Women on the Home Front (143 page)

All the Santini family were putting the Winstanleys to shame, drummed into buying tickets for the matinée show. Tina, Angelo’s wife, Maria, and Toni’s wife, Sonia, and all Maria’s customers were bombarded with a once-in-a-life-time chance to see Rosaria Santini’s first appearance on stage. They would take pictures to Marco, if he didn’t manage to get out of the san for the day. He’d made one home visit but couldn’t manage the stairs so was staying with Nonna Valentina, which upset Maria.

Dolores Pickles down the road said Marco was a saint in his suffering. Father Michael of Our Lady of Sorrows took the sacrament to him each week. He was clinging on to life by a thread and they were praying for his recovery, lighting candles to all the saints. It looked as if Maria would have yet another job to add to her collection. That woman didn’t know how to sit down, but when she did she fell asleep at her knitting. It was as if she had the troubles of the world on her shoulders. Lily wished there was something she could do to help.

One more row and then I’ve finished the back, dreamed Maria as she was knitting in her sleep, with the chatter of the dancing school waiting room fading into the background.

She could see Marco striding towards her with Rosa on his shoulders and she leaped up to greet him, only to watch the picture fade. Then another face came into view and she fought herself awake.

Knitting cardigans almost paid for Rosa’s lessons and it stopped Maria’s hands from shaking. She worked every hour and visited her husband dutifully, but the best nights were spent with her friends, sharing suppers, going to the pictures. Lately, however, something unexpected had crept into the few gaps in her busy life, something that was churning her stomach upside down. Something had happened to shake her world even more.

It started when Queenie gave her and Lily a free hair-dressing appointment each as a treat. ‘You work so hard and no one gives you anything. You spend loads on the children and never a penny on yourself,’ Queenie argued, plonking an appointment card on the counter.

For weeks Maria kept changing the appointment until she hadn’t the nerve to look Queenie in the eye. She kept tying up her hair in scarves to keep her locks out of the ice cream and as it got heavier and longer, taking a tin of Kirby grips to hold it up.

Lavaroni’s was setting the trend for the soft waved look. Not that she would ever need a permanent, not with yards of heavy curly hair, but a shorter lighter style on her head might suit the new look of the times.

She had seen Diana Unsworth off duty from the hospital sporting the new look. If Diana was going with the times then so could she. Ana was so striking to look at now she was filling out, and Su was always so neat and prim in her tailored suit and blouse, her hair caught
up in a tight bun in the nape of her neck. She never changed her style, but something inside Maria was aching for release, something to distract from the sadness of Marco’s slow progress, from the drudgery of all her chores. She was a businesswoman, mother, wife, daughter-in-law, cleaner. Where was the old Maria? Who was the
real
Maria?

In her dreams, she floated across the stage like Mimi in
La Bohème
, or strode proudly like Tosca. She was six feet tall like a Valkyrie riding to her doom. There was not a heroine on the stage at the King’s Theatre that she didn’t weep for and imagine herself acting out the great dramas.

She sat in the gods with her mop and brush at rehearsals, wiping tears from her eyes as they died so bravely in the spotlight. Why couldn’t life be so full of drama and colour, with velvet, net and satin?

Her life was drab and she was always tired, but lately she had perked up because of her new friends and their kindness. It was time she took herself in hand.

What would Marco think if she walked into the san wearing new clothes and a new look? He would think she had forgotten about his suffering but she could not ignore the kindness of a friend and she asked him what she should do.

‘You go and have your hair done all new and give me big surprise,
mia cara’
, he laughed. ‘Make all the other men jealous of my beautiful wife.’

With his blessing it was easier for Maria to go ahead and keep the appointment.

The salon was in the smart arcade with a discreet
window with screens, and each cubicle was partitioned off so the client could have privacy. There were large black hoods to dry the hair, attached to wires and plugs, and a smell of bad eggs and chemicals that no perfumed soap could disguise. For a second Maria wanted to flee but then she saw Queenie, who acted as receptionist, cleaner, shampooer and teamaker.

