The Matchmaker (9 page)

“That’s just what I like,”

said Jenny and Louise together. Meg had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position and Alda paused to rearrange her head against the cushion.

“Oh, Jenny, do you remember that one with the yellow scarf? I expect he’d kidnapped
thousands
of children,” Louise continued dreamily, and began to wander back towards the café just as a lorry, narrowly avoiding the kerb, drew up with a rattle and a roar. A man jumped down, slamming the door after him, and hurried across to the café, where a girl’s pretty, untidy head looked out laughing to welcome him. The door shut on them both.

“It’s so lovely,” mourned Louise, with her nose against the window. “Oh Jenny, there are pink cakes to-day!”

“Do come along, Weez, it will be dark before we get home,” said Alda sharply; she wanted her tea.

“Well, can we go there for my birthday treat?” asked Louise, reluctantly moving on.

“What a treat!”

“It’s
my
birthday and
my
treat.”

“Even
you
said the cakes were nice and the tea was hot when we went there, Mother,” said Jenny with her judicial air.

“But it wasn’t clean, Jenny. I do draw the line at dirty places.”

“And the ladies are all so pretty and nice. Even the old fat one was kind,” put in Louise.

“I give you all that, but I don’t like gipsies and dirt. Now that’s enough, come along.”

She hurried them away, down the long High Street which gradually ran out into fields. They left the village half in daytime business, and half in evening peace; curtains had been drawn across the bow-windows in some cottages, but in many
of
the small square houses of cream or grey stucco, built in the early years of Victoria’s reign, the blinds were still up, and within, sitting in a room filled with strong gold light, was an old woman knitting as she listened to the wireless, a man lingering at the tea-table with the evening paper, a child bent over its homework. Evergreen bushes swayed and sighed in the evening wind, shutters were going up at the chemists and the butchers; it was that hour before winter dusk when the air clears and the sun sinks in purple mist even as the first star shines out in the icy blue.

“Lucky creatures!” said Alda, as three young women sailed past them on bicycles.

“Do you think we shall
ever
have bicycles, Mother?” asked Jenny.

“Of course we shall, darling. Next year, perhaps. As soon as father comes out of the Army and goes back to the college.”

“We could go exploring.”

“And you could take Meg in a basket at the back.”

“Meg’s nearly old enough to have one for herself. By the time we all have them, she will be,” said Alda.

“We could have super picnics.”

“And get to the sea, perhaps. It’s only fifteen miles away.”

“It would be so lovely, Mother.”

This conversation had been gone over many times before but never lost its wistful fascination. Alda and Ronald had been enthusiastic bicyclists before their marriage, and had presented Jenny with a tiny bicycle almost as soon as she could walk, but they were only beginning to take rides as a trio when the Second World War broke out, and the bicycles had been destroyed with their home in Ironborough. Bicycles for all five was the family ambition, and had a good fairy given Jenny, Louise and Meg one wish, they would have unhesitatingly demanded in a shout: “Bicycles!”

“When shall we give them the cigarettes, Mother?” asked Jenny presently.

“To-morrow, if they bring the letters.”

“Need we give them to the nasty one? I’d much rather give them to the nice one.”

“We’ll give them to whichever one comes. Look, there’s the camp.”

The low sheds behind the wire were faintly visible by the starlight—for it was now dark—and the glow from their own windows, while smoke from the kitchens indicated that the evening meal was being prepared. Alda thought that the bustle and animation pervading the scene made it seem homelike, intensified as it was by the lonely sighing wind and the black sky and leafless trees; indeed, really it looked cosy, decided Mrs. Lucie-Browne.

SHE HARDLY NOTICED
the presentation of the cigarettes to Fabrio the next morning, as her attention was immediately caught, after taking the letters from him, by one which had a black border addressed in Jean’s writing. She tore it open and hastily read what she had half-expected; Mr. Hardcastle had died some days ago after a short illness which he had lacked the inclination to resist, and he was to be buried that day.

Poor Jean, thought Alda, she didn’t care much for her father, but it must have been a shock, and there will be everything for her to settle—the lease of the flat, all that furniture—the car—and what on earth will she do with herself afterwards?

Glancing again at the letter she discovered the answer to the last question: Jean proposed to come to Pine Cottage.

So I shall just leave everything to Mr. Barrowford and beetle down to you for a week or two, darling. You won’t mind, will you? I’ll sleep in the coal cellar and go Dutch in everything, of course.

That’s all very well, thought Alda, slightly dismayed, but what about——

“Yes, Jen, what is it?”

“He won’t take them,” said Jenny in a tactful whisper, jerking her head towards the slender haughty figure in the porch, who was standing very erect and monosyllabically replying to the questions of Meg and Louise.

“Oh, what nonsense,” muttered Alda, and hurried down the passage.

“Don’t you like cigarettes?” she demanded, bluntly yet sweetly, and smiling into his sullen face. “The children bought them specially for you and your friend.”

“Yes, go on,” urged Meg, gazing up at him through her fringe, which needed cutting. “They cost a shillun and two pennies.”

“Meg!” exclaimed Jenny and Louise, scandalised.

Fabrio looked down at her for a moment; then he swiftly stooped, put his hands gently about her plump body, and smartly squeezed her, twice, as if she had been a doll that squeaked, and she gave two loud, gasping laughs. Jenny and Louise laughed too; it was so funny; and Fabrio’s face changed at the sound, becoming alight with friendliness. Louise pushed the cigarettes into his pocket, crying, “Oh, you’re going to take them!” and Meg danced up and down, shouting, “Again! Again!”

“Thank—you,” he said, smiling, and Alda thought how much better-tempered his face looked when he smiled than did Emilio’s face, which was always smiling.

“I would-a like a-book,” he said, turning to her. “A—English book.”

