2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (23 page)

“My freedom? What the hell do you mean by that?”

“She knew you were planning to leave Shrimp’s and she knew that if she stayed you wouldn’t go.”

Ella went pale. “Freedom! What sort of freedom was that, not knowing where she’d gone?”

“Alice may have been childlike but she faced up to the truth, which is more than you ever did, Ella. She wanted you to be happy and to do that, she knew you had to go away.”

Ella glowered at Meredith. Then she rallied, pulled back her shoulders and snapped, “How dare you tell me you knew what Alice was thinking!” She pushed past him, almost knocking him off balance.

Spitting out her words like sour pips, she said, “As far as I’m concerned, this is the last time we will ever speak. I blame you, Meredith Evans, and I hate you, so keep away from me and mine, do you hear?”

Meredith watched her hurry away up Cockle Lane, then he staggered inside the shop and slammed the door, rattling the glass in the rotting frame.

E
lla was glad of the peace in the Italian garden; she was still shaking with anger after her confrontation with Meredith. She reached out absentmindedly and touched the arm of the stone cherub in the fountain. Beneath her fingers the stone felt warm and comforting, and her heart began to slow and her breathing grew calmer.

Christ almighty, she’d come that close to laying one on Meredith Evans. For two pins she could have knocked him through his shop window, left him sprawling among his stupid old photographs. What right did he have to say that Alice didn’t trust her and that she’d treated Alice like a child? Of course she had, because Alice was a child, a stubborn child who didn’t always know what was best for her. She’d been difficult enough to look after as it was, and then that stupid idiot Arthur Cambell had come along and filled her head with romantic nonsense. What in God’s name did a man like him want with Alice? She was beautiful, to be sure, but sweet Alice with her contrary ways, her whims and fancies and downright oddness, would have been a fish out of water in his life. She would have driven him to distraction in no time at all, and yet he’d asked her to marry him, stood at the altar waiting for her. Jesus and all the saints of heaven, what had he been playing at?

She was still racked with guilt because, although she hadn’t trusted him, a part of her had been relieved to see her sister settled and moving away, and she’d relished the prospect of the freedom she’d have when Alice had gone.

She put her hand out to open the chapel door, but then hesitated. She hadn’t set foot in the chapel since the day of Alice’s wedding. She took a deep breath, braced herself and went in.

It was cool in the chapel and the light that came through the window above the altar was restless. Shadows moved furtively across the walls and the candle stubs on the stand in the lady chapel flickered in the draught.

Ella made her way towards the altar, sat down in an ancient pew and closed her eyes, letting the darkness engulf her, the smell of the roses in the Italian garden drifting into the chapel.

If time turned backwards now she would open her eyes and the chapel would be full. Luigi and Norma Agosti in their best bib and tucker sitting proudly next to Gladys Beynon, who was wriggling with excitement, checking that the pins in her hat were secure.

All around her, friends and villagers were squeezed close together, whispering…the smells of incense and mothballs mingling with the heady scent of the freshly cut flowers that had been delivered at dawn from the florist in Swansea.

The bridegroom, standing tall and straight, staring ahead of him, the collar of his shirt stiffened with starch, white against the dark skin of his neck, his shoulders stiff with tension. His sister seated close to him, the peacock feather in her black hat quivering in the draught, vivid in the dimness of the chapel.

There was a frisson of excitement as the door opened, all ears waiting for the old organ to grind into the Wedding March. All heads turned as Dan Gwartney’s voice shattered the expectant silence.

“It’s Alice. She’s gone.”

The next moments had felt dreamlike, and ever since that day Ella had played them over and over in her head. Beside her, Gladys let out a sharp little cry of pain and Norma clapped her hands together, more in relief than astonishment. Luigi Agosti had got shakily to his feet, his hand going to his heart. There was the sound of a ring dropping on the flagged floor, rolling away and then spinning as if it would never stop.

Ella had pushed past Dan, who stood in the doorway trying to bar her exit. She’d run through the Italian garden, the cascade of water from the cherub fountain loud in her ears, while above her in the tall trees of Gwartney’s Wood the rooks squawked discordantly.

