Women on the Home Front (144 page)

She had promised the Virgin that she would be a good wife and mother, and resist temptation when it walked through the door again.

This is just a business arrangement.
She would be chaperoned by Queenie and Rosa. What harm would there be in having her hair done regularly? Customers liked to see a smart woman behind the counter. She planned to tell Marco all about this exciting venture but somehow she never got round to telling him about Sylvio’s offer.

Somehow they always had their styling sessions when Gianni had gone home and Queenie was busy at the
dancing class. Nothing improper was ever suggested but it hovered unspoken like smoke above the ceiling.

Every time Maria decided not to go, but every time there was always some reason why she could not let him down. Sylvio was an artist and an artist needed a model.

She felt so exposed when he washed her hair and she was lying backwards in his hands. He always smelled of cologne, and his hands were gentle but firm, massaging her head. How she ached for the touch of a man on her neck, even if it was only his hand with a towel.

He sat so close to her when he styled and trimmed her hair she could feel his warm breath in her ear.

Sometimes she took Rosa along but she only fingered all the trays of curlers and brushes and distracted her from sitting still, fearful of some accident with scissors. This would have to stop.

Yet everybody was commenting on the transformation, especially when she began to treat herself to a few sample lipsticks and pots of foundation cream. She found new earrings to dangle and show off her style. When strangers in the café asked who did her hair she gained solace in advertising Sylvio’s skills. The thought of letting someone else be his model was unthinkable. The dates of their sessions were ringed on her calendar with crosses like kisses. The very thought of those meetings set her heart thudding with anticipation. She tried not to think of them as assignations but why did Romeo and Juliet keep coming into her head?

There was no time to think about Sylvio’s hands
on her neck, his burning eyes and the stirrings so deep in her groin when she thought of kissing him. It was mortal sin, it was madness, but these wicked thoughts warmed her cold bed better than any hot-water bottle. I must be strong, she thought, knitting in the waiting room. Just one more row, she thought.

‘Wake up, Maria,’ whispered Ana as she picked up the knitting off the floor. She was here to collect Joy from the rehearsal. ‘You were far away.’

‘Eh?’ She jumped up. ‘I fall asleep over my knitting. I am getting old,’ she sighed, gathering the wool into her shopping bag.

‘You are too much on your feet. When you sit you sleep,’ Ana replied as the girls came spilling out of the studio, closely followed by their teacher, who beckoned the two of them into the studio, away from the other mothers.

‘I have decided to make Rosaria one of my Babes in the Wood. She’ll need a long dress,’ she smiled, pushing paper sketches into their hands. ‘They all do their mime well and are reliable. I don’t think they will freeze in the spotlight. We will do extra rehearsal for them,’ she added, and as they went back into the waiting room there was a
frisson
of jealousy as the little dancers were wrapped up against the winter cold.

It is a sign if I am good then my child will do well, Maria smiled. This is my reward. Rosa’s talent was already showing and she would have the brightest, prettiest dress she could find.

Ana beamed with pride. ‘I knew Rosa was a good
dancer,’ she said, and then, looking at Joy, they both paused. ‘What will I tell Su? She will have to help make clothes.’

‘You could ask Lily to help you. Poor Joy, she will be disappointed.’

Joy skipped ahead down the stairs, unawares until she stopped on the bottom step, turned round and gave them all a beckoning call with her hand, very exaggerated but the meaning was clear.

‘Look at me, this is how you do it. Miss Lip-rot says I am number one robin. I go first and when you lie down I cover you with leaves, very slowly, and then I bring in all the baby robins. Miss Lip-rot says I’m a star. I have note for my mummy.’ She looked at them, producing a piece of paper from her pocket.

‘Is this true?’ said Maria to Rosa, who was jumping down the steps as fast as she could.

‘Yes. Joy is first robin because she’s fat and robins have round tummies,’ said Rosa with a sneer.

‘Shush. That is not kind,’ Maria said, trying not to smile at the truth of her words.

Ana looked at her with raised eyebrows.

