by Babs Horton
“You’ve never paddled in the sea?” Ella looked horrified.
Catrin shook her head and looked at Ella hopefully.
“I suppose by rights we ought to contact your mother,” Ella said stiffly.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? She thinks I’m staying at Shrimp’s so she won’t be worried. I’ve got a return ticket to London for September, and it might do me some good to get to know the family I didn’t know I had.”
Ella took the cheese and butter back into the larder and stood there for some moments, thinking. Maybe it would be all right to keep the child here for a few weeks, just so long as she managed to keep her mouth shut and not blurt out the truth about Arthur Campbell. There was no knowing how the truth might affect the child. Ella had always thought the truth was the best option because secrets could be so damaging, and Ella Grieve knew all about secrets. Holding on to them was draining, debilitating; it made you shrivel inside a little more each day.
When Ella came out of the pantry she found Catrin sitting forlornly at the table.
“I could help out here, cook some recipes from the book so that you don’t have to cook,” Catrin said.
“I don’t know.”
“Please?” She looked imploringly at Ella.
“Oh, I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm,” Ella replied, and without warning Catrin ran across the kitchen and flung her arms round her. Startled by this show of affection, Ella flushed with awkwardness. No one had touched her in years…
She put her arms diffidently round Catrin’s tiny body and held her close, feeling the girl’s heart beating erratically behind her rib cage.
21
Catrin made the trip up to Shrimp’s alone, unlocked the kitchen door and automatically held her nose to keep out the stink. Then she looked around in surprise. Someone had been in here poking around. The kitchen drawers had been rifled through, and some of the cupboard doors were open, revealing rusty tins and grimy crockery. A window had been opened, letting in the sea breeze.
She stood nervously in the hallway listening for sounds of an intruder. Above her head the curtains of cobwebs danced in the draughts. A thick layer of dust still covered everything and the air was musty, almost sticky.
She made her way slowly up the worn stairs, turned right and slipped behind the rotting green curtain.
There was a peculiar smell in Aunt Alice’s room and it took her a while to realize that the remains of a recent fire lay smouldering in the hearth. She looked warily around. Ghosts didn’t light fires or eat chocolate.
She picked up a chocolate wrapper from the floor and sniffed it – she hated the smell. She sniffed it again and licked her lips. Maybe the man she’d seen slipping out of Aunt Alice’s room had cleaned up the kitchen, but why would anyone do that? He might even be in here now, snooping around. She listened but the house was eerily silent.
She opened the bureau and rummaged about until she found the chequebook that Ella had asked her to bring back to the castle. She slipped it into her pocket and was about to go when the wardrobe door creaked ominously behind her.
She tensed, felt every tendon in her body creak with fear. Sister Matilde always said that the worst kind of fear was the fear of fear itself. With an intake of breath she threw open the wardrobe door and jumped back.
She breathed a sigh of relief. The wardrobe was empty except for a few old dresses which smelt of neglect and mothballs. At the bottom of the wardrobe there was a large cardboard box and she knelt down and pulled it towards her – it was very light. Written on the lid in a spidery hand were the words To be delivered to Miss Ella Grieve, c⁄o Shrimp’s Hotel, Near Kilvenny. Nervously she lifted the lid, ready to jump as if she were opening a jack-in-the-box.
Nothing leapt up at her. She lifted out an ivory wedding dress decorated with sparkling gems, marvelling at the feel of the smooth satin, running her fingers over the delicately embroidered bodice. She held the dress against herself, looked in the mirror and was shocked by her reflection. The ivory of the dress heightened her pallor, made her eyes sink deeper into her face, and highlighted the dark circles beneath her eyes.
Suddenly overcome with guilt, she folded the dress back into the box and hastily replaced the lid. Why had Aunt Ella bought herself a wedding dress? She hadn’t ever married, because she was still called Grieve. Maybe the friend she’d talked about had been her lover and she had been jilted at the altar like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations and that’s why she’d shut herself up in Shrimp’s for all those years. She shoved the box back into the wardrobe and closed the door thoughtfully.
