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Thank you, Cousin Jemima.
by Ian Canadine
Dear Cousin Jemima,
Thank you so much for the kind birthday gift of Uncle Boris’s old Rugby shirt. It was particularly poignant that it clearly had not been laundered since he last wore it which must now be thirty or even forty years ago. Your suggestion that I might wear it when next I play was very touching. However, it is, unfortunately, many years since I was fit enough to play Rugby. Also, it may have slipped your mind that because I never had an eye for a ball, I avoided Rugby, and other ball games, and was in fact quite a successful “rower” – or oarsman as we were called in those days.
I was surprised and delighted to hear from you as we seem to have lost touch after that unfortunate gathering, many years ago now, when the reading of Uncle Cuthbert’s will caused such ill feeling in the family. It would be nice to stay in touch now that you have very magnanimously made the first move. Perhaps you will forgive me for reminding you that my birthday is January the twenty first rather than April the first.
Yours with much love and best wishes
Cousin Ian
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That’s My Story
by Kathy Joyce
Lucia slices rows into her second sheet of pasta dough and counts four across, four down as, from the bedroom above, another snore rumbles over the radio’s midday chimes. Scowling, she scoops a spoonful of spinach and ricotta into the middle of eight of the squares then drips chilli oil over them.
Mario had been helping the guys at church, sorting out the electrics, he’d said,. They’d worked late then talked into the night and, not wanting to disturb her, had slept in the hammock under the lemon trees. Slipping an arm around her waist and pecking her cheek with stale-breath, he’d added, “The moon was full and huge and clear, we could have swum in the Sea of Tranquillity if you had been with me.” Then he’d flopped on their bed and slept. Instantly.
She tops the ravioli and seals the edges. Who hasn’t been beguiled by a moon ripe in its lunar cycle, seen a face, a place, a trace of… the Sea of Tranquillity, the Sea of Cleverness? The Lake of Forgetfulness, the Ocean of Storms, the Bay of Honour? Except that she had packed the hammock away weeks ago.
She’s forking the edges of the pasta parcels when she hears the voice of their friend, Antonio Grimaldi, on the radio. He’s telling the interviewer about the statue groups in the Chiesa del Purgatorio that are being readied for the Passion of Christ procession next week. He describes the route the parade will take, leaving the church on Good Friday afternoon and returning for ten o’clock mass the following morning. At least, she thinks, there’ll be no wondering about her husband’s whereabouts that night. He – and Antonio - will be shouldering the Pontius Pilate Ecce Homo tableau. Behold the Man.
Lucia reads again the WhatsApp message from Antonio’s wife, Silvana, sent her early that morning whilst Mario was supposedly moon gazing. She taps out a reply. “Thank you for your message. Good to know the boys enjoyed their night of cards. I guess Mario won again – he is in excellent spirits today.”
She hears Mario use the bathroom and tucks her phone into the back pocket of her jeans as she sees him on the stairs, his face as crumpled as his yesterday’s boxers and undershirt. She greets him. “Buongiorno.”
He descends slowly, enters the kitchen, fills a glass with water.
She adjusts the gold loops in her ears and scrunches the titian curls he professes to love. “Did you get some sleep?”
“Mmmm.”
His eyes are red-rimmed.
“Better than in that hammock, huh?”
“Mmmm.”
She picks up her bag. “Right. I’m off to clean statues. Caio.”
He calls out as she is about the close the door. “Turn your phone on in case….”
****
The sun is almost down by the time the Groupo Mogli, as the wives call themselves, have gossiped their way around five of the eighteen tableaus, brushing and polishing, arranging plastic flowers, securing drapes around car batteries that will power lightbulb haloes. Lucia wipes dust from Jesus’s all-knowing, impossible-to-ignore, cobalt blue stare. “He started it,” she mutters. She runs her cloth over of The Virgin’s robe, as substantial today as when it was crafted some six hundred years ago, pondering how it was the craftsmen of the day made such lifelike figures that, over time, have merely darkened a few shades. Some people speak of miracles. Others of alchemy. Tourists speak of fibre glass replicas, but they are wrong. Giving a final flourish to Jesus’s lustred toenails Lucia descends the stepladder and folds her dusters. Mouthing the Divine Triune she crosses herself, then bids her friends ‘Arrivederci’.
****
As she sets a saucepan of water to boil and drizzles oil into a skillet, Lucia calls over the sounds of football emanating from the snug, “Come and set the table, huh?” She chops cucumber, tosses olives over salad leaves.
Mario ambles into the room. “What are we eating?”
Sage leaves spit as Lucia shakes the pan. “Ravioli. Salad. Focaccia. Ten minutes.” She slides a batch of ravioli into bubbling water, puts bread and dishes in the oven to warm, transfers crisped sage leaves onto kitchen paper. “Glass of wine?”
Mario hesitates. “Er…I’ll pour you one. Think I’ll just have beer.”
Lucia spoons cooked ravioli into a colander and slides the second batch into the water. “You could have let me know.”
“Know?”
“Where you were, last night. Antonio told Sylvana.”
“I rang. You didn’t answer.”
Lucia checks her phone and sees a missed call just after midnight, and a missed voicemail.. “Ah. Didn’t see that. What did it say.”
“That I was with the boys, having a few drinks. Would be late.”
“And you were. And then slept in the hammock rather than disturb me.”
Mario’s voice takes on a righteous note. “Kind of me, I thought.” He hands her a glass of wine. “Full moon, last night. Beautiful.”
“Would have looked even better if the hammock had been there. I took it in, a couple of weeks ago.”
“Ah. Ok”
Draining the second batch of ravioli she slides it into a dish then pours over the flavoured sage oil and scatters sage and some parmesan shavings over both. She bangs his dish on the table in front of him. “Liar.”
Mario stirs his food with his fork. “We were playing cards.”
“I know. Sylvana told me.”
“Sorry.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“You don’t like it when I play cards.”
“Did you win?”
“Well… No.”
“That’s why I don’t like it. But I like even less you lie about it.”
“Sorry. We, the boys… Y’know.” Mario forks two ravioli into his mouth, chews slowly.
“Yeah.” Lucia forks a ravioli too and chews, equally slowly.
Silence. Until Mario gasps, grabs his beer bottle and slurps. “In the name of…!”
Lucia’s eyes open wide. “What’s the matter?”
Air swooshes from Mario’s mouth, he takes another slurp of beer. “Wh… what’s in this?”
“It’s ravioli” She shrugs. “Spinach. Cheese. Garlic. The usual.”
“Bit heavy on the chili!”
Lucia forks another parcel and chews, thoughtfully. “Tastes ok to me.”
Mario is pulling apart one of the parcels, dissecting the filling. He looks at his wife’s plate, then back at his own, then lifts another piece towards his mouth, carefully. “Yours the same as…”
“Of course. I made them this morning, whilst you were sleeping off your… evening.”
He pauses. “I’ve heard people can become sensitive to chilli sometimes…”
“Yeah. Sign of a weak liver, I read it somewhere.” Lucia leans over the table, pats her husband’s hand. “Such a shame – you love chilli.” She sips her wine, slides another ravioli into her mouth, and sees again those cobalt blue eyes. “I’ll tell him, in good time” she tells her conscience, silently. “But for now, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it”.
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