Summer at the Lake (21 page)

People were always leaping to this conclusion but so accustomed to her own company, and that of her father, Esme really had no need of people her own age. ‘Please don’t worry about me,’ she said, ‘I really couldn’t be happier.’

But later, when Esme was taking her seat for lunch on the terrace after her walk, Signora Bassani approached her once more, but this time the woman wasn’t alone.

‘
Signorina
, may I present my son, Angelo, to you? He is home from Milan for the weekend and if it is agreeable to you, I wondered if he could keep you company while you have lunch. Maybe you could help to improve his English – like many young men of his age, he is lazy and refuses to study as he should.’

Inclining her head in acknowledgement, Esme regarded the extraordinarily handsome man beside Signora Bassani, a man who held himself in the same tall proud manner as his mother. His thick black hair was pomaded into place with a polished sheen, and with dark intelligent eyes, a broad forehead and aristocratic Roman nose, he gave off an air of easy entitlement.

It did not go unnoticed by Esme that in the split second it took for her to observe him, he had done the same with her.

Holding out his hand, and offering a smile of surprising warmth, he said, ‘Please to not listen to my
mamma
, I am the perfect student, the problem is I have not yet the perfect teacher.’

Shaking hands with him, Esme couldn’t help but think that while there were a few physical similarities between him and his cousin, Marco, he was an altogether different kind of man.

This was confirmed during lunch.

Self-assured and bristling with a restless energy, he entertained her with stories about his job in Milan as a newly qualified
avvocato
– a lawyer – breaking off now and then to enquire if her
pesce persico
– the local fish from the lake – was cooked to her liking, or to top up her water glass. He was an exuberant dining companion, keeping not just her amused but the guests around them, including the Kelly-Webbs who were back from an outing to Tremezzo, and a Canadian couple who had arrived from Turin last night. Gesticulating wildly with his hands, his dark eyes flashed with humour as he gave a highly amusing impersonation of Elena scolding Alberto for dirtying the floor of the holy temple of her kitchen.

He was a natural mimic, as well as a charismatic raconteur – even in a language that wasn’t his own – which for someone only four years older than Esme struck her as exceptional. But then she supposed that following the death of his father he’d had to grow up fast and adopt an older and more worldly manner.

‘I believe it is Marco who we must thank for persuading you and your father to stay here with us,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and pushing aside the bowl of perfectly ripe cherries Maria their young waitress had brought for them to share. The other guests had drifted away and it was just the two of them on the terrace now. ‘My cousin is the good and devout member of our family. Sadly, I am –’ he shrugged his shoulders expansively – ‘I am, how you say, the black ship.’

‘Black
sheep
,’ she said gently, not wanting to appear pedantic.

He slapped his hand down on the table and laughed. ‘Ah, yes, there is big difference, ship and sheep, such a difficult language you have.’

Hardly daring to imagine why he was casting himself as the bad lot of the family, Esme watched him blow a long, curling ribbon of smoke into the air. ‘I think you’re much too modest,’ she said, ‘you speak English extremely well and to the detriment of me learning Italian.’

He frowned and arched one of his well-defined eyebrows. ‘
Detree
. . .
detreement
? What is this?’

‘Sorry, it means disadvantage.’

His expression still one of puzzlement, she said, ‘What I mean is, I shan’t be able to learn your language if you continue to speak such fluent English with me.’

His expression now broke into what she could only describe as a wolfish grin. A hungry wolf at that! ‘You want to learn?’ he asked.

‘
Sì
,’ she replied, suddenly shy.

‘
Perfetto! Allora
, if you are not busy, your first lesson will be this afternoon. We shall go for a nice long walk and I shall be your
professore
. But in doing this we shall pretend to my
mamma
that you are teaching me the English. Yes?’

‘
Va bene
,’ she replied with a complicit nod, thinking that she might learn a lot more than just a language from this charming and charismatic man.

