Secrets in Sicily Read online

  ‘The quarry,’ she went on. ‘Where we went for a picnic.’ The ancient site had been blissfully deserted. The grass had grown long and golden yellow, butterflies had spangled the bushes. And sections of great stone cylinders had been strewn casually around, as if a giant had dropped a fistful of building blocks.

  ‘Oh, you mean Cave di Cusa?’

  ‘Alex said the piece would have chipped off the rock when they were carving the pillars and probably the slave made it into a figure in his break.’

  ‘Slaves didn’t have breaks,’ said Jess. ‘Is that really what Alex told you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ mumbled Lily, trying to recall her father’s history lesson: how the slaves had run away when the invaders came, flinging down their tools in the middle of their work – and how the quarry had been untouched ever since. ‘Anyway, Harry’s gone and lost it and I’ll never be able to find it.’

  ‘I buried it,’ he said. ‘To keep it safe.’

  ‘Liar, you threw it away.’

  ‘Come and finish your snacks,’ coaxed Jess. ‘Then you can pretend you’re archaeologists digging things up, like Toby.’ Toby Forrester was Alex’s best friend from school. They’d worked on digs together, but Toby was the one who’d become a full-time archaeologist. Gerald was his uncle.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ complained Lily.

  ‘I don’t see how it can be so important if you forgot about it for a year.’

  ‘It just is.’ Objects became important when you invested them with special powers. Lily hadn’t given the carving a thought all the time they’d been at home. But now that they were back in Sicily where votive offerings multiplied at roadside shrines and figurines of patron saints swung from car mirrors and ancient sarcophagi and sacrificial altars littered the countryside, obviously a piece of chiselled marble would take on a special and miraculous identity. ‘I can’t leave the beach without it.’

  Jess sighed. ‘Do you think you can remember where you buried it, Harry?’

  He pointed at a churned-up patch of sand and then darted towards their umbrella before he could be asked to help further.

  ‘I’ll have to go after him,’ said Jess. ‘Will you be all right, darling?’

  Lily ignored the question. She plunged her spade to the hilt, so deep and so fiercely that its handle snapped. Then she had to scrabble with her fingers, but all she turned up were old sweet wrappers and cigarette butts. She felt tears gathering and her face reddening with frustration because she had set herself such an impossible task.

  The people stretched out on their towels were taking little notice, but a woman, a stranger, picked a way through the bodies and crouched down beside her. She wasn’t dressed for the beach. She wore a tight skirt and a sleeveless shirt with the collar turned up to protect her neck. She had dark curling hair and enormous sunglasses that covered most of her face. Her top lip curved over the bottom one in a way that made her look slightly sulky, until she smiled. She smiled now and opened her palm to show Lily. ‘Is yours?’ she said.

  Lily was surprised at being addressed in English and then delighted when she saw what she was offered. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where did you find it?’

  At this the woman shrugged as if she didn’t understand the question. She was gazing intently at Lily through her sunglasses but she didn’t take them off. ‘You stay here in Roccamare?’

  Lily gestured behind her. ‘Up on the hill, in Villa Ercole.’

  The lady nodded, as if it was the answer she was expecting, as if English people never stayed anywhere else. And it was true that most of the visitors to this coastline were Sicilian, that most of them not only knew each other but were related too. Gerald stood out as an eccentric foreigner. Lily scrambled to her feet and said, ‘Grazie mille,’ in her best accent.

  The lady smiled again and said, ‘Piacere.’ She was still kneeling, looking up at Lily. ‘Come ti chiama?’

  ‘My name’s Lily.’

  ‘That’s pretty. Arrivederci, Lily.’

  ‘Arrivederci, signora,’ said Lily, skipping in triumph to Jess and Harry, who were packing everything up as they couldn’t stay on the beach in the full blast of the afternoon.

