The Italian Romance (29 page)

Mae held the baby in the crook of her arm and opened the screen door. Lilian was sitting on her bed. ‘Yoo-hoo,' Mae said. ‘Anyone home?' The screen door banged behind her.

Lilian tried to speak, to yodel, ‘In here,' or something like it. She couldn't. It was hard, even, to stand up. She walked to the bedroom doorway.

‘There you are,' Mae crooned. ‘Here's Mummy, sweetheart. Here she is, ye – es.' She patted the roundness of the baby's bottom as she cradled her. She rocked gently from side to side. ‘There's my little precious, yes. Who's my good girl, hmm?' Mae glanced at her daughter-in-law. Lilian was too pale. Far too pale. Her eyes drooped, and the sides of her mouth. ‘Now,' she crooned again. ‘Here's your baby daughter. All bathed and powdered.' Mae put her nose on the baby's tummy. ‘Oh, don't you smell good, hmm? Don't you smell good.' She looked up at Lilian. ‘She just had a bottle. And I put a few in the refrigerator in the house, so you just toddle over there. And make yourself comfortable! It's stinking hot in this place. That tin roof is a real killer, isn't it?' She walked slowly across to Lilian, who had not moved. ‘So you go up to the house, Lil, and relax. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all, all
right?' She folded the baby into Lilian's arms, which had risen automatically to take her. The two women leaned into each other. Mae smelled of lavender water.

‘Are you sure you won't come with us?' Mae said. She stepped back.

Lilian shook her head. ‘No.' Her voice was almost inaudible.

‘Well,' Mae said. ‘Don't worry about that. You just need rest, don't you? That's all that's wrong with you. And I think you're looking a little bit better today. A little more colour in your face.'

Lilian carried the baby to the couch. She sat down.

Mae watched her. She put her hand on her breast, over her heart. She walked slowly over, too, and sat down on the armchair, facing them. She clasped her hands on her lap. ‘You know, Lil, when Frankie was born,' she said, and her face winced as she said the name. ‘I had a bad time. I couldn't get out of bed. You know, just like you've been. My mother had to come and stay, and look after him. I thought I'd never be right. The whole world turned black. That's the only way I can describe it ... But,' and she opened her hands wide, ‘the day came when I got up, and I gave him a bath, and I remember I put him in the pram and we walked down the avenue. It was a lovely, sunny spring day. And I looked at him, lying in there with his little white bonnet on, and the rug my mother had crocheted for him tucked under his chin, and I remember he gave me the biggest smile, his whole face lit up, and the big, wide mouth grinning up at me.' She closed her eyes and knocked her fist against her breast.

The room was still and silent. Lilian raised her head. She looked at the woman whose eyes were creased in pain, whose breath was rising and falling in overwhelming waves.

Lilian said, ‘I'm sorry, Mae.'

Mae pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from her cotton belt. She blew her nose with delicacy, and glanced up at Lilian, as if she were embarrassed. ‘Ah, well,' she said. ‘They'll be wondering
where I am. Will I send Bernie across to say goodbye?' She stood up, and ironed her hands down the front of her dress.

‘No, it's all right.'

‘He'll be much better now, too, love. He just hasn't been himself since the war. But you don't know the difference this baby's made to him. You've given him back his life. That's a wonderful thing to do, Lilian. You have your whole lives ahead of you now. You'll see. You can start again.'

Lilian nodded. She did not meet Mae's eye as the older woman walked over to them, leaned down and kissed Francesca's cheek. Lilian stretched herself back, away from her. She felt Mae's curly, thick hair on her arm. ‘Bye-bye, little darling,' Mae said softly. She straightened up. ‘She'll sleep now for two or three hours.'

‘Thank you,' Lilian said.

Mae's two-inch heels chattered efficiently on the floorboards. ‘We'll be back at about midnight. You can always use the telephone up at the house, if you get lonely. Ring your mother.' She turned at the door. ‘But you just go to bed, that's the best thing, and have a nice sleep. Put her in beside you. You won't hurt her. And if you just put a pillow on either side of her so she can't roll out, you know. All right?'

‘Yes,' Lilian said. ‘Thanks.'