The following day, and shortly after Angelo had returned from Mass with his mother, he invited Esme to take the steamer across the lake with him to Bellagio where he had some business to attend to. When he’d finished he would take her to the Hotel Grand Bretagne, he explained, which he was confident she would like.

Esme and her father had been looking forward to visiting Bellagio together and she saw the disappointment in his face at Angelo’s suggestion. There was wariness in his expression also. But with assurances from Signora Bassani that Angelo would take good care of Esme, he agreed for her to go.

‘I don’t think your father approves of you spending the day with me,’ Angelo said now as the steamer pulled away from the boat stop with a loud grind and clank of machinery followed by a sudden bump that had him putting a hand out to stop her toppling forwards.

‘He was merely being protective,’ she replied, conscious that Angelo made no attempt to withdraw his hand despite the danger of her falling having passed. ‘He is my father, after all, it’s his job to look out for me.’

At that Angelo turned and flashed her one of his absurdly wolfish grins. ‘My
mamma
is also doing her job and says that I must behave as a perfect English gentleman. What do you think? Would not another English gentleman be boring for you? Would you not like something different? Perhaps I could play the part of an
innamorato
for you? It would be more fun, don’t you think?’

Esme willed herself not to blush. ‘More fun for me or for you?’ she asked.

He threw back his head and laughed. He laughed a lot. But from what she had seen so far of him in the twenty-four hours since they had met, he seemed to do everything in excess. He talked, laughed and smoked incessantly – she had never known anyone smoke so much as he did. He could also, as if a switch flicked inside him, suddenly appear almost morose. But essentially he devoted himself to flirting with her; an amusement that came as naturally to him as it did to breathe, she suspected.

‘I think it would be fun for us both,’ he said, sliding his hand to her waist and resting it there with a firmness that felt both improper and deliciously thrilling.

As a rite of passage it was very tempting for Esme to allow herself to believe she could fall in love with this confident and charismatic man. Would the experience not make her time in Italy complete, just as Elizabeth St John had urged? Certainly standing here with him on the prow of the boat, the wind blowing at her hair and the sun caressing her cheeks, she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t make the most of his attention.

As if responding to her thoughts, he increased the pressure of his hand and gently pulled her closer to him. With his other hand he pointed to a spectacular-looking palazzo in the distance with two striking
campanili.
‘For now I must concentrate and be your personal tour guide,’ he said. ‘That is the Villa del Balbianello. Originally a Franciscan monastery, it was built for the Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini.’

As the boat drew nearer and they cruised around the wooded promontory on which the villa was perched, Esme marvelled at the beautiful terraced gardens and the handsome loggia. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘There is much here that is beautiful,’ he said, switching his gaze from the scenery to her.

Now her face did flush and feeling the full force of his potent masculinity, butterflies took wing in her stomach. As unfamiliar as the feeling was, it was far from unpleasant.

Her father often described her as beautiful, but she had never thought of herself in that way. She was more inclined to believe what her mother had said of her, that she was too small and too thin, that she lacked the appropriate womanly curves men would find attractive, and that her waist-length blond hair was too fine and unmanageable. As for her face, in her opinion, it didn’t conform to any notion of what was considered classically beautiful. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ her father constantly reminded her when she sat for a painting for him, ‘and what others see in you is quite different to how you see yourself.’

After the boat had stopped at the village of Lenno, it went on to Tremezzo and Cadenabbia and once again Angelo adopted his role of tour guide, pointing out the Grand Hotel Tremezzo where Greta Garbo had stayed and the Villa Carlotta known for its colourful garden of azaleas and rhododendrons and where Esme and her father had visited; it was one of the few excursions they had made. ‘And there,’ Angelo said, ‘is the church specially for you English protestants. Maybe next Sunday you will go with your father.’ He gave her a sly smile. ‘Maybe by then you will have done something bad and will be in need of forgiveness.’

Biting her lip, she let the remark go and continued to admire the view in what she hoped was a sophisticated and enigmatic manner.

From Cadenabbia, the boat swung out towards the middle of the lake where on the far shore and shimmering in a bluish haze was their destination: Bellagio.

