2006 - Wildcat Moon (42 page)

It had all worked out well in the end. Walter had sent a letter to the Pilchard saying he’d made a mistake and was leaving the woman he’d married; which probably meant that she’d run out of money or patience. Could you believe it! He’d wanted to come back. Huh! Not a hope in hell of that And Nan, God bless her, had returned all his mail after that saying, “Whereabouts unknown but last heard of in Western Australia.” That was the last she’d heard of him.

Martha still helped Lena with the cooking in the Ristorante Skilly and Lissia washed up and spent most of her wages on ice cream! William Dally had been out to stay several times and had taught Archie an enormous amount about growing things. Archie had worked hard and they grew enough fruit and vegetables in the garden to keep them going. God, she loved it here in Santa Caterina: it was paradise.

Lissia woke and stretched. She got up and picked up the cat from the bottom of her bed. Then she opened the shutters and peeped down through the purple flowers into the garden.

Martha was down there already, filling an earthenware bowl with peaches that they’d eat for breakfast The fountain was gurgling and splashing and the cockerel was strutting among the sunflowers.

When she was washed and dressed it was Lissia’s job to go and collect the eggs from the henhouse and then she would boil water to make the coffee.

Only two cups today because Archie was gone away.

She felt sad that Archie wasn’t at the Casa delle Stelle but soon he was going to write a letter and Martha would read it to her.

Martha said that when Archie came back he was going to a place called a University in Rome. But he wasn’t; because she knew a really big secret that no one else did…

She’d been hiding under the table up in the convent kitchen and she’d heard Sister Isabella whisper to Sister Angelica that now he was twenty-one Archie had come of age and that he was a fine man to step into the shoes of
Il Camaleonte
…

It was a big secret and she mustn’t tell, ever. She was good with secrets though; she’d never told any one that the man who used to visit her at the Convent of the Blessed Saints was
II Camaleonte
and she never would.

She listened. She could hear someone whistling, someone coming along the alleyway that led to the house and she’d bet she knew who it was. Luca from the cafe’, with the funny moustaches. He came nearly every day now, bringing croissants and pastries for her and Martha.

Soon, when her jobs were done, the three of them would sit together at the table near the fountain and she’d pretend that she couldn’t see him holding Martha’s hand beneath the table cloth…

Down in the Ristorante Skilly Lena drank her coffee and picked up her wicker basket She loved the walk down to the market in the mornings. Tonight the restaurant was fully booked and she needed to buy peppers and tomatoes, courgettes and artichokes and maybe some nectarines; she had a real craving for nectarines at the moment and that meant only one thing.

Alfredo and Paulo were emptying the fishing nets. Alfredo looked down at his small son with delight He had the same silky dark hair and cheerful smile as his mother, the same enthusiasm for life.

Paulo was bursting with pride because it was the first time he had been allowed to go out fishing with Papa. Archie had taught him to swim before he’d gone away and now Papa was teaching him the names of all the fish just the way he’d done with Archie.

Stingrays and squid; sole and mullet; sea crickets and cod.

Lucia Galvini climbed the hill to fl Fanettiere and bought the bread. On her way back she called into the cafe. She was allowed to change the candle and light a new one in the little red glass that burned beneath the woman they called the silver bird. One day she might run away with the circus. But not today; she was only five and what she really wanted right now was an enormous strawberry gelato. Then she was going to call for lissia who had promised to take her to see some kittens that had just been born up at the convent.

It was siesta time in Le Petit Bijou. The shutters were dosed against the hot afternoon sun and upstairs the baby Marthe slept soundly in a wicker cradle in the cool bedroom.

In a downstairs room sunlight filtered through the shutters and bathed seven-year-old Pierre in a moving watery light. He was awake but his face was rosy from recent sleep and a smile played across his mouth as he thought of the dreams he had had: dreams of pirate ships and Vikings.

