by Rosanna Ley
Cathy had heard the commotion too and came out of her back door just as Lenny tipped himself over the wall into Edna’s garden. What on earth …? As if he was thirty-something, not seventy-something. He had always kept himself fit with gardening and walking, but this was something else again. Had the man lost his mind?
CHAPTER 55
Tess was walking back to the villa to get changed. She was due to meet up with Giovanni for more discussions about the loan to fund the refurbishment of the villa. She had to get things moving, but did she want to be obligated to Giovanni? If Tonino was to be believed, the Sciarras were not a pleasant family. Apart from Santina of course, who was lovely. And Giovanni? Well, Tess couldn’t make her mind up about Giovanni. And then her mobile rang.
‘Muma?’
‘It’s your father.’ Her mother didn’t mince words.
‘What about him?’ Scenarios fast-forwarded through her brain. Her stomach catapulted to her feet. ‘Is he ill? What’s happened?’
‘He had a fall.’
Oh God! ‘Is he hurt? Is he OK?’ She gripped on to the wall of the baglio for support. Her father wasn’t the one she ever worried about. He was always there, stable, keeping the status quo.
‘He went to the hospital. He has some cuts and bruises. And his wrist is broken.’ Tess noticed how shaky her mother’s voice sounded, how vulnerable.
‘Oh, Muma.’ But Tess exhaled in relief. Cuts and bruises and a broken wrist weren’t life-threatening. ‘Any other damage?’ she asked. She was thinking stroke and heart attack and trying not to.
‘No, darling. I just wanted to let you know.’
But Tess was already making plans. ‘I’ll catch the next available flight. You shouldn’t be on your own. I need to see him. I—’ She hurried up the steps from the baglio. She’d pack, get to the airport, go on standby; that would be the best thing.
‘Tess.’ Her mother’s voice grew stern. ‘He’s fine now. Really. He is already back at home. Do you want to speak with him?’
Did she? ‘Of course, yes please, Muma,’ she said. She put her key in the lock. ‘Dad?’
‘I’m all right, sweetheart.’ Thank goodness …
‘What have you been up to then?’ She tried to keep her voice light.
‘Oh, you know. Trying to be a hero.’
Tess smiled. He had always been her hero. She remembered following him round the flat above the Azzurro, while he did whatever DIY job was on the agenda that day. My little apprentice, he used to call her. She remembered fetching and carrying in the Azzurro too, doing errands, wiping tables, fetching pastries from the kitchen. He always had time for her. When she had a problem at school she could always tell him, when she was lost, when she didn’t understand … ‘It’ll work itself out, love,’ he would say. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I think you should put away your cape, Dad,’ she said. ‘Don’t you reckon it’s time to slow down a bit?’ She walked through the kitchen, slung her bag over a chair, grabbed some mineral water from the fridge and poured herself a glass.
‘You could be right.’ He chuckled. ‘And I don’t need you to come rushing back, my girl. I’m fine. I’ve got your mother clucking around me like an old hen. Not to mention your daughter.’
‘You should be so lucky.’ But Tess smiled.
‘I’ll pass you back, love. Muma wants to talk to you.’
‘OK. You take care now. Big hug.’ Tess went out on to the terrace. Down below, the sea looked cool and inviting. She wished she could dive in from here …
Her mother came back on and filled her in with more of the details.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said, when her mother came to the end of the story, ‘he’s almost eighty. He’s got to stop doing this sort of stuff. He’s an old man.’ Though it hurt to say it.
‘No need to rub it in,’ said her mother. ‘You know your father – if someone needs rescuing, he will step into the brooch.’
‘Breech,’ said Tess absently. But she was right. ‘So he’s really OK?’
‘How many times? He is really OK.’
‘And Ginny?’
‘Ginny is fine.’
‘And David?’
‘David?’
‘Come on, Muma.’ Tess took another sip of water. ‘What does he want? Do you have any idea? Do you think I should come back to see what’s going on?’
‘He has written to you,’ her mother said. ‘Perhaps you should wait to hear what he has to say.’
