Summer at the Villa Rosa

by Nicky Pellegrino

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Raffaella Moretti, by far the most beautiful girl in the southern Italian town of Triento, is about to marry the only boy she has ever loved. It seems that nothing but happiness lies in store for her. Yet, just one year later, she is a widow, and has taken a job as housekeeper in the Villa Rosa, working for a young American.

As Raffaella struggles to recapture her lost happiness she starts looking for ways to help those around her to do the same. There is Silvana the baker's wife, her passion barely hidden; Carlotta the gardener's daughter with her mysterious grief, and the kind and gentle owner of the Gypsy Tearoom who offers Raffaella friendship. As the lives of these villagers interweave, Raffaella is pulled into a conflict that threatens to divide Triento and destroy all she holds dear.

Filled with love, delicious food and wonderful characters, SUMMER AT THE VILLA ROSA is like taking a seat in a sun-drenched piazza and absorbing yourself in the sights and sounds of Italian life.

Release date: April 28, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 281

Sample

The pomegranate tree stood alone in the centre of the courtyard. How much longer it would stand there no one knew. Long ago
its twisted limbs had stopped reaching for the sky and now only tender care kept it alive.


Last year, in October, the old tree began to lean like the Tower of Pisa. It was Carlotta, the gardener’s daughter, who noticed
first.


‘It’s as though the fruit is too heavy for it to carry a moment longer,’ she said sadly to her father, Umberto. ‘It wants
to lay down its tired branches and rest them on the ground.’


Umberto stopped sweeping up autumn leaves and leaned on his broom. He looked at the pomegranate tree and saw Carlotta was
right. The fruit still hung like lanterns amid the sinewy branches, but the tree was pitching forward to the ground.


‘It will have to come down,’ he said shortly.

‘No, Papà!’

‘Carlotta, if I don’t chop it down, it will fall by itself,’ Umberto argued reasonably.

‘But, Papà, it’s so very old. You’ve always told me it’s been here far longer than either of us has been alive. You have to
try to save it.’


Umberto looked at his daughter, at her sharp, pale face beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat she always wore, and her thin arms
pressed to her flat chest in entreaty. And then he looked back at the pomegranate tree.


‘It’s no good, Carlotta, it’s coming down. We have plenty more pomegranate trees down there.’ He gestured towards the terraces below the courtyard. ‘And look, most of the fruit on
this tree is bad, anyway.’


‘Yes, but when you find one that isn’t bad, it tastes so much sweeter than any of the fruit from those younger trees down
below.’ She took hold of the broom and pulled it away from her father. ‘I’ll finish sweeping up these leaves if you’ll try
to save the old pomegranate tree.’


Half listening to the sound of Carlotta’s broom scratching over the flagstones, Umberto stood and stared at the tree. His
mouth hung half open, as it always did when he was thinking hard, so all the world could see there was not a tooth left in
his head. Next to his bed, he had a set of dentures in a jar, but he had never taken to wearing them, and besides, he and
Carlotta so rarely saw anyone these days it hardly seemed worth making the effort.


No one ever visited the pink house beside the courtyard. It was empty and its dark-green wooden shutters were closed tight,
as they had been for years. Umberto received a small wage each month for the work he and Carlotta did in the grounds, and
they lived quietly in their cottage just beyond the high walls. They were charged only with keeping the gardens neat and tidy,
and no one came to check the work had been done. If he chopped down the pomegranate tree, only Carlotta would notice or care.


‘It wouldn’t take much to get it down,’ he called out to her. ‘I could probably push it over if I tried.’

‘It’s roots may be deeper than you think,’ she called back.

‘We could plant another tree in its place – a sapling. It would grow before you knew it.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

‘Carlotta.’ He was exasperated now. ‘A gardener can’t afford to fall in love with the plants in his garden. He must harden
his heart and tear out those that are old or dying or simply no longer look their best. And he must plant afresh.’


Carlotta stopped brushing, but she didn’t speak. He looked over and saw she was staring at the tree.

‘I can’t imagine waking up tomorrow morning and seeing that it isn’t there,’ she said softly. ‘It’s been there every morning,
every day of my life.’


