Summer at the Lake (20 page)

Earlier, when they’d finished their lunch at Quods, Seb had asked Floriana to take the rest of the afternoon off so they could continue catching up, but she had said that Tony needed her in the office. His disappointment had been all too evident. ‘If you had warned me you were coming, I might have been able to switch my shift with somebody else,’ she had said when their waitress brought them their bill.

‘If I had warned you, you might not have agreed to see me and that was a risk I wasn’t prepared to take. And since you’ve been bleating on about being a pauper, put your money away, I’m picking up the tab on this.’

She had tried to make a grab for the bill so they could split it, but he’d been too quick for her. ‘My reactions always were faster than yours,’ he’d said with a laugh. ‘Remember all those crazy games of snap we played? I recall you slapping my hand with rather too much relish on one occasion. If I think very hard I can still feel the pain of it.’

‘I expect you deserved it,’ she said lightly. ‘If not specifically for beating me at snap, then for some other crime.’

The bill dealt with, he’d put his wallet away and helped her into her coat. It was no more than a friendly and considerate gesture, but it felt far too intimate, made her want to spring away from him. He must have sensed her anxiety and decided to confront it head on by suddenly wrapping her in a massive hug when they were outside in the cold damp air. ‘Please don’t be awkward around me, Florrie,’ he’d said.

Helplessly, she had stood frozen in mute shock, wanting to sink further into his embrace but also wanting to break free and dash across the road to the safety of the office. Chin raised, she’d blinked hard, marshalling what was left of her dwindling strength to prove she wasn’t at all awkward in his presence.

In return, tipping his head back to look at her, his gaze fixed so fast on hers she felt there was nowhere for her to hide, he took a deep breath. ‘Whatever misunderstandings we had before,’ he said, ‘let’s forget they ever happened. Let’s promise never to let anything come between us again. You’re the nearest I have to family. You’re all I have.’

His parting words had been to extract a promise from her, to accept his offer and come to his wedding.

Mentally crossing her fingers behind her back she had mumbled the assurance he wanted, but had no idea how she would stick to the agreement. To do that she would have to find a way to overcome the damage inflicted by his blindness to her feelings and her own blinding resentment towards the woman who meant the world to him. It was, she concluded, another thing to put off, another bridge to cross when the time came.

Leaving the noise of the traffic behind her, she turned into North Parade and, stopping off at Buddy Joe’s for some pasta and pesto sauce for her supper, she then cycled on to Latimer Street where she stopped again, this time to call in to see Esme.

To Floriana’s disappointment she had received news yesterday in an email from her friend Sara that she wouldn’t be returning to Oxford after all; she had been offered a job as a graphic designer in Buenos Aires. A previous email had left Floriana with the distinct impression that her friend sounded happily settled where she was, so hearing that she was going to stay shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it had. What was more, it had left Floriana feeling unusually alone and isolated.

So with no one else in whom she could confide, Floriana had known the moment she set off from work that she would call in to see her elderly new friend and pour out the events of the afternoon. She saw Esme as a safe pair of ears, someone who didn’t know Seb and would therefore be scrupulously objective in her opinion.

But really, once again she was being disingenuous and kidding herself. It wasn’t an objective opinion she wanted; she wanted somebody to agree with her and make her feel better. To go straight home now would only lead to a miserable evening spent brooding, which would end in her wrapping herself in a consoling layer of sanctimonious martyrdom and that, she knew from past experience, would never do. In contrast, Esme would cheer her up enormously.

Esme greeted her with her habitual warmth, which always seemed to be tinged with a degree of delighted anticipation, as if she had been waiting for Floriana to show up any minute on her doorstep.

‘Adam was here earlier,’ she said, before Floriana had even removed her coat. ‘He popped in to give me the splendid news he’s not going to rent out next door, but live in it himself.’

‘Did he say what’s brought this change of heart on?’ Floriana asked, noting the animated manner in which Esme delivered the news, and which only highlighted how dismally wretched she felt. Clearly Esme was going to enjoy having Adam as her neighbour. As Floriana knew all too well, he was a handy man to have around.

