The Italian Villa: An emotional and absolutely gripping WW2 historical romance Page 19

  “Oh, nothing important. Just, Flora hasn’t had a good track record of paying rent.”

  “I’m aware of that. She’s not been very well…”

  “Yeah…” she said, with fake compassion.

  “She’s on the mend now, so payments will be regular again, I can assure you.”

  “Mmmm. I hope so. She’s been renting my place for a long time. But I need an income I can rely on.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We’re going to have to see what happens next, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Just that I might be looking for another tenant.”

  My breath caught. Flora had it set up so well. That place was perfect. She’d put her heart and soul into it, despite her… her low moments. Michela couldn’t possibly throw her out!

  Right, Callie. Keep your cool.

  “I understand. Like I said, she will be regular in her payments from now on.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because I’ll check, was the first answer that came to my mind – but that would be demeaning Flora in a way she would immediately disapprove of. “Because she’s better, I told you,” I said, trying to keep calm.

  “We’ll see. At this point, I’m even considering selling the shop. A couple of people have been asking.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I’ll talk about it with Flora. Thanks for the lift, you can leave me here.”

  “It’s no problem to take you all the way.”

  I was desperate to get out the car. “I’ll walk.” I stretched my mouth in a smile as she pulled over by a small shrine – a mound of gray stones with a plaque and some flowers – where I jumped out. The winding road from the castle was dotted with little shrines, but this one was different; it was empty. For some reason, I’d never looked at it properly before as I’d passed.

  My eyes fell on the plaque, and I read the engraving.

  In memory of Lorenzo Pigna

  14 years old

  Here felled by Nazi invaders

  During the Montevino slaughter

  April 12 1945

  Pietro’s friend, the boy who’d walked all the way from Poland, whose mamma had lit so many candles in the church that they filled the floor. He’d come back only to be shot, in something called the “Montevino slaughter.” Suddenly dangerously close to tears, I tried to compose myself. I now knew exactly what awaited me next in Elisa’s diary.

  What I didn’t know was if she and her family had survived the massacre.

  I swallowed back tears as grief overwhelmed me for the broken lives of these people now gone; for Lorenzo’s short life and his mother’s pain.

  “Are you okay?” Flora asked as I arrived at the shop, making my way straight to the back room to leave my bag. My face probably said it all.

  “Not really.” The shrine and my conversation with Michela were playing on my mind. Should I tell Flora? I had to. It was her shop, and even if Michela, for some reason, had decided to speak to me and not to her, she needed to know.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Wow! I suddenly saw how amazing she looked this morning, with a strappy top and a maxi skirt, her hair half-up and half down her back.

  “I’m okay, yes. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I just had a chat with Michela… She saw me walking down to the village and offered me a lift in her car. She said the rent here hasn’t been paid on time for a while, but I said that we knew that, and that it’s sorted now.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But apparently she’s thinking of actually selling the place.” I raised my shoulders, waiting for Flora’s reaction; I was expecting defiance, instead she sounded dismayed.

  “Oh, no,” she said softly. My heart sank.

  “What’s her problem with you, Flora?” I said, half-jokingly.

  “She has her eye on Marco Leone. Or on his money, more like,” Flora said in that curt, direct way of hers.

  “Oh, that explains it.”

  “I haven’t been very regular in paying the rent, opening the shop, you know…”

  “I know.” I hated to see her so… ashamed.

  “But I’m back on track now.”

  “Yes, totally! Michela won’t have any reason to sell the place from under us.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about that, Callie,” she said, and I was touched. She was trying to reassure me. This was a different Flora from the one I’d met when I first arrived. “You look like you didn’t sleep well.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I won’t ask,” she said, smiling. “But I’m guessing it starts with T and ends with Ommaso… I’ll make you coffee!” she called, disappearing into the back.

  “No,” I replied.

  “No coffee?”

  “No Tommaso. No more, it seems.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am Paolo Caporale’s daughter.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “He can’t accept who my father was.”

  “I’ll give him a piece of my mind,” she hissed, and began to make her way to the door.

  I took her by the arm, half alarmed, half pleased that she was being so defensive of me. “Please don’t, Flora. It’ll only make things worse.”

  “Listen, Callie,” she said, and her upset was palpable. “Paolo Caporale ruined your mother’s life! And… and mine. Now he’s dead, and he’s still ruining our lives. We can’t allow it! You have no idea…” For a moment, she looked as if her memories were simply unbearable. It broke my heart.

  “Look, Flora. I told him what I thought. That it’s horribly unfair he holds this against me. There’s nothing else to do but hope he comes around.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then he’s not for me. If he can’t get past who my father is…” I shrugged and shook my head.

  “Idiota,” Flora muttered. “If you change your mind… If you want me to go speak to him—”

  “Speak? I don’t think so!” I smiled. “You’d hit him over the head with a broom.”

  Her lips had curled into a little smile.

  “Look, we’ll prepare these orders together, and we’ll talk about your love life, instead,” I said, forcing myself to be cheerful, though the Tommaso situation weighed on my heart, heavy as a stone.