Later that week Maria sat with Marco in the wings of the theatre, watching the dress rehearsal as the lights flashed around the stage and her child tiptoed through the make-believe forest in a flurry of bright pink satin edged with cream lace. It was Rosa’s Cousin Angelika’s first communion dress, cut down, dyed and trimmed with lace stained in tea. Rosa looked a little angel. It had taken all of Marco’s strength to climb the stairs
to watch the rehearsals. They held hands as tears rolled down their cheeks, tears of pride. Rosa was so young and yet so confident on stage. They saw no other child but her.

‘One day she will be a star,’ Marco whispered. ‘Santini girls can be as good as boys, you’ll see. I’ll give Rosaria what she needs: sequins, bouquets and encores. Then everyone will be proud, yes?’ he said, smiling.

Maria nodded and kissed his cheek. ‘You are so right,’ she replied, knowing it would take all of her hard work to make this dream come true.

If Levi patted her bottom one more time she would whack him like Auntie Betty used to beat the
mali
from the veranda. Ana had warned about his wandering hands but Su was never quick enough to swerve away.

‘Oops,’ he mocked. ‘You are such a tiny lass but in proportion. No wonder our Freddie took a fancy to you.’ His eyes were sludgy grey, nothing like Mister Stan’s blue sapphires.

How silly and naïve she felt, so gullible like some stupid loose woman. Why did she stay on in this cold country and take these insults? She realised now that Stan had never intended them to marry. He was like all the other
thakin
who kept their mistresses happy with false promises, lengths of silk, but now it was as if he had never existed and in his place was this fool.

I am the daughter of a British man with a proper English name, she thought. No one can take my passport from me, but still she was treated as some foreigner.
Customers gaped at her but she would never give them the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.

She liked the stall and the bustle of the market, the smell of the potions and herbs, and the foreign-sounding names on the boxes of herbs reminded her a little of the great markets of Burma with spices all the colours of the rainbow. In a town of soot and engine oil, fish-and-chip fat and fog, their stall smelled of sunshine and faraway places.

She had a good eye and ear, and was quick to improve her knowledge; what to give to whom and how much and when to ask for help. Levi knew his herbs from his roots and spices, but he was cheating Daw Esme and that worried Su.

There was a box of dried leaves on the top of the store cupboard that they were not allowed to bring down for dusting or to serve. It was a box regularly emptied and refilled but no accounts of its sales were ever kept in the books. Levi insisted that he alone must dispense this remedy and she wondered what sort of powerful medicine it was. They were allowed to portion it out into tiny packets so it must be very efficacious.

‘What’s this for?’ she had asked Lily one Saturday.

‘It must be one of Winstanley’s cure-alls, a secret recipe handed down from father to son, I expect.’ Lily sniffed at it, turning up her nose at the smell. ‘Something soothing and cooling, I expect, or something to loosen the joints. We get a lot of call for rheumatics round here…’ she added.

‘It may be a special potion for floppy dicks,’ Su
whispered. ‘That is why only a man serves it. Business is good for it.’

‘Susan!’ Lily was blushing and giggling. ‘It’s the cold that’s bringing in customers.’

‘So why doesn’t the sale go down in the book?’ She was curious how much Lily knew.

‘Levi has his own system with special customers and his regulars, and is very particular about serving them. You’ll soon recognise them,’ Lily smiled, and turned back to her packaging.

His regulars were a strange bunch, not the sort of customers who usually came to the herbal store: smart ladies in large brimmed hats, wanting remedies for headaches, constipation, skin complaints and neuralgia, ‘old biddies’, as Levi called them, with swollen ankles and bunions, who needed tonics and remedies for flatulence and bladder control. Then there came vegetarians, who bought special tins of nut cutlets and vitamin drops, and old men in mufflers wanting tonics for chests and aching joints.

Levi’s specials were younger men in long mackintoshes and no hats, sometimes wearing berets and bicycle clips, ex-soldiers with war wounds and scars, the coloured man who played drums in Toni Santini’s billiard hall and American bar off Mealhouse Lane. There were toughies with cold fish eyes, who undressed her with their stares.

They came only when Levi was on shift. Money was exchanged and packets were handed over and not a penny of it went in the till. Her curiosity was aroused until one day she asked him outright, ‘What is this stuff?’

