‘Name them.’
‘I am going to tell that Detective you are going, I want someone in the police to be forewarned and forearmed if there are any problems.’
My tummy fluttered. ‘Of course Dad.’
‘And I want you to ring me every day. If I don’t hear from you by seven-o-clock every evening I will be calling Detective Nickelby and telling him there’s an emergency.’
‘OK’
‘And I mean it Maddie, not in an Enid Blyton adventure way – but in a serious, grown-up way.’
‘Thanks Dad.’ I found tears were coming into my eyes and quickly hugged him to hide it. As a child, if I’d had a nightmare, I would get into bed with my Mum and Dad. The reality of them, the solidity of them felt like a panacea against all danger and uncertainty. And then you become an adult yourself and you realise how misplaced that blind trust was. How little a parent can really protect you from the fickleness of fate, the world’s dangers lurking around every corner.
I was a protector now, for what it was worth. And yet here I was, potentially, knowingly, exposing my child to danger and uncertainty. How could I go somewhere, amongst people that may have something to do with the disappearance of my brother? I didn’t have the answer. All I knew was that somehow it was the only thing to do. I remembered too, a time when Dan had found some older boys trying to get some money off me at school. They were almost twice his size, and as Dan had never had a fight in his life, there was little chance that he was going to be able to rely on his physical prowess to get us out unscathed. So he did what he subsequently honed into an unrivalled talent. He bamboozled and outwitted them. Even now I can remember his exact words:
‘Now I know you boys are incapacitated and subsumed by a life lived in the lower echelons of society, and no doubt experience social and economic deprivation on an illimitable degree, which in itself has led to brute vacuity; but I wonder if you would be so kind as to disengage my kinswoman, and if so I shall, on this occasion be able to overlook this regrettable event and….’ But they were already gone. He said he had got the idea from reading the memoirs of Quentin Crisp.
Mr Amarena travelled first-class of course, and although I had managed to avoid travelling back with him, his influence obviously stretched a long way. When I arrived at the check-in desk after saying goodbye to my Dad, Nicholas and Abi, the lady behind the counter said ‘Ah yes, Mr Amarena’s guest’ in a knowing way; and said I had been upgraded. When I took my seat the steward immediately brought me over a fresh-fruit smoothie, saying Mr Amarena had arranged it for me. I would have preferred a glass of wine, or a stiff scotch.
My stomach was full of butterflies, and the baby was obviously absorbing the anxiety hormones too. He was doing a full-turn inside me in a writhing, laborious kind of way. Every now and then a foot or elbow would engage with some deep, unknown pelvic nerve and it took all my self-control not to gasp out loud. I massaged my tummy gently, and his little limbs came up to meet me and pressed against my hand.
Being obviously pregnant changes your status. You are no longer an autonomous being, but public property. Not only are you told what to eat and drink, but the social reticence of strangers disappears and you are barraged with smiles and requests to ‘touch your bump.’ At times this is endearing, at others, you long anonymity again. Anonymity is what I wanted on the plane, to have time to think about what I was doing, whether or not I had a plan. It wasn’t to be though, and I was either receiving cheesy smiles from fellow passengers or fending off the obsequious attention of the cabin crew.
When we landed, I wasn’t surprised to find there was a car waiting for me at the airport. The driver told me he was to take me to the main house, I agreed, but arranged for him to take my bags directly to Nonna’s after dropping me off.
I was completely unprepared for how it would make me feel to see the estate again. My heart pressed against my chest as the gentle, scored slopes of the vineyard came into view. The brand new leaves of the vines showed bright green against the brick red soil and I saw, with a brief swell of satisfaction, that the guest-house garden, that I had tended and planted nearly a year before, was lush and thriving.
I had only been in the main house once in the Summer of the previous year, to pick up some money and instructions when Mr Amarena had been away. I had forgotten how imposing it was. It must have been a couple of hundred years old, and the beautiful old brick of the façade, the colour of baked bread, was draped here and there with waves of glossy ivy. It was Rosa Amarena who came out to meet me. She was even more glamorous than I remembered, and not a hair of her glossy black head was out of place. She made me feel hot and fat.
