The girl was pressed up against a wall, Alec leaning over her, his hands at either side of her head, imprisoning her between them. Carmina’s lovely face was inches from his, her eyelids half closed, mouth set in a tantalising pout.
He was speaking to her in urgent little whispers and Carmina was laughing softly. Patsy hung back, making sure they didn’t spot her. For one astonishing moment she thought he might be about to actually kiss the girl, but then glancing round he seemed to think better of it, and, pushing himself off the wall, walked briskly away.
Carmina stayed where she was, eyes gleaming, smiling to herself like a Cheshire cat who had very much swallowed the cream. Then she sauntered off in the direction of the ice cream cart as if she had all the time in the world.
‘The little madam,’ Patsy said, to no one in particular. ‘Now she’s teasing poor Alec.’
Patsy called in at the ice cream parlour, as she so loved to do, only to discover that Papa Bertalone had already learned of Carmina’s non-appearance at the ice cream cart. He was talking to Winnie Holmes about it and clearly upset, a crimson stain spreading up his neck, his jaw tight.
‘That girl, she so lazy. She will be the death of my business. Does she not know that competition is fierce?’
Muttering to himself, Marco expertly spooned a mixture of fresh fruit: peaches, pineapple and melon, into a tall glass, then added a few sliced grapes.
Patsy caught Winnie’s eye, giving the nosy old woman a fierce glare which said, ‘Why did you have to upset him?’ as Papa launched into his favourite complaint: the problems of running a small business.
‘Why Carmina not see we have to work in order to survive? Since the war, we have the influx of our compatriots flooding in, many from Sicily who are also anxious to make-a much money out of ice-a-creama. We have many vendettas, one family trying to outdo the other.’ He waved the ice cream scoop in the air, as if it were a machete. ‘Always on the rounds there are often two, three, or more vans all touting for business in the same street. It ees difficult to make the beeg profit, si?’
He dropped three scoops of ice cream into the dish, one each of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, then rapped the scoop on the counter. ‘They steal my pitches all the time. And the worst offenders are the Fabrianis. Now my own daughter let me down.’
Marco was more than ready to vent his fury on this absent, recalcitrant daughter who had very nearly forcibly allied him to these hated rivals in marriage.
‘Carmina, she make-a me mad. She still carry the torch for Luc, I think. Gina is the same. What is a father to do?’ he begged of his listeners, eyes wild. ‘But if my empty-headed daughters imagine there can ever be an alliance with that family, they are very mucha mistaken. I would see them both dead first.’
Patsy and Winnie exchanged a knowing glance. Marco often displayed this passionate, volatile temperament, but his words were meaningless. They both knew that he adored all of his children, worshipped the ground they walked on as all Italians do, so they paid no heed to these vehement remarks. Patsy smoothed a hand over his stiff back in an attempt to calm him.
‘I’ve just seen Carmina making her way to the ice cream cart, as a matter of fact. It should be open by now.’ She made no mention of the little encounter she’d just witnessed between the girl and Alec Hall. It may, after all, have been perfectly innocent.
Drawing in a deep steadying breath, Marco added a dash of strawberry syrup, a swirl of whipped cream, then topped it all off with a fan wafer and a few glacé cherries. Tight-lipped, he handed the dish to Winnie as if it were a gift.
‘Eeh, that looks gradely,’ the old woman said.
‘I shall speak to her,’ Marco said, darkly. ‘This cannot go on.’
‘And I’d better get back to my own work,’ said Patsy, beating a hasty retreat.
‘Why cannot you take pride in your heritage?’ Papa asked Carmina, as he had a million times before. ‘Why you always late for work, as you have been every morning this week?’
He’d been forced to gird his patience until Carlotta came to relieve him at the parlour for his dinner break. Only then was he able to vent his wrath on this wayward child. Father and daughter exchanged a few heated words and then she fell into some sort of daze, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.
He gave her arm a little shake. ‘Stop dreaming, girl. Are you listening to a word I’m saying?
