The Villa (33 page)

Move, girl. She stepped forward. She should board an omnibus, ask someone the way – the money that she had would have to last her
at least until she found Peter, possibly even until she found work. But how could she speak to any of these strange people? So, this was London – and everyone was clearly in a terrible hurry. Even as she stood there, undecided, the mist seemed to thicken around her, dank, acrid and suffocating.

Flavia became flustered. No one was smiling. Most didn’t even glance her way. And who could blame them for looking unfriendly, when it was foggy and cold and wet underfoot – Flavia’s thin shoes were leaking terribly; when it was a struggle to even see a field’s length in front of you.

‘Get a black cab from the station,’ Signor Westerman had told her. ‘No messing about, my girl, d’you hear me?’

She had nodded.

‘Give them Beatrice’s address. And give Bea this letter.’ He had pressed a thick white envelope into her hand along with the poetry manuscript that she had promised to deliver to his sister. His sister’s address was written black and clear on both.

‘Sì,
I will,’ Flavia had promised. Thinking, I will do it my way. This was her adventure, after all.

But Signor Westerman had been right. London was too much for her – especially in the cold and the fog. And she was exhausted from the journey, her knuckles white and clenched, her eyes raw. Pretending a confidence she did not feel, she raised an arm to hail a black cab. Rather to her surprise, it stopped. Flavia showed the driver the address.

She hugged her bag close to her chest as she sat in the back of the cab and breathed out in relief. Her journey to England was over, although in a way her journey had also only just begun. She peered
out of the window. So many of the buildings were derelict or in ruins – following the bombings, she supposed. Elsewhere new buildings were being erected; she could see that the skyline was changing. London had suffered in the war, she knew. But the extent of the destruction shocked her.

She could make out brightly lit shops and cafes, hairdressing salons and huge cinemas. Gigantic advertising lights shone out of the gloom. She strained to read them; she must practise her English now
.
Jacob’s
cream crackers
,
Swallow
raincoats
,
Brylcreem
for your hair. Goodness. How strange it all was. She felt a streak of excitement run through her. This was liberation. This was another world.

Progress was slow. The roads were sardined with traffic – black cars and red buses, trolleybuses and horses and carts too, and the pavements thronged with people – men in belted raincoats and hats; smart looking women in woollen coats – their scarves an occasional splash of colour in the murk. A man in a helmet and white armband – a policeman, she realised – held up a hand to halt their passage, and at his signal, men and women strode across the road, clearly on some important mission. The city was a riot of activity. And yet its voice seemed muffled in the limp mist that surrounded everything. London. It was new and it scared her half to death. But Madonna save her, how she wanted it …

They drew up outside a grand, three-storeyed house in an elegant road of large brick houses with bay windows. This must be West Dulwich. Flavia looked up and along the road in wonderment. The fog seemed to be lifting and there were trees here, their leaves dripping rainwater into puddles on the pavement; it would
really be very smart, she thought, if the sun started shining.

‘C’mon then, Missy.’ The taxi driver seemed in a hurry to be gone. Why was everyone in a rush?

She fumbled in her purse for money. He had dumped her bag on the wet pavement. In Sicily, she thought, the driver would at least take your bag to the door. But you’re not in Sicily now, she chided herself. That was what she was escaping from. Remember? She thought with another spear of guilt of Mama and Papa. Would they be angry, upset? She had left a note of explanation, but it was brief, and she was relying on Signor Westerman to make it right with them, to make them see. Of course she would have told them if she could. But Papa would have stopped her from coming, she knew it.

She’d had no choice. And choice was something that she wanted and needed. It was, Signor Westerman had told her, her human right.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said clearly to the driver. ‘Good day to you.’

He stared at her. ‘Yer welcome,’ he laughed, shook his head and was off.

Flavia checked the number on the piece of paper and then up at the house. This was Thurlow Park Road, and this house was the one. She walked up the steps. But it seemed so grand. Supposing Signor Westerman had made a mistake? Supposing Beatrice Westerman didn’t live here or had gone away …?

Courage. She squared her shoulders and rang the bell.

