The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (11 page)

She missed being part of the bringing in. Even as a six-year-old she'd helped with the harvest at Repton's; most village children did. She remembered whole gangs of them chasing the great beast of the Burrell as it thundered down the laneways, or darting behind the tractor and binder with sticks to beat the rats and rabbits as they broke cover of the mown wheat. By the time the war was underway, she was old enough to help the land girls with the stooking or with sewing grain sacks. Sometimes, in the early evenings, they'd stop to trace the planes as they rose sleek and pink-tinged from Molesworth, counting them aloud above the drone of the thresher. They would all be quiet after that, especially the women, their faces closed with thought. On those evenings, when everyone had gone home and she was waiting for Aunty Bea to emerge from the Big House, Mr Rose would let her climb onto the drum with him to sweep it clean of the loose grain, the chaff and the haulms. She'd listen to the last
hum, hum, hum
of the beaters, and the staccato of the final grains jitterbugging crazily in the open drum. ‘Listen, girl … you hear?' Mr Rose would say. ‘That's gunfire of the fairies, that is. You reckon they's on our side?' And he'd laugh, his hair and lashes pale with chaff, his lips red and wet as he swigged from his hipflask.

Connie crossed the yard and saw the Burrell beyond the pig barns, the silhouettes of the gang still at work in the billowing dust. She recognised the forms of the Onorati brothers lifting sacks onto the tray of a truck. On top of the thresher, their father was bent over the drum. He was tanned and wiry and lean as a whippet, and his shorn hair, the particular curve of his back, made her remember the prisoners bent in the doorways of barns or cutting sugar beet on the ridge during the war. It surprised her now to think how little attention she had given them. Early on she had sometimes glimpsed them thistle-podding or hedging with a camp guard from Wood Walton. But even later, when they were billeted to live at Repton's, two or three at a time, Mr Rose seemed to keep them occupied, away from the permanent hands and land girls, as if he sensed some latent danger in them, like ratting terriers that had to be kept far from the laying hens. By the time they were driving tractors and freely roaming the yard at the end of the war, she had started at Cleat's. She spent less time at Leyton House, and her aunt, while she must have seen them, never spoke of it.

This was how the war had been for Connie — a series of small intrusions from some other world: streamers of silver foil descending like frozen lightning over the fields; the irregular comings and goings of evacuee children in the schoolhouse; the shocking animal cries of a land girl with a telegram; a gabble of American voices in a truck overtaking her bike. It was like the war had allowed her a peek through the gaps in the hedgerows to a world beyond the villages, but by the time she was old enough to wonder at it, to hanker after it, that world was gone, and everyone was back home replanting the rents torn in their enclosures. Sometimes Mrs Cleat would tut her disapproval as she heard of Yanks from the airbase getting rowdy at the Pheasant over in Upton. And now and again a customer would ask if they had any of those bulrush baskets the WOPs used to sell at Thrapston market. Other than that, it seemed barely a trace had been left behind of this foreign world in their own — until now.

She watched the Onorati boys among the threshing gang, enjoying the silent rhythm of their work against the droning engine. Even from a distance she could tell the difference in the shapes and movements of the two brothers: Lucio's strength, the steady, closed way he worked; Vittorio's limber energy, his drive to finish as quickly as possible.

At the back door of the Big House, she could see that Mrs Cartwright, the cook, had already left for the day. Through the window the kitchen table showed uncut bread and covered cold platters, ready for Mr Repton's supper. He didn't eat with his wife during the bringing in. His land stretched as far as Great Siding and he always rode out to check with each of his foremen on the progress of their harvest teams. Connie had expected Mrs Repton to be alone, but as she walked around to the side of the house, hoping to be spotted by her, she heard voices coming from the open window of the library.

‘You've seen how he treats them, Harvey,' Mrs Repton was complaining, ‘making them sweat for every scrap he tosses their way. They're still WOPs to him. And he always has that
air
 about him when he's dealing with them.'

‘What
air
?' It was Mr Gilbert. Connie recognised the vaguely bored, exasperated tone that siblings used with each other. It always made her envious, even of their bickering.

