Page 12 of Change of Heart
At lunchtime she walked back down into the town to do some shopping before the general store closed for lunch. There were three or four other people in there and for a moment she even found herself checking the faces of the men in case any of them were the mysterious stranger from the previous night, but such was not the case. Giving herself a silent telling off for being so silly, she walked around the cramped confines of the little supermarket collecting food and other items she needed for her new home.
Just as she was coming out again, a battered red pickup drove past and her heart skipped a beat. She saw two figures in it, one human and one canine. Both were instantly recognisable and she had to make a concerted effort not to stop and stare moronically at them or, even worse, start waving like a mad thing. It was all over in a matter of seconds and the vehicle drove away without either of its occupants having noticed her, or, if they did, they showed no sign of it.
She wandered across the piazza towards the church and perched on a bench for a minute or two to collect herself. What on earth was going on? On the one hand she was bemused that this man and his admittedly adorable dog could reduce her to the state of a giddy teenager, but her more pragmatic self did her best to point out the upside to this. Could it really be that she was finally beginning to emerge from the protective cocoon she had spun around herself since the accident? Wendy, the counsellor she had been seeing on and off for the last four years, would no doubt approve. Maybe she should send Wendy a text.
Pulling herself together, she made a visit to the bakers where she bought a big loaf of bread and a little strawberry tart as a first-day treat, and then she went back to her new apartment and made herself lunch. As she was eating a ham and cheese sandwich, her phone rang; it was her mum, checking to see how her first morning had gone.
Alice passed on the good news that everything had gone better than she had hoped, and that she had got the impression that all of them, including the baron himself, were prepared to go through with the project of opening up to the public, however unwillingly. She then went on to talk about her plan to start making the vast expanse of land generate some income, and her mum handed the phone to her dad, who immediately offered help.
‘Hello, sweetheart, I’ve been thinking about what you said about the land up there and I’ve got a few ideas for you. First, what about timber?’
‘Already thought of that, Dad. Any other ideas? How about sheep?’
‘Not sheep, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.’ He gave a snort. ‘They are immensely stupid animals and in my experience they spend all of their lives trying to find ways of killing themselves, whether it’s by getting stuck in hedges, falling over on their backs and being unable to get up again, or catching one of the many diseases that affect sheep. No, I think what you should think about is alpacas.’
‘Alpacas?’ Alice certainly hadn’t thought of this.
‘Definitely. They’re no trouble to look after. They’re hardy hill animals and apparently you can make good money by selling their fleeces, and their meat as well I believe. Build up a herd of a few hundred – you’ve got bags of land there – and you start making a profit. I’m seriously thinking about replacing these damn ostriches with alpacas. That’s the other good thing about alpacas compared to ostriches: they’re very placid animals and they don’t try to kick or peck you to death when they’re feeling moody.’
This sounded like an excellent idea, and Alice addedalpacasbeneathcattleandhorsesto the list she had started to compile. On her father’s advice she scrubbed outsheepand, on reflection, she also drew a line throughpigs. Although potentially profitable, they could easily create a blot on the landscape and for an estate trying to lure in tourists, it was probably better to stick with photogenic animals.
She went back up to the castle at two o’clock and spent the afternoon ferreting around all the rooms, checking under dust sheets and moving piles of rubbish, to see if she could find anything of reasonable value for resale. Her hunt produced mixed results. As expected, she ran into a scary selection of eight-legged arthropods, several of which looked positively lethal, but she persevered all the same. Apart from the spiders, there were some very nice pieces of furniture, particularly a large, sculpted dresser which would no doubt fetch a decent price at auction, but nothing she saw looked likely to raise anything like the substantial amounts that were going to be needed for the conversion of the castle. The problem was that these very items were the kind of thing that it would be good to have on display when the castle opened its doors to the public. They could hardly expect people to walk through empty room after empty room.
Knowing she was going to need an office, she decided that the ground floor of the main tower and the gatehouse could be reserved for the administration, including an office for herself. After poking about in the shadows with the aid of the torch on her phone (there was no electricity in this part of the castle) she identified a suitable room for her office, from where she would be able to keep an eye on what would become the reception area. First, it would need to be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected and some effective mouse and rat traps installed. From the size of the droppings all over the floor, there appeared to be a thriving colony of them in here, and she had no intention of sharing her office with the local rodent population, not to mention all manner of scary spiders.
In the course of her tour, she went into the kitchen and sat down for a chat with Ines and her daughter and gratefully accepted the offer of a cup of coffee and a home-made biscuit. Silvia didn’t say much but Alice was struck yet again by how outstandingly beautiful she was. She could have been on the front cover of a fashion magazine, so why on earth was she working as a kitchen maid?
