The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (10 page)

‘I saw Sheba last week,' she said, surprised at the sound of her own voice. Aunty Bea replaced the teapot lid and barely noticed her. She was eyeing her husband dropping crumbs onto the
Evening Telegraph
laid on his lap under the table. For all his ungainly height, his white hair and rectitude, there was something puerile about Uncle Jack reading the paper at the dinner table. It always reminded Connie of the way the lane kids pored over the
Dandy
under the pew racks
during the Eucharist. Now she was older, she sometimes wondered whether Uncle Jack's childishness was feigned, a ploy to win small victories over his wife. Aunty Bea huffed at him and slid a tea plate directly onto the newspaper, forcing him to stop reading and look up.

‘Queen of Sheba, more like,' Aunty Bea said to Connie. She lifted her own plate and brushed under it with a palm. ‘Where was that blasted moggy anyhow? I've had her ladyship wringing her hands all day and getting in the way of fetching out the silver just because she hasn't seen the precious blighter for a week.
It's a cat
,
Mrs R
,
I tells her.
They go a-roaming. That's what they does
. Good riddance back to Burma or Siam, or whatever foreign place it came from, s'what I reckon.'

‘I suppose she's worried because the kittens are due,' Connie said.

‘Oh, I see,' Aunty Bea said, drawing out the words suspiciously. ‘That's what this is about, then, is it? Did you hear, Jack? Jack!' She brought her teacup down on the saucer before her, like a judge with a gavel. ‘I say, she's still angling after a blessed kitten.'

Aunty Bea had never let her keep a pet. Working dogs and ratting cats had litters all the time on the farms, but Connie had learned early on in her new life never to bring an animal back to Grimthorpe Lane. Aunty Bea's opinion of animals was informed by rural practicality, obsessive cleanliness and a literal view of Creation that was not uncommon in the villages, but which she had honed to a Biblical law all of its own. ‘If God had intended us to have beasts as friends, he'd have given them hands and a mind to clear up their own
muck
,' she liked to say when Connie was caught petting the rag-and-bone man's mare as a child. She remembered Aunty Bea holding her hands under the faucet and scrubbing them with a nailbrush until they throbbed. Through the kitchen window she would see Uncle Jack spading the horse's steaming dung off the lane and onto his roses.
Muck
, Connie would mouth, splaying her raw fingers under the water.
Dirty, mucky shit and crap and cack
,
she would answer Aunty Bea back in her head.

And so, surrounded by animals, she'd made do without a childhood pet, as if the war had put affection on ration along with everything else. But when Mr Repton up at the Big House bought his young wife the Siamese, she couldn't help but coddle the kitten, tease and lavish it with all her saved-up love, while Aunty Bea finished starching linen for the Reptons' weekend guests.

‘Connie, darling, you haven't let her claw you?' Mrs Repton would call, bringing out the Germolene tin. She would shake her head, happy to suck at the scratches, but the cool, delicate touch of Mrs Repton's fingers, her falling curls, her smoky, exotic scent as she bent over Connie were so much more enjoyable than being brave. Aunty Bea would be furious when she saw the bite marks. ‘That cat's the devil's spawn. Why she keeps it inside is beyond me. Ruddy hair all over the runners and fur balls behind the cushions.'

Mrs Repton adored the cat. It was rumoured she couldn't have children, and because of it the villagers allowed her to be decidedly soft in the head for animals. Connie often wondered, if it was that simple, why the same circumstance in Aunty Bea had led to feelings at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Her aunt sipped at her stewed tea. ‘Don't even think about letting her ladyship
give you one of them kittens. Don't you even think about it. If God had intended …'

Connie sighed, getting up to refill the milk jug so she could escape her aunt. ‘I'm seventeen years old,' she said. ‘I'm a bit past wanting a kitten, Aunty.'

‘Well, why bring it up then?'

‘I didn't.' She sat back down wearily. ‘I said I saw Sheba last week, that's all. At the bottom of Bythorn Rise.' On the mantel, the Bakelite clock ticked on behind her. She had the urge to shout or swear, and found herself clutching for something equally shocking, simply to be listened to, to be taken seriously for once. ‘I saw one of those Italian boys crack her about the neck.'

