Dolci di Love

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  This particular crying infant was beneath an enormous red umbrella moving up the middle of the steep lane toward the parapet. Water sprayed out beneath the wheels of an ancient pram and as it got closer she saw the umbrella was attached to its handle so that the even more ancient man pushing it could use both hands to do so. And he needed both. Montevedova and baby carriages were not an ideal combination in any weather.

  Lily willed the old man to keep pushing the crying baby up one of the steep lanes to either side of her, but he didn’t, instead approaching her sanctuary and battling unsuccessfully to get the pram over the lip of the parapet and out of the rain. She knew she should go and help as he pushed and pulled, releasing what sounded to her, in any language, like a string of curses as he struggled, but she was frozen to her spot.

  The crying got louder and the old man stopped his swearing and instead leaned in toward the baby and made soothing noises.

  Lily turned away, dry eyes prickling, but turned back when she heard the sound of a nearby door slamming. A young man, no more than twenty or so, appeared in the entrance of a shop diagonally across from them. He shot Lily a quick, appreciative look, scrunched his face up into the rain, then hunched his shoulders and dashed across the lane.

  He babbled a greeting to the older man and together they hoisted the pram into the dry recess. The old man shook himself off while the younger man reached in and fetched out the child.

  It occurred to Lily at that point that the baby he was pulling out into the cool wet air could possibly be Daniel’s but the infant who emerged was a girl: a fact heralded by the pink ribbon tied around her otherwise unisex fat bald head. Upon being picked up, the baby girl roared in fury, her chubby thighs kicking angrily beneath a frilly white dress. She threw her head furiously from side to side, face crumpled like a big red raisin, and howled. But the young man had only to jiggle her in the air a handful of times, make a few cooing noises, and the wailing stopped, the plump fists that had been banging the air suddenly stretched happily out to her sides. Within moments she was gurgling and laughing as he lifted her up and down and spoke to her in a singsong voice.

  Lily couldn’t look away. If she did, she thought, she would crumble into a mountain of wet pebbles and be swept down the drain with the water from the torrential downpour. Why had she been denied one of these precious creatures? What had she done wrong? Where was the justice?

  The two men shared a joke and the younger planted a kiss on the baby’s forehead, which made her squeal—this time with delight.

  He had turned her despair into joy so effortlessly. She wondered if he knew what a gift that was.

  Daniel, on the other hand, had always been awkward with other people’s children. He held them at funny angles and didn’t know what to do or say. It was strange, really, because he’d always insisted he wanted children as much as she did and she’d assumed he’d be different with their own, but in the six days and seventeen hours they’d had Baby Grace—she allowed herself to just think that precious name—he’d still seemed not reluctant, exactly, not even uncertain. Overawed, perhaps. She wondered what her husband was like with his Italian children, if he’d ever got the hang of it, if it now came naturally to him, this thing she herself had been given less than a week to display a flair for.

  She closed her mind to the subject, the thoughts she didn’t want to have stiffening her already-brittle bones.

  Across the parapet, the baby was being put back in her pram, the umbrella was reattached, and after the young man helped lift the carriage back onto the lane, her perilous journey continued farther up the hill in the opposite direction to which Lily’s hotel was marked on her map.

  The younger man looked after them for a while, peeking out from underneath the shelter, then moved his gaze to Lily.

  ‘Buongiorno, signora!’ he called, nodding in the direction of the rain. ‘Piove a catinelle, no?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t speak Italian.’

  ‘Ah, sorry. Turista?’

  ‘No,’ said Lily. ‘I mean, yes. Sí. Turista.’ The violin music was gone. She was cold, desperate for a shower and dry clothes. The rain wasn’t going away. She would have to brave it to get to her hotel. She started collecting her things.

  ‘Alberto,’ the young man said, walking toward her, holding out his hand for her to shake. ‘You would like to come for some wine at my shop, perhaps?’

