The Sicilian Woman's Daughter

by Linda Lo Scuro

  “Money.”

  “How much money do they want?”

  “Want £400,000. Want £200,000 each.”

  “But you don’t have that kind of money, do you?”

  “I have some money. But if not have, they want I sell house.”

  “Do they, now?” I say. “How did they find out about Uncle Tony?”

  “They no know Susi and me kill Tony,” she says. “They only suspect.”

  Essentially, it was guesswork. But they’ve guessed right. Bella and Rosa knew their Uncle Tony was violent. They’d seen Zia with black eyes. When his death was announced suddenly, their family couldn’t believe it was a natural death. It seemed strange to them at the time, but thought nothing of it for years. Now they have both grown older, have been widowed, and have more time, they decide to see what they can get. They think blackmailing Zia is win-win for them. They reckon that if Zia killed her husband, she’ll pay up; if she hasn’t, then she will have nothing against their having Uncle Tony’s grave dug up in Sicily and have a DNA test carried out.

  “Whose body is in Uncle Tony’s grave, then?” I ask.

  “I no know him. Old Cushi organise.”

  Zia tells me that the day after the murder, Old Cushi flew to The Village on Uncle Tony’s passport. Uncle Tony was off work for three weeks for the summer break. When Silvio and Stefano came back home in the evening, from their summer job, fruit-picking, they were told that their father had had to leave for Sicily – urgently – given that his mother had been taken ill suddenly.

  When in Sicily, on his way to the village, Old Cushi met up with two of his men, who arrived with a third man. This third man was shot in the woods near the roadside, wrapped up in a blanket and hidden in the woods for a day. Word was put around that Tony, travelling from England, had had a heart-attack on the road to The Village. They said Tony had been taken to the hospital in the next town.

  His elderly mother was told his body had been embalmed straight away because of the heat. The next day the body arrived in The Village already sealed up in a coffin. Tony’s mother insisted on seeing her son’s body. She was told that by now the body would smell, and it was best to leave well alone. The mother wouldn’t take no for an answer, so Old Cushi called two men to weld the coffin lid off. The body had been bandaged up, including his head, and only part of his face was visible. His mother wailed when she saw the face. She was taken away and sedated. She lived the following days in a state of confusion – at times saying it wasn’t her son, but at the same time wearing mourning clothes and accepting condolences and visitors at home, telling them what a wonderful person her son was.

  A death certificate was issued and, soon after, when Zia, Susi and her brothers arrived, the funeral and burial were carried out.

  Neatly finished off.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Friday 8th September

  Now Bella and Rosa are planning on having ‘Uncle Tony’s’ body exhumed in Sicily. And for this reason they are going to The Village in a week to organise it. Today is ultimatum day. The day the sisters deliver their last warning to Zia: pay up or be exposed as a killer. Not being related to me, I don’t know them that well. They are part of the community though. Therefore, I have vague memories of their being a couple of dullards – went about in twos. Reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – each a half, making up one person together. But, I can certainly recollect who their brother is: Adriano. The scumbag who threatened to rape me, along with my cousin, Stefano; but who ultimately raped Susi repeatedly instead. I suggested Susi and I blackmailed Adriano into giving Susi recompense for his violence, while here are his sisters blackmailing Zia.

  When the doorbell rings, Zia’s face is as white as a ghost’s, her hands trembling: “Bella and Rosa,” she utters.

  I usher Zia upstairs. “You’re going to bed, Zia. You’re in no fit state to confront these two airheads. I’ll do it.”

  “What you do now?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know, but I’ll think of something. You just go on up now.”

  “They take my money, my house...”

  “They’ll take nothing.”

  Opening the outer door, I tell them Zia isn’t well and had to go to bed. In their matching purplish and green flowery dresses they look quite innocuous. “I like your dresses,” I say. “Did you make them yourselves?” They look at each other. This is a gesture they will repeat again and again, just about every time I say something. It seems as if they need some kind of constant consent from each other. Well, I am going to give them plenty to confer about.

