Young Traveller

Exert from my in progress travel book. This part of the story takes place in Tuscany, Italy in 2009.

 

We arrived by train. Legally or not you could smoke in between the carriages which was a wonderful novelty and we merrily puffed away while chatting to a Nigerian who was doing likewise. The station looked like a stage set. Red poppies littered the grass around the train tracks and buckets holding an array of cheerfully coloured flowers line the platform. Having been used to the Irish and British train platforms which consist of a few gnarled plastic benches and a garish advert boasting Turkish holiday package deals this seemed beyond quaint. We disembark, check the time on the large old fashioned clock face and decide to grab a quick coffee. Cassandra arrives. She’s tiny like a bird with slightly yellow tinted eyes. She’s driving an impossibly small Fiat that we stuff all 6ft of ourselves along with enormous luggage into. I do a double take when I realize the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. It’s such a random detail. But it sticks with me as when I first grasp I'm in a foreign country. We whisk down the busy intersections, briskly passing clusters of charming Tuscan apartments with radiantly coloured shutters thrown open to the world. Patrick charmingly chats away so I have a chance to wonder at the scenery. It can be quite useful to have a charismatic Irish man to hide your social awkwardness behind.

We arrive at the Podere Sasso. It’s lovely, completely picturesque except for the Cypress trees which have broken branches which droop this way and that. The Cypress tree, or what I like to call the Italian tree is the long, skinny, dark green one, without which no Tuscan countryside picture is complete. Cassandra tells me later that it was unseasonal and heavy snow that had caused the droop. The buildings wrap around a large stone courtyard and there are so many nooks and crannies to the place I long to play hide and seek there. She make us minestrone soup for dinner, dropping in extra olive oil at the end and advising that this is the Italian way. We learn she is Scottish, although her accent is old money England. She grew up in Scotland during the war. We’re not exactly sure which war, first or second, but it’s not hard to imagine her as a small child, bomber planes flying overhead as she picked blackberries for jam. She keeps talking about how she’s put ‘the priest’ in our bed to warm it. Patrick and I exchange shocked stares. The only talk of priests and beds in Ireland is in crude jokes about clergy sex scandals. 

She was living in the area with her late Italian husband when they happened upon Podere Sasso. The current residence is built from the ruins of an 11^th century monastery. Her life’s work has been this piece of land. There’s a cat named Piccolo who’s apparently 27 years old and an extremely vain peacock who keeps bumping into the glass front door in an attempt to catch a look at himself. A Moldavian Alek and his son live in the rooms in the back of the monastery. They speak no English and converse with Cassandra in flowing Italian. She talks of her son Nathanial who comes up from Naples to visit on weekends. Patrick scoffs at the name and mocks it for the rest of our stay. He never trusts a man with a too English name.

Cassandra shows us our room, which sits down a long corridor and we finally learn who the priest is. He’s a cross shaped wooden frame laced with heating pads.  Unlike an electric blanket the priest lifts up the covers and warms the bed like an oven so the heat is circulated, not just underneath you. Ingenious. The room could not be more delightful. There’s a wrought iron bed, wooden floor boards and a huge window facing the courtyard. The shutters on the windows are sea blue. Her husband reclaimed them off an old building before demolition. Pairs of them line each window of the courtyard and I can see him bringing them home and lovingly painting the shutters sea blue.

The next day we’re up early to help with work needing doing around the place. That was what we agreed to, room and board in exchange for five hours every morning. We clear the garage out first, there’s endless treasure to be perused at for a pack rat like me. Old nails are sorted into neat piles, tools organized by function, vintage glass wine vats large enough to carry fifteen litres are carted out and formed into neat rows. Later I plant seedlings as Patrick mows the lawn.

That afternoon we wander the dusty road and take the left fork as instructed at the bottom of the hill. This is the way into town. We pass Nathanial’s old VW campervan parked in the woods. He brought it over from California but had evidently given up on his LA dreams and now drove an Alfa Romeo. At the top of this road you reach the cemetery and that’s when you know you’re in Rapolano di Terme. Italian cemeteries are adoringly cared for and new flowers daily lined the tombstones like blotches of paint on the creamy, grey marble.

A quick visit to the tabaccheria to buy some cigarettes, the difference in price has us gleefully smoking with abandon as they are a full four euro cheaper than in Ireland. The café across the road is filled with gentlemen of a certain age drinking espresso and gossiping. We are foreigners in this small town which doesn’t see tourists often. Patrick sticks out blatantly, he may as well be holding a sign that reads ‘I’m not from around here.’ The locals jostle to get a good glance. The bravest of the men approaches, he’s talking rapid Italian at us. Here’s an interesting thing " when English speakers converse with those of another tongue we slow the words down, pronouncing each with a clear ringing clarity. Italians do the exact same thing. Getting nowhere he produces a passport, he points to his name next to a serious looking photo of himself taken around 40 years ago. ‘Patrizio!’ he exclaims. Joyful abandon " something to talk about. Patrick gleefully points to himself and says ‘Patrick!’ Instant friends, we greet him from now on with a Sunny ‘Buongiorno’ and he touches his cap at us in the exact same way an old gentleman in Ireland would do.

The days pass in much the same way. The sun shines relentlessly and we wake as early as possible to get our work done before the heat of the day really begins. It seems almost archaic looking back on it now but we have no internet. Occasionally we check our Facebook and email on Cassandra’s computer in her sunlit office. Our mobile phones are used for the sole purpose of sending texts home. We have cold cornflakes for breakfast at the large marble table outside before we start work.

Patrick busies himself with gardening, I’m assisting. We’re tackling the enormous stinging nettles in the part of the property where garden merges with wild. We each have on two pairs of gloves and are shrieking with pain each time our hands come in contact with a painful prickle. Cassandra is gathering the nettles in a basket and prophesising over the immeasurable health benefits of nettle tea. Alek bustles over, he’s short and burly. He cries out in Russian as his large, bear like hands clasp around a giant cluster of stinging nettles. He gives us a frightening look as he passes Cassandra a hefty handful. 

Reviews

[themysticalone]

Wow..you are good at describing things.. the way you've written its very easy to imagine the scene unfolding! looking forward to reading more of your writings :)

[peanutbutterandjam]

Thank you! So lovely to get some feedback in these very tentative early days of the book.