‘No, too full of yourself, I think.’ Plump, homely Carlotta flung up her hands in a gesture of fretful despair then she held them out to Patsy and the fascinated customer as if begging for sympathy.
‘Was any woman more harassed by daughters than I? Why did I ever imagine that to have seven was a blessing?’
Patsy suppressed a giggle and concentrated on scattering roasted almonds over the double scoop of rum ice cream, trying not to catch her eye.
Thirteen year old Alessandro snorted with laughter. ‘Just as well you have three fine sons to make up for it then, Momma.’
Carlotta flung her arms about her son, hugging him with flamboyant fervour while she showered his face with kisses, then slapped him playfully about the head, making him cry out in protest.
‘You boys are the bane of my life too, always doing the bickering and the fighting, leaving your clothes all over the floor and never coming to meals on time. Was a mother ever more burdened?’
Alessandro, who had heard it all before, kissed his mother soundly on one round pink cheek and grinned. ‘Best thing to do then is to get some of us married off, and where better to start than with Carmina? She’s the one who means to marry Luc. Poor Gina won’t get a look in.’
‘What nonsense you talk, boy? Who say she marry Luc? I will hear no more about this stupeed young man.
Si
? None of my girls marry without Papa say okay.’
Carmina made no reply. She twitched her bouffant skirts, feigning indifference as she checked that her stocking seams were straight, that the low neck of her pale blue
broderie anglaise
blouse showed off her prettily rounded breasts to perfection. Taking a lipstick from her skirt pocket she began to apply it with painstaking care to full, pouting lips. ‘I shall marry whomsoever I choose, when I’m good and ready. It’s for me to say, not Papa.’
Carlotta snatched the bright pink lipstick out of her hands. Grabbing a cloth with one hand and her daughter’s pony tail with the other, she began to scrub at her mouth, oblivious to her squeals and protests. ‘No daughter of mine will look like a slut.’
Patsy decorated the Tortoni Sundae with maraschino cherries and chocolate chips.
Alessandro stood for a moment longer listening to the screams of his mother and sister as they railed at each other, watched by a growing crowd ostensibly queuing for ice cream while clearly revealing by their smirking expressions their enjoyment of the floor-show in the meantime. Satisfied with the trouble he’d caused, he slipped silently away.
Patsy stopped drizzling chocolate fudge sauce to rest a gentle hand on her future mother-in-law’s arm, respectfully pointing out that they had an audience.
‘
Momma mia
!’ Carlotta cried, noticing the curious onlookers for the first time and slapping her recalcitrant daughter once again for causing her so much embarrassment. ‘See how you shame me! Where is Alessandro? Why isn’t your brother serving the ice-a-creama? See how you drive him away with your tantrums? Go wash that muck off your face and get back to work this minute. There will be no dance for
you
tonight either. You can stay home with your sister.’
Whereupon, Carmina snatched up the second dish of rum tortoni that Patsy had painstakingly managed to prepare for the accommodating customer, and flung it after the first.
Chapter Seven
Amy wasn’t the only one constantly under siege from Mavis. Her husband was more often the subject of her censure. After a long morning’s work in the bakery, the poor man only had to set foot in the living room behind the shop for Mavis to start spreading newspapers all over her precious carpet rug, complaining bitterly about the dusting of flour emanating from his clothes.
‘Can’t you ever think to wipe them on the mat?’
‘I did wipe them.’
‘Not enough. You’ve brought half the bakery in with you. There’s flour everywhere.’
Mavis was nothing if not houseproud, constantly plumping up cushions, the big mahogany dresser polished till you could see your face in its waxed surface, every ornament carefully placed upon its own crocheted mat which she called a doiley. She even hung her curtains pattern side to the street so that folk could admire them.
Thomas would massage his hands, red and swollen from all the kneading and pounding he’d been doing that morning and say no more.
No matter how careful he was not to upset her, she loved to find fault, to contradict and criticise him in front of others, making him look like a right gormless idiot. And if he didn’t hang his coat on the right hook, line up his slippers by the hearth just so, or committed the ultimate sin of leaving his pipe and tobacco pouch tucked down the crack of the cushion in his wing chair, she’d go spare. His life wouldn’t be worth living.
Thomas was not a man who cared for battles, particularly with a wife who always managed to win.
On the rare occasions he did come out on top, she’d make sure that he lived to regret it. She would barely speak to him for days and put him on what Thomas called ‘hard rations’. Where was the point in engaging with an enemy who didn’t play by gentleman’s rules?
Come to think of it, he could do with them Peace Marchers in his own house, though she’d take no more notice of them than she did her husband. She was a woman with her own way of going about things, was Mavis.
When she was in one of her moods, he’d eat his dinner in silence then retire to his bed for an hour or two, catching up on the sleep he missed by having to be up before dawn to bake bread.
After his rest he would put on his cap and old tweed jacket, make himself a flask of coffee and go off without a word to dig his vegetable patch, or sit in his little wooden garden shed and contemplate life. Sometimes he would stop off at Lizzie Pringle’s stall on the way to buy a few chocolate caramels, his favourite.
The allotment was Thomas’s pride and joy. That was the place he most liked to be. Now that Chris was in the business with him, he tended to spend less time in the bakery and more hours growing his precious vegetables: radishes and beetroot, carrots and cos lettuce, raspberries and gooseberries. Thomas had won prizes for his leeks. The allotment was his sanctuary. Much needed with a wife like Mavis. He dreamed of retiring and spending all his time there.
On his return she would make him sit in the backyard until he’d stripped off to his long-johns, no matter if there was a bitter north-east wind blowing.
‘I don’t want no nasty bugs and spiders in my house.’
