The ceremony had gone off smoothly enough with both Mr and Mrs Duncan, the farmer and his wife, and their kindly landlady attending and wishing them well.
Knowing they hardly had a penny between them, Mrs Duncan had insisted they all go back to her farm kitchen for a slap-up tea. And what a feast that had been. Ham and pork, bowls of green salad, rosy ripe tomatoes, fresh fruit salad, and a lovely iced sponge cake with a basket of rosebuds made out of marzipan on top. Amy had cried, overwhelmed by such kindness.
Afterwards the Duncans had driven them straight to the station, standing on the platform to wave to them as the train drew out. And their lovely landlady, still suffering from guilt for having been the one to spoil their dreams of a quick handfast wedding in the first place, presented them with a hamper of food for the journey.
A perfect, wonderful wedding day. One that Amy would forever remember.
Now she sat on Chris’s old bed and stared at her face reflected in the dark of the window against the night sky. It was pale and sad, not the sort of face one would expect to see on a new bride. Perhaps it would help if she put on a spot of lipstick, but Amy didn’t have a mirror, or a lipstick for that matter. She had few possessions of any kind. Chris had access to his own clothes again, still hanging in the narrow mahogany wardrobe where he’d left them all those weeks ago, but Amy’s own were still at number twenty-four. They might as well have been a million miles away.
There was no dressing table, simply a chest of drawers, since it was a boy’s room. Apart from a few school photographs and sporting trophies, a cricket bat propped in one corner and a plaid dressing gown hanging behind the door, it was remarkably tidy. One might almost say bare. But then Mrs George was not like Big Molly, content to scatter her belongings all over the place. The living room and kitchen downstairs were equally stark.
A place for everything, and everything in its place.
And the bed was a narrow single, not a double. Amy didn’t mind the squash, she liked to cuddle close to Chris at night, but married life had not turned out quite as she’d expected.
They’d been man and wife sleeping in this bed for almost a week now, and still they hadn’t done it. Chris said the reason was that there hadn’t been the opportunity, the right moment hadn’t come. The first night they’d been too upset, both by Molly’s reaction and by the cool reception from his parents. Since then, whenever they started a bit of a cuddle it would take only the creak of a floorboard out on the landing to make them both freeze. The very idea of making love with his mother and father listening in, was too painful for either of them to contemplate.
‘We’ll have to wait a bit longer,’ Chris decided. ‘Till we can find a place of our own.’
But houses, like romance, Amy discovered, were not as easy to find as one might expect.
‘Hey up,’ said Winnie Watkins, in her mildest tones. ‘It might not be any of my business, Molly, but there’s no pleasing some folk. You’re angry with one daughter for not being married, and with the other because she is.’
‘You’re right, Winnie, it is none of your business.’
‘You chose to tell me, so what now?’
‘I don’t know, and that’s a fact. And you keep all of this under your hat, right?’
‘Oh, I can keep a secret all right,’ Winnie dryly remarked, rather inaccurately.
‘By heck there were fair ructions last night when our Amy got back. She shed that many tears when I refused to let that chap of hers stay, it’s a wonder we weren’t all washed away.’ Molly sat with her head in her hands behind her friend’s fabric stall, feeling ridiculously close to tears herself.
Why was her life in such a mess? Why had everything gone wrong? Why wouldn’t her girls pay attention to what she told them any more? It had been so much easier when they were small. She’d known what they were up to all the time then, and they’d been good little girls, doing as their mam said. Most of the time, anyroad. But it was a whole different kettle of fish now.
It had cost her a small fortune trying to put matters right, yet so far she’d got nowhere beyond putting lover boy Eddie Davidson’s foot in plaster and cracking a few of his ribs. Which wasn’t enough. Nothing like enough. But how could she ask Quinn for more help when she owed him all this money?
‘I don’t suppose you could lend me a few quid, could you?’
‘What, to pay that piece of low life? Not on your nelly. I’m not getting involved with the likes of Quinn, even if I had that amount of spare cash, which I don’t. And you must have a screw loose to get yourself tied up with him, an’ all. If you don’t watch out he’ll come and collect that rope he left and wrap it round your neck.’