‘No, but I should think it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Esme said. ‘He’s making a fresh start.’

‘Is there such a thing?’

Esme’s expression altered at once and tilting her head to one side – putting Floriana in mind of an inquisitive bird – the old lady looked at her sharply, her greyish-blue eyes keenly alert. ‘Hmm . . . I think you should come and sit down by the fire and tell me what’s made you say something as uncharacteristically gloomy as that.’

‘Well now,’ Esme said. ‘You either go to Seb’s wedding or you don’t, a choice that hasn’t changed since December when you received that save-the-day card. However, what has changed is that you now know that Seb did not send the card as a random act of politeness. But then I suspect you knew that already deep down.’

Swallowed up in the large armchair, her stockinged feet tucked under her, Euridice on the hearthrug playing with the little mouse Floriana had made for her, her young friend nodded. ‘But don’t forget, the location of the wedding is an important factor in the decision-making process,’ she said. ‘I can’t afford to go swanning off to Lake Como and I absolutely refuse to accept Seb’s offer to pay for me.’

‘I agree, that would put you in an awkward spot. But aren’t you just a little bit curious to go? It’s quite beautiful, you know.’

A small frown appeared on the girl’s face, but then it cleared and she said, ‘I’d sooner hear about the time you were there. Go on, tell me all about it. Did you fall in love there? Did you have a grand passion?’

Esme smiled at Floriana’s clever change of tack and her blatant fascination for delving into Esme’s past. It had become rather an amusing game on her part to tantalise the girl with snatches of her life, often punctuated by pointing out a relevant painting and explaining how and where her father came to paint it – that was me in Siena . . . and that was on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence . . . and oh, that was in Venice the day we saw Maria Callas enjoying an aperitif in the Gritti Palace. There were many paintings yet to be explained, but the one which Floriana knew nothing about and which would intrigue her most was upstairs in Esme’s bedroom.

‘Very well,’ she said, thinking that Floriana could do with something to distract her from this wretched Seb character who’d appeared out of the blue to further torment her – a young man who was plainly used to having his cake and eating it. ‘I’ll make us a couple of large gin and tonics and then I’ll tell you about my summer at the lake. How does that sound?’

Esme had fallen completely in love with the quiet seclusion of Hotel Margherita.

After the hurly-burly of all those busy cities, it was heavenly to be here in this enchanting oasis of tranquillity enjoying the chorus of birdsong coming from the magnolia trees. It was late morning and she was alone in the dappled shade of the vinecovered terrace, save for the occasional appearance of a finch darting in and out of the branches behind her.

Immediately below the rose-covered balustrade of the terrace, there were bushy mounds of lavender that gave off a fresh tangy fragrance in the heat. Beyond this was a fountain and a wide well-tended lawn that sloped gently down to a blaze of vermilion oleanders and two stately cypress trees reaching up into the china blue of the summer sky. Between the cypress trees was an ornamental gate and stone steps that led to the water and a boathouse and jetty. A short distance from the shore, and only for hotel guests to use, there was a sunbathing raft to swim out to.

To her right, the other side of the pleached beech hedge, Alberto, the gardener, wearing the traditional
zoccoli
– wooden clogs – was clipping the low box hedge, which formed a parterre and enclosed a herb garden. Beyond the parterre was a vegetable garden ringed with fruit trees that Alberto, along with his young grandson, also took care of. Every morning Elena the cook would come out with two baskets – one for herbs and one for vegetables – and pick what she needed for lunch, then later in the afternoon she would reappear to gather what she needed to prepare dinner for those guests who chose to dine here rather than eat at any of the nearby tavernas.

It was now the middle of June and Hotel Margherita had been Esme and her father’s home for nearly three weeks and one by one the days had dissolved into this dreamy paradise. They had not, as before, rushed to go sightseeing, rather they had dispensed with their guidebooks and followed Lucy Honeychurch’s example in
A Room With a View
; instead of acquiring information, Esme had begun to be happy.