‘My dear, how well you look!’
I smiled thinly. ‘Thank you Rosa. You look very well too.’
‘Ah.’ She shrugged as if she hadn’t the least concern over her appearance. I knew from Sergio however, that it took her at least two hours to get ready every morning, and she had a coterie of beauty professionals that called on her every few days. ‘You must come in out of the sun straight away. I have made some fresh lemonade. Roberto please take Miss Armstrong's things to the second-floor guest room.’
‘No!’ I hadn’t meant to say it so fiercely, Rosa’s jaw dropped slightly. I smiled and said more calmly in Italian, ‘No Roberto, please take my bags to Nonna Lazzatti’s as we arranged.’ Roberto stood still, perplexed.
‘But my dear, you can’t possibly mean to stay in my mother’s old place? In your condition you should be with us.’
‘Thank you Rosa, you are very kind. But Nonna is expecting me and I shall be very comfortable there.’ I nodded assertively at Roberto and he finally put my bags back in the car. ‘And please come and pick me up from here in about an hour so I can get back and unpack.’ He nodded mutely, shot Rosa a look which she returned with another shrug, then drove off up the track launching a cloud of red dust in the air behind him. I smiled at Rosa and headed towards the entrance. She looked down at my tummy, straining against my loose white dress, smiled and followed me into the quarry-tiled coolness of the hall.
‘Collette and Johnny can’t wait to see you Maddie. They are very excited about their little nephew!’
‘So Fabrizio told you it’s a boy?’
‘Of course! We share everything.’ That was something I very much doubted. ‘Ah, here we are!’ She ushered me into the dining room – an elegant well-proportioned room spoiled by ostentatious marble and glass furniture. Collette swooshed up to me in a cloud of Armani perfume and embraced me in a rather overwrought way, Johnny smiled toothily and then turned back to his newspaper.
‘It is so wonderful you have come!’ Collette gushed. ‘May I?’ She gestured to my tummy.
‘Go ahead.’ She laid her hand on me lightly then shrieked.
‘I felt him kick!’ I knew she hadn’t. Did she think I wouldn’t know? I bit my lip and went to sit down next to Johnny. ‘Mama’s prepared some supper. It’s just on its way. I can’t tell you how excited we were when Papa told us you were coming!’ She turned away and busied herself pouring out lemonade from a jug on the sideboard. ‘Ever since poor Sergio died we have thought often about the baby.’ She turned back round. ‘It’s like a gift from God, a little bit of him preserved before he was lost.’
I was relieved to have left the Amarena’s before Fabrizio returned, and the feeling deepened as the car drew up the flagged drive to Nonna’s house. It was built in a stone the same colour as the red soil, creating the impression that it had erupted fully formed out of the earth. This gave it a look of great solidity and a slight air of enchantment. The emergence of Nonna from the front door did little to dispel this impression, in her headscarf and long dark cotton dress she looked like some kindly old troll wife out of a fairy story. Only the white cable of iPod headphones sticking out of the top of her apron pocket reminded me that I hadn't stepped back in time.
As soon as she held me, and her little head, warm and strangely scented, nestled under my chin, I started to cry. I c
lung to her tightly and sobbed and sobbed. Despite her age, she felt firm and strong. Her hand moved rhythmically, comfortingly against the small of my back. Gently, she pushed me back and cupped my face in her hands. Her palms were rough and warm like the tongue of a cat.
‘Tsoro, it is so good to see you!’
‘And you Nonna. You don’t know how good. I do miss him you know, so much.’
She rested her left hand on my shoulder and her right hand went down and rested on the taut skin of my belly. As she did so I felt the baby push towards the heat of her, distending my belly. I gasped and she laughed and looked up at me, her eyes twinkling. ‘He is good and strong! You have done well, you have protected and nourished the boy.’
I remembered what she had said to me the first time we met. ‘Last Summer,’ I said a little breathlessly, ‘when I came to visit you with Sergio for the first time, you said ‘He is a wise boy.’ I thought you meant Sergio, but you didn’t did you? You meant the baby. You knew I was pregnant.’
