Dolci di Love (13 page)

‘But do they need to be traditional? Couldn't there be a modern version that maybe makes more economic sense to build?'

‘Some things can change with the times and still be true to their purpose, yes, I believe this, but you modernise a gondola and it is no longer a gondola. Not everything
needs
to be traditional, but some things do. If we do not cling to our traditions, then what? If there is no tradition, there is nothing. We are just the same as everyone else.'

‘And what's the matter with that?'

‘Ah, Lily, I keep forgetting, you have just arrived here. In Italy, the people of Montevedova consider themselves a world away from the people of Montalcino, who we can see from our bedroom windows. We can sneeze and hit them but they are like aliens in so many ways. We eat different food, we drink different wine, we have different customs. We like being different from each other, we thrive on it, and it is our traditions that make us different—otherwise we are all just a bunch of stupid people living in an increasingly corrupt country whose economy is going to the dogs.'

Lily knew little of Italian finances or politics so was ill-equipped to offer an opinion. Her headache was back. It was time she said goodbye.

‘Just so it's clear,' she told him as she got into her car, ‘I am not the sort of woman who just follows someone to his house and eats his tart.'

‘Of course, yes, I understand, especially as you barely touched the tart,' he answered, and those sad brown eyes tugged at the wasted maternal part of her. ‘Maybe next time you will stay a little longer, hmm? Eat a whole slice.'

‘I'm not sure how long I will be here, but maybe. And thank you, Alessandro.'

‘My pleasure,' he said. ‘And if there is anything else I can help you with, please allow me to do so.'

‘O
h, well done, Violetta! Well done!' The widow Ciacci's head bobbed up at the sisters' open window.

Violetta nodded, as though she was as pleased with the way the Alessandro business was turning out as anybody else, but she was not. Her stomach was in knots and her indigestion wasn't helping.

News that Lily had been found and reunited with their
calzino
might have put the other widows in fine spirits, but Violetta, with her instinct still stuck in her sternum, was not one of the same mind. Not by a long shot.

Lily had taken to drink and passed out in her car. These were not the actions of a woman born to heal Montevedova's favourite son. Yet by the time Violetta and Luciana negotiated the narrow secret stairway to the church basement, the rest of the widows gathered there had worked themselves into a fever of excitement. They buzzed like bees in clover.

‘Did you hear? Alessandro rescued her.'

‘He may as well have ridden in on a white charger!'

‘She went back to his villa.'

‘She ate the widow Benedicti's
crostata di more
.'

‘Oooh, that
crostata di more.
Mmmm, if only we had some of that here. It's just what I feel like. Those blackberries.'

‘What do you add, Benedicti, to get that extra piquance?'

‘Oh, Violetta! You have done it again!' The widow Pacini grinned from ear to ear as the Ferretti sisters made their way into the room. ‘This is a good one. This is a really good one.'

‘My Alessandro is finally going to get the happiness he deserves,' trilled the widow Benedicti, extra puffed up because her
crostata
had once more been admired. ‘Our greatest triumph yet. Dear, dear, dear Alessandro.'

Nearly every woman in the room sighed, a sound that Violetta found so irritating, it was all she could do to keep herself from slapping someone. They really were quite silly when it came to Alessandro.

To her surprise, Fiorella Fiorucci seemed as unmoved by the adulation as she was. She just rolled her eyes and pulled an iPod out of one pocket, fitting the earphones in her ears as though she didn't want to hear any more.

‘What's the problem?' she asked when she saw Violetta staring at her. ‘Don't tell me there's a rule about no music. Next thing you'll be saying a person can't undo the top button of her skirt when she's had three helpings of
ribollita
.'

The widows' collective mooning over Alessandro ground to a halt.
Ribollita
was a soup made with beans—a
lot
of beans. It was a well-known fact, especially in a secret basement with limited ventilation, that a lot of old women and a lot of beans were not a good combination.

‘Yes, anyway,' one of the widows said. ‘What next, Violetta? For our lovebirds?'

‘The widow Benedicti says a cup of coffee was as hot as it got,' someone else said. The widows approved of a decorous courtship but liked to know that fireworks were around the corner.

‘Are we going to lure Alessandro into the
pasticceria
?' suggested someone else.

‘Get Lily back to his villa, pronto?'

‘Have them both stranded somewhere in between?'

‘Stranded, yes. That worked with that pretty florist and the potter, didn't it?'

‘Or was that the little hatmaker and the barber?'

