The Fires of Torretta Page 11

  “No, of course not! Get along with you! You’d better take your pleasures while you have the chance, for soon we shall all be traipsing up and down the island searching for whatever evidence we can find.”

  Brent was waiting in his car and when she joined him, he heaved a great mocking sigh.

  “The time some girls take to wash their faces and change a dress!”

  She glanced at her watch. “Twenty-five minutes, including telling Stephen where I was going.”

  “A wise precaution! But he has his beautiful daughter to keep him company.”

  Rosamund laughed. “I think not. She went out ages ago with Niccolo.”

  “I hope she’s not taking his Italian gallantry too seriously.”

  “I’ll tell her that you’re most concerned about her.”

  “Oh, don’t do that!” he said hastily.

  She remained silent, for he was negotiating the bends in the road in the face of a stream of blazing headlights travelling the opposite way.

  In Taormina he drove up a road at the back of the town and stopped at a hotel that soared almost straight up against the mountainside.

  The restaurant was nearly full, but Brent must have reserved in advance, for they were shown to a table by the window overlooking the glittering panorama of the town below.

  Here again Brent was greeted enthusiastically by the head waiter, who apparently knew of Brent’s activities on the volcano.

  Although the two men spoke in Italian Rosamund gathered the gist of the conversation, especially when the waiter remarked that obviously Brent had not yet gone to Stromboli.

  “Not yet,” Brent replied, adding another phrase or two, then, “When I can tear myself away,” in English for Rosamund’s benefit. The flickering glance that accompanied those last words was one that momentarily surprised her, but she was not deceived. This was all part of the by-play that no doubt he practised every time he came to this or other hotels with the companion of the moment. But her mind toyed with the idea that he had really meant what he said.

  For once Brent allowed her to choose her own dishes from the menu.

  “So you do believe now that I might know what I’m eating?” she queried.

  For answer he spoke in such rapid Italian that she failed to comprehend.

  “There you are, you see!” he said smugly in English. “Your little Italian learning is a dangerous thing. In some back street cafe, you’d be eating all kinds of oddities.”

  “In some back street cafe a kindly waiter would instruct me about the odd ingredients. He wouldn’t jeer at me for not knowing.”

  Brent stared at her with a mixture of sardonic amusement and what might have been a suspicion of admiration. “I’ve never known a girl who had quite such a rasping tongue—and used it on me.”

  “A new experience for you, then,” she said complacently as she began on the fish soup she had chosen.

  For some reason she felt elated tonight and equal to any amount of Brent’s bantering comments. Yet she knew that caution was required if she were not to give him a totally false impression that she was ready to respond too easily to his present sociability.

  After dinner he suggested that they might sit for a while on the wide terrace that opened out from the hotel lounge.

  “Would you be too cold?” he inquired.

  “No, I don’t think so.” She repressed with an inward giggle that he might not be so concerned for her physical warmth as perhaps an emotional one. She blamed that notion on the wine.

  Out here the panorama was superb. Away to the left the dark hills were spangled with lights; below, the blaze and glitter of Taormina’s streets and curving away to the right the long line of shore like a jewelled hem to the sparkling mass of Giardini.

  When she glanced away from the brilliantly lighted areas she could distinguish the outline of Mount Etna with its ghostly headdress of snow.

  “I thought that at night Etna would glow with fire near the top,” she said.

  “It does occasionally, apart from full-scale eruptions,” he returned, “but usually it’s content to send up its plume of smoke.”

  “And keep its fires hidden until it chooses to blow its top.”

  “We’re not yet certain whether any volcano chooses its eruption. That’s what we’re trying to discover—whether the general movement under the earth’s crust builds up in different places, but can only find exits through volcanoes or earthquakes.”

  “And are you going to Stromboli for more research?” she asked.

  “I’ve been there a couple of times for short visits. Next time I hope to stay longer.”

  She smiled and remembered that half-sentence—“when I can tear myself away.”

  “Stromboli is always in a state of eruption,” he continued. “Mild explosions go on all the time, sometimes one in an hour, sometimes can be almost every two minutes.”

  “And the people who live there? Aren’t they in danger?”

  She heard his voice quieten. “At one time there were a couple of quite thriving parishes with nice little houses, fishing boats going out every night. But not now. Most of the houses are abandoned and have become ruins, the olive yards up the mountain slopes survive and bear fruit, but there’s no one to gather it. Stromboli is a strange and beautiful but melancholy place.”

  “Where have they gone? The inhabitants.”

  “Scattered everywhere. Some in Sicily, some on the mainland. Those who could save enough money for the fare have gone to America.”

  For the first time Rosamund realised how sincere was Brent’s concern for people who at one time or another were victims of the erratic actions of earth and fire.

  He lapsed into silence and she did not disturb his thoughts with facetious remarks.

  After a while when they had finished their coffee and liqueurs, he suggested they might go to the cafe to which he had promised to take her for the Sicilian music.

  He did not take the car, but left it under the vine-and-creeper-covered parking place outside the hotel, a small level stretch at the top of a steep, winding path edged with flowering shrubs.