She smiled at me and stroked my cheek. ‘Come in the house Maddie. There are things I must tell you.’
The kitchen was cool and her scent was explained by a pile of round oregano and olive breads steaming gently on the rough wooden table. She pulled out an old rocking chair for me and put a small coffee pot on the stove. She seemed about to sit down, but then smiled mischievously and pointed up in the air with a little gasp. ‘I nearly forgot Tsoro! My latest gadget, I bought it from the ebay!’ She jumped up, and slotted her white and brushed steel iPod into a space-age looking implement the shape of a giant bullet. Immediately the kitchen was filled with old Italian folk music – a woman singing along to a high-pitched string instrument like a mandolin. Nonna started to sing with her, her voice reedy but tone perfect. She poured the coffee and moved her feet nimbly back and forth as the song speeded up. I started to feel a little woozy, there was something soporific about the combined smells, of warmth, herbs and coffee; the undulating singing and the sound of nonna’s slippered feet passing back and forth across the sandy flag-stoned floor. I must have drifted off for a moment. I was roused by Nonna waving a cup of sweet coffee under my nose.
‘You must rest after we have spoken. But first eat my dear, and drink your coffee. She pushed a plate of torn bread, grapes and oozing cheese in front of me. I was starving I realised, and slathered some of the cheese onto the fresh-baked bread and chewed it hungrily. I stopped.
‘Oh, Nonna, the cheese…’
‘You think that women in France stop eating the Brie when they are pregnant? Mangiare and enjoy. It is pasteurised. The food fascista,’ she gestured ruefully, ‘they are even here in the hills of Italy these days.’
‘You said you had things to tell me Nonna.’
‘Yes, I have. I have a story.’ She sighed and looked at me keenly. I held her gaze. She looked at people the same way that John did, with a deep analytical interest. The comparison made my tummy clench and I breathed deeply and tried to push it away. ‘Something has happened to you since I last saw you Maddie. Something has changed in you, or woken?’ When I didn’t answer she nodded her head.
‘Your story Nonna.’ I prompted her gently.
‘Yes, yes. It come.’ She reached into one of the voluminous pockets of her dress and pulled out a little battered flask and unselfconsciously tipped a little of the spirit it contained into her coffee. ‘When I was a bambina, about six or seven I was playing out in the field behind our house and I suddenly thought of my Aunt Anna. I had not seen her for nearly a year, but I saw her face so clearly, she was smiling at me.’ Her voice trailed off and then she turned and looked at me with a little jump. ‘Scusate Tsoro. For a moment I forget you are there. It happens many times at my age.’
‘It happens a lot when you’re pregnant too.’
She laughed. ‘Papa was out feeding the chickens, I ran up to him and told him that I had just seen Aunt Anna, as clearly as I could see him. That she had been stood in front of me and smiled. He looked at me strangely. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you this Cara, but your Aunt Anna died this morning. We just had a telephone call but we didn’t want to upset you.’ He sat down and put me onto his lap then and ask me if I ever see other things too. I tell him about the time that I warned my mother to bake some bread as her suocera was coming for surprise visit; how I had known that my gatto was sick before she died. How I had known why I should not be alone with Signor Mugnaio, and all the time my father he listen, and stroke my hair and I feel his chin rough with beard as he nod against my cheek.
That evening after dinner he and my Mamma tell me that the Lazatti’s had a gift, one that usually come only to the men, but somehow, I had it. I not know it then, but the men in my family had been honoured for hundreds of years, as advisers and seers for everyone from peasants to Sindaco’s. How even then, people, they came to my father for advice on their weddings, their crops. There are reasons that the Italian’s are such a superstitious people; because in many places they have managed to keep hold of these traditions - these gifts.’
‘So you had the gift, and Rosa?’
‘No not Rosa. As I said, it is rare for Lazatti women to have the gift. It go past a generation.’
‘To Sergio!’
‘Yes, he had it, dear boy. He had it and it torture him because with it he see his own fate.’