‘Yes, yes, Violetta. What about a stranding? Or do you have some other clever trick left up your sleeve?'

But Violetta's sleeves were empty.

All she had tucked away anywhere were enormous doubts and stabbing pains.

‘Will you just leave me be!' she snapped at her friends. ‘This constant pestering is enough to give me haemorrhoids.'

‘Speaking of which,' Fiorella said, turning to the widow Ercolani. ‘How is that cream working out for you? Or are you using it on your eyes. They do that in Hollywood, so I hear.'

The widow Ercolani looked at a spot on the floor as though it might open a portal to a catacomb beneath and swallow her, but before that could happen Fiorella moved her attention to the widow Ciacci.

‘And you, feeling chirpier?' she asked. ‘You'd be amazed how many people in this town are taking those pills. It's a wonder the lot of us aren't singing and dancing every hour of the livelong day.'

The widow Ciacci wilted into a chair.

‘And as for you,' Fiorella said to the widow Mazzetti, ‘I hope you've got your knitting needles sharpened. That youngest granddaughter of yours is in the family way.'

‘But she's not married,' insisted the widow Mazzetti. ‘Oh! That little madam!'

‘Oh, hang on,' Fiorella said. ‘No, I have that wrong. Stop knitting. It's not the youngest, it's the second-to-youngest and she'll never be in the family way if she keeps taking those contraceptives.'

‘But she
is
married! Oh, that little madam!'

The collective spirit in the room was suddenly not so fine.

L
ily woke early the next morning, the sweet smell of baking
cantucci
drifting up the stairs and lightly tickling her taste buds. It was a delightful way to greet a new day and put her in an upbeat mood that her circumstances didn't otherwise warrant.

She sat on her windowsill drinking in the glorious view and wondering which piece of her broken-down life she should start picking up today, but those rolling hills, those jewel-like rooftops, that hazy blue sky over distant green horizons…

A day perched on top of such a stunning vista could only be so grim.

The vista that met her in the mirror was nowhere near as pleasing: Lily's dark roots needed urgent touching up and that, at least, she knew how to fix.

She followed her nose downstairs to the kitchen, pushing open the door to find the two sisters hunched over the refectory table covered in flour once again.

‘No rest for the wicked I see,' she joked at which Luciana dropped the bin she was holding with a
clang
, sugar spilling like paint across the stone floor.

Violetta gave her sister an earful, which Luciana robustly
returned, then they both looked miserably at the mess on the floor and just as miserably up at Lily.

With a deep sigh, Violetta attempted to sink down to ground level but didn't get farther than the mildest of knee bends. Luciana then leaned on the table for balance but winced with the pain of putting even a fraction of her weight on one wrist.

‘Hang on there,' Lily said. ‘Neither of you is going to get anywhere near the floor without a crane and a trampoline and possibly the local fire brigade. Here, let me do it.'

She took the dustpan and brush that she saw Violetta heading for and started to sweep up the mess.

‘I may already have mentioned,' she said as she cleaned, ‘that I am not really a kitchen person. My sister, Rose, is the domestic one. She would have this cleaned up before it even hit the ground. And I'll tell you something else, if Rose were here, I bet her biscotti, I'm sorry, I mean her
cantucci
would be perfect. I've never seen anything come out of her kitchen that wasn't.'

She found the trash can and poured the spilled sugar into it.

‘Mind you,' she continued as she crouched to sweep the floor again, ‘if Rose were here we wouldn't be speaking to each other because she thinks I'm turning into an abusive alcoholic like our mother, and I think it's not fair she got to have all the children.'

When she stood up again, Luciana was holding an egg in the air.

‘Oh, will you look at that,' Lily said. ‘An egg. But seriously, I am the original person who can't even boil one.'

‘
Uova
,' Luciana said, pointing at it with a curled finger. ‘
Uova
.'

‘
Uova
?' Lily repeated.

Luciana nodded, holding the egg even higher. ‘
Uova.
'

‘
Uova
,' Lily said again, putting the dustpan back in its place. ‘Oh!
Uova
. I get it. Egg!
Uova
! How about that? I feel just like Helen Keller with the water.
Uova
. A comfortable bed, a beautiful view,
and an Italian lesson as well. Thank you, ladies, it is very much appreciated, but now, if you will excuse me, I will leave and let you get on with it.'

‘
Burro
,' Luciana said, holding up a saucepan of melted butter. ‘
Burro.
'

‘Yes,
burro
,' agreed Lily. ‘Butter. Thank you. I'm sure it is but look, I really need to go.'

