Magic at Silver Spires (2 page)

“I'm looking forward to the lunch on Sunday,” I told the others. “I've never had a picnic indoors before!”

“I know!” squeaked Emily. “It's in a barn, isn't it? With hay bales to sit on!”

“I think it's the parents of a Year Nine girl from Beech House who own the barn,” said Bryony. “Mrs. Truman said it's huge, which is lucky 'cos she also said there are about thirty of us who've signed up for the bike ride!”

“What's that?” came Mrs. Truman's voice as we went into the changing room to get ready for netball. “What did Mrs. Truman say?” she added in a pretending-to-be-strict voice.

“We were just talking about the bike ride,” Sasha explained. “Are there about thirty of us going on it?”

“That's right! And mainly Year Sevens like you lot, so you'll need to be fit!” Mrs. Truman was hurrying us all up. “Get a move on now, girls!”

Get a move on.
That sounds really funny to me. Like I said, I've still got a lot of English to learn!

After lessons finished for the afternoon, Nicole and I went back to Forest Ash to get our bikes from the outhouse behind it. Sasha and Izzy decided to come with us, but Bryony went off with Emily to work in her garden.

“I wish we could go off the premises,” said Izzy. “I really want a proper practice, not just a ride around the Silver Spires grounds.”

“It's quite a long distance if we go up the main lane and down all the side paths, though,” Nicole pointed out. “And round the tennis courts and everywhere.”

I knew I'd be perfectly happy to ride around the grounds here – I love every centimetre of it. “And the grounds are so beautiful,” I added.

“I know. It's just that I really wanted to have a chance to get used to riding with traffic – and obviously there's none of that here,” said Izzy.

“Mrs. Truman said she'd organized a route that hardly touches main roads for Sunday,” said Sasha.

But I agreed with Izzy about the traffic. I'm used to riding a bike because I've done it on holiday at our little house in the mountains ever since I was about four, but that's a really quiet place with hardly any traffic. Also, I have to remember to ride on the left-hand side of the road when I am in England.

“It must have seemed a bit weird putting your bike on the plane!” Nicole said to me, as we got our helmets on.

I nodded as I remembered how I felt when we picked it up from the special collection point in the airport. A part of me was really excited of course, but there was still a little part of me feeling sad, because this would be the first time I would be on a bike ride without my family.

In the end, the four of us rode round the Silver Spires grounds about three times and it was great fun. We didn't want to run anyone down so we couldn't go fast, because after school there are always loads of people milling about, either on their way to clubs or just…what's the phrase? Oh yes, just hanging out. I like saying that!

“What else is happening on the Italian evening, Antonia?” said Sasha, as we put our bikes away and went over to Emily's garden so the six of us could all go to supper together.

“Well, Nicole, Matron and I are going to perform a little play in Italian,” I said. “We're going to mime a lot, and at the end we'll see if anyone could understand what it was about!”

Nicole's eyes widened with worry. “Only don't tell anyone about it yet, because I might be rubbish and then we'll have to abandon it.”

“You won't be rubbish!” I promised her.

“No, of course you won't,” said Izzy. “You're the only one from our dorm who'd ever actually be capable of doing a play in a foreign language, you know – apart from Antonia, obviously!” Then she laughed. “I can't wait to hear Matron speaking Italian. I mean, I've only ever heard her say things like hello and bye-bye, but she makes every word sound so dramatic, doesn't she?”

I couldn't help giggling, and Nicole laughed too, because Izzy was right. Matron loves learning Italian from me. In fact, she and Nicole have a kind of competition between themselves to see who can learn the most, and Matron's actually quite far behind Nicole, but her accent makes up for it. She puts her heart into every word. So at least everyone will be looking at Matron and not me when we come to do the play on the actual evening.

“What's so funny?” came Emily's voice from the other side of the tall hedge.

But by the time we'd all gone through the gate into the garden, she'd forgotten about her question. “Look! The first row of potatoes is now in!” she announced proudly.

“And I've got it on record!” said Bryony, tapping her camera.

“What, you've taken a picture of the bare soil?” asked Sasha, looking puzzled.

“It's not bare soil!” said Emily. “It's soil with potatoes in it!”

She was staring at the ground with eager eyes as though she was waiting for the potato shoots to come pushing through at that very moment, and Bryony quickly took a picture of her just like that. Then when the rest of us started laughing, we found ourselves being photographed too.

Emily rolled her eyes. “Please excuse my friend, you lot. She's gone a bit camera mad!”

We helped Emily put her tools away in the outhouse, because it was time to set off for the dining hall, and on the way we had bets on what might be for supper. This is our latest craze. We only ever bet with sweets but it's still great if you happen to guess right and you can keep the whole handful.

“Pizza!” said Nicole. “That's my guess!”

“Yuk, hope not,” said Emily.

That gave me a bit of a jolt because Mrs. Pridham had asked me to plan the food for the Italian evening and I'd already suggested pizza as the main dish. I've got some ideas for toppings from my dad and Mrs. Pridham is really happy because lots of Forest Ash girls are helping, and as we're following Papà's recipes the food will be genuinely Italian.

“I thought you liked pizza, Em?” I said.

Immediately she broke into a smile. “Oh, I do, and I know I'll love
your
pizza, Toni, because it'll have all sorts of exciting ingredients. But the ones here are always plain boring cheese and tomato.”

I was relieved that I didn't have to worry about my pizza toppings, but there was something that she'd just said that had given me a bit of a surprise, and it seemed I wasn't the only one.