Umberto threw his hands in the air. ‘So how do you suggest I save it?’ he asked angrily. ‘It’s half dead already so how am
I meant to keep it alive?’


‘It isn’t half dead.’ Carlotta’s voice was measured and patient. ‘Its leaves are green and it still bears fruit. But it’s
old and tired. All it needs is some help to hold its branches up from the ground.’


‘All it needs, all it needs,’ Umberto muttered, pulling the battered old hat from his head and wiping the sweat from his brow
with it. It was warm and all this thinking was hard work. ‘You’re asking too much of me,’ he exploded. ‘I don’t know how I’m
supposed to keep the damn thing from falling over.’


He heard a hiss of impatience as Carlotta threw the broom at him. Two minutes later he saw her disappearing down the stone
steps that led to the lower terraces, an axe in her hand. She was puffing when she came back and red in the face, and in her
hands there was no longer an axe but a thick, long branch with a fork in it that was wide enough to cradle the biggest of
the pomegranate tree’s trailing limbs.


‘It’s a crutch,’ Carlotta explained. ‘If we wedge it beneath that branch firmly enough, it will support the tree and it won’t
lean over any further than it has already.’


There was some heaving and pushing, but Carlotta was determined and the tree seemed to know it. Finally, it allowed the crutch to be jammed beneath
its deformed limb and let it take its weight.


Umberto stood back and surveyed their work. He nodded his head in quiet approval. ‘You’re a clever girl, Carlotta. I always
said so.’


She smiled at him in reply. ‘I’d better go and get that axe,’ she said, and he heard the happiness in her voice if not in
her words. ‘I left it down below.’


‘No, leave it,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get it later. And I’ll cut another crutch while I’m down there … just in case.’

She smiled at him again. ‘The tree will be here tomorrow when I wake. And the morning after and the one after that.’

‘It will die eventually, though, everything does,’ Umberto said bluntly. ‘And there is no one here to appreciate it while
it does live.’


‘Oh, you never know.’ Carlotta glanced at the pink house with its shutters closed against the light. ‘Perhaps someone will
come along one summer and open up the house and sit beneath the pomegranate tree to watch the sunset. Until then it’s here
for just you and me.’


Umberto clicked his tongue against his gums. ‘No one will come, Carlotta. They’ve forgotten this place even exists. It will
be empty for ever.’


Raffaella couldn’t sleep. She lay on her back in the lumpy old bed she shared with her younger sister and stared into the
darkness. The last thing she wanted was shadows beneath her eyes. But her mind was busy with thoughts of the excitement to
come and her body was filled with a restless energy. She couldn’t lie still any longer.


The sheets rustled as she slipped out from between them, but her sister didn’t stir. In the darkness, Raffaella felt her way
to the end of the bed, and her fingers found the cedar chest that stood there. Quietly, she lifted the lid and slipped her
hands inside.


The embroidered tablecloth lay on top. It was white with silver thread, and there were eight napkins to match. Beneath them
was the bedlinen her grandmother had given her when she was ten and the towels she had been presented with a year or so later.
And at the very bottom, neatly pressed and swathed in tissue paper, were the flimsy bits of underwear and pretty nightgowns
her mother had helped her embroider.


This was Raffaella’s bottom drawer. She’d been adding to it since she was a young girl, and everything inside had remained
untouched, aside from the odd airing, waiting for the day when she was married.


Tomorrow the cedar chest would be loaded on to a cart with the rest of the things that made up her dowry and taken up the
hill to a new home. And one day later, when all the celebrations were over, she would follow it. She would hang the towels
on a rail, put the sheets on the double bed and dress in the finest of the nightgowns. And that night her sister, Teresa, would sleep alone for the first time, while Raffaella climbed into bed with her new husband.


Curled up against the cedar chest, Raffaella rested her head on the stack of linen and imagined what her life would be like.
Free to kiss her Marcello’s lips as much as she wanted, to lie encircled in his arms and talk late into the night. Free to
be together without a member of the family always nearby, free to touch him and be touched in return.


Raffaella was excited by the thought of her wedding day, but she was more thrilled at the prospect of what lay beyond – her
life once the cedar chest had been emptied of all its contents and she had become Marcello’s wife. Ever since they were children
in the schoolroom and she had willed him to choose the desk beside hers, it was all she had wanted.


