Chapter 64 Elisa
Elisa
We closed the fair on a high note. I’m satisfied with the impression we made; we got orders. With all that in mind, I’m happy to stay another week in London.
Too bad I don’t see Michael as much as I’d like.
He works a lot, leaving at dawn and returning late at night; I spend my days basically alone.
He often comes home so tired that we end up staying in, like yesterday, when we were supposed to go to see Mamma Mia!
in Soho, but I ended up going alone to the early show.
Then I surprised him in the office with a takeaway lunch to eat with him.
He was happy to see me, but we had to scarf down the food because he barely had any time between his meetings.
He told me he almost never eats lunch, just a quick snack if he’s really hungry. I found it sad—not to mention unhealthy—but Michael doesn’t seem to give it a second thought.
I spent the rest of my time visiting all the museums, buying the usual souvenirs for Linda, Mamma, Donatella, and Giada; strolling around Hyde Park, which is a few minutes from Michael’s house; and doing little else.
It’s all beautiful, but I only enjoyed it half as much on my own.
When I tell Michael I’ve run out of ideas, he gives me his gym membership card, suggesting I indulge in a day of relaxation instead of trying to find more activities.
Maybe I need it, because I keep thinking about home, about Linda, about the vineyard, and I need to turn off my brain for a while; spending an entire afternoon in a place where cell phones are prohibited could be the cure.
Right now, in fact, I’m leaving the sauna feeling pleasantly relaxed, after half an hour of swimming against a current and a reactivating massage.
Wrapped in a terrycloth bathrobe, I head to the Zen bar with heated loungers and herbal teas.
“May I have an orange cinnamon herbal tea, please?” I ask the girl behind the counter, who is the image of serenity.
“Elisa?!” exclaims a woman sitting on the stool to my right with dismay.
It takes me a few seconds to register her face. “Caroline?” It’s Bingley’s sister.
“Imagine seeing you here! What are you doing in London?” she asks, continuing the conversation in English. She’s here, it’s her house, her rules, though even in Tuscany, the few times she showed up, she always avoided speaking Italian, which she knows perfectly well.
I adapt and respond in English too. “I was at the London Wine Fair and . . .”
“This is Sophia Skyper-Kensitt and Julia Bromley,” she interrupts me, uninterested in my answer, introducing me to the two women next to her, who are focused on their celery and carrots with hummus. “Girls, this is Elisa Benetti.”
“Ah, the peasant girl!” exclaims the woman with curly hair—I don’t know if it’s Sophia or Julia.
“Yes,” I reply, getting excited, because I couldn’t help but notice she’d used the word peasant, which I think of as a farmer who works other people’s land—so at least she’s being accurate, given that the estate belongs to the Bingleys—even though the word also has a negative connotation, and I have the feeling, given her tone, that’s more how she meant it. “I make wine.”
“We know,” replies the other, who is thin with platinum-blond hair styled to perfection. “Caroline told us about you.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“Oh, so many things,” she replies, giving her blond friend a strange smile. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted to hear them.
“Anyway, it’s a surprise to see you here,” comments Caroline with the acrimony that’s come to define her. “It’s a very exclusive place.”
“Do you think I can’t afford an exclusive place?” I ask, stirring sugar into the tea.
“Oh no. Except that there’s a months-long waitlist.”
“I’m Michael’s guest,” I say, sparking immediate interest.
“Michael?!” Sophia and Julia exclaim in chorus. “Michael D’Arcy?!”
“Yeah,” I confirm.
“Oh.” Caroline’s expression hardens. “How did that come about?”
“I’m staying with him for a week, and he wanted me to have a relaxing afternoon,” I reply without going into details.
“At his apartment?!” the other two repeat in unison, amazed.
“Michael is always so generous when it comes to helping the less fortunate,” Caroline continues with her digs. “Decent hotels are quite . . . expensive.”
“If I can give you some veteran advice,” the curly-haired girl interjects, “sleep with one eye open. No doubt Michael will try to seduce you. When a living female being enters his orbit, he can’t resist. He may be good in bed, but he doesn’t deserve a woman wasting her time on him.”
“And you’ve already wasted a lot,” her friend chuckles to her.
The curly-haired woman, however, doesn’t take it well. “Not as much as you have,” she replies to her through gritted teeth.
“And don’t unpack your suitcases,” adds the other. “Once he’s gotten his fix, he’ll ask you to leave him in peace. No woman has ever lasted more than forty-eight hours. I hold the record of forty and only because it was over Christmas!”
“Pay no attention to them,” Caroline tells me in a fake friendly tone. “It’s just the way he is . . . it’s easier to list the women he hasn’t slept with yet.”
“Like you, for example,” I reply, taking a sip of herbal tea.
In a fit of morbid curiosity, a few evenings ago, I asked him if there had ever been anything between him and Caroline Bingley.
After all, they lived under the same roof until they were adults, and I had my suspicions.
Suspicions that he dispelled: “I’d rather die. ”
Her two friends burst out laughing, and she glares at them.
My composure evaporates. “Girls, it was a pleasure chatting with you, but I have to go. I really needed a relaxing afternoon after ten days of nonstop sex with Michael. You’re right, he’s really good in bed, and I needed this little rest. Ah, for the record: I don’t fall into his orbit, so maybe that’s why he’s still interested in me.
And if I ever do leave, it won’t be because he’s shown me the door. ”
They stare at me in silence, their mouths agape.
“I am a farmer, and you might want to thank people like me because otherwise you’d have to pick those carrots and celery yourselves . . . but then, at least then you’d have a way to spend your miserable days.”
And having given them the answer they deserved, I get up to leave with an unpleasant sensation of unease, as if I were in the wrong place.
“How many of your exes will I meet this evening?” I ask Michael in the car on our way to his friends’ house for dinner.
