The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  She jerked away as if she’d been stung by a wasp. He recoiled. Embarrassed, I thought. Sorry for him and wanting to salvage the situation, I pulled the children in front of me. ‘Say hello to your nonna.’ I hoped she would give them a better reception than she had her son. They greeted her in tentative but perfect Italian.

  She turned front-on, and through intense dark beady eyes, studied them at length.

  ‘Matteo and Francesca,’ I said to break the silence.

  ‘You think I can’t tell the difference between a boy and a girl,’ she said.

  ‘She could pretend to be pleased to meet them,’ Ben grumbled on the quiet to me. Louder to the children, ‘Stand up nice and straight.’

  His mother’s voice drowned his out. ‘Matteo, Francesca, turn sideways,’ she ordered. ‘Now back-on.’

  They rolled their eyes at us. I didn’t blame them. This grandma displayed none of the warmth they had known with Granny Muz.

  ‘Face me again,’ the old grump said. ‘Hurry up. I haven’t all day.’

  They swung around. She beckoned them closer with a knobby finger and clawed at their hair, prodded their taut cheeks, sniffed their skin. When she was done, they scooted like scalded cats over to Ben and me and stood mute between us.

  Her lips pressed together and chin slightly raised made her look mean. ‘I suppose you expect me to fawn over your wife as well,’ she said.

  There was something quite challenging about the way she looked at me. ‘A handshake’s fine,’ I said.

  Her palm against mine felt like chilled pastry. I suppressed the urge to shiver.

  Throughout these bleak ministrations, Ernesto had stayed in the background. Now he stepped forward to push his mother’s gold-rimmed glasses further up her nose.

  ‘She’s had a tough time of late,’ he said, as we retreated to the door. ‘Don’t expect too much too soon, Julia. She’s not always this difficult.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, giving a half-hearted smile to mask my disappointment. I had expected her to be effusive, a real Italian mamma lavishing us with attention, especially Ben. She hadn’t clapped eyes on him for over a decade.

  Somewhat puzzled, I followed the brothers and children to the kitchen, Ernesto’s remarks rising above the thwack of Rosa’s shoes on the flagstones. A clock chimed in the hallway. I squealed in fright. Ben put his arm around me. Ernesto stuck a couple of fingers above his head, waggled them like the ears of a rabbit and hopped about encouraging Matteo and Francesca to do likewise.

  ‘Sit down,’ Rosa said. Oilskin covered the table, which was set with brown ceramic bowls, mugs, plates and a jug of wine. ‘I bring you soup, then chicken and vegetables, and after your plates they are clean, Zuppa Inglese.’

  ‘Do you want me to wash up before I can have English soup?’ Matteo said.

  ‘No, funny boy,’ said Rosa with a laugh. ‘I want you to eat your meat and vegetables before I serve for you a dessert.’

  Ben turned to Mattie. ‘Rosa’s zuppa is a custard and sponge cake with berries.’

  ‘Whew. That’s a relief.’

  ‘Nonna pecked at me like a hen,’ Francesca said at bedtime, flapping her arms above her head as I finished reading a chapter of Peter Pan in her third-floor room next to Matteo’s. ‘She has a nose like a beak and she smells dusty.’

  Before I could chastise her, Matteo, who was sitting at the end of her bed, head against the wall, said, ‘Nonna’s sick. Be kind.’

  I closed the book. ‘Your brother’s right. And she’s given you lovely rooms.’

  There was a pink coverlet on Francesca’s bed. Mattie’s was blue. Ben and I were across the hall in spacious quarters with burnished-gold brocade drapes, a matching bed quilt, and elegant cherry and maple furniture.

  ‘Straight to sleep,’ I said, turning off the light. ‘Off you go to your room, Matteo.’

  ‘I’m wide awake,’ he said, ‘not the tiniest bit sleepy.’

  ‘Same with me, Mamma,’ said Francesca.

  I blew kisses from the doorway. ‘No arguments, little darlings.’

  8

  At dawn, Matteo climbed into our bed. Instead of snuggling between Ben and me as he did at home, he studied the ornate carvings of vines on the headboard.

  ‘Mamma, see those tiny mice hiding among the leaves? If you say I can stay up longer than Francesca tonight, I won’t let them scamper down and frighten you.’ He scurried two fingers along my collarbone. Feigning terror, I pulled the top sheet over my face.

