Tuscany for Beginners Read online

  Barbara's ample, glossy, tanned figure is entirely the result of fine living. An ex-model turned receptionist, turned managerial secretary, turned love of the boss's life, she once donned hot pants and knee boots with the best of them—but, never one to hold back when it comes to eats and treats like pannacotta or tiramisù, Barbara now maintains the sort of luxury fat that Clarins massages and weekend spa breaks were made for. As a result, she has a wardrobe of jogging pants and lounge suits for plump days; however, when she is three pounds lighter, she is wont to pour herself into scoop-neck T-shirts, pedal pushers and fanny clingers in varying degrees of luminosity. Today, having denied herself last night's mascarpone, she is in a yellow T-shirt and matching yellow knee-length skirt, teamed with a pair of golden wedge mules. Her blonde hair, having spent the early morning in curlers, is neat and tucked under on the shoulders, while her pale mouth sports a dark pink outline. Her bright blue eyes are hidden behind a large pair of Dior sunglasses.

  “Contessa!” laughs Derek, his waistline joining in the hi-larity. “Trust you to be out here bargaining for fruit and vegetables like a native. I don't know how you do it. Ten years we've been here, and we still get our stuff from the local supermarket, don't we, Barb?”

  “Yes,” agrees Barbara, her gold earrings glaring in the brilliant sun. “We find it's so much cleaner.”

  “But so much less Italian,” smiles Belinda, allowing a slight wrinkle in her nose.

  “Oh, my God,” declares Derek. His loud flat vowels make a clearing in the crowd. “Is that you, Mary?” he says, taking a step back for a better view. “Bloody hell, look at you! Look at her, Barb. You're half the girl you used to be. Look, Barb, she's half the girl she used to be. You've slimmed down a heck of a lot.” He nods enthusiastically.

  “You certainly have.” Barbara's lined lips crack into a smile.

  “Has she?” says Belinda, looking down at her nails. “I can't say that I've noticed.”

  “Oh, you must have,” insists Barbara. “She always was quite a big girl, weren't you, Mary?”

  “Well …” says Mary, shifting from one foot to the other, looking at the ground.

  “You must tell Barbara how you did it,” says Derek. “She's always on a diet, desperately trying to lose the weight, aren't you, Barb?”

  “Yes, do, do tell Barbara how to lose all that weight.” Belinda smiles.

  “It's the high-stress low-fiber diet,” says Mary. “Ever since I lost—”

  “Ever since she got promoted,” interrupts Belinda, “it's just fallen off, hasn't it?”

  “Promoted?” says Derek, rubbing his hands together. “Con-gratulations, dear, your mother must be very proud.”

  “Promoted?” inquires Barbara, looking ever so puzzled. “What are you doing out here, all summer?”

  “She's been allowed a sabbatical,” says Belinda. “You know, one of those time-off things.”

  “Oh, right.” Barbara smiles. “The world of telecommunications has changed a lot since I was a receptionist.”

  “Yes,” agrees Belinda. “But then again, that was a very long time ago.”

  “So,” says Derek, hopping between the two women, “we're very much looking forward to having you for dinner tonight, aren't we, Barb?”

  “Oh, yes,” says Barbara. “We can't wait.”

  “Neither can we,” breezes Belinda. “But we must get on. We've got guests arriving tomorrow and tutto il mercato to get through yet.”

  “Right you are, then,” says Derek. “See you later. Arrivadeary! ”

  “See you later.” Barbara waves. “Arrivadeary.”

  “Arrivadeary!” Belinda grabs Mary's hand, then wafts her way through the crowd.

  ack at Casa Mia, after an exhausting morning buying tomatoes, a cucumber, and a loaf of bread, Belinda and Mary spend the afternoon on the terrace. After Mary's sterling work yesterday, sweeping and scrubbing out the old animal-quarters cantinas, making the beds and laying out fresh towels, there is little left for Belinda to do, except develop a bad humor about the imminent arrival of her Belgian guests. As a misanthrope, Belinda is perhaps not ideally suited to her newfound career in the service industry. The eldest daughter of a schoolteacher, she knows exactly what stations are and has always nurtured ideas above them. Her current career in service is just another good reason to hate her unfaithful rat of an ex-husband, Terrence.

