2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (21 page)

Dan Gwartney indicated that she should sit down on a battered leather sofa and he sat opposite her in a wing-backed chair, perusing her in silence for a while. Catrin looked around at the threadbare velvet curtains and battered armchairs. She liked this room, liked the feel of the worn floorboards beneath her feet and the smell of old books all jumbled up with a whiff of stale tobacco and nose-tingling snuff.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m doing some work about art for school and I wanted to know everything there is to know about someone called Piero di Bardi,” she lied.

“Piero di Bardi?” Dan’s eyes lit up with interest. “Ah, now, he was a very interesting man. There used to be a book about him here, but I’m afraid it was stolen a long time ago.”

“Stolen?”

“Well, stolen or inadvertently not returned. It happens sometimes, though thankfully not often. As I remember, it was a woman who was staying at Shrimp’s. She had a temporary membership of the library, as a lot of the guests did in the old days, but she forgot to return the book. Sadly I’ve never been able to get hold of another copy.”

“That’s a shame.”

The windows rattled under the onslaught of the wind and Catrin shivered. Dan got up and put more coal on the fire.

“As the book’s no longer here, you’ll have to settle for what I can remember about him.”

“That’s fine, thank you.”

“Now, I know Piero was born around 1721 in Naples, Italy. He was the eldest son of a poor musician and he had a younger brother who died of a fever when he was about eight years of age. Piero started painting when he was very young and soon people recognised his talent. He used to paint the lids of snuffboxes for tourists and eventually he was apprenticed to a painter where he learned his trade as a shop boy.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of them. Artists used to employ boys to work for them and they learnt how to mix paints, make brushes and stuff, and in return the master gave them lessons.”

“You’re very knowledgeable for one so young.”

“And some of the boys became great painters,” she added.

“Some of them did, but of course they had to have the talent and the desire. I expect some of them were encouraged to take up art more for the satisfaction of their parents.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Some parents want their child to achieve their own dreams rather than what the child wants.”

“I see.”

She wondered for a moment what Kizzy might want her to become. A dancer? A model? Or a film star? Fat chance.

“Anyhow, Piero was commissioned by many rich people to paint their portraits, and he painted the ceilings of many a palazzo in Rome. Now, it was believed that he moved to Naples and married a girl there, and some people think that she is the woman in the painting of
Woman and Child
, but that’s not proved. There’s some confusion about what happened to him after that, but then he resurfaced in a small village in the mountains.”

“Santa Rosa?” Catrin murmured.

Dan Gwartney looked at her in surprise. “That’s right. So you’ve done a little homework already?”

“That’s all I really know.” She tried to hide her excitement but she knew for certain now that Santa Rosa was a real place.

“What happened to Piero?” she asked.

“Well, there was a great mystery surrounding him.”

“What sort of mystery?”

“He lived for some years in Santa Rosa, where he did a lot of his best work.
Woman and Child
is one of the paintings from that period, along with a lot of others. Then he was commissioned by a wealthy chap to paint a group of feasting cherubs which was to hang in the church there.”

“And did he?”

“He finished the painting but he never kept his half of the bargain because one day he upped and left, taking the painting with him, and was never heard of again. That’s about all I know, Catrin.”

“So no one knows what became of him or the painting?”

Dan shook his head. “No, but over the years countless people have tried to solve the mystery.”

“Where do they start looking?”

“Oh, from time to time sketches have come to light which are believed to be Piero’s, often found in the most unlikely of places, and people have gone rushing off trying to find clues to what happened to him.”

“But no one ever has?”

“No. People still try, though, and if the picture of the feasting cherubs is ever found it’ll be worth a fortune.”

“And would whoever found it be able to keep it?”

Dan nodded thoughtfully.

“Piero was at the height of his powers when he went missing, and that picture would doubtless have been a masterpiece.”

“Aunt Ella was right. She said you’d know all about Piero.”

“Did she send you over here, then?”

“Yes.”

“I expect she said go and ask old Mr Knowitall, didn’t she?”