‘I know.’ Molly felt the blood seep from her every limb at the thought, leaving her weak and trembling.
Winnie shook her head in despair. ‘You’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time, Moll, and I can’t help you. You should’ve left well alone, let your lasses sort their own lives out. You aren’t responsible for their mistakes any more.’
Big Molly scowled, hating to be put in the wrong, to hear her old friend repeat what Ozzy had already told her.
‘What does your Ozzy say about all this?’ asked Winnie, as if picking up on the thought.
Molly snorted. ‘You know our Ozzy, won’t bat a fly in case it hits him back.’
‘Find the money somehow. Can’t you borrow it from the bank, or your Robert?’
Molly shook her head. ‘He’s up to his neck paying off the bank loan for the new kitchens.’
‘Well, you have to find some way to pay Quinn, and fast. Then you need to make up with your two girls and be glad you’ve still got them. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth.’
‘It’s easy for you to talk, not having a family dragging you in the mire, and you don’t remember how it was when our Lena died, all because of them Georges. Since our Amy has chosen to join them by marrying into the family, she can go and live with them, see how she likes that.’
‘Hecky thump, you’re a hard woman, Molly Poulson. You’ll rue the day you chucked them lovely lasses out on the street. You will really. You’ll rue the day.’
‘This is nice,’ Fran said, pouting her lips as seductively as she could, then giggling enticingly. ‘I can’t remember the last time you and I shared an ice cream, Marc. Too long ago. Must have been when we were quite young, but we aren’t kids any more, are we? Still, I always did fancy you rotten.’
She scooped up a spoonful of Marc’s strawberry ice cream and licked it slowly with the tip of her tongue, never taking her eyes from his as she did so.
Marc frowned as he watched the unmistakable sensuality of the gesture, wondering what had possessed him to agree to this meeting, yet fascinated nonetheless by her full ruby lips, by the challenge in those amber eyes. Although it was true that they’d known each other for a long time, he’d no wish to be reminded of their youth, about how they’d once been more than friends.
He could see his father out of the corner of his eye, watching them from behind the counter. Gossip was rife over Fran Poulson and Papa did not approve. Marc wasn’t feeling particularly proud of himself either, so what the hell did he think he was doing sitting here with her like this?
It was something to do with Fran’s woebegone expression, with her plea that she was being treated as an outcast, nobody else prepared to speak to her. In any event, Marc found it hard to refuse a plea from a helpless female, particularly one who was pretty and sexy. Fran had always had a certain charm about her, an earthy appeal that no red blooded male could entirely resist, all the more beguiling because it was one she didn’t always recognise in herself. He was aware that she’d been teased and bullied as a child, that she saw herself as fat rather than voluptuous, as plain rather than pretty, constantly comparing herself unfavourably with her more slender sister. She crossed her legs at the knee and Marc inwardly groaned, for no one could deny that she had stunning legs.
He’d wanted to help, for old times’ s
ake, but Fran, he realised, had other ideas on her mind. She’d made it very clear she was still interested in him. But was he interested in her? Marc asked himself if he wished to risk compromising the progress he’d made with Patsy, if you could call it that. She’d agreed to come to tea on Sunday, which was something, although there was no guarantee it would lead anywhere. Come Monday, she could just as easily slam the door in his face.
How many times he could keep on putting his head over the parapet only to be rejected and knocked down again, he really didn’t know.
Marc glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t have time for this, Fran. You can finish mine too, if you like. I have a job interview this afternoon at Lewis’s.’
‘Good for you,’ Fran said, panic shooting through her as she saw she was losing his attention. ‘Did you hear about Paulden’s fire? Wasn’t that dreadful? The whole store destroyed in just a few hours. You wouldn’t catch me working in one of those places. I’d get claustrophobia. Are you sure it’s wise to want to work in one? I mean, what’s wrong with staying on the market, working for your papa?’
