All stories

She held up a silver belt with a diamante buckle.

“It needs another hole in it.”

The old Italian shoemaker continued to hammer.

“Si”, he said. “Piu grande – o piu piccolo?”

“Sorry?”

“More beeg?” He looked up, widening his bright eyes, stretching his index finger away from his thumb.

“Or – leetle”. He squinted through crinkled eyelids, drawing finger and thumb into a pinch.

She glanced down to where her dress stretched tight across an obvious bulge.

“Oh, more big, I’m afraid. It’s this cruise, you see. The big ships, the grande - ” She gestured towards the port beyond the tangle of medieval alleys.

“Grande crociera. I understand,” he said.

“I was seasick to start with. Now I can’t seem to stop eating. Perhaps it’s the heat.”

He looked at her kindly.

“Perhaps.”

“We’re on shore today, in a coach, seeing the campaniles?“

“Ah, il Campanile dell’Annunciata. The Virgin’s baby tower.”

“Yeah, that. Then I saw your sign, from the square.”

She pointed to the large wooden clog hanging over the door.

He took the belt, folded it in half, then held it across her rounded belly. Then he took a tiny pencil from behind his ear and made a dot.

“But you’re too young for the crociera, no?” he said.

“Perhaps,” she replied. “I wasn’t expecting to be here on my own either; but that’s how it’s turned out.”.

A shaft of sun illuminated them together, in a tableau.

“I hadn’t known the man for very long. He’d appeared at my work one day – a salesman, just some blow-in really. Handsome, charming. Italian, like you.”

The old man breathed a wistful sigh, his head tilted as if weighing the matter.

“I booked the holiday as a surprise. You know. Italy, romance, maybe more - who knows? Stupid really. There aren’t any miracles left at my age, are there? I should’ve known.”

The cobbler knocked the tip of a sharp awl into the leather, then held the belt up to the light before giving it to her.

“What do I owe you?”

“Niente. Is a gift.”

“But I must give you something!”

“Pay me one day, in the future.”

“How can I?” she replied.

“Toccare ferro”, he said. With one weathered hand he held hers against the heavy iron last, as he pointed with the other towards the sky. “You’re not grassa, donna benedetta. You are incinta! When the baby comes, name him for me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t be. I’m too old - ”

“Si,si.” He shrugged. “You are – God’s favourite.”

“I can’t possibly be”, she replied. “I’m - on a cruise.”

She looked down again, at a body that now seemed different: transfigured.

“Though maybe”, she whispered. “Maybe. Maybe.”

The blast of a horn, far away in the town square, was sudden and urgent.

“That’s the coach”, she said. “I must go. Thank you. For the belt.”

She paused.

“Is that your name, on the sign above the door?”

“Si”, he said. “Gabriele D’Angelo”.

Isabella’s time at art school had been a disappointment. Only one project, in her final year, had really fired her imagination and even then she had lacked the skills to really follow it through. The Marche region of Italy had once been one of the world centers of shoe making, full of tiny factories. Isabella had originally thought of creating some beautiful shoes using traditional methods, but the idea had not really been encouraged except by her mother, who was part Italian

On graduation day, at the Festival Hall, she felt deflated. Several of her friends wore their own creations. Some had jobs or internships that sounded either glamourous, lucrative or both.

The one thing she was looking forward to was a trip to Italy with her Mum, Gabriella.

They flew to Pisa and then spent a couple of nights in San Gimignano with its mixture of campaniles and towers designed to show off someone’s wealth.

That night, as the bells kept her from sleeping, Isabella browsed maps on her phone. The plan was to go next to Florence and then to Venice. Isabella noticed the name Marche over on the Adriatic coast.

At breakfast Isabella raised the idea with her mother. After Venice, what about the valley of the shoes? Gabriella got out her phone and after a few minutes explained she had been checking and her grandfather’s family had come from Fermo just down the coast.

After Venice and Florence, the small town that they had been directed to inevitably looked run-down. Most of the tiny businesses that had once supplied shoes to the major fashion brands had closed long ago.

Despite Gabriella’s Italian, the few places that were open seemed to treat them like blow-ins, poverty tourists even. On the point of leaving, they looked through an open door and saw a man painstakingly stitching a beautiful pair of brogues in shades of dark brown. The smell of new leather was too tempting, as was some respite from the sun, and they slipped inside.

The old man welcomed them and beckoned for them to sit as he poured coffee. Isabella was suddenly glad that Gabriella had insisted that she speak some Italian as she grew up.

The old man, whose name was Enzo, talked passionately about what he was doing but also of the sadness he felt that the place he lived in was dying. He barely made a living he said and recently his apprentice had left to make more money in a factory in Bari.

In a moment of clarity, it was obvious what Isabella had to do. It was completely mad, but something compelled her to ask if she could be his apprentice. She wouldn’t ask for a huge wage, she could work in a bar as well if need be.

For a moment the old man just looked wistful, completely lost in thought. When he spoke, it was to talk about his daughter, living in Melbourne. He had hoped she might take an interest. But that was so long ago. There were grandchildren that he hadn’t even seen. But then his eyes returned to them. A trial period, starting in a month perhaps? Time for Isabella to make arrangements. Gabriella’s smile spoke volumes.