22
The storm came with barely a warning. Banking clouds obliterated the sun and a squally wind blew in off a sea the colour of wire wool. Then the rain came sweeping down Cockle Lane, battering against the windows of the castle, flattening the geraniums in their pots outside the Café Romana and whipping the leaves of the tall trees in Gwartney’s Wood into a bubbling green broth.
Ella had settled in the kitchen listening to the ancient, whistling wireless and Catrin was curled up on the window seat, her head buried in her book, looking for clues to the hidden treasure of Kilvenny Castle.
She was studying a painting of someone called Ismelda Bisotti, a girl probably just a bit younger than herself. She wore a faded blue frock, and was holding out a ripe pomegranate as if making a present of it to someone unseen. Her long hair was dark and wild, tinged with a blue sheen, her black eyebrows arched above enormous blue eyes framed by feathery dark lashes. There was a smudge of something white on her nose, her head was thrown back and her mouth opened wide, showing the whitest teeth Catrin had ever seen. She was laughing fit to bust. Catrin wished she could hear her laughter and wondered what had been said or what she had seen that was so hilariously funny. Just looking at Ismelda’s face made Catrin want to laugh out loud, too.
Underneath the painting was written How to make Gelato, by Ismelda Bisotti.
What on earth was Gelato?
As she stared in absorption at Ismelda Bisotti a crack of thunder broke overhead, rattling the pots and pans that hung from hooks around the kitchen, and the radio crackled and whistled furiously.
Catrin put down the book and looked out of the window. The rain was hammering down and the road was a rivulet of black water, carrying along leaves and lollipop sticks at a ferocious pace. At the Café Romana the downstairs windows were steamed up, but in an upstairs window Catrin saw an old woman peering across at the castle and waving frantically, trying to attract her attention.
“Aunt Ella, there’s a funny old woman waving at me from the café.”
Ella got up stiffly and looked out through the rain-streaked window.
“Good God. I never thought to ask Tony if Louisa was still alive. I just presumed she’d passed away – she must be well over ninety if she’s a day.”
“Who is she?”
“That’s Tony’s norma, as they say in Italian – his grandmother. Everyone in Kilvenny used to call her Norma. I suppose in a way she was like a grandmother to most of us.”
“Why do you think she’s waving at me?”
“I expect Tony has told her all about you and she wants you to go across and keep her company. She was always a nosy old bugger and probably wants to find out what’s going on.”
“Do you think I should go?”
“Why not? There’s little else you can do in this weather, and she used to be great fun to talk to.”
“Will you come, too?”
“No. I’m not ready to go visiting yet. You go but put something on over your clothes or you’ll be soaked to the skin.”
“Does it rain all the time here?”
“Only twice a week, once for four days and once for three,” Ella said with a straight face.
Catrin gave her a sideways look and then as she made her way along the corridor towards the main door Ella heard her laugh loudly. It was a long time since Ella had made anyone laugh; a long time since laughter had rung out in Kilvenny Castle.
>
23
Maria Paparella was on her way back from the early market to the Villa Rosso. She hummed cheerfully as she walked along the Via Dante. When she came level with Piero di Bardi’s house she could hear him inside, singing loudly, so she paused outside the window, breathing in the multitude of smells that drifted out of the house: dust and calfskins, charcoal and fish glue, bacon fat, linseed oil and sawdust.
She went closer to the window and peered cautiously inside. On a bench near the window there were pots of sharpened charcoal, dishes full of wax and murky water. Set out on a rickety table there were brushes of all shapes and sizes, boxes of sawdust, sand and salt. A row of bottles stood on a lop-sided shelf: vinegar, varnish, sugar and tantalising quicksilver.
She was fascinated by the flute-shaped pots that held the different colours that Piero used for his paintings.
