Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (75 page)

“Evidently she never forgot.”

“I remember I liked her very much.”

“So did I.”

And then I heard the story, piecemeal, it’s true, but at least the whole thing began to make sense to me. Mercedes Reynolds, who in fact had been christened Meredith (after the author) had, after leaving finishing school, taken the Grand Tour, ending up in Italy, where she had met and married an Italian gentleman of wealth and title, the Conte d’Albiensi, and never returned to the United States. Instead, she had changed the spelling of her name to Mercedes, had become enamored of her adopted country, had established a
salone
though bearing no children, and when the Conte died in the year 1949, had still not cared enough about the land of her birth to return. In short, the Contessa d’Albiensi, now dead, had become more Italian than the Italians … but had thought enough of at least one of her countrywomen to leave a sum of money to her.

Me, Barbara Loomis.

“Why?” I asked.

My parents looked at each other, and another chapter of the story emerged. Mother told it. “When your father and I went on our honeymoon, we stayed some of the time in Florence, and although we’d never met my Aunt Mercedes, we called her. Her villa is famous; everyone wanted to go there. I suppose I was showing off in front of your father. At any rate, we were invited, and spent a lovely two days at the Villa Paradiso. It was very beautiful, and we were so much in love. She took a fancy to us. Benevenute, her husband, a true nobleman and very handsome, liked us too. It was a memorable visit. Mercedes, in a spirit of what I thought was pure fun, said that if we named our first child Mercedes, she’d see that the child benefited. Well, of course we didn’t name you Mercedes. But somehow she must have remembered. And only three years later her husband died. It was timing … I suppose … anyone could see that she adored the Conte … and there’s so little family left, too. In the younger generation, just you, Barbara.”

“I don’t understand why I never heard this
interesting
story before,” I said, annoyed.

“It was long ago,” my father said, putting on his bifocals again. “You can’t remember everything you know.”

“
I
don’t want to forget things,” I said testily. “And now she’s left me money, whereas, if I’d known about all that, I could have met her. It seems unfair to her. And to me, if you want my opinion.”

“What’s fair?” my mother asked, turning away. “It was our life, Barbara. It belonged to us, and it’s our memory, don’t forget that. There will be memories of your own, and
your
children will look daggers at
you.
But just the same, it will have belonged only to you. So try to understand.”

“I’m sorry,” I said penitently. “It’s just that … well, having a total stranger leave me this kind of bequest … it touches me, makes me want to have known this lonely woman.”

“I don’t know why you say lonely,” my mother objected, and I wondered if it wasn’t a kind of guilt … all those years ago, on a joyous stretch of days, having been entertained by that woman, the Contessa d’Albiensi … and then forgetting.

“If she left money to someone she never even saw,” I said, “she must have been lonely. Otherwise — ”

My father crackled
The Times
, Mother fell to arranging flowers again. There was a quiet I tried to think of that woman’s life, her husband dead, far from her own kith and kin, in Italy, on an estate run by servants, with the evenings leaving her lonely and sad. I couldn’t help my resentment: I wanted to have known her.

“But then we all have our own lives to live,” I said brightly, and mercilessly. “No time to spare for those less fortunate.”

“My dear girl,” Mother said, her eyes dancing with anger, “my aunt Mercedes left you a few dollars and cents. Don’t you understand? She was worth a great deal of money. Ten thousand dollars? For a woman like that it’s a token amount. I don’t know why she did it, but I do know that it couldn’t have left much of a dent in her capital.”

She fingered baby’s breath. “Don’t bleed for her, silly girl. She had every creature comfort … and although your father and I live very well, we’re dependent on the fortunes of this country and, if you don’t realize it, the fortunes of this country, at the present moment, aren’t too sound. We have many worries. Lonely? She could have adopted a child. She didn’t need our child to leave money to. She could have — ”

Unaccountably, there were tears in my mother’s eyes. “Anyway, there was nothing I could have done,” she said, under her breath. “She was only a distant relative.”

“It’s all right,” I said uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to sound off. It’s just that … she left me the money, and it touches me, haunts me.”

