Lorri, an eternal optimist, is in search of a new life. With little money and her two beloved cats, she leaves one back alley in raining Devon to come to another in sunny Italy. But this one leads to romance, intrigue and a journey of self-discovery.



To be published in 2008.

See below for a preview of the first  two chapters.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative and creation.
There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

1

Vicolo della Mura

It was a sweltering June afternoon when I picked the car up at Pisa airport, a brand new cherry-red Fiat Uno, and placed my two beloved cats, Billy and Gertie, on the back seat in their VIP box. My small case went in the boot; all my worldly goods were coming on later in the removals van from Devon.

    The car even smelt new inside. Get the feel of it, I told myself, jiggling the gear-stick and flashing the lights, skirt Firenze, head for Siena, take the A1 for Perugia – Roma. Simple. Now, if I could just find my way out of the airport. I eased the car out of the parking lot, through the exit gate, out on to the main road about to enter the great Italian unknown.

    Hardly unknown, though, I had done the journey often enough in the past with Richard. Only then I’d been the passenger, happy to sit back and enjoy the scenery, thinking of the things I would do when we arrived. Add sand to the paint to create my special textured finish for the walls, buy acid to clean the ancient floor tiles. He built the bathroom and the kitchen. We worked well together, pausing every now and then with a mug of tea to look round with pleasure at what we were achieving. But that was then. Now I had the present to deal with.

   At the toll station I took my ticket and continued on in the direction of Perugia congratulating myself. I’d got this far. Things were going well. And after an hour and a half of steady driving I thought I recognized several landmarks. The group of ochre-coloured houses in a field to my left formed a triangle and I was certain I’d seen them before. The house with the turret on the hill; that too looked familiar. And when, after another half-hour, I saw the sign for Valdiciana I knew I was on the right road. I put my foot down and overtook several cars at a stretch, the indicator light flashing until I was past.

    This was the way to drive in Italy. Like the Italians, swoop up their bums, overtake, and streak on ahead. I gave a shout of laughter and the cherry-red Fiat flew as if on wings along the Autostrada. Windows open, warm air whipping hair off my face, I was free at last. I’d given him the slip. He belonged to a life already well behind me and I burst into song. I had done it. Survived the endless doubts and sleepless nights and come to Italy to start a new life on my own.

     I adjusted the rear-view mirror. Soon I would be climbing the street steps to Vicolo della Mura. From the bedroom window I’d see the chapel bell across the terracotta roofs to three cypresses sticking up like dark green paintbrushes. And on the roof I’d see the carabinieri through their bedroom window opposite, pale defenceless creatures they looked in their Y-fronts. And the church bells, bing-bang-dingadong, would be clanging up in the piazza; enough to raise the dead and make them laugh.

    I laughed, with relief, as I turned off at the Sinalunga sign. Not long now. Ornelia, in the downstairs flat, would be watering her pots of geraniums, Sergio in the upstairs flat would be playing his tango music, which would be heard all the way down the street to Martino’s shop. “Ahhhh,” he’d shout, sweeping his imaginary partner around the sofa, sliding and bending and stamping his heels, mouth in an oooh of pleasure, and “ahhhh” again as he collided with the lamp. Nothing would have changed. Fortunately, nothing seemed to in Sinalunga.

    Keep right at all costs, I repeated, as ten minutes later, light-headed with heat, excitement and exhaustion, I travelled up the familiar hill leading to the Centro Storico.

   But halfway up the hill I heard a bang and the car stopped with a shudder. I stared ahead in shocked disbelief. What had happened? Everything had been fine a minute ago. The cats howled; I swivelled round to lift their box back on to the seat. I turned the key in the ignition. Dead. Now what? Whatever happens don’t attract attention, I told myself. The last thing I wanted was to become a spectacle for everyone to point at. I opened the car door and the heat hit me like a furnace. The car wasn’t in the middle of the road; at least that was something. And as far as I could see, no real damage had been done; although, the bonnet did seem somewhat lower to the ground than it had earlier. Later I was to learn that the whole of the front suspension had dropped out. Then I noticed the white car behind, the door dented and scraped.

