2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (35 page)

Benito. Benito who had been accused of stealing something from the old tower while he was working up there. The old tower where Arthur Campbell had stayed. Benito had been camping in Blind Man’s Lookout.

It was Benito who had told Tony the story of the skeleton found in the old priest’s house in Santa Rosa. Father Rimaldi’s house.

Please let me go to sleep
.

But a little voice kept niggling inside her head.

Father Rimaldi was carrying a baby across the piazza, and someone saw him from a window of the Villa Rosso. A baby who wasn’t expected to live. Bindo the dwarf. Piero di Bardi’s baby son?

Dong. Dong. Dong. Father Rimaldi swinging from the bells.

One of the cockle pickers had a donkey called Bindo.

Please, brain, let me sleep
.

Benito. Benito. Benito. Benito the Houdini who could escape from locked rooms.

She yawned again, pressed her hands against her temples to try and chase the thoughts away.

Sister Matilde said try not to think…

She’d been here. It was Sister Matilde who had said how glorious it was to kneel in the early morning and watch the light slip through a stained-glass window and see the early shadows play across a lonely saint in a cool chapel.

Sister Matilde flying over the wall and escaping in the convent car.

The smell of lemons grew stronger and she was sure someone unseen was standing by her bed looking down at her. A soft hand smoothing her forehead, tracing the curve of her cheek and the arch of her brow.

Somewhere close by, she was sure, there was a contented cat purring and bees humming. Water splashed in a fountain and a pomegranate fell from the tree and landed with a thud in the parched grass.

Catrin yawned and soon after came the warm and welcome sleep of the tipsy.

N
ight was falling, a smoky darkness drifting up the valley. The wind was cold, and it rattled the shutters on the houses as it whipped through the narrow streets, whisking the water in the cherub fountain into a whirlpool. A donkey cart clattered slowly along the Via Dante, began to speed up as it passed Piero di Bardi’s house, the driver looking nervous when he heard the artist cursing and crashing around inside
.

Bindo, perched on an olive jar outside the convent, saw the donkey come to a halt outside Father Rimaldi’s house. An old man climbed stiffly down from the cart and, seeing Bindo, doffed his cap and then knocked on the priest’s door
.

Bindo looked longingly at the high walls that surrounded the Villa Rosso. He was pining for Ismelda; he hadn’t seen her since the wedding of the widow Zanelli and Signor Bisotti almost two weeks ago. With the new Signora Bisotti sniffing about and keeping a tight control on the budget, Luca couldn’t go there and help cook any more, although occasionally he was allowed in to bring messages from Piero to Signor Bisotti. He had told Bindo that poor Ismelda was locked in her room for hours and that Maria was wandering around looking as if she had swallowed a bag of salted slugs. The new Signora Bisotti, God rot her scabby tongue, was busy nosying around the house and the rumour was that the Bisottis would soon be moving to Napoli. If that happened, Bindo would up sticks and move, too; he wasn’t going to be separated from Ismelda, not even if he had to walk all the way behind them
.

Father Rimaldi came out of his house and crossed the cobbled road to the Villa Rosso, whispering to the driver of the donkey cart. Moments later Signor Bisotti appeared, saw Bindo, and gave him a look of pure hatred. Bindo glared back and then scuttled away down the Via Dante
.

It was late, a watery moon floating above the church tower. Bindo and Luca Roselli were sitting on the side of the fountain eating sunflower seeds, spitting the skins around them. Signor Bisotti’s fat white cat came scurrying up to them and Bindo grinned
.

“
That cat’s in a hurry, but he won’t be catching much without his teeth!
”

“
Signor Bisotti wasn’t too pleased, though!” Luca laughed, his own teeth white in the darkness
.

The cat leapt on to Bindo’s lap, almost knocking him backwards into the fountain
.

“
I’d like to pull that grouchy old bastard’s teeth out with rusty pliers,” Bindo said, rubbing the cat’s knobbly old head
.

“
The talk is that they’re moving to Napoli soon,” Luca said
.

“
I know, and I’ll follow them if they do,” Bindo said, puffing out his chest with bravado
.