“It haunts me too,” Mother said, looking vacantly out the window. “It makes me remember when I was young. A bride. Today, all that seems so long ago. Nobody wants to get old. It was such a happy time for us. Italy, and the villa. But it was years and years ago. So long ago … those bright, sunlit days.”

• • •

There were subsequent communications from Predella and Pineider. Apparently I wouldn’t receive any monies until the estate was probated. Yet the circumstances had captivated me. And lying awake one night, I made some plans. My vacation was due in September, for I always liked to take it late, and I decided, with some high degree of excitement, that I would vacation in Italy. It didn’t matter when I got my aunt’s money; on my salary I could swing the air fare, and as for accommodations, I could put up at a pensione, for very little, and have my meals there.

I was determined to see the villa where my benefactress had lived a good many years of her life. And as soon as I had decided that, I fell asleep, peaceful and purposeful.

I applied for my passport the very next day. I had never been abroad. I would buy Italian grammers and Italian guidebooks. Not the Hamptons this summer, not Cape Cod. Florence, instead. And a look at the Villa Paradise, where had lived the woman, my great-aunt, whose largesse had made me richer by ten thousand dollars.

I just wished she were still alive. I wished I could have met this American woman who had turned her back on her homeland and chosen to live, far from her own kind, in Italy, where, I had been told, the sun shone
all
of the time, and where my own mother and father had spent many golden days in the beginning of their relationship … days so lovely, with their mutual feeling for each other, that my great-aunt Mercedes had never forgotten the looks they gave each other, and had, in memory of those adoring glances, made me one of her heirs.

I arrived in Rome at eight o’clock in the morning, on the 19th of September. It was hot,
very
hot, in the crowded air terminal, but I was able to get a cab right away. I had booked into La Residenza, quite reasonable and anyway, it was only for overnight, since Florence was my destination. My room was not ready when I arrived at a little before nine, and I signed up for a city tour which took me to the Roman forum, St. Peter’s, Hadrian’s villa, and the Catacombs, and was back at the hotel just before the dinner hour. I dined across the street, at a ristorante called La Capriccio, and tumbled into bed at a little after ten. The Italian night, with its soft airs and sounds, was all around me, and I slept almost immediately.

Next morning I taxied, with my bags, to the Piazza della Repubblica, where I got my bus to Florence. There were some two dozen other passengers, mostly husbands and wives, and secretaries traveling together. I sat alone. I could have been in Florence in just under four hours, but this CIT tour had several historied stops and lunch in Perugia, which was why I had chosen it.

After a short stretch on a wide, modern autostrada, the bus left the main artery and wound through more scenic climes, entrancing country, verdant and colorful, fragrant, with flowers bursting out of the earth, stone houses and villas with siena-red, tiled roofs, tender valleys and purple hills. There were monasteries atop the hills, domed churches and cathedrals, campaniles cutting into the sky, ringing out the hours as the bus wound through the Tuscan landscape.

Spoleto, our first stop, was a charming, ancient little town that had become known for its annual music festival. We were given half an hour to stretch our legs, take snapshots and have coffee or a cold drink at one of the stands. There were postcards, of course, and venders selling trinkets, also some Italian children trying to get a few lira for hastily plucked field flowers that were already wilting in their sticky hands. I took a few snaps, bought one of the pathetic little bouquets and then heard a voice say at my shoulder, “Would you care for something? I’m thirsty, how about you?”

It was a youngish man I’d seen on the bus, traveling alone and sitting two rows ahead of mine. I had noticed him and I hadn’t been the only one. He was tall and good-looking and I had seen a few of the young female passengers eyeing him. I was flattered that he had singled me out, and said I was thirsty too and would love a lemon soda. We stood sipping from straws, exclaiming about how good it tasted; tart, icy-cold, it was most refreshing. And then we were herded back into the bus again, to continue on our way.

When we reached Perugia and disembarked to head for the Ristorante Papagallo, there was suddenly a light hand on my elbow. “Could we have lunch together?” the young man who had bought me the lemon soda asked.

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

When we were seated on the rooftop restaurant, with its bright garlands of flowers all about and a sumptuous view of the valley below, he introduced himself. “I’m Peter Fox,” he said. “From New York. Manhattan.”

