2008 - Recipes for Cherubs

by Babs Horton

  The rain started as she was walking up the steps from the beach, and with her head down she made her way through the long grass.

  She let herself into Shrimp’s and stood staring around her, wondering how she had let things sink to this sorry state. Looking back, there hadn’t been a particular moment when she’d given up, but after Alice died she’d slowly shut down, lost interest in herself and her surroundings. She’d stopped taking bookings and let the staff go.

  She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up how the kitchen had once been. This had been Gladys Beynon’s kingdom and was always kept spotless. Gleaming copper pots and pans reflected the light from the range, where the fire was never allowed to go out, and there was always tea brewing on the hob for all the tradesmen who brought baskets of meat and crates of fish. Halloran, the old gardener, came in with armfuls of carrots and cucumbers, radishes and peas in the pod grown in the kitchen garden.

  It used to be a hive of activity and the smells were mouthwatering. There was always the aroma of fresh bread and scones baking and the tantalising smell of hot butter being drizzled over the potted shrimps in the earthenware ramekins; the salty tang of lobsters and bream, cod and hake, kippers, cockles and mussels.

  Alice coming into the kitchen arm in arm with Benito, whom she often met when she was walking back from Duffy’s Farm where she went every morning to collect the cream and eggs. Alice carrying armfuls of wild flowers which she used to make up her posies. Alice telling Gladys, with the enthusiasm of a child, that Benito had found the remains of an Italian bread oven in the garden at Blind Man’s Lookout. Benito offering to make one for Gladys if she wanted. Gladys huffing and puffing and saying Welsh bread had always been good enough for her and she wasn’t having any foreign nonsense in her kitchen.

  How they’d laughed then, Benito saying that some of the fish she was cooking had maybe been born in Italian waters and swum all the way to Kilvenny.

  There was always talking and laughter, and in the background the bells in the pantry constantly ringing, chambermaids running hither and thither carrying with them the smells of polish and fresh linen. Kizzy waltzing in and checking her make-up in the mirror on the back of the pantry door, glancing furtively at young Tony Agosti, who had brought up some tubs of homemade ice cream from the Café Romana. Benito sitting between Alice and Kizzy, tucking into a breakfast of bacon and lava bread and cockles brought over from Aberderi.

  If only she’d had the courage, she should have handed over the running of Shrimp’s to Gladys and offered Tony Agosti the chance to work with her; they would have made a great team, and she could have left Kilvenny and made a new life for herself somewhere far away, out of reach of gossips and philistines.

  She closed the kitchen door and made her way up to Alice’s room, where she stood for a long while staring at the painting of Woman and Child. She felt close to Alice at that moment. Alice as a child, blowing kisses to this woman in the blue dress, hiding under the table in the Fisherman’s Snug. Alice as a woman, looking forward to marriage and having lots of children. She had even chosen names for them: Lucia, Maria, Pepito.

  It was almost dark as she went downstairs. The telephone began to ring. She stood stiffly listening to the shrill sound. No one had telephoned Shrimp’s in years; she’d stopped answering calls after Alice had died. She waited until the ringing stopped and then went out through the kitchen, locking the door behind her. She had taken no more than a few paces when the telephone began to ring again. She let herself back in, hurried to the booth and lifted the receiver. She flinched when she heard the hysterical voice on the other end of the line.

  60

  It was summer at last and the sun rose early, bringing with it a luminous light which drifted up the river, chasing away the bats, rinsing the sky of stars and transforming the river to a twist of pink and yellow light.

  Ismelda stood at the window looking down into the valley below. If she leant right out, she could see the deep pool below the convent where the nuns did the washing. They looked so small from up here, their heads bent as they knelt scrubbing sheets against the stones. Sometimes a soap bubble drifted up towards her, a rainbow orb glistening in the sunlight, and she thought longingly of the Villa Rosso, of Bindo and Maria, of Luca and Piero, of all that she had lost.

