The Fires of Torretta Page 9

  Before starting off again down the mountain, Brent suggested they might like some refreshment in the restaurant, where windows gave a wide view on three sides. Rosamund wondered if he were giving her the chance to retrieve her composure.

  “I really wanted to go to the very top,” said Erica.

  “Make an early start and choose a clear day,” advised Brent. “Even then, you can never be certain that the clouds won’t descend on you.”

  Rosamund carefully looked away from Brent. Yes, you could never be certain when a cloud of misunderstanding might descend on you, make you afraid to step forward or backward and alter the whole aspect of your surroundings.

  On the way down Etna they passed several villages where new villas were being built and boards advertised “Land for Sale”. Erica laughed at such optimism. “But it’s nothing but a plot of lava. How could you build on it?”

  “How does anyone build on any other kind of land?” queried Brent. “First you clear whatever is there—stone, boulders, turf. Then you start on the foundations.”

  “But you could never clear such land completely of lava, could you?” Stephen said. “There’s all the build-up underneath that’s formed over the centuries and after every eruption.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Brent. “All you do is flatten out your own plot. Lava is a very sound foundation to build on.”

  When Stephen drove through the village of Fieri, Brent asked him to stop. “You’ll see that many of the houses show a cluster of green leaves and a bunch of grapes outside. That shows that they sell wine. Quite good, too, and cheap.”

  Stephen stopped the car in a convenient place and Brent led the way to a house where apparently he was well known to the woman who opened the door. She greeted him with smiling enthusiasm.

  Rosamund heard him say that he had brought some English friends to sample her best wines and she bustled off for glasses. She returned a few minutes later with a tray and four or five carafes of wine.

  “Heavens!” exclaimed Stephen. “She doesn’t expect us to drink the lot, I hope. Otherwise, someone else will have to drive home.”

  Brent laughed. “No. These are various vintages, different kinds of grapes and so on.” He poured out and handed a glass to Rosamund. “This is real Etna wine,” he told her.

  She sipped a little of the white, then the red. “Both beautifully dry,” she said appreciatively.

  “Rather too dry for my taste,” was Erica’s opinion.

  “Then try this one.” Brent offered her a pale straw-coloured wine, which she said she liked better.

  When they left the house Erica pretended to stagger towards the car. “Potent stuff, that!” she commented.

  “Then don’t let the Etna folk see that you can’t take it!” Brent’s words sounded light enough, but to Rosamund his tone seemed reproving.

  She wondered why he was accompanying them all the way down to Taormina, unless he wanted specially to be there, but when Stephen drove up the Via Pirandello he said to the two girls, “I’m going into Taormina before we go home. Brent is going to help me buy a camera.”

  “A camera?” echoed Erica. “But you have one already.”

  “Only a toy, and I left that at home,” answered her father. The shop Brent recommended had a comprehensive stock of all kinds and Rosamund was interested enough to stand by and watch while the two men discussed with the assistant the respective merits and disadvantages of each model. Erica wandered away to look at the souvenir shop next door.

  Finally the choice was made. “Do you approve, Rosamund?” Stephen asked her.

  “Naturally. I’m only a snapshotter. Brent is the expert.”

  He gave her a sharp glance. “Only by having learned the hard way.”

  “If I’m to use the camera,” she pointed out, “you’ll see that I have all the instructions.”

  “Yes, everything’s included,” Stephen reassured her. “And it’s a very simple model.”

  Then there was all the rest of the apparatus to choose, developing tanks, printing outfits, an enlarger, chemicals of one sort and another. Rosamund grew apprehensive, quite unsure whether she was going to be capable of handling all this expensive equipment.

  Brent travelled back to Torretta with the rest of them and stayed to dinner.

  Erica, for once remembering that she ought sometimes to be her father’s hostess, suggested that a room in the villa could easily be prepared for Brent to stay the night.

  “Maria will get it ready,” she told him.

  Brent smiled, gave Rosamund a piercing glance, then said that he would stay in his own shack. “That is, if I may be allowed to call it ‘mine’.”

  “A poor little place,” commented Erica.

  “So you can understand why Tomaso and Maria were glad to move into the villa when they had the chance.”

  “Oh, I agree,” returned Stephen. “It’s not really fair to expect a caretaker-couple to occupy a place like that. In fact, I feel quite ashamed that you should use such a dilapidated little dwelling. Why don’t you stay here the night, as Erica suggests?”

  But Brent was adamant. Erica was on the verge of saying something mischievous, then she subsided into a giggle.

  After dinner they sat in the handsome drawing-room, Rosamund’s favourite of all the rooms in the villa. She admired it because it was so sparsely furnished and uncluttered with its white walls and Carrara marble floor against which the golden upholstered settees and chairs made a pleasing contrast. A couple of blackamoors on dark pedestals provided height for the eye, glass-topped tables furnished places for drinks or books or bowls of flowers and the wide windows opened out on to the garden.

  Brent glanced up at the ornamented ceiling with its plaster dolphins, birds and flowers and a centrepiece of landscape painting. “I should imagine that this room has been converted at some time. It’s too modern and spacious to have been part of the original.”