‘I’m not interested in spending my life selling ice cream, thanks. Anyway, Papa has other sons and daughters who can do that, once they are old enough. The Paulden’s fire was unfortunate but generally speaking a department store is pretty safe. Anyway, I need the job. It might be only the first step on the ladder but it would suit me perfectly, so I’ll leave you to your strawberry ice and dash off, if you don’t mind.’
She reached out to grab him, curling long, slender fingers around his wrist. ‘Oh, but I do mind. I always used to think you and me had something going for us. We were quite – matey - once over, if you remember.’
Marc laughed. ‘That was when we were at school, and both young and foolish.’
‘I’m still young and ready to be foolish with you any time, Marc. Why don’t we take in a movie or something? And I seem to remember you were pretty cool on the dance floor.’ She gave him that crooked smile which had once had him melting at the knees. The promise in it was undeniable.
His father appeared suddenly at the table. ‘Marc, are you forgetting your appointment? You must not be late.’
He was on his feet in a second. ‘No, Papa, I hadn’t forgotten. I’m going now. Bye, Fran. See you.’
‘When?’ she cried, jumping up to chase after him.
‘Um . . . I’ll call you.’
Fran giggled. ‘Don’t be silly, why would you need to call me when I live just across the road? How about Friday?’
Papa Bertalone had followed them to the door, had heard her suggestion, and his frown deepened. ‘Um, sorry no can do.’
‘The weekend then?’
‘I’m busy all this week. Sorry, Fran, got to go.’ Marc cast an anguished look at his father and fled.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sunday afternoon came and Patsy felt as if she truly were part of the family. They ate a delicious meal of macaroni and cheese, sausages and home baked bread, everyone talking at once, with much laughter and joking as they teased and jostled each other.
The four little girls were even prettier, and since the days were cool now they no longer wore their multi-coloured dresses. Instead they all had brown skirts, and sweaters, knitted, predictably, out of rainbow coloured wool. Patsy could see Mama Bertalone’s knitting bag set beside her chair, brimming over with balls of wool in every colour of the rainbow.
The older woman saw her looking and smiled, then whispered something to her husband who translated for her.
‘My wife say in our country, in Italy, we havea the sun to bringa light and colour into our lives. Here, in this grey land, you have to make it yourself.’
Patsy thought this was the loveliest idea imaginable, to knit yourself a rainbow or sew a scrap of sunshine.
As the remains of the meal were tidied away, many hands making light work of it, Patsy offered to help Mama Bertalone with the washing up. Papa Bertalone wouldn’t hear of it.
‘No, no, you are the guest. We will do that later when you young people have gone off to be alone. Now we sit by the fire and we talk. Italians, they likea to talk with their friends. It ees good, yes?’
He asked after Annie’s health, and the hat stall. He showed Patsy his prize possessions: a miniature figure of the Madonna which had once belonged to his own mother, the bell from his father’s horse-drawn ice cream cart, and a pressed flower taken from the bouquets carried by his small daughters at their first Whit Walk. His pride in his family was evident.
‘And here are the boxing trophies of my sons Giovanni, Alessandro and Marc.’ He slapped him on the back, laughing at Marc’s embarrassment as he went on to praise his newly acquired artistic skills, and boasting of how easily he’d passed his examinations. ‘He is clever, my boy, yes?’
The crimson tide of embarrassment spread right up Marc’s neck into his cheeks. ‘Papa!’
‘Now he looka for the big job in the city.’
Smiling even as Marc cringed, Patsy was curious. ‘What would you like to do, Marc?’
‘Window displays. There are many big stores in Manchester. I’d like a job doing their displays. It’s quite hard work, and very important.’
‘Of course it is molto importante,’ papa Bertalone declared. ‘Very important. How will people know what you are selling if you don’ta show it off properly in the store window? Today my son will be the dresser of windows, tomorrow, who knows? The big artistic director, the man of business, si?’
Marc groaned. ‘Don’t start on that now, Papa.’
‘And all my little princesses they will marry rich, wonderful husbands who will adore them.’
