Flirting in Italian (15 page)

It’s Kelly who comes to my rescue.

“Hey, you could be hurting her!” she says bravely, stepping forward, confronting Maria. “Let her go, okay?”

The principessa, white as a sheet, issues a quick command to Maria that has her, finally, releasing her death grip from my shoulders and stepping back. I can’t help wincing as the blood rushes back to the dents she’s made with her fingers; I rub myself to help the circulation. The principessa says quickly:

“
Mi scusi
, I am so sorry. You are all right?”

I mutter a yes to be polite, though really, I’m not at all okay. I’m in shock, cursing myself as much as Maria probably just did. Because in all my scheming to get here, to the castello where the picture of the girl who looks like me once hung, one thing never occurred to me.

If I look like a girl who might have been a di Vesperi ancestor, from hundreds of years back, there might be other
portraits still here that look just as much like me. Or, even more powerful, that resemblance might still be present in its descendants.

Which means that a member of the family, recognizing my face, might have as many questions for me as I have for them. And the first one is blindingly obvious: Who is this girl? How on earth does a girl from London, with a Scandinavian mother and a Scottish father, end up looking as if she’d walked out of an ancient Italian family portrait?

“Mi scusi,”
the principessa says again, now more composed. “But it is very strange. What is your name?”

“Violet,” I say. “Violet Routledge.”

“I do not know this name,” she says. “Row-ti-laydge.” It takes me a moment to realize that she’s attempting to pronounce my surname, she mangles the word so much. “But you see, Violetta, you resemble very much Monica, the sister of my ’usband, when she was at your age. There are some photographs, and a picture. I show you.”

She walks over to a grand piano on one side of the hall; it’s so big, this space, that I hadn’t even noticed the piano was there. It’s closed, a silver candelabra standing on top of
it, and along its ebony lid are arranged a whole raft of family photos, all in silver frames, the way the aristocracy displays its photographs; for some arcane reason, it’s considered common to hang them on the walls. I see one of Luca; he’s a few years younger, scowling at the camera, his black hair hanging in inky strands over his face, his expression somehow so characteristic that it makes me smile, makes me want to reach out and touch the face in the photo.

Oh God. I really do have it bad for him
.

The principessa is reaching out for a photograph right at the back of the collection, her thin wrist snaking elegantly between the frames.

“Lascia stare,”
Maria snaps at her.
“Non lo fare.”

“Zitta, te,”
she responds autocratically, and the four of us girls exchange a startled glance; we just heard a princess tell her housekeeper to shut up.

“Ecco!”
The principessa lifts up a large photograph in an ornate frame and shows it to me. Everyone else cranes in too. “This is my ’usband”—she has some problem with her h’s—“and ’is sister on ’oliday, so many years ago. In Capri.”

I was expecting the principe to look like his son, but he doesn’t. Luca takes very much after his mother. His father is stocky and dark, strong-featured, with an imposing nose, square shoulders, and a very hairy chest. His hair’s longer than is fashionable now, cut in layers that almost come to his shoulders, and he’s wearing very short terry-cloth swim trunks. He’s sitting on what looks like the back of a yacht, on one of the long padded seats, his arm around his sister, whose hair is tumbling all around her face in frizzy curls.
She’s dressed in a white caftan with wide sleeves, trimmed with gold rickrack, and she’s smiling at the camera, one hand lifted to push her hair back, while her brother is staring straight at it challengingly.
If Monica’s my age in this photo
, I think,
she’s really confident, poised, and sure of herself, her legs crossed elegantly. She definitely looks much older than seventeen
.

“Their clothes!
So
seventies!” observes Paige, mistress of the inappropriate comment.

Fortunately the principessa ignores her. She’s looking at me now; I’m very conscious of her eyes on me as I stare at the photograph and at Monica’s face. Almost reluctantly, I recognize my dark slanting eyes, which narrow into slits in photos when I’m smiling into the sun. My arching eyebrows, my smooth, sallow skin, my full cheeks, and my pouty mouth. It isn’t quite like looking into a mirror, as it was with the
Portrait of a Young Lady
, but the resemblance is definitely present.

“You seem to have the di Vesperi face,” she says softly.

“Senti, Donatella,”
Catia says sharply to her friend, “it’s simply the same type, but not the same. Small dark Italian girls. Lots of girls around here look like her.”

Just as Luca pointed out
, I think, wincing.
In Italy, I’m two a penny
.

Catia reaches out and takes the photograph from the principessa’s hand, returning it to its distant place among the others.

