A Funeral in Fiesole (6 page)

The bells in the lotto machine rang out when I had the ticket checked, which told me two things. John had the draw date wrong, and the ticket was never scanned. The small Indian woman leaned forward from behind the counter and asked me to go in the shop. All her sentences were questions. ‘I’m not allowed to shout it all over the shopping centre, you know – because of security? But you have won a large amount, ma’am? Which you will need to collect from the Lotteries people? I’ll tell you what to do? It’s quick and easy?’ Her eyebrows rose, and her uneven lips smiled to show teeth on one side of a large mouth.

‘No!’

‘Yes – slightly over three million dollars? Congratulations?’

I had to hold onto the counter. I clutched my bag and stared at her, stunned wordless.

What followed were three days of dumbfounded movement. With the money safely clearing to my bank account, with my bags stowed somewhere in the bowels of an aeroplane, with my head crammed with innumerable emotions and questions, I arrived in Florence and made my way to Fiesole. In a rented car, a luxury at which I would usually have frowned.

My writing made me an adequate income, and John was by no means stingy, but having over three million dollars in the bank – in cash – was a very new sensation I would never get used to.

What went on in my head during the twenty-two hours it took to get from Melbourne to Fiesole was a repetitious debate with myself. Would I tell John about the win?

No – no. He did not deserve to be told. He had paid the fourteen dollars for the ticket, but leaving as he did, and leaving me in such misery, entitled him to nothing. I was so angry; so aggrieved. So wounded by his numb thoughtless exit from my life. Recompense in the form of a lot of money was my … my what? My what? Just deserts. This one I could win. I was wronged, and the universe sent me compensation, instantly. All I wished was that John had said something dramatic like, ‘I’m leaving! I’m taking what’s mine! Damn you! You can have the rest!’

He hadn’t, of course. John never spoke in forceful exclamations. He was measured, quiet, deliberate. His action that day, however, made me feel as though he had, for once, shouted his disgust at me.

The events of the last three days were overwhelming, incredible. If I had included them in a novel, readers would discount them as totally implausible. That so much should have happened to me, and all at one time, was not the stuff of fiction, however. It was all unaccountable in a way that could only happen in a life that was unfortunately all too real. All too overpowering. No one would believe me, but I was not about to tell a soul, least of all my siblings.

I saw Nigel and Harriet had some sort of struggle they would not talk about. The likelihood it was financial was quite high. I felt Brod did not care much about money. His career in banking brought in enough for him never to be worried. He lacked for nothing. Suzanna – the most prosperous of us four – oozed success like Mama’s pancakes would ooze blackberry juice.

Ah – those pancakes. She had me in thrall, knocking a quiet knuckle on my door late on a Sunday morning, ‘Paola – pancakes.’ She made it special, so special – a change from Matilde’s Italian meals and treats. At the kitchen table, just me and Mama. This was nothing like the biscotti or pasta the Italian woman whipped up so easily. It was nothing like the pistachio ice-cream, or delicious panna, the whipped cream the Italian maid floated on our bowls of milky coffee. It was nothing like dark crispy fried zucchini curls we clamoured for.  Mama’s pancakes were Mama’s pancakes.

And now, having driven up the driveway, round the green cypresses, and parked near those slippery grey front steps, I had come close to making a decision about myself. Now I lay in the same bed I battled my adolescent demons in, I could think about what I would do – and how I wanted to live the rest of my life – so clearly it was starting to unsteady me. Or set me straight. Or something. I was never more confused in my life. Still, I had had a win.

I could spill the beans and tell everyone my marriage was over. It might either surprise them or not. I was not about to make it an announcement – I would tell them individually and in private. I would never tell a soul about the three million, however. It was impossible to know this early whether it would be enough to buy Nigel, Brod, and Suzanna out and take on the big house on my own.

Oh – as I turned a particularly sharp bend in the near-new rental car, I realized I had options, and it made me dizzy. Dizzy with the range and scope of what I could do with the rest of my life. Nearing sixty was not too terrible. Mama lived to well over eighty, and I could also have twenty good years left in me to take the place and renovate the guts out of it. Raise it to a reasonable condition, which would bring back something of the past. I wanted something of Mama’s enthusiasm, her ability in the garden, her instinctual style, her understanding of exactly how a room should be decorated and furnished.

