Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  “Oh no, I couldn’t. Trusting me to come into your house is one thing; cooking a Sicilian dish for your Sicilian man might be stretching that trust a little too far.”

  However, in the short time she has got to know her host, Catherine understands that she is likely to turn a deaf ear to her protest.

  “Cooking is good for the soul,” Angelica states, nodding as if to lend her theory a degree or two of affirmation. “I have always found this to be so, particularly when Alberto and I have a difference of opinion and I am left to endure his silence until he sees the sense in what I have said.” She winks, playfully. “Look, why don’t we do this: you can help prepare and I will show you how to make the arancini. Then, if Alberto finds fault with it, I will say I am the cook; and if he doesn’t, you can claim all the credit. It will be a game for us to play.”

  Catherine laughs, realising as she does so that it is the first time she has laughed in far too long. “Angelica, I bet your husband doesn’t ever find fault with your cooking; something tells me he might go hungry if he did.”

  “Good. That is settled.” She picks a knife out from the wooden block. “Here, you see to the celery and carrots, chop them finely, and I’ll start with the meat and the rice.”

  As they attend to their allotted tasks, Angelica tells her how in the west of Sicily they call them arancine, because they are round, like an orange, una arancia; whereas here, in the east, they are known as arancini and they are rounded at the base and pointy at the top, like a cone, which makes them easier to eat. Then, of course, there is the matter of whether they are male or female, as in arancini or arancine, but then the men of the west are more feminine, so who cares what they think! No one, she says, really seems to know.

  Angelica is content to talk while she stirs the grated pecorino, the butter, and the salt and pepper into the rice, tasting as she goes; and Catherine is happy to listen as she cleans, slices and chops.

  Alberto, or so she would have Catherine believe, is an okay kind of husband. “He can’t be too bad, can he? After all, he has kept me well and he has been a good father to our four sons, all of whom live in the north: the first near Milan, the second in Turin, the third in Rome and the fourth… Now, where was Ninolino when last we spoke?” And without any prompting, she manages to steer clear of subjects which might threaten to complicate or interfere with what seems so far to be a pleasing association.

  While they wait for the rice to cool, Angelica grinds two varieties of coffee bean, before filling the group handle, tamping down the contents and inserting the handle into the espresso machine.

  Thick, orange–brown liquid dribbles into small cups. “You like coffee?”

  “Yes, of course, Angelica. I like the taste, but most of all I love the aroma. It makes me feel alive. I can’t really get going in the morning without a proper sniff of coffee.”

  “I am the same, although I think I drink more than is good for me.”

  They sip and appreciate and relax, and during the silence the elephant of Catherine’s circumstance steals into the room, all too soon growing too large for either of them to ignore.

  Finishing her coffee and, perhaps, spurred by the hit of caffeine, Catherine sits upright and says, “Yes, you have a question for me. Several, I should imagine. Please, Angelica, you have been so good to me: please don’t feel that you can’t ask.”

  Unnerved by a stranger reading her thoughts, Angelica’s dark eyes flash like black lightning in a sunlit room. Soon enough, though, she softens and puts down her cup.

  “Whatever your situation, Caterina, this is no business of mine. Your silence is your silence, and it is not mine to break. God knows, it is not as though we women don’t know how to suffer in silence.” She arches her eyebrows, suggesting there have been far too many times when she has had to seek solace in her own counsel. “But, isn’t there someone you should contact? Isn’t there someone who you should call to tell what has happened to you or where you are? Unless I am mistaken, which is possible but not probable, you are a mother. I was watching your hands while you prepared the vegetables: like me, you are not a professional in the kitchen; yet like me, you prepare the food with love.” She reaches out and grabs Catherine’s hands, holding them up as if they are exhibits in a court case. “Look, you have the hands of a woman who cooks with love, and to cook with love means you have someone you love to cook for.” Angelica lets go of Catherine’s hands and leans forward as she speaks, pointing her finger to drive home her assertion. “You are a mother; I see this in you as much as I see it in myself when I look in the mirror. And as you are a mother, then there must be a child or children and, somewhere, a father. Is it not right for you to let them, one of them, know where you are? They may be worried; I know I would be.”

