‘What’re those hieroglyphics on the gate?’
‘It says, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more.”
‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I. Mom has a whimsical side.’
Looking back at the gate as they passed through the wall, Tommy said, ‘What language is it written in?’
‘The Great Pile,’ Del said.
‘That’s a language?’
‘No, that’s the name of the house. Look.’
The Payne mansion, standing on perhaps three acres of grounds behind the estate wall was easily the largest in the neighbourhood. It was an enormous, sprawling, wildly romantic Mediterranean villa with deep loggias behind colonnades, arches upon arches, lattice panels dripping with the white blossoms of night-blooming jasmine, balustraded balconies shaded by trellises groaning under the weight of red-flowering bougainvillea, bell towers and cupolas, so many steeply pitched barrel-tile roofs hipping into one another that Tommy might have been looking down on an entire Italian village rather than at a single structure. The scene was so cunningly and romantically lit that it could well have been the most insanely ornate stage setting in the most maniacally extravagant Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that the singular British genius of Broadway kitsch had ever created.
The driveway descended slightly into a spacious stone-paved motor court at the centre of which stood a four-tiered fountain featuring fifteen life-size marble maidens in togas, pouring water from vases.
As she drove the Ferrari around the astonishing fountain to the front door, Del said, ‘Mom wanted to build a more modern place, but the community’s architectural guidelines specified Mediterranean, and the architectural committee had a very narrow definition of the word. She became so frustrated with the approval process that she designed the most ridiculously exaggerated Mediterranean house the world had ever seen, thinking they’d be appalled and reconsider her previous plans -but they loved it. By then it seemed a good joke to her, so she built the place.’
‘She built all this as a joke?’
‘My mom’s nothing if not cool. Anyway, some people in this neighbourhood have named their houses, so Mom called this place The Great Pile.’
She parked in front of an arched portico supported by marble columns featuring carved vines and bunches of grapes.
Warm amber and rose-coloured light seemed to glow behind every bevelled pane of every leaded-glass window in the house.
‘Is she having a party at this hour?’
‘Party? No, no. She just likes the place to be lit up like, as she puts it, “a cruise ship on a dark sea.”
‘Why?’
‘To remind herself that we’re all passengers on an endless and magical journey.’
‘She actually said that?’
‘Isn’t it a pretty thought?’ Del said.
‘She sure sounds like your mother.’
The limestone front walk was bordered by inlaid mosaic patterns created with terra-cotta and yellow ceramic tiles. Scootie raced ahead of them, tail wagging.
The ornate surround at the twelve-foot-high door consisted of sixteen highly embellished scenes intricately carved in limestone, all depicting a haloed monk in different poses but always with the same beatific expression, surrounded by joyous crowds of smiling and capering animals with their own haloes – dogs, cats, doves, mice, goats, cows, horses, pigs, camels, chickens, ducks, raccoons, owls, geese, rabbits.
‘Saint Francis of Assisi, talking to the animals,’ Del said. ‘They’re antique carvings by an unknown sculptor, taken out of a fifteenth-century Italian monastery that was mostly destroyed in World War II.’
‘Is it the same order of monks that produces all those Elvis paintings on velvet?’
Grinning at him, she said, ‘Mom’s going to like you.’ The massive mahogany door swung open as they reached it, and a tall silver-haired man in a white shirt, black tie, black suit, and mirror-polished black shoes stood just beyond the threshold. A fluffy white beach towel was folded precisely over his left arm, in the manner that a waiter might carry a linen bar towel to wrap a champagne bottle.
With a reverberant British accent, he said, ‘Welcome to The Great Pile.’
‘Is Mom still making you say that, Mummingford?’
‘I shall never tire of it, Miss Payne.’
‘Mummingford, this is my friend, Tommy Phan.’
Tommy was surprised to hear her say his name correctly.
‘Honoured to meet you, Mr. Phan,’ Mummingford said, half bowing from the waist as he stepped back from the doorway.