by Angela Petch
Eventually Giuseppe gave up with his love-making and returned to his side of the bed. ‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I whispered back, tears trickling down my cheeks, unseen in the dark. ‘No, I don’t.’
If he couldn’t understand that I wanted him to make love to me with passion and not because of a sense of duty or pity, then how could I explain? It was better not to be loved at all. But I said nothing.
Since that time he’d tried once more when he was very drunk. On that occasion he was clumsy with me and I pulled the counterpane from the bed and moved to Dario’s room, positioning the nursery chair against the latch so he couldn’t enter.
I wondered how it was possible we could talk about so many subjects – plants, books, livestock and of course little Dario – but we couldn’t talk about us. In my heart there was a storm that needed to break and my heart hurt like thorns on the wild rosa canina growing in the hedgerows.
NOW AND THEN
Chapter 25
Late August 2010 – Anna and Alba travel to England
Francesco left Anna and Alba at Arezzo station where they were to start their journey back to England. On the train to Pisa airport Alba sat in her own world, eyes closed, ear-phones plugged in to her music. Anna thought she was so beautiful; her long, thick lashes looked almost false, fanned above sun-bronzed cheeks. She loved her as fiercely and protectively as the children she’d had with Francesco, but she knew it was no good to wrap them in cotton wool. Alba was nearly nineteen now, ready to spread her wings and start her own journey but, like any loving parent Anna feared for her vulnerability and safety.
Despite the latest Donna Leon mystery on her lap, Anna had no energy even to pick it up to read. Tense and fatigued, her skin felt stretched across her face, tight like a rubber mask. She’d promised Francesco to let him know straight away about the doctor’s diagnosis and told him not to worry - although she herself was more than anxious. As they pulled away from the station she stared out of the compartment window. An assortment of graffiti defaced once beautiful buildings lining the tracks and everywhere was grimy, as if nobody cared about the world they inhabited. In the outer suburbs flats were like boxes piled on top of each other: rubber gloves, brooms and cleaning paraphernalia decorating most of the balconies. Through an open window she glimpsed a woman folding laundry from a basket, a bicycle parked in the middle of her tiny living room.
They changed trains at Florence and the districts along the railway lines were even uglier. Washing hung down the sides of filthy palazzo walls, more graffiti tattooed every building, pigeons huddled on crumbling ledges. It was all very different from shiny tourist brochures depicting the sights of Ponte Vecchio and Piazzale Michelangelo. Although desperate to get to England, Anna was already missing her beautiful fresh corner of rural Tuscany.
The scenery improved slightly as they approached Pisa. Sunflower fields dotted the flat landscape and ancient abandoned farmhouses bore witness to an exodus from countryside to city.
On the plane they grimaced as they drank stewed tea from polystyrene cups.
‘Who’d want to be an air-hostess?’ Anna remarked, watching a pretty girl and slim young steward manoeuvre a cumbersome food trolley along the narrow gangway.
‘Why do you say that?’ Alba asked, looking up from the in-flight magazine she was flicking through.
‘It’s not exactly a glamorous job, is it? They’re just like waiters – except they work in difficult, restricted spaces.’
‘At least they get to travel,’ Alba retorted, ‘and see new places.’
‘You’ve really been looking forward to these few days away, haven’t you?’
‘Yep!’ she said, stuffing the magazine back into the seat pocket in front of her. ‘I can’t wait to get to Newcastle to see what the university is really like. I’ve looked at all the info on line, but glossy photos and the real thing might be different.’
‘Very wise! Keep an open mind.’
They held hands as the plane descended – each convinced it was the other who needed reassurance about bumpy landings. The Italian passengers broke into applause as the wheels touched the runway at Stansted and Anna smiled at the idiosyncrasy. She’d only ever come across Italian passengers who applauded the pilot for a safe landing. Once they had gone through passport control and customs, they kissed each other before catching separate trains.
‘See you in a week in Newcastle then,’ said Anna, waving her stepdaughter goodbye. ‘Make the most of it.’