“I’m Barbara Loomis and I’m from Manhattan too.”

He said he was staying in Florence for a few days; I said I was too. His hotel was The Grand, he told me and I said mine was The Continentale. We compared cameras, had a delicious lunch, made some small talk and were back in the bus again in an hour and a half. There was one more short stop, at Arezzo, before going on to Florence, where we arrived at a little before five o’clock.

One by one passengers were let off at their hotels; my friend Peter Fox, with a nod and a smile to me, left us at the Grand in the Piazza Ognissanti, quite a few people got out on the Lungarno Acciaioli, in front of the Berchielli. I was the next to leave, along with two others. The Hotel Continentale was very pleasant looking, situated at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio. “I’m Barbara Loomis,” I said to the man at the desk. “I reserved a single and bath.”

He consulted his bookings. “Ah yes. Did you have a good trip from Rome?”

“A beautiful trip, thanks.”

I surrendered my passport and was taken up to my room,
numero settantune.
It faced the Arno and the crowded approach to the Ponte Vecchio, and was very noisy, but I didn’t care. It offered a stunning view, with church spires, golden domes and soaring campaniles across the river. I sat at the window smoking and having a little nip from the flask of scotch I’d brought with me, until the bright gold of the day changed to a misty violet, sentimentalizing. So here I was, old Barbs, in the cradle of the Renaissance. I could smell the antiquity, and by closing my eyes could imagine that it was the fourteenth century, that when I opened them again I would see Michelangelo walking along the embankment below, perhaps arm in arm with the young da Vinci.

Hunger pangs brought me back to the present. I leafed through my guidebook; one of the recommended restaurants was the Buca Lapi, in the Via del Trebbio. It was not a long walk: Florerice was a smallish city and I had been given a very good map by the hotel. I had a good dry martini on the rocks and was studying the menu when I happened to look up. One “happens to look up” because, I have always thought, of certain vibrations, and when my gaze traveled across the room I saw him, Peter Fox. He was not alone now, but with someone else, a middle-aged man, and the two of them were deep in conversation. They were at the other end of the room, but now and then I caught a phrase or two and it was not in English, but in Italian. I distinctly heard Peter say,
“Quanto dista da qui?”
To which the reply was,
“Sei chilometri.”

I mentally translated. Peter had asked, “How far is it?” and his companion had answered, “Six kilometers.”

Languages come easily to me. Perhaps not German, but French, Italian and Spanish have overtones that strike my ear with a certain feeling of familiarity, and of course the Romance languages have much in common. If you knew Latin, it follows that the above tongues are not all that far afield. I listened, and after a while heard Peter say,
“Si, domani.”

Yes, tomorrow …

After that a large party of Americans came into the room, very voluble, and I couldn’t hear anything else for their loud talk and laughter. While I was still feasting on my entree, a delicious steak Florentin, a local specialty, the two men, having already finished their meal, rose and left. For a moment, as Peter’s eyes traveled incuriously around the room, I thought he had seen me, but obviously he had not. He threw down some lira for the waiter and soon vanished through the arched doorway.

I thought it rather a coincidence that we had chanced to take dinner at the same place and then tired, sated and ready for bed, I went back, through the charmingly lit Florentine streets, to my hotel. It took no effort to fall asleep; it had been a long day and, once in bed, pillowing my head on the downy mounds in their hand-embroidered cases, I was off in no time. It was only when the brilliant Florentine sun flooded the room that I opened my eyes. It was barely seven o’clock, but this was Italy, where the sun drenched the earliest hours. The blinding red of blood, dripping from a pierced heart, dazzled me from across the room; the framed picture of the throbbing heart of the crucified Christ, a little too realistic for my taste, stared at me. It was a Catholic country; they took their religion literally. It was somehow unsettling, and when my breakfast came up via room service, I turned my back to it so as to regain my appetite.

A pigeon whirred outside and, as I poured out my coffee, settled down onto the stone sill, cooing softly. And at nine o’clock, as the hands of my bedside clock turned, the hour bonged out from Giotto’s belltower. It was one of the loveliest things about Italy, the bells eternally signaling the passing of time: it gave me an almost sensual pleasure.