  “Urrgh.” Belinda sighs atop her green-and-white-striped lounger. Eyes closed, sporting a smaller and altogether jauntier terrazzo hat, which she saves for afternoons in the sun, she huffs and puffs and flaps her legs as if she were trying to rid herself of flies.

  “Urrgh,” she repeats.

  Mary ignores her. The heat of the afternoon beats on her back and the hum of insects is lulling her to sleep.

  “Urrgh,” says Belinda.

  “What?” asks Mary finally, through a squashed cheek on the ground.

  “Did I make a noise?”

  “You sighed.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, what?”

  “I was thinking.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes, I was thinking that they just didn't sound very pleasant on the telephone,” exhales Belinda, her plucked eyebrows rising above her sunglasses.

  “Who?”

  “The Belgians.”

  “What was wrong with them?” asks Mary, pulling her black bathing suit out of her white buttocks.

  “Well, their voices for a start.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They sounded all nasal and French.”

  “Well, they are French.”

  “They're Belgian,” corrects Belinda.

  “I know, but they speak French in Belgium.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Well, these do, apparently.”

  “Oh, God, I do hope they aren't going to be difficult.” Belinda pours herself some lemonade from the lemon-filled glass jug. “I mean, the last time we had some Belgians here they started asking for bottled water in their bedroom.”

  “I thought you supplied that,” says Mary, rolling on to her back.

  “I do. But they wanted bottled-bottled water, you know, with the seals intact. Not the ones I'd refilled from the tap.”

  “Oh …”

  “Well, I thought it was very demanding. I mean, if they want that sort of thing, they should go to some ghastly airconditioned hotel in Poggibonsi with small soaps and a minibar. Honestly, these people don't want the real rustica Tuscan experience, like in Frances Mayes's, they want something sanitized with wheelchair access and picnicking facilities.”

  “Or just bottled water,” suggests Mary.

  “Well … as you seem so au fait with their little needs, it's lucky you'll be dealing with them, then, isn't it?” Belinda gets up from her lounger with a long, languid stretch. “I'm afraid it's far too hot for me out here,” she announces with a flap of her hand, and picks up the old Vogue, which has curled like wood shavings in the sun. “I'm off for a sleep. We should be ready to go to Derek's about seven thirty.”

  n the dot of seven thirty Belinda is in the hall, adding the finishing touches to her outfit. It seems that she has decided to go to Derek and Barbara's as some sort of gypsy. Dressed in a floor-length tiered black skirt with a tight black T-shirt and some old hoop earrings, she is standing in front of the mirror trying to work out what to do with her fringed red scarf. She ties it around her head like she's about to gaze into a crystal ball. She places it at a jaunty angle around her waist, as if she's about to dance a tarantella, then around her neck, which makes her look like some rather flamboyant doors-to-manual air hostess.

  “Darling, what do you think?” she asks, turning to Mary, who is dressed in a pair of black trousers and a white shirt. “I've just seen something rather similar in Vogue. ” She pulls down the T-shirt with a snaking of her hips and pops some upperarm flesh back inside the sleeve.

  “Well �
�” says Mary, foolishly letting doubt sound in her voice.

  “Well, it's a hell of a lot better than going out looking like a waitress,” retorts Belinda, eyeing her daughter up and down with practiced speed. “Honestly, haven't you got anything else to wear?”

  “Well, after last summer, when I went out twice, I haven't packed much in the way of smart clothes.”

  “Oh,” says Belinda, as she walks out of the door. “You'd better go and buy yourself some stuff in the market next week. I can't have you moping around in that all summer. You'll put the guests off their holiday.”

