A Funeral in Fiesole Read online

  What he might not have been prepared for was our gasp when the details of who was to get what were read. I was left stunned, stunned, but rather satisfied. I had never expected such an outcome, and of course deciding whether it was equitable was not an issue, because it was clear Mama had calculated the values of properties very, very carefully. Recently, too. We all gave each other silent stares when the notary read the date of the will. It was barely five months before she died. He explained how he had made his way to the hospice and ascertained and confirmed she was of sound mind and good intent – as signified by two signatures of competent witnesses, one of them Mama’s doctor – to dictate a will to nullify and cancel all others.

  ‘The aspects of Italian law were all followed to the letter – of that she made absolutely sure.’ He lowered his eyes to the papers, and up again. ‘And of course I was there to guide her in each of the aspects.’

  I did not have a sense, when we all emerged from the library where we had all gathered, how any of the others might feel about the contents of the will. There were a few details about some small items. I was to get all the books in the house, and Papa’s youthful portrait by Daniele Brigante. Nigel was given the entire collection of marble busts and some of the wine; Suzanna all the clocks and barometers of the house, which amounted to quite a number, and some named pieces of furniture she might choose from an inventory; and I was happy to hear the chess set, three paintings, and various bits and pieces of Papa’s, which were in safe dry storage, plus more than half of the wine store, were to go to Brod.

  Each single piece of her jewellery was itemized, valued, and apportioned to one or the others of us, and it was touching to listen to it detailed, and equally poignant to see how fairly she had figured it all out. Among other things, the pearls I hated went to Nigel for Harriet and later for Lori. The emerald earrings went to Suzanna, whose eyes brightened at once. Brod was given the beautiful gold Swiss wristwatch Papa used to wear when we were little, and I … I was happy to hear her brilliant set of diamond rings was mine.

  Lori came in at the end with a tray on which Harriet had prepared a bottle of grappa and a host of small stemmed glasses. Dottor Ugobaldi stood and joined us, and elegant discretion demanded we did not discuss the will at that point. Discussion about the other astounding bequests would have to wait until he got into his lavish Alfa Romeo and whizzed down the driveway, past the cypresses in a row, past the dismal and ugly empty pots, which should have been full of some sort of shrub, and down the winding hill towards Fiesole and his home or office. That was an opportunity for me to disappear.

  ‘Where are you going Paola? Aren’t you …?’

  I swept past Nigel. He was beaming, so pleased about Mama’s foresight and benevolence he was dying to talk about it, to gauge our agreement – or resentment – about his very good fortune.

  I was not about to discuss Mama’s wishes with him. Not right at that point. I could not help one observation. ‘You did play a requiem in the end, Nigel.’

  Surprise paled his face. ‘Er … um … Mozart’s. Only recorded music – did it sound okay? The sound system was appalling. I know Mama did not put it on her list, but …’

  ‘But?’

  He seemed close to rage. ‘Listen, Paola. Trying to please everyone is darned difficult. We had time for one more piece, so I thought, what would be appropriate? And we all did sing rather pleasantly to Abide with me.’

  I held back a sigh. ‘I’m not scolding, Nigel. Only making an observation.’

  He took a deep breath and hurried into his question. ‘So what do you think …?’

  ‘Not ready to talk about it yet, Nigel. I don’t want to talk about money and houses and … or anything of the sort.’ And I took off across the front veranda, past the drenched marble table. Someone, possibly Harriet, had taken away the fallen beach umbrella, and wound back the awnings over the French windows, so it was tidier out there than when I had driven up the first day. All in honour of the notary, who would not have given a second glance to such things.

  I was not ready to discuss my own fortune with my little brother. Or his. No way. No. Not yet. I could scarcely believe it myself. Clever Mama. Clever, clever Mama. She knew us all so well, even in her old age, after we had all flown off to live out our individual independent lives. To live out our problems.

