Chapter 7
The piazza was surrounded by bars and restaurants, the table where Stella and Joe sat shaded by a great palm tree.
To one side stood a fine dove-grey building, its facade enlivened by trompe l’oeil shutters and balconies.
Behind Joe’s head, swifts circled the old cathedral’s campanile.
They’d been shopping all morning but now, having dropped their bags at the hotel, Stella was glad to stop for lunch.
She breathed in the scent from the pot of basil that helped weigh down the cheerful red and white tablecloth.
Joe looked quizzically at a cube of potato. ‘Strange thing to put in pasta.’
‘Pesto, potato and green beans – it’s the quintessential Ligurian recipe,’ Stella said.
She unwrapped the paper napkin from her fork and dug into her trofie, each twisted strand of pasta coated in vivid green pesto, each mouthful a fresh new grassy, tangy hit, making her tastebuds sing with pleasure.
For a moment she was transported back in time: her mamma, papà, brother and sister crammed around the table in their tiny kitchen, falling on their food like they hadn’t eaten for a week.
Lunch back then, even on weekdays, was a long, drawn-out affair.
The church bells chiming twelve brought all work in the surrounding vineyards and olive groves to a standstill.
The streets stayed silent for hours save for a splash of rain or a mew of a stray cat.
Everyone stayed indoors to eat and then to rest during the hottest part of the day.
It was so different here. Many of the boutiques closed for a few hours but Sanremo was still buzzing, accommodating its tourists and their eccentric, non-Italian ways.
The couple on the next table were finishing off their lunch with a cappuccino.
At half past twelve! If they’d asked for that in the village bar, old Signora Dossetti would have flat-out refused to serve them – and given them a lecture on the dangers of too much milk in the stomach.
Stella couldn’t help smiling to herself.
Not all her memories of the village were bad ones.
But she couldn’t afford to think that way.
She’d cut all ties. She was as much of a tourist now as Joe.
She studied his kind, handsome face as he finished off his pasta. He was her future.
The waiter removed the basket of bread and cleared their dishes away. Joe asked for the bill.
‘Where shall we go after this?’ she asked briskly.
Joe spread the map from the Tourist Information in the space where their bowls had been. ‘The old town, if you’d like.’
‘It’s known as La Pigna, meaning pinecone, because of the layout of the streets.’
Joe paid the bill and stood up, slipping his wallet into his back pocket. He took her by the hand. ‘The pinecone it is! I’m looking forward to this.’
‘Same here.’ It would keep them far away from the seafront where she and Gino had lain in each other’s arms. Before her world ended.
As soon as they left the lively piazza behind, Stella knew she’d made a mistake.
The rough stone walls of the passageway that led them away, the lantern above her head, the feel of the cobblestones rolling beneath the thin soles of her sandals – she was back in the world of her childhood, all crumbling archways, narrow caruggi and little shrines to the Virgin Mother.
They emerged into the Piazza San Siro. Church bells were tolling; a couple of strutting pigeons flew away at their approach. Concentrate on the little details, Stella.
‘This is so charming.’ She pointed to a donkey flanked by two palm trees carved into the soft stone above the cathedral’s latticed wooden doors. Across the piazza, sun glowed on the yellow facade of the Battistero di San Giovanni.
‘It feels like we’ve stepped back in time,’ Joe said.
‘Mmm,’ Stella murmured. She fixed her eyes on the piazza’s third, smallest, church, studying the concentric half-circles of yellow, black, green and navy glass on the high window.
Below, asymmetrical steps led up to the church door.
In front of those, an ancient marble drinking trough stood supported by four stone lions, their faces worn smooth.
More water drizzled into the trough from a lion’s head spout.
‘We could walk up to the Regina Elena park,’ she suggested.
Joe consulted the map. ‘I think we need to go that way.’ He set off down a side street. Stella followed, content to let him take charge, her head too full of memories to concentrate on directions.
He led her across a road to where a sign told them they’d reached the Porta Montà, one of the town’s old gates.
They set off up the sloping street. She’d forgotten how it felt to be always climbing upwards and downwards, passing through archways, taking narrow passageways, walking on stone steps bowed from the tread of ten thousand feet.
Joe was quiet, his face rather red from the unaccustomed exertion.
Post-lunch sounds emanated from behind lace curtains: televisions humming, the clatter of washing up. They walked on past parked mopeds, pots of pink hydrangeas and yellow houses.
Arriving at a small square at the base of the park, Joe stopped to read an information board.
Stella didn’t usually bother to look at them but this time she waited patiently, glad of a rest before they continued their uphill climb.
A black and white photograph on the board showed the view before them as it had once appeared.
A large apartment block was quite unchanged, the other building in the photograph was no longer there, it must have been demolished.
‘It says that was once the site of the Villa ?berg, used as the headquarters of the Gestapo, but weren’t the Italians on the Allies’ side by the end of the war?’ Joe frowned.
‘Mussolini was toppled in July 1943, the armistice with Britain and the Allies was a few weeks later,’ Stella remembered from school.
‘But the Germans weren’t happy about losing their ally.
They parachuted in, plucked Mussolini from his prison in the mountains and set up a puppet regime, the Salò Republic on Lake Garda.
Northern Italy was basically controlled by the Germans until the end of the war. ’
‘I didn’t know that. I remember learning about Vichy France and the French resistance at school but hardly anything about Italy.’
