The Italian Romance (9 page)

Lilian was sitting on the old couch, curled in a corner of it, when Bernie opened the screen door and came in. She was exactly where she had been when he'd left two hours before. She had felt relaxed there till that moment, and he had felt eager. It disturbed him to see her sitting so quietly, so still. It made him afraid.

‘See you got the place all tidied up,' he said.

The dishes from last night's dinner, and from breakfast, were stacked on the chair. He could see with his own eyes a tangled ball of her hair rolling across the floor with the breeze that sneaked in under the screen. It didn't gnaw at his nerve ends. He wasn't like that, too happy in himself, too innocent. But it disturbed a sense of equilibrium in him. When a woman came into a man's life, she gave him home. This wife, this Lilian of his, didn't, somehow. Every day he longed to be there with her, hurried to her. Many days he raced up the steps, three wooden slats, his boots thumped on the wooden verandah, the door squealed as he opened it, no matter how much oil he poured on to the hinges, and there she was, motionless on the couch, as if she'd been there all day.

Lilian stood up. She wore a light summer dress, buttoned to
the waist. She seemed to have forgotten her shoes again. ‘I'll wash up later,' she said.

‘Are you ready?'

‘Yeah, I'm ready.'

She'd been waiting for him. When she heard his heavy tread on the verandah boards, her heart had leaped. She had no idea why she hadn't washed the dishes, and she had no idea why it mattered. She'd been thinking about a woman who lived near her parents' house. Pauline had just arrived back on the train from Sydney, where her husband had walked up a long gangway with a duffel bag over his shoulder, a slouch hat on his head, and waved to her as he'd set sail for the other side of the world to fight the Germans. Pauline wouldn't come out of her house now.

Her shoes were under the kitchen table. She had to get down on her hands and knees to retrieve them. Bernard watched her. The pads of her feet were stained with dust, the neat ring of her heel, the fleshy parts of each of her delicate toes. The skirt of her dress became rounded as she reached in. He loved that roundness. She crawled out backwards.

‘Why don't you put them away where you can find them?' he said.

‘I did put them away. I put them under the table.'

He said nothing. He opened the door. She held on to the back of a kitchen chair as she pushed her feet into the shoes, grabbed her bag from the floor beside the couch, and walked out past him. He pulled hard at the screen to ensure there was no mosquitosized crack. He didn't bother to close the wooden door.

His father's car was parked in the shade of the barn. He fell in beside her and they walked across the yard together. ‘Did he mind when you asked him for a lend of the car?' she said.

‘Dad? No.' Bernard threw the keys a few inches up in the air, and caught them.

She touched the black hump over the wheel. It was hot. Her husband opened the passenger door for her. She stepped up into
the seat, and he slammed it shut, tugged at it to make sure it was secure. She put her hands under her thighs and straightened her dress. The windows were down.

Bernie climbed in beside her. He leaned towards her. She immediately turned to him and kissed him. They had these little rituals, quickly developed. He turned the ignition key, rested his right arm on the window and looked over his shoulder. He reversed the car, and pulled the steering wheel so that his left arm crossed his chest. She pleasured in the movements he made, the skilful, thoughtless reflex of it.

When he accelerated forward, the wheels spun for a moment, and dust flew up behind them like smoke. ‘Put your window up,' he said.

She grabbed the handle and moved it awkwardly around and around. ‘It's too hot,' she said.

‘I know, but it will get all over you.' As he drove, he slowly wound up his own window, almost to the top. He left two inches for her. ‘When we get on the road, you can open it again,' he said. He changed gear, and they both seemed to relax into the shift; she loved that feeling, as a rider does when his horse breaks into an easy canter. She was completely content in that moment. He dropped his left hand to the seat between them. She put her fingers through his. He squeezed, and she squeezed back.

‘I just want to scoot up here to see this mob,' he said, as he left the main track and followed another up the rise. The grass here was, if not green, at least doing its job of knitting the soil together. Half a dozen gum trees, wide in their isolation from each other, cast a longed-for shade, and groups of horses clustered under one or another. The car sounded different on the grass, and felt different. When he braked, the car almost slid to a stop, quietly. He left the door open as he walked away. She watched as he put his foot on the rung of a gate. He was so tall that he almost stepped over from there.