Mae looked at her, nodded her head and pulled the door open. A fly flew in like a cat chased by dogs but Mae didn't notice. Her shoes rang on the wooden verandah and thumped down the steps. Lilian listened for her steps to fade on the dry, dusty earth. The fly buzzed her and did swooping dives above her head.

The taxicab had arrived an hour after the Malones left. She knew him, the taxi man, a friend of her father's from the ex-servicemen's club. He laid her two suitcases in the boot of his car, and threw the baby's bag on the back seat. He insisted on holding her arm as she came down the steps. He wasn't curious.

He'd left her sitting on a newly painted bench on the station
platform, the cases neat beside her. He'd piled them together in order of size.

There was a carefully tended garden to her right, freshly manured. She barely noticed the smell; its tartness had been with her all her life. Three Boston ferns fanned out in the luscious shade. They'd just had a watering; diamonds of wet slid slowly down the fronds. And among them were constantly pruned red geraniums. Red flower petals, soft as velvet, dribbled around the brick edging and collapsed on to the tiny yellow pebbles of the platform's floor. She looked down into the face of her baby. Francesca's lips were almost as red, softer. She sucked in her sleep, dreaming of the breast she had never had.

Lilian was in a dream, too. As yet, she didn't know if she were arriving in to reality, or had left it.

She was waiting. The train would come in twenty minutes. She had told them she'd be here, waiting for them, at half past ten. The station clock, slung from a wrought iron arm, ticked towards the half hour.

And then, there they were. They stood for a moment in the platform entrance. They both just looked at her.

Her mother moved first. She walked slowly, her fist to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God,' she was saying. She dropped to the seat. ‘Lilian, darling, what are you doing?'

Lilian, who had steeled herself, could not stop her eyes from filling with tears. She found her throat too full to speak. She shook her head.

She felt the quiet presence of her father standing over her, the height and slender firmness of him, as he tucked himself in beside the sweet garden. He put his hand on her back. She turned and burrowed her nose into the sleeve of his shirt. It smelt full of sun.

She swallowed a few times as her parents watched. She tried to breathe herself into calmness. She said, so quietly that Viv leaned forwards to hear, ‘I have to go. I have to.'

Viv closed her eyes. She rubbed her daughter's knee. ‘Oh, love,
nothing's that bad, believe me. Look, we think you should come back home. You don't have to stay out there. It never suited you. Just come home, you and the baby.'

Lilian shook her head. Viv's fingers tightened around her knee. She said, ‘Listen, love, I've had a think about it. I was wrong about your job on the newspaper, insisting that you leave. Everyone's different, aren't they? Why don't you go and get your old job back. Tommy would take you in a flash, wouldn't he, Mick? He told Mick you were the best young reporter he ever had. You go back and we'll look after the baby for you. You can live your own life that way. Don't take any notice of what people say to you. We're not all the same. And it's important that you're happy, love. That's all that matters to your dad and me.'

‘Oh, Mum,' Lilian said. A tear plopped out and fell on to Francesca's curled hand. It opened like a sea urchin, felt the air, and closed up on itself again. Lilian gazed down at her, trying to sniff back the tears. Francesca's fingernails had the moon-like sheen of pearls.

She looked away, drawn by the sharp glint on the railway tracks. The sunlight cut into her eyes. She said, ‘There's something I haven't told you.' The sun ran along the track so that she didn't know if it was the light moving, or the track, or perhaps she herself. She opened her mouth, preparing for the words to come out.

Viv released her knee, and leaned against the lengths of painted wood at her back.

Lilian licked her lips.

And then her father's voice said, ‘It's the Italian, isn't it?'

‘What Italian?' Viv said.

Lilian raised her face to her father. ‘How did you know?'

He glanced away. He looked across the tracks to the other platform. It was empty – the train heading west was not due till the small hours. He said, ‘I saw you together in the car one day. And then, later, I passed by your office, and he was in there with you.'

‘Oh, for goodness' sakes, Mick!' Viv said. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

His hand slid up to Lilian's shoulder. Viv stared at him, her mouth tight. The two of them, Lilian and Mick, seemed to be staring at the same spot ahead of them. She sighed.

‘God Almighty, Lilian, you can't be serious. I never heard anything so ridiculous. A bloody Italian? Are you mad?'

Her father's hand squeezed her shoulder. She began to pat the baby.