  “Okay, if we’re finished with terrible news, it’s time for your first test,” Flora said.

  Now, that was a quick change of subject.

  “What test?”

  “I want to know what you learned from the books I gave you,” she said, while her hands were working quickly, beautiful and skilled, lifting jars off the shelf, weighing herbs, slipping them into paper bags with lists stapled on them.

  “Okay. Ready.”

  “Let’s see… What can you use hibiscus for?”

  “It’s an antibacterial and it promotes menstrual flow.”

  “Careful if—”

  “You have high blood pressure. A no-no if you’re pregnant.”

  “Ten out of ten. Arthritis. What do you suggest?”

  “Turmeric… cat’s claw… aloe vera cream for painful joints, ginger to reduce inflammation.”

  “Okay, an easy one. Cellulite! Always a favorite.”

  “Dandelion, parsley, centella and fenugreek?”

  “You forgot a crucial one…”

  “Birch! Betula pubescens.”

  “Well, you’ve been studying! Keep going. Lollipop?” she asked and handed me one of the honey lollipops she kept on the counter for when children visited, making me smile.

  “Thank you! So, the books you gave me are the ones you used on your course?” I asked.

  “Some of them, yes. Please can you put the contents of these bags into Passiflora jars?” she asked, passing them to me.

  Looming behind Flora were jars in several sizes: each had the Passiflora logo, a stylized Passiflora flower painted on top, and a removable label on which to write the herbs used. I began to decant the
contents of the bags, now well blended, into the jars, then wrote the contents of each jar on a label, using a pen with black ink. We were a good team. We worked in harmony.

  “I went to a college in Turin and I did three years there,” Flora told me. “Then I specialized in herbal medicine, as part of the pharmacy course. People who think herbalism is all new-agey fluffy stuff have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s a science. And you know, there was a lot of math in the course. It’s a miracle I passed, to be honest. I was terrible at math.”

  “Did you have to do math?”

  “Oh yes. You must be able to calculate exact doses for things, exact proportions. Sometimes you have to calculate the dosage in relation to the weight of the patient. You can’t take risks. If you make scented candles and bath bombs” – she gestured behind her – “you’re safe. You can’t overdose on a jasmine candle! But if you’re preparing medicine, you must be careful. Licensed, and careful.”

  “The course you did sounds amazing. There was a leaflet tucked into one of the books.”

  “Oh, yes?” She smiled. “That was years ago. I was about your age… so that was what? Fifteen years ago.”

  She was thirty-seven. There were only sixteen years between us.

  There was a question I’d wanted to ask for a while, but hadn’t found the courage to. “Do you think… Well, do you think I would be suited to it? I mean, to study the same courses you did?”

  But Flora didn’t have time to reply, because a customer came in. I let go of the breath I’d been holding.

  “Ciao! How are you?” Flora said to the woman who’d just entered. She seemed to know most of her customers – a lot of them came back again and again, and she followed them through weeks and months in whatever health journey they were making.

  “I’m good… Well, actually, I’m having trouble sleeping these days,” the woman said. She seemed to be in her early forties, and looked a bit despondent, with shadows under her eyes.

  “Sure. Callie here will make you a blend. Callie?”

  I formulated a “who, me?” in my mind, panicked, and rose to the challenge all in the space of a moment. “Oh. Yes. I can make you a blend,” I said, throwing a glance to Flora, who gave me a small nod.

  “Okay. So. Valerian, passionflower… our namesake… and chamomile.” I scooped up the dried herbs from jars on the shelves behind us. “And lavender.”

  “Mmmm, I would say let’s leave out the lavender,” my aunt said gently. I wondered why. It was one of the best herbs for relaxation, but I didn’t question.

  “Sure. Would you like a sachet or one of our jars?”

  “Oh, a Passiflora jar, please.”

  “You can bring it back when you’re finished, and we’ll refill it for you.”

  “Great. Thanks.” The woman paid, and as was about to leave when Flora whispered to her: “Good luck.”

  “Thank you!”

  And then, to me, after she’d gone: “You did well.”

  “Thank you. But this was easy.”

  “Not as easy as it looked. You know, the signora you just sold herbal tea to. She’s trying for a baby. She’s going to have treatment soon.”

  “Oh, wow! How do you know?”

  “She’s been here before. That’s why I didn’t want you to add lavender to the mixture.”

  “Oh, yes! I read it in one of the books: lavender is not good in the first three months of pregnancy. But how do you know she’s trying for a baby? Are you aware of all your customers’ private lives?”

  “Those who come for healing, yes. ‘Are you pregnant or trying for a baby?’ is one of the key things you must ask. You get close to them, you know, it gets personal. That’s the beauty of it. It’s why I do it.”

  “Yes. I understand. Flora, you said the women in our family are mostly healers of some sort. What about my mother? What did she do?”

  “She was a nurse. She worked with the elderly. So, yeah, she carried on the family tradition too. Though she died so young, of course.”

  I looked down for a moment. “My mom… I mean my adoptive mom… also worked in a retirement home. She was a nursing assistant there. She stopped when I was born.”

