Authors: Roberta Latow
Philip Markham had had a glorious day alone at home. After seeing Amanda to the car, he had returned to the house to make several calls and then lock himself away in his library to work on his book on Goya. Left in London were his secretary and researcher, and his hectic life as an art dealer of some renown. He was a man who loved his life and his work and the woman he lived with, whom he considered to be his partner in life. Philip was handsome and erudite, from the English aristocracy. He was an important name in the international art market, entertaining and being entertained by a côterie of interesting people, most of whom were fabulously wealthy or representing museums that were heavily endowed financially.
As Amanda had driven away from the house, yet again Philip marvelled at how well suited to each other in love and their social and business lives they were. Though he liked to be flirtatious with the many women who chased after him, he had always been
faithful to Amanda. She had met him, gone after him, entrapped him first with sex and then with her ability to give him all the freedom he needed to get on with whatever he wanted from life. More importantly, she was clever enough to hold him fast with sex, and keep him interested by her own business successes, capabilities and charm. She never intruded on him with the mundane, protected him from the common facts of life. He loved her for that and for not exposing him to those things about herself that might interfere with their stylish relationship. They did rather dwell on, were even a little smug about being the perfect couple whose standards never slipped.
They were one of those couples that were whole and complete as much when they were apart as when they were together; that was their strength. The edge to their relationship was that they never totally surrendered themselves to each other, even in sex which was when they came the closest. They were a couple who did not die for one another but instead hung on for dear life. That, and knowing their limitations and living at ease with them, rather than talking or doing anything about them, was the way of life they liked, were
comfortable
with. They never even contemplated the possibility of living without the guidelines they had set themselves for love and the good life.
Philip walked through the gardens to the kitchen where the remnants of breakfast were still on the table. He asked Maria for another cup of coffee and sat down to pick at the remaining paper thin slices of Parma ham which he rolled around a sliver of corn bread and popped into his mouth. Having seen the housekeeper had already poured a cup for herself,
he invited her to sit at the table with him. Maria accepted, always enjoying the rare times she and Philip had a moment to talk. She was a little dazzled by his good looks, by what an important man he was, how good as employers he and Amanda were to those who worked for them. His Italian was excellent, much better than Amanda’s, and that and his charm made their rare and brief conversations something special for the housekeeper. They chatted amicably for about ten minutes and Philip left her to go to the library where he told her he did not expect to be disturbed.
It was too glorious a morning to miss and so, instead of walking through the house to the library, a room he was extremely proud of, he chose to walk from the kitchen into the garden around the house and through the front door. He was as always distracted from thoughts of work when he gazed across the distant hills and down to the valley below. In the landscape, the Tuscan cypresses reaching for the sky, so proud, so very pure and romantic, touched the heart, tweaked the soul. There was something sinuous in these flame-shapes that always suggested to Philip they had done away with time. They undulated gently and played in the slightest of breezes. It always seemed to him as if they held secrets and kept them.
He raised a pair of binoculars that had been lying on a table on the terrace to his eyes and scanned the area, giving himself a panoramic view. Riding just below a grove of cypresses as much as a mile away he saw the pale rider, careering her white stallion along a ridge. She and her horse were a glorious sight. The horse was high-stepping, nimble, proud. And the rider? She and her horse were as if part of the landscape, like the earth
and the sun, the moon and the stars. Like the cypresses, she held her secrets and thrived.
Philip placed the binoculars back on the table. Without them, Eliza and the white stallion were no more than a moving white dot on the hills. He was somehow relieved that Amanda was not here to see her pale rider. There was something about Eliza Flemming and the way she rode the Tuscan hills on her white stallion that was attractive and yet disturbing to Amanda. Even more so now that she had had tea with her and learned that Eliza was to marry the farmer, Vittorio.
