The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  Alessia’s laughter changed to choking. I handed her a glass of water. A few sips and she regained her composure. ‘Matteo will go far,’ she said, looking at me, ‘if you loosen the apron strings.’

  Francesca said, ‘I wish he’d go far away from me,’ and she stuck out her tongue.

  ‘I’ll cut that off,’ Rosa said, ‘if I see you at the almonds again.’

  ‘I’d rather swallow it,’ Francesca replied.

  Matteo said, ‘Show me and I’ll give you my pocket money.’

  We were chortling at Francesca’s efforts to curl her tongue down her throat when Ben and Ernesto, collars up to deflect the rain, ducked through the back door into the kitchen and shook themselves like dogs.

  ‘What’s amusing my precious little Francesca?’ Ernesto said.

  I expect she was torn between landing her brother in trouble and risking a telling-off from Ben for misbehaving, because she said, ‘Boys are imbeciles.’

  Ernesto insinuating that she belonged to him, that he had the right to know what she thought, set me thinking about the talks Ilaria and I’d had about women fighting for recognition and financial independence. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘They want to be in charge.’

  My brother-in-law walked up to me. Inches from my face, he laughed. Not with amusement or warmth. His tone had obduracy at its core. He took off his jacket and thrust it at me. The wetness soaked through my T-shirt to my skin.

  ‘You won’t always think so, Francesca,’ he said, his back now to me. ‘In ten or so years you’ll beg me to let you marry a suave young man.’

  He couldn’t dictate her future. That was for her to decide.

  Francesca screwed up her face. ‘I’d sooner marry a Vespa.’

  As the laughter died down, Ernesto hoisted her into the air. He made revving engine noises and whizzed her around the room with Matteo in hot pursuit. Rosa, Alessia and I cheered from the sidelines. Ben hooked his arm around mine, rested his chin on my shoulder.

  That evening I found Alessia in her room, dragging on a cigarette. She had a head cold and a touch of bronchitis. The doctor had been to see her. I removed the clips from her bun and brushed her thinning hair. In an effort to cheer her up, as well as encourage her to confide in me, I said, ‘Tell me about the courtships in your day’, expecting her to regale me with romantic accounts.

  ‘Let me think,’ she said, resting her hands on her knees. The rattle in her chest made me think of seeds shaken in a tin. ‘The chef the schoolmaster told Matteo about belonged to the Artusi clan. A local bandit, Il Traghettatore, the Ferryman, and his cronies held up them and other wealthy citizens in a theatre.’

  She gave a string of short pants. To my ear, they sounded thin, as if she were scaling a high-altitude peak. ‘How dreadful,’ I said, hoping for a happy ending to her tale, waiting for her to settle before I resumed brushing her hair.

  In a husky rasp, she said, ‘As well as stealing money from their captives, in front of everyone several bandits raped the women, including the chef’s young sister. She went crazy from the shock and ended up in an asylum.’

  Our eyes met in the mirror. She looked as disgusted as I felt. ‘Terrible,’ I said. I put down the brush on the dressing table and divided her hair into three equal strands and began plaiting down to the tip. ‘What on earth fuels such barbaric acts?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with passion,’ she said. ‘Men who adore and respect us never resort to force. Only those who have been brutalised or aggrieved turn the act into a form of power and control.’

  ‘That makes it worse. They know what it’s like to be a victim.’

  She looked at me again in the mirror. ‘It feels familiar.’ Nothing more. Then, ‘The Artusi girl never recovered.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ I said, as sickening images filled my mind. ‘There, we’re done.’

  I fiddled with the hairpins and tried to settle my thoughts. ‘Let me see to your feet,’ I said after a while. Her heels were rough, cracked in places. Unable to forget what she had told me, I said, ‘The horrors that girl had to endure.’ I rubbed cold cream into the worst areas. ‘And in front of members of her family.’

  Alessia tensed her toes. Unwittingly I had breached an invisible boundary. Her feet hit the floor. She reached for the stick beside her chair and crossed the room to her bed. Rosa had already turned back the cover. ‘Thank you, Julia,’ Alessia said. ‘I can manage from here.’