She was unable to read the labels on the pots but Luca had told her the names of some of the colours: indigo, verdigris, lampblack, cinabrese, sinoper, vermillion, ochre, saffron…They were such exotic, exciting names that they made her head spin and conjured up images of all the faraway places she would never see.
She caught a glimpse of Piero, his dark head bent over a canvas, completely absorbed in his work. He glanced up suddenly and there was a look of such joy in those dreamy eyes of his that she shivered with pleasure.
Here was a man in dire need of fattening up. She’d come back tomorrow and bring him something special to eat, put a bit of colour in those pallid cheeks, a little more flesh around those sunken buttocks. Something must have cheered him up, because Luca had been complaining for weeks that he’d been in the foulest of moods.
Thinking of Luca she smiled and felt for the piece of paper in her pocket that her uncle, the travelling shoe seller, had given her in exchange for two freshly baked loaves of focaccia and a walnut cake. This afternoon Luca would read the words on the paper and they would search out the ingredients for the new recipe.
She made the sign of the cross as she came level with the little saint in her niche on the convent wall, and further along she stopped outside the convent gates and looked down at the two jars that had stood outside the convent gates for as long as anyone could remember. It was in one of those jars that the baby Bindo had been abandoned one winter’s night long ago.
She remembered that night vividly because it was the night when she had started working as a servant at the Villa Rosso. Earlier in the day Signor Bisotti had been asking around the village for a girl to help out, as his wife had gone into early labour with her second child and now the child was delivered but the mother was sick. Maria’s mother had gladly offered her services; it had been a relief to have one less mouth to feed through another cold winter.
Maria had tearfully packed her few possessions in a bundle, hugged her mother for a long time, and then made her way through the village to the Villa Rosso. She had been no more than a child herself and had sat on one of these olive jars trying to summon the courage to walk across the piazza and knock on the door of the villa.
The snow had been falling for several hours, the wind was biting and she had pulled her thin cloak tighter around her body and looked up fearfully at the hideous gargoyles on the church, with waterfalls of ice spilling from their wide ugly mouths.
Signora Bisotti was in a bad way after the birth, and Maria had been sent to sit with her and bathe her fevered brow with water. She had been afraid because the Signora lay so still, her breathing very shallow. She was as thin as a willow reed and pale as death, her head turned to the side, eyes rolling backwards into her head, mouth moving in silent but fervent prayer.
Later that evening she had heard Signor Bisotti whisper to Father Rimaldi that it was only a matter of time, and less than a few hours later Signora Bisotti was dead.
Father Rimaldi had risked life and limb riding down to the Convent of Santa Lucia to find a wet-nurse and had returned at dawn with a sad-faced mute who stood in to feed the famished baby.
That first night in the Villa Rosso Maria had lain in bed listening to the wind screaming around the house and the querulous cries of the newly born Bisotti child. Later she had knelt on the bed looking out of the window at the swirling snow until tiredness overtook her. When she had finally fallen asleep it was a fitful sleep, the sound of crying babies and the moaning wind interrupting her dreams.
That freezing night someone had crept past the shuttered houses and abandoned baby Bindo in the olive jar. If Father Rimaldi had not ventured out from his house just before dawn, the child would surely have perished. It was a miracle.
Maria did not see the newborn baby girl they had named Ismelda until the end of her first week at the villa. She clearly remembered peering down into the crib where Ismelda lay roaring, her tightly balled fists pummelling the air, her face red with fury. Mamma mia, she’d been born making a noise and hadn’t stopped since.
Maria had worked in the Villa Rosso ever since that night. She had looked after Ismelda after the wet-nurse was sent away. She had sat up with her through the long nights when she was cutting her first teeth, wiped her brow through fevers and bouts of colic, and now they were as close as if they were blood relatives.
Maria turned away from the convent gates and almost bumped into Father Rimaldi. She did not like him, for even though he wore the priest’s cloth, beneath it his heart was as dark as a witch’s armpit.
