Brief Encounter at the Picture House by the Sea Read online

The old dairy building was tucked away behind her grandparents’ house, a stainless-steel temple to ice-cream, and Gina was perched at the centre island. It had a multi-burner gas hob and behind her there was a floor-to-ceiling fridge, a walk-in freezer filled with the silver pans she’d seen full of ice-cream in the window of Ferrelli’s and several chrome-coloured machines, none of which Gina could fathom. ‘It takes a lot of skill?’ she guessed.

  He slammed one hand down on the shiny work surface, creating a mini thunderclap. ‘Of course it does, otherwise everyone would be doing it. What are the core ingredients?’

  She glanced back at the fridge. It was filled with full-fat milk, cream and eggs from a nearby farm and she didn’t need a degree in catering to understand why. There was a bowl of something white on the counter that she assumed was sugar. But surely it couldn’t be so simple? ‘Uh – milk, sugar, eggs and cream?’

  ‘Exactly so,’ Nonno said, looking satisfied. ‘No artificial ingredients. Just perfect fresh gelato, made to my mother’s recipe.’

  Gina knew the story – Ferdie had arrived in Britain in 1957 from Italy with no money and no plan, other than a burning determination to make a better life for himself. He’d fallen into a job working for the London Brick company in Bedford but secretly longed to become a chef. Then he met Elena, the daughter of another Italian immigrant, and it had been love at first sight. Ferdie had learned how to cook, adapting recipes from a notebook he’d been given by his mother, and saved all of his wages until he had earned enough to open a small business of his own. Then he’d proposed to Elena. Eventually, they’d moved to Cornwall, where Ferdie insisted the milk quality was the best in the whole country, and had never looked back.

  ‘What about the flavours?’ Gina thought back to the tangy strawberry ice-cream she’d enjoyed earlier. Where did Nonno get strawberries juicy enough to turn into delicious ice-cream at this time of year?

  ‘Again, all fresh ingredients – there’s a fruit farm near Padstow that delivers whatever we need, all year round.’ Ferdie noticed Gina eyeing the equipment nervously. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not expecting you to understand the pasteuriser or the batch freezers yet. You’re going to be starting much smaller. Take a saucepan from underneath the counter.’

  Gina did as he instructed, lifting a heavy, copper-bottomed pan from the shelf and placing it onto one of the hob burners.

  ‘Today, you’re going to learn how to make your own ice-cream from start to finish, just like generations of Italians before you,’ Ferdie explained. ‘Although I am not going to insist you beat it by hand with a wooden spoon like they did – I am not a monster, after all.’

  He sat back on a stool and pointed to the fridge. ‘You’ll find most of what you need in there, and the sugar is in front of you.’

  Once Gina had gathered her ingredients, Ferdie set about instructing her. She heated the milk and a much smaller amount of cream in the pan, then split the egg yolks from the whites and beat the yolks with the sugar in a shiny red mixer until it was thick and creamy.

  ‘Now comes the tricky part,’ Ferdie told her. ‘You need to add the hot milk to the eggs to make a custard. Do it too fast and you will end up with scrambled egg.’

  Under his watchful eye, Gina added spoonful after spoonful to the eggs and sugar, stirring constantly. Once both mixtures were combined, she poured it back into the saucepan and set it to gently heat again.

  Ferdie unscrewed a nearby jar and pulled out what looked like a dried-up twig. He handed it to Gina. ‘This is a vanilla pod. Split it along the middle and drop it into the pan. Then stir until the mixture makes a coat for your spoon. Be careful it does not stick – then it will burn and taste like the inside of a shoe.’

  She smiled and concentrated on stirring the custard. There was something soothing about focusing entirely on cooking, Gina thought, as she watched the mixture slowly thicken, aware that Nonno’s critical eye was fixed on her. She really couldn’t afford to mess this up – he’d never let her back into the dairy if she did.

  ‘And now it needs to chill down,’ Ferdie announced. ‘Pour it into a bowl and leave it to cool at room temperature, then it needs to go into the fridge for several hours or even overnight.’

