2006 - Wildcat Moon

by Babs Horton

  “Lefs hope you don’t have to,” she said absently.

  Eloise Fanthorpe gathered her wits and looked at the proffered menu. It had been carefully written out in a childish hand and decorated around the edges with small drawings. She looked at it with growing interest. There were drawings of a variety of animals: miniature elephants and wizen-faced monkeys; coiled pythons and dancing bears; there was even a circus caravan and a Big Top.

  After a while she swapped menus with William Dally and smiled with delight. On this one there were pictures of a house, or possibly a pub, and a very small child sitting outside in a pram. Above the pub the sky was peppered with stars and a huge moon. She looked closely at the moon and saw that there was the imprint of a cat’s paw on its surface. In another corner there was a picture of a girl running towards a tall grey house with many windows and in each window there was a smiling face, faces looking out into a bright sunlit day.

  Along the top of the menu was a long train, the carriages rattling along at speed, and in the window a woman held a baby in a shawl, both looking out with startled eyes. They were truly remarkable drawings. How she wished that her father was still alive to see the raw talent of this artist.

  As Eloise looked up from the menu, a small girl stepped out from behind the bar and came towards their table hesitantly, carefully carrying knives and forks and linen napkins.

  Eloise Fanthorpe smiled at her and the girl smiled back.

  “Do you know who drew these?” she asked pointing at the menu.

  The girl nodded. “Cissie Abelson drew them,” she said.

  “Is she here?”

  The girl nodded slowly.

  “Do you think I could speak with her?”

  “She don’t speak much,” the girl said. “And she’s not allowed to speak to strangers ever.”

  Miss Fanthorpe smiled and said, “Could you fetch her?”

  “It’s me,” the girl said. “I’m Cissie Abelson.”

  Eloise looked nonplussed. The child standing awkwardly in front of her with her mouth hanging open was obviously not a bright child, not in the accepted sense, but anyone who could draw like this was exceptionally gifted.

  “These drawings, Cissie Abelson, are very good, very good indeed. Who taught you to draw like this?”

  The girl’s face grew blank and she shrugged her shoulders, looking troubled.

  “When did you go to the circus?”

  The girl looked dumbfounded and scratched her nose. Eloise looked up suddenly to see the woman behind the bar eyeing her with displeasure.

  Eloise coughed, handed the menu back to the little girl hurriedly, took a slug of her drink and then winced.

  “She was giving me a filthy look for talking to the child,” Eloise hissed at William, nodding towards Nan who was wiping down the bar.

  “Funny folks round here, on the secretive side, always have been. Best not to ask too many questions in the Skallies, if you ask me.”

  “I was only being friendly. Anyway, the child’s drawings are quite wonderful.”

  “Ave you picked what you want to eat yet?”

  “I’ll have the sea bass,” she said with a smile. “And you?”

  “Fish and prawn pie. My old mother used to make that. It were a ceiling floater of a dish.”

  The woman came out from behind the bar and took their order, before whisking the menus away.

  Soon the smell of fresh fish cooking filled the air and out at the back of the pub someone was singing cheerfully.

  Two dinner plates emerged through the curtains followed by a man’s head. He stopped in his tracks, blushed deeply, handed the plates quickly to the woman and disappeared but not quickly enough. Eloise Fanthorpe recognized him immediately but looked down at the table diplomatically.

  William Dally ate his meal with enthusiasm. The pie was cooked to perfection, the pastry crust golden and moist, the prawns and fish mouth wateringly scrumptious. He hadn’t been in the Pilchard for years; the last time he’d eaten food here was when the Dennis family had kept the place. After they went, it had gone to the dogs. But damn, this young woman was doing well here now and whoever had done the cooking knew what they were doing. It was a bloody grand place and served a damn fine drop of ale too.

  As Nan Abelson cleared away the empty plates, William Dally said, “Don’t suppose you know if Archie Grimble is anywhere around?”