‘I don’t feel very well,’ Carmina said, her mouth falling into a sulky pout.
Winnie Holmes waddled over to listen to this fierce argument between father and daughter, not wishing to miss the concluding chapters in this little dispute. She gave Carmina a measuring glance. ‘The lass does look a bit peaky, a touch under-the-weather like. Have you eaten summat that disagrees with you, girl?’
They both turned to look at the old woman, surprised to find her standing there, avidly drinking in every word of this private conversation.
Ignoring her, Marco continued, ‘Momma tell me she call you and call you, and still you late for work. You don’t even have breakfast.’
Carmina said, ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. Sorry, Papa, I won’t be late again, I promise.’
She was late in another respect too and had felt far too sick even to get out of bed this morning. It had happened once or twice recently and Carmina had been forced to persuade Marta, whose room she was now sharing, to fetch her a cup of sweetened tea before she could risk lifting her head off the pillow.
Her father clicked his tongue in exasperation. ‘Why I employ you I cannot think.’
Carmina dimpled at him. ‘Because you love me?’
He ignored this too. ‘Always I hear the same excuses, and always you make-a the same mistake, over and over again. It ees because you do not think.’ He tapped his own head. ‘We Italians are proud of our ability to maka the best ice-a-creama in the world. Why you not proud of that?’
Carmina was barely listening to him. A secret excitement was building up inside her. Nothing had been quite going her way lately, now she thought the tide might have turned at last. Life was catching up with her dreams and Luc wouldn’t be able to wriggle out of his responsibilities this time.
It seemed that whenever she told what she knew to be a lie, it had a remarkable habit of coming true.
First she’d fabricated a tale to Gina that Luc had been seen kissing other girls, and then engineered a necking session with him herself, which nicely proved her point. Her story that she was pregnant with Luc’s child had sadly back-fired, thanks to Momma and Doc Mitchell. It had been easy enough to persuade Gina to believe they really had made love, at Luc’s insistence, and even been forgiven for her own part in this alleged betrayal. But she’d felt as if everything she’d dreamed of was slipping away from her.
Now it seemed fortune was again smiling on her, as she might well be pregnant after all.
Carmina became aware that Winnie was watching her closely, and she experienced the eerie sensation that the woman could see right into her mind. It was as if she knew everything that was going on there. But then it was well known there was little the old witch didn’t miss.
Of course, there was one tiny difficulty over her situation.
Assuming she was pregnant, and in view of the fact she and Luc never had made love, and that she was involved in what might be termed an interesting, if somewhat unromantic, relationship with Alec Hall, Carmina knew well enough who the father was. It certainly wasn’t Luc Fabriani, which was unfortunate.
Not that she allowed this to trouble her too much. After all, it was only her word against his what happened in his old car that night. So the father of her child could be whoever she said it was. And she would choose Luc, naturally. That would be one lie nobody could disprove, not now.
It was past three o’clock in the afternoon and she was longing to escape, but would Papa let her go home early? Carmina decided to ask. ‘Papa, I’m still not feeling too good, can I go now, please?’
Marco let out a heavy sigh and shook his head
sadly at Winnie. ‘Daughters are never around when you need them or when there is work to be done. Always they want the time off, more money from their papa’s pocket, the coat from his back.’
‘Aye, some folk are expert at getting what they want,’ Winnie agreed, watching Carmina walk away with curiosity in her shrewd gaze. ‘But they don’t allus like it when they get it.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chris and Amy were thrilled to be in their own home at last, with their new baby, a boy whom they named Daniel. Even if the little house was an odd mix of Mavis’s cast-offs and Amy’s ultra-modern touches, not to mention Thomas’s amateur efforts at the new D-I-Y. None of this really concerned them as they could now shut the door against the world, and against Mavis’s interference. They could be completely alone and private, at least for most of the time. Mavis did manage to find some excuse or other to pop in each and every day. Thomas they rarely saw, and Ozzy stayed well clear, in case he should be asked to do something.