  Lunch at the villa was always followed by a siesta. Lying on her bed, on top of the sheets with an electric fan whirring in the corner, Lily tucked the carving inside her pillowcase to keep it safe, though she’d have to take it out before Dolly changed the bedlinen. When Dolly wasn’t cooking, she was washing and cleaning, sweeping and scrubbing. She would put down powder to get rid of the ants and hang up sticky strips of paper to trap the flies. She was waging war against nature, Alex said, trying to stop it from crossing the threshold. As in her dealings with Gerald, she foolishly believed she could win.

  *

  Lily didn’t give much thought to the woman on the beach. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how she had known the piece of stone was hers or why she’d taken the trouble to return it. But a couple of days later she reappeared. The bumpy track that passed Villa Ercole was not much used and Lily and Harry, playing in the copse of almond trees, were surprised to see a car park on the verge. When the driver stayed in his seat and his passenger got out, they supposed it was to ask for directions.

  At first Lily didn’t recognise the woman because she wasn’t wearing her sunglasses. Her eyes were brown and oval like the almonds, which gave her a sleepy look. She was carrying a curious device in a grey case. She leant over the wall and called out in Italian. When Lily didn’t respond, she said in English: ‘You are Lily, yes?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘Do you remember me?’

  Lily nodded again and Harry, joining her, said, ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘She’s the person who found my statue after you lost it.’

  The lady said, ‘The view is so beautiful here I must stop and take a picture.’ She undid the zip of the grey case and took out a large oblong camera. ‘This is Polaroid. You know it?’ They didn’t. ‘I show you how it works, yes? If you stand together.’

  Lily held Harry’s hand. The leaves formed dappled shadows on the ground and behind them, she knew, was the glint of blue sea. The lady pointed the viewfinder at them and pressed a button. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘We must wait.’

  Generally Jess was the family photographer, fiddling about with the light meter and the lens focus. The film had to be sent away to be developed before Lily could help arrange and label the pictures in an album. She had never seen a photo emerge like magic from the mouth of a camera, the image taking shape before their eyes. She and Harry both squealed.

  ‘You like it?’ said the lady. ‘You want to keep it?’

  ‘Can we, please?’

  There were eight photographs, she told them, on each film, so she would take seven more and share them out. She had bought the camera in America when she’d lived there; it was where she had learned her English. She took some shots of the children, together and apart. Then she asked Harry if he would like to have a go. He took two pictures of Lily and the lady leaning against the wall, not quite touching, and a third one of them with their arms around each other’s waists. Lily snapped the lady pretending to pick a nut from the tree and she would have taken another, but the film was used up. The man in the car, who they’d forgotten about, hooted and called: ‘Dai, Carlotta, sbrigati.’

  ‘Arrivo, Claudio! I have to go,’ she said, her voice wistful.

  ‘Will we see you again?’ said Lily.

  ‘I hope so.’ She shuffled the pictures between her fingers like cards, hesitated a moment and then thrust them at Lily. ‘I will keep one,’ she said. ‘These are for you.’ Quickly she turned and got into the car. The man, Claudio, reversed and they drove off in a puff of dust.

  Lily and Harry ran indoors and found their parents and Gerald in the salone. They were sitting at the table, with a carafe of wine in the centre. The wine in their glasses was a light straw colour; there wasn’t much left in the carafe. The needle was sticking on the record player but nobod
y made any move to take it off. Jess smiled lazily, ‘What have you got there, poppet?’

  ‘Photos.’

  ‘Photos? Where did you find them?’

  ‘They’re of me and Harry. A lady took them.’

  ‘I suppose she wants paying?’ said Alex. ‘She should have sent you to ask us first.’

  ‘They’re a present,’ said Lily. ‘She’s gone now.’

  ‘A present? That’s a bit weird. Are you sure you got the right end of the stick?’

  ‘She spoke English,’ said Lily, annoyed that her word was being doubted. ‘She said I could keep them, didn’t she, Harry?’

  Harry nodded. ‘They were magic photos.’

  ‘Magic? How?’

  Lily handed over one of the snaps of Harry and herself sitting on the stone wall. ‘Oh,’ said Alex. ‘Polaroids.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Jess, and Lily passed her the rest.

