Chapter 39
Florence
Back over on the main island of Sicily, Florence and Jack got out of the taxi into the hot white sunshine accompanied by the sound of church bells.
They stood outside an ochre-walled farmhouse surrounded by open fields and wild scrubland.
Florence was thrilled to have left Lipari behind.
Since Jack’s admission about his feelings for her, and the kiss they had shared, an unspoken anticipation had been growing and building between them.
She pushed open the wooden door which gave onto a courtyard, the floor tiled in beautiful sand-coloured stone which the late-afternoon sun had painted with stripes of gold.
‘Limestone,’ came a voice.
Florence whirled round to see a small wiry man smiling as he came towards them arms outstretched. ‘Extracted from the area of the Iblei mountains here in Sicily. Jack, welcome.’
Jack and the man shook hands and then he turned to her. ‘This is Florence.’
Edward smiled and kissed her on both cheeks. While she glanced around the courtyard at succulents and feathery bamboos growing in giant terracotta pots and the flowering plants cascading from the windows above, Edward explained that two communal ‘salons’ or sitting rooms opened into the courtyard.
‘Just use whichever one you like. Make it your own. There’s only myself and Gloria here. And there’s a pool through there. Well, a pond really, but you can dip your toes into it. The fish don’t bite.’
Florence sighed with pleasure as he then led them inside and through a hall into one of the bedrooms. It turned out to have a vaulted ceiling, a chandelier, and was painted pale blue, with cream linen curtains framing two faded blue doors and diaphanous gauze pulled to the side of both the windows.
She glanced at the view of golden hills, delighted to be away from the palace on Lipari with its forbidding atmosphere.
‘Gloria is the interior designer,’ Edward said. ‘And my niece. Come and meet her.’
A few minutes later, a tall, elegant woman wearing a pink and orange silk kaftan flowing around her as she walked, called hello. Her blonde hair fell in a sheet to her waist and her eyes were electric blue.
‘We are aiming for sustainable living,’ she said. ‘Everything happens at a slower pace here. It’s so nice to meet you.’
‘You have a kitchen garden?’ asked Florence.
‘We do. Aubergines, peppers, courgettes, melons, onions and strawberries.’
‘I used to grow all those in France.’
‘Well this is our first year. You know, the war …’
‘Did you suffer much damage?’
‘Some.’
‘You live here all year round?’
The woman sighed and, holding Florence’s elbow, steered her towards another faded blue door with glass panels that revealed a small patio shaded by palm trees.
The air vibrated with the sound of bees, birdsong too.
It was so different from France and England, and Florence wondered if there might be something Moorish about it.
Bougainvillaea climbed the stone walls, three small ferns grew in earthenware tubs and there were two rattan armchairs, a small table, a comfy chaise longue, and a lemon tree.
‘This is yours. See that door? It opens directly to your room.’ Florence glanced at Jack, wondering if he would say they needed two rooms. He remained silent.
They had a light supper washed down by local red wine and went to bed early, claiming tiredness.
In their private bathroom, lit only by candlelight, Florence washed first and then Jack.
He extinguished the oil lamp in the bedroom, and they lay down on crisp white sheets beneath a fan listening to the sound of the fountain as the scent of thyme drifted in from the open window.
It was the end of summer but still warm.
She had never felt anything like this before and reached over to touch his skin with her fingertips.
She felt his shiver in her own body and heard his sudden sharp intake of breath.
She turned her head to the side to look at him lying beside her, something she’d longed for, but could only see the silhouette of his face in profile.
She forced herself to wait, secure now that he wanted her.
And she was sure of herself too, despite her earlier worries of not being able to be intimate with a man after the rape.
Now she was balancing on the delicious moment before anything more happened, but in the absolute assurance that it would.
She traced the muscular curves of his arms and then rolled completely onto her side, facing him in the darkness.
He kissed her gently and then more forcefully.
‘You’re sure you want to?’ he asked.
‘You need to ask?’ She laughed and he stroked her neck, her breasts, her thighs, with the lightest touch and so, so tenderly. ‘I won’t break, you know,’ she said and could feel his smile.
‘I’ve recovered from what happened to me,’ she added. ‘Truly.’
After waiting so long she had expected the sex to be over swiftly, but it wasn’t.
There were interludes of almost unimaginable elation as they took their time, other moments when she felt tears on her cheeks and the heat coming off his body in waves.
She kissed his wrists, felt his pulse, and awed by the sensation of his heart on her lips she allowed him to engulf her.
She’d long wondered about how Jack would be and now she knew.
Immersed in him, her heart pounded so fast she thought it might break through her ribcage.
