She stood about as tall as Lily’s chest. Lily could see the hair thinning around her centre part, could pick out the worn patches on the collar of her black cotton dress. She smelled of daphne. It was not what Lily had expected from the look of her. In Lily’s experience, which was admittedly limited, people this old did not generally smell this good.
She felt a lump rise in her throat, an inexplicable surge of misplaced affection. She was tired, jet-lagged, out of her comfort zone.
‘No speako Italiano,’ she told the old woman, feeling hopelessly unsophisticated. Years before, Daniel had suggested they take lessons, but she hadn’t seen the point.
The old woman squeezed her hand tighter, then, with a robust tug, started to pull her around the tiny store, leaning on her slightly as she knocked at the glass bowls, tapped at the floor, pointed to the sign in the window, all the while continuing to chatter happily away in Italian.
Lily smiled and nodded because she was still dripping wet, bone-shatteringly tired and didn’t know what else to do. Taking this as a sign of acquiescence, the old woman let go of her hand and rather spryly grabbed at the handle of her suitcase. For someone so crippled, she managed to pull it remarkably swiftly behind the counter and through the door she and her sister had come out of.
Lily waited a moment until she realised the woman wasn’t coming back, and followed. The back room had the same dim lighting and a similar intoxicating smell but was even warmer than the shop and was dominated by a large refectory-style table, used so often its top was no longer level but dipped and rose in a smooth landscape of curves and hollows. Two chairs sat at each end, and there was a single bed piled high with quilts pushed against the far wall. Behind the table was a kitchen of sorts with curtained shelves and a tiny television on top of a freestanding box on legs that Lily assumed was in lieu of a refrigerator.
‘This is the apartment?’ she asked. She needed to lie down and it was toasty warm and, despite its simplicity, strangely inviting. But the bed in the corner didn’t even look long enough for her.
‘I’m sorry, but you know, I don’t think it’s quite what I’m looking for,’ she told the old woman, who merely blew her a sort of raspberry and pointed to the ceiling. It was painted pale yellow, or nicotine colour, and bore another unlikely chandelier.
‘Yes, it’s lovely, but still,’ Lily said and reached for her bag. But the little old lady clung to it, shaking her head, a steely glint in those small black eyes as she opened another door that Lily had assumed was a cupboard and disappeared into it.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ she grumbled but again followed. It wasn’t a cupboard at all, but a narrow stairwell that led up to another room, infinitely bigger and brighter, with a double bed, a bigger chandelier, an enormous television, and that same strangely spicy sweet scent.
The bed looked so appealing that Lily wanted nothing more than to just lie down on the spongy covers and drift away into glorious nothingness.
The ceiling in this room had been painted, fresco style, between the weathered beams in a pale blue-and-yellow delicate floral pattern with curlicues of mauve and green at each end. It reminded Lily of something; she didn’t quite know what, but it was something good.
The old Italian woman stood in the middle of the room mumbling incoherently, but as Lily looked around and weighed up the prospect of staying put, it occurred to her that it wasn’t mumbling at all but a repetition of the same sequence of words.
‘Mi chiamo Violetta,’ the old woman was saying. ‘Mi chiamo Violetta.’ She tapped at the hollow chest where her bosoms had once been (they now sagged jauntily below, one significantly higher than the other). ‘Violetta,’ she said again. ‘Capita? Violetta. Violetta.’
‘Oh, of course!’ Lily answered, as it seeped in that the woman was introducing herself. She acknowledged this by giving a silly little bow of her upper body that probably wasn’t the custom in everyday Italy unless you were meeting the Pope. ‘Violetta,’ she repeated. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Lily. Mi chiamo Lily? Is that how you say it?’
Violetta raised the sparse hedges of her eyebrows. ‘Lee-lee,’ she tried the word out, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Lee-lee. OK.’ Then she hobbled to the faded floral curtains behind her, throwing them open to reveal a large picture window facing out to the valley that rolled down the hill from the town.
Lily took a step forward.