  Gina started at him in disappointment. ‘So I won’t get to taste it until tomorrow?’

  He glared at her. ‘You cannot rush gelato. But it is a good idea to try the custard, so that you know what it should be like at each stage.’

  She dipped a spoon into the mix and blew to cool it down. It tasted delicious, reminding her of the apple pie and custard her mother used to make. ‘Wow.’

  ‘So now you know how it should taste.’ Ferdie nodded in satisfaction. ‘But I know that you are impatient, so if you look in the fridge, you will see an identical mix that I made this morning, ready for you to make into ice-cream.’

  Sure enough, there was a covered bowl of custard there. Gina carried it to the work surface. Ferdie made her remove the vanilla pod and sieve the mixture. ‘And now the magic happens,’ he said, pointing to a much smaller ice-cream machine that sat on the worktop against one wall. ‘I use this one when I am testing a recipe and only need a small batch. The bowl has been in the freezer for hours – once you add the custard to it, the machine churns it and the mix becomes colder and colder until it is almost frozen too.’

  ‘Can’t I just put it in the freezer as it is?’ Gina asked, frowning.

  ‘No!’ Ferdie looked as though she had slapped him. ‘Ice crystals will form and your ice-cream will taste like water.’

  The machine got to work. Gina watched in fascination as the custard thickened to something much closer to the ice-cream she’d seen at Ferrelli’s.

  ‘So now you begin to see how gelato is made,’ Ferdie said. ‘The hard work starts here. This time, you will make a custard with no help from me.’

  He made his way to the door. ‘The quantities are on the wall over there – you will need to convert them to make a smaller batch. The ingredients are all here too. You have thirty minutes.’

  With a final nod, he turned and left. The door banged shut. Gina stared after him for a moment, then squared her shoulders. This was a test. All she had to do was repeat exactly what she’d just done, and not even that because she didn’t need to churn the gelato, just make the custard. She could do it; it was only ice-cream, after all. Compared to managing a large corporate event it would be a walk in the park.

  Checking the wall for the quantities, Gina gathered the ingredients again. The bowl that had held the sugar was empty so she searched through the cupboards until she found a large container and carried it over to the scales. Then she set about making her mixture.

  It was all going well until she broke an egg yolk. Taking a deep breath, she rinsed her hands and tried again, passing each yolk between her fingers until all the white had slipped into the spare bowl below. She stirred in the sugar and started the mixer. Remembering Nonno’s warning about scrambled egg, she took her time while adding the hot milk, then transferred everything to the saucepan and snapped in another vanilla pod.

  The mixture had just started to thicken when Nonno came back.

  ‘Let’s see how you did,’ he said, peering into the pan. He lifted the spoon and examined the back. ‘The thickness isn’t bad, although it isn’t sticking as well as it should.’

  Gina felt a needle of anxiety. She’d followed his instructions to the letter. ‘Maybe it needs more time. Didn’t you say you can’t rush gelato?’

  Ferdie gave her an even look. ‘So I did. The true test will be in the tasting.’ He lifted the spoon to his lips and took the tiniest of tastes.

  The spoon didn’t move as his mouth twisted in disgust. He glanced at Gina. ‘You used the same ingredients as before?’

  She nodded, feeling more needles in her stomach. ‘Except for the sugar – I found some more in one of the cupboards by the oven.’

  Ferdie lowered the spoon and dabbed at his mouth with a tissue. ‘Show me.’

&nbs
p; She led him over to the wall and found the container.

  ‘And you assumed this was sugar? You didn’t check?’

  Gina stared at him in confusion. ‘What else could it be?’

  Ferdie shook his head. ‘I don’t know – salt, maybe?’

  She felt her cheeks begin to burn as she glanced at the white crystals. They looked like sugar and poured like sugar so it hadn’t even occurred to her that it might be anything else. Why would Nonno have an unlabelled container of salt in his kitchen anyway? Surely it was an accident waiting to—

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘You set me up!’ she said indignantly. ‘You deliberately left the salt where I would find it and you knew I wouldn’t check.’

  Ferdie seemed unperturbed by her accusation. ‘The first rule of the kitchen – check your ingredients.’

