Dolci di Love

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  ‘That I do believe,’ said Lily.

  ‘But is true about the rent,’ insisted Violetta. ‘Without you we could not stay open another minute.’

  ‘Stay open? Your shop? It isn’t open now.’

  ‘We have trouble,’ Violetta admitted. ‘Since the arthritis, the cantucci is not turning out so good and those Borsolini bastardi down the hill make a fortune selling ugly cookies to fat tourists who won’t do the climb up here to our store.’

  ‘OK, you know what? Thank you for being honest but that’s not my problem, and you know what else, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’m leaving anyway. You can keep the money I gave you to pay this month’s rent for your shop but I’m going home. Now.’

  The sisters looked at each other.

  ‘We are definitely getting too old for this merda,’ Violetta told her sister in Italian.

  ‘The problem is the money you give us is for last month’s rent,’ she told Lily. ‘We have no money for this month’s rent.’

  ‘I gave you five hundred euros!’

  ‘We are behind.’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry about that, but the reality is that you need to get someone else to make your cantucci so you have a viable prospect to actually sell, or better still, you need to beat the Borsolini bastardi at their own game. I don’t know—make what everyone is buying from them, only better, and then maybe you can afford to meet your financial responsibilities. Or talk to the owner of the building and try to come to some arrangement over the rent. Who owns the building anyway?’ Lily asked. ‘To whom do you owe this money?’

  A heated debate broke out between the sisters.

  ‘We own it,’ Violetta eventually confessed. ‘We owe the money to us.’

  All Lily could do was laugh.

  ‘You want to trick me into renting a store that has nothing in it so you can “stay” open when you seem not to have been open for quite a long time selling nonexistent cantucci to customers who don’t exist?’

  Violetta explained this all the Luciana, then they both turned to her and nodded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this some kind of joke? No? OK, that’s it. I’m going upstairs to pack.’

  ‘Mention the little girl,’ Luciana ordered her sister.

  ‘What about the little girl?’ Violetta demanded accordingly. ‘Francesca?’

  Lily stopped in her tracks.

  ‘What about Francesca?’ she asked. ‘What has Francesca got to do with it?’

  ‘Francesca has everything to do with it,’ Violetta answered.

  A difficult silence descended on the room. The two sisters’ four dark eyes bored into her.

  ‘You know about Daniel?’

  ‘We know about a little girl in need of amore. And we know about a darning group that really likes heart-shaped cantucci.’

  ‘Your darning group ate all our cantucci?’

  ‘Sí. And they’re a hard crowd to please. But all they need to do is spread the word and our heart-shaped cantucci—we call it amorucci now—could be a very viable prospect. If only we had someone to help us make it. And then there’s Francesca. Tut, tut. Poor little broken-winged Francesca.’

  ‘This is extortion!’

  Violetta cackled like an old hen, then translated for Luciana, who cackled even harder.

  ‘She says welcome to Italy!’ Violetta reported, pushing her chair back with an almighty scraping as she struggled to her feet. ‘But this isn’t real extortion’s poor cousin twice removed. Anyway, you might want to think about this overnight.’

  Lily was astounded.

  ‘There is nothing to think about. I have a life back in New York, you know: a home, a job, responsibilities of my own. I can’t just drop everything and run a cantucci store in Tuscany. That’s ludicrous.’

  But she wasn’t thinking of her home, her job, her responsibilities, or even of her broken heart or the man who broke it. She was thinking of the smile on Francesca’s face as she saw the shape the cookie cutter had made in the cantucci.

  Lily looked up and caught Violetta’s eye. There was a lot of wrinkled skin on that ancient face, but a wink is still a wink.

  Chapter 43

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning.

  Lily was long in bed, having agreed to sleep on it, but still intent on leaving first thing in the morning. This gave the widows another four hours at least to come up with the rest of their plan.

  Violetta had taped a tourist office map of Montevedova on the wall and was marking various points with pin tacks.

