Chapter 1 #2
Six small tables lined with red and white checked tablecloths were tightly packed into the narrow space.
Mounted to the wall was a collection of some twenty-odd wooden rolling pins, each featuring a little indecipherable plaque.
They were lined up vertically in two straight lines.
To their right, the cream painted wall was dotted with black and white photos.
Alessio immediately recognised many as iconic scenes from post-war Italian cinema.
The patchwork of images worked seamlessly to transport diners to another time, another era.
It certainly felt as if the restaurant had been pulled from a deep nostalgic past. The fragrant air was reminiscent of a home kitchen, of particular dishes, just a handful, cooked at once.
It didn’t have the amalgamated savouriness of a kitchen catering for a multi--option menu.
Alessio intuited that whatever this kitchen produced was much simpler.
Along the wall to the right were saloon-style wooden swing doors leading into the kitchen and a serving window with a counter.
‘Wait here a moment, I want you to meet someone,’ Francesca said, coming to a halt outside the swing doors. ‘One of our chefs. She’s a force in the kitchen.’
Alessio’s mouth went dry and he felt his protective barriers rising inside.
Unaware of his unease, Francesca pushed her way through the saloon doors and Alessio could hear her speaking in dialect with a woman, whose raspy voice was dry and crackling in comparison to Francesca’s sweet, lyrical British English.
There was a nasal pitch to it, and it exuded a certain authority.
Suddenly a crash sounded from inside the kitchen, followed by the thud of heavy wood meeting the inside of a metallic trough. Alessio winced at Francesca’s gasps.
Then, just as Alessio darted to the serving window to inspect the source of the commotion, the other woman’s face appeared over the ledge.
Well, only just.
‘Buongiorno.’ The plaited bun of grey hair visible from over the top of the ledge bobbed in time with the greeting.
Alessio perched his intricately inked forearms on the counter and leaned over until the woman’s face came into view.
She was eighty if she was a day, and beaming.
He couldn’t help but mirror her joyous smile while Francesca was trying her best to wrangle a large wooden pasta board from a wash trough. ‘Buongiorno,’ he said.
Having righted the board, Francesca turned her attention back to Alessio. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, ‘This is my Nonna Maria.’
‘Erm. I don’t speak much . . . Non parlo . . . Could you translate?’
Francesca smiled and relayed the message in Italian, and Maria’s deep brown eyes twinkled at Alessio in return.
‘Nonna is eighty-nine years old, but acts like a teenager most of the time.’
That mischievous pucker to Maria’s lips hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Alessio grinned. ‘Piacere, Maria,’ he managed, offering his hand in greeting.
But Maria’s grey-speckled brows joined forces to form one discontented line of disapproval. ‘No.’ She threw a passionate pointed finger down by her side, and Alessio had to bite down on his lip to keep from laughing. ‘Vieni qua!’ Maria ordered him to her side.
Francesca nodded that it was ok for him to join them in the kitchen, so he pushed his way through the saloon doors.
Politely, he offered Maria an outstretched hand, but it was promptly slapped away and she threw her arms around his middle, drawing him in for a full-bodied embrace, the force of which almost winded the unsuspecting Alessio.
He locked eyes with Francesca, who was now giggling into her steepled fingers. Alessio noticed that her short nails were painted red. ‘You just earned yourself another nonna,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t aware they were on offer.’ Alessio lowered his arms, which he had been holding mid-air, awkwardly outstretched, to rest gently against Maria’s back, returning her cuddle.
‘Secco,’ Maria said, giving him a final squeeze. ‘Secco. Deve mangiare qualcosa.’
‘Secco?’ he asked Francesca.
Through an embarrassed grimace, she said, ‘Nonna thinks you’re too skinny and she wants you to eat something.’
Alessio erupted with laughter. ‘Maria, I go to the gym to look exactly like this.’ He gestured to the space she had been grabbing. ‘I work very hard to stay trim.’ He mimed a double set of bicep curls, which drew a playful shake of the head from Francesca.
‘Mah!’ Maria retorted and trotted her round frame with a generous bust to the bench behind her.
She fetched a handful of biscuits from a ceramic jar, wrapped them in a paper napkin and delivered the parcel into Alessio’s grip.
‘Mangia, figlio!’ Then she descended into some scowling regional Italian, losing Alessio immediately.