  The adults gazed at the pictures in an abstracted and bemused sort of way. In the background the record continued to stutter its same irritating phrase. ‘Turn that off, will you, darling? Thanks. Who is she anyway, this photographer?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell us.’

  ‘The man called her Carlotta,’ said Harry.

  ‘She isn’t English?’

  ‘No, she’s Italian. She’s the lady who found my statue when it was lost on the beach.’

  ‘You mean this is the second time you’ve seen her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Jess and Lily began to think that, like Alice in Wonderland, her parents were getting easily confused. Probably because of the wine. This must have been one of those days when they started drinking as soon as they woke from their siesta. Gerald encouraged it. His prime time was in the morning. If he had any work to do it was always abandoned by lunch. He never exerted himself in the afternoons.

  ‘She was nice,’ said Lily.

  ‘Is this her, standing next to you?’

  ‘She let me take it,’ said Harry.

  Jess examined the snapshot more closely, with a baffled frown. She gave it to Alex, who was peering at it when Dolly came into the room.

  Dolly had a way of walking that made her seem bigger than she really was, bustling and puffing and wiggling her bottom like a duck. Gerald was the opposite. He didn’t make unnecessary movements, as if he had to conserve all his energy to feed his brain.

  ‘Cosa c’è?’ she said, alert at once to the atmosphere.

  Gerald gave a minimal, elegant wave of his hand towards the scattered pictures.

  Dolly pounced. ‘Matre santa!’ she yelped. Dolly invoked Matre santa, the sainted Mother of God, several times a day so Lily wasn’t surprised at her exclamation. But then the healthy copper of her face faded as if it were being rinsed out of her skin. ‘What are these?’

  ‘Apparently someone called Carlotta took them this afternoon,’ said Jess. ‘And gave them to the children. You know everyone around here. You don’t recognise her, do you?’

  ‘No’ she said firmly. ‘Assolutamente no. I have never met this woman.’

  ‘Can I have them back, please?’ said Lily, holding out her hand. She’d no idea what the fuss was about or why the photos had caused such a stir but, since they’d been given to her specially, she intended to keep control of them.

  3

  The McKenzies never missed the Sunday passeggiata, when families in their smartest outfits strolled along the Roccamare beachfront. Alex swung Harry onto his shoulders so that between them they were double the height of the crowd and Harry had the best view. ‘Can you see anyone we know?’ asked Lily, skipping alongside. She and Jess were both wearing gored skirts cut from a fabric Jess had designed, paired with white tee shirts. She liked the way they matched, the approving looks from passers-by who could tell they belonged together.

  After a while Harry pointed and called to Lily, ‘Over there. I can see her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The lady with the camera.’ He wriggled his way down Alex’s back as if he were a tree he’d been climbing.

  ‘Whoa!’ said Alex, bending to rub his shin where Harry had accidentally kicked it. ‘What’s the hurry?’

  No one hurried during the passeggiata. The whole point was to saunter, to stop every few minutes to exchange greetings. You could spend as long as you liked choosing your favourite flavours of ice cream and nobody would rush you. But Harry said, ‘I want her to take my picture,’ and bolted down one of the streets that led to the central piazza.

  ‘Little bugger,’ said Alex.

  ‘I’ll go after him,’ offered Lily.

  ‘We don’t want you disappearing too. We should stick together,’ said Jess.

  But Harry was swift and nimble and it was much harder for the three of them to barge through the knots of people gossiping. When they got to the piazza there was no sign of him. Usually he would head straight for the fountain in the middle to check for coins or fishes, though he never found either; it was more often filled with dirt and dry leaves.

  ‘Little bugger,’ said Alex again.

  Café chairs and tables were set out beneath two facing rows of ornamental orange trees. On the left-hand side, a band was playing – one man with an accordion and two with fiddles – and people were dancing to the music. They scoured the spectators for a dazzle of white-blond hair until Jess exclaimed, ‘There he is!’

