Late Season Read online

  ‘Well, it’s not quite that easy,’ Tom said, amiably. ‘But I’d be happy to treat you. There’s a little trattoria in Florence I want to have a look at. There are some pretty good places in Siena, and I think Grosseto has one or two, as well. That might be an idea, it’s a bit more unusual, Grosseto, off the tourist trail. Unspoilt, so I hear.’ He pondered. ‘That might make a nice trip. It’s by the sea, too, so we could take the boys for a swim.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ said Lucien, and Justine thought she saw Tom look at him sharply. After all, Lucien was not on safe ground in that particular argument; she had no idea what he managed to do with himself all day, she realized, nice enough work, too. She wondered what was the matter with him, needling Tom like that. She said nothing.

  Tom rested his head back on the wood and looked up at the stars. ‘Someone’s got to do it,’ he said mildly. ‘You’d be surprised how little fun it can be, sometimes.’ Turning, he raised his glass to his lips.

  ‘Do you think Dido’s really all right?’ said Louisa, out of the silence that followed.

  ‘She did look awful, didn’t she?’ Justine said. I don’t know anything about migraines.’

  ‘My mother gets them,’ Louisa said, shortly. ‘Psychosomatic, if you ask me, in her case anyway. Certainly Mama’s seem to occur at awfully convenient moments.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucien, thoughtfully. ‘They can be a sign of underlying problems. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere. Allergies, trauma, abuse. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Abuse?’ said Louisa.

  Justine looked at Lucien disbelievingly. ‘Lucien,’ she said, a warning note in her voice.

  ‘I didn’t mean –’ Lucien looked around, avoiding Justine’s eye. ‘But you have to say, she’s not in an ideal situation. Their relationship is – well, intense, to say the least. And let’s face it, if it had been the perfect family Evie would still be here, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Lucien,’ said Justine. ‘Shut up. Dido’s lost her mother. Martin – can you imagine what that feels like? Migraines would be the least of it. The way Evie died too. Dido must feel absolutely abandoned. What’s Martin supposed to do, send her to boarding school?’

  She could have gone on, but saw them all looking at her, and closed her mouth with a snap. Feeling a stinging behind her eyes, Justine lay back down and stared up through the trees.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Tom, after a moment. ‘Let’s give them a break, shall we?’ And Justine heard something in his voice, something more than friendly counsel.

  OK, OK,’ said Lucien. He didn’t sound repentant, just placatory. ‘Sure. Maybe he’ll warm up a bit, give us a chance to help.’

  For a long moment or two they all fell silent, the only sounds the hiss of the fire, not much more than embers now, and the singing of the insects over their heads. Justine swung her legs down and got to her feet.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. Lucien nodded with a half-smile but he didn’t follow her.

  And as Justine walked past the silent house she looked up and saw that the window of the room where Martin and Dido slept stood open. Inside all was dark.

  8

  ‘I’m going into town, caro,’ Anna called up the stairs in the bright morning light. ‘Just to catch the market. Anything you want?’

  ‘No thanks, Mamma.’ He sounded awake, but tired.

  ‘Go back to sleep, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve filled the coffee pot, you just turn it on.’ And she closed the door softly behind her as she left the house.

  Anna Viola had postponed learning to drive, like a few of life’s other milestones, until it was almost too late. When her mother had died, eighteen years after her grandmother, Anna had been sixty-two, and she had known that either she would have to sell the house in the country or move back there, and if she moved back, she would have to learn to drive. It didn’t occur to her that anyone would think that her age would disqualify her for the task and if it had, it would not have bothered her. As it turned out Anna had got her patente without fuss, and bought herself a tiny car, a red Fiat 500 that still served her very well for trips to the market or the shops once or twice a week and the occasional long haul back to Rome, although she had not done that for a while. This morning the car had warmed up nicely in the sun and started first time, and Anna bounced and jolted down the lane towards the main road and Montequercio.