  I headed upstairs, thinking about the Artusi girl. With no preamble I walked into our bedroom and said to Ben, who was sitting on a chair, staring into the distance, ‘Do you think something vile happened to your mother, something that caused her to turn off her feelings for you? Something that made her behave in perverse ways?’

  ‘Leave it, Julia. I’m warning you.’

  ‘I want to know.’

  ‘Not tonight, please. I’ve had an awful week with Ernesto. He’s pressuring me to take on work I’d rather not do.’

  ‘Say no to him.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s complicated, hard to explain.’

  ‘For a woman to understand, you mean.’

  He clapped his hands over his ears. ‘Stop this nonsense. Please!’

  ‘Don’t you want to find out why your mother favours him over you?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up about it.’

  ‘Don’t order me around.’

  He took off his shoe and threw it at me. The toe clipped my elbow.

  I picked it up and tossed it back.

  Before I knew what was happening, we were hurling insults at each other. We kept it up until Matteo ran into the room. ‘Stop it! You’re scaring Frannie and me.’

  ‘Sorry if our game woke you,’ I said. ‘Go back to bed and I’ll come through for a chat in a tick.’

  When I returned, Ben was breathing steadily, feigning sleep.

  From the far side of the bed I thought if Ernesto found a wife we could leave. He wasn’t without charm. This evening, he had initiated the fun. He took pride in Matteo’s prowess on the football pitch, and he tolerated Francesca’s obsession with animals. Acquiring a wife and children might curb his temper and his devotion to money, and increase his chances of gaining public recognition as a top photographer. If the café proprietress failed to meet the qualities Ernesto expected in a wife, he could look elsewhere. Maybe he sketched the faces of potential contenders in his pads. Also, if he was less available to Alessia, she might soften her attitude towards Ben. I knew frustration lay behind the shoe-throwing episode but I fumed anyway. I wanted the tender, fun-loving man I had fallen for, not this sullen grouch. Thinking he might buck up in agreeable company, I decided to invite Oliver over to join us. Maybe we could go to Positano since Ben was keen to take us there. If Oliver thought he had changed, we’d work out what to do about it.

  Armed with tokens purchased with change left over from shopping at the market, I called Oliver from a public telephone so we could talk freely. No answer. I tried the next day and failed to reach him again. After a third unsuccessful attempt I accepted that he was working overseas and might not surface for months. Normally he wrote to tell me when he was leaving the country and gave an approximate return date. This time I hadn’t heard anything, which wasn’t like him.

  The prospect of a trip away shelved, I returned to the villa, where I found Rosa at the kitchen table folding laundry and rubbing her top teeth across her lower lip. A question leapt off my tongue: ‘Have you seen a letter in the last month with a London stamp?’

  She gave a swift shake of her head. ‘Carlo, he needs me.’ She shoved the towel in her hand back into the basket and bustled outside.

  Her reaction made me suspicious. Was she tampering with the mail? I had spotted her sorting through a pile three or four weeks ago, unaware I was watching.

  18

  The four of us normally took a walk after church, which I welcomed after enduring a long-winded service, copious venerat
ions of the saints and more references to sacred objects than necessary. Today, Alessia, whose cough had eased to an irritating tickle, followed our preparations with doleful eyes. She never went anywhere except to the hospital, and no one came to visit her apart from the doctor and the priest with pitted skin, an aftermath, Alessia told me, of a severe case of chickenpox. On top of this disfigurement, brown warts studded his ears and ran down the sides of his face. When Francesca first sighted him, she mistook the blemishes for bugs and fetched her insect net. She might have pounced had Matteo not directed her to a slug on a windowsill outside.

  Confident Alessia would welcome a change of scenery, I suggested to Ben that we could get a wheelchair and take her with us on our Sunday afternoon outings if there was little or no wind to set her coughing. He was doubtful, but to please me he floated the idea as she gazed through a drawing-room window. Rage raked across her face, blazed in her eyes. She slapped an armrest with a balled fist, cut him off before he finished. ‘You think I’m a freak show!’ The effort she put into scoffing the suggestion loosened phlegm in her respiratory passages. She scrabbled for a handkerchief in her pocket, held it to her mouth and coughed up clumps of vile muck.

  Undeterred, Ben said, ‘Julia and I thought you might like to see what’s going on beyond these walls.’ She gurgled and rasped as if she were juggling knives in her throat. He squatted beside her. ‘You needn’t talk to anyone.’

