Tuscan Rose (8 page)

From the reverence in the man’s tone, Rosa was sure he was not referring to the upright piano she and Clementina played in the alcove of the schoolroom, and only when the Marchesa was out for the afternoon. He must be referring to one of the rooms off the ballroom. She had caught a glimpse of the French doors that led
from the grand ballroom onto a loggia one day when she and Clementina were walking in the gardens. She shook her head in response to his question.

‘Never?’ Curiosity seemed to be struggling with courtesy on Signor Morelli’s face. ‘It’s a pity, because if you like music that piano is one of the most beautiful instruments a person could hear in their lifetime. I used to tune it for the Marchese’s sister when she gave recitals. The piano suited her style perfectly: dramatic, rich and full-bodied.’

Rosa’s interest was piqued by the mention of Clementina’s aunt. ‘You used to tune her piano?’ She had two minutes left in which to race to the car but she wanted to know more about the woman who had made the exquisite opera sets and—it now seemed—had been an accomplished musician.

‘She died too young,’ Signor Morelli lamented. ‘It surprised us all. She was so robustly healthy. But then her husband had been killed in an uprising in Libya. Perhaps it was the shock.’

Signor Morelli attached a ticket to Rosa’s flute case and wrote her a receipt. He was about to hand it to her when he hesitated again. ‘They say the Marchese has never got over his sister’s death, that he mourns for her still?’

This time Rosa was sure from the lift of the old man’s eyebrow that he was waiting for her to confirm or deny his assertion. The merchants she had visited on Via Tornabuoni seemed to have a keen interest in what went on at the villa.

‘I don’t know the Marchese well enough,’ she explained. ‘I have only been governess there for a week.’

From the corner of her eye, Rosa saw the assistant put down the French horn. He was not even trying to hide his interest. ‘And how does poor Giovanni fare these days?’ he called out to her.

‘Giovanni?’

‘Giovanni Taviani. The gatekeeper. He used to be the estate manager—’

The bell on the shop door rang and a woman rushed inside, dragging a boy in a shorts suit towards the counter. The boy was
carrying a violin with a broken neck. He looked pleased with himself.

‘Excuse me, signore,’ the woman said in Italian but with an English accent. ‘This is a disaster. His music examination is tomorrow afternoon.’

Signor Morelli nodded to the woman and guided Rosa towards the door. ‘We have a trumpet to return to Fiesole on Friday. My assistant will take your flute too.’

Out on the street, Rosa was relieved to see that Giuseppe had spotted her and was manoeuvring the car towards the shop. She adjusted her hat to bring back the circulation to her head while Giuseppe turned into a side street so she could get into the car. When Rosa entered the street, she passed under the window of the music workshop.

‘I’ll go as far as the gatehouse,’ she heard the assistant tell Signor Morelli. ‘No further. Witches were burnt at the Villa Scarfiotti in the days of the Inquisition. They say the place is haunted.’

The reference to witches at the villa made Rosa shiver. She hurried towards where Giuseppe had stopped the car and almost tripped over a beggar woman sitting in a doorway. Lying across the woman’s patched apron was an infant swaddled in rags. The child’s cheeks were sunken with hunger and it seemed to Rosa that its eyes looked up at her in despair. If the Wolf had not taken her to the convent all those years ago, she could have shared the same fate.

The woman stretched out her wasted arm.
‘Per favore, signorina?’

Something prickled Rosa’s palm. She looked down at her hand and remembered the notes that Signor Parigi had placed there. She reached into her pocket and counted them out. They came to more than she would make as Clementina’s governess in a week. Those chairs Signor Parigi had sold the couple must have been worth a fortune. But it was more money than Rosa needed. She was clothed and fed. It didn’t occur to her that she should keep some of the money for the future. She pressed the notes into the woman’s hand and continued towards the car, not stopping to take in the stunned expression on the beggar woman’s face.

I
n early May, after Rosa had been at the Villa Scarfiotti for two months, a garden party was held in honour of Clementina’s ninth birthday. It was a birthday party in name only because from the small number of children invited compared to the adult guests, it seemed more an opportunity for the Marchesa to show off the Nile green dress she had bought in Paris and her Ferragamo red suede shoes. The guests were from the nearby villas. Some of them were Tuscans but most were foreigners. The men turned from their female companions and stood transfixed when the Marchesa moved through the gathering to greet her guests. The other women in their silk ensembles and georgette princess dresses paled in comparison. The Marchesa was like an ocean liner leaving all in her wake. Rosa followed with Clementina, whose position of honour on the day was overshadowed by her mother.

