The House in Amalfi (13 page)

“Ah, but I must introduce myself properly,” he said. “I am Nico Pirata.”

“Oh!” Jammy said. “The skull and crossbones—the Marquis de Sade . . .”

Nico smiled, but his eyes were still on me. “Unfortunately, all I can lay claim to is a pirate ancestor.”

I looked down at my glass, then up again at him through my lashes. Oh my God, I thought, I’m actually
flirting
with him. . . . Jammy’s right; I am going crazy. I took another fortifying sip of the lemon rocket fuel and smiled some more.

“You really live in the Castello?” I asked.

“At weekends, and for a few weeks in the summer. Mostly I’m in Rome.” He waved to Aldo for reinforcements. Aldo brought the bottle and put it on the table. Nico refilled our little glasses.

“It must be very beautiful, the Castello,” I said, taking another cookie.

“It’s beautiful, but I prefer Rome. But of course, Lamour, I know your name. You must be Jon-Boy’s daughter?”

My eyes snapped open. I stared, astonished, at him. “Did you know him?” I asked eagerly. “Surely you’re too young . . . ?”

He shrugged. “Everyone around here knows of the
dottore;
everybody liked him. Especially . . .” Somehow I
knew
he
was going to say “e
specially the women,”
but he stopped himself.

“I’m here to see my father’s house,” I said. “I lived there when I was a child. I haven’t been back since he died.”

Nico patted my hand. “Of course,” he said gently. “It’s normal that you should.” And then he told us the story of how the house had been built in the 1920s for the pretty little opera singer from Naples who was the mistress of the then head of the Pirata family.
That
Signor Pirata had also had a wife and five children, though the poor wife had spent more time in Naples and Rome than at the Castello.

Jammy said, “If I owned the Castello I might never want to leave it.” Then she took another sip of her
limoncello
.

I flashed her an astonished look; she hadn’t even seen the Castello except for the battlements and the flag. I decided it must be the rocket fuel talking. I wanted to ask Nico about the storm and if he knew the story of how Jon-Boy had died, but this was neither the time nor the place. And besides, right now coming toward us at a rapid stride was a beautiful young woman with an angry scowl on her face.
Uh-huh,
I thought,
here comes the irate girlfriend. . . .

She stopped at our table and stood, hands on her hips, glaring down at us and our half-empty bottle of
limoncello
. I felt like a guilty kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar. I had to admit she was gorgeous, though. Her long dark hair was braided and she was wearing a brief white halter top and impeccable white shorts that showed off her perfect tan.

She put a proprietorial hand on Nico’s shoulder, and he tilted his head to smile up at her. “Allow me to introduce my sister, Aurora,” he said. “Aurora, this is the Signora Mortimer and the Signora Harrington.”

I felt rather than saw Jammy’s piercing conspiratorial glance. I knew she meant:
Oh good, he’s her brother, not her lover.
I guessed they knew what she meant, too and I blushed. I could have killed her.

“Hi, Aurora, good to meet you,” Jammy said, and I smiled and nodded hello, but the only response we got was a cold stare.

Aurora pouted, looking prettier than ever. “Nico, you know Papa said we were not to talk to
her,
” she said, jerking her head in my direction.

My astonished eyes met Jammy’s. What
was
Aurora talking about?

“That’s never stopped me from talking to a woman before,” Nico said, holding my gaze, ignoring his sister as she flounced angrily off.

“Forgive Aurora’s rudeness,” he said. “Sometimes she acts like a spoiled child.”

Jammy and I stared, embarrassed, into our
limoncello
glasses and refused to have more. A few moments later, he pushed back his chair. “Jammy, Lamour,” he said, “I’m so happy to have met you. You must let me show you around the Castello Pirata before you leave. I’ll call you at the hotel to make an assignation.” I stared at him.
Assignation
didn’t exactly mean just “appointment.”

He took Jammy’s hand and bent over it in a little bow. Then he took mine and a little
frisson
passed between us. Of course he was younger, maybe by as much as ten years, but somehow, today, that didn’t matter.

“I hope to see you soon, Lamour,” he said softly. And then, with a casual wave, he headed back to his silver Riva, where we saw his sister was waiting for him.

Aurora Pirata didn’t know why her father had forbidden them to speak to Lamour Harrington, but it didn’t matter. Actually,
forbidden
was too strong a word: Lorenzo had said he would
prefer
them not to speak to her. Aurora was furious with her brother for so flagrantly disobeying their father’s wishes. But more than that, they had looked as though they were having a good time, laughing and talking like old friends. She thought jealously that was just like Nico: he became instant best friends with everybody he met.

It was a happy knack Aurora did not possess. Despite her beauty, she was desperately insecure. Her mother had recognized her needs and indulged her, smothering her with love and kindness. But when her mother died when Aurora was only three years old she was cast into a well of despair so deep, her father had feared she might never recover. Psychiatrists and her father’s steadfast love had gotten her through those long, tough, lonely years, but eventually she’d recovered, switching the full force of her love from Marella to Lorenzo.

