A Rather Lovely Inheritance (34 page)

Jeremy drew himself up a bit taller as we approached the old man sitting in the garden. Domenico was reading his newspaper, but he looked up and put it aside as we drew nearer. He was a tall, trim, wiry old man with a whole beautiful headful of silver hair. He was exquisitely combed, shaved, groomed—and he wore a three-piece suit of the softest lightweight wool, and good well-shined leather shoes that were not brand-new but were finely made and elegant. He looked like a man dressed to go to church on Sunday—but a Sunday from another era. He sat erect, proud, self-possessed and alert, with a dignified demeanor that was perhaps a little stern. As we drew nearer I caught a whiff of a lemon verbena aftershave, and something about the scent was rather touching. For it occurred to me that despite his slightly reticent demeanor, he’d dressed and prepared himself very carefully for this meeting.

“Buongiorno,”
I said as we drew nearer, since Jeremy suddenly went mute as a post.

The old man smiled.
“Buongiorno,”
he said politely. He gestured toward two other iron garden chairs with cushions on them, for us to sit down. We did, and I looked at Jeremy, who was gazing at the old man. I had not expected to see a family resemblance because I didn’t have the time to give it much thought, but now I saw the high foreheads, the elegant wave of the lustrous hair, the intelligent curve of the eyebrows.

They studied each other quietly. Finally they both turned to me. So it was up to me, I realized, to get these two lions to talk to each other. My Italian vocabulary was of the teach-yourself-at-home variety, to figure out art terminology.
“Lei parla inglese?”
I asked hesitatingly.

The old man said,
“Scusi
, not so good anymore.” Aw, nuts, I thought. I nudged Jeremy, and he remembered the gift I’d made him buy. It was a small bottle of a good, smooth brandy, a label that I’d seen on my father’s shelf. Jeremy had slipped it into his jacket pocket, as if it were a good-luck talisman that he was hanging on to for dear life. It was wrapped in a gold and red shiny-paper gift sleeve, with a tasseled red drawstring. Jeremy handed it to the old man, who slowly pulled the drawstring and extracted the bottle, held it up in the light and nodded approvingly, then set it on the iron table near him and said, lightly and genuinely,
“Grazie.”

Then he folded his hands in his lap and waited, intently scrutinizing Jeremy rather expectantly, pleasantly but a bit wary. Jeremy shot me a pleading look that quite nakedly said,
Help me!
Something had to be done, or these two sphinxes were going to sit here staring at each other till the end of time.

I tried to imagine this elderly gentleman as a wide-eyed little boy, riding alongside Aunt Penelope in her Dragonetta auto, escaping out of wartime Italy. Then I remembered something I’d stuck in my handbag back at Aunt Pen’s villa.The little toy soldier I’d found in the car. In all the excitement I’d forgotten about it. I pulled it out now and gently handed it to Domenico, and said,
“Si ricorda?”
Then I held my breath, wondering if he’d really remember it.

I knew that I was taking a chance, dredging it all up. Possibly Jeremy would want to throttle me if I screwed this up for him, judging by the way he raised his eyebrows and shot me a slightly panicked look, as Domenico leaned forward and bent his head over the toy to examine it.

“Ah!” Domenico said, immediately lifting the hat on the soldier’s head and making the arms and legs jump. That gesture, and the fond smile of memory that broke across his face, making an old man look suddenly like a wistful little kid, well . . . it told me everything I wanted to know.

Domenico’s eyes misted over as he looked at me and said wonderingly,
“Ha mai conosciuto Penelope, quella bella signora?”

“Sure we knew her!” I exclaimed. I hesitated, then plunged on.
“Penelope era mia grande zia—la sorella di mia nonna,”
I said. This was a sentence I’d been rehearsing in my mind all the way over here: Penelope was my great-aunt, the sister of my grandmother. Aunt Sheila must have prepared him for this little news flash, because he nodded as if he understood perfectly.The fond smile of memory had softened his expression now.

“Era una signora molto generosa, Penelope,”
he said, infusing the words with a great deal of heart as he recalled Aunt Penelope as a woman of supreme generosity.

I felt victorious about communicating well enough, but now I looked at Jeremy, and my glance said,
Okay, buddy, you’re on.Talk to your grandfather.