She had thrown off her wedding hat, kicked off her new shoes and run like a hare down Cockle Row, hurtled across the beach, up the steep steps in her haste to get to Alice.

The breeze was riffling through the bunting that had been hung up in the trees surrounding the front lawn of Shrimp’s, and the clink of glasses came from the marquee on the lawn. The servants were a blur of black and white as they came running out of the hotel, staring wide-eyed at Ella as she careered past them, calling frantically for Alice.

There was no sign of Alice anywhere, and though she pressed the servants for information no one could remember seeing her leaving. Her wedding dress lay discarded on the bed in her room, the fake diamonds twinkling brilliantly in the morning sunshine. The suitcase that she had so carefully packed for her honeymoon was gone. Then Ella saw the two photographs that had been ripped in half and tossed into the fireplace.

Ella sat down heavily on the bed and pieced them together. Sweet Jesus! Poor Alice. No wonder she hadn’t turned up at the church. As she sat immobile with shock she heard the train puffing away in the distance and knew without a doubt that her sister was on that train. Alice, who had never done anything independently in her life, was I making her first journey away from Kilvenny on her own.

Kizzy was the first to arrive back at Shrimp’s. She came running into Alice’s room, her face tear stained, eyes wide with alarm.

Ella got to her feet, stood stiffly, a pulse in her neck racing as Kizzy looked to her for an explanation. Ella thrust the ripped photographs into her hands and Kizzy looked at them, threw back her head and laughed hysterically.

Ella had been incensed, consumed with fury. How dare this slip of a girl, barely out of school, laugh when she was presented with the damning evidence against her?

“It’s not what you think, Aunt Ella. The man is just besotted with me.”

“Don’t tell me what to think, Kizzy Grieve!”

Then she looked intently at Kizzy and for the first time she noticed that under her eyes were dark circles, carefully concealed by make-up. She saw the expensive red dress, which Alice had brought her from Knightsbridge, straining at the seams across Kizzy’s burgeoning belly.

“Are you pregnant?”

Kizzy cast down her head and nodded. When she looked up, tears were running freely down her face.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“I didn’t mean it to happen like this.”

“Well, it’s a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.”

“I thought that despite our differences we could make a go of it.”

Ella lost control. “Get out of here! Get out – and don’t you
ever
come back.”

“But Aunt Ella, I’ve nowhere to go, no money.”

“You should have thought about that. Now get out and ask that two-faced bastard you’ve been canoodling with behind your aunt’s back to look after you and your bastard child. You bloody whore!”

“But you don’t understand, Aunt Ella!”

“Oh, I understand all right!” Ella screamed and she caught Kizzy a resounding slap across her cheek.

Kizzy stumbled out of the room, blundered up the stairs to her bedroom in the attic. Ella, unable to move, heard her a short while later racing down the stairs and the front door had banged loudly behind her.

After Kizzy had gone, Ella stood there for a long time, expecting the groom to storm in looking for Alice. But he didn’t come. No one came. She heard later that he’d marched out of the church with his sister in tow, and they had left Kilvenny soon after. Ella had not seen either of them since, and had no desire to. She’d sworn that she’d never have anything more to do with Kizzy Grieve or her illegitimate child, but now she felt a growing affinity with Catrin, greater than with anyone else in a long time.

By the time Ella bucked up the courage to go downstairs the hotel had been silent, the few remaining guests gone and the servants keeping to their rooms.

She had crept down here to the chapel and left a note beneath the statue of the tiny saint, explaining why she couldn’t leave. Then she went to the stable block, where she kept her old car, took her carefully packed haversack out of the boot and went slowly, numbly back to Shrimp’s. Her hopes of freedom had been dashed and she had lost the one opportunity to be with the person whom, against all the odds, she thought she could truly love.

She had driven away from Kilvenny in the early hours to begin her fruitless search for Alice, and over the next months Shrimp’s had gone into a steady decline.

Ella wiped a tear from her cheek, opened her eyes, then shielded them from the light that was streaming through the altar window, warming her like a benediction. She felt closer to Alice at that moment than she had in years, as if Alice’s presence was all around her; spinning in the dust motes, glistening in the light, tangible in the very air itself.

