‘Oh come on, Santina – it’s a little joke between friends.’
I had no memory of friendship.
‘Well, you’d better get used to it. Men around here don’t just sit around and let beauty slip between their fingers like water, no? You’ve been around the British too long.’
I returned a forced smile, thankful Rosalia’s family’s laughter drowned my silence.
‘You’ve changed,’ he continued, mistaking my silence as an invitation for conversation. ‘You left a polio-struck orphan with a tatty dress and a half-hearted smile. Now you look . . .’
His hands waved in the air, as if they might pluck the word out from it somehow. I worried about the gesture that might follow.
‘Eat your food and save us all from this drivel!’ Rosalia’s grandmother piped up from the opposite end of the table, her wrinkled skin creasing into even more tiny folds.
‘Salud to that!’ the men cried, as the rest of the lunch simmered through the afternoon.
After the men left to sip limoncello outside on the small concrete terrace, and Rosalia, myself and the rest of the women had cleared the kitchen, it was time for me to return. Rosalia walked me to the gate, running a proud hand over her lemon trees overhead as she did so.
‘I know a joke from the truth, Santi.’
I turned to her, feeling Elizabeth’s weight pull on my back.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she replied off my look, ‘you know perfectly well what I’m on about.’
‘I don’t.’
‘It’s that mountain air in your lungs. Too near the sky to see what’s on the ground in front of you.’
Rosalia talked in riddles.
‘Paolino, Santina. You think it’s all singsong. I can tell it’s more than that.’
‘Aren’t you tired of weaving stories where there aren’t any?’
Her eyebrows did a little dance and her dimples deepened.
‘See you next week, Rosali. Thank you.’
‘Don’t ever say thank you. You’re family now. You say thank you it’s like I’m just a neighbor.’ She flicked a playful slap on my arm.
I went on my way, jogging home to prepare a light late lunch for the Major, Elizabeth bobbing up and down, delighted with the insane pace of her guardian.
I would have liked to remember keeping a calm hand upon the plates whilst setting the table after I returned home. I would have liked to forget the way I dropped not one but two plates upon the unforgiving tiles, blaming myself for rushing, knowing it had more to do with the memory of Paolino’s claustrophobia-inducing grin across Rosalia’s loud lunch, the way his eyes managed to connect with mine every time I looked toward his end of the table. Now my fingers quarrelled with one another whilst my mind chased silence. The Major strode through the kitchen just as I placed a few leaves of romaine into a bowl with the last of the tomatoes.
‘Whatever have these plates done to you, Santina?’ he asked, looking down at the heap of shards swept out of the way in haste.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I was starting to gabble. The appearance of Adeline in the doorway plunged us both into silence.
‘I smell kedgeree,’ she said, flat.
I looked at the Major. His eyes were alight.
‘Yes. I made it this morning,’ I said, filling the silence, hoping that if I spoke close to normalcy it might uphold her spell of sanity. Throughout the spring and summer we had seen a marked improvement in Adeline. On occasion she even held Elizabeth for snatched moments.
‘So you did,’ she replied, ‘it got me out of bed. I fell in love with Henry after I ate the first forkful he ever gave me.’
She looked at him. There was a simmer of a smile beyond her exhaustion. The spark was still there, the snap of a match as it ignites against sandpaper even if the flame fails into smoke. He took her hand and walked her out onto the terrace. They sat in silence for a moment. He cradled her fingers in his.
They shared an apple after their food, then Adeline returned upstairs. The Major did not retire to the library as usual. He sat looking out toward the sea whilst I cleared around him. Elizabeth refused to stay in her wooden chair I’d set in the kitchen. She fretted until I released her, so I delayed my tidying till she took her nap. I walked with her down the steps that led into the garden and sat her down on the last one, beside me. She crawled a little way down the hill, paused, squatted, then heaved herself up to standing. I’d seen her do this many times but she’d never held herself upright for so long. The breeze lifted her curls. Her nose scrunched. Then one foot lifted. She waivered but didn’t fall. A step. Then another. Then another. Several more determined paces followed, before she collapsed again onto the grass. I ran to her, wrapped my arms around her and swung her around.
‘You’re walking, ciccia! You’re doing it! Brava!’
She giggled into my ear as I squeezed her. I saw the Major over her shoulder. He was laughing. I’d never seen his expression so relaxed.
That afternoon Elizabeth took the longest nap of her life. I returned to the kitchen to finish clearing up and found a large bowl of oranges and lemons upon the table.
‘There you are, Santina. I’ve been waiting.’
The Major’s buoyant mood caught me off guard. Adeline must be sleeping too.
‘I took a short stroll to the end of the garden this morning as the sun rose,’ he said. ‘I gathered another load of oranges and lemons. Glorious.’
‘Are you ready for tea, sir?’
‘Not just now. I thought as the women in my life are finally sleeping, and it’s a little cooler, we would prepare a British breakfast staple.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘This afternoon, your English lesson is marmalade.’
We never had lessons on a Sunday.
‘This is not to be rushed,’ he began. ‘You may relinquish your dinner duties; Adeline and I can fix something for ourselves tonight. Once we start we have to keep a close eye on the proceedings.’
I gave a feeble nod, imagining how good my bed would feel at this very moment.
‘Where is your notebook, Santina?’
I lifted it out of my pocket, where I kept it.
‘Excellent. Now, whilst the marmalade is cooking we will write up the method. No time will be left idle. There is much to do.’
I had made some jams in the past but this process was a different beast. He stood over me, marshalling the way I dropped the ten scrubbed oranges and four lemons into a large stock pot, covering them with water and describing in more detail than was necessary how we would let it reach a boil, and then simmer for the next three hours, clamping the lid down to stop valuable vapors escaping. ‘A perfect poach is required, not an exacerbated boil, you understand?’ Though his words were clipped and could be mistaken for a military pace, there was a boyish skit to his lilt when he and I worked in the kitchen. He was in his late thirties, but when he spoke of food or poetry the years fell away, lifting veils through