Jeremy cleared his throat and looked uncharacteristically nervous as he reached into his pocket and extracted the photo that I’d given him from Aunt Sheila, the one with his father as a grown man in the kitchen with him.This took me by surprise. He had kept it all along, but this was the first I’d seen of it since I gave it to him at his apartment. Now he handed it to the old man.

“E questo uomo è tuo figlio?”
he asked tentatively.

“Ah, si, si!”
Domenico exclaimed after he peered at the photo of his son Tony. He pulled something gold out of his pocket, which at first I thought was a pocket-watch, because it was round and connected to a chain. But then he detached it carefully from the chain, and opened it, and handed it to Jeremy, who reached for it and held it out so I could see it, too. It was a locket with two photographs. One was a pale-skinned, dark-eyed woman with a cloud of soft black hair piled up on her head—his wife, Rose, no doubt.The other photo was of a boy about six years old, wearing a Yankees baseball shirt and cap, and a broad grin on his face.

“Tony,” Domenico said proudly. His eyes misted a little as he gazed at Jeremy’s picture of Tony as a grown man in bell-bottom jeans. “Tony was a good boy, a good boy,” Domenico muttered. He peered closer at the baby in the picture, then stared at Jeremy.

“Il bambino?”
he said inquiringly before the two of them handed each other their pictures back. Jeremy nodded vigorously, then looked directly at Domenico.

“Io sono il figlio di tuo figlio,”
Jeremy came out with unexpectedly. My jaw dropped. It was the way he said it, so firmly, as if he’d accepted it for the first time. I am the son of your son.

I held my breath. How was the old man going to take it? Was he going to suspect that a foreigner would have no reason to come all this way after all these years to claim kinship unless he wanted money or something? Was he going to tell Jeremy to go fly a kite, and give him a complex for the rest of his life?

Domenico leaned forward intently. Jeremy gulped and sat very still. Domenico looked at Jeremy and then reached out and patted his cheek affectionately.
“Si, si, è vero,”
he said. “Your mama says you are a good-a boy, too.”

Jeremy sat perfectly still, like a dog who can’t believe his good luck at being wanted, loved and petted after having been lost and miserable, and who doesn’t dare move a muscle for fear of dispelling the perfect moment. His eyes were huge, as if he were fighting back emotion.

Domenico saw this and chuckled, and then he took something else from his pocket. It was a knife, like a camper’s jackknife, only this was a more beautiful and a very serious one, with a gold and ivory handle. The old man reached out to the tree, which was heavy with ripe fruit, and which was attracting a few wasps that I had been keeping an eye on. He plucked a pear with total concentration, as if it were being served to him on a tray and he was selecting the best one.Then he took a lovely linen handkerchief that had been neatly folded in his breast pocket, and wiped the pear to clean it. Then he proceeded to peel the pear, letting the peelings collect in an empty ashtray on the wrought-iron table beside him.Then he expertly sliced a nice chunk of the pear, and, still holding the slice on the knife, extended it and offered Jeremy the first slice.

“Per il figlio di figlio mio,”
the old man said with a slight twinkle of amusement. I recognized the gesture because my father used to do these things for me when I was a little girl. He would cut slices of apples, pears or peaches and hand them to me, slice by slice. I knew the affection such a gesture carried, and, apparently, so did Jeremy, because his eyes were very bright as he accepted the slice and popped it into his mouth. The old man calmly cut another piece and offered it to me. But when he spoke, he addressed Jeremy.

“Per la donna di questo figlio-di-figlio-mio,”
the grandfather said, finding it a good joke to tease a younger man by referring to me as “the woman of this son-of-my-son.” Jeremy glanced at me to see if I got it, and I grinned. Domenico saw this and chuckled, and continued to carve that pear, giving a slice to Jeremy, then to me, then to himself, until it was finished. It was the softest, sweetest pear I’d ever tasted in my life.

Silence descended again, and Domenico still had that expectant gaze. Jeremy looked choked up, even though he’d chewed and swallowed his last slice of pear. So I, brightly and boldly, decided to revert to being the social director of this cruise. Haltingly but determinedly, I worked up enough schoolgirl vocabulary to string like beads into a sentence, in which I thought that I was asking “What was Tony really like?”

