High life
Well met in Tuscany
Taki
f this isn't the most beautiful spot in Europe, I'll not only announce my engage- ment to Andrea Dworkin, I'll even go through with it. (For any of you unfamiliar with what A. Dworkin is, she is the outraged feminist writer who insists that all heterosexual intercourse is rape and humi- liation for the woman.) As I look out of my bedroom window, past the de rigueur swimming pool, there are verdant soft hills covered with olive trees, cypresses and vines, with ochre-coloured terracotta houses spread all over the hillocks, and the centuries-old villages clinging to the hills. The light is unreal, the temperature just about perfect, and the whole scene inde- scribably beautiful.
My house is a large farmhouse, with white walls, heavy wooden beams, stone floors and red tiles. It overlooks the historically important Villa Cetinale, own- ed by Lord Lambton, in whose property I've temporarily parked the mother of my children, both . kids, Professor Van Den Haag, and soon some characters I'd rather not admit in writing are friends of mine.
What makes this holiday even more pleasant are the two female cooks, our nanny (also young and French to boot) and Louisa, the Tuscan housekeeper and fem- me a tout faire who between cleaning, washing, ironing, and planning menus, picks up my little boy and licks him as if he were an ice-cream. As everybody who has ever ventured outside England knows, Italians are warm-hearted people, and nothing makes them warmer than the sight of small children. John Taki, aged six but looking younger than his years, has been treated like an ice-cream ever since his arrival in Tuscany one week ago, but unlike English parents, I ain't worried. What concerns me is my 11-year-old daughter. She has my temperament, is very pretty and blonde, which makes it danger- ous to take her further south than Siena.
On my first night, the mother of my children organised a dinner party al fresco for Jasper and Camilla Guinness — both Tuscan emigres — and Tony Lambton. Perhaps it was the beauty of the surround- ings, the good company and the excellent vino, or maybe the fascinating conversa- tion between Tony and the professor about Russian writers that did it, but it did it. Around 2 a.m. I climbed the stone stairs towards my bedroom, and the next thing I knew, I woke up the next morning feeling perfect. Apparently I had fallen and knocked myself clean out, and was carried by my guests into my letto matrimoniale. Which led Jasper Guinness to believe that falling rather hard on the left side of one's head may be the cure for a hangover.
Personally, I believe that the ghosts which this place is full of had more to do with my feeling so well after a two-day drinking bout than the knock on the head. Cetinale was built by Pope Alexander VII, and was inherited by his nephew Cardinal Flavio Chigi, who employed Carlo Fontana (he had something to do with a rather important church in Rome by the name of St Peter's) to make a few improvements to it. Chigi was a terrific heel, and murdered a political rival of his who may have also had a beautiful wife. The trouble was that back then God was still very much alive, and the ghost of the murdered man haunted Chigi. So he went to see the Pope and begged for absolution. Popes in those days were known for their flexibility, and a deal was struck. Chigi was granted his absolution on condition he kept his mistresses high up on a hermitage he had to build above his property. Furthermore, for the first two weeks he had to climb up the steep hill once a day on his knees as a penance.
I've climbed the hill every day — not on my knees, mind you — and I swear I can still feel ghostly presences up there. The hermitage is beautiful but spooky — as a Cardinal's private whorehouse should be — but it's the well in front of it that houses the ghosts. Legend has it that no one can look down into the well and not be sucked in, and when I tried, I swear I felt the centripetal forces pulling me. Maybe it's the well that has the hangover cure, which means I must have Jeffrey Bernard fly down immediately.
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