The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (42 page)

‘I can't go back,' she said, afraid he was going to swing the truck around and back up the rise.

‘Oh, I see.' She heard him make a noise at the back of his throat, a soft chuckle. ‘I can understand that.' He grimaced at her, conjuring the image of Aunty Bea. ‘Still, don't mean he's coming.'

‘Who?'

‘Your young fella what you sat here waiting for all them months.'

His words drenched her with humiliation. Had even Fossett read her better than she'd read herself?

‘I give him a lift to Benford train station this morning. Said there weren't nothing to keep him in Leyton anymore.'

She felt as if he had knocked all the air out of her.

‘I 'spect now he meant you, going off to Luton, like … with his brother.' He was watching her expectantly. Perhaps the whole of Leyton had seen through her.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, did someone put up a notice on the parish board?'

He laughed. ‘Not that I seen, but you know Leyton.'

‘Well, where was he going? Lucio, I mean. What was he going to do? Did he tell you?'

‘Whoa! Steady on.' Fossett ran a hand over his chin. ‘Let's see now. He said that Mr Swann had offered him some work in London.'

‘Really?' She didn't know whether she was surprised or disappointed, more relieved or angry. ‘Really?' She fidgeted in the seat. How could he have gone without telling her, without saying goodbye? But then she realised that was exactly what she had once intended to do.

‘No great loss, I suppose. Someone had already tipped him off on the price of them cony skins. I were on a tidy wicket there for a while.' He winked at her and she shook her head at him, struggling not to smile.

‘Where are you taking me, Fossett?' she asked. She had the suspicion he was enjoying himself.

‘Mrs Cleat's, of course,' he said. ‘She'll know what to do.'

Fossett was right. Perhaps he was instinctive about people in the same way he was about his dogs and birds. He seemed to know that Mrs Cleat only needed to be needed to bring out the best in her. Connie felt ashamed at not seeing it before, not going to her earlier, after all their years of working together. She took Connie under her roof unquestioningly — even at the expense of a renewal of hostilities between herself and Bea Farrington, another schism in the Christian Ladies — and managed every angle of village gossip in her indomitable way.

‘I had a room to rent and Connie wanted to be nearer the shop,' she fired off over the counter in the days that followed. ‘Simple as that,' she added, her steely eye implying that further questions on the matter would reveal the utter stupidity of the asker. Despite her loyalty to St Margaret's, she took a surprisingly romantic view of Connie's scattering of Uncle Jack's ashes on the crease, even going so far as to motion the parish council to erect a plaque on the side of the clubhouse, which read:

In Memory of
Our Keeper of the Green
Jack Farrington
1900–1950

And any detractors of the much-anticipated mural project, particularly those quick to voice their disdain at St Dorothea being portrayed as a well-known local redhead, found themselves quickly silenced at Cleat's. ‘Why shouldn't Mr Swann want to paint a head of hair like that, tell me? Artistic types see the beauty in what others might find … well, a little brash and confronting. That's the nature of art, is it not?' Connie couldn't help but think Mr Gilbert would have been quite proud of the
old girl
.

But most of all, Connie was surprised by Mrs Cleat's help in another matter that weighed more heavily on her mind. Her nights were often restless with it, and when she got tired of fighting her pillow and the satin eiderdown that kept slipping from the bed, she would descend the creaking stairs into the shop, pacing the unlit shelves, running her hand over the Formica, cocking her head at the moon that rippled through the bull's-eye pane. The counter always smelled of Parma Violets these days. Mrs Cleat called the rolls of purple sweets her
one indulgence
and said they were the true sign the war was over. Their intense musky perfume had trailed behind her ever since supplies had become more regular, but Connie knew they also wreaked havoc on her digestion.

Late one night in the shop, she heard a rustle of paper behind her and turned to find Mrs Cleat dissolving a Beecham's into a glass of water.

