The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  He grumped on about the English system being torture for boys who couldn’t spell or sit for long periods indoors without fidgeting — both afflictions of his.

  ‘You might prefer the approach here,’ I said.

  ‘I bet you sixpence I won’t.’

  He tried another tactic as I stacked the coffee cups. ‘Uncle Ernesto said I’m second in line to run the Moretti Empire.’ As he elaborated, I processed whether this was my brother-in-law’s real reason for getting us over. ‘He says the family business deals with people and profit, not science or history. He reckons I have a fine brain for commerce. He thinks I’ll take to it as easily as I picked up football. I don’t want to go to school and get beaten with a cane. My football pals say this happens daily.’

  ‘It won’t if you behave and do your homework.’

  ‘You’re not listening. I’m going to find Papa and Uncle Ernesto.’

  ‘I won’t change my mind, Mattie,’ I called after him, concerned he was paying more attention to the men and his football friends than to me.

  ‘I don’t want the children falling behind their classmates at home,’ I said to Ben and Ernesto over pre-dinner drinks on the terrace. ‘Their holiday can’t go on indefinitely.’

  ‘Matteo’s future is best left to us men,’ Ernesto said. He bit into an olive and spat out the stone. ‘Isn’t that right, little brother?’

  Ben kicked a seedpod from one spot to another.

  ‘I’m his mother. I want what’s best for him.’

  Ignoring me, Ernesto said, ‘Benito, we have a deal to close tomorrow. Make sure you’re up with the first crow of the rooster.’

  He walked off, leaving me mystified as to why he thought he had the right to interfere in parenting decisions. I turned to Ben, who held up his hands in surrender. If I couldn’t bring him or his brother around to my way of thinking and the children missed out on a term’s education, I’d never forgive myself. To make matters worse, neither Ernesto nor Ben had mentioned Francesca. Everything was about Matteo. Were females not considered worth educating in this city?

  During dinner, I cast doubt on my ability to ensure that the children didn’t fall behind their peers in basic subjects if they didn’t attend school. ‘I’m hopeless at calculations,’ I said. ‘Ernesto, could you take the lead there? And what about history, geography and science? I know nothing about ancient civilisations, or volcanoes or magnetic fields. Ben, could you cover these topics?’ I hoped taking this tack might persuade them that school was the better option.

  As the evening wore on and neither man gave an inch, I changed tactics. ‘Unless Mattie’s a pupil I don’t suppose he can play for a school football team. Gosh, what a shame.’

  ‘Enough,’ Ernesto said, rising from the terrace table. ‘Benito, put their names down closer to term time. Julia, sort their uniforms.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Matteo said, slamming down his fork. ‘Uncle Ernesto?’

  ‘You heard me, boy.’

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘It’s what your mamma wants.’

  Thinking it might work to my advantage if I let Ernesto think he was in charge, I said, ‘Uncle Ernesto hasn’t the time to run around with slates and chalk, and Papa has to do his share.’ A corner of Ernesto’s mouth twisted almost too fast for me to notice. After he’d said ‘Julia has it sorted’, I doubted it had happened.

  Saturday week. Matteo was kicking a football around with the Vomero boys, while Francesca baked with Rosa and Ben got ready to lend Carlo a hand digging out a diseased tree. He was sitting on the front steps, lacing up his shoes, as I pulled weeds from a flowerpot crammed with scarlet pelargoniums. We were chatting companionably when Ernesto came around the corner of the villa with a sketchpad in his hand. ‘I’m heading to Chiaia for an hour,’ he said.

  Great, I thought. A neighbour I met on the street had mentioned that the shops in this waterside area were luxurious. Not trusting her taste, I wanted to see for myself. So thinking it would also give me a chance to get to know my brother-in-law a little better, learn what made him tick, I said, ‘Can I come along for the ride?’

  His slate-black eyebrows interlocked, deepening the furrow between his eyes. ‘Tell her,’ he said to Ben, and he strode towards his Fiat, slammed the door behind him and roared off, stirring up gravel and leaves in his wake.

  ‘What the hell was that about?’ I said, wiping dust from my bare arms.