Amy’s own mother, Big Molly, also popped in regularly, of course, to bounce her first grandchild on her ample knee and deposit a selection of freshly baked pies or sausage rolls in Amy’s kitchen.
‘Just so’s you’re not dependent on that rubbish yer in-laws bakery churns out. You need summat decent in yer belly when you’re breast feeding.’ As if a steak and kidney pie was guaranteed to produce the best baby milk.
Amy leapt to their defence. ‘I’ll have you know that Chris, my own lovely husband if you remember, works in the bakery now, and he doesn’t produce rubbish.’
Big Molly made a scoffing sound in the back of her throat. Uniting the two families in holy matrimony had done nothing to banish the feud between them, not in her eyes.
The young couple spent a good deal of time holding and cuddling little Danny, and watching him breathe in and out. They would examine his tiny fingernails, all perfectly formed, his translucent skin, the down of soft hair which had a distinctly reddish tinge, clearly taking after his mother, and the curve of eyelashes that sleepily brushed his soft round cheeks. They loved the way his mouth puckered after his feed, the slight twitch which was surely his first smile, and his wide blue-eyed gaze which seemed to focus with surprise upon their loving faces.
Yet despite it being an easy birth, and Amy feeling as if she were bursting with energy and happiness, she continued to be wracked with self-doubt, fearful of the huge responsibility of caring for this new little person. The first few weeks were the worst and neither she nor Chris got much sleep during this time.
Danny was quite a good baby but small, and perhaps because of this, he tended to fall asleep before properly finishing his feed. Then two or three hours later he’d wake up crying for more.
Not that she allowed him to cry for long. Amy had carefully read and re-read every page of Dr Spock’s book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care which she followed to the letter. If Danny was crying then there must be a reason, and she would pick him up instantly to nurture and cuddle him.
Naturally, Mavis did not approve of this excessive attention. She was quite shocked by the idea of feeding the infant on demand. ‘He should be fed every four hours, on the dot. His little digestive system needs a regular routine, and on no account should he be fed more frequently than that. You’ll only make him fat and greedy if you give in to his every whimper, and he must certainly never be allowed to assume he is the boss.’
Fat chance of that with you around, Amy thought.
And then he started crying every evening, for no apparent reason at all. Night after night he would cry, sometimes till he was sick. Amy was distraught. The nurse said it was nothing more than a bit of colic. Mavis insisted Amy had been grossly over-feeding him.
‘I’m not. He just won’t feed properly. He isn’t interested in anything I give him. Not his bottle, not even the breast. I’m at my wits’ end.’
And if he didn’t take his last feed properly, then he would wake up again two hours later, crying with hunger. Amy was lucky if she got any sleep before the early hours of the morning. She was utterly exhausted, Chris too, poor man. And he then had to get up and do the morning’s baking.
Tonight, Danny was again screaming at full throttle, stiffening his little body and absolutely refusing to accept the rubber teat. Amy was in tears when Mavis walked in right in the middle of it, without even knocking, as was her wont.
‘Cooee! It’s only me,’ she chirruped, and then stopped, appalled by what she saw.
‘Please don’t cry, Danny. Oh, what can I do?’ Amy begged of her mother-in-law. He keeps drawing up his little legs but I’ve given him some gripe water. What more can I do? Why is he behaving like this?’
‘You’ve overfed him, that’s why. But you wouldn’t listen, would you?’
‘The nurse says it’s quite normal behaviour at this age, but I don’t know how to cope with it? Why won’t he stop?’ Amy sobbed.
Mavis watched this performance for a whole five seconds and then swept the baby up into her arms and bore him away upstairs. Seconds later she was back. Danny was still screaming, albeit at a distance.
‘What have you done with him?’ Amy cried.
‘Put him in his cot until he calms down.’
‘You can’t do that. We can’t ignore him. He might be sick. He might choke, or stop breathing.’
‘He sounds in fine fettle to me. Once he’s over his little paddy, you can feed him, calmly and quietly.’