“Being wistful seems like an inadequate response when the world is (in some places quite literally) on fire.” The autodidact frowned and took another sip of artisanal Kombucha.

His students were rapt. This was the real deal, the hardcore philosophy they had signed up for. Giuseppe Campanile carried all before him on the elegant bow wave of his fearsome reputation. His father may have been merely an old Italian shoe maker named after the most prominent feature of his small Umbrian town’s forgettable architecture, but due to his assiduous application to the tenets of Youtube, Joe C had created a singular niche. That hallowed niche was a beacon to the minds of the vacuous, gullible and impressionable, and the wonder of the internet had revealed just how many of those minds were available for exploitation.

For a simple, if eye-watering, monthly fee, his followers could wallow in the glow of their individual device’s screens, and absorb his bon mots blissfully, safe in the knowledge that they were ahead of the curve. The mainstream media had failed them and their discovery of a tailor-made cargo cult which responded in real time to their every dim-bulb impulse was a revelation.

What wasn’t immediately apparent was that Giuseppe was an AI bot programmed in a dank basement in St. Petersburg with the express purpose of capturing the attention of those for whom paying attention was generally a problem. If enough of the enfeebled minds of the decadent West could be harnessed, there would be no need for more expensive and noisy weapons. Such is the landscape of the imagination for the dreamers beneath the onion domes. The fact that some of those domes graced the Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood was almost too poetic, even for Pushkin’s countrymen.

Giuseppe continued: ‘Yes, wistfulness is a valuable and even likeable facet of the human emotional condition, but what is really required is surrender. If your world is falling apart – embrace it! Only the fool resists the tide of human history and stands in the way of the great men who inevitably shape our destiny.’ He took another sip of the kombucha as a banner drifted across the bottom of his acolytes’ screens informing them of their unique opportunity to purchase their own supply of this nectar, this elixir. Of course it would be a good idea to buy a reasonable quantity of this treat before bowing to the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Giuseppe’s world view, if only to keep the capitalist wheels turning. Even if, as we have seen, this particular brand of capitalism was nurtured by the gentle and loving embrace of the Politburo.

He finally got to the point; “Are you going to wait for the next blow-in to steal your job, your house, your very existence? The truly brave heart knows that in order to impose his will (women didn’t get much of a look-in in Joe’s world – lucky women) he must be prepared to take the final step of self-determination – self-annihilation.” At that Joe looked straight into the camera, you could almost say wistfully, and finished “After all you wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you?”

The bells in the church tower of Santa Agata di Madria didn’t ring so often these days. On this morning though they sounded long and hard for the soul of the beloved village shoemaker Guiseppe who had died peacefully in his workshop at the age of 93.

A tall, aged figure limped towards the café D’Agosto on the square, he was carrying an antiquated brown leather bag. The figure was recognisable to all as Guiseppe’s friend, “The English Mister”.

By the time he sat down, his usual cocktail, Torabhaig Islay Single Malt, orange bitters and Vermouth had been presented by Onofrio the barman. The Mister still referred to Onofrio as “boy”, despite the fact that he was now in his late sixties and calculating retirement.

The Mister had a brusque manner and only spoke English, but his generosity (often with Guiseppe’s money), love of gambling and the bond he had formed with Guiseppe meant he was tolerated by the village elders. This dwindling band of denizens waited patiently for him to make good on his promises to pay for the repair of the campanile and establish a vineyard as soon as his money arrived.

Onofrio raised a toast with him “To Guiseppe, a last Salute”.

“There was no fucking finer man in all of fucking Italy!” Said the Mister. He downed his cocktail in one go and demanded another. Onofrio had worried who would pay for the Mister’s drinks now that Guiseppe was gone but, to his surprise the nonagenarian Anglophone took a roll of banknotes from his pocket and offered to buy everyone in the café a “tipple”. (“Everyone” being Onofrio, a lizard and a thin looking cat.)

The villagers that passed nodded respectfully but didn’t disturb, a couple of old timers got wind that the Mister was buying drinks and made their way to the café, but largely the square was as sleepy as always after the bells stopped pealing.

The Mister stared wistfully for several hours, sipping from his glass which was steadily refilled.

Onofrio knew he had shared the great platonic love of brothers with Guiseppe and dared not disturb his reverie as the old man sat like a granite rock staring out on to the flat sea of the village square.

If he had been able to see inside the Mister’s head however, he would have realised that his thoughts were not very wistful.

“Why had the old fool told them where he was?”

“Why had nobody told him who the Urbino boys were? Or of the links they had in Sicily?”

“Why had he not gone red instead of black?”

“Were Guiseppe’s life savings enough to get him to Dubai?”

And most importantly, “Had he covered his tracks properly this time?”

At 4.30 he climbed unsteadily to his feet and crossed the square.

The beautiful Brogues Giuseppe had made him as a gift were hurting his feet, his baggage was heavy and his suit had seen better days but he would have to do.

With a sigh, the man once known as “Lucky” Lucan climbed aboard the bus to Pisa leaving Santa Agata forever.

