“Oh, Lord,” says Kyle across the table. “That looks like lardo to me.”
“Lardo?” repeats Belinda.
“Yeah, you know, smoked pig fat. I can't believe you eat that stuff. Did you make that picnic yourself ?”
“Of course I did!” Belinda lies, opening up another sandwich-shaped packet. “Sandwiches,”she says, “of “—she puts her nose between the crusts of ciabatta— “Um …”
“Lampredotto,” says Kyle, peering over. “Tripe,” he translates.
“Mm, very rustico, ”smiles Lauren, cutting into a tender piece of lamb and popping it into her mouth. “Enjoy!”
“I will.” Belinda takes a bite of her tripe sandwich, mixing it with a huge swig of wine. She chews and just manages to swallow. “Oh, look,” she adds, her eyes watering as she forgets not to be surprised by her own picnic, “a small piece of cheese.”
“Yummy,” says Lauren.
“Do you want some of Mummy's picnic?” Belinda asks Mary, a pleading look in her eyes.
“I'll mix and match between the two,” says Mary. “But I think I'll pass on the tripe.”
“Did someone say tripe?” asks Derek, raising his head from his plate, his mouth moist with meat.
“Belinda's eating tripe sandwiches,” Lauren tells him as she slices into a grilled aubergine.
“Oh, delicious. I haven't had one in ages. Can I have a bite?”
“Derek, don't be silly,” says Belinda, handing over the tripe sandwiches. “I made it especially with you in mind.”
“Oh, fantastic,” he says, pushing his lamb to one side. “This brings it all back. My childhood in Manchester. Oh, thank you.” He takes a large bite. “Mm, mm, mm,” he says, eyeing Be-linda's plate again. “Is that pork fat?”
“Yes,” says Belinda.
“Oh, may I?”
“Have it, Derek dear, do.”
“Oh, Contessa,” he grins, “with all this offal you are really spoiling me.”
“You've won him over,” declares Barbara. “He loves a bit of fat, that man, reminds him of those beef-dripping sandwiches his ma used to make.”
“Mm.” Derek beams.
While Derek's taste buds tap-dance down memory lane, everyone else gorges themselves on the antipodean feast served by the commune girls. Everyone, that is, except Mary, who can't eat, and Lauren, who is hardly eating. Mary is too tense and too excited even to think about lamb or salmon and ginger sticks. Kyle is sitting opposite her. He has just told her he loves her. And he has asked her to run away with him. She can barely stop herself from screaming with happiness. Never has a picnic proved to be so long, so dull, and so protracted.
Lauren, having asked around, has learned that one of the main reasons why Belinda always came in last in the cheeserolling competition was because she drank too much wine and ate too much food before the race. To keep her chance of victory high, Lauren is abstaining from both.
Meanwhile, the others are not holding back. Derek's on his second tripe sandwich. Howard, having gotten over Belinda's smarting alcohol comment, is working his way speedily through a bottle of wine. Paloma is on her fourth glass; Duran and Janet are on their third each. Jaqui is trying to pace herself but not succeeding, due to dehydration at the coal face of cooking. And Kyle is so excited that he has finally admitted to Mary he loves her that he can hardly stop smiling and sipping his wine.
Just as everyone is about to sit back to let their food digest, the announcement comes over the loud-speaker that the cheese rolling is about to commence. Lauren stands up and starts to loosen her shoulders and relax her legs by shaking them out. Derek is impressed. “Bravo!”
“Go, Lauren! Go, Lauren!” chant the Aussies.
Everyone gets up to walk toward the finish line just before the church. The roadsides are already packed with Italians who stand two or three deep in places, waiting for the races to begin.
First up is the children. Six young boys stand in a row at the top of the hill, each with a round cheese the size of their own heads at their feet. The elderly man who runs the café on the Serrana road walks the length of the line checking each cheese. Dressed in a black jacket and trousers with a white shirt and the Italian flag worn as a sash, he takes his job very seriously. As, it seems, do the boys. Aged between eight and eleven, their faces are determined, and their dark eyes are trained on the road. Their parents are already shouting encouragement. The elderly man mutters something. The children pick up their cheeses. Then, suddenly, without any ceremony, they're off.