As the fine linen grew warm beneath her cheek, she tried to imagine the weight of a gold ring on her finger and the new sense
of belonging. It was difficult to believe that so much happiness lay in wait for her.


She lifted her head from the linen and carefully closed the lid of the chest, then eased herself back into bed. Teresa continued
to sleep soundly. Raffaella listened to her sister’s rhythmic breathing and felt the warmth radiating from her skinny body.
One more night like this and then it would be Marcello lying there beside her.


She closed her eyes and slowly her mind quietened. At long last she slipped away into sleep.

When Raffaella finally woke, her mouth was dry, her eyes filled with sleep, and her sister’s side of the bed empty. There
was no sound except the crying of gulls and the lapping of water, but as she blinked and rubbed her eyes clean, she smelled
coffee. She sat up in bed and ran her fingers through the tangle of her long, black hair. What time was it? she wondered.
How late had they left her to sleep?


Pulling back the curtains, she saw the sun was climbing in the sky. Her father and the rest of the fishermen must have set out long ago. Now their boats would be nothing more than
dark dots on the blue horizon.


The cottage Raffaella had lived in all her life was perched on a rock, overlooking the harbour and the sea beyond. Years ago
it had been painted the colour of peaches, but the lash of salt in the wind had quickly peeled the paint from the walls where
the sun had blistered it.


The rock was inhospitable, but a few stunted bushes clung on grimly, and at its base, well above the high-tide mark, her father
had planted a white statue of Our Lady, who stared out to sea and protected the fishermen and all those who risked their lives
riding the waves.


Their little house was built to fit round the curve of the rock. Every room was narrow and cramped, but the narrowest part
of all was the kitchen, where the wall was carved into the rock itself. Brightly coloured plates danced across the rough grey
slab, and on a high shelf, Raffaella’s mother had arranged wine bottles she’d collected, her eye caught by an unusual shape
or shade, and jewels of glass she’d found while trawling the beach, fragments worn smooth by the sea and the sand.


What Raffaella loved most about her mother was the way she looked for the play in life. When she had to clean and polish her
house, she did it with a song or at least a hum. If she had to shake out the crumbs from a tablecloth, she amused herself
by scaring away the seagulls that perched on the narrow ledge of rock below the kitchen window.


Even while she made a simple cup of coffee she was playing, heaping the fine coffee grounds in an impossibly tall pyramid,
higher and higher every time, until sometimes it collapsed all over the kitchen table and she had to clean it up and start
again.


Her mother’s coffee shouldn’t have tasted any different than coffee made by someone else’s hand, but Raffaella was convinced it was better. She breathed its scent now as she climbed down the crooked steps from her room at the top of the
house.


‘Mamma, what time is it?’ she called out. ‘Why didn’t you wake me earlier?’

‘Ah, Raffaella, you’re up at last.’ She heard a laugh streak through her mother’s voice. ‘The smell of coffee must have woken
you. I wondered if it might.’


‘No, you knew it would. That’s why you made it.’ Raffaella stepped into the skinny kitchen and smiled at the familiar sight
of her mother pouring a stream of black coffee into two small white cups and spooning in sugar.


‘I knew?’ Her mother looked up and smiled back in reply. ‘Well, perhaps I did.’

Sliding on to the wooden bench pushed back against the hard rock wall, Raffaella reached for her cup. ‘Mmm, that’s strong,’
she said between sips. ‘I’ll miss your coffee when I go. Mine never tastes so good.’


‘And I’ll miss you –’ her mother took up her own cup ‘– much more than you’ll miss my coffee. Why couldn’t you have picked
a local boy, eh? A nice boy from around here.’


Raffaella didn’t smile, for she knew her mother was only half joking. All her life she had lived in the southern Italian village
of Triento, nestled in the folds and ripples of the mountains where they met the sea. Triento was a divided town. Half of
it, Big Triento, clung to the foothills of the mountains, and the other half, Little Triento, perched on the rocks beside
the harbour where the fishing boats were moored. A steep and perilous road zigzagged from one half to the other.


When Raffaella married Marcello, she would go up in the world quite literally. She would leave the fisherman’s cottage in Little
Triento and head up the steep incline to her new life as the wife of a prosperous merchant’s son.


