The Fires of Torretta Read online

  They dawdled about the town of Reggio and Brent wisely said, “We’ll look in the Museum another time. The past is not for us today.”

  “I remember what you quoted—‘Look to this day; for yesterday is already a dream and—’ ”

  “ ‘And tomorrow is only a vision’,” he finished for her. When they sat outside a little cafe and drank coffee, he asked, “Does your family allow you to roam Europe and pick up a geologist on Etna?”

  “I’ve nobody very close,” she told him. “My father died when I was very young and my mother about four years ago. I visit an aunt occasionally. That was one of the reasons why I was glad to get a residential job with Stephen.”

  He remained thoughtful for a few moments. “I knew even less of my parents. My father was a doctor in Central Africa and my mother worked with him, but they both contracted fever and died there. At the time, I was at boarding school, so I stayed on in the holidays until I went to Winchester and then to Cambridge. So I grew up as a ‘solitary’ and it may be that having to occupy myself in the holidays attracted me towards geology. I always felt I was a nuisance to other people.”

  “But you don’t feel you’re a nuisance now?”

  “To you I hope I’ll always be that. At least, you can’t regard me with indifference.”

  They stayed so long talking about themselves and their past ideas and future ambitions that they nearly missed the last ferry back to Messina. Hand in hand they ran along the waterfront and arrived breathless just before the gangway was lifted.

  Across the dark sea the lights of Messina glittered like jewellery and the mountains on both Sicily and Calabria were outlined in the clear sky.

  “You can just see the tip of Etna from here,” Brent pointed out.

  “A ghostly mountain. It looks so deceptively calm with that pale snow cap, you’d never imagine it could erupt fire and flame.”

  “But you saw Stromboli with its fireworks at night when you were on Panarea?”

  “Yes. One night there was a storm and the wind really did sound like Aeolian harps.”

  “Oh, we have so much to explore.” His arm tightened around her as they stood near the rail. “We must go to every single one of the Aeolian islands. Then all those south of Sicily, besides the interior of Sicily itself. Haven’t you been to any of the Greek temple sites?”

  “Well, no. Actually Stephen started to plan a tour for us, Erica and me, but somehow he became involved in other matters and then he said that probably it would be better to go to the temples after the tourist season.”

  “We’ll go together,” Brent promised. “Anyway, I shall prove a better guide than Stephen would.”

  “Arrogant as ever?”

  “Naturally. He’s seen them probably once a few years ago. I’ve been to each one a dozen times or more.”

  At the hotel in Messina, Brent and Rosamund were greeted by Stephen and Adriana as though they had returned from a transatlantic voyage.

  “We thought you’d missed the ferry,” said Stephen, with a searching glance at Rosamund.

  “Or that you had decided to swim across,” put in Adriana.

  “The truth was that I had to throw Rosamund overboard,” explained Brent, “before she agreed to marry me. Then I had to jump in afterwards and rescue her.”

  “Always the hero,” observed Rosamund gently.

  “Watch it, girl,” he threatened. “I might let my imagination carry me away!”

  Adriana had disappeared for a few moments, then she returned with an extremely handsome young Italian.

  “Allow me to introduce Lorenzo to you, Rosamund.”

  In a few moments his parents were introduced. So the reason for Adriana’s radiance was now evident. As the party sat around a table in the lounge, Adriana whispered to Rosamund, “It is to Brent that I owe so much happiness.”

  “Yes?” prompted Rosamund, eager to know.

  “I was so unhappy, as you understand, but he made me see that if I wore a long face and would not talk, then I should never be happy or attractive to any other young man. So I smiled when I did not want to smile—but only to please Brent. And so, when I met Lorenzo again—for I knew him two years ago—he said I was so different and fell in love with me.”

  Rosamund pressed the other girl’s hand. In the midst of her own excited enchantment, she was glad to spare a thought for Adriana who had plotted today on Brent’s instructions so happily.

  Adriana accompanied Stephen and Rosamund next day back to Torretta. Brent had to attend to one or two business affairs before he could take a fortnight’s leave and would come to the Villa Delfino the following day.

  Erica had already heard the news by telephone from Adriana.

  “Congratulations! I always knew you were the one for Brent,” she said on greeting Rosamund. Then she laughed. “Do you think Father will tame him down to a university professor?”

  “I doubt if anyone could. Not for a long, long time, anyway,” replied Rosamund enthusiastically.

  “You’re two of a kind. Interested in the same things. Actually, you’ve taught, me at least something while we’ve been here.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Erica smiled. “Well, to wait for the right man. Not to be in a hurry to decide. You see, I know now that Hugo wasn’t right for me. Neither is Niccolo.”

  Rosamund gave Erica a slightly suspicious glance.

  “And have you met someone new?”

  Erica flushed. “Yes. He’s an actor at the Greek theatre in Taormina.”

  Rosamund gasped. “Oh, no, Erica! Not all over again!”

