A Funeral in Fiesole (16 page)

Needless stirring and teasing

I knew what Brod was stewing about. Of course I knew. A twin’s thoughts are never entirely secret. He was brooding about his relationship with Mama. Was her love for him faithfully and unerringly equal to hers for me? What a dilemma to have, when one is half of something! Although I suspected siblings all had a craving for special regard from a parent, the preoccupation was worse for twins!

We had only one parent for the portion of our childhood we could remember. For the part that most probably truly mattered. We all, except Paola, had very fragile memories of Papa, and they were memories created out of narrative and family folklore, rather than authentic recollections. We were all second-hand witnesses to what he did and who he was. All dead parents were saints. Mama was turning into one right now, under all our noses.

Paola of course had what she termed the curse of a long memory. She might have remembered some of Papa’s faults and errors. Or may have realized sainthood was not something one could confer on our mother. Was there such a thing as a parent who entirely lacked flaws and weaknesses? I for one remembered Mama singling out my older sister when it came to selecting clothes for the winter. She spent much more time with her than with me. Or with the boys.

I was infuriated by Brod’s teasing and stirring out on the terrace, and Paola was not there to rein him in with a clearly rational observation based on some real memory, or some logical calculation. She appeared late, unusually relaxed, and unwilling to enter an argument started without her. She missed her calling – Paola should have gone into the law. What a formidable unflappable judge she would have made!

What a transparent thing for Brod to do! Stirring us all up about the bequest. Transparent at least to me. I thought he was quite happy with it all, and that he would sign the d
ichiarazione di successione
without a murmur. It appeared, however, that Nigel, who had most at stake apparently, and who desperately needed us all to sign, was ruffled and upset. Nigel was the most likely to sign without much hesitation, and my guess was Paola had no reason not to.

I was rather elated with my portion of the estate. For two reasons; the most important one being I would not have to surrender, sell, or buy out any one of my siblings. I was singled out quite amazingly cleverly by Mama. Oh, Mama! Clever, without being scheming. Intelligent and fair, but infinitely understanding of me in particular. Perhaps I would have to live it down with the others.

How dreadful being the female half of a pair of twins might have been with a chauvinistic parent, or one driven by popular beliefs, and prejudices, and social preferences! At least Mama saw the hazards late in life, even though I had to fight for attention too often when I was young.

My second reason was of course the boat. I had planned, schemed and worked all my life with an aim in mind. Papa taught us all to work towards aims. Or so Mama used to tell us, all the summer long. Mine was to sail the Med. Persuading Lewis took a long time, but I guessed he would relent because all he wanted was for us to be comfortable together. Comfort for Lewis was not a simple thing. It had to be physical and mental. He was a complex man. I realized he seemed to everyone to be a dogsbody, a yes-man, an auxiliary, a side-kick to my activities and ventures, but he has been no small help. He is a collaborator of very fine quality, who can strategize and implement plans, working flexibility into financial policies and logistical procedures without which I would have floundered a long time ago. No one can buy and sell franchises on their own. Lewis is like the scullery of this house, the old scullery which holds up the entire building, it and its formidable buttresses.

He made me realize, very early in our relationship, the likelihood was I would not make a great parent. We debated what it would mean to have a family, and I had to agree I wanted my plans and dreams to materialize much more than I wanted to be a mother. He was happy with the decision.

‘I’m a private person who would not cope well with sticky interruptions, sleepless nights, and four-hourly feeds, Suzanna. You are pretty much the same,’ he said. It was only years later I realized he was clearing the way for a future he could handle. ‘The fact we are discussing this at all is a good indicator, darling – and it’s why I brought it up.’

It was years before I realized what he meant. He was also right about his feelings about the will.

I could have laughed out loud in surprise when we all sat so solemnly in Mama’s sitting room with the notary. Did they all see me raise a hand to cover an involuntary smile? Mama set me free of my siblings. She insulated me, made me feel special, in the same way as she would single me out as a child, very early on a Saturday morning, when she’d tap a knuckle on my door, put her head into the room, and hiss, ‘Suzanna … I made us pancakes!’ No one else heard. We’d sit in the big warm kitchen and stuff ourselves with blackberry pancakes, oozing with dark juice.

‘Eat them while they’re warm … here’s more sugar.’

She sensed how being a younger sister, how being a twin, how being a young woman, was not the easiest thing. She gave me strength and distinction.

‘You’ll go far, my darling,’ she would say, tapping her garden-stressed fingers on the red table top. ‘Very much your own little person. You are a determined young thing.’

And we’d talk about school, about friends, about my agony over the right haircut and the visibility of steel braces on my awful teeth! She made time feel like a stretchable or shrinkable commodity. I learned so much from Mama’s concept of time and how to get it to work for me.