  I walked down to the grass terrace where the large pots stood, stopped, and gave them a visual test. All still sound and usable. Huge and round-bellied, they stood, sodden and darkened by the rain, only half full of spent soil, with dead sticks which were once shrubs, blackened with mould, sticking out, all angled in defeat. I pulled one out and it came away without protest, so I threw it to one side and saw when I peered in the gloom there were dozens of tiny little green shoots, less than a centimetre high, pushing their way through the cracked surface.

  New life. New plants. New weeds. There was a chance someone might see to them soon.

  Nigel

  Up and down, down and up

  How sad to see Brod stop during his reading, close to tears. He swallowed and continued after a pause which was not too long, but he must have felt awkward. I felt for him, and felt the same lump in my own throat. He could not have remembered Papa’s funeral. We were all so young. I can’t remember what happened very clearly. Did we stay on at school? I hardly think it would have been the case.

  But here, now, in Fiesole, it was different and strange because no matter whether we had been to other funerals, I did believe none could ever be like our mother’s. We were all bound up in grief, and because of our English-ness, had less ways to deal with it. We might have had Italian summers of passion and excitement and shouting and wild displays of childish emotions of all kinds, but when it came to the rites and rituals of life, we reverted to type.

  I felt most sorry for Paola, who was unaccompanied, even though we were all there with her, her siblings. John should have been there and I felt angry at him for being overworked. Even though it was something I envied in a way, being so monstrously and noticeably unemployed myself. I envied anyone with any sort of an income, especially Brod and Suzanna, who didn’t have a worry in the world. Truthfully speaking, Harriet and I deserved the largest chunk out of Mama’s will, if the world was anything like a fair place. We cared for her so well. We spent so much in airfares and things while she was unwell. Back and forth, back and forth.

  I shook my head in an effort to stall extreme annoyance. Well, fairness was most likely going to be the outcome, so how could I expect more? But we sorely needed it. I contained irritation and aimed it in my heart at Paola’s husband. Undeniably – work was not nearly a good enough excuse to allow one’s wife to travel to Italy alone all the way from Melbourne, and to live through what could be easily one of life’s most difficult four days. A week. Whatever.

  Harriet would not have dreamt of leaving me to deal with my mother’s funeral on my own. We do things together, my wife and I. How peculiar to see John and Paola go about things in such a different way. Even Lewis, quiet and taciturn as he was, was Suzanna’s shadow, a loyal and true partner if ever there was one. I bet she would not have been half as successful without him.

  I was honestly also a bit irate at Suzanna for asking so many questions about where this item and that object were. How was I to know what happened to the sideboard or bookcase or whatever the large piece of furniture was called?

  She did come down to the kitchen the night before the funeral, breathless, as if she had gone through the entire house, room by room by room, seeking things she remembered.

  I wanted to confront her, scold her for thinking only about material things at such a time, but I bit my lip and kept silent. I had to say something, though. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

  She took three deep breaths. ‘Yes, Nigel. Do. Please.’ Quite out of breath. ‘If you counted the number of little flights of stairs and steps and staircases and whatnot in this house… phew.’

  ‘A hundred and …’

 
; ‘ … thirty-one!’ She remembered.

  We would all, as children, play hide-and-seek, various hiding games, seeking games, shouting and silent games all through the house. One of the things we surely knew was the number of steps in the places. Su e giù, su e giù, we would chant, as Matilde had taught us.

  ‘Up and down,’ she said, taking a seat at the big red table. ‘Down and up.’

  I didn’t ask whether she had been in every single room, because it was the kind of interrogation she expected, so I held back, spiteful, leaving it to her to state. She would not enter the rooms we were all occupying while we were there, anyway.

  ‘So what do you think will be in the will tomorrow, Nigel?’

  I poured hot water into the big brown teapot, which steamed up my glasses, and said nothing.

  She waited.

  ‘I was more … I’m more anxious and nervous about the funeral, Suzanna.’ There. I said it pointedly, to make her feel a bit like she ought to, rather than worrying about sideboards and carpets and what we would all do about selling the house.

