Flirting with Italian

ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS

This weekend, dear readers, I abandoned culture, history, the familiarity of the city and took a train ride out into the Italian countryside.

It’s a bit unnerving, buying a ticket in a foreign language. I’m working on my Italian and I can ask the right questions. ‘Un’andata e ritorno, per favore …’

Unfortunately, I don’t understand the answers. It’s like listening to a radio that’s slipped off the station. My ear isn’t tuned in to the sounds, the inflections of the language. I have to listen ten times as hard and even then I’m only catching one word in five.

Somehow, though, I caught the right train and made it safely to my destination.

MATTEO DI SERRONE was furious. Isabella di Serrrone might be the darling of the Italian cinema, but right at that moment she was no favourite of his.

He’d planned an early escape from Rome, but had instead become embroiled in his cousin’s latest indiscretions when she’d arrived on his doorstep with an army of paparazzi in her wake.

She knew how he loathed the media. They’d all but destroyed his mother and they would do the same to her if she gave them half a chance.

Now, instead of a quiet early morning drive to Isola del Serrone, a day in the vineyards checking that everything was ready for the harvest, he was in her limousine, playing Pied Piper to her escort, with his sulky teenage brother for company.

‘Cheer up, Stephano. You, at least, are getting something out of this,’ Matteo said.

‘Stop acting the hard man. You know you’d do anything for Bella,’ came the swift reply.

He glanced at the boy. Made-up, in wig and dark glasses, with his cousin’s coat thrown around his shoulders, he was pretty enough to be mistaken for her. Pretty enough to have fooled the following pack of photographers.

‘Not quite anything,’ Matteo said and, as he grinned, the tension leached out of him. ‘I promise you that, not even for Bella, would I be prepared to wear lipstick.’

The mountains towered, clear and sharp, rising dramatically from the valley floor. Sarah looked up at them, peaceful, unthreatening in the sunlight, and tried to imagine them in the middle of winter. Covered in snow. The haunt of wolves and bears.

Unless, of course, Lex had made it up about the wolves and bears. Which was entirely possible.

Early in October, the sun was still strong enough for her to be glad of the straw hat she wore to keep it off her face. She paused by the bridge to look down at the river, trickling over stones, very low after the long hot summer. Took her time as she walked up the hill towards the village, looking around her for a glimpse of a familiar wall. The ruins of a once grand house.

Steps led up to a piazza, golden in the sunlight, shaded with trees. There were small shops, a café where the aproned proprietor was setting out tables and a church that seemed far too large for such a small place.

It was pretty enough to be a film set and she stood in the centre of the square, turning in a slow circle, taking photographs with her phone, making sure that she missed nothing.

As she came to a standstill she realised that she was being stared at by the man wearing the apron.

‘Buon giorno,’ she called.

He stared at her for a moment, then nodded briefly before retreating inside.

She shrugged. Not exactly an arms-wide welcome and, instead of crossing the square to have a coffee, ask him about the village, she walked towards the church. It was possible that the priest would be her best bet. She’d scanned a copy of Lucia’s photograph onto her netbook before framing one for Lex, but she didn’t have it with her. She wasn’t planning on flashing it around. But she could at least describe the house.

It was dark inside after the glare of the sun, but she could see that several people were waiting in the pews by the confessional boxes. Clearly the priest was going to be busy for a while.

It was a pretty church, beautifully painted, with a number of memorial plaques on the walls. Maybe one of them would bear the name Lucia? It would be a starting place.

As she looked around, a woman arranging flowers in a niche by a statue of the Madonna stared at her over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. Clearly the village wasn’t used to strangers and, feeling like an intruder, she decided to come back later when the church was quiet. Once outside, she followed a path that continued up the hill.

High ground.

That was what she needed. Somewhere she could look down on the village, see everything.

She continued upwards, passed houses tucked away behind high walls that offered only the occasional glimpse of a tiny courtyard, a pot of bright flowers, through wrought-iron gates. Above her there were trees, the promise of open vistas and she pressed on until she found the way unexpectedly blocked by a wall that looked a lot newer than the path.

There was a gate set into it but, as she reached for the handle, assuming that it was to keep goats from wandering into the village, it was flung open by a young man with a coat bundled under his arm.

It was hard to say which of them was most startled but he recovered first and, with a slightly theatrical bow, said, ‘Il mio piacese, signora!’

‘No problem …’ Then, as he held the gate wide for her. ‘Thank you.’ No … ‘Grazie.’

‘My pleasure, signora Inglese. Have a good day,’ he said, grinning broadly, clearly delighted with life.

She watched him bound down the steps. By the time he’d reached the square he was talking twenty to the dozen into his phone.

Smiling at such youthful energy, she looked around her. There was nothing beyond the wall except a rough path which led upwards through thick, scrubby woods to the top of the hill. With luck, there would be a clearing at the top, a viewpoint from which she could survey the surrounding countryside.

She closed the gate and carried on, catching the occasional glimpse of a vast vineyard sloping away into the distance on her right. Then, as she neared the top of the hill, the thicket thinned out and her heart stopped.

Ahead of her, the path edged towards a tumbledown stretch of wall. Part of it had fallen away so long ago that weeds had colonised it, growing out of cracks in the stone.

Patches of dry yellow lichens spread themselves out in the sun where Lucia had sat, smiling one last time for a man who was going away. Who she must have known she’d never see again.

Only a dusty footprint suggested that anyone had been this way since.

She took a step nearer. Reached out to lay her hand on the warm stone.

Here. Lucia had sat here. And as she looked up she saw a house. The house. No longer a grey, blurry ruin in an old photograph, but restored and far larger, grander than she’d realised.

It wasn’t the front, but the side view of the house and what had been rubble in her picture was now a square tower, the stucco a soft, faded umber in the strong sunlight.

There were vines, heavy with fruit, trailing over a large pergola at the rear. A rustic table set beneath it where generations of a family could eat beneath its shade.

The garden was full of colour. And above the distant sound of a tractor, the humming of insects in the midday heat, she could hear water running.

The spring that had been their only water supply all through that harsh winter.

Her hands were shaking as she used her phone to take a photograph of the restored scene. Only the wall—Lucia’s wall—had not been rebuilt. But why would it be? There was no one up here to keep out. On the contrary, it appeared to be a shortcut into the village and she glanced back down the path, wondering who the rather beautiful young man could have been. Family? A friend. Or an illicit lover, maybe, from the smear of lipstick on his lower lip, making his escape via the back way.

She took off her hat, fanned herself with it, turned again to look at the house. Wondering who lived there. Could it be the same family who’d owned the house when it had sheltered Lex?

Unlikely.

According to the website she’d found, the Isola del Serrone vineyard had long ago become a co-operative run by the villagers.

And the glimpse of a swimming pool suggested that the house had been bought by some wealthy businessman who used it as a weekend retreat from Rome.

Whatever, there were no answers here. Only the wall was as it had been and on a sudden whim she turned, put her hat down and hitched herself up, spreading her arms wide to support herself as Lucia had done. Closing her eyes, imagining how she’d felt, the sun warm on her face, danger passed. A last moment of happiness before Lex was repatriated, sent back to his rejoicing family, and she was left alone.