While Carmina’s hair fell into luxuriant dark waves, Gina’s own brown locks were cut short and as straight as the falling rain. More often than not she pinned it out of the way with kirby-grips. Nor did she have her sister’s curves. Clothes hung on her as if on a clothes peg, not a budding young woman. She despaired of ever getting breasts, of ever being seen as normal.
So why risk making a fool of herself before everyone? Despite her resolution Gina felt bitterly disappointed, wept silently into her pillow and slept not a wink. By morning she’d quite made up her mind. She couldn’t possibly go to the dance. Carmina was right. She’d only make herself, and Luc, a laughing stock.
She sought comfort in the thought that they could perhaps still be friends, although felt no longer able to consider him as a possible boy friend, not now that she knew he’d kissed her sister too, and two-timed her.
But what did it matter? It wasn’t as if she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him, was it? Gina didn’t like to admit, even to herself, that she’d almost certainly been in danger of doing just that. He’d been so sweet to her, so unlike the Luc that Carmina had known and bragged out. He hadn’t seemed dangerous and racy to her, not in the least.
But he needed to be told her decision and Gina really couldn’t bear to tell him face to face.
Carmina generously agreed to personally deliver the note Gina agonised over and rewrote a dozen times before she was finally satisfied with it.
‘Tell him I appreciate the invitation, but explain that I’m really not up to dancing, not yet,’ Gina begged, and a great wedge of emotion blocked her throat so that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She hated any reference to her disability, so having to use that as an excuse was a bitter pill to swallow. But not for the world was Gina prepared to admit that she’d heard about his betrayal.
‘I’ll make sure he understands,’ Carmina reassured her with saccharine sweetness.
But then, of a sudden, perhaps caused by something in her sister’s tone of voice, or a glint very like triumph, quickly masked, in her dark brown eyes, Gina instantly changed her mind. ‘No! Give me back the note. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll speak to him myself.’
‘Don’t be silly. Why upset yourself by seeing him again? No one else will know how he betrayed you, I swear it.’
‘Perhaps I’m being too hasty. Maybe I should give him the chance to explain.’
Carmina was horrified. The last thing she wanted was for Gina to repeat to Luc all she’d said about him, showing her up for the liar she undoubtedly was. ‘And make yourself look a complete fool by begging for him to like you? Don’t be stupid! I’ll put the letter into Luc’s hand personally, and simply explain how dancing is not really your thing.’
‘Thank you, but I’d rather do it myself. Give me the letter, Carmina. Please.’
The two sisters argued, almost came to blows over the scrap of paper, before Carmina tossed it to the floor in a ‘why-should-I-care-what-you-do gesture and flounced off downstairs. By the time Gina came down to breakfast some moments later she sensed at once by the chill in the atmosphere that Carmina had indeed revealed her precious secret.
Chapter Four
Amy was being instructed on how to make cold water starch so that the collars of Chris’s shirts could be properly stiffened. While conceding that today’s young preferred attached collars, her mother-in-law insisted that all respectable men were expected to wear starched white shirts with collars ironed until they shone. The fact that her son did not care for them was quite by the way. Mavis was most particular about how things should be done.
She put moth balls in every parchment-lined drawer, folded her Viyella nightdress each morning into its satin nightdress case, brushed the crumbs from the tablecloth with a silver backed brush and dustpan especially for the purpose. Mavis liked things nice.
When she was young, Mavis’s family had employed a young Irish maid from Donegal. She’d explained to Amy how the girl had needed to be taught proper table manners. ‘My dear mother always insisted on the highest standards, as do I.’ Making it very plain that she thought Amy too lacked certain values since she was a member of the dreaded Poulson family.
Mavis considered that she’d married beneath her in choosing Thomas George as a husband, and as she couldn’t afford a maid and her son had foolishly made the same mistake, her new daughter-in-law would serve very well instead. Amy was a useful, and free, alternative.
Mavis herself did little more than flick a duster around, expecting her daughter-in-law to carry out the more mundane tasks under her careful supervision, hence the lesson in cold water starch. Sadly, as per usual, Amy’s efforts failed to impress, and she found herself at the receiving end of yet another lecture.
She didn’t protest, where was the point? It was far easier to comply. Any hint of rebellion always brought reprisals and Amy was a peace-maker, had spent her entire life mediating between various members of the Poulson household and was thankful to have escaped. Besides which she was a sensitive, caring girl who believed everyone should be happy and kind to one other, and would take almost any course rather than provoke an argument. She really had no wish to be at odds with anyone, if she could at all avoid it.
Yet there was a stubborn core of steel in her too, which had stood her in good stead over the years. Even the patient Amy had her limits, and Mavis was fast approaching them.
Since her soaking the other day, Mavis had barely stopped berating her, as if Amy had done it simply to vex her.
‘I really cannot imagine what you were thinking of.’
‘I was interested in the march, in all those people who passionately believe they can make the government change its mind about nuclear weapons.’
‘Absolute nonsense, how can such small-minded, ordinary people know better than Mr Macmillan and his government what needs to be done?’ she scoffed. ‘What if the Russians should come and we aren’t properly defended? We made that mistake in World War Two. We mustn’t ever let that happen again.’
