Authors: Roberta Latow
‘Do you know Eliza Flemming intends to marry a poor farmer? Actually the farmer who has been cutting our meadow for the last fifteen years.’
‘Yes, I had heard she was engaged to Vittorio Carducci. It has been rather a long engagement, a few years now. I suppose when they are finally ready they will get to the altar,’ answered Lady Fenchurch.
‘You know his name!’
A wry smile crossed the older woman’s lips. ‘Yes, I do. Everyone who has heard of his and Eliza’s love story does.’
‘Have you met him, Edwina?’
‘No, though I believe Michael has, several times when he has gone out on a shoot. Vittorio sometimes organises the beaters, if it’s that kind of shoot. I think he even hunted with him once. Yes, I remember now, Michael said he was a fine shot. I did know his wife.’
‘I had no idea he had been married?’
‘A tragic affair for all concerned.’
It was just then that Webster arrived followed by two maids, middle-aged and dressed in black uniforms with pretty white organza aprons. He stood to the side while they served Amanda with eggs poached on a
bed of spinach, in a
pancetta,
shallot, wild mushroom and cream sauce. Lady Edwina was served a plate of scrambled eggs.
‘I must confess that I am puzzled how a woman like Eliza can make such a lowly marriage. What might they have in common? How will they be able to share a life? Frankly, it disturbs me. I can’t imagine that she will go through with it. And the wife? A tragic affair? What happened there?’ pressed Amanda.
Edwina Fenchurch suddenly looked embarrassed, and in French, which she knew Amanda spoke fluently and the butler and two maids did not understand, told her, ‘My dear, not in front of the domestics. Later, if we must.’ Amanda noted a tone of annoyance in her voice. Why? she wondered. Over a peasant farmer and his wife?
The chance to speak again did not come until after breakfast when the Fenchurches were walking Amanda and Philip to their car. Amanda took Edwina by the arm and, walking her away from the men said, ‘Edwina, about Vittorio and the wife you knew – do briefly fill me in. I would so like to know. Vittorio has been nothing but the farmer who cut my meadows for all these years, and now suddenly he appears to be far more than that.’
‘On the contrary, Vittorio Carducci is and will never be more than that. That’s his power: being a handsome, unambitious man, content with his birthright. A farmer who has a love of the land and is prepared to eke out a living from it all his life. That’s what attracts the women that have fallen in love with him, some of whom have been destroyed by loving and wanting to change him. His wife was the most tragic example
of that. She never understood how strong he was. Amanda, your interest in all this surprises me, though I suppose you might just as well hear about her and poor Vittorio from me as from anyone else. It’s common knowledge in these parts, which was why I didn’t want to discuss it in front of the maids. You see, for the locals Vittorio Carducci is a rather romantic figure.’
It was at that moment that Philip called out for Amanda to hurry along, they were due a good distance away for lunch with more friends. Edwina Fenchurch smiled and started walking back to the car, Amanda placed a hand on her arm. The two women gazed into each other’s eyes, then Edwina slipped her arm through Amanda’s and called over her shoulder, ‘Just a few minutes, Philip, I want to show Amanda my white roses.’
‘Thank you, Edwina.’
‘What is this strong interest in Vittorio, Amanda? That’s blunt but I mean to be blunt. There is nothing there for you, my dear. I can assure you I am right about that.’
‘Edwina! No, no. It’s not him, it’s
them.
I’m repelled at the idea that a woman such as Eliza should give herself over to a marriage with all the limitations that this one will surely impose on her.’
Lady Edwina actually raised her eyebrows. She had never realised before how truly insensitive to real beauty and intolerant of pure love Amanda was. And as everyone else knew, there was real beauty in Eliza and Vittorio, it was that which people saw in each of them and were drawn to. Quite obviously Vittorio and Eliza’s story was a blow to the very foundations of Amanda’s own life and love. Now Edwina felt
compelled to tell her about Vittorio’s wife, something that should settle her curiosity and make her back off and leave Eliza and Vittorio to get on with their lives. It would not do to have another woman come between them once more.