Catrin shook her head, but she felt her face go pink and she knew that he could tell she was lying.

Catrin looked more closely at him. He had a sweet face for an old man. His cheeks were pink and shiny, and his bushy eyebrows lifted up when he smiled. He had hair like silver candyfloss and kind blue-grey eyes which twinkled in the firelight.

“Would I be able to find out anything about Santa Rosa while I’m here?”

Dan went over to the bookshelves. He took a small step-ladder, climbed to the top and began to search the shelves. A few minutes later he climbed carefully down, holding a dusty book in one hand.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Here we are,
Days in Old Italy
, by Theodora Sprenker. Your Aunt Alice, God bless her, could probably recite every word in this book.”

“Could she?”

“Oh, she loved this book, spent hours with her nose in it. Anyhow, come over to the table and I’ll put the reading lamp on so you can see properly.”

Catrin crossed to the large shiny-topped table near the window.

“There’s a spirit stove over there in the corner and a tin of chocolate biscuits. If you fancy a brew or get peckish, you can help yourself.”

She eyed the biscuit tin longingly, then turned her back on it. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry. What time do you close?”

“No proper time, my lovely; you can’t put opening and closing hours on learning, I always think. The door’s open most of the time. It’s so nice to see a child who has a love of books. Most youngsters seem to spend hours stuck in front of the television.”

“We’re not allowed to watch television at school.”

“How about listening to the radio or the record player?”

“We’re only allowed to listen to classical music.”

“None of that loud pop stuff?”

“Only Val Doonican and Vera Lynn, but they’re not very easy to dance to. Sister Lucy says Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley are the spawn of the devil, wriggling their hips and pulling goo-goo eyes like madmen.”

Dan chuckled, sat down in his chair, picked up a book and began to read.

Days in Old Italy
was heavy and the pages yellow with age.

There was a date on a page near the front of the book: 1903.

She searched through the index and found the right page, then turned to the section on Santa Rosa and read eagerly.

Santa Rosa is a sombre, windswept village in winter and sweltering in the summer months. It is a charming if dilapidated medieval place with narrow streets and a pretty cobbled piazza with a fountain graced by a trio of splendid cherubs. The church is a large, ugly affair with a tower and an enormous bell which resounds around the village, calling the remaining inhabitants to prayer. The interior has no particular artistic merit, and the cheap wooden panelling spoils the acoustic effect, but there are some lovely marble saints set in shadowy niches.

Dan Gwartney looked up from his book and watched Catrin with interest. Oblivious of his scrutiny, she read on.

Many of the houses in Santa Rosa are empty now, owing to emigration on a large scale, but one can take an agreeable walk through the shady streets and drink a cool glass of wine in the cave-like bar where one can linger over a lunch of freshly made pasta. Then at your leisure amble back through the village and stroll through the abandoned Villa Rosso, a former grand villa once home to the wealthy Bisotti family. Ponder awhile in the overgrown gardens or take a siesta in the shade of the pomegranate tree.

Catrin shivered with excitement. Santa Rosa was a real place and she was sure that the paintings in
Recipes for Cherubs
were of real people, too. The wealthy Bisotti family had lived in the blood-coloured Villa Rosso and Ismelda Bisotti would have lived there too.

Before you leave Santa Rosa walk along the narrow Via Dante, for there you will find the abandoned studio of the renowned artist Piero di Bardi. It is well worth a visit to Santa Rosa, just to step inside the old house and see what life was like in eighteenth-century Italy. Remarkably, the house has been kept just as it was the day the artist left the village, never to be heard of again. Rumours abound about his fate; some say he was set upon by robbers on the road to Terrini and killed; others that he went mad and was incarcerated in an asylum. All mere conjecture, no doubt, and probably his fate will sadly never be uncovered though many have tried to discover what happened to him and his lost masterpieces.

In his studio the original flute-shaped paintpots remain just as he left them. Although the paint is long gone, the pots are labelled: indigo, verdigris, cinabrese, lampblack, sinoper, vermillion, ochre, saffron and the peculiarly named dragon’s blood.