‘But we weren’t invaded in World War Two.’
‘We might have been. We certainly had very little means of defending ourselves at the start of the war.’
‘Yes, I accept that as a fair argument, but look what happened in Hiroshima. If we continue along that road, where will it all end? Isn’t it time we concentrated on making peace?’
As ever, Amy made the fundamental mistake of imagining she could have an intelligent conversation with her mother-in-law.
‘What would you know about such things? Foolish girl, you don’t even have the sense to keep out of the rain. Goodness knows how you’ll cope when this baby is actually born. Keep stirring that starch, child, we don’t want it to go all lumpy. I really don’t know what Chris will say when he finds out.’
Amy wondered how many babies she would need to produce before she ceased to be a child in her mother-in-law’s eyes.
Mavis made a point of telling her son all about the escapade almost as soon as he walked through the door. Chris was so upset and worried at how the wetting might affect the baby that the moment they were alone in bed that night, he gave Amy a gentle ticking off, almost as if he too saw her as a naughty schoolgirl who really should know better. He seemed to do that a good deal these days, usually instigated by some tale or other from his mother which more often than not was a huge exaggeration of the truth, or else far too trivial to matter.
The other day he’d looked at her straight-faced and said, ‘Mother tells me that you turned all her lace curtains pink in the wash.’
‘It was an accident. One of your luminous shocking pink socks got mixed up with them. I rather liked the result, actually. It was a lovely shade of pale pink.’
Amy had instantly fallen into a fit of giggles and Chris had frowned at her reprovingly. ‘You know that Mother considers her lace curtains to be the whitest in the whole street. You shouldn’t be so careless, Amy.’
She’d naturally protested but on this occasion, however, Amy
was ashamed to admit that her beloved husband was probably right. She should not have been out in the rain getting soaked through. It was indeed a very foolish thing to do.
‘It was just that I was so bored. I’ll be glad when this baby is born and I can start living my life again. Why did you make me stop working for Ma? She could do with some help on the pie stall and we could do with the money to save up for a place of our own.’
‘You know full well that I insisted you take time off from work because you were pregnant and should rest. Besides, I hope no wife of mine will ever need to go out to work just to put a roof over our heads.’
Amy cuddled up to him in the single bed they shared in the back bedroom, the one where Chris had lived since he was a boy, kissing his tightly pursed mouth till it softened and opened to her.
‘Stop being such an old fuddy-duddy. It was great fun watching that march. They were handing out leaflets,’ Amy told him, between kisses. ‘All about how we should walk for a weekend, a day, or even an hour if we’re opposed to any government having nuclear weapons. Maybe I will.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t want you walking anywhere in your condition, or involving yourself with those sort of people.’
‘What sort of people is that, Chris?’
‘With people who sleep in church halls getting up to heaven knows what. They have no morals.’
Amy looked at him. ‘They have a higher standard of morals than folk who click their tongues about the way the world is going and yet do nothing about it. Goodness, you’re beginning to sound as snobby as your mother. Those people weren’t just students and left-wing weirdos, there were also middle-class, professional people, the kind your mother might invite in for a dry sherry or afternoon tea. Some were young women pushing babies in prams. I almost went and joined them there and then. I want a safe world for our baby too, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do, but it’s not our place to provide one. It’s certainly not yours.’
Amy bristled slightly. ‘What is my place then, Chris? If I can’t have a home of my own, if I’m not permitted to work, am not allowed to join in an intelligent, non-violent protest about an important issue, what am I allowed to do? Wash your shirts, I suppose.’
‘There’s no shame in a wife washing her husband’s shirts.’
‘Of course there isn’t, not unless I turn all your shirts pink, to match the lace curtains.’
He stared at her, horrified. ‘You didn’t!’
Amy could never be cross with him for long, if only because he was so very serious. Now she fell to giggling as she unbuttoned his pyjama jacket and peeled off his trousers. ‘No, I didn’t, the lesson today was in how to make a good cold water starch.’
Chris groaned.
‘Anyway, why would you care how your clothes are washed, so long as there’s a clean shirt hanging in the wardrobe whenever you want one?’
All the while she provoked him with her teasing, Chris was beginning to respond to her kisses, quite against his better judgement, for she was too far gone in pregnancy for him to risk taking things any further despite Amy’s insistence it wouldn’t harm the baby.
But then Chris was a cautious man, not one for taking chances. It was only his desperate love for Amy and that dreadful feud between their parents which had driven him to do something as crazy as eloping to Gretna Green. And he hadn’t regretted it, not for a moment, although it was a great help that his parents had agreed to offer them a home and employment on their return, since they were stony broke by then. Amy insisted they would have coped well enough on their own, but Chris wasn’t too sure.
The bakery was a family business, his heritage in a way, so since he’d lost his job doing the milk round, he’d set his mind to learning the trade. Amy didn’t seem to understand that he wanted things to be good for them, and safe. No more risks.
But now his head was going all muzzy with desire. Maybe they might risk making love, after all, if they were gentle.