Rhonda watched the fluffy seed parachute twirl its way through her window in the breeze. It reminded her of a small child in a tutu and took her back to warm memories of dance classes in the Memo on Tuesday afternoons. She had been a slight and graceful confection then, a small strawberry blond twinkle. Her mam was always lucky on the bingo and had saved enough winnings for Rhonda to have a precious little pair of ballet flats from old Guiseppe Morgan’s shoe shop in the high street.

Age 6 she too had been a fluffy little seed fairy dancing on the breeze. However, by the time she was 15, as far as seed analogies go, she was more of a coconut. Puberty had not done her any favours and her twinkling days were far behind. As this darker recollection emerged, Rhonda saw the seed fluff become snagged in the dusty old web on her ceiling. Being a teenager in a South Wales town in the 70’s and being called Rhonda had been no joke for her. Rhonda’s mother had been an avid cinema fan and Rhonda Fleming was one of her idols. So of course, when she found herself to be the proud owner of a red-haired baby, she naturally thought - what better name?

By 1976, however, no one under 30 remembered Rhonda Fleming and at any rate Rhonda Jones bore no resemblance to her, with her dull straw hair, her acne and her tree trunk legs. What the name did provide was an apt geographical taunt of great value to the local boys, which was usually some kind of variant of – keep away from her lads, we don’t want to go up Rhonda’s valley! Hence, being no competition, Rhonda was chosen as a messenger for the other girls – Megan fancies you, will you go out with her – Megan is chucking you. Rhonda was made to walk ahead of her girlfriends when passing a group of boys so as not to detract from the desired aesthetic. She was told with great confidence by her cousin that she would never be married and may never have a boyfriend.

As Rhonda remembered these humiliations she relived the hot flush of shame. Sat here on her crumpled bed, the wistful Sunday mood threatened to evaporate, her skin prickled, and her breath snagged. She looked out of the window, past the weatherworn shutters and the webs, across the valley to the tracing paper mountains of the dusky evening. The bell for church service tolled from the silhouette of a campanile in the nearby village.

Rhonda looked down at the resting shape in the bed beside her, Guiseppe Morgan’s grandson, beautiful Italian Welsh boy who had kissed Ronda at the christmas disco in 1978 after they head banged together to Hawkwind. He had married her, and they went to live in his grandfather’s village in north Italy in 1982, where on just such mild languorous evenings over the years, he had paid no heed to warnings and made many happy visits to Rhonda’s valley. With which thought, Rhonda felt the breeze kiss her cheek and looked up to see the little dancer dislodge from the web and float on out across the valley.

The world outside was chaos. Shades of grey fighting a battle with no cause, reason, or abatement. Debris swirled in the wind as raindrops slammed against windows. The splat of each drop was violent, but its passion was diffused by the glass.

Inside, all was calm, safe, and empty. Alex poured coffee over a hangover and fought the temptation to check last night’s sent messages. The break, break-up, and breakdown were done. Now Alex meandered between daydreams, nightmares, and bad choices. The perfect environment for wistful thoughts.

In one moment, Alex is yelling ‘I do’ in a cobbled piazza as a chorus rings from the campaniles and an old Italian shoemaker holds up a glass, wiping away a single tear of joy. In another, flames engulf everything when a stray spark catches a long-dried-out bouquet and extinguishes emotional anguish with physical agony.

Alex was lost in a grimier, sweatier scenario when they blew in. A disturbance. A jingling bell. A damp gust. A change of pressure. A door wrestled back into its frame. A click. Stillness.

Now there was Alex and a stranger.

A flash of eye contact and an exchange of half smiles diffused one kind of tension and, in Alex, ignited another. The stranger began to browse. Alex tried to look busy. Tried not to be caught looking. At least not too often. The rain against the panes seemed louder than before.

‘Can I help you with anything?’ Alex said after what felt like an age. The final word was meant to sound suggestive but came out like digestive discomfort. It didn’t seem to matter. The stranger’s only response was an almost imperceptible shake of their beautiful hair.

‘I’ve just boiled the kettle, if you need warming up?’ Alex lied, but the reaction was no different. The stranger turned the corner of a display table. Alex spotted cables hanging from their ears.

‘You can’t hear me, can you?’ Alex tested.

No answer.

‘Well, at least you’re not ignoring me.’

A pause.

‘I could say anything I want, couldn’t I?’

Silence.

‘I’m glad you blew in. I was feeling quite lonely, you see. It’s been a tough few months. Since…’

The stranger glanced up. Panic ran through Alex. Every nerve burned. Breath seemed to solidify in the lungs.

The stranger looked down again. Alex tingled with relief.

Lightning flashed in the windows, catching the stranger's attention and putting the room in silhouette. As colour returned, the low rumble of thunder seemed to envelop the room. Waves rolled through Alex’s body.

Alex’s eyes closed. ‘Shall we just fuck on this desk right now?!’

Eyes opened. The stranger stood just a metre away, facing Alex, headphones in one hand, a recently plucked book in the other. A startled expression.

…

‘Just this, please,’ the stranger eventually said.

A jingling bell. A damp gust. A change of pressure. Stillness.

Alex sat down and clicked the button on the kettle.