Surely everyone can rise to a love story? she thought. Even a tragic one if it ultimately has a happy ending, as she dearly hoped this one would. She told Amanda, ‘Janine le Donneur had many lovers in her day but only one husband, a well-kept secret, and he was Vittorio Carducci.’
‘Le Donneur the writer! That brilliant, talented woman, sophisticated, beautiful, an intellectual, one of the extreme right-wing French writers? Oh, please, surely not?’
‘Surely yes, Amanda. I know the story because I knew her. My nephew married her sister. She had a house some ten miles from the Villa Montecatini. When Vittorio was sixteen he started doing odd jobs for her there. She was a difficult and very beautiful woman with a strong libido that she exercised with discretion. Tuscany was her hideaway where she liked to seclude herself for most of the year when she was writing. She took Vittorio on as a young and secret lover, despite or maybe because there was a large difference in their ages. They suited each other’s sexual needs, and for years it went on because where else would a poor Tuscan boy get sex without complications?
‘But she made the fatal mistake older women often make. When he wanted his freedom, she found he was already a part of her life. She refused to let him go. Janine was a devious woman. She had a
grand reputation to uphold in the literary world which she kept alive by never allowing her personal life to become public. She truly cared for and loved nothing but writing. But she held the one trump card that she knew would keep Vittorio in her life. He married her when, at the age of forty-two, she gave him a son. Then at forty-four, twin sons.
‘It was all a grave mistake. For her nothing was the same once the children were born. They infringed on her life with Vittorio and on her work. She deserted him when the twins were only a month old, kidnapped them actually and returned to France, never to return to Tuscany. She took a house in Grasse, and her children were brought up there by their grandmother. Janine closed the Tuscany house and divorced Vittorio, tricked him in fact, by declaring that she would give him back his sons if he did nothing to hinder a divorce and kept their marriage and their having children a secret. He believed her, to his detriment.’
‘She got her divorce and kept the children!’ exclaimed Amanda.
‘Exactly. Vittorio hadn’t the money nor was he clever enough to fight her. Eliza was his first love and he lost her, he lost the woman he never loved but married, he lost his children, then he lost his first-born in a tragic boating accident off St Tropez. As you and the rest of the world know, Janine le Donneur, when she died several years ago, burned all her personal papers except for a letter she left to her sons, telling them that Vittorio was their father.’
Amanda was at last silenced on the subject. Edwina Fenchurch took some satisfaction in that. She had known Eliza since she was a child and felt she had
that same sweet innocence and purity of heart she had always had, in sharp contrast to the more hardened Amanda, who, Edwina imagined, would never feel able to lay down her life for love – a state of mind that, for Eliza, was as natural as the sun rising every morning. Edwina slipped her arm through her guest’s and together they walked towards the men who were patiently waiting for them.
Off in the distance, a grey mist was climbing the hills. It was sure to be raining on their crest but no rain was falling this far away. It was dry and hot, and the Villa Montecatini was waiting for the sun to break through the clouds. A wind seemed to be blowing in from the north-west. Dark clouds were hanging low but bright light behind them etched an edge, a shimmering glow, around their voluptuous shapes. The threatened rain storm would blow itself away, the sun would not be long in coming to burn off the mist. In an hour’s time it would be all bright blue skies, the humidity would have vanished, and then the glory of all glories: a hot late-summer day in Tuscany.
Eliza was on the terrace waiting for Vittorio to bring the horses around, a pair of picnic baskets connected by a leather strap, waiting at her feet. These would soon be slung over her horse, Braganza. Today they were to ride across the Montecatini estate, to check out the vineyards and orchards, the olive groves and farm yards; to speak to the farm hands, ride into several villages and have a drink with the pickers who would soon be coming to the farm for the harvesting. Afterwards they would make the pilgrimage they tended to make every few months, to gather wild
flowers for the mausoleum where Dulcima Forrester lay interred with her ancestors on the small island in the lake. They would be home just before dark.