Philip had deduced that Amanda was besotted with the idea of Eliza Flemming and her farmer as great lovers, the Abelard and Heloise of Tuscany. He would have liked to think of this as romantic tosh, but like Amanda he couldn’t. Philip was no fool; he understood that to sacrifice all for love was a noble premise for a farmer and his upper-class English lady, for many others too, but he knew it was a dangerous prospect for those like Amanda and he who were incapable of such sacrifice. In fact, he considered it somehow obscene that any one could consider dying, giving one’s life up to death, for love or sexual satisfaction. A momentary death, that split second of pure bliss in orgasm, well, that was a very different thing. The farmer and his lady posed a threat to Amanda and Philip; the odd couple’s relationship was based on love alone according to what he had heard. But Philip told himself, You never miss what you have never tasted, and dismissed the couple from his mind.
It was late-afternoon when Amanda returned home and found him having a siesta in their bedroom. She
very quietly peeled off her clothes, bathed and lay down naked next to him. She fell asleep. This time her sleep was dreamless but when she awakened it was Vittorio who was on her mind, not Philip or Eliza. She lay there thinking of what it must be like to be made love to by this rough and handsome, near-illiterate man, what pleasure Eliza must derive from being riven by him. She became quite excited as her imagination took flight. She rolled on to her side and then slipped on top of Philip. He had not been asleep but lying there for a long time with his eyes closed, thinking what a lucky man Farmer Carducci was.
Eliza was dead-heading the wildly overgrown wild rose bushes on the drive some distance from, but still in sight of, the main gates to the Villa Montecatini. It was close to eight o’clock in the evening and the sun was overshadowed by dusk, rushing to slay the day and meet the night. A pearly mist would soon be settling on the hills. The birds were singing now that the fierce heat of the day had passed. Eliza’s long blonde hair was held back off her face in a single plait and on her head she wore a battered old straw hat, the same one Dulcima used to wear when she was gardening.
She heard the rattle of the huge iron gate and looked down the drive to see Vittorio waving goodbye to someone as he slipped through and closed it behind him. Eliza watched him walking up the centre of the long drive, bending down occasionally to retrieve a broken branch or an over-large stone, and toss it into the bushes. With his toe, he scuffed gravel and dirt into a pot hole. Always the farmer. How he loved this land, his Tuscany, the farm and the villa and its grounds. It
occurred to Eliza that he was as born to it as she was, only in different circumstances.
He had not as yet seen her lost among the rose bushes just behind a cypress tree, but would eventually because she was quite visible. It gave her the opportunity to look at him. It seemed so young and foolish, childish, even that she should not be able to get enough of looking at him. But that was indeed the case. He was as much a part of her life as her own flesh and blood. She emerged from the shadows of the rose bush to make herself more visible, placed her basket on the ground, and sat down on the small wood and canvas folding seat she carried with her when she gardened, just as her mother used to do. It was an artist’s seat left here by Edward Lear who had been a long-time guest in the villa in the last century. That triggered an idea. There was a portfolio of a dozen or more Lear water-colours: San Miniato al Monte, Villa San Firenze, the Villa Montecatini, from many angles, and gorgeous landscapes of the surrounding area. She would give them to Vittorio as a wedding present. When they could afford it she would have them framed for him, to be hung in the summerhouse near the lake. It had always been one of their favourite hiding places when they had been young.
Vittorio was still some distance away when he saw her. He cupped his hands around his mouth to form a megaphone of sorts and called out, ‘Buona sera, Eliza,’ then waved his arms, a smile of pure joy crossing his face.
She called back and watched him continue up the drive. Her mind flashed back to the first day of her return from Egypt to Italy and the villa, when
she
had walked up the drive after an absence of more than two decades. She had taken the bus from Pisa to Lucca and a taxi from there through the countryside to the villa, overwhelmed with emotion for the sheer love she felt on seeing Tuscany again. All those years when it and her home and family life there had been lost; when husbands and children, her own weakness, other priorities, had taken over her life and kept her away. It was she who pushed open the gate for the taxi and then gave the driver directions to the front door of the villa where he might leave the one small case she had travelled with. And then Eliza had walked, as Vittorio was walking now, alone up the drive, clearing it as she went, just as he was doing now, for her first time as the owner of her beloved Villa Montecatini.
