The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store

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The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store Page 8

by Jo Riccioni


  Connie took a slow breath and gazed out at the ripe evening through the kitchen window. She often wanted to have tea in the garden on these summer nights, but Aunty Bea refused to eat bugs with dinner. ‘They’re hardly savages, Aunty,’ Connie said. ‘The Romans had plumbing and heating when we were still living in mud huts. Besides, Repton’s is overrun with rabbit and hare. Why would they kill a cat?’

  ‘Righty-o, Miss I’m-nearly-eighteen-now-and-know-it-all. Would you listen to her, Jack? You tell her what them WOPs at Wood Walton liked to eat.’

  But Uncle Jack remained silent, contemplating his fist balled next to his teacup. He didn’t have to tell her. Early in the war she had seen two prisoners from the camp at Wood Walton squatting in the mud by the brook, the yellow circles on their backs appearing from a distance like twin suns rising in the bulrushes. Tommy Pointon came to school one day with a woven trap they’d given him. ‘You put the seed down on the ground, see. The finch hops along, has a peck, you pull the string and bang! Down comes the basket.’ He slammed his hand on the desk, grinning as they all jumped.

  ‘But why would you want to pull a bird so little?’ Mavis Darby had asked.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to pull one as dim as you,’ Tommy said, and all the boys laughed. ‘They eat-a them. With-a their macaroni,’ he sang. There was a stunned silence as they all wondered what part of a finch or thrush was worth the eating. Later Mavis had her comeuppance, running into the yard that afternoon and shouting that PC Ferris was giving Tommy Pointon a hiding for frat’nising.

  ‘For goodness sake,’ Connie said, beginning to clear the tea things, ‘that was the war. They had to eat, like everyone else.’

  ‘And you expect them Eye-ties to be more civilised now, I suppose? A leopard don’t change its spots.’ Aunty Bea folded her arms and adjusted her shoulders. ‘I hope you’re not setting your sights on them two boys, just because the likes of Mr Gilbert and her ladyship have granted them an audience.’ She glanced at Uncle Jack again. ‘Some of us remembers things.’

  ‘What?’ Connie said. ‘What things? I don’t remember anything because you never tell me in the first place.’

  Aunty Bea sniffed and went to the sink. Uncle Jack offered only a vague shake of his head before looking back down at the plate in his lap. For once his complicit silence sparked her anger even more. ‘See, you won’t even let Uncle Jack speak!’ She couldn’t help herself. She knew she’d pay for it later. ‘You treat us both like naughty children.’

  ‘Don’t you get that tone up with me.’ Aunty Bea stood to face her across the table. ‘Course he speaks.’

  Uncle Jack rose to his feet, his chair making a drawn-out screech along the tiles. He shook a trouser leg of crumbs, gave a preparatory cough and lowered his eyes to Connie, like he might say something. But instead he retreated, vapid as a shadow, to the front room, where all that could be heard was the ghostly rustle of his newspaper.

  ‘See what you’ve done?’ Aunty Bea gestured after him. There was something childishly lost and regretful about her now. Connie studied her tiny frame, as neat and trim as Uncle Jack’s was tall and gangling. With all her compact energy, she might still be young. Sometimes Connie had heard tinkers or gypsies at the door calling Aunty Bea miss or petal. She marvelled that they could not trace the years of disappointment gathered at her mouth, the cleft of regrets driven between her pale eyebrows. But exactly what disappointments, what regrets, Connie could never fathom.

  ‘Happy now?’ Aunty Bea said, reaching under the sink for a dustpan and brush.

  ‘Happy with what?’ Connie persisted.

  Aunty Bea resurfaced, her cheeks rosy as chilblains, as if, like everything else, she had spent her life scrubbing them raw. The emotions that crossed her face were as varied and confused as an autumn sky. The clock on the mantel continued its perky tick. Connie reached across to her aunt and pushed back a tendril of hair that had escaped its pin. It still glowed partially red among the faded brown, like an ember in the grate. But at the touch, Aunty Bea’s hand went up to her head self-consciously. Her expression cooled and the moment disintegrated.

  ‘You’re the replica of your mother,’ she said. ‘The Lord knows we done our best for you. But it’s never enough, is it? Just like her, you are. Yearning after the fancy and faraway, always hankering after something, wanting more. Well, where did it get her?’

