The Painted Altar

Chapter Ten

I was aware that he seemed to be waiting for me to say something in return. That the moment, the precise conjunction of the place and time in which we found ourselves, demanded as such.

I glanced down at the chastened-looking canine now sitting obediently at his feet. "Dante," I heard myself remarking. "Interesting name for a dog." It was the first thing which came into my head.

The facial landscape shifted a little - cheeks stretching, a series of ridges forming at the corner of each eye. "What name could be more appropriate? Dante knew a lot about little devils, after all." There was an affectionate pat on the dog's head. "Still young, still learning what's right and what's wrong. But we'll get there boy, won't we eh?"

Those ridges at the corners of his eyes now straightened again, the jagged lines where the valleys had been pale against his healthy tan. Proof, it seemed, that smiling was something which came to him naturally and easily. Something he did often, the sun blocked out between the pinched folds of flesh.

He wasn't smiling right at that very moment however - had turned his gaze, was contemplating the sea with the same consumed intensity I'd  noted the previous evening. "It has arrived," he announced, his voice hushed as if in awe. "That brief moment that comes at a certain point of every dawn. The angle of the sun, it is just so that the sea seems to be silver. A vast pool of liquid silver."

He was right, I saw, also turning my gaze. Quicksilver. The sea had become a gently rippling vat of quicksilver. So subtle and so simple, something the jogger at that moment passing by seemed not to have noticed, yet which so described was one of the most breathtaking sights I had ever beheld.

"The sea has many faces," the man mused beside me. "It can laugh and play. It can - how do you say? It can snarl. Snarl like an angry dog, yes. It can bite. Turn you upside down, steal from you. But when it is like this it is as splendid as a..." His eyes turned momentarily skywards as he sought an appropriate simile. "As a sleeping child."

He turned then, Dante tugging him along back the way they'd come. The way I was going. Back towards the harbour, the centre of town.

"What's your name?" he called over his shoulder.

"Mary," I called back.

"And I'm Lucio." He paused his step, twisted neck back to me. "Come Mary, I buy you breakfast. Apologise for Dante scaring you so. I take you to the place that serves the best croissants in all of Punto San Giacomo. The best cappuccino too." That ready smile flashed once more across his face. "I almost forgot - no milk, right? Yours will have to be a double espresso then."

Dante then jerked him back into motion. And I had no choice, it seemed, other than to follow.

*

As we headed from the beach, I was to learn several interesting things about him. He was a recently retired librarian, for example. His English was self taught from books, honed via regular visits across the Atlantic to visit his sister and her family in Florida. As for dogs, these had always been an important part of his life. Before Dante there had been a Golden Retriever called Boccaccio; before that a German Shepherd named Virgil. The man clearly had a penchant for classical poetry.

The cafė he led me to was on one of the long streets which ran parallel to the sea, not far from my hotel. Directly across the road was the pretty baroque facade of a church, the crumbled brickwork of a bell tower rising in stark silhouette against the unbroken azure of the sky. In between swooshed and beeped the early morning traffic; passers-by strode languidly across our line of vision, their mutual calls of salutation almost boomed like thunderclaps across the street.

Such energy - such indomitable joie de vivre - was frankly beyond my comprehension. Perhaps it had something to do with the head-spinning strength of the coffee the people there drank, the sugary indulgence of their pastries. For them, breakfast was much more than a quickly slurped bowl of cereal, a grabbed half-eaten slice of toast. It was a ritual, as much so as evening mass. Fuel for both body and soul.

As Lucio sipped on his cappuccino, Dante curled up at his feet, I couldn't help but notice the wedding band on his finger. I wondered as to the nature of the relationship he had with his wife, that he should think nothing of inviting a woman he barely even knew to have breakfast with him.

"Why are you here Mary?" he suddenly asked, dabbing paper napkin to the corners of his lips. "Sure, Punto San Giacomo has it charms, but there are many places near here that have more charms. Where the sea is even clearer and the sand much finer, and where foreigners come to pass their holidays. In Punto San Giacomo, to hear a foreign voice is rare."

Yes, I assured him, I'd sort of had that impression. I then proceeded to recount to him the same tale I'd told George Shreeves, John Simmonds and Peter Harvey. That I was a freelance journalist researching a story. By that point, it had become almost a force of habit. So far from Ravensby, from anybody even vaguely connected to Irene, such subterfuge wasn't entirely necessary of course. But that was who I was. That was my nature. I was the sort of person to hide even when there was no need to. I suppose I just found things easier that way somehow.

Did he know Salvatore D'Ambra, I asked?

The question provoked a smile, one I perceived as slightly rueful of nature. "Sure I know Salvatore D'Ambra." A flicked hand indicated the general scene around us. "Look around Mary. This town suffocates. It's like a hand around a person's throat. Everyone knows everyone."

My plan had been to wait until later in the day, ask around some of the bars - the old men I'd seen the previous evening slapping down playing cards at the outside tables, noisily discussing politics and football, whatever the hell it was elderly Italian men talked about. But even if I were to find my uncle, what then? With which common language would we be able to communicate? I wondered if Lucio had any plans for that morning, whether he might not mind accompanying me, acting as interpreter.

Before I had chance to ask, I noticed him frowning at me however. "But  I'm surprised you haven't heard. It was in the local newspaper yesterday." The gaze which held my own was sombre, regretful. "The DNA test, there was no match. Those bones they found in England, they're not Vincenzo D'Ambra's."

~~~~~