Luciana poured the butter into the mixture on the table. ‘
Mescolare
,' she said to Lily. ‘
Mescolare
.' She turned to Violetta, who seemed deeply unimpressed although it was hard to tell; she always looked a bit like that. ‘
En inglese?
' Luciana said to her sister. ‘
Mescolare?
'

The smell of the sugar, the fresh eggs, and the warm butter wafted in invisible tendrils around Lily's face, unlocking a secret door in her memory so sharply she could almost hear a key turn. She couldn't for the life of her tell what lay inside but for a moment was overwhelmed by an indescribable flood of something warm and delicious. And happy, really happy.

‘Oh,' she said, her hand on her chest. ‘Goodness.'

‘
Mescolare
,' insisted Luciana. ‘
Mescolare
!'

‘Look,' said Lily, ‘you will just have to excuse me for my lack of Italiano, but I don't want cooking lessons or language lessons. I'm not a real tourist, you know. I never even wanted to come to Tuscany until I found out my husband had a girlfriend and two children here.'

This time it was the bowl of hazelnuts in Violetta's hands that fell to the ground. The bowl broke in two and the nuts bounced cheerfully to the four corners of the room.

‘
Santa merda
!' Violetta whispered.

‘
Santamerda
?' Lily echoed as she got to the floor once more to pick them up. ‘
Santamerda, santamerda, santamerda
,' she repeated as she chased the nuts around the kitchen floor.

‘It's all just getting too strange for words,' she said from beneath the table. ‘The thing is, I was trying to lay low while I worked out a plan, but then yesterday—was it yesterday?—yes, then yesterday there she was, Daniel's daughter, standing in your shop staring at me with his great big green eyes.'

She scrambled under the dresser while above her Violetta—somewhat shakily—sought more hazelnuts from the pantry.

‘Those
santamerda
sure know how to move,' Lily said, spotting a coven of them over in the far corner.

‘What I wouldn't give for that little girl to be mine,' she continued, putting the last of the spilled nuts in the trash and moving out of Luciana's way as she took a pan of
cantucci
logs out of the oven. They were perfectly cooked, if a little kookily shaped.

‘Francesca,' Lily continued, absentmindedly moving back to the table and plunging her hands into the mixture in front of her, folding it between her fingers and slowly blending in the new hazelnut supply as the elderly sisters looked on.

‘Who wouldn't want a daughter like that? I mean, she's perfect. And the totally crazy thing is that I can't even bring myself to hate him, to hate Daniel, for having that gorgeous little girl, and I know that I should and I know that deep down I really, really must. And I certainly feel the occasional wave of something dark and possibly ever-so-slightly murderous, but mostly what I feel is envious. Envious! You see? That's crazy. It's pathetic. It cannot be normal. Can it be normal?'

Beneath her hands, the mixture was emerging as a smooth dough bubbled with round brown nuts.

‘And now there's this other guy,' she said as Luciana began slicing the cooked logs into biscotti-shaped discs and laying the discs on another baking pan.

‘Oh, so that's how it gets to be
cantucci
—you bake it again,' Lily said as she halved the mixture she was working on, then halved it
again. ‘Anyway, this guy—I won't even mention his name because you just might recognise it—this guy is the sort of man you dream about showing up to give you a helping hand and he seems to keep doing just that, and if I can be honest with you, which I think I can since you don't have a clue what I am saying, I've never really been given a helping hand like that and it's not all bad. In fact it is pretty darn good.'

‘I have a clue,' Violetta said, but Lily, not expecting her to be speaking English, did not hear it that way.

‘I went to his house, for heaven's sake,' Lily told her. ‘I went to his house in the middle of nowhere without telling anybody and ate some tart, some really good tart.'

‘I know about tart,' the little old woman insisted, fixing her with her dark, beady eyes.

‘No need to look at me like that, Violetta, it was only a few mouthfuls,' Lily said.

‘Why so much fuss about a
crostata
?'

‘So anyway, will you look at this! Here are your
cantucci
logs all ready for baking, and quite smooth and even, too, if I may say so myself. Did I really do that? So, listen, this has been fun and I'm glad I could help, but my roots are showing and I'm missing my standard hair appointment at home so I am going to go find a hairdresser and there's no point asking you, not that there's anything wrong with a bun at a certain age, but I think I'll be getting down to the tourist office to see who they can recommend. Good luck with the finished product.
Ciao, ciao
!'

