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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Art / Music / Theater / Dance
- Published: 07/31/2013
THE ART OF CIRCUMSTANCE
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, Germany.jpg)
The Art of Circumstance
This was in 2007 my first an attempt at a novel. It soon became clear that the narrative would in fact improve from being reduced to a shorter format. Accordingly, I include it in this collection.
This little tale is set in London, just like Thespian Maiden. However, here we are members of the British art scene and the colourful surprise party for our sexy heroine Melissa MacCambridge is one of a kind. She gets a little more help than she bargained for when she meets what she believes is the ideal man.
My father was a very religious man. Having worked years and years in the religious field as a church organist, he had become very conservative as the years passed. Coming across a priest who had told him at length about Veronica’s veil, he had spent quite a few years reading about the woman. Very soon he decided that he wanted his future child, if it were to be a girl, to be called Veronica. It might give her a holy personality. No such luck. Still, I was fascinated about the woman that had given me my middle name. She had apparently wiped the face of Jesus with a scarf, a shroud that then received magic powers.
At any rate, Melissa was my first Christian name and everybody knew the story about why my name was Melissa. I told it to anyone who knew the TV-series Falcon Crest. Even if they did not know the series itself, I would explain what it was about. As an adult, I then learned to enjoy red wine. This was not only because of the story being set in a winery. It was also because I loved the taste of elegance.
After pretty much having ignored the series as a kid, I bought the first three seasons of it on DVD as a grown-up and engulfed every moment of it. I realized then and there that the resemblance to my soap opera namesake was uncanny.
My mother had been an avid fan.
She had watched every episode with religious fervour.
My grandmother Elisa could never pronounce the name.
She would say Malcolm Fress.
“Why do you like that character Melissa, Rebecca?” my grandmother would tell my mother. “She is bollocks and daft and her boyfriend is a prat and his nards belong in the bog.”
After hearing my eighty year old grandma talk that way I nearly spat out my gum and coughed heave. My grandmother was always very fancy in her etiquette, but had the language of a sailor.
My mother thought Melissa was beautiful and really loved the actress Ana Alicia. So when my mother expected me, it was obvious that, if I were to be a girl, I would be named Melissa. Had I been a boy I would’ve been named Cole or Lance, the two main male characters in the series.
In any case, I was born into wealth. My father was a very popular church musician and a teacher at Guild Hall. He had worked in St. Paul’s for ages. My mother wrote romantic novels under the pseudonym Julia Cathridge.
Her novels were sold by the millions. Our house in Southampton was littered with books by my mother’s rival Barbara Cartland and my father spent all his time trying to avoid hearing my mother rave on about which stud her new heroine would mount.
We had a flat in Kensington and my father would sometimes spend the week there when he taught in London.
Otherwise, he would correspond via the web with customers who wanted an article about church music for a magazine.
I did play the flute and I had dabbled with the organ a bit, but it was really my father’s zealous raving for art that had caught my interest. When I finished my schooling at eighteen, I immediately applied to study art and spent the next seven years grabbing two degrees in Art History and Art Design.
I was extraordinarily lucky, because I very soon after my second diploma received a job as the youngest Director of Collections to date. Melissa Veronica MacCambridge was a success.
The problem I encountered was envy. Older men taking order from a young woman was something they had not encountered before and I found myself at length trying to prove that I knew something about brushstrokes, canvases, frames and style. In two ways I changed their minds over the next two years of my career: they started to respect me when they saw that I was not just a pretty crumpet. I could make tough decisions and would, if necessary, use force to prove my point. The other way was by actually giving my employees extra bonuses. I called that the whip and carrot method.
No, I didn’t sleep with them. I gave them assignments that made them feel special. I saw a business clerk that had a special liking for Rubens and I would assign him to organize the ticket sales for a Rubens exhibition. One waitress was especially keen on singing, I gave her a possibility to sing live at a reception of her choice.
I had been in my position for about three years, going about my business, when a young man arrived in our museum. It struck me that he had a very suave way about him that really did foretell me that he was a man of some stature. I really did not mingle with the crowd. I had other things to do. This time, however, I was fascinated. How was I to use my skills now? I had worked to be respected as a neutral boss. I didn’t want to spoil it by sleeping with some sexy man just because he was talented.
Well, I let it pass. I forgot about it. Then the same man appeared again, wandering about the collections and studying the paintings with such interest that I began to wonder who he was. He looked Italian.
I was interrupted by a colleague who had a question and when I turned back to speak to the man, he was gone. Now I really was obsessed.
Well, I thought about him all the way back home to Mayfair. I made myself a cup of tea and turned on the oven in order to heat up frozen lasagne.
I turned on the telly and zapped about for a bit when I suddenly saw the man that I had seen twice in the gallery. He was apparently a conductor, newly hired by Covent Garden to work on an opera.
I was very impressed by his position, but again I didn’t want to be known as a loose lass trying to impress illustrious people. I tried to look twice or thrice in order to really make sure if he was the same man as the one I had seen back at work. I soon came to the conclusion that he was. I also realized that I had misinterpreted myself. I was illustrious, too. I had the respect of my peers.
I found him attractive, but my professionalism did not allow me to delve any further into my infatuation. I was naturally very surprised to have seen the man on TV that I had witnessed in my museum and so I decided to use my position to actually find my way to meet him. I felt like a youngster trying to ask my favourite bloke out for the prom.
