2006 - Wildcat Moon (32 page)

“Grazie,” Archie murmured from his perch on the stool, his legs dangling down and his calliper in full view of the watching men.

After a while they ignored him and continued their talking. There were ten or so tables that had seen better days and set around them were rush-backed chairs with wobbly legs. The stone floor was littered with cigarette ends, screwed-up pieces of paper and toothpicks. On the rough-hewn walls there were pictures of dead popes and a flyblown poster advertising a circus. Beneath the poster there was a blurry photograph of a woman and across the bottom of the photograph someone had scrawled their name illegibly in a whorl of faded black ink.

Beneath the photograph, on a narrow shelf, there was a jar of fresh flowers and in front of the flowers a candle burned in a small red glass. It was a shrine of some sort.

One of the old men saw Archie looking and Archie pointed at the photo and said shyly, “Santa Caterina?”

The old man clapped his hands against his leg, threw back his head and laughed loudly.

“Santa Caterina!
Non! L’ucello d’argento!
”

Archie shook his head in embarrassment.

The small man behind the counter translated for him, “She no Santa Caterina. Santa Caterina very good woman but very ugly. This one very beautiful. In English she called the ‘silver bird. In Italia we say
l’ucello d’argento
.”

Archie grinned foolishly and sipped his lemonade.

He sat for a while longer, finished his drink and clambered down awkwardly from the high stool.

Arrivederci!

Arrivederci!

The three men turned and watched him go, with interest and then they turned back to the bar and continued their conversation.

Archie arrived back at the house to find Lena sitting out on the front step shelling peas into a large metal bowl.

“You been a long time today.”

“A tiny little man, about the size of a dwarf, gave me a glass of lemonade in a cafe round the corner from the baker’s.”

Lena looked up. “Ah, I know, the Silver Bird Cafe.”

Archie nodded. “Is it called after the girl?”

Lena put down the bowl of peas and patted the step for Archie to sit down beside her.

“That’s right. Here in Santa Caterina once was a little girl. She orphan at Santa Caterina. Very beautiful, very mischief full, always running and jumping like a boy and making the nuns shake their heads and pray to Santa Caterina to make her quieter. When she fifteen she falls in love and runs away with the circus and she gone many years. When they hear of her again in Santa Caterina she very famous, she how you say, she fly through the air in circus.”

“A trapeze artist?”

“Si, that’s the words, trapeze artist.”

“Did she ever come back to Santa Caterina?”

“Si. She make her peace with the nuns. She have a child. For many months she travel with circus all over Italy and France but for some months she come back here to Santa Caterina. But later come the terrible tragedy for our little silver bird.”

Archie looked up at Lena and held his breath.

“One day, the circus come to village near Santa Caterina and she, the one they call the silver bird, have very bad accident.”

“What happened?”

“She do the trick high in air and let go, but the man she do trick with doesn’t catch her. Was terrible. She fall like a little bird from the nest and breaks her neck.”

Lena shook her head sadly and crossed herself.

Archie sucked in his breath through his teeth with a whistling sound.

Just then Alfredo came walking along the path carrying a bucket full of fresh fish.

“Archie have a drink in Luca’s cafe this morning and I telling him the story of the woman they call the silver bird,” Lena said.

“Ah, that was tragedy! You know, my mama was there in circus tent with her sister when it happen. For long time she not speak of it because it was too terrible. Give her bad night dreams for many years,” Alfredo remembered.

“That’s a real sad story.”

“Ah, si, and the poor husband and child was there when it happened.”

Archie blinked back his tears. “The silver bird wasn’t her real name, though, was it?”

“No. She called Rosa Gasparini.”

Archie looked down at his skinny knees, they were shaking uncontrollably and his mouth was as dry as a burnt twig-Rosa Gasparini!

Thomas Gasparini Greswode. Rosa Gasparini. He tried to conjure up the face of the woman in the photograph that Romilly Greswode had given to him. Rosa Gasparini, the silver bird who had fallen to her death was the mother of Thomas from Killivray. .

She was the pretty bride in the photograph looking up at her husband outside the tiny church.

