Читать книгу: «One Summer in Italy»

Chapter One

The following year, as tourist season begins

Promises #1, #2 and #3: Don’t Mope. Do all the things single women do. Visit Montelibertà.

Sofia could see what Davide was up to. Threading between the black iron tables of Il Giardino he was deliberately brushing against Amy, apparently irresistibly drawn to her blonde-haired, blue-eyed prettiness.

Like Sofia, Amy had only been working at the hotel Casa Felice for ten days. As Davide had been away on a course, this was the first time their duties had brought them all together yet Sofia had heard Davide ask Amy for a date within ten minutes of the start of the shift. Not visibly rebuffed by her gasp of dismay and embarrassed head-shake, he’d then proceeded to behave like a Jack Russell in heat.

Sofia’s protective instincts were roused by her friend’s obvious distress. Amy was eighteen and this was her first summer job, for crying out loud! Davide was at least a decade her senior and the son of the owner. Sofia timed her next run to the kitchen hatch to coincide with Amy’s. ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered.

Amy’s eyes sparkled with angry tears as she balanced two pâté boards and an order of truffles on her tray. ‘Davide’s being a creep.’

‘He certainly is. I’m just checking you’re aware he’s Benedetta’s son—’

‘Don’t care! I’m not putting up with him rubbing his yucky “bits” on my bum.’ Amy spun on her heel with a swish of her blonde ponytail and made for a table of three middle-aged Englishwomen who’d whiled away the wait for food with a couple of bottles of prosecco.

Powerless to help, Sofia continued to run food and drink to her own tables, swinging fully laden trays up onto her flattened hand. It was hard work in the midday sun and the mercury was soaring even at the beginning of June. She watched her section, whipping out pen and pad to take orders then running the food and drink to the appropriate table. Quick, brisk, hurry. Smile, smile, smile. Take money. Clear tables; sanitise. Ignore burning feet and aching back …

‘YAH! Ungh!’

Sofia halted, sanitising spray poised as her eyes hunted out the origin of the strangled cries. In front of the corner of the bar Davide was doubled over, eyes bulging.

Nearby, a flushed Amy swung an empty tray. ‘Sorry. You startled me and my tray slipped.’ Then she loaded her next order of drinks and glided rapidly away without troubling to hide a triumphant grin.

Sofia smiled back uneasily, not missing the malevolent glare Davide directed at Amy’s rear view. ‘Keep an eye on him now,’ Sofia murmured when she contrived to make their paths converge at the bar. ‘What did you do?’ She cast a glance at Davide, who’d managed to straighten up and was taking an order from an Italian family.

‘Hit him in the ’nads with my tray. He might keep them further away from me in future.’ But the first flush of victory was obviously fading and Amy was beginning to look apprehensive as she slid four coffees onto the tray-slash-weapon.

Sofia wiped her hands on her apron and arranged her own tray so that it balanced before following in Amy’s wake. Amy was evidently given to impetuous action when threatened, but Sofia knew Davide’s type. He might not take long to strike back.

Smiling through the familiar routine of ‘Whose is the Cappuccino? And the Americano?’ with her customers, Sofia watched with a sinking sense of inevitability as Davide slunk up behind Amy at the table of the prosecco ladies just as she began the rotation of the wrist that would arc a tray full of steaming coffee cups from her shoulder to the table.

All it took was for Davide to shoot out a furtive arm.

The tray flipped off Amy’s hand … slap into the lap of one of the customers.

‘Ow, ow, ow!’ The woman leaped to her feet, dragging steaming fabric away from her legs. ‘You stupid girl! My best white linen trousers! How could you be so clumsy?’

‘I’m sorry!’ Amy, pale and shocked, glanced frantically behind her, obviously suspecting the tray had had some help in its flight. But Davide had lost no time in gliding away and was already watching from the shady doorway that led to reception.

‘Excuse me!’ Sofia plonked down the final Americano and raced between the craning guests, whipping off her apron. Reaching the unfortunate customer, she dunked the white cotton into the meltwater surrounding upended prosecco bottles in the ice bucket. ‘If you’d like to sit down I’ll put this over your legs in case you’ve been scalded. It’ll dilute the coffee, too. I know it’s not comfortable but I’m sure Casa Felice will pay for cleaning. Amy’s right to apologise, but I do think she was jostled.’

‘I was.’ Amy’s bottom lip began to quiver. ‘I’m very sorry – but the tray just seemed to leap off my hand.’

‘Oh, yes, trays are full of tricks like that,’ Mrs Coffee Trousers retorted. But then, seeing everyone staring at her, sat down and let Sofia lay the cold cloth across her thighs.