  But Erica was laughing madly. “Don’t worry. He’s only a passing phase. In any case, he goes to Syracuse next week to play there.” She gave Rosamund a mischievous smile. “But he is marvellously attractive.”

  “Dear Erica,” murmured Rosamund. “Enjoy yourself and don’t take him too seriously.” She bent to kiss the other girl.

  “Now, I suppose, you’ll be leaving us, Father and me, and careering up and down Etna to be with Brent.”

  “Not yet.” Rosamund had already discussed the situation with Stephen.

  “Brent has his work to do at the observatory,” she had pointed out, “either on Etna or in Stromboli, so if I may, I’d like to stay on here just as long as you want me.”

  Stephen welcomed the idea. “I was afraid you’d dash off.”

  She laughed. “Not in the middle of your new book!”

  “When do you think of marrying the man?”

  “Some time ahead yet,” she answered. “Maybe near Christmas or early next year.”

  “There’s plenty of room for both of you here in the Villa,” he offered. “Also if Brent wants a study where he can work—more or less undisturbed—when he’s here, we could give him one of the little bedrooms that aren’t used.”

  “Thank you, I think he might like that.” After a pause she added, “Stephen, you’re not too disappointed about Brent—and Erica?”

  He put an affectionate hand on her shoulder. “No. I was being over-hasty to see her settled with someone, but that would have been an ill-assorted match.” He smiled and added, “Perhaps I might even get a little more real work done on my project now that it’s been decided who shall partner whom. We shan’t have Erica’s tantrums to contend with.”

  At last Rosamund saw her opportunity to tackle him on the subject of his daughter. “Perhaps I ought not to say this, but if you could take Erica into your confidence rather more, I think she’d appreciate it.”

  “My confidence? But I do.”

  She shook her head. “Consult her sometimes before you make a decision. This villa, for instance—she didn’t even see it before you’d actually agreed to take it. And then when you plan the outings and tours, even if you’ve already made up your mind, you could listen to her suggestions.”

  He stared at her for a moment or two in dismay. Then he smiled. “Yes, I forget she’s grown-up. I’m afraid I still regard her as a schoolgirl.”

>   “And she ought to be given the chance to act as your hostess.”

  Stephen kissed her cheek. “Brent’s a lucky man. When you do go off with him on his travels, I think I shall envy him.”

  Maria was delighted at Rosamund’s news. She broke into a torrent of Italian interspersed with Sicilian words that the girl did not comprehend at all, but the meaning was plain. After disentangling some of the older woman’s sentences, Rosamund discovered that Brent had apparently been in the habit of referring to her and Maria as his two inamorate, his two sweethearts, in the letters he wrote in large capitals so that she could read them.

  Perhaps the most heartwarming and touching token of affection was from Lucia, who gave Rosamund a single pale pink handkerchief with the corner hand-worked in drawn thread and an embroidered rose.

  Rosamund’s eyes filled with tears as she kissed the young girl in gratitude. “I shall always treasure it.”

  The Mandellis gave a gala dinner the next evening when Brent came and there was much toasting and jollity. Evidently Adriana’s parents favoured Lorenzo, so there would be few difficulties there.

  After the meal when Brent and Rosamund tried to slip away to the garden, Seppi, who was now home again from Palermo, complained that everyone around him was in love.

  “You, Rosamund, and Brent, and my sister. Also Niccolo spends all his time with a new girl. I shall be glad to join the navy. There is such much here.”

  Rosamund laughed. “Such much? You mean—either ‘too much’ or ‘so much’. Not ‘such much’.”

  “There! You see. I shall lose you for my English,” was Seppi’s lament as he walked away despondently.

  “Poor lad!” murmured Brent. “His turn will undoubtedly come.”

  “You said that as though you regretted your fate,” she scolded him.

  “Ah!” he sighed deeply. “As the Italians say, ‘what will be, will be.’ ”

  They had reached the terrace of the Mandelli villa with an open stonework balcony. From here the lights of Taormina and Giardini below on the shore level sparkled and scintillated.

  Then suddenly as they stood watching, rockets and cascades of red or orange light pierced the darkness; there were stars and plumes and fountains, flowers and undulating trains of circles.

  “So you have your fireworks after all,” Brent said quietly, bending to kiss the tip of her ear.

  “Is it a saint’s day?” she queried.

  “Could be. Or a local landowner’s birthday. Does it matter?”

  “Not in the least. Let the fires of Torretta celebrate for us.”

  “As long as they are what the Italians call gioco dei fuochi, the play of fire, I don’t mind. In other senses, Torretta was a pretty fiery place for me. Every time I came here I was shot down in flames.”

  “And now?” She glanced up at him.

  “All I want now is the glow and the warmth with a few sparks thrown in for luck.”

  As he spoke a great rocket soared up into the dark sky, burst into sparkling fragments that curved and plunged into the sea.

  They laughed at this appropriate timing and then remained silent, for in their shared love words were no longer necessary between them.