2006 - Wildcat Moon (13 page)

“Nearly a Christmas now, little Archie?”

“Only a few days away.”

“What you a want for Christmas?”

He wanted to say that he’d like a policeman to come and cart the porker away to gaol, but he didn’t.

“A book on Sherlock Holmes and a penknife with a tor-toiseshell handle.”

“You don’t want much. I ask that Kelly boy, the ugly one, and he tell me a list as long as a sausage.”

Archie giggled.

“Mrs Galvini, have you ever heard of a place in Italy called Santa Caterina?” he asked innocently.

Mrs Galvini wrinkled up her nose. “Santa Caterina? How you spell this place, Archie?”

He spelled it out from memory.

Mrs Galvini spun around. “Ah! Not like you say Santa Kate-rina. Iss Santa Caterina!”

There was a trace of tears in her eyes as she spoke. “Santa Caterina. Oh, so beautiful a little place, I been there many times. How you know this word, Archie?”

“I…I looked it up in the dictionary,” he lied and blushed. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he spoke, “Did you live there, Mrs Galvini?”

“No, me I come from Napoli.”

Archie tried to hide his disappointment. “Is Alfredo from Napoli too?”

“No, no, my Alfredo he is from island called Ischia but he has an aunt in Santa Caterina—she’s a, how do you say here, a nun, yes a nun. A holy sister. Now she very old but still got all her own teeth.”

Archie wondered if Alfredo’s aunt would be about the same age as Thomas Greswode would have been if he’d lived.

“I have snapshot of Sister Isabella. Let me find for you while you eating.
Una momenta
.”

Mrs Galvini opened the door of the oven and lifted out a large plate-sized pastry in the shape of a big yellow sun. Archie stared at it in fascination as Mrs Galvini began to slice it expertly.

“Here for you some Napoli pizza. Eat and make you strong.”

Mrs Galvini left the room and he heard her rummaging about in the parlour and muttering to herself.

Archie ate hungrily, wondering as he did if this Isabella person might have known Thomas Greswode when he was little, in the days before he came to Killivray House.

Mrs Galvini bustled back into the room blowing and beaming, put down an old chocolate box on the table, pulled up a chair and sat down heavily next to Archie.

“Let me find for you. Ah, here we are. See, this is Sister Isabella.”

Archie looked down at a faded brown and white photograph of a young girl smiling cheekily at the camera. She was wearing a long, white party dress and her hair was tied in untidy pigtails.

He looked up at Mrs Galvini with a confused expression on his face.

“This is Isabella when she a little girl. Alfredo’s mama say she very beautiful and always very full of the mischief. One day she wants to join the circus and then one minute she in love and then, boom! All of a sudden she goes off to be a nun. God is calling her, you see. And when the good God calls you must answer him.”

His mammy always said the same, that when God called you must answer him but Archie had made up his mind that he wasn’t going to. If he heard God calling him he was going to hide under the stairs and cover his ears.

“See here is another one, outside the convent where she been many, many years a nun.”

Archie looked down at a photograph of an elderly woman dressed in a nun’s habit standing outside an ancient building with barred windows like a prison.

“How did you meet Alfredo?” Archie asked, changing the subject.

“Me and Alfredo we meet on ferry boat and he making big eyes at me like this.”

She demonstrated a lovesick Alfredo and Archie laughed and blushed at the same time.

“What’s it like, this Santa Caterina?”

“Iss very beautiful.”

“Is it a big place?”

“No, is very small.”

“So would Alfredo know everyone who lived there?”

“
Si, si
. Alfredo go there for the holidays when he a little boyl Know nearly everybody there then but now it’s a long time since he been there. Sister Isabella, though, she got a mind like the elephanto, she know everything go on in Santa Caterina even though she shut up in the convent.”

Archie sighed, how he’d love to go and talk to this old woman. Try and find out a bit more about Thomas Gasparini Greswode.

“You enjoy my cooking, Archie?”

“Oh, yes, ifs lovely.”

He eyed the pizza hungrily and Mrs Galvini ruffled his hair affectionately then cut him another large slice and pushed it towards him.

“One day, I say to my Alfredo, one day we open a shop or maybe a
ristorante
like we had in Napoli and we sell lots of Napoli pizza but he says, Lena, it will never catch on, eh. So we still living here in these Skallies,” Mrs Galvini said sadly.