In such a grand establishment, she was expecting a servant, but the woman who came to the door didn’t look like a servant. She was tall and thin and her fair hair was frizzy. She wore metal spectacles, looked quite a few years older than Signor Westerman and seemed
much taken aback when she saw Flavia standing there with her suitcase.

‘Hello,’ she said politely. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Miss Beatrice Westerman?’ Flavia asked in her best accent. For there was a definite resemblance to Signor Westerman in the shape of the woman’s nose and chin.

The woman nodded. ‘I am she.’

‘I have a letter from your brother Edward.’ Flavia dug the thick envelope out of the outside pocket of her bag. It was a little crumpled and damp from the journey, but otherwise intact. ‘And I have package in my suitcase,’ she added for good measure. ‘Of his poetry.’

‘From Edward?’ Beatrice’s eyes lit up. She took the envelope and turned it around in her hands. ‘You’ve come all the way from Sicily?’ she asked Flavia.

‘Yes. On a train,’ Flavia confirmed.

Beatrice Westerman put her head to one side like a bird. ‘Indeed? And you can understand what I say to you?’

‘Yes.’ Flavia nodded. ‘I speak English a little. Your brother … ’ She hesitated, ‘and others, they teach me.’

Beatrice smiled. ‘I see.’ Though she still looked confused. Flavia supposed it wasn’t every day that some strange, foreign girl appeared on your doorstep with a message from the brother you hadn’t seen for years.

Flavia wanted to tell her to read the letter, and she wanted very much to go inside the house, where it might be warm and hopefully comforting, but it would be impolite to say any of these things, so she hovered on the doorstep while Beatrice stared at her and turned the letter over and around in her hands.

‘My family – they work for your brother,’ she explained. ‘In Cetaria.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Beatrice seemed to recover herself. ‘Do come in. I am so sorry. Come inside and we shall have some tea.’ She beckoned Flavia through the door. ‘Or coffee,’ she amended. ‘Though I only have instant, I’m afraid.’

Flavia had no idea what instant might be, but it didn’t matter. She was in the warm.

Bea Westerman made tea and produced dainty cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, limp lettuce hearts and washed out tomatoes. She extracted a cube of pink fleshy ham in jelly from a tin with a wind up key which she proceeded to slice thinly with a sharp knife. A tin of red salmon. Red salmon …? And synthetic-looking cakes with a stiff cream which she laid out on a lace tablecloth on a small side table.

‘It isn’t much,’ Bea Westerman said apologetically. ‘We have more tinned food now, of course, but not as much tea or ham as I would like.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Rationing, you know.’

Flavia was surprised. She knew about rationing, of course. She knew about having no food, about having to scrimp and forage. But she had thought that would all be over by now in England …

They sat in upholstered chairs in a room that was painted pale blue with a cream ceiling. Apart from the chairs and the table, there was a bookcase, which reminded Flavia of Signor Westerman, a glass fronted cabinet full of china, a rather grand marble fireplace and paintings on the walls of, Flavia supposed, the English countryside. It looked very green and watery, and as Peter had said, there were fields and trees and hedgerows.

She watched Signor Westerman’s sister read the letter through twice. When they had finished eating, she settled herself with her hands on her lap and regarded Flavia solemnly.

‘You will stay here tonight, my dear,’ she said. It didn’t sound like a question.

‘Thank you,’ said Flavia. She wasn’t sure she would have been up to searching for alternative accommodation in London on this wet November afternoon.

‘And for as long as you wish,’ Bea added. ‘Your family in Sicily have been good to Edward. It is now the turn of those of us here in England, to help you.’

Flavia felt a tear come to her eye at this kindness and she quashed it with some resolution. It was ridiculous – this was not the time for weakness. She would need all her strength to settle into this alien place, all her strength for what was to come.

‘My brother tells me that you will be looking for a job. And he informs me that you are a wonderful cook.’

Flavia tried to look modest, but she knew a wide smile had spread across her face.

‘So I suggest that until you find alternative employment, you work for me,’ Bea said briskly. ‘You can do the cooking, and occasionally help Mrs Saunders with some of her cleaning duties – she’s getting rather old and can’t bend like she used to – and I shall ask you to do a few small errands for me. In return, you will have your keep.’

Flavia tried to follow her meaning, tried not to look blank.