  A ten-minute silent drive away, Derek and Barbara's house, with its outhouses and chestnut barn, is significantly larger than Casa Mia. It is Italian on the outside, but the inside is furnished, as Belinda always enjoys pointing out, like a big Barratt home on the outskirts of Manchester, which indeed is where all of the furniture came from. The sitting room, along with a vast television of cinematic proportions and Derek's mustard yellow, La-Z-Boy armchair, contains a vulva pink leather threepiece suite, a large glass coffee table, and a bookshelf of videos. Hanging from the ceiling in the dining room is a gold-and-glass chandelier that was shipped especially from Harrods lighting department. In fact, interestingly—and Barbara is rather prone to tell this story after a couple of glasses of wine—it is actually the second chandelier that Harrods sent to the Hewitt household. The first ended up in a pile of small crystal pieces after it slipped off the back of a lorry down a valley on the Castellina in Chianti road. As a result the chandelier, due to its expense and convoluted arrival, holds great significance in the household. Dinners, rather than being held in the balmy evening heat of the terrace, are, more often than not, laid up in the confined and airless dining room. And tonight is no exception.

  arbara is on her second gin and tonic and seventh olive when Belinda and Mary arrive. Dressed in a leopard-skin bat-winged top and white pedal pushers that fold into a camel's hoof at the crotch, she is clip-clopping back and forth from the kitchen to the sitting room, fixing drinks.

  “Belinda, Mary, welcome, welcome,”she says, touching opposite shoulders with both of them. “Go through to the lounge,” she ushers them ahead, while continuing to tell Howard the chandelier story. He is right behind her, smiling as if he has never heard it before. “And then,” she resumes, “we found that it had fallen off the back of a lorry—”

  “Really?” says Howard. His parched lips are cracked. His stare is locked on the bottle of alcohol in Barbara's hand.

  “I know … amazing, isn't it?” she says. “What did you say you wanted?”

  “Gin,” he says. “Please,” he adds quickly.

  “Gin and what?”

  “Oh,” says Howard, having obviously not thought as far as a mixer. “Whatever you have.”

  “Bitter lemon?”

  “Bitter lemon is fine.” Howard nods quickly, staring at the bottle, willing it to make contact with his glass.

  “Oh, Belinda!” Barbara puts down the bottle and walks back into the sitting room. “What would you and Mary like?”

  “I'd love a gin and tonic,” says Belinda, “and Mary will have a spritzer as she's driving.”

  “Right you are, then,” says Barbara, with a flick of her stiff blonde hair. “On its way.”

  “Hope you don't mind,” says Howard, meeting his hostess in the doorway, a large glass of a pale green drink in his hand. “I helped myself.”

  “Don't be silly, Howie,” says Barbara, giving him a gentle shove. “My casa is your casa. Make yourself at home. We don't stand on ceremony here. Do we, Derek? Derek?” she repeats, shouting through the brick archway toward the hall and an apparently locked door.

  There's a loud flush. Belinda, Mary, Howard, and Barbara all stare at the white door. Nothing happens. There's another flurry of rapid attempted flushing, and eventually Derek opens the door.

  “Oh,” he says, his brown eyes round with surprise when confronted with his audience. “I had no idea our guests had arrived.”

  “Yes,” says Barbara. “You've been in there a while.”

  “Sorry about that,” says Derek, walking toward the sitting room and running his thumb along the waistband of his beige slacks. “I got caught a little short.”

  “As I said,” continues Barbara, the maroon lines of her lips coming together, “there's no standing on ceremony in this house.”

  “So,” says Belinda, fiddling with the fringed red scarf at her waist, as she attempts to raise the tone of the conversation, “have you succumbed to the muse yet, Howard?”

  “Sorry?” says Howard, halfway down his glass of bitter-lemon-flavored gin. He looks at her with the pale, glazed eyes of someone who has yet to communicate with another human being that day. In an open-necked denim shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and leather sandals, Howard's lean, brown body and wild, unkempt blond hair are still haunted by sex appeal. “Um, no. What? Muse? No, not really,” he stammers. “I've been staring at my computer, trying to get my hero out of bed all day.”

  “Really?” says Belinda, appearing both interested and intelligent at the same time. “He's stuck?”

  “Well, I managed twenty words,” says Howard, draining his glass.

  “Just so long as they were good words,” says Belinda with a little light laugh, as Derek passes her a gin and tonic.

  “And then I deleted them all,” continues Howard.

  “Oh,” says Belinda, taking a small sip. “Well, I find my oeuvre comes to me quite naturally. In fact, there are some days when I find myself so overtaken by the muse that I just can't stop. Scribble, scribble, scribble.” Her pink-tipped hand scribbles in the air.