  Having passed her test, all that time ago, Anna had told Paolo that she was going to leave Rome. He was still at home, anyway, sleeping on the same hard single bed in the little bedroom under the eaves where he’d slept since he was six months old and Anna had reluctantly moved him from her side. Anna had the impression, although he’d said nothing to her for fear of hurting her feelings, that Paolo had been thinking about looking for a place of his own for a little while – since girls had entered the equation, in fact. He had just got his first job as a junior casualty doctor in a city hospital, and almost straight away he’d begun to go out with Olivia, who worked as a technician in the pathology labs in the hospital. He’d met her in the hospital bar, where she’d asked him to light her cigarette; it had been obvious even to Anna that she’d picked him up, though Paolo didn’t seem aware of it at the time.

  All the same, Anna had been gratified to see Paolo look a little lost when she announced her decision and the realization that he was on his own at last began to dawn. She was pleasantly surprised, naturally, that his first thought had not been of the freedom her decision would afford him. But he had got used to the idea of his mother’s departure quickly enough, and when the time came he had helped her to load the few possessions she wanted to take – not much really, to show for all those years of work; her clothes, of course, all handmade, a few rugs, a lamp or two into – the little red car. And Anna had come back home at last, to the empty house on the edge of the forest, after forty-five years away.

  It was odd, really, that it still felt like home, Anna thought now as she drove through the trees towards the main road. The golden light slanted down on to the road ahead of her, shifting like water as the leaves moved in the breeze. But then sometimes Anna still felt like a sixteen year old herself, as though the years between had left no trace, except Paolo. She had spent almost twice as long in the city but its comfort and its charm had slid off her like water. All she had ever wanted was to be back here.

  Set on a rounded hill top on the edge of the densely wooded region of Tuscany south of Siena known as the Alta Maremma, Montequercio was ten minutes from Anna Viola’s house by the fast main road, but closer to twenty-five from Il Vignacce. More like a large village than a town, the population of Montequercio was a mere fifteen hundred souls, which was not much more than it had been when Anna had been a child. The village was picturesque enough, but too remote, down poorly maintained country roads that wound in and out of valleys and spurs, to have ever found an established place on the tourist map.

  The Maremma, a place of marshland criss-crossed by Roman drainage channels, wild dark valleys and inaccessible charms, did not figure large on the tourist map. It could not compete with the smooth chalk-grey hills of the Val d’Orcia, each one, it seemed, topped picturesquely by a country chapel and a couple of cypresses, with the pretty villages tumbling down the hills around the Val di Chiana nor with the vineyards and castles of Chianti, but it did have its own select band of admirers. In recent years the inhabitants of Montequercio had been taken by surprise by a small but regular and increasing number of visitors, perhaps because unadulterated nature was gaining in popularity, or because they were simply running out of room elsewhere. Local opinion was ambivalent as to the usefulness of tourism to the region, their quiet, secluded, pristine forest. Some were genuinely hospitable, others supposed it was as good a way as any to make money, but there were those, too, used to the peaceful monotony of country life, who found the incomers arrogant, inconsiderate and intrusive.

  At any rate, Montequercio presented an unusual aspect to visitors; the ta
ll brick houses that ringed the hill’s summit formed an unbroken wall and they all faced inwards, presenting only their blank rear walls to the outside world, so that the village seemed to turn its back on strangers. From the road that passed beneath them the faded red walls, marked only here and there by a shuttered window to show that they were not ramparts but houses, looked distinctly unfriendly. On closer inspection, however, the fortifications could be entered easily enough through one of three gates, and once inside the village revealed itself. Anna indicated to turn inside.

  Just within the walls there was a large, oval piazza containing a monument to the fallen dead of two world wars and another, stuck with faded portraits, to the partisans, some car parking spaces and two bars, facing each other on opposite sides of the market place. The old red brick houses that ringed the piazza were in varying states of disrepair; some had the remains of painted render crumbling away from their façades while others had none left at all and only a few had been the subject of any restoration. Here and there a house had been done up with new green metal shutters and window boxes bright with geraniums, but mostly they were warped and faded wooden ones, and the overall impression was of a sleepy town, unused to offering itself up for inspection.

