2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (11 page)

Bindo had nearly come a cropper, though, because Signor Bisotti had looked down from his balcony and seen him just as he cornered the furious cat. Thank God Ismelda had appeared in the garden and, swift as a wink, had shoved him into the peelings bin and saved him from a certain beating
.

Maria Paparella laid a crisp white cloth on the grass and, to Bindo’s delight, began to set out the most sumptuous spread of food that he had ever seen. He looked with wide-eyed wonder at the feast before him and his small belly ached with hunger
.

The nuns at the Santa Rosa convent were kind enough to him, and in return for running errands and doing odd jobs they let him sleep in the stables. They fed him twice daily but mainly on thin soup and under-cooked beans which gave him the gripe
.

There were slices of spicy sausage and ham on a roughly hewn wooden platter, pale cheeses wrapped tightly in vine leaves and small, orange-yolked eggs on a bed of crispy green leaves. There were dusky grapes and downy-skinned peaches. And in the centre of the cloth, a basket of golden bread which gave off the sweet smells of rosemary and olive oil and made his belly ache with longing
.

Ismelda picked up one of the loaves, broke it in two, and handed him half. “You like
focaccia?”
she asked
.

He nodded, his mouth too full to answer. It was the most delicious bread he had ever tasted. The convent bread he was used to was dark and chewy and could be used to fill holes in the walls, but this bread was fit for angels. It was golden and crisp to the touch, dusted with salt, dimpled and stuck with sprigs of rosemary
.

After they had feasted for some time Bindo looked up in surprise that they had a visitor. It was his good friend Luca Roselli, who worked as a shop boy for Piero di Bardi
.

Luca stopped in his tracks when he saw Bindo, winked at his friend and grinned
.

Ismelda leant towards Bindo and said, “Luca comes here most afternoons when Papa is out of the way. Maria teaches him to cook, and one day he’s going to be the best cook in all Italy and open his own eating house, isn’t that so, Luca?
”

Luca smiled and blushed with pleasure
. “Si,
one day I will be able to leave that hell-hole of a place where I work
.”

“
You don’t like working for Piero di Bardi?” Ismelda asked
.

“
I hate it,” he said with feeling
.

“
But don’t you learn a lot of things?
”

“
I don’t want to learn how to make cheese glue and varnish and have to trail around farms looking for white hogs so I can make paintbrushes
.”

“
You don’t?
”

Luca shook his head sadly, and Ismelda sighed. She would give her eye-teeth for a job like that but she was just a silly rich girl and would never be allowed to work
.

Luca knelt down and held out an earthenware dish for their inspection
.

“Panecotta
with a juice of summer fruits,” he announced. “Maria has taught me to make it
.”

“
How does she know how to make all these wonderful things?” Bindo asked
.

“
She has an uncle, an old shoe seller, who comes up to Santa Rosa once in a while from Naples, and he brings her all the latest recipes from the grand houses there. She can’t read so I read them for her and then she teaches me how to make them
.”

“
Next week my uncle has promised to bring me a very new exciting recipe,” Maria said, sitting down on the grass beside them. “Something very special, which Luca and I will make for you
.”

“
What is it?” Ismelda asked eagerly
.

Maria tapped the side of her nose and laughed gaily. “It’s a secret. You will have to wait and see
.”

“
Can Bindo come and have some of this secret stuff?
”

Maria grinned. “If we can get your father out of the way for a few hours, we will have another little feast all together
.”

Bindo beamed and his green eyes glittered with happiness. He looked up at Luca and saw that his eyes danced with delight; he had never seen Luca looking so happy
.

He put out his hand tentatively, brushed his fingers gently against Ismelda’s warm cheek and sighed. This was the most wonderful day of his life
.

In an upstairs bedroom in the Villa Rosso Piero di Bardi woke from a drunken sleep, rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and groaned. He was soaked in a muck sweat and the inside of his mouth tasted like putrefied meat
.

He sat up and looked around, wondering where in the name of God he was. Then he remembered with embarrassment the conversation he had had here with Signor Bisotti earlier in the day
.