  Connie knew better than to answer, but the image of the cat, the monotony of the clock, the scrape of Uncle Jack’s chair, his retreating shadow goaded her on. ‘I don’t know, where did it get her? How would I know when nobody ever tells me anything?’ She heard the whine in her voice and put her hand on her forehead to steady her thoughts.

  ‘It led her down a path of sin, is all you need to know,’ Aunty Bea said mechanically, ‘and the wages of sin is —’

  Connie was already out of the door and reaching for her bike, propped against the front of the house. Aunty Bea stood in the doorway, the dustpan brush trembling at her hip.

  ‘Don’t you dare turn your back on me when I’m talking of Christ.’

  ‘You weren’t talking of Christ. You were talking about sin and my mother, remember?’ Connie breathed in the thick scent of the evening, gathering her patience. ‘I’m going for a bike ride. I think Christ will be OK with it.’

  ‘You be back before dark,’ Aunty Bea said. She caught hold of the saddle as Connie pushed past, and lowered her voice to a hiss: ‘Or don’t you bother coming back at all.’

  It was an empty threat, Connie knew, but one that had never been spoken before, and the challenge it held made her breathless before she had even started to cycle down the lane. It was always talk of her mother, or the avoidance of it, that reduced Aunty Bea to her meanest self. Connie had grown up straining her ear to the rumours, of which there was never any lack in Leyton. There were whispers of dance halls in the West End and clubs in Soho, of GIs and disappointments. And one night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she had heard Aunty Bea telling Uncle Jack of the bag of bones she had visited in a bombed-out bedsit, where ten or so people lived sharing that evil muck. By then she knew that Aunty Bea wasn’t talking about animal manure. Connie didn’t need every detail, but as she got older, not being offered any at all became even more crushing. It was as if Aunty Bea believed the flawed blueprint of her sister had to be firmly kept under lock and key, for fear Connie would trace in it her own intrinsic nature. And Connie needed to be protected from herself at all costs.

  She gripped at the handlebars, her mind so full that the bike seemed to carry her of its own accord, following its usual route. And so she found herself freewheeling down Bythorn Rise in the syrupy light, her arms clutched behind her head, the wet flick of insects on her skin. Her heart raced with the speed and the dare of not touching the handlebars; with the danger of falling, of hitting a stone in the road, of a puncture — anything to feel alive, to make something happen that might nudge at the endless coil of her days and nights, wound tight as a cocked spring.

  At Repton’s, the Burrell engine was still droning. Mr Rose and his threshing team were finishing the western acres, and as she swung round the bend at the bottom of the rise, she spotted the line of steam rising behind the ridge. She left her bike at the gate, fetched her book from the basket, and climbed the bridle path towards the Big House. As she walked, she picked out the familiar beat of the threshing drum, a sound that had always stirred mixed emotions in her: the excitement of the harvest and the sadness of summer’s end.

  She missed being part of the bringing in. Even as a six-year-old she’d helped with the harvest at Repton’s; most village children did. She remembered whole gangs of them chasing the great beast of the Burrell as it thundered down the laneways, or darting behind the tractor and binder with sticks to beat the rats and rabbits as they broke cover of the mown wheat. By the time the war was underway, she was old enough to help the land gi
rls with the stooking or with sewing grain sacks. Sometimes, in the early evenings, they’d stop to trace the planes as they rose sleek and pink-tinged from Molesworth, counting them aloud above the drone of the thresher. They would all be quiet after that, especially the women, their faces closed with thought. On those evenings, when everyone had gone home and she was waiting for Aunty Bea to emerge from the Big House, Mr Rose would let her climb onto the drum with him to sweep it clean of the loose grain, the chaff and the haulms. She’d listen to the last hum, hum, hum of the beaters, and the staccato of the final grains jitterbugging crazily in the open drum. ‘Listen, girl … you hear?’ Mr Rose would say. ‘That’s gunfire of the fairies, that is. You reckon they’s on our side?’ And he’d laugh, his hair and lashes pale with chaff, his lips red and wet as he swigged from his hipflask.