‘We will see you and the Baron at the ball next month, won’t we?’ the Marchesa asked a blonde woman with high cheekbones.

The woman was wearing a dress with silk hibiscus flowers sewn on it and transparent nylon shoes. She carried a dachshund with a hibiscus on its collar and was the only rival to the Marchesa’s striking fashion sense. ‘But of course,’ she replied with a French accent. ‘We already have our costumes.’

The Marchesa grinned. ‘Baroness Derveaux, you Parisians are more original than the conventional Florentines. If it were not for you I would kill myself.’

Baroness Derveaux threw back her head and laughed, showing her rows of pearly-white teeth. Rosa remembered the women she had seen in Via Tornabuoni. If
they
were conventional what must the Parisians be like?

The Marchesa, with Clementina and Rosa in tow, moved on to greet the other guests. Rosa was surprised to see Signora Corvetto. She was wearing a gunmetal satin dress and standing next to a white-haired man in a wheelchair. His sun-spotted hands and sagging face were such a contrast to Signora Corvetto’s beauty that Rosa assumed the man was her grandfather. She was taken aback when the Marchesa greeted him and she realised that he was Signora Corvetto’s husband. Rosa was even more surprised when the Marchesa did not act like the cat that got the cream around Signora Corvetto, as she had the other women. Although her husband’s mistress was younger and prettier, perhaps the Marchesa did not feel outclassed by her rival. The other guests went to great lengths to speak with Signor Corvetto, who was partially deaf, but turned their faces from his wife. It was obvious they considered her below themselves socially. The snubs Rosa had received at the convent from the paying students were on a smaller social scale, but she felt Signora Corvetto’s embarrassment just the same. Clementina, unconcerned with social mores, threw her arms around Signora Corvetto and embraced her without reservation.

‘Buon compleanno!
Happy birthday!’ Signora Corvetto said, returning Clementina’s kisses. ‘Nine today! You’re a big girl!’

Signora Corvetto’s eyes filled with tears and Rosa wondered why Clementina’s growing up would make her sad.

‘Come on,’ the Marchesa urged Clementina. ‘Lunch will be served soon.’

Clementina squeezed Rosa’s hand and whispered, ‘Signora Corvetto is nice. She comes to see me every birthday.’

Rosa noticed a young man with a cowlick and disgruntled eyes standing on the edge of the gathering. His gaze did not leave the Marchesa’s face but she paid him no attention. When they reached the jasmine-covered gazebo where a string quartet was playing, the Marchesa leaned over and blew air kisses on Clementina’s cheeks before turning to Rosa. ‘You can take her to play with the other children now.’

‘Yes, Signora Marchesa,’ Rosa replied in a calm voice that did not betray the rage she felt at the Marchesa’s indifference to her daughter. The Marchese’s mistress displayed more affection towards Clementina than her own mother! It amazed Rosa that the girl possessed a cheerful disposition despite her mother’s neglect. Perhaps it was her father’s love that saved her. Rosa looked around for the Marchese but he had disappeared the same time his wife had started parading around the gathering.

Maria and Rosa had been charged with taking care of Baroness Derveaux’s twin boys and the seven other children of guests as well as Clementina. To help them, the twins’ English governess, Miss Butterfield, had been enlisted. Miss Butterfield was in her fifties with slim ankles and a generous bosom. She was so top-heavy she looked as though she could topple over at any moment. While Rosa and Maria set about organising the children into games of octopus and beautiful queen, the effort of watching the children play seemed to exhaust Miss Butterfield. She sat down in a wicker chair and began fanning herself. Rosa was concerned that she might be ill. The Tuscan climate did not always agree with the English, Mrs Richards had told her. They were prone to all sorts of maladies: sunstroke, diarrhoea, fevers. Rosa poured a glass of lemon water and offered it to the governess.

‘I wasn’t cut out for this life of servitude,’ Miss Butterfield told Rosa. ‘My father was a gentleman in the King’s service and had inherited acres in the Lake District, but alas his trickster cousin swindled him out of it all.’