Funny how she always referred to it as
her
house, except when bills needed paying when it was
his
business. Mavis found it demeaning to live behind the baker’s shop, had complained about their lack of privacy almost daily throughout their married life.
‘If we had a proper house ...’ she would say, whenever she launched into one of her complaints.
‘If I didn’t have to listen to that shop bell jangling all day my nerves wouldn’t be half so bad,’ was another.
There were times when Thomas didn’t like himself very much, only too aware that he should stand up to his bullying wife more. And he the man who’d done battle royal with Big Molly Poulson, flinging custard tarts and lemon meringue pies at each other on one occasion, a feud that had lasted for most of his adult life. Not that he’d been the cause of it, but Big Molly held him accountable for something his older brother had foolishly done years before.
He dreaded to think how Mavis would react if he ever did make a stand against
her
. He’d waved the flag of truce so many times it was threadbare, so happen he should consider marshalling some big guns instead.
Amy watched all of this in sympathetic silence, her heart going out to the beleaguered Thomas for he was surely a saint.
Chris maintained that his father had lost all self-respect by allowing himself to become hen-pecked. Amy had some experience of this with her own father, yet Ozzy had a way of going his own way, of standing up to Big Molly without actually appearing to. Chris’s father was quite another matter. Firm enough with his son, but putty in the hands of his over-bearing wife.
Amy felt she was in danger of falling into the same trap: doing as she was told simply for peace.
Their sex life too had been severely hampered by living with his parents, cramped in the back bedroom where Chris had lived as a boy, his old comics still lying about and his cricket bat standing in the corner, had not helped. It had been difficult enough for them to consummate their marriage in the first place, with Chris acutely aware of his mother listening from the next bedroom. But then she’d quickly fallen pregnant and all plans for moving had been put on hold.
Since coming to live with the Georges, following their marriage, Amy had discovered that her mother-in-law was generally right about most things, at least in her own opinion. She seemed to delight in proving how useless Amy was as a wife, constantly finding fault with her efforts as she had done over the starch incident. There were a whole string of tasks she was forbidden to do for her own husband, like darn his socks, or fold his shirts since his mother obviously knew best how he liked them done. She wasn’t even allowed to make his dinner without a stream of advice and criticism.
Today she was being taught how to skin and joint a rabbit and deal with the heart, kidneys and the suet surrounding each. It might, as Mavis insisted, be a vital part of the cooking process, but Amy wasn’t enjoying the process one little bit.
She was wearing a large apron over her print maternity smock and pants with the button-up flap at the front, and it was all smeared with blood and other unmentionable mess.
When they were finished, the pastry mixed and rolled to Mavis’s satisfaction and the rabbit pie standing on the formica-topped kitchen cupboard ready for the oven, Amy was quite certain she wouldn’t be able to eat a mouthful.
‘Now go and change, and see that you wash your hands thoroughly,’ Mavis scolded, as if she were still a child needing to be told such things.
‘I’ve nothing else to put on. My other smock is washed but not yet dry enough to iron.’ Amy glanced at the clothes-horse laden with clothes that stood by the kitchen range.
‘Don’t you have a decent skirt to wear? Or a dress that fits?’
‘Yes, but those are for best. We’re saving our money for the baby and for a home of our own. What’s the point of wasting it on clothes I’ll only wear for a few months?’
‘We always changed for dinner when I was a gel,’ Mavis snapped.
‘I really don’t think Chris would expect me to.’ Not just for rabbit pie, Amy thought.
‘It’s important for a woman not to let herself go, even when she’s married.’
Mavis was always impeccably well groomed, in a sensible, wholesome sort of way. She claimed not to slavishly follow fashion, although Amy would often see her pouring over the photographs of models in her
Woman’s Weekly
. Even when she was ostensibly ‘doing the housework’ she would be smartly attired in twin set and pearls, a clean frilly apron tied about her waist which she changed for a fresh one every single day.
She always wore dark red lipstick on her small tight mouth, and attempted to cover the wrinkles on her sagging cheeks with Goya face powder. Her natural wavy brown hair was worn in a neat pleat at the back of her head. It was slightly greasy as she washed it only on Fridays with Silvikrin shampoo, and visited the hair dresser once a month for a trim. She would tell Amy off for washing hers too often, or at the wrong time of the month. Mavis was full of dire warnings and old wives’ tales.
‘Chris seems happy enough with me the way I am,’ she would protest.
‘Well, let me tell you men can very quickly start to look elsewhere if you don’t take proper care of yourself, girl.’
Amy tried not to giggle at the thought of the beleaguered Thomas daring to look elsewhere, much as he might suffer at his wife’s hands. Yet there was a resentment building up inside herself over this constant litany of advice and put-downs. Somewhere inside her head a voice was screaming to be let out of this prison, but Amy knew better than to allow these dangerous emotions free-reign. She went quietly upstairs to examine her meagre wardrobe.
How she longed for peace, a place of their own, for things to be perfect when their first child was born. Amy knew in her heart that something must be done to improve their lives. Quite how this minor miracle was to be achieved, she really didn’t know.
Patsy could hear the noise long before she reached the house. Even as she tripped up the very same steps down which she used to watch the Bertalone girls in their rainbow coloured dresses kiss goodbye to their momma and papa every morning, she could hear the shrieks within.
Yet another quarrel.
She was eager to see Marc and give him a kiss at the end of a long day spent apart. On the days when she attended her millinery course, he usually arrived home from his job at Kendals’ department store a little before her, so Patsy expected to find him as eagerly waiting for her. Often he would meet her at the end of Champion Street and she’d been disappointed to find he wasn’t there waiting for her this evening. But then he might be late home himself.