The Lemon Tree Café

by Cathy Bramley

  My heart zipped about joyously. ‘There was me thinking that you and him …?’

  She smoothed a strand of pink hair out of her eye and tucked it into her hood. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. Anyway, you looked upset, you OK?’

  ‘Not really.’ I pulled a face. Understatement of the century.

  ‘Come on, Gina,’ said one of the boys, tapping at her sleeve.

  ‘I’d better go.’ Gina smiled. ‘Oh good news, I nearly forgot. Tell Gabe I can do Friday now; I’ve had a cancellation. I missed him at the school gates this morning. Don’t eat it all.’

  This last comment was aimed at the boys, whose small jaws were valiantly trying to make a dent in yesterday’s bread. I reached into one of the bags and tore a roll in three, passing the smallest piece inside the rain cover to the little girl.

  ‘Friday?’ I frowned.

  ‘Babysitting,’ she said. ‘He’s taking someone important for dinner, apparently.’

  My heart double-dinged like a target in a pinball machine; it was the first I’d heard of it. Perhaps he’d met someone he liked at the school gates after all.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, intrigued. ‘If I see him, I’ll be sure to pass the message on.’

  Inside, I breathed in the warmth and welcome of our little café and cast a proud eye over our newly polished tables, the pots of fragrant herbs, the vibrant Italian crockery gleaming on Nonna’s old dresser and the framed posters adorning what little wall space we had either side of the counter. The old chalk blackboard declared our soup of the day to be a warming tomato and basil and the smell of freshly baked banana muffins wafted through the air enticingly as Juliet transferred them from the cooling rack to the cake stand.

  I was glad we were meeting here after all. The comforting surroundings of the café gave a semblance of normality to what could possibly be the most abnormal day our family had ever encountered.

  Someone had made a sort of barrier with the lemon trees across the entrance to the conservatory to offer us some privacy and I pushed my way through.

  I was the last to arrive, although I’d already shouted my hellos when I collected the bread. Dad had his arm around the back of Mum’s chair. She was shredding a napkin into a million pieces, Lia was uploading a picture of Juliet’s fresh muffins to the café’s Instagram page and Nonna was fussing with a watering can round the lemon trees.

  ‘Sorry, everyone,’ I said, hanging my coat over the back of a chair. I kissed everyone before sitting down next to Lia. ‘No Arlo?’

  Lia pointed to the toy corner where my nephew was holding court on a play mat with two other little ones. ‘Over there with Naomi, the twins’ mother. Socializing.’

  The café didn’t have quite the same Marie Celeste air to it today, although it was still quieter than usual. Doreen was in the kitchen cooking breakfasts and Juliet was serving the vicar with his usual Tuesday order. But Stanley’s chair looked very empty without him.

  Nonna let out a sigh before sitting down between Mum and Lia. ‘How’s poor Stanley? What he say?’

  She looked every day of her seventy-five years today: her white hair wasn’t as neatly coiled into its bun as normal and her eyes were dull and tired.

  ‘He said you make him feel young and he looks forward to keeping you company again soon.’

  ‘That so sweet.’ She sighed, pressing a hand to her chest. ‘After everything I done to him.’

  ‘But first things first,’ said Mum, taking Nonna’s hand. ‘We need to know if Marco is still alive.’

  Nonna looked down at her lap. ‘I know, I know. I should never have led Stanley on like that without knowing.’

  Mum took a deep breath and I could see she was fighting to keep her temper under control.

  ‘Not just because of that, Mamma,’ she said, withdrawing her hand. ‘If my father is alive, I’d quite like to meet him, if that’s all right with you?’

  I looked at Lia and pulled a face. I didn’t think there was much chance of that.

  Nonna’s chin wobbled. ‘Oh Luisa, cara, what a mess.’

  Dad’s arm slid to Mum’s shoulders and she leaned against him heavily.

  Lia looked at me as if to say ‘you’re the eldest’ and began to examine her fingernails.

  ‘We think we may have the answer to that,’ I said and outlined what Lia and I had discovered on the internet last night.