A mare trotted down to him. She was always curious. She put
her nose into his shoulder and he slung an arm about her neck. Lilian could hear the sound of his voice, but she couldn't make out what he said to the horse. He walked on, and the mare wheeled and trotted behind him, her tail swishing. A tribe of flies, no doubt, were enjoying the ride on her rump. The young colt suddenly appeared on the rim of the hill. This was the one they were interested in, all the men and Mae, too. He was cocky, but beautiful in his born elegance, the lanky voluptuousness of his limbs. He was eyeing the man. Bernie's stride took on strain as he climbed. The colt, sensing encroaching authority, leaped against the blue sky. His back legs kicked out. Lilian heard Bernie say, ‘Whoa, whoa boy.' He held out his hand as he gained the highest point and walked towards the young horse. The colt was smaller than he played he was. He would grow fine and strong, perfectly muscled, if the instincts of the Malones held true. Bernie put his hand in his trouser pocket. He must have come supplied with a goody, a carrot perhaps. He offered it to the young horse. Lilian smiled.

She wound down her window. There was a breeze here. She opened her own door, slipped one shoe off and hung her leg out. Her foot slid on the cool grass. She caught a sturdy blade between her toes and tugged, but not enough to damage it or dislodge its determined roots from the earth. She closed her eyes. The light and the heat that warmed even her bones, hypnotised her skin and the downy hair on her arms and legs also sank into her eyelids and fell, inevitably, down the black holes of her pupils into her centre. Her foot slid back and forwards on the ticklish grass.

He slammed the door and she jumped. ‘Were you asleep?'

‘No, just...' She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Day dreaming.'

She shrugged again. She didn't know what she had been doing. She sat back in the cab, and shut her door. ‘Is he all right?' she said.

‘Yeah, he's good.' He laughed a little as he said it, as if there
were some secret thing. She looked at him, but he concentrated now on straightening up his long back and legs against the seat, and rolling the car back down the track.

‘He's a beauty,' he said after a minute.

She drummed a little tune on the window ledge. She was happy to sit beside him, to drive on the endless road between two endless stretches of land that in the east buckled into a dark, rolling range, and in the west burned along the horizon as the sun began its drop. The sun would take three strong hours yet before it disappeared.

Town was quiet on a Saturday afternoon; everyone had shut up shop. Bernie tooted his horn at Mr Harrison the draper and his son Bill the Coot who, overdressed in jackets and ties, were locking the door of their premises. Bill waved with one hand, yanked off his tie with the other and waved it around his head. He walked out to the edge of the footpath to give himself more of a showcase. Bernie hit the horn again. He leaned his head out of the window and shouted, ‘You're as mad as a coot.'

Bill yelled, ‘You know what they oughta do with people like you?'

‘What?'

Bill roared out his answer. He'd stepped onto the road as he delivered the insult, his hand at the side of his mouth. But the car had driven on too far.

‘What did he say?' Lilian said.

Bernie laughed. He was watching Bill in the rear-view mirror. ‘Dunno,' he said.

He put out his hand and signalled his turn at the crossroad. He swung the car in nose first to the kerb.

There were twenty or so people waiting outside the picture theatre. Bunny had her back to the street, standing with a hand on her hip, a high-heeled foot arched up behind her. She threw back her head to laugh. The two young men facing her, squared to each other, watched the swing of her hair.

Lilian felt a heat of annoyance. ‘God, she's a child,' she said.

‘Who?' He rested his arm along the back of the seat, raised himself an inch or two and settled more comfortably.

‘Oh, Bunny. She thinks she's a movie star.'

‘They seem to be liking it.'

‘She does that to everybody. You'd think they'd have more pride.'

‘You're jealous.'

‘I am not,' she said.

He laughed at her. ‘You are too. Don't worry,' he said. He kissed her forehead. It was smooth, almost transparent. ‘I like you better.'

One of Bunny's swains leaned to her, said a few words in her ear. She turned her head towards the car, and bent down to wave in through the windscreen. The two young men gazed at the pull of the soft material across her hips and bottom. She gestured Lilian out. Lilian waved at her to come over.

In the intimacy of the car, she said to him, ‘Do you think she's good looking?'

He shrugged. ‘Yeah,' he said. The leather creaked as he withdrew his arm, opened the door, and put one foot on the road. ‘Are you getting out?'

‘In a minute. Here she comes,' Lilian said.

Bunny was swaying over to them. Bernie said, ‘G'day.'