  She reared up a second time. ‘I’m not fit to be seen!’ She threw back her head, let out a moan, and another, louder and longer, and lastly a scream that mutated into another coughing fit. Her bone-thin chest heaved beneath her loose-fitting dress.

  Ben nudged me. ‘See what you’ve done?’

  To spare the children from more hysterics, I said, ‘Matteo, take Frannie to feed the animals.’

  ‘We’ll find Uncle Ernesto,’ Matteo said. ‘Nonna does as he asks.’

  ‘Stop squawking, Nonna,’ Francesca chipped in. ‘You’re hurting my ears.’

  ‘Go with Mattie,’ I said to her, wishing I could also leave.

  Neither Ben nor I could calm Alessia. If we came within reach, she let out bloodcurdling screams. So when Ernesto hurried towards us, I was grateful. He knelt in front of her. ‘I’m with you,’ he murmured. ‘Hush, hush.’

  ‘It shouldn’t have happened, Sergio,’ she said, mistaking him for her dead husband. ‘It made me sick.’

  ‘Sergio’s gone, Mamma. It’s me, Ernesto.’ He cupped her face, ravaged with anguish, between his hands. ‘Conserve your strength. Slow your breathing. Do it for me. That’s it. Good. Nice and steady. You’re so brave.’ He stroked her hair, kissed her forehead. She flexed her legs, gave a guttural moan. ‘You’re safe with me, Mamma.’ He scooped her into his arms, cradled her against his chest and carried her to her room.

  An image arrived unbidden into my mind: Ernesto spending sizeable chunks of his early twenties soothing her, dealing with the tensions between her and Sergio, resenting his brother whose presence for unknown reasons distressed their mother, while all around bombs shook the ground they stood on.

  We didn’t go for our walk. After the children had tended the animals, Ben sent them upstairs to read while he washed the car and Rosa tidied the kitchen. Ernesto and I sat with Alessia in her room as imagined or remembered events besieged her. The priest came at Ernesto’s request, his unfortunate face hovering over us like a black cloud.

  At one stage, Alessia addressed her dead husband as if he were standing at the foot of her bed. ‘Come any nearer, Sergio, and I’ll douse you with viper venom,’ she yelled, and swirled imaginary fluid around her mouth.

  Shortly after this outburst, she grabbed an alarm clock from her bedside table and threw it at the apparition. When I sought to save a vase from suffering the same fate, she sank her teeth into my hand, drawing blood and leaving puncture marks.

  The area puffed up, catching Matteo’s attention at breakfast. ‘Mamma,’ he said, ‘what gnawed on you during the night?’

  ‘Some cranky old bug,’ I replied in an off-handed manner, willing Ernesto to keep his mother quiet in her room while we ate.

  ‘They don’t have sharp teeth,’ said Francesca. ‘It must have been a vampire.’

  ‘You little know-all, Frannie,’ I said with a forced smile. ‘Finish your breakfast. Papa’s waiting in the car.’ I fetched their schoolbags from a peg on the wall. ‘Here you are. Hurry or you’ll be late.’

  Before Alessia’s madness lifted, I twice mopped up blood-streaked vomit.

  When the clock chimed the passing of another hour, she woke and allowed me to sponge her and change her nightgown, drifting thereafter into a peaceful sleep. At noon she opened her eyes and asked for chicken broth. I called to Rosa, who, predicting this request, had already killed, plucked and boiled a bird along with carrots, celery, onions and orzo.

  She came in with a bowlful. ‘Small mouthfuls,’ and she handed me a spoon and napkin and returned to her household tasks.

  I tucked the napkin under Alessia’s chin. ‘Smells delicious. Are you ready?’

  She opened her mouth like a baby bird and let me feed her.

  The doctor’s car came to a gear-crunching halt on the loose gravel outside. Ben had phoned him before taking the children to school. He’d spent the rest of the morning in the scullery lifting heavy items for Rosa, who was giving it a clean.

  ‘Better late than never,’ Ben said, poking his head into Alessia’s room as he headed down the hall to open the front door.

  ‘The wife of a dignitary has gone into labour,’ the doctor said, rushing in and placing his medical bag on a chair near Alessia’s bed.