  Catherine’s expression which had a moment before appeared relaxed and yielding, suddenly hardens and her posture assumes an aggressive rigidity. She stares, her eyes glazing over, seeing not the woman in front of her so much as the faces of others she needs either to address or to shoo away to some quiet corner of her mind, where they will have to wait for her to deal with them.

  Angelica sees her withdraw and hurries to catch her before she runs so far away that she is out of reach. “Your phone: to my knowledge you haven’t used it since you arrived here.”

  Her effort, though, is rewarded only with silence.

  “If you cannot bring yourself to talk to someone, then what about a simple text message: that surely would be better than nothing?”

  Catherine sits and looks at her without seeing.

  “And your computer, your laptop. I know you have it with you because I brought it from the hotel. If you do not want to turn on your phone, if you are afraid of knowing that you have missed calls or that you have too many messages, then perhaps at least you could send an email.”

  Nothing; still nothing; no response, just the distant stare of a woman who cannot understand why something, some trauma, some injustice or some monumental misfortune, has been thrust upon her. The white noise of breaking waves floods her mind; the unbearable pressure of the deep crushes her skull; and the knowledge that her lungs must burst terrifies her. She raises her arms up towards the ceiling and follows them with her eyes. She tries to speak, but finds that instead of words coming out from her mouth, water rushes in. She is gagging, she dares not swallow, an eye watches her while she chokes: she–”

  “Caterina?”

  Someone is shouting.

  “Caterina?”

  She is still looking up, still searching for the arms that will pull her to safety.

  “Caterina? Put your arms down. Look at me. Now. Look at me.”

  And she does, slowly. She looks down and lowers her arms, as if pretending to a languorous ballet, and her eyes begin to regain their focus. “Yes,” she says, though she does not recognise the monosyllabic, monotone response as coming from her own mouth.

  “Caterina? Look at me.”

  “Yes, Angelica. Sorry.” Gently, she shakes her head, wishing the fog from her mind. “I don’t feel so great. I’m cold and a little tired. If you don’t mind, I’ll go and lie down for a while?”

  “No, my dear Caterina, I don’t mind. You are exhausted. Go. Go and lie down. Rest your troubled heart.” Though driven by her motherly instincts, Angelica does not get up and follow her; rather she sits and watches and whispers to herself, “Not such a fool that Dottore Roselli, eh?”

  *

  Judging by the cooler temperature and the lack of shadow, Catherine has slept far beyond dinner. A plate of ciabatta and pata negra ham, a glass of water and a second smaller plate of little round sfingi carnival doughnuts sit on the chest of drawers. The idea appeals; the effort involved in fetching them less so.

  She lays on the bed and, as the evening slips towards dusk, listens to the disparate harmonies of the narrow streets beyond her open window: the nasal whine of a scoot
er, the insistent hoot of a car’s horn, the peal of church bells, the shrieking laughter of children, the plaintiff cry of herring gulls.

  Angelica’s imperative tones drift up the stairs. “No, Alberto, I will not have it. Whatever has happened to this woman, it is no fault of hers; this I sense very strongly.”

  A man, his voice a slow and steady basso profundo, replies, “Okay, okay, so this ‘ngrisa; you seem to like her, but we don’t know exactly what has happened to her. We don’t know anything, apart from the fact that she nearly drowned. And I know that is not unusual, eh? There is always some idiot who doesn’t know how dangerous the waters can be. But what if she has committed some crime, eh? What if it turns out she has; we could be in trouble for harbouring a criminal, have you thought of that?”