‘Oh, hi there,' Bunny said. She watched Bernie as he strolled up on to the footpath, putting his hand out to one of her beaus.

Bunny stepped down to the car. She leaned into Lilian, said quietly, ‘Did you see Billy?'

Lilian nodded. She glanced at the two boys standing by the theatre door. ‘Yeah, he's going home to change.'

Bunny stood straight again. ‘Well, if he thinks I'm goin' to cook waiting for him out here all day,' she said loudly, ‘he's got another think coming.'

Bunny casually examined the crossroad, resting her hand
along Lilian's window. Her skin was deep brown; there was a three-penny-sized mole above her broad wrist. Lilian said, ‘Mr Petersen's opening up.'

Bunny didn't look at Lilian. ‘Yeah, okay,' she said.

Bernie shouted, ‘Lil, come on. I don't want to miss the newsreel.'

Lilian nodded to him through the windscreen.

Bunny watched the corner. She said, ‘That's all they care about. The bloody war. Where was he when you saw him? Don't tell me he was still at the shop. He'll be all bloody day.'

Francesco, my love,

Have you received my letters? Please let me know. But I will keep sending them, one way or the other. It must be difficult to write in the camp. Did you receive the parcel of warm clothes? I am afraid for you in the winter there.

Gianni is well. He has been at home all summer. I made the decision to keep him off school for a few more weeks. You probably would not approve. I wish I could talk to you. He said to me last week, as I was in his room to kiss him goodnight, that the Americans are here. I said yes, the Allies have landed in the South. He grabbed my hand and said, No, they are here, and he pointed to the floor. Here, I asked him, what do you mean? He looked away, and though I took his face in my hands and turned him to me, he dropped his head and wouldn't meet my eyes. He said that you would come home soon. He seems to believe that. You are a hero to him. Though it is so long since he saw you. I think he has
confused you with the Americans. It is the films that he sees in town, the cowboys and detective stories. May you return as soon as possible, so that he will have his father with him, to wish him goodnight and to walk with him over the fields. I see him from my window some mornings; he has let himself out very early and he wanders and runs and I feel he must be so lonely. If only you could come back to him.

Of course you will know that Mussolini has been deposed. I will talk to you of it later. Poor Papa. He was distraught. Jacob said to him, Papa, why can't you see what is right in front of your face? This is the inevitable outcome. Inevitable, he said. I don't know what he means by that. But I wish he wouldn't talk to Papa in such a way. Jacob has been following a certain path, I feel sure. I worry so terribly for him. Six men were lined up and shot last week. It is too late for the Fascists now. Why don't they stop? Why shoot men, when it is all over? Please think of my brother, keep him in your thoughts night and day, that he will be safe until the Allies come. There is no point in getting himself shot when it is practically all over. Did I mention to you that Susanna's beau (you know Susanna, Papa and Mama's maid) joined the p. and was killed. This is what I mean about Jacob. Susanna has run away to Sardinia. Papa says she would have been much better off, and safer, to stay with them.

Papa telephoned a few days ago and asked Gianni and me to come up for dinner. You wouldn't believe it, Francesco, they had Shabbat. It is the first Shabbat meal Gianni has ever eaten. Papa wore his father's prayer shawl. I remember Grandfather wearing it. I was eight when he died. He had a white beard. His voice was so deep, saying the prayers. I remember the candlelight on the table, making the crystal glasses wink. Mama lit some candles, too. She had to help in the kitchen because Maria doesn't know how to keep kosher. And Ruth hasn't got eyes in the back of her head. Mama said
she came in and saw the girl heating milk in the pan. Maria started to cry. I don't know what's come over them. Papa couldn't remember some of the prayers, poor Papa. He put his hands up over his face. Gianni whispered to me, what is he doing now? His eyes were huge, gazing at Papa, as I did at my Grandpapa. I said in his ear, he's praying silently. Gianni nodded. I think Papa was crying behind his hands. Francesco, are we going to be all right? Oh, how I wish you were here with us. I don't know what to do. Should I try to get to England, to you? Please write and tell me what to do. I am so scared for Gianni. No one knows what is going to happen next.

We were all so happy such a short time ago. What happened? What happened, Francesco? Please tell me.

I wait every day for another letter from you. Gianni kisses you.

Your loving wife,

Sonia

P.S. By the way, Alphonso has taken your hunting guns to safety. I don't know where.