Next day at work, I went straight to the financial department and asked them, theoretically, if it might be possible to arrange an art fair in the National Gallery, where Italian food was served and Italian art was displayed and of course Italian music was played. It was all just a reason to get into this guy’s pants. I was playing two parts. It was a double entendré, if you like. I was the professional organizer that tried to create something new to get into someone’s drawers … uh, heart.
The boss of the financial department found it a fantastic proposal and asked me if I had any possible names that could help us organize the event. I had recalled the name of the Italian conductor at Covent Garden: Luigi Scarabella from Venice had also been to visit the gallery and if we could get the Opera to lend us some singers to appear with some Italian songs, all the better.
My financial collaborator, a very eager man named Jonathan Frakes just like actor that played William Riker in Star Trek, was very interested not in my abilities, but what he must’ve guessed was a very principal 38 C bust. Yes, I know. It seems haughty to flaunt one’s own physical attributes, but I knew that I had the assets so why not flaunt them. I didn’t really flaunt them, but why hide them?
I kept my distance, but managed to get a few points by bending over and giving him a few glimpses into my Victoria’s Secret cleavage. Not that I wasn’t proud of my womanly characteristics.
I knew very well that he admired not only my substructure, but also my ability to come up with a few good suggestions, which might help boost my respect ratio in the gallery.
Well, I called Covent Garden and explained that I was the Director of Collections at the National Gallery. I was arranging a mutual art and composition banquet with Italy as a theme and that we would very much be interested in Maestro Luigi Scarabella as a potential musical organizer.
The lady in the artistic department seemed very friendly and kept on thanking the gallery for this initiative. She told me that the Maestro was away for the day, but that he would contact me. I left her my office phone number and we hung up.
In a day or two, the phone rang. I was actually just eating breakfast when the phone rang and on the other end was the Maestro himself. He seemed very cheerful and so I made a joke that I thought musicians slept until ten. Fortunately, he had a sense of humour and laughed it off. He pointed out that opera singers and conductors often start rehearsing at ten, which means that have to be in the theatre and change into rehearsal costume and vocalize or get themselves there at least by nine thirty. Usually, after a performance in the evening before, a singer never sleeps before one or two o’clock, he told me. This leaves him or her with six or seven hours of sleep on a regular basis. Musicians sleeping in the morning was one of the pleasant lies of the business.
He seemed rather easy going, though, and kept on jabbing about being new in London and needing someone to take him around, as he said. I then segued into my part of the deal and told him about my plans to organize events at our establishment.
He seemed very eager to be part of this deal, but said that we should check with the office to actually ask if he was free for the dates of the concerts.
He suggested that we might try to organize something big by next year by June 2nd because that was the so called Festa della Repubblica, commemorating when Italy became a Republic.
I suggested that we organize several dates next spring starting with a Venice like Carnival on Febuary 26th 2011, when the actual carnival would start in Venice and then we could keep on having events like that all through spring and end the whole thing in June with a big bash gala night.
The Maestro said that this all sounded fabulous, but that he would want it to be big enough so that sponsors could join in and give us cash. We could discuss this best over dinner. If I were free tomorrow night he could take me to his favourite Italian restaurant in Covent Garden, a place called Bertorelli in St. Martin’s Lane.
After checking my calendar, I agreed to meet him a seven, when I finished work. He had no performance to conduct. I would check for possible sponsors and we would throw some ideas.
Well, I went about my business all day that day and all day the next day without telling anyone except my boss about the meeting. It was official, so I had to keep it that way.
Needless to say, our collaboration kept on deepening during our work. I tried my best to tell myself that I was actually just interested in him professionally, but how does a woman tell herself that she just likes a man for his job when his eyes are made of wine?
Everything that we planned turned out exactly the way we planned. In the course of that one year we received much attention from the media. Even CNN and France 24 came along and spoke to us about our events. The National Gallery was granted publicity we only could’ve foreseen in our dreams.
We had actually pushed away our feelings of sensual attraction for this long a time. We had even been involved with other people for short periods, but broke up and started seeing each other again. We had kissed, but never taken the step toward a relationship.
We worked almost all of the time, so that was probably the reason why we never mated. We were married to our vocations.
It then did happen after the final musical, culinary and artistic event on June 2nd. We had been a grand success and decided to celebrate it with a grand event of our own. We went to see Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and I was impressed that Luigi knew one of the actors. He took me to a Thai restaurant in Kensington, where we spent our time getting drunk and disappearing into the loo to neck.
The play was marvellous and the food was fantastic and we ended up in bed together making love for hours. The next morning was like living in rapture. A long breakfast followed by passionate love and walks along the Themes.
We were enjoying a brilliant moment, when suddenly a beautiful Italian girl came running toward us out of nowhere on the crossing. She met us by Tower Bridge and slapped me, leaving with Luigi screaming foul words in Italian to his beloved girl. I was left standing on Tower Bridge like a wet poodle and wondering what they hell had happened. I had now worked a year with a man and had missed that he was playing a game with me?
When I got back Luigi was there by my door and kept shaking his head. I asked him if he had something to tell me.
He said that I had now met his crazy sister. She had come here with him and was working as an accountant in a bank. She absolutely wanted him to marry her best friend. He had told her off and asked her politely to let him make a decision. She agreed to leave him alone, but then actually only see him when absolutely necessary.
