Chapter 19
We sat in the wine bar for a long time, and outside the sky quickly darkened. Rapha?l went outside a couple of times to make phone calls, which necessitated a lot of hand waving and frowning.
‘Isn’t she coming?’ I asked when he came back inside.
He sighed. ‘She says she has been held up.’
‘With guns? And criminals?’ Evelyn asked.
He shook his head. ‘Genova is an artist. She was finishing off something and I think the moment she put the phone down she forgot all about it. But she says she is nearly ready and will be with us soon.’
‘What does “soon” mean,’ Diana muttered. ‘I don’t like to seem ungrateful but it’s nearly seven thirty, and it’s dark.’
‘Here the Italians embrace la vita lenta,’ he replied, ‘the slow life. And many believe in dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing when they get the chance. Italians work to live, they do not live to work. Everyone is your friend, as you can tell, but life is slower and more pleasant. Things get done eventually.’
At that point the workman in his blue boiler suit dropped down from his bar stool and yawned.
‘I go home,’ he said, and he flapped one hand in front of him, ‘my wife will be angry. The meal will be ready.’
He came over and kissed us all on both cheeks as though we were old friends and then shook Rapha?l’s hand. Another few minutes were spent saying goodbye to everyone else before he actually left.
‘He’s already had a pizza, his wife won’t be pleased with him at all,’ Diana murmured.
And still there was no sign of Genova.
‘Perhaps we should eat,’ Rapha?l said, ‘after all there is no hurry. We have hours before we need to get there.’
Personally, I would have been happier being too early, and had already visualised us huddled, shivering together on some bench on the dockside, watching the reassuring bulk of the Avanti coming towards us, or more likely backing in towards the quayside and churning up a lot of brown water in the process. I’d even imagined the trucks and vans waiting there with us, ready to remove all the trash from the ship, and load up all the new provisions that the hungry passengers might need on the next part of the journey.
Instead, we were shown to a small table at the back of the wine bar, and after the boss had turfed a stringy looking cat off one of the chairs and flapped at the seat rather dramatically with a tea towel, we sat down.
‘He says there is no menu,’ Rapha?l explained. ‘His wife cooks what she feels like, so it will be a surprise.’
‘I think we might have had enough surprises for one day,’ Evelyn said, but she looked reasonably cheerful as she unwrapped her cutlery from a red paper napkin.
A large, fierce-looking woman swathed in a tartan apron came to look at us, perhaps gauging her audience, and then without a word she went back through a battered-looking door, presumably to the kitchen.
First of all, the boss, who introduced himself as Emmanuel and his wife as Maddalena, deposited a large carafe of rough red wine on the table, plus four chunky, rather scratched glasses, a basket of bread, a dish of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a small bowl of sea salt.
We obediently drank and dunked the bread into the oil, enjoying the rustic flavours.
‘Well, this will keep us going,’ I said, and took a sip of my wine. It might not have had any fancy labels and there was obviously no fussing over the cork because there wasn’t one, but it was delicious.
Diana was sitting next to Rapha?l and as the table was quite cramped, there must have been a bit of thigh contact between them, which pleased me a great deal.
‘So, what happens next?’ she said, fiddling with her cutlery, picking up another piece of bread and putting it down untasted.
I hid a knowing smile. Despite all her denials over the past few days, I still knew my sister well enough to recognise the slightly breathy, anxious tone in her voice. I’d heard it many times before at school discos, weekends spent lolling on our beds reading Jackie magazine and discussing some spotty youth or other. There was no doubt in my mind, she definitely fancied him. Did it matter that she was no longer a teenager with all the hang-ups and insecurities that go with it? It seemed not. After sixty years of sisterhood and friendship, eventually she would always reveal what she was thinking, and I just needed to give her the space and time to do so.
No mask can be worn forever and perhaps at my age I had at last learned some patience. I don’t think I had realised before what a powerful tool that can be.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Evelyn said happily, ‘these things have a way of working out. I remember once a girlfriend and I were stranded in Cairo. There was a man from our hotel who had taken quite a shine to me, and it was terribly romantic. Telling me I was his goddess, that he couldn’t live without me. There were stars above the pyramids in an endless sky…’
She stopped and shook her head, a little smile playing across her face.
‘So, what happened?’ I asked when the suspense got too much.
‘Oh nothing, I just laughed and my friend and I just started walking and I suppose the man realised how ridiculous the whole thing was. The next thing, we were back in the hotel and I was perched on my favourite bar stool with a gin sling. Anyway, I think our chef is bringing yet more food. I really shouldn’t have eaten so much bread.’
Maddalena came out of the kitchen again, banging open the door with her bottom, and depositing a platter of bruschettas on the table between us. A feat which required a lot of things to be moved out of the way first. Diana sat, holding the salt and pepper grinders in one hand and her wine glass in the other, until Rapha?l came to her rescue and put them on a nearby table.
‘These look delicious, although I don’t think I really need any more carbohydrates,’ Evelyn murmured.
We looked up to see Maddalena watching us from a small crack in the door, and unwilling to offend her, we tucked in.
Ten minutes later, just as we were sitting back in our chairs and congratulating each other on finding such a delicious meal and wondering again where Genova had got to, a big pot of something was brought out and deposited on top of the empty platter, before Maddalena whisked off the lid with a flourish.
‘Pollo all’Arrabiata,’ she said, allowing herself a brief look of pride, before standing at the side of the table, hands on her hips, watching for our reaction. ‘Mangia adesso prima che facia freddo!’