This was no Electra complex; it was simply that Aurora’s father was the rock on whom she depended. He understood her fears and her depression; he knew all her self-doubts, understood her shyness with strangers. Aurora had always been a child who needed extra attention, extra reassurance, and her father had made sure she got it. And so did Nico, when he
thought about it, that is, because, like today, Nico was always going off at a tangent, easily distracted, easily amused.

Aurora preferred books and classical music; she loved her family and the Castello and her small group of friends in Rome and at the university where she was studying fine arts with the aim of one day becoming curator of a museum. When she was feeling good, she enjoyed giving small dinner parties for her friends, secure in their company. They discussed art and politics, and though she was shy, her intelligence shone through. When she was not feeling good, she stayed alone, often unable even to get out of bed, filled with a sense of doom and dark despair.

Beauty was the last thing on Aurora’s itinerary. She accepted that she was pretty, but it didn’t seem that important. She used little makeup, and though always well-dressed, she was not a clotheshorse. She had boyfriends, but she was no flirt, and she liked to go to movies and concerts, usually in a group. To an outsider, she might seem spoiled and petulant, and in fact she was. First her mother had spoiled her rotten and then her father. Only Nico stood up to her.

“How could you talk to those women when Papa said not to?” she said furiously as they sped across the bay in the Riva.

Her face was pink with anger, but Nico ignored her. He was still thinking about Lamour and Jammy. He’d liked their straightforward freshness, their willingness to laugh and enjoy the moment. Glancing out of the corner of his eye at his sister, he sighed.

“Aurora,” he said, “just grow up, will you?”

Back at the Castello, Aurora ran immediately to tell her father what had happened.

Lorenzo was sitting in his study, reading over the plans for a new ship to be built in the French shipyards at Caen, but he stopped work to listen to his daughter.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said after she’d poured out the story of Nico’s disobedience. “I’ll speak with him.”

Sighing, he watched her stride away and wished she had been the one to rebel and not Nico.

Still, he could see clearly now that he would have to do something about Lamour Harrington.

Back at the Amalfitano, Jammy sighed, “What’s with the men around here? They all look like Greek—or should I say Roman?—gods, and they’re all a bit crazy. Maybe you’ll fit in here after all, Lamour.”

I called Aldo for the bill, but he said not to worry; he had put it all on Signor Nico’s tab. We had a bit of an argument in my stumbling Italian, because of course I couldn’t allow that. In the end, I managed to pay for our lunch, but the rocket fuel remained on Nico’s tab. Jammy and I walked back up the flight of stairs that led out of the inlet, between the hills, to the road.

“So? What d’you think?” Jammy asked.

It was like in our girlie old high school days: I knew exactly what she meant. “He’s . . . interesting,” I replied.

“What about the spoiled brat sister?
And
the controlling father who doesn’t want them to speak to you?”

I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Who the hell knows what’s going on?” I said. “I’ll have to ask Mifune.”

When we got back to the house Mifune was trimming the cedars overhanging the terrace with a fierce-looking machete. I remembered he had always used honed-steel machetes, and even now, with the waning strength of an old man, he moved with a smooth rhythmic certainty that was a joy to watch.

I’d told Jammy all about my mentor and now she was
about to meet him. He bowed solemnly as his pale eyes took her in.

“Welcome, Lamour’s good friend,” he said, and Jammy said, “Thank you.”

“Come with me,” he said, and he showed her his gardens, explaining in his reedy accented voice the concept of Japanese gardening. Jammy listened respectfully; then she thanked him.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before, Mifune,” she said, not totally understanding what he was—who he was. “But I know you are a good man.”

“Then we are equal, signora,” he said, and with a bow he went back to his job.

Jammy looked at me, hands palms up. “At least someone is sane around here,” she said with a grin.

Later that evening, I left Jammy at the hotel with a headache, probably due to an overdose of rocket fuel at lunch, and returned alone to the house with a borrowed can of oil for the lock.

To my surprise I found Mifune sitting cross-legged on the flat slab of stone by the waterfall. He rose when he saw me, a tired smile on his face.

“Mifune, I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

“I come here in the cool of the evening to meditate,” he said. “I like to clear my mind of the excesses of the day and leave myself at peace and open to new ideas. For me, it is a source of creativity, like a deep well that never dries up.”

I had never thought of creativity in that way, but now it made sense. By cleansing your mind of the day’s trials and tribulations, you were left with a clean slate on which new ideas could transcribe themselves.

“Then I shall try it, too,” I said as we walked together up the steps to the house. “I have the feeling I’m going to need quite a lot of ‘creativity’ once I get started on my new self-sufficient life.”