Summer at the Lake (24 page)

Much to everyone’s amusement, Elena was adamant that it wasn’t just thanks to
Dio
that Marco had made such a good recovery, it was also down to Esme. She further claimed that Esme had been sent by the angels themselves to minister to him. It didn’t matter how often Esme said she had done nothing but read to Marco or play board games with him when he had regained sufficient energy, Elena refused to believe she hadn’t been blessed by God with the gift of healing.

‘If that woman’s praise of you continues you’ll become a figure of devotion and there’ll be a chapel built here in your honour,’ Elizabeth joked when Elena had left them. ‘Or if not an actual chapel, then one of those little shrines where people light candles and leave flowers.’

Angelo shook his head and blew a long stream of smoke into the air. ‘That will not be enough for Elena, she will not rest until she has taken Esme to the Vatican to be made a saint by the Papa himself.’

‘Oh, stop it all of you,’ Esme said, her cheeks reddening. She hated to be the focus of attention.

Next to her Marco said, ‘I think you must take your medicine of praise and swallow it like the good patient you said I must be.’

‘Please don’t you start as well,’ she said.

Her father laughed. ‘Marco, I’m afraid you’d do better to save your breath, she is completely determined to be thoroughly ungracious. See how she has stubbornly set her chin, that means she will listen to no one but herself now.’

‘I disagree,’ Angelo said, ‘that is not the chin of a stubborn person, it is the chin of a saint!’

‘Goodness!’ Esme exclaimed. ‘Won’t you all just stop it and leave me alone?’

‘But you give us such pleasure,’ Angelo said, with a wink.

‘In that case, I’m going for a swim.’

Rising from his chair, Angelo said, ‘In that case I am in the mood for a swim also.’

They swam out to the raft and after Angelo had given her a hand up, they lay in the hot sun, the water softly lapping at the wood beneath them. Regularly swimming twice a day Esme could not only now swim like a fish, but her pale white skin had an unrecognisable golden hue to it, a sight that took her by surprise whenever she looked in the mirror. Hello, my new self, she would think with a happy smile.

But as she always did when alone in Angelo’s company, Esme felt very much her old self – horribly gauche and out of her depth.

It was different when she was with Marco, there was nothing threatening or intimidating about his presence and the more time she had spent in his company during his period of recuperation, listening to his stories about his parents when he’d been a young child and his plans for the future, the surer she had felt in his company. With him she could relax and be entirely herself.

In contrast, with Angelo she always felt the need to prove herself to him; to the point of trying to be someone and something she wasn’t. During his visit home to the lake last weekend he had insisted on taking her for a drive in his new car, a Fiat Topolino. It had not been the romantic tour of the lake she had thought it would be – instead he took her to Dongo to show her where, dressed in a German soldier’s uniform, Mussolini had been captured with his mistress, Clara Petacci. He told her about the missing vats of gold and important war documents that locals were convinced lay somewhere at the bottom of the lake. The gold he referred to had been wedding rings given by villagers – so poor it was all they had left to give – to support the war effort and collected by soldiers passing through the villages. ‘Your Winston Churchill came last year to look for those documents,’ Angelo had gone on to say. ‘It was an unofficial trip, people were told, that he was here to paint, like your father, but everyone here knows the truth, that he and the British government wanted to find letters that had been exchanged with Il Duce.’

Esme had no idea if that was true, but saddened by the thought of all those poor men and women handing over their precious wedding rings, she had asked Angelo if he thought the gold would ever be found. ‘Who knows,’ he said with a careless shrug, ‘maybe it has already been found and stolen.’ He then drove back the way they had come, stopping off to show her the spot in Mezzegra where Mussolini and his mistress had been shot.

It was a macabre trip for him to take her on and Esme had wondered if it was another of his tests he liked to put her through. In the same way kissing her in the car before they returned to Hotel Margherita had seemed to be. She had allowed him to do it, but when his hands had begun to explore her body she had, after a moment’s hesitation when curiosity and a tiny thrill of excitement had caused her to wonder what it might be like, pushed his hands away. He had made no comment, had merely smiled, lit another cigarette and driven on, leaving her with the distinct impression that his actions were nothing more than a perfunctory exercise for him. Which, and not at all to her credit, had left her feeling childishly sulky for the rest of the day.

