The Italian Romance (4 page)

And now as I think of husbands and wives, what is this Jim's status, exactly? Has he the slightest right to be seductive with people?

I can't stay here forever, parked between the two of them. I back out. ‘Butter?' I pipe at Francesca. I am horrified to see her face. I have maddened her – it wouldn't take much to ignite her. I can hardly explain my behaviour and will have to make do with feigned ignorance. She doesn't help. She ignores my question, waiting for the bushman to continue the conversation I so rudely interrupted.

‘Right,' I say. ‘Well, help yourselves.' And I flap at the kitchen bench dementedly. Behind me, Jim's voice, clear, low and displaying a wealth of patience in the driver's seat, pronounces the words, ‘Born and bred.'

‘I love it out there,' she says. ‘You can see the heat.'

‘And hear it,' he adds.

‘Blast,' I say. There is a silence behind me. ‘Sorry. Can't seem to open this can of chickpeas.'

‘Please,' Johnny says. Though I am not watching him, I can just see the eager face, his awkward rise from the table.

‘Jim,' I say to the bushman. ‘Would you mind?'

‘Sure.' He joins me. I have a clove of garlic on the pan, sizzling quietly in olive oil. He takes the can opener from my hand. I don't think he believes me.

‘Just drain them and throw them in the pan.'

‘Sure,' he says again. He is over six foot, and ripe for a woman. I hadn't noticed it before.

I dry my hands on the tea towel. Dora is engaging her now. Francesca says the name of the small town where I lived many, many years ago. I haven't heard it spoken in a long time.

‘Isn't that near where you're from, Lil?'

Dora has an inconvenient memory.

‘Down that way, yes,' I reply. ‘Just turf them into the pan, Jim, that's the way. Give them a bit of a stir.'

‘Oh,' Dora says. I've railroaded her conversation.

Vincenzo saves it. ‘And what are you doing in our beautiful city? I hear you are an academic. Are you to teach here?'

‘No, I'm researching for my doctorate. I am here to meet Australian artists who live in Europe. Exile and so on. And different influences.'

‘Ah, you are interviewing our famous writer! Lily, you are too modest as usual. You didn't tell us.'

‘No,' Francesca says, firm as a knife. She cuts Vincenzo's enthusiasm dead. ‘No, I don't do writers. Visual artists.'

I throw the steaming pot of pasta into the colander in the sink, and turn to face them as the water drains. Dora is gulping at her wine. She knows something is wrong. I suppose I'll have to tell her. I might ring her tomorrow.

Johnny, ever-valiant, wades in. ‘But you can take a diversion, a path off the main road. It might lead you down a rich mine. Or you could do an article, for a magazine.'

I say, ‘I don't think so, Johnny.'

His brown eyes look up at me like a puppy's. ‘Apart from anything else,' I say, ‘I was interviewed for some newspaper out there only a few weeks ago. I'm sure you saw it, Francesca.'

‘Yes,' she says. She won't take my gaze. ‘I did see it.'

Well, that's part of the puzzle solved.

‘Va bene,' Johnny says. He raises his hands in surrender.

Jim says quietly to me, ‘What do you want me to do with this?'

‘Oh!' I have forgotten about him, stirring away at the chickpeas. ‘We sling all of this together in a bowl. And you see the coriander in the glass of water there by the window? Throw in a bit of that, too.'

‘Lily, when you sit down, you must tell us about your new novel,' Vincenzo says. ‘More wine, my dear?' It is Francesca's glass he hovers the bottle over.

‘She doesn't like to do that, Vin. Do you, Lil? You'd rather not talk about it,' Dora says.

‘Ah, a little hint, that's all we want. We do not want your secrets,' Vincenzo says.

Jim places the pasta bowl on the breadboard I had earlier put on the table for that purpose. I didn't even have to tell him. I carry over the salad.

‘Now, sit and relax,' Vincenzo orders. ‘We will help ourselves. Tell us what it is about, this new masterpiece.'

‘Oh.' I am truly sighing. I decide it is probably better to speak than not to speak. I gesture with my hand toward the food. Jim pulls out his chair as if to sit, but says to Francesca, ‘May I help you?' He takes up strings of pasta between two serving spoons, all I have for the purpose these days, and she drives her plate across the table to meet it.

