Chapter 33 #2
She took a mouthful and chewed. ‘Delicious,’ she said, savouring it.
‘I have milk too. Goat’s milk.’
He handed her a tin mug full of it.
She drank it rapidly.
‘I can make myself scarce while you wash and change.’ He pointed at the bucket of water. ‘Did you sleep all right?’
‘Like a baby.’
He wandered off and after a cursory wash she dug out a clean dress from her bag and dragged a brush through her tangled curls. When he came back, she began packing and said they’d better plan the day.
‘We need to get a bus to Milazzo,’ he said. There we’ll find someone to take us across to a small port on Lipari. There are ferries, but none today.’
She straightened up. ‘Can you never tell me anything about what you were doing while I was in Devon and you were away? Now that the war is over.’
‘Still classified,’ he said and pulled a face. ‘But I can tell you I was working in association with the SIS and the Free French. And I was offered a job with MI6.’
‘You turned it down?’
‘I’m an architect, remember?’
She laughed. ‘So you say. And I am still going to Malta to find Rosalie. You too, the minute you’ve finished here?’
‘Absolutely but for now, let’s just focus on the job in hand. I know so little about where we’re headed. My friend Edward’s place is on the north coast of Lipari but it’s a tiny island so shouldn’t be hard to find.’
‘What does he want you to do?’
‘Initially just to inspect the place for bomb damage. See if the place is still sound.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, I gather he has great plans for it although I don’t yet know what, or if he’ll hire me to be the architect.’
‘Surely he wouldn’t ask you if he wasn’t going to use you?’
‘Maybe. He’s rich. Has property all over the world and before the war was developing a network of exclusive hotels.’
‘The place must be big then?’
‘It may just be his own place. He’s being cagey. Wants me to get in touch when I know what’s what.’
‘Best figure out if the ferries have a timetable, then. For when we come back.’
The little fishing boat bobbed about on a dazzling azure sea and before long it was discharging them onto a narrow jetty. Florence clutched her canvas bag and smelt the salty seaweed air while Jack arranged for a cart to take them to their destination.
The island was dusty and mountainous. Dear God, she thought, as they set off, where has he brought me?
Malta seemed further away than ever. The driver sat astride the donkey pulling the cart along a stony path – you couldn’t call it a road – past the occasional bleak farmhouse.
Then it rattled and jolted along narrower dirt trails that ran up and over the parched hills.
All she could see were endless ochre crags rising higher and higher as they left the sea behind.
The wind was alive, blowing dust into her eyes and she rubbed them, only making the stinging worse.
Jack noticed. ‘You okay?’
She nodded but her spirits were sinking.
‘Bad time of year,’ he said over the noise of the wheels rolling and bumping over the stones. ‘Dry. Looks greener in the north east.’
She turned away and kept her eyes closed. Would any time of year here be better?
They reached the peak of the mountain they’d been climbing and then began the descent through the sun-bleached landscape. She opened her eyes wide. ‘Oh,’ she said and drew in her breath at the sight of the sea. It seemed endless and such a deep violet blue.
He grinned to see her surprise.
They jolted down the hill and she saw volcanic cliffs plunging into the sea where brightly coloured fishing boats bobbed about.
‘Should be plenty of fish,’ Jack said.
‘Man cannot live on fish alone,’ she said and smiled at him.
They arrived at a long tree-lined track, road, she wasn’t sure what, leading back towards the mountains again but flat here.
She spotted a tanned workman in a long leather apron who waved at their driver.
Could you call a man on a donkey a driver?
The drive, she decided it was a drive, was now lined with sculptures on squat columns, some of them damaged, and then she saw it.
She whistled in amazement.
A mansion, for that is what it appeared to be, was coming into view.
The driver spoke in guttural Sicilian and Jack said. ‘I think he’s telling us it used to be a palace and, but for a housekeeper, it has been unoccupied for decades.’
The two-storey terracotta and cream building spread out before them in a long, high rectangle.
She counted the first-floor windows, all with delicate wrought-iron railings.
Ten? No. Twelve. At least twelve. All of them with their canvas blinds down but held away from the windows on rods at the bottom to allow air into the rooms.
The man steered the cart round to the side of the house which turned out to be the front.
Jack helped Florence climb down.
She felt suddenly exuberant, a feeling that had been absent for some time. Something important was waiting for her here, she knew it.
Florence looked up at the main doorway of the grand house.
It was on the first floor with two large windows either side and surrounded by ornate stonework with a balcony in front.
From the balcony a staircase descended on both sides curving to the front.
