by Paige Toon
The wind is ferocious today, but despite the dust that collects up our noses and cakes our skin and hair, I feel the stirrings of lightness in my chest.
After breakfast, Louise and I meander around the grounds of our old high school and pass by her former dugout. We drop in on the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum where we both did stints as tour guides one summer holiday when we were sixteen, and we even revisit the location of my first kiss which happened, randomly, inside the shell of an old spaceship that was left over from a movie they filmed here.
Eventually, we end up at the pub. We used to come here as teenagers when we weren’t quite legal, and if Beryl, the owner, was in a good mood, she’d turn a blind eye. Put a foot wrong and we’d be dragged out by our ears.
Beryl is serving behind the bar tonight.
‘It’s good to see you out and about,’ she says when I go up to order a second round.
I know she means well, but her comment needles my conscience. Louise and I have been laughing about a failed double date we went on as teenagers when her parents had parked right next to us at the drive-in. Now I’m wondering how I can find anything funny when we buried my grandmother only yesterday. It feels wrong.
‘You’ve been through so much, Angie,’ Louise says when I return to the table in a sombre mood. ‘You’ve got to embrace life now. No one is going to hold it against you.’
‘I’m sorry, but I no longer feel comfortable being here.’
‘How about we take a bottle back to yours?’ she suggests.
I’m not ready to call it a night yet, so this seems like a good move. Then I remember that we don’t need to buy a bottle.
‘Let’s crack open one of Grandad’s fancy reds instead.’
Louise’s eyes light up. ‘Loving this plan.’
*
The thing about living in a cave is, if you need a shelf or another bedroom, you can carve one out of the rock. If you’re lucky, you might even unearth treasure while you’re renovating: one of the local motels uncovered so much opal that it paid for the extra rooms they were excavating.
In Grandad’s case, he wanted a wine rack, so he bored half a dozen bottle-sized holes directly into the living room wall and happened to find enough colour to pay for a no-expense-spared trip to Adelaide to visit the wineries with Mum and Nan.
It was the first of many such trips that they took and, in later years, I went instead of my mother.
I still remember those endless green hills and the rows of grapevines that seemed to go on forever.
The wine-tastings bored me half to death, but the swims in the cool, clean ocean that inevitably came towards the end of our holidays easily made up for it – they’re some of my best memories.
Grandad added to his wine rack over the years, drilling out new holes and filling them with bottles, but he never again found opal. And Nan and I never drank any of his wine. Nan was more of a sherry drinker and the thought of tucking into her husband’s cherished collection made her feel too sad, so it stayed there while her health dwindled.
I certainly didn’t feel right drinking it myself. I’ve barely drunk a drop of alcohol in years. I was worried I might sleep too heavily and miss something I shouldn’t, like Nan switching off the fridge-freezer at the socket. She did this on my birthday a few years ago and I woke up the next morning to face, not only a pounding headache from the wine I’d drunk the night before, but a freezer full of defrosted meat. I had a lock installed on the kitchen door after that.
‘I know nothing about wine,’ I tell Louise as I pull a random bottle from its dusty hole and brush my hand over the label. ‘Lockwood House Creek Shiraz.’
‘I know that winery!’ Louise exclaims. ‘It’s up in the hills. The guy who runs the cellar door is hot.’
‘Made with grapes from sixty-five-year-old vines planted down by the creek at Lockwood House,’ I recite from the label.
‘Give me that,’ she gasps, swiping the bottle. ‘This is their really good one. Probably worth a few hundred bucks,’ she says. ‘Don’t waste it on us.’
I laugh and make a mental note to give this one to Jimmy before sliding it back into its hole. It hits the rocky wall at the end with a clunk.
A few bottles later, I’m wondering how on earth Louise knows so much about wine. She’s recognised every winery so far and even knows which years to look out for.
‘Mark and I often tour the wineries. It’s our thing,’ she tells me. ‘You should sell these, they’d be worth a packet.’