“Don’t you like the Skallies, Mrs Galvini?”

“Ah, si, for me this is home for now; one day when it’s safe maybe I go back to Napoli though. Maybe even go to Santa Caterina again for holiday,” she said in a dreamy voice.

“Isn’t it safe in Napoli?”

“Not for my Alfredo, some bad men there, very bad.”

She motioned someone slitting a throat and Archie watched her with wide eyes.

He wondered how Mr and Mrs Galvini had found their way from Napoli to the Skallies.

He was about to ask her when the front door opened and Alfredo Galvini came hurrying into the house bringing with him a flurry of snow.

“Ah, Lena, I am freezed to the bloody bones. Hey, Archie boy, it’s good to see you.”

“I just telling Archie that in Napoli we have a little
ristorante
but bad men make trouble and we have to go.”

Alfredo pulled off his overcoat and muffler then sat down at the table.

“Don’t be telling him all the bad things, Lena, he only a little boy.”

“Little boy maybe but very clever boy, he just asking me all about Santa Caterina. He seen it in a what you call it, dishionary.”

Alfredo Galvini scratched his head and looked long and hard at Archie.

“Not a dictionary exactly, Mr Galvini, an atlas, we have them in school.”

Alfredo leant across and stroked Archie’s cheek. “It’s a good place Santa Caterina, very warm in the summer; you can swim all day if you want So many fish too, you can pull out a fish fresh for your supper from the sea. You would like it there, Archie. Maybe one day you go and see for yourself, eh?”

“I’d like to but I don’t expect I ever will. I don’t suppose I’ll ever even leave the Skallies.”

“When I was little boy, I never think I leave Italia and come all way here,” he said, but there was a wistfulness in his voice that made Archie feel sorry for him.

The Galvinis hadn’t chosen to come to the Skallies, they’d come to escape from the bad men of Napoli. He wondered for the first time ever why his mother had left Ireland behind. His father was English so they must have met after she left and then come to the Skallies together. He knew from some old photographs he’d found in a tin under his mammy’s bed that the house where she had grown up had been big and she’d had her very own pony. And her sister, the one with the whisper of a name, once had a dog called Pickles, who chased chickens and buried his bones in the rose bed. Why would his mammy have left all that behind to come to the Skallies? Was she running away from bad men too? She didn’t need to, he thought sadly, she’d brought one along with her.

“Mr Galvini, do you think that everyone who lives in the Skallies is here because they’re running away from something?”

Mr Galvini sighed and helped himself to a slice of Mrs Galvini’s Napoli pizza. He chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds and then said, “Maybe, Archie, maybe we all running away from something. Some of us knows it and some of us don’t. Somehow we finds this little place up here on the rocks. And for a while we all safe, eh? Then one day maybe we go away as quickly as we come. No one knows what the future is holding for us.”

“Do you think that Benjamin Tregantle was running away from something?” Archie asked.

Mrs Galvini laughed, “No, he was very brave, very brave man. Nothing ever frighten him! If he catch the bad men from Naples he tell them take a jump. Then he go Poof, poof and knock them down flying.”

Archie smiled at the thought of Benjamin fighting off the bad men from Naples.

“Did Benjamin live all his life here in the Skallies?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Mr Galvini said. “I think he live with his papa and mamma in ‘Ogwash ‘Ouse but then he away a long time then come back here to place where he born when he much older.”

Archie was puzzled. Something was bothering him. Benjamin had left the letter for him in his jacket pocket so did that mean that he knew he was going to die? He couldn’t have, though, because everyone had said it was an accident, hadn’t they? Maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe Benjamin had been murdered? Maybe Benjamin and Thomas Greswode had both been murdered.

And if that was true then the Skallies wasn’t a safe place to be at all.

“Well, I best be going, Mrs Galvini, Mr Galvini. Thanks a bundle for the food.”

“You welcome here any time, Archie. You come Christmas morning, eh, and I have little surprise for you,” Mrs Galvini said.

He took his leave and closed the kitchen door, pausing outside the parlour for another glimpse at the gaudy treasures inside. He heard Mr Galvini say quietly, “He asking many questions, Lena, be careful what you tells him.”

