Lorri is searching for a new life. She finds one down a dark alleyway in Tuscany: mishaps, intrigue, passion and a journey of self-discovery await her...
Vicolo della Mura
It was June and sweltering. I picked the car up at Pisa airport, a brand new cherry-red Fiat Uno, and placed my two beloved cats, Billy and Gertie, on the back seat in their VIP box. My small case went in the boot; all my worldly goods were coming on later in the removals van from Devon.
The car even smelt new inside. Get the feel of it, I told myself, jiggling the gear-stick and flashing the lights, skirt Firenze, head for Siena, take the A1 for Perugia – Roma. Simple. Now, if I could just find my way out of the airport. I eased the car out of the parking lot, through the exit gate, out on to the main road about to enter the great Italian unknown.
Hardly unknown, though, I had done the journey often enough in the past with Richard. Only then I’d been the passenger, happy to sit back and enjoy the scenery, thinking of the things I would do when we arrived. Add sand to the paint to create my special textured finish for the walls, buy acid to clean the ancient floor tiles. He built the bathroom and the kitchen. We worked well together, pausing every now and then with a mug of tea to look round with pleasure at what we were achieving. But that was then. Now I had the present to deal with.
At the toll station I took my ticket and continued on in the direction of Perugia congratulating myself. I’d got this far. Things were going well. And after an hour and a half of steady driving I thought I recognized several landmarks. The group of ochre-coloured houses in a field to my left formed a triangle and I was certain I’d seen them before. The house with the turret on the hill; that too looked familiar. And when, after another half-hour, I saw the sign for Valdiciana I knew I was on the right road. I put my foot down and overtook several cars at a stretch, the indicator light flashing until I was past.
This was the way to drive in Italy. Like the Italians, swoop up their bums, overtake, and streak on ahead. I gave a shout of laughter and the cherry-red Fiat flew as if on wings along the Autostrada. Windows open, warm air whipping hair off my face, I was free at last. I’d given him the slip. He belonged to a life already well behind me and I burst into song. I had done it. Survived the endless doubts and sleepless nights and come to Italy to start a new life on my own.
I adjusted the rear-view mirror. Soon I would be climbing the street steps to Vicolo della Mura. From the bedroom window I’d see the chapel bell across the terracotta roofs to three cypresses sticking up like dark green paintbrushes. And on the roof I’d see the carabinieri through their bedroom window opposite, pale defenceless creatures they looked in their Y-fronts. And the church bells, bing-bang-ding-dang, would be clanging up in the piazza; enough to raise the dead and make them laugh.
I laughed, with relief, as I turned off at the Sinalunga sign. Not long now. Ornelia, in the downstairs flat, would be watering her pots of geraniums, Sergio in the upstairs flat would be playing his tango music, which would be heard all the way down the street to Martino’s shop. “Ahhhh,” he’d shout, sweeping his imaginary partner around the sofa, sliding and bending and stamping his heels, mouth in an oooh of pleasure, and “ahhhh” again as he collided with the lamp. Nothing would have changed. Fortunately, nothing seemed to in Sinalunga.
Keep right at all costs, I repeated, as ten minutes later, light-headed with heat, excitement and exhaustion, I travelled up the familiar hill leading to the Centro Storico.
But halfway up the hill I heard a bang and the car stopped with a shudder. I stared ahead in shocked disbelief. What had happened? Everything had been fine a minute ago. The cats howled; I swivelled round to lift their box back on to the seat. I turned the key in the ignition. Dead. Now what? Whatever happens don’t attract attention, I told myself. The last thing I wanted was to become a spectacle for everyone to point at. I opened the car door and the heat hit me like a furnace. The car wasn’t in the middle of the road; at least that was something. And as far as I could see, no real damage had been done; although, the bonnet did seem somewhat lower to the ground than it had earlier. Later I was to learn that the whole of the front suspension had dropped out. Then I noticed the white car behind, the door dented and scraped.
I stared at it appalled. It was obvious what had happened. In keeping so well to the right I’d veered into a parked car. I felt sick with disappointment. Why did this have to happen when I was almost home? Trembling, I lifted the cat-box and suitcase out of the car and sat on the boiling hot pavement waiting for inspiration.
People were gathering from nowhere. They stared dubiously at the red Fiat, then at me. An old man said something. I smiled apprehensively and said, Buongiorno, it being the only Italian word that sprang to mind at that moment. People moved closer. They pointed at my car, then at the white one behind it. Several people shook their heads and tut-tutted. Then to my alarm the carabinieri drew up in their dark blue car and parked alongside the Fiat blocking the traffic, which meant even more people would stop and stare at the pink-faced English woman melting with her cat-box and suitcase beside her on the pavement.
