The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store

by Jo Riccioni

  ‘The other side?’ Connie nearly laughed. ‘They’re not that narrow-minded, surely? Even Leyton has to get over the war sometime.’ But as she said it she thought of Aunty Bea.

  Mr Gilbert stopped and turned to her. The light under the door spilled across his shoes but made his face shadowy and serious. ‘Oh, they’ll get over the war, alright. But what they won’t get over is that Lucio is a Roman Catholic, Connie.’

  She would have realised the Italians were Catholic had she given it any thought. But she’d only seen the Onorati as a product of the war, thought of them in terms of the war’s divisions. Now she understood their foreignness ran even deeper. The villagers of Leyton didn’t have a Catholic among them. It was an odd tic of religious history, of geography, perhaps. But when the lumpy effigy of Guy Fawkes was dragged from house to house on Bonfire Night, it was more than a tic that some villagers crossed themselves as they tossed their pennies to the lane kids and cried burn the papist. And as a child, she had seen itinerant Irish farmhands refused at the Green Man, Tommy Pointon’s spit fizzing behind them on the pavement as the kids shouted, ‘G’on and piss off, bloody bead jigglers.’ In her mind’s eye, she saw the expression on Aunty Bea’s face, imagined the fury over the Formica if news got out about these murals.

  The lock turned in the oak door and Mr Swann’s thin frame appeared backlit in the doorway, his miner’s cap still on his head.

  ‘Swann,’ Mr Gilbert said. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you to take your hat off in church?’

  The artist grinned at his friend and removed the soggy end of a roll-up from his lips. ‘Gilbert,’ was all he said. He regarded them with blue eyes that might have been arrogant had they not been somewhat glazed. His mouth made a half-hearted smirk that gave the impression he found everything around him either mildly amusing or mildly distasteful, Connie could not tell which.

  Mr Gilbert introduced her. ‘Hope you don’t mind, Swann. She’s a friend of the boy’s. She’ll be very discreet, I assure you.’

  Mr Swann put the wet cigarette to his mouth and sucked tightly, examining Connie. When he stepped back to allow them in, she noticed he was unsteady on his feet.

  ‘Welcome to the house of God,’ he drawled, pulling off his cap with feigned deference, ‘better known as the school of Swann.’ Connie had the urge to cover her mouth from the fumes of whiskey as she passed him. ‘Don’t mind if I pass you over to Botticelli for the tour, old boy, but I was rather hoping to catch last orders at the Green Man.’ Mr Swann made an elaborate yawn and rubbed at his neck. ‘Not sure how he does it,’ he said, motioning to the scaffolding, on which Connie saw Lucio adjusting a rig of stage lights towards the eastern wall of the transept. ‘Damned if the boy doesn’t keep going all night. Like his life depended on it. Wish I could spirit him up to London to help me out with those bloody Drury Lane commissions’ — he winced — ‘a tad overdue!’ He replaced his cap and smirked at Connie again, as if she had just stepped out of her clothes in front of him. She shouldered past and made her way up the nave towards the scaffold. Behind her she could hear him asking Mr Gilbert for a spare quid.

  From the raised platform, Lucio was looking down at her. The spotlights threw into relief the wiry tufts of stitches scything his eye, the blue that blossomed around it, the cuts in his nose and lip. He straightened and pressed his forearm to his chin, as though wiping sweat away, even though the church was cold as a tomb. The handles of the brushes in his fist ground together like teeth.

  ‘Can I come up?’ she asked. He set the brushes across an upturned crate and squatted on the scaffold so he could take her hand. She climbed up beside him, the heat of the stage lights warming her a little. He dropped her hand and they angled themselves away from each other, studying different ends of the mural.

  He was working in the left of the view, on a bird taking flight between the branches of an ash. The wands of glossy leaves seemed to quiver as they drifted across the arch, and a feather shed from the bird’s beating wings spiralled as if disturbed by a breeze, or by the bang of the door. The hoary tree trunk was a study in itself, the silver bark beset with patches of white and orange lichen, borers and beetles, and in one part, a shelf fungus that appeared so real she felt she might reach out and break off a white-tipped frill, the way she used to as a child, cutting through the spinneys on the bridle path to the schoolhouse. To her right, in the foreground, stood three women in robes of russet, sapphire and brown, one bent in grief, her companions regarding each other, their faces pencilled, as yet unpainted. A light caught the hand of one woman, clutching at the neck of her headdress. Her skin was chafed at the knuckles, thick-fingered — a worker’s hand, the faint liver spots of age strangely familiar.