  He guided her down flights of narrow steps leading from one street level to a lower one. Once she nearly disturbed a ginger cat busily eating its supper out of a piece of paper. Then Brent took her hand to help her down those last few steps where they narrowed so much that only one person at a time could squeeze through to emerge on the Corso Umberto.

  “It wouldn’t do to become too fat for that flight, would it?” she commented. “One would get stuck between the walls.”

  “In that case you have to waddle down or puff your way up a wider street.”

  She made a mental note of the exact place where it was situated on the Corso, for it was new to her and she wanted to explore it in daylight.

  Brent became separated from her once or twice by the Saturday night crowds. Then he linked her arm in his until they came to an antique shop set back in a small space and not flush with the street. This space was crammed with ironware, pottery, pictures, furniture and every kind of bric-a-brac. Brent spoke to a middle-aged man just inside the door, then escorted Rosamund up a flight of thickly carpeted stairs and into a room where the walls were covered with paintings.

  The middle of the room was furnished with small dark wood tables and chairs or benches and at one end on a dais, three musicians chatted together.

  Two young men, dark and Sicilian-looking, moved up on a bench to make space for Rosamund and Brent.

  A haze of tobacco smoke hung about the room and excited chatter rose and fell in waves of clamorous sound.

  A carafe of red wine was placed in front of Brent by a young white-jacketed man who gave Rosamund a penetrating glance that caused her to look away and lean slightly nearer to Brent.

  “When is it possible to look at the paintings on the walls?” she whispered.

  “Best seen in daylight,” Brent replied. “You can come in during the day. The owner of the antique shop below will a
lways welcome visitors. You saw him when we came in.”

  It was obvious to her that in this subdued light the pictures could not be seen to advantage. Indeed, she wondered if they would not acquire a veneer of smoke deposit if the customers always behaved like this.

  By now the musicians were taking their places, thrumming their instruments, two mandolins and a guitar, with a fourth man who sat surrounded by a variety of instruments, small drum, tambourine and several others.

  There was no announcement of the programme. The guitarist nodded and immediately two powerful voices burst into song, accompanied by their owners’ mandolins and a tremolo effect on the drum.

  The words were of course lost on Rosamund, but she loved the wild impassioned melodies. The chatter was silenced and the audience listened attentively until the singers came to what was evidently a last refrain, when the listeners joined in with exuberance, Brent among them.

  “So you know the words?” she asked during the applause.

  “Some of them. Sometimes they sing ditties not really fit for ladies’ ears, but you won’t understand the Sicilian dialect.”

  She tut-tutted and frowned at him. “How can you be sure that I won’t get Tomaso and Maria to teach me?”

  “That day is a long way off. By that time the boys will be singing an entirely new set of songs.”

  “I thought you said their songs were traditional.”

  “So they are. But they usually try to introduce two or three different ones, songs that they’ve come across in another part of the island.”

  The men began to sing again and this time the effects man, if he could be so called, played an ocarina, which gave out some bird-like notes punctuating the song and causing the audience to laugh.

  Rosamund glanced at the groups of men at the tables and noticed that there were only two other women, dark-haired with olive skins and luminous eyes. They kept glancing at her and she wondered if they considered her an intruder, but when eventually the concert was over and Brent rose to go, she realised that it was her escort who was the attraction and not herself.

  Both the young women called out a sentence or two to him and one put her hand on his jacket sleeve as he passed until the man next to her roughly grabbed her wrist and jerked her away.

  Brent called a genial “Arrivederci” to all and shepherded Rosamund out of the building and into the street, but not into the Corso Umberto. A door led into yet another stepped street on a different level.

  “This town is a maze of riddles,” she said. “You go upstairs instead of down and come out at the height of someone’s roof.”

  “Short cuts,” he said tersely. “In a moment I’ll show you another.”

  Unexpectedly he propelled her into the foyer of a well-lit hotel, rang for the lift and when it came, indicated that she should step in. Mystified, she asked, “Where are we going now?”

  He smiled for answer and waited while she alighted. “Top floor, street level again,” he murmured. “Saves the climb.”

  She saw now that they had entered the hotel several floors below and come out on another street, almost opposite the hotel where she and Brent had dined and where he had left his car.

  “Handy. I’ll remember that dodge,” she said.

  In the car going home she was uncommonly sleepy, but would not surrender to the pleasure of nodding off. The fear that she might unconsciously let her head rest on Brent’s shoulder kept her bolt upright.

  “It was a wonderful evening,” she said quietly. “I enjoyed it all. Thank you for taking me.”

  “Even to such a low place?”

  But she was too tired to exchange any more banter.

  It was past midnight when they arrived at the Villa Delfino and now she was contrite that she had probably kept Tomaso waiting up for her before he could lock up.

  As Brent entered with her, she remembered about his room being prepared.

  “Ask Tomaso if a room is ready for you,” she whispered.

  A few words and a knowing smile passed between the two men. Rosamund apologised to Tomaso for their late arrival, but he shook his head, saying it was of no importance.

  “Good night, Brent, and thank you again.”

