Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy

‘Which means dangerous,’ said Delia. ‘Oh, bother. Crumbling stonework, I suppose.’

Benedetta must have seen them by the tower, for her small figure hurtled out of the house, cries of disapproval on her lips as she hurried up to them, wagging her finger in a most definite way.

‘Is she telling us that the tower is out of bounds?’ said Jessica.

‘We can see that for ourselves,’ said Marjorie.

Delia was listening carefully to Benedetta’s flow of words. ‘I think she’s asking us if we’ve seen the salotto . That’s the drawing room.’ She shook her head, and Benedetta seized her arm, pulling her towards the steps and back inside.

‘ Ecco! ’ announced Benedetta, as she swung open the door to the main room of the house. The shutters were closed, but instead of opening them, she switched on the lights. ‘ Il salotto .’

‘I was right, it’s the drawing room,’ said Delia. ‘Goodness, look at the ceiling.’ She turned to Benedetta and gestured to the shuttered windows, and Benedetta shook her head and made negative tutting sounds. Then she relented, and went over to the windows to open the shutters at the two windows which led out on to the arcaded terrace, George leaping across to help her.

Even with the shutters open, the light in the room was muted, but now they could see up into the vaulted ceiling, which was a deep, dark blue, scattered with stars.

‘How pretty,’ said Delia, tilting her head back to get a better view.

She had expected the drawing room to have heavy, dark wooden furniture, and she was surprised by the cream walls and panelling, and modern furniture, of a kind, she said in an awed way, that one mostly saw in magazines.

‘Comfortable, though,’ said Jessica, bouncing down on an immense sofa.

Benedetta looked pleased at their evident admiration, and burst into a torrent of Italian, from which Delia gathered that the room was entirely the work of Beatrice Malaspina. Benedetta was pointing with an air of pride at the frieze of figures painted along the walls at shoulder height. They were dressed in mediaeval costume, Delia saw, as she went to have a closer look.

‘Not old, of course,’ said Marjorie. ‘Old in style, but modern in execution. And how varied; look, this man is almost surreal, and this poor creature has been so cubified you can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. It isn’t finished, either—there are the outlines of more figures that haven’t been painted in. I wish we could see it properly, this part of the room is very dim.’

There was another window on that side, with a closed, slatted wooden blind over it. Delia went to pull the slats open, but the string had no effect, and Benedetta came over to take it from her hand, shaking her head again and showing her that it was firmly stuck.

‘It’s like the pilgrimage to Canterbury,’ said Delia, peering at the figures, which were walking along a road, between buildings painted in a slanting two-dimensional way.

‘Not Chaucer, but another great mediaeval poet, I think you’ll find,’ said Marjorie. ‘Dante. Look, there he is, in the red hat, greeting the line of people. And the building he’s standing in front of is the Villa Dante, I’m sure it is.’

‘How very clever of you to recognise him,’ said Jessica.

‘There’s a famous painting of Dante in a cap like that,’ said Marjorie, sounding slightly defensive for the first time. ‘This is copied almost exactly, so it’s hardly clever of me. And, given the name of the villa, it’s not surprising to find a picture of him here.’

‘I wonder if the house actually has any connection with Dante?’ George said. ‘Perhaps he stayed here. Perhaps Benedetta would know.’

Delia was listening hard to what Benedetta was telling them about the figures painted on the wall. She shook her head, frustrated. ‘She’s too fast for me. I really am quite useless at Italian.’

‘We have to be grateful that one of us has any knowledge of Italian,’ said George. ‘I regret that I never learned the language, although, unlike Jessica’—with an apologetic smile in her direction—‘I was good at Latin.’

‘Oh, Latin,’ said Delia. ‘It isn’t at all the same, you know. They pronounce all the words differently, for one thing, and then one imagines that the Romans spoke in measured tones, like stone inscriptions.’

‘Whereas,’ said Marjorie, ‘they no doubt gabbled away like anything. Do you think that’s a portrait of Beatrice Malaspina?’

The painting hung on the far wall on a panel between two flat fluted columns. It was a full-length portrait of a woman dressed in evening dress in the style of the late nineteenth century, her hair swept up, a black velvet ribbon at her slender throat. Her dress was black, and cut very low. Paris, thought Delia, and what a beautiful woman she must have been. No, not exactly a beauty; striking, rather, with that mass of hair and those huge dark eyes.

Benedetta hurried over to press a switch that illuminated the painting from above. In the brighter light, Delia could see that the hair of the woman in the portrait was very dark red, not unlike her own, but with glints to it that hers didn’t have. ‘And just look at that diamond on the velvet collar, what a huge stone,’ she said.

Whatever else Beatrice Malaspina was, she had been rich. Or married to a rich man, which amounted to the same thing.

Or did it? Her mother was married to a rich man, but did that mean she was too? Far from it, with every penny counted, every item of expenditure having to be justified. Delia’s own first act of financial independence had been to open an account at a different bank from the one where all the family had their business; goodness, what a storm that had provoked. Father hated not being in control of her money.

‘I think it’s by Sargent,’ she said, after staring at the picture for a while longer. ‘We have a portrait of my mother painted by Sargent.’

‘A fashionable lady,’ said George. He was doing a swift calculation in his head. ‘How old would you say she was in that painting? Late twenties? Early thirties?’

Marjorie had her head on one side. ‘Past thirty. She looks slightly younger than she is because of the way the painter has chosen to light the portrait.’

Delia was surprised at how definite Marjorie was. Was she going to turn out to be one of those assertive women who always insisted that they, and they alone, were right? If so, she, as well as Jessica, would find her a tiresome companion.

‘In that case,’ George said, ‘we may make a guess as to when she was born. That is, if one can date a picture by the clothes, which is more than I can do.’

‘About 1900,’ said Delia. ‘I know something about clothes of that time,’ she added.

‘In which case, she would have been born in 1870 or thereabouts,’ said George.

‘So she must have been in her late eighties when she died.’

‘A good age,’ said George. ‘Let us hope that we live so long.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Marjorie, but so quietly that Delia only just caught the bitter words.

Delia had been drawn irresistibly to the piano which stood close to a window. She lifted the lid and tried a few chords, then pulled a face. ‘It needs tuning, but it’s a good one; nice touch, excellent tone, I should say.’

Benedetta was beside her, gesturing and talking much too fast. Delia sat back on the piano stool and gestured to her to slow down. Benedetta tried again.

‘It was Beatrice Malaspina’s piano. I mean, of course it was hers, this was her house, but she played it. At least, I think that’s what she’s saying.’

Benedetta seized Delia’s hand in a surprisingly strong grasp and tugged her up from the stool. ‘Okay,’ said Delia, disentangling herself with some difficulty. ‘What do you want to show me? Oh, a cupboard full of music, how heavenly. Here’s the full score of The Magic Flute . Perfect; I see Beatrice Malaspina as a Mozartian.’