In the time she had been inside, the rain had stopped, and although the mist still clung to pockets of undulating land and wafted greedily around huddled clumps of trees, enough of the foreign landscape was emerging in front of her eyes to take her breath away.
‘Oh my goodness!’ she said moving closer, a throbbing blister, hunger, and her anxiety retreating.
The view was astonishing. Suddenly she definitely could see the long lunches and the youthful sexual athletics.
What’s more, as she watched, the dreary mist continued to rise, revealing a rolling carpet of different vibrant greens stretching away from Montevedova toward the horizon. Trails of pencil pines meandered down distant ridges, neat stands of olives crisscrossed emerald fields, rows of grapes marched up and down gentle hillsides. Tiny orange-hued villas appeared before her eyes, tucked in between little explosions of foliage.
A pigeon—such ugly creatures at home—flapped gracefully over the terracotta tiled roof just below her, drawing her eye as it departed to another little hilltop town floating above a recalcitrant band of mist like a beheaded cardinal’s hat in the distance.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘Just beautiful.’
‘Sí, molto bello,’ Violetta agreed, without much emotion. ‘Molto bello.’
‘Molto bello,’ Lily repeated, opening the window and leaning out. How could this astonishing vista, this extraordinary landscape, have been hiding behind all that rain and dreary mire as she drove here?
Down below her, to the left, something large and round was trying to emerge but kept being snatched away by a rogue cloud of fog. When it finally reappeared for good, it brought its whole coppered dome and bell tower with it, revealing itself to be Madonna di San Biagio—the church in the photo in Daniel’s shoe.
With that, the mist seemed to disappear altogether and Lily saw everything very clearly. She was in this place for a reason and it did not leave room for awe.
Stony-faced, she turned away and let Violetta show her the tiny bathroom, with its minute shower stall, a child-size lavatory, and not so much as a single cabinet for storage.
The room wasn’t what Lily would have chosen, but it was spotlessly clean and dry and she was wet and exhausted.
‘You know what? I think I’ll take it,’ she told Violetta. ‘For a few nights at least. Is that OK?’
‘Sí, sí, OK, OK,’ the old woman said, patting the cover on the bed.
Lily’s body ached to lie down on it. If she could just catch a few hours sleep, a few minutes even, she would be able to think more clearly.
She took 500 euro out of her wallet and was surprised when Violetta grabbed it all but was too worn out to attempt further conversation. Instead, she held a finger to her lips in what she hoped was the international language of ‘let’s keep this whole thing our little secret’ and waited until the old woman reciprocated, which she did, following this up with another long string of something undecipherable and a dismissive wave goodbye.
As soon as she was gone, Lily slipped off her kitten heels, peeled off her sodden clothes, lay back on the bed, and almost immediately drifted off into blissful oblivion.
Chapter 13
The widows were not a happy bunch when Violetta hobbled down to meet them in the basement.
‘You are wrong,’ one group was shouting at another.
‘No, you are wrong,’ the other group was shouting back.
‘You’re both wrong,’ a third splinter was joining in the fray.
Thinking they were arguing about Lily and Alessandro, Violetta bit her lip and scuttled over to her sister, who was sta
nding beneath the ginger supper knocking back a glass of vin santo.
‘What’s going on?’ Violetta whispered.
‘Fiorella brought a torta della nonna,’ explained Luciana, pointing to the table where there was nothing but a few crumbs left on a crumpled paper plate.
‘She did what?’
‘She brought a torta della nonna and it was extremely delicious, but it’s started something of a debate,’ Luciana said.
‘You use whole eggs in the pastry,’ an angry voice cried.
‘No, you just use the yolks!’
‘You use orange zest.’
‘No, vanilla.’
‘No, a tablespoon of olive oil.’
‘It’s not the pastry that makes a good torta della nonna anyway, it’s the filling!’
‘Ricotta,’ went up one chorus.
‘No ricotta,’ went up another.