‘Do you know what Papa used to say, Suzanna?’ She asked me this one Saturday morning when the sun sizzled early outside and she felt it would be a dreadfully humid day. I was all ears, all replete after eating half a dozen pancakes and drinking a bowl of warm milk to which she had added a splash of coffee from the intractable filter machine. ‘Papa said everything was either time or money. Now you, of all people, would understand the … the concept.’

And I kept the concept in mind my entire career. Everything in business, indeed, was time or money! But Mama gave me a gardening example, which stayed in my head, more than Papa’s behest ever could. ‘You can plant a sapling and wait for five years for a good crop of fruit … which is time. Or you can buy an advanced, more expensive, tree and have fruit the same year. That’s money.’

So I always measured cost against waiting, in business. And found someone like Lewis who always estimated what he called my acumen above his own. Only a generous and very clever man without an inflated ego could do what Lewis did. I’ve been so lucky!

A sweet grannie

I insisted on Grant driving with me to Matilde’s, all the way to Prato. We followed Paola’s directions and got there rather quickly, despite the gridlock traffic we encountered as we entered town. There was the tall orange building she mentioned, and yes, a mushroom-coloured apartment block, where Matilde and her niece lived.

‘
O, guarda, guarda!
’’ She was so delighted to see me, clapping her hands like a child and beaming, beaming – she took both my hands in hers, as she would when I was little, but she was gratefully too short now to sweep my hair backwards off my forehead.

She shook Grant’s hand and tried her English on him, which seemed hilarious to her too, so we all stood in her narrow hallway and hooted with laughter. It was good.

Grant gave me a little shake of his head, followed by a quick nod and wink, which meant I didn’t have to constantly translate back and forth. He was happy to sit there and watch me converse with Matilde, who told me all about how Donato spent his last year, and how he had carved a massive owl out of a tree stump, slowly chiselling and whittling over the twelve months he was poorly; unwilling to sit and do nothing.

‘He did not wait to die, he worked right to the end, filling the room with sawdust and shavings, and laughing when I tried to sweep and dust. Come, I’ll show you!’ She led up a passage to a small spotless bedroom, where a beautiful fruitwood owl stood on a chest. ‘
M’ha lasciato un gufo!
’ She laughed, but there was a slight tremor in her voice and she impatiently brushed a tear from her cheek. ‘He left me an owl, an owl, a preying bird that flies at night, and I cannot find a reason why. I think for once he wanted to do something without reason.’

‘Did he …?’

‘Never, never. Everything he did had a reason, like when he planted those new pine trees in a row, to please your mother. Goodness knows how tall they must be now. Close to the house. Close. Sheltering. The owl? No reason.’

I think she did see some sort of reason, and I was quite touched to see her emotion. She sat us in her small kitchen and gave us some sweet yellowish wine and her famous almond biscuits.

Grant held up his glass. ‘Mm – what is this? It’s delicious.’

‘Trebbiano grapes,’ she said. ‘Explain to your friend, Broderick. This is Tuscan
vin santo
, and look – the colour is gold.’ She held up her small stemmed glass and light from the kitchen window lit it up, amber.

She explained about her relatives, who had a vineyard somewhere in the hills on the other side of Florence. Her niece Anna bowed her head, poured us all a little more wine, and peeped at something baking in the wall oven.

‘More biscuits, more
cantuccini
. I often send a little basket of them to the nuns at the
monastero
di San Clemente. There are still nuns there, you know. They live
in clausura
… how do you …?’

‘Cloistered – isolated from the world, am I right?’

She agreed. ‘They rely on the community to keep food on their table, you know. They are Dominicans. It is a very old monastery. Very old, medieval,’ she went on, in her Florentine dialect, which was clear and easy to follow. ‘There are still a few nuns there, shut away from the world. They hardly speak to each other. A life of prayer and contemplation.’ She smiled and cocked an eye at me. ‘I suppose there need to be some nice pious people to make up for the rest of us, wicked as we are.’ She chuckled.

‘Wicked?’

‘Eh?’

I could see her hearing came and went. Her face was tired. ‘We can’t stay long, Matilde.’

She had turned her good ear to me and tilted her head. ‘But not before we speak a bit about your dear mother – what a wonderful woman she was, eh? And how clever in the garden. Ah, la signora Nina!’

‘She outlived Papa …’

‘… by quite a few years, yes. So she made sure you four children knew him, by talking about him and what he did. All those rooms he renovated at the villa!’

‘Mm – the villa needs a lot of repairs now.’