‘Your food and your bed,’ Bea explained. ‘And a little pocket money.’ She paused. ‘What do you think?’

Flavia thought she understood what was being offered. ‘Yes,’ she
said. ‘Thank you. But … ’ But there was something much more important she had to do first.

‘Ah yes, your mission.’ Bea nodded. ‘Edward mentions this in his letter. But he doesn’t offer too many details.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘Do tell me all about it, my dear.’

So Flavia, who had kept Peter a secret for so long from so many, told her the whole story. About how she had first found him with the wreckage of his glider. (And this time she was surprised to see Bea Westerman’s eyes fill with tears). About how she had nursed him and how he had almost died. How they had fallen in love and how she had written to him. So many letters … So much love.

‘So I must find him,’ she said in conclusion. ‘I must find him and discover what has happened to him.’

Bea nodded gravely. She seemed to be considering her words carefully. ‘It has been an awfully long time,’ she said at last. ‘In six years… ’

‘I know.’ Flavia didn’t have the words to explain. Yes, in six years Peter could have died – he might never have made it back to England. But she felt in her heart that he was alive. There was a light in her heart, and she knew that when he died, it would be extinguished.

‘His situation,’ Bea said, ‘might have changed.’

‘Perhaps.’ Flavia knew this too. ‘But we made a vow. A promise. I do not think he would break it.’

‘Maybe not,’ Bea said. ‘But wartime … ’ She sighed and then rose to her feet. ‘It changes us all.’

Flavia wondered how Bea had been changed by wartime. Had she
perhaps had a sweetheart who had gone to war? She wasn’t too old, was she, though she was older than Edward, and somewhat more serious.

‘I will assist you in your quest,’ said Bea. ‘We will talk again tomorrow. But in the meantime Mrs Saunders will be here in a jiffy and she’ll show you your room and where you can have a wash. You will want to rest. You can start work tomorrow. What do you think, my dear?’

Flavia nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She must unpack the manuscript which she had laid at the bottom of her suitcase and give Bea Westerman her brother’s poems. It had gone very well, she felt. Bea was friendly and Flavia was more than happy to work for her for a while. Better than that, she had promised to help her find Peter. Peter… She suddenly felt overcome by exhaustion. She was in England, and already a step closer to the man she loved. Now her journey had really begun.

Biancolilla … Cerasuola … Nocellara del Belice …
The versatile Sicilian olive: wise, ancient, beautiful, bitter … Used for medicine, soap, cooking, lighting, eating … Its wood the most fragrant, its oil steeped in tradition and ritual. The tree provides shade from the hot summer sun, wood for warm winter fires. An essential of life
.

Flavia remembered Papa and the other men taking the brown sacks full of olives down to the press in the village square. Checking the weights on the scales, following their progress round the big barn as they travelled from machine to machine until the cloudy green oil was poured into jugs
ready for sealing. Then back at the house eating Mama’s freshly baked bread with the new oil.

Roast peppers
, she decided,
with rice, pine nuts, lemon juice and chopped green olives. Served with a fresh young salad, the leaves to be found by the roadside or in the fields
.

Tess was lingering in the shower, trying to regain the sense of euphoria she’d felt on the beach with Tonino. Once she emerged, reality would intrude, she knew it.

The bathroom was one part of the villa that left nothing to be desired. The tiles were blue and white, the washbasin and bidet were wide and solid, the power shower did what it said on the tin. The claw-toothed tub in one corner and the decorative mirror above the washbasin – which looked distinctly Venetian to Tess’s uneducated eye – not only added a touch of decadence but also reminded her where she was – in her beautiful 1930s villa in Sicily. She’d remember that when she did the place up, she told herself, reluctantly switching off the jet of hot water. A place like this needed touches of class; it was born to be glamorous.

She wrapped herself in one of the giant black towels she’d found in Edward Westerman’s airing cupboard when she first arrived and regarded her steamy reflection in the mirror. She wiped the glass. She was flushed – and not just with the heat of the shower. She looked like a woman who wanted to be made love to, for God’s sake. She’d better wake up and quick. This was Sicily. She was English (more or less). The last thing
she needed was a fling with a Sicilian man who had Family History and was Bad News. So don’t get carried away, she told herself firmly.