  ‘It could be him,’ said Nonna, her hand fluttering up to her neck. She twisted a gold crucifix round in her shaking fingers. ‘He was two years older than me.’

  ‘So I’ll never know him now,’ said Mum flatly. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

  Nonna drew herself up tall and met her daughter’s eye. ‘Then you are lucky, lucky girl. That man was dicky head. Worse. He was evil. I know you angry now, but he was. And if he is dead, I not sad. Not at all.’

  The feisty old lady I knew and loved was back.

  ‘Tell us why, Nonna,’ I urged. ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Nonna looked at me gratefully. ‘I lie awake last night, thinking, thinking, thinking. How to make you understand what it is like for me, why I do what I do, where to start my story. It not easy.’

  ‘How about starting with breakfast,’ said Doreen from behind the waxy leaves of the potted lemon trees. She pushed her plump bottom through and set a tray of bacon sandwiches on the table. ‘I bet none of you has eaten.’

  She was right, I hadn’t been hungry earlier. My mouth watered.

  ‘Doreen, you’re a marvel,’ said Dad, picking one up and chomping straight into it.

  She went pink and her cheeks dimpled.

  ‘And as you know this is proper Derbyshire bacon.’ She flicked her plait over her shoulders. ‘Not like the stuff they serve up at Garden Warehouse, all fat and gristle.’

  ‘Tea up!’ Juliet called, her wiry frame also backing through the greenery.

  Mum made room for a second tray and both Doreen and Juliet hovered while we helped ourselves to mugs of tea and bacon sandwiches and showered them with gratitude.

  Nonna took a couple of mouthfuls and pushed her plate aside.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Nonna?’ I suggested. ‘We know so little about your life back in Italy.’

  Because whenever we asked you about it, you always changed the subject …

  ‘And what we thought we knew, we actually don’t,’ Mum added, nostrils flaring.

  Lia widened her eyes. ‘What about …?’ She jerked her head towards Doreen and Juliet who seemed to be stacking the empty plates in slow motion.

  Nonna lifted a shoulder. ‘I have no secrets from my staff.’

  Dad cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, no more than from anyone else,’ Nonna muttered, folding her arms.

  ‘Hello? Anyone serving?’ called a familiar voice from the counter. ‘Ooh, hello? Am I missing something?’

  The makeshift barrier of potted lemon trees was no match for Stella Derry’s nosiness and her beady eyes darted round us all.

  ‘Yeah, your invite.’ Juliet scowled at her and marched her back through to the café. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Well!’ said Stella, adding resignedly, ‘Earl Grey, please.’

  Doreen glanced at her colleague’s retreating back and nibbled her lip.

  ‘We, Juliet and me, well, we wanted to say that we understand that things are a bit tricky, so don’t worry about the café. We’ll manage it between us.’

  ‘True that,’ Juliet agreed gruffly, rejoining us after dispensing the fastest pot of tea in history. ‘This is a proper family business in every sense of the word. The way you rally round to support each other—’

  ‘Yes, like when Rosie stepped in to help here even though she thought the job was beneath her,’ said Doreen with a ghost of a smile.

  I opened my mouth to argue but Juliet ploughed on.

  ‘Aye, and when you all went to watch Alec sing Dolly Parton songs.’

  ‘In a dress and heels.’ Doreen’s eyebrow lifte
d a fraction.

  ‘When he had his midlife crisis.’

  Dad ran a finger round his collar. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘And you all let Lia take over the kitchen for hours using every utensil we own just to make one pot of soup,’ Juliet added innocently.

  Lia frowned. ‘Not hours.’

  I didn’t look at her. Three to be exact.

  ‘And that’s what makes this family special. We feel privileged to be part of it, don’t we, Juliet?’ said Doreen, looping her arm through her colleague’s.

  ‘Aye. Now, every family has a story to tell, I reckon,’ she said, checking we all still had tea in our mugs. ‘And we’re going to leave you to tell yours.’

  The two of them disappeared back through the branches to the counter without another word and for a moment we were all silent. It was the longest speech they’d ever made without bickering and certainly the most heartfelt.