  She felt the tremor in the platform as Lucio shifted his weight. ‘Have you done most of this?’ she asked.

  He glanced at Mr Swann by the western door, where Mr Gilbert was holding his hand up to them. ‘I’d better see him to the Green Man. Back in a half hour, alright?’ They watched the men go, their footsteps sounding along the gravel path, leaving nothing but the hum of the stage lights, the hollow breath of the vaulted space around them. Lucio bent to clean his brushes on a rag, but she caught him observing her as she considered the work again.

  ‘There’s so much here …’ She heard the sibilance of her voice evaporating with her breath in the cold air. She tried again. ‘It’s all so real, like it could move … it makes me …’ But she couldn’t find the words. All she managed was, ‘It’s too beautiful for Leyton.’

  He frowned. The muscles in his jaw were clenched.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked, indicating the figures.

  ‘Salome and Joanna.’ He angled his head towards the third woman. ‘And Mary outside the tomb.’

  She remembered Mr Swann’s sketches with their descriptions in the memorial hall. ‘I know that,’ she said. Again she examined the hand clutching the cloth, lit by the sepulchral glow, realising it would be enhanced cleverly by light through the south windows in the day. ‘But who are they?’

  ‘No one.’ He shrugged. ‘Mr Swann’s models. He does the figures, the faces.’ He pointed behind them, to the western wall of the transept, where another scaffold stood before an unfinished scene. She could make out two figures before a wooded backdrop.

  ‘St John and St Peter in the garden of Getsemaní,’ he said.

  ‘Gethsemane,’ she repeated. She had always loved the name, and now the subtle difference of his Italian pronunciation.

  ‘Look.’ He grabbed the handles of a light and aimed it at the mural. ‘You see Peter?’ The faces flooded with colour and life, and she recognised Mr Gilbert’s, the perplexed expression he wore in the shop when he had forgotten something. In the face of St John, she saw a rather noble, optimistic profile of Mr Swann himself.

  She realised her mouth was open and she closed it. Lucio smiled at her, and she felt the blood returning to her face and hands, warm and tingling. ‘Do the committee know? Have they seen this yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Mr Swann says —’ He paused, a twist to his lips that might have been amusement. ‘He says they must sell more jam and cakes if they don’t like it. He has no money to pay models.’ She grinned. Despite the little she had learned and seen of Mr Swann, she could imagine him saying it. And she could also imagine the uproar once Mrs Cleat and the Christian Ladies found out they’d be singing There Is a Green Hill Far Away to the image of the schoolteacher perpetually wondering whether he’d left behind his cheese ration. Not quite the transcendent aid to worship they might have had in mind.

  She turned to him again. His face was in the shadow of the light shining on the mural, making his bruises seem all the worse.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ she said, the echo of her voice sounding too loud, too accusing in the silence of the church. ‘I thought maybe … did I do something wrong, was I too outspoken — about the picture
?’

  He frowned and pushed his hair back from his face with his wrist. ‘No.’

  She lifted her hand towards him, towards the curve of stitches at his eye, but he turned away and she let it fall again.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said. ‘I mean, for nothing. No money, no recognition. And the work at Repton’s on top of it all. You should be going to art college.’

  ‘How?’ he said flatly, like he was going through the motions of a tedious argument. ‘We still pay Repton money for our passage here.’

  ‘There are scholarships. If you’re good, they pay for you. Mr Gilbert could help you.’

  ‘Not for people like me — not for aliens. Mr Gilbert says I need a British passport first. Only six more years to wait.’ His laugh was sharp, ironic. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Why do you always say that? Stop saying that,’ she said, and the force of it surprised her. She found she had grabbed at his wrist, as if to shake him. ‘Look at this.’ She thrust her other hand towards the walls. ‘You need to get away. From Repton’s, from Leyton. Can’t you see?’

  His eyes scanned the sweep of the ash branches, the dove’s wing, the falling light in the garden at Gethsemane. ‘I do get away,’ he said.