My first thought was to ask him if a successful man like him really could be so lined by a sister. He told me that she was his Achilles’ Heal and the only way to control her was to bring their father to London, who was a real Italian patriarch.
He was in Italy and there was no way to get him here just to tell his daughter off, Luigi said. ‘Il mio Padre Giuseppe’ believed that his children were intelligent enough to handle their own affairs.
Okay, I had gotten into this by falling in lust with a guy with Chianti in his iris. I had stick with this. Now what?
The only problem was that Signorina Luisa Scarabella had the temper of a La Scala diva. Luigi, the actual star, was quite calm.
Well, I started the affiliation with the man. After all, I was in love. It didn’t take long, though, before Luisa came running home to her brother’s place in the middle of breakfast and told me off, that her girlfriend Emma Smythe had gone out with Luigi and she was in love with him. Luigi told her off, that he was not in love with Emma, and if Luisa didn’t accept that she might just as well quit her job and leave for Venice. Luisa was quiet for a long while, saying only very little.
She stayed for a cup of tea and left then without saying a word.
We said little after that during breakfast and decided to go to one of the rehearsal rooms in the opera house and practice with a violinist that worked in the orchestra. We had found some interesting pieces for piano, violin and flute and wanted to try them out. We could have rehearsed at Luigi’s place, but the violinist was a busy man. He preferred to practice in the theatre.
Amazingly enough, those pieces sounded fantastic with the three of us and we started rehearsing on a regular basis.
Luisa remained a problem. She would barge in at the most inconvenient of times. Once she even had Emma with her. I really wanted to kill her.
Then Emma moved to Scotland. She had spent a time in the U.S. and now had been given the opportunity to work in Glasgow as an actress. Luisa had no reason to break us up, so Luisa quit her job at the bank and went back to Italy.
Luigi and I were free, at least for a time.
Soon enough, we were rehearsing very week with the violinist. One day, my father appeared in the rehearsal room and was so taken by the sound that he said: ‘You must appear in public.’
At the Italian feasts in the gallery Luigi had played countless songs and accompanied singers. I had performed a piece or two on my flute with his accompaniment. This was different, we now had our own concert.
We were very excited and practiced for weeks in order to put together the right programme. We found the church, the time and the pieces. The press arrived and we were a success.
He had work, we had work, and it was not easy to find time to practice. I had never played this much flute before and my fingers were numb. My upper lip felt like pastrami.
In the beginning, we only played once a month. We really worked hard to get concerts and my father kept on spitting out the most remote locations for concerts: the old people’s home in Walthamstow, the bridge club of Whitechapel and the Vivaldi Association of Mayfair. Luigi had his locations and I could offer some places like the National Gallery and others.
After being together with Luigi a year, we had ten concerts on our back. Some of the concerts we had with Geoffrey Darcy, our violinist, and some without. We even had a name: L’astro d’argento. We had named ourselves the Silver Star after the text in the Neapolitan song Santa Lucia. Our trade mark was a silver star. We wore them on our clothes and even had music stands with silver stars on them. It was a fun gag. People thought we were a pop band.
We were just starting to get bigger gigs in and around London when good old Luisa came back to see one of our concerts. Shit. She was very still and quiet and very diplomatic during the evening, but as soon as we entered our flat she found something to pick on.
In their very broad Italian dialect they spent a half hour screaming at each other about him being a snob or her being a freak or something. I told them both that they could have fun fighting. I was tired and needed sleep. I was going to bed.
I fell asleep and dreamed very strange dreams. Waking up at two in the morning, I heard the two siblings were still awake. Now they were drinking wine and eating chocolate. This time they were friends and told me that they wanted to invite the whole family to London.
God help me, I thought. I put in my ear plugs and went to bed. If the rest of the family were as loud as those two I would have to buy a carton full of earplugs.
After that there was no stopping Luisa. She spoke in such a lively way about loving her brother that I began to wonder if he had given her reefer in order to change her mind.
Anyway, the entire plan with bringing the Italian family to London came true. Soon enough, Mamma Sophia and Padre Giuseppe were in our flat turning the entire bright and dreary English apartment into a miniature Naples.
They didn’t come alone. They brought their two cousins and four grandchildren and two brothers and four uncles. My big apartment turned into a very small apartment. I felt like Fellini.
Pasta was being cooked in a pot boiling over with froth and Giuseppe turned up the volume on the stereo when Pavarotti sang ‘Funiculi, Funicula’. The funny thing was that, although it was so bloody loud in the flat from all the noise, they still managed to hold a decent conversation. Sophia asked me if she could hang up her washing in my bathroom. The hotel room was so small that there was no space for more washing there. I asked her what the hell she was washing. She had just arrived in London. Sophia laughed and slapped me on my bosom. My body hurt after that and I boiled with rage.
I said yes and so I really did feel like my home actually not was London, but Sicily.
Sophia kept on screaming ‘Mamma Mia!’ whenever the boys were too loud for her. In the evenings we did not go to the opera I felt like I was in heaven. Peace and quiet and no yelling Italians. I remember a rock star friend of mind telling me that he heard bongo drums outside his hotel room after a show in Wembley Arena, because the volume had been so loud.
I felt that way now.
The sound volume of the conversation and the day to day life had been so loud lately that my ears were buzzing. I loved showing these people around the Gallery and I loved their Pesto and Luisa’s fabulously theatrical stories, but I also loved it when they went back to Italia. At last I could devote myself to my life.