  “I didn't know you were writing a novel,” says Derek, sitting down on the low edge of his pink sofa, his slim legs akimbo as he accommodates his stomach.

  “It's not really a novel,” says Belinda, with a tweak of her suitably artistic outfit.

  “Well, in my limited experience a book is either a novel or it's not,” remarks Howard. With a rattle of ice in his empty glass, he gets out of his seat and makes his way back into the kitchen.

  “I suppose you could call it a diary.” Belinda is undeterred. “All I'm doing is passing on my pensées and aperçus. ”

  “Who's got a pair of new shoes?” says Barbara, walking into the room with a tray of olives.

  “No, my love,” corrects Derek. “It's Belinda. She's sharing her aperçus. ”

  “Oh, right,” says Barbara, with a small unenlightened shrug. “I only ask because I'm wearing new shoes.” She kicks up a golden mule, which is less gold and more mule than the pair she wore to market that morning.

  “Those look lovely,” says Mary, holding her spritzer, perched on the sofa.

  “Thank you, love,” says Barbara. “And so do you.”

  Mary smiles.

  “She looks like a waitress,” says Belinda, and swigs her drink.

  “No, she doesn't,” says Barbara.

  “It's the black and white,” continues Belinda.

  “Take no notice.” Derek pats the back of Mary's hand. “I think you look lovely.”

  “Hear, hear. Cheers,” says Howard, who takes any opportunity to drain a full glass.

  “Well, this is nice,” says Barbara, leaning forward to pick up a turquoise and gold packet of cigarettes from the glass coffee table. “Derek and I haven't entertained in a while,” she adds, then lights a St. Moritz Menthol and exhales.

  “No, my love. Not since last week.”Derek nods in agreement.

  “Do you mind if I … ?” asks Howard from the doorway, waving his empty glass at the rest of the sitting room.

  “No, mate,” says Derek, putting three olives into his mouth at once. “You just keep helping yourself.”

  “So, have you got guests arriving tomorrow then, Belinda?” asks Barbara, with taps of her cigarette.

  “The Contessa's house is full all summer, isn't it?” declares Derek, with a flatulent-sounding squeak of the leather sofa.

  �
�We've got some lovely Belgians arriving tomorrow,” says Belinda. “They're either surgeons, doctors, or lawyers, I can't remember which, but they're certainly professionals of some sort.”

  “That's nice,” says Barbara.

  “Ye-es,” says Belinda, her head cocking to one side. “It will be nice to have some intelligent conversation.”

  “Yes,” agrees Barbara. “That's always nice…. Well,” she adds, with a small clap, “I think maybe we should move through and sit down. Steve said he might be late, so I think we'll forge on without him.”

  “Steve?” says Belinda, getting off a pink leather chair. “Do I know Steve?”

  “You know Steve,” Derek tells her. “Everyone knows Steve.”

  “Steve the builder,” says Barbara.

  “A builder?” says Belinda.

  “He probably did your house,” suggests Barbara helpfully.

  “No, I don't think so.”Belinda smiles. “Italians did my house.”

  “Are you sure?” says Derek, pulling his slacks out of his crotch as he stands.

  “Didn't you buy your place already done up?” asks Howard, still by the door. “From that English developer?”

  “Not entirely done up,” says Belinda.

  “Well, how can you be sure he didn't do your house then?” Howard takes another swig.

  “Anyway, he's a bit of a real estate agent these days as well,” says Barbara. “He's ever so nice.”

  In the dining room, the chandelier is dimmed to make the large white room appear bathed in candlelight. The windows are small and, despite being open, let in no draft at all. There is a silk Persian rug of varying shades of pink and peach on the flagstone floor, and on one wall a large, gold-framed family photo of Derek and Barbara with their two children, Paul and Diane. The long mahogany table is laid with silver plates. There are piles of fruit and nuts in large silver bowls along the middle, and carafes of wine to one side. The effect is so opulent and lush that you might mistake it for Christmas.

  As lovers of all things fine, Derek and Barbara are generous hosts and enjoy sharing their fat pension schemes with their friends. While Derek pours his carafes of Chianti, Barbara busies herself in the kitchen, cutting up the slab of foie gras they bought in bulk on their last trip through France.