Chapter 19
Over the next few days Giovanni turns up every morning at Casa Luna, sometimes with Alessandro or Enrico, sometimes on his own.
I go to La Tavola and offer coffee or pasta to anyone who needs it.
I take in the deliveries when they arrive from the shop, cook and freeze vegetables ready for pasta sauces.
I have coffee with Caterina, and the children enjoy days helping in the garden or cooking with me.
It’s a little routine I’m starting to enjoy.
Today, though, Giovanni arrives at the house with someone else. As soon as I see her, despite the heat of the day, I turn cold.
‘This is Stella. You’ve met.’
She smiles at me.
I say nothing. Just stand and stare.
‘She’s come to help me today.’
‘ Buongiorno ,’ I try to say but my tongue is tied and I have no idea how the greeting sounds.
‘It would be good for her to learn a trade. Be able to work, like Alessandro and Enrico.’ Giovanni smiles but I can’t.
I turn to the tap to pour water into the cafetière. It’s stiff.
‘Oh, you have to go first one way, then the other,’ says Stella, turning the tap on for me, making me bristle. How would she know the workings of the tap in this place?
Giovanni tells her he’ll be plastering the ceiling, repairing broken woodwork, including the step, and painting the walls – oh, and fixing the leaking roof.
I make coffee and put it on a little table I’ve positioned outside the front door where Giovanni sits for his coffee breaks, watching the world go by and chatting to the locals he knows. My hands are shaking. Giovanni joins me. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks.
‘I’m not sure I am, actually,’ I say, remembering his words: it’s okay not to be okay. I glare at him. ‘What’s she doing here?’
‘I told you, it’s good to get her working, learning skills,’ he says, looking me straight in the eye.
‘Of all the places you could have taken her to, you brought her here. Is that really a good idea?’ I say crossly.
‘Stella?’ He looks back inside. ‘She can be a handful. She needs to be kept occupied. I’ll keep an eye on her, don’t worry.’
‘But—’ I stop myself. So many questions are running around in my head, but do I really want to know the answers? Right now, I don’t want to hear anything about how she knows Marco. I want it all to be a silly lie that got out of hand. A sick joke would be better than the truth, if there is any.
The mayor walks past and congratulates me on how I’m getting on, and for using local labour. ‘ Ciao, Giovanni .’ Stella comes out to join us and I bristle. The mayor nods to her, then walks on. She finishes her coffee and goes inside.
I can feel Giovanni standing next to me. ‘If it wasn’t for La Tavola, people like Stella would have nowhere to go.’
‘I know. And I know you’re doing good work there, Giovanni. I’m just not sure that this is helping me right now.’
‘I needed La Tavola as much as some of the residents do. I needed to get back into the kitchen, to realize that’s home for me. Just not the bullying, shouting places that call themselves professional kitchens.’
I can feel frustration in him, matching mine. It’s creating hot energy between us, drawing us closer, like magnets.
‘But it can’t survive on charity alone. More and more people are relying on La Tavola, and we can’t exist on what we get from Alfonso’s shop.
Money is short and rent has to be paid. And he is selling up.
He’s finding it hard to run the shop and look after his wife.
He wants to retire. But without his donations, and without any money, I don’t know how we’ll keep going. ’
‘Whose money is short? Yours? You’ve been financing this?’
‘Like I say, it started as a thank-you, after I arrived here, but La Tavola has taken on a life of its own. It needs more than I can give it now.’
‘But you can’t walk away?’
He shrugs. ‘I won’t leave yet. It gave me everything I needed when I needed it. I’m back on an even keel now. At some point, though, I may want to move on. But I don’t think I can keep La Tavola going for those who still need it.’
‘There must be a way to save it,’ I find myself saying, for all the people who rely on it as a place of safety and sanctuary as much as they do for the food.
He frowns. ‘If only I knew how.’
‘There has to be something you can do.’
He looks straight into my eyes, and I feel something shift, as if I’m walking over quicksand.
‘Nothing scares you, does it, Thea? Not falling-down houses, in foreign countries, with leaking roofs, nothing.’
‘Everything scares me, Giovanni. You and I both know how scary life can get. That’s why I can see how important La Tavola is to the people who need it. There must be a way to save it.’
He’s running his hands through his curly hair and then throwing them up in despair. ‘Do you think I haven’t tried to find one?’
‘What’s the alternative, Giovanni? Where will Caterina go?
Alessandro and Enrico, Giuseppe, Francesco and Alfonso, whose only respite is the time he spends here on a Sunday.
You were there when I needed you. Still are.
’ We look at each other and something shifts in me again, like sand, swirling and creating patterns.
I want to hold on to it and also to push it away.
‘La Tavola is there for you, not just me.’
But something inside me speaks differently.
Luca is running down the hill with Pietro. ‘Mum, the mayor was in La Tavola! He says La Tavola will have to be sold! Mum, you can’t let it happen!’
I look at Giovanni.
‘As I say, unless I can find a way to make an income to run it, I’ll have to hand back the keys. The mayor will sell it, like this house, to someone who wants to commit to staying here.’
‘Can’t you open it as a restaurant, make it earn its keep and buy it?’
He shakes his head. ‘There aren’t the customers here. If there were, others would be doing just that.’
‘Mum, you must help!’ Aimee begins to cry. ‘It’s just like when Dad died and the restaurant went. You can’t let La Tavola close.’
Suddenly everything is rushing back at me. The restaurant closing. The people I had to let go.
‘But,’ I say, gesticulating and feeling every bit Italian, ‘I don’t know how!’
‘Yes, you do!’ says Luca. ‘You ran the restaurant for years, even after Dad died.’
I really don’t want to go back to that world.
I look at the children’s faces. ‘Okay, okay. If Giovanni wants my help …’ I’m trying not to let myself think that the strange feeling inside me is anything but nerves at finding something to help here ‘… how about we meet at La Tavola once you’ve finished here for the day?
We should call a meeting for anyone who has an idea about how we can save it. ’
‘ Grazie ,’ he says, getting back to work.
In the garden I can hear the goats bleating …