‘I’ll miss you too, Mamma,’ Raffaella replied. ‘But I’ll still see you, won’t I? Whenever you come up the hill to market?’

Her mother laughed. It was a deep and throaty sound that Raffaella had grown used to hearing countless times each day throughout
her childhood.


‘Won’t I?’ she repeated.

‘I suppose you might,’ her mother replied, and then she frowned. ‘Although not every day, Raffaella, I can’t promise you that.’

Raffaella knew how much her mother, Anna, hated climbing the hill. She would do almost anything to avoid it: make ingredients
stretch a little further, create a meal out of almost nothing.


But cleverest of all was Anna’s ability to divine when one of the other wives of Little Triento was on the brink of slipping
her basket over her arm and embarking on the long, slow walk up to Big Triento to shop for food. Invariably, seconds before
the woman left, Anna would land on her doorstep and press a few coins on her, along with a quickly scribbled shopping list.
‘Just a couple of things,’ she’d say breathlessly. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’


Anna was tall with a low voice and a natural air of authority and few of the fishermen’s wives dared say no to her. Beatrice
Ferrando, Patrizia Sesto, Giuliana Biagio and the rest, all were a little afraid of her. So they would walk up the hill and
carry a heavier basket back down again while Anna slipped off home and pleased herself.


Usually, she would sit with a book in her hand for an hour or so until her shopping arrived on the doorstep and it was time
to start cooking dinner for her husband, Tommaso, her two daughters and her only son, Sergio.


Raffaella’s mother rarely walked up the steep hill if she could help it and as a result she was softer of thigh and rounder
of belly than most of the other fishermen’s wives. Yet Tommaso loved her womanly curves, and she loved the stolen hours she had to herself.


But now Anna sighed a little as she sipped her coffee, almost as if she knew the steep hill was beckoning her again.

‘Your brother Sergio often complains that the meat Beatrice Ferrando brings me is too fatty,’ she mused. ‘And last week Patrizia
Sesto came back with rotten tomatoes. We had to throw most of them away, remember? I might as well go to the market myself
more often.’


‘Yes, I agree. You might as well,’ Raffaella echoed, and she poured her mother another tiny cup of the strong coffee before
it grew cold.


Anna tried to keep the frown from her face as she watched her daughter moving about the kitchen, putting away the coffee things.
There was so much to worry about. Would Raffaella be happy with this boy she wanted so much? Would marriage be the joyful
thing she expected?


Most of the mothers of Triento would be thrilled to have a daughter marry into the Russo family, but Anna didn’t feel that
way. She saw how Raffaella hero-worshipped the boy. And she feared that he in turn saw little beyond her beauty. When she
woke in the middle of the night, her elder daughter’s future was the thing she worried most about, tossing and turning until
dawn.


She prayed fervently that this marriage was the right thing. But if it turned out not to be, if sadness lay in store for Raffaella,
then she wanted to be there watching over her.


And if that meant putting her basket over her arm and climbing the hill to Big Triento every other day, then so be it. Anna
would miss her stolen hours and hate every moment of the steep walk, but she could see no other way.


Wedding days in Triento were always properly celebrated. The whole village loved to come together to mark the occasion. And
this was a special wedding. The eldest son of Triento’s most prosperous family was marrying the town’s most beautiful girl.
People had been talking about it avidly ever since they were first promised to each other.


‘Raffaella Moretti, she’s only a fisherman’s daughter, she’s marrying well,’ they’d mutter to each other.

‘Yes, but just look at her,’ sighed the women over their baskets as they gathered in the main piazza. ‘Those long, black ringlets
that fall to her waist, her full lips, her perfect skin … And she’s never had eyes for anyone but Marcello Russo. They’re
so in love.’


‘What about that body of hers, eh?’ The men jabbed each other with sharp elbows as they drank and smoked together in the corner
bar. ‘She has the breasts of a goddess and the legs of a movie star. If I were Russo, I’d have married her as fast as I could.’


But Marcello hadn’t rushed into marriage. He had held on until he’d finished serving out his apprenticeship. Two years he’d
waited while he learned the family business inside out.