  He raised his hand in salute and as she went upstairs, he turned and walked along the corridor with Tomaso.

  In her room she kicked off her shoes. A wry thought entered her head. It would have been practically impossible for Brent to give her a good-night kiss in the blaze of light in the hall with Tomaso looking on. She blinked the tiredness from her eyes. Perhaps that had been a clever idea of hers to thank him first while he was still driving home. Clever, perhaps, but not as satisfying as a warm, friendly good-night salutation. Yet perhaps she had managed to steer clear of a momentary give-away. A fractional response on her part might have told him the unpalatable truth.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rosamund was pleased when Maria announced that she had been able to get a young girl to help with the work.

  “Her name is Lucia and she will come every day from the village.”

  “Is her home far away?” Rosamund asked.

  Maria shook her head. “No. Only fifteen minutes’ walking.”

  Rosamund discussed the wages and the meals Lucia was to have.

  “Is her family poor? Not much money?”

  Maria smiled. “All very poor.”

  “Then you can sometimes give Lucia a little food to take home.” Rosamund considered that a certain generosity might prevent the girl from helping herself.

  “Now we shall have a little time for the reading lessons,” Rosamund continued.

  She had already mentioned the subject to Maria, who was delighted that at her time of life, in her early fifties, someone would take the trouble to teach her to read.

  Rosamund even contemplated that later on she would teach Maria to write as well. Then she would be able to write to her son in the North, as well as read his letters for herself.

  “You made a comfortable room last night for the English signore?” she now asked Maria.

  “Yes, but he did not sleep there.”

  “No?” Rosamund was surprised.

  Maria now began to speak rapidly and it was only with difficulty that Rosamund could follow her, but the gist of it was that Brent had returned to the cottage last night and left very early this morning.

  “Oh, I see.”

  Rosamund went out of the kitchen into the courtyard. Brent’s car had gone and his cottage appeared to be shut. On the door hung an exquisite palm cross, elaborately woven and interlaced with flowers.

  When she returned to Maria, she said, “He’s apparently not there. Who put the palm cross there? You?”

  Maria nodded. “Tomaso makes them to sell if he can to people in the village.” After a pause she added, “There is one on the door of the villa.”

  Rosamund was immediately regretful that she had not noticed it, but then she had not yet gone out of the front door.

  “That is a most charming custom for Palm Sunday,” she said. “Thank you, Maria. But the English signore did not see the palm on his door?”

  “No. Tomaso put it there very early, but the signore had gone.”

  “A pity.” She finished giving various instructions about the meals and went out into the garden.

  She pondered on Brent’s sudden departure. What had she said or done last night to cause him to dash away? Had she betrayed her own feelings too clearly and so frightened him off? Then common sense reminded her that most likely he had intended to come to the cottage for only a few hours, to pick up some books perhaps, or spend a little time reading undisturbed. But the cottage had been in disarray, thanks to Erica’s decorating ideas, so in the end he had made the best of a wasted evening and taken Rosamund to dinner and the Sicilian studio cafe.

  It was Stephen who raised the subject at lunch.

  “Erica tells me that Brent has gone. How did you so mortally offend him?”

  Rosamund laughed. “I’ve no idea.
How do we know that he didn’t intend to go off somewhere else this morning? He might have other plans.”

  Erica giggled. “Somehow you don’t seem to be his favourite girl companion of the moment, do you? He takes you out, you annoy him and he goes off in a huff.”

  Rosamund shrugged. “I do my best to please,” she said mock-mournfully.

  “Well, I hope you two girls between you are not going to make it difficult for him to come here often,” remarked Stephen. “I want to be on good terms with him, as I’m sure he can give me quite a lot of help with my researches.”

  “Was he suitably grateful for my efforts in painting his cottage?” queried Erica.

  “Grateful? Your efforts?” Rosamund nearly choked. “If I’d known he was coming back, I would have had nothing to do with your painting schemes, but left you to face the music.”

  “Was that what upset him?” asked Stephen.

  “If I’d been there,” put in Erica, “his annoyance would have melted in two minutes. You don’t know how to handle men.”

  Rosamund grinned. “But you didn’t have to handle the furniture back again.”

  “But apparently he took you out to dinner,” said Stephen, “so he wasn’t too put out.”

  Erica’s blue eyes flickered with interest. “Where did you go? And why were you so late coming home? You weren’t eating all that time.”

  “We dined at one of the hotels up on the top road that goes to Castel Mola,” replied Rosamund amiably. “Then he took me to a studio that was also a cafe and we listened to Sicilian songs.” She beamed at Erica. “And you? Did you enjoy a good outing with Niccolo? Where?”

  Erica pouted. “Only for a short drive along the coast. Niccolo had to deliver some papers for his father, business affairs apparently. Then we stopped at a cafe for some wine, and came home.”

  “Good. Then your father was not alone for dinner, after all.” Rosamund’s tone was complacency itself. She glanced up in time to catch Erica’s sombre gaze, but was glad when the subject of Brent and his goings and comings was dropped.

  During the week, Stephen made tentative beginnings on some of the research work that was to occupy him and Rosamund for most of the year ahead.