  ‘I’m trying not to think about tomorrow.’ Her voice was muted in the large kitchen. ‘I’m trying …’

  What was she trying to do – avoid the emotion? Postpone it? This was not what Suzanna was like. As a young person she confronted people, stared them in the eye. Demanded what she wanted. Asked what she wanted to know. Loudly.

  ‘Tomorrow will be over before we know it. It might feel like the longest day in our lives, but it’s something…’

  ‘I know what it is, Nigel. I’m not sixteen, you know! And I have been to a number of funerals. We have all lost friends, and parents of friends, and colleagues … oh, I have had my share of funerals.’

  ‘None of them like this one.’

  She was silent for a minute, pulling the cup and saucer I slid towards her and clinking the teaspoon against the cup. ‘No, true. None of them as … significant.’

  ‘Or emotional.’

  ‘How many people do you think will be there?’

  ‘Certainly not more than about thirty. I think there are some older people down at San Girolamo who remember her well, and of course there will always be the steadfast churchgoer or two.’

  ‘Or six.’

  ‘Yes, who appear at every ceremony or mass or whatever, simply because it’s on.’

  ‘So we’ll have the village set there as well.’

  ‘No doubt. Do you want a biscuit with your tea?’

  She made a face. ‘I don’t eat biscuits! It’s amazing, Nigel – I am fifty-three, and yet you guys treat me like I was still six or ten or thirteen. I might have eaten the odd biscuit Matilde baked when I was in ankle socks … but a lot of water has gone under the bridge.’

  I didn’t say, You’re fifty-five Suzanna. I said instead, ‘And I might have collected anything and everything bearing a slight resemblance to a stamp when I was twelve, but I don’t any more.’

  ‘There you are!’

  ‘And I used to have everything pointed out to me because I was the youngest, Suzanna, but I can see things quite plainly for myself now.’ I formed my hands into binoculars, like a little kid, and ogled around the kitchen. A controlled effort, to keep irritation in check.

  She laughed at that point. She took a dainty sip of the tea I made her and laughed again. ‘You’ll always be the youngest, Nigel.’

  It was my turn to smile.

  ‘Now tell me what’s eating you.’

  Oh lord – I was not about to tell her I’d been made redundant and having bills and things to pay that came up to my eyeballs.

  And she saw I was not going to disclose what was eating me to her. Not then. Not ever.

  ‘Missing Mama, I guess. This is certainly not the best reason to have a family reunion, and even though Harriet and I and the children lived here when she was ill and … and … It’s still not comfortable or easy.’

  ‘No, it couldn’t be. Don’t think we blame you for things not being where we thought they’d always be, though, Nigel.’

  ‘Blame me?’

  ‘I can’t find the bookcase!’

  ‘Oh?’ I had to take a deep breath to stay calm. She was blaming me.

  ‘It wasn’t in any of those partially-renovated bedrooms in the wing. It would have been beautifully dry there. I can’t remember its condition.’

  ‘Did it have a deep bottom drawer which …?’

  ‘Yes. It did.’ She sipped tea. ‘Look. Forget about it. Now all we need to find out is what’s eating Brod. I don’t want to be the one to ask him.’

  ‘It had all those records in it, remember? Papa’s record collection. I’d give my right arm for them, today. Never gave it a thought when I was young. We’re music mad in my family – the kids both play. We have classical music in our blood. Harriet’s grandmother was a concert pianist. I wonder where all those records went, Suzanna – but stuff is like that. It goes. Like the bookcase. Like the one dining room chair. Like the curtains someone mentioned. Stuff vanishes.’

  ‘Do you think we should have been more … or perhaps Mama should have …? I don’t know!’ She huffed anger through her nostrils and took off on heels clattering on the old tiles.