‘You’re in luck. It’s Sylvio’s day to take new clients. He’s very modern. All the young ones like him.’ She winked and Maria half recalled Queenie’s story about the prisoner of war who had come touting for work when he was released.

She thought fondly of that first gathering at the Winstanleys’ house, the night they formed the supper club. Last Saturday they took themselves off to the first house of the pictures next door to see
It’s a Wonderful Life
and she’d cried all through it, great sobs that set Lily off and then Queenie, until the people in the row in front turned round and told them to shut up or go outside. The soulless pigs!

That was the trouble with the English. They had no sense of drama. Poor Jimmy Stewart, doing his best and getting it all wrong. She felt like that sometimes. However she tried to please the family, it was never enough.

They’d all trooped upstairs to sample her new spaghetti Bolognese, sitting in silence as if they’d just been to a funeral not a cinema.

‘What is the matter with you all? Where is your soul? It was a happy film with a happy ending. You don’t get many happy endings in the theatre. They all die so bravely: Tosca jump off the castle, Mimi is sick.
It is so sad. Giselle goes mad and the poor swan maid and her love jump into the lake. I love a good cry…you get your money’s worth of tears with opera.’

The week before they’d been to dinner at Diana’s house, dining off bone china and silver cutlery, and Eva had cooked a strange beef dish that was delicious.

It was a change from Maria’s own cooking but she liked it best when they came to her.

There was always some friend of a friend-a Pole, a Ukrainian exile, off-duty nurses from the Infirmary where Ana was now working as an orderly, who joined them. It was getting a crush to fit them all in upstairs so they spilled out into the downstairs and piled the tables and chairs together.

Eva got them knitting squares from leftover wool to make into blankets for the refugee camps. Everyone was clacking away, jabbering and gossiping. Some were thoughtful, like Lily, who brought her sugar ration. Others brought what they could spare. Maria lived for those evenings, especially when news from Moses Heights wasn’t good.

When Marco had a bad week, she panicked and prayed. When he’d had a good week she could relax and sing, but she could always forget her troubles when the girls came round.

She could never understand the set-up in Division Street. The women stayed on there, despite the sister-in-law who hated their guts and called their friends ‘that Olive Oil Club’. They never talked about their dead husbands in her presence. It was as if they had never existed.

It was a strange family, not falling in and out like the Santinis, but coming and going and never meeting up together. Even dear Lily-she was supposed to be getting married soon and they’d never even met her beloved.

One stolen pram had changed all their lives for the better. Salt and honey they might be, but they were the best mamas in Grimbleton, wanting a better life for their daughters than the hard struggle they were living now.

Su said dancing classes made them stand tall and straight, and Madame said it grew a good ear for music and rhythm. She was impressed that all their instructions were in French:
plié, arabesque, port de bras.
She had cut out the article in the
Mercury
, showing a line of babies from the class all smiling at the camera. ‘Babies who know French before English and not yet three years old!’ They looked so cute in their uniforms, and Rosa looked the brightest of them all. Maria was picturing Rosa’s name in neon lights, shining for all the other mothers to admire, when she became aware of a man standing behind her, fingering her hair with interest, ruffling it up and examining her in the mirror.

‘This is good hair, madam, but too heavy. It all need big cut,’ he smiled, flashing a pair of shiny jet-black eyes over her head. She suddenly felt protective of all her hair and ashamed of daydreaming. She launched instinctively into Italian. He responded in a torrent of his mother tongue with a thick northern accent and the rest of the discussion was a rattle of questions and answers.

Sylvio Bertorelli was from the north, from the industrial heartland, used to chimneys and smoke. He liked Grimbleton and had no desire to go home to a defeated country. He had been the barber in the camp on the moors and decided to make the best of his captivity and train himself to be a ladies’ hairdresser, and he was ambitious.

As he was chatting, so great chunks of Maria’s hair were floating down onto the tiles.

‘Stop!’ she cried, wondering if there was any hair left on her head.

‘You wait and see. It’ll be good. Now it is easy to dress and let the curl come through. You have fine thick hair, the very best, Signora Santini. Make your husband very proud,’ he laughed, and suddenly it was easy to tell him all about Marco and his family and his chest not healing properly, and all her worries about the ice-cream parlour.

