Thank you, God, for the ultra long Italian lunch hour!
With luck, by the time he’d had lunch and a stroll around
in the sun
, he’d be far from wanting to look at any paintings.
‘What a shame.’ She congratulated herself on the note of regret in her voice.
He burst out laughing. ‘My word, you said that as if you really meant it. Your talents are quite wasted on secretarial work
. Y
ou ought to be an actress. Right, then, dissembler
–
the lamp first, then the furniture plan, then Montefalco, food and wine. If it turns out that we get there too late to feed our minds, we’ll just have to settle for feeding our stomachs instead.’
She stood still, her mouth open, watching him go into the house. Dissembler!
Didn’t that mean fake and hypocrite? It had come up once in a Shakes
peare play she did at school.
Could
that mean Tom had seen through her
secretary
ruse
?
But n
o,
of course it
could
n’t
–
he’d been smiling as he’d
gone into the house
. She closed her mouth and followed him into the hall.
He’d taken two of the bedside lamps from the cluster that stood on the hall floor and was carrying them up the wide stone stairs to the master bedroom. She hurried after him and reached him
just
as he was lifting the bedroom latch and pushing the door open. Hot on his heels, she followed him into the shuttered room.
A thin beam of white light shone
into the dark room from a tiny
window high among the rafters
,
falling
on to the floor in a pale circle at
the foot of the bed
. Silvery specks of dust danced in the column of sheer light.
Tom handed her one of the lamps. ‘
Will
you put this on the table on the
other
side of the
bed? I’ll do the one this side,
and
make a start on
a quick sketch of the room.’
‘Sure
thing
.’
Turning round
the corner of the bed a fraction too soon, her toe hit the foot of the iron bedpost. ‘Fuck!’ she cried out in sudden pain, and dropped the lamp on to the bed.
‘Why, Evie!
Surely that’s not
another invitation for us to share a bed, an invitation that’s rather more
direct in nature than the last?
’
‘Huh, dream on! I stubbed my toe on the bed and it’s absolute agony. It really hurts.’ She
sat on the bed,
kicked off her sandal, bent over and began to rub her toe.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, coming over to her side
and sitting down next to her
.
She heard a trace of anxiety in his voice. Her spirits lifted – could it be that her pain and suffering were going to come up trumps?
She gave a little whimper. And another.
‘Just about. But I bet my toe’s going to be one big bruise before the day’s out. And I’ve chipped the varnish.’ She straightened up and treated him to the Brave Little Woman look. No point in summoning the Damsel in Dire Distress effect – she’d used that one before and it had fallen on unfeeling eyes.
‘Chipped varnish! Now that
is
serious. Would it help if I kissed it better?’
‘Given a straight choice between that and you switching on the light to prevent any further damage to my body, I’ll take the second of the two, thank you very much
,
tempted though I am by the
thought
of you on the floor at my feet.’
The smile on his face was traced by a line of silvery light. She found herself smiling back at him.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the loud beating of their hearts. Then he
got up
, went over to the bedside table and put th
e lamp on it. She heard a click
, and light flooded the side of the bed.
‘And then there was light. You see, your word is my command, Evie.
Is there anything else I can do to compensate f
or
the chipped varnish?
’
She s
lipped into her sandal and stood up, looking anywhere but
at the large bed
with its
deep mattress.
‘You’re OK. I’m all out of commands for the moment.’
‘Then if your toe permits, will you be the one to draw the outline of the room?’ He took a notebook and pen out of the pocket in his jeans and handed them to her. ‘We’ll mark on it where the chest of drawers and wardrobe
should
go.’
She took the book from him, did a quick sketch of the room and then pointed to the side of the sketch. ‘The wardrobe will go here, won’t it? It’s a no-brainer. And the chest of drawers here.’
‘I agree. Mark them in, would you, please?’
She did as he
’d
asked, slipped the top back on the pen a
nd
glanced around the room. ‘Airhead that I am, I’m wondering what colour you’re going to choose for your sheets and curtains.’
‘As your reward for great fortitude in the face of damage to
your person
, you may choose the colour.’
‘White,’ she replied after a moment’s thought. ‘White in every room. The walls are already white and there’s a lot o
f grey stone around the house. W
hite curtains and white bed linen would be super cool. Or do you think it’d be too much like living in a monastery?’
‘That’s a point.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’m not planning on living like a monk.’
‘And very wise, too,’ she said gravely. ‘You’ve already shown how much you like good food and the best of wine – and both of those are forbidden to a monk. No, a life of abstinence would never do for you.’
‘You’re absolutely right about there not being a lot of attention paid to food and drink in a monastery, Evie. When I spoke,
though,
I hadn’t actually been thinking about those
two aspects of monastic life. B
ut yes, having to abstain from those, too, would prove an insurmountable obstacle.’
