Chickens Eat Pasta Page 3

  “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve never missed a deadline before, but you seem a bit distracted lately.” Caroline, the usually brusque assistant news editor, peered over my shoulder with an expression of concern. I hurriedly shoved Cesare’s latest progress report under some notebooks and pulled out the story that I should have handed in half an hour earlier. She was right, of course. My mind was no longer completely on the job.

  She wasn’t the only one to notice.

  “You’re in love aren’t you? Tell me who it is. I bet he’s Italian.”

  Patrick was my closest friend at the newspaper. He lived next door but one and we’d often go for a drink together at the Eagle on the way home, to moan about a particularly harrowing day in the newsroom, or to berate the latest absurd story we’d been asked to cover. He had let me cry on his shoulder more than once in the months since my break up with Rob, and I in turn had offered whisky and sympathy during the final phases of his long and tortured relationship with a girl who lived in London.

  “So go on, what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’ve been staring into space all morning, and you hardly touched your food in the canteen at lunchtime. And you keep looking at some kind of photograph, though I can’t see who it is. If you ask me, your behaviour is decidedly shifty.”

  “Buongiorno!” Jed, the arts reporter, passed by my desk seconds after Patrick had left. “I brought you a cappuccino.” He placed a frothy concoction in a plastic cup in front of me. “I know you only drink Italian coffee these days.”

  *

  Sipping the milky brew as Jed moved off to write his theatre review, I pulled out Cesare’s letter again. He had found a local builder in nearby Spoleto, a man from his parish church who was, he said, scrupulously honest. Between them, they had set about finding ways to save me money. The bath was second-hand but never used, since it had come from one of the unfinished apartments in the skiing village that was now abandoned. Cesare had got a scouting contact who was also an electrician to do the wiring. The flooring was finished, the roof mended and the house was beginning to take shape. He suggested that I get Benedetto, a handyman who lived in the village, to put up shelves and do other odd jobs when I next came over, and he told me that Angela and Ercolino had been looking after the accounts, paying my electricity bills for me with some money I had left them. After our meeting over dinner, Angela and Ercolino had insisted on helping me.

  “I’m not sure you really know what you’ve taken on,” said Angela, as we sat in a bar having coffee together the day after the dinner at Mirella’s. We were in Terni, and in less than hour my train would leave for Rome where I would be catching my flight home.

  “It’s not easy finding your way around in Italy, and I should know. I think you’ll need all the help you can get. By the way, do they still make picallili in England? I haven’t tasted it for years.”

  Sitting at my desk littered with drawings of the kitchen plan, I remembered how Ercolino had driven his Vespa down to the station to join Angela in waving me off. As I climbed on board, Angela pressed a small package into my hand. In it was a sandwich made with slices of prosciutto and a little carton of red wine with a straw. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

  *

  Angela’s picnics. She had always made one for me whenever I left to go anywhere during all the time we had now known each other. That was one of the items on the ‘things I’ll miss’ list I had made when I had been trying to decide whether or not to leave Italy – and say goodbye to my house. The two handwritten pages were still on the table next to my handbag, ready to put in the car as soon as Angela and Ercolino arrived to take me on the first leg of my final journey back to England. I glanced at the first one.

  Things I won’t miss:

  1. Not being able to turn on the toaster and an iron without blowing the entire electrical circuit.

  2. Not having an electric blanket in winter.

  3. Having to spend two hours to get a cheque cashed in the bank.

  4. Being stared at if I walk into a bar and order a drink.

  5. Going to a dinner party where everyone sees who can talk the loudest.

  6. Having to sit next to the women, while all the men sit together at the other end and talk about football.

  7. Lecherous men.

  8. Being told that the food is uneatable in England.

  9. Being told that it never stops raining in England.

  I’d made my mind up now. I turned to the now crumpled second list.

  Things I’ll miss:

  1. The sound of the house martins chattering first thing in the morning.

  2. The taste of strawberry wine.

  3. Bombing around the winding roads in my little Fiat 500.

  4. Diving from my small rowing boat for a swim in Lake Piediluco.

  5. Ercolino’s malapropisms.

  6. Angela’s picnics.

  7. My lovely house.

  The writing trailed off at this point and the ink from the felt tip had smudged. My hand was still damp from wiping my eyes. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes to get everything ready, finish my packing and wash the kitchen floor again. There was no real logic in it, but I had to leave the house spotless. It was the least I could do after deciding to abandon it.

  ***

  Thanks to my correspondence with Cesare, I had learned a whole new Italian vocabulary, far removed from anything I ever came across at university. Pozzo nero was the latest new term I had had to grapple with. I had looked it up in the Italian-English dictionary that I now kept on my desk next to my typewriter. Cesspit. I’d just had one put in apparently. To be honest, I wasn’t that familiar with the word in English. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

  “Call for you on extension nine dearie. It’s someone foreign, I think.” Caroline cupped her hand over the receiver on the other side of the newsroom. “Nice voice, I must say! I do hope this is a work related call dearie. I’m still waiting for that story on the dive bombing seagull attacks in Peacehaven.”

