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Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson

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For once Benedetti keeps silent as though calculating that my own wordless surprise is best allowed to speak for itself. Despite myself I am already trying to visualise how this space can be best adapted to the Samper style of living, my initial resistance to the house admittedly lessened by finding it in such good internal repair. Going ahead while opening
windows
Benedetti leads the way up the staircase to the first floor. This, too, has been unfussily restored. The plasterwork on the white walls is obviously all new, and without any of the tricksy ‘antiquing’ lapses of taste such as individual stones arbitrarily left unplastered and carefully picked out. There are three bedrooms, the principal being spacious enough to accommodate easily even a bed the size of the one in
Crendlesham
Hall that Adrian and I shared at weekends and in which the sleeping Josh practically disappeared on the night of the Great Puke – as I now think of that literally fatal evening. The two bathrooms are unfinished, presumably awaiting
somebody’s
choice of tiles and fitments. The floor is cement, the plumbing connections all ready. A smaller flight of stairs leads to the attic. Great stretches of raw cement floor. The walls end abruptly just above the lintels of the window frames. Around them stands a rusty line of ‘cristi’, the extensible builder’s props whose shape suggests crucifixion to the jocular mind, supporting four-by-twos of rough pine to which the tin roof is nailed, pitched slightly higher at the back to shed the rain. Here the walls’ stonework is hidden behind the modern ribbed terra-cotta slabs called
tabelle
, but to judge from the window embrasures without increasing the thickness of the walls. H’m.

‘Okay,’ I say at last as we go back downstairs. ‘What’s the story?’

‘A tale indeed. A builder from Lucca bought this house at about the same time as you bought yours. I believe he was a distant relative of the old
contadini
who owned it. He had no intention of living here himself. He bought it speculatively when house prices in this area were beginning to rise rapidly. It was in pretty shabby condition. Shall we say in that respect it was not unlike la signora Marta’s house before she took up residence at Le Roccie?’

What does he mean, before? On that illicit visit last summer with Baggy and Dumpy Benedetti must have seen for himself that Marta’s residence in the house had changed nothing. A couple of rooms had been whitewashed and a few sackfuls of cobwebs had been removed, but only because the place had been used as a set for shooting some interiors for Pacini’s film. ‘I can imagine,’ I say.

‘So this builder was hoping to restore it and sell it to
foreigners
but unfortunately …’

‘… he ran out of money?’

‘No, although I agree that’s what so often happens. He simply did the project without getting the necessary planning
permissions
. He claimed he was just doing some necessary repairs.’

‘Expensive, but not particularly fatal.’

‘True. But then he fell foul of the Belle Arti, or the Beni
Culturali
as we have to remember to call them these days. He added that top floor, which is inauthentic.’

‘I thought those
tabelle
upstairs were suggestive. The stonework up there’s just cladding.’

Benedetti eyes me with mock admiration. ‘I pity the poor agent who tries to pull the wool over signor Samper’s eyes. He stands no chance. When we go outside I think you’ll agree the builder did a pretty good job of matching the stonework of the top storey with the rest of the house but yes, when you see those modern
forati
on the inside up there you realise at once what he’s done.’

‘So basically he did everything
abusivamente
.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And the inevitable moment came when the Comune stopped him working?’

‘Correct. The whole site was embargoed four years ago.
Bloccato
. He was allowed to put on a temporary roof to
protect
it, that was all. They gave him the opportunity to
demolish
the top floor and restore the original roof but he must have thought he’d already spent too much. He decided to leave everything as it was and hope for an amnesty.’

Ah, that made sense. Like everything else the builder had done, it was a calculated risk. Every so often the Italian
government
declares an
amnestia
on illegal buildings and they acquire a
condono edilizia
, or a pardon. At the cost of a token fine the building suddenly becomes legal. In this case the builder had no doubt reckoned the time he might have to wait until the next amnesty against the money he’d already spent and the ever-increasing theoretical market value of the
property
itself, and decided to bet on it. Since there hasn’t been an
amnestia
recently and I’m here as a potential buyer, he has obviously lost his wager.

‘But if the place is still embargoed,’ I point out in a musing sort of way, ‘he can’t sell it and no one can buy it.’


Teoricamente
. In theory, that’s true.’ Benedetti eyes me again, a prep-school master attempting to disguise an indecent proposal behind a meaningful hint. But old lightning-brain Samper has long seen it coming. Almost from the start the air has been laden with the gamey scent of a deal.

