Chapter 23

Chapter 23 - Cape Town

It was a hot afternoon. The dry wind scorched the vineyards and mountains surrounding Cape Town like they were victims of its anger. The sky shone a light, translucent blue that contrasted starkly against the heat of the day. So, cool blue sky battled with the tempestuous wind, only finally winning out when both were spent at the day‘s end.

Angela ensured that they sat outside under umbrella’s. She didn’t want her tanned children to get too chaffed by the heat. And while Giuseppe and Flaminia played under the shade Angela sunbathed. She needed the colour. She spent so much time inside writing. Deadlines always seemed to catch up with her. Michael never seemed to have the same problem, he was always so planned. It was almost as though he organized his agent and publisher and not the other way round. There was no danger of that being the case with Angela. She grimaced at the thought and she smiled at their success.

She smiled at how her and Michael had made such a wonderful life for themselves. Both now successful and famous authors, even though no one ever knew that Angela was. For how could they, her readers only ever knew her by her pen name, Giacomo Davide.

And Giuseppe was such a lively boy. Like an ugly duckling fast emerging as that young swan. He was tall and strong and confident. Even his twitch he could almost control. Almost.

And Flaminia looked just like her mother, with long brown hair, big brown eyes and those long legs. And her parents loved her so. And Angela marveled every day at the love affair between daughter and father. For Michael treated his daughter just like he treated his wife. Angela just kept smiling.

She never quite remembered what made her look up when she did. But she did. She looked up and she saw that police car slowly crawling toward her house. Followed by another car. A black car. She always got nervous whenever she saw a police car. But this was different. This police car had purpose. She just knew it. So her stomach instantly contracted and the grumbling commenced. Everything went into slow motion. And the police car and the black car just kept coming toward her. Quietly crawling along their road like shadows in the night.

Angela was terrified. Where was Michael? He was supposed to back from his lunch meeting by now. And he was normally so punctual. Then she panicked. Maybe he was in one of those cars. Maybe they had already caught up with him; the accomplice. Angela battled with herself not to cry. And all her dreams and happiness fell away. They fell away like snow falling off trees. And left her empty. Her past had finally caught up with her. The Grimaldi’s had won. Of course they would. Even South Africa was too close. And so her African dream was about to end as her life at Girotondo had. And she was so happy. So happy until that moment. That moment with her children playing around her when the police car and that black car appeared.

The police car stopped in front of their gates. A police man stepped out at the same time as another man stepped out of the car behind her. He wore a black suit and a white shirt. He looked like he was suffering from the heat. They both marched towards her.

“Angela Grimaldi, formerly Angela Liguria?” The policeman called out.

Her name hung in the air. It just hung there and then faded in the afternoon wind. And it echoed in her head, reminding her of her youth in Girotondo, playing in the vineyards and the olive groves. Then it reminded her of her children playing in their garden in Cape Town. Her daughter as her. She had such a wonderful father. And Flaminia had her mountains to look up to as Angela had with Monte Amiato, always soothing her and strengthening her resolve.

“Angela Grimaldi.” The policeman called out again as if to awaken Angela from her trance.

Then she moved. She grabbed her children and she took them inside the house. She gave then both a big hug and told them that she loved them more than anything. Then she walked back out. Her head held high and her shoulders stiff. Stiff with fear. Her stomach grumbling.

And as the man in black pulled a large white envelope out of his brown leather briefcase she knew they were arresting her. So that is what an arrest warrant looked like. This is how they did it. And it was so different to all her nightmares. In fact it could not have been more different.

The two men let themselves into her drive. The iron gates clanged shut behind them. The noise made Angela shudder. That and the determined way in which the two men marched towards her. Both with somber expressions.

“Angela Grimaldi, this is for you.”

The other man spoke up. The one with the black suit and white shirt and brown leather bag. The one that suffered from the heat and was already sweating. He looked like he drank too much as he handed her the white envelope. That formal white envelope with black ink across it.

She took it from him and slowly opened it. Her eyes were on the envelope and it’s interior, but her mind was in prison. She could see the bars and the mattress and the walls. She could see the lonely sky out of her little window. And she knew that she would not be able to see her mountains from there.

She read the letter.

“Dear Angela,

I am sure that it will have taken my lawyers a great deal of time to find you. I am also sure that Bruno is no longer alive. So, I will, by now have been dead for a while. The cancer that sabotaged me these last years of my life will have finally prevailed.

And so it is with sadness and humility that I must now look to my family’s legacy. For as you took my son away to live out his last years, I deprived us of my other child. For it was I that killed him in the vineyards. I killed him when I realized who he was. When I found him with that other man. And I take that with me to my grave.

So, before I depart, as I must leave this letter in the hands of our lawyers, I leave the estate in your hands. For I leave all the family Grimaldi estate and assets to Giuseppe Grimaldi, my grandson and Bruno’s son. And when he is old enough he will become Conte Grimaldi.

I ask that you manage the estate for him until he is twenty one and that you carry the title of Contessa Grimaldi. The Grimaldi estate is one of the finest in Italy and I beg you to look after it as Bruno would have.

Affectionately,

Conte Grimaldi.”

Angela stared at the two men standing silently before her. Then she threw her hands up in the air and her head to the clouds and she laughed and she laughed and she laughed.

copyright ©Philip L Letts 2007