  Connie crossed the yard and saw the Burrell beyond the pig barns, the silhouettes of the gang still at work in the billowing dust. She recognised the forms of the Onorati brothers lifting sacks onto the tray of a truck. On top of the thresher, their father was bent over the drum. He was tanned and wiry and lean as a whippet, and his shorn hair, the particular curve of his back, made her remember the prisoners bent in the doorways of barns or cutting sugar beet on the ridge during the war. It surprised her now to think how little attention she had given them. Early on she had sometimes glimpsed them thistle-podding or hedging with a camp guard from Wood Walton. But even later, when they were billeted to live at Repton’s, two or three at a time, Mr Rose seemed to keep them occupied, away from the permanent hands and land girls, as if he sensed some latent danger in them, like ratting terriers that had to be kept far from the laying hens. By the time they were driving tractors and freely roaming the yard at the end of the war, she had started at Cleat’s. She spent less time at Leyton House, and her aunt, while she must have seen them, never spoke of it.

  This was how the war had been for Connie — a series of small intrusions from some other world: streamers of silver foil descending like frozen lightning over the fields; the irregular comings and goings of evacuee children in the schoolhouse; the shocking animal cries of a land girl with a telegram; a gabble of American voices in a truck overtaking her bike. It was like the war had allowed her a peek through the gaps in the hedgerows to a world beyond the villages, but by the time she was old enough to wonder at it, to hanker after it, that world was gone, and everyone was back home replanting the rents torn in their enclosures. Sometimes Mrs Cleat would tut her disapproval as she heard of Yanks from the airbase getting rowdy at the Pheasant over in Upton. And now and again a customer would ask if they had any of those bulrush baskets the WOPs used to sell at Thrapston market. Other than that, it seemed barely a trace had been left behind of this foreign world in their own — until now.

  She watched the Onorati boys among the threshing gang, enjoying the silent rhythm of their work against the droning engine. Even from a distance she could tell the difference in the shapes and movements of the two brothers: Lucio’s strength, the steady, closed way he worked; Vittorio’s limber energy, his drive to finish as quickly as possible.

  At the back door of the Big House, she could see that Mrs Cartwright, the cook, had already left for the day. Through the window the kitchen table showed uncut bread and covered cold platters, ready for Mr Repton’s supper. He didn’t eat with his wife during the bringing in. His land stretched as far as Great Siding and he always rode out to check with each of his foremen on the progress of their harvest teams. Connie had expected Mrs Repton to be alone, but as she walked around to the side of the house, hoping to be spotted by her, she heard voices coming from the open window of the library.

  ‘You’ve seen how he treats them, Harvey,’ Mrs Repton was complaining, ‘making them sweat for every scrap he tosses their way. They’re still WOPs to him. And he always has that air about him when he’s dealing with them.’

  ‘What air?’ It was Mr Gilbert. Connie recognised the vaguely bored, exasperated tone that siblings used with each other. It always made her envious, even of their bickering.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … it’s that self-righteous look of the bountiful victorious, I suppose.’

  Mr Gilbert laughed. ‘Oh Evie, really.’

  ‘He does! And I hate it.’ There was an impatient jingle of bangles, the snap and flare of a cigarette lighter. ‘Whenever I try to do something useful, like sending up food or spare furniture for that dilapidated shed he’s got them living in, he puffs up about it, like I’m doing something untoward, blurring the boundaries, old girl, or some sort of nonsense.’

  ‘Well, what on earth do you expect from Repton? He’s hardly going to be inviting them in for cocktails, is he?’

  ‘I notice you have.’

  ‘I’m a mere schoolteacher, not the lord-of-all-he-surveys. Anyway, I wouldn’t over-think Repton. It’s simply economics for him. Where else would he have found such grateful workers for such paltry outlay?’ Drinks were poured; a chime of crystal.

  ‘But that business with the eggs, Harvey,’ Mrs Repton persisted. ‘I’ve a mind to march up there with a whole basketful of bloody eggs for the boys if they want them.’

  ‘Now, that wouldn’t be one of your best ideas.’ Mr Gilbert had become serious. ‘Aldo wouldn’t want to accept them.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘A man with nothing still has his pride left, Evie. It simply costs him a lot more. Even Repton is perceptive enough to see that. The boys tell me their father’s repaying him the cost of their passage, were you aware?’ She was silent. ‘God knows how long that’s going to take them. Repton would have already factored that cost in their lower wages. So you see, Aldo’s pride effectively indentures them to the farm for quite some time.’