I catch Vincenzo's eye. He eagerly awaits my next word, or so he would have me believe. ‘Well, it's about the war,' I say. ‘Set in Italy.'

‘Wonderful, wonderful,' he says.

Johnny says, from the opposite end of the table, ‘Wonderful. Yes, there is so much to be said. Untold stories. It was a terrible time for us.'

‘I wasn't here, of course. I came after the war.'

‘But you can imagine. That is the great gift of a writer,' Vin says.

‘Indeed,' I say. ‘We are bloody marvellous.'

Dora snorts. That's another reason I like her.

Johnny's fluency with the language has palled somewhat since his return from New York. He doesn't know whether to laugh or not. ‘And who is the subject of the novel, Lilian? Do you tell a soldier's story, or a woman's story like Moravia?'

‘I really can't say too much, Johnny, if you'll forgive me.' I feel Francesca looking at me. Surprised, I meet her eye and she expresses such hostility that I wish I hadn't. I agree that I sound pompous about my work. I agree. I hadn't wanted to talk about it at all. What am I supposed to do?

Johnny, however, is now a dog with a bone. ‘But which area do you cover? The domestic, or the war front?'

‘Ah, well, not one or the other, in those terms. The main character is a woman, a Jew.'

‘Oh, my God,' he says. He throws his hands up.

Dora says, ‘That will be hard going.'

‘Indeed,' I say. I can feel Francesca's eyes on me again. ‘Indeed, it's a hard life being a writer compared to being a Jew in Italy in nineteen forty-three.' I hope I have succeeded in demolishing myself, so that she might be satisfied.

Vincenzo says to her, ‘You are too young to remember those days. Even in your country the danger was rife. Lilian has very interesting comments to make. I was not aware myself of the difficulties out there.'

She says, ‘My father was in the war. He was over here for a while, fighting.'

I grip my wine glass.

‘You must be very proud of him,' Dora says.

‘He's dead,' she says. She stares at me.

I am now the one who cannot meet her eye. I didn't know he was dead. I suppose it was more than likely.

‘Yes, I am proud of him,' she continues. ‘He was the most wonderful man I ever met.' She dabs at her mouth with the linen napkin.

My own throat constricts. I am scared for her. Don't let her
cry, don't let her do what she does not want to do in front of me.

And suddenly she is on her feet. ‘If you'll excuse me,' she says. ‘Excuse me, please. I really must ... I'm sorry.'

I clamber up, too. She rushes into the lobby and I am after her. She grabs her bag from the side table and her jacket from the chair beside it. ‘Shouldn't have come,' she says. There is a tear sliding down the side of her nose. What can I do for her? I cannot put my hand on her. I rush back to the sitting room.

‘Jim!' I say. I am like a mad hen.

She is out the door. It closes shut behind her before I reach it. ‘Oh, my God,' I say to it. I hear her running down the stairs. Jim is in the lobby behind me. ‘Go after her,' I say. ‘She doesn't know the area. She'll get lost.'

He doesn't say, ‘What is wrong with you both?' He doesn't say, ‘What did you do to her?' or ‘I thought you didn't want me to even finish a sentence to her.' He picks up his coat from the chair, opens the door and takes the stairs two at a time. I hear the lift door closing. He is going to miss her.

I hear him shout, ‘Hold it.'

I stand in the doorway. I am clinging to the architrave. ‘Hurry,' I mouth. And then the doors slide open again, and I hear his voice. I am absurdly relieved.

If my other guests would now kindly leave without a word, I would be grateful.

However, there they are, the three of them staring at me as I walk across to them.

‘What on earth happened?' Dora says.

‘Long story,' I say.

‘But, my God, Lilian.' Johnny is standing at his place. ‘This is so rude. Your beautiful dinner spoiled.'

‘It's not that beautiful, Johnny,' I say. I raise my hand to stop them. ‘Why don't you enjoy your meal, the three of you. I apologise for this.'

Vincenzo, damn him, walks around the table to me. ‘Why do
you apologise? My God, you did nothing to invite this...' he hesitates, and turns to the others as he says, ‘performance.'

‘Exacto,' Johnny says.

‘Sit down, Johnny,' I say as I escape Vincenzo's attempt to hug me. ‘Please. I can't explain just now.' I look at Dora. She is still seated, though her chair is now well back from the table. I say, specifically to her, ‘Tomorrow.'