I thought so, anyway.
Luigi now rehearsed during the daytime. He could pop over to the gallery and take a nap before a performance in the evening. There was not much of a love life, to tell you the truth. We had some quickies in my office, but as I came home around seven he was already at work. I was mostly too tired to stay up until midnight, when Luigi usually came home from the opera. He would finish the show at ten thirty or eleven and there would always be something for him to do. Somebody would talk to him or he would stop by a pub. Even if he didn’t, he came home at the earliest eleven o’clock.
With me starting work already at nine in the morning, it was impossible for me to not shut my eyes before then.
Well, one day Luisa called. She was all upset about something. Their mother was very sick. A bad pneumonia had hit her and she asked Luigi to come. We booked a flight and flew over. Soon we were in the hospital and everyone was crying and shaking their heads, screaming ‘Dio mio, madonna mia!’ and the whole scene was like the scene in an Italian movie. Luigi’s squadron of relatives were with us and they were all acting out a Greek tragedy. I was very moved by this heartfelt emotion until one day Mamma Sophia stood up, pronounced by the doctors in having gotten well, and said that she was hungry.
So, back she was. We stayed on for another week or so and the family again screamed at each other and laughed at Giuseppe’s naughty jokes and played Puccini on the quiet volume of 85 decibels. It was funny to see how happy Sophia was to be cooking pasta again, but I needed my peace and I asked my future husband how long we had to stay here. We could be using our vacation in London making love and going to musicals.
He agreed with me that staying here was a bit exasperating and we flew back to good old, quiet London.
Three days of bliss followed and then it was back to work.
I suggested that we do something about our present situation and he asked me what I was thinking of. I had given him enough of a hint, I thought, and so a week later in a restaurant off Piccadilly Circus after a West End show he asked me to marry him.
We married six months later in a Kensington church. Members of the press were there. They had followed our success with L’astro d’argento and asked us when we would do another concert. We told them that we were planning some nice events later this summer, but that right now love was the priority.
Our Italian relatives were all there and Mamma Sophia cried so loud in the church that even my mother, the romantically reserved and very English lady that she was, told her to be quiet. We held the party in a hotel and danced until three. The next day we flew over to the Maldives for our honeymoon.
What amazed me was that the Italians came back right away once we were back in London. I could not believe it. They would not leave us alone. The worst thing was that Luigi did not seem to care. Luisa sometimes stayed over in the living room, although she lived in the hotel with the others. She didn’t live in London anymore and he found it fun to have her in the flat. It didn’t seem to bother Luigi that we got hot and bothered with his sister there.
When I got pregnant with our future child they were there practically all the time.
Then, I decided to have my parents over for dinner.
That was a good idea. We cooked a nice tasty meal and drank some delicious French wine. We listened to my father’s favourite sonic spirituality: Handel’s Water Music.
In a quiet moment, while my mother and my husband were blabbering on about romantic novels, I told my father that I was going crazy with these bloody Italians treating this house as if it were a buggering museum. My father, in his typically reserved wit, told me that I should be happy to have people around me that were different than me. That gave me a good chance to add something new into their lives. Their new attitudes actually could give me something undiscovered, as well. I had already become more dignified.
I really thought about that.
Maybe my entire prejudice about the family had been coloured by our first meeting. Luisa had literally startled me out of liking her when she arrived near Tower Bridge and pulled away Luigi. After that, no matter how sweet she had become, I had always seen her as a foe. The next time they arrived I tried my best not to get irritated whenever someone turned up an aria or laughed in a loud way.
Soon enough, Sophia said that they were thinking about coming less and trying to intensify their stays. After our son Simon Eros James Francesco Scarabella was born they did come as often, but they never stayed over at our flat and they weren’t so loud. I had remained calm and even been able to tell them to be more quiet, especially since Simon needed sleep.
Earlier on, I had actually thought that I could not tell them anything, because they were so different. That taught me that no matter how different someone is, there is always a way to communicate. All you have to do is look into the person’s eyes and say what you have to say in a friendly way.
I may of lost some peace and quiet, but I have won friends. Now a days, I find the peace of mind that I need in the love that my family provides. That is reward enough for a lifetime.
I had decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I had become Italian. I yelled as good as mama Sophia and soon, I gathered, I would be cooking Pasta and singing ‘O Soave Fanciulla’ like the female tenor I would never be.
My music and my art is my ultimate spiritual satisfaction, but without the love of my family that would be just a crashing cymbal.
I remember a painting by Caravaggio. Amor vincit omnium, I believe it was called. The painting shows the God Amor ruling over science, military and music.
Ultimately, that is right. Still, ruled by is maybe a wrong formulation. Love leads music and art. It inspires it. We remember heaven and try to emulate it and so we created art to express our spiritual endeavours.
That brings us back where we started: my name. Melissa Veronica. This expresses exactly what I am today. I am the mixture between the honest vanity of a Californian wine queen and a holy believer. In earlier days I thought that blend actually crashed like oil and water. In actual fact it is more like the strong sensuality of a cappuccino. The strong, sexy coffee is mellowed by some lovely, calm cream. Nothing could be more delightful, especially with my two men by my side.
Viva Italia! Viva la musica! Viva l’amore! Viva Londonium!