‘I thought I heard the stairs,' she said. The rags in her hair caught the moonlight as she tossed back the drink with a shudder. ‘Come on, now. Let's have a cup of tea.'

They sat in the back kitchen and she felt the shopkeeper studying her, waiting less for the tea to brew than for her to speak. When she didn't, Mrs Cleat said, ‘Well, are you going to tell him you're not coming, or will I have to do it?'

‘Tell who?'

‘Prince Charming, of course! Who d'you think I meant?'

Connie had to close her mouth.

‘I do answer my own telephone sometimes, you know.' Mrs Cleat swilled the pot gently. The slosh of the tea inside was comforting to Connie.

She sighed. ‘There's just so much more I want, Mrs Cleat. So much more I want to see and do than ending up —' She stopped. It felt such a relief to say it to someone, but she didn't want to belittle the shop, or indeed those things that Mrs Cleat might at one time have wanted for herself: love, marriage, a family.

‘Course you do. Don't you think I seen that? Soon as you explained them Berkel compression scales to me, I said to myself,
Make the most on her, Eleanor, 'cause you won't have her for much longer. She's going places on her own steam, that one
. And I told your aunt only the other day,
Did you expect she'd be slicing government cheddar all her life, Bea?
'

Mrs Cleat took her hand. ‘She'll come around, you'll see. In the meantime, I suggest you stop leaving this lying around and actually do something about it.' She reached to the chair beside her and took from its seat a brochure. It was an admissions booklet for Avery Hill Teacher Training College in Greenwich. Mr Gilbert had sent it to her after she'd written to tell him she was living with Mrs Cleat.

‘Do you really think I could?' she said.

‘Mr Gilbert seems to think so, and he'd be the one to know, wouldn't he?' Mrs Cleat sniffed and poured the tea, glancing at Connie fingering the pamphlet. As she set down the pot, her face reddened and her eyes glittered. She pulled a handkerchief from her cuff.

‘What? What's wrong?' Connie asked.

Mrs Cleat shook her head and fanned her face like she was having a hot flush. She tutted. ‘No, nothing … nothing at all …' She balled the handkerchief into her fist and straightened the buttons of her housecoat. ‘But I'll tell you one thing, Connie Farrington. It's times like this I realise it was all good for something.'

‘What was?'

‘The war, of course. For women like you and me.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘You do. Just looking at you … and remembering myself.' Her focus softened. ‘Course, in my day, a lot of it was nothing but dreams, but some of us still had them. You've got such opportunities now,' she said. ‘Such possibilities.' And she licked her handkerchief and buffed at a spot on the table, before taking the pot to the sink.

When Connie finally went to bed, she thought of what Mrs Cleat had said.
Women like you and me.
Not many months ago, she might have been mortified at such a comparison. But perhaps it wasn't so far from the truth in some ways: she had never thought before then that Mrs Cleat had chosen the shop, her independence, above another husband, above children. As she creaked up the stairwell, the smell of Parma Violets lingered about Mrs Cleat's bedroom, and from within came the sound of ledger pages turning long into the night.

Over the next few days, she tried to telephone Vittorio, but she couldn't seem to catch him at the garage, and the messages she left went unanswered. When Mrs Cleat caught her hanging up the receiver for the fourth time that week, confused and almost teary with frustration, she insisted that Connie go to Luton the next day.

‘Dear me, it's only common decency to break off with a chap to his face,' Mrs Cleat reassured her, as if this was a formality with which she herself had been repeatedly burdened. Connie was momentarily amused at the thought of Mrs Cleat dispatching suitors with the prickly courtesy she reserved for her accounts overdue. But the following morning, the dread of what was ahead of her had become physical, a heaviness in her limbs like she had already done a day's stocktake in the back store.