Was it what I wanted? I could not have known it as I climbed the front steps. When I took in the wall gods, when I leaned against the kitchen table, when I counted visible drops forming and falling from my old bedroom ceiling, I thought I could work it out.

Dull and dreary

There was something decidedly strange about Brod. He’d changed in some way. He would never age, of course – he simply did not have the worries that accompanied having a family. Harriet and I have been through thick, thin, and all sorts of depths and widths of scrapes financially – and I had to admit, emotionally – since our two were born.

Lori was not an easy child. They say having an exceptionally intelligent and talented child is as much a problem as having a slow one, which we supposed was true, when she was very young. Tad was very much an introvert, and preferred messing about in his room, similar to what I liked to do in the kitchen when caught up in something insurmountable like too many bills in the same fortnight.

A child of the background, Tad was always, doing mediocre things effortlessly and without fuss. Lori might have played the cello like an angel, but her brother blew a trumpet with quiet gusto in the school band and smiled his way around acquaintances and teachers in his vague mellow way. If he sniffed turbulence, he stayed away. We always wondered who he took after.

Come to think of it, there was something going on with Paola, as well. She was not as forthright and verbal as we remembered her. She found fault with the place, like a buyer ahead of an auction, enumerating negative aspects of the place, but more quietly. She watched us all, from the distance of the other side of the table, the entire time it took to have dinner the first night. I wondered how she would be the rest of the time; at the funeral, and when the will was read.

‘The notary said he will come to the funeral, and afterwards we can all come back here from the reception – which should only take about an hour. He will say a few words and read the will.’ I informed them all what had been arranged at breakfast on the second day. It was Harriet who organized it. I was not very good with timing things so they actually worked. From the expression in her eyes I could plainly see Paola would not have had the will read directly after the funeral. It could not be changed now.

My wife kept staring at my sisters. I thought she had decided for herself Brod would not make a fuss, and would agree the big house had to be sold, since anything else would be too complicated. It needed too much costly work to bring it to a state good enough to be rented out. Selling it was the only way.

I was still very uncomfortable about losing my job. The news would eventually filter out to everyone, I hoped, and I would not have to announce the information. At least – it was what I imagined would happen. I could always disappear to the kitchen to whip up a tiramisu or something. It was humiliating, to say the least.

‘My goodness, Nigel! I’ve heard Matilde is still active and lucid and living in her own place.’ It was Paola, who burst into the downstairs sitting room, wearing a bright shawl around her shoulders and holding a book.

I was surprised she did not know. ‘Of course. We saw her a couple of years ago down in Prato, where she’s living with a niece, I think. Deaf as a post.’

‘Oh? How sad. She … how old would she be?’

‘Ninety … no, ninety-two, I think.’

Paola sat in the old green sofa, grumbled about the dampness and the lack of lace curtains again, and went on. ‘Do you think I should go down and see her? Do you think she’ll be there tomorrow?’

I shook my head. ‘Definitely too old for funerals, Paola.’

She leaned forward and dropped her voice a bit. ‘Do you like Grant? He seems so staid and steady, and so much older than Brod.’ She sat back and prepared to grill me.

‘Not that much older. It’s because Brod will never age. He’s … like a tall elf. Plus I feel Grant is very good for him – someone with an artistic bent … you know, he designs buildings and does ... whatever architectural designers do.’

‘Do you remember when he brought a flamboyant boy home for part of the holiday? Do you remember? Fletcher something, and how Mama cut him down to size … and how we all ended up going down to put him on the train together?’

I shook my head.

‘Don’t you? It was hilarious. Mama understood Brod – always did, but his friend Fletcher was something else.’

‘I don’t remember, Paola.’

‘He kept asking why two of us have Italian names and two of us have English names, and how we ate such different things from what he got at home.’

‘Where was he from?’

‘Somewhere in England – he was very bossy with Brod, and Mama soon put him in his place.’

I shook my head again. ‘You were blessed with the memory of …’

‘It’s a curse, not a blessing, Nigel. Some things I’d much rather forget.’

‘Oh, come on now – we didn’t have a bad time of it at all.’ But I saw suddenly it was not our childhood she wanted to forget, but something that had happened to her, and it was most probably recent.