He felt for the silver bird necklace around his neck.

“You all right, Archie?” Alfredo asked with concern.

“Yes, I’ll just put the bread away and then I’m going to have a lie-down. I think it’s the heat making me feel faint.”

He made his way shakily into the cool of the house and climbed unsteadily up the stairs.

When he had gone Alfredo said to Lena, “You know, he very sensitive little boy. Don’t be telling him too many sad stories.”

“I understand. Maybe, you know, I think Archie got a sad story of his own that he don’t know nothing about. Is funny Martha sending him to us.”

“How you mean, Lena?”

“Well, all time we know him she don’t let him out of her sight much. Then she send him all this way to us on boat. I very glad he come but I worry what she hiding.”

“I worries too. Is odd how the father go and don’t come back and then she hurry off like that. If I had a son like Archie I never leave him.”

Upstairs in the cool of his bedroom Archie lay down on his bed and watched the slivers of sunlight slip through the slats of the shutters, watched the sunbeams playing across the bare wooden floor. He dosed his eyes and imagined Thomas Greswode sitting proudly in the circus Big Top, hearing the gasp of the audience as they watched his brave mama high on the trapeze.

Then, looking up at her and holding his breath as she flew through the air…

He knew that in a split second she would be safely in the hands of the man on the trapeze hanging upside down waiting to catch her. And then the audience would clap and shriek with delight.

But then it had all gone horribly wrong.

Their hands had never met and she had crashed to the sawdust floor.

After she had died Thomas had been sent back to England. He had left behind sunny Santa Caterina here in Italy to live in gloomy Killivray House, the house his father had inherited. And he would die young and never return here.

Archie felt for the silver bird necklace around his neck and held it tightly.

Nan poured two cups of tea and passed one across the kitchen table to Fleep.

“Well, it was quiet tonight except for that peculiar couple and the Paynes at last knockings,” Fleep said, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers.

“It’ll be busy tomorrow, mind, the forecast is good. Well be rushed off our feet.”

Fleep didn’t answer and Nan looked across at him curiously.

“Fleep, you seem on edge. What’s wrong? Was it something to do with that woman? I didn’t like her either; it was like she was here just to snoop on us.”

He looked up suddenly and said, “Seems like she rattled you too, Nan. Why?”

“It was just the way she was looking at the menus that Cissie had made and then asking her questions about her drawing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Cissie draws beautifully. You should be glad that people recognize her talent.”

“I am in a way but I hate people nosing around. I’ve noticed that in her drawings Cissie describes her past life. It’s quite weird because she draws things that happened when she was quite small, things you wouldn’t think that she even remembered.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Oh, it’s just me being testy. I’m too protective over her, I know that. Anyway, why did she make you feel so awkward? You went crimson when you saw her.”

“It was a while back. When I first arrived I did something rather foolish and she saw me.”

“What did you do?”

He blew smoke rings towards the ceiling and then said, “I was going to put an end to things. I’d had enough, you see.”

Nan sat with the cup halfway up to her lips. “You don’t mean…not seriously…”

He nodded and the colour drained from Nan’s face.

“But why?”

“I’d been so depressed, made a real mess of my life. My parents were old when I was born and they died quite close together. I frittered away my inheritance; blew thousands on drugs and drink, mixing with the wrong sort. I had a broken romance, then ran off abroad to lick my wounds.”

“And how did you end up here?”

“That’s the strange bit, Nan. I’d been making my way up through France. I’d been thrown out of the place I was staying when I couldn’t pay the rent. I was penniless, on my uppers. I’d spent my last cents on a bottle of cheap brandy and was drunk as a lord. It was snowing and I’d passed out in an alleyway somewhere near the Rue Popincourt. I was woken up by a parrot screeching in my ear. It was really weird, Nan, there I was all alone with a monumental hangover staring at a foul-mouthed parrot, and tied to the cage was an envelope and inside a key with the address of the Grockles.”

“And so you just pitched up here?”

“I did. Well, I was half out of my mind on drink and drugs, I thought it was some sort of joke. But when I got here and the key fitted the door to the Grockles I could hardly believe it. How did you come to live in the Skallies, Nan?”