‘I thought I’d give them away as leaving presents.’
She looks delighted. ‘So you’re leaving? Definitely?’
I give her a smile and nod. ‘I don’t know when, but soon. After the dust has settled.’
Not that the dust ever settles around here.
‘Have you still got a passport?’ Louise asks.
I nod. I applied for it when I was nineteen, before Nan was diagnosed. She made me feel horrible when I asked her to dig out my birth certificate, and I still remember the additional sting of: father unknown.
‘Where will you go?’
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Come to Adelaide and we’ll check out some travel agents!’ she urges. ‘We can go shopping and update your wardrobe.’ She pulls a face as she says this. ‘Then I can take you to the airport and see you off!’
Louise’s words bring about a warm glow inside me. Is this what proper excitement feels like? It’s been so long, I hardly recognise it.
‘Come on, let’s toast the adventures you’re going to have.’
Three bottles later and I’m out of patience.
‘They’re all good!’ I cry. ‘Pick one. Any one you want!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘In that case, let’s go for the Cab Sauv.’
‘Which one was that again?’ I stare at the wall.
She points. ‘There, I think.’
I pull out a bottle, but it’s dusty, not one of the ones we’ve already looked at. I slide it in the hole with a clunk and pull out another. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ I snap when I see that it’s another dusty bottle. ‘We’re drinking the next one, no matter what it is.’
‘Deal,’ she says with a clap. ‘Lucky dip for grown-ups.’
I slide it back in, but this time, there’s no clunk. I pull the bottle out a little and slide it in again. The surface at the end gives, as though it’s made out of something soft. It’s certainly not rock.
‘What’s wrong?’ Louise asks as I pull the bottle out fully and peer into the hole.
‘Can you pass me the torch from the shelf?’ I ask. There’s some sort of rough material at the end. I pinch it between my fingers and it comes loose, bringing with it a small dust cloud.
‘What are you doing?’ Louise asks as I turn over the crumpled piece of canvas. ‘Wait,’ she says before I can put my arm into the hole again. ‘There could be a snake nest down there for all you know.’ She hands me the torch and I direct the light inside.
An envelope, folded in half, is wedged in at the end. I frown and pull it out. It’s addressed in neat, rounded handwriting to someone called Giulio Marchesi in Rome. My heart skips a beat at the sight of my own name and address on the back.
No, not my name: it must be my mother’s.
‘What is it?’ Louise asks as I hastily open the envelope and scan the words written on the two pages of white paper inside.
I glance up at her.
‘It’s a letter from my mother to my father.’
Chapter 5
Earlier, my heart was pounding in my ears, but at the sight of Bonnie’s face, it plummets to the depths of my stomach.
‘You knew about this?’
‘I wasn’t aware that she’d kept the letter,’ she replies in a shaky voice.
‘Who? Who kept it? Mum or Nan?’
‘I think it must’ve been Ginny,’ she replies miserably.
It’s after ten at night and I felt bad
when Bonnie answered the door in her nightgown, but I couldn’t bring myself to wait until morning to run this by her. Louise is back at my dugout, checking behind the other bottles to see if there’s anything else we missed.
‘You’d better come in and sit down,’ Bonnie says, indicating the kitchen table.
As soon as we’re seated, she begins to talk.
Bonnie’s daughter, Helen, who lives in Port Lincoln with a family of her own, was the person who told Bonnie that my mother had wanted to contact my father. Helen was eighteen when Mum returned from overseas, aged twenty, and although they hadn’t been close, they had, on occasion, hung out together.
Shortly before I was born, Helen popped next door and found my mother in tears.
‘Up until that point, your nan had been telling everyone that Angie planned to raise the baby on her own, that the father wasn’t on the scene and never would be. She made it very clear to us all that we should butt out and mind our own business.’
But Helen must have happened across my mother in a moment of weakness because Mum told her everything. She said that she met my father whilst working as a waitress at an Italian restaurant in Rome.
