Santina said her goodbyes to Woman in Black mark one and, maintaining a firm hold on Tess’s arm, led her into the kitchen. This was dominated by an ancient stove above which various iron cooking implements hung from hooks on the smoke-stained whitewashed wall. There was a small square window with a net curtain and an assortment of wooden chairs placed around a stained, pock-marked table in the centre of the room.

‘
Espresso
?’ Santina demanded. ‘
Caffè? Biscottu
?’

Much as she was desperate to see the villa, Tess had the feeling that her hostess was not to be deflected from hospitality. And besides, it had been a long time since lunch at Gatwick, she realised. An espresso might just hit the spot. ‘
Sì, grazie
.’ She sank on to the chair Santina had indicated. She was tired. She felt as if she’d been strung out with tension for days – since Robin’s announcement that he couldn’t come away with her, in fact. How was the weekend with Helen’s parents going, she wondered. Where were they now? At dinner? At the theatre? Anyway, something in this kitchen had just cut the rope. Her shoulders slumped and she let herself relax. She was here now. She had made it.

Santina nodded, retreated to the kitchen doorway and started shouting up the stairs. ‘Giovanni! Giovanni!’

Who would this be, Tess wondered. An ageing husband perhaps? Another face from Muma’s past who would expect Tess to have at least heard of him?

But no. Two minutes later, a Sicilian man – probably in his late thirties, Tess guessed – entered the room. He wasn’t tall, but even so, he seemed impressive as he paused in the doorway. Posed almost, she found herself thinking. His thick black brows beetled together when he saw Tess. He rattled out something to Santina and she rattled back. Like a couple of old-fashioned trains hurtling down a track.

‘You are Flavia’s daughter?’ he asked abruptly in English.

‘Yes.’ It was beginning to sound like a TV series. Tess didn’t know whether to be offended by his tone or relieved that here was someone she could communicate with at last.
‘I’m Tess. Tess Angel.’ She got up and held out her hand. ‘And you are …?’

‘Giovanni Sciarra.’ He said the words with some pride. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, eyeing her from under his dark lashes. ‘At your service.’

Hmm. Tess wasn’t sure about that. The last thing she needed right now was male attention – of any kind.

Santina poured water from a jug in the white enamel sink and scooped some coffee into a small metal percolator which she placed on the stove. She hovered by Tess, beaming and nodding, before letting loose a stream of unintelligible words.

Giovanni smiled (a cruel smile, Tess decided, a bit like a tiger who’d spotted a kill). ‘I must apologise,’ he said. ‘Your visit – it is
una sorpresa
– a surprise. We thought Flavia’s daughter to be of a greater age.’

Tess raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said.

‘No, no, you do not disappoint.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘But … ’ He drew up a chair and mounted it by swinging one muscular leg over, so that – weirdly – he was facing her over the back slats. Tess tried not to giggle. His new position only fuelled the tiger fantasy – only now the tiger was behind the bars of a cage.

‘My great-aunt Santina,’ he gestured towards the elderly woman, ‘and your mother, Flavia, were childhood friends,’ he said. ‘As you must know.’

Tess shook her head. She might as well come clean. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that.’ She smiled at Santina who smiled back.

‘Ah, yes. She talks about it often,’ he went on. ‘They played together as girls. The families … They were very close.’ He made a gesture, the little fingers of each hand linked. She noticed that he wore a gold signet ring initialled GES.

‘Oh, I see.’ Hence the effusive greeting. Tess smiled again at the old woman.

‘So … ’ He shrugged. ‘My father was a good age when he married my mama.’

Ah. ‘Right …’ At over forty, her mother had given birth to Tess late in life – at least by Sicilian standards. Giovanni would have expected Flavia’s daughter to be a bit younger than his father. But in fact Giovanni and Tess were of a similar age.

Santina was talking again. Giovanni cocked his head to one side as he listened to her, a slight frown on his handsome face. His skin was a dark olive, his eyes brown. Handsome, but maybe a little cold, she guessed.

‘My aunt wishes to enquire after the health of Flavia, your mother?’ he said, rather formally, when Santina was done.

Tess nodded. ‘She is well.
Grazie
.’

Santina seemed satisfied. For a moment a faraway look crept into her wrinkled dark eyes, and then she went over to the stove where the coffee was steaming and poured the thick black liquid into a small cream cup. She placed this in front of Tess and stood watching until she felt compelled to take a first sip.

‘It’s good,’ she said. And it was. ‘
Bene. Grazie
.’ That had to be all her Italian used up. But at least if she could smile and
nod and thank people, she wouldn’t be thought impolite, just stupid perhaps.

Giovanni fetched a black jacket from a hook outside the kitchen door and pulled it on. ‘When you are ready,
Signurina
,’ he said. ‘Or
signura
?’ He looked pointedly at her left hand.

‘I’m not married,’ said Tess. They certainly got quickly down to the nitty-gritty around here.

‘
Bene
,’ he said.

Bene
?

‘I will take you to Villa Sirena.’ He held out one hand, palm up, and looked expectantly at his aunt. Santina produced two keys from the pocket of her apron, one big, one small. She placed them reverentially on his palm.

His fingers closed around them and he nodded. ‘
Allora, andiamo
.’

‘Great.’ Tess swallowed the last of the coffee and got up. ‘
Grazie
.’

Santina stepped forward to take Tess’s hand, holding it as if she wanted to say something or as if she didn’t want to let it go. Then Giovanni spoke once more and she kissed Tess on both cheeks, squeezed her shoulders and finally released her. But as Tess followed Giovanni Sciarra from the house, she was aware of the tiny woman in black watching them from the doorway. She seemed kind enough, though it was hard to believe her a contemporary of her mother’s. Tess sighed. If only Muma had given her some clue about the people in this place. She didn’t know who had been her friends, who her
enemies. She had no idea whom to trust. But she wasn’t in any kind of danger here, was she? She’d only come to look at a house. Her house.

Once alone with Giovanni, she felt a little self-conscious. ‘Is it far?’ she asked, ‘only my bags are back there in the car … ’

‘
No
.’ He pointed down some steps, towards a piazza. It was almost dark now, but she could make out a stone archway and some benches. ‘It is down here, beyond the
baglio
. I will take you there and come back for your things.’

Oh. ‘There’s no need … ’ she began, but he raised a hand to silence her. She followed him meekly down the steps. Here in Sicily, men clearly accepted their right to unquestioned authority. So perhaps she wouldn’t challenge it. Not today anyhow.