Amy was appalled. ‘But he isn’t in a paddy. He has colic. He needs a cuddle. I’m going to get him.’
‘Indeed you won’t.’ So saying, Mavis pushed Amy back down in her chair, and held her there. ‘You stay right where you are. He’ll stop in a minute.’
But he didn’t stop. He just kept right on crying, his sobs growing louder by the minute. As were Amy’s. By the time Chris arrived home from work, it was to find his mother and wife engaged almost in a wrestling match as Amy struggled to get upstairs to her screaming child and Mavis physically preventing her from doing so.
‘Mother!’ he shouted, above the din. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
Mavis let go upon the instant and Amy flew upstairs. By the time she returned with the distressed infant, Danny’s sobs had subsided to a more normal tearful cry, his little mouth turned down in abject misery. Amy put him to her breast and sighed with relief as he began at last to suckle.
‘You’ll ruin that child. Mark my words, you’ll ruin him,’ Mavis announced, and marched out of the house in a fine lather, a shower of plaster falling from the ceiling as she slammed the front door.
A stream of visitors continued to arrive at the little house, all bearing gifts for mother and child. There were flowers from Betty Hemley, chocolates from Lizzie Pringle, teething rings and rattles, matinee jackets and romper suits, any number of vests, pram rugs and nightdresses, and half of Champion Street must be knitting bootees, Amy thought.
Dorothy Thompson, or Aunty, as she was more affectionately called, popped in for a long chat one afternoon, just to see how the young mum was coping. She gave Amy some handy tips on child-rearing, including evening colic, which made Amy feel much better. She didn’t even make a fuss when Danny sicked up some of his last feed all down the front of her cardigan.
‘It’ll wash,’ was all she said, gently mopping him up.
Aunty also offered to mind him should Amy ever be stuck for a baby-sitter. ‘I’ve got that many foster childer, what’s one more? Don’t forget now, you and your lovely hubby need a bit of time on yer own now and then.’
Amy was touched. Neither grandparent had thought to offer such a thing.
Gina continued to call in regularly, following a morning spent in Dena’s sewing room, and Patsy too was a frequent visitor. She would pop over for half an hour whenever she could fit it in her busy schedule, anxious to reassure herself that her friend was well. Patsy was, of course, enchanted by little Danny although firmly declaring she wasn’t yet ready to embark on motherhood herself. ‘Mar
c’s the one getting broody, not me. I’ve told him he can have the kids himself if he’s so keen.’
Amy chuckled. ‘I don’t think it quite works that way, Patsy love.’
‘Pity. Well, maybe he could stay at home and look after them, then I can keep working on the hat stall.’
‘Wouldn’t you want to take time off to have children?’ Amy asked, puzzled. ‘I thought you wanted a family of your own.’
‘I do, but not yet. There are things I want to do first.’
‘Having a family is important too. You can always have a career later.’
‘Oh, don’t you start, I thought you were supposed to be my friend. Marc is becoming a positive bore on the subject. Where’s the hurry? I tell him. Though I must confess if I could guarantee to produce a baby as sweet as little Danny here, I’d be seriously tempted. Can I hold him?’
‘Course you can.’
Patsy held the baby on her lap for no more than five seconds before he started to cry, when she quickly handed him back. ‘Perhaps not.’
Amy laughed and admired the little romper suit Patsy had brought her, before tucking it in a drawer with half a dozen others. ‘Thanks for getting a larger size, he’s growing so fast he’ll be out of his first baby stuff in no time. Mind you, I think he has enough clothes to see him through till he’s four at least.’
Patsy admired what Amy had done to the house and told her about the changes she’d made on the hat stall. They chatted about Clara for a while and how she was coping, then Patsy admitted to some concern over the increase in shop-lifting she’d been experiencing lately.
‘It’s a real worry. I think it might be one of those new kids who have moved in below the fish market. Don’t know their names but they’re a bit rough, real troublemakers the lot of them.
Who's Sorry Now (2008) Page 22