2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (22 page)

The girls shuffled together, hands clasped in front of them, their practised beatific smiles in place
.

“Bellissima.
Now you are ready for another sitting with Piero di Bardi. Thanks to dear Signor Bisotti, your beauty will be captured for eternity. And to think that soon you will adorn the walls of the church here in Santa Rosa
. Mamma mia.
Come, girls we must not keep the great artist waiting
. Presto!”

Adriana and Alessandra dutifully followed their mamma out of the house and across the cobbled piazza, the sun glinting off their shiny tresses swinging beneath their sun hats. The widow Zanelli was careful to keep the sun at bay: she didn’t want her two darlings covered in freckles or developing the coarse dark skin of the Santa Rosa peasants. Cod forbid. She had high hopes for these girls; good marriages and wealth surely could not elude such beautiful, dutiful daughters
.

As they approached the Villa Rosso the widow Zanelli smiled. One day very soon she would stop protesting and agree to marry Signor Bisotti. Heaven knows he had asked her often enough these past weeks, and if her suspicions were right it would be timely to get wed sooner rather than later. She didn’t want to be taking her vows with a great fat belly
.

How splendid it would be to live in the Villa Rosso and how important she and her daughters would become in Santa Rosa. To be married to such a fine and wealthy gentleman would be an honour indeed
.

She would soon stamp her mark on the Villa Rosso, and one of the first things she did would be to give that impudent Maria Paparella her marching orders. She would soon put a stop to all her airs and graces, making all those fancy meals and squandering Signor Bisotti’s money. Why, only yesterday she had taken an enormous smoked ham to Piero di Bardi’s house, no doubt paid for by Signor Bisotti. For far too long that impudent hussy had wielded too much power in the Villa Rosso but now her days were numbered. Maria Paparella was a simple peasant from a long line of peasant stock, and that was where she belonged and where she would return, to live among the poor, eking out her days
.

As for Ismelda Bisotti, from what little the widow had heard of the child, it was clear that she needed a firm hand. Father Rimaldi had only yesterday confided that Ismelda was to be sent to the nuns at Santa Lucia. She would get her come-uppance there. She’d be sure to get a good whipping from the holy sisters. A few days shut up in a dark cellar would stop her headstrong nonsense
.

Poor Signor Bisotti had had such a time of it since the Good Lord had taken that poor wife of his. Signora Bisotti had always been a frail little thing, quite a plain woman, too, if the widow Zanelli’s memory served her well. Giving birth to that monster of a child, Ismelda, must have been her final undoing
.

As
the widow and her daughters turned into Fig Lane, a fat white cat hurtled past them and they almost collided with Bindo, who was hot in pursuit of the cat
.

Bindo skidded to a halt, raising a cloud of dust from the baked ground. He watched with dismay as the cat made its escape down an alleyway, then stepped back hastily to allow the strutting trio to pass
.

“Buon giorno,”
Bindo called, affecting a low bow
.

The widow Zanelli curled her lip and glared at him. She pulled the girls closer to her, so that they would not come into contact with the dirty dwarf
.

The girls peered round their mother’s buxom frame, held their noses theatrically and raised their eyes heavenwards
.

Bindo stood, hands on hips, and watched the widow shepherd her daughters in front of her
.

“
Be off, you pint-sized freak,” she snarled. “Small wonder that mother of yours abandoned you in an olive jar!
”

Bindo bit his lips, closed his eyes against the pain of her words. She was talking rubbish. His mother had left him at the convent so that he could live. Hadn’t Mother Ignatia said he was lovingly wrapped in blankets against the cold of the winter’s night?

“
Who does she think she is, eh?” Bindo said loudly. “She has the face of a poisoned trout and those two daughters of hers would make a good pair of gargoyles for the church
.”

The widow Zanelli turned and glowered at him. “They say that when Father Rimaldi fished you out of that olive jar you were as slippery as an eel. It took two days to wash the oil off you. A mother doesn’t do that to a child she loves
.”