“He’s just a curious that’s all.”

“It’s not for us to interfere, Lena. We don’t know why his family comes to the Skallies, eh? Mrs Grimble keep herself very private. Never saying anything ‘bout where she come from. Maybe she got something secret she don’t want no one to know, like the rest of us.”

Archie stepped out into the icy night and closed the door to Skibbereen quietly.

The parrot in the Grockles squawked, “Shoot the bloody bastards!”

He wondered if everyone in the Skallies had something to hide. Did Nan? And the quiet Misses Arbuthnot? Even his own mother!

Maybe the porker wasn’t his real father. Maybe his real father was a prince or a rich man. Just a nice one would be okay.

That would be a great secret.

Archie walked towards the hole in the rock and stood looking down on to Skilly Beach. In the window of the Boathouse a candle burned fitfully. He wondered what mad Gwennie was doing in there all alone? She wasn’t a safe person to be around, that was for sure.

He looked up at the enormous moon that sailed above and drew in his breath. It was the sort of moon old Benjamin used to call a Wildcat Moon.

He remembered Benjamin once saying, “Look up there, Archie, don’t see the moon like that often. Look close and you’ll see the imprint of a cat’s paw. That’s a Wildcat Moon tonight.”

And while Archie had strained his one good eye to look for the paw in the moon the wildcats in the yard of the Pilchard had started to wail.

“Listen to them, Archie, it’s like an invisible conductor in an orchestra has waved his baton. A Wildcat Moon always means change, Archie, whether we want it or not.”

Archie hurried along Bloater Row and let himself into Bag End just as the wildcats began to wail.

Clementine Fernaud hurried away down the drive of Killivray House, head bent against the icy wind, snowflakes settling on the brim of her felt hat and twinkling in the gloaming.

It was a long walk to the village but she had to get to a telephone box and put through an urgent call. She couldn’t have risked telephoning from the house; Nanny Bea wasn’t a problem, but Romilly had ears like a bat and always seemed to be watching her, scrutinizing her suspiciously as if wanting to find fault.

She couldn’t afford to let the child know who she was and give the game away, too much depended on keeping her identity a secret.

When she reached the village she looked around at the twenty or so houses that made up the main street of Rhoskilly. The curtains were all drawn against the cold night and the smell of wood smoke was strong in the air.

She found the telephone box and was dismayed to find it occupied by a large man with his back towards her. She stepped into the shadows and waited.

She heard scraps of the conversation from inside the box: “I tell you there could be money in it for you. I’ve been in there and there’s a fair few antiques. I’ve helped myself to a few already. All we need is transport…wait for the right moment…”

“Of course it’s safe. I’ve had about as much as I can take here. I’ve been enquiring about a school, an institution for the cripple…and then I’m out of here. Of course Marthall come, she’ll have no bloody choice…”

“You think on it I can’t take much more of this godforsaken hole. Easy pickings, man. I’ll ring you after Christmas.”

With mat the man slammed down the receiver.

Clementine moved further into the shadows and watched as a fat, unshaven man came out of the telephone box. He cleared his throat, spat into the snow, took a cigarette from behind his ear and struck a match.

For a second the man’s face was illuminated.

He had pockmarked skin and a large, bulbous nose. One of his front teeth was missing. He was an ugly-looking brute if ever she’d seen one.

Clementine drew in her breath as he passed close by her, the smell of tobacco and stale sweat strong in the clean night air. She waited until he reached the end of the road and then she saw another figure emerge from a house further down the road. He kept to the shadows as if he was following the first man and didn’t want to be seen. She slipped silently into the telephone box, took out a scrap of paper from her coat pocket and made a call.

It seemed like an age before the call was answered. When she at last heard the woman’s voice she spoke rapidly for several minutes, then bade her farewell.

When she had replaced the receiver she leant her head against the side of the box and breathed a sigh of relief. She was safe for now. Thank God! All she had to do was keep her composure when Jonathan Greswode arrived for Christmas and all should go well.

If she were discovered, though, God knows what would happen!

The sky was darkening and the snow falling faster. She hurried along, careful not to lose her footing on the slippery ground, pausing after a while to relieve the stitch in her side. She looked around her and realized with annoyance that she’d taken the wrong road.