One tall, one short, fat carabinieri sauntered towards me, not so defenceless now with submachine guns stuck in their belts. I stood up and offered my passport.
“Dove abita?”
“Vicolo della Mura.”
“But that is Italia,” the fat one said, loudly, glancing round at the people, making sure they could hear him speaking English.
“I know, I’ve come to live here.”
“But where you live in England?”
“I don’t anymore.”
“Uh?” he turned to his tall companion who was writing in a thick black book. “Non comprehend. You must.”
“W-what must I?”
“You must to live in some place in your country.”
Realising there was no point in explaining; I gave him the Devon address even though I no longer lived there. I held out my hand for my passport and at that point the cats howled again and all attention turned to the VIP box at my feet. “Micio, micio,” said a hefty woman, poking her finger through the mesh door. She drew back at the hissing. The carabiniere handed me a document that was incomprehensible. The sun beat down on my head. I swayed slightly and held onto the tall carabiniere’s arm for support and everyone watched avidly. A young woman was looking at me from her car, one of a line moving slowly up the hill. I waved frantically, gestured that I needed a lift, she nodded, I lifted the cat-box and suitcase onto the back seat and in less than five minutes we were crossing the Piazza Garibaldi and turning left down the Via Ciro Pinsuti.
News had travelled fast, it seemed. The first person I saw as I emerged from the car was Lionello Torossi, my elderly neighbour from the end of the street, and who spoke fluent English, German, French and Spanish. He’d already heard of the accident with la straniera, guessed it was me and had come to help. “You have announced your arrival extraordinarily well,” he said, chuckling. “Now everyone knows you are here.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “I had hoped to arrive quietly and anonymously.”
“My dear young lady, you are too attractive to arrive anywhere anonymously and especially in a place like this. The people are delighted to see you; they want to be entertained. You are their portable theatre.”
Thanking the woman, whose name I didn’t catch, I carried the stricken cats and my suitcase up the street steps, round Ornelia’s pots of geraniums into the alleyway, only to find, to my alarm, my front door open.
“Madonnasanta!” Brandishing a key, Tonina came hurrying downstairs to meet me. “Signora. Signora Lorri!”
“Tonina. What’s happened?”
“Niente acqua, non c’e il tetto - ” Tonina burst into an excitable flow of Italian, ‘no water’, ‘no roof’, being the only understandable words. Struggling through the narrow front door, I climbed the stone stairs to the bedroom and planted the case on the floor, the cat-box on the bed. I stared at the window, at a man with a funny little hat perched on the roof beaming at me. “ I spik Inlish.”
A man’s voice then, behind me, from the stairs. And then Tonina, almost hysterical, throwing up her hands as she entered the bedroom. “Madonnina, Sergio vuole parlare dell’acqua.”
“Oh no, no, please…not now…I can’t. I can’t speak to anyone…I’m exhausted.”
“Signora!” Sergio, my upstairs neighbour, hovered outside the bedroom. “Possiamo parlare?”
I forced a smile. “Buongiorno, Sergio. I-I’m very tired. I haven’t slept. No sleep. We talk domani?”
Tonina seemed to understand, if not all the words, the intentions behind them. She pushed Sergio firmly back down the stairs with a final “Non, non, non!”
But the man with the hat, he was still there. “Me Domenico, I do noo roof, wok in Australia. You Inlish lady? I search for good Inlish wife.”
Tonina rushed at him and banged the shutters in his face. “Cara Signora Lorri,” she said, clasping her hands to her chest. “Non si preoccupi. Do not worry. I am so sorry because, because of la situazione con Ricardo.”
I collapsed on the bed. In the shadowy light I watched Tonina pile clean linen from the chest of drawers onto the mattress. It was impossible to explain right then that sometimes one can feel less sorry being alone than with someone who makes you unhappy. So I nodded in agreement and said nothing.
“Ah, la vita.” Tonina sighed with resignation, blew a kiss, and promised to return later with buckets of water.
An acrid stench filled the bedroom. Closing the door, I eased the long-suffering cats from their box, and taking a pillowcase, the nearest thing to hand, wiped urine off their fur and offered biscuits from my pocket, which they refused to eat. Had I been crazy to come? Hardly any grasp of the language, four years off fifty and with virtually no money? Many would think so. But I did at least own the roof over my head, even if it was half off, and that, after all, had been the main reason for coming. Mike, the counsellor in Devon, had been the other. Imagine you have wings, he’d said, and fly above your fear. And I’d visualized great dusty feathery things attached to my shoulder blades stiff from lack of use. They had lifted me off his grey carpet onto the windowsill; out over Totnes High Street and across the sea with the gulls I flew, soaring into space, zing-zanging with the stars.
The cats were reaching up to sniff the shutters, where I thought I saw Domenico peering at me through the slats.
Excerpt
"There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"
Goethe
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