Violetta walked into the middle of this heated battle and silenced the lot of them with just one look, which ended on Fiorella sitting happily on a chair with pastry crumbs cascading down her cleavage.
‘We do not have torta della nonna at meetings of the Secret League of Widowed Darners,’ Violetta said coldly. ‘We have cantucci.’
‘Oh, really,’ Fiorella scoffed. ‘Says who?’
‘Says me,’ Violetta answered.
The widow Mazzetti held the rule book up and shook it, although it had nearly killed her not to have a slice or two of such a good-looking torta.
‘Says the rules,’ Violetta confirmed.
Fiorella was not a woman used to female company, or company of any kind for that matter, and was getting the distinct impression that she wasn’t very good at it. ‘Right. Fine. Whatever you say.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s only dolci. I just thought some of us could do with a bit of sweetening up.’
‘Never mind that, are we really going to help out that stuck-up American ice princess?’ the widow Ercolani asked, cutting to the chase. She was suffering from indigestion so hadn’t had any torta, although she definitely could have done with some sweetening. ‘We’re asking for trouble involving an “outsider,” if you ask me,’ she added. ‘And who’s to say she won’t whisk Alessandro away once we’ve done our bit.’
The widow Benedicti hadn’t thought of this and turned, panicked, to Violetta for assurance.
The League was officially a democracy, so decisions were meant to be made based on a majority rule, but really, Violetta was the leader and always had been; it was a divine situation, a bit like the Dalai Lama, only in black.
And the truth was that Violetta had always felt she possessed a sixth sense when it came to matters of the heart, and was helped in this regard by Luciana, who possessed five-and-a-half.
Usually, she knew exactly what to do and who to do it to, but today no bells were ringing, no signs were flashing, her mind was as clear as minestrone. Was Alessandro really their calzino rotto? And could Lily truly be the woman to soothe his broken heart?
Where before she felt nothing but certainty, today she felt like the cornetto she’d had for breakfast was lodged in her chest and would never move. That was all.
‘What about Roberto, the bus driver, from Cremona,’ Luciana suggested, stepping helpfully into the breach. ‘Remember we set him up with Angelica from the language school? Bit of a bumpy start as I recall but they’ve got children now, and grandchildren.’
‘Cremona isn’t a foreign country,’ the widow Ercolani pointed out.
‘Put your hand up if you have ever been to Cremona,’ Violetta commanded, retrieving her wits and seizing the opportunity.
Not a single hand rose.
‘And put your hand up if you have ever been to America.’
Again, not a single hand rose.
‘Therefore I think we can safely say that America is no more foreign than Cremona.’
This seemed to satisfy the group at large but Fiorella felt moved to voice her own skepticism. ‘So, let me get this straight, this blonde turista is seen talking to old droopy drawers out in the valley and on those grounds you decide this is the love match?’
‘This blonde turista is seen talking to old droopy drawers on one of Violetta’s special days,’ the widow Benedicti stressed. ‘That’s the key. And by the way, he does not have droopy drawers.’ That Alessandro fitted his drawers quite well had already been discussed on a number of occasions.
‘Right. Good system,’ drawled Fiorella, rolling her eyes, something she did with enormous skill.
On any other occasion Violetta might have shut her up with a vicious stare or got the widow Mazzetti to refer again to the rule book for statutes regarding ethnicity, but the events of the day had unsettled her too badly and still there was that sharp pain in her chest, poking at her from the inside like an evil finger.
In the past she had found that a sticky issue could sometimes be resolved by pulling a bit of darning-related wisdom out of her pocket, and given the circumstances, she decided to try this again.
‘Might I remind you,’ she told the assembled widows, ‘that our job is not to judge the sock by its colour or even the quality of its wool, but to simply fix the hole, be it in the toe or the heel.’
Her pronouncement was met with silence at first, then a couple of heads nodded, and a couple more, and eventually the whole room was full of nodding heads.
And just one pair of rolling eyes.
Chapter 14
The early morning light threw a friendly shaft across Lily’s face and for a few sleepy moments she thought she was at home in the Seventy-second Street apartment.
