by Angela Petch
Then Giselda told us a story. One of her cats came to sit on her lap and curled up in a tiny ball and she stroked it gently. You could hear it purring from the other side of the room.
Giselda’s story
Once upon a time there was a handsome cowboy, young and strong, who used to ride down from the mountain of Viamaggio to the Maremma coast each autumn.
One spring as he started on his return journey away from the coast, on a day that was hot and sultry, he led his horse to drink water near the site of an Etruscan tomb which had filled up with cool, refreshing water. As his horse started to drink, the cowboy thought he could make out a beautiful young girl, her arm reaching out to the tomb. He thought it was probably a trick of the light but her smile was so alluring and she was so beautiful he just had to try and grasp hold of her and he ended up falling into the tomb. He couldn’t manage to climb out and so he drowned.
That night his poor horse kept whinnying with grief and galloped about the Maremma plain, desperate to be reunited with his handsome young rider.
It is said that even today, if you are out and about on a moonlit night down on the Tuscan coast, you can hear the neighing of a horse breaking the silence of the night.
After her story, Gianni’s Babbo told another story.
Gianni’s Babbo’s story
A greedy miller cheated people by taking some of the grain for his own use at the beginning and keeping flour back after it was milled.
One harsh winter, when people were dying like flies from cold and hunger, the miller was the only person comfortable. He sat beside his warm fire with his larder full of bread and he sent packing any beggar that came his way.
One night a woman came to his door. She was cold and dressed in rags and she held a baby in her arms but he pushed her away and shut the door in her face.
He drank a glass of red wine and fell asleep and when he awoke, the fire had gone out in his hearth and his mill was in ruins around him.
He saw the ghost of the woman who had come to his door, now dressed in fine clothes. Her beautiful face looked like the one on the statue of Our Lady in the little church in his village and she told the miller off for earlier sending the poor hungry woman away from his warm fireside.
‘You sent me packing,’ she told him, ‘and now your mill and your bread will be forever cursed.’
‘Now, the next time you walk past the site of his old mill,’ Gianni’s babbo told us, ‘you will notice that the mill stones are still to this day cracked and useless and you should make the sign of the cross as a sign of respect.’
We spent ages trying to decide which mill it could possibly be but I am sure it isn’t our lovely Mulino. It doesn’t feel at all spooky and nobody walks past it and makes the sign of the cross. I think it might be the old watermill at the bottom of Rofelle, at the end of a steep stony track. Nobody has lived there for years and Babbo told me he has seen wolves there recently.
SUNDAY
YIPEE!
Today we returned to our normal life. It was great to pour cornflakes into a bowl and not wear scratchy clothes and Mamma said she was going to spend more than an hour in the bath and nobody should disturb her, no matter what. I played a new computer game and the twins watched cartoons on the telly.
But I’m glad we did our experiment of living in the 1920s.
And in a kind of way I miss some things too, like the stories round the fire and not having to have a shower each day and Mamma laughing more.
At least I’ve done my homework and I’ve decided that now I’ve spent a bit more time with them, some of the kids in my class are not too bad. So I might go back to school in Badia in September after all.
Chapter 17
Alba by the river – 2010
The kitchen table was upended, transformed into a pirate ship, and now the twins were performing cartwheels across the living room area. Their excited squeals and annoying secret language was getting on Alba’s nerves. She’d read the same paragraph seven times over before snapping her book shut and shouting to Anna, ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Heat bounced off rocks in the river. There was no breeze and cicadas kicked off their noisy protest in the stifling afternoon. Willow trees stood still, their long silvery finger branches drooping in the shallows. She made for her special space in the lee of a high outcrop further along from the pool, near the waterfall where the family often swam. Her head was full of the trip to Camerino. The university had an amazing reputation and she’d liked the old town. There was a lot going on and the students were very friendly. Babbo seemed keen she should enrol in architecture and design and at school they had recommended this too because it would suit her artistic talents. But she was unsure. All of a sudden there seemed too many decisions to make in her life.
Sitting in the shade on her favourite flat rock with its whirls and curls, she began to relax. Babbo had explained when she was little how her rock had once been at the bottom of the sea. She imagined its curious undulations as waves frozen in time. It was hard to take in that the ocean once covered even the peaks of the mountains surrounding her all those zillions of years ago. Thinking about it made her feel insignificant, like a speck of nothingness. She felt she should hurry up and live her life before it passed her by.
The boy was at the pool again on his own. She had seen him arrive with his family at Il Mulino. He was wearing tight trunks, unlike the baggy swimwear fashionable amongst her school friends. He was fit.
But he probably plays English cricket and tennis and rugby and goes to a public school and lives in a big, swanky house in Surrey, like Aunt Jane, she thought. Probs a right snobby nob…
He was climbing to the top of the waterfall now, the muscles in his arms straining as his fingers sought purchase.
More to the right, she wanted to yell. Move your left foot up to the right and you’ll find the stone big enough to take your weight. Then grip the reinforcement bar sticking out on the left and you can haul yourself up easily.
