Summer at the Lake (17 page)

The man had thrown back his head and let out an unpleasantly patronising laugh that filled the salon in which they had congregated for pre-dinner drinks. ‘Silcox, old man, I see you have a Marxist for a daughter! You’d better watch her.’

‘I’m entirely in agreement with Esme,’ her father said mildly, breaking off from chatting to an antiquarian bookseller from Kensington. ‘After all, how can we truly understand the mind of an Italian when one moment he has been ordered to fight the Americans and the British, and the next he is fighting with them?’

‘Quite right,’ Professor Banes joined in. ‘Is it any wonder things are as chaotic as they are when, within ten years of turmoil they have been expected to respect a dictator, then a king, followed by a republic?’

A woman wearing an expression of intense boredom added her laconic voice to the debate. ‘Oh, let’s face it,’ she said with an aloof flick of a well-manicured hand, ‘Italians are natural anarchists. Now, please, will someone make me another Americano, I’m gasping?’

Leaving behind them La Residenza Santa Maria, the beautiful sunsets over the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, the Giotto frescos, the fountains, the hills of Fiesole and Professor Banes’ eclectic circle of friends, they set off for Venice where they encountered an equally cosmopolitan crowd.

Esme’s first sighting of the beautiful city was as she and her father stepped outside of the railway station – the Venezia Santa Lucia – and there directly in front of her was the Grand Canal. During the train journey from Florence she had read from her Baedeker what to expect, but the preparation had been in vain. In a daze of mute astonishment she stood looking at the Grand Canal while her father located the boat stop. Then in rapt wonder they travelled by motor launch to their hotel, weaving their way through the traffic of
vaporetti
and gondolas.

As a treat, her father had booked them into the Hotel Danieli for the first four days of their stay. Next door to the Doge’s Palace and the Ponte dei Sospiri, her room overlooked the lagoon and the island of San Giorgio; to the right was the Grand Canal and the Santa Maria della Salute in all its magnificence. It was a truly spellbinding view.

Surely here she would fall in love, she thought wistfully.

The next morning she awoke early to the sound of bells ringing across the city, and rushing to the window, eager to greet the day, she had flung it open and absorbed the intoxicating atmosphere. Wanting to soak up every sight, sound and smell, to be a part of it, she had hurriedly dressed and without bothering to disturb her father in the room next door, she had quietly crept out to explore on her own. She had only walked as far as the Piazza San Marco when she came to a stop. Seeing the great square deserted, save for the pigeons, she stood with the basilica behind her in a trance of lost enchantment.

Just a few months off her nineteenth birthday, she considered herself quite grown up, but the child within her – the child that her mother had kept squashed under her thumb – wanted to be let loose and run impulsively through the pigeons. And deciding that since it was not yet six o’clock and there was no one about, she could do exactly as she wanted with perfect impunity. So, with her arms stretched out either side of her, she ran at the birds and to her inordinately silly satisfaction they rose as one with a noisy flap of their wings and wheeled up into the pearly dawn sky in a burst of panic.

Laughing aloud, and with her eyes shut, she spun round and round like a whirling dervish. Then opening her eyes, she turned and started to run the way she’d just come, only to crash head-long into the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on.

‘
Buongiorno
,’ he said, smiling at her.

Her cheeks flaming with a deep flush of embarrassment, at the same time denied the power of coherent speech, all she could do was stare back at him in a horribly gauche manner. So much for the sophisticated young woman she had believed herself to be since coming to Italy!

‘You are English?’ he said, more of a statement than a question.

She nodded and finally found her tongue and the confidence to speak in Italian. ‘
Sì, signore
,’ she said, ‘
sono Inglese.
’

The smile increased and showed off two rows of white teeth against a tanned face – a face that was beautifully aesthetic, like that of a Renaissance statue. ‘
Brava, parla Italiano?
’ he said.

‘
Un po
’,’ she managed to say, thinking that his eyes were quite literally as blue as the Adriatic and that he wasn’t much older than her.

Perhaps guessing he had exhausted her Italian vocabulary, he said, ‘You like to frighten the pigeons? It is a game for you?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never done anything like that before, I just suddenly felt like being extremely silly.’