‘Good luck with Aunty Jane.’
Anna smiled, although inside she was a wreck. The prospect of her sister’s bossy company was as nothing compared to her fears about the upcoming appointment with Jane’s doctor.
Jane offered to accompany her to the surgery but Anna turned her down. ‘It’s only a routine check-up,’ she lied. ‘You’re better off staying here and packing a couple more boxes while I’m gone.’
It was good to be away from her sister’s incessant chatter and gossip about her bridge-playing cronies. She had forgotten how domineering a personality Jane was. She constantly admonished her for not using the bubble wrap and tissue paper efficiently and if Anna had had to listen once more about the next-door neighbours’ inconsiderate lighting of bonfires or untidy guttering, she would have happily dropped Jane’s precious Wedgewood ornament collection onto her quarry-tiled kitchen floor and walked out to let her get on with the move by herself.
The walk through the smart neighbourhood to the Edwardian building housing Doctor William’s practice took under ten minutes. Along the way she noticed front gardens with neatly clipped hedges and weeded beds brimming with colourful plants. She couldn’t help thinking that if these gardens had been in Italy, tidy rows of vegetables would be growing where this palette of roses and frothy flowers bloomed.
At the doctor’s she leafed through a dog-eared sailing magazine in the waiting room while rehearsing what she would say to the doctor. The walls were hung with amateur paintings of seascapes and an assortment of still lives. She admired a naïve water colour of a jug of sunflowers, wondering where she could hang it in Il Mulino and then decided against its purchase, the price tag of £250 putting her off.
‘I’m Doctor Pennington, the locum. How can I help you, Mrs Santucki?’ The lanky young doctor had made the typical English mistake of mispronouncing her surname. He looked hardly older than Alba, she thought, wondering for how long he’d been qualified.
‘My name’s Italian - pronounced with a ‘ch’ sound, doctor,’ she corrected.
‘Ah, so sorry! Languages never were my strong point and we have an increasing amount of difficult surnames in this practice.’
He asked her a little about Italy and where she lived. Then he told her he’d only been to Italy once - to Rimini for a stag-do - and he’d managed to miss his flight home. All the while Anna was half relieved she was getting no nearer to the issue of her fear of dying from terminal cancer and not being around to see her children grow up. And then, totally unexpectedly, she started to cry. The young doctor handed her a box of tissues and she began to voice her worries while he listened, his legs stretched out beneath the desk and his too long arms folded in his lap. When she had finished and apologized several times for her tears and blown her nose, he smiled kindly.
‘Please don’t say sorry. That’s what we’re here for - to listen and see how to help.’ He looked at the notes in front of him. ‘I see from the forms you filled in at reception that you’re in your mid-forties, Mrs Santucci,’ he said, pronouncing her name correctly this time. ‘You might be going into early menopause… But your symptoms are indicative to me of a number of things, so I’d like to examine you first and I’ll tell you where we go from there.’
After he’d finished, he spoke to her from behind the curtain he’d pulled round the couch so she could dress again in privacy. She thought it quaint after he’d been feeling all round her pelvic area and asking intimate questions about her sex life. But his re
spect was professional and comforting.
‘In view of the fact that you’re returning to Italy next week, I’d like our nurse to take blood samples and send them off immediately to the lab. I’ll mark them as urgent,’ he said, looking up from his notes. ‘One is for the ovarian cancer you’re so worried about. The lab can measure the level of a protein called CA-125 produced by ovarian cancer cells… ’
Anna leant forward in her chair to say something but he interrupted her. ‘I don’t believe that’s what’s is wrong, however. But we need to allay any concerns.’
She watched as three phials of blood were extracted from her left arm, thinking how amazing it was that this dark red liquid, her life-force, might soon provide answers.
‘We should have the results back in two days’ time,’ the young nurse said, ‘so make another appointment to see doctor then.’