  “My dear husband,” she replies unafraid to conceal her patronising tone, “please don’t refer to her as ‘ngrisa. Yes, she is an English woman, a lady, but she has a name, Caterina, and I would ask you to afford her the respect you would like to be afforded when you find yourself in someone else’s country. Pah, you watch too many strangers getting off the ferry from Calabria; it makes you suspicious; it makes you prone to seeing the mystery in people. Why can’t you see the light in them instead?”

  “The light? Didn’t you tell me Dottore Roselli was unsure as to whether or not she was trying to kill herself, that she is depressed and therefore a liability to anyone who should volunteer to care for her?” He pauses. “Ah, you and your lost causes!”

  “No,” Angelica says, the cold steel of her ire inserting itself into her denial, “that was not what the good Dottore said and, what’s more, it is not what I said. Dottore Roselli believes she is troubled by something in her past and one doesn’t need to be a doctor of medicine or psychology to realise that. As I said, she is welcome to stay here for a few days, at least until she has regained her confidence. Really, Alberto, there are times…”

  “But you said she seems to show no remorse?”

  “No, I said that even though she has said she is sorry several times, I don’t believe she has done anything that merits an apology. I don’t get the impression that if she had been intent upon taking her own life, she is sorry she failed, and that is a far cry from not showing remorse.”

  “Okay. Okay. I get it. Angelica, my darling wife, my love. Can you spare a drop of olive oil for my ears; I believe the wax–”

  “Alberto!” she moans, spicing her menace with a pinch of sarcasm.

  “Yes, yes. I apologise. I did not mean to be unsympathetic. You know as well as I do that this ‘ngrisa is welcome to stay for as long as you desire. Besides, what with it being summer and many of the men demanding their right to go on holiday, you will probably see more of her than you will of me.”

  “Peace at work, eh?” she says.

  Ignoring her gibe, Alberto carries on: “What intrigues me, though, is why, if she had been intending to take her own life, she should do so here and not somewhere else. Why would you leave your home country to do such a thing when you can do it much easier on your own doorstep? And how is it, as you tell me she can, that she speaks our language, eh? And I don’t mean Italian; I mean Sicilian. That, you must agree, is most unusual.”

  Even though Catherine has not yet met Alberto, she can imagine him poking a stubby finger at Angelica as he speaks.

  “Your risotto is getting cold.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. By the way, what happened to the arancini you promised? You know very well I would happily commit murder for your arancini and I have been looking forward to them all day.”

  “That is my fault,” Angelica replies, meekly. “I ran out of pork mince. Yes, me, running out of pork mince. Can you imagine! But don’t worry, I will finish them for tomorrow’s dinner. Try not to be late, Antonio is coming.”

  “Me? Late? Ridiculous! And since when did your fisherman brother turn up on time, eh?”

  Chapter 5

  Since the evening before, she has lain in bed and closed both her eyes and ears to the world; and yet as hard as Catherine has tried, she has not managed to escape either the images in her thoughts or the noise from beyond her window.

  Downstairs, she hears the rattle of a key in a lock, the creak of a handle and the screech of hinges long overdue a drop of oil, footsteps on tile. A minute or so later, a draught of disturbed air tells her the bedroom door is now open.

  “Caterina,” Angelica says, not loudly, but very definitely not quietly, “it is after midday, please, you should get up.”

  “And you sound exactly like my nonna,” she replies, rolling onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

  “Your nonna? She is your nonna or you call her Nonna?”

  “Was. Perhaps is. I don’t know. When I was in the hospital, I felt her presence; it was like she was in the next room, listening through the wall. I was her only grandchild and she was always just plain Nonna to me.”

  Angelica crosses the room, leans on the window sill and gazes down into the narrow street below. “If you were her only grandchild then you must have been close to her.”

  “There’s no doubt I was precious to her; she used to spoil me rotten. But close? I was only eleven when she died: do you think you can know anyone when you are only eleven?”

  “Oh yes. Children are very perceptive, much more so than adults. We complicate our appreciation of others with petty judgements and pointless jealousies: children know by instinct whether a soul is compassionate and affectionate. What do you remember of her?”

