by Babs Horton
43
In the cool of the kitchen Catrin laid out all the gelato ingredients that Tony had brought with him. She propped Recipes for Cherubs up on the table and occasionally turned the page to look at the painting of Luca Roselli. Every time she looked at that sweet face a lump grew in her throat. He was sitting on the grass, leaning against the trunk of the pomegranate tree. His eyes were closed and he was smiling contentedly as if he knew a secret that no one else did. She noticed for the first time what he had round his throat: a horn-shaped corno like the one Nonna had shown her. It hadn’t protected Luca from bad luck.
She cracked the eggs one by one and beat them with a fork until her arms ached, folded in the cream and began to whip the mixture again, as she imagined Maria Paparella had done years ago.
It was hard work and soon her forehead was damp with exertion. She painstakingly cut the lemon and orange rind into the thinnest of slivers, removed the leaves from the strawberries, washed and drained them and sliced them.
She wanted to serve the gelato in pomegranates like the one Ismelda Bisotti was holding in the painting but Tony told her that they weren’t yet in season, so instead she cut the tops off four large lemons and scoured out all the flesh.
Tony had also brought the ice-cream maker he’d unearthed, and he spent five minutes explaining how to use it. Under his watchful eye Catrin packed the ice and salt between the outer and inner containers, then he put the lid on and showed her how to turn the handle.
“You carry on with that,” he said, “while I go to fetch the cake I’ve made. Just keep turning and then we’ll add more ice and salt and then hey presto! we shall have the best ice cream ever.”
“How will I know when it’s ready?”
“Take the lid off and you should see when it’s started to stick to the sides.”
“Okay. When it’s ready I’m going to fill the lemons with it and put the top of the lemon on like a little lid, and a mint leaf for decoration.”
“They’ll look and taste wonderful, I’m sure.”
A table had been laid in the Italian garden and the pink gingham cloth fluttered in the warm breeze. The garden was alive with birdsong, the hypnotic droning of bees amongst the roses, and the sound of water splashing into the fountain.
Ella was sitting next to Norma, who was wearing a black lace shawl to keep the sun off her face. When Catrin came out with the ice creams, Norma threw back the shawl and cried, “Bellissimo!”
Flushed with pride, Catrin watched in delight as they each took one. She thought they looked like a scene out of Recipes for Cherubs, sitting together in the Italian garden eating home-made ice cream and enjoying each other’s company.
“This is delicious,” Tony said, spooning ice cream into his mouth.
“Nothing taste quite like ice cream made the old-fashioned way,” Nonna said, smacking her lips noisily.
Catrin picked up her spoon and took a little ice cream on it. She couldn’t eat much of it because of all the cream and eggs; it was so fattening.
She closed her eyes and put the spoon gingerly to her lips. The coolness was welcome after all her efforts, and the taste was divine. Just one little spoonful, that’s all she was going to allow herself; a taste was quite sufficient, but she took another mouthful and relished the tang of lemon and orange on her tastebuds.
“This is wonderful!” Norma said, waving her spoon in the air. “You got any more of this?”
Catrin nodded happily and slipped another spoonful of ice cream into her own mouth without thinking. Soon she was digging down into the lemon, searching out the last of the ice cream.
“Now that is ice cream fit for cherubs,” Ella said, wiping a smear of it from her chin.
“It’s an Ismelda special.”
“I never hear of this Ismelda ice cream,” Norma said, wrinkling her forehead.
“Ismelda’s a girl, not an ice cream.”
“She’s a friend of yours?”
“No, she’s a girl I wish I’d known, someone who lived a long time ago.”
Ella looked enquiringly at her.
“Ismelda Bisotti,” Catrin said dreamily.
“You wants to stay clear of them Bisottis,” Norma warned.
“Why?” Catrin pricked her ears up.
“They not good people. They involve with American Mafia and very bad people,” Norma said, admonishing the air with a gnarled old finger.
“The Ismelda Bisotti I’m talking about was Italian.”
“These Bisottis came from Italia, too. They start with ice-cream shops and restaurants in Naples, then they buy hotels and they emigrate to America and become very rich.”
“I’ve heard of the Bisottis,” Ella said. “I remember years ago reading about one of the Bisotti daughters marrying into the English aristocracy. Let me see, I think an Alessandra Bisotti married the duke of somewhere or other.”
Catrin sat quite still. Alessandra was the name of one of the girls in her book, but their last name was Zanelli so the widow must be their mother. Widows were women whose husbands had died, so maybe Signor Bisotti had married her. Catrin pulled a face; she didn’t like the look of Signor Bisotti or that snooty widow and her goody-two-shoes daughters. Poor Ismelda, if they’d become her stepsisters.
Catrin walked over to the fountain, pondering what she’d learnt. It seemed as if everyone had deserted Santa Rosa, but why? Piero di Bardi had disappeared, the Bisottis had gone to America, and Luca Roselli had lost his life in Kilvenny.
She looked across at Aunt Ella, Norma and Tony and smiled. A few weeks ago she hadn’t known they’d existed, and now she couldn’t imagine life without them.