She left the old women having what sounded like the rumblings of a humdinger of an argument and headed down the Corso but stopped in her tracks when she considered that Carlotta could well be re-employed at the bakery down the hill by now.

Rather than risk running into her again, she decided to take one of the tiny alleyways leading away from the main street, up
toward the
piazza grande
and the other lane on the opposite side of the hill.

She could bypass Carlotta's bakery that way and still make it to the tourist office. However, the first thing she saw on the Via Ricci after winding through a handful of the little lanes to get there was a hairdressing salon, its window full of faded pictures of 1980s bouffy blonde hairstyles.

In New York, she had her roots done every three weeks at great expense in a salon on Fifth Avenue where caviar blinis were served with ice-cold Veuve Clicquot.

This did not look like a blini-and-Veuve Clicquot establishment, but her roots needed attention—she would not let standards slip just because of her current predicament—so she went in and explained to the frumpy woman at reception what she would like. The frumpy woman did not speak English but seemed to understand her anyway, pointing at her own parting, then at a picture in a magazine of a beautiful blonde with perfect highlights.

‘
Sí, sí
.' Lily smiled and was shown to a seat. The frumpy receptionist then called out something in Italian to whoever was in the room at the back of the salon, said, ‘
Uno momento
' to Lily, and shuffled out the front door.

A scented oil was throwing out a pleasant, grassy aroma in the corner while gentle, classical music played at just the right level. Lily was starting to relax into an Italian fashion magazine when her hairdresser emerged from the curtain behind reception bearing a tray of dye and brushes.

She sank into her chair as deeply as she could.

‘
Buongiorno
,' the hairdresser said limply and looked at her in the mirror.

Take me now
, Lily silently pleaded to whatever cosmic ghoul was in charge of punishing her so harshly.
Take me now.

The hairdresser had the thin lips, the mistrustful smile, the
same long mane but without the swish. How could Lily have been so stupid? Carlotta was not the woman in the photo, this was the woman. Sisters!

The hairdresser was curvier than Carlotta and she definitely had hips: they were currently straining the lower buttons of her dress, and her dangerous look—while not in evidence just then as much as it was in the photo—still seemed not far away.

‘
Mi chiamo
Eugenia,' she said, in a tired voice. ‘My name is Eugenia. You want your roots done, no? Not a cut? Some inches off the bottom?'

She held Lily's hair out and made a snipping gesture.

Lily, the famous problem solver, could not for the life of her figure out the solution for this.

If Eugenia knew who Lily was, she was in a very vulnerable position. The woman could render her bald with just a few toxic drops in the dye solution or could bring out the shears and give her a mohawk.

If Eugenia didn't know who Lily was, she could just get up and leave, which might create a fuss, but still, it was the better option. However, as she started to rise from her chair, she felt the cold tingle of the blonding solution on her scalp.

‘Is all right?' Eugenia asked, confused, the plastic bowl of bleach in her hand.

Lily waited, but a cold tingle was as bad as it got. She settled stiffly back in the seat. Her hair, for the moment, was safe, and she had no choice but to sit there and watch in the mirror as Eugenia worked slowly and methodically on her roots. Eugenia (not a red-hot seductress name by any stretch) was not the siren she had imagined. She wore little or no makeup, the hem on one side of her dress was falling down, her high heels were worn on the outsides, and she chewed nervously on her lower lip as she applied the solution to Lily's thick hair in neat sections.

When Eugenia was about halfway through, her cell phone rang. She snatched it out of her pocket, said, ‘
Scusi
,' and hurried into the back room. Lily strained to hear the conversation, but it was over too quickly and Eugenia soon came back, even more dishevelled than before.

She did not look anything like a happy, confident, husband-stealer. She looked like a wreck.

She applied more dye to Lily's roots, which was when Lily noticed that her hands were unsteady.

‘Are you OK?' she asked carefully.

Eugenia nodded violently.

‘Fine,' she said. ‘Truly, is fine.'

But she did not seem fine. In fact, she seemed to be unravelling before Lily's eyes. ‘Really, is nothing,' she insisted, and applied yet more dye. ‘Is nothing, absolutely nothing,' she repeated, almost angrily, and plunged the brush she was using back into the bowl, stirring it viciously, so viciously that little bits of blue solution slopped onto the floor, onto her dress, her foot.

Lily's shoulders were back up near her ears. Where was this heading? Suddenly, though, Eugenia stopped, her whole body collapsing into a slump, and she shook her unhappy head.