Marco never made her feel this way. Being with him was infinitely more straightforward, she never had to worry that he might do or say anything improper with her. Yet there were definitely times, especially when his health had improved and their conversations became more animated, when she forgot that he was a priest in training and viewed him as she would any other man. She had said this to him once and he had laughed and said he would much prefer that she did exactly that. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life being treated as an oddity, he said, that wasn’t what his calling was about.

She admired him for knowing with such certainty what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing and had said she wished she had the same clear vision. ‘It will come to you one day,’ he assured her. ‘Better to wait than to rush into something that is wrong for you. I had to wait until I had completed my studies at university before I really knew what I wanted to do.’

‘You are very quiet today,
amore
,’ Angelo said, interrupting Esme’s thoughts.

‘I’m often quiet,’ she said, hoping she sounded enigmatic rather than just plain boring.

‘Yes, but today you seem too serious.’ He trailed a finger along her arm. ‘Do I not make you laugh any more?’

‘You haven’t said anything to make me laugh,’ she said.

He stroked her arm again, his fingers slowly moving from her shoulder down to the tips of her fingers. With her eyes squeezed shut, she gave an involuntary shiver. A shiver that she knew would not go unnoticed by Angelo. Beneath her she felt the raft rock slightly as he shifted his position and then she felt his warm lips kissing her shoulder, following the route his hand had just made. Then, as if her body had a mind of its own, she turned over and looked up into Angelo’s face above her.

‘I have been patient enough with you,’ he said gruffly, his dark eyes glittering, ‘now I am going to kiss you as I know you want me to kiss you.’ With unexpected force his mouth connected with hers and he kissed her fully and deeply and for a very long time, his tongue forcing her mouth to open wider still.

She put her arms around his broad and muscular back, then moved her hands to the nape of his neck. His response was to kiss her with greater strength and passion, pinning her to the raft. He gripped one of her legs with his hand then, running a hand the length of her thigh, he pushed her legs apart.

But she felt nothing. She wanted to – why else would she have turned over? – but all she felt was an awareness of the mechanics of what Angelo was doing to her. It was as if she was having an out-of-body experience, was merely observing what they were doing. What was wrong with her? Why was she so passive, why couldn’t she enjoy herself? Was she frigid; was that it? She had overheard girls at school discussing the problem some women had, their jokes and laughter suggesting it was not something to own up to.

Angelo suddenly pulled back from her. For an awful moment he was so still and stared at her with such contempt, she held her breath fearful what he might do or say.

‘Am I boring you?’

‘No!’

‘What then? Why do you just lie there, like you are asleep?’

She couldn’t speak.

‘You have much to learn, Esme,’ he said, turning from her and sitting up, the palms of his hands flat on the surface of the raft as if preparing to launch himself off. ‘You should not tease men the way you do, one minute blowing hot, and then cold.’

‘I wasn’t teasing you,’ she murmured, stung by his words. ‘I’m sorry . . . I thought I wanted to . . . I mean, I tried, but . . .’ Her words trailed off hopelessly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

‘Desire is not a conscious decision,’ he snapped. ‘It is one of the most natural and spontaneous things a man and a woman can experience.’

Sitting up, she tried to appease him. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I have a lot to learn.’

His mouth clamped shut, the muscles ticking at his jaw, he kept his gaze fixed on some faraway point across the lake. ‘Just not with me,’ he said finally.

‘Perhaps not,’ she murmured, realising with new understanding that she had just learnt something crucially important: she could never love somebody like Angelo. ‘I’m sure I’m no more than a diversion for you,’ she said lightly. After all, he wasn’t going to claim to be broken-hearted at her rejection, was he? Surely it was nothing more than a glancing blow to his vanity he was suffering?

He turned his head and at the flicker of what looked like fire in his eyes, she wondered if she had been too flippant and underestimated how he might feel.

‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, ‘you are no longer interested in me because you are now more interested in somebody else? Marco, for instance?’

So that was it! He was jealous of her friendship with his cousin. How petty of him. Well, enough of his accusations, she would take no more of them! She leapt to her feet. ‘If you’re going to start talking such nonsense, I’m going back.’

Quick as a flash, he was on his feet also, making the raft rock violently beneath them, and with a movement that took her by surprise, he grabbed hold of her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced it up sharply. ‘Look at me and swear it is not my saintly cousin Marco who interests you more now. And don’t lie to me, I have seen the way you are around him.’

Filled with outrage, she glared at Angelo and thrust his hands away from her. ‘You arrogant pig! Don’t you dare ever touch or speak to me that way again.’ And pushing past him, she dived into the water and swam back to the shore, her legs and arms powered by furious indignation and the awful and mortifying knowledge that Angelo was right.

To make matters worse, when she reached the jetty, Marco was standing at the top of the stone steps looking down at her. ‘Is everything all right, Esme?’ he asked, concern written all over his anxious face.

‘No!’ she said with a tearful cry, grabbing the towel she’d left on the steps and running past him and almost colliding with Alberto who was pushing a wheelbarrow across the lawn. ‘Everything is not all right!’

Half an hour later there was a knock at her bedroom door. Lying on her bed, her swimsuit now exchanged for a dress, her hair still wet and wrapped in a towel, she ignored whoever it was who had come to pester her. In a state of abject shame, she couldn’t talk to anyone right now.

A second knock followed.

And a third.

‘Esme, it’s me, Marco. Tell me what is wrong. Are you unwell?’

She stifled a cry of alarm. Not Marco. Anyone but him! ‘Please go away,’ she said.

‘No,
cara
, not until I know what is wrong with you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong.’

‘Then come to the door and prove it to me.’

Reluctantly she got off the bed and opened the door.

His handsome face drawn into a frown, Marco’s worried gaze swept over her. ‘You have been crying,
poverina.
Why?’

Her lips shut tight, she shook her head.

‘May I come in so we can talk in private?’

She hesitated. To be alone with him now after what Angelo had said, no, she mustn’t.

‘Please,’ he persisted, ‘I am so worried about you.’

Against her better judgement, she gave in.

The door closed, he went over to the window that overlooked the garden and lake, and turned to face her. ‘I think you have been crying because of something my cousin has said. Or maybe something he has done. Will you tell me what it is? Did he hurt you? I saw the two of you on the raft,’ he added, not quite meeting her eye. ‘I saw you dive into the lake. You looked very angry.’

She swallowed, filled with yet more shame – just how much had Marco witnessed? Oh, how could she have allowed Angelo to kiss her the way he had when all along she hadn’t felt a fraction of what she felt for dear sweet Marco? Why had she encouraged a man who seemed to enjoy her discomfort, especially if he was the cause of it? What a childish and treacherous game she had been playing. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘I’m too ashamed.’

Marco moved away from the window and came towards her. ‘I am right, Angelo did do something to you!’

‘No! It was me. It was my fault.’

‘Esme, you are in many ways so very clever, but you are young and I know my cousin, he can be very persuasive and has a certain reputation in these things. If he made you do something you regret, it is not your fault.’

Aghast at what Marco might imagine had taken place, she said, ‘It’s not as bad as you think. It’s just that he accused me of something and though I denied it to him, I know that it’s true.’

‘My cousin has no right to accuse you of anything.’

‘Maybe he does if it’s true.’

He stepped closer to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘As always I think you are being too generous of spirit. But I hate the idea of you being upset. Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?’

‘Thank you, but no.’

He sighed and seemed visibly to sag before her. ‘I am going to rest now,’ he said, putting a hand to his forehead and pushing back the hair that had flopped down onto his eyes. ‘I am tired, but perhaps later you will come for a walk with me before dinner?’

In the end Marco overslept and didn’t surface for dinner until quite late. By then arrangements had been made for Esme’s father and Elizabeth to join a couple from Bath in a game of bridge after dinner and so Esme was free to sit with Marco on the terrace.