Women on the Home Front (132 page)

‘You tell Levi that is one book he owes me now. I can’t keep doing him favours.’ She shot a glance in his direction, patting her hair.

Susan paid for the goods and shoved them under the pram top.

‘Thanks, Shirley, love. We owe you,’ Lily whispered. It was embarrassing to find out just how many coupons Levi was squandering at that stall. Ivy was behind it, she must be.

‘Come on, we’ll find Santini’s, one last try and then home before dark,’ she smiled, guiding the big blue baby barge out of the hall as they launched forth once more on their quest. Everyone was tired and thirsty and ready for a sit-down. Santini’s ice-cream parlour was sandwiched between the theatre and the cinema in Kirkgate, with an alley on the other side.

Just to say the word ‘Santini’s’ was to conjure up a world all of its own, snug and warm, buzzing with chattering shoppers, an oasis where the weary of Grimbleton could rest aching legs, smoke, sipping steaming mugs of Bovril, tea or dip a spoon into an ice-cream soda.

There was no room for a pram so they lifted out
the infants and put it outside the window. They stood waiting for a corner seat until someone got up to leave. There was a smell of cigar smoke and chicory, the clink of the sugar spoon chained to the table. The tables were wiped clean by a waitress with satiny black hair tied with a scarf, gypsy fashion, around her curls, who darted in and round the bar like a black beetle, while the owner, with a black moustache and greased-back hair, kept the orders coming. It was going to be a long wait for service. Perhaps, Lily thought, she should leave them here and go back to relieve Enid on the stall?

There was always a buzz and a certain smell. She could hear the rattle of Italian being shouted in the back kitchen and the operatic voice of someone singing while they worked. The ice cream came in coloured glasses with fruit syrup on the top and golden wafers stuck at an angle. Ana ordered a scoop in a glass of fizzy pop to share with Dina, but the others ordered hot cocoa to warm themselves through.

‘Isn’t it cold enough outside?’ Su laughed.

‘I want to shut my eyes and dream of hot summers. There was bar on Canea harbour. Italians made the best ice-cream sundae in Crete, all the colours of the rainbow. I see
“la volta”–
the evening parade-when everybody walk and show off their clothes…before the war come and spoil it. You try it?’ Ana sighed, waving her spoon in the air like a sword.

Lily dipped her spoon in the ice to savour the moment. It tasted of cornflour and tinned milk, not much else, but it was sweet and gritty and there were
ice particles clinging to her tongue. It would do. ‘Very nice but very cold.’

Joy was in raptures at the taste.

Ana’s breasts were beginning to leak. She needed to nurse and opened her blouse, but Susan gasped, ‘You can’t do that in here! It is not done in a public place to open your titties to view. Is it, Miss Lily?’

‘I have no choice or I leak all over blouse. No one can see. I tuck her into my coat, look. She is happy. I am dry. Everybody happy,’ Ana said.

‘You are so Greek,’ Su replied, trying to distract Joy with the spoon, but Joy was watching, alert, and began to tug her own shirt open. ‘Now look what you’ve done. Dina is too old for the breast milk. She is a big girl. I used a bottle, more hygienic and polite. We do like the British ladies in Burma.’

‘British have no time for baby,’ Ana snapped. ‘They wrap them up and put them out of sight. They do not take them out at night. They like only quiet babies. Here it is like home,’ Ana argued. ‘I like it here.’

‘I thought you were enemies, Italy and Greece?’ Lily asked, knowing a little about the conflict between the two countries.

‘I hate Mussolini and his men but I have friends in Canea. Many Italians were my friends. The war is over now. We are all far from home,’ Ana sighed, sucking the dregs of the soda, trying not to slurp.

‘I hate Japanese, all of them,’ said Su, rising quickly.

The truce was over. It was time to pay their bill and gather up the hats and mittens. It was going to be a long journey uphill before nightfall.
When they got outside, it was snowing lightly and the pram was nowhere to be seen. They all looked at each other with horror.

‘Oh no!’

Only the tracks of its wheels, disappearing down the dark alley to the side of the theatre, were visible, tracks fast covering over with snow.

There was a kerfuffle in the doorway as they tripped back through the entrance of Santini’s shouting, ‘The pram’s gone! Our shopping is gone!’