    I stared at it appalled. It was obvious what had happened. In keeping so well to the right I’d veered into a parked car. I felt sick with disappointment. Why did this have to happen when I was almost home? Trembling, I lifted the cat-box and suitcase out of the car and sat on the boiling hot pavement waiting for inspiration.

   People were gathering from nowhere. They stared at the Fiat, then at me. An old man said something. I smiled apprehensively and said, Buongiorno, it being the only Italian word that sprang to mind at that moment. People moved closer. They stared dubiously at my car, then at the one behind it. Several people shook their heads and tut-tutted.  Then to my alarm the carabinieri drew up in their dark blue car and parked alongside the Fiat blocking the traffic, which meant even more people would stop and stare at the pink-faced English woman melting with her cat-box and suitcase beside her on the pavement.

    One tall, one short, fat carabinieri sauntered towards me, not so defenceless now with submachine guns stuck in their belts. I stood up and offered my passport. “Dove abita?” the fat one asked.

    “Vicolo della Mura,” I said.

    “But that is Italia,” he said, loudly, glancing round at the people, making sure they could hear him speaking English.

    “I know, I’ve come to live here.”

    “But where you live in England?”

    “I don’t anymore.”

    “Uh?” he turned to his tall companion who was writing in a thick black book. “Non comprehend. You must.”

    “W-what must I?”

    “You must to live in some place in your country.”

    Realising there was no point in explaining; I gave him the Devon address even though I no longer lived there. I held out my hand for my passport and at that point the cats howled again and all attention turned to the VIP box at my feet. “Micio, micio,” said a hefty woman, poking her finger through the mesh door. She drew back at the hissing. The carabiniere handed me a document that was incomprehensible. The sun beat down on my head. I swayed slightly and held onto the carabinieri for support and everyone watched avidly. A young woman was looking at me from her car, one of a line moving slowly up the hill. I waved frantically, gestured that I needed a lift, she nodded, I lifted the cat-box and suitcase onto the back seat and in less than five minutes we were crossing the Piazza Garibaldi and turning left down the Via Ciro Pinsuti.

    News had travelled fast, it seemed. The first person I saw as I emerged from the car was Lionello Torossi, my elderly neighbour from the end of the street, and who spoke fluent English, German, French and Spanish. He’d already heard of the accident with la straniera, guessed it was me and had come to help. “You have announced your arrival extraordinarily well,” he said, chuckling. “Now everyone knows you are here.”

    “Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “I had hoped to arrive quietly and anonymously.”

    “My dear young lady, you are too attractive to arrive anywhere anonymously and especially in a place like this. The people are delighted to see you; they want to be entertained. You are their portable theatre.”

    Thanking the woman, whose name I didn’t catch, I carried the stricken cats and my suitcase up the street steps, round Ornelia’s pots of geraniums into the alleyway, only to find, to my alarm, my front door open.

    “Madonnasanta!” Brandishing a key, Tonina came hurrying downstairs to meet me. “Signora, signora Lorri!”

  “Tonina. What’s happened?”

   “Niente acqua, non c’e il tetto - ” Tonina burst into an excitable flow of Italian, ‘no water’, ‘no roof’, being the only understandable words. Struggling through the narrow front door, I climbed the stone stairs to the bedroom and planted the case on the floor, the cat-box on the bed. I stared at the window, at a man with a funny little hat perched on the roof beaming at me. “I spik Inlish.”

   A man’s voice then, behind me, from the stairs. And then Tonina, almost hysterical, throwing up her hands as she entered the bedroom. “Madonnina, Sergio vuole parlare dell’acqua.”

    “Oh no, no, please, not now, I can’t,” I said. “I can’t speak to anyone, I’m exhausted.”

   “Signora!” Sergio, my upstairs neighbour, hovered outside the bedroom. “Possiamo parlare?”