  “But the villa is not very old,” put in Rosamund. “Only the early years of this century. The Mandelli villa is much older and they told me that Signor Mandelli’s father watched this one being built and was highly critical of having another villa on his doorstep as he said.”

  Brent laughed. “But the Mandelli place is higher up. You could hardly say that this one obstructed the view.”

  “You can see just one chimney of ours from part of their garden,” Rosamund laughed. “So whatever eyesore this might have been, the old man hadn’t much to complain of.” After a moment she added, “I think it possible that these windows were altered. I found some old photos in a drawer and these windows were smaller and there was no loggia outside.”

  It was fairly late when Brent left the villa to go to his cottage and Stephen accompanied him. The two girls looked at each other, then laughed.

  “Isn’t he obstinate!” Erica said. “He prefers to martyr himself in that awful little shack rather than stay a night here.”

  Rosamund gave the other an oblique glance. “Perhaps he’s afraid of you.”

  “And what do you mean by that?” Erica demanded crossly.

  “Nothing uncivil,” Rosamund grinned. “Only that he obviously prefers to be independent and views us as a couple of harpies.”

  Erica relaxed into laughter. “He makes me feel uncomfortable half the time, as though I were some sort of specimen that he has to dissect. Does he have that effect on you?”

  “Sometimes,” admitted Rosamund. She could certainly not reveal that incident on the mountain when she had clung to him, even if only for a moment. Perhaps that event was responsible for his show of independence. He was unwilling to be drawn into any kind of involvement with either girl.

  Yet all Rosamund’s senses cried out that she wanted to be involved with him. She had made all those high-minded resolutions that she was not going to be like Erica or Adriana or any of those other girls in his past, who had fallen in love with him, only to be thrust aside when a new attraction appeared. But high-minded resolutions count for nothin
g when the moment of truth has to be faced, and now she was forced to admit that she had fallen desperately in love with a man to whom she could never be more than a casual acquaintance. Her only sane course was to prevent Brent from ever suspecting the truth.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rosamund found herself landed next morning with the task of driving the newly-hired car up to Belpasso to take Brent back.

  Stephen asked her as soon as she had finished her breakfast and entered his study, where he was apparently waiting for her.

  “But couldn’t he take a taxi? I’m not sure I want to drive up those winding roads the first time I take an unfamiliar car.”

  “Well, you could kill two birds with one stone. I thought on the way back you could stop in Taormina and pick up all that camera and photographic equipment. I didn’t trust anyone to deliver it in case of damage.”

  “I wouldn’t mind making the journey into Taormina and back, but—”

  “Oh, you’ll be all right.” Stephen’s assurances were more bland than she cared for. Besides, driving Brent would be a problem on its own.

  Fortunately this end of the matter was solved easily. Brent was already at the wheel when she joined him.

  “You don’t mind, I suppose?” he queried, opening the door for her. “I don’t usually enjoy being driven by someone else.”

  “Especially a woman?” she asked as he drove out of the gates.

  “Oh, especially a woman,” he agreed emphatically.

  “You’re unflattering to my driving ability,” she said smoothly. “You don’t know how skilled I might be.”

  “Exactly. That’s it. Unknown quantity.”

  “So the unknown frightens you?”

  “Sometimes. Don’t you find that, too?”

  He flashed her a quick glance, then again watched the road. Was he referring to yesterday’s misadventure when he had rescued her on Mount Etna?

  “Yes,” she answered flatly, unwilling to pursue the subject in case she were entangled in an argument with which she could not cope.

  “Actually I’m glad you’re driving,” she confessed with a mischievous sidelong glance at his profile. “Even alone with a new car and driving on the wrong side of the road, I’d not be too happy, but with—”

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “With a passenger

  “And particularly if I happen to be that passenger, what then?”

  “I might easily run into a lorry out of sheer nerves or dash off over a precipice.”

  “Then what a fate I’ve saved myself!” he mocked. “How will you manage to drive back?”

  She relapsed into laughter. “Well, there’s always that old dodge—you see me home, then I come back with you and so on ad infinitum.”

  “Do you think I have so little to do with my time that I can afford to spend it touring up and down between Taormina and Belpasso?”

  “No.” It was on the tip of her tongue to say that perhaps he had little time to spare for journeys to Torretta now that the Villa Delfino was occupied by a fairly demanding professor and two ubiquitous girls. By the time she had thought of some less pointed remark, he was off on another topic.

  “Tell me about this photography business. Have you ever done more than press a button on a camera?”

  “No. But I’m willing to learn and I can see how much it will help Stephen if he’s able to have his own photographs.”

  Brent began to laugh as though she had said something witty. “It won’t help him if you fudge his pet photos.”

  “Why should I fudge them? I’ll follow the instructions. We have spare rooms at the villa. I’ll have one fixed up as a darkroom if necessary.”

  “What a girl you are for taking on thorny problems! Cars and cameras. Nothing daunts you!”

  “Does poking about on a volcano daunt you?” she asked with spirit.

  “Frequently. How am I to know that when I poke I’m not stirring up a vast fire that will blaze up and engulf us all?”

  “I hope in those circumstances you have more sense.”