  Through a gap in the Sunday suits, Harry could be glimpsed hopping up and down, while the dancers waltzed gaily past him, as if he longed to join in. He didn’t notice his parents or respond to anyone calling his name until Alex used his masterful voice. ‘Harry! McKenzie! Here! Now!’ Begrudgingly he mooched towards them.

  ‘You shouldn’t have run off like that, darling,’ Jess said. ‘Why didn’t you wait for us?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to get lost,’ said Harry. ‘And I wanted to see her again.’

  The music swelled and died, there was a hearty burst of clapping. One of the couples, Lily saw, included the lady Harry had chased. She’d been dancing with a much older man who had a flat linen cap pulled low over his brow. He kissed her hand and she laughed and waved him goodbye. She started walking in the direction of the McKenzies and then stopped abruptly when she saw them watching her. She had been wearing her sunglasses on the top of her head; now she pulled them down over her eyes, which Lily thought a little odd.

  Harry skipped straight up to her so there was no way they couldn’t all say ‘Ciao’ to each other, though afterwards there was an awkward pause. She had no camera so they couldn’t ask for more photographs. Alex began to say something in Italian and the lady said, ‘Is okay, you can speak English, I will understand.’

  Alex said, ‘Are you the person who took the Polaroids?’

  Jess said, ‘It was very kind of you to give them to the children.’

  The lady said, ‘You have a beautiful family.’

  ‘But Polaroid film is expensive and we ought to reimburse you.’

  ‘No, please, is my pleasure.’

  Some people vacated a table nearby and Alex said, ‘Then let us buy you a drink.’ He pulled out a chair so the lady had to sit in it and they took up their places.

  A waiter appeared to take their order. ‘Prego?’

  ‘Can I have an ice cream?’ said Harry.

  ‘What about you, Lily?’

  ‘Orange granita, please.’ At home she might choose a Mivvi or an Orange Maid but they weren’t as special as granita, which was a treat you couldn’t find anywhere else.

  The lady, seated opposite Lily at the round table, was gazing at her steadily through her dark lenses. The set of her mouth was serious, not smiling or laughing any more. ‘I have learned the names of your children,’ she said. ‘And I am Carlotta Galetti.’

  Jess and Alex introduced themselves and Jess said, ‘Do you live here or are you visiting family?’

  Even Lily could see that Carlotta was more sophisticated than most of the locals. She
was stylish and glamorous, the sort of person who was bound to live in a big city.

  ‘I come from near here,’ she said. ‘From Santa Margherita, in the Belice valley.’

  ‘Santa Margherita?’ said Alex. ‘Were you there at the time of the earthquake?’

  ‘Yes.’ She shivered and her hands trembled on the table top. The waiter set down their order: an espresso for Carlotta, beers for Jess and Alex, Harry’s gelato in a paper tub and Lily’s gorgeous glowing granita in a glass with a long-handled spoon.

  Alex could soften his voice till it ran like melted butter. ‘Did you come for the ceremony? We were told it happened last week.’

  ‘No, not for the ceremony. I am here for holiday in Roccamare only.’

  ‘It’s good to hear they’re making progress with the new town though,’ said Jess. ‘Were any of your family affected?’

  Carlotta’s hands moved from the table into her lap so Lily could no longer see if they were twitching. She could, however, see a tear slide beneath the rim of the sunglasses. Otherwise she sat motionless, completely different from the dancing queen who’d gladdened the heart and taxed the joints of her elderly partner. ‘I lost my family,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, my goodness! How dreadful!’

  ‘I went away for a long time. Many years. It has been difficult for me to come back.’

  Alex said, ‘I can imagine. I saw how it was.’

  Carlotta dabbed her upper lip with a paper napkin. The single tear wasn’t followed by another. She said in surprise, ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes. I’d come out to Sicily to celebrate New Year with a friend. Toby was working on the dig in Mozia – his uncle owns Villa Ercole, which I think you know. Afterwards I stayed on to volunteer with Danilo Dolci. I was impressed with the man’s activism, with what he was trying to achieve, and I wanted to be a part of it. And then we heard the call for help and went along to do what we could.’