Venezia? E 'possibile che si giunga al più presto.
THE ART OF CIRCUMSTANCE(Charles E.J. Moulton)
The Art of Circumstance
This was in 2007 my first an attempt at a novel. It soon became clear that the narrative would in fact improve from being reduced to a shorter format. Accordingly, I include it in this collection.
This little tale is set in London, just like Thespian Maiden. However, here we are members of the British art scene and the colourful surprise party for our sexy heroine Melissa MacCambridge is one of a kind. She gets a little more help than she bargained for when she meets what she believes is the ideal man.
My father was a very religious man. Having worked years and years in the religious field as a church organist, he had become very conservative as the years passed. Coming across a priest who had told him at length about Veronica’s veil, he had spent quite a few years reading about the woman. Very soon he decided that he wanted his future child, if it were to be a girl, to be called Veronica. It might give her a holy personality. No such luck. Still, I was fascinated about the woman that had given me my middle name. She had apparently wiped the face of Jesus with a scarf, a shroud that then received magic powers.
At any rate, Melissa was my first Christian name and everybody knew the story about why my name was Melissa. I told it to anyone who knew the TV-series Falcon Crest. Even if they did not know the series itself, I would explain what it was about. As an adult, I then learned to enjoy red wine. This was not only because of the story being set in a winery. It was also because I loved the taste of elegance.
After pretty much having ignored the series as a kid, I bought the first three seasons of it on DVD as a grown-up and engulfed every moment of it. I realized then and there that the resemblance to my soap opera namesake was uncanny.
My mother had been an avid fan.
She had watched every episode with religious fervour.
My grandmother Elisa could never pronounce the name.
She would say Malcolm Fress.
“Why do you like that character Melissa, Rebecca?” my grandmother would tell my mother. “She is bollocks and daft and her boyfriend is a prat and his nards belong in the bog.”
After hearing my eighty year old grandma talk that way I nearly spat out my gum and coughed heave. My grandmother was always very fancy in her etiquette, but had the language of a sailor.
My mother thought Melissa was beautiful and really loved the actress Ana Alicia. So when my mother expected me, it was obvious that, if I were to be a girl, I would be named Melissa. Had I been a boy I would’ve been named Cole or Lance, the two main male characters in the series.
In any case, I was born into wealth. My father was a very popular church musician and a teacher at Guild Hall. He had worked in St. Paul’s for ages. My mother wrote romantic novels under the pseudonym Julia Cathridge.
Her novels were sold by the millions. Our house in Southampton was littered with books by my mother’s rival Barbara Cartland and my father spent all his time trying to avoid hearing my mother rave on about which stud her new heroine would mount.
We had a flat in Kensington and my father would sometimes spend the week there when he taught in London.
Otherwise, he would correspond via the web with customers who wanted an article about church music for a magazine.
I did play the flute and I had dabbled with the organ a bit, but it was really my father’s zealous raving for art that had caught my interest. When I finished my schooling at eighteen, I immediately applied to study art and spent the next seven years grabbing two degrees in Art History and Art Design.
I was extraordinarily lucky, because I very soon after my second diploma received a job as the youngest Director of Collections to date. Melissa Veronica MacCambridge was a success.
The problem I encountered was envy. Older men taking order from a young woman was something they had not encountered before and I found myself at length trying to prove that I knew something about brushstrokes, canvases, frames and style. In two ways I changed their minds over the next two years of my career: they started to respect me when they saw that I was not just a pretty crumpet. I could make tough decisions and would, if necessary, use force to prove my point. The other way was by actually giving my employees extra bonuses. I called that the whip and carrot method.
No, I didn’t sleep with them. I gave them assignments that made them feel special. I saw a business clerk that had a special liking for Rubens and I would assign him to organize the ticket sales for a Rubens exhibition. One waitress was especially keen on singing, I gave her a possibility to sing live at a reception of her choice.
I had been in my position for about three years, going about my business, when a young man arrived in our museum. It struck me that he had a very suave way about him that really did foretell me that he was a man of some stature. I really did not mingle with the crowd. I had other things to do. This time, however, I was fascinated. How was I to use my skills now? I had worked to be respected as a neutral boss. I didn’t want to spoil it by sleeping with some sexy man just because he was talented.
Well, I let it pass. I forgot about it. Then the same man appeared again, wandering about the collections and studying the paintings with such interest that I began to wonder who he was. He looked Italian.
I was interrupted by a colleague who had a question and when I turned back to speak to the man, he was gone. Now I really was obsessed.
Well, I thought about him all the way back home to Mayfair. I made myself a cup of tea and turned on the oven in order to heat up frozen lasagne.
I turned on the telly and zapped about for a bit when I suddenly saw the man that I had seen twice in the gallery. He was apparently a conductor, newly hired by Covent Garden to work on an opera.
I was very impressed by his position, but again I didn’t want to be known as a loose lass trying to impress illustrious people. I tried to look twice or thrice in order to really make sure if he was the same man as the one I had seen back at work. I soon came to the conclusion that he was. I also realized that I had misinterpreted myself. I was illustrious, too. I had the respect of my peers.
I found him attractive, but my professionalism did not allow me to delve any further into my infatuation. I was naturally very surprised to have seen the man on TV that I had witnessed in my museum and so I decided to use my position to actually find my way to meet him. I felt like a youngster trying to ask my favourite bloke out for the prom.
