2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (40 page)

“Well, she’s not coming home to me. I’m not cut out for full-time mothering.”

“You’re honest at any rate, Kizzy.”

“A few days back here and I’m ready to bolt. It’s my nature.”

“Where will you bolt to?”

“I’ve a friend holidaying in the South of France, and if I ever get out of this bloody place I’ll be winging my way down there pretty damn quick.”

“And Catrin?” he asked.

“I could arrange for her to go back to school early.”

“She’s happy enough here, don’t you think?”

“With her new father?” Kizzy said with a laugh. And then she was out of the door and hurrying up Cockle Lane, leaving behind the faintest whiff of expensive perfume.

S
ister Annunziata hurried into the refectory, looked round the room and immediately saw the empty seat. Seeing her concern, one of the sisters whispered, “The Bisotti girl has asked not to eat this evening because she is feeling unwell
.”

Sister Annunziata nodded her thanks and smiled discreetly
.

No doubt Ismelda had been feasting on the delicious food her friends had sent and probably could not face the watery beans and tough bread that were dished up nightly. When the meal was over she would try to slip away and spend some time with Ismelda
.

Sister Annunziata looked sadly at the faces around her, dull-eyed and devoid of hope. She prayed that one day things would change, that more compassion would be shown to these poor souls whose minds were afflicted
.

As for Ismelda, sweet Jesus, such a child should never have been put here. She was clever and capricious and a joy to be around. It was sinful that she should be incarcerated in a place like this because her father wanted her out of the way. Ismelda was a gift from God; she was wise beyond her years and had so much to offer the world. Half the inmates here didn’t deserve to be locked up. They needed respite, peace and love to make them better, not shackles and chains and hours shut away in solitude. One day she hoped that she might be granted the strength to speak out and try to change things
.

The last of the sun’s rays played across the faces of the inmates and sisters seated at the long table; the faces of the mad and the sane all bathed in the warm glow of the late autumn sunset. The convent bell began to chime and the sister on duty looked up from her reading of the Scriptures as if aware that something was afoot. There was a restless silence in the room, a pent-up excitement exhibited in the twitching of noses, the feverish brightness in the expectant eyes of the inmates
.

The echo of the bell clung to the air, along with a whiff of incense and the smell of candle smoke
.

There was a sudden intake of breath as though everyone in the room was breathing at the same rate, everyone turning their face towards the largest of the arched windows
.

A silence fractured by intensity
.

Then a fleeting vision, as of a giant bird freefailing beyond the window, silhouetted momentarily against the archway of golden sky. Wild dark hair billowing out around a pale face, enormous eyes, a mouth opening, the cry of triumph…or was it terror?

A cacophony of twisted spoons banging on the wooden table and a raucous cheer growing ever louder
.

The nuns rushed to the windows, the swirl of their threadbare habits making the dust rise
.

The high-pitched scream of a postulant rent the air
.

Outside the bats were swooping and somewhere a dog howled
.

Sister Annunziata pushed her way to the window and watched aghast as the small body, arms outstretched like a crucifix, floated downstream until the darkening waters swallowed her up
.

In the turret Sister Annunziata lit the oil lamp and watched as the crucifix on the wall grew momentarily dark then light in the flux of moving shadows. The smell of life clung to the room, a faint aroma of coarse convent soap, fresh herbs and recent tears
.

She stood by the narrow window and tried to imagine how it had felt to climb out on to the perilous ledge and then step out into oblivion. She was overcome with giddiness, crossed herself feebly, wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and breathed deeply in the cool night air
.

Moonlight dappled the dark pool far below, and the river ran on heedlessly downstream towards the faraway sea
.

Only a few hours had passed, and yet time seemed suspended
.

She knew that what she had witnessed today would return to her, again and again; an image that would come to her in her dreams or in the lonely quiet hours
.

