The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  Hearing the threat in his voice I said to Ben, ‘Tell him.’

  I argued with Wiggin for days. He wanted me to go to a nursing home for unmarried mothers and sign adoption papers, a prospect I found abhorrent. I telephoned Oliver and pleaded with him to intervene.

  While Oliver and Ben worked on Wiggin, empty sherry glasses gathered like fretful corgis around Muz’s feet. A breakthrough came on the fourth evening. In an alcoholic haze, Muz circled a date on the calendar and alongside wrote ‘Julia to marry’.

  Ben purchased our four-bed, two-bathroom house in Chelsea forty-eight hours after Wiggin signed the marriage application form. In return for his capitulation, Ben agreed never to take us out of the country, not even on holiday. I viewed this proviso with disdain and repaid Wiggin with sullenness, failing to consider what it had cost him to watch me embark on a future that bore no resemblance to the one he had wanted for me. Looking back as a mature woman and mother, I think he feared we would disappear without trace into southern Italy. Ironic when you consider what happened.

  I spent the evening before the wedding with my grim-faced parents and Oliver’s, the Bardsley-Duttons. ‘Golden Boy’, the four of them called Oliver, who had gained a first at Oxford and won a plum job in the Foreign Office. If it wasn’t for the longstanding friendship between our parents, Oliver and I would never have met, let alone become pals, because he was six years older than me. We hit it off partly because neither of us had siblings. Had Oliver not been tuned for the other channel our parents would have expected us to marry. For years the six of us holidayed together every summer in France or northern Italy.

  Over dreary pre-nuptial drinks, Oliver took me aside. ‘It’s not too late to pull out, Julia.’

  His comment released within me a deluge of self-doubt. Was I too young and too immature to be a mother, a wife? Would I regret giving up acting? Had I ruined my life? ‘There’s no going back,’ I said, patting my stomach. ‘Life with Ben will be as exciting for me as your career is for you.’

  Oliver frowned. ‘Julia, marriage and a career are entirely different beasts.’

  Ben and I exchanged vows in May 1950. My beaded lace dress, borrowed from a cousin who married in the thirties, ‘skimmed the area of concern’, as Muz put it. ‘Life is not a play,’ she said in my bedroom moments before we were due to leave for the church. Wiggin was downstairs in his study, pacing about like a bull with toothache. ‘You can’t walk out if this production flops, Chicky,’ Muz said, referring to a show Ben had partially financed. Due to poor ticket sales — all our friends came on opening night — we’d had to close early. She went to adjust my veil, which I insisted on wearing off my face, unlike those worn by ‘proper brides’, another of her phrases. I pushed her hand aside. She tugged at it anyway. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done, Julia?’

  I picked up a lipstick from the dressing table and unscrewed the top. In front of a large oval mirror I applied one coat, blotted my lips on a tissue, added a second layer and bent forward to admire the fuchsia tint.

  ‘You could have married a surgeon,’ Muz said. ‘Had a life that opened doors.’

  ‘Close mine when you leave.’

  ‘Chicky, dear, you may regret this foolishness.’

  A typical teenager out of my depth, I’d pulled a face. Beneath the bravado I feared Ben might not turn up at the altar.

  I needn’t have worried, though I thought it odd that he was the only Moretti to attend. Much later I learned he hadn’t invited his family. But our London chums turned up in droves, their flamboyant clothes and personalities lifting the ceremony into a theatrical realm. I felt like Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the focus of attention. Nevertheless, I stumbled over the marriage vows. Saying them made them real. And legal. And forever.

  Walking down the aisle afterwards with Ben, I wondered whether I should have taken things more slowly and not slipped as easily from my father’s arm to my husband’s. Thankfully these misgivings evaporated as we reached the steps and faced our cheering friends as man and wife. I threw my bouquet to Marsha, but she was too busy lighting a fag to catch it. The current squeeze of a film director who had a wife in the country seized the flying object.

  ‘She’ll need to look elsewhere for a wedding ring,’ Ben whispered.

  I fingered mine with pride. He had chosen me.

  From my perspective the sole downside was having to relinquish my place at RADA. I’d gone to that interview. The acceptance letter had arrived two months afterwards. To begin with I contemplated juggling motherhood with acting, only realising my folly when Ben added housewife to the mix.