     I forced a smile. “Buongiorno, Sergio. I-I’m very tired. I haven’t slept. No sleep. We talk domani?”

    Tonina seemed to understand, if not all the words, the intentions behind them. She pushed Sergio firmly back down the stairs with a final “Non, non, non!”

    But the man with the hat, he was still there. “Me Domenico, I do noo roof, wok in Australia. You Inlish lady?”

   Tonina rushed at him and banged the shutters in his face. “Cara Signora Lorri,” she said, clasping her hands to her chest. “Non si preoccupi. Do not worry. I am so sorry because, because of la situazione con Ricardo.”

    I collapsed on the bed. In the shadowy light I watched Tonina pile clean linen from the chest of drawers on to the mattress. It was impossible to explain right then that sometimes one can feel less sorry being alone than with someone who makes you unhappy. So I nodded in agreement and said nothing.

    “Ah, la vita.” Tonina sighed with resignation, blew a kiss, and promised to return later with buckets of water.

   An acrid stench filled the bedroom.  Closing the door, I eased the long-suffering cats from their box, and taking a pillowcase, the nearest thing to hand, wiped urine off their fur and offered biscuits from my pocket which they refused to eat.  Had I been crazy to come? Hardly any grasp of the language, four years off fifty and with virtually no money? Many would think so. But I did at least own the roof over my head, even if it was half off, and that, after all, had been the main reason for coming. Mike, the counsellor in Devon, had been the other. Imagine you have wings, he’d said, and fly above your fear. And I’d visualized great dusty feathery things attached to my shoulder blades stiff from lack of use. They’d lifted me off his grey carpet on to the windowsill; out over Totnes High Street and across the sea with the gulls I flew, soaring into space, zing-zanging with the stars.

    The cats were reaching up to sniff the shutters, where I thought I saw Domenico peering at me through the slats.

 

2

Settling In

“You have an air about you that makes one believe you have reserves.”

    “Inwardly, perhaps. Certainly not outwardly.”

    “If you have the one, you’ll have the other. It is only a question of time.”

    I was having a cup of Sunday afternoon tea with my seventy-two-year-old neighbour, retired film director and undisputed ‘wise man’ of the village, Lionello Torossi. I had called round for his advice on how much I would have to pay for the damaged Fiat, not to mention the other car. “Nothing,” he assured me. “The company is covered for such accidents. You do not have to worry about anything.”

    I gazed at Lionello in wonder. Could things ever be that easy? “But won’t I have to sign something?” I asked.

   “There is always something to sign in Italy. But I have spoken to the carabinieri. Your car has been collected and now there is nothing more to be done. What will you do for transport in the meantime?”

    I leaned contentedly back in the chintz-covered armchair with no idea what I was going to do. It was too hot to think, I was happy to have Lionello think for me.  “You will buy a car, of course.”

    I laughed. “I can’t afford one,” I said.

    Lionello’s eyes twinkled. “You know, you English are very amusing. One wealthy Englishman I knew was always complaining of not having money. How could he repair his roof? How could he pay for this or that? But the roof was repaired and life continued because when something was important enough he always found the money to do whatever was necessary.”

    “He probably sold the family silver to pay for it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any.”

    “You English have a talent for pretending to be broke when really you are comfortably off.” Lionello stretched his legs out from the chintz-covered sofa. “Now tell me, I am fascinated, what is someone like you intending to do here in this small parochial place?”

    “I’m going to do bed and breakfast,” I said. “I advertised in the Telegraph before coming out. The first couple arrive on the twenty-eighth of this month.”

    “But in what bed will you put them?”

    “In my bed while I sleep in the sitting room.”

    “In that minuscule salotto?  How is it possible?”

    “All is possible when you have to survive.”

   “Huh!”  Lionello threw up his hands. “You English, you never fail to amaze me. Now, of course, you must buy a larger place. Something with a lovely terrazza and swimming-pool for the guests, no?”