Only I must have put the words in the wrong order; I think it came out “What did Tony like?” instead, because after a slightly puzzled look, Domenico said,
“La musica.”

The little girl was coming toward us, carrying a silver tray with three china espresso cups and saucers on it, and a small bowl of tiny sugar cubes. Domenico spoke to her and she nodded, set the tray on the table, turned and ran back to the house. He reached for the bottle of brandy from Jeremy, opened it, and put a modest drop in his coffee, then held the bottle over our cups and glanced at us inquiringly to ask if we each wanted it.And none of us said no.We sipped our spiked coffee in a silence that had become natural and companionable.

Moments later the little girl came marching solemnly and importantly across the lawn, carrying something as if it were a baby. She handed it to the old man, and he, in turn, handed it to Jeremy. It was a mandolin.

“From your fadder,” the old man said distinctly. Jeremy looked startled as the mandolin was placed in his hands.The old man held up his palm and made a gentle pushing gesture, suggesting that Jeremy play it. Jeremy hesitated.

“Aw, g’wan,” I said.

Haltingly at first, and then with more confidence, Jeremy plinked out a little melody. The mandolin had a beautiful sweet tone, rather high, like a young boy in a choir. Halfway through I thought I recognized the tune, dimly, and then it came to me, and somehow I managed to smile and not giggle ferociously as I wanted to when I identified the dulcet melody of “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles.

“I
T WAS ALL I COULD THINK OF TO PLAY,” JEREMY TOLD ME LATER, when we were back in the car on the road. “I drew a complete blank at first.”

“Well, he loved it,” I said. The mandolin was sitting on the backseat. Domenico insisted we take it, because it belonged to Jeremy’s father. Jeremy had choked out a thank-you in Italian, and when we’d said good-bye and crossed the lawn, he turned back once more to look at the old man in the garden, who looked up and waved to him, raising his hand in that genuine benediction that Italians so naturally offer to travellers.

As we drove off, Jeremy blinked more than once and then glanced at me fearfully as if to see if I was watching him in this extremely emotional moment. I pretended to be rooting around in my purse for the highway map, and I didn’t dare look at him until he began talking normally again.

“Thanks for coming with me,” he said in a tone that indicated the impact of comprehending, finally, who his father was. He seemed truly calm for the first time in all these weeks of fury, uncertainty and tension.

“I liked him a lot,” I said.

“So did I,” he said. I fell silent.

“Mum’s gone back to London,” he said finally.“She said we could stay at the villa overnight. I think we should, because Harold wants us to come straight back to London, which means we should start out early tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling strangely compliant about everything.

When we returned to the villa the chef was still there, cooking busily, and a maid was laying the table for dinner for two, with candles and flowers in delicate cut-glass holders. She had flung open the doors, which led to a stone balcony. Everything seemed so ancient, eternal, as if it had been here forever.

And suddenly, as we stood there admiring the view, it hit me. Here I was, not just acting out, but living out, my favorite time-travel fantasy—the villa, the balcony, the cocktails, a nice fella to talk to, and I even had decent new clothes to wear for a change, though they were a bit crushed, having been stuffed in shopping bags in the trunk of Jeremy’s car all this time.

We gazed down at a beautiful, shimmering blue pool at the back of the house, which we’d been too nervous to notice when we first got here. It had a tiled floor, and a stone sculpture of a dolphin in the center, spurting water out of his mouth, as a fountain. I’d bought a bathing suit on my shopping spree, and Jeremy said he always traveled with one because he liked to swim in hotel pools to work out the kinks of traveling. So we decided to go for a swim. And, I’m happy to report, the hives from my wax job at the spa were all gone, and I was now as sleek as a professional swimmer all spruced to win a race. We hurried down and plunged right in, grateful for the shock of cool water after all the dust and heat of the afternoon.

I felt straight as an arrow as I sliced through the water. We swam side by side, back and forth, while the dappled sunlight leapt and flickered across the water. I watched our shadows crawling along at the bottom of the pool, keeping pace with us. We finally paused to rest, tilting our faces up to the fountain-spray of water coming from the dolphin sculpture in big benevolent arcs. Jeremy demanded to know why I, a mere slip of a girl, swam faster than he, a hulking male. It was the kind of demand he’d have made when we were kids.