‘Well, you're not going, and that's that. Pick up her bags, Mick, and you just come along, Lil. We're going home.' Viv stood up.

‘No, Mum.'

Viv waited for a moment, until her rage caught up with her. Then she bent down and snaked her hand in under the baby. ‘Give her to me, and come and get in the car. Bloody nonsense. No wonder Bernie's never at home. What a bloody thing to do to a man, off fighting.'

Lilian scooped the baby up to her chin. ‘Get away from her, Mum.'

‘That's enough, Viv,' Mick said.

Viv, bent over her daughter, flashed her eyes up to him.

He said, ‘Enough, Viv.'

She straightened up. Her knees almost touched Lilian's.

Francesca's hand settled on Lilian's face.

Viv said, ‘And just where do you think you're going to go? I thought they'd sent them all back to Italy, where they bloody belong. Was he one of the ones who worked for the Malones?'

Lilian took the tiny hand in hers, and kissed the plump covering over the knuckles. She nodded.

‘Christ,' Viv breathed. ‘Of all the sneaking things to do, Lil. I never thought you'd sink so low. How could you? One of your husband's enemies. He's risking his bloody life, and you're ... Oh!'

‘Don't talk to her like that, Viv,' Mick said.

‘Well, if I had talked to her like that, we might not be in this pretty mess now, would we? And you, just let her go her own way. Avoid, avoid, avoid. She's all right. Well, she's not bloody all right, is she?'

They didn't hear the train's long approach. And then they turned their heads, the three of them, as the engine belched steam and crawled into the platform.

Viv said, ‘Now, that's it. Pick up her bags, Mick. And you, young lady, march out that door now. I don't care how old you are. If you behave like a child, I'll treat you like one.'

Lilian shook her head, slowly. ‘No, Mum, no. I'm leaving. It's decided.'

Viv fell into the seat. ‘No,' she cried. ‘Lil, for God's sake, think of your baby, if not yourself. Where on earth are you going? They'll ship him out, and then what will you do?'

Lilian watched the stationmaster, his flag rolled in his hand, wander up the platform to where the driver was leaning from his window. She could barely get her breath.

Viv said, ‘You're not thinking of going with him? Not to Italy? Mick!'

Mick said, ‘What are your plans, Lil?'

She nodded her head, privately. ‘I have money. You know, I've been on good money for years. And yes, the plan is that I sail for Italy. Me and Francesca.'

Slowly, wary of her mother, Lilian got to her feet. Viv's shoulders were drooped, her feet splayed. Mick put his arm around his daughter. He said, ‘That's a very big move, Lil. Are you sure? They don't have food over there. They've got nothing. The place is blown apart.'

Lilian rested her head against her father. ‘Dad,' she said. ‘I have to.'

He half-circled, held her and the baby into him. She cried, then, big, heaving tears. ‘I'm sorry,' she tried to say. ‘I'm so sorry. But I need him so much. You don't know how much I need him.'
Mick patted her back. He looked down at his wife. He shook his head.

Viv joined her hands together, interlocked her fingers. ‘All right,' she said. She moved forward on the seat and slowly stood up.

‘Now,' she said. ‘Tell us where you're going next. We'll telephone you tonight.'

Mick's hands eased away. Lilian wiped her nose against her hand. ‘Broadway House. Where you spent your honeymoon.'

Viv bit her lip. Her eyes met her husband's. She said, ‘We'll phone you, then. And you're to keep in touch every step of the way, do you understand? And if you need us, we'll come up to Sydney. Or send money wherever you are. All right?'

Lilian said in a small voice, ‘All right.'

The stationmaster's voice sang out across the platform, ‘Are you gettin' on, or what's goin' on?'

Mick picked up a suitcase in each hand. He nodded to the small leather bag, bulging with cotton nappies. Viv slipped behind Lilian and took it.

‘Come on, love,' Mick said.

The stationmaster walked down the length of the train, past the burning wheels, axles lulled. He reached up and opened a carriage door. Lilian set her jaw. Francesca stuck her fingers inside her mother's mouth, tugged the bottom lip down. Viv walked behind her husband. Her ankle gave, and she winced. She limped the rest of the way, behind them, to the three wooden steps which Lilian, gripping one hand on the rail bar, was already climbing up.