  After a leisurely drink and a wander around the piazza the small number of visitors to Montequercio, which did not figure in many guidebooks, would walk on in search of what else the village might have to offer, but they found only quiet, shuttered alleys, and few signs of life. There were a couple of cantinas offering cases of wine, Chianti Classico or Brunello di Montalcino in wooden display boxes, a little pyramid of miniature salami made from wild boar, some cheeses, but they kept erratic hours, the supply of customers being irregular at best.

  A narrow brick path, tucked down a side alley and easily missed altogether, did lead steeply uphill to another, smaller piazza, in its centre a stooping elderly holm oak that was the last representative of the trees for which the village was named. This tiny piazza sat on the top of the village and above most of the houses, and on one side, facing east, offered a near-panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. On a clear day in spring an undulating patchwork of fields, grey just tinged with new green, could be seen stretching in one direction, up towards Siena; just now, at the end of summer, some were golden with stubble and others had already been ploughed. The other way lay the forest, silver in the morning but black at dusk, like a great soft dark eiderdown draped over the hills.

  Often in the summer a couple of minivans would turn up in the piazza and one or other of the scout troops of the region, overgrown children in shorts and neckerchiefs, would be disgorged with their bedding rolls and rucksacks, ready for a week’s camping in the woods. It was a popular destination among scout leaders, offering a taste of the wilderness, rocks and rivers and well-trodden paths, some interesting flora, fauna and geology all in one package. These days there were rumours about the Albanesi living rough in the woods and there were some dissenting voices among the parents, but these simply kept their children at home. After all, before the Albanesi there had been other, different rumours, about deserters lost since the war, wild men, predators of one kind or another for whom the empty hills were useful cover.

  Anna parked her car just inside the village walls, where the car park was busy with traffic to and from the market inside. She felt the need of a nice cappuccino on a bright morning like this, and once inside the gates she walked across the piazza towards Il Cinghiale. There was not exactly rivalry between the two bars in the village, as they attracted quite distinct groups and were not therefore in competition, but neither was there any love lost between their proprietors. Il Cinghiale was the smaller bar; run by Piero Montale’s cousin Giovannino, it sat at the top of the sloping piazza. It had a clientele composed almost entirely of local people; visitors seemed to realize this very soon after their arrival in the village because, despite its pretty appearance, they did not gravitate towards it.

  Il Cinghiale was situated on the ground floor of a small, red-fronted building beside the post office; only two storeys high, it had a little ornate iron balcony on the first floor, and a wisteria wound up the front, golden-leaved in summer and adding to a very charming impression. There were a few tables outside, for the warmer months, but it was very difficult to find a seat there as an outsider, as each of the bar’s regulars had his or her favoured position for a certain part of the day and was reluctant to budge once settled in. Inside there was always a whole porchella, or roast suckling pig, to be found lying in splendour on the wooden slab above Giovannino’s glass-fronted cool. cabinet, golden and fragrant, its tender meat studded with garlic and stuffed with fennel. In the cabinet below were black-skinned pecorino cheeses and a few other, less significant meats; sausage, the salted, air-cured Tuscan hams and sbricciolona, a huge pink salame spiked with fennel seed, but the porchetta was the main attraction.

  Today three local men, drinking small glasses of some dark, viscous aperitivo and dressed for winter in padded jackets despite the sun outside, stood elbow to elbow at the counter and watched as Anna crossed the piazza towards them. Beside them the beer delivery man, whose truck was blocking off three parking spaces outside, was talking to Giovannino, but even he turned to see what the others were looking at.

  Anna did not look like the average countrywoman; even now, at seventy-five or so, she stood out among them. She was still handsome, Giovannino acknowledged to himself, watching her approach as he polished a glass, but it was more than that. She stood upright, her hair was still dark, and she always pinned it up neatly, revealing a firm jaw and a full mouth. She wore her old clothes well, handmade stuff she had brought back with her from Rome all those years ago, and she had the walk of a much younger woman, quick and careful as she crossed the cobblestones of the piazza.