‘Good! I think it is very good to be silly at times. Too many people are too serious. And anyway, the pigeons are much too big for their bots, they need to be chased now and then.’

‘
Boots
,’ she corrected him. Then immediately regretted it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that was rude of me.’

‘No, no. It is the best way to learn, to be taught the correct words and pronunciation. I very much want to speak
l’inglese corretto
. You are here alone in Venice?’

‘I’m here with my father.’

‘For how long?’

‘A couple of weeks, then we’re going on to Lake Como.’

‘
Bello
. Do you know where at the lake you will stay?’

She shook her head again, noticing that the pigeons had returned to the piazza and had completely surrounded her and this charming young man with his oh-so-blue eyes and his jet-black hair. ‘We haven’t booked anything yet,’ she said. ‘We’re taking each day as it comes.’

She went on to tell him that this trip to Italy was a chance for her father to explore his love of painting, ‘Although he would never describe himself as anything other than an amateur artist,’ she said, ‘but, and perhaps I am a little biased, I think he’s genuinely talented.’

‘Then may I make a suggestion?’

‘Please.’

‘I have an aunt who runs a modest hotel on the shores of the lake. It is not one of the very grand establishments, but it is comfortable and very tranquil. The views would not disappoint and would be perfect for your father. And for you also,’ he added with a smile that made her heartbeat quicken and her legs feel as wobbly as cooked spaghetti.

It was then that he held out his hand to her and introduced himself as Marco Bassani and explained that he was in his first year of seminary studying to be a priest.

Her heart almost crashed to a stop.

All along the lake, the steamer dropped people off and picked others up. Standing at the prow of the boat, and with growing excitement, Esme stood next to her father and watched the passing scenery. Pretty villages nestled in the lower slopes of the hillsides, tiny cottages and palatial villas lined the foreshore, and gardens lush and bright with azaleas and oleanders in full bloom dazzled the eye with flowers of vermilion and creamy yellow, pink and white, all contrasting vividly with the dark green cypress trees that stood tall and proud like sentinels on guard duty.

It was every bit as beautiful as Marco had said it would be. And it was here he had grown up, adopted by his aunt – Signora Giulia Bassani – after the death of his parents when he’d been a boy. It was difficult to imagine how he could bear to leave this beautiful place to go off and become, of all things, a priest.

Esme tried not to give in to the thought too much, but a less than worthy part of her considered it a waste for Marco to give his life to the Church, but as she and her father had become better acquainted with Marco during their stay in Venice, which they had prolonged by an extra week, she had begun to appreciate the sincerity of his faith and belief that the path he had chosen was the right one. ‘In life,’ he had told her, ‘we are each called to do something special and when we know in our hearts what it is, we must do it, for then it will not be a duty, but a pleasure.’

Esme had found his company considerably more interesting and engaging than the crowd of diplomats, industrialists and socalled intellectuals they had met in Venice – a self-serving bunch she had soon grown weary of. Marco had been very much a breath of fresh air.

Her father nudged her and pointed towards a pale yellow villa with dark green shutters. ‘According to the directions, that’s Hotel Margherita,’ he said. ‘The next stop is ours.’

As the boat slowed and sailed closer to the shoreline, Esme shielded her eyes from the sun and took in the substantial villa and its grounds that sloped gently down to the water’s edge. Positioned as it was on a promontory, and with nothing else around it, it was as if Villa Margherita stood atop its very own private island.

So this was home for the rest of the summer, Esme thought happily.

It was the ringing of the telephone that woke Esme. So deeply had she been dreaming, it took her a moment to orientate herself, to realign her mind with the present and to relinquish the powerful hold of the past, to which, in sleep, she had surrendered herself entirely.

But by the time she made it to the hall in the semi-darkness, switching on the lights as she went, the ringing stopped.

‘Who could it be?’ she said to Euridice who had followed behind her. ‘Nobody rings us on Christmas Day.’

She was on her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on and make a pot of tea, when the telephone started up again.

‘Hello,’ she said guardedly, expecting it to be a stranger who had misdialled.

‘Esme, is that you?’