  I looked at the faces I loved most in the world and felt my throat tighten; this family was special and whatever it was that Nonna had to tell us, that would never change.

  ‘Mamma?’ Mum said calmly. ‘Rosie’s right, I think you should start at the very beginning.’

  ‘OK.’ Nonna took a sip of her tea and set the mug carefully on a coaster while she gathered her thoughts. ‘I was born in Sorrento in nineteen forty-one. My mother was Isabella and my father was Salvatore De Rosa, Sav for short. My brother was older than me, he is Sav too. We live in apartment over the family business.’

  ‘A café?’ Lia asked.

  Nonna shook her head. ‘A bar called Bar Salvatore.’

  Dad chuckled.

  She caught his eye and her lips twitched. ‘My family like that name. Papà worked hard – too hard – and died suddenly when I was only young. Mamma took over until Sav left school. Then, of course, he run it because he is man of the family.’

  Nonna told us about growing up in the pretty town of Sorrento: diving off the rocks and swimming in an emerald Mediterranean Sea, watching the fishermen bring in their fresh catch at the Marina Grande, playing in the narrow streets around the Piazza Tasso when the square filled up with people dancing and drinking during festivals throughout the year. And, of course, the lemon groves which she had always hinted at but had never wanted to discuss until now.

  ‘When I sixteen,’ Nonna began, ‘I leave school and start to work in the bar. I cook and clean and waitress. Sav was in charge. He did as little as possible.’

  ‘If I ever have another baby and it’s a girl,’ said Lia, folding her arms, ‘they’ll be treated exactly the same.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ I murmured.

  ‘Every day, I meet my girlfriends in the lemon grove in the middle of Sorrento. We sit in shade, talk about boys and escape our mothers and our jobs for an hour. Our little bit of freedom.’

  I gazed at Nonna, transfixed. The sounds and smells of the café behind me disappeared and I found myself transported to 1950s Italy and inside the head of a sixteen-year-old girl, on the cusp of falling in love …

  One baking hot day when the air was thick and still, Maria was sitting with her friends, talking and drinking lemonade as usual in the lemon grove, when suddenly there was a cry as a ladder, which had been leaning against a nearby tree slipped, a pair of legs appeared amongst the branches and a wooden crate of lemons came crashing to the ground. The legs belonged to a boy who landed with a thud at the girls’ feet. Her friends laughed as the lemons rolled everywhere and the boy darted left and right to collect them but Maria didn’t laugh. She stared. She had never seen such a beautiful face in her life. His eyes were so dark, they were nearly black, he had wild curly hair and a strong proud nose and when he smiled at her, her heart … well, it was like having a choir of angels singing inside her head. She jumped to her feet and helped him pick up the rest of the lemons.

  The boy introduced himself as Lorenzo Carloni and asked if he could walk her home when he finished work. Maria, scarcely able to string a sentence together with nerves, said yes.

  After that they barely spent a day apart. Maria was in love. And for a reason she never understood, Lorenzo loved Maria fiercely too. He was only two years older than her but he had seen so much more life. He was loud and boisterous and made friends everywhere he went. He had nothing: no family, no home, no one. His mother and father were already dead and his grandmother had brought him up in a poor part of Naples. When she died, he travelled to Sorrento to earn a living and got work picking lemons. It didn’t pay much but it was a job and Lorenzo was grateful for what he had.

  Maria was besotted. It was as if she had been living in a world of black and white before and now it was in colour, like the movies. The sun always shone when Lorenzo was around. Her mother liked him too. He lived in a shared room in a boarding house, but he began to spend all his time with Maria’s family. Lorenzo’s dream was to escape the poverty of post-war southern Italy. He told Maria stories of men he knew who had got work and a free passage to England. Lorenzo and Maria made plans to go as soon as they were married, but Maria’s mother said she wasn’t allowed to marry until she was eighteen. So until then, both of them saved up what little money they had ready to build their new life together. The weeks before her eighteenth birthday, they talked of little else. When the day finally came, she waited for Lorenzo. He’d promised to come after work and said he’d have a special birthday present for her. She was sure it would be a ring.