One rolls his cheese immediately over the side of the road and is disqualified. His face goes pink as he tries not to cry. Another child falls over and grazes his knee on the white stone road. The other four cheeses keep careering down the hill. Another boy goes over the edge. A cheese falls flat on its side.
Finally, there are only two boys left in the running. The technique is hard—to keep patting the cheese along while keeping it upright and not slowing it down. Then it's all over—the taller, older, and more experienced of the two boys crosses the line first. A corner of the crowd erupts. The Bianchi family joins in—he's a cousin from a nearby valley. There is much cheering, clapping, and celebration. The boy is held aloft and bounced from shoulder to shoulder.
Next up are three old men whose cheeses are twice the size of the children's. Each is dressed in black trousers with gnarled bowlegs like olive trees, only their shirts are different: one is white, another is maroon, and the last is a pale pistachio green. They start off at a more dignified pace. Their cheeses are well controlled as they trot behind them, keeping them perpendicu-lar. The crowd is loud and boisterous. They cheer them on. It is neck and neck. There is nothing to choose between them. Then, suddenly, the man in the pistachio shirt loses control of his cheese. It careers off in the direction of the maroon-shirted man. The pistachio man's cheese collides with the maroon man's cheese and takes them both off the edge of the road and into instant disqualification. While the man in the white shirt graciously crosses the line to claim his victory, the other two are farther up the hill, shouting and slapping each other aggressively on the arms.
Finally, it is Lauren's turn in the open race. Here, the lineup is packed and clearly more competitive. Gianfranco and Marco Bianchi are standing near her, rubbing their large cheeses for a smoother, more even roll. Other groups of men appear to have arrived from outside the village. They are professional cheese rollers with different-colored sashes around their waists and silverware stacked up at home.
“Go on, Lauren!” shouts Howard, raising a glass of red wine in her direction. She salutes back like a gymnast about to mount her apparatus.
“Go, Lauren! Go, Lauren! Go, Lauren!” chant the Aussie girls, stirring the air like a Jerry Springer audience.
“Go, Lauren, go!” shouts Barbara, shaking a sweaty pink fist.
“Go on, Mom, stick it to them!” shouts Kyle, his hands cupped around his mouth.
The atmosphere is tense. The thirty or so competitors jostle for position. Elbows are out, cheeses are ready, some of the more determined are pawing the ground like bulls about to charge. Her head above the herd, Lauren looks cool and serene.
“Uno, due, tre!” shouts the elderly man in the sashed Italian flag.
They're off, flying down the hillside at full pelt. The tactics are dirty, people are being thumped, tripped, their cheeses kicked over and out of the way. Others forge forth. Lauren is in the running.
“Go on!” shouts Derek.
The noise is deafening.
“Come on, Mom!” yells Kyle.
They round the corner into the home stretch. Franco Bianchi is out in front. He's being pursued by a burly man in a red sash. Lauren is third, running along, patting furiously, keeping up with the men.
“Go, Lauren! Go, Lauren! Go, Lauren!”The Aussie girls stir.
“Come on, Franco, come on, you bastard, come on,”mutters Belinda, her face puce with wine and worry. Her hands are sweaty and tense.
The finish l
ine is only a few rolls away. Franco and Red Sash are head to head. Lauren is in third. The rest of the field is not far behind. Franco makes his move. He goes to knock Red Sash out of the way. They hit each other, their cheeses collide, they both fall flat on their sides, and Lauren frantically pats her way to the first expat victory in the history of the Festa di For maggio.
The Aussies go crazy, Kyle jumps for joy, Barbara cries with emotion, and Belinda is nearly sick. Fortunately her groan of despair is drowned in the roars of applause from everyone else. As Lauren is held aloft, her elegant limbs bounced from handsome Italian shoulder to handsome Italian shoulder, Belinda leans against a tree for support. Weak with fury, she almost passes out as the americana and her large silver cup bob past on their victory parade.
