A Funeral in Fiesole Read Free Page B

and very nervous, for a reason we all guessed. ‘Paola – have you and Grant ever met?’
    Introductions, explanations, recounts of their drive. Paola’s reaction to Grant’s appearance was predictable. Handsome, too handsome, he gave the impression he should be on the big screen, or on the stage, or a model at the very least. Nothing like it. Grant was an architectural draftsman, or engineer, or designer, or something; arresting grey eyes and all. What he ever saw in Brod – well, it was obviously Brod’s wit and slap-dash ways … so very attractive and winning. Possibly the only gregarious soul in the family. No, no – Suzanna was our extrovert. There was also his caring personality, a feminine sympathy we all earlier on thought was part of being a twin. The empathy of being half of something, we all thought, before we could guess. Mama grasped it immediately. For Mama, things tended to fall into place when they happened, even if they were a shot out of the blue.
    I remembered how Paola took Brod’s sexuality the first time he walked in with an obviously camp university boyfriend. Chilly, she was; aloof and supercilious. Analytical more than accepting. So many years ago, before she left for Australia. She went off so young. Where had all those years gone?
    Harriet had to get used to my strange family from the start, I supposed. From my mother who was an heiress, who painted a little, whose money allowed her many mistakes and privileges, and much enviable leisure. Mama, with her small house in Cornwall and a sizeable villa in Tuscany. This predictable summer house, where we spent all school holidays in a warm cultural sun-bath. Yes, from Mama, to all four of us siblings.
    We grew up half Italian simply because of where we lived our summers. My wife never met our father, of course. We four all had different, if vague, memories of his attempts at opening small cafés and bistros. Abandoning projects through premature sales; he did that a lot. Once or twice he surprisingly made more money than anyone ever imagined. The stuff of family legend.
    Paola, because of her age, remembered more than any of us about Papa’s misguided forays into the hospitality industry. Even renovating this house with the view of turning it into a B & B was part of his whole energetic idea-driven exploits.
    Mama had easily laughed it off. ‘Do you think we could have guests among the children’s mess and noise all summer, darling?’ Her calm amused question, at the time Papa was thinking of applying for permits and things, stopped everything in its tracks.
    He came to see she would never cooperate. That was when he saw it for the first time; or so Paola tells it. Evidence remains of his efforts. Some of the bigger bedrooms up in the far wing were redone.
    And now here we were, all coming together for Mama’s funeral. All wondering when the conversations – for now so superficial and cordial – would come down to the greedy. Paola, and her use of complicated vocabulary, would say the pecuniary , the acquisitive . My older sister uses words like weapons, and her face betrays her emotional state when she does. Her lean frame and her short primly parted dark hair loudly announced her methodical personality.
    If only we, Harriet and I, could be choosey – about words or feelings. We had no choices. We needed money, and we needed it fast. Frankly, we had put so much towards caring for Mama we deserved at least as much as a quarter of everything.
    Losing my job in the spring was something we never bargained for. How could I, such a competent programmer, suddenly find myself unemployed at fifty-three, with apparently little prospect of finding anything else immediately to provide the all-important income? How could Harriet cope? Realistically speaking, her work never made enough for anything else apart from the upkeep of our cars and the expenses of two rather demanding children and their high maintenance lives; musical instruments and all that.