  Nan looked at him suspiciously.

  “He’s hot here at the moment. He’s away with his family.” As she spoke she was aware of Eloise Fanthorpe scrutinizing her face as if she were looking for something concealed there.

  Nan turned away as William Dally said, “Gone anywhere interesting, has he?”

  “Abroad,” Nan said and walked away.

  “Well, I’ll be buggered,” William Dally said with a shake of his head.

  Eloise Fanthorpe had gone very pale and was looking ahead of her as if in a stupor.

  The bread shop in Santa Caterina was called II Fanettiere and it was halfway up a very steep hill overlooked by the towering and ancient convent.

  The first time they went to fetch bread, Alfredo showed Archie the way through the narrow streets and taught him how to ask for bread in Italian.

  Each day after, it was his job to climb the hill and fetch the early morning bread.

  Every day as soon as he woke he dressed and slipped out through the jangling curtains of the Galvinis’ house and made his way there.

  In those first few days he hurried past the groups of local men smoking and gossiping along the harbour wall and avoided the old women who seemed always to be out sweeping the cobbles in front of their houses. But day by day his confidence grew and he began to return their calls of buon giorno.

  He knew now that when they called out Come sta? they were asking him how he was and now he replied, “Motto bene, grazie.” Very well, thank you. And he was delighted when they smiled and laughed and waved at him. And he did feel well, he felt better than he’d ever felt!

  When first he had climbed the steep hill to the bread shop his bad leg had ached and the calliper had chafed his skin raw. But since he’d been having his daily swimming lessons with Alfredo his leg was growing stronger.

  After he had been in Santa Caterina for almost a week he set out as usual on his daily errand for bread. Climbing slowly up the steep, cobbled hill, he managed for once not to have a rest halfway up. He arrived at the panettiere hot and dusty but pleased with himself.

  He bought two loaves of bread and exchanged a smile and a come sta? with the young woman behind the counter and then left. Coming back down the hill he paused and looked along a narrow alleyway that led off to the left. It was dim and dark and halfway along an old woman in a black dress and headscarf slept on a low chair outside a house. Up until now he had always taken the route that Alfredo had shown him but he was sure that if he went down the alley and then turned right he should come back to the harbour only further along.

  He stepped timidly into the alleyway and made his way along it, tiptoeing so as not to wake the old woman. As he came level with her she grunted, looked up at him with lively brown eyes and held out her wrinkled hand.

  Hesitantly he inched his hand towards her.

  She took hold of his hand, so pale against the deep weathered brown of her own skin. She held his hand for some moments and then looked into his eyes.

  She let go of his hand reluctantly. Archie smiled at her and moved on quickly, conscious of her eyes boring into his back. Turning right into a wider street, he made his way towards a cafe in front of which chairs and tables were set out on the cobbles.

  He peeped inside the cafe. It was empty except for two old men who stood at the counter smoking.

  They turned and looked at him inquisitively and called out to someone.

  A small man, barely big enough to see over the counter popped up and stared at Archie. He had bright; twinkling eyes and an enormous moustache that curled upwards towards his eyebrows. Archie blushed and
made to walk away but the tiny man called out to him.

  “Buon giorno!”

  Archie muttered a reply and walked on.

  The small man called out again but he spoke fast and Archie could not understand what he was saying.

  He grew flustered and quickened his step.

  “Inglese. Non capisco!” one of the old men said.

  The small man hurried out from the cafe and came towards Archie, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. He took the loaves of bread from him and laid them down on the counter, and then he lifted Archie up onto a high stool in front of the bar. Then he hastened behind the counter, poured a glass of lemonade and pushed it towards Archie with a smile.

  “Grazie,” Archie murmured from his perch on the stool, his legs dangling down and his calliper in full view of the watching men.

