by Mary Contini
‘Members of the Fascismo, look to our proverbs for guidance. Il Duce will only accept into the movement those of outstanding moral character, those who are models in the practice of the Christian and civil virtues, those who are upstanding in the Community.
‘Mussolini demands that you honour your family, your God and your country. What better message than that? But he also demands an effort, an added talent if you are to be good Italians, good Scottish citizens. His is the most inspiring proverb:
“Meglio vivere un giorno da leone, che cent’anni da pecora!”
“Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep!”’
The whole audience rose in applause, not a single sheep among them.
After two minutes’ solemn silence for the fallen comrades in both armies, the Fascists and Italians sang D’Annunzio’s rousing song from the First World War that had been deliberately adopted as the Fascists’ theme.
Giovinezza, giovinezza, primavera di belezza,
Nel fascismo è la salvezza, della nostra libertà!
Young People. Young people. Springtime of beauty,
Fascism is the saviour of our liberty!
Alfonso’s heart filled with immense national pride. He remembered each of the men who had fallen alongside him in the war. They had died for this. They had died for this true vision of peace and co-operation between countries. They had died for love.
Maria looked up at him when he joined with the other soldiers and raised his arm in the ancient Roman salute. There were tears rolling down his cheeks. He was swept away by the humanity of the moment, desperate to relate to and be a part of the future of his beloved Italy.
He had no idea that Toscanini, his musical hero of the battle at Monte Santo, was refusing to play ‘Giovinezza’ at La Scala in Milan and was publicly opposing Mussolini and all that he stood for.
Fulfilling the prophecy of La Madonna in Maria’s dream, their baby girl was born on 30 March 1924, two years to the day on which Olivia had died. Alfonso and Maria wept together. Their sad memories of their lost child intensified their joy at the new birth. Alfonso could see only hope for their future.
‘We’ll call her Olivia Benita. Mussolini will protect this child and secure peace in her lifetime.’ Alfonso proudly made the decree and no one dared argue against it.
Marietta and Cesidio had also had a new baby boy called Alessandro. It was with a sense of elation that Alfonso and Maria took the tram to go down the coast to visit their friends with their new baby girl.
The women hugged each other warmly. Their lives were really starting to look good.
When Alfonso was out of earshot, Maria quizzed Marietta about this Fascist club.
‘Marietta, I didn’t see you and Cesidio at the ceremony last month. Did you know about it?’
Anna, Alex, Lena and Johnny
‘Oh yes, Maria, Cesidio got an invitation from his old army unit. I don’t want him to get involved. Alfonso and some of the other men have been trying to convince him, but I really think it’s best to keep out of it.’
‘That’s what I said to Alfonso, but he is so fired up with it. I’ve never seen him so happy and contented so I am afraid to say anything else.’
‘I understand that it’s different for you, living in town. Down here it is so much easier; we are part of the Scottish community. They call Cesidio “Sis”, and me “Mary Coppola”, if you don’t mind.’
Maria laughed. Alfonso was called Mr Crolla in the shop, or “Tally bastard” depending on the time of night. ‘What about London? Are your relatives there joining up?’
‘Yes, some of them are very keen. They already have a Fascist club and they have an Italian school, hospital, free holidays for the children. It sounds really good.
‘To tell you the truth, Maria, down here in this small community we’re more troubled with religion than politics. The Presbyterian Church and the Free Church of Scotland are against us opening on Sundays. They think we’re a bad influence on the young.’
‘How can they say that? We do everything for our children. Is that not true? Are Lena and Giovanni going to school yet? What age are they now?’
‘Six and five. They go on the tram to Musselburgh, Our Lady of Loretto. It’s a lovely school. Giovanni can read three words already! But the tram fare up and down every day is quite a lot. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to send them every year. We’ll see.’
They took the children for a walk up School Lane and across the Edinburgh Road to see Inglis’ farm, which was at the edge of the village. The farmer grew crops of barley, wheat and kale, but Marietta wanted the children to see the horses and the pigs. They loved the big black pig that snorted and farted and rolled in the mud. The little pink piglets scrambled for a teat and suckled as long as they could before a bigger, stronger sibling nudged them out of the way.
‘Maria, Mr Inglis has two piglets for us, one for you and one for me.’
‘Oh, what a treat! Grazie, Marietta. Alfonso will love that. How are you going to cook it?’
Maria found the prospect of stuffing the piglet with rosemary and garlic and roasting it in the oven even more exciting than her new hat, and certainly more interesting than Alfonso’s antics with big boys playing at soldiers or politics.
Alfonso didn’t see it like that at all. He saw a real opportunity to bind his relatives and compatriots together and to take responsibility for making their community successful in Edinburgh. He attended meetings regularly with the Scoto-Italian Society and enjoyed increasing his knowledge of both countries.
He marched with the Fascio in the Armistice Day celebrations in November, marching with the ex-servicemen from the Scottish regiments and playing their Italian marches and ‘Giovinezza’ alongside the ‘Flowers of the Forest’ and ‘Scotland the Brave’.