Miss Butterfield launched into a litany of ills that had befallen her since she came into the world. She had three brothers and two sisters
who had ill-treated her as a child and no longer spoke with her. ‘A guilty conscience needs no accuser,’ she sniffed. Her mother had suffered arthritis all her life and now Miss Butterfield, who looked robustly healthy to Rosa, seemed destined to suffer the same. ‘How my knees throbbed this winter,’ she said. ‘I thought I might perish with the pain.’ There were problems with sore teeth, a weak chest, aching bones and constipation. Miss Butterfield’s greatest disappointment was her ‘beloved’ suitor who in the end married her younger sister. ‘She stole him away, right from under my nose. Like a thief in the night. Gone! All my hopes for a happy life!’

Rosa tried to show concern but realised it was only encouraging Miss Butterfield to continue. She was relieved when she saw Ada and Paolina bringing platters of fruit tarts, slices of
castagnaccio
and
cenci
dusted in sugar down the path towards them. A manservent and maid followed behind, carrying jugs of fruit punch and glasses.

‘Look! They are bringing the treats,’ Rosa said, standing up. She organised the children to each take a napkin and to sit on the carpet that had been laid out for them.

The maid with the fruit punch sidled up to Maria. ‘The men are very dashing today,’ she said to her. ‘Especially him.’

‘He’s
always
dashing,’ Maria giggled.

Rosa glanced towards the adult party, wondering who the maids were talking about. The Marchese was still nowhere to be seen. The young man with the cowlick was continuing to follow the Marchesa’s every move with his blazing eyes. His features were even but his expression was like that of a man fixed on a problem. Rosa could not imagine him ever laughing. The only other man under forty was Vittorio and surely the maids couldn’t be referring to him. The Marchesa’s brother was strutting among the guests in his jackboots and black shirt. His only concession to the celebration was a gardenia in his buttonhole. Rosa thought he was the most unattractive human being she had ever seen and the most stupid. Once, at one of the torturous dinners she shared with the Scarfiotti family, she had heard him claim, ‘War is not an
unfortunate necessity but an expression of man’s virility’, and a few moments later whine like an infant because his soup was cold. Paolina had told her that Vittorio had participated in D’Annunzio’s daring expedition to Fiume and that the scar on his forehead was from a raid with the
squadristi
on a communist meeting. ‘But one day when he discovered a boil on his back, he took to bed and moaned as if he had been visited by the Black Death,’ she said.

Ada showed more sympathy for Vittorio. ‘He took a blow to the head in battle and has been having trouble adjusting to a quiet life since he came back from the war,’ she explained. ‘Signora Guerrini said that he is suffering a form of amnesia and can’t remember anything of his childhood or youth. All he knows is how to fight.’

Rosa watched Vittorio give some Austrian guests the fascist salute. Even in the short time she had known him, he seemed to be deteriorating further into madness.

Ada nudged Rosa. ‘Those girls have men on the brain,’ she said, indicating Maria and the maid. ‘Mind you don’t go the same way. They aren’t worth it.’

The children finished their sweets and licked their fingers. They wiped their icing-sugar-covered hands on their smock dresses and sailor suits and bustled around Rosa, urging her to let them play a game of ice witch. Rosa turned to ask Maria to assist her but the maid had disappeared. She assumed she had returned to the house with Ada to help in the kitchen.

‘They pay me a meagre allowance for clothes,’ said Miss Butterfield, after Rosa had settled the children into their game and sat down to watch them. ‘They say it is because the Baroness gives me her mother’s dresses after they have been worn only a few times. Can you imagine? Hand-me-downs! What an insult! Look at this one, for instance: it’s almost threadbare!’

Miss Butterfield’s dress was made of mulberry crepe and was the slip-on type with an overblouse front that looked fashionable. It was nicer than anything Rosa owned. She began to feel
impatient with Miss Butterfield’s complaining. Perhaps the true reason her suitor had preferred her sister was because he had discerned there would be no pleasing her.

A shrill laugh pierced the air. It startled Rosa. The Marchesa was talking with a man whose wide girth hung over his pants. She was sucking on a cigarette in a holder and blowing the smoke flirtatiously in the man’s direction. Rosa saw the man with the cowlick turn and flee towards the house.