‘Written to me?’ That didn’t sound like David. Tess transferred her mobile to the other ear. She got to her feet once more and walked down the terraced garden, past the broken fountain and the hibiscus, listening to her mother’s voice as she talked about David’s reappearance in their lives.
‘Ginny needs to spend time with him,’ her mother was saying. ‘I think it is doing her good. You know, maybe our daughters need their fathers more than we want to believe, Tess, hmm?’
Tess stared out towards the ruin of the cottage her mother’s family had lived in. Just a pile of stones … Thought of the Sicilian girl and her English airman. ‘That’s all very well, Muma,’ she said, when her mother paused. ‘But David chose to leave in the first place, if you remember.’
She had accepted from the start that she was a single parent who’d have to manage alone – or at least without a man. And she’d never asked David for a thing – it would have been pointless since he never had anything. She had always resisted the impulse to bad-mouth him to her daughter and in any case she didn’t have anything against him apart from the fact that he’d run away. But … Turning up now – when she wasn’t around and when things were difficult with Ginny, annoyed her. It was so typical, so careless.
‘I know that,’ her mother said. ‘Only perhaps it was not as easy for David as you thought.’
‘Yeah, well it wasn’t easy for me either.’ Her mother knew that better than anyone. She was the one who was there for Tess after Ginny was born, who helped her through the postnatal tears, the loneliness, the sheer terror of looking after a baby alone. What would Tess have done without her? She went back to the wrought-iron table and took another long swallow of her mineral water. She was still tempted to get on the next available flight – what with her father and David. And now that everything had gone pear-shaped with Tonino … But on the other hand, she should stay and get the building work on the villa underway at least. And she needed to talk to Giovanni.
‘What is the harm in letting David spend time with Ginny?’ her mother asked.
She was right. What harm could David do? He wasn’t unkind and Ginny was his daughter. Ginny was old enough to look after herself, and she did have her grandparents to watch out for her. Added to this, none of her family seemed to want Tess to come home …
A thought occurred to her. ‘Would Ginny come out here do you think, Muma? For a holiday? Would you and Dad come too?’
She heard the intake of breath. ‘I do not think so, Tess,’ she said.
‘But wouldn’t you like to see it all again, Muma?’ She looked around the dilapidated terrace. ‘The villa, the baglio, the village …?’ It was hard to comprehend. Whatever her mother felt about the place, Cetaria was still where her family had lived, where she had grown up. And the longer Tess stayed here, the more she could sense the fabric of her mother’s life, the more she was beginning to understand her. She had been made tough by her experiences, Tess understood that now. It was a matter of survival, and of love.
‘I am not sure that I could,’ her mother said at last. ‘It may be too much of a journey.’
Tess thought of the pile of rubble on the other side of the garden wall. That might be hard. ‘Will you at least think about it?’
There was a long pause.
‘There are days,’ her mother said, ‘when I hardly stop.’
CHAPTER 56
Flavia thought she had come to the end. Not the end of their story – but that was part two and Tess had been around for much of that, so what was
the need to write it down? Did she really need to know the rest?
But there was something unsatisfactory about the story – she’d realised that even before Lenny’s fall. It was unfinished, it left too much unsaid, it wasn’t the whole truth. If she died tomorrow, Tess wouldn’t know – just as it turned out Lenny hadn’t known.
It had been a shock. They never had much trouble in Pridehaven. It was an area with a low crime rate and most of the young people were nice enough, though some were a bit noisy. Most looked far fiercer than they really were. It wasn’t a bad place.
When Lenny first heard the shouting and Edna’s voice raised, he should have called Flavia, or the police, instead of resorting to DIY.
In Edna’s garden, their neighbour told Flavia later, were two youths. One was trampling her flower beds at the bottom of the garden; the other was halfway across the lawn.
‘Kindly remove yourself from my property, young man,’ Edna told him. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’
‘Aw, I’m so scared,’ said the boy, just as Lenny launched himself heroically on to the lawn.
‘Come here, you little toe-rag,’ yelled Lenny. (‘He was very masterful,’ Edna added). ‘Let me at you.’