‘Nothing’s insurmountable. You’ve just got to want it enough
,
that’s all.’
‘Aha, that all-embracing
it
. So I’ll succeed if I want
it
enough, will I? It’s an interesting thought. However, I fear that we ought to
put it out of our mind
, pleas
ant
though
I’m sure
such rumination would
be. W
e need to get off to Montefalco pretty soon
–
my non-monk-like desire for food is getting stronger with every passing minute.’
Wow, h
is comment about ‘that all-embracing
it
’ was pretty near the mark.
And s
he hadn’t even intended him to take her comment the way he’d taken it. Or the way he’d pretended to take it. Could it be that Tom was nudging th
ings
forward
? Urgent m
ental note to self
–
conversation along similar lines to be resumed as soon as possible. P
S. Said conversation must
take place in surroundings conducive to throwing off inhibitions.
She
organised
her features into a frown
, as if a sudden thought had come into her head.
‘How about this for a suggestion? There was more to do here than we
realised
and it’s taken lo
nger than we thought it would. As y
ou’re hungry now, why don’t we
cut out the idea of hav
ing
lunch in
Montefalco and
eat in Massa Piccola
instead
? We could go to the restaurant just back from the main road, which we thought looked rather nice.
Then
we can go to Montefalco this
evening when
everything’s
open again
. W
e can look round
the gallery
and maybe have a drink there.
Or even dinner?
What do you think?’
His reply was lost in a sudden loud banging that reverberated through the house.
‘What’
s that?’ She spun round and stared towards the staircase.
He made a move towards the door.
‘I think we’ve got visitors. Someone’s at the front door and they sound pretty insistent.’
The banging came again, and they heard people moving around outside the house. Voices were talking excitedly.
‘Can you hear what they’re saying?’
She listened intently. ‘No, not really
,
the sound’s muffled. Someone mentioned water and someone else
said something about the pool
, b
ut that’s all I could make out.’
The banging was followed by the
sound of
a
heavy
vehicle being driven past the outside o
f the house. T
hey heard it
come to a
stop, and then a second vehicle followed the first.
A m
oment later, there was more thump
ing on the door.
‘Come on
. L
et’s go and see what they want.’ He tucked the plan of the room in
to
his pocket. ‘If neces
sary, I’ll have to ring Eduardo,
or rather you will. It looks
as if
we may end up having him with us after all today.’ He gave her a wry smile and went out on to the landing.
They went quickly down the stairs and Tom opened the front door. Three men in overalls stood under the porch, three shapes dark against the bright glare of the midday sun.
‘
Buon giorno!
’ Evie said, stepping forward, and she asked them what they wanted.
‘It’s water for the pool,’ she told Tom when she’d finished talking to the men and looking at the papers that they’d shown her. ‘They’ve been filling the pool by bringing up lorry loads of water, and they were short by a couple of loads. Apparently the water is meant to come to the top of the pool and flow over the side into the white grating, but it isn’t yet high enough to do that. They’ve got all the necessary papers. They told Eduardo that they’d be coming today and they thought he’d be here.’
‘Is there anything we can do or should we call Eduardo?’
‘No, we don’t need him. There’s something t
o be signed, but you can sign. T
hey don’t need us to be here at all, they just need a signature.’
‘Right, then
. S
how me where to sign and we’ll let them get on with it.’
He signed on the line that Evie indicated and handed the paper back. The men nodded their thanks, turned and went back to the lorries. Tom closed the door behind them and
led the way
into the sitting room.
‘Your suggestion about leaving Montefalco till t
his evening is a good one
. All
the more so because
it means we can
come back
from lunch
after the men have gone, just to check that everything’s al
l
right.’ He w
ent
over to the arched glass doors and
looked out at
the pool. ‘It’s a shame we can’t swim today. It would have been nice to have been able to use the pool at least once before we went back to England
,
but we can’t – the pool man will
need
to do his stuff first. However, there’s nothing to stop us sitting with our legs in the water, if we felt so inclined.’
Fantastic
! Things were getting better by the minute. Lunch somewhere nice; a
hot
afternoon by the pool; wine in the evening. And just the two of them together all day.
It was beyond
brilliant
.
‘So, l
et’s get off to Massa now, Evie – we can pick up a couple of towels on the way.’
Suppressing her inner elation, she forced
a
concerned
expression
to her face
.
‘What about the room plans? We’ve only done one room so far.’
‘We can do th
e other
s
when we come back.
W
e’ve done more than enough for one morning
. W
e’ll
leave the men to do their job and b
y the time we get back, they’ll have long gone and we’ll have the pl
ace to ourselves
.
So we can go if you’re ready.
’