  Throughout the pregnancy Ben treated me as if I were a valuable piece of Limoges. If I ventured out, he wanted to know where I was going and with whom. One day he came home unexpectedly for lunch and found an empty house. He was drumming his fingers on the table when I walked in. ‘Where have you been?’

  Rather than admit I had panicked at the baby turning inside me and had gone for a walk to take my mind off the weird sensation, I said, ‘Just a spur-of-the-moment stroll, nothing strenuous.’ I glanced at the wall clock. It was 1.45 p.m. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ It dawned on me that I’d never been to his office or seen inside the storage buildings. ‘What do you actually do there, anyway?’

  ‘This and that.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He scratched the side of his head and moved nearer to the door.

  ‘Well?’ I said, flipping my hands towards him.

  ‘I see to orders, ease things along, sort out hitches.’

  Sunlight coming through a window refracted onto the wall either side of him, creating a splintered effect I found disconcerting. Rather than pull him up on his lack of detail and chance a row, I hesitated, and in the space, he said, ‘My main job is taking care of you and this little one.’ He lifted up my loose top and kissed my belly. ‘And if we’re lucky, there’ll be another before long.’

  5

  New Zealand, 1994

  ‘Mrs Moretti, your son has sustained serious head injuries,’ the neurosurgeon says.

  We are in a meeting room. He and a nurse sit opposite me.

  ‘I had to perform a craniotomy,’ he goes on, ‘which involved temporarily removing a bone flap to relieve the rising pressure inside his skull.’

  Air rushes from my lungs and a leaden weight lodges in my stomach.

  ‘It’s a shock,’ says the nurse, and pushes a box of tissues on the coffee table over to my side.

  I grip the arms of the chair and stare at a picture of an albatross on the wall until I regain a semblance of composure. ‘Can anything else be done?’ I ask.

  The neurosurgeon looks at me. ‘A brain acts much like a sponge,’ he says. ‘It soaks up excess fluid. This is why after surgery we slightly elevated your son’s’ — he looks at his file — ‘Matteo’s head, a simple procedure that allows the blood and cerebrospinal fluid to drain away. We’re also keeping his neck straight.’

  ‘I understand,’ I say, although I find it difficult to absorb the information.

  The surgeon’s long, thin face remains expressionless. Nevertheless, he speaks with sensitivity, pausing for me to ask questions. ‘Will he make a full recovery?’

  ‘Such cases are rarely straightforward,’ he replies. ‘We can’t rule out brain damage.’

  Alarmed at the prospect, I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. ‘Can we stay with the best possible scenario, please?’

  ‘For the time being,’ he says in a sympathetic tone. ‘We’ve transferred Matteo to ICU, our Intensive Care Unit. Take the stairs or the lift to the third floor. I’ll come and check on him later today. We can talk again then.’

  He gets to his feet and leaves with the nurse.

  I falter outside Matteo’s room, trace with a fingertip each letter of his name written on a card slotted into a small metal frame.

  ‘Go straight in, Mrs Moretti,’ says a brisk female voice behind me.

  I turn around, re
gister the stripes on her uniform and assume she’s the ward sister. All I can manage in response is a brief nod. She moves on. I press a hand to the door. Slowly swing it open. Take in the walls, bedcovers and bandages, white as hoar frost. Purple bruises and reddish swelling on a manly face, an adult body attached to tubes and machines, a noisy ventilator to assist with his breathing. I stumble towards a chair, sit down, interlace my fingers and exert pressure until the bones ache. In an effort to reconcile the Matteo I knew before with this Matteo, I repeat four sentences.

  I am your mother.

  You are my son.

  We’re together again.

  This is all that matters.

  It takes ages for me to accept the length of his arms and legs, the broad chest rising and falling. I wonder if under the dressing protecting his skull, his hair, black as onyx, remains thick and wavy, whether he has tamed the hint of a cowlick in the front. The minuscule scar at the hairline of his forehead, the result of a tumble from an oak tree as a youngster, is not visible either. Only the perfect arc of his eyebrows matches the image I have cherished for thirty-two years. Though I also notice and remember how the lower part of his earlobes are unconnected to the side of his face, just as mine are.