Next day at work, I went straight to the financial department and asked them, theoretically, if it might be possible to arrange an art fair in the National Gallery, where Italian food was served and Italian art was displayed and of course Italian music was played. It was all just a reason to get into this guy’s pants. I was playing two parts. It was a double entendré, if you like. I was the professional organizer that tried to create something new to get into someone’s drawers … uh, heart.
The boss of the financial department found it a fantastic proposal and asked me if I had any possible names that could help us organize the event. I had recalled the name of the Italian conductor at Covent Garden: Luigi Scarabella from Venice had also been to visit the gallery and if we could get the Opera to lend us some singers to appear with some Italian songs, all the better.
My financial collaborator, a very eager man named Jonathan Frakes just like actor that played William Riker in Star Trek, was very interested not in my abilities, but what he must’ve guessed was a very principal 38 C bust. Yes, I know. It seems haughty to flaunt one’s own physical attributes, but I knew that I had the assets so why not flaunt them. I didn’t really flaunt them, but why hide them?
I kept my distance, but managed to get a few points by bending over and giving him a few glimpses into my Victoria’s Secret cleavage. Not that I wasn’t proud of my womanly characteristics.
I knew very well that he admired not only my substructure, but also my ability to come up with a few good suggestions, which might help boost my respect ratio in the gallery.
Well, I called Covent Garden and explained that I was the Director of Collections at the National Gallery. I was arranging a mutual art and composition banquet with Italy as a theme and that we would very much be interested in Maestro Luigi Scarabella as a potential musical organizer.
The lady in the artistic department seemed very friendly and kept on thanking the gallery for this initiative. She told me that the Maestro was away for the day, but that he would contact me. I left her my office phone number and we hung up.
In a day or two, the phone rang. I was actually just eating breakfast when the phone rang and on the other end was the Maestro himself. He seemed very cheerful and so I made a joke that I thought musicians slept until ten. Fortunately, he had a sense of humour and laughed it off. He pointed out that opera singers and conductors often start rehearsing at ten, which means that have to be in the theatre and change into rehearsal costume and vocalize or get themselves there at least by nine thirty. Usually, after a performance in the evening before, a singer never sleeps before one or two o’clock, he told me. This leaves him or her with six or seven hours of sleep on a regular basis. Musicians sleeping in the morning was one of the pleasant lies of the business.
He seemed rather easy going, though, and kept on jabbing about being new in London and needing someone to take him around, as he said. I then segued into my part of the deal and told him about my plans to organize events at our establishment.
He seemed very eager to be part of this deal, but said that we should check with the office to actually ask if he was free for the dates of the concerts.
He suggested that we might try to organize something big by next year by June 2nd because that was the so called Festa della Repubblica, commemorating when Italy became a Republic.
I suggested that we organize several dates next spring starting with a Venice like Carnival on Febuary 26th 2011, when the actual carnival would start in Venice and then we could keep on having events like that all through spring and end the whole thing in June with a big bash gala night.
The Maestro said that this all sounded fabulous, but that he would want it to be big enough so that sponsors could join in and give us cash. We could discuss this best over dinner. If I were free tomorrow night he could take me to his favourite Italian restaurant in Covent Garden, a place called Bertorelli in St. Martin’s Lane.
After checking my calendar, I agreed to meet him a seven, when I finished work. He had no performance to conduct. I would check for possible sponsors and we would throw some ideas.
Well, I went about my business all day that day and all day the next day without telling anyone except my boss about the meeting. It was official, so I had to keep it that way.
Needless to say, our collaboration kept on deepening during our work. I tried my best to tell myself that I was actually just interested in him professionally, but how does a woman tell herself that she just likes a man for his job when his eyes are made of wine?
Everything that we planned turned out exactly the way we planned. In the course of that one year we received much attention from the media. Even CNN and France 24 came along and spoke to us about our events. The National Gallery was granted publicity we only could’ve foreseen in our dreams.
We had actually pushed away our feelings of sensual attraction for this long a time. We had even been involved with other people for short periods, but broke up and started seeing each other again. We had kissed, but never taken the step toward a relationship.
We worked almost all of the time, so that was probably the reason why we never mated. We were married to our vocations.
It then did happen after the final musical, culinary and artistic event on June 2nd. We had been a grand success and decided to celebrate it with a grand event of our own. We went to see Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and I was impressed that Luigi knew one of the actors. He took me to a Thai restaurant in Kensington, where we spent our time getting drunk and disappearing into the loo to neck.
The play was marvellous and the food was fantastic and we ended up in bed together making love for hours. The next morning was like living in rapture. A long breakfast followed by passionate love and walks along the Themes.
We were enjoying a brilliant moment, when suddenly a beautiful Italian girl came running toward us out of nowhere on the crossing. She met us by Tower Bridge and slapped me, leaving with Luigi screaming foul words in Italian to his beloved girl. I was left standing on Tower Bridge like a wet poodle and wondering what they hell had happened. I had now worked a year with a man and had missed that he was playing a game with me?
When I got back Luigi was there by my door and kept shaking his head. I asked him if he had something to tell me.
He said that I had now met his crazy sister. She had come here with him and was working as an accountant in a bank. She absolutely wanted him to marry her best friend. He had told her off and asked her politely to let him make a decision. She agreed to leave him alone, but then actually only see him when absolutely necessary.