Queenie shampooed her hair thoroughly in a sink contraption that was very efficient but looked too much like a guillotine to be restful.

‘I see you like our Sylvio…Quite the ladies’ man,’ whispered Queenie. ‘Poor old Gianni gets all the old dears, now everyone wants Sylvio. He did Bebe Daniels’ hair last week when they were on at the King’s. She was
very
pleased and tipped him five bob.’

Maria suddenly realised she had no money for a tip. It was hard not to feel self-conscious swathed in towels and sitting still while he finger-curled and pinned coils of hair around her head with setting lotion.

He was full of plans to go on courses in Manchester
and bring the latest styles back to the mill town. ‘I do great hair, win competitions so everyone want shampoo from Sylvio’s,’ he smiled.

His film-star looks were striking. He had one of those faces that must have fallen off a marble pillar: thick straight brows, black eyes fringed with long lashes, a wide smile and even, white teeth. He was slim but not thin, broad-shouldered, and had neat hips like a dancing man. His fingers were long, tapered and artistic. It was worth coming to the hairdresser’s just for the floor-show.

Common sense said he would be charming with all his clients so that they would come back time and time again. Yet there was something innocent in his enthusiasm and flamboyance that reminded Maria of Rosa with a new toy, of Marco listening to the football scores on the wireless when the Grasshoppers were winning at home.

Sylvio was used to silly women flashing their eyes at him but Maria was not going to demean herself. When she saw the results of his efforts in the mirror, however, she gasped with pleasure.

‘Is that really me?’ she said, staring at the transformation of the old careworn Maria, she of a hundred chores and jobs, into this young girl with soft curls framing her features and highlighting her own large brown eyes.

‘You like?’ he said. ‘Now we’ll see your bright eyes and long neck like swan. We can see the shape of your head, yes?’ No wonder he was looking pleased with himself.

Queenie stood back. ‘Crikey Moses, Ria. Marco will
have a new visitor tonight and all the ward’ll be jealous,’ she winked, and Maria could not resist giving Queenie a big hug.

‘Grazie…
Thank you. I am a new woman now,’ she laughed, wanting to walk around town and savour the moment when heads turned and wondered if that was really Maria Santini.

‘It will need cutting every six weeks or it will all drop,’ Sylvio warned, and she nodded and promised to come back again.

She’d meant it at the time but the weeks went on and the style was growing out and there was never any money to spend on herself. There were clothes and ballet shoes for Rosa and extra fruit for Marco. The walls needed distempering. Always something.

Weeks later, one afternoon when she was rushed off her feet, Maria saw him sitting in the window table drawing on his cigarette, sipping a cup of cappuccino from their new chrome Gaggia steam coffee machine. He looked up when she went over.

‘I come to see how my new look model is doing. It is grown…’ he said, and she blushed.

‘I’m sorry…no time and you are expensive,’ she added.

‘I know but the best is expensive. However, I need plenty of practice and a model gets her hair cut free. I have ideas. Will you sit for me?’ he asked, flashing her one of his high-octane smiles. ‘I need someone with a good neck, good hair and a strong face…’ He was pleading with his eyes and she tried to stay businesslike in her reply.

‘That would be a fair arrangement but I work many hours. It would have to fit in. I must bring my little girl,’ she whispered in Italian, not wanting her business to be broadcast all around the town. Nonna Valentina would not approve, nor her brothers-in-law. Sylvio was not family and Santinis only worked for family.

Her heart was thumping when she walked away. This was dangerous, this excitement, and she knew where it could lead. Only once had she slipped before D-day, when the town was invaded with Yanks going south. There was this GI from New Jersey, one of a gang who hung out at Santini’s. He used to sing and dance and make a fool of himself and he made her laugh and forget the war. He had a roving eye and flattered her loneliness. They had gone dancing and one thing led to another, a brief encounter in Queens Park. She vowed never to betray Marco again. Then Marco came back on embarkation leave and her shame sent her to confession and back into the arms of the Church.