  ‘You just made that up,’ Gina said. ‘You wanted me to fail and so you made sure that I would.’

  He shrugged. ‘But you won’t ever make a mistake like that again, right? You will always check you have the right ingredients in the future.’

  She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Because he was right – she would check. But surely there were easier ways to teach her?

  ‘Class is dismissed for today,’ Ferdie announced. ‘Come back at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  Gina felt her shoulders droop. ‘Okay, Nonno.’

  Ferdie’s expression softened a little. ‘You did well today. Apart from the salt.’

  Sighing, Gina poured her salty custard away and washed everything up. She wished Nonno hadn’t set her up to fail on her very first day, but she supposed things could only get better. Couldn’t they?

  Chapter Five

  At dinner, Nonna was furious with Ferdie when she found out what he’d done and sent a volley of Italian across the dining table that Gina was fairly sure contained a number of unsavoury insults. Ferdie refused to be bowed, insisting it was a lesson Gina needed to learn.

  ‘That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!’ Nonna cried, throwing her hands up into the air. ‘Only an idiota would keep salt and sugar in a kitchen with no labels. It would teach you a lesson if Gina went back to London right now!’

  ‘Nonna, it’s okay,’ Gina said. ‘No harm done.’

  Elena threw her husband a dark look. ‘If I find out you are trying to drive Gina away—’

  ‘Of course not,’ Ferdie said. ‘Gina understands, don’t you? It was a rite of passage – something to be experienced and learned from.’

  ‘The girl can read,’ Elena said in a withering tone. ‘I doubt it is likely she will mix up the salt and the sugar if they are properly labelled.’

  ‘Enough,’ Ferdie growled. ‘It is finished, anyway. Done. Tomorrow, I will teach her all my secrets, okay?’

  ‘You had better,’ Elena warned him. ‘Or else maybe I will start to mix up the salt and the sugar in your coffee.’

  Early the next morning, Gina arrived at the dairy to find Nonno waiting for her. He spent several hours showing her how to add flavours to the basic custard she’d made the day before, encouraging her to taste and experiment with the ingredients so that she understood the balance of flavours. In the afternoon, he taught her what each of the large machines did: one pasteurised the ingredients so that they passed food safety requirements, and the other heated and churned the mixture in turn, so that it could be poured into the traditional stainless-steel Napoli pans used by ice-cream makers all over the world. By the end of the day, Gina’s head was spinning but she had a much better understanding of what the business of making gelato actually involved.

  ‘Have you ever thought about trying some different flavours?’ she asked Ferdie as she wiped down the work surfaces. ‘There’s a place in London that sells—’

  ‘No,’ Ferdie interrupted her. ‘It took me years to perfect these recipes and they sell very well. We don’t need to complicate things with new, experimental flavours.’

  Gina thought back to Nonna’s plan to tinker with Ferdie’s existing recipes. ‘But what if there was a traditional Italian recipe that might work well as an ice-cream – like, I don’t know, tiramisu maybe? I bet your customers would love a new flavour.’

  Ferdie’s eyes glittered. ‘They like the ones we already have.’

  ‘But how do you know? Have you ever asked them?’

  ‘No. People are idiots – they don’t know what they want. Before you know it, they will be suggesting bacon flavour ice-cream called Piggy McPigface.’ He snorted. ‘Like I said – idiots.’

  Gina took a deep breath and tried a different tack. ‘Wouldn’t you like a fresh challenge, Nonno?’

  His face darkened. ‘No.’

  Gina had learned when she could push her luck with Nonno’s temper and when she should quit; this was definitely time to leave it. Besides, he looked tired, and spending a day teaching her how to make gelato wasn’t exactly restful.

  ‘Why don’t you leave me to clean up?’ she suggested, smiling. ‘Go and get some rest.’

  He eyed her suspiciously. ‘Do you promise not to whip up a curry-flavoured gelato once my back is turned?’

  She laughed. ‘I know I still have a lot to learn. I won’t even try to whip up a batch of salted vanilla.’