  ‘But they can’t appreciate this here. Not in Leyton. Don’t you understand? You’ll waste away here.’

  Her fingers still gripped his wrist, and he laid his hand on top of hers. ‘I think maybe it’s you who waste away here,’ he whispered. But she couldn’t be sure whether she heard the words or simply felt them, saw them forming in the cast of his black eyes. She snatched her hand away.

  ‘Connie,’ he said. For the first time, she heard the sound her name made in his mouth, like something new, a name too exotic for the lanes of Leyton. And she wanted it to reinvent her, to remake her somewhere else: in Gethsemane or Israel, Damascus or Egypt, Antioch or Cappadocia. But the door creaked, and when she looked about her again, she was still in the stony chill of St Margaret’s Village Church in Leyton, Mr Gilbert observing them with ruddy cheeks and chapped lips, his bicycle clip attached to his leg, his trilby turning in his hand.

  Montelupini

  1943

  The festival of Ferragosto took place on one of the hottest days Lucio could remember. Even at sunset, he could feel the heat of the cobbles through his sandals as he and Vittorio trailed back along Via del Soccorso towards the village. An irritable Professore Centini had caught them lounging in the cool air by the fountain and set them to putting up trestle tables and hanging lanterns down on the campo for the evening’s celebrations. Now they were sweaty from it, and while the rest of the village made their way to the party, Vittorio had insisted on going home to change. They approached the village just as the sun slotted behind the hills, and Lucio could almost hear the stones of the houses, the church, the battlements sigh their relief. On days like this, the whole village held its breath for nightfall.

  As they climbed the steps to the piazzetta, they heard laughter coming from the osteria: a voice, German and loud, crowing in victory. Under the single light bulb of the pergola, Lucio could see Captain Schlosser’s head, throwing back the remains of his glass, and Otto, bent towards the cards on the table. They seemed to be the last ones left at the bar, finishing their game. The rest of the unit had sauntered past Lucio and his brother in dribs and drabs, making their unsteady way down to the festival, red-faced from an afternoon’s drinking in the heat.

  ‘Idiot crucchi,’ Vittorio muttered once again. It was his favourite comment these days. He leaned against the entrance to Vicolo Giotto and eyed the two senior officers with disgust. ‘Anyone would think they were tourists on holiday. Do you think they’ve even heard that Mussolini’s behind bars?’

  Lucio didn’t answer. He had no doubt the captain knew, but if he’d received any specific orders following Il Duce’s arrest, he was keeping them very close to his chest. He and his men continued to frequent the osteria as they always had, while behind his back the villagers fretted about the German reinforcements arriving in Montemezzo and the larger towns, the hostile attitude of the new troops, and the withdrawal of courtesies and trading.

  ‘Here we are, pussyfooting around them, like some unexploded bomb in the piazza, but all Schlosser does is sit in the tavern and get everyone drunk for Ferragosto.’ His brother was right. If tensions had increased between the Germans and the Italians elsewhere, the captain’s answer was simply to drink the edge off them. In a gesture of goodwill to the Montelupinese, he’d even gone so far as to procure a piglet through his connections in Montemezzo, so that the pig jousting — the highlight of the festival — could continue as it always had. The fact that most of the village would rather eat the beast than play games with it seemed irrelevant to the captain.

  Vittorio kicked at the heel of his sandal, as if to dislodge a piece of grit. ‘Well, if that crucco’s so desperate to see the jousting, we’ll give him a joust.’ He entered the alleyway, but glanced back at Lucio from the shadows. ‘And we’ll be hanging a nice fat porker in the cellar by winter, you’ll see, Guf.’ He thrust his hands in his pockets and began to walk home. But Lucio, hearing shouts again from the osteria, lingered under the arch of Vicolo Giotto.

  ‘Padre! Padre, tell him!’ the captain was calling loudly, rattling his chair behind him as he stood to address Padre Ruggiero. The priest was labouring across the piazzetta in his heavy robes, having finished vespers at San Pietro’s. ‘Tell him, Padre. He must see the pig fight!’ The captain motioned to Otto impatiently. His accent had become thicker with the drink and Lucio could barely understand him. ‘I find the pig especially. Is good sport, yah?’ He pulled out a chair for Padre Ruggiero, who sat down heavily and pressed his sweating face into a handkerchief. He had come, it seemed, with the purpose of escorting the officers to the festival — making even more effort than Captain Schlosser to ignore the tensions erupting around them.