  He had short, spiky, dark hair, Alberto, and a sort of boyish charm that had its appeal, as did the glass of wine, but the tugging at her insides that had arrived with the baby’s cries tautened further within her. She wanted to be alone, somewhere dark and quiet.

  ‘Maybe some other time.’ She smiled politely.

  ‘Are you sure? This rain look like to stay for some time…I am just sitting down to my lunch. I have bread and prosciutto and tomatoes from my grandmother’s garden—she bring them to me just now and said I should share them with the first pretty blonde woman I see, then I look out the window and here you are. Seems like fate, no?’

  ‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Lily said more forcefully than she meant to. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m tired and would just like to get to my hotel.’

  Alberto held up his hands.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, but his smile was still warm. ‘I understand. No problem. Welcome to Montevedova anyway, no?’

  ‘Sí.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ciao, ciao,’ he said, and, collar up, he took off.

  By the time Lily reached the torn and tattered canopy of the Hotel Adesso she had pulled a calf muscle, wrenched her shoulder, and decided that whatever small, dry luxuries no-star accommodation could offer, she would gratefully accept.

  She stopped under the canopy, dripping, and rubbed her palm where the handle of her bag had cut off the circulation just as a foul stench hit her square in the face.

  Every door in the hotel opened and a rumble of mutual disgust and anger billowed through the three-storey building, ending with a shriek as a uniformed housemaid came running down the hallway, hand over her nose.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lily asked, as the maid gulped for fresh air and rubbed her stomach, grimacing.

  ‘The drains,’ she said. ‘There is big problem.’

  ‘With all of them?’

  ‘They are flowing over. In the bathroom.’

  ‘But I’m supposed to stay here!’

  ‘I think not today,’ the housemaid said. ‘Try Hotel Prato. Is four stars.’

  The lobby at the end of the hallway was filling with angry guests demanding information from the lone, harried receptionist, and Lily’s dream of no-star refuge drained away like nothing else was apparently managing.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ she said. ‘Hotel Prato is closed for renovations. I don’t suppose you know of anywhere else?’

  ‘Hotel Prato closed? Are you—’ But the rest of the housemaid’s response was swallowed by an almighty holler coming from a diminutive grey-haired woman who appeared in the lobby and continued to make an enthusiastically vocal fuss. ‘Scusi,’ the housemaid said, then covered her face with a handkerchief and dashed back down the hall.

  The raindrops bounced furiously off the cobbles in front of her as Lily contemplated the Corso once again. But the stench was not getting any sweeter, the lobby any emptier. She lurched back out into the lane, body pitched against the weather, and headed uphill, but she had gone barely a dozen steps when she came to a tiny ivy-covered building on the opposite side with a FOR RENT sign written in wobbly letters in its darkened window.

  Without stopping to think further, Lily pitched in the door, her bag listing sideways as she hauled it in behind her, her purse slipping from her grasp and sliding across the floor, a large unseemly looking puddle forming beneath her.

  The space was cozily dark, but she didn’t need to see much to figure out it was no ordinary house. It was some sort of shop, she thought, as her eyes adjusted. A bakeshop. It was tiny, barely larger than her beloved cl
oset at home, but infinitely better-smelling. Facing her was an L-shaped marble counter set out galley-style from the walls. On this counter sat a dozen or so enormous fluted glass bowls, some on raised plinths so they sat at different heights, in a palette of dark reds and blues and greens. The way the scant light reflected through the dusty air—bouncing off a chandelier, of all things, then striking the bowls and shimmering around the outside of the room—gave Lily the impression of being in the middle of a stained-glass window.

  A scent she couldn’t quite place seemed to leach out of the walls. At first she thought it was cinnamon, then vanilla, then something more floral, like lavender. It was oddly comforting, like being wrapped in a satin-lined coat. Indeed, she could no longer hear the rain beating down, and with the heat in the room and the spiciness in the air, her bones loosened, her blood warmed, her colour started to return.

  In the window bearing the FOR RENT sign, a lonely wrought-iron chair sat neatly waiting beside a tiny round table. The tiled floor beneath her kitten heels was a slightly crazed mosaic in faded burnt orange, dull turquoise, and grey.