  “But volcanoes are unpredictable.”

  “Like women?”

  He sighed heavily and negotiated a cross-roads before he spoke. “Does Erica drive?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Perhaps she might have been a more amiable companion this morning.”

  Rosamund laughed. “She wasn’t up when we left. You’d have had to wait until about eleven before she was ready to start.”

  He was now .driving through the village of Fieri where they had stopped yesterday to sample wine.

  “Would you like to stop here for a few minutes?” he asked.

  “Would there be coffee somewhere, or must it be wine?”

  “Coffee, of course. I don’t drink Signora Milena’s wine so early in the day.” His tone was rebuking, but his eyes danced with malice and amusement.

  He took her to a small cafe where three workmen sat at a table playing cards with a pack so worn that most of the pips seemed to have disappeared and the court cards were a coloured blur.

  The coffee was refreshing and here again it seemed that Brent was well-known to the proprietor, who gave Rosamund a few enquiring glances from under his dark eyebrows. What was he hinting at? That Brent had a wide set of girl acquaintances whom he toured around?

  Rosamund thought that idea far-fetched and born only of a niggling curiosity to know an undue amount about his private life. Curiosity or jealousy? Such thoughts would ruin her peace of mind if she allowed them to intrude on every trivial occasion.

  When they arrived in Belpasso, Brent asked, “Is it too early for lunch? Would you like a light snack?”

  For a moment she hesitated. Then she realised that he probably needed something to eat before he drove farther up the mountain in his own car.

  “I’ll have just one light dish,” she answered, accepting that his need was greater than hers, she thought ludicrously.

  He took her to a patisserie where there was a choice of hot and cold dishes or one could settle for a large, creamy, gooey pastry.

  “I understand that Erica, at least, didn’t much care for my cafe where I live.”

  Rosamund giggled. “She was somewhat dismayed to find it occupied by men in working clothes.”

  “But you, of course, were not put out by that?”

  “I wondered what sort of joke Stephen was playing on us, but I knew there must be a good reason for going there.”

  “And the courtyard at the back was quite pleasant. I eat there sometimes, but usually I find it more interesting to hobnob with some of the cafe’s regular customers. Their memories are vivid, even if not always accurate, but by comparing several versions of the same occurrence, you can manage to get a reasonable picture.”

  “You mean their accounts of eruptions of Etna?”

  “That and other events. They can tell you how their grandfathers built their houses, planted their vines, their olives and oranges, or set themselves up as carriers and used the painted Sicilian carts that you still see all over the island in the more rural parts. You must realise that until the spectacular eruption two years ago, most people under forty had never seen Etna really blazing fire and pouring it down the slopes. One or two minor outbursts, but nothing on that scale.”

  “Have you to stay on Etna for a long time or will you eventually move off somewhere else?” The words were out before she realised why she had asked such a direct question. Yet, since she was committed to staying a year working for Stephen, it was imperative for her to know how long Brent might be staying. If he left soon, then perhaps this unbearable ache for his presence might die a natural death before her emotions threatened to drag her still more deeply into an abyss of longing for this man who could offer her only a teasing friendship.

  Now his grey eyes flickered with a light that might be surprise or amusement or even a sardonic satisfaction that she showed interest in his professional comings and goings.

  “I’ve more than a year to do he
re, but I expect to spend part of that time pottering about the small islands, Stromboli, Vulcano and the Aeolian islands, and anywhere else I fancy if it might be interesting.”

  So what did that mean? That just when her frustration was soothed by his long absences, he would suddenly appear from time to time to jab her into a renewed awareness?

  When she returned to the car, he told her, “I’ve checked the petrol for you. I’d advise you to avoid the new autostrada. There’ll be a lot of heavy traffic and the Italians drive like speed-kings on a racing track. Keep to the coast road from Giarre and along to Giardini and you should be all right.”

  When his hand rested on her shoulder for a moment she wanted to twist into his arms, but she controlled herself, as he closed the door and waved.

  She was relieved that driving back claimed her concentration, for otherwise she would have been dreaming of Brent, his tone of voice, the way he looked. After the first few miles she became more accustomed to driving on the right and she was able to relax. Sections of the new autostrada were open and frequently disappeared into well-lit tunnels burrowing through the mountains, but she would wait until she was more familiar with Sicilian roads before dashing along these highways.

  The coast road was easy to follow and she arrived in Taormina about the middle of the afternoon. Siesta time, of course. She parked the car at a convenient spot and roamed about the town. Soon Easter would be here and the confectioners’ shops were full of Easter eggs and extremely elaborate lambs in icing sugar, always complete with a flag.

  She walked down a flight of wide steps flanked by shops; wine and fruit, embroidered linen and souvenirs, a small bookshop, bright coloured dresses, a jewellers—even this little stepped street was almost a market in itself.

  At the foot, another street cut across, then turned a sharp corner, and here Rosamund discovered a new aspect of Taormina. Almost hidden in a garden, yet inside the main part of the town, was a small cinema. She gazed intently at the rambling buildings, the various entrances and the posters advertising the shows, and wondered if this had once been someone’s handsome villa set in gardens.