The Impatient Virgin. ANNE WEALE
sail over with them and come back on the ferry.’
‘A splendid idea,’ said the contessa, watching Van wolf down a large helping of pasta. ‘It’s not good to spend all your time riveted to your computer. I’m sure it’s bad for you...hour after hour gazing at a screen.’
His mouth full, her great-grandson gave her a smile with his eyes. Although he was inches taller than her long-dead husband, and still far too thin for his height, there were moments when he reminded her of Giovanni, the irresistibly attractive Italian aristocrat who had come to New York looking for a rich bride to help him restore his ancestral home to its former glory.
Now, sixty-five years later, Orengo was again in decline. Very soon, like other once-great houses, it would be demolished and the site redeveloped as a hotel or blocks of holiday apartments. The thought of it tore at her heart but she could see no alternative.
Van was the only member of the family who ever came here and he was too young to rescue Orengo from the fate of all white elephants. Although several of his American forebears had made fortunes, he was unlikely ever to emulate them. He had a good brain but at present seemed unable to focus on anything but his computer.
Perhaps in twenty years’ time he would be successful at something, but by then it would be too late.
On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Anny was cooking breakfast in the galley when she heard someone hailing the schooner and went on deck to see Van standing on the beach with a knapsack slung on one shoulder.
Her heart leapt with pleasure. She hadn’t known he was coming and having him to share her birthday celebrations was better than a stack of expensive presents.
‘Watch the pan, will you, Bart?’ she called to her uncle. ‘I’m going to pick up Van.’
By the time the rubber dinghy nudged the shingle at the water’s edge, Van had taken off his shoes in readiness to step aboard.
In the seven years since their first meeting he had changed as much as Anny had. The lanky youth, built like a half-starved dog, all ribs and prominent shoulder bones, had matured into a man with a lean but powerful physique.
Bart claimed some of the credit for this transformation. He had taught Van to crew for him and introduced him to the pleasures of snorkelling and wind-surfing. From being bookish and sedentary, he had changed, at least part of the time, to being an active outdoorsman.
‘Hi! How’s it going?’ he greeted her.
‘Fine. What a great surprise. When did you get here?’
‘Too late last night to come down and say hello. Theodora says you were up at the house yesterday, writing letters for her.’
‘Her hands are so twisted now it hurts her to hold a pen. But I thought she seemed less depressed. Did she know you were coming?’
He shook his head. ‘I saw a special offer on trips to Paris. I have to be back there Thursday so I’ll only be here two nights.’
‘It’s a long way to come for two nights.’
‘I had a special reason. Bart...how are you?’ Looking up from the dinghy as it came alongside, he gave his warm smile to her uncle who had come up on deck to greet him.
It wasn’t till they were aboard and the two men had greeted each other that Van turned back to Anny. ‘Happy birthday.’ He bent his tall head to kiss her lightly on both cheeks.
Anny felt herself blushing. Kisses weren’t part of her life. Bart was kind, but he wasn’t demonstrative. Even when she was little he had never kissed her goodnight. Affectionate pats on the head or shoulder and, occasionally, a brief cuddle if she had hurt herself was his limit on physical expressions of the close bond between them.
Immediately after kissing her, Van started to delve in his knapsack, missing her reaction to the touch of his lips.
‘A little something for the skipper...’ he handed over a bottle in an airline bag ‘...and some bits and pieces for the first mate.’
The parcels he handed to her were all beautifully wrapped. Some of the ribbon adornments had become crushed in transit but were soon tweaked back into shape by Anny’s appreciative fingers.
While Bart went below for a glass to sample his present, she began to unwrap hers, carefully peeling away the bits of sticky tape so as not to damage the lovely paper.
Members of Van’s family whom she knew only by name had sent a swimsuit, a calculator, a backpack-style bag, a pen as thick as a cigar, a belt with a silver buckle and a couple of cassettes for the head-set he had given her for her thirteenth birthday. All the presents had cards attached to them with messages like—To Giovanni’s mermaid with birthday wishes from Cousin Kate.
The parcel tagged with his handwriting she kept till last. It looked and felt like a heavy book, perhaps an anthology of American poetry. He knew she loved poetry.
‘You’ll have to give me the addresses of all these kind people. I must write and thank them.’
‘Postcards will do. You can buy some in Nice this afternoon.’
‘Why are we going to Nice?’
‘Wait and see.’
When Van looked at her with that glint of laughter in his eyes, it gave Anny a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had felt it a few times before, like a butterfly fluttering inside her. Today it was stronger, more disturbing.
She read the card on his parcel. The message was short and factual. To Anny from Giovanni. With the date.
‘Why not “from Van”?’ she asked.
‘Because that’s my proper name. When I’m rich and famous I’ll be Giovanni Carlisle to the world and Van to my family and friends. You won’t use Anny for your byline, will you? I thought when you started your career you’d change to Annette Howard.’
‘I like Anny better. It’s what I’ve always been—’ She broke off as, instead of the expected book jacket, she exposed a grey plastic box.
‘What’s that you’ve brought her?’ asked Bart, reappearing with a bottle of whisky in one hand and two tumblers in the other. ‘Will you join me?’
‘Not right now, thanks. It’s a laptop computer for Anny to write her stuff on,’ Van told him. ‘That’s a great old typewriter you use, but it’s a museum piece. This—’ he tapped the lid of the laptop ‘—isn’t state-of-the-art, but it’s OK for entry level.’
Anny was overwhelmed. Because it was important to Van, she had looked at computer equipment the last time they were in a place with a shop which sold it. The prices had seemed exorbitant.
Although Van’s father had an important job in the American foreign service and his mother’s second husband had factories near Milan connected with the booming Italian fashion industry, Van did not seem to share in his parents’ prosperity. He had been expensively educated, but from things he’d let drop, it sounded as if what he was paid for his job as a computer programmer didn’t leave him much spare cash after he had paid his overheads.
‘Look, here’s how you do it.’ He showed her.
Watching the screen inside the lid come to life, she said, ‘It’s wonderful, but you shouldn’t have given me such an expensive present.’
‘I got it cheap from a guy who was upgrading. Later I’ll give you a tutorial. Right now, how about breakfast?’
‘Oh, my goodness...the ham.’ She handed the laptop to him and hurried back to the galley.
Later they swam. Although here, in late April, the air temperature was already that of midsummer in northern Europe, when they dived from the deck, for the first few moments under water the sea felt breathtakingly cold. Bart never swam till June, sometimes not till July