1926
Life was good. The business was doing well. They had moved into a new top flat on Brunton Place, a lovely bright home with plenty of space and a beautiful large kitchen. It had a bath and electricity, two luxuries Maria enjoyed immensely.
After school and at the weekends the older children started to work in the shop. It was a great help; it saved paying wages, and the children could speak English, which really helped their mother. Maria had never made any effort to learn to speak English. She still could not read and write, although Alfonso had insisted she learn to sign her name so that when her new Italian passport was issued she didn’t mark it with her thumb print and a cross as she had done before, but scrolled her name clumsily across the bottom.
The shop did especially well when the Hibernian football team were playing at home. Then Mrs Glen and the girls couldn’t get the queue served fast enough. Maria and Alfonso were working all hours saving every penny they could. They wanted to open a bigger shop, nearer the football ground.
When the football was on, Alfonso, Domenico and Vittorio stood at the gates of the stadium and sold warm Scottish mince pies from a tray. Margherita ran up and down Easter Road with boxes of more pies as fast as they would heat up in the oven. After a few months the organisers allowed the likeable Italian lads to come into the grounds and sell at half-time, which did more trade in a few hours than the shop did all week.
Alfonso’s scheme with Pietro was paying off as pacco after pacco arrived from Italy. Pietro wrote regularly and reported on the great changes that were happening in Italy with Mussolini’s plans. Mussolini was building roads and draining marshes, giving work to thousands. The trains were running on time and were much safer and more efficient, so the parcels that Pietro was sending were taking three days to arrive instead of five.
Alfonso paid attention to this news and it reassured him that he was right about Mussolini. The man was a saviour for Italy.
When the sausages and cheeses arrived, Alfonso packed them into two old suitcases he had bought in a second-hand shop in the Grassmarket and he made his way around the Italian shops. This meant that not only did he earn a bit of extra money but he enjoyed keeping up with all the f
amilies.
He was always keen to pick up snippets of information or report positive news about Italy and Mussolini. Valvona and De Marco, who both had Italian grocer’s shops, were not too happy that Alfonso was selling direct to their customers, so now and then he’d talk to them and sell them some sausages or cheese at wholesale prices to keep them happy.
There appeared to be plenty of business. Valvona had opened an Italian produce wholesale business in Merchant Street, in the heart of the old town near Candlemaker Row, on the way down to the Grassmarket. There were plenty of Italian businesses in Edinburgh and the east of Scotland who bought from him. A lot of them were dependent on Valvona for ingredients they couldn’t buy elsewhere. It became a place where Alfonso could meet other Italians and keep an ear to the ground.
Visiting the Grassmarket area he became aware of another side of the Italian community. The first wave of immigrants had managed to get a hold in business and most were fairly successful. Some families, however, hadn’t been so lucky and were struggling to survive. In some of the outlying villages, Italians were working as farm labourers, their wives and daughters cleaning or sewing to make a living. In some shops, too many family members had come across from Italy and there was not enough work for them all. Few Scottish businesses would employ unskilled Italians.
After the immigration law of 1920 restricting immigration, a loop-hole allowed young children to come into the country under the umbrella of adoption or education. Some arrived off transport ships with labels round their necks asking directions to the Italian family they were going to. Some families were unscrupulous, not offering them education but making them work in their shops up to eighteen hours a day, with board and lodgings their only reward.
In the Grassmarket, in the dark, damp tenement buildings overshadowed by Edinburgh Castle, there were some Italian soldiers who had been wounded in the war and had returned to a life of poverty. If a husband died in the war, Italian wives found themselves without income, feeding five or six children living in a squalid room and kitchen with shared outside toilets. Any income would be from cleaning or ironing. The children didn’t attend school but scraped a living doing errands for shopkeepers or delivering messages.
Scottish families living in this area were also scraping a living. Abject poverty is a great leveller and the mixture of Jewish, Irish, Italian and Scots produced an exotic, vibrant community. With ingenuity they used every skill they could to survive. Some grew herbs and funghi in window boxes balanced precariously on their window-sills. One old soldier even had a mousetrap on his window-ledge in which he caught unsuspecting sparrows and roasted them over a brazier to eat.
Alfonso often took the children to the Grassmarket on Thursdays. The tree-lined square had a weekly market with lots of colourful stalls selling fresh produce, clothes and nick-nacks. Irish dancing, an Italian with a barrel organ and a monkey, and the children running barefoot around the square made Alfonso feel he was almost at home in the piazza in Picinisco.
There was also an Italian ice cream barrow at the market, pushed along on two wheels. The Hokey Pokey man sold penny cones in the summer and enterprisingly used his barrow to sell hot chestnuts in the winter, keeping the customers happy all year round.
A gypsy with a tamed parrot sat at the water fountain. ‘Fortune telling! Threepence to know your future!’
She put two cards in front of the parrot. If it picked up the pink one, you would have a girl, the blue one, a boy. Margherita believed completely in the gypsy’s powers. When Mamma had visited the gypsy just after Olivia had been born the parrot had picked up two pink cards at once and the gypsy had predicted that Maria would have another two baby girls. Maria had been very excited about this news and there had been great talk about whether the prediction would come true or not.
