Chapter Three
Down a Tuscan Alley
3
Gossip and Intrigue
The tools are all here, hidden in a box under the bed where Richard left them: a power drill, screwdrivers; various boxes of screws, nails, raw-plugs, three hammers and a saw. “You must be very careful how you handle these things,” he’d said. “Don’t mix the screws with the nails and the nails with the screws. They must be kept in their separate boxes. And never use the drill; it’s far too dangerous. In fact, it’s better if you don’t touch these things at all. Just leave it to me.”
What would he say now, I wonder, if he could see me balanced precariously on top of the sideboard, clutching a large mantel mirror, mouth full of screws, screwdriver behind my ear and brandishing a power drill? I position the heavy mirror against the wall and mark with a biro where I have to make the holes. Remarkable how many skilled jobs you can learn in twenty-four hours when you have to.
And I do have to, for the odd-job man doesn’t appear to exist here. “Oooh, no!” Tonina had looked incredulously at me when asked if Alberto, her husband might lend a hand with the mirror. “Suo cuori non sta bene,” she’d said, patting her heart. “Deve riposare.” Ah, yes, of course, poor thing, he must rest. Sit with his other retired cronies in the Bar Cortese playing cards, while Tonina, according to Lionello, works herself into an early urn already reserved for her in the crematorium.
After drilling two holes in the wall and filling them with wine bottle cork, I ease the mirror into place, take two long screws from my mouth, twist them into the cork, then frantic screwing and – hooray! The mirror is up, and holding, and reasonably straight.
Kneeling to place glasses in the cupboard underneath, I can hear the women’s voices out in the street shouting guttural, foreign words. I sit back on my heels in a beam of sunlight and a million stars dance in the dust. Can this place ever really be my home? The English seascapes on the walls, the treasured old books on the shelves: Bucham, Hardy, Wells, Bronte; they’re as out of place as I am in this Italian village.
I get up and stand at the window; the women have gone inside now. Tosca’s peeling green shutters are closed against the sun. Ornelia’s pots of scarlet geraniums crowd on the doorstep and a hefty pair of pink bloomers dangle on the line today.
In time I’ll learn the language and the culture. And in time I might work out the mentality. I might also find it’s not all that different from my own.
***
“Lei-deve-guardare-la-pompa,” Tonina’s explaining slowly and loudly to me this morning. It’s important to keep an eye on the pump, make sure the reserve tank is full, the boiler not furred up with calcium. Which was why, apparently, there’s been no water. “But how will I know?” I ask. “Come saprò – if it’s furred up, if you see what I mean?”
Tonina bursts out laughing. “Perche, Signora Lorri, l’ aqua non viene.” Because no water comes. That makes sense. But how can it be prevented? Ah, I need a water softener. Where do I go for that? No answer. I sigh. Without the language I’m handicapped and nothing makes sense. Sergio’s making no sense either. Water’s been dripping into his fireplace. He blames Ornelia; she must replace her down-pipe and poor Ornelia has cried all morning, she told me. There’s nothing wrong with her pipe. He should get his pipe seen to as there had been water leaking down her bedroom wall, which was directly under his kitchen, for years.
This heated discussion had taken place at seven-thirty this morning directly beneath my bedroom window. When Tonina had thumped on the front door I had stuck my head under the pillow. But when the thumping had become pounding, the cats flying to the top of the wardrobe and Tonina screeching up at me, I’d had to respond before the entire street gathered beneath my window wondering if la signora Inglese had died in the night. I’ve since learnt what the discussion had been about from Lionello who was back from visiting his daughter in Rome and had heard the story of Sergio’s pipes from Martino when buying his bread this morning.
It’s now midday and they are still up on the roof: Domenico, the builder, a bandy-legged plumber, Domenico, Tonina, and Sergio, who, bored with tangoing, is now trying to find gaps between the tiles where the rain has got in. But the problem is, there’s been no rain for months. Domenico’s on his knees – I can see him – on the roof tiles, clasping his hands at the sky and praying for the rain. “Prego per la pioggia!” he cries.
By twelve-thirty they all clamber down the kitchen stairs still arguing, but Sergio seems to have something else apart from his pipes on his mind. “I learn English with you?” he says, yellow snappers advancing and a strange look in his eyes.
“I don’t teach English,” I state, backing against the sink.
Whatever other problems there may be, hot water now gushes from the kitchen tap, and with gentle persuasion, once the rust had cleared, also from the bathroom, which means the B&Bs can at least have a decent shower when they arrive. It’s as they’re all trooping out through the front door that the bandy-legged plumber suddenly sprints back up the stairs and ducks past me into the bedroom. I stare in amazement at a pair of dirty trainers sticking out from under my bed wondering what’s going on.