‘She wants you to ea—’
‘Yeah, I got that part.’ Under his breath he said, ‘I don’t have a choice, do I?’
‘Here, it’s eat or be eaten.’
Alessio dropped his head in defeat and smiled back at Maria. ‘Ok, Maria. Grazie.’
Maria’s right index finger shot skywards. ‘Nonna Maria . . .’ She stressed her preferred title, head cocked slightly to the side.
Alessio leaned down to better level their mismatched heights. He whispered, ‘Nonna Maria.’
‘Perfetto!’ Maria cooed, just before the interruption of a ringing mobile phone.
‘Mio!’ she said, reaching into the right-side pocket of her lace-fringed apron and withdrawing a phone.
But it wasn’t ringing. The ringtone chirped again, and this time she fished through the apron’s left-side pocket.
She withdrew a second phone. ‘Ah!’ she assessed, clearly pleased by the name on her screen.
With a wrinkled finger she swiped and answered the call, stepping away from their conversation.
Alessio was amused and suspected Francesca could read this across his face. ‘Her boyfriend,’ she clarified.
‘And two phones?’
Francesca smiled after her nonna. ‘She’s a busy and popular woman in Impastino.’
‘I have no doubt.’
Francesca leaned closer to Alessio, and motioned to him with a covert ‘come hither’ gesture. He lowered his head, welcoming her whispered words. ‘I’m convinced there’s a third phone hidden somewhere.’
‘Why would she need a third?’
‘For her lover.’
His eyes widened. ‘Lover?’
‘Just. You. Wait.’
There was something about the way she said this casual remark that made Alessio realise that the idea he’d been toying with, of cancelling the accommodation reservation and looking elsewhere in town, would not be an option.
Francesca wasn’t in his head. She couldn’t feel what he felt. So how could she know?
Strapped for a response, Alessio politely smiled.
Perhaps sensing the change in his thoughts, Francesca snapped back to the task at hand. Her eyes flicked again to her watch. ‘My apartment. Let’s go.’
‘Your apartment?’
‘Yes, but now yours for the summer! Andiamo.’ She gestured that he could lead the way. ‘Out the kitchen, to the back of the restaurant. There’s a flight of stairs. We go up then head outside. I’m right behind you.’
‘Thank you.’
The stairs led to a heavy fire door on a narrow landing. Alessio pushed it open, lifted his suitcase over the aluminium floor strip, and stepped out onto the balcony which ran along the rear of the restaurant.
Fresh mountain-top air; it enveloped Alessio immediately, pushing aside the restaurant’s thick cooking smells.
From the balcony Alessio had an unobstructed view of Monte Calvo off in the distance, one of the highest points along Puglia’s peninsular coastline. He peered over the railing and the steep drop of the land behind the building caught him off guard.
‘That land,’ Francesca pointed down and across the levels of cut, segmented earth, ‘is ours.’ She sighed, folding her arms and leaning on the railing beside him. ‘Our orto. Vegetables, herbs, fruit. We have a few olive trees and almond trees. Just for our own needs. We don’t produce for sale.’
There was something about the way Francesca’s eyes softened and her lashes fluttered that told Alessio there was much more to this garden and her connection to it than she was letting on.
But just as he was about to comment on the abundance of tomatoes, the ripe woody scent of which he could smell even up on the balcony, she ushered him to turn around. ‘We live up here.’
We?
She tapped her foot against the bottom rung of a wrought-iron ladder hanging at an angle from the level above them.
‘The ladder takes you to our apartments. There are two; a smaller one which you have rented that is usually mine, and a second, a little larger, which I share with Nonna Maria when we have guests. Come, I’ll show you. ’
Francesca shot up the ladder with the ease of decades of experience. Alessio watched as she slipped from view, but not before noticing the line of definition where her olive calves and shins married.
The prospect of spending the next three months of the intense pugliese summer in Francesca’s sun-kissed, alluring presence, as tempting as it seemed on the surface, would likely be a distraction. An unwanted one.
Alessio took a deep breath, forcing the air to the furthermost pockets of his lungs, then took to the ladder. His suitcase followed behind, suspended almost comically in his right hand.
Straightening himself on the second balcony, he flattened down the hem of his linen shirt and pushed his suitcase against the open weave railing. Its black plastic castors began to twist and roll on the polished terracotta tiles, but he shunted a foot in place to stop it.