The Girl in the Red Dress

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The Girl in the Red Dress Page 11

by Elaine Chong


  He shrugs. “It’s been empty for two years so bound to be mice. Windows are all locked though.” He gives me a sharp look. “You’re not thinking of selling the place?”

  “It’s not mine to sell,” I say.

  His eyes narrow and his mouth hardens into a thin line. “Your mother told me she’d give me first refusal for my boy if she ever sold it. I wouldn’t like to think she’d go back on her word, not after everything I’ve done for her.”

  Sensing that hostilities might have been resumed, I back away from the fence. “I just wanted to take a quick look at the place. And like I said, it’s not mine to sell.”

  He picks up the shovel, muttering under his breath, and walks straight back into his own house, slamming the front door shut behind him.

  Maybe that’s why my mother has chosen not to live in the bungalow, I think to myself, but why not sell it? That’s what I still don’t understand.

  Lenora

  I think I must have drifted in and out of sleep all morning. Aggie seemed to come and go from the room with surprising regularity – like one of those little figurines in a cuckoo clock popping in and out when the hour strikes. Though I’m no longer certain what’s real and what’s imagination, my own good sense tells me that I must have been dreaming about her some of the time.

  I don’t understand what she wants from me.

  Lunch was chicken soup. I managed to eat some of it, and the nurse who they call Kelly told me I was a good girl when she took the tray away. If she noticed the angry glare, which I gave her in response to this condescending observation, she did a good job of hiding it.

  The physiotherapy midget with the fake smile came in after lunch.

  “Are we going to get you out of that bed today, Lenora?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said. “Not unless you’ve got a hoist and a glass of wine to celebrate the occasion.”

  The stupid girl laughed. “We don’t serve alcohol, but you can have a cup of tea.”

  “In that case,” I said, “I think I’ll just stay in bed.”

  She shook her head. “We have to get you moving. We can’t let you stay in bed.”

  I told her, “I’ll think about it. Perhaps when you come back without your imaginary friend?” Of course, she hadn’t a clue what I was talking about because they all speak to you like you’re a wilful child when you won’t cooperate.

  She then had the temerity to wag her finger at me and say, “I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer when I come back on Monday.” She actually looked like she meant it, so I expect she’ll be bringing reinforcements.

  Lying back on the pillows, I suddenly notice a strand of cobweb hanging from the ceiling; a single, silvery thread the cleaners have missed, probably because they spend most of their time mopping the floor and don’t think to look up.

  Most of my married life was spent making sure the house was clean and tidy for George. It was a thankless task, and when we moved to Hillcrest House, I insisted we employ someone to help. He wasn’t keen on the idea, thought I should be able to manage it all on my own, but it was one of the few occasions when he gave in without a fight.

  I don’t think about him very often now but whenever I do think about him it’s with a sense of sadness, although this generosity of spirit is something that’s only come about since he died. Before he died, when we lived our own, very separate lives, I felt nothing but contempt for him.

  Of course, I didn’t always feel like that. Once upon a time I think I was in love with him, but it was such a brief flowering of passion, and ended disappointingly abruptly after our wedding.

  I didn’t want to marry him, and George didn’t really want to marry me, but my father insisted. He wasn’t a gentleman in the social sense of the word, my old dad – he was a tenant farmer with a large family to feed – but he did possess the moral certitude of a man who understood that reputation is important. He wasn’t about to allow his only daughter to squander hers when the ‘situation’ in which she suddenly found herself could be so easily rectified.

  George’s parents were less enthusiastic about the union: their ambitions for their only son hadn’t included a shotgun wedding to a farmer’s daughter. But … the banns were called, and the wedding went ahead, and four months later our son, Richard, was born.

  I remember lying in a hospital bed not unlike the one in which I’m now confined, looking down into the pinched little face of this mewling baby and praying with all my heart that I would grow to love him, because at that point I didn’t love him. I was twenty years old and had recklessly abandoned the principles my parents had spent their lives instilling into me because a handsome man with a modicum of charm had taken a bit of a shine to me. I felt like my life had ended, and in a way it had.