“Dear God, Norma, that’s your third helping,” Tony said with a whoop of disbelief. “You weren’t standing behind the door when God handed out appetites.”
“Ah, and that’s why I nearly as big as the elefante.” Norma laughed and prodded him playfully on the arm with her spoon. “Is good to be a big woman, I think. Nobody mess with big women. All this fashions for stick-skinny models come to no good. The young girls, they all want to be so thin they almost see through. They weak with eating so little, and then they got no fire, and when they got no fire they let the men push them around.”
“No man ever pushed you around,” Ella said with a laugh.
“No, because me, I never no skinny jinny. I like my food too much.”
Catrin turned away hastily; she was uncomfortable when people talked about fatness and appetite.
“Antonio, you going to cut that walnut cake or we just got to look at it, eh?”
Catrin declined the cake politely and sat quietly on the edge of the fountain while Norma and Ella ate cake as if food was soon to be on ration.
“Talking of walnuts, do you remember that etui of Alice’s?” Ella said.
“What’s an etui?” Catrin asked.
“It’s usually a sort of sewing case, only this one was a painting set. It was quite beautiful and whoever had made it must have taken enormous trouble over it. It was a real walnut shell, beautifully burnished, and it had a hinged lid. When it was opened, it had the tiniest little paintbrushes and things inside. It was Alice’s pride and joy.”
“Tell Catrin the story of how she find this thing,” Norma urged.
“Well, it was really strange. My father – your greatgrandfather – found the cherub statue over there in the castle and decided that he was going to restore the fountain. It took him weeks to plumb it in and make the plinth.”
“What’s that got to do with the etui thingy?” Catrin asked.
“Be patient, I’m getting there. My father had finally finished the fountain and we were all waiting excitedly for him to turn it on. There was a great clanking and clattering as the water made its way through the pipes, and then all of a sudden a trickle of water dribbled out of the cherub’s mouth. A few seconds later there was a great whoosh! and water shot out, and something flew out and landed in Alice’s lap. It was a small oilcloth package and inside was the
walnut etui. Alice thought it was a miracle, of course, and Father let her keep it. No one had a clue what it was doing in there.”
Catrin tried to contain her excitement. She knew the statue of the cherub had been washed up when the Flino sank, and she was sure it was the statue in the picture of the Santa Rosa piazza. Luca Roselli had lived in Santa Rosa and he was on the Flino when she went down.
Hell, there were so many unanswered questions. Where was Luca going to, and why did he bring the statue with him? Was he travelling alone or were there others from Santa Rosa on the Flino, too? And who had hidden the walnut etui in the cherub’s mouth, and was it done in Italy or in Kilvenny?
“Do you still have the etui?” she asked.
“I haven’t seen it for ages. Alice used to keep it in her dowry box.”
Bugger. If only she could find the dowry box, she was sure she’d learn something important.
A cloud drifted across the sun and a breeze got up, rustling the roses on the walls of the castle and sending a shower of petals over the four of them, like perfumed confetti. The chapel door opened and banged shut. Norma put her hand to her head but too late: the breeze snatched at her black lace shawl and whipped it away, sent it looping and swirling high above their upturned heads. It came to land like a parachute, balanced for a moment on the water spurting from the cherub’s mouth, then wrapped itself over the cherub’s face.
Catrin leapt to her feet, retrieved the soggy shawl and handed it to Norma, but her mind was on something else entirely. On a snowy night in a small hilltop town…
44
In the garden Maria had set up a small table in the shade because the day was blisteringly hot. A dragonfly danced through on a current of hot air and bees fizzed excitedly among the flowers.
Pipi lay hidden in the bushes, purring loudly.
Bindo sat at the table, his feet dangling over the edge of his chair. He had made an effort to wash in the fountain in the piazza, and had slicked down his silky hair in preparation for his visit.
Ismelda sat next to him, dressed in a pretty blue frock, with a freshly washed ribbon already escaping from her unruly hair.
Bindo thought she looked wonderful, good enough to eat. Her blue eyes sparkled with delight and the colour in her cheeks was high from rising excitement. Surreptitiously he felt for her hand beneath the table and squeezed it tightly in his own sweaty one.
Ismelda winked at him. She loved to look at him, delighting in the colour of his hair, the sunlight streaking it with thin ribbons of gold and copper. She wanted to reach out and touch his snub nose with its dusting of summer freckles, to smooth her hand along his downy cheek, feel the shape of his bones beneath his hot skin.
How she would love to trace her finger around the outline of his pink mouth, a mouth which threatened to break into a wide smile at any moment.
Maria came out into the garden carrying a silver salver on which there were four rosy red pomegranates.
“II gelato!” she said.
Luca handed a pomegranate to Ismelda and another to Bindo.
“It’s cold!” Ismelda shrieked, almost dropping hers.
“Si, is il gelato. Very cold and made with ice. This special recipe come all the way from Napoli, and Luca and I make especially for you.”
“Eat and enjoy,” Luca said, handing them each a small spoon roughly hewn from wood.