A month ago Signor Bisotti had commissioned him to paint a scene of cherubs to be hung in the church, and he had agreed out of desperation because he owed money to half the population of Santa Rosa. In a week’s time he needed to have the preliminary sketches ready to show Signor Bisotti, and all he had at the moment was a blank canvas and an empty head
.

What was wrong with him of late? He had never had this problem in the past – why, his hand had always itched to draw, even when he was in the most improbable of places. Sometimes when he was kneeling during Mass and a shaft of sunlight doused a cool saint in a shadowy niche or cast luminous haloes around the upturned faces of the altar boys, he would have killed to be able to take up his charcoal and set to work. Yet in the last weeks it was as if the world around him had grown stale and uninteresting and his eyes could not make contact with his hand
.

His fingers felt heavy, as if his blood was transforming into a thick syrup and parts of him were turning to stone, little by little, his hands, maybe next his arms
.

This morning, he had begged for more time but Signor Bisotti was having none of it. And then he had dropped the bombshell. He wanted Piero to model his cherubs on the widow Zanelli’s two daughters
.

Sweet Jesus, the man was mad. The Zanelli sisters were pretty enough, but in such an artificial way, all baubles and bangles and dangling ribbons. They had fine enough faces to grace the front of a snuffbox, but there was no freshness, no earthiness, and no aura of innocence about them. He had told Signor Bisotti this, said he must feel the very essence of his model’s flesh seep into his being
.

At that point Signor Bisotti had lost his temper and screeched, “This is the drink making you talk nonsense. Essence and aura my arse! Pah! When I ask the carpenter to make me a table, does he say, “Oh, the oak has no aura, no essence?” No. He takes my money and he makes me a table. You, Piero, will paint the Zanelli girls or I will withdraw my generous offer
.”

Then Signor Bisotti had led him up to this cool, dark room and bidden him lie down until he was sober and his madness had passed
.

Now Piero ran his paint-stained fingers through his tangled hair in despair. He knew that as soon as those damned Zanelli girls were sitting in front of him his hands would begin to shake and his mind would flit from one incongruous thought to another. He had surely been cursed, his talents dried up, congealed like old paint blobs on the empty palette of his mind
.

He got unsteadily to his feet, went over to the window, pushed open the shutters and screwed up his eyes against the bright sunshine
.

He looked down into the garden of the Villa Rosso and drew in his breath with a whistle at the scene before him
.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the pomegranate tree, dappling the faces of the four people sitting on the grass
.

There was a girl he had never seen before. She must be Ismelda, the youngest Bisotti girl, the one Signor Bisotti took great pains to keep hidden away. He’d heard the locals speak of her in hushed tones, calling her the odd child, a child who could put the evil eye on you, make milk turn sour and the hens stop laying
.

She was looking intently at the little dwarf, Bindo, and the unusual blue of her eyes was so captivating that Piero could not take his own eyes off her. It was like getting a sudden glimpse of the sea, of unfathomable swirling depths. Her face was remarkable; she was no classic beauty but there was a great vitality and an animation about her which took his breath away
.

Her skin was as smooth as alabaster, a cluster of freckles peppering her nose and cheeks. She had a wide mouth, lips as pink as roses, as plump as caterpillars. A mane of wild, glossy hair framed this wonderful face, hair as black and blue as a raven’s wing
.

Reluctantly he turned his eyes away from her and looked at Bindo, and it was as if he was seeing him properly for the first time. The boy had been miraculously transformed in some way, but what was it that had changed? His skin was paler than usual and, though darkened by the summer sun, it had a translucency that transformed his features. A smear of red fruit dissected the smooth skin of his cheek like a scar
.

Bindo was looking at Ismelda with wonder in his deep green eyes, drinking her up with his gaze, his eyelashes whispering across cheeks dusted with freckles of sunlight
.