‘Mm,’ I say. ‘So I officially endorse the Diana story, the Comune lifts the embargo on condition that the builder sells – which I bet he will since his money’s been locked up for a good few years now and he must be sick of the trouble this place has caused him – and I get first refusal. Probably several refusals. What’s he asking?’

‘Four hundred thousand.’

‘Euros? He must be joking. An entire floor to demolish, a
new roof to put on, a
pavimento
to lay outside, a garage to build, bathrooms to install, kitchen to equip. What about
services
? I can see it’s plumbed and wired.’

‘Well, of course they all have to be connected. There’s mains sewerage and even gas in the middle of the road.’

‘Yes, a good hundred metres away. Phone? No visible
landlines
. You’re talking a lot of money and a great deal of time and bureaucratic nightmare to make this place fully habitable. And still he wants four hundred thousand?’ Cool hand
Samper
, playing the seasoned expert, chooses the right dismissive tone. ‘Not a cat in hell’s chance. Shall we go back to town and get a coffee?’

In silence Benedetti locks up and leads the way back to his monster wagon. ‘I’m sure the sum being asked is
trattabile
, by the way,’ he adds.

‘Negotiable? I should hope it was.’

‘But a person as enviably
aggiornato
as yourself,’ he says as I once again strap myself fatalistically into his all-terrain
juggernaut
, ‘will of course be aware how much in demand
isolated
properties with a stupendous view like this one are.’ The prep-school master, his initial advances rebuffed, resorts to wheedling and threats.

‘If by up-to-date you mean that I’ll have heard the wild rumours about Russian mafiosi buying properties around here with attaché cases stuffed with cash, then yes. But people to whom money is no object don’t buy unfinished houses with tin roofs, do they? They go upmarket for grandees’ villas with swimming pools and tennis courts. And most of the
prospective
buyers of houses like this one have just enough sense to work out that there will be a long way to go before they can finally let themselves and their kids through the front door for a family holiday. And they also may not know there are ways of minimising costs and hustling things along.’ Now it’s my turn to give him a meaningful look, schoolboy hinting that he might come across if it were made worth his while in terms of exam results. We all have our price, do we not?

We are barging back down the mountainside along the
narrow
winding lane with dangling brambles from the high banks on either side slapping the car’s flanks like quirts. For one appalling moment, just as we are about to enter a blind S-bend, Benedetti takes his eyes off the road to give me a placid leer.

‘I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, signor Samper, at how relaxed and easy this process could be. These little
transactions
are two-way affairs, aren’t they? A bit of give and take on both sides?’

I begin to wonder if at some time in the past Benedetti might actually have been a schoolteacher. He has all the moves.

email from Dr Adrian Jestico ([email protected])
to Dr Penny Barbisant ([email protected])

So it
is
a munitions ship, eh? Does your old supervisor not merit a small prize for inspired guesswork? Anyway, you’re right: it will
probably
foul up your fieldwork unless you can get your department head to change the remit so you can work specifically on mapping
chromosome
set changes in bivalves at graduated distances from a WW2 munitions ship wreck. Anyway, have a look at the Beaufort’s Dyke data I mentioned last month. All those ancient incendiary devices coming ashore on the Scottish and Irish coasts. There was a
mini-panic
about it in 1995 when I first went to BOIS (which is how I remember the year). You might also glance at the data on a WW2 Liberty ship, the
Richard Montgomery
. It’s also a US munitions ship but wrecked in the UK off the Isle of Sheppey. The MoD has decided the cargo’s too unstable to risk touching so the whole area around it is buoyed off. There may be some existing studies on chemical
contamination
in the surrounding sediments & biota but there probably aren’t because of the prohibited area. They say if the remaining cargo explodes at low tide it could flatten Sheerness. One’s mouth waters.

You admit to being homesick from time to time but take it from me, Penny, you’re well out of Southampton. This Severn Barrage thing’s shaping up to be another Great British Farce. There are two
reasons
for building a barrage across the Severn. Number one: tidal power generation. Good strong tidal flows there, lots of whizzing
turbines
. The other is that serious erosion of the N. Devon & Somerset coastlines is proceeding apace & with rising sea levels it’s getting worse by the year. They predict that unless the barrage is built the Somerset Levels will flood in the next 20–30 years. So?