  George didn’t love him either – he made that clear from the moment Richard was dragged out of me by a pair of surgical forceps. It was very bloody, very brutal. They wrapped him up in a muslin cloth and offered him to George, but he took one brief, disinterested glance at the screaming bundle and shook his head. No, he didn’t want to hold his son.

  In the days that followed his birth, I did grow to love my baby, and eventually, when he could walk and talk, I think George developed a fondness of sorts for him, but in the beginning it was impossible to look at him and not be reminded that we were bound together till death parted us because this little scrap of humanity had inadvertently come into our lives.

  If there had once been a few, brief months of blossoming romance then they came to naught, and the truth is that the marriage blessed by God was blighted from the start.

  The strange thing is that when death did finally part us, only then was I able to look back and see that George had suffered too.

  Julia

  As the plane descends into Heathrow airport, I look out of the window. The London skyline is painted in its usual depressing palette of grey. Why on earth does Colin think that I would want to come back here to live?

  I send Richard a text message telling him I’ve landed safely and intend to go straight to my hotel. Fortunately, my British passport allows me to speed through Passport Control – ‘speed’ being a relative term. But at least I don’t have to wait in an excessively long queue like my fellow Singaporean travellers, who are forced to stand in line like beggars in a soup kitchen, which is ironic considering that most of them would rather sell their souls than live under British leaden skies.

  As soon as I’ve collected my suitcase, I make my way outside. Last time we were here, Colin insisted on taking the tube and we arrived at the Marriott Marble Arch sweating and breathless. I’m going to take a taxi, which is what every sensible woman does when she wants to make a dignified entrance.

  The taxi driver isn’t English, but he does know where to find the Marriott Hotel in George Street and he doesn’t want to engage me in pointless conversation, so I can sit back and relax.

  At the hotel, I’m checked in with effortless efficiency, and then a porter carries my suitcases up to the room. It’s late and I’m tired so I unpack, take a shower and go straight to bed.

  I wake the following morning having slept only fitfully in a strange bed and am immediately aware that my body clock is frantically trying to adjust to the tail end of British summer time. The roads outside are quiet, which surprises me, but then I remember that it’s Sunday.

  Richard has left a voicemail on my phone.

  “Hi Julia. Look ... if you haven’t got anything else planned, Silvio and I wondered if you’d like to have lunch with us at the restaurant? You can get on the Central Line tube at Marble Arch and get out at Chancery Lane. It’s about a five-minute walk from the station. If you fancy it, just turn up. Around two? Yeah, that should be fine. I thought we could visit Mum later, but obviously only if you’re not too jet-lagged. Actually, text me. Okay, Ciao!”

  Do I have anything else planned? Well, no, but do I want to have lunch with the entire Mazzi family buzzing round me? Probably not, but I might just have to show w
illing if I’m going to convince Richard to help me contest our father’s will. At least Silvio should be good company.

  Colin once asked me if I’d known that my brother was gay when we were growing up and I could honestly tell him that I had absolutely no idea. This isn’t because I was especially unobservant or insensitive: it’s because Richard did everything that he possibly could to fit in with my father’s ideas about what a man should be, and that included marrying someone of the opposite sex.

  I liked Sarah, his ex-wife, well enough, although I’d only met her a handful of times before we moved to Singapore. I think she was good for Richard, helped him to escape my father’s heavy-handed influence. Of course, once that happened and he was finally free to be his own person – well, the person he wanted to be, perhaps was always destined to be – that was someone who liked men. That must have been hard for Sarah, but she took it really well, apparently. I have to say I would have been much less understanding and much more inclined to take a pair of scissors to his wardrobe and a key to the paintwork on his car.

  My father, not unexpectedly, took it very badly. I don’t think he ever forgave Richard.