The peace and contentment, the happiness that she and the family had always known there, had flooded back to Eliza, enveloping her. Though tired and in need of rest from her years of work and life in Upper Egypt, she had felt strong in herself and her heart and full of energy to begin again. The taxi had been on its way back from the villa, kicking up dust on the drive, speeding towards the still-open gate, when the driver screeched to a halt next to Eliza to tell her that there was a welcome party on their way down the drive to meet her. She changed pace and was walking swiftly up the drive, practically at a run, when a band of people waving and calling out her name came into view, the house in its dilapidated glory visible behind them.
She had told them nothing in her cable except the day of her arrival and that she was coming home at last and for ever. The staff and farm workers, whom she had known since she was a child and most of whom had
lived there all their life, were in some cases now very old or just old, their children with whom she had grown up there with
their
children. Tears sparkled in their eyes. Affection for Eliza showed in their faces, and hugs and kisses bade her welcome home. Among them, lingering in the background to this brilliant reunion, had been Vittorio. They had gazed into each other’s eyes and the years of separation, all that had passed for a life without each other, was there to be read in them – read and to be respected, certainly not denied. Suddenly that long period of time when Eliza thought she could not return to the villa was over. She had paid the price for not following her heart, paid for both of them. When she had walked into his arms and they had hugged each other, Eliza was a woman free from guilt and Vittorio had forgiven her.
Those first months after her return were months of convalescence, to restore her health. Eliza had not realised just how exhausted she was, and though rest and good food and the clean, clear Tuscan air put her back into peak condition, it did take time. She gradually eased herself into being the mistress of the house and assuming once more a life where she had once been happy. It had been in those months too that Eliza and Vittorio very slowly welcomed each other into their respective lives. She had had much to learn about the estate, not only how it was worked to yield the best from it but how it worked financially, and Vittorio was always at her side to teach her. It was in those months that they got to know each other again by talking about the lives that they had led since that fateful day he had seen her in John’s flat in London.
Eliza had been ruthlessly honest about herself and
her marriages, her children, her years in Egypt. She portrayed those periods of her life exactly as they had been, flaws and all. Vittorio had been no less honest, and the contrast between their two lives could not have been greater. Here were two people, so different in every way, who had lived such different lives. What hope was there for them to come together? Was it possible to build a bridge across the chasm that separated them? It was, of course, there always had been one: the profound and deep love they had for each other. There were, during those first few months after Eliza’s return, a few people around them who understood that, but for most people then and even more so now, years later, the alliance was inexplicable. Amanda Dix was a case in point. She could see no link and believed that any liaison between them could only be seen as a disaster in the making.
Eliza began to laugh and at the same time feel sorry for Amanda. Vittorio was now about two hundred yards away from her, picking cream-coloured roses off a bush. She watched him gather sprigs of laurel and several white wild iris. He was forming a bouquet for her. He bent down and picked some long green grass and used it to tie the flowers together so they might remain in a bunch.
As she gazed down the road at her lover, Eliza marvelled at how little Vittorio’s looks had changed. She saw him still as a young man though he was middle-aged now and had some grey streaks in his hair. As he walked towards her, his offering in his hand, once more clearing twigs and stones from the drive, she was reminded of the several months that had passed before they committed themselves to a sexual life together.
Wherever they had gone there had always been women interested in Vittorio, most especially the foreign women living in and around the area. It was true there was a raw sexuality about him. He was like a tom cat always in heat, or at least that was the way he looked. And that kind of sexuality and the pride with which he walked, did rather label him. After his and Eliza’s first sexual encounter, it had rather labelled her as well, for they found it impossible to keep their sensual delight in each other to themselves. They glowed with it.