“You’re making too much of this,” she says firmly. “Goodness knows why.”

Catia is taking the principessa’s elbow, turning her away from the piano, guiding her to the foot of the staircase.

“We really should get on with the tour,” she says, briskly now. “There’s so much here the girls will be interested in.”

Behind them, I see Maria nodding vehemently, her gaze fixed approvingly on Catia.

“
Sisi, brava, signora
,” she agrees.
“Vado a preparare i bibiti.”

Turning to us, she flaps the skirt of her dress like a farmer shooing geese, indicating in no uncertain terms that we should follow our hostess and be quick about it. We scramble to do as she says: Maria is someone you definitely don’t mess with. My shoulders are still sore.

“So!” Catia beckons us up the stairs; they’re waiting for us on the balcony. “I will tell you a few facts about the castello as we walk around. The castle you see now is not the original one—that was built in the nine hundreds. It came into the possession of the di Vesperi family in 1167, but because it is placed so strategically, at the edge of the territorial boundary between Florence and Siena, who were almost always at war in those times, it was a very important defense for Florence. You can see its position is very good, on this hill. Hard to attack, easy for the occupiers to see what is happening for miles around and to report back to Florence what the Sienese soldiers are doing. So it became a target for the Sienese, and in 1478 it came under a huge attack by them and the Aragonian army from Spain, who were fighting together, and they bombarded it for weeks—can you imagine?—and finally demolished it. It was razed to the ground.”

“Razed?” Paige asks, looking baffled.

“Like a razor,” Kendra says, miming shaving her face. “All smooth, nothing left.”

“Jeez,” Paige says, as Catia continues:

“But then the war ended, they made peace, and Florence gave money to the di Vesperis to help rebuild.”

“That was nice of them!” Paige says happily.

“They didn’t give them the dosh ’cause they were
nice
,” Kelly says. “They did it ’cause it was strategic. They needed a castle here so they could defend the border and have a vantage point to see what the Sienese were up to.”

“Esatto,”
Catia says, beaming, and Kendra looks cross; Catia didn’t say
esatto
when Kendra helped Paige with the definition of “razed.” Kelly and Kendra are clearly used to being the brightest girls in their respective classes, the teacher’s pets. Now they’re battling to win the lion’s share of Catia’s attention and approval.

Unlike me. I was never the teacher’s pet. Apart from anything else, it was exhausting enough always having my mum hover around me at home; the last thing I’d want is a teacher doing it at school. I’m steady, a good student, but I never aspired to be the girl at the front of the class with her hand up and the fanatic gleam in her eye of someone who knows the answer to the question and is longing to spit it out.

“This was a working castle, of course, when rebuilt,” Catia continues as we proceed along the balcony and into a high long room running along the far side of the building. Its red damask walls are hung with paintings clustered tightly together, in gilded frames so opulent and curlicued that they’re almost works of art in their own right. “But the principe at that time, Bettino was his name, he took the opportunity to build also a lovely house here for his family,
a proper mansion, not just a medieval castle. As a result the house is very grand but also most comfortable, even today for the generations who follow.”

Catia does a sort of acknowledging wave and smile at the principessa, like an official announcement that she’s paid a compliment to the family.

“We are
very
lucky to be allowed to visit it like this,” Catia adds, and we all compose our expressions to ones of gratitude. “The public is
never
allowed inside—the house is not open for any kind of tours. The di Vesperi wine is famous, of course, but that is sold from the
cantine
, the wine cellars, which have a separate entrance from the other part of the
fortezza
, the fortress. We will visit those today as well as the house. They are part of the old dungeons, which we will also explore. You may be interested to know that as well as making wine, the Castello di Vesperi also produces oil,
vin santo
—a kind of sweet wine like sherry,
marmelate
—jams, and honey.”

Lavender honey
, I think, remembering the bumblebees by the pool yesterday.

“And this, as you can see, is the family portrait gallery. We will start with Bettino di Vesperi.…”

My heart tightens. Will I see what I’m looking for?

Catia is standing under a huge oil painting of a man in armor looking very serious indeed. I stare up at him, her words suddenly very far away and indistinct, like the buzzing of bees in lavender bushes. I’m wondering if I’m looking at one of my ancestors; as her words flow on—clearly, Catia has done this tour every year with her summer course girls, perfecting her tour-guide information—I look from face to
face eagerly, up and down the line of portraits. Looking for the girl in the picture from Sir John Soane’s Museum. Looking for myself. I’m both afraid and excited.