‘Oh, I don't know … it's that self-righteous look of the bountiful victorious, I suppose.'

Mr Gilbert laughed. ‘Oh Evie, really.'

‘He does! And I hate it.' There was an impatient jingle of bangles, the snap and flare of a cigarette lighter. ‘Whenever I try to
do something useful
,
like
sending up food or spare furniture for that dilapidated shed he's got them living in, he puffs up about it, like I'm doing something untoward,
blurring the boundaries, old girl
, or some sort of nonsense.'

‘Well, what on earth do you expect from Repton? He's hardly going to be inviting them in for cocktails, is he?'

‘I notice
you
have.'

‘I'm a mere schoolteacher, not the lord-of-all-he-surveys. Anyway, I wouldn't over-think Repton. It's simply economics for him. Where else would he have found such grateful workers for such paltry outlay?' Drinks were poured; a chime of crystal.

‘But that business with the eggs, Harvey,' Mrs Repton persisted. ‘I've a mind to march up there with a whole basketful of bloody eggs for the boys if they want them.'

‘Now, that wouldn't be one of your best ideas.' Mr Gilbert had become serious. ‘Aldo wouldn't want to accept them.'

‘Why ever not?'

‘A man with nothing still has his pride left, Evie. It simply costs him a lot more. Even Repton is perceptive enough to see that. The boys tell me their father's repaying him the cost of their passage, were you aware?' She was silent. ‘God knows how long that's going to take them. Repton would have already factored that cost in their lower wages. So you see, Aldo's pride effectively indentures them to the farm for quite some time.'

Mrs Repton didn't answer. Connie heard the soft sucking on a cigarette, its smoke mingling with the evening air outside, sweet and dense with the last lavender. She thought she should turn and leave, but Mrs Repton began again.

‘What happened to the wife — the boys' mother? Have they told you about her?' There were footsteps on the wooden floor, near the window. Connie didn't want to be caught out, but she didn't want to miss the answer either.

‘They haven't said. And I haven't asked. I should think there's a good deal of the past they don't want to talk about and, quite frankly, we probably don't want to know. I'm more curious about their future, what they choose to do from now on.'

‘Oh, Harvey,' Mrs Repton said, half reprimanding, half concerned. ‘You're not, are you? Please say that you're not.'

‘Not what?'

‘Don't be obtuse. You know what I mean.'

The footsteps sounded again at the window. ‘I'm only helping them, Eve. Christ knows they need it.'

Connie began to retreat, just catching Mrs Repton's reply: ‘What is it with you, Harvey? You and Italians?'

‘Connie … Connie, is that you?' Mr Gilbert's voice halted her on the lavender walk as she retraced her steps along the side of the house. She turned to see him sitting on the ledge of the window, leaning out.

She lifted the book in her hand. ‘I came to return it.'

‘Well, come on, then. Don't dilly-dally there.' He waved her to the window and held out his hand for her to swing herself over the low sill. She obliged, glancing awkwardly towards Mrs Repton at the drinks cabinet.

‘Look, Evie. Look what I've caught in my web,' Mr Gilbert said, his hands squeezing Connie's shoulders and propelling her in.

Mrs Repton crossed the room to take Connie's wrist in her cool palm, as if weighing it. Her grey eyes, Connie noticed, were changeful, and often had the hint of some other light about them. Now they were shot with green, like a cat's. The image of the Siamese grew large in her mind.

‘I thought you'd forsaken me,' Mrs Repton said — not altogether teasing, Connie thought.

‘I've been busy … you know, at the shop.'

‘I suppose you've come for more books rather than the pleasure of our company?' Mr Gilbert said, feigning indignation. ‘What did you give her, Eve?' He took the book from Connie's hand, and his mouth twisted into a mischievous smirk. ‘Ah, Forster.
Un Ingelese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato
.'

‘Certainly true of you, Harvey, I should think,' Mrs Repton murmured over the lip of her glass.

‘Ha! And what about you? Una Inglese Italianata? I'm certain you got up to as much mischief in Florence as I did.'