  Sister Annunziata had told her that they had been several times to visit her but each time they had been turned away. As the days went on she became more despondent. Once a day she was allowed out into the yard for exercise, but the other inmates terrified her: dribbling old women who rocked back and forth, groaning; others who moved around as if in a trance and, the worst by far, the ones in shackles who screamed and shook on the spot as if trying to remember the steps to some strange dance they’d learnt long ago.

  At meal times she sat in the refectory looking apathetically at the bowl of stewed beans that was served each day; all appetite gone. She thought longingly of the days in the Villa Rosso when she’d sat beneath the pomegranate tree with her friends, the sun breaking through the branches and dappling them with light.

  High summer passed, and all too soon the cold winds of autumn came boisterously up the valley, clattering the shutters and making the inmates of Santa Lucia howl with misery at the thought of approaching winter.

  61

  The moon was floating above Gwartney’s Wood, the first uneasy stars pricking through the bowl of inky sky, when Catrin wobbled back down Cockle Lane on the bike.

  Dan Gwartney, standing at the window of the library, waved as she passed the window but she was in no mood to talk to anyone. The lights were out in the Café Romana, and Meredith’s shop was in darkness.

  She left the bike in the courtyard of the castle, looked around for Aunt Ella and decided that she was either over talking to Norma or she had gone to bed early.

  She went into the kitchen, cut herself some bread and cheese, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and hurried upstairs. She found Recipes for Cherubs and turned to the picture of Bindo. She smiled down at his cheeky face, traced the dusting of freckles on his snub nose and sighed.

  If everything she’d worked out was true, Piero di Bardi and Maria Paparella had survived the sinking of the Flino and set up house in Blind Man’s Lookout. Bindo had been saved and come to work for Nathaniel Grieve in Kilvenny, where poor Luca Roselli was buried in the churchyard.

  She yawned and her stomach rumbled noisily. She was starving after all the exercise, but the bread and cheese must wait; there was something she needed to do. She went over to the wardrobe and got out Aunt Alice’s dowry box.

  She’d been wrong about one thing. Arthur Campbell certainly wouldn’t have married Alice Grieve just to get his hands on the rubbishy trinkets she’d stashed in the box. Maybe he really had loved her.

  She opened the box, tipped out the contents and dropped the box on to the bed – and heard something rattling inside. She shook the box, tipped it upside down, and saw the false bottom. Carefully she turned the box round in her hands and examined it, slid out the bottom of the box and tipped out a pile of small paintings.

  She gathered them up and laid them around her on the bed.

  They were similar to the ones in Recipes for Cherubs, although the hand that had painted these was less sure, less steady.

  There were four paintings in all.

  The first was of a red-cheeked young nun winking cheekily beneath her wimple, the fingers of one hand crossed as if she was wishing someone good luck. In the other hand she held a leather-bound book with gold writing on the front that looked as if it had been recently painted: Recipes for Cherubs. A book which had been put together over two hundred years ago and had somehow ended up here in Kilvenny and given Catrin as much pain and pleasure as it probably had Aunt Alice before her.

  She turned to the second painting, and her hand shook as she held it. There was Bindo as Catrin had never seen him before, his face white with shock, tears streaming down his dirt-streaked cheeks, his lips shaking with sorrow. Stand
ing beside him was Luca, holding on to Bindo with one hand, the scar on Luca’s cheek livid against the extraordinary pallor of his skin.

  Above the two forlorn figures of the boys the sky over Santa Rosa was darkly brooding, while around their bare feet leaves swirled in a wild eddy. Catrin could feel the pain seeping out of the painting and she shivered as they, too, would have been shivering in the cold night air…

  She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the third painting. There were the two Zanelli sisters done up like dog’s dinners, wearing identical dresses of frothy cream lace, their hair in glossy ringlets and tied with red ribbons. They looked as smug as guts, their pink mouths twisted into satisfied smiles, eyes hard as dried prunes. Signor Bisotti stood behind them with a smile which revealed teeth the colour of graveyard headstones. Standing next to him was the widow Zanelli, one hand laid across her chest, revealing a gold band on her ring finger, and on her face a smile which could turn butter rancid.