The leak is coming from under the bed? I can’t decide whether to laugh or not. Someone’s forgotten to close the pipe that affected the overflow? It’s beyond comprehension. The plumber emerges from under the bed perspiring copiously and talking rapidly. “Piano, piano,” I say. “No understand. Too quick.”
“Slow, slow.” He grins and introduces himself as Massimo. Then carries on about how he’d known all along where the leak was coming from but said nothing because he didn’t want to get me into trouble with Sergio who is crazy – at least, I think that’s the gist of it. “I make good, no problem,” he adds. I move quickly from the bedroom to the kitchen. Judging by the way he’s looking at me there could well be a problem, which has nothing to do with water!
“I don’t have the money to pay you, at this moment,” I explain. “But would you accept a bottle of wine for your kindness?” I reach up to the cupboard for a bottle. He plants his hands on my waist. I hold the bottle between us. He tries to kiss me. I step back and the bottle slips from my hand, shards of glass and wine at our feet.
He laughs, seeming to think it all very funny and normal. I’m a woman alone, therefore I must need a man and I had offered him wine, which was obviously an invitation. He insists on cleaning the floor with bundles of kitchen towel, saying something about his uncle having a vineyard and how he would return, tomorrow being Saturday, with his own bottle of wine. Again, I think that’s what he said. Whatever, I will make a point of being out.
The heated discussion is still underway outside Ornelia’s door as I close mine against Massimo. The voices are travelling back along the alley to my door. I flee upstairs praying not for rain, but to be left in peace with my cats and my boxes.
Still another fifty-two boxes to unpack and fifteen days before the first B&Bs arrived. I heave the Welsh dresser against the kitchen wall. Cups on hooks, plates on shelves, pots and pans in the cupboard, things are finding places. I’ll hang strings of onions and garlic and herbs from the beams. It will look like a welcoming home when I’ve finished.
The copper pans hang from the beams and the copper warming pan Richard gave me, I’ve put on the wall next to the dresser. What to put in the corner of the room? Richard wanted to build a fireplace, but there’d never been time, we were only ever here for two weeks at the most. Then we always had to get back to England and try and earn a living: Richard with his building business, ‘Creative Renovations’, and me, caring for an elderly lady in the day, trying to write my first novel at night.
Perhaps Ronaldo might build me a fireplace. Then we could snuggle up together on cold winter evenings, if there are such things in Italy. But better not fantasize too much, it may never happen and then where will all the fantasizing get me? But I can’t stop thinking of how he said I was important to him. I’m glad we never went further; I don’t want to hurry things either, I’m definitely not ready. But I think of his kisses under the trees, his face against mine, I’d felt all the heat of the day inside his skin. It was while opening the box marked fragile that I heard the ominous rattling within. From under the bubble-wrap I tentatively lift out a teapot minus a spout, every cup but one of my grandmother’s Victorian tea set smashed to pieces!
I sit on the floor and look at the devastation around me. A heavy frying pan has been packed on top of the delicate items. So much for ‘Removals on the Cheap’ seen advertised in a Devon newspaper. “You’ve got enough china for two Pakistani families,” the removal man had said. Was placing the frying pan on the china his way of saying no one should have more than they need?
I arrange the fragments of china on the table and photograph them, a spout here, a handle there. I could claim on the insurance; that at least will give me some much-needed money. Sweeping the devastation into a plastic bag, I try not to think too much about the loss. It’s gone to make space for something better, I tell myself, and carry the clanking bundle downstairs.
There’s a note under the front door. My stomach lurches. He’s written. I’ll see him tonight, tomorrow, or the next night? Eagerly I pick it up.
‘Tu sei una cattiva donna perche hai abbandonato tuo marito . . . ‘
I stand for several minutes very still. I can feel the beating of my heart as I re-read the words. You are a wicked woman because you have abandoned your husband; that much I understand. It’s the rest that’s totally incomprehensible.
“’You are a wicked woman because you have abandoned your husband who was a good husband . . . ‘”
Lionello, reading the note from his chintz sofa, can’t stop laughing. “You must write a book,” he says. “Scenes from Tuscan life, you can call it. It will make a fortune then you can buy the house with the terazza that you dream of.”
“But is it a joke, or what?”
“A wonderfully funny joke. This woman is an artist in her own way.”
“You think it’s a woman?”
“Of course it is a woman – ‘. . . you will be punished like all the wicked women before you.’ Only a woman can write such things. A man would never write something so colourful and dramatic, he hasn’t the imagination.”
“But who is she? And why is she doing this?”
“Because you are stirring the passions.”
“Not intentionally.”
“In less then two days of your arrival here your ex-husband arrives with roses.”
“I never asked him to come. And now he’s gone back to Germany, as far as I know.”
“But you do not know and that is why it is so exciting. From one moment to the next you cannot imagine what is going to happen. There is Domenico on the roof looking at you through the shutters, you have the over-sexed plumber in the bed.”