  She giggled with her friends all afternoon, doing her hair and dressing in her best clothes; she was so excited to see him. By nightfall, he hadn’t come. Nor had he sent a message. At midnight still nothing. Maria went to bed worried and uneasy; it wasn’t like him to let her down.

  In the morning, the police arrived. Lorenzo was dead. He had been robbed and stabbed, dying instantly in an alley behind the cathedral. Maria was beyond devastated. The light in her heart went out and with it all her hopes and dreams of marrying the love of her life. She barely left her bed for a month. Sav went back many times for her to ask the police if they had discovered who had killed him. But they never found out. The police told Sav that the last person to see him was the owner of a jewellery shop and that the thief must have been watching him. Maria dragged herself from her bed to talk to him, desperate to find out about Lorenzo’s last movements. The jeweller confirmed that Lorenzo had been planning to propose to Maria that night. The jeweller showed her an identical ring to the one Lorenzo had chosen. It was gold and set with two tiny diamonds – one for each year he had loved her. Maria broke down in tears and the jeweller was so affected by her grief that he gave it to her to keep.

  ‘But I could not bring myself to wear it.’ Nonna sighed. ‘Lorenzo bought me a ring and it cost him his life. I never really get over that.’

  ‘Nonna,’ Lia wiped her eyes, ‘that story breaks my heart. Why aren’t you more upset?’

  The old lady patted her hand. ‘This happen nearly sixty years ago, cara. And in my head, I already tell it a thousand times.’

  ‘Then why not tell it to me, Mamma?’ Mum demanded, raking both hands through her hair.

  ‘And why keep it a secret?’ I asked, sipping the last of my cold tea. ‘It doesn’t make sense. You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘I must say, Maria,’ said Dad, his brow creasing in confusion, ‘it’s a terribly sad tale, but he was just your first love, what has all this got to do with Marco Benedetto?’

  ‘Because Lorenzo taught me how to love.’ Nonna’s features turned to stone. ‘And then Marco taught me never to let a man into my heart again.’

  Beads of perspiration formed along my forehead and my heart began to pound. I’d learned that lesson too. I prayed to God that she hadn’t learned it the same way as I had.

  ‘Coffee this time?’ Doreen smiled sweetly, plonking a tray of coffee and almond biscuits on the table.

  I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said shakily. ‘And Doreen? You’d better
find the limoncello.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse,’ said Nonna blackly.

  Chapter 23

  Over coffee, and limoncello for Nonna, she told us that as far as she was concerned, from the age of eighteen, she was Maria Carloni – Lorenzo’s widow. She had his ring, or at least one like it, she knew he had loved her and in her heart she was as good as married. And although her future plans were shattered, she was thankful for all the happy times they had had. So for the next few years, she simply carried on with her life; she watched her friends marry and have babies. But for her there was no one else, she wasn’t interested in sharing her life with a man who wasn’t Lorenzo. She lived with her mother, she worked in the bar and tried to bring in new customers, to make people feel welcome in Bar Salvatore, just like when her father had been alive.

  Throughout Nonna’s story, she kept her chin up, showing me every inch of the proud young woman she would have been all those years ago.

  ‘I can’t imagine anything keeping you down for too long,’ I said, pouring us all a top-up.

  ‘That’s true, Mamma,’ said Mum. ‘You have always been a very determined woman.’

  ‘Lia?’ Juliet appeared holding Arlo at arm’s length in front of her. He was kicking his legs and looking very pleased with himself. ‘Naomi and the twins are ready to go and I think Arlo might need a change.’

  Lia stood up, waved to the twins’ mum and shouted her thanks. Taking Arlo from Juliet, she caught a whiff of her offspring.

  ‘Oh poo.’ She pouted. ‘Now I’m going to miss the story.’

  I handed her Arlo’s changing bag and winced at the smell. ‘I’d offer to do it, but … No, actually, that’s a lie.’

  Nonna’s face had gone a peculiar colour. ‘We come to part of the story which isn’t for the children’s ears. Or yours, Alec.’

  Lia tutted. ‘Arlo isn’t going to understand.’