  Giovannino still remembered her arrival back in Montequercio; to him, of course, just a boy, she had been a stranger, although his parents had known who she was. They had grumbled over her city clothes and the unfriendly way she had with her, no doubt also acquired in Rome; by this, he knew even then, they meant that they would have liked her to come over and inform them of every detail of her life since she had left the village, down to her employer’s maiden name. When she did not oblige they called her changed, corrupted, untrustworthy. To Giovannino as a boy she had seemed mysterious and – although he would not have admitted it, then or now – beautiful, soft and sweet-smelling, with a small waist and a rounded bosom. Quite unlike the mothers of his other friends. And the fact that she had a past had been a part of the attraction. Anna, framed by the glass door now, pushed it inwards, and the little bell rang. The three men at the counter turned back to their wine.

  Anna smiled a crooked smile at the men’s hastily turned backs and took a sugar-dusted pastry from the cabinet and the cappuccino Giovannino pushed over to her. He nodded to Anna with the ghost of a smile, which she returned. Sometimes Anna felt like laughing out loud at the faint look of suspicion Giovannino was never able entirely to disguise when he served her; instead she took a little bite from her cake, and the icing sugar dusted her lip. She turned to look out through the doors into the sun, and wondered whether the English from Il Vignacce would be up here today, buying provisions.

  The first place to look for the foreign visitors to the village, who were still enough of a novelty for the Montequerciani to be curious about them, would be in the second of its bars, the Bellavista. It had never been the locals’ favourite, perhaps because its owner, Carlo, was a northerner by birth and had only married into the village. Set in one of the tall houses that formed the wall that ringed the village, the Bellavista had been expanded some twenty years earlier to accommodate a large, gloomy pool hall with a juke box and slot machines.

  Carlo did make money in the summer; his big front terrace, despite having a less favourable aspect than that of Il Cinghiale, was packed with French and German tourists from April until October, paying top prices for weak caffe latte and Carlo’s v
ery inferior mass-produced ice cream. There were plenty of Germans: tall, friendly, brown-skinned people with stubble-headed children whom Anna found very difficult to connect with the grimy, hard-faced invaders of her childhood. There were not so many English visitors; perhaps they were less adventurous, less interested in the countryside, speculated the locals, or maybe they just had different guide books.

  Perhaps because it had been expanded, the interior of the Bellavista always seemed empty, summer and winter. A few bored children sent in by their parents might be found wandering desultorily through the dim, cavernous interior in search of modern attractions, prodding the buttons on the jukebox or smearing the sweet cabinet with their sticky fingers while Carlo restrained himself from rapping their knuckles. And despite its name and its position in the city walls, the bar didn’t have much of a view. In recent years great trees had sprung up on the steep slope around the village like weeds in the void, blocking out the sun and replacing it with a dim greenish undersea light. Standing at the back of the pool hall beside the picture windows was like being in the jungle, looking out from a tree house suspended over a ravine.

  Apart from the two bars, set a little way back and up some broad stone steps the piazza contained a squat marble church undistinguished by architectural ornament except one stained-glass rose window looking on to the square. Visitors, having drunk their caffe latte at the Bellavista and for want of anything else to do, would regularly wander inside when they found it open, but they generally emerged looking bemused and a little disappointed; it contained one or two undistinguished eighteenth-century oils and a plaster madonna but no frescoes, by Piero della Francesco or anyone else.

  Anna did not go to church; chief among the advantages of having left the small community for so long, she found, was the opportunity to discard certain kinds of conventional behaviour, such as churchgoing, without attracting too much in the way of hostility. After forty years in Rome Anna felt she had gained the dubious status almost of a stranger in the village; she thought they had washed their hands of her. In practice this meant that, although she was from time to time issued with dire warnings about the dangers of the Albanesi at large in the forest, she could live there alone without interference, she could dress as she pleased, and, most importantly, she had been able to return to her village with a grown son and without a husband, and no one could say a thing, at least not to her face.