‘It’ll soon dry in this heat,’ remarked one of her companions from the comfortable position of not having been bathed in near-boiling liquid. She smiled at Amy. ‘Don’t you worry, darlin’. Worse things happen at sea.’

Sofia was just about to suggest Amy return to the bar to ask for the coffee order to be repeated when Benedetta barrelled out through the double doors of the hotel with Davide a few steps behind. Sofia’s heart dropped. Benedetta Morbidelli, an impressive mix of immaculate and statuesque, owned all of hotel Casa Felice and its café, Il Giardino. By the look of Davide’s smirk, he’d lit his mother’s blue touch paper and was now intending to watch her explode.

‘Sacked! Go, you!’ Benedetta yelled at Amy, her dark ‘updo’ quivering as she made extravagant shooing motions with her hands.

Amy’s lip quivered harder. ‘But it wasn’t my fault—’

‘Pack! Go!’ Benedetta thundered up to the table and gave Amy a little shove with her well-manicured fingertips.

‘But it wasn’t her fault,’ protested Sofia. She turned to give Davide a pointed stare, raising her voice over the sound of a motorbike arriving in the hotel car park beyond a row of flower tubs. ‘Someone knocked her.’

‘There was a young man nearby,’ said the same prosecco lady who’d tried to calm things before.

‘Go!’ Benedetta shouted in Amy’s face.

Amy took a frightened step back, stuttering piteously. ‘I h-haven’t got anywhere to go. I’m supposed to stay here till S-September.’

‘Look! Look what you do to my customer!’ Benedetta lifted the wetted apron off the maltreated prosecco lady’s legs.

Mrs Coffee Trousers was beginning to look discomfited. ‘You shouldn’t sack her. Even if she wasn’t jostled it was an accident and you’ve got no call to push her around, neither. You could get sued for that.’

‘I’ll pay for the cleaning,’ Amy quavered, before adding, wretchedly. ‘Once I’ve had some wages.’

‘Wages?’ Benedetta began shouting again at Amy, this time in Italian, that she would get no wages, she must go this very minute and pack her bags, then leave Casa Felice and never return.

The English tourists were obviously not following shrieked Italian but they all blinked as Benedetta shoved Amy again, presumably to encourage her to her room to pack. Amy, not understanding, began to cry.

Sofia lifted her voice. ‘Maybe we could discuss this indoors in private, Benedetta?’ When ignored, she repeated the suggestion in Italian.

Benedetta turned her wrath down a notch, perhaps seeing in Sofia an experienced hand. ‘She’s too young for this job. I need to get someone new from the website,’ she explained in the same language.

Sofia took a deep breath. ‘Actually, it was Davide. He made a nuisance of himself and when Amy put a stop to it he got his revenge by bumping her tray. I’m afraid I saw him do it.’

Davide stopped smirking and began to protest ‘Eh, eh!’ as Italian-speaking customers turned to gaze reproachfully at him.

‘What’s that you’re saying?’ demanded Mrs Coffee Trousers.

Sofia, despite a growing feeling that crossing the excitable Benedetta might result in her soon joining Amy in clearing her room, repeated her accusation in English. The English-speaking customers swivelled suspicious gazes towards Davide too.

‘No!’ remonstrated Benedetta with an air of injured reproach. ‘Not Davide.’

Then a man appeared beside the group, raking back fair hair damp with perspiration. In his thirties, he carried a red crash helmet and a black biker jacket, his lower half encased in protective gear. ‘She’s right. I saw this waiter do it.’ He turned a fierce glare on Davide. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, getting this young girl in bother and then grinning about it.’

‘Eh, eh!’ protested Davide again. ‘She dropped it. She is clumsy. It’s not my fault.’

‘She did not drop it!’ Sofia glanced at Biker Man, hopeful that this English tourist would continue to support her. ‘You’ve been brushing your … the front of your trousers against her and when she hit you with her tray, you got your revenge. And you went in and told tales to your mother.’ For Benedetta’s benefit, she repeated her allegation in Italian. Biker Man nodded, arms folded, interposing at intervals, ‘That’s absolutely right!’ even at the Italian bits.

Benedetta, visibly dismayed by the way things were going, dropped her voice to a confidential murmur. ‘We talk indoors, Amy.’ Rounding on Davide she snapped at him in Italian to give Mrs Coffee Trousers and her coterie their drinks on the house in lieu of paying the cleaning bill and then take over Amy’s tables as well as his own.

She made to usher Amy inside but Biker Man began to follow. ‘I’m here to check into the hotel, but I won’t be doing so until I have your assurance that this young girl still has a job.’