She stuck her nose in the air and marched off along the Via Dante. Bindo spat into the dust, wiped his eyes with the back of his grubby hand and went out into the sun-drenched piazza
.

C
atrin wandered along Cockle Lane and through the wicket gate into the churchyard, where she paused here and there to read the inscriptions that were still legible on some of the crooked headstones. There were Gwartneys and Grieves buried in among Merediths and Joneses, and against the wall that separated the graveyard from the castle she noticed a row of small crosses covered so thickly in moss that the names were illegible. On one of the graves there was a small posy of withered wild flowers – dandelions, cowslips and weeds – tied with green ribbon. It was a strange posy, the sort a young child might make, someone who didn’t know the difference between weeds and flowers.

She came upon Alice Grieve’s grave unexpectedly in a shady corner of the graveyard, and was surprised to see that it was well tended and that a bunch of rosemary had been put there; rosemary for remembrance. Catrin knelt down and traced her fingers around the words on the headstone.

Alice Katherine Grieve

Taken suddenly after a short illness

So Alice hadn’t died of a broken heart at all. A shadow fell across the headstone and Catrin spun round to see the man from the photographer’s shop staring at her with a strange look in his rheumy eyes. She could smell whisky on his breath and hear the bronchial rattle of his chest, and she got clumsily to her feet and backed away.

“Poor Alice,” he muttered, nodding down at the grave.

“Kicking up the daisies well before she should have been.”

He pulled a bottle from the depths of his trouser pocket, swigged thirstily, then belched loudly.

Catrin stayed silent, wondering whether to make a bolt for it.

“She was a damn good woman, Alice. There wasn’t a nasty bone in her body. She was gentle and trusting, not like that bloody sister of hers.”

“Ella Grieve is my aunt,” Catrin said stiffly.

He swayed dangerously, put his hands out and steadied himself on the gravestone. “Then you
are
Kizzy Grieve’s child?”

“Yes.”

He turned to face her, pinpricks of oily sweat breaking out on his crinkly forehead, a lock of lank hair hanging down over one bloodshot eye.

“I thought that night when I saw you looking into my window wearing that boater hat, that you were a ghost,” he muttered.

“Well, as you can see, I’m not,” she said haughtily.

He looked around anxiously. “Is your mother here with you?”

Catrin shook her head.

He looked relieved, came closer to her. “You’re not a bit like Kizzy,” he said.

People always said that, as though it was a shame that someone as beautiful as Kizzy Grieve should have such a plain Jane for a daughter. Of course, they didn’t say it in so many words but it was obvious what they were thinking.

“Kizzy never even had the decency to come back here to bury her aunt,” he went on.

“She couldn’t very well, could she? She’s not welcome here.”

“Why did she send you here after all this time?”

“She had to go to Italy all of a sudden,” Catrin muttered sulkily.

“Dear God, if I’d have known what would happen to poor Alice, I would have taken her away from here, kept her safe.”

Catrin wondered if he was one of the mad people Bryn Jones had talked about.

“I’ll never forgive myself for not seeing what was going on in front of my own eyes. If I had, Alice might still be alive today.”

He began muttering incoherently, took another swig from the bottle before he spoke again. “You’re staying in the castle, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“Rather you than me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s a queer old place. Alice used to say she saw things in there.”

“I’ve never seen any ghosts or anything spooky at all,” Catrin said, a quiver rising in her voice.

“She didn’t always see them, but she said that sometimes she could smell lemons and lavender and other times she could feel them all around her, a sudden rush of cool air and the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.”

Catrin felt light-headed; she’d smelt those smells too and she felt the hairs on the back of her own neck lifting now, a frisson of fear squeezing her bladder.

It was the living you had to be afraid of, not the dead.

“Alice could see things that no one else could see.”

“Maybe she just imagined them. I mean, wasn’t she a bit simple?”

Meredith Evans glowered at her and she flinched.

“She wasn’t simple, she was like a child, and children can often see what grown-ups can’t because they haven’t become jaded by the world. They still believe in magic and…and love.”

Catrin felt suddenly cold and hugged herself.