“To read?” she cried. “Of course! I’ll see what we’ve got.”

“I—am-a learning to read English.”

“Yes—wait a minute—I’ve got one that will be just the thing for you,” and she hurried away.

In a few minutes she returned.

“There!” she said, holding out to him a thick volume in a battered green and gold cover. “
I Promessi Sposi, The Betrothed Lovers
, by Manzoni, you know—famous Italian writer. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. This is an English translation.”

Fabrio reverently took the eighteenth-century Italian classic, with its faded brown pages and end-papers stained by water splashes, in his strong hands, large in proportion to his frame and coarsened by years of work in the open air. Alda watched his face with growing sympathy and interest as he slowly repeated under his breath some of the English words on the title page.

“Is it any good?” she asked at last, choosing her words.

He shook his head dejectedly.

“Not-a much. I cannot read-a, much,” he answered without looking up. “No good-a, this,” and he handed it back to her. The animation had died out of his face.

To her, it was strange to see the strong feelings struggling on eyes and lips and held back by his ignorance of her language, and then, suddenly, the dam burst, and Fabrio burst into a flood of Italian to which she listened; at first uncomprehendingly and then with increasing embarrassment, for although she could not understand a word he was saying it was perfectly plain to her that he was pouring it all out to her; his loneliness, his loathing of captivity, and his longing for his native land. She thought, too, from the expression in his blazing blue eyes that he was imploring her to be his friend.

What could she do? Only listen with sympathetic nods and murmurs that became increasingly mechanical, while the children stood round demanding, “What is he saying, Mother? What’s the matter? Doesn’t he like the cigarettes?”

Suddenly he ceased. He turned away, shaking his head and making a downward, backward flinging of the hand as if condemning every word that he had uttered to a hell of hopelessness, and then Alda realised that Mr. Hoadley was standing by the gate, calling sternly to him.

Fabrio went straight towards his master, and Alda, having returned Mr. Hoadley’s irritable “Good morning,” went back into the house with
I Promessi Sposi
, and a little smile on her pretty mouth. All her relationships with men had been gay and triumphant, so why should she not smile?

But while she was getting through the morning’s work with the help of Jenny and Louise, she decided (in spite of that smile) that all encouragement of Fabrio, beyond the barest courtesy, must now cease.

Any kindnesses in the form of talks, or books, or cigarettes would actually be unkindnesses, leading to the increase of that romantic admiration which he clearly felt for herself and to uncharitable comments from Mrs. Hoadley, who was just the type to make them (in this opinion Alda was less than just to Mrs. Hoadley). There would be rebukes from his employer; perhaps even a loss of the dignity, both private and public, of Mrs. Ronald Lucie-Browne. She had the strongest contempt for married women who flirted, and never realised that her own eyes and manner were innocently inviting.

It would be easy enough to quell his admiration, for he was only a peasant; Mr. Hoadley had told her as much; had he been a young Italian barrister or business man the task might have been more difficult.

Thus did Alda and her Dissenting ancestry dismiss Fabrio’s manhood.

He, after hearing in furious silence some angry words of reproof for gossiping from Mr. Hoadley, had gone on the farmer’s orders down to the hay rick by the Small Meadow. This was a smallish rick garnered during the previous June, and where it had already been cut into for winter supplies, the surface of sombre gold looked good enough for a man to eat. He was ordered to get down fodder for the cows.

His feet ached with the cold inside his heavy boots and as he wielded the fork his hands gradually became numbed, but he did not mind the discomfort, for he was accustomed to hard
work
in the open air and took it for granted under blue sky or grey; what he did mind, what set his face in sullenness and made his eyes look savage, was the double wound to his pride.

The first he had inflicted upon himself, when he had lost control and poured out to the kind Signora (that comely, matronly mother of three daughters) all his hatred of the camp and his shame that he could barely read and write. He had not known this shame until he entered the Army, but since his captivity he had brooded upon it; sometimes in a dim, puzzled way, he believed that if he had known how to read and to write fluently, he might have avoided being taken prisoner, or escaped before he was brought to England, and his ignorance made him feel inferior to the other men in the camp, for the only other two who were similarly handicapped were a fierce vile-tempered Roman from the Trastavere, prematurely aged by vice, and a half-witted Sicilian lout from the hills of Calabria. Fabrio felt—he knew—himself to be the superior of both these creatures and he hated to feel himself linked with them in a common ignorance.

Then his master, that accursed man set over him whose very name he could not pronounce accurately, had insulted him in front of the Signora, with whom he had been getting on so well! He had shouted at him as if he were a slave!

And Fabrio did not feel himself a slave. How should he? in that unbroken pride of youth which is so strong that the young man or woman who experiences it feels: I shall never die, and this warm sunny wind blows into my face while I stride against it like a lord of the earth, and then (if she is a girl) she moves her rounded neck to see her gold earrings reflected in the window of the car and feels her power, right down to the very tips of her eyelashes. Fabrio, too, was still sustained by his former close contact with the earth and the sea, though month by month, as the life of the camp held him fast, the refreshing force declined in strength. In his own village and the nearby port he had been able to earn by his own hands enough to contribute to
the
family needs and to pay for his own needs and pleasures; pleasures strong and delightful to him, however simple and poor they might have appeared to over-civilised people. In San Angelo the young men had accepted him as their equal and the young women had been eager for his notice and he had not wanted more than this; he had been happy, like a bird in the woods or a cricket in the olive groves, never thinking, seldom unhappy except when a mood of melancholy (heritage and penalty from that drop of purer blood in his veins) drifted across his soul.

Holy Mother! he thought now, if I could drive
this
into him! and he struck the fork savagely into the bristling surface of the rick and shook it furiously to and fro, so that the misty shapes of the far-off Downs were momentarily veiled by a shower of dark fragments.