She could do it with her eyes closed but you had to take care not to dive straight down once you’d climbed to the top. There was a sharp boulder on the river bed, concealed by foaming spray from the waterfall.
She stepped out from her shady hiding-place, yelling, ‘Careful!’
He looked over, cupping his hand to his ear, the din of water tumbling onto rocks masking her words.
And then he dived. A clean slice through the air, piercing the surface of the water with the slightest of ripples marking his entry point.
She waited, holding her breath for the moment when he would reappear. When he didn’t resurface, she set off, leaping across the rocks, running through the shallows to plunge into deep water. He could easily have broken his neck; she had left her mobile phone back home; how could she get an ambulance here in time…? And suddenly her ankles were grabbed and she felt herself being pulled into the river. When she came up for air and screamed at him, he laughed in her face.
Standing up, she was incandescent with fury - because she’d been dragged in and her shorts and T-shirt were soaking; because he’d tricked her into thinking he had drowned or cracked his head open on a boulder and because she fancied him and she’d gone and made such a stupid wally of herself.
He took in the sight of her: skimpy wet T-shirt clinging to big breasts, shorts transparent from her dunking, revealing skimpy panties underneath, maybe a thong? She had a great body. Shame about the peculiar streaks of blue in her long, brown hair. And that stud. He’d never liked nose piercings; had always wondered how bogies didn’t get stuck to the metal bits. He could tell she was well angry with him. Seriously angry, shouting something about concealed rocks. Did she think he was thick or something? He’d sussed the depths out before he’d dived in.
‘Mi chiamo Danny. My name’s Danny,’ he said, extending his hand.
He knew Italians were touchy-feely and planted kisses on each others’ cheeks when they introduced themselves. He’d watched men doing that in the bar in Badia
Tedalda. Men even kissed men. You wouldn’t catch him kissing his mates like that. Not even for two crates of beer. Well, maybe he might for two – but defo not for one. But it didn’t look as if she was going to let him anywhere near her face – or anywhere else, for that matter.
‘It’s short for Daniel,’ he continued, his hand still extended. ‘I’m staying in your mill.’
‘I know you are, you idiot,’ she retorted and started to walk away from him along the bank.
‘Er - excuse me,’ he said, a grin on his face as he observed the string of algae hanging from the back of her wet shorts, ‘you seem to have grown a tail.’
She felt behind her, pulled the weed away, scrunched it into a ball and lobbed it hard at him, smacking him square on the nose. ‘And you seem to have grown a beak,’ she said, continuing her walk back along the river track.
It was the Saturday evening barbecue – a tradition started eight years previously by Anna and Francesco when they had started up their holiday business. New arrivals were always invited and it was an opportunity to tell them about local market days or concerts and festas. Francesco acted as meat chef for these informal suppers, while Anna rustled up her famous Anglo-Italian puddings. Tonight it was tipsy trifle with Amaretto biscuits and peaches but with absolutely no jelly in sight. The children waited on the guests and everybody mixed in at the long trestle table set up under the shelter of a willow tree at the edge of the river and laid with a gingham cloth. Candles in painted jam jars hung from the branches and as well as the flames from the barbecue pit, Francesco lit a bonfire nearby and placed chairs around for people to sit and chat after the meal.
‘Take this plate of meat to the table, Alba,’ her father said, ‘and there’s a tray of roasted peppers and aubergines in the kitchen for the vegetarians.’
He picked up an old cow bell from the ground and swung it back and forth, ‘A tavola, tutti! It’s ready, come and sit down to eat.’
By the time Alba returned with the dishes, the only seat left at the long table was next to the insufferable Daniel. She tried to wriggle as far away as possible from him but his mother was a big woman, taking up a place and a half, and Daniel’s legs nudged hers.
‘Can we be friends again?’ he asked.
‘I never thought we were friends in the first place.’
Emilia sitting opposite frowned at her. ‘That’s not very nice, Alba. Babbo’s always saying we’ve got to be nice to our guests.’
Danny laughed, reached over and tweaked the little girl’s long plaits whereupon she added, ‘but I can see why she might not want to be nice to you. Leave my plait alone, please.’
‘Whoops!’ he said, tucking into a pork chop, ‘are all the females in this family prickly?’
As soon as she could, Alba left the table with a pile of crockery and escaped to the kitchen to start stacking the dishwasher. Every now and again she stole glances at Danny through the window above the sink. He’d moved nearer to the fire and was prodding embers with a long stick. Sparks flew up like fireflies, lighting up his tanned face and blond hair. She watched him cup his cigarette with one hand while he fetched a can of beer from the table. He caught her looking at him and she moved away from the window.
‘I’m tired, Mamma,’ she said, ‘I’m off to bed.’
She lay on top of the covers, too hot and unsettled for sleep, wishing the next fortnight would pass quickly so new guests would arrive and she could say goodbye to Danny and his family forever.
The next day was hotter than ever.
‘There’ll be a storm before too long,’ Francesco told his family at breakfast. ‘Make the most of the sunshine today because the weather’s going to break. I hope it doesn’t rain for the concert this evening.
They were going as a group to Anghiari to listen to the Southbank Junior Symphonia. It was a free annual event and a calendar fixture always enjoyed by guests.