‘Anyone see pram go walking?’ pleaded Susan, her English collapsing with emotion. Lil was trying to hold on to both children, while feeling sick.

There was much staring out of the steamed-up windows, and shaking of heads, but little action. After the sympathies no one was showing much interest except the waitress, who came running at once.

‘Can I help?’ she asked, seeing the panic on their faces.

‘While we came in for a drink, our pram was stolen,’ Lily explained.

‘Now Daw Esme will shout,’ Susan butted in, all of a tremble, her eyes wide like jet coat buttons, full of fear.

‘And stockings. I have no stockings,’ sobbed Ana.

‘A cup of tea is what you need…on the house,’ said the young waitress.

‘What is on the house?’ Susan asked.

One of the regulars, who was blowing cigarette smoke into their faces, winked, ‘Free,
gratis
, cost you nowt, love. A good ’un is Maria, allus on top of the job.’

‘Shutta that flannel, Percy, ’snot for you…
Capisci
? He can buy his own cuppa,’ came the reply from the counter. ‘That man sit all afternoon with his teacake until pub opens. If I seen you with pram, I warn you. Leave nothing with four wheels outside shop in centre of town unless it is chained with lock. You stay warm in here, Maria will sort you out.’ She scurried to the boiler and made a cup of tea for each of them.

‘All my shopping and Ivy’s pram, oh dear, oh dear!’ Susan shook her head, trembling.

‘Far away in back street, long gone,’ shouted the waitress from over the bar. ‘No good people, pickpockets, nick spoons off table till we chain them down, toilet paper from washroom and soap, ashtrays…all disappear. Anything not stuck down, it walk.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Now war is over, it is all cheating. No one care. It is all looking after number one.’

‘It’s just the pram’s not ours. We borrowed it for the day,’ Lily sighed, knowing it was gone for good and it was all her fault. They were not used to taking it into town. Neville was pushed only to the local shops and the park.

‘How can we go back with nothing? It is getting dark and so cold. I am Susan,’ said Su, holding out her hand. ‘Susan Winstanley, and she is Ana Winstanley This is kind sister, Lily Winstanley.’

‘Bene…
All you Winstanley girls no worry. I find my brother-in-law, Angelo. He bring taxi and take you
home,
pronto.
I am Maria, Maria Santini,’ she smiled back with a warmth that made Lily feel slightly better.

‘We’ve no money left for a taxi, I’m afraid,’ Lily explained, embarrassed to be caught short. With shopping and paying for the drinks, she had just a few coppers left.

‘You pay me later. My fault I am not warning you. You must always keep pram in sight. So many
bambini
since war and not many prams. Are you visiting?’ Maria asked.

‘We came to find our husbands but he is killed. We bring our girls to see Winstanley,’ Susan lied. ‘I am the widow of a cousin down south, come for funeral, didn’t I?’ She looked to Lily for support.

Lily flushed. The poor girl was doing her best to sound convincing but her heart wasn’t in it.

‘I’m sure Mrs Santini doesn’t want to know all our sad business, Susan. I’d better go and get the van from Levi and collect you later.’

She rose as if to leave but Maria darted forward, almost pushing her down. ‘You sit. You all have shock. Sit and drink tea.’

It was not that Maria Santini didn’t love a drama to break up a long afternoon serving sodas and sundaes, cups of tea and hot Bovril, but her husband was home from hospital and it was not one of his better days, and now there were these three women to sort out.

‘Maria! What are you doing?’ She could hear a plaintive cry from the top of the stairs.

‘Marco! Don’t you strain yourself! I’m coming soon,’
she yelled back. Leaving him to play with little Rosaria for a few minutes until Nonna Valentina took over in the flat was too exhausting.

Enzo was a lazy boy in the kitchen and she didn’t trust him at the till. Not all the Santinis were as honest and hardworking as she was, or feared the wrath of her mother-in-law. They were Nonna Valentina’s sons and grandsons, and could get away with anything. Maria was only an in-law.

There was something familiar in the faces of the foreign girls, something she recognised so well: that wide-eyed look of strangers in a foreign land, cold, conspicuous, unsure of the lingo, straining to understand. It was cruel to give them tea but the coffee was not much better, milky and weak.

