Susan Buckland: Glass of wine and my left foot

COMMENT


I can't bring myself to throw out a pair of evening shoes that have passed their use-by date. The left shoe is the stumbling block. I feel sentimentally attached to it. After one mellow evening in Tuscany, I lost it and didn't expect to ever see it again.

On that particular evening the summer light was slow to fade and I became distracted by ruby-coloured wine and dreamy views from the windows of my villa. Tignanello, it was called. It lay in folding hills overlooking vineyards owned by the Antinori family who have been perfecting their vintages since the 14th century. Their Solaia wine fetches a high price these days.

Propped by pillows on the bed with a glass of a more modestly priced vintage, I drank in the scene. Through the windows the landscape had natural harmony, despite generations of cultivation.

Olive groves, vines, cypress trees and tiled houses suffused into pastels of green, ochre and rose. Beyond were forests of oak wrapping around it like a picture frame.

Heady stuff. Especially when you are warming up to a dinner of regional delights and trying not to spill the Antinori Red on the white linen bedspread.

At some point, I don't remember when, my evening shoes and I parted company. Come dinner time, I could find only one.

The left one remained hidden like a gecko under a rock.

Nothing for it but to wear my walking shoes to dinner, definitely a down-at-heel look when your host is a symphony of elegance. At dinner he wanted his guests to have a "gusto" (taste) of the local dishes.

He was a dish himself with hair swished back and seductively curling at the neck. I kept my shoes under the tablecloth while a procession of plates arrived: eggplant, cured ham, rice with truffles, green pasta with ham and mushrooms and tasty white beans.

"Surely you Kiwis have room for la dolce," challenged the host as the waiters brought the desert menu to the table and the clock ticked midnight.

When we arrived back at the Antinori Estate, the estate manager said that I had been moved to the larger villa next door. I would like my new villa, he assured me. It was even more beautiful. And don't worry, Signora, the luggage had been moved, too.

Tignanello remained in darkness while the gracious dinner host escorted me to the "larger villa and even more beautiful villa next door". For a fleeting moment I toyed with inviting him in to help look for my shoe. "Magari," as the Italians say when they wish for the impossible.

Before departing the next morning I asked the manager if it were possible to look once more for the missing left shoe. Alas, guests were now ensconced in Tignanello and he didn't want to disturb them. But he would ask the maid to look when she cleaned the villa.


Well how is this for service? On my return to New Zealand a couple of weeks later I found a box with an Italian postmark. Inside was the black evening shoe I had let slide off my foot in Tignanello after pouring the second glass of Chianti.

There was no note in the box. Just the shoe. And the Antinori name on the lid. The maid had obviously left no stone unturned.

"You little beauty," I thought collectively of the shoe and its rescuers. Call me a sentimental hoarder, but this left shoe, like the memory of Tignanello in Tuscany, is worth hanging on to.