Just as Marco Bassani had said it would, the scenery and quality of light had truly inspired Esme’s father; he was in heaven! Never before had Esme seen him so relaxed, or so free. He was a changed man, a man who no longer had to hide his talent for painting from a wife who had inhibited his gift by constantly undermining and humiliating him.

A few days ago, during lunch, the Kelly-Webbs – an American couple from Baltimore on their honeymoon – had begged her father to let them buy one of his paintings of the lake to take home as a memento of their blissful time here. Predictably William had shied away from any sort of financial transaction, but Esme had encouraged him to take the money, not because they needed it, but to convince himself that he was a bona fide artist who could sell his work for no other reason other than it was admired and appreciated.

The Kelly-Webbs’ delight soon spread round the small hotel and other guests had since approached William for a painting to take home with them.

After breakfast this morning, and taking with him his canvas bag of paints, brushes and block of watercolour paper, along with a picnic lunch specially made by Elena, William had set off to explore the lake in a wooden sailing dinghy. Alberto’s grandson, Cesare, a boy of only twelve years of age, had given him a lesson yesterday in how to sail the boat and as the heat of the day intensified Esme hoped her father had remembered to take his hat. She also hoped her father had been able to understand what Cesare had told him as the young boy, like Alberto and Elena, spoke in a thick impenetrable local dialect.

Thinking she really ought to summon the energy to go for a walk, Esme heard footsteps approaching.

It was Signora Giulia Bassani.

A handsome woman with heavy-lidded dark eyes, Signora Bassani was always immaculately dressed and held herself tall and proud. Often there was a brusqueness to her manner that initially had made Esme awkward around her, but she soon came to realise that the woman’s coolness masked a sadness that she kept locked deep within her.

Marco had explained to Esme and her father that his aunt had been widowed during the war, just months before Italy joined the Allies against Germany. The strain of trying to keep the family business afloat in such dire times was too much for Alessio Bassani and he suffered a heart attack. He was just recovering from this when a fire ravaged the factory down at Como and all was lost. He died a month later.

For several centuries the Bassani family had been at the forefront of silk manufacturing in Como. Alessio Bassani and his brother, Romano – Marco’s father – had taken over the business from their own father, but then when he was eight years old Marco’s parents had died in a car crash, leaving him to be brought up by his aunt and uncle, who had a son a couple of years older than him. Alessio Bassani continued alone with the business but without his brother at his side, who, it was rumoured, was the more astute of the two, things began to slip away from him. Then war broke out.

It wasn’t from Marco that Esme had learnt the more intimate details about the Bassani family, but from an English couple staying at the hotel. Gerald and Josephine Montford had been coming to the lake since well before the war – and to Hotel Margherita four years ago when it first opened – and were, as they liked to say, very much a part of the furniture, practically family if they were to be credited.
You wouldn’t believe the changes we’ve seen here at the lake!
was a constant refrain from them. As first-timers to the hotel, Esme and her father had been singled out on arrival, not just as a captive audience, but also to be put under the Montford microscope to discover whether they were worth cultivating.

Now as she looked at Signora Giulia Bassani, Esme felt she knew rather too much about the unfortunate woman whose circumstances had been so dramatically altered as a result of the war and her husband’s death. Turning the family home into a hotel to make ends meet must have come at great cost to her honour and pride. From being the lady of the house, she was now reduced to being at the beck and call of strangers who slept in rooms once occupied by several generations of the Bassani family.

‘
Buongiorno
, Signorina Esme, you did not want to go out with your father today?’ The woman spoke excellent English, but her words were always spoken with grave civility.

Esme smiled politely. ‘No, I thought I’d have a quiet day here on my own and read.’ She indicated the book on the table in front of her –
The Enchanted April
.

‘You read a lot,’ Signora Bassani said. ‘Every time I see you, you have a book in your hands. I fear you must be very bored here at Hotel Margherita.’

‘Goodness no!’ Esme exclaimed. ‘How could I possibly be bored here?’

‘You are so much younger than the other guests, there is no one of your own age to talk to.’