Urban Venus (28 page)

I know my Dad’s sister, Aunt Sarah, has been into family tree research for the past few years, since she retired, and that is my true reason for calling Evie. She’s always been very close to Sarah, who took Evie to her heart just as much as my Dad did when he and Mum got together, and I’m kind of hoping that she will be able to wheedle some information out of Sarah, without me having to ask and therefore posing the question as to why I need it. I manage to convince Evie that it’s for a project I’m working on, that I need some links between art through the ages and my own personal history, and she doesn’t take too much persuading to approach Sarah. It would just save me an awful lot of time and effort, and give me some kind of starting point, if I had some pre-researched stuff to be going on with.

Of course Sarah’s research will only cover my Dad’s side of the family, so what I do if my link to Titian is via my maternal side, I really don’t know. And I can’t believe for one minute that it will go back more than a century or so, but I have to start somewhere, and if Evie can email me Sarah’s files then it’s something, I suppose. Although ‘needle in a haystack’ would be a very appropriate term right now; what chance have I really got of stumbling across anything relevant, when there are so many centuries to trawl through? It’s all quite daunting really. I don’t know what I’m looking for, when, where or why. It’s an unsolved puzzle on a monumental scale.

So far today I’ve managed to put last night’s events out of my mind and apply myself to the job in hand. But now I sit at my open window, smelling those roses and breathing in the warm air, and allow myself to think back over the whole evening. What a fabulous night! Kissing Vincenzo aside, what a place Monteriggioni is, and that shop, that restaurant – wow! I suppose I was an easy conquest in the face of all that seduction of a material and aesthetic nature, and Vincenzo probably didn’t have to try too hard to make me swoon and fall into his arms. It was not only him I was seduced by but the whole package. In any case, it was only a kiss – it wasn’t like I’d jumped into bed with him or anything, was it?

My phone beeps with a message. Without even glancing at it I guess it will be Vincenzo, checking up on me and making sure I’m OK after last night. We’d both snoozed all the way back – how unromantic – so we hadn’t talked about what happened, and I didn’t stir until we were outside my apartment, at which point he’d woken me up with a light kiss on the cheek.

‘
Siamo arrivati, bella Lydia,’
he’d said.
‘Ci vediamo domani.’
I remembered how he’d said the same to me after that fateful meal out, months ago, when I’d first arrived. This time I get the feeling he really
does
want to see me tomorrow. After all, I mystify him, don’t I? Instead of being the mad girl with the dreams, I am now mystifying, which has to be an improvement on crazy. I quite like the idea of that.

The message
is
from Vincenzo; just a quick one to check I’m OK (as expected) and asking if I can meet him for coffee later. I’m planning an afternoon in the library – after all the distractions this week I need to get on with some coursework – so I reply to say that I’ll pop in on him at the end of the day and then we can go for a drink somewhere. With his tutor’s hat on, hopefully he’ll appreciate my dedication and not see it as a snub, as it isn’t meant to be. I don’t feel I need to go rushing over to see him right away; what happened last night was lovely, if unexpected, and I am surprisingly OK with it (which I also inform him of to put his mind at rest, adding a little smiley face to the end of the text). But I am behind with my studies and I can’t afford to be.

The ancestry files from Aunt Sarah, via Evie, have just pinged through on my laptop – boy, she’s a fast worker – so I resolve to spend what’s left of the morning looking through those, and then knuckle down to some serious work in the afternoon, away from here and all distractions. Vincenzo will have to wait a little longer for the pleasure of my company. I’m sure he’ll cope.

There’s so much here to wade through. I’ve just spent the past couple of hours barely scratching the surface of Aunt Sarah’s database, and I have to say what I’ve seen so far looks fantastic. She’s managed to trace some branches of the family right back to the eighteenth century; I can’t begin to imagine how long she must have toiled over it. I know I can’t really expect to stumble across something that might lead me to Titian so early on, it would be naïve of me to think that was likely, but I can’t help myself from hoping. This first glance doesn’t throw up any obvious names that might link through; nothing sounds remotely like it might have come from Italy, or from anywhere beyond the UK, come to that.

I just need to stumble across some little gem of information which will spark off a link. If only it were as easy as all that…

An afternoon in the library finds my coursework sufficiently caught up on and the nagging guilt for my lack of attention to my studies this week appeased, so I pop across town to meet Vincenzo as promised.

‘
Bella Lydia,’
he says, greeting me enthusiastically with a kiss on the lips, his hands gently stroking my arms. His kiss doesn’t linger though, and although he is smiling, his eyes give away the uncertainty he obviously feels, despite my reassurances by text this morning that I was fine about last night.

‘
Lydia-the-mysterious at your service,’ I joke, kissing him again to try to dispel that uncertainty.

‘
You liked that tag, didn’t you,’ he replies, relaxing a little in the knowledge that I’m not about to tear him off a strip for pouncing on me last night. In any case, there
was
no pouncing involved, and for once I hadn’t fought him off; I’d kissed him back. I suppose he imagined I’d only done that because I’d had too much to drink, and that in the cold light of day I would come to my senses and give him the boot. But no, he needn’t worry. I’m happy to be at this point with him; at the start of a new relationship – possibly?

I must be turning native; what has happened to my complete disapproval of tutor-student relationships? I was so adamant at the start of the year that I’d never get embroiled in any such situation, and I’d still like to think I’m not doing anything morally wrong, but it does seem to be more acceptable over here, doesn’t it? I find I don’t have to try too hard to convince myself – and I’m amazed at just how easy it is to do that.

