The Italian Romance by Joanne Carroll Read Free Book Online

glass of water, darling. It’s so hot. Phew.’ Viv enjoyed illustrating her point. She put her handbag on the table, pulled a white handkerchief from her sleeve and wagged it in front of her face, and said again, ‘Phew. Oh, darling, look at all the flies. Why don’t you shut the door properly?’
    The girl continued to fuss at her hair. She was aware of her mother immobilised in the middle of the floor, white straw hat on her head, her other hand, palm up, poised in the most delicate way across her abdomen. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her.
    Viv said, ‘Where’s a glass?’
    â€˜Oh, sorry. I’ll get it,’ she said and opened the dresser. She was secretly thrilled to see the neat line-up of cups, glasses, plates and bowls, only too recently achieved. Thrilled not for and in themselves, but because her mother would barely notice, so natural an event it was to open a cupboard door on to such a scene. She poured crystal clear water from a blue jug she kept in the ice-box.
    â€˜Thank you, darling,’ Viv said. She drank thirstily, and self-consciously as she always did. She flapped the opening of her jacket, a gesture vain in its efforts to cool down her over-heated little body.
    â€˜Why don’t you take your coat off?’ Lilian said.
    Viv tipped the glass and drained the water. ‘I will, love,’ she said. ‘After. I want to look nice for Mae and Vince. Oh, darling, where are your shoes? Don’t walk around like that. What will they think of you?’
    â€˜I couldn’t care less what they think of me.’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous,’ Viv said. She put the glass on the table. She walked towards the bedroom.
    The girl’s heart sank. ‘Oh, Mum, don’t,’ she said, but Viv had already opened the door.
    â€˜Oh, my God,’ Viv said.
    â€˜Oh, Mum,’ the girl said again.
    â€˜Would you look at this? When did you last wash those sheets? Oh, look! Your clothes are all over the floor. Bernie won’t put up with this forever, sweetheart. Do you even know where your shoes are?’
    â€˜Yes, I do,’ the girl said, upset. Viv had a certain way with her. The girl stomped past her into the bedroom, ripped the sheets from where they’d been mangled at the foot of the bed and dropped them to the floor. She trod on them as she went around to the other side and looked down expectantly at the bare boards. Her shoes were not there. She glanced quickly at the doorway – her mother had disappeared – then got down on her hands and knees to feel around under the bed.
    â€˜Where’s there a hankie?’ she said, distracted, as she walked back in to the kitchen. The shoes bit at her heels. She began to pull underwear from the washing basket she’d left on the couch, and found a lace-edged handkerchief. She folded it over, and over again.
    â€˜Give that to me and let me iron it,’ her mother said.
    The girl held it against her abdomen and smoothed it with her hand. ‘There. Ironed,’ she said.
    Bernie straddled the wing of the sofa. He rested his arm lightly behind his young wife’s shoulders. She could smell the sweat ofhis morning’s work and sense the heat off him. She leaned back, unobtrusively. His moist skin sucked against hers. She felt the bulge of muscle where his shirt-sleeve was rolled up above his elbow.
    The green-baize card table had been brought out from the pantry, unfolded, covered with a linen cloth. Mae had embroidered the cloth herself when she was expecting her second son, Frankie. Two dinner plates, that had been loaded with sandwiches, were nearly empty. No one was impolite enough to polish off the last lonely looking egg-and-lettuce-filled triangle. And on the lamington plate were scattered only cake crumbs and thumbprints of chocolate and coconut gratings which resembled, off-puttingly, an exhausted tribe of white ants.
    The girl’s father sat upright