My first thought was to ask him if a successful man like him really could be so lined by a sister. He told me that she was his Achilles’ Heal and the only way to control her was to bring their father to London, who was a real Italian patriarch.
He was in Italy and there was no way to get him here just to tell his daughter off, Luigi said. ‘Il mio Padre Giuseppe’ believed that his children were intelligent enough to handle their own affairs.
Okay, I had gotten into this by falling in lust with a guy with Chianti in his iris. I had stick with this. Now what?
The only problem was that Signorina Luisa Scarabella had the temper of a La Scala diva. Luigi, the actual star, was quite calm.
Well, I started the affiliation with the man. After all, I was in love. It didn’t take long, though, before Luisa came running home to her brother’s place in the middle of breakfast and told me off, that her girlfriend Emma Smythe had gone out with Luigi and she was in love with him. Luigi told her off, that he was not in love with Emma, and if Luisa didn’t accept that she might just as well quit her job and leave for Venice. Luisa was quiet for a long while, saying only very little.
She stayed for a cup of tea and left then without saying a word.
We said little after that during breakfast and decided to go to one of the rehearsal rooms in the opera house and practice with a violinist that worked in the orchestra. We had found some interesting pieces for piano, violin and flute and wanted to try them out. We could have rehearsed at Luigi’s place, but the violinist was a busy man. He preferred to practice in the theatre.
Amazingly enough, those pieces sounded fantastic with the three of us and we started rehearsing on a regular basis.
Luisa remained a problem. She would barge in at the most inconvenient of times. Once she even had Emma with her. I really wanted to kill her.
Then Emma moved to Scotland. She had spent a time in the U.S. and now had been given the opportunity to work in Glasgow as an actress. Luisa had no reason to break us up, so Luisa quit her job at the bank and went back to Italy.
Luigi and I were free, at least for a time.
Soon enough, we were rehearsing very week with the violinist. One day, my father appeared in the rehearsal room and was so taken by the sound that he said: ‘You must appear in public.’
At the Italian feasts in the gallery Luigi had played countless songs and accompanied singers. I had performed a piece or two on my flute with his accompaniment. This was different, we now had our own concert.
We were very excited and practiced for weeks in order to put together the right programme. We found the church, the time and the pieces. The press arrived and we were a success.
He had work, we had work, and it was not easy to find time to practice. I had never played this much flute before and my fingers were numb. My upper lip felt like pastrami.
In the beginning, we only played once a month. We really worked hard to get concerts and my father kept on spitting out the most remote locations for concerts: the old people’s home in Walthamstow, the bridge club of Whitechapel and the Vivaldi Association of Mayfair. Luigi had his locations and I could offer some places like the National Gallery and others.
After being together with Luigi a year, we had ten concerts on our back. Some of the concerts we had with Geoffrey Darcy, our violinist, and some without. We even had a name: L’astro d’argento. We had named ourselves the Silver Star after the text in the Neapolitan song Santa Lucia. Our trade mark was a silver star. We wore them on our clothes and even had music stands with silver stars on them. It was a fun gag. People thought we were a pop band.
We were just starting to get bigger gigs in and around London when good old Luisa came back to see one of our concerts. Shit. She was very still and quiet and very diplomatic during the evening, but as soon as we entered our flat she found something to pick on.
In their very broad Italian dialect they spent a half hour screaming at each other about him being a snob or her being a freak or something. I told them both that they could have fun fighting. I was tired and needed sleep. I was going to bed.
I fell asleep and dreamed very strange dreams. Waking up at two in the morning, I heard the two siblings were still awake. Now they were drinking wine and eating chocolate. This time they were friends and told me that they wanted to invite the whole family to London.
God help me, I thought. I put in my ear plugs and went to bed. If the rest of the family were as loud as those two I would have to buy a carton full of earplugs.
After that there was no stopping Luisa. She spoke in such a lively way about loving her brother that I began to wonder if he had given her reefer in order to change her mind.
Anyway, the entire plan with bringing the Italian family to London came true. Soon enough, Mamma Sophia and Padre Giuseppe were in our flat turning the entire bright and dreary English apartment into a miniature Naples.
They didn’t come alone. They brought their two cousins and four grandchildren and two brothers and four uncles. My big apartment turned into a very small apartment. I felt like Fellini.
Pasta was being cooked in a pot boiling over with froth and Giuseppe turned up the volume on the stereo when Pavarotti sang ‘Funiculi, Funicula’. The funny thing was that, although it was so bloody loud in the flat from all the noise, they still managed to hold a decent conversation. Sophia asked me if she could hang up her washing in my bathroom. The hotel room was so small that there was no space for more washing there. I asked her what the hell she was washing. She had just arrived in London. Sophia laughed and slapped me on my bosom. My body hurt after that and I boiled with rage.
I said yes and so I really did feel like my home actually not was London, but Sicily.
Sophia kept on screaming ‘Mamma Mia!’ whenever the boys were too loud for her. In the evenings we did not go to the opera I felt like I was in heaven. Peace and quiet and no yelling Italians. I remember a rock star friend of mind telling me that he heard bongo drums outside his hotel room after a show in Wembley Arena, because the volume had been so loud.
I felt that way now.
The sound volume of the conversation and the day to day life had been so loud lately that my ears were buzzing. I loved showing these people around the Gallery and I loved their Pesto and Luisa’s fabulously theatrical stories, but I also loved it when they went back to Italia. At last I could devote myself to my life.