It was only a few years ago that it had been Maria’s own fate; brought over from Palermo by Nonna Valentina to marry Marco, a distant cousin, the youngest of the Santini brothers. She was soon put to work behind the counter, in the kitchen; one of a succession of brides and cousins expected to cook, clean, have many
bambini
and keep the ice-cream parlour up to scratch while the men expanded their growing empire. The war had changed everything when they were interned for being aliens but the good people of Grimbleton missed their ice creams and made a fuss, bringing them all home.

Marco went to war and now he was upstairs wheezing, not fit to be out of the sanitarium. Rosaria spent her waking hours with Nonna Valentina, or sometimes in the kitchen. She sat in her high chair supervising the
preparations with an eagle eye, but it was good for her to see something of her daddy.

‘Come and meet my Marco while you wait,’ Maria said, taking the tray out to the three women. ‘You meet my Rosaria.’

‘Thank you,’ said the English girl with slumped shoulders, who towered above her. ‘We don’t want to be a bother.’

‘You no bother. Come up the stairs and meet my Marco. It is good for him to have company…’

‘Marco, I have a surprise. Poor ladies lost their pram-no-good thieving scum again. You talk to them while I finish orders,’ she smiled, ushering them up the wooden stairs to the rooms above, which looked out across at the King’s Theatre. ‘Susan, Ana and Lily Winstanley…meet my husband.’

He shuffled forward like an old man. The trousers hung off his buttocks, once firm and strong. His face was ashen but his eyes were still black as coal and his hair smooth as jet.

‘I ring Angelo for taxi,’ Maria smiled. ‘Find
bambini
biscuits in the tin.’ It was time to leave them and clatter downstairs. ‘You tell them all about us. How your papa and mama come to England for better life. That will keep them entertained.’

After the mix-up all their sons were proud to be called up, for they were British citizens. Now Valentina, the Widow Santini, hovered over them all like an avenging angel. Antonio was running the local billiard hall and American bar. Angelo owned two taxis and a private charabanc coach. Marco ran the ice-cream
parlour and the horse and cart selling cones around the parks.

Angelo had failed his medical. Toni did his duty and Marco got a direct hit in his chest on D-Day, coming home a physical wreck. He now spent his time out on the moors in the Moses Heights sanatorium, trying to breathe and gather strength.

There were plenty of grandsons helping run the place but none of them was Maria’s son. Rosaria was born prematurely when everyone despaired of the two of them ever producing a child to satisfy Santini honour. Marco was proud and everyone was happy.

Now Maria had to work all hours to keep body and soul together and give Marco the comforts he craved.

During the war the making of real ice cream was forbidden, but the Santinis devised ices made from condensed milk and sweeteners, flavoured with fruit syrups that passed regulations. There were four other rival establishments in the town, all touting for business on the streets, but everyone knew Santini’s ices were the best. Thank goodness Lancashire folk liked their ice cream in cornets and wafers, sundaes and floating on fizzy pop.

‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for Santini ice cream’ was painted on the side of many a horse-drawn cart.

Santini’s had the finest site in town, a café squashed between the Regal Cinema and the King’s Theatre, with some of the better shops and the parish church close by. It was handy for the theatre queues, audiences nipping in for cones between shows, parades, afternoon
shopping. It was a good place for an evening rendezvous, to wait for buses and within easy reach of several pubs.

Children came for knickerbocker glories when they came to see the pantomime, and theatricals called in for snacks between shows. Maria made it her business to know who was in town in Grimbleton, and Angelo got business from her customers. She was training up Enzo, one of Antonio’s sons, in the back kitchen but he needed watching. Without a son of her own, Enzo would be expected to take over the parlour when he was a man.

‘Ragazza
for the kitchen,
ragazzo
for the business-girls for the kitchen, boys for the business’ Pepe’s old rule held in the family and Maria was not proper family until she produced a son. Nonna Valentina Santini had made that clear enough.

Maria and Marco lived above the shop in the flat on the top floor. It was just two rooms and a kitchen where she grabbed a few precious hours with little Rosa before finishing the shift as a cleaner in the King’s Theatre to earn some extra money. It was lucky that she didn’t need much sleep. Being busy kept her from thinking about the past and Marco’s deteriorating condition.

Every Saturday she lit a candle in the Catholic chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, pleading on her knees for an angel to wake Padre Pio of Pietrelcina from his dreaming so that the blessed healer of the sick would work a miracle on Marco’s smashed lungs.