I put my head in my hands. It explained so much. It explained his sensitivity, his occasional sadness, the suddenness of his declaration to me; the fact he wasn’t fazed when I said I couldn’t have children. Maybe he knew it even then – that he would have a baby with me - this miracle baby. ‘I remember when I was here when he was a little boy, he knew that one of the goats was pregnant! And our son, he has the gift. You can tell already?’
Nonna smiled and nodded. ‘Yes Tsoro. I recognised his energy as soon as I saw you that day. It emanated from you.’
I sat forward, adrenalin surged into my blood and the baby squirmed instantly in response. ‘I’ve seen him. I’ve not told anyone this, but I’ve seen him!’
Nonna raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
‘I thought perhaps it was some kind of waking dream, like the ones I had as a child. Something brought on by the hormones; but it’s not is it?’ I sat back, a little breathless and shook my head.
Nonna leaned forward and rested her brown wrinkled hand on mine. ‘This is much for you to think about. To understand.’
‘But he’s just a baby. He has no language and no awareness. He’s a blank! How can he talk to me and reason with me? It doesn’t make any sense!’
‘When we are born we are empty and we are full. It is the way. It is your son’s consciousness that talks to you; the consciousness that is waiting to be called in when he is born. It surrounds him and comes from him but it is not yet of him. Piccoli bits of it are there; when he see sunlight through the skin of your stomach, when he hear your voice echo, when he touch the umbilical cord that feed him. These things he feels, but when he is born, he will be able to think also. Then all his consciousness, his anima, will come into him – will grow to fill him preselezione continua -a’ she gestured into the air, ‘ – to last his whole life!’
I tried to focus on Nonna’s rapt face and bright eyes, but my head swam and my vision started to blur.
Nonna reached for my hand. ‘Now you must rest. Both of you must rest.’
Nonna woke me at a quarter to seven as she had promised. I had descended immediately into a deep dreamless sleep and felt heavy-eyed and sluggish as I searched for my phone. Dad seemed reassured to hear from me, and to find that I was safely with Nonna. Anxiety sharpened the edges of his voice though, and I knew that it was going to take a lot to keep him from jumping on the first plane and flying over; especially if I was going to have the time to look for Dan.
After talking with Nonna I had half expected to descend straight into the lighthouse, but I was relieved when I didn’t. As much as I loved seeing my son, I was overwhelmed. Being pregnant amplified the powerf
ul forces now at play in my life. In many ways it felt like the most natural thing in the world – after all, millions of women went through it. On the other hand, truly believing there is a living being growing inside you, feeling it move and hiccup against your skin and bones, was strange and miraculous. I felt like I was caught on a tidal wave. It was extraordinary how much my life had changed in one short year. When I’d emerged, dazed and blinking from my depression, I had intended, resigned myself, to a life that was simple and predictable; but once I had invited Sergio to have dinner with me that Summer evening in Mr Amarena’s guest house, I had sent my life down a completely different path – one of surprise parenthood and loss and mystery. I wondered if with hindsight I would make a different decision but decided that I wouldn’t. My baby was the most important thing in the world to me now, and that was that.
When I got downstairs Nonna told me that the Amarena’s had called to invite me to join them for dinner. With a knowing look she said that Fabrizio was bringing the cart over at eight. My first impulse was indignation and a desire to call him up and tell him what to do with his cart – if anything, now I was in Italy, the impulse to avoid him was even stronger. How easy it would be just to stay with Nonna for a couple of weeks, spend time at Sergio’s grave, to just be and think. I shook myself internally. That wasn’t the only reason I had come. I had also come to see if I could find out anything about Dan and I wasn’t going to do that by hiding away. So I swallowed my apprehension and tiredness and showered.
I spent time getting ready – somehow looking as good as I could was a kind of talisman. The Amarena’s were all impeccably groomed and I wanted to present as confident and strong a front as possible. I felt very vulnerable. A part of me suspected that Fabrizio at least, would like nothing more than to have my baby to himself, and I had to make sure that I held everything together and didn’t present any weak points. This was a difficult state of mind to contain, and the effort of it was making my boy twist and press inside me. I massaged my belly, feeling the pressure and tightening under the skin. It reassured me and strengthened my resolve.
The Soul Room Page 14