  It had been Cesare on the phone, and it was not good news. The planning authorities in Montebello had paid a visit to my house and slapped a ban on all work until further notice. An overzealous official had noticed that some stone steps had been built on the approach to the property, and these weren’t covered by the blanket planning alterations that Cesare had registered when the builders started work on the interior.

  I involuntarily clapped a hand to my forehead, before removing it quickly as it became clear I was being watched.

  “So what on earth do I do now?” I hissed down the phone.

  “Don’t worry. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Haven’t you heard of a condono? Here in Italy, everything can be forgiven if you know how to go about it.” I hurriedly thumbed through my dictionary under the entries for c. Condono: pardon or amnesty, especially for work undertaken without planning permission.

  “Tranquilla. I’ll take care of it.” Cesare’s voice was reassuring. “I only told you as I knew you were hoping to have the house habitable by Christmas. That’s out of the question now I’m afraid. But we can sort it out. Of course, we’ll have to pay.”

  So much for Christmas. So much for the house-warming party. I glanced up at the clock above my desk to see how long before I could decently make an exit.

  “Everything all right is it?” said Caroline, sidling up to my desk. “You’re not thinking of going home yet I hope. You know how we hate clock watchers in this newsroom.”

  *

  Caroline had not been the only person to notice the change since I had come back from Italy. My two brothers telephoned me regularly, barely disguising their concern over the disaster they were convinced was looming. Although we all lived in different parts of the country, we were even closer now that we only had each other. Charles was very aware that he was the head of the family, with all the responsibilities this entailed.

  “I know you won
’t like this, but I just wondered if it might be a good idea for you to see a doctor,” he blurted out in one of his evening phone calls.

  “What kind of doctor? I’m perfectly well.”

  You could almost hear him summoning up his courage on the other end of the line.

  “Well, maybe one that you can talk to about things, about your feelings,” he ventured uncomfortably.

  “You mean a psychiatrist?”

  “Well it can’t do any harm. You’ve always been a bit reckless, but even you must admit that you’ve been acting very strangely lately. And it can’t be easy living on your own after all this time.”

  In a way, he was right. It wasn’t much fun living by myself after spending seven years with the man everyone had expected me to marry. And I had lost my appetite for the job I had once enjoyed so much, for the place where I lived and for the everyday routine that I now found suffocating. My new house in the Umbrian hills was the best thing that had happened to me for longer than I could remember.

  *

  To quell my brothers’ fears, I had invited them both down for dinner a few nights later at the Italian restaurant three doors away from my house in Brighton. It was owned by a kind-looking man from Calabria called Vito, who would often invite me over for a glass of wine and a plate of pasta while he prepared the dinner menu, his wife eyeing us attentively from the kitchen where she was rolling out sheets of lasagne.

  The evening had not been a great success. I saw my brothers’ anxious glances as I handed round the photographs of my house in San Massano. I had taken the shots the day after I bought it, and although I was enraptured every time I looked at them, it was clear they didn’t have the same effect on my brothers. I quickly took the pictures back and stuffed them into the frayed envelope that now went everywhere with me. It seemed the right moment to break some more news. I had decided to hand in my notice at work, put some tenants in my house in Brighton and move out to Italy so that I could follow the renovation more closely.

  *

  At my leaving party, held, as was traditional, in the Eagle, the editor bought the first round of drinks before making a short speech. Earlier, in his office, he had offered to take me back if, as he put it ominously, “things don’t work out.”

  “In fact, if you agree to come back in, let’s say a year, I’ll see if I can get some sort of retainer for you while you’re away.”

  It was very tempting. Having an income, however small, would make all the difference. And it would be far less risky if there was a job to come back to.

  “Thank you. But I can’t make any promises about coming back. So it’s better to make a clean break.” The words had come out before I could stop them.

  “But what are you going to do? How will you earn a living? What about your career?” Everyone knew that this busy evening paper was a stepping stone to Fleet Street, the holy grail for reporters.

  Other people’s reactions were not much more encouraging.

  ”Are you crazy? Turning down the offer of money and your job back? That doesn’t happen often in this business.” Mark the crime reporter was incredulous. But then he had a wife and three children, so he had a different outlook on life. His desk was next to mine and he would often punctuate his calls to police contacts about robberies with equally fraught ones about the latest emergency in his domestic life.

  “So long as you’re leaving because you want to. Not because you’re running away.” That was Flynn, one of the subs, who didn’t say much, but was famous for his quiet words of wisdom.

  “Oh Italy. Yes, lovely place. It’s just a pity they are all such thieves!” That was my uncle – my uncle by marriage, as I always pointed out. His disapproval made me want to go even more.

  “I so hope you’re doing the right thing. You worked so hard to become a journalist and now it looks as if you’re throwing it all away,” said my younger brother Jamie as he drove me to the airport a month and a half later. He squeezed my hand. “By the way, I couldn’t resist, so I went out there a few weeks ago to see for myself what kind of crazy adventure you are getting into. You are quite mad, but I have to admit, the place is beautiful. I met your friends by the way.”