Standing up to open the door, Doctor Pennington shook her hand and told her to keep busy and try not to brood. ‘We’re having lovely weather at the moment. Go for walks in the park, go shopping, visit a garden centre - anything but sit at home and worry.’ His handshake was firm, confident and Anna walked away with her fingers metaphorically crossed, desperately wanting the next two days of helping Jane to fly past.
***
‘Down it! down it! down it!’ the students shouted, thumping on the bar tables, bottles and glasses vibrating with every hand beat. A tumbler toppled over spilling brown liquid into a boy’s lap. He stood up and stared at his wet crotch. ‘Fuck that!’ he shouted and tipped another half pint over the head of the girl leaning into him.
Screams, laughter, whistles as the girl stuck out her boobs, her wet T-shirt revealing she wore no bra. She clambered up onto the bar, gyrating to David Guetta pumping from loudspeakers.
‘Off! Off! Off!’ he shouted and the rest of the mob took up the chant as she moved her hips provocatively to the music.
Alba slipped out of the university Union building. Icy air blasted her after the student fug. Not being used to northern weather, she’d left her denim jacket back in her room in Ricky Road, the Halls where she’d been allocated a room for this late Open Weekend.
She had tossed and turned most of the night and finally giving up on sleep, she crawled out of bed at 6 a.m. to plan her itinerary from leaflets left on the desk. It had turned out to be a long busy day and she was tired now, as well as shivery cold. She’d sat in on a sample lecture on the Romantics given by an attractive post-graduate from the English department, been shown round the vast library, computer clusters, sports centre, various cafes and the beautiful quadrangle. Afterwards she went into town. A volunteer student had given her a whistle-stop tour of some of the city, which she had really enjoyed, including the Sage building and the new Millennium Bridge over the Tyne, pointing out the best bars. The city was sparkly steel and a pleasing combination of modern and industrial Victorian and she’d enjoyed its cosmopolitan atmosphere more than viewing the university departments.
It was now approaching midnight. and she’d had enough of today. To keep warm she decided to jog back to her room, pretty confident she knew the way. There were plenty of street lights to help her – unlike back in Rofelle where nights of full moon or a torch were the only way to see the way after sunset.
She took a left, past an all-night Londis store. A huddle of young lads wearing thin shirts, despite the raw weather, were arguing on the pavement over what midnight snack to buy. She avoided a puddle of vomit and stepped out to cross the main road. A car screeched as the driver slammed on the brakes, swerving to avoid hitting her. Automatically she had looked left at oncoming traffic, forgetting that in England cars drove on the opposite side of the road. The driver kept his hand pressed down on the horn, lowered his window and shouted, ‘Bloody students, look where ya gaan’, before accelerating into the night.
She stopped half way across the road on a traffic island, her legs wobbling from the near miss. When she felt ready, she checked for approaching traffic, making sure to do the opposite of what she would do in Italy. Safe on the other side, she turned left again and found herself on a path flanked with parkland. There were no street lights here and it felt wrong – the path seemed to be leading away from the built-up area of the city and into countryside. So she turned round to retrace her route and promptly collided with a cyclist.
Alba came to, unsure whether the stars were in her head or in the black sky.
‘Ya alreet, pet?’
A Hoodie, a scarf tied bandit-style over the bottom half of the face, was bent right over her frowning with concern. ‘I didna see ya at all, like.’
Alba liked the Geordie accent; it would go well set to music, she thought randomly and then immediately winced, hoping she hadn’t broken anything.
‘I’ve been and called for an ambulance, pet,’ the Hoodie continued, ‘it’s on its way now. Don’t move until it gets here, like…if it ever does, mind.’
Hoodie pulled down the scarf to reveal a pretty young girl wearing bright red lipstick, a stud in her right nostril just like her own. Or was it her left nostril, Alba wondered. It was too complicated to work out, lying on her back. She felt woozy as well and hoped she wasn’t going to be sick, because these were her only clean clothes.
‘I’ll stay with ya now, until they come. Are yas a student? What’s ya name? I’m Manda. Stay awake for me now, pet…ya might have concussion. I’m not a nurse or nowt but that’s what I’ve seen on the telly, in Casualty, like.’
