Chapter 1 Rafaella #2
Outside, Gina was waiting for her on the pavement, and together they made their way back down to the harbour promenade.
Silvana’s atelier (as she had started to call it) and the cobbler’s were situated in a small building on the corner of Via Santa Marcellina, right at the junction where the coast road began to wind up the hill, north past the Giannellis’ trappito towards Marina di Andrano.
Most of the other village amenities were in the opposite direction, back down the hill and round the bend of the beach.
Gina’s family’s grocery sat on the corner plot of Borgo Pescatori – they could see the tomatoes being offloaded from the blue three-wheel Piaggio truck outside – but the barber, the chandlery and Tito’s Bar were further along, on a man-made island positioned between the coast road and the small lane that ran in front of Villa Agosto.
It was a constant gripe among the villagers that so much land was ‘lost’ to those grand, empty villas while the locals had to scratch for space in the heart of where they lived and worked.
They walked along the promenade, nodding and smiling at the familiar faces they passed.
There was scarcely a handkerchief’s worth of space along the entire stretch, but they could name everyone they saw – the anziani swimming sedately in the calm waters or standing half-immersed and motionless at the concrete steps; the toddlers splashing in the shallows and watched by their mothers, talking.
They passed their old schoolmates Donatella, Antonia and Clara lying out on towels and deepening their suntans.
‘Ciao, Gina. Ciao, Rafa.’
‘Ciao.’
They walked on a few steps before Gina knocked Rafaella’s hand. ‘You know Antonia did it with Enzo?’ she whispered.
‘No, she did not!’ Rafaella gasped.
‘Don’t look back!’ Gina hissed, catching her just as she was about to. ‘She did. Enzo told Fon, who told Luigi, who told me.’
Gina’s sources were always impeccable, and Rafaella felt a cold bullet of fear at the risk Antonia had taken.
The flirtations of their early girlhood were being replaced by more serious courtships; there was a sense of competition now among the girls speeding past on the back of a boy’s bike or sharing an ice cream on the harbour wall, as if finding a husband was a race and the good ones would soon be snapped up.
Gina herself attracted plenty of attention from the boys they knew; she had always been petite but now she was curvy too, her body as soft as her tongue was sharp, and it was apparently an intoxicating mix.
Rafaella didn’t have the same-size pool to fish in and was constantly being teased by her two brothers about all the ways she was ‘wrong’: she was too tall, they said, and her fledgling curves were like berries on a twig.
But Fon Giannelli didn’t seem to care. He looked at her as if she was Venus or Aphrodite, and she was grateful for that.
They walked under the shallow archway that tunnelled through low-lying cliffs to the other side of the headland.
The beachside caffè was set on the village’s ‘second’ beach – barely more than a rug of sand on the rocks – and only open during the summer holidays.
It was merely a wooden shack with some tables and chairs, but they sold coffee, affogato, gelato and granita to tourists coming back from the lido, the natural high-sided sea pools carved out of the basalt rocks further along.
Together the girls set about lifting the shutters and setting out the few small tables, casting squares of shade onto the sand with brightly striped umbrellas.
A family stopped within moments and Gina served them as Rafaella went round the back and pulled a block of ice from the freezer.
She began hacking at it with a pick, feeling sweat bead at her brow even in the shade.
‘Here,’ she said fifteen minutes later, emerging with a tub of crushed ice and setting it along the back counter – it was mirrored so they could see the goings-on behind them without having to turn around as they prepared the refreshments during busy periods.
Three of the five tables were already taken, the patrons burying their toes in the sand as they sipped coffee and watched the boats at sea.
The sailing yachts were still far out, but the shrimpers were on their way back in. Even from here, Rafaella could tell the different boats by the distinctive patching of their sails, their small outboards puttering in a low gurgle as they slowly returned to port.
She turned to clean out the refrigerator but the high whine of a motor caught her attention.
Looking back, she saw a sporty motorboat shoot past the headland in a sharp line before pulling hard left and beginning to turn figures of eight in the deeper waters beyond the harbour wall.
Its wake instantly set the shrimpers rocking on their approach into harbour, and shouts rose up like ravens’ cries.
‘Who is that?’ she squinted, stepping out onto the sand and shading her eyes to see better, but the figures on board were too distant to make out.
Gina gave a small tut. ‘Well, I heard Gina Lollobrigida’s dress fabric wasn’t all Dante brought back from Rome.’
