Page 11 of Change of Heart
‘Achille, no. Papà, a bit of a struggle, but with Nonna’s help he came around.’
The baroness joined the conversation. ‘My son doesn’t like change. You have to understand that about him. His father, God bless him, was exactly the same, and that’s the main reason we find ourselves having to take such a drastic step now.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘If my husband had been a bit more commercially minded, things would be a lot different.’
Alice was impressed at how pragmatic the old lady sounded. ‘When you say commercially minded, what sort of thing did you have in mind? Opening the castle to the public years ago or something else?’
‘I confess that none of us had thought of opening to the public until Simonetta came up with the idea.’ She gave her granddaughter another little smile. ‘Agriculture is what I’ve always said we should do, but they’ve always been against it.’
Simonetta added a bit of explanation. ‘As you know, the family’s been here for many centuries, and back in medieval and Renaissance times they were the de facto rulers of all this area. People travelling up and down the valley – merchants, pilgrims and others – all had to pay for the right to do so and the family grew rich as a result. Of course that all stopped a long time ago and we’ve slowly been running out of resources ever since.’
‘So why not make money from the land that you own, like your grandmother says? My father makes a decent living out of a farm that’s far smaller than what you have here. All right, my dad’s farm is almost all workable, productive flat land, and here in the hills it’s going to be more difficult, but I can’t help noticing that you have many hundreds of hectares of woodland. The price of timber has shot up over the last few years. I’m sure that’s something to be looked at.’ She saw Simonetta and her grandmother exchange approving looks and pressed on with her ideas. ‘Also, so close to Parma, what about milk for parmesan cheese or pigs for ham?’
‘All excellent ideas, Alice,’ Simonetta replied, a note of regret creeping into her voice. ‘But you have to try to understand the mindset of my father and his forebears. Doing something like that would turn us into mere farmers.’ She held up her hands in apology. ‘No offence to your father, I’m just trying to put you in the picture as far as Varaldo family tradition is concerned. In the eyes of my father and his father before him this would make us no better than the Montorso family.’ She caught Alice’s eye. ‘Have you heard that name before?’
Alice nodded, there was no point pretending. ‘Until last night, no, but I was talking to Signora Rossi and she told me some of the story, and how the current mayor is deliberately being obstructive. I must admit to being amazed that a feud that started over half a millennium ago should still continue to this day.’
‘I know. It must sound crazy to you. It still sounds crazy to me, and I’ve lived with it all my life.’ Simonetta picked up her cup of coffee and held it out towards Alice in a mock toast. ‘Well, here’s hoping some fresh blood will be able to knock a bit of sense into them, but don’t hold your breath.’
She took a mouthful of coffee and sat back, leaving Alice mulling over what she had just heard. It was beginning to make sense. Ever since being offered the job she had been racking her brains to work out why so much land was not being worked, and now she knew the answer: simple, old-fashioned prejudice, coupled with a misplaced sense of tradition. She felt sure Simonetta was right and that she was going to find herself with an uphill struggle to push change through.
Chapter 8
The three of them chatted for well over an hour and Alice learned more and more about the history of the family, the town and the whole area. Apparently the castle was situated on the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route that led all the way from Canterbury in England to Rome, and Alice wondered if that might help to get more visitors to the castle when they opened to the public. The subject of the Montorso family was not brought up again, but Alice knew that it would be lurking in the background to everything she did while she was here. They were still talking when the door opened and a tall, dark-haired man walked in. The resemblance to his father quite remarkable and Simonetta hardly needed to make the introductions.
‘Alice, this is my brother, Achille.’ She pointed to the clock on the mantlepiece and adopted a hectoring, if affectionate, tone. ‘Nine-thirty, this is early for you, Achille. Come and meet our new castle manager, Alice Sterling.’
He walked over to where Alice was sitting and she stood up to shake hands with him. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She avoided calling him anything for now and Simonetta must have noticed.
‘Alice, do call him by his first name. That’s all right with you, isn’t it, Achille?’
‘Of course, and may I call you Alice?’ He was a good-looking man but, interestingly, Alice felt no spark of attraction like the one she had felt for the anonymous man the previous evening. On the one hand it was reassuring to her that she hadn’t suddenly developed into a maneater, but it just made what she had felt the previous evening even more inexplicable. Hastily returning her attention to the present, she gave him a smile and a nod. ‘Yes, of course, please call me Alice.’ She looked across at the baroness. ‘And the same applies to you, please, Lady Varaldo.’
A minute later the maid reappeared from the kitchen with more coffee and a pile of her mother’s home-made biscuits and Alice was struck yet again by how beautiful she was in a discreet, understated way. As the woman set the tray down on the table, she shot a brief glance across at Achille. Alice was no great expert on human emotions, but she felt sure she had caught affection or more in that brief glance. More interesting still was the fact that an answering expression of tenderness appeared on Achille’s face. As Silvia collected the old tray and left the room, Alice filed that little piece of information away. It would appear that the future Baron Varaldo and his kitchen maid had feelings for each other, and Alice wondered what Achille’s father might have to say about that.