It was all in the past now, and she’d lived too long immersed in the past. She got slowly to her feet and made her way out of the coolness of the chapel and into the sunlight.

C
atrin waited until she was sure Aunt Ella and Meredith were out of the way, then hurried across the road to the Café Romana.

The bell above the door jangled noisily as she went in.

At a table in the far corner a woman sat opposite a young boy of about seven, who was spooning ice cream into his mouth from a silver dish. Between mouthfuls he smiled at Tony Agosti, who was behind the counter.

“You like my banana ice cream, eh, Dai?” said Tony.

“Yes, Mr Agosti, it’s lovely. Better than the toffee one, I think, but only just.”

“He’s a real fiend for ice cream,” the woman said. “He’d eat it for breakfast, dinner and tea if I let him.”

“Ice cream is good for you, but only after you eat your food, eh?” Tony grinned. “Catrin, my lovely, what can I do for you? You want some ice cream? Freshly made vanilla or tutti frutti. Cornet, wafer or tub? Chocolate sauce? Or raspberry, maybe?”

She shook her head furiously, swallowed her rising spittle. “No, thank you, I don’t like ice cream.”

“You don’t like ice cream?”

“I’ll have hers,” the boy called out enthusiastically, and Tony laughed.

“Maybe a little piece of toast for you?”

She imagined the taste of the hot bread oozing with salty butter. It made her head feel as if it was full of buzzing flies, and her stomach strained at the leash.

“Okay. Just one piece, though, and not with the butter spread too thickly.”

“Hot buttered toast coming up. You want to go up and see Norma and I’ll bring it up for you?”

“Thank you.”

As she went through the curtain behind the counter she heard the woman say, “You want to butter that kid a whole loaf of toast, Tony. She looks like she just got out of a concentration camp.”

Catrin escaped up the stairs.

Nonna was sitting up at the window, and when Catrin came into the room her face lit up with pleasure.

“Hey, you breathing very heavy. Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’ve just been over in the graveyard and I bumped into the man from the photographer’s shop.”

“Meredith Evans, you mean. He’s a funny old stick.”

“I didn’t like him much. He said some odd things, and he’s just had a blazing row with Aunt Ella.”

“So I heard. Is no love lost between those two.”

“Why?”

“Because he used to be in love with your Aunt Alice.”

“I guessed that, but she didn’t love him back, did she?”

“For a while everyone think one day she marry Meredith, but then she fall in love with someone else.”

Just then Tony came in, carrying a plate piled with hot buttered toast. He set it down beside Catrin. She thanked him, looked at it longingly, broke a tiny piece off and stuffed it guiltily into her mouth. The taste was out of this world and sent a shiver of pleasure through her body.

That was quite enough. Just one taste. One little bit. She mustn’t weaken. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She’d eat and eat and eat until all the fat came back – the disgusting dimples and the chubby knees, the rounded belly and, worst of all, the horrible bosoms that got in the way of everything.

She snatched up a piece of toast and stuffed it into her mouth. Butter dribbled down her chin and she wiped it away impatiently. She couldn’t stop herself. It was always like this if she gave in. She took up the second piece of toast and ate it without taking a breath. And then the third.

“You feeling better now?” Norma asked when she had finished.

“Yes, thank you.” Catrin looked up guiltily and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was glad Norma hadn’t been able to see her stuffing her face like a pig. She made herself a promise that she wouldn’t eat another thing today. Or tomorrow.

“Norma, Meredith said that Aunt Alice used to see things over in the castle. Do you think that’s true?”

“Yes, I think is true.”

Catrin sniggered nervously. “He said she found an old book and it gave her bad dreams.”

“Ah, that book cause so much trouble! Puts the ideas in her head and Alice is very fanciful and she starts searching, searching, driving everybody mad.”

“And that’s why they sent her to see the doctors in London?”

“Pah! That was waste of time. Alice tell me the doctor he make her talk about her dreams, draw pictures of the things she sees. Is all big load of nonsense because when she come back she still searching and searching.”