THE PROMISE

Alfred Criscuolo

Grampa played the sax and the clarinet in whatever local 'big band' he could get to. I adored both him and his music. I used to sit listening to him practice for ages at a time. I'm told that he wanted at least one of us to get into music and that was me. I'd started the violin when I was eight years old and, while my mother screamed at me to practice, grampa coaxed me and egged me on.

He was my idol. A gentle man. A man with an eye for the girls who didn't mind showing it, even when nan was around. He loved the Sunday western on BBC2 and I used to sit between his knees in front of his armchair and watch the western with him. Poor bugger would often fall asleep half way through - a post-prandial stupour after nan's mountainesque Sunday lunch.

As I got older, he branched out in the musical instrument stakes. He taught himself the cello so that he could join a very amateur string ensemble with me. It seems to me with hindsight that he did all he could for me and I would have done anything for him.

As the muses would have it, he died in October 1976 when I was 16. I was gutted. I wasn't even allowed to pay my last respects. Whilst I concede that my interest in women and beer were starting to wax at about that time, his death ensured the end of my violin career, if career it could ever have been. I gave it up and turned to hedonism ... if in a rather naive and harmless form.

I'm convinced that grampa felt guilty for having renounced his roots because his message to me was that I should never forget that I was Italian - You are Italian and you should never forget it. I made him a promise - a hundred times - that I would keep the faith; that I would remember our roots; that I would undo what uncle Tony had done.

From the age of 13 I started to teach myself Italian. I bought Maria Valgimigli's book - Living Italian - and started teaching myself Italian. I bought myself 'Teach Yourself Italian' and continued the process. Until, when I was 18, I applied to the Polytechnic of Central London School of Languages to study Italian and I was accepted for the 'post-A-Level course'.  When I dropped out of my Italian and German course in 1981, I was fluent and what's more I sounded like an Italian - not like an Englishman speaking Italian. Between 1978 and 1981 I spoke more Italian than I did English.

The only thing on my mind was an old picture postcard of Amalfi - a gorgeous black and white picture - of a place that the family had called home.  By the time I'd reached the age of 16, I'd changed my name back to Criscuolo. When the next brother down was 18, I paid to have his name changed back and my dad did the same around about the same time.

And I'd started to plot the family tree. My search for my connection to Pontone di Scala had begun. Old family papers. Snippets from aunts and uncles. I was going to rebuild my roots. I was going to find out who I was ... where I belonged.  It was the return of the Criscuolos and this time it was the real thing.

Of course, the return of the Criscuolos didn't happen quite overnight. When I made the decision that the promise must be kept, I was only thirteen. A mere boy.

Nan and grampa had been going to Italian evening classes for years when I became aware of it. It never really struck me as strange although it might reasonably have done. As I recall nan got on better with the language than grampa did. Grampa cursed in Italian but that was the only Italian he ever spoke and I didn't realize that he was cursing in Italian until years later.

They used to go on Mediterranean cruises. I don't remember whether it was every year or every other year or what it was but I remember they went on them. One year the cruise stopped off in Amalfi and they went ashore. Nan told me when they came back. It must have been in the early '70s.  They sat down for a drink in the square. Nan said she asked about getting to Pontone (Ponton' it was always called in our house) but couldn't make herself understood; or at least that was her impression. She said though that, while they were sat drinking their cup of coffee, a lady saw grampa and motioned him to come with her - "Venga, venga", she said (Come, come). Nan said that grampa was afraid to go and shook his head.

I have no idea what to make of this story but I can imagine someone seeing him and seeing in him a local face.

Anyway, they had an hour or so in the square and headed back to the launch to get back on the ship. That was it. He was almost home. Within a few miles of his cousins up in the mountains. I have to say that I understand the fear; or at least I came to understand it many years later.

I must have been about fifteen or sixteen when I met my first honest-to-God Italians. They were three young ladies in their late teens or early twenties. They were in Devon with a throng of other kids from all over Europe to study English in summer school.



I took a deep breath ... and asked very formally "Loro sono italiane?" They nodded. I don't remember actually getting much out of them by way of conversation. "Mio nonno è italiano." (my grampa is Italian) I said, proud as punch. Proud that my grampa was Italian and proud that I was actually speaking Italian to real Italians. Their reaction was disappointing to say the least. My revelation didn't even provoke an "Oh, really." They were completely underwhelmed.

I walked with them down to the front (Combe Martin bay), showed them where it was they were going and they skipped off chattering and giggling between themselves.  I can't say whether I sounded like an Englishman speaking Italian or an Italian speaking Italian because I got no feedback at all ... although the extent to which my charges were underwhelmed may have been feedback enough. I was gutted.

I've always put it down to the assumption that they were Tuscan. Strange people the Tuscans. In my travels around Italy, they have appeared to be the least talkative. Of course, I can't say for certain that they were Toscane.  Strange people though the Tuscans though. Anyone who says 'Hoha-Hola' for Coca-Cola has to be viewed with suspicion.