The girl playing the clarinet in the quartet swung from side to side, immersed in her private world. As she conjured her screeching music, she bent her knees and arched her eyebrows at some meaningful note that meant absolutely nothing to Alba. Instead she watched with fascination as three white moths were caught in the glare of spotlights, dancing and flapping as if riding on crotchets and quavers.
She stole a sideways glance at her parents. Babbo had his eyes closed as he listened, Anna’s hand clasped tightly in his lap. Alba consulted her programme. “Divertimenti by F. Bridge.” She’d never heard of him.
Daniel was sitting on the white plastic chair next to hers. He leant nearer to her, wrinkling up his nose and whispered, ‘Let’s go to the next venue in Piazza del Popolo before everybody else gets there to grab the best seats. This is crap…’
They were at the edge of the row so could sneak away without having to clamber over anybody’s legs. She was still annoyed with him for tricking her in the river, but anything was better than sitting through this boring caterwaul.
The climbed steep alleyway steps past tall mediaeval houses, their window ledges decorated with pots of frothy coral geraniums, and arrived in the piazza. A stage had been set up at the lower end and there was another scattering of plastic chairs on the incline. Daniel pointed to the bar in the corner and steered her towards it.
‘Wait outside and I’ll fetch us a drink.’
But she went in and made her way to the balcony at the back of the bar to take in the view. There was a full moon and the air was still warm. The Apennines were a moody blue backcloth to lights twinkling from houses on the plain. Car headlights and city lights from distant Sansepolcro added to the night sparkle.
Notes from the quartet’s instruments continued to float towards them from the piazza they’d left.
Four alley cats dressed like humans yowling to the moon, she thought and not music to relax to. It was discordant, ‘hiccough music’ leading the listener to somewhere and then letting them down, pointing them in unexpected directions.
Daniel returned, carrying a bottle of Sangiovese and two plastic beakers. They found a place at the back of the piazza and leant against the wall of a house, its stones still warm from the sun.
‘Cheaty music,’ she said gulping the wine.
‘You what?’
‘I guess it’s supposed to mimic tension or something. I prefer music I can sink into.’
‘You don’t have to like it. You sound guilty for not liking it.’
‘Everybody else seemed to,’ she said, turning to him, ‘I felt ignorant looking round at their rapt expressions. As if I was missing something important.’
He laughed. ‘How do you know they weren’t just bored and wondering when it was going to end, or thinking how hard the chairs were or how tight their best shoes were?’
‘Do you think the musicians noticed us sneaking off?’
‘What does it matter? You worry too much.’ He topped up her wine. ‘Cheers!’ he said, touching his beaker to hers. ‘Who cares about anything?’
The music stopped. There was the sound of clapping and then a crescendo of voices as the audience began to crowd into the square from the last venue. Anna and Danny stayed put against the wall, happy to remain at the back watching people panic-scrabbling for chairs in front of them.
The next piece of music sounded better to her ears. She looked up the name of the composer: A. Piazzola, from South America. It was a tango. About twenty-five musicians wandered onto the stage, strolling together, chatting and laughing. They were dressed casually, but all in black. A beautiful blonde wore brown espadrilles and an elegant black halter neck evening-dress. Then, from amidst all the chatter, a young Japanese violinist walked to the front of the stage and plucked a few chords. The pretty blonde moved further forward, replying to his introduction and then, one by one, the others joined in.
The music was magnetic. Daniel put their beakers on the ground and pulled her to him. They moved in time, kick stepping up the alleyway leading out of the square, improvising, guessing at tango moves together. She let h
erself be guided by him, her body responding to his, giggles bubbling up from deep within her.
‘Look serious!’ he hissed in mock melodrama, ‘the tango is deadly serious…’ And then he swept her downwards into a back-bend. She squeaked but he held her tight so she wouldn’t fall. He pulled her up again in time with the brusque melody that soared from high to low, low to high and then, on the final chord, he kissed her on the mouth. Long and slow.
She liked it.
He tasted of wine and excitement.
A clap of thunder joined the music, followed by heavy drops of rain that splashed onto their faces as they remained fused together.
‘Oh, there you both are,’ her father said, emerging from the alleyway with an umbrella.
And they sprang apart.
In the car park Danny slipped into the back seat next to Anna and held her hand for the entire drive back up the mountain.
Forty-five minutes later the car pulled into the gateway of Il Mulino.
‘Can we see each other tomorrow night?’ Danny whispered.
‘I can’t,’ Alba said. ‘I’ve arranged to go out with my father. But the day after tomorrow’s good.’
‘Shit – my parents want to drag me to Urbino for the day.’
She shrugged an apology but there was no way she was going to cancel tomorrow’s outing with Babbo. It was a belated birthday present: a night time trip to listen for wolves.
Chapter 18
Alba and the wolves
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Alba,’ Francesco said next morning, ‘but I have to take Donna and the team to Arezzo for a meeting really early tomorrow and you know how late it gets when Mirko gets whiff of his wolves and wants to stay out half the night observing them. Is there anybody else you could take?’