  Ben stood up. ‘In Ernesto’s mind only a harlot gets into a car alone with a man who isn’t her husband.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben, we’re related.’

  ‘Remember me saying as we packed that you had a lot to learn about my people? That was an example of what I meant.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am.’

  On top of Ernesto’s backward thinking, his mother insisted on inspecting my work, following behind me double-checking that I used the correct amount of polish on the dining room furniture and rubbed the sodding stuff in circles, and applied the right pressure in the right place. Not the behaviour of a dying woman. And whenever I opened a window or a door, bugs flocked in and feasted on my delicate English skin. They didn’t torment anyone else. ‘My blood’s too garlicky,’ Ben joked when I asked why they left him alone.

  Once in a while, he drove us to Mappatella beach. There Matteo and Francesca frolicked in the tepid shallows while I soaked my itchy body and Ben swam underwater longer than I thought humanly possible. One day he surfaced in front of us and we inspected him for gills. ‘Ben,’ I said, ‘sometimes I think you belong to an entirely different species.’

  10

  On the final day of August, the children’s nonna complained of a dry mouth. She had been coughing off and on for an hour. I was going to get water for her when the phone rang. No one was around to answer it, so I picked up. A male voice thundered down the line. Workers at a Moretti factory were refusing to operate a piece of machinery they considered unsafe. The foreman wanted the brothers to come to the site and squash the unrest. There were deadlines to meet. It was Thursday. He had to dispatch a fleet of loaded lorries on Friday.

  Sidelining Ben’s mother’s request, I went upstairs to fetch him from the balcony. He extracted extra details from the caller and headed outside to find Ernesto. While his brother readied the car, Ben came into the kitchen where I was holding a glass under the cold tap. He had the canvas bag he and Ernesto called Signor Cash-a-Ready. When I first heard the term, I thought they were referring to an actual person. ‘How will you and Ernesto handle the situation?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll make the workers see sense,’ he said as he counted lire onto the table.

  ‘With a cash sweetener?’

  ‘If only it were that simple.’

  I turned my back to him to close the tap. ‘Good luck,’ I said as I swung around again, expecting the usual kiss. To my astonishment, he was gone.

  En route to his mother, who waited for me in the drawing room, I brooded about her treatment of him. If she wasn’t applying the cold shoulder, she was firing off unreasonable complaints. If our stay didn’t turn out well, I’d wear the blame. Determined to win her over I swept through the open door with a warm smile and good intentions. The previous day she had added food preparation to my workload, although I was not yet allowed to cook or ferry food and drink to her in her bedroom.

  ‘Here you go,’ I said, passing the glass to her.

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘I had to answer the telephone.’

  She took a sip of water. ‘Leave that to Rosa.’

  Rather than explain that her housekeeper hadn’t been in the vicinity, I said, ‘Of course, I will from now on.’ She thrust the glass back at me. I set it down on the table, thinking that if I were to blend compliance with charm, I might make progress. ‘Ben and Ernesto were fortunate to grow up in a spacious home.’

  She snorted.

  Undeterred, I pushed on. ‘You have a splendid variety of colour in t
he garden. Did you choose the plants?’

  She drew in her lips and lowered her chin. ‘That’s Carlo’s job.’

  I took her response as an invitation to continue. ‘If my sums are right, Ben was born a month before Ernesto started school. Great planning on your part.’

  Rosa had mentioned the timing as we made giardiniera the previous afternoon. Marinated in red-wine vinegar and packed in olive oil, the vegetables were a delicious accompaniment to a meal. As she blended the spices and I sliced peppers, she had also implied that the Moretti matriarch came from an impoverished background.

  ‘Nothing about your precious husband was planned,’ said my mother-in-law.

  I concealed my astonishment by scooping up a handkerchief from the floor. At the door, I paused in case she thought of an additional job for me to do. She waited until I was on the move again before saying, ‘Ernesto preferred things as they were.’

  Rosa had told me as much while we were bottling the giardiniera. ‘Ernesto, he threw terrible tantrums when his little brother he arrived.’ Flinging the cloth she held over her shoulder, she pumped her fists in the air. ‘Ernesto, he scared birds from the trees. He caused much trouble for bubby Benito.’