    This was becoming hilarious. “What with?” I said.  “I don’t have that kind of money. In fact, I don’t have any money to speak of.”

    “But you told me that you sold the house in England. Surely, Richard divided some money with you?”

    “There was virtually nothing to divide,” I explained. “The bank took everything. Richard had to close his building business and accept a friend’s offer of work in Germany where he met another woman with whom he now lives.”

     I placed my cup on its saucer. I was finding it difficult to continue. It only seemed like yesterday since we’d sat in this same room discussing our plans over coffee with Lionello.

    “Well, at least, you have your own charming little apartment. Richard restored it beautifully. I remember how it was in the beginning, a little black hole, filthy and with cobwebs.” Richard’s Volvo with the mattress tied to the luggage rack, mirrors and pictures, yes, I, too, remembered, always more items from England on each journey until we had created our ideal holiday home. It had been our base until we could find our dream house, sell up in England and come and live here.  “And is the wine still there? Or did Tonina’s husband drink it all?” Twelve bottles of Rosso di Montalcino stacked along the top of the kitchen cupboard, one bottle of which I’d already opened. Wine bought to celebrate our arrival in Italy. Little did I think that I’d be celebrating alone. “And what will you do if Richard returns? Will you accept him back?”

    I shook my head. It was too painful to think of.

On Monday afternoon I lay on the bed in my underwear, overcome with the heat. The cats sprawled beside me, their ears twitching at any sound coming from the direction of the shutters, still closed against Domenico. Sweat poured off me. This was only June, what would July and August be like?  I looked at the English prints above the Victorian chest of drawers, small rustic wardrobe next to my mother’s large hand-carved gilt Italian mirror which had looked over the top in her St John’s Wood flat, but which now had found its rightful home.  Lionello had said I was lucky to own such a charming little apartment and it was true, I was. I looked up at the little window above the bed, which I still hadn’t made a curtain for, then at the heavy oak beams. They’d been covered in whitewash at first, I’d worked up a ladder for days on end with a carrier bag over my head, scrubbing at the wood, dirty water splashing into my eyes and down my neck. But the varnishing had made up for all the hard work, worth the aching back to see the colour seep into the wood bringing it to life again.  I’d felt a deep sense of achievement when I’d finished, as though I’d passed some kind of inner test. Mixing the paint to exactly the right shade of ochre and spreading it over the dingy bedroom walls had been like bringing light into the room. Creating order out of chaos, I like to think I’m good at that.

   The larger window had been too high up the wall to see out of at first. Richard had raised the floor so we could sit up in bed and look out at the chapel bell and the sky. I found his white canvas shoes under the bed earlier and wrapped them in a carrier bag before I had time to think and hid them on top of the wardrobe. Out of sight out of mind.

   “No looki, looki!”

   The cats’ heads shot up, and Billy, the tabby, hissed at the sound of Domenico outside the shutters fixing rooftiles. I held Gertie, the more timid of the two, she would spring up on top of the wardrobe, otherwise, and nothing would coax her down for hours.

On Wednesday morning the furniture arrived. The driver tried bringing the lorry down Via Ciro Pinsuti but the street was too narrow. He reversed out into the piazza, performed a hazardous three-point turn in front of the astonished priest, knocked an urn off a column, and then headed back down the hill, by which time the whole of Sinalunga had been alerted to la straniera once more causing havoc.

    I had almost given up hope of ever seeing my furniture again, when finally, someone provided a pick-up truck and everything had been brought up the hill in slow stages, in to Via della Mura, a narrow street beside the old village wall with so many sheets flapping from a line strung across from one side to the other, they totally obscured the little alleyway leading to my front door. Sixty-five packing boxes were unloaded in the narrow street outside Tosca’s front door. Though at least eighty and only as tall as some of the boxes, she was screaming so forcefully that the driver, a weary Englishman from Essex, was doubtful whether to proceed. “La roba, la roba!” she’d cried, waving her thin little arms frantically up into his face. What on earth did robes have to do with anything? Something had to be done immediately to sort out the chaos, so throwing myself at the boxes, I pushed and shoved, ducking under Tosca’s sheets, stumbling over Ornelia’s geraniums.