She doesn't take her troubled gaze off me. But she says, ‘Vin, sit down, caro. Let's enjoy our dinner. Johnny.'

Johnny does as he is told. He is the picture of misery. He picks up his fork, nevertheless, and rolls strings of taglietelle around it. Vincenzo, under his wife's unspoken supplication, goes back to her. As he sits, he says, ‘All the same, I offer my sympathies to you, Lilian, for the ruination of your evening.'

I too sit. I am not hungry, of course. I pour more wine into my half-full glass. ‘I don't deserve sympathy, Vin, yours or anyone else's. Most certainly not Francesca's.'

Dora's hand is tactful as it takes my wrist. All the same, I feel like a prisoner in her grip and, even worse, I feel like a performer. I smile a false smile of thanks and release myself. I have a pressing need to hold my wineglass between both palms.

The sun began to rise. Even before, the kookaburras were already laughing. They woke first. The trees were still spectres. Light splayed out along the horizon, the tip of the sun's head crowned and into the world came the huge, unavoidable presence. It was perfect, blood red, heavy. Other birds sensed it. One after another the calls came, a whip lashed, bells chimed in tiny throats. One bird shrieked high and clear and across the vastness of the bush, miles perhaps, another, waiting, shrieked back. The darkness bled away in the night-cooled clay; and beneath the storms of mist breathing among the trunks of trees, discarded strings of bark hung lank to the grass and nests of damp ferns hid.

The sun rose swiftly from the earth. It shrank as it ascended and became more brilliant, distant. The bush turned to its business.

The young husband left the house without disturbing his wife. She was waking as he quietly closed the screen door.

The clock on the sideboard tick-tocked. There were hours when she loved its sound. She reached for his pillow, hugged it against her. She lay awake, listening.

It was after two when she picked up the tin dish and opened
the screen door with her hip. She stepped down from the verandah. The light brown earth had a red tinge to it. It was dry. Dust. When she tipped the water a few feet from the front door, it found no purchase, turned immediately to mud. Belatedly, she spotted the row of leggy geraniums growing by the verandah. ‘Oh,' she said, and she walked across the dirt to the thirsty plants, upended the dish and shook it. A few drops caught themselves on leaves, weighed them down and dripped ineffectually to the cracked soil. ‘Bugger,' she said.

It was as she trailed towards the cottage, the tin dish clutched against her breast, that her father-in-law's black car, kicking up a dust trail, drove to the main house. Young Frankie rode on the running board, leaning his body out like a taut bow. She could make out his father's hand as it banged on the outside of his door and she could hear him shouting at Frankie to straighten up and stop fooling around. Frank barely responded. As the car slid around to the front door, he jumped from the board and ran a few feet to slow himself down. He saw her on the cottage verandah, darkened by the shade of the corrugated iron roof. He waved his freckled hand and she waved back. She liked Frankie. He took off around the side of the house.

The two men climbed out from the front. The other was her own father. He opened the back door and her mother erupted from the dim insides. She wore a hip-length jacket over her dress and the white hat she'd worn to the wedding. She caught sight of her daughter. The girl waved at her and mouthed a garbled message about being up there in a minute after returning the washing-up dish to the kitchen and putting on her shoes. Her mother put a hand up to her ear. The girl shook her head.

Mae Malone had appeared. She came down the red stone steps, her hands raised as if she were amazed to see the Fergusons pouring out of her husband's car, as if she hadn't been baking since the day before.

The young wife opened the screen door. It creaked and as she
let it fall back behind her, it shuddered. She walked dust across the wooden floor. Clear imprints of the pads of her feet followed her to the shaving mirror nailed on the wall. She picked up the damp tea towel and wiped her hot, reddened cheeks and forehead. She dabbed at the sides of her nose, at two clusters of tiny bubbles of sweat.

She was suddenly tired. She didn't want to go up to the big house, to carry around plates of scones and lamingtons, and afterwards collect up the dirty cups and saucers and, with another tea towel in her fist, stand beside her mother-in-law who'd pass her the steaming hot, too slippery, too precious tea things from her water-boiled hands. And she'd wonder how Mae could bear that her hands were lobster-red.