  “Look out for Space Bog,” he called out mysteriously as I wheeled my trolley towards security.

  *

  “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?” Angela was standing beside me. The kitchen floor was dry now. “You don’t have to go, you know. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  “Better we stay here and have a nice lunch rather than go outside in this rain. We’ll get as wet as a chicken.” That was Ercolino, practical as ever.

  Angela glanced at the pieces of paper, thrust carelessly aside when I had gone to let them in.

  “You’ve left out the most important one of all from the things you’ll miss,” she said.

  “Yes, all the wonderful dinners we would have had together,” chipped in her husband. “How are you going to survive with all that bloody awful English food? You’ve already lost enough weight as it is.”

  “No, it’s something else, and I think she knows what it is,” said Angela quietly.

  “Yes, it’s Mario.” I felt my eyelashes become damp once again. “But it’s no good. It just wouldn’t work. I’ve made my decision. Come on. Let’s get the luggage into the car before I miss the train.”

  Chapter Two

  The family sitting opposite me in the compartment didn’t take long to start unpacking their picnic. The train had barely pulled out of Rome station when the mother, a short wiry woman, began opening tupperware boxes from a large zipped holdall she kept near her feet. She passed around bundles of food wrapped in paper napkins to her husband and each of her three children. Then just as she was about to sit down again she hesitated as if she had forgotten something, and got back up to extend a paper bag in my direction. It was filled with large round shapes which appeared to be covered in breadcrumbs.

  “Go on. They’re arancini. Made with rice, meat sauce and mozzarella. I made them myself,” said the woman. She pressed one into my hand while her husband passed me a paper cup filled with red wine.

  “You’re not from around here are you Signorina? I can tell by the way you look. Nor are we for that matter. We’re from Sicily.”

  That explained the accent, which was totally different from anything I had heard before. “Have another. There’s plenty for everyone.”

  There certainly seemed to be. As each container was emptied, another would appear from the seemingly bottomless bag, and passed round to each member of the family, before being offered to me. There was no point in arguing, and it seemed a long time since my last meal. The early morning Kenya Airways flight I had taken cost half as much as Alitalia, but the food had not looked tempting.

  The Sicilian family was on a long journey back to Milan, where the father worked in a factory. They had been home to spend a few days holiday in Catania. Between mouthfuls, they talked nonstop about who they had seen during their stay, where they had gone, and especially what they had eaten. They had been travelling all night.

  I had been away for nearly four months, and it felt good to be back. The train had picked up speed now, but it was warm and I stood up to open a window and enjoy the feeling of cooler air against my skin. Abruptly, the window was slammed shut, and I turned to see a heavily built middle-aged lady who had been sitting in the corner.

  “We can’t have windows open. The draught will give us a dreadful chill,” she said firmly. I struggled to understand the logic, but looking around the rest of the carriage I saw that the decision had been made. Even the friendly Sicilian family was nodding in agreement with the woman.

  “Draughts are very dangerous,” said the mother, wiping her brow with a cotton handkerchief drawn from a large handbag. “Especially if you have been eating.”

  There was little choice but to give in. It was less than an hour now to Terni and it wouldn’t be long until I was back in San Massano. The train pull
ed into the station at last and I peeled my legs off the leather seat. The Sicilian man handed down my three heavy bags and, to my relief, I saw Angela and Ercolino walking towards me along the platform. They both gave me a hug and Ercolino started fussing in his mixed metaphor English.

  “Why have you brought so much luggage?” he said. “How am I going to fit all that in my car? It’s only small you know. Like me. Like her. You drive me round the bloody wall.”

  “Leave her in peace Ercolino,” said Angela, giving him a soft slap on one cheek and a kiss on the other.

  “It’s so good to see you again. Come on, we’re going back to our place for some lunch. You must be starving.”

  Angela led the way out to the side street where they had left Ercolino’s car. It was indeed very small, a gleaming bright red Fiat 500. And seeing Angela and Ercolino next to it, all three seemed made for each other. I hadn’t really noticed before, but both husband and wife were a full head shorter than I was and fitted into the miniature car perfectly. I climbed into the back and squeezed my bags next to me and onto my lap.

  “I can’t see a bloody thing out of the back,” said Ercolino.

  “Oh shut up. It’s only a few minutes’ drive.” Angela turned round to look at me.

  “He loves his Cinquecento you know. People keep offering to buy it but he won’t sell it.”

  On the way, we passed the steelworks, which was, I now knew, the major source of employment in Terni.

  “They used to make weapons here,” said Ercolino. “Did you know that the gun used to shoot President Kennedy was made here in Terni?”

  A few minutes later, Ercolino pulled up outside a row of one-storey buildings, all of which looked the same.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Welcome to our home.”

  *

  “Ah, the Cinquecento. Do you remember the time you ran up all those fines with your Cinquecento, and I had to get my policeman friend to get them torn up?” Ercolino had taken the list from Angela now, and was looking at the things that I’d miss.