As Belinda's festa goes from bad to worse, she takes solace from the nice Riesling wine brought along by the Australian girls. She sits at the opposite end of the table from the victorious Lauren, telling long-winded stories about the joy of taking part.
Night falls and the dancing begins, and while Lauren enjoys entertaining the very attentive Derek, Barbara, and Howard, and Belinda continues to repeat herself in the company of Paloma and Duran; Kyle and Mary spot their opportunity for a discreet dance.
The air is warm and the stars are just beginning to show in the night sky. The members of the village band, with rotund Roberto on the fiddle and the two brothers who work in the supermarket near Serrana on piano and trumpet, are striking all the right notes. Hidden in the middle of the crowd, Kyle's arms are wrapped around Mary as they sway in time to the music.
“This is wonderful,” he whispers.
“Mm,”she agrees, inhaling his warm, sweet smell as she leans against his chest.
“You're wonderful,” he says, brushing his cheek against her hair.
“What a magical evening,” she says. “I don't think I've ever been so happy.”
Suddenly Kyle feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns swiftly around. Gianfranco Bianchi is standing behind him, his hair dank with sweat, his shirt transparent. His eyes are glazed with drink. “My go,” he announces, pointing to Mary.
“Oh, no, mate,” says Kyle, smiling, putting a protective arm around her. “She's with me.”
“I want dance,” slurs Franco, as he lunges forward and shoves Kyle, stumbling, to the ground.
“Honestly, Franco,” says Mary, taking a step back.
“Hey,”says Kyle, standing up and brushing himself off, “what are you doing?”
“I want dance,” explains Franco, walking toward Mary and making swinging, dancing moves with his hips.
The crowd, sensing that something is going on, starts to move away and clear a space around the three of them.
“Dance, dance,” says Franco.
“No, thank you,” replies Mary.
“Dance, dance,” he repeats.
“Oy, Franco,” shouts Kyle, tapping him on the shoulder making him turn around, “the lady's said no.”
“Fuck off,” says Franco, taking a swing at Kyle and missing.
“Fuck you,” says Kyle, hitting him full on the jaw.
The music stops, the crowd moves farther away, and the three of them are left on their own. Franco stoops in the middle, holding his jaw, working up the energy to make another strike.
“Just leave her alone, man,” says Kyle, his palms out in front of him.
“What's going on?” asks Lauren, making her way toward the circle in the crowd.
Franco makes another lunge. The crowd draws breath as he fails to make contact.
“Oh, Gawd, Mary,” says Belinda, zigzagging through the crowd. “Is that ghastly American boy pestering you again?”
“Pestering her? Puh-lease!” yells Lauren, swinging around, her hands on her hips. “As if my grade-A-student son would want to have anything to do with your deadbeat daughter!”
“Your grade-A-student son? Honestly, if you could hear yourself. Mary has no interest in your ghastly son, no matter how many stupid bloody grades he has. Mary, come here,” demands Belinda.
“Mary, stand your ground,” says Kyle, taking a step toward her, his eyes fixed on hers.
“Mary, come here,” demands Belinda again. “I won't ask a third time.”
“Mary,” says Kyle, his voice urgent, his eyes pleading. “Anything,” he says. “Remember, we can do anything together.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asks Lauren.
“Come here, Mary,” snaps Belinda. “I'm not joking.”
“Mary?” says Kyle.
Mary looks from one face to another, then slowly but surely, almost imperceptibly at first, she starts to move. Her eyes fixed on his, her footsteps uncertain, she walks toward Kyle.
“Come on,” he urges, his arms outstretched. “Come on, you can do it.” He smiles.
“Come on. Mary, anything,” he says, as she falls into his arms.
Someone claps. Belinda scans the crowd. “You traitor!” she shouts at her daughter. She takes an unsteady step forward. “I never want to see you again!”
“Mum!” pleads Mary, trying to move forward. Kyle holds her back.
“I mean it, you ungrateful little tart!” roars Belinda. “I never want to see you again. In fact, if you so much as darken my door … Never again, you understand. Never!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
alking around her house in her cream nylon nightie, Belinda looks as if she has been exhumed. The lack of sleep, the bottle of red wine she consumed last night on her return from the festa, coupled with that morning's strong, milky coffee, have all curdled in her stomach, making her grumpy, disoriented, and on the verge of throwing up. She is also in shock. After all it is not every day that one loses a daughter.