It was a gorgeous day as I recall, the 16th of October 1976. I was out in our very small back garden and it was early afternoon. We didn't have a phone in them days so, funnily enough, we didn't get any calls.

Out of the blue though, one of the kids from next door came running round like a bat out of hell. "your nan's just phoned. You've got to go up to hers. Your grampa's poorly."  It was about a mile from our place to nan and grampa's and though I ran like I'd never run before in my life, it seemed to take ages. To get to the house, I had to run up a long flight of concrete stairs to a terrace of four houses that sat on the side of the valley. Their house was the third.

I banged on the door and nan let me in. "He's at the bottom of the garden", she said pointing urgently. I don't know what I expected to see or do but I ran to the far end of the garden. There was a flight of concrete stairs at the bottom of the garden that went up to the garage. Grampa had been working on the car.  The doctor had signed him off sick because of his heart and told him to take it easy. Of course he didn't. He was lugging the car battery around - recharging it.  When I got to the top of the stairs, he was lying on the gravel with the car battery on its side beside him. I knelt down beside him and took his hand. He was still alive - I'm certain of that. He looked at me and then he died. I could almost see the life leave him ... as if it were something visible, tangible.

I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. I wasn't old enough; something like that. He was buried in a cemetery in London together with his parents - Nicola and Raffaella. It was as close to home as he was going to get.

When I say I was gutted I mean it. That ripped the guts out of me. He hadn't lived to see me keep my promise. I felt I'd failed. I knew he was watching though and I knew that there was no way I was going to let him down.

All aboard for Amalfi

Dad inherited the car. A white, or off-white, Morris traveller. You know. The one with the wooden trim. I don't remember how old it was but it was in immaculate condition. Grampa looked after it impeccably. I used to have to start it with the starting handle because he didn't want to use the battery. It used to annoy the hell out of him when nan scratched the windscreen with her diamond ring when she was wiping it.

Anyway. It was summer 1977 and me, dad and Neal (one of my brothers) were going to drive down to Amalfi. We were going to take our time and do the whole thing on spec. I don't remember much about the drive from north Devon to the port and I don't remember which port we went to. I figure that it must have been up on the south-east coast because we drove through Picardie when we got off at the other end.

It was in Picardie - in Reims to be precise - that the whole grand plan came crashing to a grinding halt. We were driving through Reims and were crossing a crossroads when a car hurtled into the side of us ... or was it the other way round. It must have been us who drove into his side. Why? The Morris was a write-off.  It was towed to a garage and with what French I'd learned in my five years at comprehensive school, I established that the fella reckoned that it would cost more to repair than it was worth.

What did we do? We got the train to Paris and decided to spend a few days there instead before heading home. We wandered around until we found a little boarding house in Rue Faubourg St Denis. It looked like a perfect city centre spot.  After we'd had a bit of a kip and freshened up, we stepped out for the evening. Get something to eat. My incredibly naive, 17 year old eyes were on stalks. The street was lined with extremely good-looking, provocatively dressed young ladies all asking me if I was interested in a little quality time. Made I smile, it did.

We did only stay a couple of days. Saw the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame and all that good stuff and lived on baguettes with whatever took our fancy to fill them. Then, dreams in tatters, we got the train back to Calais (I think it was) for the boat back to good ol' Blighty.

At this stage I'm starting to wonder if the odds - or the Gods - aren't stacked against me. We got home about three weeks before anyone was expecting us home and without grampa's precious car. He'd had it for years with ne'er a scratch on it. Dad had had it a couple of months and written it off.  Amalfi remained an unreachable mirage.

In September 1978 I arrived in London; the boy from the country had arrived in London. The newly rechristened Marco Criscuolo, the boy from Buckinghamshire and Devon, had arrived in London. It had an air of unreality about it but it felt like a massive step in the right direction. How could I fail to fulfil the promise now?

I was going to study Italian and German at Polytechnic of Central School of Languages in the square behind the Euston Tower.  Although I had no formal qualifications in Italian, the head of department (a red-haired fella from Milan I think) had conducted my interview in Italian and concluded that my Italian was good enough to allow me to start 'from A level'. This felt like a giant step forward. I was going to get myself a degree in Italian and I'd have a piece of paper that said I was Italian ... sort of anyway.

My Italian thrived in this environment. Most of the other kids on the course were first generation Brits whose parents were Italian. They spoke Italian among themselves and I soon succeeded in making myself one of them ... being the sociable sort that I am.  On top of that, all of the lectures were taken in Italian and all of the assignments had to be written in Italian. It was sink or swim and as languages were my thing, I swam - I'd managed to come out of comprehensive with O levels in French, German, Latin and Spanish and A levels in French and German and all without doing any work. I was convinced that I'd be able to do the same here. An easy degree I figured.

Woburn Walk

None of that really mattered though because in my new-found Italian community I was doing my best to bring about some sort of metamorphosis from English country boy to London-Italian city boy.  More importantly, I started going down to Woburn Walk regularly to see Bob and Ginny (Andrea and Giovannina) and Marie, thereby re-establishing my link to grampa's generation.