I can’t remember how many Severn barrage schemes have been proposed since 1849, when they wanted it to create harbours for their fishing fleets & to serve as a road bridge. 14? 16? And that includes plans by the dear old Nazis in the 1940s who decided they would need one after they’d conquered Britain. Anyway, it’s now time for yet another barrage scheme so Defra & the Dept. of Trade & Industry have duly commissioned a zillion Environmental Impact Assessments, a lot of which fall to BOIS. It’s seriously getting in the way of normal work. In addition we’re bombarded with fierce or whingeing notes from municipalities in South Wales who write in to tell us that a barrage will dramatically change their coastline’s
sediment
budget. All this crap is turning us into bureaucrats. I became an oceanographer because I actually love the sea & its creatures. I do not love the DTI & its creatures, some of whom make
holothurians
look multi-talented. I had one in my office the other day who, if you’d upended him, could probably have ejected a stream of water & sand particles from his anus in vague protest, but that would have been about it.

As for dear Gerry, I’m afraid he’s miffed with me because I can’t go & give him a hand rescuing stuff from his house when the
bulldozers
go in. I just can’t get away at the moment, we’re all knee deep in these endless meetings. He says he understands but his tone says he doesn’t. That’s the trouble with being self-employed: you imagine that everyone else is as free of timetables as you yourself. And what’s more, because everyone else has a salary (as opposed to your own unpredictable pittance) you assume they must have the financial freedom to be able to take time off on a whim. On the phone Gerry’s voice gets a slightly petulant edge to it when I say I truly can’t drop everything & come. He’s such an egotist but I do feel sorry for him. It will be no fun unearthing his belongings (
embarrassing
, too, now & then) & I wish I could be there if only to lend moral support.

However, he says he’s going to be interviewed for a TV
documentary
about Millie Cleat, which he’ll enjoy. I gather it’s for
Global
Eyeball
& Leo Wolstenholme’s going out personally to interview him, so our Gerry’s clearly on the way to becoming a mini-celeb in his own right. He has also raised an interesting point. I can’t
remember
if you were still here when there was the fuss over that EAGIS survey in the Canaries two or three years ago? Sorry if I’m telling you stuff you already know, but the EU funded a seismic study of the roots of Cumbre Vieja, that volcanic peak with the crack in it which, if it collapses, they say will cause a tsunami that could swamp New York. The survey was in full swing when Millie was doing one of her around-the-world races. To save time & catch a current one night she cut across four brilliantly lit survey vessels close enough to make them take violent evasive action. Needless to say, this
completely
screwed up the leg & it turned out that in about 5 minutes flat Millie had ruined a vital part of the survey. As usual, they were on an ultra-tight time budget & it took them the best part of 24 hours to
disentangle
a cat’s cradle of streamers & air hoses – £80,000’s worth of equipment damage – after which they had to abort the survey & head home. The gap in the seismological picture turned out to be critical so we still don’t know how unstable Cumbre Vieja really is. Gerry always claims Millie remained to her dying day (which we all remember so vividly) blissfully unaware of the havoc she caused. Meanwhile, there was a conspiracy at BOIS & all the other
participating
institutions in Europe not to leak the fact that the survey
vessels
had got the whole episode on video. They were so mightily pissed off at her they were saving the film for release at a moment when she could be made to look a complete idiot. Unfortunately they waited too long & it never happened.

Gerry’s now suggesting Leo Wolstenholme ought to be told about the Canaries caper – the other side of the Millie myth, sort of thing. So he has asked me to sound out various people who were on EAGIS & ask what they think. All the video stuff’s here at
Southampton
. It’s not edited or anything, just webcam files, but the TV people could easily put it together if they wanted. If
Global Eyeball
does run the story I’m afraid I don’t think it will have the impact a lot of
scientists
(as well as Gerry himself) imagine.

Other than that, Gerry says he’s thinking of buying another house in the same area of Italy though obviously not on that same bit of mountain. From the point of view of our relationship, such as it is (whatever it is), I’m sorry he’s so far away. From his own point of view it’s logical. He’s more than fluent in the language – verbose, one could say – & the place feels like home to him, so why not? It’s a pity house prices in that part of Tuscany are so ludicrously high he’s probably going to have to spend a good deal, if not all, of his film rights windfall. Our lavishly salaried hearts bleed for him.

I must now apologise for being gratuitously rude about the man from the DTI. He’s just been back & he’s actually from Defra. He came to remind me there’s virtually no aspect of a Severn Barrage that can’t fall under the heading of the environment or food or rural affairs. Exercising his department’s interest in food he stayed to lunch, & I wish to state that like any sea cucumber he can ingest nourishment even though his mouth is fringed with a moustache rather than
tentacles
. It remains to be seen whether he can eject sticky white threads when irritated. I’m hoping to give him plenty of opportunity to display this faculty but until he does holothurians still win on
all-round
performance. Especially their conversation.

Cheers,
Adrian

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