These visits round the estate were always happy and easy going, whether it was a good, just fair, or even a bad season for the farm. This was an abundantly good one. Vittorio and Eliza were close to the land and the people who worked on it with them. It was a profit-sharing enterprise between landowner, tenant farmer and the workforce that had been going on for ten generations. The Montecatini farm was unique in the area and the envy of less liberal and generous landowners. Over the years the system had worked for the Montecatinis, maybe not enough to make them rich but certainly to keep the estate going and self-sufficient. The local farming community gave a certain amount of respect to Vittorio Carducci since he and his family had for generations been running the farm, but in the few years since Eliza’s return she had become equally important in their lives for the work she had done in the Health Service and as a local magistrate, and not least because she was a Montecatini, half-Italian and mistress of the farm and the villa. Everyone waited in hope that the promised wedding between the farmer and the magistrate would finally come off.
Eliza heard the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves before she saw Vittorio come into view, riding his horse and leading hers. This morning she was riding the Arabian mare that Antonio had bought her years before in Egypt. A month after her return to Tuscany the horse had arrived with a note signed by him and Anwar. It merely said, ‘Lest you forget.’
Eliza mounted Braganza after handing Vittorio the picnic basket and together they rode down a bridle path along the edge of the garden then struck out alongside a field blue with flowering flax.
They had made several stops and had had talks with the field hands and the dairy man, had coffee with a half dozen people who ran the dairy and the cheese house. Over glasses of wine and slabs of fresh buffalo mozzarella laid on chunks of rough granary bread, they listened to the cheese man’s idea to expand their output. Eliza was quite stunned at the difference in her earnings over the last few years, which had all been poured into saving the roof and buying equipment for the farm.
Once mounted again on Braganza, riding next to Vittorio, she told him, ‘The farm is so much better and more prosperous than when we were children, and I know it’s all due to you. We owe you so much, Vittorio. Father always said, “Leave it to the Carduccis and we will always have the Villa Montecatini.” And he was never wrong.’
‘In the last of your mother’s years here she always told me, “Vittorio, save the Villa Montecatini for Eliza. She’ll be back, and when she is, together you will keep it always safe for our families.” ’
‘Vittorio! You’ve never told me that before.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
They rode in silence for some distance before Eliza spoke again. ‘Have you noticed, Vittorio, in the last year the family has been drifting in and out of the house again, as in the old days when we were children? The cast of characters may have changed but they come in and out in a celebration of life and Tuscany. Effie,
Constanza, Clara, Dendra … sometimes just their children. Then there’s Samantha and her father, and now Olivia is asking when she can come with some of her friends. And I’m so thrilled that your two boys have taken to coming over, wanting to stay with us rather than in the house Janine left them. I know how much having them back means to you. The house is full of the lives and comings and goings of family, yours and mine. It’s what we’ve wanted ever since we’ve been together.’
‘We’ve all come a long way. But maybe not so far, if you know what I mean?’
‘Well, I think I do, darling.’
‘Have you noticed that no one asks any longer when we’re going to marry?’ he asked Eliza.
‘Yes, I have actually. It sometimes bothers me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think they assume we will not marry. I would hate to think we were becoming a joke with this long engagement.’
Vittorio began to laugh. ‘Are you proposing to me again, Eliza?’
‘Yes, dammit, I believe I am.’
He laughed even louder and looked very happy. ‘Name the date!’ he told her.
‘You do mean it? We said we would wait to marry until we were certain we could live with each other, accept our differences, the years and the other lives we have lived without each other. Is that time really over? You’re sure about this? You won’t leave me at the altar?’
He pulled up his horse and leaned over to take the reins of Eliza’s from her hands. She smiled but there
were tears in her eyes. Vittorio dismounted and led the two horses out of the sun and under a huge old apple tree, laden with ripening fruit tinged red. There he tied the horses to a bough and, taking Eliza by the hands, helped her to dismount from Braganza.
Vittorio removed the wide-brimmed straw hat from her hair. He pulled the tortoiseshell hairpins from the French twist at the nape of her neck and tossed them into the grass. Tears began running from Eliza’s eyes. He licked them away with the tip of his tongue as he unbuttoned the white silk shirt she was wearing and pulled its tails out from under the waistband of her riding breeches. He caressed her breasts and licked the beads of perspiration from between them. Then he moved his lips from her breasts to her mouth and kissed her passionately. Finally he told her in a voice husky with emotion, ‘I’ve waited since you were seven years old to commit myself to you in love and before God. Why would I leave you at the altar?’