‘In France the story was simpler. Apart from those who collaborated with the Nazis, people were on the same side. But here things were… complicated. Mussolini had been in power since 1922. Many people still supported him, they felt betrayed when the new government surrendered. Some people wanted to keep fighting, others couldn’t understand why Italy had gone to war in the first place.
Many soldiers hid out in the mountains and countryside to fight the new fascist threat.
The North descended into a kind of civil war. ’
‘Thank goodness that’s all in the past,’ Joe said.
‘But not forgotten.’ She thought of the stone obelisk commemorating the villagers shot in cold blood where her mamma and papà laid flowers every year.
‘Hey!’ Joe chucked her under the chin. ‘Don’t look so glum. Shall we carry on to the top of the park and up to the Sanctuary?’
‘Yes, let’s do that.’ She’d been there once on a school outing. Even as a typical bored teenager she’d been impressed.
They climbed up and up but it was worth the strain in her legs.
The Sanctuary of Madonna della Costa was even more beautiful than she remembered it: a vast pale Wedgwood blue and vanilla church set against the cloudless sky, crowned by a great central dome and a smaller one at each corner turned green with age.
Joe stopped to take a selfie, his arm around her.
‘I’ll send that to Lauren,’ Stella said. Her daughter was probably in some high-powered meeting right now, silencing some chap in a suit with a withering look.
Stella crossed the petal-patterned pebble mosaic paving, past plinths topped with white marble cherubs.
After a look inside, gasping at the frescoed ceiling, the twisted marble pillars and sheer sensory overload of colour and statuary, they reversed their climb, resting for a while on a bench by a small glass-fronted shrine to the Virgin Mary set into the rough stone wall.
Stella had started to notice the signs of devotion everywhere and each time, an image of Fernanda, Gino’s mother, came unbidden: a tiny ancient woman wielding a broom on the church steps.
Of course, Fernanda couldn’t have been all that old back then, no more than mid-forties, but her stern countenance made her seem as old as the stones she swept.
‘Are you okay to carry on?’ Joe said.
Stella stood up, creaking slightly. Perhaps Carol was right to nag her to join the yoga class at the Leisure Centre.
She’d be fit for nothing when they got back to the hotel except for lounging by the pool.
She wasn’t too sure of the way back but she soon recognised a particularly vibrant display of geraniums by someone’s front door.
And as long as they kept walking downwards, they’d reach the main town for sure.
Joe strode under an archway, past a small café with tables around a fountain with a bull’s head through a small courtyard where washing hung across the balconies and down more steps. Somehow, they ended up on a piazza directly opposite the place where they’d had lunch.
‘I don’t know how we got here,’ Joe admitted.
‘But we’re here, that’s what counts.’ Stella smiled.
‘Here together.’ He pecked her on the lips. ‘Shall we stop at the gelateria with the big blue cone? It’s on the way to the hotel.’
Stella considered. She was already having trouble doing up the zips on some of the slightly too tight dresses Joe had bought her. But she was on holiday. ‘Yes, that’s a nice idea. We’re not having dinner until half-eight.’
‘I think you’ll like the restaurant.’
‘I’m sure I will. Shall we go to the casino afterwards? It’s such a beautiful, famous building, I’ve always wanted to see inside.’
Joe turned to her, his brow troubled. ‘I didn’t know you were a gambler.’
Stella laughed. ‘We don’t have to have a bet – and anyway I don’t think a few spins of a one-armed bandit will corrupt us.
’ An image of Fernanda waggling her finger entered Stella’s head.
In Gino’s mamma’s eyes the casino was akin to Sodom and Gomorrah, a sinful den of bright lights.
Fernanda didn’t even like to see Gino play cards with his mates like all the other kids – and men – in the village did.
‘Not for me.’ Joe shook his head.
Stella felt a sudden stir of something. Daring? Rebellion? That was daft, Joe would never stop her doing anything. ‘Come on, just one go on the roulette. It will be fun. We might even win!’
‘You don’t want to set off down that rocky road.’ Joe’s laugh seemed a bit forced. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, Stella. I don’t want you to do something you’d regret.’
‘I guess you’re right, I’d probably just lose my money.’
She pushed aside the uneasy feeling. Joe was just being responsible. And that was a good thing. She didn’t want another reckless husband like Ricky.
There’d been too many nights when Stella had woken up to find her ex-husband’s side of the bed empty.
She’d find him passed out on the sofa more often than not.
She didn’t know how she’d put up with it all: caring for Lauren; sorting out Ricky’s debts; the lonely nights listening to the click, click, click of his cigarette lighter as he crumbled a lump of hash, the sweet grassy smoke wafting up the stairs.
They set off towards the gelateria, Joe holding her hand. The pedestrianised area was quiet save for a large family group jostling to take multiple photographs by the bronze statue of Mike Bongiorno, arm raised in his familiar pose.
‘Who’s Mike Bongiorno? They seem very excited,’ Joe said.
‘He organised the Sanremo festival and hosted family game shows. When I was a kid he was one of the most recognisable people on TV. They called him The Quiz King.’
Mamma and Papà had been huge fans. The whole family had gathered around their small portable set, never missing an episode of I Sogni nel Cassetto – the dreams you put away in a drawer. Stella hadn’t put her dreams in a drawer. She’d buried them far deeper than that.