Boy One now had a muddy foothold on the back fence and was scaling it like a rat up a drainpipe. And despite the fact that he was being threatened by a red-faced elderly man wearing sunflower-yellow gardening gloves, Boy Two was legging it down the garden.
‘Run away, would you?’ snarled Lenny and gave chase.
‘He didn’t see Tabitha,’ said Edna, when recounting the story to Flavia. ‘She was in her favourite spot by the nasturtiums. But she’s such a nervy cat. She streaked in front of Lenny, and he tripped right over her. Fell face down on the path.’
Fortunately, by then, Boy Two was already disappearing over the fence, unaware that his adversary had fallen.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Edna said to Flavia. ‘Tabitha was terrified, you see.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Flavia reassured her. ‘Or Tabitha’s.’ Flavia couldn’t even blame Lenny. How could you blame someone for being who he was?
Edna got to Lenny as soon as she could. She thought at first he’d had a heart attack – so she performed artificial respiration and put Lenny in the recovery position before phoning for an ambulance. She’d watched Casualty enough times and the temptation was just too much. ‘Anyone,’ she said, ‘would have done the same.’
By the time Flavia arrived by the more conventional route of the pavement, the garden path and the front door, Lenny was sitting up with a cut lip, gingerly examining his wrist.
Flavia had been shocked at the state of him. His face was cut too and there was a big lump on his temple. His arms and legs were badly grazed and his hand was limp and twisted. She went with him in the ambulance, held his hand and prayed to the Madonna she had last prayed to in Sicily when she was a girl.
‘It’s just a fall, love,’ he kept saying to her.
But to Flavia it felt like a warning.
‘We’ve been happy, haven’t we, Flavia my darling?’ he said as they arrived at A & E.
Flavia stared at him. ‘You said it was just a fall. Why are you talking as if you’re at death’s window, for the love of God?’
‘Door,’ he said. ‘Death’s door.’
‘Door, window, wherever … ’ Flavia clicked her tongue.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me we’ve been happy.’
‘Yes, Lenny,’ she said. ‘We have been happy.’ Yes, it was only a fall. But sometimes a fall could shake everything up.
And that’s when Flavia knew.
CHAPTER 57
Ginny had a lot of stuff to tell Becca when they met up for pizza and a long-overdue girlie chat.
They started with Pops’s fall.
‘Until it happened,’ Ginny told her, ‘everything was going tickety tigers.’ The Ball had been keeping a low profile. Ginny guessed It was only sulking and that pretty soon it would show Its face again, but for now, she was enjoying the reprieve.
‘That’s life,’ said Becca in a philosophical un-Becca-like way. ‘It’s all swings and bloody roundabouts.’
Ginny had been working in the Bull and Bear early Saturday evening when the call came through. Magic Fingers had just started their set; lots of rhythm, lots of juice and Albie was looking dark and sexy and as bemused as ever. Not for long, she decided.
Ginny could serve drinks in her sleep now. She was so fast she almost knew what they would order before they asked for it. She could do shots while a pint was pouring, crack open a beer while she ladled out ice. She knew who’d been waiting longest and while they were waiting she could keep them in line.
She’d met up with Albie a couple of times so far. He was nice. She reckoned that he’d be easy to fall in love with or run away with or give up anything for. So she was holding back. She didn’t want to start what she couldn’t finish. Not yet anyway. And she had places to go. Someone to find. While Albie – who had his music and his song writing and the band – seemed OK with that. For now.
‘I’ll have a pint of best, please, Ginny, my darling.’ That was her father who had come to hear the music – and probably to check out Albie, who she’d mentioned at dinner the other night.
The phone in the pub rang and rang, and at last Brian answered it. Ginny could see that he could hardly hear; he covered his other ear and yelled into the receiver, then he lasered a look straight at her and Ginny flinched.
‘What?’ she mouthed at him, continuing to serve a customer.
He came up to her, put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Better get your coat, love,’ he said.