She bunched the towel in her fist. The windowsill took her attention. She wrapped a corner of the cloth around her finger and poked at a tiny quarry of ingrained black dirt where a dead fly had ended its days. She swept the fly ungraciously to the floor and continued to scrape conscientiously with her nail. Outside the window, she could see the wooden tower of the water tank. And there was Rusty, the cur who compartmentalised his life between, on the one hand, running like a mad thing at the wheels of the car, joining in the gallop when the men rode out, darting about the legs of the horses, and on the other flopping in the shade, motionless, possibly dead, for hot hour upon hour till his visible ear woke up, twitched once more and he, astonishingly, tore off to some new event of the world's making. He lay now at his leisure under the wooden struts. The early afternoon shadows were inexorably on the move. He would feel his dust-laden, tan rump heating up in the awful sun before long.

She heard the footsteps. She recognised them, the two-toned beat, the sturdy heel and wider sole, a blood rhythm. She picked up her husband's comb from his shaving-gear shelf, took an appalled look at the scum which had gathered along the base of its teeth, and nevertheless made a few approaches to the front of her hair with it.

The footsteps stopped. Her mother was bent to peer through the wire screen; the bending seemed to assist in the seeing, though it was otherwise pointless. ‘Anybody home?' she yodelled. And, without a pause, the hinges squealed. There she was, in the open doorway, dark against the almost unbearable light washing over the yard and the tree-less paddocks to the encroaching bush and the dazed horizon.

‘What are you doing?' her mother said.

The girl scissored her fingers through her hair, busy establishing waves. ‘Hello,' she said.

‘Why aren't you up at the house helping Mae?' Vivienne Ferguson walked into the room. Her face, too, was flushed, cheeks reddened in the heat. ‘Get me a glass of water, darling. It's so hot. Phew.' Viv enjoyed illustrating her point. She put her handbag on the table, pulled a white handkerchief from her sleeve and wagged it in front of her face, and said again, ‘Phew. Oh, darling, look at all the flies. Why don't you shut the door properly?'

The girl continued to fuss at her hair. She was aware of her mother immobilised in the middle of the floor, white straw hat on her head, her other hand, palm up, poised in the most delicate way across her abdomen. She could feel her mother's eyes on her.

Viv said, ‘Where's a glass?'

‘Oh, sorry. I'll get it,' she said and opened the dresser. She was secretly thrilled to see the neat line-up of cups, glasses, plates and bowls, only too recently achieved. Thrilled not for and in themselves, but because her mother would barely notice, so natural an event it was to open a cupboard door on to such a scene. She poured crystal clear water from a blue jug she kept in the ice-box.

‘Thank you, darling,' Viv said. She drank thirstily, and self-consciously as she always did. She flapped the opening of her jacket, a gesture vain in its efforts to cool down her over-heated little body.

‘Why don't you take your coat off?' Lilian said.

Viv tipped the glass and drained the water. ‘I will, love,' she said. ‘After. I want to look nice for Mae and Vince. Oh, darling, where are your shoes? Don't walk around like that. What will they think of you?'

‘I couldn't care less what they think of me.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Viv said. She put the glass on the table. She walked towards the bedroom.

The girl's heart sank. ‘Oh, Mum, don't,' she said, but Viv had already opened the door.

‘Oh, my God,' Viv said.

‘Oh, Mum,' the girl said again.

‘Would you look at this? When did you last wash those sheets? Oh, look! Your clothes are all over the floor. Bernie won't put up with this forever, sweetheart. Do you even know where your shoes are?'

‘Yes, I do,' the girl said, upset. Viv had a certain way with her. The girl stomped past her into the bedroom, ripped the sheets from where they'd been mangled at the foot of the bed and dropped them to the floor. She trod on them as she went around to the other side and looked down expectantly at the bare boards. Her shoes were not there. She glanced quickly at the doorway – her mother had disappeared – then got down on her hands and knees to feel around under the bed.

‘Where's there a hankie?' she said, distracted, as she walked back in to the kitchen. The shoes bit at her heels. She began to pull underwear from the washing basket she'd left on the couch, and found a lace-edged handkerchief. She folded it over, and over again.

‘Give that to me and let me iron it,' her mother said.

The girl held it against her abdomen and smoothed it with her hand. ‘There. Ironed,' she said.

Bernie straddled the wing of the sofa. He rested his arm lightly behind his young wife's shoulders. She could smell the sweat of
his morning's work and sense the heat off him. She leaned back, unobtrusively. His moist skin sucked against hers. She felt the bulge of muscle where his shirt-sleeve was rolled up above his elbow.