The cat raised a paw and tapped Bindo’s chin, claws withdrawn
.

“
Me too,” Luca replied miserably
.

Bindo stared at him, green eyes glittering with surprise. “You?
”

“
Can you keep a secret?
”

“
Of course.” Bindo pressed his small hand to his heart dramatically
.

“
Signor Bisotti’s spoken to my mother. He wants me to go and work for him, to set me up in a shop in Napoli where I can experiment with my cooking and especially with my
gelato.”

“
And you’re sad about that?
”

“
I don’t want to work for him, I want to work for myself, but my mother’s over the moon and says I must go
.”

“
You want to watch yourself with him: his promises are made and broken several times a day. But at least we’ll be in Napoli together
.”

The cat grew agitated, dug its claws into Bindo’s thighs and meowed plaintively
.

“
Ouch! Be careful, Pipi
.”

“
One day maybe I can even give you a job
.”

“
I will be rich, buy a house and marry
 – ”
Bindo stopped mid-sentence and cocked his head to one side. “Can you hear that?
”

“
What?
”

“
Someone’s screaming!
”

They leapt down off the fountain and ran, the wind whipping their hair into their faces and blowing the crisp leaves into an agitated dance around their bare feet
.

A
berderi was a hamlet, a huddle of broken-down old cottages set around a water pump which had long since fallen into disrepair. The Ship and Bottle pub was the only place that showed any signs of life: the sound of raucous singing drifted out, along with a blue stream of cigarette smoke which floated away on the breeze.

The ride from Kilvenny along the cliff road had veered between the exhilarating and the terrifying, and when Catrin got off the bike she had borrowed from Tony Agosti she crumpled, her legs like jelly and her lungs bursting.

She tiptoed past the pub, then walked slowly past the derelict houses, the smell of seaweed and donkey shit strong in the morning air.

The last house had a sign above its door,
The Shambles
. She stopped and listened. It seemed to be the only house where anyone was home. A radio was playing and a kettle whistled piercingly. Looking through the open front door into the gloomy darkness of the passage, she jumped when a voice croaked, “Who’s there?”

She made her way slowly, anxiously, towards the voice.

In a cavelike kitchen with a window the size of an arrow slit, a tiny woman no bigger than a child was huddled in an armchair. Despite a fire roaring in the grate as though it were the depths of winter, she was wrapped in a plaid shawl. The room was stifling, and smelt strongly of fish and stewed tea.

The old woman’s face was yellow and waxy, as if she had been preserved for a long time in a dank, dark place; she watched Catrin approach with wily eyes.

“Don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Come on in, whoever you are.”

“I’m Catrin Grieve,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

“Queenie Probert,” the old woman said, examining Catrin with interest. “I can tell you’re a Grieve, all right,” she said at last. “What are you doing so far from home?”

“I’m exploring.”

“Well, come over here and sit by me.”

Catrin edged towards her and sat down hesitantly on a stool at her feet.

“I remember your Aunt Alice well.”

“You do?”

“She often came here when she was a girl, a bit like you poking about trying to find things out,” the old woman croaked, her slack mouth twisting itself into a smile. She got awkwardly to her feet, moved the kettle off the hob, switched off the radio and fixed her gaze on Catrin again. “What is it you’re looking for?”

“A donkey called Bindo.”

Mrs Probert laughed, exposing a graveyard of teeth. “There been no donkey called Bindo here for years now.”

“But there was once?”

Mrs Probert cackled with laughter again, and Catrin shrank back in alarm and began to wish that she hadn’t come all this way.

“Don’t look so afraid. Get a bit closer and listen carefully so I don’t have to raise my voice.”

Catrin felt a shiver of excitement run along her backbone. She was on the same trail as Alice.

“There was always a donkey called Bindo here for as long as I can remember. Used to happen that when one Bindo died the name was passed on to a new donkey.”

“But it doesn’t happen any more?”

“Sadly, times change and the young ones give them daft names nowadays, call them after them shrieking pop stars and footballers. Not right in my book, calling a donkey Stanley Matthews.”

“Why Bindo?”

“You got time to hear all the story?”

Catrin nodded eagerly.

