Marisa translated, and there was lots of shouting, particularly of popular Italian songs and hymns he simply didn’t know, but they finally settled on a gentle programme of Verdi and Rossini.
Marisa took the laptop into the bedroom, where the breaths were still faltering and far apart. One of the younger cousins immediately got up and Marisa slipped into their place.
‘Hey, Nonna,’ she said. ‘Here he is, he’s going to play for you.’
There it was, almost impossible to feel – the tiniest grasp on her sleeve.
‘Buona sera, Babushka of Marisa,’ said Alexei, and beamed cheerfully, then turned to his piano and started with a merry waltz, as other family members crammed into the bedroom to hear.
To Marisa’s astonishment, her nonna’s eyes opened for the first time in two days. She couldn’t quite focus, but Marisa held up the laptop.
‘That’s him?’ she said in a papery whisper. Alexei, oblivious, was concentrating intently on the music, those huge ungainly hands of his now flying as if they were in their natural habitat; a seal in water.
‘Si, Nonna.’
‘I like him,’ she said.
Marisa kissed her nonna as she closed her eyes and settled back to sleep as the music played on and everyone discussed Alexei ad infinitum and Marisa found that she missed him. And much later, at four o’clock in the morning when the world was truly still and all the Rossis were asleep, with her beloved eldest daughter Lucia holding her hand, curled up fast asleep next to her on the bed, Ismarilda Madolina Marisa Rossi woke, bolt awake, eyes wide open, and said, quite distinctly, ‘Carlo’, Marisa’s grandfather’s name, and then the breathing stopped and Marisa herself in the next room woke with a start and wondered what she could hear.
It took her a little while to realise it was something she could not hear.
Chapter Sixty-nine
The farewells were so teary and heartfelt and emotional, and Marisa couldn’t help it; for a buttoned-up, shy person, she would have thought she would hate it but she did not. She loved every second as her cousins spilled out of old cars and surrounded her as she marched through the airport, lamenting as if she was leaving the way Lucia had left: to somewhere cold and distant and expensive with the very real possibility that they might never see each other again.
‘I’ll be back!’
‘Bring your boyfriend.’
‘Yes, we like the piano player,’ said several other people.
Marisa rolled her eyes.
‘Someone will have to buy a bigger house to fit him,’ pointed out Gino, who was catching the train in the afternoon which meant the entourage could follow him in the same way.
Marisa frowned at the extra suitcase full of supplies that had been pressed upon her, along with the seeds from her nonna’s garden.
‘This is going to cost me more in extra luggage than . . . never mind,’ she said, submitting herself to being hugged and kissed, even by the younger cousins, who had all done very well in their end of term exams and were all vying to come to England to take on shifts at the pizza shop at random, as far as Marisa could figure out.
Her mother was staying. She didn’t know how long, and Marisa didn’t ask. The house in Exeter was worth a lot now, just through the way things had gone, and she and Ann Angela seemed perfectly happy bickering all day. Who knew, she might stay.
All the way home Marisa felt worn out; tears wrung dry – the funeral service had been crowded and jolly and beautiful, on a sunny day, with wonderful music and happy memories and songs of a life well lived and that, undeniably, lived on in the hordes of cousins and children and family that descended her; the opposite of that grey awful day when her grandfather had gone to a cold grave by himself. Ismarilda was laid next to Carlo, together again, and the grave was laden with sunflowers.
She had mentioned – casually, she thought – to Alexei that she was returning and she told Polly as well (who had replied with a very terse, ‘Thank God’) and she hadn’t once, absolutely not, well, perhaps just a little, allowed herself to fantasise that he would show up to pick her up from the airport.
He did not, but Huckle did, and she was incredibly grateful to see him, and pleasingly distracted by the twins who had a lot to tell her about what Lowin’s party was going to be like and how it was going to be the best party ever and they were having a magician who could disappear and also fly and how there were going to be fireworks and elephants and tigers and also dragons who could fly and you could get on the back of a dragon and it would fly and there was going to be a candyfloss waterfall, and absolutely no snakes (this last from Daisy).
‘That sounds . . . sticky,’ said Marisa.
‘Well, you’re going to find out,’ said Huckle. ‘You’re doing the catering.’
Marisa scrunched up her face.
‘Where am I going to find a waterfall at such short notice?’
‘Yay!’ hollered the twins.
‘I think,’ said Huckle, with admirable restraint, ‘we are going to have to work on our expectation management.’
It wasn’t until he dropped her off at the end of the unpaved road that Marisa started to get truly, properly nervous.
She had missed him.
She had thought she might get over him, that it was a crush born of proximity and desperation. It was not.
In fact, it had gone quite the other way. She suddenly found she was intensely interested in Alexei; in his passionate moods; his absolute disinterest in conforming or being normal; his fascinating house and deep interests; the way he threw himself into his work. And the fact that he was, above and beyond anything else, kind. Kind to everyone; to children, to her, to her grandmother. Kind didn’t come up on dating apps very often. Funny and kind together even less so – in fact, many of the men Marisa had met in her dating days who announced they had a good sense of humour, were in fact cutting and cruel, or told long jokes and were dull. She couldn’t imagine Alexei being either of those things.
He was unconventional . . . but then, she supposed, so was she. So was anyone who ended up in Mount Polbearne, at the end of the world.
She had thought longingly of his large frame, his penetrating eyes, his soft mouth.
She was going to see him as soon as she’d had a shower and got changed; would show off the pretty golden tan her olive skin had picked up; the freckles that had popped out on her nose, the tiny streaks in her dark hair; maybe even – it was a gorgeous day – wear the floaty dress she had bought on impulse; the big silver earrings Ann Angela had convinced her would be just the thing.
Dragging her bag up the road, she suddenly felt distinctly more nervous than she had getting on the plane.
Chapter Seventy
The sun was directly in her eyes as she marched up the hill, which meant at first she couldn’t quite figure out what she was seeing.
The door was open to Alexei’s house, and there was a lot of noise. The next thing that happened was several large objects were hurled out of the house, including a pair of his boots and his treasured bust of Beethoven (Marisa hadn’t known who it was and had once asked ‘who is that angry-looking but quite handsome man?’ and Alexei had gone into rhapsodies), which smashed straight onto the stony ground in a million white pieces.