Next to him on the bed lay the elephant book end and he picked it up and carefully opened it, the way Cissie had taught him to, the way he would teach Marthe when she was bigger. He tipped out the treasures that he’d found this morning. A dead spider he had found beneath the fig tree and three dirty shells that were hidden in the soil near the workshop where Aunt Cissie did her paintings. Not that she worked all the time like she pretended to. He was tall enough to peep through the window now, if he stood on tiptoe. Sometimes when she said she was not to be disturbed she was in there kissing Henri from the village. Yuk!

Out in the garden a man lay in a hammock watching the sunlight filter through the olive trees. Soon, soon he would stir himself and saunter down to the village to fetch the bread and then he would wake Nan and together they would prepare the evening meal, something a little special tonight in honour of their visitor who was probably speeding along the roads right now like a bat out of hell.

Cissie dosed the door to her workshop and hid the key under a bush. Later she would creep down here and Henri would be waiting for her. After dinner they were going to break the news…

She wound her way back up the path, through the olive trees. In the kitchen she washed the paint from her hands and face in the stone sink and looked at her face in the mirror. Sometimes people said she looked a bit like Nan but that was just to be kind. Nan was pretty, she wasn’t. And anyway why would she look like Nan?

Cissie smiled; sometimes people thought that she was dafter than she was, even Nan.

She could remember the day quite clearly, even though she’d been ever so little…

It was dark and she’d been sitting in her pram, crying because it was cold and she was wet and hungry. She’d always been hungry, she was always left sitting outside while the woman who pushed her pram went inside and didn’t come out for hours.

Once someone had walked past the pram and said, “People like that didn’t deserve to have children…”

And they didn’t.

She remembered Nan’s arms reaching down into the pram and lifting her, lining her up towards the stars and men running and running. Nan had saved her.

Pierre wandered out into the garden. Soon it would be time for dinner, but maybe he could sneak off now while no one was looking and escape into the woods. After all playing was so much more fun than eating. Eating was boring. Yesterday, he and his friend Bernard had made a den and he’d found some tools down in the workshop that used to belong to his grandpapa. He was going to have another go at carving something from wood, the way Mama said Grandpapa had done. He’d already made Marine a carved dog which he was going to give her for her first birthday; it wasn’t half bad either for a beginner.

Then he remembered that Mama’s old friend Miriam was arriving this evening. Maybe he’d leave the woodcarving until tomorrow. Miriam was such fun! She told such stories about her past and Mama always laughed and told her to stop telling such lies and filling his head with daft ideas. For a nun she was something else!

In Nanskelly Agnes Arbuthnot sat at the piano in the drawing room and played. Although she was old and frail her hands skimmed the keys and she was completely immersed in her music.

“She never makes a mistake, you know,” old Mrs Smythe said loudly to her neighbour.

“I know, dear. She was tipped to be a concert pianist when she was a young woman,” Mrs Jacobson said.

“They say there was some kind of scandal,” Mrs Smythe whispered. “All to do with a young man, I expect. You know what young girls are.”

Mrs Jacobson tried to keep a straight face and winked surreptitiously at Noni Arbuthnot who was sitting across from them pretending to read.

Mrs Jacobson had known the Arbuthnots when she was young. She’d never thought that she’d see them again until her husband Solly had met a man outside the synagogue in Willesden Green who’d taken him for a salt beef sandwich in the cafe there. She stifled a tear thinking of Solly. He’d been heartbroken when his business had hit the rocks. He’d managed to pay off all his debts but there was the question of his pride. And then, out of the blue, he’d been offered the job of running Nanskelly. He’d been in his element here…

Her mind went back to the Arbuthnot girls then. A striking pair of girls they’d been although there was always something a little different about Agnes. She lived in a world of her own. Not quite able to function in the real world, but there wasn’t anything odd in that really. What was it Solly had said? There’s room for all sorts in this peculiar universe and who are we to judge? We need to accept more and judge less.

Noni had always been the life and soul of any event if she got half a chance. Then of course that terrible thing had happened.

She looked across at Agnes now, head bent over the piano. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose when she was a girl but in the end, like the worm, she’d turned. It was all quite ghastly really, a father getting that drunk and terrorizing his own daughters.