“Many years ago, the body of a boy was washed up on the beach – the tide had dragged him up here; still clinging to a pallet he was. He was close to death and the cockle women brought the poor little fellow up here to die in peace.”

“He was little, then?”

“A tiny little thing like that Tom Thumb.”

“Bigger than that, I think. What happened to him?” Catrin asked with bated breath.

“He was laid out in the back bar of the Ship and Bottle, where he breathed his last,” Queenie Probert said, closing her eyes as if she, too, was giving up the ghost. She paused for what seemed an age.

“And then he died?”

“When they came to bury him in the morning, they saw a movement of his little finger.”

“He was alive?”

“It was a miracle. He was badly injured, mind, and he’d lost the art of speaking. But the strangest thing was’ – Catrin could barely breathe – ’that inside his jacket was a tiny statue of a saint. That’s what must have kept him safe, see.”

Catrin was silent. In the painting in
Recipes for Cherubs
there was a niche in the wall of the convent in Santa Rosa, where a small saint looked down on the olive jar in which a baby had been abandoned one freezing night.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Queenie Probert said, touching Catrin gently on her arm.

“I was just thinking, that’s all. Did he stay in Aberderi?”

“Times were hard here in those days. Most people were on the bones of their arse, and another mouth to feed was nigh on impossible.”

“So what did he do?”

“He was given a bed in the shed with the donkeys until he was well. In fact, he scratched his name in the wood on one of the donkey stalls – Bindo. That’s how people knew what to call him. It’s there to this day.”

“And then?”

“I fancy he went to work over Kilvenny way for Nathaniel Grieve.”

Catrin grinned. Imagine that! He’d worked in Kilvenny, had walked the same alleys and lanes as she had. It made her heart puff up with pleasure to think of him doing that.

“Thank you, Mrs Probert, for telling me all this.”

“You’re welcome, my lovely. Strange how you came here with all your questions just like your Aunt Alice did all those years ago. She wanted to know all about the little dwarf, too.”

Catrin wondered what else Aunt Alice had found out.

“I’m tired now, but I enjoyed our little chat. If you go up the lane and turn left you’ll see where they keep the donkeys.”

Almost before she finished her sentence, her head nodded on to her chest and she was snoring soundly.

I
t was getting dark when Catrin went into the donkey shed, a weak light breaking through the gaps in the ramshackle roof. Up in the rafters a bird chirruped and the shadowy donkeys shuffled their feet expectantly, their large heads nodding over the doors of the stalls as if in welcome. Catrin felt as though she were stepping into a Christmas Nativity scene except for the earthy smells of damp straw and steaming donkey droppings.

Outside the wind was getting up, rattling the wooden building and bringing with it the smell of seaweed and fish. Stray drops of rain wheedled their way in through the broken roof and somewhere close by a mouse scuttled for cover.

As she approached the nearest stall the donkey lifted its head, drew back its lips and showed a mouthful of yellow teeth. Catrin stepped closer. Far out at sea the thunder rolled and she shivered.

Above each stall there was a makeshift sign with a name on it:
STANLEY, ELVIS, TOMMY, GRACIE
.

She stepped up to Grade’s stall, put out her hand and the donkey nuzzled her fingers playfully. She knelt down on the floor and ran her hands over the ancient wood of the door, her fingers finding the letters carved there: bindo.

Here in this shed the green-eyed boy had slept, sharing the stable with the donkeys, tucked up in the straw amongst the mice and nesting birds.

She imagined him curled up at night, listening to the sea pounding on to the beach, the scream of the gulls as they followed the fishing boats in. How homesick he must have felt, away from his friends, alone in a strange land where he couldn’t even speak the language. It was even worse than that, though, because Queenie said that he’d lost the use of his tongue. Thinking of his loneliness brought a lump to her throat. She patted Grade’s nose and turned away; it was time she set off back to Kilvenny before the weather came in any worse.

The donkeys were watching her in dignified silence, ancient-looking beasts with knowing eyes.

She closed the stable door and stood with her back pressed against it for a long time, breathing deeply in the salty air, feeling the rain on her face, soft as a blessing.