‘A special tobacco to ease the joints,’ he answered, not looking at her for once when he spoke.

‘Shouldn’t it go in the book?’ she continued, trying to catch his eye.

‘No need for you to bother your pretty little head with any of this. I’ll deal with it in my own way. I like to deal with these customers direct. It is strictly my business so no more questions,’ he said, dismissing her curiosity.

One afternoon when Levi was out at one of his endless meetings and she was alone on the stall, she found the wooden steps that folded into a chair and climbed up to examine the shoebox more closely. She sniffed the herbs, inhaled and shut her eyes. There was something in the distinctive odour that took her back to that troopship journey to England, to the back streets and music clubs of Rangoon where men chewed roots and grinned, the sort of dens of iniquity that the headmistress of her school warned her girls never to go near but all had risked a peek in, nevertheless.

It didn’t look like tobacco but it was dried and crushed, hidden up there for a reason. Perhaps it was a potent concoction, as Enid had said, highly prized and efficacious, subject to strict rationing. It was not fair that Levi gave it only to his men friends, so she pulled out two packets and stuffed them in her overcoat.

Maria’s mother-in-law had a terrible backache. Why should she not have some relief from
her
pain? How could he be so mean as to ration it only to men?

If Daw Esme only knew about his cheating heart it
would ‘upset the applecart’, as she often said. Daw Esme was a fair woman, distant, strict. A mother deserved more respect from her son but as the proverb said: bone in chicken, relatives in man, that one can’t avoid.

There were so many secrets in the household. Division House, it should be called, not Waverley. How the two lodgers and their daughters were closer relatives than everyone thought, how Lily’s wedding day never came, how she, Susan, had kept her own store of pure gold bangles hidden from prying eyes to buy extra treats for Joy, how they must always lock the bathroom door from Levi’s Tom peeping. Nothing was as it seemed but as the proverb said: ‘You can stop speaking to someone but you can never stop being related to them.’

Ana was training to be a real nurse, thanks to kind Diana and Eva. Maria spent more time now in Lavaroni’s with Queenie, but the gang always met up at dancing class to watch their girls blossoming into star turns. Joy was a little slower than the others but Su was teaching her to dance Burmese style and one day Miss Liptrot would give her a solo spot in the big display. She would have to wear the full
pwe
costume and that would cost money.

If Auntie Betty, God protect her eternal soul, could see her standing like some common servant here, she would be shocked. But it would do for now until that great day when Joy Liat would make them all proud. She must be educated to marry well and then she would repay her mother for all her sacrifices by producing many grandchildren in the big house with many chimneys. That was what was keeping Susan smiling.

Everything she was doing was for Joy. Only the best school, the best clothes, the best chance for her to shine would justify all her sacrifices.

She did not trust the Winstanleys to help her achieve this goal. Only foreign mothers shared the same dream. Su, Ana and Maria would make a good team if they stuck together.

She smiled to herself, thinking of all the ammunition she had about Levi’s devious scams: the false accounting, private prescriptions and the obnoxious attempts he made to seduce her. If only he knew how repulsive he was to her, a mere shadow of his brother’s handsome features.

Levi was a big bellied man with a flabby mouth. How had Ivy ever managed to kiss such a horror. He reminded her of one of the gargoyles grinning from the roof of the ancient parish church, lewd-eyed, bold and grotesque. Yet there was something compulsive in looking on such a sight, if only to mock it. This made all his fumblings bearable.

His weaknesses made her feel strong and strangely superior. I am smart biscuit lady, she thought. I will watch you and bide my time.

One day he would go over the top and she would be waiting then to show him up for what he was. She had the family name to think of, she had the ear of his mother and the Olive Oil Club to back her up. He would get what was coming to him in spadefuls for all he had dumped on to her in the past.

When Lily came to collect Joy for her dancing class, Susan slipped the packets in her pocket for Maria.

‘Tell her to give this to Nonna Valentina for her bad back. It is a very special herb to give good relief. She must brew in tea or put it in a pipe and smoke it, I think. Let me know how it works. There is more where that came from,’ she laughed.