The Secret Legacy: The perfect summer read for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Dinah Jeffries. Sara Alexander
ought to be. ‘Positano.’
‘I know a Napoletana when I see one!’
He scooted around the counter, leaving the blaze of short order cooks whipping up omelettes behind him.
‘You’re not long here, am I right, signorina?’
I had an inkling to suggest that I’d never met a Neapolitan man who ever thought he wasn’t right about anything, but thought better of it.
‘You working? Lavori?’
‘Yes,’ I began, realizing how much I’d cherished my anonymity until this interrogation, how the incessant Positanese prying was very much part of my past not present, ‘for two gentlemen. In Hampstead.’
His eyebrows raised and his head tilted.
‘Hey, Carla!’ he yelled over to the waitress zipping between tables with egg-smeared plates balanced just the right side of equilibrium. ‘This signorina is up with the Hampstead crowd! Not one gentleman! Two! Not bad for a fishing village girl, no?’
I was back on my narrow streets, gossip climbing cobbles. I took a breath to speak without knowing what I wanted to say. He quashed my indecision before I could. ‘Listen, if it doesn’t work out with the Lords up there, you call me, si? Wait – two men you say? Together in one house? Brothers?’
I shook my head. His eyebrows furrowed. I wasn’t convinced that he didn’t mutter something to the Virgin Mary and the saints.
‘I always have work for a paesan.’ I didn’t want to be a paesan. I wanted to be a Londoner. ‘This Soho,’ he continued, twiddling his fingers in the air like someone sprinkling Parmigiano, ‘this patch belongs to us Italiani. Out there we’re immigrants. But in Soho we help each other – capisce?’
I nodded, but I didn’t understand. Or didn’t want to.
I tried to let go of the vague sense that his approach was more of an offensive than a welcome. Wisdom, and scrawled number on limp paper imparted, he turned and walked across the café, waving sing-song arms at an English couple who were sat at another Formica booth, dipping their rectangular strips of toast into soft-boiled eggs. I took a final sip and left, all remnants of homesickness hanging in the sweaty tea-smudged air of that café.
My attic room is etched in my memory. It was clean and simple. My routine was described to me in great detail and it didn’t take me long to adjust to the gentlemen’s habits, which, it would seem, never altered independent of the day. To her credit, Signora Cavaldi’s terse grip had stood me in fine stead for London life.
I hadn’t meant to, nor planned to, but on my sixth visit to the police station the first cracks appeared. Small but prominent fissures. I was the tenth in line to have my Certificate of Registration stamped. I held it in my hand, trying to not let my nerves crease it too much. At the top was my number: 096818. And below the words: ALIENS ORDER 1956. Every other visit, I had felt like it would only be a matter of time until I would no longer be alien; I would belong, click into the puzzle, be that final missing piece. But that day, as the drizzle left a damp trail on my hair like half-dried tears, I felt the sting of being the outsider. It was the first time I’d noticed the sideways glances of the people going about their regular days. Or perhaps they had always looked at us like that. I was used to being alone, I told myself. Life here was a world better than the one I’d left behind. I almost convinced myself.
Autumn and winter trundled by, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr Benn and Mr George were not impressed by my work. There was nothing major I could pinpoint about the shift in our day to day lives. A wave of frustration drew in, a little snatched remark here, an almost imperceptible roll of the eye; the toast being over-done, under-done, too early, not early enough. The minutiae of small failures tripped into an impressive collection, the way insignificant disappointments ferment into resentment between lovers till they can no longer bear to be together but cannot define exactly what pressure has pushed them apart. All three of us knew that I would not be working there much longer.
One morning in early May, the bell rang of a Saturday afternoon, a surprising sun casting boastful rays across the black and white tiles of the wide hallway, as if it too had joined in to celebrate my imminent termination of employment. I knew it would be my final weekend here, and I would, against my better judgement, give the owner of New Piccadilly Café a call after all. I turned the latch and opened the door.
Upon the step stood a man and a woman. She had a mane of strawberry blonde locks cascading in defiant curls past her shoulders. They bounced over the deep purple of her full-length woollen cardigan. Her long red chiffon slip beneath danced on the spring breeze by her bare feet, slipped into simple roman sandals. His beard was a thing to behold, waves of thick blond tuft with streaks of red. A wide-brimmed leather hat perched on his head at an angle. His heavy leather boots stamped a few times upon the mat, scraping off imaginary snow or the memory of yet another wet day. At once they reminded me of the painting in the window. Only this splash of color and verve came with its very own halo surround, courtesy of the bitter white sun.
I noticed I was staring just before they did, and stepped aside to let them in. The woman flashed me a wide smile, flicked the hair off her face and removed her shoes, before floating into the front room where Mr Benn had insisted I light a fire. She wrapped her arms around him, and I pretended not to notice when she kissed him on the lips and sat on his knee. So did the gentleman who accompanied her. He, rather, shook Mr George’s hand, who then nodded for me to open the wine.
I filled four glasses with prosecco and handed them out. Mr Benn and Mr George carried on talking. The man and the woman thanked me. I returned to the tray and lifted the small bowl of nuts Mr Benn had asked me to prepare. As I placed them upon the low table before the fire the woman reached out her hand. ‘Santina, aren’t you?’
I nodded, wanting to avoid conversation.
‘Henry,’ she began, turning to the man who had accompanied her, ‘this is Santina, darling. Oh she’s a pip. You’re like a Mediterranean stroll in the sun – you know you’ve found a beauty, don’t you, boys?’
Mr Benn and Mr George smiled, one lip each.
‘Santina, it’s a pleasure,’ she continued, whilst I squirmed. ‘We’ve heard a great deal about you. How exquisite to have a slice of Positano right here in North West London. Henry, darling, it fills me with a great deal of hope. It’s like a ray of sun through the fog.’
‘That’ll be the morning sun actually doing what it’s compelled to do,’ he answered, ‘quite naturally.’
The woman rolled her eyes and jumped up from Mr Benn’s lap.
‘Quite right – I’m not thinking straight at all – thank God for that! Who’d live a life through logic’s narrow lens, for crying out loud?’
‘I’ll drink to that!’ cried Mr George, and the four of them stood and clinked.
‘Go easy with the wine, Adeline,’ replied Henry, who I assumed was her husband. Though in this house, when guests appeared, it wasn’t always clear who belonged to whom. The boundaries I had become accustomed to back home were the suffused haze after a spring shower.
The woman’s hand slipped down to her abdomen. ‘Good heavens, I almost forgot! Yes, we’ve got some marvellous news, haven’t we?’
‘Indeed,’ Henry replied, catching my eye as he did so.
‘I shall be creating more than paintings this year, gentlemen!’ she cried, flinging her arms up at such a speed that she almost lost half the contents of her glass onto the Persian rug under-foot. ‘I am now producing humans also!’
It was hard to follow the conversation with accuracy, especially since I hadn’t been allowed into or out of it. I could understand that the willowy figure before me was pregnant. As she stood up it became so obvious that I wondered how I hadn’t noticed before.
‘Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Crabtree!’ cried Mr George.
‘That’ll