‘You and … is everything all right with you and John, Paola?’

She smiled and opened the book. Her downcast eyes did not tell me a thing. All I could see were the top of her head, with its severe haircut, and the upturned corners of her small mouth. Her lipstick was very much like Harriet’s. A shade of dull apricot that went with her hazel eyes. Harriet had Lori to guide her – she knew more about cosmetics and what suited her than her mother. Paola – well, Paola was the kind of woman who would have loved a daughter.

‘John’s a bit overworked, Nigel. He couldn’t even come to this.’

Was what I heard in her voice resentment? ‘Oh.’ Wouldn’t it be nice if Paola could talk to someone? She was manifestly so full of grief over Mama. Harriet would not do. They never got on. Suzanna was too self-involved to fully listen. She asserted herself, always, and drew herself above and beyond us all. I wondered if being a twin did something to women.

‘If it weren’t raining, I would take a walk down to the rubble wall.’

‘Part of it’s come down, you know, Paola.’

‘Oh no.’ She paused. ‘How much do you think it would take to fix this place, Nigel? Conservatively, I mean, if we ever wanted to … do it up?’

‘We?’ I stopped. It was no time to ask if she would consider buying me out. It would have solved a lot of my financial problems to come into some cash. It wasn’t the time.

‘A rough figure.’

‘Rough – not a lot. Something like … what? A couple of … okay. I did do some sums in my head about a year ago. ‘Two hundred thousand euros, perhaps. Or three if you wanted to be lavish.’

‘So much!’

I pulled a face. ‘I know it sounds like a lot.’ I could not say more. Her face showed a mixed sentiment. She did not seem to like the figure. It was a lot of money none of us could pull together easily.

‘Do you think Brod and Grant are interested in taking it on?’ Her eyes were narrow. She must have thought of asking Brod to buy her out. I wondered how she would tackle the conversation. Paola could be quite imperious. It made me angry to think how calculating she was. It irked me that she did not consider me for a second. Was it so obvious I could not buy her out; did I appear that needy? But I had to control my temper. Mars, my wall god, my war god, was a childhood influence I could blame once upon a time. Not any longer.

‘Oh, look. Is that a break in the weather? I think I will walk down to the wall.’ She was off, leaving her book on the sofa, and the door ajar behind her.

I sat back and waited before putting the kettle on, wondering whether a whole kilo of veal medallions was enough for dinner. The thought of food calmed me, but I wondered whether I would be this much in control for the whole week.

Suzanna put her head in the door. ‘There you are. What’s everyone wearing tomorrow? Regulation black, all dull and dreary?’

‘You would never be all dull and dreary, Suzanna. Ask Lori and Harriet. They seem to have it figured out. All I have to do is wear a dark suit. This is Italy, after all.’

‘Hm. You boys have it easy. I brought this fabulous black outfit, but it definitely needs something to brighten it up. Like red shoes.’

I smiled. ‘
Red shoes
… ask Lori and Harriet … they’ll tell you.’

It was time to start preparing dinner. There was a pile of beans needing topping and tailing, which was a nice contemplative task. The big blue colander could be in the great old scullery; I’d have to look.

Mama insisted on calling it a scullery, when of course it was nothing of the sort. It was an ancient annexe to the kitchen, presumably medieval, against which the whole house leaned. It felt like everything else was added to it. Sturdy and substantial, it must have started out as a stable, and was probably where all the livestock was kept when the weather was like this; too rainy for anything.

It had a vaulted roof, metal rings set at intervals along one side, and walls so thick the tall thin windows were like slashes in the masonry, through which light would slant if there were any decent sunshine outside.

It was getting dark, and Paola would have to find her way back by memory. I could imagine her lingering out there in the wet grass, under threatening skies. Brooding. She would brood. I would seethe. That’s how we were.

The view through the scullery window facing down the back was limited, but I glimpsed her out there, walking, deep in thought. I was surprised when someone caught up with her. Someone in a big rainproof jacket with a hood. He brought along another jacket and helped her into it. I watched as they walked away from the house together, both grasping the hoods, bent against the wind and rain like old sailors. It might have been Brod, helping out our eldest sister, who was most likely feeling lonely, and not a little sad. John should have come out with her from Melbourne. He was usually considerate and quite sociable. Something must have happened.