The Russo family made and sold the finest hand-woven linens. ‘Crafted in the traditional way since 1880,’ as they often told
people proudly. Since he was the eldest son, Marcello had been allotted the prime job of working in the family’s shop, while
his four younger brothers were relegated to the workroom, where the fabrics were woven, and to the packing house, where they were carefully folded in tissue paper and sent off to customers all over Italy.


Once married, Marcello would be given the apartment above the linen shop. It wasn’t much more than a couple of rooms, but
for a first home it was fine. And as soon as they started having children, he planned to find them somewhere bigger to live.


Marcello wasn’t nervous on the day of his wedding. As he shaved and smoothed back the dark brown hair that tended to flop
into his eyes and dressed in his new suit, he felt content. He liked the way his future was looking – a beautiful wife, a good
job, what more could a man want?


It was late morning and the sun had come out from behind the mountain at last and washed over the tall, skinny buildings,
which were the colour of honey and sand, that lined the steep streets of Big Triento. Above the terracotta-tiled rooflines,
the spires and steeples of churches soared.


Soon the bells would start ringing. One by one each of Triento’s seven churches would let them peal out until the noise echoed
loudly over the mountains and people began to gather in the streets to wave him on his way.


Marcello glanced in the mirror and smoothed back his unruly hair one last time. His brother Stefano would be here any moment
and it would be time to go.


Just as he was reaching for his watch, he heard his brother’s prompt knock on the bedroom door.

‘Marcello, your days as a single man are nearly over,’ called Stefano, flinging open the door as the rest of his brothers
cheered and whistled in the background. ‘Are you ready?’


‘Yes, I’m ready,’ Marcello replied, and moved to walk out of the door.

‘Stop and let me straighten your tie first,’ Stefano ordered, fussing with some imaginary crookedness. ‘The streets are lined
with well-wishers. You have to look your best for them. Agostino, Gennaro, Fabrizio, what do you think? Does he look ready?’


Agostino and Gennaro cheered and whistled again, but Marcello noticed his youngest brother, Fabrizio, had fallen silent and
the expression on his face seemed half sullen.


‘Fabrizio, what do you think? Do I look good enough to marry Raffaella Moretti?’ he asked.

His youngest brother shrugged. ‘I suppose so,’ he replied, ‘but it doesn’t matter how much you dress yourself up. She’ll always
be the beautiful one.’


Stefano laughed and slapped him over the back of the head as if he’d made a joke. But Fabrizio’s tone was serious, and as
he followed his brothers out of the front door and down the narrow street, his face looked as sullen as ever.


The village was alive with people. Women smiled and waved at the five young Russo boys dressed in all their finery and called
out, ‘Buona fortuna’. Some of the older ones dabbed at the corners of their eyes with white handkerchiefs. For the first and only time that day
Marcello felt his nerves jangle.


‘Come on, wave back at them, they’re here to wish you well,’ Stefano encouraged him over the cacophony of ringing bells.

‘They’re here to see Raffaella, not me.’ Marcello shrugged. ‘They can’t wait to find out what she looks like in her wedding
gown.’


All the same, as they approached the grey stone façade of the Church of Santa Trinita, Marcello lifted his hand at the crowds
and they cheered and clapped in return.


Padre Simone was waiting for him at the altar in his white priest’s robes, and the church pews were crammed with family, friends
and any of the other villagers who had managed to find themselves a space. There were sprays of white flowers on the ends
of each pew and more blossoms arranged in brass urns on either side of the altar. This was his mother Alba’s work, realised Marcello. She had been up here early this morning to make sure everything was perfect.


Marcello stood at the altar, his four brothers behind him, and waited to hear the sound of the crowd cheering once again for
then he’d know Raffaella had arrived at Santa Trinita in her little cart pulled by a donkey. Sure enough, minutes later, the
cry went up, far louder than it had been for him.


He didn’t turn round, not even when he heard the church door open and the rustle as everyone in the pews turned to see the
bride. The organ began to play and Marcello knew Raffaella and her father had started their slow walk up the aisle, but he
continued to stare straight ahead. Only when he sensed she was right beside him did he choose to look round.