‘My advice?’ Her shrewd eyes opened wide, as wide as the deep wrinkles and papery eyelids allowed. ‘You should keep it. One of you. Some of you. All of you? There should be a
signore
or
signora
Larkin at the villa forever! Keep it, have a couple of men like Pierino, who is Anna’s brother here, do some work. He is a good handyman. It’s all you need. Slowly, slowly – it’s how you should do it. Isn’t it so, Anna?’

Her niece made a motion of assent. She sat in a corner of the room, away from the table, with her arms folded comfortably over her rounded stomach, chewing a biscuit. ‘Pierino is very good. He will be more than happy to work at the villa.’

Grant had no notion of what the conversation was about. He sipped his wine and glanced at me, at Matilde, and on to Anna, and back to me. We would have to go soon, or he would be bored rigid.

‘We’ll go soon, Grant.’

‘No – this visit is important. Isn’t it? Don’t worry about me. It’s not like it happens every weekend, Brod.’ He waved an emphatic hand and I could see he wished he had such people to visit, in Italy, or anywhere.

‘Now listen, before you go, I must tell you a secret only you will hear. Are you listening?’

‘Yes, Matilde.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘There was something your mother wanted you to have, Brod-er-ick.’

It was so funny, so reminiscent of my childhood, to have her call me by my full name. I remembered her scolding me for running over a tiled floor she had mopped.
Brod-er-ick!
I reminded her of how she would shake the mop at me.

‘Ha ha! You were such a naughty boy. You used to steal things from your big sister’s room, and I occasionally used to take books and comics from under your bed, and put them back in the box under hers! Ha ha!’

We all laughed again, Grant not knowing what amused us so heartily, his eyes gazing from one face to another, and enjoying it anyway.

‘Listen,
carino
, listen. Go and search up in the roof of the back house. You know very well – the back house where Donato and I used to live? Go to the little house, and up in the roof space, in the … what do you call it?’

‘The attic?’

‘Ecco –
il sottotetto
. Yes, yes – up in the attic you will find something your beautiful mother wanted you to have, only you. Don’t tell anyone else,
capito?
’

I understood. ‘But what is it, Matilde?’

She smiled in a mysterious way. ‘It will be very clear when you find it.
Buona fortuna, caro
.’

She wished me good fortune, in exactly the same way as she would when we all went back to school in the autumn, when we were kids. I could see she was tired. I kissed her on both cheeks and Grant and I made our farewells and walked back to the car.

‘Such a sweet little grannie, she is.’

‘Oh Grant – she used to have such energy. She practically ran the villa … chasing us, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and keeping Mama company in the garden from time to time. It couldn’t have been easy, with us four kids making such a noise and such a mess.’

‘And talking, talking, talking!’

I twisted sideways. ‘Do we talk a lot?’

Grant laughed. ‘Do you talk! And you all have the same habit of saying something three times, in three different … distinct … varied … ways!’ He held up three fingers as he said the words.

‘Mama’s speech patterns were … well, repetitive. Are mine?’

‘You all do it.’

‘Matilde became used to us and our mess and noise … and repetition … I suppose.’

‘She treasured every minute, if her eyes reflected anything.’

‘I guess so. What do you think is in the attic at the small back house, up at the villa, then?’

‘What attic? You’ve got to tell me what went on. I couldn’t understand a word, the way you gabbled on and on!’

I laughed and explained what Matilde had said about something hidden in the attic, as we drove all the way back to Fiesole.

‘Do you think she actually meant I should keep it a secret?’

‘If it’s a bag of gold coins you feasibly could, but if it’s anything bigger you’d have to explain to the other three.’

‘Hm. I’ll have a peep before we all leave tomorrow.’

‘I’m looking forward to coming back, Brod.’

‘Ha ha, Grant. We’ll have to make real decisions about all that at some point. We must still have the big final deciding discussion.’

I gazed out of the car window and wondered what we would end up doing, about the villa, about the inheritance, about the way it had all gone. I didn’t know whether to be grateful to Mama for how she had divided it all up; or to be sorry I stirred such an argument up the night before, and infuriated Suzanna. I also seemed to have scared Nigel. Poor Nigel – I didn’t mean to jolt him. It’s gone absolutely the right way for him.

There was still the question of Paola. Although a bit less wound up than the day we all arrived, and a bit less nervous than on the day of the funeral, my older sister seemed sometimes edgy and sometimes composed; exerting enormous control over her emotions and every word she let out of her mouth. Surely she wasn’t always so? I should get her alone and have a nice long chat. I had nearly forgotten her long marriage had only recently broken down and I still hadn’t said a word to her about it all.

I might corner her in the hall, in front of the wall gods, in front of her Neptune, and my Diana and her fading hounds, quite as I used to do as a boy, and sweeten her up with something like roller skates or a box of books or … I wonder how she would react if I mentioned a pallet of young plants?