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You know nothing of me or my circumstances…
Her accusation of the morning bit into his mind. And she’d understood what Lucia had called her. She shouldn’t have, but she had.
The feeling of discomfort mounted.
She was dragging the wailing boy towards the lounger, speaking to him sternly, and had managed to get a towel around his little body. He promptly threw it off with an even louder wail. But the girl wrapped him up in it yet again, and just as swiftly wrapped herself as well, knotting the towel around her like a sarong. She straightened up.
Maybe it was because the towel veiled from his eyes the hideous swimsuit, or maybe it was the lowering sun casting an amber glow over the pool area, reflecting warm light on to her, but suddenly he thought she looked quite graceful, with her slender limbs and sunlit skin. She had long hair, he noticed with mild surprise. It wasn’t loose, though, it was tied back in a long stringy ponytail. He hadn’t even realised she did have long hair—she’d always had it clamped on the back of her head by some kind of clip in a totally style-less way.
He watched her pick up the kiddie, hoist him on to her hip. His wails had died away now, and he was staring at Rafaello instead, with his big dark eyes. What had she said his name was? Benji? He’d try and remember next time. It might stop her correcting him in that snippy way.
She cleared up her stuff and left, muttering a defiant ‘Excuse me’ as she moved past with all her clutter. The child—Benji, he reprimanded himself—was clutching his inflatable ring as if it were golden treasure.
A mixture of exasperation and discomfort filled Rafaello. The girl had obviously been enjoying herself with her baby—Benji, he reminded himself—and now they were hurrying away. It was quite unnecessary. They wouldn’t have bothered him, provided they stayed out of his swimming lane.
Well, too late now. She’d insisted on going. It was hardly his fault, he told himself, feeling irritated. He took up a position by the edge of the pool and executed a perfect racing dive, ploughing down to the far end twenty metres away in a punishing, rapid freestyle.
Forty minutes and two kilometres later he hauled himself out, tired but in a markedly better mood. The sun had gone now, and dusk was settling in, but the air was still pleasantly warm. He walked down the length of the pool, picked up his towel and rubbed his hair, before wrapping the towel over his body.
Hunger nipped at him. He’d shower, change and take an aperitif. His aunt would pounce on him, he knew, and give him an earful, but his mood after exercise was good enough to put up with it. He was glad she’d turned up. She always managed to calm his father down—she’d been doing it all her life.
And having his aunt and uncle present would certainly help to make dinner less of an ordeal. They would help to keep things civil. He’d try and get Bernardo started on whatever his current research was—his uncle didn’t speak much, except when it was on his favourite scholarly topic. Then he could expound for ever if he found a willing victim.
A smile curved Rafaello’s mouth as he headed back indoors. He had a lot of time for Bernardo—there was a whole lot of good sense in there, and a tempering disposition that went well with his aunt’s acid-tongued approach to life—and family. They’d never had children, and Rafaello had fond memories of both his aunt and uncle making a huge fuss of him when he’d been little, arriving for family celebrations and holidays up in the cool Tuscan hills.
Right on cue, some twenty minutes later, as he sipped his chilled beer, sitting out on the terrace overlooking the gardens stretching away all around the villa, the cypress trees framing the vista of the valley below, he heard the businesslike tread of his aunt approaching. He stood up as she came to him, and helped her take a seat.
‘So,’ she began, with a martial light in her eye, ‘now we talk.’
Upstairs, Magda was giving Benji his bath. It was hardly necessary—he was as clean as a whistle from the pool—but it seemed compensation for him after having been dragged away from the water. She didn’t feel too bad about it, however—it hadn’t been their first dip. They’d already swum twice earlier in the day, which had been spent, like yesterday, in blissful ease.
She’d swum, had lunch with Maria and Giuseppe, swum again, napped with Benji and then explored the beautiful gardens and grounds of the villa—a skilful mix of formality and cultivated wildness—even venturing further up the hill behind into the lower slopes of the plentiful chestnut woods that stretched behind the villa. Hearing from Maria on their return that Rafaello’s aunt and uncle had arrived, she’d hidden herself and Benji in the pool area again for a final swim.