I look now at the word under Giulio Marchesi on the front of the envelope: Serafina’s. Could that be the restaurant’s name?
‘She’d written to your father a couple of months earlier, but he didn’t reply,’ Bonnie continues. ‘Your nan kept saying that he obviously wanted nothing to do with her. She urged Angie to forget all about him, but Angie told Helen in confidence that she planned to write again or try to phone him after you were born. She still held out hope that her first letter had simply been lost in the post.’
‘But Nan never sent it,’ I murmur.
When my grandmother told me that my father was a ‘bad man’, I’d thought those two little words meant something truly terrible, but there’s nothing in this letter that implies violence. Quite the opposite…
Caro Giulio,
Firstly, I’m sorry for leaving without saying goodbye. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I had thought a clean break would be better for everyone. Things were so intense there at the end – not only between us, but also between you and Marta, although I know that was a different kind of intensity. I hope she’s feeling better now? She’s been preying on my mind a lot.
You probably didn’t think you’d ever hear from me again and, in truth, you weren’t supposed to. I had planned to complete my travels, return home and try to forget all about what happened between us in beautiful Roma, but fate, it seems, had other plans.
I’ve wanted to write to you countless times in the last few months, but I haven’t known where to start. There is no easy way to say it so here goes: I’m pregnant. Seven months, to be exact – that night at Serafina’s, right before I left.
I know this will come as a terrible shock, and please believe me when I tell you that I don’t expect you to be involved, but I thought you had a right to know. And if you would like to have a relationship with your son or daughter, then I promise that I will do everything possible to make that happen.
Do you think you could give me a call one night when you finish work? Ideally between midnight and 1 a.m. your time, Sunday through Thursday? Sorry to be so exact, but South Australia is eleven and a half hours ahead of Italy which means it’ll be lunchtime on the following day here and my mum should be out, taking lunch to my dad at work. I’d rather talk without them eavesdropping!
Frankly, though, you can call me any time – I’d really like to hear your voice. It’s been a frightening few months, to be honest, and I’m desperate to talk all of this through. My number is below.
Ciao,
Angie x
Mum wrote her telephone number below her name – it’s the same one that I have now.
‘Who’s Marta?’ I wonder out loud.
Bonnie clears her throat. ‘She was your father’s wife.’
I feel as though I’ve been winded. ‘My mum had an affair with a married man?’
Bonnie nods reluctantly.
I’m already experiencing a whirlwind of emotions, but now I can add disappointment to the mix.
I’m also oddly relieved. I had always feared that my biological father had physically hurt my mother, but is the fact that he was married what Nan meant by him being a bad man? I don’t like that he cheated, but I’m glad he wasn’t violent.
‘Did Helen tell you?’
Bonnie nods. ‘On the day of your mum’s funeral. She’d kept Angie’s confidence until then, but broke down and blurted it all out. Later, your grandmother confirmed it.’
Oh, this is too much…
‘You spoke to Nan?’ My voice cracks on the question.
And neither of them ever told me?
‘I brought it up with her a couple of times,’ Bonnie replies with mounting distress. ‘It always resulted in her getting very upset and angry. She said that your father had had his chance to come out of the woodwork, that Angie had written to him and he hadn’t even had the decency to reply. She claimed she had no way of contacting him herself – she said she couldn’t even remember his name, let alone which restaurant he worked at – and she seemed convinced that he wanted nothing to do with you because he was married. She believed that telling you all of this would only cause you pain and…’ Bonnie hesitates. ‘And I thought she might be right.’
I have such a lump in my throat, it’s hard to talk around it. ‘But it was all a lie!’ I slap my hand down on the envelope. ‘My grandparents had a name and address for my father all along!’
‘I knew nothing about that,’ Bonnie states firmly, her eyes shining.