‘She wants you to eat up, before it gets cold,’ Rapha?l murmured.
Emmanuel crept forward. ‘Her favourite,’ he said, ‘you would call it angry chicken, she does it very well. Spicy.’
‘I don’t think I can,’ Evelyn whispered. ‘I’m absolutely full up.’
‘Thank heavens it’s not pasta,’ Diana said, ‘my carbohydrate levels are already at bursting point. I’m going to be so fat when I get home.’
‘Nonsense, madame,’ Rapha?l said gallantly, ‘you are parfait. Perfect. This is good Italian cooking, fresh peppers, herbs, and chicken braised in wine. There is nothing fattening about that.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Diana said, and helped herself to some.
It really was delicious, and we were there, eating and chatting away for about two hours while customers came and went, and the night outside grew even darker.
‘That’s it,’ Evelyn said putting down her cutlery and trying to hide the remnants of her meal under a spoon, ‘I can’t eat another thing.’
Emmanuel cleared away our plates and brought us another carafe of red wine.
He shook his head. ‘No one leaves without fritole,’ he said firmly.
We sat, loosening our belts wondering what he meant.
Seconds later Maddalena came out of the kitchen with yet another platter, and I think we all stifled a whimper.
‘Fritole,’ she said, and glared around the table, daring us not to eat them, ‘fritole di mia nonna.’
‘Her grandmother’s recipe,’ Rapha?l explained.
They were small, deep-fried fritters flavoured with apple and oranges and covered in powdered sugar. They looked about a thousand calories apiece.
‘I don’t suppose Genova is here, is she?’ Diana said hopefully, glancing towards the door.
Rapha?l went outside to phone her yet again and returned a few moments later.
‘She says she will be with us soon.’
‘She said that hours ago,’ I said, ‘it’s nearly ten thirty. Surely she won’t want to start driving across the country at this hour?’
‘She says she had a picture to deliver to someone in Potenza, which is on the way. Well, not actually on the way, there will just be a small detour. And when we get to the port she has a cousin there where she will stay. She seems quite confident, very happy, there is time,’ he said.
Diana looked at the clock on the wall and sighed.
‘Nearly time for me to have a fit of hysterics,’ she muttered.
I could see Evelyn hiding some of the fritole in her napkin and tucking them into her handbag, which seemed a good idea to me, so I did the same.
And then the ridiculous situation struck me. Instead of being safely on the Avanti, possibly with yet another cocktail in my hand, or even tucked up in bed with a nice cup of tea, I was sitting in the foothills of an unpredictable volcano, having eaten too much and waiting for a lift from a stranger across a country I knew nothing about.
Unexpectedly, I felt like laughing, but perhaps that wouldn’t have been a good idea, and Maddalena would undoubtedly have taken offence. I would use my new patience in a mature and sensible way and wait.
I wished I had some charge on my phone so I could ring Eddy. The sound of his voice would have been very reassuring, but undoubtedly he would then worry about me and he wouldn’t have been able to do anything, so there was no point. Still, it would have been nice to talk to him.
And anyway, looking on the bright side, we had been well looked after, eaten perhaps too much, and apparently help was at hand.
I looked for the umpteenth time towards the door and was rewarded by the sight of a woman, bursting in through the swing doors. She was dressed exactly as I would have expected a young, slightly scatty artist to dress, in torn, paint-splattered jeans, a canvas jacket and an artfully tied woollen shawl around her neck, her pretty face smiling as she saw Rapha?l across the room.
‘There you are at last!’ she said, as though we had been the ones to keep her waiting.
This then degenerated into a long conversation mostly in French and partly in Italian, about where we had been, what had happened and who we were. Then there were the obligatory introductions and a lot of cheek kissing and hand shaking, while Emmanuel made out the bill and held it out towards Rapha?l.
Diana took hold of it.
‘Absolutely not, this one is on me, it’s partly my fault we are here. I’ll pay.’
Well, this was a turn up for the books. Another new show of assertion from my sister, I hadn’t seen that for years.
Eventually we stopped the introductions and moved on to the farewells and thank yous which took another few minutes and in the end, all the remaining customers at the wine bar, some of them with napkins tucked under their chins and glasses in their hands, came outside to wave us off.
‘I should take a picture,’ Rapha?l said.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Diana replied, ‘and I don’t think the cruise line would thank you anyway.’
Genova led us towards her car, which was illegally parked outside, oblivious to the fact that there were a couple of off-duty policemen inside drinking beer and who were amongst the crowd watching us.
‘In we get,’ she said cheerfully.
Her car was a battered Fiat of uncertain age, and the back seat was filled with coats and food wrappers, and a dog who had been peacefully snoozing on top of them.
The dog was shunted to one side, and we jammed ourselves in.
‘I’m sorry you are out so late,’ I said, ‘it’s really very kind of you to rescue us.’
Genova started the car on the third attempt and clashed the gears noisily.
‘I am a night owl,’ she said, ‘it is no problem, and the roads will be clearer than in the day. We will be there in no time at all.’
We made our way out onto the E45, the name of which reminded me of a face cream I’d once used, and on down the coast towards Salerno.
‘I would go the mountain road, but I’m not sure my car would cope with the load tonight,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Not after all the food we have eaten,’ Evelyn said.
Talking of which, the dog, which had been placed, much to his disappointment in the footwell between us, had almost immediately sensed that we had snacks about our persons and was whiffling away at my handbag with some enthusiasm, and quite a bit of drooling.