Nan was silent for a moment.

“It’s a long story and I’m not sure I’m ready to tell it yet.”

Fleep patted her hand.

“Anyway, Fleep, tell me what has the woman who was here tonight got to do with you trying to end it all?”

“I’d made my decision, decided there was nothing left in this life for me. I went around the coast, there’s a small beach there and I had a lot to drink. I’d planned to walk out into the water, keep on walking, then swim out to sea and drown myself.”

“You don’t still feel like that?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head and smiled. “Not any more. The worst bit was that all of a sudden that woman and her friend appeared with hundreds of schoolgirls and I was…”

“You were what?”

“God, this is so embarrassing. You see, I was standing there absolutely naked.”

Nan put her hand over her mouth. “You’re joking!” she squealed with laughter.

Fleep nodded and blushed. “There didn’t seem much point walking out into the sea with clothes on.”

“Oh, my God, and they all saw you, all those schoolgirls?”

He nodded again and covered his face with his hands.

“Nan, I still have nightmares about it. It was awful.”

But Nan couldn’t answer she was laughing so much.

“I hope she didn’t recognize me tonight,” Fleep said.

“She wouldn’t with your clothes on!” Nan shrieked.

“Pack it in, Nan, it wasn’t funny. There was another woman with her who was screaming for her to call the police. I could have been locked up.”

She tried to stem her mirth but every time she looked at Fleep’s horrified face it set her off again. She laughed until her sides ached and she felt weak all over. Soon Fleep was laughing too and the Pilchard echoed to the sound of their laughter. Outside, the wildcats slept on the outhouse roof under a soft and silver moon.

From her eyrie in the convent Sister Isabella watched the small English boy who was staying with Alfredo and Lena climb the hill to the baker’s each day. At first he climbed slowly, dragging his feet, looking over his shoulder as though he were afraid that someone was following him. With each day, though, he seemed to grow stronger, and his withered leg grew a little more sturdy.

Taking up her binoculars, she focused on his face and saw that the hue of his skin had grown steadily darker and the blue of his eyes more vivid, the front of his hair bleached fairer.

The day he had stood nervously, looking into the alleyway just below the
panettiere
, she had watched him with fascination. He was curious but afraid, finding his way round hesitantly. Little by little he was getting braver and ever more curious about life in Santa Caterina. He was just a child, though; he wouldn’t get in the way.

She turned away from the window and made her way down the steep stairs and out into the enclosed courtyard.

It was hot and the courtyard was deserted. Most of the sisters were inside busy with their chores. Now she was so old she had little work allotted to her and so she was free to do whatever took her fancy. Most days she went to the library to write up her memoirs of life here in the convent but of late she grew tired more easily and spent more time outside in the courtyard in the shade of the old lemon tree.

She sat down stiffly, dipped her hand into the cool waters of the fountain and drifted off into her memories of the past.

When she’d first entered the convent she’d come under false pretences. She’d had no vocation to be a nun; she’d just been trying to run away from the pain of unrequited love. Life as a nun had been an escape from a world too painful to contemplate. She’d imagined a life of meditation and serenity, of prayer and praise and long periods of silence. How wrong she’d been!

She looked up then as the children came out of the door on the far side of the courtyard. A crocodile of chattering boys and girls on their way to breakfast under the watchful eye of Sister Benedicta. Their voices filled the courtyard and she smiled to see their faces. A small girl who was holding the hand of a tiny boy caught her eye. Sister Isabella waved to her and the girl waved back. She had arrived as a silent, frightened little girl and now she was in the middle of every sort of mischief. A spirited soul saved from a life without hope, with the whole world ahead of her now. The children’s voices died away as they went through the door into the refectory for their breakfast.

She closed her eyes and prayed that the convent would always be a place of sanctuary for the lost and dispossessed. She opened them to look up at the clear blue sky above the convent. A bird soared to a great height and then swooped, singing joyously. A fat lemon fell from the tree and landed with a thud, sending up a small cloud of dust from the parched soil.