I can’t believe I’m twenty-seven and I’ve gone all these years thinking that, once my grandparents passed away, I’d be alone in the world. But now it seems that I might have a father out there who doesn’t even know I exist!
Bonnie reaches over and takes my hand as tears spill down my cheeks. ‘Your grandparents were crushed after Angie’s death. With their daughter gone, you were the only thing that made them smile. They would have been terrified of losing you, darling,’ she says, her own tears breaking free. ‘They’d lost your mother once when she’d disappeared on her travels for two years – that was hard enough on your nan. Your grandad missed her too, of course, but he had his work to distract him whereas your nan was like a little lost sheep when Angie went away. When your mother returned, your nan would have done everything she could to convince her to stay and raise you here. Maybe she planned to tell you about your father one day,’ she says. ‘Maybe she kept the letter for that very reason. She might’ve even forgotten she had it!’
I stare at her desolately, my tears continuing to fall. ‘I’ll never know now, will I?’
Chapter 6
When I return to my dugout, Louise is putting the last of the bottles back into the wine rack.
‘The rest were all solid rock,’ she replies in response to my silent query.
I slump down on the sofa.
‘What did Bonnie say?’ she asks.
‘I’m going to need a drink before I tell you.’
We’re half a glass down by the time I’ve finished filling her in. I’ve barely even registered what the wine tastes like, but Louise manages to get in that it’s a ‘very good drop’.
‘Where’s your laptop?’ she asks at last.
I fetch it from my bedroom, then settle down next to her on the sofa as she copies the address from the envelope into the browser and hits return.
We might live in caves, but thankfully we have access to the internet. It’s kept me blissfully connected to the outside world while I’ve been stuck inside.
I’m not really expecting Louise to find anything, so I almost spit out my mouthful when she cries, ‘Serafina’s! It’s a pizza restaurant!’
‘It still exists?’
Sure enough, it’s right there on Google Maps with a 4.7 star rating. My eyes drift down to the telephone number under the listing and then to
the line beneath.
Open now.
My pulse speeds up. I have no doubt that the wine is giving me Dutch courage, but something else makes me act on impulse – the part of me that doesn’t want to waste another minute of my life.
‘Are you calling him now?’ Louise asks with astonishment as I reach for the telephone and dial the number with a shaking hand.
‘There’s no way he’ll still work there,’ I reply bravely, pressing the phone to my ear. ‘But someone might know what’s happened to him.’
There’s a long, unfamiliar-sounding ringtone. Does it mean the line is engaged? I’m a little relieved, but then the phone clicks and a woman answers.
‘Ciao, Serafina’s.’
‘Er, hello,’ I reply, jolting to attention. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘You want to make a reservation?’
‘Um, no, I’m trying to track down a man called Giulio Marchesi. I think he used to work there.’
There’s a rustling sound and I hear the woman bark a name: Alessandro.
A moment later, a man comes on the line. ‘How can I help you?’ he asks smoothly. As with the woman who answered the phone, he has an Italian accent, but his is not as strong.
I fight the urge to hang up, suddenly having second thoughts about rushing into this.
‘Um, I’m wondering if anyone there might know someone called Giulio Marchesi?’ I ask hesitantly.
‘Giulio Marchesi?’ he repeats, and it sounds different to the way I said it. Better. With proper pronunciation.
Joo-Lee-oh Mar-chay-see.
‘Yes!’ I exclaim, nerves engulfing me.
‘He’s not here right now.’
The blood drains from my face. ‘You mean, he still works there?’
Louise’s eyes are out on stalks – I’m pretty sure mine are too.
The man at the other end of the line lets out a short laugh. ‘Where else would he be?’
There’s a pause and I can hear the bustle of restaurant noise in the background. It must be lunchtime there.
When the man next speaks, he sounds wary. ‘Who are you?’
What do I say? I hadn’t thought about this, hadn’t planned it, hadn’t even imagined for one second that my father would be so easy to track down. Am I about to blow his whole life apart?