  A couple of days later, I repeated the gist of this conversation to Ben as we strolled to Friggitoria to collect deep-fried snacks, a Saturday treat for the children, who we had left stacking garden rubbish with Carlo in preparation for a bonfire.

  ‘Rosa got that right,’ Ben said.

  He had been tense since returning from the factory, so it was a relief for us to chat normally. It was stinking hot, no breeze. He stopped to light a cigarette. I waited as he blew jets of smoke into the tinder-dry air. Motorcars and Vespa scooters kicked up blistering dust and metal chips from the road. Pieces pinged against my bare skin; others stuck to the hem of my sunfrock. I flapped the skirt to shake off the worst of them.

  ‘Keep showing off those legs,’ Ben said, ‘and you’ll attract more than debris.’

  I laughed and twirled in front of him.

  He reached for my hand, gave it a squeeze. We hadn’t gone far when to my surprise and without a lead-in, he said, ‘I don’t recall my parents showing affection towards one another, no hugs, kisses or kind words. I grew up thinking they were incapable of loving anyone except Ernesto.’

  I twirled a strand of hair around my finger and recalled Rosa’s comment about his mother’s dismal upbringing. ‘From what I’ve picked up she gave you a better start than she had as a child. That’s something, don’t you think?’

  ‘Food on the table and cash in the vault means nothing without love.’

  He let go my hand, flicked the cigarette butt into the gutter and ground it out with the toe of his shoe, adding to the pile of discarded papers, sweet wrappers and scraps of cardboard that might not be collected for weeks. I’d heard grumbles at the market about the ongoing problem. It depended on which faction of the Camorra controlled the patch, what debts were outstanding, whether deals could be done. Ben quickened his pace, to outrun, I speculated, the outrage he bore towards his parents.

  I caught up with him. ‘Why did she treat you differently to Ernesto?’

  ‘Goodness knows. She’s warming to our children, though. This morning she praised their singing and played a game of Snap with Francesca.’

  ‘If she hasn’t blacklisted them, she must have feelings for you.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, taking his arm as he eyeballed a truck driver, who braked, indicating to those in vehicles approaching from the opposite direction to stop, too. We dashed across the road, Ben flicking a finger in both directions. A gesture of thanks, I assumed.

  ‘Don’t let her drive a wedge between us, Julia.’

  ‘Never,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘You must have some happy memories?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there was the time Sergio brought home a suitcase of American dollars. He burst into the hallway and tossed the cash into the air like confetti. As the banknotes floated to the floor, Mamma danced on them. She let me join her. Then Ernesto came inside and spoiled everything.’

  ‘Where do you think your father got the money from?’

  ‘Sergio had a knack for sniffing out deals.’

  ‘Do you mean dodgy ones?’

  Ben flinched. ‘He wasn’t a complete shark. During the bleakest months of the occupation, he obtained medicine for sick kids and loaned money to desperate women.’

  What, I wondered, had Sergio expected in return. Aloud I said, ‘So, like Ernesto, he had a good side.’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Ben said, ‘though I wasn’t privy to it.’

  He stepped over an empty cigarette packet discarded on the pavement. The advertising label, featuring a working man with a smug expression, made me think of the photograph I’d seen on Ben’s mother’s dresser since gaining permission to enter her bedroom: Sergio staring into the camera, chest protruding like a plump pigeon’s, hat set at a raffish angle, hand on his wife’s shoulder. Her impassive expression contrasting with her heavily pregnant belly, implying there was already distance between them. Young Ernesto gazed up at his parents, bewilderment on his angelic face.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Ben if his father had been a blackmarket profiteer as well as a collaborator. Instead I said, ‘It’s hard to imagine what it was like for your family during those years.’ Ben stared ahead as if lost in thought. To fill the lengthening silence, I added, ‘None of us knows what we’re capable of doing in circumstances beyond our control.’

  ‘Starvation destroys morals.’

  I walked into Friggitoria with these words ringing in my ears.

