was good.
15
The swim must have tired me because I fell asleep on the bench and when I woke, I was stiff, my hands prickled with pins and needles. The temperature had cooled and the airplane vapour trails that criss-crossed the sky were tinged gold.
I picked up my plate and went back into the villa. Half a dozen empty beer bottles were lined up alongside the wall at the back of the kitchen. I could no longer hear voices but followed the sound of chopping into the garden and found Joe hacking away at the oversized creepers with a long handled axe. I said, ‘Hi.’
He put the head of the axe on the floor and leaned on the end of the handle.
‘I found the axe in the log shed,’ he said. ‘It’s not great, but it’ll do for now. The guys are going to lend me some power tools.’
‘That’s great,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘I’m going for another swim.’
He headed off towards the decking without inviting me to join him, which was fine, I hadn’t wanted to go anyway. I went in the other direction and fetched my suitcase from the car. I dragged it across the gardens and into the hallway, up the stairs.
From the landing window, I could see Joe crawling through the sea across the bay towards the floating dock. He was a long way away and it was unnerving to be in the villa with no other living being nearby. All around me, I sensed movement, whispers as if the shadows of the people who’d inhabited the villa were there with me; generations of DeLucas.
The child Anna used to play marbles here, on this landing. She’d told me she liked to come up here, out of sight of the adults downstairs who were always encouraging her to play the piano for them, or sit with them, which she found boring. She preferred to be alone. She’d sit on the landing, beside this very bookcase, and line up her collection of marbles according to her favourites, as if they had personalities. I’d played similar games with inanimate objects as a child. Had Anna imagined her dead brother and sisters here with her when she played?
As this exact question troubled me, I heard a gentle rumble, unmistakably the sound of a small glass ball rolling over the floorboards. I stepped back, against the wall, afraid that I’d inadvertently summoned the spirits of Anna’s lost siblings. I didn’t want to tread on a marble or step on the outstretched hand of an imaginary child.
Feeling light-headed, conscious that it was my overwrought state that was seeding these psychic fantasies, I hefted the awkward suitcase into the nearest bedroom and changed into a pair of shorts and a jumper. Then I ran back downstairs and out into the garden.
The sunset was lighting up one side of the villa, turning it red as if it was on fire. The kitchen was at the back of the villa and immediately beyond was a paved courtyard and behind that was the overgrown lawn and the derelict swimming pool. Wooden trellising supported an ancient vine with a trunk as thick as my thigh, a vine that had been trained to climb up and over the courtyard, giving it shade from the sun and some protection from the rain. Beneath the vine was a sturdy wooden table, covered with fallen leaves, desiccated grapes and bird droppings. Joe and his friends had moved three of the chairs earlier so they could drink their beers in the sunshine.
Joe and I could eat out here, this evening, I thought. We would have to eat together because the alternative, being in separate rooms inside the old villa was untenable to me. I couldn’t be alone in this place, in the dark. The very thought made the hairs on my body prickle, brought the whispers of the villa’s ghosts closer. I was so uneasy that I contemplated going back to the decking to find Joe, but I was afraid I might lose my way in the gloaming and accidentally wander into the graveyard of the still-born.
Instead, while I waited for him to return, I kept myself busy, moving the chairs back to the table and dusting the seats. If I prepared the table for our evening meal, then it would be difficult for Joe to walk away.
In the kitchen, I found glass jars containing candles, each jar covered by a dusty saucer that had kept the candle clean beneath. We’d bought matches, and although the candles had been left for so long, they lit easily. I set the jars on the table outside and some along the ledge of the window in the kitchen, where they flickered cheerfully.
Next, I swept the tabletop, and then the area around the table. In the candlelight, the courtyard took on a cosy atmosphere. The first stars began to twinkle in the night sky.
Joe returned, his T-shirt clinging to his damp shoulders. Beyond the black silhouettes of trees, silver moonlight was caught in the small waves rolling in from the bay and breaking against the rocks. The cicadas sang their song. Joe did not comment on the preparations I’d made. Perhaps he was thinking about the evening before, when I’d rushed off to my hotel room rather than eat with him.
I tried not to think about Anna’s dead siblings watching from the shadows as I laid out the food, bottles of water. I unwrapped the wax paper from the cheese, opened a jar of olives, sliced tomatoes. Joe opened two bottles of beer and passed one to me. We sat at the table in the candlelight. I pulled the zip on my jumper up to my chin. Joe was thoughtful, staring into the mouth of his bottle. It was peaceful and I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere, so I tried to think of something to say that would be friendly, without compromising my anger; something that wouldn’t summon the spirit of Anna to the table.
‘Did you used to eat out here,’ I asked Joe, ‘when you came, before, on holiday?’
‘All the time.’ He looked around as if remembering the people who used to occupy the empty chairs. ‘My grandmother used to love entertaining. There’d be lanterns hung in the trees, lights everywhere.’ He trailed off and fell silent again. ‘There was a housekeeper then, did I tell you? And a caretaker, a married couple. They lived together in a cottage behind the garage. They had a little dog. They were very good to me and Cece.’
‘Was Cece upset that Anna left this place to you and me?’
‘She got the London house. She thinks she came off best.’
Oh, Anna. More evidence of your scheming; you giving the uncomplicated London house to your uncomplicated daughter and the abandoned, difficult Sicilian villa to the abandoned son and his difficult ex-wife.
‘Did your father ever come here?’ I asked to change the subject.
‘No,’ Joe replied.
‘Never?’
He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped back his head and drank. ‘He didn’t like the heat. And he thought Sicily was a shithole of an island.’
That sounded exactly the kind of thing Patrick Cadogan would have said. He might have been a psychologist but he had the tact of a meteorite.
I pulled my left leg up onto the chair, wrapped my arm around it and rubbed the ankle. Moths were batting at the candle jars. Bats darted overhead, blacking out tiny parts of the sky.
We finished our beers and opened some more, becoming more relaxed. We told one another a little about our lives now. Joe talked about his gardening work, the van he drove, the long, solitary walks he took around the mountains and coastline of North Wales. I talked about the dogs and Fitz, how we joked we would grow old together, becoming more set in our ways until we turned into two eccentric old women surrounded by rescued pets.
We didn’t