She opened her eyes, stretched out her arms, and took a few bleary beats to remember she was not lying next to Daniel on the Hästens mattress she’d bought herself, even though it cost the same as a car, for her fortieth birthday. Daniel was missing, the sheets were a shade of apricot she would never let into her building, let alone her home, and the electricity in her arm hair told her they were also polyester.
She rolled onto her side, looking at the vast expanse of empty bed beside her.
She rolled onto her back again. Blew out a sigh. Let the despair of her miserable situation fully descend.
Once it had settled near rock bottom, she realised she’d been there before. Mornings, if she was honest with herself, had been miserable for a long time.
This was why at home she organised herself a jam-packed schedule, which started the moment her eyes flew open and which she faced, undaunted, with determined enthusiasm. She liked it that way. She organised it that way. The devil finds work for idle hands, the nuns had always said, and Lily found it to also be true of the mind. The devil finds work for an idle mind.
She sat up in her synthetic bed, the static electricity snatching at her silk pyjamas. She needed to get out and work up a sweat, but as she stood to seek out her running shoes she caught a glimpse of the view waiting quietly out the picture-postcard window.
Tuscany, a place she had never been the slightest bit anxious to see despite the many opportunities, a place she’d not even thought to imagine and which on first impression had sadly underwhelmed her. Yet here it was and here she was and again it took her breath away.
She moved closer to the window and gazed out at the rolling patchwork sea of greens; so many different shades and each one deeper or brighter or more dazzling than the one right next to it. She realised that if she had imagined Tuscany, she would have seen it as burnt orange and golden; vibrant colours but harsh and arid compared to the moist and thriving sprawl of grasses, grapes, olives, forests, and fields that stretched below her.
It was so beautiful it was impossible to concentrate on what had brought her there.
Instead, she leaned against the window frame and watched daylight crawl across the landscape, the offensive shade of apricot on the electric sheets and her wretched heart forgotten as she just let the world’s natural shades unfurl in front of her.
She kept thinking she should go, do something, get on with it—whatever it was—but watching
the sun creep higher in the sky, spreading its fingers slowly across the rolling hills and valleys, was completely mesmerising.
It wasn’t till she heard the sound of something being dropped with a clatter below her that she registered how ravenous she was. She couldn’t think what time it would be in New York or how many meals she must have missed. She’d had nothing since the flight the day before. She was starving.
She crossed the room and looked out the other window up and down the Corso. The Hotel Adesso looked remarkably unscathed by its plumbing disaster of the day before; it looked to be sleeping, just like the rest of the street, shuttered and silent. The sun was yet to wake the town with its golden touch the way it had woken Lily and the valley.
She wondered if Daniel was asleep somewhere nearby, his face relaxed, his blond hair sticking up on one side like it did before he washed it in the morning, the dark, dangerous woman tossing restlessly beside him.
Another pang knocked at her insides, and it wasn’t hunger. It was Daniel. She turned away from the beautiful view.
She should be angry, she thought as she washed her hair in the tiny shower. She should not be marvelling at the ridiculous view or calmly wondering about her cheating husband’s hair, she should be enraged. But she wasn’t. She knew rage only too well, thanks to her mother. Rage involved spankings and slaps; shouting and screaming; sharp objects thrown at small heads; terrifying threats; foul language; utter, uncontrollable, high-decibel fury.
Lily felt something, and it was big—she was there in Montevedova after all—but it wasn’t loud and explosive in her mother’s vein. It was more complicated than that, like the sort of itch that could drive a person mad, or an ache so deep its source was unfathomable.
She searched her face in the mirror for any outward signs of crisis but found no fury there either, a little tightness around the eyes, perhaps, a slightly haunted expression.
Once upon a time she’d seen herself as maybe not beautiful—who admitted to that—but as agreeable. She still conceded to the positive overall package: the blonde hair, the good cheekbones, the clear skin for someone of her vintage, the slender body that she worked so hard to maintain.