Rose stopped short. Her hands were full with the tray, and Matteo had slipped his hands into his pockets, clearly not about to take it from her. ‘I can only see my feet...’
He tipped the hat a little further back. ‘Better?’
‘Much. This is a comfortable hat.’
‘Looks a lot better on you than it does on me.’ Matteo grinned, putting his hands back into his pockets.
Nannu Alberto dusted William down at their approach, taking his lemonade and drinking it down. He showed them the vines, his workworn hands brushing the leaves tenderly. Then they walked down to the fermentation hall, a high, brick-built structure with white-painted render, half-hidden in a fold in the hill.
William put his hands over his ears at the din of the machinery, and they were hurried through the bottling plant and into the quieter fermentation area, where Matteo showed them the enormous stainless steel vats.
‘After the harvest the grapes come here, to be de-stemmed and crushed. Then the wine’s fermented in these vats.’
‘I’m a bit disappointed. Whenever I think of a winery, I think cobwebs and huge wooden casks.’ The place was spotless, all shining metal and automation.
‘We have those too.’ Matteo and Nannu Alberto grinned at each other, and led them through into another huge hall. Row upon row of wooden casks, stacked in racks, reached up to the ceiling.
‘You will try the wine.’ Nannu Alberto made it sound like an ultimatum rather than an offer and disappeared between the casks before Rose could answer.
‘You could try asking...’ Matteo called after him and received no reply. Rose tugged at his sleeve.
‘He’s very kind, and I’d love to try some. Do I have to spit it out afterwards?’
Matteo shrugged. ‘You can if you want. I prefer to drink my wine.’
Nannu Alberto returned with three glasses, a couple of mouthfuls of wine in each. When Rose took a sip, she was aware of two pairs of eyes watching her intently. She nodded, savouring the taste on her tongue, and Matteo and his grandfather both smiled at the same time.
They stopped on their way back to the house under the huge, spreading orange tree. Wordlessly, Nannu Alberto reached up, picking four ripe mandarins and handing three t
o Matteo, who gave one each to William and Rose and started to peel one for himself. As William smelled his, Rose remembered that neither of them could tell which fruits were ripe. It seemed that Nannu Alberto had been picking fruit for Matteo ever since he was a little boy, and he still did now.
‘This variety ripens much later than most mandarins. And they’re very sweet.’
It had been on the tree just a few moments ago, and the fruit was not only sweet and juicy but it smelled and tasted more like an orange than anything that Rose had ever experienced. William was struggling to peel his and Nannu Alberto took it from him, carefully stripping the pith from each segment before he gave it to William as they walked towards the house.
‘This is what we are made from.’
Matteo chuckled. ‘What you are made from, Nannu?’
‘Pfft.’ Nannu Alberto dismissed the assertion with a wave of his hand and an observation in Italian. Rose raised her eyebrows and Matteo translated.
‘He says that when you are born in Sicily you’re the fruit of the land, and you’re made by it. No one can get away from that.’ Matteo added his own postscript. ‘That’s only partly true.’
‘Which part?’
‘In Rome or London, even when I’m in Palermo, I’m made from a lot of different things. Logic mostly. But here....’
‘You were born here?’
‘In this house. My parents were living in Rome, but they’d come to stay over the summer. Nannu Alberto reckons that my blood’s in the land, along with that of generations of Di Salvos.’ He showed her the thin white line of a scar that ran across the side of his hand.
‘How did you do that?’
‘With a pruning knife. Nannu Alberto treated it as if it was some kind of rite of passage, and Nanna Maria gave him a piece of her mind and took me to the doctor to have it stitched.’
‘So you have roots. That’s not a bad thing, is it?’
‘No. Anyway, I made my choice.’ A dark shadow passed momentarily across his face but was banished in a moment.