Left to explore on her own while Angelo went for his meeting, Esme quickly orientated herself, noting Hotel du Lac on the waterfront where she was to find Angelo later, and set off.

Compared to the serenity of Hotel Margherita, Bellagio came as something of a shock; it felt crowded and claustrophobic. In part this was because it was so pretty and attracted tourists from all around the lake. It was smaller than she had imagined, and with its warren of dark and narrow cobbled alleyways it reminded her of Venice, except here the streets were all steeply inclined.

At the top of one of these narrow streets, Esme found herself in a small piazza where on her left, according to her guidebook, stood the Romanesque church of San Giacomo. A cursory glance inside the cool interior presented nothing of any great interest for her and she decided to go back down to the waterfront and find somewhere for a cold drink.

She had only gone a short distance when she caught sight of a familiar figure some yards ahead of her. Too far away for her to call out to Angelo, she hurried to catch him up, but stuck behind an elderly couple struggling to negotiate the steepness of the steps, she lost sight of him. But then turning to her left, she saw him again in a narrow alleyway.

He wasn’t alone though; he was with four other men. Admittedly she hardly knew Angelo, but knowing his background they didn’t seem to be the type of men with whom Esme would expect him to associate, they looked much too rough and ready, decidedly disreputable. One of them opened a canvas duffel bag and handed a bundle of paper to the man on his right who began leafing through it. It was a few seconds before Esme realised that it was a thick wad of lire notes he was not so much leafing through but counting.

An instinct she didn’t question told Esme to take a step back into the doorway of a shop and, peering cautiously out from her hiding place, she watched Angelo take the money and tuck it inside the soft leather briefcase he’d brought with him on the boat, a case she had assumed contained important papers and documents for his meeting here. Never had she imagined the meeting would be with such shady-looking ruffians who, for all she knew, could be gangsters. Then a more alarming thought occurred to her; maybe they were members of
Cosa Nostra
– the Mafia?

Back in Florence and Rome there had been much talk of what went on in Sicily, of the thriving black market and the protection racketeering, and the killings. But surely that didn’t go on here, not in this charmingly picturesque little town. Yet if it did, what on earth was Angelo doing mixed up in it?

No, she had to have got it wrong; she was letting her imagination get the better of her and leaping entirely to the wrong conclusion.

Later, in the garden at the Hotel Grand Bretagne, where Angelo was met with smiles and handshakes by a number of people who knew him by name, they were shown to a table overlooking the lake.

A party was in full flow, and in the heat of the afternoon sun, the air fragrant with the smell of crushed grass, couples of all ages were dancing on the lawn – the men in suit trousers and shirts with ties loosened at the neck and sleeves rolled up to their elbows, the women elegantly attired in colourful sundresses either fashionably cinched in at the waist, or cut to suit the fuller figure of the older women. They were dancing to music provided by two singers accompanied by a small band with an accordion player.

The song being performed was one that Esme was sure she recognised, and watching the rhythmic way in which the couples were dancing, it came to her where she’d heard the song before; it had been in Rome in a trattoria with her father and a radio had been playing and when this song came on everybody had joined in and sung along. Glasses of grappa had then appeared and their waiter had explained that it was a popular Neapolitan song sung by the renowned Trio Lescano.

Their seats turned towards the band, and nodding his head in time to the music, Angelo lit a cigarette and smiled at Esme. Trying to rid herself of the unease that had dogged her since witnessing him in the alleyway with those shifty-looking men, she returned the smile aware that Angelo was not the cheerful loquacious man with whom she had come to Bellagio just a few hours ago; he was in a much darker and reflective mood.

Watching the dancing couples, she wondered if he would ask her to dance. She half hoped he would, especially if he held her as close as these couples were holding each other, but the other half of her – the Esme who, at the hands of her mother, had lived a life as sheltered as that of a nun – trembled at the thought. The only dancing she had ever done had been at school, when her partners had been other girls.