We decide to go for an
aperitivo
and then see how the mood takes us afterwards. I find myself really hoping we can spend the rest of the evening together; now that my wariness of his reputation seems to have miraculously deserted me, I really would like to get to know him better, on a personal level. I feel I know him pretty well in the academic sense – we’ve spent a lot of time together over the past few months – but this is different. I want to know more about
him
the person, not the tutor, all the usual sort of early-date stuff. So is this a date? I suppose it has to be.

‘
Come to Bologna with me the weekend after next,’ Vincenzo proposes as we linger over our desserts. We moved on post-aperitif to a little
trattoria
in the
centro
. It’s a gorgeous little place;
trattoria
yes, but cheap and cheerful, no, in true Vincenzo style. It’s what I’d have called ‘authentically Italian’ in the days before I came over here and knew any better; proper Italian food, not just pasta and not a pizza in sight, and fully staffed by Italians, not Eastern European students trained to sound Italian. It’s also one of those rare places in Florence which isn’t full of tourists. One of the advantages of going out with a local I suppose; they know where to go. Stefano and I used to go to some great places – in a lower price bracket, but still lovely. That’s the first time I’ve thought about him for a while and it hits me with a bit of an icy blast. I wonder what he’d have to say about my dining companion this evening…

‘
I have to go up there and finalise the details for my commission this summer,’ he continues. ‘Come with me? Please?’

Bologna would be great, I have to admit. I’m not sure about spending a whole weekend with Vincenzo so early on in our relationship – if that’s what it is turning into – but the opportunity to walk the same streets as Maria once did, see the churches, arches and palaces that she also set eyes on, is too much of an opportunity to miss, so I quickly agree to Vincenzo’s proposition. He will be in meetings for a significant portion of the weekend, anyway, which will leave me free to wander around and do the tourist trail, get a real feel for the place where Maria spent her youth. Sounds too good an opportunity to miss.

‘
Yes, please,’ I reply.

Twenty-Four

I really could get used to this. Vincenzo has just checked us into our hotel, separate rooms, of course; I’m glad he didn’t presume.

This place is unbelievably gorgeous, the Grand Hotel Majestic ‘Già Baglioni’. Now you have to realise that this is not the sort of place I have
ever
stayed at, or even dreamed that one day I might have the funds to do so – which I haven’t. Holidays in the Irvine family never stretched much beyond a week on a caravan park in Dorset or Devon, which was lovely; we always had a fabulous time and the sun always shone, but until now I never knew such luxury existed. Or how much it costs to say somewhere like this; I have just spotted the tariff swinging innocently on the back of the door. I didn’t realise you were expected to fork out the price of a small car to stay in one of their top suites for the night.

And something else I have to deal with is this strange notion that I am starting to feel like a kept woman. Vincenzo never lets me pay for anything, so much so that it got to the point in the middle of the week when I felt I needed to say something to try and redress the balance. Not that I can reciprocate on the same scale, of course, but if he could at least let me pay for something small now and again it would really help. Even just treat him to a coffee once in a while.

That was when Vincenzo sat me down and told me all about his trust fund. He’d never spoken much about his family before, so I was amazed to discover that he is in fact descended from Italian aristocracy, and if the Italian Constitution of 1948 hadn’t abolished the
Consulta Araldica
, or in other words the right to use a title of nobility, then he would also be a
‘Nobile’.
His Grandfather was the last to use the title legally, and despite the dissolution of the aristocracy in this country, the families who once bore these titles are still highly regarded in current society. I find it all quite fascinating, as I’d always regarded Italians as much more of a nation without class, compared to us Brits. We are a country of royalists, still clinging to an outmoded class system and still in thrall to Kings and Queens, Dukes and Duchesses. The Italians don’t have all that.

So anyway, back to the trust fund. As well as being ‘nobility’, the Tizzaro family is also extremely wealthy. Wealth and status don’t always go hand in hand, of course, but in this case they do and Vincenzo’s father, who is still alive and well and lives near Milan, settled a substantial portion of the family fortune on Vincenzo when he reached twenty-one. Vincenzo is entitled to the interest from the fund, but not to the capital, until his father dies. Not that it makes much difference by the sound of things. He certainly has enough cash at his disposal to live a more than comfortable existence; his salary from the University and commission from the sale of his paintings must seem like mere pin money to him. In fact, with that sort of money, I’m surprised he even bothers to work at all.

‘
I don’t tell many people about the money,’ Vincenzo added afterwards. ‘And from the look on your face, I’m glad I don’t.’ I must have looked pretty shocked. I’d guessed he had to have more funds available to him than just an academic’s salary, to facilitate the lifestyle he leads, but I wasn’t expecting this.

‘
It’s not every day you realise you’re in the presence of landed gentry,’ I’d replied, trying to sound light-hearted about the whole thing. ‘Do I need to curtsey?’

He laughed. ‘I don’t tell people because I don’t want them to change the way they think of me. In fact you’re the first girlfriend I’ve told.’

Girlfriend. There it was, that word, and I found myself feeling snugly contented under that title.

‘
People already think I’m a bit flash, don’t they?’ he’d asked, and that had made me smile.
As if!
‘I don’t want them thinking I throw my money around and also there are some girls who, well, you know, are only out for what they can get.’

‘
I really appreciate you telling me about your family,’ I say to Vincenzo now, to convince him that I really am OK about discovering I’m going out with a millionaire, which I suppose he must be. I’ve almost managed to recover from the shock of seeing how much he has paid for me to stay here. ‘But I still want you to let me pay for
something
now and again. I could never fund this sort of thing, of course,’ I say, waving my arm around at the opulence of the hotel bar, where we are having a drink together, ‘but just let me buy the odd round of drinks now and again, won’t you? Let me feel useful?’