Piero started when he saw that Luca Roselli, his shop boy, was down there in the garden, too. The cheeky devil was supposed to be at the house in the Via Dante, making cheese glue. So this was where he sloped off to in the afternoons – no wonder Piero could never find him when there was work to be done. Luca’s eyes were closed and there was a look of such contentment on his face that Piero was astonished. Gone was the scowl he wore when he was working for Piero. He was resting his back against the pomegranate tree, wriggling his bare brown toes, looking as though he had not a care in the world
.

Maria Paparella, the Bisottis’ servant, sat cross-legged on the grass, her faded black dress rucked up to just below her dimpled knees. Her plump calves were as pale as early narcissi, in contrast to her large sun-browned arms; here was a woman of contrast, of light and shade, of strength and tenderness
.

It was a scene of such raw and unadulterated beauty that it made the hairs on his neck quiver, and a lump grow in his throat
.

Maria Paparella looked up suddenly, and she smiled as their eyes met. Piero stepped back hastily from the window, feeling suddenly bashful. He drew the shutters together reluctantly and stood for a long time in the darkened room. For the first time in months his hand itched to take up his charcoal and draw
.

I
n Kilvenny Castle Ella Grieve woke early in the four-poster bed where she had been born almost fifty-three years ago. Until last night she had barely set foot in the castle since the day her family had moved to Shrimp’s Hotel. After they had gone, the castle had been shut up until her eldest brother, William, had married Hester and moved in here.

As she lay listening to the morning sounds of Kilvenny, she grew puzzled. There was the sound of birdsong and the lapping of the waves down on the beach, but something was missing. It was all far too quiet. She was used to the silence up at Shrimp’s, but down here in the village there had always been lots of bustle and noise. Today there was no raucous laughter from the fish workers as they made their way down to the Café Romana, where they bided their time until the ramshackle bus arrived to take them along the rutted road to the smokehouse further down the coast. She hadn’t heard the clop of hooves as the donkey cart from Duffy’s Farm made its way around the narrow streets, delivering milk, eggs and gossip.

She got up, opened the window and looked over at the Café Romana. She was surprised to see that the door was firmly shut and the sign still turned to CLOSED. There was no sign of movement inside, no steam rising from the coffee machine, no workers in greasy overalls, no lingering smell of strong tobacco or pungent whiff of fish on the morning breeze.

She turned away from the window and wandered fretfully around the room. Above the fireplace there was a framed photograph of William’s awful wife, Hester. Hester had been a beautiful woman but her beauty was marred by cold, scornful eyes and a cruel twist to her lovely lips. Ella looked at the sleek blonde hair framing the well-boned face, and shuddered. Hester Grieve had been a sly, calculating bitch.

Thinking of her brought Kizzy reluctantly to mind. She had been a little beauty, too, not fair like her mother but dark like the Grieves. She’d been a delightful child, full of fun and able to charm everyone around her, but after her father died she’d hardened and in her teenage years she’d been nothing short of a bloody handful. Hester had been hopeless with her, impatient and critical and hideously jealous of Kizzy’s youth. When she met her second husband she’d bundled Kizzy off with relief to boarding school, upped sticks and never set foot in Kilvenny again.

Kizzy had come back to Shrimp’s every school holiday, severing all ties with Hester. Ella had been fond of Kizzy, had always hoped that she would join them in running Shrimp’s after she left school, but that wasn’t to be. Kizzy had proved that she had far more of her mother in her than anyone had thought. What she had done to Alice had been quite unforgivable, poor, beautiful, naive Alice, who hadn’t a bad bone in her body. Alice had been far lovelier than either Hester or Kizzy; she’d had looks to die for and she’d always been able to attract any man’s eye, though not necessarily his heart.

Ella sat down at the dressing table and scrutinised her reflection in the mirror. There was a slight improvement on how she had looked yesterday because last night she’d soaked in the antiquated bath downstairs, her first bath in longer than she cared to remember. Her face had scrubbed up well and there was a semblance of colour in her cheeks this morning; her hair was clean, although still tangled from years of neglect.

Dear God, she must have frightened that child half to death when she opened the door to her the other night. Whatever must Catrin have thought, seeing her great-aunt dressed in that old brown overall, odd-coloured Wellingtons and a face which hadn’t been washed in months, even years?