‘You Italians create fantasies and everyone else believes them,’ Miss Butterfield sneered. ‘The Marchesa Scarfiotti! Oh, she loves the title, doesn’t she? The villa. The clothes. Everyone believes that preposterous story about her mother being an Egyptian princess! What a load of codswallop!’

Rosa drew back at Miss Butterfield’s remark. She wasn’t fond of the Marchesa but she was growing tired of the gossip. She felt it was wrong to take wages from the Scarfiottis then talk about them behind their backs. Suor Maddalena had often quoted from Proverbs:
Only a liar listens to gossip.
Rosa turned away, hinting that she was not interested in any sordid details Miss Butterfield wished to share about her mistress, but the governess pressed on as if she hadn’t noticed.

‘One of my cousins was posted in Egypt. He knew Generale Caleffi. The Marchesa’s mother danced in a bar in Cairo. She tricked the general into marrying her and his family had to make something up to avoid the scandal.’

Rosa drew a breath through clenched teeth. The Marchese was obviously proud of his family name and she doubted he would have chosen a wife who would sully it. Her mind turned back to the woman in the turban she had seen outside the summerhouse. Still, what Miss Butterfield said would explain why the Marchese would not allow Clementina to speak with her grandmother.

Seeing that she had struck some interest in Rosa, Miss Butterfield became animated. ‘The Marchesa’s mother is ruthless. Why, my cousin used to say that the old general never died of dysentery. She—’

Miss Butterfield was cut off by the appearance of Maria hurrying towards them from the direction of the loggia. Rosa was thankful. She did not like the direction Miss Butterfield’s story was taking.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Maria. ‘I remembered I had to see the gardener about roses for the bomboniere. They are making them up in the house now.’

Maria’s cap was askew and her chin was red. Rosa reached up to help her straighten the cap and noticed a sour smell about her—like body odour and bleach. It struck Rosa as strange because Maria was fastidious about her grooming. It must have been because it was a warm day and she had been running.

‘It’s all right,’ said Rosa. ‘I was about to set the children up for the sack race.’

Applause sounded through the gathering. The children began to cheer. Rosa and Maria turned to where everyone was looking. The Marchese was walking down the path leading a grey pony with a white mane. The pony’s pink saddle and bridle were engraved with stars and a pink plume was perched on its head. Clementina’s eyes grew wide with excitement. She rushed towards her father.

‘She’s come all the way from Scotland especially for you,’ the Marchese told her.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Clementina, nestling her cheek to the pony’s flank. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Bonnie Lass,’ replied the Marchese in a mock Scottish accent that made the children laugh.

The Marchese’s usual aloofness gave way to a face alive with love and pride when he led his daughter around the garden on the pony. After Clementina’s parade, he helped the other children take turns in riding it. He threw back his head and laughed when one boy asked if the pony was real or whether it was two servants dressed up. Rosa had heard that ponies could be bad-tempered, but the little horse behaved docilely, even with the children hopping and skipping alongside it.

Baron Derveaux, a man with gangly legs and winged eyebrows, joined in to help. His tender manner when he lifted the children into the saddle made him seem like an agreeable man. Rosa wondered why Miss Butterfield found so much in her employers to complain about.

‘A complete disaster,’ said Miss Butterfield, shaking her head. ‘What a lack of decorum! Baron Derveaux is like a child himself. It’s the French, they never grow up.’

Rosa dismissed Miss Butterfield as someone with a pessimistic view of the world. She thought the Derveaux twins were lovely and their parents seemed charming. She recalled a quote from the English poet John Milton:
The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven.
Miss Butterfield would do well to listen to her countryman. The story about the Marchesa’s mother dancing in a bar probably wasn’t true at all.

When the party was over and the guests were ready to leave, Signor Bonizzoni instructed Rosa and Maria to assist him with the bomboniere because the Marchesa’s personal maid was busy with the guest book and Signora Guerrini was organising the other maids to tidy up. The two young women passed the packages to the Marchese and Marchesa to give out as their guests departed. The men received a silver pen with Clementina’s name and the date engraved on it, while the women were given crystal perfume bottles etched with the same. The children received tulle bags of sugared almonds. Clementina curtseyed gracefully to each parting guest.