  ‘Yes indeed. You must see the pig joust, Signor Otto,’ Padre Ruggiero said, when he had recovered his breath. ‘It’s quite a spectacle. And so generous of the captain to make sure we’ve been able to carry on our traditions in such lean times.’

  Otto didn’t seem drunk at all, and Lucio sensed from the way he sat, upright and awkward, that he was there under obligation. ‘I’m sorry, Padre. I’m not usually such a bore. I have a terrible toothache, I’m afraid —’

  ‘He needs a drink, yes?’ the captain interrupted. ‘I tell him, drink the padre’s aquavit. Tomorrow I take him to Monteferro myself to —’ He put the knuckle of his forefinger to his mouth and made a ripping noise in his cheek, mimicking the extraction of the tooth. He laughed, pushing a generous glass of liquor towards Otto. Even from where he stood, Lucio could see the unmistakeable colour of Raimondi Gold. The captain said something energetic in German and took a swig from a silver hipflask on the table.

  ‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ Otto apologised to the priest.

  ‘Even so, the captain is right,’ Padre Ruggiero said, eyeing the size of the glass that had been poured. ‘The villagers use this grappa as medicine. It’s known to cure all manner of ailments. Particularly good for toothache, as I recall. Still,’ he took the glass and poured some of the liquid into another, ‘you shouldn’t overdo it.’ He knocked back the contents in one gulp.

  The captain clapped the priest on the shoulder. ‘Komm,’ he said excitedly and nudged the glass again towards Otto. ‘Komm!’ Otto took it up, while Padre Ruggiero gave him a slow nod, like a benediction. He put the glass carefully to his lips, but before he could drink, the captain had tipped it upwards so that Otto was forced to gulp the whole shot or wear it down his shirtfront. Captain Schlosser wheezed as Otto grimaced, the liquor coursing down his throat.

  When the joke had worn off, the captain jumped up. ‘Good!’ he said, slipping the hipflask into Otto’s shirt pocket and patting it. ‘Now we see the fighting pig!’ And
he grinned at them, innocent as a boy on the way to a country fair.

  Lucio didn’t go home to change. Instead he tailed the Germans and the priest, catching up with Otto when he found him alone at the edge of the campo. He was inspecting the lanterns that Lucio and his brother had hung from the trees, along the grassy hillside where most of the villagers had spread themselves, chatting before the entertainment began. In the meadow stood a semi-circle of ancient stones set about a chalk pit, partially cut into the hillside — when and by whom, nobody knew anymore. The small amphitheatre was only ever used for the Ferragosto games, or by children who staged plays and enacted feats of gladiatorial prowess while their mothers were at the washhouse. Leading the captain, Padre Ruggiero had already threaded through the crowd to take up the low stone seats set about the arena, which were always reserved for him. Behind them the soldiers from the mess were loitering in groups, set apart from the Italians, talking in their staccato voices and sending out volleys of laughter from time to time, like a flock of crows.

  ‘How is your toothache?’ Lucio asked Otto. He could tell from the shine in his friend’s cheek and the softer line of his jaw that the liquor was already working its magic.

  ‘Practically gone,’ Otto said, surprised. ‘The priest was right about that stuff.’ Lucio nodded.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Otto continued, gesturing at the coloured lights in the branches above them, the torches around the ring that were beginning to brighten with the falling night. ‘The people go to so much trouble. It must mean a lot to them.’

  Lucio shrugged. He remembered Ferragosto as it used to be: the pig spitting on the roast, Urso and Polvere arguing over its basting; the tables where the women would serve orecchie di prete, newspaper cones of olives and nuts, and the freshly made crostoli and ciambelle. There was none of that now, only a cask of young wine that Fagiolo drew off and sold by the glass to locals, and by the jug to the Germans. Everyone had eaten before they came, he knew, unable or unwilling to spare anything for the communal feast that once was the heart of the celebration. Now everyone saved the best of their harvests to trade, and pride prevented them from bringing out the paltry remains they kept to feed themselves.