There are terracotta pots containing sticks of sharpened charcoal and handmade brushes of all shapes and sizes. There are boxes containing sand, salt and sawdust, and on a worm-eaten shelf there are bottles of vinegar, varnish and quicksilver.

Empty wine pitchers litter the floor and there is even a giant half-eaten ham hanging from the ceiling – preserved with varnish by someone for posterity. Although none of Piero’s paintings remain in the house, it is certainly well worth a visit for students of art or history.

On leaving Santa Rosa, take the steep road down towards Terrini…

Catrin sat up straight looking ahead of her. Terrini! The Convent of Santa Lucia was near Terrini, and that’s where her mother was right now. Her mother wouldn’t be a bit interested in artists and old houses; all that interested her was men and dress shops and how pretty she looked.

Catrin closed the book thoughtfully. How she would love to walk through the cobbled streets of Santa Rosa and have a cool drink in the bar. How wonderful to open the door to Piero di Bardi’s abandoned house in the Via Dante and go inside. Maybe there would be clues there which would show why he had left in such a hurry and where he’d gone. A person couldn’t just vanish, surely?

She cast her mind back to the portrait of Piero di Bardi in
Recipes for Cherubs
and wondered if it was a self-portrait. She was sure it must be because all the portraits in the book were certainly done by a genius.

Piero was a thin-faced man with dark, tangled hair which hung down to his shoulders. His cheeks were hollow and there were dark circles under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept well in a long time. There was a spark of vibrant energy, though, in those eyes, dreamy haunting eyes which looked steadfastly out from the page and seemed to look right into her soul. His hand was outstretched, holding a paintbrush in long slender fingers.

She turned her attention back to Theodora Sprenker.

Terrini is a one-street town, one of the most poverty-stricken places I have ever encountered in all my travels. Barefoot children, dressed in stinking rags but with the faces of angels, followed me as I passed through, and I could hardly bear to look upon their ravaged faces with their suppurating sores and famished eyes.

There is no inn or house in Terrini in which one would feel safe to stay, so I rode straight through, throwing a few coins to these poor children.

I rode for a good half-hour, the road winding steadily upwards, until in the early evening I came within sight of the Convent of Santa Lucia. Such a curious place I have never seen, perched as it is on a hilltop, built into the very rock itself, the walls turning a deep blood-red as the sun began to set. I took my lodgings there and have wished fervently ever since that I had not. I have recurring nightmares about the place which leave me weak and quivering with fear. The poor souls incarcerated there were dressed in a uniform of rags and spent their days screaming, banging their heads and rocking back and forth, babbling incoherently. The most crazed of the inmates were locked in cells with bars on the windows and all the while the most heart-rending moaning emanated from these cells and one could barely dare to contemplate the horrors that lay behind the locked doors. Suffice it to say that I stayed only one night, the longest night of my life.

Catrin giggled. She wondered if the Convent of Santa Lucia was as bad today as it had been then. She smiled, thinking of her mother stuck in such a place; Kizzy would be hopping mad to be cooped up there all this time. For a moment she felt a frisson of guilt. Maybe she should ring Arthur Campbell and ask him to send her mother some money, but if she did, she’d have to say she was in Kilvenny and then he’d be bound to come and get her. No, her mother could stew in her own juices. It would serve her right for gadding off to Italy to meet an old friend, probably some stupid man who’d taken her fancy.

She looked up from the book and saw the odd man from the photographer’s shop looking in through the window at her. And then suddenly he was gone.

T
he widow Zanelli could barely contain her delight as she unwound the rags from her daughter Adriana’s hair and brushed out the glossy ringlets, coiling them round her fingers, stiffening them with a little spit in unruly places. She applied a little rouge to the child’s cheeks and stood back to admire her handiwork
.

Then she carried out the same procedure on Adriana’s twin, Alessandra
.

“
Stand beside your sister, there in front of the window, so that I can admire you both
.”