  After a while they ignored him and continued their talking. There were ten or so tables that had seen better days and set around them were rush-backed chairs with wobbly legs. The stone floor was littered with cigarette ends, screwed-up pieces of paper and toothpicks. On the rough-hewn walls there were pictures of dead popes and a flyblown poster advertising a circus. Beneath the poster there was a blurry photograph of a woman and across the bottom of the photograph someone had scrawled their name illegibly in a whorl of faded black ink.

  Beneath the photograph, on a narrow shelf, there was a jar of fresh flowers and in front of the flowers a candle burned in a small red glass. It was a shrine of some sort.

  One of the old men saw Archie looking and Archie pointed at the photo and said shyly, “Santa Caterina?”

  The old man clapped his hands against his leg, threw back his head and laughed loudly.

  “Santa Caterina! Non! L’ucello d’argento!”

  Archie shook his head in embarrassment.

  The small man behind the counter translated for him, “She no Santa Caterina. Santa Caterina very good woman but very ugly. This one very beautiful. In English she called the ‘silver bird. In Italia we say l’ucello d’argento.”

  Archie grinned foolishly and sipped his lemonade.

  He sat for a while longer, finished his drink and clambered down awkwardly from the high stool.

  Arrivederci!

  Arrivederci!

  The three men turned and watched him go, with interest and then they turned back to the bar and continued their conversation.

  Archie arrived back at the house to find Lena sitting out on the front step shelling peas into a large metal bowl.

  “You been a long time today.”

  “A tiny little man, about the size of a dwarf, gave me a glass of lemonade in a cafe round the corner from the baker’s.”

  Lena looked up. “Ah, I know, the Silver Bird Cafe.”

  Archie nodded. “Is it called after the girl?”

  Lena put down the bowl of peas and patted the step for Archie to sit down beside her.

  “That’s right. Here in Santa Caterina once was a little girl. She orphan at Santa Caterina. Very beautiful, very mischief full, always running and jumping like a boy and making the nuns shake their heads and pray to Santa Caterina to make her quieter. When she fifteen she falls in love and runs away with the circus and she gone many years. When they hear of her again in Santa Caterina she very famous, she how you say, she fly through the air in circus.”

  “A trapeze artist?”

  “Si, that’s the words, trapeze artist.”

  “Did she ever come back to Santa Caterina?”

  “Si. She make her peace with the nuns. She have a child. For many months she travel with circus all over Italy and France but for some months she come back here to Santa Caterina. But later come the terrible tragedy for our little silver bird.”

  Archie looked up at Lena and held his breath.

  “One day, the circus come to village near Santa Caterina and she, the one they call the silver bird, have very bad accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “She do the trick high in air and let go, but the man she do trick with doesn’t catch her. Was terrible. She fall like a little bird from the nest and breaks her neck.”

  Lena shook her head sadly and crossed herself.

  Archie sucked in his breath through his teeth with a whistling sound.

  Just then Alfredo came walking along the path carrying a bucket full of fresh fish.

  “Archie have a drink in Luca’s cafe this morning and I telling him the story of the woman they call the silver bird,” Lena said.

  “Ah, that was tragedy! You know, my mama was there in circus tent with her sister when it happen. For long time she not speak of it because it was too terrible. Give her bad night dreams for many years,” Alfredo remembered.

  “That’s a real sad story.”

  “Ah, si, and the poor husband and child was there when it happened.”

  Archie blinked back his tears. “The silver bird wasn’t her real name, though, was it?”

  “No. She called Rosa Gasparini.”

  Archie looked down at his skinny knees, they were shaking uncontrollably and his mouth was as dry as a burnt twig-Rosa Gasparini!

  Thomas Gasparini Greswode. Rosa Gasparini. He tried to conjure up the face of the woman in the photograph that Romilly Greswode had given to him. Rosa Gasparini, the silver bird who had fallen to her death was the mother of Thomas from Killivray. .

  She was the pretty bride in the photograph looking up at her husband outside the tiny church.

  He felt for the silver bird necklace around his neck.

  “You all right, Archie?” Alfredo asked with concern.