  If luck is with us and he regains consciousness, what will he recognise of me? My auburn hair that no longer falls to my shoulders, eyes faded to a greyer shade of blue, the slender nose that marks me as Christopher Fleet’s daughter? Or the cheeks that grief has hollowed out, cheeks a younger Matteo stroked as he waited for his papa and me to wake. ‘It’s getting light,’ he’d whisper, eager for a cuddle and a story, his angular body carrying the scent of lavender I sprinkled on his bed sheets.

  This room smells of bleach.

  These memories stir up layers of worry and guilt, doubt and anguish, uncomfortable feelings. I wouldn’t blame Matteo if he didn’t want to speak to me. Once trust has been lost, it’s hard to regain.

  I walk to the window, stare at the rain-soaked sky, empty apart from a lone seagull, and wonder, if he recovers, what the future will hold. As usual, conjecture leads me into dark corners, not where I want to be. I take a deep breath. My lips stick together. I moisten them with water I pour from a jug into a paper cup. The coldness surprises me. I look up and catch my reflection in the windowpane. Shock has blunted my features, deadened my eyes.

  Outside on the street, traffic noise merges with people calling to one another. Inside this room, nothing stirs except my thoughts, which I hesitate to lay before my son, fearing what they might rekindle. Nor can I predict his reaction if I were to reach across and take his hand, lying motionless on the double-edged top sheet.

  While I work on quelling my nerves, a nurse with glassy-blue eyes comes to replace the saline. Pale down covers the lower half of her face. She’s plain, yet there’s something comforting about her. She gives a timid smile, dips her head and regulates the amount of fresh solution dripping into Matteo’s veins. Satisfied, she turns to me and says, ‘He’s calm. He must sense you’re here with him.’

  Although her logic is faulty, I bob my head to acknowledge her kindness. ‘When he was young we called him Mattie,’ I say, realising I have not done so since beginning this vigil.

  She tucks a wayward sheet corner under the mattress. With the toe of her shoe, she coaxes all four castors to face the same direction. Standing back, arms bent at the elbows, she says, ‘There, he’s set.’

  For what, I want to know, for what?

  I’m about to ask if she has nursed many head-trauma cases when she gives another tentative smile, glances at her patient and, as she prepares to leave the room, says, ‘I won’t be far away, Mattie.’

  Doctors and nurses come in at regular intervals to check on him. Hours slip by. When we’re next alone, I rest my elbows on the side of the bed, cradle my chin in both hands and study him. But being this close overwhelms me, so I straighten up and imagine what his first words might be, pretend we will let what happened vanish without allocating blame or casting aspersions. All of it fantasy. The reality is bound to be beastly. How could it be otherwise? He no longer knows me, nor I him. No wonder I can’t decide if he senses me at his bedside.

  Leather-soled shoes slap along the corridor and stop outside the door. I glance at the wall clock: 5 p.m., the neurosurgeon as promised. I sit upright. Wait for him to join us.

  ‘This won’t take long, Mrs Moretti,’ he says, edging around me to shine a thin-beamed light into his patient’s eyes. ‘I want to see if there’s a response in his pupils,’ he explains. When he completes the task, he checks for reflexes.

  A faint sigh escapes from him as he flicks through the clinical files. I brace for bad news, but he merely asks the attending nurse about urine flow and blood pressure. Then he swallows twice in quick succession, which to me implies that he’s about to speak in a forthright manner.

  ‘There’s no change in your son’s condition,’ he says and takes a step backwards as if creating space for me to speak.

  I stay quiet, wanting him to concentrate on his tests.

  As if my lack of response reflects badly on him, he lowers his head and says, ‘He’s stable, though.’

  I wait for him to carry on talking, but he is not a man to be hurried. In due course, he says, ‘We must work together, Mrs Moretti,’ and he rocks on his heels, leaving his proclamation to dangle — a lure for me to contemplate.

  When he next speaks, his attitude has softened, become more conciliatory. ‘I realise it’s distressing to see your son in this state.’ He clears his throat and adjusts his tie as he crosses the room. In the doorway, he says, ‘Matteo has been fortunate so far.’