  Colin, on the other hand, was surprisingly understanding when Richard finally tiptoed out of the closet. For a man whose views on most other subjects verges on blind bigotry, he was actually incredibly supportive and told Richard not to look back, disregard everything my father said about “nonces” and “queers”, and get on with his life.

  When Richard met and fell in love with Silvio Mazzi, I was probably even a little bit jealous. Silvio is one of those men, who attract attention wherever they go. Tall, dark, handsome and with the kind of good dress sense that only a stylish, metropolitan Italian can own, he is the opposite of my brother in every way you could possibly imagine. I’m not sure his family welcomed Richard in the beginning. I think Silvio’s mother (the matriarch of the family) was still hoping that her beautiful son would find himself a beautiful wife and make beautiful babies, but my brother is now an integral part of the Mazzi clan and much happier for it.

  I decide to text him back, accepting the invitation to lunch, but declining the offer to visit our mother. I just can’t face it – not yet.

  Even though the temperature outside is still in double figures, it feels like the inside of a refrigerator to me. I only managed a cup of coffee for breakfast – the after-effects of a long-haul flight and food served every time you blinked – but by one o’clock I’m hungry and looking forward to lunch, so I decide to leave early.

  There’s more traffic on the road than was suggested by the sounds penetrating the hotel window, but I forget that every building here has double-glazing. At least the grey sky that greeted me yesterday has now been replaced with a cheerful shade of blue. It’s not quite a cloudless sky, but I can feel the sun on my face.

  I’ve spent the greater part of my life not living in this country and Singapore is now my forever home, but it’s impossible to forget and not appreciate (albeit grudgingly) the fresh feel of an English autumn day. The air is cooler than is comfortable for someone used to living in a tropical climate, but it’s pleasant after being cooped up first in an aeroplane for more than fourteen hours and then in a hotel room. As a consequence, the walk to Marble Arch tube station is really quite enjoyable.

  The Mazzi family restaurant – ‘Bocca Felice’ – was first opened in 1898 by Silvio’s great-great-grandfather, and then closed down in 1941 by his grandfather, Antonio, after Italy weighed in on the side of Hitler. The whole family removed themselves from London and went home for the duration of the war. But Papa Mazzi, Silvio’s father, always wanted to re-open the restaurant and at the first opportunity moved his wife and now grown-up family back to Clerkenwell Road.

  How do I know all of this? It’s because it’s been repeated to me by Silvio’s mother every time I’ve visited the restaurant; I can count those times on the fingers of one hand and I’m sure I wasn’t listening to the story with particular attention, but somehow the facts and figures have stuck in my head.

  When I arrive at the restaurant, it’s obvious from the first glance through the large, well-polished window that business is brisk. As soon as I set foot inside, Silvio peels away from a lively group of customers and envelops me in a huge hug. People don’t do this in Singapore, neither friends nor family (an invasion of personal space such as this is usually met with wide-eyed alarm and rigor mortis like stiffening of the limbs), but I attempt to respond with an appreciative smile.

  “Silvio! It’s lovely to see you again.”

  “Benvenuto a casa, mia bellissima, Julia!”

  “English please, Silvio.”

  “Of course, my darling girl. Welcome home.” He slips an arm around my shoulders and draws me to the rear of the restaurant. “Come, come. We have a little table waiting for us. You want a drink? What do you want to drink? You want wine, yes?” He rushes off to the bar and leaves me standing by myself.

  The restaurant is full of people speaking Italian loudly and punctuated with laughter. It’s a Sunday afternoon and the Roman Catholic Church of St Peter (known locally as the Italian church) is just around the corner so I’m guessing that Midday Mass is over, sins have been confessed, and now it’s time to drink and be merry.

  Richard appears at my shoulder. “Julia! You’re early.” He knows better than to attempt the big welcome home hug thing and instead kisses me chastely on both cheeks. “You’re looking well,” he says. “Good journey?”