She stripped the bed of its coarse blankets and packed Ismelda’s few belongings into a trunk, but though she searched she could not find the walnut paintbox that had been Ismelda’s prized possession. She found the scraps of canvas wedged beneath the bed, and she held them in trembling hands. The smell of oil paint still lingered and the paint had barely dried on the last page. A strand of dark hair was trapped in the paint, the imprint of a finger in vermillion on the last empty page…Her tears fell then, bitter tears against the futility of it all
.

She extinguished the lamp and closed the ill-fitting wooden shutters against the night. The bats were already circling the turrets, the dogs barking in the small towns scattered across the valley. The nun’s lips moved in silent prayer and the cries of the mad and the misplaced echoed in her ears
.

Sister Annunziata closed the book gently, held it against her breast then slipped it beneath the folds of her habit
.

No one must steal it. The story was not quite finished yet…

K
izzy was leaving Kilvenny, and Catrin could barely contain her delight. Dan had arranged for a car to pick her up and take her to Swansea. There she would do the rounds of hairdressers, manicurists and dress shops before heading back to London and then on to the South of France. She’d half-heartedly offered to take Catrin with her, but Catrin had politely declined; she and Tony had exciting plans for the rest of the summer.

Catrin stood waiting dutifully outside the castle while Kizzy trailed around saying her goodbyes, kissing everyone on both cheeks like a film star, making Dan and Meredith blush deeply.

She stepped up to Catrin and took her face in both hands. Catrin squirmed. This was Kizzy’s theatrical idea of mother love; an intent look into her child’s eyes, a false tear trailing down her cheek, and then a swift walk away; she’d seen it in a film somewhere and adopted it as her own.

“Goodbye, darling. Write to me,” she whispered and then she turned and walked to the car without looking back.

As an afterthought she opened her handbag, took something out, turned and held it out to Catrin.

The girl went to her mother and held out her hand.

“Here,” Kizzy said. “Aunt Alice gave me this, but I never really liked it. I couldn’t see the point, really.”

Catrin looked down at the walnut
etui
that nestled in the palm of her hand.

She looked up to thank Kizzy, and for the first time ever she saw the beginnings of a real tear in her mother’s eye.

Carefully Catrin lifted the catch on the side of the walnut, revealing tiny paintbrushes, small sticks of charcoal and a little artist’s palette with paint marks on it. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Aunt Alice loved that. If she’d met you she’d have liked you to have it.”

But Catrin wasn’t listening. She was peering down at the initials someone had painstakingly inscribed on the lid: LB.

She said, “Ismelda Bisotti. It belonged to Ismelda Bisotti.”

“No, dear, it didn’t, it was Aunt Alice’s.”

“Sorry, er, Ismelda was – 
is
a friend of mine.”

“It’s just as well I didn’t call you Ismelda, then.”

“Why? Were you thinking of it?”

“Oh yes. I always loved that name,” Kizzy said, smoothing her hair.

“You did?”

Kizzy nodded and winced. The breeze was getting up and she didn’t want to stand here all day talking about girls’ names and have her hair blown all over the place. She climbed into the car, and waved demurely to Ella and the others standing outside the castle.

“What made you think of Ismelda as a name?” Catrin asked as the car began to pull away.

“Because it’s the name of the girl in the…” Her words were carried away by the breeze.

“What did you say?” Catrin yelled, but the car was already accelerating past the war memorial.

Catrin stood holding the walnut tightly in her hand, and she didn’t move until the car was out of sight.

W
hen Signor Bisotti and Father Rimaldi arrived at the house in the Via Dante, Piero was long gone. They stamped from room to room cursing loudly, opening closets and peering inside. The studio was just as it had always been, but Piero’s canvases were gone and there was no sign of the painting of
Feasting Cherubs.
Signor Bisotti slammed his fist down on the table, shaking the flute-shaped pots of paint and scattering charcoal all over the floor
.

They hurried back along the Via Dante to the convent, where Father Rimaldi headed straight for the stables. There was no sign of Bindo. His few belongings were gone and one of the nuns who came running out to see what the disturbance was said they hadn’t seen him since yesterday
.

