The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store by Jo Riccioni Read Free Book Online Page B

clenched it around an imaginary handlebar, whistling through his teeth.
    â€˜And you’re the whistler,’ Connie said. She started to dust off the scale, before feeling like Mrs Cleat and stopping herself.
    â€˜Oh good, you’ve met already,’ Mr Gilbert said matter-of-factly, and he clapped the boy on the back, grinning. ‘Splendid.’
    The Italian tilted his head to the side. ‘Victor Onorati,’ he said. ‘My name is Vic.’
    â€˜Oh, that’s right. No Italian. He wants no Italian. Everyting Inglish , Inglish ,’ Mr Gilbert mimicked. His hand lingered on the boy’s shoulder as they laughed, and their complicity caused a pang in Connie’s stomach, like hunger, but for what she did not know.
    â€˜Vittorio here has come bearing gifts. We thought you might like to share them with us. Come for tea at the schoolhouse?’
    â€˜Me?’ she said, and felt immediately stupid for it.
    â€˜Why not you? Vittorio keeps saying he deserves someone prettier than me to practise his English on, isn’t that right, Vic ?’ The boy seemed unashamed at the comment, whether it was true or not. ‘Come on, Connie. It will do you good,’ Mr Gilbert said.
    She sensed her neck and cheeks becoming hot. It wasn’t just the compliment or the unexpected invitation. It was the Italian’s composure, as if he already knew the outcome of this meeting and was interested simply in the manner in which it would unfold. She thought of the few village boys his age who came into the shop, often in pairs, their chummy bravado as they made a show of ignoring her while browsing the shelves, before buying what they always bought: five Woodbines or a tube of shaving soap. It felt seductive to be looked at so directly, to be examined quite patently as something desirable and worthy of attention. Before she had even thought through what would happen if she got home late without telling Aunty Bea, she found herself nodding.
    â€˜Excellent, then,’ Mr Gilbert said, and began to collect the bags from the counter, thrusting them one after the other into his student’s chest. ‘Come along, Vittorio. If you seriously intend to become a Vic you’re going to have to stop all that staring. It won’t do around here, old boy — making the girls blush to their bobby pins.’ He squeezed Vittorio behind the neck and she watched them leaving, waiting for Mr Gilbert to lift his hat at her through the bay window. But he passed distractedly, steering the boy by his shoulder, and Connie noticed an ease, a physical affability that she had never seen between two men walking on the streets of Leyton until then. A liveliness had settled in Mr Gilbert’s manner, a brightness in his face that had not been there before, and for the first time she could see the man he might have been fifteen or twenty years ago, the man he might have been at her own age. She found herself curious about this change the Italian boy had effected in him, but she now understood the rankling in her stomach was not jealousy. It was apprehension. Staring through the bull’s-eye pane in the shop window, she sensed something shift, some tiny fracture — as if she was at the centre of a kaleidoscope, and everything about her was on the cusp of something new.
    Even without the invitation to tea at the schoolhouse, the hour between Mrs Cleat’s return and closing time on a Tuesday was always the longest of the week for Connie. Mrs Cleat atoned for her sin of leaving the shop by having Connie perform penance on her behalf. This took the form of camphor-sprinkling, chalkboard-blacking, potato-sorting, and any other creative shop maintenance Mrs Cleat could devise to keep Connie busy, while giving her a blow-by-blow account of the battle for high art fought over teacups in the church hall.
    When Mrs Cleat finally released her, wearing half the dirt of that morning’s potato