  “Come in, come in,” I say. “I’ve always been in a rush when our paths have crossed here at Zia’s. Contrastingly, I have all afternoon today so we can sit down and have a nice little chat,” I smile. “Cuppa tea?”

  Coming out of the kitchen with a tray of tea and lemon cupcakes, I catch them confabulating. They stop and stare at me. “Oh,” I say, “Zia made some lemon cupcakes this morning. Aren’t we the lucky ones?” They nervously take one each when I offer them the cakes on little plates.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” I say. “Sun’s been shining all day. Rain coming in the next few days. You know, when it starts raining it never stops. I’ll bet it’s going to be a long cold winter...” This is getting tiresome. There I am talking and talking to fill in the empty silence. I am also doing it so that they feel at ease. Well, what the hell, they’ll just have to feel awkward. I stop my gush of words and look out of the window. We sit there for a while longer drinking tea.

  “We came to talk to Zia,” Bella says. Rosa nods.

  “I’m afraid you can’t talk to her today. You do know she’s eighty-seven, don’t you? She’s been getting quite feeble lately. Too much worry. She told me you were coming here today, and I volunteered to meet you. You can tell me whatever you wanted to tell Zia.”

  “It’s not easy for us to talk about it with someone else,” Rosa says. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Why? I have Zia’s full consent to discuss the delicate issue you came here to talk about today. Just tell me as if I were Zia. It has everything to do with me. I’m representing her.”

  It is easy for them to bully a little old lady. It is going to be a bit more difficult with me. They know that. They look at each other again before plunging into the heart of the matter.

  “We think,” Bella begins, “that Zia killed our Uncle Tony.”

  “And what makes you think that?” I say.

  “There was rumours when we was kids that she killed him. My mum and friends talked about it.” Bella nods her consent to Rosa’s statement.

  “So it’s not all guesswork, then?” Like I had to at school with the children, I would have to explain the situation to them to make them understand where we were at. “In other words, I thought you were only guessing at it. But now you bring forward evidence. Your evidence is that your mother talked about it to others. It’s only hearsay. No evidence whatsoever. If I remember correctly your mother, Signora Carmela, was a choice gossip. Anything she said cannot, for one moment, be thought of as reliable.”

  “Other people was saying so, as well,” Rosa says.

  “Yes, because your mother had put the thought into their heads,” I lean forward towards them, then say slowly: “Your mother was a liar.”

  That didn’t go down well. They didn’t like it and got quite irate. Rosa opens her mouth as if to say something, but Bella answers instead. “How dare you call my mum a liar?”

  “How dare you call my Zia a murderer?” I say. “Which is worse?”

  They look at each other. Say nothing.

  “Do you think your Uncle Tony was a nice man?” I ask.

  “We knew he was hitting Zia. Mum talked about Zia’s black eyes and bruises. That’s why we think she did it. She had a reason to kill Uncle Tony. And mum said he went off to Sicily without saying anything to my dad. We was in Sicily at the same time, on holiday. Then we was told, Uncle Tony was dead. Even my grandmoth
er said she didn’t think the body in the coffin was Uncle Tony.”

  “So why didn’t your father go to The Village sooner to support your grandmother’s doubts?”

  “I told you. All our family was already in Sicily,” Bella says. “We was staying with my mum’s family in another province in Sicily.”

  “Our gran didn’t have our mum’s parents’ address to send us a telegram,” Rosa says, “my gran couldn’t read or write. The telegram came late and our dad got to The Village after the funeral.”

  I lean forward towards them again, slowly put my elbow on the table to prop up my face, squint my eyes and say slowly and gravely: “Then maybe your dad killed Uncle Tony in Sicily?”

  They are horrified, start shaking their heads. Get cross. Their dad, they say was a gentle man. He didn’t have it in him to kill someone.

  “I’ll tell you what he did,” I say. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s just dawned on me – clear as daylight. He knew Uncle Tony was going to Sicily, he found an excuse to get away from his family, killed Uncle Tony and then went back to his family at your grandmother’s. As if nothing had happened.”