  After he has gone I rise from the chair, walk to the window and stare at a cabbage tree in the corner of a carpark across the road. Its sword-like leaves flail in a brisk southerly wind until my mind reconfigures them into a grove of olive trees.

  6

  Italy, 1961

  The third week in April, Oliver drove the four of us to Heathrow where we boarded a British European Airways flight to Rome. Matteo was ten years old and Francesca almost eight. Had it not been for the accident the previous summer, we would never have gone. Wiggin and Muz, and Oliver’s parents, were among a group of English holidaymakers travelling across a rugged region of Portugal in a small plane when the engine failed. A farmer watched the machine glide for a few minutes, then drop from the sky and burst into flames. There were no survivors.

  I was still devastated six months on, and not thinking clearly throughout the duration that Ben’s older brother Ernesto inundated him with phone calls, claiming their mother was unwell and insisting he return to Naples. Despite heated exchanges in Neapolitan — a language in its own right I realised much later, not just a dialect — Ben seemed reluctant to commit to a trip, whereas I thought a change might ease our grief and allow us to create new family memories with the Morettis. For these reasons I badgered him night and day, a jackhammer in his head, pressuring him to break the promise he’d made to my father. ‘He’s dead, he won’t know,’ I repeated, eventually wearing him down.

  As the sole heir of my parents’ estate, I closed up their house and stored their personal belongings along with ours in the attic of our home, and with Ben’s assistance attended to legal matters, transferring all financial assets into a trust fund he offered to manage — easier for him, he said. Wiggin had operated from the same premise, and because I was in love with Ben I hadn’t questioned what everyone considered normal practice for the era. Foolish of me, I know.

  At my request Ben agreed to rent our home fully furnished at a reasonable rate to Marsha and her artist boyfriend, Simon, who had a reputation for slashing canvases if they failed to absorb his creative juices. They were expecting their first baby and living in a cramped bedsit. Understandably they jumped at the chance to spread out. I thought they could wire the rent money to me each month but Ben said they were more likely to keep up the payments if he and the solicitor were in charge.

  I pre
pared the children for the journey while Ben delegated the bulk of his work to a nervy Frenchman whom he told me wore a gas mask whenever cigarette smoke levels became intolerable, and an East Ender with a fetish for ledgers. Both men agreed to cable him weekly with updates on his business and phone him in a crisis.

  ‘Is a long-distance arrangement possible?’ I asked Ben when he arrived home.

  ‘I know how to deal with matters from afar,’ he replied.

  As a child I had flown to Rome with my parents and watched Italians bestow frenzied embraces on loved ones, but it felt different walking through the terminal with Ben and the children knowing we were staying for an indefinite period. Neither holidaymaker nor compatriot, I was an outsider, a state I hadn’t experienced before.

  Even so, as we taxied to the train station, I daydreamed about soaking up the culture. Helping to care for Ben’s mother wouldn’t take all my time. At weekends, we could go as a family to museums and historic sites. Walk among ruins. See Pompeii. I leaned over and kissed Ben on the cheek. ‘Thanks for bringing us,’ I said.

  He caught his bottom lip between his teeth, held it there for a moment. ‘It mightn’t go as smoothly as you hope.’

  I squeezed his hand. ‘It’s up to us to make it work,’ I said, recalling aspects of a conversation we’d had while packing. Partway through sorting which summer clothes to take, he said, ‘Napoli is a city of secrets and strife, Julia. During the reign of Julius Caesar, if the slaves dropped as much as a plate they were thrown in tanks stocked with carnivorous eels.’ I stopped folding a blouse to watch him separate a tangle of ties, cheeks sucked in, a habit he’d acquired in recent weeks. ‘The district you’re born into,’ he carried on, ‘determines whether you struggle or thrive. It’s impossible to get ahead unless you have access to significant amounts of money through legal or other means.’ He smoothed a kink in the tie he was holding and placed it in his suitcase.

  ‘English kings were equally as brutal and unjust as your emperors,’ I said, moving to the bay window. A russet sunset spanned the horizon as far as I could see. ‘I’m a seasoned traveller. Or I was when I was younger.’