Chapter 16 Rafaella
Rafaella
Antonia, Donatella and Clara were already waiting for them by the time Rafaella and Gina walked round from the other side of the port. ‘We brought some refreshments,’ Antonia winked, revealing a bottle of Campari in her bag.
Gina looked delighted, but Rafaella still had a headache from the night before. She had drunk far too much beer by the fire and afterwards at the piazza.
‘See you later,’ Gina called to El Greco, who sat in his chair in the shade of his harbourmaster’s house. He waved back, making a note of their departure in his log.
They jumped aboard her father’s tiny red boat, Principessa – it was only big enough for puttering around the local coves – and Gina cast off the mooring rope as Rafaella put her hand to the tiller, guiding them carefully through the tight meander of the marina into open water.
They waved to the anziani, standing in the water for their pre-dinner dip, as they passed; there had been much for them to discuss today, picking over the mattanza and last night’s fight just as the ragazzi had done in the piazza.
(It seemed to Rafaella that people didn’t change with age; they just steeped into deeper versions of themselves.) There was a general sense that ancient, invisible lines had been crossed, as if tectonic plates were shifting and about to change their landscape for ever.
The breeze picked up as they headed south along the rocky coast, shallow cliffs rising above the water, jackdaws and rock pigeons nesting on the rocks.
Rafaella enjoyed the sensation of her hair being blown off her neck and she stretched gently, grateful for a chance to rest at last. It had been a long day on little sleep and she had been tempted to go straight home after her shift, but the girls all wanted to regroup after last night.
Donatella hadn’t been lying when she’d said they needed to talk about the boys, and Rafaella had been surprised to find Gina uncharacteristically tight-lipped all day about Dante’s goodnight kisses, insisting on waiting specifically to tell her now, with the others.
It was the first time Rafaella could recall Gina holding back from her. Was it an omen of things to come? A shift in the tectonic plates of their friendship?
They drank from the bottle Antonia shared around as they passed the numerous grottoes and caves that characterized this stretch of coastline, cutting a line past the narrow Canale del Rio, where some smart yachts were lying at anchor.
Marina Serra was only a short way further along, distinguished by two natural sea pools that sat behind a chasm in the front of the cliffs. Unlike the Tricase lido’s short and stubby plunge pools, here they were long, snaking channels and meandering canals.
Rafaella threw out the anchor at their usual spot, the chain rattling as it spooled out.
They were still in open water in front of the cliffs, only a narrow gap in the rock face revealing the cavity behind and the sea pools on the other side.
Visitors in passing yachts could easily glide past without ever knowing what they were missing.
The girls stripped down to their bikinis, passing around the bottle for a last gulp before diving into the azure water.
They laughed and carried on talking as soon as they surfaced, treading water or floating on their backs as they let the stresses of the day finally leave their bodies; they were all on their feet for twelve hours a day at their various jobs.
It felt good to be weightless for a while.
Rafaella dived down a few times to look at the fish; she had always loved swimming into the underwater caves and looking for octopus and starfish.
When they were little, she and Dado had trained themselves to hold their breath for as long as they could.
Her record was two minutes nine; his was two minutes forty-four.
She had never managed to beat him and, once he had grown tall, knew she never would.
‘Come on!’ Clara called, leading the way to the rocks. Rafaella hoisted herself up on the side of the boat, reaching for the diving knife and fastening the sheath to her right thigh before following after them.
By the time she stepped sideways through the crevice the others were already in the shallow pool, kicking their feet idly.
She was aware of their eyes running over her as she made her way through.
Her body didn’t look like theirs yet and she wasn’t sure it ever would, despite what her mother and Silvana said.
It seemed to her she took more after her father: lean and lanky.
‘Oh, that’s so nice,’ she groaned as, like the others, she lay back and let her legs float forward, planting her hands on the rock bed. The water was bathtub-warm.
‘That’s what you said to Fon last night,’ Donatella said in a teasing voice and with a wicked look. ‘You know, the noises you were making were almost inappropriate.’
Rafaella stiffened. They were? ‘I was drunk. I’d had too much to drink,’ she mumbled.
‘Yeah? How drunk exactly?’ Antonia leered.
‘… Not that drunk,’ Rafaella replied, knowing exactly what she was alluding to.
‘Ugh, who could have predicted that?’ Antonia rolled her eyes, immediately losing interest. ‘Gina? What happened with Dante after you left?’
‘And don’t say “nothing”!’ Clara cried, butting in. ‘He was claiming you last night! He wants you!’
Donatella kicked her feet excitedly in the water. ‘He’s so gorgeous!’
Gina looked back at them with shining eyes and a rare lack of guile, and it suddenly occurred to Rafaella – had her friend been deliberately holding back her joy all day because she knew Rafaella’s feelings about Dante?
She had never hidden her frank dislike of him, and she felt a frisson of anxiety in her stomach now as Gina leaned in conspiratorially to the other girls, ready to confide.
‘Well, we kissed …’
Clara squealed, clapping her hands over her mouth.
‘But we just kissed!’ Gina added hurriedly.
There was no ‘just’ about it; Rafaella knew this was the apogee of her best friend’s lifelong dream.
‘Tell us everything!’ Donatella gasped. ‘I’d give my right lung to kiss him just once!’
‘Well, you won’t have to,’ Gina crowed, pushing up her bosom provocatively. ‘I intend to make sure he never looks at another girl again!’
‘Is he good?’ Clara whispered. ‘Can you tell he’s experienced?’
Gina lowered her eyes, looking up at them all from beneath long lashes.
‘He knows exactly what to do.’ She gave a shudder as she pressed a hand to her heart.