I thought so, anyway.
Luigi now rehearsed during the daytime. He could pop over to the gallery and take a nap before a performance in the evening. There was not much of a love life, to tell you the truth. We had some quickies in my office, but as I came home around seven he was already at work. I was mostly too tired to stay up until midnight, when Luigi usually came home from the opera. He would finish the show at ten thirty or eleven and there would always be something for him to do. Somebody would talk to him or he would stop by a pub. Even if he didn’t, he came home at the earliest eleven o’clock.
With me starting work already at nine in the morning, it was impossible for me to not shut my eyes before then.
Well, one day Luisa called. She was all upset about something. Their mother was very sick. A bad pneumonia had hit her and she asked Luigi to come. We booked a flight and flew over. Soon we were in the hospital and everyone was crying and shaking their heads, screaming ‘Dio mio, madonna mia!’ and the whole scene was like the scene in an Italian movie. Luigi’s squadron of relatives were with us and they were all acting out a Greek tragedy. I was very moved by this heartfelt emotion until one day Mamma Sophia stood up, pronounced by the doctors in having gotten well, and said that she was hungry.
So, back she was. We stayed on for another week or so and the family again screamed at each other and laughed at Giuseppe’s naughty jokes and played Puccini on the quiet volume of 85 decibels. It was funny to see how happy Sophia was to be cooking pasta again, but I needed my peace and I asked my future husband how long we had to stay here. We could be using our vacation in London making love and going to musicals.
He agreed with me that staying here was a bit exasperating and we flew back to good old, quiet London.
Three days of bliss followed and then it was back to work.
I suggested that we do something about our present situation and he asked me what I was thinking of. I had given him enough of a hint, I thought, and so a week later in a restaurant off Piccadilly Circus after a West End show he asked me to marry him.
We married six months later in a Kensington church. Members of the press were there. They had followed our success with L’astro d’argento and asked us when we would do another concert. We told them that we were planning some nice events later this summer, but that right now love was the priority.
Our Italian relatives were all there and Mamma Sophia cried so loud in the church that even my mother, the romantically reserved and very English lady that she was, told her to be quiet. We held the party in a hotel and danced until three. The next day we flew over to the Maldives for our honeymoon.
What amazed me was that the Italians came back right away once we were back in London. I could not believe it. They would not leave us alone. The worst thing was that Luigi did not seem to care. Luisa sometimes stayed over in the living room, although she lived in the hotel with the others. She didn’t live in London anymore and he found it fun to have her in the flat. It didn’t seem to bother Luigi that we got hot and bothered with his sister there.
When I got pregnant with our future child they were there practically all the time.
Then, I decided to have my parents over for dinner.
That was a good idea. We cooked a nice tasty meal and drank some delicious French wine. We listened to my father’s favourite sonic spirituality: Handel’s Water Music.
In a quiet moment, while my mother and my husband were blabbering on about romantic novels, I told my father that I was going crazy with these bloody Italians treating this house as if it were a buggering museum. My father, in his typically reserved wit, told me that I should be happy to have people around me that were different than me. That gave me a good chance to add something new into their lives. Their new attitudes actually could give me something undiscovered, as well. I had already become more dignified.
I really thought about that.
Maybe my entire prejudice about the family had been coloured by our first meeting. Luisa had literally startled me out of liking her when she arrived near Tower Bridge and pulled away Luigi. After that, no matter how sweet she had become, I had always seen her as a foe. The next time they arrived I tried my best not to get irritated whenever someone turned up an aria or laughed in a loud way.
Soon enough, Sophia said that they were thinking about coming less and trying to intensify their stays. After our son Simon Eros James Francesco Scarabella was born they did come as often, but they never stayed over at our flat and they weren’t so loud. I had remained calm and even been able to tell them to be more quiet, especially since Simon needed sleep.
Earlier on, I had actually thought that I could not tell them anything, because they were so different. That taught me that no matter how different someone is, there is always a way to communicate. All you have to do is look into the person’s eyes and say what you have to say in a friendly way.
I may of lost some peace and quiet, but I have won friends. Now a days, I find the peace of mind that I need in the love that my family provides. That is reward enough for a lifetime.
I had decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I had become Italian. I yelled as good as mama Sophia and soon, I gathered, I would be cooking Pasta and singing ‘O Soave Fanciulla’ like the female tenor I would never be.
My music and my art is my ultimate spiritual satisfaction, but without the love of my family that would be just a crashing cymbal.
I remember a painting by Caravaggio. Amor vincit omnium, I believe it was called. The painting shows the God Amor ruling over science, military and music.
Ultimately, that is right. Still, ruled by is maybe a wrong formulation. Love leads music and art. It inspires it. We remember heaven and try to emulate it and so we created art to express our spiritual endeavours.
That brings us back where we started: my name. Melissa Veronica. This expresses exactly what I am today. I am the mixture between the honest vanity of a Californian wine queen and a holy believer. In earlier days I thought that blend actually crashed like oil and water. In actual fact it is more like the strong sensuality of a cappuccino. The strong, sexy coffee is mellowed by some lovely, calm cream. Nothing could be more delightful, especially with my two men by my side.
Viva Italia! Viva la musica! Viva l’amore! Viva Londonium!
Venezia? E 'possibile che si giunga al più presto.
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