‘Well then, could you at least beg her not to starch my collars,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘My neck is rubbed raw, as red as a turkey cock’s,’ and they both burst out laughing at this, although they had to stifle the sound under the covers so that his mother and father didn’t hear.
It was a day or two later and, shoulders hunched against the April cold, Alec Hall was making his way to his little music shop on the edge of the market hall. He still had the Peace Marcher’s demonstration niggling away at the back of his mind, and he was also haunted by the image of a beautiful girl in a scarlet duffel coat.
The strains of Bobby Darin singing Dream Lover reached him as he approached. Dreams! He had far too many of those, and they generally turned into nightmares. Day and night they played havoc with his mind.
But he mustn’t dwell on memories, mustn’t become obsessed. There was more to life than war. His own father, for goodness sake, had told him not to be a bore on the subject.
‘Really, Alec,’ he would say, in that commanding tone of voice he used when addressing what he considered to be lesser beings. ‘I know you had a terrible time of it but stop being so damned self-pitying. You must learn to put the past behind you and start living again. Be a man.’
But then he’d never been a sympathetic parent even when Alec was a child. He would accuse him of being fussy and over-sensitive just because he preferred to play with the girls rather than other boys. Or of being too soft and namby-pamby, his favourite words. Alec’s mother would insist that his father was only attempting to toughen him up so that he’d grow into a strong man. Where his father had failed, life and two wars had more than made up for it.
Even today, five years on, he showed little interest in Alec’s excellent war record, constantly picking on him for being content with a small shop on an insignificant little market. He accused his son of having no ambition, and of not liking hard work. Nor were any of Alec’s family and friends aware how badly the Korean war had affected him in that alien land.
He supposed his father was right in one respect, at least. Alec admitted that he wasn’t the most astute businessman in the world. Classical music was his passion, and playing his favourite Mozart and Schubert was what engrossed him, not standing around for hours trying to sell rubbish to stupid teenagers.
Yet he was keen to make a decent living and hoped that Terry, his son, had made them some much-needed profit this morning while Alec had enjoyed his usual breakfast of bacon and eggs in Belle’s Café. The boy meant well but his head was full of that skiffle group he was in, so Alec very much doubted it.
As he pushed open the door, a young girl dashed out and ran full tilt into him. She was carrying a record in its brown paper sleeve, and almost dropped it as they collided.
‘Sorry! Hey, are you okay?’ Alec put out his hands to steady her. It was Carmina Bertalone. Now here was one teenager he would be willing to find time for.
She looked up at him and laughed, velvet brown eyes dancing. ‘I’m fine. Who better to bump into than a handsome man?’
‘I rather think I’m the lucky one,’ he said.
She dimpled at him. ‘Will you be playing the records during the interval at the dance on Friday night, Mr Hall?’ Her lovely head tilted provocatively to one side as she innocently asked the question.
‘I might,’ Alec said, instantly dismissing his earlier plan to leave that to Terry as his gaze swivelled directly to her cleavage.
‘See you there, then.’
He watched the provocative sway of her hips as she walked away, the flirtatious smile she flung back at him over her shoulder, the swinging gloss of her ebony pony tail. Standing there, smiling after her like some awe-struck schoolboy, he felt again that quiver of excitement, the familiar ache in his loins. Young girls were ever his weakness, but then didn’t he deserve one, after what he’d been through?
Chapter Five
The Bertalone family’s ice cream parlour stood just inside the iron-framed market hall, a shining example of sparkling marble cou
nter tops, huge mirrors, and brass and copper fittings. It was here that the ice cream was made, in a small, clinically clean room set behind the parlour. Patsy liked to help whenever she had a moment or two to spare during her dinner hour, if only because Papa Bertalone was such a kind man who had welcomed her into his family with open arms.
Not that she had much free time being pretty fully occupied helping Clara on the hat stall, working on projects for her millinery course, or creating hats for her own clientele. Nevertheless, Patsy was anxious to be a part of this family she was about to join when she married Marc. She loved to watch Papa making the ice cream. He was so very proud of his small empire, and eagerly embroiled in expansion plans for a business started more than sixty years ago by his great uncle.
Today he was making Peach Gelato, and her mouth was already watering just watching him gather the ingredients together: ripe fresh peaches flown in from Italy, mascarpone and yoghurt.
‘This tastes wonderful,’ she said, nibbling a slice of peach.
Papa grinned at her. ‘You come work with me in the ice-a-creama parlour and I teach you all you needa to know about ice-a-creama.’
Patsy instinctively glanced across at Carmina who was just a few feet away serving customers, the rigid stance of her spine loudly proclaiming that she’d heard every word of her father’s offer and resented it deeply. The girl would certainly not welcome Patsy’s intrusion into her own private territory even though she frequently trespassed on hers, and claimed to be bored sick of serving ice cream. Patsy gave Marco a rueful look even as she picked up a knife and began to chop the peeled peaches into small pieces, as she had done many times before.
‘My skills lie in a different direction. I love working with hats, and Clara needs me even more now that Annie has been forced to retire through ill health.’
Who's Sorry Now (2008) Page 3