  “Yes, I’ll just put the bread away and then I’m going to have a lie-down. I think it’s the heat making me feel faint.”

  He made his way shakily into the cool of the house and climbed unsteadily up the stairs.

  When he had gone Alfredo said to Lena, “You know, he very sensitive little boy. Don’t be telling him too many sad stories.”

  “I understand. Maybe, you know, I think Archie got a sad story of his own that he don’t know nothing about. Is funny Martha sending him to us.”

  “How you mean, Lena?”

  “Well, all time we know him she don’t let him out of her sight much. Then she send him all this way to us on boat. I very glad he come but I worry what she hiding.”

  “I worries too. Is odd how the father go and don’t come back and then she hurry off like that. If I had a son like Archie I never leave him.”

  Upstairs in the cool of his bedroom Archie lay down on his bed and watched the slivers of sunlight slip through the slats of the shutters, watched the sunbeams playing across the bare wooden floor. He dosed his eyes and imagined Thomas Greswode sitting proudly in the circus Big Top, hearing the gasp of the audience as they watched his brave mama high on the trapeze.

  Then, looking up at her and holding his breath as she flew through the air…

  He knew that in a split second she would be safely in the hands of the man on the trapeze hanging upside down waiting to catch her. And then the audience would clap and shriek with delight.

  But then it had all gone horribly wrong.

  Their hands had never met and she had crashed to the sawdust floor.

  After she had died Thomas had been sent back to England. He had left behind sunny Santa Caterina here in Italy to live in gloomy Killivray House, the house his father had inherited. And he would die young and never return here.

  Archie felt for the silver bird necklace around his neck and held it tightly.

  Nan poured two cups of tea and passed one across the kitchen table to Fleep.

  “Well, it was quiet tonight except for that peculiar couple and the Paynes at last knockings,” Fleep said, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers.

  “It’ll be busy tomorrow, mind, the forecast is good. Well be rushed off our feet.”

  Fleep didn’t answer and Nan looked across at him curiously.

  “Fleep, you seem on edge. What’s wrong? Was it something to
do with that woman? I didn’t like her either; it was like she was here just to snoop on us.”

  He looked up suddenly and said, “Seems like she rattled you too, Nan. Why?”

  “It was just the way she was looking at the menus that Cissie had made and then asking her questions about her drawing.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Cissie draws beautifully. You should be glad that people recognize her talent.”

  “I am in a way but I hate people nosing around. I’ve noticed that in her drawings Cissie describes her past life. It’s quite weird because she draws things that happened when she was quite small, things you wouldn’t think that she even remembered.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Oh, it’s just me being testy. I’m too protective over her, I know that. Anyway, why did she make you feel so awkward? You went crimson when you saw her.”

  “It was a while back. When I first arrived I did something rather foolish and she saw me.”

  “What did you do?”

  He blew smoke rings towards the ceiling and then said, “I was going to put an end to things. I’d had enough, you see.”

  Nan sat with the cup halfway up to her lips. “You don’t mean…not seriously…”

  He nodded and the colour drained from Nan’s face.

  “But why?”

  “I’d been so depressed, made a real mess of my life. My parents were old when I was born and they died quite close together. I frittered away my inheritance; blew thousands on drugs and drink, mixing with the wrong sort. I had a broken romance, then ran off abroad to lick my wounds.”

  “And how did you end up here?”

  “That’s the strange bit, Nan. I’d been making my way up through France. I’d been thrown out of the place I was staying when I couldn’t pay the rent. I was penniless, on my uppers. I’d spent my last cents on a bottle of cheap brandy and was drunk as a lord. It was snowing and I’d passed out in an alleyway somewhere near the Rue Popincourt. I was woken up by a parrot screeching in my ear. It was really weird, Nan, there I was all alone with a monumental hangover staring at a foul-mouthed parrot, and tied to the cage was an envelope and inside a key with the address of the Grockles.”