On the steps of the shop, Mrs Cleat picked lint from the lapel of Connie's mackintosh and thrust out her chin to indicate she should stand up straight. ‘And be on your guard for diddies and pickpockets hanging about the stations,' she warned. She scanned Connie once more, giving her the curt nod of her approval, before hurrying back to her counter. ‘I don't know. The young today,' she tutted to Mrs Jellis. ‘What d'they think we done before the telephone, I ask you?' But she nodded again at Connie through the bull's-eye pane as she buffed the Formica.

The bus to Benford and the subsequent train to Luton seemed to take an age. She used to imagine this trip south so often, buoyant with the fantasy of escape, of her life beginning: the fields and cows and hedgerows through the carriage windows would melt into a blur behind her, and the solid lines of spires and rooftops, dense as trees in the woods, would greet her ahead. But now she was too preoccupied with the draw and tug of her stomach, sickened by the rocking carriage and the prospect of what she had to do when it stopped.

At Luton station, unable to face prolonging her agony with the confusion of buses and timetables, she hailed a cab. It was the first taxi she had ever been in, but her dread at visiting Vittorio dampened the small thrill of her extravagant independence. She couldn't truly enjoy the ride past the imposing town hall, down wide streets with their seemingly endless cars and buses, shops and cinemas, hotels and teahouses, the pavements of people. When she reached the garage on the other side of town, the cars on the pristine forecourt shone unnaturally bright in the winter sun, arranged in perfect angles to the street — ready to be driven away, to drive someone away. A wave of doubt broke over her: everything here seemed so busy and new and of-the-future, purposely other-than-Leyton. Was she making the right decision? She watched the cab pulling off. No one came onto the forecourt to greet her. The office behind the rows of cars was empty. She walked up to the open doors of a workshop at the back. Inside, she found a Vauxhall on the jack, with a pair of overalled legs underneath it that did not belong to Vittorio.

‘Victor Mature you're after, is it?' the mechanic said from under the car when she asked him. ‘S'his half day, love.' He wheeled out and sat up, wiping his hands on a rag and eyeing her, not without interest. Her face must have shown her anxiety, for when she apologised and said goodbye, he followed her onto the street and called out, ‘Look … hang on. His new place's in Overington Street. S'not far off.' He gave her brief directions and then rubbed at his neck, a rueful expression on his face, as if regretting he had opened his mouth.

Overington Street was exactly as Vittorio had described it to her on the telephone. The row of terraced houses had for the most part been split into flats, small but newly painted and with a view across the park. She found the number and went through the gate. A net curtain downstairs quivered, and she saw an elderly hand retreating. Behind the upstairs window she heard voices, the sound of a door closing. A woman's laugh seemed to spiral down and settle before her, somehow random and at the same time inevitable. It wasn't just any woman's laugh, but one she knew, one she had felt the chill of many times before that morning. She dropped her hand from the knocker and turned to cross the street.

In the park over the road she sat down in the shadow of a laurel. She felt vapid, impotent, and the dampness of the bench seemed to seep straight into her as though she was blotting paper. A woman passed by, pushing a pram, the toddler peering over its side at the large spoked wheels making their
click, click, click
. She thought of the noise her Royal Enfield had made when she first rode it from the shop.
This
Roy-al En-field
. She remembered the way Vittorio had said the words. He had come so far, hadn't he? And she was sure he had so much further to go. She thought she might cry, but the whine of her vanity was fleeting, her injured pride brushed aside by the truth of it all, suddenly so obvious, such a relief in its admission: Vittorio and Agnes.

The door slammed shut behind them when they emerged, the loose scarf in Agnes's hand billowing against Vittorio's trousers in the draught.
Puce
, Mr Gilbert had called it. It wasn't puce at all, she saw, but brown, and it made her mouth twitch. She watched the way Agnes touched her hand to Vittorio's arm, pulling him up before the kerb so he would remember to open the door of the Anglia for her. She watched the way he swung her about like he might kiss her, only to point to something at her mouth instead. And she watched the way Agnes flushed and rubbed at her teeth with a finger, stooping down to the car's wing mirror to check her lipstick. Yes, she thought, they really were made for each other.