Immediately she regretted it. Aunty Bea snatched her hand from the teapot as if scalded. Uncle Jack shook his newspaper and raised his head, blinking at her steadily. ‘What d'you mean?' Aunty Bea asked. ‘D'you mean you seen him kill it?'

Connie tried to be flippant. ‘I'm not sure. I could be wrong. It was dark.'

But there was no going back now. Aunty Bea wouldn't let her. ‘And he done what, this Eye-talian?'

‘I don't know, maybe it was Mr Rose or Fossett.' She had her aunt's full attention now.

‘Well.' Aunty Bea pulled in her chin and lined up the tea things distractedly. ‘There were no love lost between me and that cat, but I wouldn't've wished it that kind of harm.' She looked at Uncle Jack, as if he might have an explanation, before thinking better of it and continuing.

‘Janet Livesey did say they were near as wild, them WOP boys … like as diddies. Reckoned one of them were seen buying dog food in a tin. No doubt Repton's paying them very near nothing, and they'll eat any old thing, you know, them
Continentals
— horse, dog, donkey, anything with fur or feathers, they say.' She swallowed her tea with a grudging mouth like the milk was curdled. ‘Makes my stomach turn.'

Connie took a slow breath and gazed out at the ripe evening through the kitchen window. She often wanted to have tea in the garden on these summer nights, but Aunty Bea refused to
eat bugs with dinner.
‘They're hardly savages, Aunty,' Connie said. ‘The Romans had plumbing and heating when we were still living in mud huts. Besides, Repton's is overrun with rabbit and hare. Why would they kill a cat?'

‘Righty-o, Miss I'm-nearly-eighteen-now-and-know-it-all. Would you listen to her, Jack? You tell her what them WOPs at Wood Walton liked to eat.'

But Uncle Jack remained silent, contemplating his fist balled next to his teacup. He didn't have to tell her. Early in the war she had seen two prisoners from the camp at Wood Walton squatting in the mud by the brook, the yellow circles on their backs appearing from a distance like twin suns rising in the bulrushes. Tommy Pointon came to school one day with a woven trap they'd given him. ‘You put the seed down on the ground, see. The finch hops along, has a peck, you pull the string and
bang
! Down comes the basket.' He slammed his hand on the desk, grinning as they all jumped.

‘But why would you want to pull a bird so little?' Mavis Darby had asked.

‘Well, I wouldn't want to pull one as dim as you,' Tommy said, and all the boys laughed. ‘They eat-a them. With-a their
macaroni
,' he sang. There was a stunned silence as they all wondered what part of a finch or thrush was worth the eating. Later Mavis had her comeuppance, running into the yard that afternoon and shouting that PC Ferris was giving Tommy Pointon a hiding for
frat'nising
.

‘For goodness sake,' Connie said, beginning to clear the tea things, ‘that was the war. They had to eat, like everyone else.'

‘And you expect them Eye-ties to be more civilised now, I suppose? A leopard don't change its spots.' Aunty Bea folded her arms and adjusted her shoulders. ‘I hope you're not setting your sights on them two boys, just because the likes of Mr Gilbert and
her
ladyship
have granted them an audience.' She glanced at Uncle Jack again. ‘Some of us remembers things.'

‘What?' Connie said. ‘What
things
? I don't remember anything because you never tell me in the first place.'

Aunty Bea sniffed and went to the sink. Uncle Jack offered only a vague shake of his head before looking back down at the plate in his lap. For once his complicit silence sparked her anger even more. ‘See, you won't even let Uncle Jack speak!' She couldn't help herself. She knew she'd pay for it later. ‘You treat us both like naughty children.'

‘Don't you get that tone up with me.' Aunty Bea stood to face her across the table. ‘Course he speaks.'

Uncle Jack rose to his feet, his chair making a drawn-out screech along the tiles. He shook a trouser leg of crumbs, gave a preparatory cough and lowered his eyes to Connie, like he might say something. But instead he retreated, vapid as a shadow, to the front room, where all that could be heard was the ghostly rustle of his newspaper.