  Brod

  A missing painting

  Grant could be quite an amazing person. He was touched and worried about Paola, who was the only sibling there without a partner. She was quite as detached as our nephew Tad, who was only there for a while at the church, and disappeared afterwards. We wondered what and where the boy ate and how Harriet and Nigel managed his solitariness. If they thought it needed management at all. I guessed I would never understand children, although I did – as a youngster – occasionally go through phases I could liken to Tad’s behaviour. It was very probable this attitude thing of his was a phase too. My brother didn’t seem too worried about his son. He seemed burdened by something else.

  ‘I walked out in the rain to Paola,’ Grant said, ‘who was drifting out there, distressed, in the long wet grass, without an umbrella or anything. There were two old raincoats on a rail, so I put one on, and took the other out to her.’

  ‘Oh, Grant – that was nice.’ We walked down one of the steep narrow streets of Fiesole, which were made of steps. There was a break in the very changeable Fiesole weather which buoyed us; no need for an umbrella now. Window boxes full of flowers, high yellow walls, green-painted shutters and wrought iron balconies surrounded us. If we’d been tourists, it would have been hard to distinguish the pensione we were staying at from other large yellow houses.

  I wondered how long the rain would hold off, but the strip of sky above us, at least, was a shade of pleasant blue. It was unusual to be in Fiesole at such a wet and chilly time of the year.

  Grant walked along with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking at his feet as we descended one stepped street. ‘Brod, her husband’s left her. John … is it John?’

  I stopped, gaped, and held my breath for a moment. This was incredible news.

  ‘… immediately before she flew out from Melbourne.’

  Two surprises in two breaths. ‘Incredible!’ Of all the relationships in the family, Paola and John’s used to seem to me to be strongest. ‘Did she say why?’ Paola had chosen to confide in Grant – a perfect stranger – which was even more atypical of her.

  ‘He met someone.’

  I could imagine Paola’s sarcastic voice and the way she would have pulled her mouth to utter those words. ‘What – so you walked in the rain and …’

  ‘It was awful … but good – you know what I mean? Do you know that rare instance when the time is right for someone to talk? I felt so flattered to be confided in, and by your big sister of all people. She stood and spilled it all out. How he told her before he jumped in a taxi to fly to Brisbane.’

  ‘Goodness. She must still be smarting from it all. I have to … should I? Should I talk to her? I think I should. Did she ask you not to tell me, or anything?’ I stopped in front of a sharp corner as two girls on
scooters whizzed past.

  ‘No. She seemed relieved to get it off her chest. We both got quite damp in the rain. We returned and put the raincoats back, and she went in to pour us two glasses of the old cellared wine, and we sat in the room where you said you used to sit with your mother.’

  I could see Grant there, with Paola.

  ‘She’s very nice, Brod.’

  ‘Of course she is.’

  ‘No … come on. You know what I mean. I first thought she was sullen and sarcastic … and prim. Now I know she had reason.’

  I could not disagree. ‘Paola … she’s … oh, poor Paola. You know, she’s the oldest, the wisest, and has a fabulous memory. She remembers stuff from when she was four, and six, and fifteen.’

  ‘She says it’s a curse, and doesn’t mean it as a joke.’

  I agreed. ‘She was always a sombre and serious type. Not given to joking.’

  Grant moved to face me. ‘She can be bitingly … intelligently … funny. I mean her humour is dry.’

  ‘Humour!’ But I saw what he meant. I thought of something. ‘Grant … you didn’t tell her – you didn’t return the favour and confide in her, did you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Oh, Grant. There was no need. We’ll sort it out ourselves.’ I hoped my voice didn’t whine, but I was annoyed.

  He folded his arms. ‘I felt there was need. We found something, on a brief rainy walk. We talked. Properly, honestly, you know – no holding back. Besides, I wanted to get it off my chest.’

  ‘Paola would have thought you were telling tales. On me.’

  He huffed, annoyed with me. Annoyed and exasperated with me. ‘Ah! Huh!’

  ‘Grant.’

  ‘Um – I asked her if she thought it was too old to think of adopting an infant at … if … when one is over fifty. I am fifty-eight, Brod. This is about me, too.’