  Happy families. The new Bisotti family in the days before they went to Naples and made their fortune selling ice cream and then on to America where they had become millionaires. She supposed Ismelda had left Santa Rosa, too, and gone with them, poor girl.

  The final painting made her draw back in alarm. It was a view from a great height, looking down to where a river meandered between huge boulders. There were birds on the wing, seen from above, floating on currents of air. It made her head spin and she felt a tightness pressing down on her ribs, forcing the air out of her lungs and making her gasp.

  Catrin put down the painting and sat staring ahead of her. When she’d first seen the paintings in Recipes for Cherubs she’d been full of wonder. They had cheered her up when it had seemed that life wasn’t worth living; the recipes had given her an interest in food and making things for other people to enjoy. Maria, Luca, Ismelda, Bindo and Piero had felt like friends, not just pictures in a book, and yet beneath the surface there had been something unpleasant bubbling away all the time.

  There was such a difference between the paintings here and the ones in Recipes for Cherubs. There was no feeling of joy, of celebration or appetite for life in these. They were pictures of loss and separation, of misery and pain.

  She heard someone calling her name, and before she had time to hide the dowry box, Aunt Ella came rushing into the room, her face puce with exertion, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

  “What’s the matter, Aunt Ella?”

  “I’ve just spoken to your mother on the telephone and she’s spitting teeth and feathers.”

  Part Three

  62

  Kizzy Grieve stepped down off the train, smoothed her clothes and patted her hair. Then, looking around, she frowned and wondered if she’d got off at the right place. Kilvenny station had always been spick and span, with pots of bright flowers set along the platform and baskets of flowers hanging outside the waiting room. But now the kiosk that used to serve tea and biscuits and hot soup in the winter was boarded up, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was all run-down and grubby and there was no station-master or porter to carry her suitcase.

  She sighed. What she really wanted right now was a large gin and tonic and a long, hot bath. First, though, she’d have to face the Aunts and she wasn’t relishing that at all. As for Catrin, when she got her on her own she’d give her an absolute ear bashing. How dare she ignore her letters and not send any money? She’d had an absolute nightmare of a time in that godforsaken hellhole of a convent. She cursed under her breath. If she ever found out who had sent her on a wild-goose chase, there’d be hell to pay. It was pretty damned obvious now why she’d been sent the stupid postcard in the first place.

  When she’d arrived back in London she’d opened the door of the house in Ermington Square and realised immediately that something was wrong. The hallway was in chaos, the telephone table upturned and the cupboards under the stairs emptied out, umbrellas and hats tossed all over the place. The drawing room had been ransacked and every door and cupboard in the kitchen emptied, drawers opened and the contents strewn all around.

  The rest of the house was in equal turmoil and yet when she’d hurtled into her bedroom to check her jewellery box it was untouched. As she’d stood with her hand poised over the telephone to report the burglary to the police, it had started to ring and she’d been so relieved to hear Arthur Campbell’s voice on the other end of the line. He’d offered to come straight round, organised someone to come and do the clearing up and had taken her back to his house for the night, then driven her to Paddington this morning.

  And now here she was back in Kilvenny. She wandered out of the station and into the lane to look for a taxi but the lane was deserted. Damn and blast! It would take for ever to walk all the way to Shrimp’s. As soon as she could she’d get out of this dreary backwater and sort something out with Catrin’s school, arrange for her to stay there for the rest of the holidays. Kizzy needed a proper break after everything she’d been through of late.

  She teetered down the lane towards Kilvenny, her high heels clacking noisily on the tarmac, her suitcase banging against her legs.