  “Nonna,” Catherine says, summoning her image. “I suppose my lasting memory of her was not long before she died. She was short and quite small, and she had these warm eyes and this way of smiling that melted your heart. She loved to cuddle and even when I was taller than her, she liked me to sit on her lap. I remember she always smelled of bergamot, a little like freshly–made Earl Grey tea.”

  “Yes, of course, L’essenza di Bergamotto,” Angelica repeats, breathing deep as if inhaling the perfumes of citrus oil.

  “Nonna always kept a tin of chocolates, but she would wait until tea–time before asking me to get the tin from the drawer and then reminding me I was only ever allowed to take three. I remember one time I asked her why tea–time and why only ever three, and she lowered her head to look at me over her glasses: “Caterina,” she said, “the best things in life are always worth waiting for and if we were to eat all the chocolates today, there will be nothing left for us to look forward to tomorrow.” For her, everything was always going to be better tomorrow.”

  “And she, too, called you Caterina,” Angelica says to the window.

  “Yes. Just like you insist on doing.”

  “And she died when you were eleven?”

  “Yes. 1980, the same year and two months after my father died. I sometimes wonder if his dying didn’t break her heart: you know, her only son.”

  “Eleven, eh,” Angelica repeats.

  “Yes.”

  “And I am now three years the wrong side of fifty and you are three years younger than me.”

  “If you like,” Catherine replies, as though she could not care if she was a hundred years younger or older.

  “Good!” Angelica bangs her palms against the window sill, as if she has come to a decision, steps over beside the bed, crosses her arms and looks down. “Good!” she repeats. “I do like. Yes. This means we both have time to achieve much.”

  “Much of what?”

  “Much of many things. And first, I am going to take a leaf out of your nonna’s book. From now on, you will know yourself as Caterina, I will know you as Caterina and I will introduce you as Caterina: the old Catherine is of no use to either of us for the next few days.” Angelica waits for an objection and when none is forthcoming, she carries right on. “And second, you will, just as your nonna asked you, get out of bed: for if we have learned one lesson from our history, it
is that however calamitous our misfortune, we must always rise again to rebuild our lives.”

  *

  “Now, look,” Angelica says, encouraging her to the hob. “The vegetables are soft and the onions almost clear, so we are ready to add the pork and beef mince to the saucepan. Keep stirring until the meat is brown: take this, use this wooden spoon. Then, when you are satisfied with the colour, add some red wine from this bottle, and allow it to reduce. Don’t look at me like that, Caterina, you do it.”

  “But I don’t know how much wine,” she replies, hesitating.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure you can work it out. Add enough, but not too much. Use your imagination. Use your love.”

  “We seem to be cooking a considerable quantity: how many are you expecting for dinner?”

  “Just the four of us.”

  “Four?”

  “Yes, you and me, Alberto and Antonio.”

  “Antonio,” Caterina repeats. “And who is Antonio?”

  “He is my brother. Today is Wednesday and Antonio comes to eat with us every Wednesday evening. No, don’t look surprised, I am not trying to match–make. First comes the day, then comes Antonio and now you are here. That is the way it works.”

  “This is your brother whose wife left him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So he has no one to cook for him?”

  “No, which is why he joins us on Wednesdays. Pay attention to the meat, Caterina, do not let it burn, eh?”

  “Yes, sorry.” She stirs and stirs again. “What is he like, your brother?”

  “What is he like?” Angelica thinks for a moment. “Antonio is one of those men who once he has decided things are a certain way, he is unlikely to change his mind.”

  “Stubborn, you mean.”

  “No, not so much stubborn. You could say he is like an egg: he can appear a little hard–boiled, but he is not necessarily hard–hearted. He is a man for common sense, for logic and for patience. These are all qualities of a good fisherman.”

  “A fisherman?” Caterina says, surprised and at the same time curious.