  Gina spent most of Saturday morning looking at apartments. She finally plumped for one in a luxury holiday let complex on the edge of Mawgan Porth, which was near enough for her to be able to get to Polwhipple easily without being on her grandparents’ doorstep. She signed the three-month agreement, trying not to wince at the cost, but at least her new home had the benefit of being furnished for holiday makers; it had everything she might need, right down to a Nespresso machine she knew she’d never use. Nonna never used anything other than freshly ground beans and Gina would have felt like she was cheating to slip one of the aluminium pods into the machine.

  But it was the view that had really sold the apartment to Gina. She’d grown used to waking up to the sound of the ocean outside her hotel room over the past few mornings and wanted to stay as close as she could to the water. And this apartment had a view of the beach, with a set of steep stairs that led down the side of the cliff, so she could watch the tide crash onto the shore and see the surfers dip in and out of the waves from the comfort of her balcony or head down to the sands. She didn’t expect to recognise Ben if he came to surf but that didn’t stop her watching.

  She found her mind straying back to him often since their meeting on the beach. Seeing him again had jogged her memory and she found herself remembering snippets of conversations and more of the mischief they’d got up to. There’d been the time she’d snuck some of Nonna’s limoncello down to the beach so that they could get drunk, a plan that had ended the moment they’d tasted it. And there’d been the time he’d assured her he knew how to roller-skate and had borrowed her boots; that had ended with a trip to A&E. Most of all, she remembered laughing with him; big, helpless laughter that had them both doubled over and gasping. She was fairly sure it had got them thrown out of the Palace on more than one occasion, when their fellow cinema-goers had complained. If she was honest, Ben had been the reason she’d been so keen to spend every summer in Polwhipple, right up until her parents had moved to Los Angeles, taking her out of Cornwall’s reach. It had been harder to stay in touch at a distance back then, before Facebook and smartphones, and gradually, she’d forgotten about their friendship.

  After a quick trip to Newquay in Nonna’s little powder-blue Fiat to stock up on essentials, Gina strolled into Polwhipple. The sun was shining just enough to take the edge off the chilly March breeze, and the beach had several hardy families populating it with sandcastles. She spotted a number of people enjoying ice-creams from Ferrelli’s and smiled; soon they might even be eating a batch she had made.

  Carrie’s Attic was open for business. Once again, Gina lingered at the window, admiring a vintage leather handbag and watching the customers browsing within. She knew it was only a matter of time before s
he joined them but today she had a different mission.

  Manda wasn’t working when Gina reached the Palace to check for details of that night’s screening. Instead, it was Heather, a forty-something single mum who brought her son along with her. Gina could see him now, sat in the corner of the concession, glued to an iPad. She waved to Heather over the heads of the queue; Manda would doubtless have filled her in and there’d be plenty of time to catch up with all of Nonno’s employees over the weeks to come.

  There was a sheet of A4 paper stuck to the door of the Palace, exactly as Manda had described. It contained the bare minimum of information – the film name, the age rating and the start time. Gina pulled a face; it did the job, just about, but it wasn’t what she’d call enticing.

  She tapped a message into her phone and sent it to Ben.

  Footloose starts at 8:30 p.m. Meet outside at 8:15?

  Gina

  A few minutes later her screen flashed.

  See you then. Shall I bring the limoncello or will you?

  Ben

  Gina swiped Reply.

  Huh, I still remember what it tasted like. How about we stick to ice-cream?

  Deal! See you later.

  Smiling, Gina put her phone away and set off home. She was looking forward to the film, in spite of her misgivings about the state of the cinema. It might just be a night to remember.

  The first thing Gina noticed when she approached the Palace that evening was that she’d been right about the sign; it was missing several bulbs. The second was Ben himself, wrapped up against the chilly evening in a black woollen coat and scarf. He smiled when he saw her. ‘Is it me or does this feel a bit weird?’

  Gina started to return the smile until it occurred to her for the first time to wonder whether Ben might have a girlfriend. Surely someone who looked like he did couldn’t be single? But it also hadn’t occurred to her to think of going to the cinema with an old friend as weird either; it definitely wasn’t a date. ‘In what way?’