An hour later they were both apoplectic with fury. Maria Paparella’s room in the Villa Rosso had been emptied, and most of the food in the larder had gone. Then Signora Roselli came running to say that Luca, the ungrateful little sod, had upped and offed without a word
.

As Signor Bisotti and Father Rimaldi stood together in the piazza, they were aware that they were being watched. There was no one around but the eyes of the village were on them
.

“
When I get my hands on that bastard Piero, he’ll rue the day he played this trick on me
.”

“
They can’t have got far if they’ve loaded all those paintings on to a cart
.”

“
The people are up in arms over that painting. They think we’ve made fools out of them; it won’t be safe for us to stay for long. The signora and I will travel down to Napoli tonight. What about you?
”

“
They won’t lay their dirty hands on a priest,” Father Rimaldi said confidently
.

“
Whatever possessed the man to do such a thing?” Signor Bisotti moaned. “You don’t think he has any idea of what we did?
”

“
How could he?” Father Rimaldi said querulously
.

“
I don’t know, but a few weeks back when I was giving that bloody dwarf a beating Piero looked at me and at the dwarf very strangely, as if he had worked something out. It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you
.”

Father Rimaldi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I had the same feeling when Maria Paparella was speaking to me about the night the baby was abandoned, as if she, too, knew something or was trying hard to remember something
.”

“
If they do know, we must make sure they keep their mouths shut,” Signor Bisotti said, his eyes narrowing
.

“
We must keep calm and try to be logical. If Piero knew the truth, he would have done more than just paint a picture that made fools of us all
.”

Signor Bisotti sat down abruptly on the side of the fountain. Nausea rose in the pit of his stomach as he thought back to that awful moment in the church when the cloth had been removed and the painting revealed
.

Sweet Saviour, he’d been expecting to see a masterpiece and instead there was a painting of himself and Father Rimaldi naked as the day they were born. There were devil horns growing from their heads and long tails protruding from their naked behinds. Signora Bisotti had been painted, too, and her daughters: the three of them staring down from the church, three revolting gargoyles with gaping mouths and bulging red-veined eyes, a shower of golden coins spewing from each of their mouths like vomit
.

Signor Bisotti put his head in his hands. Signora Bisotti would never forgive him for this public humiliation. She had stormed off to the Villa Rosso and shut herself in the bedroom. He himself had stood in horrified silence as the church emptied around him. He could still hear the laughter of the peasants echoing in his ears, the visiting priests hurrying away, twittering like scandalised sparrows
.

“
I won’t rest until he’s found and punished – until they’re all found and punished,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll have men sent to Napoli to look for them; you can bet that’s where the four of them would have headed
.”

“
The five of them,” Father Rimaldi said grimly, and he nudged Signor Bisotti in the ribs. Bisotti, realising what he meant, spat on the cobbles and stormed off towards the Villa Rosso, hell-bent on swift revenge
.

W
hen Kizzy had gone Aunt Ella suggested a walk up to Shrimp’s, but Catrin refused. She was restless and wanted to be on her own to think about her mother’s parting words. Which girl could she have been talking about? It was infuriating, and she wouldn’t be able to speak to Kizzy for weeks now to find out what she’d meant.

She watched Aunt Ella walk off towards the library with Dan and raised her eyebrows. Grown-ups could be dead funny. One minute they hated someone, the next they were best friends. Ella was forever popping over to Meredith’s shop, the Café Romana or the library, which was really odd because she’d avoided Dan and Meredith until Kizzy came back.

Catrin headed towards the beach, but no sooner had she sat down when Meredith came whistling along and plonked himself down next to her. She talked politely for a while and then, frustrated at not being left alone, got up and went back to the castle, where she collected
Recipes for Cherubs
from her room.

Then, checking no one was watching her, she went into the graveyard and sat down in a shady spot; she ought to get some peace in there.