“She said it was the people from the book calling to her, trying to tell her about the secret of Kilvenny Castle.”

Catrin swallowed hard and blurted out, “Did you ever see the book of paintings she found?”

“No, she would never let anyone see it. She used to have dreams after she found it and she drove everyone mad scouring the castle for clues for hours on end. That’s when they sent her to see the doctors up in London.”

“What could the doctors do?”

“Bugger all, but they were supposed to find out why she had such strange dreams.”

“And did it work?”

“No. It was a waste of good money. Mrs Grieve had the book burnt in the end, and poor Alice broke her heart over that, and not long after, they left the castle and moved up to Shrimp’s.”

Catrin bit her lips to hide her grin. They were all wrong about the book being burnt because it was up in her room, safely hidden under the bed.

“Did Alice still have the dreams after the book was burnt?”

“No. Nonna helped her, got rid of the dreams until
he
came along and started raking it all up again.”

“Do you mean the man she was going to marry?”

He nodded, and spat out angrily between his teeth, “He never loved Alice – he only pretended he wanted to marry her. I think she was interesting to him as a sort of peculiar specimen to prod and probe for his own satisfaction.”

“If he didn’t want to marry her, why was he waiting for her in the chapel?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing was a bloody charade; she’d got something he wanted and he was determined to get it.”

Catrin wrinkled her brow in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He was after something very special – ”

He stopped mid-sentence, knelt down and traced the letters of Alice Grieve’s name with his finger. Then he got awkwardly to his feet, tipped his cap to Catrin, steadied himself and staggered away through the graveyard. Catrin lingered until she was sure he’d gone, then made her way to the wicket gate.

Outside the Café Romana Meredith Evans was standing face to face with Ella Grieve, and Catrin could tell that they weren’t having a cosy chat.

Ella made to move away but Meredith sidestepped and blocked her path.

“We were bound to meet sooner or later,” he said.

“Later would have suited me just fine,” Ella growled.

“Don’t be like that.”

“I’ll be exactly how I like. Now get out of my bloody way.”

Catrin could sense the hatred rising off Ella like heat waves. Her first reaction was to run away. She hated seeing people who were angry: anger was about being out of control, a sin.

“Come on, Ella, what’s done is done. Neither of us can change what happened to Alice,” Meredith said, his voice placatory. He put his hand on Ella’s arm and she pushed him away roughly.

“What you did, Meredith Evans, was despicable.” Her voice was cold, her blue eyes narrowed with anger.

“For God’s sake, I was wrong to do what I did but you didn’t want Alice to marry that man any more than I did.”

“You’re right on that score, but it’s the way you went about it that got my goat.”

“I thought it was for the best.”

“For the best! You knew what was going on and yet you waited until the last minute to let her know the truth.”

Meredith’s hand flew to his face as if he had been slapped.

“You’re never right, Meredith. They said Alice was shortchanged in the brains department, but you take the bloody biscuit.”

“You seem to forget that Alice was a grown woman and some of those decisions she made for herself.”

“Grown woman, my arse. She had the mentality of a child.”

“The trouble was you only ever saw her as a child and treated her like one. She knew what she was doing that day when she left, and the fact is she didn’t trust you enough to tell you the truth!”

Ella stiffened, clenched her fists and moved towards Meredith menacingly. But he stepped hurriedly out of her way.

“You were responsible for what happened,” said Ella, “and then you let her get on a train on her own when she must have been in a terrible state. She was vulnerable, barely able to get from the village to Shrimp’s on her own without mishap, never mind going off to God knows where.”

“She was calmer than you think, and she knew exactly what she was doing,” Meredith said coldly.

“Do you realise that I spent months looking for her, charging across the country checking all the places I thought she might have gone to?”

“Have you ever thought that maybe she didn’t want you to find her!”

Ella glared at Meredith Evans and the fury on her face almost made Catrin buckle at the knees.

“Are you telling me you knew my sister better than I did?”

“Maybe I’m telling you your sister was trying to give you your freedom!”