2008 - Recipes for Cherubs

by Babs Horton

  “But why would he murder the woman?”

  “That will always remain a mystery, I’m afraid.” Catrin’s mind was still racing. She was pretty damned sure who the woman was. It was the woman in the Piero di Bardi painting, the woman who was carrying Piero di Bardi’s child. Maybe she had arrived in Santa Rosa that snowy winter’s night with her baby, looking for Piero. Had she come across Father Rimaldi, and had he offered to help her and then double-crossed her? If there had been a struggle, her scarf might have come off and blown round the neck of the little cherub. Then what had happened? Had he murdered her and given the baby to the nuns?

  She thought of the painting of Father Rimaldi, the hawklike nose and the eyes with the murderous glint, and she shivered. “Anyone for pudding?” Tony asked.

  50

  Maria was hard at work preparing for the evening meal. She worked without her usual enthusiasm, chopping vegetables angrily, cursing when she nicked her finger with a knife, stemming the trickle of blood on the sleeve of her old dress.

  Ismelda was shut up in her bedroom in disgrace, because Signor Bisotti had caught her sitting up in the pomegranate tree this morning. What a fuss just because a child was tempted to climb a tree. He had taken on as if she were some kind of monster. Then the miserable old bastard had confiscated her box of treasures. Mother of God! How awful was it to stash a pile of childish keepsakes in a box? Hadn’t he ever been a child himself? He was probably born a wizened little shitpot. Whatever had his wife seen in him? She had been a good-looking woman with a sunny temperament. Mind you, there had been some gossip that she’d been betrothed to the wood carver who lived in the alleyway behind the church, but Signor Bisotti had paid her parents handsomely for her hand in marriage.

  Marie finished preparing the vegetables for the minestrone and began to make the strangolapreti. Later, Luca was coming to help her make some gelato. He, bless him, was full of himself these days with his plans for opening a shop in Naples selling this icy gelato and making his fortune.

  She had her work cut out today: after all the cooking, she must serve at the table tonight – it would stick in her craw to fetch and carry for the likes of the widow Zanelli and her simpering daughters. As for Father Rimaldi, maybe the strangolapreti would do the trick and strangle the bastard.

  She crossed herself hastily. It wasn’t right to think ill of a man of the cloth, but these days he was strutting around Santa Rosa as if he were some kind of prince. He was puffed up with his own importance, telling everyone that soon he would be the guardian of a church which boasted a painting of feasting cherubs by the famous Piero di Bardi. No doubt he would line his pockets with the offerings from people who came from far and wide to look at the great man’s work.

  She had been back to the house in the Via Dante several times, on the pretext of passing messages to Luca. Each time she had taken Piero a little offering, morello cherries steeped in wine, a fish stew or a walnut cake. He was filling out a little, but he wasn’t at all well and she’d noticed that sometimes he stumbled into the furniture as if he hadn’t seen it. She was worried because, despite the animation in his eyes, he looked gaunt and exhausted. They spoke little, apart from polite pleasantries, but she was comfortable in his company and he in hers, and sometimes he looked at her in a way which made her heart feel as if it had turned to panecotta.

  All day long and half the night Piero was working on his masterpiece. Signor Bisotti constantly bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t seen the picture yet, but Piero was adamant on that point. No one was going to see it until it was finished; no one, that is, except Bindo. Maria knew he’d seen it – he and Piero had struck up quite a friendship in the last few weeks.

  Maria sighed. Life would change for ever when that awful woman came here to live. She was driving the whole village mad, waylaying all and sundry and bragging about the fact that her daughters were soon to be immortalised in paint.

  In a few weeks she would be wed, would become the new Signora Bisotti and move into the Villa Rosso. Maria smiled ruefully. Signor Bisotti had been searching high and low for the wedding ring that had belonged to his first wife, because the old skinflint wasn’t willing to have a new one made. He hadn’t found it yet, and she was damn sure that Ismelda had something to do with its disappearance though she’d flatly denied it.

  Chapter 51

  Catrin and Tony were sitting on the step of the Café Romana watching a huge moon rising. The breeze was cool, with a hint of rain in the air, and somewhere far off a bell clanged dolefully.

  “Why is that bell ringing non-stop?”

  “That’s the Waiting bell in Aberderi,” Tony said.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Someone’s ill and not expected to live through the night. They’ll ring the bell all night long until first light.”

  Catrin shivered and Tony put his arm round her and hugged her.

  She said, “Don’t let’s talk about dying. That was a lovely meal, Tony, You know you really should open a restaurant somewhere – you’d be great at it.”

  “Ah, chance would be a fine thing.”

  “You know earlier when you were talking about Benito? Norma said that he got into some trouble here. What did he do?”

  Tony drew heavily on his cigarette, and it was a while before he spoke. “He was accused of stealing something from the tower.”

  “In the castle?”

  “Yes. You know where the old nursery is?”

  “I’ve never been up there.”

  “Well, sometimes when Shrimp’s was full they used the tower as an overflow. Guests stayed there and walked up to Shrimp’s for their meals.”

  “So if it was raining while they stayed here, they’d get soaked?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Catrin grinned. That was one mystery solved. Arthur Campbell must have stayed in the tower, and that’s why he’d written the comment about getting soaked.

  “Go on, tell me the rest.”

  “Benito was in the tower, doing some painting and repairs, and one of the guests accused him of stealing. She said that she caught him going through her bags.”

  “And was he?”

  “I never believed a word of it.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The police were called and PC Idwal, the local bobby at the time, who was a bit of an idiot, locked him in the tower while they waited for a police car to arrive from Swansea, but he did a Houdini and escaped.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “God knows, but he did.”

  Tony threw down his cigarette in a shower of sparks. “I got a postcard from him a few weeks later from Italy.”

  Catrin gave him a sideways glance and said softly, “The Napoli cherub postcard?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “He was mad about cherubs, always going on about finding some long-lost painting by an Italian fellow – as if there was any chance of finding it here in Kilvenny!”

  “He came here to look for it?” Catrin asked incredulously.

  “He’d met a woman in London, another nut case who was just as mad about this artist, and she had a picture which she was convinced was a di Bardi. She said she’d found it between the pages of an old book when she was staying in Kilvenny. Very far-fetched, if you ask me.”

  “A picture of an ugly cat without any teeth?”

  “How the heck did you know that?”

  “I just have a good imagination, that’s all.”

  They were silent for a while. Catrin was convinced that she knew who the woman was: Sister Matilde in the days before she had become a nun. Sister had stayed here and had taken the book on Piero out of the library and never returned it.

  “And Benito went away and you never saw him again?”

  “That’s right. He just disappeared into the sunset and left a lot of unhappy people behind him.”

  Catrin fell silent again, staring up at the map of stars above and the huge, milky moon that drifted above Gwartney’s Wood. Ov
er in Aberderi the Waiting bell continued to toll.

  52

  It was gone midnight by the time Catrin got back to the castle and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She was still a little tipsy from all the wine. She undressed and crawled into bed but, though she was physically exhausted, her brain would not let her rest and she kept going over and over what Tony had told her.

  “Benito just disappeared into the sunset and left a lot of unhappy people behind him.”

  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.

  53

  Night 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.

  54

  Aberderi 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 sa
id 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.”