  When she turned into Cockle Lane she stopped suddenly. Kilvenny had never been the most exciting place in the world, but this was far worse than she remembered it. It had been pretty in its ramshackle way, but now half the houses were boarded up and the others in dire need of a paintbrush. There was something else missing, too; that awful smell of bloody fish.

  A light went off in the Proprietary Library as she passed the window. She wondered if Dan Gwartney were still alive; he’d always seemed as old as the hills. She was sure he’d had a bit of a thing for Aunt Ella, but it certainly hadn’t been mutual. The telephone in the library rang and made Kizzy jump. She swore under her breath. She’d only been back in Kilvenny five minutes and already her nerves were in shreds.

  The Café Romana was still there, but it lay in darkness, which was odd because it had always been full in the evenings. She smiled then, thinking of the days when she’d lingered for hours over a sarsaparilla, making eyes at the local boys. She supposed Tony Agosti had long since left for the bright lights of the city; he’d always had ambition, that boy, and he was so good-looking.

  Outside Meredith Evans’s shop she stopped to catch her breath and glance at the photographs on display. God almighty, it was like a time warp in there; none of the photographs had been changed.

  Meredith had been an odd little fellow and absolutely besotted with Aunt Alice. Maybe when all the hullabaloo had died down after the wedding Alice had married him. In fact, Mrs Alice Meredith might be in there now, fast asleep upstairs, cuddled up to Meredith.

  That whole affair between Aunt Alice and Arthur Campbell had been very odd. Whatever he’d seen in Aunt Alice had been a total mystery, and it would never have worked out between them. She’d done Aunt Alice a favour, really, by flirting with Arthur, although she hadn’t meant it to turn out the way it had. God, it had been awful when Aunt Alice didn’t turn up at the chapel, with everyone there waiting expectantly. There was worse to come, though, when Ella had shown her the photographs of her and Arthur Campbell together. She’d never been in any doubt about who had taken them; it was Meredith, and the motive pure spite. Oh, well, that was all water under the bridge and probably all for the best as far as everyone was concerned. She’d thought it was the end of the world at the time, but it had given her the opportunity to escape from Kilvenny and Arthur Campbell had provided for her and Catrin well.

  She looked down Cockle Lane towards Kilvenny Castle and shuddered. She’d hated that spooky place when she was a child. It was so ancient and cold, full of whispering noises and peculiar smells that came from nowhere. When she got back to London she’d put it on the market and get shot of it.

  As she came level with the castle she stopped in her tracks. There was a flickering light in her old bedroom windows, as if the fire had been lit, and there was a light on in the kitchen.

  She crept up to the latticed windows and peered
inside. An old woman with the wildest hair she’d ever seen was sitting near the stove and opposite her sat Catrin, cross-legged in a high-backed chair. She looked very different from the last time Kizzy had seen her. She’d put on some weight, and her skin was bronzed, her face animated in a way Kizzy had rarely seen. Kizzy bristled. How could she sit there looking so bloody cheerful when she’d left her own mother abandoned in a convent full of lunatics?

  She looked at the old woman again and realised with a shock that it was Aunt Ella. The years hadn’t been kind to her – she’d never been a good-looking woman but she’d always made the best of herself in a casual way. What were they doing down here at the castle, instead of up at Shrimp’s?

  She was about to march in and disturb this delightful domestic scene, but then she had second thoughts. Aunt Ella wasn’t likely to kill the fatted calf at her homecoming so perhaps it would be best if she went up to Shrimp’s first, to find out what was going on. If Aunt Alice was there it would be easier to break the ice with her – she was always the easier of the two to twist round Kizzy’s finger.

  She backed away from the window and hurried down Cockle Lane where she stood looking at the Fisherman’s Snug. She thought longingly of those long, hot summers when she’d been home from boarding school and how she used to hide under the table in there for a kissing session with whoever she was with at the time. She sighed and slipped off her shoes to relieve her pinched toes, and to her surprise the door of the Snug opened and someone stepped out of the shadows.