  On our return, we found Rosa preparing cold drinks to go with the snacks. ‘Carlo, he tells me the children they worked like Trojans.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Ben said, smiling at Matteo and Francesca.

  I went into the drawing room and relayed Carlo’s compliment to their nonna who was playing Patience at the card table.

  ‘They take after me,’ she said. ‘I earned my keep from day one.’

  I didn’t ask what she had done, in case it annoyed her. ‘Can I get you a drink, something to eat?’

  She shook her head and wrinkled her nose. I retied the cord on the drapes and rearranged an ornament on the windowsill. Out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head. I moseyed over to the radiogram. ‘I’m in the mood for a singalong. What’s your favourite tune?’

  She rattled off a title. I flipped through the record collection without success. ‘Repeat it, please.’

  ‘You’re useless!’ she yelled, thumping her walking cane on the floor. Ben had purchased it for her after the doctor diagnosed a strained muscle in her chest due to a persistent wracking cough. Regrettably, he couldn’t convince her to quit smoking.

  Rosa scurried into the room. ‘What’s wrong?’ Her eyes flitted from her employer to me.

  Nonna issued a chain of words that sounded like threats. Rosa shooed me out, her face devoid of expression. The ferocity of Ben’s mother’s outburst reminded me of rabid bats, harbingers of wrath.

  Frustrated at my inability to figure out what she’d said, I kicked the kitchen doorstop. I had experienced similar outrage when a turn of phrase went over my head during conversations between Rosa and Carlo, and also the doctor and priest who were frequent callers. Matteo and Francesca were already telling jokes in Neapolitan and chuckling at those shared with Ben and Ernesto. Aware of the strained relationship between their papa and uncle, they were keen to work out what was going on and never passed up an opportunity to make sense of it.

  Example: on the terrace that evening at dusk, the children with orange juice, the rest of us with red wine. Ben was grumbling about a pack of dogs he saw romping along the fence line when he’d gone to fetch Matteo from the open area where he was booting a football into a net with another lad.

  ‘Why do dogs sniff each other’s rears when they meet?’ Matteo asked.

  ‘They
want to know what their adversaries have eaten,’ Ernesto said. ‘The meatier they smell, the more powerful and wealthy their owners will be.’ He thrust out his chest and banged it with closed fists, emulating the stance of an ape. The likeness increased as he retracted his lower lip, revealing an expanse of pastel-pink gum and strong teeth.

  Francesca was amused. ‘Do it again, Uncle Ernesto. Go on.’

  While they horsed about, Matteo sidled up to Ben. ‘What do you think, Papa?’

  ‘Dogs don’t trust their eyes,’ he said. ‘Only their noses. They smell to work out where they fit in.’

  ‘Like finding their order in the pack,’ Matteo said, as Ernesto and Francesca rejoined us. The men laughed, chummy at the start, less so when Matteo said, ‘Papa, you and Uncle Ernesto should take turns at being the boss.’

  All weekend, Matteo crept up behind Rosa and Carlo, and his nonna, sniffing at the clothing covering their backsides.

  Sunday night, Francesca already asleep, Ben and me at the kitchen table reading a letter from Diann, Matteo stopped drawing football drills in his exercise book and glanced up. ‘Sick people and old ones smell like rotten eggs and anchovies.’

  Ben clipped him across the ear with his open hand. ‘Enough of your cheek.’

  I was shocked.

  When we retired, I had it out with him. ‘You’ve never hit him before.’

  ‘It was only a tap,’ Ben said, throwing his shirt over an armchair. The fringed tassels stitched to the base gave an elongated quiver. ‘He’s getting lippy. I expect him to treat his elders with respect.’

  ‘Then behave towards him the same way.’

  He yanked the belt of his trousers through the tabs and flung it across the room. The buckle clipped the side of the full-length mirror and fell to the floor.

  Heaving with contempt, I repeated one of his new favourite sayings, ‘Boys will be boys.’

  For the first time in our marriage, we occupied opposite sides of the bed.

  11

  Well before daylight, I woke to find Ben’s hand cupping my breast. ‘Sorry about last night,’ he murmured.