The green-baize card table had been brought out from the pantry, unfolded, covered with a linen cloth. Mae had embroidered the cloth herself when she was expecting her second son, Frankie. Two dinner plates, that had been loaded with sandwiches, were nearly empty. No one was impolite enough to polish off the last lonely looking egg-and-lettuce-filled triangle. And on the lamington plate were scattered only cake crumbs and thumbprints of chocolate and coconut gratings which resembled, off-puttingly, an exhausted tribe of white ants.

The girl's father sat upright on one of the kitchen chairs, which Mae had quietly carried into the lounge room before the guests arrived. He balanced his bread-and-butter plate on his knees and held a delicate and very best cup and saucer in his intimidated hands.

Beside him, her father-in-law reached down for the cup and saucer he'd placed on the floor, crossed his legs and said, ‘Yes, well, o'course the Poles couldn't a been expected to hold out any longer than they did. They never had a chance, really. I don't know, Mick, I don't trust this man at all. It remains to be seen what he intends to do next.'

‘Still, it doesn't look too bad over there at present,' Mick Ferguson assured him. ‘They've gone quiet. Won't blow up like the last one.'

‘Let's hope not,' Mae Malone said. ‘We wouldn't want to go that way again.' Mae picked at her sandwich, two fingers beak-like at the bread. She had painstakingly sliced all the crusts off earlier and thrown them out the back door to the dogs. She seemed lost in contemplation of the moist white triangle of bread and the slice of red tomato trailing from it onto her flowered plate.

Mick said, ‘Storm in a teacup, love. It'll all die down again.'

‘Of course it will,' Vivienne said. ‘They've got more sense.'

‘You'd think the Germans would a bloody learned their lesson.' The girl's shoulders jumped. She looked over at her father-in-law, watched how his big, sun-leathered hand circled the tiny cup. He slurped at the strong tea. He said, ‘How many times do they have to have their backsides kicked?'

‘Oh, Vince,' Mae said. She looked sheepishly at Viv.

‘Sorry, ladies,' he said. ‘But you'd agree with me on that, Mick. When my lot were over there, in France, you never saw anything like it.' He moved slightly on his chair and glanced at the women. As Mae caught his eye, he held up a hand and said, ‘Now, I'm not going to talk about it, love. Anyway, we've had enough of it, I can tell you.'

‘Too right,' Mick Ferguson said. He stared at the milky dregs in his own cup and put it back on the saucer. ‘Still,' he said ‘if it comes to it, I suppose there's only one thing to do about it.'

The girl felt the muscle in her husband's arm tense and grow hard. And then she heard him say, ‘They reckon France will hold this time, if the Germans attack. That might put a bit of sense into Adolph's head.'

She wanted to sip at her cooling tea, but the air had thickened around her; she couldn't raise her hand. She didn't really know why.

Her mother's voice broke a moment's unexplained silence. ‘Just let him have the bits he says belong to them,' Viv said. The girl felt a worm of embarrassment. Her mother tried to please sometimes, in a way that made her daughter too sorry for them all. Viv said, ‘That way, we can have peace.'

‘That's right, darling. A bit of common sense, that's all that's needed,' Mae said. She leaned forward and pushed the plate with the lone sandwich forward. ‘Anyone going to have that? Come on. It'll only go out to the dogs.'

‘Don't be shy,' Vince said.

Bernie sat forward, too. His thigh bumped her elbow. ‘Well, the
Aussies took care of them the last time. Our boys will sort them out again, if need be.'

The light cotton curtains billowed in a breeze that took them by surprise. Her mother suddenly made a grab for the egg sandwich and stuffed most of it in her mouth as if she were hardly aware of herself. Her father picked up his cup again and drained it of its cold, milky dregs. Mae hit her knee with her hands, just once, gently.

Vince nested his cup and saucer in one hand and stood. ‘Let's get them into the kitchen for her, Mick, and I'll show you a beauty I picked up at the sales last week. Two-year-old,' he said.

Mae began to hoist herself to her feet. The girl, watching her, stood. She felt the damp imprint of her husband's arm on her back.

‘No, love, we'll do it,' Vince said. ‘You lot stay here and talk. It's early yet. You sit down, too, Lilian.'