  “I see.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that that was how they might have met and arranged the adoption. I wanted to ask Flora, but something else, something that rose very quickly from the depths of me, came out instead.

  “Flora… Why were you so horrible to me when I first arrived?”

  She looked up from the oil bottles, and there was something in her expression that was almost… pained.

  “It’s okay, you can tell me. I’m tough, you know.”

  Am I?

  “There are things you need to know. I’m trying to find a way to tell you all…” she began. But it wasn’t to be, not then. The shop bell went, and another customer entered, followed by another and another until closing time. I knew by the end of the day that the moment had passed, that Flora wasn’t ready to tell me just yet, just as I hadn’t been ready to ask about how my adoptive parents and Malva met. I had to respect that.

  After what felt like an endless day, every step dragged as I made my way up the hill in the light summer evening. I knew that at the end of the long climb I would be compelled to open Elisa’s diary once more and to re-live the tragic news of Lorenzo’s death all over again and find out who, if anyone, survived the massacre.

  I passed Tommaso’s cottage and saw that it was deserted, the door and the shutters closed. His garden and his small orchard seemed forlorn without him around, cheerfully going about his work. He must have taken Morella with him because there was no sign of her either.

  A lonely figure was walking toward me: an elderly woman with a straw hat, a skirt and socks – the attire of local women when they worked the land, I’d noticed. “Ciao, Callie,” she called. I wasn’t sure who she was, then I realized how much she looked like Nonna Tina. She had to be Tina’s sister. I didn’t even ask myself how she knew who I was. The nonna-web, clearly.

  “Ciao… Sorry, have you seen Tommaso today?” I gestured towards his cottage.

  “Early this morning. He’s gone to Milan. For business.”

  For business. Okay.

  “Grazie.”

  “Prego. Take care, child,” she said sweetly, and stroked my face with cool, wrinkled hands, before walking on, slow and a bit rigid, the way old people do. She didn’t even know me, except by name. For some reason, her affectionate touch had moved me.

  It was lonely up here without Tommaso. Everything was turning out to be so complicated. But I would manage. I knew how to be alone and how to take care of myself. And things with Flora were improving. It wasn’t all bad.

  When I stepped inside, at least the house enveloped me with its warmth, as usual. There was something about Firefly House – it always seemed to welcome me, like it was happy I was back. Maybe it was just my imagination.

  I changed into loungewear, and decided it was a night for comfort food. With glee, I made myself a PB&J sandwich. I’d been overjoyed when I saw peanut butter in the local grocery store. Of course I was into Italian food and those amazing flavors I was discovering, but every once in a while a girl wants a little taste of home.

  I lit the fire in the sitting room – I was getting better at it – and performed what had become a sort of ritual, before reading Elisa’s diary: I opened the window to let the breeze and the cricket song in, lit the candle Flora had given me, and curled up on one of the couches. I opened the small book onto the last page I’d read and turned the page. The next began with just three heartbreaking words: Pietro is dead.

  I clasped my hand on my mouth and sat up.

  My little brother, whom I fed and bathed as a baby, who used to play soldiers in the kitchen, running around with Mamma’s wooden spoon, has been killed.

  I feel like I am quite dead myself.

  I steadied myself and kept on reading, blinking away the tears.

  When I came back
from work, I knew at once what had happened. I had a feeling in my bones. Too much bad news was coming from everywhere; it was almost sacrilegious to believe our family would be spared from the grief consuming the whole town. I could hear Zia Costanza’s sobs all the way from the garden.

  “He’s gone,” was all she said before holding me close and tight like she was drowning, until her sobs became silent and contained, like she always was. My eyes were dry with shock.

  I found Mamma upstairs in Pietro’s room, sitting by the window. She’d cried so much recently, and yet now that the worst had happened, she, too, was without tears. “They deceived him,” she said softly. “They made him believe he was fighting for glory, for victory. For Italy. He was fighting for nothing. He died for nothing.”

  I ran to Mamma and laid my head in her lap. We comforted each other as best we could. She insisted on sleeping in Pietro’s bed that night and I eventually convinced her to take some medicine that would help her sleep. Zia Costanza sat by Mamma, praying until she did. Then I went to see Papa, his hands bloody from where he’d pounded them against the wall.

  I went out into the night, looking for Don Giuseppe…

  “Callie! Come out at once! Callie!” A female voice, calling me from the garden. I shook myself, dried my tears and ran downstairs.

  “Don’t you dare ignore me! Come out!” I recognized Sofia’s voice at once.

  I took a breath and opened the door. “Stop screaming! What are you doing here?”

  She pushed past me and made her way inside. “You stay away from my father.”

  “What?”

  “You spoke to him. At the café.”

  “I said hello! He asked me how Flora was, I said she was good! You’re crazy!”

  “Stop trying to get them back together! Flora almost destroyed him. Everything was fine again, then you had to come along to stir things up.”

  “What exactly did I stir?” I was trying to get my head around what she was saying, but it wasn’t easy. I was still lost in the diary, and it was hard to come back to reality again. Especially a reality where a virtual stranger had turned up at my door to shout at me.