‘He bought a speedboat?’ Rafaella asked in disbelief. ‘… But how? With what?’
In the winter, during harvest season, the Giannellis ran the port’s communal olive press – the trappito – on a plot of land at the tip of the headland just above the little caffè, atop the cliffs.
But in the summer months, like many of the other men, they were fishermen.
To have the money to spare for a speedboat, of all things …
‘Dante’s a film star now.’
‘He was an extra on a film set!’
‘Hollywood money,’ Gina shrugged. ‘Even the extras get rich.’ She sighed. ‘Who knows? Maybe he signed a contract while he was there.’
‘Oh, I think we’d have heard if that was the case,’ Rafaella groaned.
‘Well, it’s perfectly possible. I mean, with his looks …’
It was true Dante Giannelli had the kind of brooding Roman profile that the camera loved.
Perhaps if he were playing a character other than himself, Rafaella thought, he might be convincing as a romantic hero; but whereas his brother had tentatively wooed her for months, Dante was notorious for his hot passions and cool heart.
She could make out two silhouettes on board, bracing against the wind, their cheers whooping into the sky as the boat carved loops into the sea’s skin, and she knew Fon was out there with his brother. Dante was his idol, and he trotted after him like an eager puppy.
‘I hope he’s not going to do that all summer,’ she muttered.
‘Maybe if we play our cards right, he’ll take us out on it,’ Gina said with a coy wink.
Gina, so astute in every other way, had always had a blind spot for the handsome eldest Giannelli boy, but at twenty-three, he was five years their senior and well known for his love of fast women.
Hand-holding with teenagers didn’t cross his mind.
‘No thanks,’ Rafaella grinned, turning away at last and heading for the welcome shade of the caffè. Summer was only just heating up, but already her skin was nut-brown and her long, light brown hair was turning blonde around her face.
‘Hey, signorinas! Signorinas!’ a voice called imperiously, and Rafaella looked up to see a couple stalking over the sand towards them.
The sunlight bounced off their gleaming hair, the beach reflected in the lenses of their fashionable sunglasses.
The young woman was wearing a shockingly short, brightly swirled sundress, a far cry from the muted and demure cottons of the locals.
‘Romy?’ Gina gasped. ‘Cosi?’ She broke into a sprint as Romola did the same, and the two friends embraced so hard they almost fell over.
Rafaella, gathering herself, was only a few steps behind. ‘You’re here already?’ she asked, clutching Romola in disbelief. ‘We didn’t think you would come for another week! Your letter—’
‘I know,’ Romola laughed, throwing out her hands excitedly. ‘But for one thing, the city was too hot! It was impossible! I told Mamma I would surely die if we stayed another day. Didn’t I say that, Cosi?’
Cosimo drew level with his sister and grinned at them. ‘She did.’
‘Always the drama!’ Gina groaned. She looked Cosi up and down for a moment. ‘You got ugly,’ she said.
‘You got short.’
‘I’ve always been short, idiot,’ she laughed, punching him in the arm before allowing him to fold her into a hug.
Cosimo was only older than Romola by eleven months, so the four of them had always played together as children; they had grown up like siblings, or cousins perhaps, squabbling one minute and racing into the sea the next.
Only, as Rafaella reached up with a welcoming hug too, she detected restraint in his manner as his arms closed around her, a new tension in his usually languid body.
She felt the swell of muscles beneath his T-shirt, stubble against her cheek; there was little left of the boy she had grown up with in this man’s body.
She pulled away, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You look so different! … Both of you!’
‘Says you!’ Romola laughed. ‘I wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks from a distance! When did you grow so tall?’
‘Oh, stop! Papa says I am like a weed,’ Rafaella grimaced. At five foot nine, she stood almost a full head and shoulders above the other girls.
‘A sunflower, perhaps! You have become such a beauty. Isn’t she beautiful, Cosi?’ Cosimo gave a noncommittal nod as Romola cupped Rafaella’s cheek and tutted. ‘All the boys must be chasing you now.’
‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘They like Gina.’
‘They like Antonia!’ Gina corrected with a knowing wink. ‘And don’t listen to her – Fon circles her like a leopard! None of the other boys can get near her.’
‘… Fon Giannelli?’ Cosimo blurted. ‘Dante’s brother? The fisherman’s son?’
Rafaella felt herself taken aback by his tone. She had never known him to be a snob.