Last night, when she returned to Casa Mia, furiously redfaced and humiliated, she sat up for a while knocking back medicinal red wine while awaiting Mary's humble arrival. The silence in the house was overwhelming. A hot wind whistled. Even the crickets were muted. At the faintest sound of a door rattling or a shutter banging, Belinda called out her daughter's name, expecting to see Mary's sheepish face in the doorway and hear an abject apology following swiftly in its wake. But she never came. And the longer Belinda waited up, the more she realized that Mary's departure was not some adolescent joke or teenage tantrum, but something rather more real.
Yet even this morning, when Belinda flung open the door to Mary's bedroom, she half expected her daughter to be there.
Actually, she was completely expecting her daughter to be there, sitting up in bed, with an embarrassed will-you-ever-forgive-me look on her face. But no. When Belinda opened the door to Mary's small white priest's hole of a room, all she found was a well-made bed, some neatly piled clothes, and a few sprigs of lavender in a water glass by the bed. All her inexpensive beauty products were balanced along the window ledge and her laundry bag was still beside the shower in the corner of the room.
Well, at least she hadn't actually planned to run away with the ghastly Kevin, Belinda thought. That, and the fact the americana seemed equally horrified that her son had run off, was Be-linda's only consolation. But, sadly, Lauren had not made quite such a scene in front of the whole village and people from the surrounding valleys. Lauren hadn't raised her voice. Belinda had walked off screaming like a professional wailer, her hands waving in the air, and swearing until her own face almost turned blue. The whole thing was too humiliating to think about. Belinda hadn't felt quite so demeaned, debased, and degraded since she'd found her husband at it like a terrier with her friend-and-next-door-neighbor.
How could it have come to this? she wonders, as she sits on her terrace, all alone, staring at the Casa Padronale below. What had she done to deserve this? She'd come to Tuscany nearly five years ago to try to make a new life for herself, to escape the shame of her husband's infidelity. She'd come with new resolutions, new hopes and dreams, new ideas. She'd reinvented herself. She'd changed her clothes. She'd cut her hair. She'd opened herself up to new things. S
he'd grown to like garlic. She'd discovered Michelangelo. She might even, one day, learn how to paint a watercolor foreground. She had planned to live the Frances Mayes dream, a fecund life in the fecund hills of the Tuscan countryside. And now it all lies in tatters around her.
Belinda starts to cry. Not the usual crocodile tears she uses on Derek and Howard when she wants their attention and support. But real tears. Silent tears of despair. They roll slowly and quietly down her face. She doesn't even have the energy to wipe them away. Belinda hasn't cried with grief rather than histrionics for more than five years. Even during the divorce, and the breakup of her marriage, she'd managed only a couple of very public blubs, but they were when her husband most deserved them.
However, this hot Monday morning is different. Mary is gone, and Belinda has no one to turn to for help and support. In her battle to keep control of the valley, she has managed to alienate every ally and friend she ever had. A tear crawls the length of her nose, hangs for a while, clinging to the end, before it slowly drops off, landing on the table. No one has telephoned this morning. No one has called around. In a time of crisis the expat community normally sticks together. Like the time when Howard's roof blew off in a storm: she and Derek had taken turns in having him to stay until he had found enough money to get it fixed. The expat community always sticks together—except, of course, when it's fighting among itself.
Belinda stares down the valley and strains to see the goingson at the Casa Padronale. Lauren's car is there. The americana is in. God, how she wishes that woman had never chosen to make this particular corner of Tuscany “work for her.” Why couldn't she have gone north toward Lucca, where the rich Brits hang out, or east toward Cortona, where the Bohemians live? Why did she have to arrive slap-bang in the middle of Tuscany, in the heart of Chianti, and make it her tasteful home? Nearby Poggibonsi is famously the ugliest town in Tuscany: hadn't that been enough to put her off?
Tuscany for Beginners Page 24