Sofia felt her mouth drop open. Biker Man was certainly taking his support of Amy seriously. What was it about blondes? Men all seemed to act like fools where they were concerned.

Benedetta hurriedly backtracked to pat Amy’s arm and turn her in the direction of her tables. ‘You stay. It’s OK. You work. I ’pologise for my son.’ She turned a smile on Biker Man. ‘You are a hotel guest? Welcome to Casa Felice. Please follow me.’ Glaring at Davide as she passed, she ushered Biker Man towards the cool interior of the hotel.

Just before he disappeared, the man turned and gave Sofia a grin and a wink.

She gazed after him, lips parting in astonishment.

A scowling Davide silently cleared up the mess of spilled coffee and broken crockery and Sofia gave Amy’s arm a quick pat. ‘How about you pop and get these lovely ladies cake to go with their fresh coffees. Signora Morbidelli said it was on the house.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ the prosecco ladies said to Sofia, and ‘Isn’t that good of her?’ to each other.

‘Thank you,’ Amy whispered as they both headed to the bar. She was clinging to Sofia’s arm as if she were even younger than her eighteen years. ‘I don’t know what I would’ve done if she’d sacked me. That man turned up just at the right time.’

‘Yes, it was lucky the guest saw everything.’ Sofia placed a slight emphasis on the word guest, but decided that now was not the time to point out more clearly that the residents of the hotel were always referred to respectfully. ‘If you want to clear tables for a bit I can take orders from your section until you’re feeling better.’ Or feeling a bit less Jekyll and Hyde. She would never have suspected Amy of being capable of swinging so rapidly from sweet and mild to angry and vengeful if she hadn’t witnessed it.

A few minutes later, encountering Davide at the kitchen hatch, Sofia treated him to her widest smile. ‘Shall we forget that all happened and just be friends?’

Davide spat out a word Aldo had told Sofia never to use, prompting the dad of a nearby Italian family to berate him for his language.

‘So that’s a “no” then.’ Sofia turned briskly and headed off towards a new table of red-faced, sweaty tourists to fulfil their urgent requests for cold drinks.

Levi left the storm in a teacup behind him and followed the woman indoors to the reception desk, bemused by her speedy change of mood – only seconds ago she’d been bandying about threats of the sack but now she was beaming benevolently as she indicated the well-groomed young woman behind the reception desk. ‘My daughter Aurora will be delighted to check you in.’

Aurora, looking to be in her twenties and oozing Italian chic – or whatever the Italian for chic was – smiled at Levi as if nothing would give her greater pleasure. ‘May I take your name?’

‘Levi Gunn.’ He was glad the personnel at the hotel spoke English as he’d had no opportunity to brush up on even a few Italian phrases before rushing off on this trip. While Aurora took him through the check-in process, he planted his Joe Rocket textile jacket and unpleasantly sweaty crash helmet on the desk. The armour in both jacket and his bike pants was essential for the road but less suitable for the blazing sun at a journey’s end. At his last stop-off, near Verona, he’d wrung his T-shirt out in cold water before putting it on beneath his bike jacket, but he still felt like a steamed fish.

Or was he just hot with anger at the scene he’d witnessed? His instinct to help the sobbing girl had seized him like a giant hand. Supporting the protests of the other waitress had done the trick. The blonde waitress’s job seemed saved and the dark-haired one had smiled at him, even though her eyes had been alive with curiosity.

Aurora finished tapping at her computer keyboard and took a printout from the printer tray. ‘You have room 303, which has a balcony looking over the town of Montelibertà. Hotel residents have use of the terrace at the rear of the hotel, with a fantastic view across the valley and of other peaks in the Umbrian mountains. The terrace leads from the dining room on the lower level and many guests choose to take their breakfast there.’

‘Sounds great. I like to paint landscapes so the terrace sounds wonderful.’

Aurora smiled as she turned the printout towards him and passed him a pen. ‘You will find many beautiful views to paint here. Please, if you need information or recommendations, let me know. Casa Felice is a family concern. My mother expects us all to work hard at pleasing our guests.’

‘I’m sure she always puts the guests first,’ Levi said dryly, thinking again of the crying waitress. Once he’d been given a key card he reluctantly closed his ears to the call of a frosty beer in Il Giardino and clumped across the small lobby in his biking boots, back out into the sun that blazed down on his fair English head. In the car park his Ducati Diavel, black with a red sub-frame and flashes, still radiated heat from the long trek across England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy in three days of hard riding. He didn’t hang around as he transferred tightly rolled underwear, T-shirts and shorts out of his panniers, the nearest things to luggage compartments on a bike, and into the cotton sack he kept for the purpose. All the while, he kept an eye on Il Giardino and the staff weaving their way between busy tables.