  Francesca, who had followed him in, said in a squeaky voice, ‘Mattie, you’re scaring Mamma. She has the jelly wobbles.’ She stifled a giggle.

  I threw off the sheet and grabbed Matteo. ‘Francesca, tickle his ribs.’

  After he begged for mercy we tossed pillows at each other before collapsing on the floor, a haystack of arms and legs. We lay laughing, enfolded in Ben’s arms. Muted sunlight shining through the stained-glass casements bathed the room in shafts of crimson and gold.

  Committed to caring for Ben’s mother and wanting to support him to do whatever he could to make her comfortable, I hadn’t mentioned the coldness she had shown towards him when we arrived, but, noticing a wounded expression flash across his face, I said, ‘It’s going to be fine.’ He looked away, his lashes moist.

  ‘You need to learn our national game, Matteo, if you want to make friends,’ Ernesto said after Mass on Sunday morning. He rummaged in a cupboard under the stairs, tossed out a ball. ‘We’re fanatical about it.’

  What he said made sense. From our balcony, Matteo had watched boys close to his age play football in an open space adjacent to the villa.

  ‘Come with me, Matteo,’ Ernesto said. ‘I’ll see if you have potential.’

  On a bare patch of ground beyond the terrace and main flower garden, Ernesto and Ben took Matteo through basic moves. There was none of the light-hearted banter that had accompanied the cricket matches with Oliver at home. Football was more than a game to Ernesto: it was a power struggle. He elbowed Ben for no reason, tripped him if he was about to score, and accused him of breaking a rule when to my untrained eye Ernesto looked to be in the wrong. Ben didn’t call him on it, choosing instead to work the ball between his feet and dispatch it to Matteo. I didn’t think letting his brother employ underhand tactics set a good example to our son. ‘Play by the rules!’ I shouted from the sidelines.

  ‘I’m the referee,’ Ernesto countered. ‘Your job is to bring out the oranges.’

  Alone with Ben at bedtime I said, ‘I see what you mean about Ernesto wanting everything in his favour. He’s super-competitive. Why do you let him—’

  Ben cut me off mid-stream. ‘Julia, button your lip while we’re here.’

  I was about to argue when I caught a harsh glint in his eyes. ‘Very well, I’ll give it a go,’ I said. But I couldn’t help adding, ‘Your family is very different from mine.’

  Early into a sweltering June, Matteo learned to dribble the ball between shrubs, up and down paths, and aim at the net Francesca drew on a stonewall with her hopscotch chalk. In no time, he mastered techniques that Ben said had taken him months to pick up at that age. This praise, along with a smattering of football slang gleaned from the men during their coaching sessions, boosted Matteo’s confidence. So when the Vomero boys returned to play next door, he came into the kitchen where I was making a pot of tea and said, ‘Can I join them, Mamma? Please?’

  The police episode I’d witnessed in our first week popped into my mind. ‘Best if you remain on the property, Mattie.’

  ‘I want to learn the game from boys my own age. Papa and Uncle Ernesto mightn’t be up to date with the rules.’

  His peeved expression reminded me that at breakfast Ben had caught me straightening the collar of our son’s short-sleeved shirt. ‘Stop fussing over him as if he’s a girl,’ he’d said, insinuating he saw something in me that hadn’t been evident in London.

  I dithered, and Matteo took the opportunity to strengthen his case. ‘I need to
mix with boys my age.’

  ‘OK, off you go,’ I said, flicking a straggly curl out of his eyes. ‘I’ll take my cup of tea up to the balcony and watch how you get on.’

  After successfully kicking the ball to another boy, he glanced up and waved. Soon he was too busy perfecting the scissor move and joshing with his new friends to bother about me. Within a fortnight, he banished me from my roost. ‘Mamma, I’m nearly eleven,’ he said, derailing my half-formed objection.

  Thereafter, if I mentioned the bruises on his legs acquired from these games, he cocked his head and shrugged, a habit of his uncle’s. I learned to ask about the score or the role he’d had in setting up a goal. Anything else he treated with mild disdain.

  At this stage, Ben’s mother refused to let me care for her or help about the house. She persisted in running Rosa ragged. The poor woman had to attend to her employer’s needs as well as the household chores. ‘I have high standards,’ Signora Moretti said when I offered to take on simple duties.