‘See what you've done?' Aunty Bea gestured after him. There was something childishly lost and regretful about her now. Connie studied her tiny frame, as neat and trim as Uncle Jack's was tall and gangling. With all her compact energy, she might still be young. Sometimes Connie had heard tinkers or gypsies at the door calling Aunty Bea
miss
or
petal
. She marvelled that they could not trace the years of disappointment gathered at her mouth, the cleft of regrets driven between her pale eyebrows. But exactly what disappointments, what regrets, Connie could never fathom.

‘Happy now?' Aunty Bea said, reaching under the sink for a dustpan and brush.

‘Happy with what?' Connie persisted.

Aunty Bea resurfaced, her cheeks rosy as chilblains, as if, like everything else, she had spent her life scrubbing them raw. The emotions that crossed her face were as varied and confused as an autumn sky. The clock on the mantel continued its perky tick. Connie reached across to her aunt and pushed back a tendril of hair that had escaped its pin. It still glowed partially red among the faded brown, like an ember in the grate. But at the touch, Aunty Bea's hand went up to her head self-consciously. Her expression cooled and the moment disintegrated.

‘You're the replica of your mother,' she said. ‘The Lord knows we done our best for you. But it's never enough, is it? Just like her, you are. Yearning after the fancy and faraway, always hankering after something, wanting more. Well, where did it get her?'

Connie knew better than to answer, but the image of the cat, the monotony of the clock, the scrape of Uncle Jack's chair, his retreating shadow goaded her on. ‘I don't know, where
did
it get her? How would I know when nobody ever tells me anything?' She heard the whine in her voice and put her hand on her forehead to steady her thoughts.

‘It led her down a path of sin, is all you need to know,' Aunty Bea said mechanically, ‘and the wages of sin is —'

Connie was already out of the door and reaching for her bike, propped against the front of the house. Aunty Bea stood in the doorway, the dustpan brush trembling at her hip.

‘Don't you dare turn your back on me when I'm talking of Christ.'

‘You weren't talking of Christ. You were talking about sin and my mother, remember?' Connie breathed in the thick scent of the evening, gathering her patience. ‘I'm going for a bike ride. I think Christ will be OK with it.'

‘You be back before dark,' Aunty Bea said. She caught hold of the saddle as Connie pushed past, and lowered her voice to a hiss: ‘Or don't you bother coming back at all.'

It was an empty threat, Connie knew, but one that had never been spoken before, and the challenge it held made her breathless before she had even started to cycle down the lane. It was always talk of her mother, or the avoidance of it, that reduced Aunty Bea to her meanest self. Connie had grown up straining her ear to the rumours, of which there was never any lack in Leyton. There were whispers of dance halls in the West End and clubs in Soho, of GIs and disappointments. And one night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she had heard Aunty Bea telling Uncle Jack of
the bag of bones
she had visited in a bombed-out bedsit, where ten or so people lived sharing
that evil muck
. By then she knew that Aunty Bea wasn't talking about animal manure. Connie didn't need every detail, but as she got older, not being offered any at all became even more crushing. It was as if Aunty Bea believed the flawed blueprint of her sister had to be firmly kept under lock and key, for fear Connie would trace in it her own intrinsic nature. And Connie needed to be protected from herself at all costs.

She gripped at the handlebars, her mind so full that the bike seemed to carry her of its own accord, following its usual route. And so she found herself freewheeling down Bythorn Rise in the syrupy light, her arms clutched behind her head, the wet flick of insects on her skin. Her heart raced with the speed and the dare of not touching the handlebars; with the danger of falling, of hitting a stone in the road, of a puncture — anything to feel alive, to make something happen that might nudge at the endless coil of her days and nights, wound tight as a cocked spring.

At Repton's, the Burrell engine was still droning. Mr Rose and his threshing team were finishing the western acres, and as she swung round the bend at the bottom of the rise, she spotted the line of steam rising behind the ridge. She left her bike at the gate, fetched her book from the basket, and climbed the bridle path towards the Big House. As she walked, she picked out the familiar beat of the threshing drum, a sound that had always stirred mixed emotions in her: the excitement of the harvest and the sadness of summer's end.