And it was thrilling. Beyond thrilling and Jack was everything she wanted him to be.
At breakfast they held hands under the table as the white tablecloth lifted gently in the breeze.
An orange butterfly had become trapped in a fold of the gauze curtains behind them.
As if caught in a dream she watched spellbound as Jack got up, cradled the butterfly in his hands and released it into the garden.
Gloria brought out a pot of coffee and home-made pastries as well as bread and local cheese.
‘I’ve forgotten the orange juice,’ she said.
Jack rose to his feet, but she waved him down.
Later they went for a walk across rocky scrubland above a deep valley, from where they could see caves built into the cliffs.
‘I think I’ll avoid caves for the time being.’
He laughed and drew her to him.
Further on they saw rolling woodlands and jagged hills.
‘We could go to Noto itself, if you like. Edward says the town is a maze of honey-coloured buildings. I thought it might be your sort of place.’
‘Are you meeting with Edward today? I mean for work.’
‘After lunch.’
‘Is this place his, or Gloria’s? I asked if she lived here all the time, but I don’t think she replied.’
‘She lives in New York, I believe, but spends part of the year here. She’s making quite a name for herself in the world of design, or she was before the war. This place is her latest project.’
While Jack met with Edward, Florence took a nap, or a riposo as she liked to call it now.
She spent an enchanted hour half awake, half asleep, hearing sounds but not engaging with them, just daydreaming happily as the world drifted by.
But then Hélène slipped into her mind as image after image of their lives in the Dordogne arose.
Compelled to re-examine every moment, she saw herself with her sisters climbing the hills before the early morning mist dissipated.
Saw herself staking out her beloved goats.
Saw herself swimming with Hélène, who’d always been like a mother to her.
Florence liked to think she was a good person but, oh God!
She loved Jack, truly loved him, and he loved her, but she loved her sister too and she worried about how Hélène would react when she knew.
The upsetting thoughts continued and the deeper she went into her own sense of failure, her own wrongdoing, the worse the violation of her relationship with her sister seemed.
By the late afternoon when Jack rejoined her, his beautiful green eyes looking so much more relaxed than they had been, she felt better for seeing him.
She knew she was shifting and growing and that meant confronting difficult things.
It would turn out all right with Hélène, she told herself.
In the end it would have to. This new changed relationship with Jack was still so fragile, and they were only just discovering each other – she didn’t want anything to spoil that.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘After last night.’
She smiled. ‘I’m very all right after last night, Jack, although I can’t help thinking about Hélène.’
‘She’ll be fine, Florence, I’m sure of it. She’s a good person.’
Florence nodded and hoped he was right.
‘Edward has decided to delay work on the palace in Lipari but has given me a contact in Malta who might, I don’t know, maybe need a hand with some of the restoration work there. They took a terrible battering during the Great Siege.’
‘Who’s the contact?’
‘Someone in a governmental department involved in the rebuilding. Apparently, the destruction there is worse than in Palermo.’
‘Hard to imagine, isn’t it?’
‘Makes me wonder, if Rosalie is even still there, how badly she may have been affected.’ Jack shook his head. ‘I mentioned before Malta’s strategic importance as a British Crown Colony.’
‘Yes, and how it suffered during the bombardment by air.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘What I’m trying to say is there’s a chance Rosalie may not even be alive.’
There was a moment’s silence as Florence considered this. ‘You might be right,’ she eventually said.
‘I really hope I’m not … By the way, changing the subject, Edward told me something about the house in Lipari.
You were right about the atmosphere. Apparently three generations of the family were slaughtered there.
A Mafia vendetta, he thinks. Few of the locals will go anywhere near the place. They believe it’s cursed.’
Florence could believe that. Given how she’d felt there, it made sense.
They sat quietly for a few moments and then the air in the room seemed to grow lighter.
‘There’s something else I’ve been waiting to say,’ he continued and took hold of her hand but then didn’t speak.
She smiled at the way he looked so uncertain and yet so earnest. ‘You can say anything you want to me, Jack. Anything.’
He avoided her eyes by glancing down. ‘The thing is …’
She tilted her head, waiting.
‘I’m not much good at this sort of thing, Florence, but I want to love without fear … and your absence from my life … Well, I couldn’t even contemplate it before, and when you were seeing Bruce, I … well … I wasn’t comfortable.’
She couldn’t help smiling at the way he described his feelings.
He looked up and searched her eyes. ‘All right, the truth is I was dying inside … I need you to understand, I mean really understand, that I am not trifling with you, Florence. That I will never trifle with you, and I don’t want to take advantage in any way—’
He gently stroked the hair from her brow. Then, as she began to speak, he put a finger to her lips before he kissed them.