Ismelda spooned ice cream into her mouth and smacked her lips with gusto. “I have never tasted anything so good in all my life.”
“You know, one day I may open a shop which sells nothing except gelato,” Luca said.
“You would never be able to get enough ice to keep going,” Maria said.
“Maybe someone will find a way of making ice.”
“How could they do that?” Maria scoffed.
“If you could find a way of keeping it cold, I could take a tray and walk around the village and call out to people to come and try some of my ice cream,” Luca said.
“Who in Santa Rosa has the money to buy ice cream?” Bindo asked.
“Maybe I go to Napoli, to all the big cities where people have lots of money. Maybe to France, or even as far as Inghilterra.”
“Whoa!” Bindo cried. “That’s miles away. You have to cross the seas, and it’s cold there all the time, so who will want to eat cold things?”
“Promise to take me with you if you go,” Maria begged. “I’ve never been out of this village.”
“I have only been out of this house to go to mass,” Ismelda said sadly.
Bindo leant over to her, pushed her hair back from her ear and whispered something to her.
Her blue eyes widened with surprise and she put her hand to his cheek. “You would do this thing for me?”
Bindo nodded eagerly.
Maria got suddenly to her feet and put a finger to her lips. “Quickly! Signor Bisotti is back earlier than we thought. Give Bindo a leg up into the tree, Luca.”
Luca leapt into action and lifted Bindo up into the branches of a fir tree alongside the garden wall. Ismelda watched in admiration as Bindo made his way effortlessly up into the tree. Then, quick as a wink, he was clambering over the wall. They heard a yelp and loud cursing as he made contact with the ground, just as Signor Bisotti stumbled out into the garden.
He had drunk too much, his face was red and blotchy, and he was sweating profusely. “You’ll all be glad to know my good news.”
“What good news, Papa?” Ismelda asked, wiping a smear of gelato from her nose.
“This afternoon, the lovely widow Zanelli accepted my proposal of marriage. We are to be married in three weeks’ time.”
Maria drew in her breath with a wheezing sound and reached for Ismelda’s hand.
Ismelda turned pale and her eyes grew wide with astonishment and the threat of tears.
“Is no one going to congratulate me on my good news?”
There was silence, apart from the sound of an empty pomegranate falling from Ismelda’s hand into the grass, and the contented snoring of the toothless Pipi somewhere in the bushes.
45
In Shrimp’s Hotel Catrin stood in front of Piero di Bardi’s beautiful painting Woman and Child, the painting that Aunt Alice used to blow kisses to every night before she went to bed.
It was curious that, although it was called Woman and Child, there was no child. She put her head on one side and scrutinised the woman, then turned her attention to the photograph of her mother wearing the poppy-red dress with the scalloped hemline. Of course! You couldn’t see the child because the child wasn’t yet born. She stepped closer to the painting and saw the soft undulation of the woman’s belly beneath the blue material of her dress. This was supposed to be the woman Piero had married in Naples, so what had happened to her and her child?
She was very beautiful in an unusual way, and there was a wonderful liveliness about her face, her eyes full of passion and her mouth slightly open as if she was about to speak. If only those lips could move and tell her story.
If Piero di Bardi had painted the picture, he must have been with the woman when she was pregnant, and then for some reason they had separated and he ended up in Santa Rosa, and there was no mention of his wife and child ever living with him.
She felt her excitement growing as she examined the scarf tied round the woman’s head, holding her dark hair back off her forehead. It was a distinctive blue scarf, with fringes of gold and red.
This was the moment of truth. Excitedly she opened Recipes for Cherubs and turned the pages until she came to the snow scene. There was the shivering cherub with a scarf wrapped comically around its neck. A blue scarf with blurry fringes of red and gold at either end. If she was right – and it was a long shot – the woman in the painting had been in Santa Rosa on that freezing night. Had she wrapped the scarf round the cherub’s neck as a joke, or had it been snatched by the wind, the way Nonna’s shawl had been?
Had she come to Santa Rosa to find Piero and show him their newborn child?
It was all too complicated, and made her head ache with the effort of thinking. She looked at the small face peering out of the window of the red house. Whoever it was would have seen what was going on, but there was no way Catrin would ever find out who the person was or what she had seen.
She turned sadly away from the painting and made her way out of the room and down the corridor, pausing at the top of the stairs. The telephone in the booth downstairs was ringing. She was in two minds as to whether to answer it; she was afraid that it would be her mother or, worse still, Arthur Campbell. She slipped out through the kitchen door and went thoughtfully back through the long grass.
As she walked up Cockle Lane she looked across at Meredith Evans Photographer’s shop. She had a feeling that it had been him slipping out of the chapel the other night, the same man she had seen at Shrimp’s. If he was so keen on snooping, maybe she should go into his shop and see if there was anything interesting there. The thought of being in the gloomy old shop on her own, though, made her nervous. She walked past the shop several times, glancing furtively in through the window, but couldn’t buck up the courage to go inside. Then she had a brilliant idea.
46