‘What? What’s happened?’ In the busy, noisy pub, Ginny’s eyes looked for her father’s. He was some way from where she stood but he saw her immediately.
‘Dad,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ said Becca. ‘So you had a sort of Dad moment?’
‘Yeah.’ Ginny sipped her Coke. Her first.
‘And your Granddad’s OK?’
Their pizzas with garlic bread on the side and large fries to share arrived. Ginny’s was Margherita with extra pepperoni and Becca’s was a four-cheese special.
‘He’s fine.’ Ginny bit into the garlic bread. It was crisp, deep and pungently perfect. His wrist was splinted up and his arm was in a sling. But apart from the blue-yellow bruises creeping around his mouth and jaw, he was fine.
Becca loaded chips on to her pizza and cut a slice. ‘What does your mum say about your dad turning up then?’ she asked, before wrapping her mouth around it.
‘She’s been pretty cool,’ Ginny admitted. Lately, she’d had a chance to see things from a different point of view. And she’d come to the conclusion that her mother was a bit special.
She knew that her dad had written to Mum too, and she had an inkling what it might be about.
‘Now,’ said Becca. ‘Tell me about Ben.’
Ginny obliged.
‘What a dick,’ said Becca, when she’d finished. ‘It’s not you who should have been doing something else in bed, Gins, it’s him. Come here.’
And as Ginny leaned closer, she instructed her in some of the finer details of sexual artistry and expectation, both of them punctuating the lesson with mouthfuls of Coke and pizza. ‘For next time,’ she said with a wink.
Ginny thought of Dark and Bemused. ‘For next time,’ she agreed.
‘So what’s on the agenda now?’ Becca sat back at last, her plate empty.
‘I’m going travelling,’ Ginny said. ‘To Australia.’
‘Blimey, Gins,’ said Becca, ‘I was talking about pudding.’
Over chocolate brownies and whipped cream, Ginny told her what her father had said.
‘I’ve got a place in Sydney you can use as a base.’ Bought presumably since the windfall, Ginny thought. ‘Just say the word and I’ll hand over the keys.’
‘Would you be there in Sydney?’ she’d asked him, not knowing if she would want him to be or not.
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He shrugged. ‘I was thinking of doing some travelling of my own,’ he said. ‘In the van. Europe maybe. I kind of missed it out before.’
‘Cool,’ said Becca. ‘Is it easy to get work in Australia? Is it easy to travel around?’
Ginny was savouring the taste of melted chocolate and cream. There was nothing like it. ‘Simple Simon, my dad says. The hostels give you all the info you need about jobs and stuff and where to head for next. Some of the backpackers do bar work, some do telesales, some do fruit-picking.’
Becca didn’t comment on the ‘my dad’ stuff. And that was good because sometimes Ginny couldn’t get her head round it either. Like one minute she was fatherless, and the next he was there, being, well, being what she seemed to need. Ginny kind of understood now that he hadn’t turned his back on her; he had turned his back on fatherhood. Which was bad, but maybe not as bad. She wouldn’t forget the lost years though. How could she?
‘Amazing,’ Becca said, spooning the last of the dessert into her mouth.
‘The brownies?’
‘Your dad.’
‘Yeah, well … ’ He had made a lot of mistakes. He wasn’t perfect or even near perfect. He was different, that was all. Becca’s father wore suits and worked in a bank and her mother was a dinner lady. They were never going to compete.
‘Do you need a travelling buddy?’ Becca asked, finishing her Coke.
‘You are joking?’ Ginny stared at her. She hadn’t wanted to admit to anyone that this was the aspect of the trip that worried her the most. It was all very well to go off to find yourself, but who would count to ten and then help you look?
‘I’m deadly serious.’ Becca wiped her mouth with a napkin. ‘I’d love it. Seriously, Gins, we’d have such a good time.’
Well they would, but, ‘What about Harry?’ she asked.
Becca pouted. ‘Who’s Harry?’
‘You haven’t—?’
‘No.’ Becca shook her head. ‘But he’s not the whole world, Gins. He’s buggering off to uni soon. And then what?’