     But several hours later when the street was clear, Tosca was still at her door shouting about la roba, which I had since learnt meant ‘the things’. “Va bene, Tosca,” I tried to reassure her. “Tutto finito. No problems.” Tosca squinted up at me and cackled, showing two grey tusks. Then breaking into a flow of incomprehensible words wrapped her arms around me and buried her little hairy face in my stomach. Hopefully, that meant la straniera had been forgiven for creating such confusione.

   Other curious neighbours had gathered in the narrow street. Rosalba frowned as she watched the activity. She’d been the one Richard and I had lunched with every first Sunday of our visit. Pasta with a tomato or meat sauce, both had to be tasted. Followed by a horrific row of little roasted birds, a delicacy in the area, better not looked at, let alone eaten. “Mangia! Mangia!” Rosalba had yelled above the noise of the television turned up to full blast. “She very funny woman,” Giovanni, her husband said, as he’d poured the vino speciale from Martino’s shop.

    Dave, the removal man; looked round my small kitchen incredulously. “Where’s all this stuff going?” he asked.

    “I’ll find a place.”

    “Like on the roof? Ha-ha!”

    His mate, Colin, painfully thin and seemingly too weak to lift anything heavier than a box of towels, sank onto a box marked ‘fragile’. “Oh, no, do please be careful - ” I rushed to the box and lifted him off it. “There are some very delicate things in here.”

    “Have you come for good?” Colin asked, glancing round at the boxes filling every available space in the kitchen, on the stairs and in the miniscule salotto.

    “Well, she ain’t come for the weekend, has she?” said Dave, laughing.    

    “What brought you here?”

    “I wanted to lose myself.”

    Neither had an answer to that. Which was just as well as my back was breaking after having heaved most of the heavier stuff up the stairs myself. All I wanted was to be left alone with my boxes. Then all I owned in the world would be under one sweltering roof. All this effort only to come to another alleyway? But from this one I could see the sky, unlike the one I’d left in Devon, dark and dingy and damp.

     Four hours later, it was beginning to look like home. The chintz armchair, desk, reading lamp, the tall clock and green two-seater sofa had all been squeezed into the salotto alongside the coffee table, bookcase and cupboard. It was now just possible to take three small steps ahead, two to the right and one to the left without knocking into anything.

    Sunlight streamed down the old wooden steps, brought by Richard from an office building in London and fixed to the kitchen wall so we could climb out of the high window and sit on the roof. Where Billy sat washing his bottom. A good sign that.

    I too sat on a step and gazed round at the boxes surrounding me, one mounted on top of the other almost to the high ceiling. How on earth was I ever to get organised before the b&bs arrived? I couldn’t help laughing; people came to Italy to live in spacious houses surrounded by vineyards. Whereas, here I was, imprisoned by furniture and not a vineyard in sight. Only the street steps could be seen from the salotto window, leading down from Via della Mura to Martino’s grocer shop.

   But it was Tuscany! And against impossible odds, I’d got myself here. I’ve never been so excited in my whole life as I was at that moment. My adventure had begun. Who knew where it would lead? But now contacts were crucial. Who did I know, apart from Lionello? Vittorio Esposito, whom I didn’t entirely trust, but whose friendship and support I urgently needed.

     I headed across the piazza to use the telephone in the bar Cortese.  “Ciao, Silka, it’s Lorri. I’ve finally arrived in Sinalunga to live.”

    “Lorri! We hear that you arrive, but Vittorio cannot to contact you. You have now a telephone?”

   “No, I’m ringing from the bar.”

   “Today is my birthday. You come tonight for dinner with us?”

   “I’d love to,” I said.

    Even dubious contacts were better than none.

    I left the bar and headed back across the piazza trying to contain my excitement. Another step on the way towards making my dream a reality.