Sure as fate, Maria did eventually have another two girls, Gloria Italia was born in January 1926 and almost a year to the day, Maria’s final daughter, Filomena, was born!
Alfonso kept an eye out for the more vulnerable families and often, without letting on to Maria, he would bring them some cheese or bread, lend them some money or just give a handful of sweets for their children. He gained a reputation for being very kind and willing to help out. He often solved one person’s problem by helping another.
It became apparent to the Consul and the officials in the town that Alfonso had built up a name for being fair and good. He was charismatic and naturally took the lead. So when the funds became available to open the Edinburgh Fascio hall, Consul Nicol Bruce approached Alfonso to inform him that he had been ‘selected’ to be the secretary of the club. Alfonso was flattered and accepted the honour without hesitation. When he went home and told Maria, all hell broke loose.
‘Madonna mia! Alfonso, how could you? Why do you want to take on all that responsibility? You’ll just get involved and be running after everyone, wasting your time.’
‘But, Maria, I have been chosen! In a way, I have no choice. It is an honour but also it will be good for us. I will be more respected in the community. Domenico leaves school soon. He’ll be able to help you and we will be able to open another shop.’
Filomena, Maria, Olivia and Gloria, c. 1932
‘And who’ll look after the first shop if you are out doing the Fascist Party business and I am left here again with the girls?’
At that, as if they realised their father was up to something, Olivia (no one, not even Alfonso, could bring themselves to call her Benita) and Gloria burst out crying.
Maria picked up Filomena, still a baby, and tried a different tack with her husband.
‘Alfonso, please. Say no! I have these three girls to look after. I’ve six children to wash for. We have eight mouths to feed. We need you around us, not around other families.’
‘Maria, I have been selected, I didn’t volunteer. I have no choice. It’s an honour to serve our community. Look on the bright side. I have to go round the families in the outlying districts to recruit more members. I can get more orders for the salsiccie and pecorino at the same time. Pietro will get more business as well. And the children will get free Italian classes, and there are going to be free holidays for them in Italy.’
Maria knew that a holiday in Italy could cost as much as ten pounds. She went quiet. She dreamt of letting her children go back to visit their homeland.
Alfonso waited a moment and then, just as Maria was about to say something, he picked up Olivia and sat her on the table.
‘And, Olivia, my beautiful little girl, my first job is to organise a party for you and your brothers and sisters,’ and just as Maria was going to pull Olivia away from him, ‘and for Mamma and Papà to go and dance and have a lovely time.’
Maria gave in. There was no use arguing with Alfonso. His heart was set on it, and anyway what was wrong with them all having a little bit of fun?
Sugo di Fonteluna
Italian Sausage Tomato Sauce for Pasta
Use good quality spicy Italian pork sausage, dried or fresh.
4–5 tablespoons virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 piece peperoncino, to taste
1 medium onion, finely chopped
300g piece spicy Italian sausage,
skinned if required and sliced
2 x 450g tins good quality Italian tomatoes,
liquidised and sieved
fresh basil
sea salt
Choose a heavy bottomed saucepan. Warm the olive oil, and flavour with the garlic and chilli. Gently sauté the onions until transparent, add the sausage and brown for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes and raise the heat to a slow simmer. Balance the lid on a wooden spoon over the top of the pan to allow the sugo to slowly reduce for about 50 minutes. Be careful to keep a low heat so that the sugo does not burn. Check the seasoning and add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add a few sprigs of fresh basil to finish.
Serve with chunky pasta such as rigatoni or penne and freshly gr
ated Parmigiano Reggiano.
Cacciocavallo alla Brace
Grilled Cacciocavallo Cheese
Cacciocavallo, literally ‘cheese on horseback’, is a tear-shaped cow’s-milk cheese. The name derives from the fact that the curd was left to dry by hanging it in muslin or goat’s skin straddling a horse on a horizontal stick or branch. Thus the itinerant shepherds could mature the cheese as they travelled. It is a medium soft cheese similar to aged Provalone, with a hard edible rind.
Warm a grill or griddle to high. Cut 3–4 cm-thick slices of Cacciocavallo or Provalone and grill it until it starts to brown and melt. Remove it onto a warmed plate and sprinkle with chopped thyme and parsley and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
Serve with a well dressed salad and rough rustic bread. This is also delicious with griddled aubergines.
Patate e Finocchio al Forno
Roasted Potatoes and Fennel
4 fluffy potatoes
(Maris Piper or King Edward)
1 large bulb fresh fennel
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
Peel and finely slice the potatoes. Slice the fennel in half, removing its small core at the bottom. Trim off any coarse outer parts and the tough stem at the top but keep the fine fennel fronds, which are full of wonderful aniseed flavour. Cut the fennel lengthwise to make thin slices.
Mix the potatoes and fennel with plenty of extra virgin olive oil and a good seasoning of sea salt. Add the fennel fronds and lay on a baking tray just large enough to hold them in a shallow layer.