She stepped back in alarm and said, “You startled me, Father. I was lost in my thoughts.”
“And what were you thinking, my child? Good thoughts, I hope?”
“I was thinking about the woman who left Bindo here in the olive jar. I often wonder what happened to her.”
“It’s so long ago. The poor wretch probably has a pile of children by now, and has long forgotten that unfortunate child.”
“I wonder,” she said absentmindedly.
She nodded to Father Rimaldi, made her way across the square and past the fountain, putting out a hand to brush the outstretched fingers of one of the cherubs.
Father Rimaldi watched her go with a strange expression on his face.
24
The bell above the door of the Café Romana tinkled as Catrin stepped inside. Tony Agosti beamed at her from behind the counter. “Ah, Catrin, so you’ve come to see my nonna.”
“How did you know that?”
“Ever since she heard that you and Ella were staying at the castle she’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof. She’s been up at the window looking out for you. I’ll take you up to her. Nonna can’t get about much any more but she doesn’t miss a trick.”
He led Catrin behind the counter, through a curtained doorway and up a narrow staircase to the first floor.
Nonna was sitting in a wicker chair close to the window, like a bird in an eyrie looking down over Kilvenny. Close up she was a sight to behold, an old woman dressed all in black, black jumper, long black skirt and thick black bobbly stockings. She wore a black scarf over her silver hair, knotted under a cascade of wobbling chins. She was so old that she looked as if she had dropped out from between the pages of Recipes for Cherubs.
She looked up and Catrin knew at once from the opaque milky blue of her eyes that she was blind, so how could she have seen Catrin in the window of the castle?
As if reading her thoughts Tony said, “She can hardly see anything these days, just shadows mainly, but she senses when people are there, isn’t that true, Nonna?”
The old woman nodded and smiled, and her face creased into deep dark furrows.
“Norma, this is Catrin, Ella Grieve’s great-niece, who’s staying over at the castle.”
The old woman looked Catrin up and down as if she could see her.
“Sit down. Sit down. You leave us alone now, Antonio, you don’t want to be listening to the women’s talking,” she said impatiently.
Tony winked at Catrin and left the room, whistling as he clattered down the stairs.
“So you are little girl who make Ella Grieve
come out of hiding?”
“Yes. Only I’m not so little, I’m thirteen.”
“You very thin for a girl of thirteen,” Nonna said.
Catrin looked at her warily; maybe she was just pretending to be blind. “I’ve always been thin,” she lied.
“Not so thin as this, I think. Like the stick you are.”
Catrin bristled with indignation.
“You angry I say you are too thin, eh?”
“No,” Catrin replied sulkily.
“You a bit prickly like your Aunt Ella?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, I’ve only just met her.”
Nonna was silent for a moment and then she said wistfully, “I glad you comes here to Kilvenny. I missed Ella all these years. Funny I never think that she be one to run away and hide her face from the world.”
“I suppose not.”
“She was a livewire when she was a girl, always in trouble.”
“Did you know her very well?”
“Well? ‘Course I knows her well. I there in the room when she being born and that Ella she come out kicking and yelling. My Antonio say people like cheese and chalk when they are very different. Ella and Alice like this chalk and cheese even though they twins.”
“They were twins!” Catrin exclaimed.
“Yes, they twins but not like you say the peas in pod. They looks very different. They acts very different. Alice was very quiet girl.”
“And Ella wasn’t?” Catrin asked with interest.
“No. She always in the mischief. Her mother coming down here from Shrimp’s many times looking for her. She always talking to the old fishermen and her mother get mad as a nutter and shouting fit to bust. But she always brings back many fish for supper so she forgiven sometimes.”
Catrin smiled and thought that Ella sounded as if she’d been good fun when she was little.
“I tell you, Kilvenny very quiet when Ella got sent away to the boardings school but she not stay there long.”