  They are gob-smacked. “Our dad didn’t have a reason to kill Uncle Tony. Our dad and Uncle Tony loved each other,” Bella says.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, we’re sure,” Rosa says.

  “I’m not.” I say. “I think they sorely hated each other.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Bella says.

  “They put on a show of affection,” I say. “I heard rumours as well as a kid. Uncle Tony was a philanderer.”

  Confused, they turn and look at each other.

  “It means that Uncle Tony went with other women. He had affairs. One of the reasons he kept hitting Zia was because she opposed his extramarital escapades.”

  “We never heard anyone say Uncle Tony had affairs,” Bella says.

  “Of course you didn’t hear about it. Those involved, like your father, are the last to know, aren’t they?”

  By now they are totally confused.

  “Yes,” I say. “Uncle Tony’s longest lasting affair was with your mother, Signora Carmela.”

  They are open-mouthed with shock. Bella breathes out and says: “You’re making it up.”

  “No, I’m not. Everyone knew, it was the talk of the community. It was also rumoured that your father was homosexual.”

  They gasp.

  I have nothing against homosexuals, in fact I like them very much. When I first went to university my best friends were two gay blokes. They made the curtains for my bedsit. I only had one window. The best drapery in town – beautiful! You should have seen the flounces. In Bella and Rosa’s small minds, homosexuality must have been the worst sin a man could commit.

  “Another lemon cake anyone?” I went over to them with the tray, but they refused. “You know, these lemon cakes are delicious. I must get the recipe from Zia,” I say.

  “Your mother probably wasn’t getting much sex. So Uncle Tony took advantage of the situation. Your father knew about it and tried to stop the encounters. Signora Carmela and Uncle Tony got a jolly good liking for each other and wouldn’t stop. Now do you see why your mother was telling all-and-sundry that Zia had murdered her husband? Distraction, my dear ladies, distraction. ‘Shine the spotlight over there, on Zia; and not on me. I’ll keep myself hidden in the wings, thank you very much,’ Signora Carmela would have said.”

  “We don’t believe any of it. It can’t be true,” one says, while the other nods.

  “It’s true. True as I’m sitting here. I’ll wager that if you did exhume his body, your father’s DNA would be all over it,” I say. “Well, ladies, I need to be getting on.”

  They stand up.

  “Oh, and another thing,” I say, “I wouldn’t go to Sicily if I were your good selves. If you do go, buy a one-way ticket. Neither of you would come back. You’d be cemented up in your family tomb, probably next to your Uncle Tony, or he could be your father for all you know. Mark my words, if you go to Sicily, now or at any time in the future, you will not come back. Let the dead rest in peace. Give up ideas about exhuming bodies.” They stare at me. I show them the way out. “Just don’t go,” I say, shutting them out.

  I tip-toe upstairs to see how Zia is getting on. She is sleeping like a baby under her pink velvet bedspread. On her dressing table are various objects: a jar of Pond’s cream, a black hairpin, crochet hook entangled in my yellow wool, a couple of terracotta pots, and a sea-shell jewellery box. I go back downstairs to tidy up. There is a big tin on the kitchen table. I pull it open to see what is inside. It is full of lemon cupcakes. She lives on her own and makes cakes for an army. Tears come to my eyes, thinking of Zia’s lonely life. What life has it been? Shut up in this house with a cadaver for company – always afraid someone will discover the body. And living in fear that the public might discover that Susi, her precious daughter, is a murderer. Zia’s life has rotated around that pantry. What will happen to the house when she dies? Susi will have to come and live here. On the other hand, would anyone know there was a body there? No, they wouldn’t. But Zia has to get rid of that little altar down there: the bunch of artificial flowers, and the plastic Virgin Mary statue.

  “Zia,” I call, “wakey, wakey. Cuppa tea? Lemon cupcake?”

  She opens her eyes and yawns. “What time?”