  Mrs Repton didn’t answer. Connie heard the soft sucking on a cigarette, its smoke mingling with the evening air outside, sweet and dense with the last lavender. She thought she should turn and leave, but Mrs Repton began again.

  ‘What happened to the wife — the boys’ mother? Have they told you about her?’ There were footsteps on the wooden floor, near the window. Connie didn’t want to be caught out, but she didn’t want to miss the answer either.

  ‘They haven’t said. And I haven’t asked. I should think there’s a good deal of the past they don’t want to talk about and, quite frankly, we probably don’t want to know. I’m more curious about their future, what they choose to do from now on.’

  ‘Oh, Harvey,’ Mrs Repton said, half reprimanding, half concerned. ‘You’re not, are you? Please say that you’re not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse. You know what I mean.’

  The footsteps sounded again at the window. ‘I’m only helping them, Eve. Christ knows they need it.’

  Connie began to retreat, just catching Mrs Repton’s reply: ‘What is it with you, Harvey? You and Italians?’

  ‘Connie … Connie, is that you?’ Mr Gilbert’s voice halted her on the lavender walk as she retraced her steps along the side of the house. She turned to see him sitting on the ledge of the window, leaning out.

  She lifted the book in her hand. ‘I came to return it.’

  ‘Well, come on, then. Don’t dilly-dally there.’ He waved her to the window and held out his hand for her to swing herself over the low sill. She obliged, glancing awkwardly towards Mrs Repton at the drinks cabinet.

  ‘Look, Evie. Look what I’ve caught in my web,’ Mr Gilbert said, his hands squeezing Connie’s shoulders and propelling her in.

  Mrs Repton crossed the room to take Connie’s wrist in her cool palm, as if weighing it. Her grey eyes, Connie noticed, were changeful, and often had the hint of some other light about them. Now they were shot with green, like a cat’s. The image of the Siamese grew large in her mind.

  ‘I thought you’d forsaken me,’ Mrs Repton said — not altogether teasing, Connie thought.
/>   ‘I’ve been busy … you know, at the shop.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve come for more books rather than the pleasure of our company?’ Mr Gilbert said, feigning indignation. ‘What did you give her, Eve?’ He took the book from Connie’s hand, and his mouth twisted into a mischievous smirk. ‘Ah, Forster. Un Ingelese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato.’

  ‘Certainly true of you, Harvey, I should think,’ Mrs Repton murmured over the lip of her glass.

  ‘Ha! And what about you? Una Inglese Italianata? I’m certain you got up to as much mischief in Florence as I did.’

  ‘Hardly. I had Mummy hovering over me the whole four months we were visiting you.’ The curls gathered at Mrs Repton’s neck shifted as she reached for another cigarette from the caddie. ‘I had to point out to her that it was rather tricky trying to improve one’s Italian without actually talking to anyone.’ She perched on the arm of the leather chair, her eyes glazing as she remembered. ‘It really was uncannily like the book. I might very well have been Lucy Honeychurch.’

  Connie still felt awkward from eavesdropping. She didn’t know that Mrs Repton had travelled, but the conversation between brother and sister seemed too private for her to ask all the questions she wanted to about Italy. Instead they fell quiet. When Mr Gilbert looked at her, she said, ‘What about them?’ She nodded to the window, towards the western fields and the distant drone of the Burrell, which at that very second cut out, amplifying the chatter of swallows roosting in the eaves, the noisy closure of the day.

  ‘Who?’ Mr Gilbert asked.

  ‘The Italians,’ she said. They both regarded her oddly, waiting for more. ‘It’s just that I looked up what it meant — what Cecil Vyse says in the book.’ She indicated the Forster in Mr Gilbert’s hand. ‘I wondered if the saying works the other way round. You know, if the Englishman in Italy becomes a devil, what happens to the Italians in England?’ She tried to smile, to show she meant it as a joke. ‘Do you think they become saints?’ But in her mind, images of the Onorati brothers — Lucio’s bloodied face, the newly hatched nightingale, Sheba’s carcass, Vittorio cleaning up broken eggs, the hole in his boot — seemed to run over one another, conflicting and unsettling. She knew then she wouldn’t be able to say anything about the missing cat.

 

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