  As the month progressed, daytime temperatures reached furnace-like proportions. If Ernesto, who attended to business in the mornings and worked in his downtown photography studio in the afternoons, didn’t change his shirt before sitting down to dinner, Matteo wouldn’t put on a clean one either.

  ‘Julia, he’s a boy,’ Ben said when I looked to him for support.

  ‘Mattie’s a pig,’ Francesca chanted, her face as shiny as Rosa’s brass pots, which hung on metal hooks above the stove. Ernesto would oink, inciting Francesca to crawl across the flagstones on all fours and Rosa to flap her hands as if she were rounding up a farm animal, not an impressionable child.

  Early one afternoon I found Rosa ironing her way through a mountain of linen, perspiration trickling off her face and pooling in the folds of her neck. As she smoothed out the last crease in a nightgown, I said, ‘Would you like me to take it through to Signora Moretti?’

  ‘No, best you leave it with me.’

  ‘You do more than your share.’ I picked up the item, now folded on the table.

  Rosa sat the heel of the iron on the stand and took the nightgown from me. ‘You do not decide. She does.’

  As if that scolding wasn’t sufficient, mid-afternoon I found Ben’s mother seated at the kitchen table sorting through clothes she planned to donate to a church fair. ‘Let me give you a hand,’ I said, reaching for a blouse with a missing button. ‘Where do you keep your needles and thread?’

  ‘I’m not blind,’ she said, and shoved me aside.

  9

  ‘Why get us over?’ I asked Ben. We were in bed. It was late. Neither of us could sleep. ‘We’ve been here almost nine weeks. I don’t think she’s gravely ill. She puffs, normal for a woman her age, and she tires easily, but if she rests, she’s fine. What do you think is going on?’

  He propped himself up on an elbow. ‘She’s a game-player. I did warn you.’ Leaning over, he kissed my shoulder. ‘I phoned her doctor this morning. Ernesto was exaggerating when he told me on the phone she had only six months to live. It’s more like one to two years. Emphysema progresses in stages. She’s classed between moderate, the second stage, and severe, the third. There’re four in total.’

  ‘So we’re here under false pretences. Why would Ernesto mislead you?’

  Ben kicked off the top sheet. ‘Self-serving reasons always drive my brother’s intentions.’

  ‘What do you mean? He is full of himself and super-competitive but lots of men behave as he does.’

  ‘You’ll see for yourself soon enough.’

  ‘That’s not fair. You can’t hint at something and then brush it off.’

  ‘If you hadn’t gone on about my mother needing me, we wouldn’t be here. I wasn’t keen, remember?’

  It was true. I had worn him down. ‘Sorry.’

  He stroked my arm. ‘You were grieving for your parents, Julia, and desperate to befriend my mother. As you’re discovering, she’s complicated so it’s unlikely to happen.’

  Oh yes it will, I thought, one way or another. ‘What do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Ernesto thinks the children are giving her a new lease of life. The doctor agrees.’ All the light went out of his eyes. I indicated he continue with a turn of my wrist. ‘As the disease progresses she’s bound to need extra care. Rosa can’t do everything. She’s worn out.’

  ‘Come to think of it, your mother’s not exactly cosy with you.’

  ‘Never has been,’ he said and he switched off the bedside lamp.

  In the darkness, I said, ‘The longer we stay, the more chances you’ll have to improve your relationship with her.’

  ‘Benito, tell your wife to close her book and pick up a duster,’ his mother said when she found me reading in the drawing room. ‘She has no idea what it takes to run a place this size.’

  Ben was sprawled out on the sofa, watching the children through a window playing tag outside. ‘Speak to Julia directly. She’s right in front of you.’

  I bent over a corner of the page I was on and stood up. ‘I’ll do whatever’s required. Give me a list.’

  She ran her tongue slowly across her top lip, like a wild creature gauging the acuity of its prey. ‘Iron your husband’s shirts. He looks like a tramp. And while you’re at it, scrub the washhouse floor.’

  This was the beginning of her putting me to work, almost as though she had heard me complain at not being allowed to do anything. I felt satisfaction at this breakthrough but also annoyance at her commanding tone, the indirect order made via Ben, the fact I was to be her cleaner.