  She stepped forward and saw that the bowls were full of what looked like biscotti; the Italian cookies she never ate when they came with coffee or the check at Babbo or ’Cesca.

  Her mouth watered. It had been a long time since she had eaten anything.

  Behind the counter, against the back wall, stood a set of shelves, on which sat a dusty collection of spice jars and faded cookie boxes. They looked old-fashioned to Lily, as though they had been sitting there for many, many years.

  In fact, it looked like the whole store had been sitting there for many, many years. If it was a store. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place with which Heigelmann’s would trifle. There was no room for more than five customers, tops, and there didn’t seem to be a cash register. Or anyone working there.

  The biscotti, upon further inspection, differed from the similar cookies Lily turned down at Babbo or ’Cesca, which were oval shaped and smooth. These ones were slightly unconventional: their shapes uneven and the surfaces a little craggy.

  Also, unless she was mistaken—and there was that enchanting light shimmering about the room giving everything a slightly ethereal glow, so her eyes could have been playing tricks on her—there was a fine layer of dust over the cookies.

  Maybe it wasn’t a shop but a museum of some sort. Either way, this room was obviously not for rent, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another one that was, and she hardly had any other options.

  She stepped out of the puddle she had made on the floor. ‘Hello!’ she called out. ‘Anyone here?’

  Chapter 11

  The widow Ercolani waited until Lily had left the tourist office and slowly dialled the widow Ciacci’s number.

  ‘She was booked into Prato,’ she duly reported, ‘so I’ve flushed her up to Adesso to get her closer to you, but I really can’t see what all the fuss is about.’

  The widow Ercolani did not like Grace Kelly in Rear Window. She was more of a Sophia Loren fan.

  ‘Never mind what all the fuss is about,’ the widow Ciacci said briskly. It was common knowledge that the widow Ercolani had her granddaughter Adriana earmarked for Alessandro, but a good man was wasted on that hussy. ‘What else can you tell us about her?’

  ‘She’s tall and American.’

  ‘American? Oh! And what else?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I said what else? She’s tall and American and…?’

  ‘And that’s not enough? I thought we’d be giving her a miss in the circumstances. Besides, she was too thin for someone that height and not dressed for the weather or the climb.’ The widow Ercolani did not have to pretend to be crotchety. It came to her quite naturally.

  ‘Well, it’s Alessandro’s heart we’re mending, isn’t it?’ the widow Ciacci reminded her. ‘And it’s not up to us how that gets done or who does it. It’s up to Violetta.’

  The widow Ercolani harrumphed. Her crotchetiness extended as far as Violetta. And beyond.

  ‘Well, it’s not like we’re getting the results we used to, these days,’ she sniffed. ‘The last three cases we’ve worked on have been nothing short of disastrous.’

  It was true. There had been a bad run. First they’d tried to fix the baker’s son up with a woman who had a rare allergy to flour; then they’d tried to reunite the draper with her high school sweetheart, unaware of his newly formed gambling problem; and most recently they pushed the curvaceous mayor’s secretary into the arms of a man who turned out to have a boyfriend in Cortona. These disasters had been a long time in the planning and execution and the dreadful results had hit the widows hard.

  Times were tough and getting tougher, that much was obvious, but the widow Ciacci didn’t want to get into that right now. She had a sore tooth and didn’t feel like squeezing details out of the widow Ercolani like pips out of a lemon.

  ‘The problem is that we’re falling down on our intelligence gathering,’ she said rather pointedly. ‘Which, might I remind you, it is your job to help provide.’

  ‘That is not the problem,’ the widow Ercolani argued. ‘The problem is that Violetta’s getting too old and crumbly to work her magic.’ The widow Ercolani was feeling pretty old and crumbly herself. Her ears rang, her hips ached, and she had spent her pension on chocolate so could not afford any painkillers.