“What did you just call Antonia, Ems?” asked Nicole.

“Toni! Nice name, eh?” grinned Emily. “Don't know why no one's thought of it before.”

“It's only nice if Antonia thinks so,” said Nicole, who's always so thoughtful.

“It's what my dad calls me, actually,” I said. I didn't add that I'd felt a moment of homesickness at the sound of it. I nodded slowly. “Yes…I like it.”

“Hey, cool!” said Emily, rushing off ahead of us all and leaping into the air. “
I
thought of it. Good old me!” But then she came racing back a moment later. “Okay, lay your bets everyone. Nicole reckons it's pizza. I say spag bol.”

“I think chicken Kiev,” I quickly added. And while the others made their guesses and kept changing their minds, a picture grew in my mind of Papà in his restaurant with his tall chef's hat and his crisp white apron that somehow manages to stay nearly clean even after three hours in a hot steamy kitchen. I could just see him moving smoothly but very quickly from the cooker to the serving hatch and from the chopping board to the sink, working away without ever stopping for a second, his deep strong voice calling out urgent instructions to the other two chefs. Everyone is a little bit afraid of Papà. And that includes me. Well, I'm not exactly afraid, it's just that he seems to make all the decisions in our house. For example, it was his idea that I should come here to Silver Spires.

When he and Mamma said they had something to discuss with me after lunch one Sunday last spring, I remember how my stomach went into – what do you call it? – yes, knots. Paolo and Ricardo had gone down the road to my grandparents' house and I was planning on joining them, but Papà was looking at me with such a serious expression that I knew this was going to be something very important, and I felt scared.

“Toni,” he began, tipping his head to one side. “Mamma and I have made a decision about your education. These days it is important to be able to speak English. It is the most widely spoken language in the world and opens many doors in another important world – the world of business.”

“Yes I know, and I've already started learning English at primary school and next year we carry on at secondary…” I interrupted. But he put a hand up to stop me gabbling on.

“To learn English properly you need to be in a country where English is the main language spoken.”

I remember how the tears had gathered in my eyes as I realized what was coming next and how I probably wouldn't be able to stop it.

“And it's not just for the sake of the language, it's also about absorbing the whole culture.”

“But I don't want—”

Again he put his hand up. “We have found a wonderful school in England that you will love, Toni. A school for girls, which looks like a very happy school. I thought we could have a look online together.”

“You want to send me away! I won't see you for weeks and weeks. I'll be miserable. How can you do this to me?” And with that I'd burst into tears and Mamma had tried to cuddle me and soothe me but I'd pushed her off and refused to look at the computer. So Papà printed off some pages and left them on the table for me and eventually, when both my parents had left the room, I looked at the pages. I saw lots of smiling girls and some beautiful buildings, especially one with twinkling panes of glass and tall spires that looked as though they were studded with diamonds. But so what? It was an English school with English girls, so no one would want to be my friend because they wouldn't understand me and I wouldn't understand them.

For days I felt a big weight of sadness on my shoulders and a hot fire of anger inside me that Papà could be so horrible. I asked why
me
, why not Paolo and Ricardo? But Papà said they'd be going away too when they were older. I cried and cried and kept looking at the printed pages all about Silver Spires. Sometimes I threw them down in disgust, but one time when I was looking at the sparkling spires I was tempted to look on the website and find out more. I couldn't read the English very well and that made the fire inside me rage even more. But then I realized that if I went to this school I would actually become an English speaker. And there were other pictures that Papà hadn't printed – a dormitory with laughing girls sitting on their beds, a grand theatre, a swimming pool, a place for little pets to live. And slowly, slowly I started to think I might manage. I couldn't get so far as to think I might be happy, but I thought I might manage.

And I have. I've more than managed. I more than like it.

I love it.

The days leading up to the bike ride were great fun. Those of us who had been nervous before felt only excitement at the thought of our big adventure. Every morning, the first one to wake up in our dorm (which is called Emerald dorm, by the way, because all the Year Seven dorms are named after precious stones), would jump out of bed and rush to the window to see what the weather was like. It's nearly always Emily who wakes up first actually, and she often goes for a walk before breakfast, even when it's cold.

“How can you bear it?” I always say to her as I hug my dressing gown around me tightly.

She looks at me as though I'm
pazza
– I mean crazy. “But it's lovely and warm!”

And that's when I realize I'm still Italian at heart, because I've never been lovely and warm in England.

When Sunday arrived I found myself singing a song Papà taught me when I was much younger, called “Cincirinella”. Cincirinella was a man who had a wagon, and a mule to pull it along, and together they went trotting hundreds of kilometres over mountains and hills, sometimes in wind and rain. But they were always happy together and Cincirinella sang his trotting song as he rode along. I used to love singing that song with Papà when we rode our bikes together.

“Someone's happy!” said Miss Stevenson, the assistant housemistress, who was one of the staff coming with us on the bike ride. She's only in her early twenties and I like her very much because we have something in common. She was new at the beginning of this year too, and she felt homesick and strange just like I did. She actually once told me that, and it helped me to know I wasn't alone.

“Have a great day!” said Mrs. Pridham, who saw us off. (We were the only six going from Forest Ash.) “And take care, all of you!” she added.

“We will!” we called out brightly and I thought how like a mother she was, waving at us with her big smile, but with eyes that also held worry. I recognized that look, because it was the same one I'd often seen in Mamma's eyes when my brothers and I were going off with Papà on a bike ride.