The teenage girl – Amy, the owner had called her – although appearing in danger of buckling under the weight of a well-laden tray, moved briskly, her face pink with exertion. After watching her for another few moments and deciding she was fundamentally OK, Levi checked out Davide, who, as he swept tables clear with angry movements, didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind which of the waitresses to glare daggers at. A man who’d sexually harass a younger colleague found no favour with Levi and that he’d proved to be the owner’s son made it worse. Little shit. Levi was usually a live-and-let-live kind of guy but his old man, ‘Bullet’ Gunn, had run a repair garage all Levi’s life and treated his workers with friendly respect. Levi had followed his dad’s example when it came to his own business.

Emptying the second pannier, he glanced at the dark waitress, her upswept hair glossy beneath the sun. She looked about thirty to his thirty-five. A crisp black dress emphasised her shape and a white apron hugged her hips. As he watched, she paused to speak with Amy, tray of empties aloft. She seemed to have the younger girl’s back, judging by the way she’d launched into battle in – impressively – both Italian and English. After watching for another second, he locked his panniers, grabbed his paintbox from the bungees securing it and took himself indoors.

Now he had the opportunity to study Casa Felice as he returned to the cool of the reception area, he found it charming. Where the walls were plastered they were painted white, but large areas of craggy russet stone had been left exposed, a contrast to the dark grey marble of floor and front desk. A wooden banister curved up alongside the stairs.

Room 303 proved as pleasant a surprise as the foyer had been, though oddly shaped. It held a modern bed and an eclectic mix of graceful furniture, and the bathroom was up to date and clean. Levi had booked a ‘superior’ room, all that was available at short notice, so was glad to see something for his extra seventy euros a night, especially the balcony that gazed over tiers of tilted terracotta roofs and the road curving down the hill into a jumble of buildings.

Montelibertà was a select but significant tourist destination, much of it made from the same rock it perched upon, like a little brother of the city of Orvieto to the north. Casa Felice stood on the edge of the town, secluded in its own grounds yet only a ten-minute walk from the centre. According to the website it boasted fifty guest bedrooms over three floors. The road outside, Via Virgilio, led out of town to an extensive country park. Il Giardino, he reflected, was neatly positioned to tempt those who’d worked up thirst and hunger with a country walk.

The ground fell away from the hotel at the back too, and he paused to drink in the view over the shrubs and lavender of the gardens below the terrace where the valley steepened. Large tracts of the slopes were darkly clothed with trees below the hazy purple peaks, some with other towns on the summit. He itched to get out the watercolour paints that had provided his major means of relaxation since his school days. Instead, conscious of his rumbling stomach, he returned to the cool indoors to take a shower and make his way downstairs to seek refreshment.

Half an hour later he was seated beneath the shade of one of Il Giardino’s off-white parasols. He had no trouble finding a vacant table. It was now three o’clock so perhaps many tourists had lunched already. Both waitresses were still working and the dark one appeared before him, producing her pad and pen from her apron pocket.

‘Buon giorno,’ she greeted him brightly. ‘Would you like to order?’ Her eyes were brown and her skin golden. If he hadn’t heard her speaking English he would have taken her for Italian.

‘Buon giorno.’ He ordered a large beer and an arancino rice ball stuffed with ragù.

‘Coming right up.’ She returned in a couple of minutes bearing a tall glass of pale beer and deposited it on the table. ‘Your arancino will be ready shortly.’ She shot a swift glance around and then lowered her voice. ‘Thanks for your help earlier. It made things a lot easier.’

‘It felt like the right thing to do.’ He took a long, satisfying draught of his beer, the chill liquid cutting through any remaining journey dust in his throat. As she’d raised the subject he asked, ‘Is the other waitress OK?’

‘I think so.’ Her eyes smiled. ‘I’m not sure how you saw the incident when you and your motorbike didn’t arrive until after it had taken place but I’m grateful, and I know Amy is.’

Levi shrugged off the first part of her sentence. ‘That guy – Davide? He’s not around right now?’

She grinned, her teeth white and even. ‘Benedetta thought it was a good idea to send him on his break.’

He chuckled. ‘I suppose Casa Felice’s not like one of those massive places where it’s easy to assign staff members to opposite ends of the building and know they’d be unlikely to see each other.’

She nodded. ‘Especially as Amy and I live in at Casa Felice.’

‘Do all the staff?’