  One marked the room near Piazza San Francesca where Daniel was staying, the other the pasticceria, another the roundabout near the tourist office, a fourth the truck drivers’ depot, a fifth the back road that wound around to San Biagio church, and another the church itself.

  ‘Widows Del Grasso, Ciacci, Ercolani, and Pacini, are you clear?’

  ‘Sí,’ they answered in unison.

  ‘Del Grasso, you don’t look so sure.’

  ‘I know what I have to do, I’m just worried about the smell,’ she said.

  ‘If you take enough food and a bottle of grappa there should be no need to get that close,’ Violetta said. ‘Mazzetti has worked out the timing. If we all do our bit, it should run like clockwork.’

  ‘You know, sometimes I wish we were really just a darning club,’ grumbled the widow Benedicti.

  ‘Have you lost your cotton-picking mind?’ asked Fiorella. ‘Where’s the romance in darning?’

  Violetta and Luciana looked at her, then each other, and smiled. Their matching aching bones heaved matching sighs of relief. They were tired and they were old, but they could rest happy in the knowledge that when they went to meet Silvio and Salvatore in the great beyond, the League would be in safe hands.

  Fiorella looked down at her feet and let out a hoot of laughter.

  ‘Look at that!’ she cackled. ‘One blue shoe and one brown one! Now that’s got to make a day more interesting.’

  She certainly had a gift for looking on the bright side.

  Chapter 44

  Lily had expected a sleepless night after the roller-coaster events of the day, the ups and downs of which ricocheted around her head as she climbed the stairs to her room for the very last time.

  But the moment she lay down she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, waking so early that the friendly ray of light that liked to tickle her chin in the morning was still only climbing its way down the wall.

  With the pale golden light dappling on the pretty ceiling and sparkling off the chandelier above her, it was like being inside a glittery snow globe.

  She lay there, stretching out in the sleepy warmth, trying not to think of Daniel shouting at her in the alley, of Alessandro whispering to her while he ran his fingers up her thigh, of Francesca smiling at her over a heart-shaped cookie.

  Her world had been thoroughly shaken up, there was no pretending otherwise, but when the glitter settled, she would be at home in her old life in New York. She could keep what had happened in Tuscany separate from everything else, to be shaken again—or not—as she saw fit.

  She wasn’t sad. In fact, she felt a tiny buzz of anticipation in her belly as she got up and started folding and packing her clothes, trying not to look out the window or smell the jasmine that grew up a weathered trellis beside the window or marvel at the general splendour of the green and gorgeous countryside.

  These things could go in the glittery snow globe and stay there too.

  Her suitcase packed, she carried it quietly down the narrow stairs and entered the kitchen. She knew better than to think she could escape the sisters, but she was not prepared to see them waiting—Violetta standing and Luciana sitting—behind the table upon which they had set out all the ingredients for a massive amorucci marathon.

  The bins of flour and sugar were at the ready. Dozens of eggs, freshly laid and still sporting coiffures of straw, were stacked beside them. More baking pans had appeared from somewhere and there were b
owls of extra ingredients sitting at the end of the table like treasure chests piled with lemons, walnuts, pine nuts, oranges, cinnamon quills, vanilla pods, cherries, dried fruit, and dark chocolate.

  The pastel bowl collection had increased half-a-dozen-fold since the day before, as had the mixing spoons and the cookie cutters. This was a production line, ready and waiting, and she couldn’t for the life of her imagine why they had gone to all the bother, let alone the expense, when they knew she was leaving.

  Clearly, they underestimated her resolve. Although as she looked at them, unmoving in their black shiftless smocks, it struck Lily that there was a ferocity emanating from the Ferretti sisters that she hadn’t noticed before. If they’d ever seemed cute, that was well gone. They looked a little bit like gnarled old rats. There was nothing feeble or quaint about them. They meant business. Indeed, they would not be out of place haggling for shillings in a Zanzibar spice market.