  “Well, I’m one those people who never turn right when they get on a plane,” I say, “so yes, it was a tolerable journey.”

  He looks puzzled. “Never turn right? Oh, I see. Business class.”

  “It’s very noisy,” I say. “Are we really going to eat here in the restaurant?”

  “No, No. We’re going to eat upstairs in the flat.”

  He leads me though a doorway just inside the entrance to the kitchen, which is a cacophony of people shouting angrily at one another in Italian; stainless steel pots and pans being flung around with abandon; huge, white porcelain plates clattering together as they are carried in and carried out, and enormous extractor fans whirring round like the blades of a helicopter before take-off. The noise is deafening.

  Richard takes my hand. “Come this way,” he mouths at me. He closes the door behind us, and immediately the noise is halved, and we can hear each other speak. “It’s a fire door,” he explains. “I don’t know how they work like that; it’s no wonder Silvio thinks he’s going deaf.”

  “Is he going deaf?”

  Richard laughs. “I think it’s called selective hearing.”

  At the top of the stairs, we go through what looks like yet another heavy fire door, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason for it is simply to block out the noise from the restaurant, because inside the flat everything is calm and quiet.

  “You don’t live here now, surely?” I ask him.

  “No, no. But Silvio and Eduardo sometimes stay over when they’re on a late shift. Did I tell you they opened another restaurant in Canary Wharf? That makes three now. Toni’s managing it. Marina’s finally taken over the restaurant in Muswell Hill because Luca and Antonia are both at high school.”

  I shake my head – Richard probably mentioned it to me, but I have to confess I have little interest in the Mazzis’ empire building.

  “Who does Mamma live with?” I suddenly think to ask.

  Richard looks surprised. “She still lives here, of course.”

  “She’s not here now?”

  “She’s gone home for a few weeks. Her sister Vittoria’s organised a big family reunion. Apparently, they’re taking over a hotel. Four generations under one roof.”

  “Sounds like my idea of heaven.”

  “Liar,” Richard says, and we both laugh.

  He guides me through to the kitchen where a small, round table has already been prepared for lunch with a red and white-checked tablecloth, three glasses and three sets of cutlery.
Other than a sink unit, a gas cooker and a continental dresser, the room is surprisingly free of clutter and actually has none of the homely charm of the restaurant below us.

  “How hungry are you?” Richard asks.

  “Very,” I say. “I only had coffee for breakfast.”

  We hear the fire door slam and seconds later Silvio bursts into the kitchen. “Let’s eat. What do you like, Julia? Pizza? Pasta? Please don’t say salad. We Mazzis, we don’t like skinny women.”

  “You don’t like women full stop,” I tease him.

  “I love women!” he exclaims.

  “Why don’t you order for us all?”

  “Good idea. Then Ricardo cannot complain that he made a bad choice. I choose for everyone.”

  While we wait for the food to arrive, Richard brings me up to date.

  “So, you really think Mum’s got dementia?” I ask him.

  “I’m not sure what to think,” he says, then he relates a story about tickets to the swimming pool and Mum’s old friend, Agnes. “She wanted me to hide them from her for some reason. I mean, the woman’s been dead for nearly two years. A couple of days ago,” he goes on, “she told me Robin had been in to see her. Apparently, he was wearing the same jacket he wore to Dad’s funeral.”

  “And you’re not sure if she’s got dementia?” I say. “Seriously?”

  He purses his lips and considers it briefly. “I’m really not sure. Silvio and I have been reading up about it and those aren’t typical symptoms. You more usually get problems with memory loss and changes in personality and mood. The only thing that makes me wonder is something we saw on one website. It talked about difficulties with tasks, which need planning and organisation. She’s definitely got some issues with that.”

  “You’re going to have to explain,” I tell him.

  “Well, the house and the garden for a start,” he says. “You know how much she loves the garden, but the back garden hasn’t seen a lawnmower for about two months by the look of it, and the seaside-inspired front garden is covered in weeds.”

 

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