  ‘I’ll look forward to hearing you discussing that directly with Violetta at the meeting later today, shall I?’ the widow Ciacci suggested.

  ‘I’m sorry. What was that?’

  ‘Oh, never mind. I need to get on to the plumbing at the Hotel Adesso.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ grumbled the widow Ercolani. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

  Up the hill, Violetta got such a fright when she heard Lily call from the pasticceria that she spat out a mouthful of coffee clear across the table, only missing her sister by the merest of smidgeons.

  ‘She’s here already,’ Luciana said, unfazed. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘That stupid doorbell!’ spluttered Violetta.

  Where had the time gone? It seemed like she’d only just issued her instructions and gone to the WC—an almost full-time occupation at her stage—and now this Lily woman was on the other side of the door calling out for them.

  On top of not having an itchy nose or smelling orange blossom and being bulldozed by her usually placid younger sister into accepting the irritating and unsuitable Fiorella Fiorucci into the League, she felt wrong-footed, to say the least.

  She took another sip of her coffee. She could barely taste it. Never mind a sixth sense, she was now back down to five, if not four. This, on top of everything, catapulted her into the filthiest of moods.

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ she snapped at her sister. ‘I’m allowed to sit down for five minutes and enjoy my coffee without you mooning at me across the table like an old heifer, aren’t I?’

  ‘If I’m an old heifer, you’re an even older one,’ pointed out Luciana. ‘And anyway, what’s got your giblets in a pickle?’

  ‘My giblets are not in a pickle,’ Violetta said. ‘I’m just devising the rest of the plan.’

  ‘I thought we already had the plan,’ Luciana said, her chair scraping against the floor as she slowly stood up. ‘You take Grace Kelly upstairs and pump her for information while Ciacci and I meet with Benedicti and the others to start devising our strategy for Alessandro, then we—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do know how it works, Luciana. I am the director of this league, you might recall.’

  ‘And this is you not in a pickle?’ Luciana lifted her sagging eyelids to have a really good look at her sister. She was right, she was old. She’d been old for a long time and she looked especially old today. Luciana felt a tiny tremor of something down near her still-throbbing toe that had nothing to do with a broken heart other than, possibly, her own.

  ‘Are you all right, Violetta?’ she asked quietly.

  This was met with w
hat she thought was a snort, although it could have come from any part of her aged sibling. ‘I’m always all right,’ Violetta said as she stiffly rose from the table. ‘As usual, I’ll do the talking. Now step to it.’

  Chapter 12

  Lily heard muffled grumblings, the scraping of chairs, and the soft scuff of shuffling feet before the door in the rear corner of the bakeshop creaked open and out hobbled two almost identical old women, both dressed in black, both with thin grey hair scraped into wispy buns, both so wrinkled their faces looked like dried autumn leaves.

  They stood hip to hip behind the counter, and after a moment or two of looking her up and down, one of them started a breathless monologue of which Lily understood not a syllable, while the other looked on, nodding shakily in agreement.

  ‘I’m sorry, please—I’m not following, I don’t speak Italian,’ Lily said, attempting to staunch the flow. ‘I’m here about the place to rent.’

  The chattering old woman just kept chattering and the nodding one nodding.

  ‘The place to rent?’ Lily said, louder. ‘Is it a room? An apartment?’ She moved over to the window and tapped at the sign. ‘Apartamento? Rento?’

  The nodding woman then said something to the chattering one. They both stopped and looked her up and down again, then the nodding one left the shop.

  This took quite a long time. She moved very slowly.

  ‘So about this room,’ Lily said when the nodding old lady had made her way out the door. ‘If there’s anything you can tell me…It’s just that I’m slightly desperate.’

  The remaining old woman clasped both hands beneath her chin and squinted so hard that her wrinkles surfed over each other to the edges of her face like ripples in a pond. Her small dark eyes gleamed beneath layers of drooping lid. Finally, she hobbled around the counter and over to Lily, grasping one of her hands. Her fingers were swollen and bent, but they were surprisingly soft and warm.