While they waited for the ambulance to arrive, the two girls exchanged details. Manda was sweet and friendlier than any of the students Alba had met at Open Day. She worked in a boutique selling vintage clothes and chatted away about her favourite Forties outfits, determined to keep Alba awake. Most of the students Alba had met that day had been stand-offish. She had given them the benefit of the doubt, thinking they might be shy. But a lot seemed immature and self-absorbed.
At A and E, a kind nurse phoned Anna. There was nothing broken but they made Alba stay in overnight in hospital to check the bump on her head was nothing serious. Manda left as soon as she knew Alba was going to be fine and they swapped e-mail addresses, promising to keep in touch.
When Anna arrived before lunch the following day, Alba was already up and dressed and sitting in the visitors’ room leafing through old magazines, a box of painkillers in her pocket and a bandage supporting a sprain to her right wrist. She was surprised when she burst into tears the moment Anna hugged her, but her stepmother assured her it was delayed shock.
Later on, sitting in the Slug and Lettuce, eating a large burger and chips, Alba apologised once again. ‘I’m so sorry, Anna. I’ve dragged you all the way up here away from your sister.’
‘You dragged me away just in time. Before I committed a gruesome murder,’ Anna replied, setting down her cappuccino, thinking how unnecessarily huge it was compared to cups of coffee in Italy.
‘How come?’ Alba asked, adding another squirt of spicy relish to her burger, enjoying the chance to eat “fast food rubbish”, as her father disparagingly described it.
‘I couldn’t do a thing right. I was given lessons at the start on how to wrap china tea cups and saucers in tissue paper, how to clean out a cupboard with bleach, how to use a duster more efficiently – she told me off for flicking mine. When I wanted a break she wouldn’t let me drink my tea from a mug, saying it was common. And when I tried to throw out her manky dried flower arrangements - well past their sell-by-date - I thought she was going to have a heart attack.’
Alba laughed, ‘Sounds a whole bundle of fun - not.’
‘Oh I could go on, believe me. But I won’t. Just take it from me I was more than pleased to have a genuine excuse for leaving early.’ Anna left the remainder of her tureen of cappuccino and called for the bill. ‘What would you like to do now? Are there any more lectures or talks you need to attend?’
Alba shook her head. ‘I’m done,’ she said.
‘What about a spot of retail therapy? We
’ve got a good four hours left, I reckon, before they close. Let’s hit the shops… if you feel up to it?’
Alba wished later she’d filmed the fun they’d had. She could have sped it up, set it to honky-tonk piano music, faded the colours to sepia and edited it with those scratchy features old films had down the sides of the screen. Charlie Chaplin, eat your heart out, she thought.
They tried on hats: trilbies, cloches, deer-stalkers, wedding extravaganzas covered in lace and flowers, fascinators and bobble hats. Alba’s wrist was too sore to pull on trousers, but in Primark Anna tried cheap skimpy jeans that took no prisoners and expensive designer dresses in Fenwick’s, wondering when she would ever wear them back home in Rofelle. They sprayed themselves with perfume testers in the Beauty department until Anna said they were starting to smell like a brothel.
‘What’s a brothel smell like?’ Alba asked, genuinely curious.
‘I don’t know…it’s just something my mother always used to say. Now, lead me to the next shop.’
In the end the only purchase was made by Anna. She treated Alba to a pair of purple Converse trainers and then they headed for the water front and found a bar where they ordered a bottle of crisp white Chenin blanc, instead of a pot of tea.
Anna kicked off her shoes and wiggled her sore feet.
‘I’m out of practice with shopping,’ she said, raising her glass to her stepdaughter, ‘but I’ve enjoyed every single minute of this afternoon. Thank you so much!’
‘Thank you!’ Alba smiled, ‘It’s been great.’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything before telling Babbo,’ Anna said, ‘but I can’t keep it to myself any longer. You can be the first to help me celebrate.’