“Buona sera!”
comes a high, familiar voice, and we swing around to see, to our great annoyance, Elisa, walking down the carpet that runs down the center of the portrait gallery as if she were on a Milan catwalk. She’s in tight white linen trousers trimmed with gilt coins, and an equally tight khaki silk shirt, almost entirely covered with pockets and shoulder tabs; clearly the safari-meets-military-chic-in-San-Tropez look is in this summer. Her heels are three-inch-high wooden studded platforms, and her hair is artfully tousled and anchored by a huge pair of D&G sunglasses. I can tell they’re D&G because each arm is decorated with a gigantic logo. Luca was definitely right about Italians liking to show off their designer labels.

“Elisa!” her mother says, looking very surprised.
“Non ti aspettavo, cara.”

Elisa flicks her fingers at her mother in a gesture that’s half acknowledgment, half dismissal, and strides up to the principessa, who takes Elisa’s face in her hands and kisses her on both cheeks.

“Piacere, Elisa,”
the principessa says fondly.
“Ma sei venuta a trovare Luca? Mi dispiace, lui non c’è oggi. E andato a Firenze.”

“Lo so, lo so,”
Elisa assures her, and she casts a malicious glance at us girls. “The princess asks if I come to see Luca, and I say no, I know he is in Florence. That will be a disappointment for all of you,
non è vero
? I’m sure you took a long time to get dressed up, hoping to see him.”

We’re all seething, but of course it’s completely true.
Elisa has a horrible way of hitting the nail bang on the head. I’m not the only one who agonized over the choice of clothes today. I settled on a jersey tea-dress, black with a print of cherries on it, and sandals with red heels to echo the cherries: black and red suit my skin and my hair. The dress has a sweetheart neckline, sort of sexy without showing cleavage, which would be a big no-no when you’re meeting a princess. My hair’s pinned up and smoothed into curls, my lashes are mascaraed, and my cheeks have a hint of blush.

We’ve all made much the same decisions, thinking along the same lines, choosing pretty dresses smart enough for a visit to a castle, but body-fitted and attractive enough in case the son of the princess just happens to be there. Paige took hours just to do her hair, and it’s amazing, like something out of a shampoo commercial, lustrous golden waves you want to reach out and touch.

Elisa’s eyes narrow in amusement as she looks us up and down. Clearly, she thinks she’s a great deal smarter and chicer than we are.
And she’s probably right
, I reflect gloomily, smoothing down my skirt. Elisa is wearing what is the height of fashion in Italy right now, and she knows it. Somehow, she’s managed to make herself appear much older, much more knowing.
We look like the teenagers we are
, I think.
Elisa looks like she’s well into her twenties, all grown up
.

“I only come to the castello to see my friend Luca, to have parties,” she continues, smiling nastily. “Never to hear the history, like a tourist. So I think it will be fun to pretend to be a tourist.”

Having put us all down thoroughly, she turns on her heel, wraps her arm through the principessa’s, and strolls
away with her a couple of steps, making the point that she’s an always-welcome guest, and we’re … not.

Catia’s frowning deeply. Eventually she relaunches into her information blitz, but we’re all visibly distracted. The other girls, when not casting glances of loathing at Elisa, were made curious by the principessa’s outburst on seeing me. They wander around, pointing out various women who they think resemble me. Everything begins to blur together after a while; the faces, though above Elizabethan ruffs to huge crinoline skirts to Regency slip dresses with tiny puffed sleeves, are very like mine.
But then, I do look Italian
, I think. I see Luca’s father’s features again and again—the square build, the commanding nose, the tight dark curls—but I don’t see Luca at all. He really does take after his mother’s side of the family.

“Here,” Kelly says, stopping next to me as I look up at a painting of a woman sitting on a bench outside the castello, a delicate fan in her hand. Two children play in her wide brocade skirts—a little boy with a top, a little girl with a doll. “Now, that little girl looks just like you, Violet.”

I elbow her crossly at being compared to a chubby little four-year-old.

“No, honestly! She’s got just the same hair as you! And the eyes go up at the outside corners, like yours do—”

“Hey, look at this one!” Paige calls from the other side of the gallery. “I think I found Violet here—though this dress makes her butt look like the side of a house—”

I stick two fingers up at her as Kelly, giggling, runs over to join her and Kendra.

“One thing’s for sure,” Kendra’s saying sarcastically, “I’m
not going to spot anyone who looks like
me
in these pictures. I guess they didn’t have any slaves in Italy, right?”