  ‘No excuse,’ Ben said.

  The doctor dropped a surname.

  Colour drained from Ben’s face.

  ‘Bound to be problems,’ the doctor went on. ‘She has narrow hips. I phoned an ambulance. No time to waste. I’m meeting the couple at the hospital.’

  ‘We won’t hold you up,’ Ben said.

  ‘Strain’s likely the cause of Signora Moretti’s confused state,’ said the doctor. ‘Keep her calm.’ He reached into his medical bag and handed me a tube of antiseptic ointment for my hand. In his haste to reach his important patient, he neglected to listen to Alessia’s chest or take her temperature.

  I resumed feeding her the broth until she pushed away the bowl and after that I talked to her until the terror in her eyes changed into what I construed as a knowing stare. I imagined her coming to terms with the transitory nature of life, reviewing the stages that had marked and made her: neglected youngster, hopeful singer, troubled wife, powerful mother and matriarch, dependent invalid, dying woman. I dabbed the corners of her mouth with the napkin. She had repeated a phrase in her delirium: ‘I am more than a pawn.’ As much as I wanted to understand the significance of Sono più di un pegno, I was reluctant to ask. But she seemed to tune into my thoughts, saying, ‘Never believe what you hear during an old woman’s ravings.’

  I held her gaze. ‘You can tell me anything. I’m not easily shocked.’

  She plucked at the hem of her eiderdown. ‘You’re English. It’s impossible for you to understand the likes of me.’

  ‘I want to,’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  On Wednesday Matteo abandoned Francesca and me to dawdle to and from school with his football pals. He was growing up, viewing the world from a male perspective, and an Italian one at that.

  Apart from Ilaria, I had no female friends to meet for heart-to-hearts. If by chance I bumped into an affable housewife on the street, she almost always went on about her home and family. On the sole occasion I picked up a titbit of gossip and relayed it to Ben, instead of building on the story as he would have done at home, he said, ‘Forget what you heard about the coroner’s mistress. Find a less deadly form of entertainment.’

  ‘Surely you don’t believe there’s an informer on every corner?’ Besides, the Camorra wouldn’t be bothered about idle chitchat.

  B
en grabbed my forearms and said in a threatening tone, ‘Keep your tongue under control.’

  I pushed him away. ‘I miss chatting with the girls.’

  ‘You have the children and me.’

  ‘I need women friends.’

  ‘Napoli is not London, Julia. We’re not as free here.’

  ‘You mean I’m not.’

  I dashed to the bathroom, banged the lavatory seat down and sat on it, wishing I could have a good moan to Marsha.

  She and Simon were still renting our Chelsea home. When I last called her, she had me in stitches over the folly of a stout old Tory caught larking about in St James’s Park with a guardsman. The fool had attempted to outrun the police. She also updated me on the Fulham Road crowd and the theatre scene. Mostly she wanted tips to get her child to sleep through the night. ‘Half the time he wakes up before I’ve gone to bed,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m tempted to soak his dummy in booze.’ I was thinking of a silly response when I realised Ernesto was lurking in the hallway listening in. Was this his way of reminding me of the cost of long-distance calls? ‘I have to go, the kid’s playing up,’ Marsha said. ‘We’ll catch up on your news next time. Give your dishy husband a big kiss from me.’

  She might not have believed me if I’d said Ben had changed. In her eyes, good-looking men were gods. The same belief had blinded me. It had taken living in Naples to see beyond the outer trappings of a splendid physique and effortless charm.

  19

  For a change, Ernesto and Ben weren’t at each other’s throats. I had seen Ernesto in a compassionate light as he comforted his mother, Ben was making an effort to be less reactive, and Alessia and I were comfortable again in each other’s company.

  This calm spell coincided with a drop in temperature, confining us indoors in the evening. To stave off boredom we introduced Alessia and Ernesto to Monopoly, which we had given Matteo for his birthday. From the outset, Ernesto cottoned onto the benefits of owning the utilities and train stations and taking on the role of banker. True to form, Ben bought Park Lane and Regent Street, Francesca shifted alliances to suit her prospects, and Matteo went for underdogs like Old Kent Road. Alessia, who also accumulated property at the lower end of the market, found the effort of throwing the two dice exhausting.