‘Yeeesss,’ chorused the little girls in question, climbing all over him for kisses and hugs, pulling his nose and ears as they fought to reclaim his attention. Patsy watched them in delight, laughing at the fun.
Later, once the little ones were in bed, she learned that Clara and her lover were not the only ones to suffer during the war. It was Patsy herself who asked to hear the Bertalone’s story. She wanted to understand, thinking that it might help her to come to terms with her own past. Which, in turn, might assist her in sorting out her confused feelings about Marc, and making decisions about the future.
At first Mr Bertalone refused. ‘We do not speaka of those sad times.’
‘I wish you would. I’d like to hear your story. Isn’t it important that we young ones understand what went before? Marc tells me you spent three years interned in the Isle of Man. And Clara has told me her story, how she had to escape from Paris, and from France.’
‘Ah, yes, the sisters.’ Marco Bertalone paused, seeming to sink into deep thought for a long moment, his kindly face solemn. ‘Si, they were very brave, I think. All right, I will tell you quickly, then we speaka of other things, yes?’
Patsy smiled her thanks.
He spoke of a banging on his front door at midnight, of a military vehicle taking him away, leaving his wife and children to cope alone as best they could in their fear and horror. Yet he claimed he was lucky.
‘I did not have to fight in the war as so many of our boys did, though I would have been glad to do so, had I been accepted on the side of the British. I did not drown in a sinking ship, like the Arandora Star which carried hundreds of Italian internees and was sunk by a U-Boat off the west coast of Ireland. I was the lucky one, si?
‘My wife, she suffered the curfew. The missing of my wages was a problem for her and for my children. She couldn’t even make-a the ice- creama. Manufacture was banned because of the shortage of food. Marc, he was only four or five, and Maria, his elder sister whose wedding you attended, only seven or eight, and there were two other bambinis. Mucha worka for their mama. Molto problemas!
Marc said, ‘I remember being disappointed that we weren’t allowed to take part in the Whit Walks, nor even permitted to have radios. Presumably we weren’t trusted not to make reports to the enemy. Huh, as if we knew what was going on, or would have told if we did. I
t was insulting.’
‘That is war,’ his father remarked with a philosophical shrug, hands waving dismissively. ‘The military, they have to do these things, to be safe. But we survived. The war ended and our British friends they welcome us all home, and we are happy again, si? So enough of this solemn talk. You walka with my boy now. It is dusk but young ones do not mind the dark, I think. Have this precious time together. Enjoy your youth. It will not come again.’
Patsy glanced shyly across at Marc to find he was smiling at her. Embarrassed now, but unable to refuse to go out for a walk with him since that would seem rude, she allowed Papa Bertalone to fetch her coat.
As he helped her put it on, he said, ‘You mention the sisters, your dear aunts . . .’
‘They aren’t exactly my aunts.’ Had Marc been telling his father about her? She cast him a fierce glance but he gave a little shake of his head, telling her otherwise.
Papa Bertalone shrugged. ‘Whatever. They tell you how they escape Paris? What they were doing there? When they leave?’
‘Yes. Annie was a teacher at the university, and they left early in the war, 1940, I think, when the Germans invaded. They escaped in a pig truck, of all things.’
‘No, no. The truck of the pigs, that may be true, but it was much later that they leave. Paris was occupied and they did not get out until 1942 or 3. And they were very busy in that time. They show much bravery. Molto coraggio. You aska them whata they do in the war. Maybe they tell you.’
Patsy had believed she’d heard all there was to learn except her own particular role in Clara’s life. Now she saw that she had learned only half the story, that there was another intriguing insight into the sisters’ lives in Paris to be gained. Yet another puzzle to be solved.
Having Marc walk her home in the dark was the last thing Patsy wanted. It only reminded her of how much she liked him, and she really didn’t dare to think about that too much.
Yet there had been something different between them today. She’d felt far more relaxed than previously. They’d chatted and laughed together, exchanged glances and smiles, as if they understood each other. He’d treated her with great courtesy and respect, welcoming her into his home and the heart of his family almost as if she belonged there. It had given her a warm glow inside.
Fools Fall in Love Page 28