Ines volunteered the information that she was sixty-two and had worked for the family since the age of sixteen. Her husband had also worked here in the castle but had sadly died of lung cancer when he was still only in his fifties. With a bit of coaxing from Alice she came up with a bit more background on the history of the place and, in particular, the underlying feud with the Montorso family. According to her father, who had also spent his whole life working at the castle, the origin of the bitter dispute went back to medieval times when the two families had ended up on opposite sides in the vicious internecine wars between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. According to her father, relations between the families had gradually improved over the centuries until the early twentieth century but had taken another hit with the advent of fascism in Italy.
Here again they had ended up on different sides. The Montorso family had proved to be staunch supporters of Mussolini and his Blackshirts while the Varaldo family had opposed what was happening and had suffered persecution as a result. Simonetta’s grandfather had even been imprisoned for some months shortly before the Italian capitulation in 1943, managing to get out of jail during the brief hiatus before the German occupying forces took over. Alice resolved to try to sit down with the baroness sometime in the hope of hearing more about what had happened during the war. This story showed that the strained relations between the two families were more recent and so more relatable.
Ines told her that there were only two full-time members of staff here at the castle apart from herself and Silvia, and apparently they didn’t do much apart from general maintenance and a certain amount of work in the grounds, looking after a handful of chickens and a small vegetable garden. From the look of disapproval on her face, which was shared by her daughter, it was clear that the kitchen staff didn’t have a very high opinion of the work ethic of the ground staff, Alfonso and Pietro.
It was beginning to get late by this time, but Alice resolved to go and seek out these two gentlemen the following morning to ascertain just exactly what their duties entailed. She had no reason to doubt Ines’s version, but out of fairness she needed to see for herself.
Chapter 9
The next day proved to be unexpectedly interesting. After checking with Simonetta to ask where she might find Pietro and Alfonso, Alice spent half an hour tramping through the surrounding fields and woods until she finally came across the two men. It had rained in the night but she had come well equipped and her boots kept her dry as she picked her way through the mud and the long grass. She brought her stick with her just in case but she managed to negotiate the terrain without needing it. Finally she came out onto a rough track and happened upon a sweet little stone cottage that could have come straight out of Hansel and Gretel. It was at the edge of a forest made up of mature conifers and deciduous trees which, to her eyes, were just crying out to be harvested, and there were wisps of smoke coming out of the chimney. Parked outside the cottage was a vintage tractor which probably belonged in a museum. It was so old, it looked as though the tyres were solid rubber. She shuddered to think how bone rattlingly uncomfortable it would be to ride on something like this along the rutted, potholed track.
She walked up to the door, propped her stick out of the way off to one side and knocked twice. There was the sound of a chair being pushed back, followed by footsteps coming to the door, which opened with a creak. Alice hadn’t been told anything about either Alfonso or Pietro and she had somehow been expecting a couple of old men of a similar vintage to the tractor parked outside. In consequence, she was surprised to find herself confronted by a man with an unruly mass of ginger hair who looked younger than she was. He was also over a foot taller and a foot wider than she was and he actually had to tilt his head to one side to avoid hitting the door frame. Feeling somewhat intimidated, Alice nevertheless managed to summon a bright smile and held out her hand, but not without a certain amount of trepidation.
‘Good morning, my name’s Alice and I’m the new castle manager.’
She distinctly saw his jaw drop and she felt his eyes staring down at her in disbelief. A voice from behind him made him half turn but he appeared incapable of speech.
‘Who is it, Pietro?’
Seeing that the giant was still looking stunned, Alice raised her voice and repeated what she had just said and she heard hurried footsteps approaching from within. A man of about fifty appeared behind Pietro and elbowed him out of the way so that he could shake Alice’s hand.
‘Signora, good morning, I’m very pleased to meet you. We both are, aren’t we, Pietro?’
He jabbed his elbow into the big man’s side again and this finally did the trick. Pietro extended a massive paw and shook Alice’s hand remarkably gently, murmuring, ‘Buongiorno, signora.’
‘Come in, signora. Can we offer you a cup of coffee? We’re just on our morning break.’
Alice walked inside and looked around. The interior of the cottage was, if anything, even sweeter than the outside and she felt sure that there would be a place for this magical little construction when children started visiting the property. There was an appetising smell of coffee in the room and this had presumably been made on the old-fashioned stove sitting alongside an antique workbench, behind which was a rack of even older-looking tools. Some of these were so antiquated she had no idea what purpose they might have served. She glanced across towards the older man and nodded.
‘I’d love a cup of coffee, thank you. I assume you’re Alfonso, is that right?’
