‘She sounds fun.’
‘She was.’
‘And these are her memoirs? Are we going to publish them?’
‘Oh, yes. What she’ll have to say about all those artists will make good reading, quite apart from the story of her own adventurous life.’
Susie was standing by the window, looking down at the dismal street, slick with rain. A rag and bone cart was going by, the horse’s back covered with an old sack to protect it from the wet, the driver shouting out his incomprehensible Londoner’s cry.
‘Oh, I meant to tell you, there were a couple of shifty-looking men hanging around when I came in. They’re still there, look, lurking outside number nine. Do you think they might be casing the joint?’
Olivia got up from her desk and joined Susie at the window. One glance was enough. She laughed. ‘You read too many thrillers, Susie. Those aren’t crooks—well, not the kind you were thinking of. Those are reporters. The man in the tweed coat is Giles Slattery of the Sketch. The one in the grubby mac with a camera is a photographer.’
‘Giles Slattery, the gossip columnist?’
‘Yes. I wonder who they’re waiting for.’
‘Somebody famous, do you think?’
‘What, here in Bloomsbury? I doubt it. Not the kind of famous Slattery goes for, at any rate.’
Delia Vaughan was hanging on to the steering wheel as if to loosen her grip would be to admit defeat. The wind had risen to a deafening shriek, coming in wild gusts that made the canvas top of the car bang and flap as though at any moment it would fly off.
They had stopped two hours before, to put up the hood, when the wind had whipped Jessica’s hat off, and Delia had only just stopped her silk headscarf going the same way.
‘We should find a hotel,’ Jessica said. ‘The weather’s getting worse.’
Delia didn’t want to stay at a hotel. In her mind, the Villa Dante had come to represent a refuge, a haven from the storm, a destination that was more than journey’s end. It was irrational, but she was determined to press on, despite her exhaustion, her hacking cough and Jessica’s urgings for her to be sensible and get off the road and out of the storm.
‘We’re only about thirty miles away, let’s keep going.’
‘Let me find something to wrap round my head, then,’ said Jessica. ‘This car is full of draughts, and I can’t hear myself think with all the noise in my ears. When I get back to England, I’m going to sell it, and buy a saloon.’ She extracted a silk scarf from her bag and put it over her head, tying it under her chin. ‘Come on then, if you must.’
It was slow going, and Delia was as relieved as Jessica when they came to a sign that read San Silvestro. ‘We take the road going south, the lawyer said, and turn off immediately after we’ve gone under the railway bridge. Then it’s uphill, and we’ll see the gates and the villa.’
‘How can we see anything in all this?’ said Jessica.
Miraculously, as they went up the hill, the skies lightened for a moment, and they could see a pair of tall, wrought-iron gates silhouetted in the blazing wind.
‘It’s astonishing,’ yelled Delia, an unreasonable surge of excitement rising in her as she caught a glimpse of the classical façade of a large house. Then it was gone, and she pressed her foot hard down on the accelerator, hoping the strange noises the engine was making didn’t mean it was about to conk out.
They made it to the gates, and stopped the car, although Delia left the engine running, ‘Just in case,’ she shouted to Jessica.
The gates were shut, with a rusty chain looped round the bars to hold them together. The wind was rising by the minute, and now the air was full of flying sand: that was the sound like hail that had rattled against the hood of the car. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Jessica said. ‘There’s no name anywhere.’
‘It’s where the lawyer said it would be, and we didn’t see a sign of any other house in the vicinity. Do you think this sand is blowing off a beach? I never asked how close the villa was to the sea.’
‘Do Italian beaches have red sand?’
‘I don’t know.’ Delia’s hair was whipping about her eyes, and she pushed it ineffectually back from her forehead, trying to wedge a strand behind her ears.
‘Is there a bell?’
‘Only this.’ Delia pointed to a brass bell attached to one of the stone gateposts. A frayed rope with a knot at its end swung from it in the wind.
‘Give it a tug,’ Jessica said.
They could hear a faint clang from the bell, but the sound was carried away by the wind.
‘It’s so hot,’ said Jessica. ‘Like a wind from the desert.’
‘Villa Dante or not,’ Delia said, ‘we’re going in. Or we’ll be flattened by this blasted tempest, and I hate to think what’ll happen if any more of it gets into the engine of your car. Stranded is what we’d be then.’
She gave the gates an impatient shake, and let out a cry of triumph, carried away in the wind, as the chain slithered to the ground. A sudden gust tore the gates apart, driving them inwards to land with a crash against the stones set alongside the driveway.
‘Watch out,’ cried Jessica, as the gates began to swing back towards them with squealing ferocity.
Delia flung herself against the left-hand one, and, hanging on to it, looked around for a stone to wedge it open.
‘There, on the grass,’ shouted Jessica, who had got back into the car and started to edge it forward.
Delia kicked the stone into place, then forced the other gate back and held it as Jessica drove the car through.
Jessica was gesturing at her to get into the car, but Delia first picked up the chain and waited for the moment when the gates clanged together to wrench it through and twist it round the bars.
‘It won’t hold,’ she yelled, as she got back into the car.
‘The gate’s the least of our worries,’ said Jessica. ‘I just hope there’s someone here to let us in.’
They drove up to the house, not noticing anything about it, intent only on getting the car and themselves under shelter, out of the terrifying, sand-laden wind.
‘This is the back of the house,’ yelled Delia. ‘Look for somewhere to put the car.’
‘There,’ Jessica said. ‘A stable, or is it a garage?’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s shelter.’
The doors were banging to and fro in the wind and Delia struggled to hold them back while Jessica drove the car in.
Delia leant against the stone wall, blinking the sand out of her eyes. ‘What a relief to be out of that ghastly hot wind,’ she said.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Jessica said. ‘How do we get inside the house?’
In fact, Delia was perfectly happy to stay there, out of the wind, the engine switched off,