  “It’s 4.30.” I put the tray before her. Sit on her bed. Rain is patting on the windows.

  “Cosy. Tea in bed,” she says. “What happen with two sister?”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about them any more, Zia. To cut a long story short, I’ve asked them not to go to The Village.”

  “They say yes?” she asks.

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll see them again, nor will they go to Sicily. But I can’t be sure of that. They’re pretty thick.”

  “They no dig up body?”

  “Not if they’ve got a granule of sense. But, Zia, we have to sort out your pantry. You can’t have that altar down there, if anyone were to see it they’d find it odd. It might set them off thinking all sorts of strange things.”

  “They no see.”

  “Let’s suppose, now it’s not going to happen, but let’s just suppose that you were taken ill suddenly. Someone could find the altar. They might get ideas of digging the floor up.”

  She thinks about it.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” I say. “We’ll get a nice photo of Uncle Tony put it on a table and you can place the Virgin Mary, flowers and even a candle around it. What do you think of that?”

  “I think good idea. I put on table near phone.”

  “Yes, and the pantry door must be unlocked at all times. You draw attention to it by locking it. Throw away that lock and key.”

  She says she will leave the door unlocked, but she’ll keep the lock and key in case she needs it for some other reason.

  “You do all that this evening, please, Zia. I need to go now.”

  I can’t find the light switch when I walk out of her bedroom, so go slowly down the dark, narrow staircase, feeling my way. The carpet is lighter along the edges of each stair. Worn out.

  On the underground, I manage to contain myself. But when I get to the Thames towpath, I let it all out. I cry. I cry like a child. I cry for Zia – a wasted life. I cry for Susi, raped in her youth and having to go round with a killing on her conscience. Maybe I even cry for myself, for my past that has raised its ugly head into my present, even though I have put up airtight barriers. It has seeped through anyway.

  When I see Humps in the evening, I feel immediately uplifted. He is my fixed star, reference point, my north, my south, my east, my west. And he has been so for nearly thirty-five years. No nonsense and let’s get on with it, kind of thing. No time for feeling sorry for yourself. He pulls me up when I think too much.

  “Hello, darling. Had a nice day?”

  “Bloody awful. Stock markets are all over the place. Clients phoning wantin
g miracles.”

  “Well, you’re home now. We’ll have a lovely relaxing weekend, plan our Sicily trip and book it. We’re going to have a wonderful time. Think of lovely beaches, great food and chilled wine.”

  “We certainly need to have a break. Get away from it all,” he says.

  “You’re telling me.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sunday 10th September

  We are in for a quiet day. On Sundays, if we don’t get to see the kids, I phone them, then tell Humps their news. We have a tendency to think they get things wrong, but we let them get on with it. Humps is against interfering in their lives. If it hadn’t been for him, I think I would have waded in with unwanted advice and probably ruined our relationship with them. News was mostly the progress of little Benjamin. How he’s added new words to his vocabulary. He is saying ‘mama’ and ‘dada,’ and pointing with determination when he wants something.

  After the Bella-Rosa episode, I feel I need to speak to Susi, too. I’ll phone her and see when we can meet. I don’t want to discuss this on the phone with Humps in the house.

  “Hi, Mary.”

  “Hi, Susi. How are you getting on with your new little business?”

  “Oh, it’s OK. I’ve contacted a few people. If it works, it’s going to be much better than working for the Americans. In the end, they might have done me a favour.”

  “That really is good news. I was phoning to see if we could meet up for a drink.”

  “I don’t have much time right now. Not during the week anyway. I could do this evening, if you want.”

  “Fine, done.”

  We set the time and place.

  “Humps, I’m going out for a drink with Susi this evening. I’ll have to leave you on your own.” Before he could say he wants to come too, I say: “Woman-to-woman talk. You know how it is.”

  “Sounds like I’m staying here,” he says.

  “You can catch up on your reading. Have you finished this week’s Economist?”

  “No, but I suppose I’ll finish it this evening.”