She smiled enigmatically.
'What?' demanded Adam.
'He is a bit nervous, I think. No one knows what her plans are now that she has . . . come to life again. He has waited a long time for the villa. He thought it would be his when Nonna died.'
'I hope he doesn't blame me.'
'You?'
He told her how Maurizio had searched him out in the garden with his concerns about his mother. He told her he had detected a degree of antagonism on Maurizio's part, although he didn't reveal that he had repaid like with like. He also mentioned the painkillers, reckoning she had a right to know. Antonella seemed more surprised by the fact that Maria had shared the information about the doctor's visit with Maurizio.
'She doesn't like Maurizio.'
'Or maybe she's just genuinely concerned for your grandmother.'
'Maybe.'
'I know I am. She could be running herself into the ground.'
'If she is, nothing will stop her.'
'That's very fatalistic.'
The slight barb wasn't lost on Antonella. Her eyes fastened on him, dark and hard.
'I love my grandmother, but I also know her well.'
They were rescued by the sound of an approaching vehicle. It blew into the yard in a cloud of white dust: one car, three couples crammed into it. The yard was soon filled with the sounds of laughter.
Two hours later, it was still echoing off the walls. No amount of food or wine—and both kept rolling down the staircase from the house—could dampen it. They even played a game of hoops in between two of the courses. The game was a gift to Antonella from her brother, Edoardo, a private joke lost on the rest of the company, and one the siblings refused to share.
Edoardo had his sister's jet-black hair and olive skin. He was a year or so younger than her, big and ebullient, humorous and shrewd. It was hard not be sucked along in his slipstream. The only person who seemed impervious to its pull was his girlfriend, Grazia—a fellow law student. She was also the only person who didn't speak English, not that this stopped her trying to speak it, and at the breakneck speed she spoke her own language. The result was a tumbling Babel of words, most of them French. Whenever Edoardo tried to correct her, she would round on him and say,
'Shut up. He understands. Don't you, Adam?'
To which Adam would invariably reply, 'Absolutely.'
'Absolutely' became something of a calling cry. It started when Enrico, newly wed to Venetian Claudia with the cornflower-blue eyes, was offered a top-up of wine. 'Absolutely,' he replied. And it went from there.
Italy is changing fast, now that we've joined the Common Market. Absolutely. Domenico Modugno should have won the Euro- vision Song Contest with 'Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu.' Absolutely.
The word only lost its currency when, as the coffee hit the table, someone remarked that the Christian Democrat Party was riddled with former Fascists.
'Be careful what you say,' chipped in the cartoonist who wanted to be a painter. 'Their uncle was a Fascist, was he not?'
It was Edoardo who replied. 'Absolutely. And it was Fascists who killed him. So what does that tell you?'
The cartoonist apologized for the comment, was forgiven, and the word didn't rear its head again. The mood remained buoyant, but Adam now found himself struggling to keep up. The banter and the bonhomie had been welcome diversions; they had allowed him to forget about the photograph tucked between the pages of his notebook lying on the sideboard in the kitchen. But now that Emilio had barged his way into the conversation, back into Adam's thoughts, there was no ignoring him.
While the others rattled on around the table, his mind wandered elsewhere—to Gregor Mendel and recessive genes and ear- lobes and the old photo of the rowing crew on the wall of Professor Leonard's rooms in Jesus College. He tried to prevent them straying further afield, into darker territory, where his conversations with Fausto lurked.
He chipped in from time to time, covering for his distraction, and when the other guests finally left, he was relieved to be forced back to the world around him, pumping hands and kissing cheeks and waving as the car disappeared up the hard white track to San Casciano, carried on a billowing dust cloud.
He said he'd help tidy up, an offer gratefully accepted by Antonella. They worked hard, methodically, until all that remained was a pile of dripping crockery on the draining board and a red wine stain on the bricks in the yard, where a glass had been toppled.
They retired to a makeshift wooden bench on a grassy rise beside the barn. It was a calm and peaceful spot, the shifting shadows retouching the landscape as the sun slowly dropped away to the west.
'What a place to live,' said Adam. 'You're very lucky.'
'Oh, I pay for it. The estate needs all the money it can get.'
'Things are bad?'
'Not just here—everywhere.'
She explained that the family that had occupied the house for countless generations had recently moved on, abandoning the countryside for the town, as many were now doing. The moment new tenants were found, she'd be out.