“Where did that come from?”
“I saw Caroline Bingley with her friends Julia and Sophia this afternoon at the spa, and it turns out they’ve both slept with you.”
“That was back in school. Water under the bridge,” he replies. “But knowing them, they probably invented things on purpose to make you jealous.”
“I’m not jealous; it just seems that in London there’s a new conquest of yours around every bend. I want to know if I need to prepare myself tonight.”
“No danger. I’ve never slept with any of my friends’ girlfriends. You can enjoy dinner without fear of treason.”
“I don’t know if I’m cut out to interact with your acquaintances,” I admit with a tightening in my stomach that makes me want to do anything but eat.
“These guys are all really easy, no snobs.” He takes advantage of the red light to kiss me. “Everyone will like you.”
When a little later we knock on the door of an apartment in a very chic building overlooking the Thames, my heart pounds with anxiety.
Sebastian, whom I already met at the fair, opens the door, and he and Michael greet each other in a sequence of gestures only brothers would know.
“Come in! You’re the last to arrive, and we’re all starving. It’s so nice see you again, Elisa,” he greets me warmly, inviting me to give him my coat. “Come on, I’ll introduce you around.”
The guests are having an aperitif on the living room sofas.
“Hey everyone, let me introduce you to Elisa,” announces Michael.
“And behave yourselves. Elisa, this is Duke and Allegra. And this is Jemma and Ashford, the craziest duke and duchess the United Kingdom has ever seen, and Charlotte is Sebastian’s girlfriend. Where are Harring and Cécile?”
“Meeting their wedding planner,” Duke replies, pretending to put a gun to his head.
“I’m not great with names, but to make it up to you I brought some wine,” I say, gesturing toward the case Michael is holding. “I make it myself at Charles’s estate in Tuscany.”
“Ah, how beautiful!” Allegra exclaims, applauding. “I’d love to try it. Sebastian was just telling us how delicious it was.”
“I’m sure he was just being kind.”
“Who, him?” his girlfriend giggles. “He finds something terrible to say about everything. If he speaks well about something, you know he’s being sincere. And not only that, last week we had a journalist over for dinner from Wine Spectator, who went crazy when she tasted your Chianti Riserva.”
Okay, that explains a lot. I have Foliero to thank for thinking so fast.
We take our seats at the table, and, to my great relief, dinner is filled with casual chatter, laughter, and good humor.
The boys entertain us with tragicomic anecdotes from university, then Jemma takes center stage with the story of her and Ashford’s wedding, a strange tale involving his hallucinating mother, a peyote cake, and the queen.
They ask me about myself and my work and are interested in the answers, although after a few too many drinks, I’m no longer so sure I’m expressing myself in proper English.
After we eat, the boys compete at pinball, and I stay with the girls, picking at dessert leftovers around the kitchen island.
“So you’re trying to buy Charles’s estate in Tuscany?” Jemma asks me.
“Yes, but the bank is still in the process of approving the loan . . .”
“Do you have any photos with you?” Allegra asks me. “I don’t mean to be intrusive, but I work in luxury real estate, and this is exactly the kind of property we deal with. We actually manage a Renaissance palace right outside Florence.”
I open the gallery on my phone and show her the images. “Here it is.”
“How wonderful!” all three exclaim, gathered around a photo of a golden sunset over the vineyard.
“I know, that’s why I don’t want it to become a golf club,” I comment bitterly. “No offense, if any of you play golf.”
“I play tennis,” replies Allegra.
“I am a champion of skipping . . . the gym,” Charlotte intervenes.
“I argue with my mother-in-law,” says Jemma. “That burns a lot of calories.”
“You said that, in addition to the winery, you want to transform the villa into a farmhouse, right?”
“Yes, but high end,” I specify. “It is a seventeenth-century villa, after all. Too bad it costs a fortune.”
“I could manage the project,” Charlotte says, perking up as if she’d received an electric shock.
“You?”
“I develop hotels for the Bloom Group, and I specialize in restorations. The company also has a foundation for the protection of cultural heritage, and I could include the villa project among my pro bono commitments. You’ll still have to pay for the work itself, but I can manage the project and the construction site without any issues. ”
“Seriously? Are you sure?”
“And I can give you a cost-benefit plan,” adds Allegra.
“I was a make-up artist,” Jemma chimes in. “But I can promote you. Aristocratic guests are great for marketing . . . In fact, I’ll start right away.” She takes my cell phone and sends herself the photos.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sending them to my best friend. Cécile and Harring are getting married next year, and they haven’t chosen a venue yet.”
“Are you saying they should get married at Le Giuggiole?” Maybe I didn’t quite understand her.
“Of course!”
“But . . .” I want to stop her, but I don’t know how.
“No buts.”
“Forget it,” Allegra convinces me. “When Jemma gets an idea in her head, there’s no stopping her.”
“Well, thank you,” I say, moved. “I don’t know how to reciprocate.”
“Give me these, and we’ll be even,” Jemma says, seizing the two surviving bottles. “I’m having guests for dinner and want to make a good impression on them. May I?”
“Certainly! I’m not taking them home.” It seems like the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude. “Tell me, do you often meet for dinner?” I ask hopefully.
Allegra shrugs. “We try to manage a couple of times a year. We’re always on the move for work, and Jemma has a baby . . . it’s a mess to schedule.”
Vanishing hope. “This afternoon I had an unpleasant run-in with Michael’s bitter exes, and I wasn’t really in the mood to go out. But tonight is the first time I’ve really felt at ease.”
“Girls!” exclaims Charlotte. “Raise your hand if you’ve had problems with your husband’s exes.”
All three shoot their hands into the air.
“As you can see,” Allegra concludes, pouring me some wine, “you’re in good company.”