Steps to the Clouds Stories E-Book

Mariella Epifani

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A woman, an intellectual and writer, is in conflict between her longlife love that is going to end and a true new love that will give her pain. The end comes when somebody rings her door-bell.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

Cover

Table of contents

Steps to the Clouds

Pictures:

"Heaven and Hell" by Jim Warren, cover picture.

The cat on the inside covers is Tobias, two years old.

Credits:

The authoress thanks Dr Massimo Vetrò for proof-reading and technical support.

Sylvia Dennis

Fighting fit

Once I was fatBut I wasn’t happy.

I had to crawlCouldn’t make it snappy

Then along came my childAnd she said to me“Mummy will you help meTo climb that tree"

I knew right thenThat I had to changeSo I started to look atThe health food range.

It changed my lifeAnd I never looked backAnd now I know I’mOn the right track

Keeping healthyGives me so much funI’ve never been on aSeven mile run!It’s not always easy

I have to sayBut now that I’m thinIt’s here to stay.

To the memory of

Sylvia and Anna Maria that I failed to love

And Antonio I will never stop loving

My primary school teacher had some missing teeth and white hair in an age when today you are still attractive. I hated her when she explained maths but she was lovely when she read out poems.

One day she read out a poem and she explained the meaning. Then she asked us to write a comment. I was excited, my heart was beating fast, and I wrote a comment. The teacher asked me to read out my comment and then unexpectedly she said: “well done, Mariella”

In the last year but one in the primary school I was already ten, so my father thought that was the time to enter the secondary school. He gave me some teaching for a month in science, maths and Italian and gave me good advice on how to write a composition. So I successfully passed the exams and I entered the secondary school. Still now when I write I hear his voice giving me advice.

My mother was a clerk in the planning section of the Town Hall. She used to work mornings and afternoons and when she came back home in the afternoon, she had a nap sitting in the chair close to my desk while my sister and I were learning Latin, English and Maths.

Anka Story

“Mrs Dalloway said that would buy the flowers herself.”

(From Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, 1925)

21 March 2025 

A new birthday has come along punctually as always on the first day in spring. Since the afternoon I was born and that was of a Monday, my birthdays have come with no break in joy and more often in sorrow leading me to this age: 75. I still feel light and full of energy and wishing to go on in my everyday life and above all in my intellectual life. I have been doing a research on some eighteenth-nineteenth-century English writers and mainly on their private lives and aspirations. The reading public has appreciated this less-known feature and I have sold many copies both in Italy and abroad where these writers are better known.

This has made me well-known and has given me lots of money, so not only I have become famous but I have earned enough to fill my empty bank account considerably. The little money I had inherited from my parents years ago had disappeared in a short time.

The research on English women writers had begun as a private thing and then developed into large-scale research. This had led to the writing of essays first well-known in Britain and then in other countries in the world. I was famous and later rich. I didn’t save the money just for myself but I gave some to my nephew who had left for New Zealand to work on a sheep–breeding project.

Sweet Serena opens the door, kisses me and gives me roses and springtime flowers and home-made cakes. She comes Mondays to Fridays to clean my flat and do the washing and drives me to town to do errands. I still walk rather well, but traffic in the city is horrible and I am afraid of falling and hurting.

In the afternoon some friends come: Maria Carmela, nicknamed the American, as her mother had lived in USA and taught her American English, Maria Antonietta, Adriana, Rosangela and Caterina, the German teacher in the school where I used to teach. My friends give me flowers, cakes, perfumes and many other presents.

My life in the last few years has been rather happy and away from worries, travelling from my birthday place to London and New York. I like my birthplace in the south of Italy, its beautiful sea, its history and also I like it because my parents lived here.

After the presents, the cakes and the chats my friends regretfully go.

My cat Tobias comes down from top of the bookcase. He was a stray cat a colleague had seen at the park ten years ago and she had asked me to bring me home with me. I hesitated but then she said: may God reward you so I soon had him in my arms and took him home with me. Three more cats were already living with me, but Tobias was so beautiful and in need of care.

Here he is, his white and orange striped tail and body. He is still lively and has been sleeping on my stomach for years when I go to bed. Though, I miss the other cats: Countess, a dark tabby cat, Milady black and shiny and Babà pale orange. They fell asleep in the peace of God and St Anthony the Abbot after a short-time illness, wet with my tears.

I go into the library where my university and teaching books and many other English books are kept. The are also photos in frames: myself on the diploma day, my father holding my two-year-old nephew, my nephew with me on his Communion day and my mother at her 80th home party.

I open a photo album: all the pictures are black and white and refer back to my early youth. I see one I thought I had lost: it’s me holding my tortoise Tobias, a present from my grandfather he had bought for a few lira at the market when tortoises were not protected.The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream...(From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth)

In the photo I was wearing a light blue dress with white dots and lace around the collar. My clever grandmother had made it. My father had taken the picture. My father was brilliant: a law degree at 21, good at wall painting and a sort of Jack of all trades in the household.