Beneath the main door, tall gates enclosed a huge archway.
The stone of the building shone like gold in the bright sunshine, purple bougainvillaea crept up the walls and a strong scent of lemons wafted in the aromatic air.
Herbs too she thought, certainly thyme, mint, rosemary.
She inhaled deeply and pinched her arm. Could this place be real?
Behind the house the volcanic mountain rose, magnificent, pink, hazy, and when she turned the other way, she saw the smudge of silvery sea glinting not far away.
Jack looked almost as surprised as she was.
‘He didn’t tell you?’ she asked.
‘He did not. This place is enormous.’
A woman in a faded black dress with a tiny white collar and small bib apron came through the archway. She didn’t smile or speak but indicated they should follow her up the stairs. She was tall and stick thin, with a grey plait wound into a bun at the back of her neck and eyes as black as midnight.
As she climbed the wide white steps Florence couldn’t wait to see inside but had to curb her impatience as the woman moved so slowly it seemed as if her every joint needed oiling.
At the top she unlocked the bronze door – oxidised by time or weather, or probably both, it had a delicate patina of greenish blue.
They entered a long room with a dozen open windows along one side where cream-coloured Italian lace curtains billowed in the breeze this side of the blinds she’d seen on the outside.
Florence saw Jack’s eyebrows rise, as awed by it as she, for it felt as if they had been ushered into a world that had long gone.
The room was pure nineteenth century, a place where the passing years had touched nothing.
No electric lights – and she doubted there’d be running water – yet everything looked exquisite.
Dark carved furniture and chairs upholstered in a striped gold fabric.
Candelabra on the side tables and the most stunning tiled floor she had ever seen in intricate Arabic patterns of blue, ochre, white and terracotta.
‘Incredible,’ Jack muttered. ‘Completely intact.’
He glanced up, whistled and she followed his gaze to a frescoed ceiling where cherubs danced among the clouds.
The past was all around her, and the spirits of the past too.
She heard whispering and the ringing of a ghostly bell.
She pictured the people who’d lived there, and they didn’t seem gone.
Not gone at all. Had they just slipped out for a minute?
Maybe headed off to the beach with a picnic, returning at any moment to wonder what these travellers from another age were doing in their home?
She could hear the whoosh of the distant sea and felt an uncomfortable shiver.
There was something menacing in the air, and she felt the spirits here were not the happy kind.
The housekeeper smiled grimly and spoke to Jack.
‘What?’ Florence asked.
‘She says her name is Claudia and we are to follow her to our rooms.’
They passed a few rooms where open doors revealed furniture covered in dust sheets and at the end Claudia showed them two rooms, one on either side of the corridor. He glanced in both then tilted his head at her.
‘Choice is yours, Florence.’
The rooms were identical save for the fact that one looked out at the mountain, which seemed incredibly close, and the other faced the sea. She dithered, drawn by the mountain and yet it was … intimidating? Ominous even? Still, despite that, she pointed to the mountain side.
‘You’re sure? You wouldn’t rather have the sea? It’s lighter.’
She looked and shook her head. ‘I’m sure.’
Claudia spoke to him again and he translated for Florence. ‘She says she will take care of all the meals, and she has a letter for me.’
‘Really? How come?’
He shrugged. ‘Search me. She’s gone to fetch it now.’
The woman had left the room while Jack was talking and returned now with a white envelope with his name scrawled on it. He put down their bags, tore it open and read.
‘Who is it from?’ Florence asked, curious.
‘Edward, the one who owns this place. He’s already in Sicily.’
‘Coming here?’
‘No, I’m to go to him at his place in Donnafugata apparently, take my report with me.’
‘Has he asked you to take charge of restoration?’
‘No. He only wants an honest view of its condition before he goes any further.’
‘How long before we can go to Malta?’
‘It’ll take a while to survey this place properly and then to see him about it.’
Florence fingered the silver charm bracelet she wore round her wrist and remembered her mother’s strangely bright eyes as she’d given it to her.
She had seen how thin Claudette had been then, had felt it when she’d hugged her, but when she’d asked, her mother had grown impatient. ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ she’d said.
She had hoped Claudette would visit her in Devon before they left for Sicily, and in fact a visit had been planned, but when the time came, her mother had written to say she had a touch of flu, nothing serious, and couldn’t make the trip.
She thought of Rosalie and of her mother.
How must it feel not to have seen each other for twenty years?
It was unimaginable not to see your sister for so long and she wished she could tell Claudette how close she was to Malta now.