Chapter 4 Rafaella
Rafaella
Rafaella could tell the party was in full swing long before she began pulling on the squeaky brakes of her bike as she freewheeled down the hill.
Music echoed across the bay, shrieks of laughter carrying into the night sky like silver arrows aiming for the stars.
Her stomach was in knots as she pulled up, and she took a few deep breaths while she propped the bike against a wall.
Across the road, a few young men in suits – not from around here – were leaning on their scooters by the harbour wall; they were dragging on cigarettes and looking down onto the marina below. Were they some of Romy and Cosimo’s friends, invited to the party too?
She stepped around the stone gate piers and stopped short at the sight before her.
This party was invariably the highlight of the villagers’ calendar, but this year it somehow seemed more.
The garden, always beautiful, was lit like a wedding cake, the long drive strung with globe lights, and the number of guests had doubled from last year.
Automatically, she tugged on her cotton dress, trying to find another centimetre of length.
It was too plain, too short and too tight.
It wasn’t a party dress in the slightest, but she had nothing else to wear that fit, and she couldn’t fill out the curves in either Silvana’s or Gina’s dresses.
There had been no time, of course, for her sister to see her for a fitting today, all the village women having been commandeered for the party preparations.
Not that it mattered how she looked when Valentina Fabiani was here. Rafaella could be standing here nude and no one would notice.
She walked past the lemon trees, finding reassurance in the number of familiar smiling faces she passed, for there were many, many others she didn’t recognize.
Where had they all come from? Rome? That was almost a day’s drive away, but there were of course dozens of sumptuous villas nestled in grand estates on the hills around here, hidden by oak forests and olive groves.
‘Ciao, Rafa!’
She turned and saw Federico Franchetti waving to her.
He was dressed in an ivory silk evening jacket and chatting easily with a couple of the village men, who wore their best suits.
She recognized the rare look of abandon on her neighbours’ faces – for one night only, their troubles were eased.
They could eat and drink with an extravagance otherwise unknown to them – there would be no portioning the cheese or counting the tomatoes on each plate tonight.
‘Ciao, Fede,’ she smiled, waving back. He was Cosi’s older brother, twenty-two or thereabouts, but unlike Cosi, Fede was a rare bird to spot in the port.
Always studious, he wanted to be a lawyer and seemed to spend most of his time here preparing for exams. As such, she didn’t know him well, and her closeness with his brother and sister lay at odds with the polite formality of their relationship.
She knew manners dictated she go over and make conversation; she was an adult now, after all, not a little girl stealing chocolates from their kitchen.
But she felt overwhelmed by the extravagance on display, not to mention trepidatious about how this evening might unfold.
She didn’t know how to prepare herself for seeing Cosimo with Valentina Fabiani, and small talk was the last thing she wanted …
‘Hey, Rafa!’ Her name carried again, and this time she saw Gina standing by the round pool with some of the local crowd: Luigi, Gino, Antonia, Donatella. ‘Get over here!’ Gina yelled, beckoning her.
‘Yeah! Where’ve you been?’ Antonia called.
‘Oh …’ She hesitated as she looked back at Fede, caught between obligation and ease.
‘Go, I’ll catch up with you later,’ he smiled, seeing her quandary and not offended in the least as he turned back to his companions. He was a master of the art of mingling, able to talk with anyone.
She walked over to the others, grateful for the reprieve.
Countless beer bottles were lined along the rim of the pool wall, others toppled at their feet, and Rafaella could tell at once they were well on their way to being drunk.
The blue light from the water reflected up and rippled over their faces, making the whites of their eyes shine.
Rafaella looked into the water, remembering the afternoon’s escapades – only a few hours ago and yet a lifetime too, it felt – as Cosimo had dunked and thrown her into the depths, frolicking as if it was the old days.
But it had been only a glancing time-slip into the past for her.
She couldn’t pretend it was the same. They weren’t children anymore, and something fundamental had shifted between them.
Even last summer she wouldn’t have thought twice about their games, but now …
She could still feel the firmness of his hands on her body, the spread of his fingers on her waist, and the fear she had kindled all year had been confirmed: the innocence between them had gone.
She couldn’t go back to how it had been before, even if he could.
Gina handed her a beer. ‘Drink,’ she commanded. Luigi had his arm draped over her shoulder and kept brazenly staring down at her cleavage, which was set off to full effect tonight in her too-tight green dress.
‘Where’s Romola?’ Rafaella asked.
Gina irritably shrugged Luigi’s arm away. She seemed perpetually in flight from her boyfriend’s attentions, as if seduction by him was a terrible but inevitable fate. ‘Not down yet. No doubt stuck on hostessing duties with the starlet.’
‘But Fede’s over there—’
‘How come you’re so late, anyway?’ Antonia asked, looking at Rafaella’s dress with a pitying expression.
‘I lost track of time.’ She couldn’t tell them that she’d spent an hour sitting on the end of her bed, willing herself to move. To face what had to be faced tonight.
‘Lost track of time? Had better things to do, did you?’ Antonia laughed, swinging an arm around at the bedecked garden.
Rafaella looked at Gina. ‘Have I missed much?’
‘Not once you’ve got that down you.’ Gina playfully tipped the bottle up to Rafaella’s lips and she duly obliged, swallowing as much as she could until she began coughing.
‘Edo Carosa has already been sent home in disgrace for pissing on Apollo,’ Luigi laughed. ‘The duchessa looked like she was going to have a stroke.’
‘And they’ve run out of Cointreau,’ Gino added. ‘Which apparently is a nightmare …?’
The others groaned. Even nightmares were class-based. Theirs came as unexpected pregnancies they couldn’t afford, failed harvests, injuries that left them unable to work …
‘So, have you seen her?’ Rafaella asked them all, keeping her voice neutral.
‘Not yet. I think she’s waiting to make an entrance,’ Luigi said, taking a step back and craning his neck to look up the garden to where everyone else was standing.
The open, arched balconies that ran along the front of the pink villa were hidden from sight here by the deep cover of the lemon trees.
‘Or else she’s getting busy with Cosimo,’ Gino said with a smirk.
Rafaella looked away sharply. She couldn’t see the villa, but she could see through to the lawn where the food tables had been set up; the (now despoiled) statue of Apollo was moodily spotlit and, either side, twinkling chandeliers hung from the lowest branches of the two old stone-pine trees.
The nonnas, in their black dresses, were seated around a table with several bottles of red wine between them and they were all talking and gesticulating intently.
Nonna Giacosa was hitting bystanders on the legs with her stick whenever they strayed too close.
There were no hard boundaries between the Tricase residents and the Franchettis’ personal guests, but although they stood together Rafaella saw there was almost no mingling between the groups either, despite Fede’s lone efforts.
They were divided by a host of unspoken distinctions – manners in conversation, the etiquette of holding a glass.
Even the pitch of the visitors’ laughter was moderated to something appealing and unobtrusive.
Unlike the villagers in their muted cottons, the summer people were draped in extravagant colours, their dresses cut in liquid silks and gauzy, voluminous taffetas.
Jewels clung to their earlobes, throats, wrists and fingers; they wore their hair in chic chignons and updos like the ones Silvana pored over in her magazines.
Rafaella knew her sister would be in her element here among so many illustrious people, her magpie eye taking in the discreet haute-couture details of outfits made in Roman or Florentine ateliers.
This night alone would keep the villagers gossiping for at least a month, but all Rafaella saw was the vast breach between residents and incomers.
Us and them, she thought, knowing she was on the wrong side.
Knowing what it meant for her vain hopes.
‘Fon was here earlier,’ Gino said, catching her looking around the crowd. ‘But he had to help Dante with something.’