2008 - Recipes for Cherubs

by Babs Horton

  She searched through the index and found the right page, then turned to the section on Santa Rosa and read eagerly.

  Santa Rosa is a sombre, windswept village in winter and sweltering in the summer months. It is a charming if dilapidated medieval place with narrow streets and a pretty cobbled piazza with a fountain graced by a trio of splendid cherubs. The church is a large, ugly affair with a tower and an enormous bell which resounds around the village, calling the remaining inhabitants to prayer. The interior has no particular artistic merit, and the cheap wooden panelling spoils the acoustic effect, but there are some lovely marble saints set in shadowy niches.

  Dan Gwartney looked up from his book and watched Catrin with interest. Oblivious of his scrutiny, she read on.

  Many of the houses in Santa Rosa are empty now, owing to emigration on a large scale, but one can take an agreeable walk through the shady streets and drink a cool glass of wine in the cave-like bar where one can linger over a lunch of freshly made pasta. Then at your leisure amble back through the village and stroll through the abandoned Villa Rosso, a former grand villa once home to the wealthy Bisotti family. Ponder awhile in the overgrown gardens or take a siesta in the shade of the pomegranate tree.

  Catrin shivered with excitement. Santa Rosa was a real place and she was sure that the paintings in Recipes for Cherubs were of real people, too. The wealthy Bisotti family had lived in the blood-coloured Villa Rosso and Ismelda Bisotti would have lived there too.

  Before you leave Santa Rosa walk along the narrow Via Dante, for there you will find the abandoned studio of the renowned artist Piero di Bardi. It is well worth a visit to Santa Rosa, just to step inside the old house and see what life was like in eighteenth-century Italy. Remarkably, the house has been kept just as it was the day the artist left the village, never to be heard of again. Rumours abound about his fate; some say he was set upon by robbers on the road to Terrini and killed; others that he went mad and was incarcerated in an asylum. All mere conjecture, no doubt, and probably his fate will sadly never be uncovered though many have tried to discover what happened to him and his lost masterpieces.

  In his studio the original flute-shaped paintpots remain just as he left them. Although the paint is long gone, the pots are labelled: indigo, verdigris, cinabrese, lampblack, sinoper, vermillion, ochre, saffron and the peculiarly named dragon’s blood.

  There are terracotta pots containing sticks of sharpened charcoal and handmade brushes of all shapes and sizes. There are boxes containing sand, salt and sawdust, and on a worm-eaten shelf there are bottles of vinegar, varnish and quicksilver.

  Empty wine pitchers litter the floor and there is even a giant half-eaten ham hanging from the ceiling – preserved with varnish by someone for posterity. Although none of Piero’s paintings remain in the house, it is certainly well worth a visit for students of art or history.

  On leaving Santa Rosa, take the steep road down towards Terrini…

  Catrin sat up straight looking ahead of her. Terrini! The Convent of Santa Lucia was near Terrini, and that’s where her mother was right now. Her mother wouldn’t be a bit interested in artists and old houses; all that interested her was men and dress shops and how pretty she looked.

  Catrin closed the book thoughtfully. How she would love to walk through the cobbled streets of Santa Rosa and have a cool drink in the bar. How wonderful to open the door to Piero di Bardi’s abandoned house in the Via Dante and go inside. Maybe there would be clues there which would show why he had left in such a hurry and where he’d gone. A person couldn’t just vanish, surely?

  She cast her mind back to the portrait of Piero di Bardi in Recipes for Cherubs and wondered if it was a self-portrait. She was sure it must be because all the portraits in the book were certainly done by a genius.

  Piero was a thin-faced man with dark, tangled hair which hung down to his shoulders. His cheeks were hollow and there were dark circles under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept well in a long time. There was a spark of vibrant energy, though, in those eyes, dreamy haunting eyes which looked steadfastly out from the page and seemed to look right into her soul. His hand was outstretched, holding a paintbrush in long slender fingers.

  She turned her attention back to Theodora Sprenker.

  Terrini is a one-street town, one of the most poverty-stricken places I have ever encountered in all my travels. Barefoot children, dressed in stinking rags but with the faces of angels, followed me as I passed through, and I could hardly bear to look upon their ravaged faces with their suppurating sores and famished eyes.

  There is no inn or house in Terrini in which one would feel safe to stay, so I rode straight through, throwing a few coins to these poor children.

  I rode for a good half-hour, the road winding steadily upwards, until in the early evening I came within sight of the Convent of Santa Lucia. Such a curious place I have never seen, perched as it is on a hilltop, built into the very rock itself, the walls turning a deep blood-red as the sun began to set. I took my lodgings there and have wished fervently ever since that I had not. I have recurring nightmares about the place which leave me weak and quivering with fear. The poor souls incarcerated there were dressed in a uniform of rags and spent their days screaming, banging their heads and rocking back and forth, babbling incoherently. The most crazed of the inmates were locked in cells with bars on the windows and all the while the most heart-rending moaning emanated from these cells and one could barely dare to contemplate the horrors that lay behind the locked doors. Suffice it to say that I stayed only one night, the longest night of my life.

  Catrin giggled. She wondered if the Convent of Santa Lucia was as bad today as it had been then. She smiled, thinking of her mother stuck in such a place; Kizzy would be hopping mad to be cooped up there all this time. For a moment she felt a frisson of guilt. Maybe she should ring Arthur Campbell and ask him to send her mother some money, but if she did, she’d have to say she was in Kilvenny and then he’d be bound to come and get her. No, her mother could stew in her own juices. It would serve her right for gadding off to Italy to meet an old friend, probably some stupid man who’d taken her fancy.

  She looked up from the book and saw the odd man from the photographer’s shop looking in through the window at her. And then suddenly he was gone.

  28

  The widow Zanelli could barely contain her delight as she unwound the rags from her daughter Adriana’s hair and brushed out the glossy ringlets, coiling them round her fingers, stiffening them with a little spit in unruly places. She applied a little rouge to the child’s cheeks and stood back to admire her handiwork.

  Then she carried out the same procedure on Adriana’s twin, Alessandra.

  “Stand beside your sister, there in front of the window, so that I can admire you both.”

  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.

  29

  Catrin 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.

&nb
sp; “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.