Raffaella was as beautiful as he’d known she would be. Her white dress was full-skirted, her veil yards of embroidered tulle.
She held a loosely tied bouquet of white flowers, and Marcello saw her hands were shaking.


‘Don’t be nervous,’ he whispered, moving closer to her. ‘I’m here. I’ll look after you.’

Padre Simone raised an eyebrow and Marcello nodded. They were ready.

‘We’d like you to marry us now, Padre,’ he said calmly, taking Raffaella’s hand and squeezing it tight.

The ceremony seemed to go on for ever. Throughout each long prayer Marcello held on to Raffaella’s hand. He could sense her
whole body trembling, and when he glanced down, he saw that behind her veil, her eyes were glistening with tears.


Only when it was time for them to exchange wedding rings did he let her hand loose. And then, as soon as he was able to, he
picked it up again.


‘We’ll be together for the rest of our lives,’ he whispered in her ear as they walked back down the aisle and stood together
on the steps of the church, their families milling around them. There was Raffaella’s mother, tears in her eyes, hugging them and calling out her congratulations. Her father,
wiry little Tommaso Moretti, shook him by the hand, and her brother, Sergio, clapped him on the back. ‘Congratulations, congratulations.’
He’d never heard the word said so often by so many people.


And then his mother, Alba, was beside them, her lips pressed into a hard little smile.

‘Congratulations.’ She seemed to say the word to Raffaella alone.

Her veil pulled back from her beautiful face, Raffaella smiled at her new mother-in-law.

‘Well?’ Alba tossed her head and her tight grey curls wobbled. ‘Say thank you for a lovely husband.’

Raffaella blinked and took a step backwards. ‘Yes, thank you. Of course thank you,’ she stammered.

Alba smiled tightly again, took her son’s face in her hands and kissed him hard on both cheeks. And then she was gone, most
likely to make sure the tables for the wedding feast were set up to her satisfaction.


The feast was to be held on long trestles laid out in the piazza. Almost all the village would settle there, beneath huge
canvas umbrellas to shade them from the August sun, and the eating would go on all afternoon. There were ten courses in all,
ending with the wedding cake, which was so big it would have to be wheeled out on a trolley.


Marcello knew his father-in-law, Tommaso Moretti, hadn’t been able to foot the bill for such a lavish occasion, so his own
parents had contributed generously, for they wanted things done well. A small ceremony and a simple feast might be fine for
some people, but it wouldn’t have looked good for the eldest son of the Russo family.


The party would go on until late into the night and it was sure to end in drunkenness and dancing. But he and Raffaella would
slip away as early as they could and hide themselves away in the apartment above the linen shop. And tomorrow their new lives as a married couple would begin. Taking his seat
at the head table, his beautiful wife beside him, Marcello’s sense of contentment grew even stronger.


Raffaella was overwhelmed. Since her mother had helped fasten her into her dress this morning, her heart seemed to have been
beating twice as fast as normal. Standing beside Marcello at the altar, she’d barely been able to keep herself from fainting.
She’d hung on to his hand as if it were the only thing that could hold her up.


Somehow she’d made it through the ceremony, saying her vows in a hoarse voice and trembling as Marcello slid the gold ring
on her finger. It was a little loose, she realised now, twisting it nervously as she sat beside her new husband at the wedding
table. She must have lost weight since it was bought for her.


Platters of food started arriving: trays of baked rigatoni, huge wheels of bread and dishes of seafood. Raffaella couldn’t
have eaten it, even if she’d been hungry. Everyone wanted to talk to her, to give her their congratulations, admire her dress,
tell her she looked wonderful. She felt dazed with happiness.


‘Can you believe it? We’re finally married,’ she whispered to Marcello when there was a break in the stream of visitors to
their table.


‘Of course I believe it.’ He brushed a kiss over her lips. ‘I’ve planned to marry you since you were a girl. It was always
going to happen.’


‘I’ll be a good wife to you,’ she promised him.

‘I know you will.’ He squeezed her shoulder and then turned to his brother Gennaro, who was heaping his plate with a second
helping.


‘Eat, eat, you’ll need your strength later,’ Gennaro was laughing.

All of the Russo brothers and their father, Roberto, had plates piled high and were eating with gusto. Only his mother, Alba,
was nibbling at her food