‘Hardly. I had Mummy hovering over me the whole four months we were visiting you.' The curls gathered at Mrs Repton's neck shifted as she reached for another cigarette from the caddie. ‘I had to point out to her that it was rather tricky trying to improve one's Italian without actually talking to anyone.' She perched on the arm of the leather chair, her eyes glazing as she remembered. ‘It really was uncannily like the book. I might very well have been Lucy Honeychurch.'

Connie still felt awkward from eavesdropping. She didn't know that Mrs Repton had travelled, but the conversation between brother and sister seemed too private for her to ask all the questions she wanted to about Italy. Instead they fell quiet. When Mr Gilbert looked at her, she said, ‘What about them?' She nodded to the window, towards the western fields and the distant drone of the Burrell, which at that very second cut out, amplifying the chatter of swallows roosting in the eaves, the noisy closure of the day.

‘Who?' Mr Gilbert asked.

‘The Italians,' she said. They both regarded her oddly, waiting for more. ‘It's just that I looked up what it meant — what Cecil Vyse says in the book.' She indicated the Forster in Mr Gilbert's hand. ‘I wondered if the saying works the other way round. You know, if the Englishman in Italy becomes a devil, what happens to the Italians in England?' She tried to smile, to show she meant it as a joke. ‘Do you think they become saints?' But in her mind, images of the Onorati brothers — Lucio's bloodied face, the newly hatched nightingale, Sheba's carcass, Vittorio cleaning up broken eggs, the hole in his boot — seemed to run over one another, conflicting and unsettling. She knew then she wouldn't be able to say anything about the missing cat.

‘Oh, Connie!' Mrs Repton rose from the chair and squeezed an arm through hers. ‘You really are an absolute gem.'

‘I told you, Evie.' Mr Gilbert tipped his chin towards Connie. ‘She's definitely not government issue.'

Mrs Repton let her arms fall from Connie's and wandered towards the window. Beyond the lawns, on the incline west, the harvest teams were finishing for the day. They could make out figures walking along the ridge, the silhouettes of two men clearing the top of the thresher.

‘Maybe you're right,' Mrs Repton said, almost to herself. ‘People are inevitably changed by the countries they live in.'

‘But an anglicised Italian?' Mr Gilbert mused. ‘That would be a sacrilege.'

‘Isn't that what you're doing, though, Mr Gilbert?' Connie said. ‘Teaching them our language, our customs and manners?'

He considered her, a little surprised. ‘I suppose I am, but I hope I never completely
anglicise
them … Anyway, I couldn't possibly, even if I wanted to.'

‘Why not?'

He studied the whiskey spinning in his glass and then drained it quickly. ‘Because Italy is impossible to forget. It's a dream that haunts you all your life.'

She left them, giving her excuses about riding home in the dark. She hadn't wanted to go, but the visit had left her with greater and more interesting preoccupations than calling Aunty Bea's bluff about the curfew. The library at the Big House often had this effect on her: she always loved its dim, cool refuge; a world unconnected to Leyton and its mud, the rot in its barns, the bland patchwork of fields outside. As a child she had spent hours there waiting for Aunty Bea, spinning the old globe on its stand, thumbing through the volumes, imagining herself somewhere else, in some parallel existence. There she could escape the Connie she was and imagine the Veronica or Clarissa — even perhaps the Marylyn — she might have been. The ashen smell of the books alone was enough to fire her imagination. But that night, as she ran her eyes across the spines and listened to Mrs Repton and Mr Gilbert talk about their travels, their privileges, she had begun to scoff at herself. All the words in the library, she realised, weren't going to let her experience what they had experienced, or make the world any more possible to her. All their easy encouragements, their open-mindedness, the casual debate she sometimes heard between them about education reform, social liberation and the classless future made possible by the war: it dazzled her. And misled her — making her feel special, making her feel that she might achieve anything. If Mr Gilbert and his sister chose to ignore the mud of Leyton clinging to her shoes, it still did not free her from it. She knew this now, had known it for some time, but even so, she could not give up the seductive pull of their orbit, or the brighter, more stimulating version of herself that she became in their reflected glow.