‘When I think what I’ve been suffering with Luigi, jabbing his tongue into my mouth …
It’s been like kissing an electric eel! Whereas with Dante …
’ She closed her eyes, the rapture on her face leaving them in no doubt about how good it had been.
‘Now I understand what they mean when they say you melt into them.’
Rafaella thought the girls themselves were looking like half-melted gelati as they listened, limp and breathless. ‘But what about Luigi?’ she asked, the voice of reason.
‘What about him?’ Gina shrugged. ‘We’re over.’
‘But you’ve been going out with him for months.’
‘So? There’s no going back now. I just couldn’t! Dante has ruined me.’
All the girls, except Rafaella, groaned in chorus. ‘So you’re actually serious about seeing him again?’ she asked, trying to keep the alarm from her voice. Dante’s reputation with women was notorious. Couldn’t they see he was just going to use her?
A smile grew on Gina’s small mouth. For all her voluptuousness, she had the face of a doll, her chin coming to a small point, her bow lips falling in a natural pout. ‘He wants to see me again tomorrow.’
‘Not today?’ Antonia asked.
Gina’s smile faded as she picked up on a hidden jibe. ‘He couldn’t do today.’
‘Oh.’
‘What does oh mean?’ Gina asked tartly.
Rafaella flinched. The two girls’ friendship had always teetered on a knife-edge of contempt.
‘Well, it’s just I would have thought if he was really keen—’
‘He’s in Specchia all day. He won’t get back till late.’
‘That’s funny – what’s a fisherman doing in Specchia?’ Antonia puzzled. The large town was ten kilometres inland.
‘His father may be a fisherman, but that’s the very least of Dante’s enterprises now,’ Gina said indignantly.
‘Enterprises, eh?’ Donatella sounded impressed. ‘So he’s a businessman, is he?’
Gina kicked her legs, splashing water into their faces and moving the moment back into harmless teasing. ‘You know he is! You’re just jealous!’
They laughed. ‘Perhaps!’
Rafaella looked on uneasily.
‘So where’s he going to take you tomorrow?’ Clara asked, still hanging on every word.
‘He hasn’t said yet.’ Gina glanced at Rafaella. ‘But I need to be looking good for it. I was going to ask Silvana if she could take my green dress up an inch. It’s short, but not short enough.’
‘You want it done by tomorrow?’ Rafaella laughed. ‘Good luck! I’ve been waiting for my dress since spring and she’s still not done it! Nothing fits me.’
‘Don’t we know it,’ Antonia quipped with a roll of her eyes. ‘Why do you always dress like you’re that little girl in that book? What’s it called? The scandalous one?’
Lolita? Rafaella kept quiet, but swallowed at the intended dig. ‘… Silvana’s working all hours on her wedding dress, so that has to come first at the moment. She hasn’t had a chance to get to it yet.’
Antonia shrugged. ‘Whatever. Fon clearly likes it. He couldn’t handle a real woman, though.’ She struck a pose like a burlesque dancer, her breasts sticking up through the water like torpedoes.
‘So things are completely good between you two now, are they, Raf?’ Clara asked more diplomatically. ‘You’ve forgiven him?’
‘Yes. He made a mistake, but he’s very sorry about it.’
‘He’s a man!’ Donatella said with a ‘what can you do?’ tone, as if that explained it.
‘More than that – he’s a Giannelli!’ Antonia chimed in with a wink. ‘Strong urges.’
‘He’s growing more handsome by the day, too,’ Clara said. ‘Hey, Gina – soon he’ll be giving Dante a run for his money!’
‘Pah!’ Gina snorted, waving away the bold claim with a swat of her wrist. ‘Never! I’ve got the best Giannelli brother!’
‘Who wants to hear about my date?’ Antonia asked with a gleam in her eye.
Francesco Romano had turned up at the piazza shortly after them, joining the group at Dante’s insistence, and to everyone’s surprise she had taken up the offer of a ride back on his bike.
Like Dante, he was at least five years older.
He hadn’t grown up in the area, and although he worked for Rafaella’s father, she had only seen him a handful of times in the few years since he’d lived here.
Their conversation the other day in the olive grove had been the first time they’d actually spoken.
The others squealed in readiness for yet more scandal, but Rafaella felt the need to cool off. There was a competitive undercurrent to all this gossip that set her on edge.
‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ she said. ‘I’m going to look for some percebes to collect. I promised Mamma.’
The others didn’t care, already engrossed as Antonia went straight into graphic details; she hadn’t ‘just’ kissed her date, of course.
Rafaella swam away, slipping beneath the surface and feeling the water stream over her.
She could see the sunbeams falling in thick shafts through the shallows, warming her skin as she made her way through the channel.
The sun was hanging low now, like the ripest peach on a tree, and shadows were beginning to creep.
The pools were emptying out, the day’s stragglers walking up the steps cut into the cliffs and carrying their towels as they headed home for dinner. In another hour, it would be dark.
She rolled onto her back, drifting towards the end of the pool, which turned in a dog-leg, taking her out of sight of the girls.
She knew that at the inside corner, just past the bend, there was a tiny inlet – no more than a notch, really, but its sheltered position made it an ideal spot for the barnacles to cling onto.
She ducked under water again as she turned in, to get a better look at the amount of barnacles on the rocks.
They were thickly layered amid the kelp, and she reached for the diving knife strapped to her thigh.
There was enough here to harvest.
She went to surface, but as she looked up, she saw two pairs of feet – men’s feet – on the ledge. They were entwined, the water lapping up to their ankles.
Her eyes widened as she realized what was happening and, through the water, caught a glimpse of their faces.
Rafaella pushed away in alarm, turning under water and immediately swimming back into the main channel of the pool. By the time she broke the surface, she was panting, desperate for air as she tried to make sense not just of what she had seen –
But whom.