  But Lily had looked stronger foe in the eye than these two. She would not be intimidated. She let go of her suitcase and girded her loins for the ensuing battle.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ she said. ‘You have obviously gone to a lot of trouble, but I thought I made it perfectly clear to you that I am not staying, so I won’t be able to help you.’

  The sisters said nothing.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, and I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful with your amorucci endeavours, but please, here, let me give you this to help you pay rent. To yourselves.’ She reached into her purse and pulled out her last 100 euro note.

  The sisters said nothing, so Lily slid the note into the bowl of oranges and lemons, disrupting the fruit, some of which bounced off the table and onto the floor.

  The sisters did not move a muscle.

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ Lily said, chasing the rolling citrus around the room, then trying unsuccessfully to restack the bowl, eventually putting two of the lemons in her purse to get the job finished.

  ‘Right,’ she said, finally. ‘It’s been a fascinating experience and I’d like to thank you for your hospitality and the use of your kitchen,’ she said. ‘But you’ve obviously got a lot of work to do today so I’ll be on my way, as planned. As for Francesca, well, if you see her, please say—please tell her…’ Her throat closed, making it hard to continue. Such a display of emotion had certainly never escaped her in the Heigelmann’s boardroom. That would be suicide.

  ‘Yes, anyway, I would be very grateful if you could just say goodbye.’

  Nothing. The glaring got a bit more intense, perhaps, but Lily was not going to fold now.

  ‘So thank you once again and good luck.’

  Still, the sisters showed no response, so Lily turned and pulled her suitcase across the uneven stone floor toward the door. She cursed herself for not getting the wretched thing fixed or replaced because its wobbly wheel had only gotten wobblier.

  It got stuck going through the narrow doorway into the shop, then again on the corner of the counter as she rounded the bend, finally collecting the little chair by the front window.

  Once she had extricated the bag from the furniture, she found she could not open the shop door. It was firmly stuck and she nearly wrenched her arm out pulling it open, which happened so suddenly the chain holding the bell broke and it crashed to the floor, only narrowly missing her head.

  She thought about going back to tell the sisters, but decided her 100 euro tip would have to cover the damage.

  She picked up the pieces and left them in a pile on the table in the front window.

  The cobbled lane of the Corso was empty, silent but for Lily and her wobbly-wheeled bag. She kept her eyes down, avoiding the colourful window boxes and pretty shop displays, the slices of the valley that hid in the spaces between the buildings.

  Down in the deserted parking lot, she climbed into her Fiat 500 and pressed Dermott’s on button, but her plan to get to the airport in Rome as quickly as possible started unravelling almost straight away when two of the exits at the difficult roundabout near the parking lot’s entrance were blocked off by roadwork signs.

  ‘Turn left,’ Dermott instructed, and when she disobeyed, through no fault of her own, he ordered her to turn left again, by which point she had been around the roundabout twice and didn’t know which left he meant.

  ‘There is no left,’ she argued, pointlessly. ‘There’s back into the parking lot, up toward the town if you have the right sticker, the main road to Siena, or this other dusty little road.’

  She took the other dusty little road, which meandered around the back of Montevedova, curling between enormous pine trees between which she could not escape her last views of the beautiful Val D’Orcia.

  Was it the colour? The acres and acres of green rolling pastures? The bunches of fat grapes that hung lazily on their miles of vines? The copious stands of gracious olive trees? It was all so alive. Everywhere she looked, creation was doing its thing, feeding plants, watering fields, growing leaves, blooming. The buzz in her belly hummed happily along until she rounded a corner and almost rear-ended a large truck that had stopped in the middle of the road. It soon became clear why. She only had to crane her neck out of the window to see that there was another equally large truck stopped on the other side of the road, coming from the opposite direction. The road was not big enough for both of them.