She caught Noni’s eyes and smiled. Of course, Agnes had been the sort of child who told the truth, the absolute truth however painful, and she kept to her word…

In court she’d told the truth too, said that she’d told her fattier that if he laid a finger on Noni again she’d hit him with the poker. And of course she had!

If it hadn’t been for someone employing a top lawyer, she would certainly have been convicted.

She was woken from her reverie by Mr Payne, holding out his hand to her for a dance.

He was always one for a bit of fun. She got up and followed him onto the dance floor.

Noni Arbuthnot watched them with pleasure. It was good to see him enjoying himself again, he’d been real down in the dumps after his brother had passed away. He wasn’t a bad little dancer for his age, quite nimble on his feet.

Noni was feeling quite peckish and she was glad that soon it would be time for their afternoon snack. There was nothing like a stiff gin and tonic and a bowl of toasted almonds in the late afternoon. And my goodness, couldn’t some of the residents here knock back a drink. Those two little Italian nuns who had come over for a short holiday could drink like fish and the elder of the two must be pushing a hundred at least!

A cool wind came in off the sea and whipped leaves along the pavement. The door of the telephone box swung open and creaked on its broken hinges. The few shops on the village main street were closed and the front doors shut fast against the worrisome wind.

A sign pointed the way down to the Skallies and the rough track that once led from Rhoskilly Village was tarmacked now.

His first sight of the place made him catch his breath and he had to steady himself against a lamppost.

Little remained of the Skallies now, many of the ramshackle houses he remembered so well were gone, washed away in the Great Storms at the end of the sixties.

He stood where Bag End had been; only the sea-facing wall remained and the arched window where he’d looked out the night of the first full moon after Benjamin Tregantle’s death.

Opposite the ruin of his old home, Hogwash House still stood firm against the elements. The windows were brightly, painted in a deep blue; there was a shiny brass knocker on the door and colourful curtains hung at the windows. A lone gull still graced the chimney pot and a sign advertised Chameleon Trust: School Visitor Centre.

He looked around him in awe. The Feapods, Cuckoo’s Nest and the Grockles were reduced to rubble but Skibbereen had survived and the shrine in the wall was now a rusted grotto full of empty milk bottles.

The wobbly chapel still stood, silhouetted against a restless sky. The roof was a skeleton of rotten beams and a
DANGER KEEP OUT
sign was nailed to the wall.

The Pilchard Inn looked as it always had and through the glass of the porthole windows a light burned brightly and a radio blurted out the shipping news.

He reached out and took hold of the door handle.

The landlord of the Pilchard Inn looked up at the handsome young man with the rucksack who had just come in.

“What will you have, sir?”

“A pint of Best,” he said, “and a room for the night if you have one.”

“No trouble. We’ve only one other guest staying at the moment, and they’re up at the school most of the time. You planning on staying long?”

“A couple of nights.”

“On holiday, sir?”

“Kind of. I came into a small inheritance when I was twenty-one, wanted to see a bit of the world.”

“You’re not from round these parts then?”

“No, I’ve been most of my life in Italy. But I was here for a while as a kid. I lived in the house they called Bag End. And yourself?”

The man smiled. “Bit of a halfway house for me, mate. Strange story really, I was down on my uppers and met a chap who asked if I fancied running this place until I got on my feet.”

“Did you meet him round here?”

“No, in a funny little all-night cafe off the Edgware Road.”

Archie Grimble smiled and took a sip of his pint.

“Does much go on round here?” he asked.

“It’s very quiet in the winter but we get a lot of kids down staving at Hogwash House throughout the year. And quite a few of the staff from Killivray House come up for a drink evening times when they’re off duty.”

“From Killivray?”

“Big place up through the woods. It used to be privately owned, by posh folk. It’s a school now.”

“A school?”

“It’s a great place, sort of international school, run by the Chameleon Trust, same people as own Hogwash and most of what’s left of the Skallies. The kids come from all over the place. Bit like the United Nations, Chinese, Indian, French. They’ve a reunion on at the moment…”