They continued talking and Achille gradually became more involved. It was clear from what he said that he knew little or nothing about agriculture, but Alice didn’t sense any great reluctance in him at the idea of beginning to work the surrounding land a bit more. Maybe, she thought to herself, she might be able to push the decision through and the family would be able to start generating some much-needed cash. However, half an hour later when the baron himself arrived, the outlook suddenly became less hopeful. When his daughter hesitantly repeated what Alice had said about timber, milk and pork, he shook his head irritably.
‘Over my dead body. We are Varaldos, not farmers.’
Alice saw Simonetta shoot a despairing glance across to her grandmother and the old lady took the hint.
‘Lodovico, this is the twenty-first century and nobody owes our family any favours anymore. If you want to hold on to this land and this castle, then you’re going to have to listen to what we’re telling you. Otherwise, in a few years’ time you might find yourself living in a scruffy apartment block on the outskirts of Parma.’
Alice suppressed a smile. Wealth was a very relative thing, but she felt sure that the next step down if the baron ever had to sell this estate would be a lot less stark than his mother was predicting. Still, if it helped to shake him out of his complacency, then more power to the old lady’s elbow. She listened with interest as both his daughter and his son joined in the argument and managed to get some sort of grudging commitment from the baron that he would at least listen to whatever Alice might propose. Taking this as a positive sign, Alice asked if she could begin a formal meeting and handed around copies of the agenda she had prepared. Now that the time had come for her to start doing the job she had been engaged to do, the butterflies returned to her stomach, but she did her best to banish them. She was now the castle manager and she was determined to manage.
The meeting lasted on and off for the rest of the morning, and Alice came to the end of it feeling more relaxed and optimistic than she had done earlier. It had been agreed that she would draw up a suggested plan of action to get things moving on the conversion of the castle into a tourist attraction, but also that she would look closely into what could be done to utilise the land better. Simonetta told her that they had obtained a line of credit from their bank – using the property as a guarantee – and the baron’s apprehension was clear to see. In an attempt to reassure him, Alice suggested that in the first instance she should take a look around in case there was any unused furniture and other non-essential items in the castle that might have significant value. Certainly, if they could raise most of the money for the project by selling some antiques, this would soften the blow considerably. Understandably, this suggestion was met with enthusiasm by all of them, and Alice resolved to spend the afternoon poking around.
After the meeting, Simonetta gave her two sets of keys, one for the white Fiat sitting outside in the courtyard, the other, heftier set, for the castle itself, and then led Alice on a tour of inspection.
The living accommodation extended all the way around all four sides of the central courtyard and Alice soon lost count of the number of rooms, but she did note that it took almost a quarter of an hour to complete the full circle of the courtyard and come back to where they had started. As well as an endless succession of rooms on these two floors, there were no fewer than five towers: the largest one over the main gate, and separate, smaller towers on each of the four corners of the structure.
In the gatehouse Simonetta led her up a spiral stone staircase and by the time they emerged on the roof of the tower, Alice’s knee was screaming at her. She took a welcome rest as she looked out over the crenellated battlements. The 360-degree view was panoramic and they could see all the way down the valley in one direction and up to the tops of the hills in the other.
While they stood up there, Simonetta gave her the highlights of the history of the castle. ‘Although the original structure was built in the early Middle Ages, it received a major makeover during the Renaissance. At that time, it was transformed from a Spartan fortress into a more comfortable family home, although it badly needs modernising now.’
Alice nodded in agreement. From what she had seen, the place still lacked quite a few modern-day creature comforts, and in a property this big, remedying that wouldn’t be cheap.
Simonetta didn’t show Alice the bedrooms being used by the family, but the rooms Alice did see were almost all furnished to some extent, even though most of the furniture was concealed under massive dustsheets which had probably started life white, but which were now a dull grey colour after sitting there for decades. They didn’t stop to study these more closely, not least as there appeared to be a thriving population of spiders in the castle and one or two of these looked decidedly sinister. Alice had never been a spider fan and she had a feeling she was going to have some unpleasant close encounters here. Still, she told herself, a little bit of arachnophobia wasn’t going to stop her making a go of it.
On the ground floor there was a vast stable and sizeable storage areas, some containing unidentifiable rusting machinery and even a couple of ancient vehicles, half-submerged beneath heaps of junk. There would be a major cleaning up job to be done, but Alice felt sure there would be ample room down here for new toilets, a cafeteria and a gift shop, as well as somewhere for administrators and guides to be based. Beneath all this, there were extensive cellars and a series of small, dank rooms that might have been dungeons back in the mists of time. Alice imagined that these could be transformed into something of interest although the family would have to be careful not to make them too scary, as there would hopefully be lots of children among the visitors.