“Under the bed, not in it.”
“. . . and now you have the anonymous letters.”
“Only one so far, which I could do without.”
“But more will follow.”
“Oh no, I hope not.”
“This is only the beginning. It is your presence here that is creating the drama. The curtain has risen, as you say in England. You are creating the wonderful theatre and someone is bound to be murdered in their bed before long.”
“Not me, I hope.”
“You are disturbing the blood pressures, you are making the women jealous, the temperature is rising and it is already insufferably hot.”
“I came here to live quietly, not to disturb everyone.”
“But, my dear beautiful lady, you are disturbing the whole village with your blue eyes.”
“Oh, come on.”
“The women have fear of losing their husbands, and however useless they are it is better to have someone than no one to cook the pasta for.”
“But I don’t want their husbands.”
“And you don’t want your own, it seems. Therefore, you must be looking for another in their imagination. You are an English woman with blue eyes and red hairs. You are alone, you are a mysterious straniera and available.”
“Not for their husbands I’m not.”
“Ah, but they don’t know that. And you must understand, every Italian man, even one as old and as ugly as me, believes he is Casanova. The mother tells us in the cradle how handsome and clever we are even if we turn out to be ugly and stupid. But you mustn’t worry. I am sure there is no problem. The people will like you. They already do.”
“Do they? How do you know?”
“You salute everyone, they say. Always you are smiling. They are curious. They want to know why you are here alone. Where is her husband, they ask me. And I try to explain that you are – “ Lionello circled his hand in the air, “divided for now – “
“Divided forever.”
“I tell them you are searching for a new life. But that they must keep their husbands safely inside the house when you are about.”
“You didn’t say that?”
“Of course not.” Lionello begins laughing, his laughter developing into a fit of dry coughing. He reaches for the decanter of white wine on the glass-topped table beside him. “I am getting too old for all this stimulation,” he gasps. “And I am too old to live here alone, Tonina tells me. I am not sure what she has in mind, do you?”
“I hate to think.”
“Perhaps she is planning to move in with me. Ha! What would her useless husband say about that?” He pours a generous measure of white wine into two goblets. “But these people, you know, they are not bad. They have their own beliefs and superstitions; it takes time for a stranger to be accepted, even one as charming as yourself. I have been here for twelve years but they still think of me as il Romano.” He hands me a glass. “You know, I think there is something in this wine – “ He swallows a mouthful. “I have an idea there is in this wine a substance that is making me hallucinate. I see things.”
“What things?”
“Faces in the stones. There is one in my garden wall, you must look, he is wearing a three-cornered hat and I swear it is Napoleon. He salutes me when I approach the house, and I always return the salute. I think he must have taken a round trip from Elba to Sinalunga and back to Elba. What do you think?”
I sip my wine. It tastes like chilled peaches and honey. “I think everything is possible here,” I say, and swallow more of the magical wine. He could be right; perhaps I’ve been hallucinating ever since I arrived.
“We are surrounded by the past and I feel sometimes the past and the present merge and become one all-consuming present.” Lionello swallows more wine. “And the light here, you know, it is like a drug, the extraordinary luminosity plays tricks with the mind. Yet the people do not see anything. They were born here and see nothing exceptional. And now, here you are, giving some theatre to the people and making Italy your home.”
“There was nowhere else to go.”
“Huh! There is always somewhere else to go. You wanted to come here, and so you came. And now you are making the best of things. But what will you do here alone in the winter with no tourists?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve not really thought about that. Look for work of some kind, perhaps?”
“You must learn to speak good Italian. Then doors will open for you. You will meet interesting people. A fine man, a count perhaps, who would carry you away to his castello. And this is what the people here are waiting for, to see whom you will choose to be with. And then the women will be happy, so long as it is not one of their husbands, of course. Ha-ha! I love this theatre. I hope it is going to continue.”
What would Lionello say, I wonder, if I told him that I had already met a fine man whom I couldn’t stop thinking of, younger than me, with no castello and nothing to carry me away with, even the clothes he wears are Vittorio’s cast-offs, he told me.
“The best thing for you to do now,” Lionello is saying, “is to go to Siena, to the Università degli Stranieri. They do inexpensive summer courses. Make the people here wait for the next scene of the drama until you are ready to play it.”
***
When I leave Lionello’s house I look at the rockery at the end of his garden, trying not to think of another, smaller, English rockery where I buried my ring before setting off down the motorway in search of a new life in Devon. I would prefer to forget that, but the past has a way of springing out on me from round every corner.
I lean against the jasmine-covered wall scrutinizing the rocks from various angles. I can see no sign of a stone resembling Napoleon with or without his three-cornered hat. Perhaps I haven’t had quite enough of the hallucinogenic wine.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four
© 2011
Soon to be published by Solstice Publishing Inc.