  She could hear the drivers shouting at each other from behind the wheels of their respective rigs. Before too long, one got out, then the other, and so she got out too but then swiftly got back in again when one driver, who looked too old to be in charge of such a big vehicle in the first place, reached into the cab of his truck and spryly grabbed a socket wrench.

  At that point, Lily noticed a leafy unpaved lane to her right, and she decided that rather than wait around and see what disaster was about to unfold with the truck drivers, she would take it.

  The lane was narrow, and quite steep, but after half a mile it opened up and Lily found herself in what she thought was the valley she’d been gazing at from her room. She was sure she recognised Bagno Vignoni in the distance, and even farther away on the horizon, the other little turreted village she had seen from the spa town.

  While she was concentrating on that, however, she ran literally into a herd of goats. One moment the road was open and empty, the next she rounded a bend and there they all were, absolutely everywhere, swamping the car, maahing and baahing and stretching up to the next corner and around it.

  She sat there unsure what to do. She certainly wasn’t game to drive through them. She didn’t know much about goats, but thought these ones looked bigger than normal. And some were just babies. She’d squash them, surely.

  She turned the car off. The goatherd, if that’s what they still called them, could not be far away. It didn’t make sense to leave all these beasts untended for long. She would wait it out.

  She watched a baby goat get separated from its mother and panic in the mosh pit of other goats. It was trying to keep its head up out of the throng, but it was too small. Its mother was calling it, her head raised, one eyeball rolling wildly as it got pushed farther and farther away.

  Finally, she could take it no longer. She pushed open her door, but in so doing panicked all the goats nearest to her, and next thing she knew, the baby had been sucked into the sea of beasts that weren’t its mother and dragged away.

  A billy goat jumped out of the crowd then and put its two front legs on the hood of the Fiat. It looked straight at her, accusingly.

  Lily felt the beginnings of fear. The sour aroma of a thousand goats was starting to stick to her clothes. She turned to look behind her but two goats thrust her out of the way, pushing her farther from her car and into the middle of the road.

  They were moving down the hill toward the next corner and taking her with them. She grimaced as she stepped on squishy pile after squishy pile and bade a silent goodbye to her suede Tod’s loafers.

  The goats were not inclined to scatter, so moving throu
gh them was hard work, and it was getting hotter, but at last she rounded the next corner to see that one of the three-wheeled farm trucks so beloved by Italian farmers was parked on the sloping shoulder of the road. More goats milled around it but Lily waded through them to get closer, looking in vain for the driver.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Buongiorno?’

  Nothing but goat voices answered. It was then that she saw the half-hidden signpost to San Biagio tucked between a stand of big leafy trees on the other side of the road. Anywhere else in the world, she might have thought she was dreaming, but in Italy she’d come to accept that a church was just as likely to appear in a hidden lane surrounded by goats as it was in a piazza grande.

  She trampled her way over to the sign and pushed open a rusted gate. A dozen goats leaped in front of her and scattered up a long overgrown path that delivered her to another gate, which she assumed must be the neglected rear access to the church.

  More goats joined her as she wended her way through the undergrowth, then the path cleared and she saw a plain wooden door in the middle of a great expanse of golden stone. This was the church, so surely there would be a priest who could help her, or at least a phone. Or perhaps the goatherd had popped in to say a prayer or drink the holy water.

  She pushed open the door.

  It was like stepping into a dream.

  San Biagio from the outside, even from what little she had seen, was impressive but plain, verging on austere.

  Inside it was anything but. Frescoes of cherubs and saints in a palette of pale yellow, blue, and pink adorned the curved ceilings and massive walls, studded with gilded cornices.

  Light poured in from the clear windows in the church’s massive central dome, illuminating a spot in front of the altar that was itself lit in a smoother hue by a stained-glass window depicting the Virgin Mary.

  Lily lifted her hand to shade her eyes and wiped her feet—wretched goats—before starting to move in toward the beautiful altar with its massive statues carved into the wall and a flower arrangement that stood taller than she did.