  Ben whacked the armrest of the sofa with an open hand and sat up. ‘Linen crumples. You never criticise Ernesto when he wears it.’

  ‘He can carry it off.’

  ‘You’re impossible,’ Ben said. ‘Come on, Julia, we’ll join Frannie and Mattie.’

  ‘Waster,’ his mother called after him.

  He didn’t utter another word until we reached the front steps.

  ‘I can’t do anything right where she’s concerned. Never could.’ There was a ragged edge to his voice, somewhere between irritation and anger.

  Thinking he might calm down if I also complained about her, I said, ‘The old bag had no right ordering me around as if I were a servant.’

  ‘Don’t badmouth her,’ he said, veering back inside, leaving me open-mouthed and stunned.

  We woke at dawn to a crimson sky. Neither of us eager to rise, we lay on top of the bedcover waiting for the familiar blue sheen to appear and brilliant yellow sun, signifying another scorcher. The last residues of the bloodshot tones faded as the children bounded from their rooms into ours.

  ‘Rosa has breakfast ready,’ Frannie said. ‘And Nonna left a list of jobs longer than Papa’s necktie for you on the table.’

  ‘I’ll need helpers,’ I said. ‘Any volunteers?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Matteo. ‘Uncle Ernesto needs a hand to mend a fence. He wants you there as well, Papa.’

  I turned to Frannie. She shook her head. ‘I’m feeding the animals with Carlo.’

  ‘Deserters,’ I said with a laugh, and rolled off the bed.

  The savage heat turned me into a prickly husk as I went about the morning chores, which included washing the tiles in the entrance hall and climbing a ladder to dust every lightshade on the lower floor.

  Around 1 p.m. Rosa called us to the kitchen for tomatoes, olives, salami, a selection of cheese and bread, and sliced melon. Grateful it wasn’t a cooked meal, I hummed as I handed out the plates and filled the glasses with homemade lemonade.

  Francesca said, ‘Mattie has more than me.’

  ‘I have not,’ he said, comparing the levels.

  ‘Have so,’ Francesca insisted.

  ‘Ben,’ I said, separating the glasses, ‘I think we should find out about schools in the neighbourhood.’ Any mention of school would stop their squabbling, and I was thinking ahead because I wasn’t familiar with the Italian enrolment system. I already knew from Rosa that classes f
inished at 1 or 1.30 pm, so the children would always have lunch at the villa.

  He shot forward in his chair. ‘We’re not staying long-term. Besides, the education system differs from England’s. It’ll confuse them.’

  ‘I don’t want them to fall behind,’ I said, taking my place at the table. ‘Anyway, they could do with a broad education.’

  ‘They can learn everything they need to know on the streets,’ Ernesto said. ‘Napoli’s a savvy teacher.’

  ‘Sightseeing isn’t what I have in mind,’ I said. ‘They need proper lessons.’

  Ernesto rose to his feet. ‘Sort it, Benito.’ He left through the rear door.

  ‘Mamma, we’re on our holidays,’ said Matteo.

  ‘Summer doesn’t go on forever, Mattie. Ben, when does the next term start?’

  ‘Beginning of October, so give it a rest.’

  Rosa’s eyes darted from him to me. She held out a hand to Francesca. ‘You and me, we feed mash to the hens.’

  Ben went too, taking his coffee and a cigarette, leaving Matteo with me. He was spinning a knife on the table top. The blade caught a shaft of sunlight pouring through the window, momentarily blinding me. ‘Quit playing with the cutlery,’ I said. ‘Help me clear up if you’ve nothing better to do.’

  He banged his elbows against his torso. ‘That’s women’s work.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He had never behaved this way before. ‘Do as you’re told.’

  He plunked the salt cellar on the condiment shelf and returned for the pepper pot. ‘Mamma, Uncle Ernesto and Papa can teach Frannie and me. Papa can name every capital city in every country in the entire world and describe the design and colour of their flags. And Uncle Ernesto is ace at arithmetic. He multiplies and divides sums in his head and he gets the top price for his olive oil.’

  ‘A proper education is never wasted,’ I said, feeling a flicker of shame as I remembered the casualness with which I had discarded mine. ‘It sets you up for life.’ Lordy, I was parroting Wiggin.

  ‘I learn better outdoors.’

  ‘That makes no sense, Mattie.’