‘It is,’ she said, still guardedly, not recognising the voice at the other end of the line and blaming her befuddled state on her mind which was still lagging behind in Italy.

‘It’s me, Floriana. I just wanted to wish you a happy Christmas.’

At the girl’s words, her throat bunched tight with emotion, just as it had earlier when she’d opened her presents and had been so moved by the thoughtfulness of her two young friends.

‘Esme? Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she said croakily.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, battling to pull herself together. ‘Just a little groggy, I was fast asleep.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry I disturbed you.’

‘My darling girl, don’t apologise, it’s lovely to hear from you. I’m very touched that you should think of me, and thank you for my beautiful present, and for Euridice’s mouse. You’ve quite spoilt us. Are you having a good Christmas?’

There was a long and exaggerated groan in Esme’s ear. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m back. By the way, are you free that day for lunch?’

‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away.’

‘Brilliant.’

Later, when she was settled with a cup of tea and a mince pie and she had shaken the last vestiges of the past from her mind, Esme focused her thoughts on the present and in particular her new friends, Floriana and Adam.

She knew she was getting ahead of herself, and as different as they were in temperament, she detected the signs of a very pleasing chemistry between the pair of them; it was there in the easy way they interacted and in her opinion it quite belied the length of time they had known each other.

Esme had never played at matchmaking before, but she was quite tempted to do so with these two. However, she would have to tread carefully for very likely Adam had a long way to go yet before he would be over Jesse, and goodness only knew how Floriana felt about this Sebastian character.

A grey cold sky had wrapped itself around Oxford since the New Year and today the city lay submerged beneath a shroud of freezing fog making it feel as though it was cut off from the rest of the world.

January was the quietest month of the year for Floriana – not surprisingly people weren’t keen to sign up for tours when it was so perishing cold – instead, and because this was the time of year when they were inundated with bookings for when the season took off around Easter, she helped in the office. But this morning a hardy Russian couple from Moscow – Mr and Mrs Zhukova – had requested a personal three-hour city tour. Dressed in thick woollen overcoats and fur hats, they hadn’t once objected to the biting cold wind that numbed Floriana’s hands and feet and whipped at her face bringing tears to her eyes – maybe for them this was a mild spring day.

Dreaming Spires Tours had only the one Russian-speaking guide – Martina, who was unfortunately off sick – but thankfully the Zhukovas had a more than adequate grasp of English and Floriana had encountered no difficulties in talking to them. The only hitch she’d had was trying to explain to Mr Zhukova – a thickset man with a permanently nodding head as he listened to her every word – that none of the colleges were for sale. He’d given her a steely look when she’d had to repeat this in the front quad of Christ Church after he’d interrupted her part-way through explaining about Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower and its seven-ton bell known at Great Tom. ‘Not true,’ he’d said, shaking his head vigorously. ‘Everything for sale for right price.’

The other problem she’d encountered was that Mr Zhukova’s mobile kept ringing. He was taking a call now, speaking loudly in Russian, his head nodding non-stop, his expression unreadable. And while he continued his conversation, and Floriana shivered and breathed in the icy lung-numbing air and tried to chat politely with his wife, she started to lead them back towards the High where they’d begun the tour outside the office, and where the couple’s driver would be waiting to whisk them back to London. It had crossed Floriana’s mind more than once that this visit to Oxford for the couple had in actual fact been a buying expedition and they were now leaving disappointed. Her imagination running away with itself, she imagined Mr Zhukova consoling himself with a bunch of oligarch pals in a swanky Mayfair bar tonight, hitting the vodka shots and planning his next move: Cambridge.

Esme was always laughing at Floriana for having what she called a fertile mind. ‘Is that what you call it?’ Adam had remarked in his habitually droll manner. ‘Not just plain bonkers, then?’ He’d made the comment at the weekend when he’d invited Floriana and Esme to have a look round his new house. Since buying it, he’d had builders in to rip out what a series of previous owners had done by way of supposed improvement. He wanted to return the property to its original Victorian roots, he’d explained. ‘Complete with parlourmaids and bootboys, no doubt?’ Floriana had joked. ‘Could I be the po-faced housekeeper? I can be really stern when I want to be.’