Man with a Seagull on His Head Page 10

  All five paintings were in the same style, made up of lots of tiny little dashes so it looked as though the scenes were quivering, alive. Positano was by far her favourite though, pictured in the evening sun with a peachy sheen across the water. The colourful little houses were stacked up on the cliff, huddled around the crescent cove where fishing boats were hauled up on the sand. Out in the water larger pleasure boats were moored up for the evening, the first few lights shining through the portholes, and on the shore their passengers dined at the restaurants lining the beach. The place was full of people. Not like the people of Stilo but tall, elegant people enjoying themselves. Jennifer could never decide which she’d most like to be: strolling barefoot on the beach, waltzing to the accordion, or standing alone above the town staring out at the sunset.

  They had a notice board in the restaurant crammed full of postcards from customers who’d made it; greetings from Amalfi, Positano, Ravello, Sorrento: It’s even more magical in real life! Bellissimo! Sipping Campari and watching the sunset! Tomorrow we catch the boat to Amalfi. Ciao!

  Paolo knew La Mamma was going to be a hit with the customers and he couldn’t wait to get her in the kitchen. “She not happy unless she busy,” he said, “and I got plenty to keep her busy. She gonna love it—her grandchildren all fussing around her, her daughters-in-law to boss about, her sons driving her around like she the Queen. She should come here years ago!”

  Jennifer and Vito stood at the top of their steps. The sun was high and made a mirror of the car window so that La Mamma, sitting inside, was hidden behind a reflected huddle of hydrangeas. Jennifer had to dip and squint to make out the dark, stern shape of her mother-in-law’s profile. She sat immobile, staring straight ahead out of the windscreen, clutching a small duffle bag to her chest as though it were in danger of being snatched. Paolo slammed out of the other side of the car and Giulietta emerged from the back seat. At the same time, Vito set off down the steps so that the three of them arrived together at the passenger door. Paolo opened it, and out poured a sharp torrent of words, like machine gun fire, into the soft English air. The brothers ducked, as though for cover, reaching inside the car and grabbing an elbow each. As soon as La Mamma had been hauled to her feet she turned suddenly and stonily silent.

  Jennifer was always shocked by just how small the woman was. Small and compacted like a little lump of volcanic rock. She wore her widow’s uniform: a black, long-sleeved, sack-like dress, paled by the sun upon the shoulders as if a coating of dust had settled in the five years since her husband’s death. Her steely grey hair was cut short into a prisoner’s crop. She’d always had it long, curled into a bun on the back of her head, but Giulietta insisted she lose it for Jennifer’s sake, seeing as she’d be the one having to wash it every week. Her face felt the lack of it, seemed ungainly, fearful, like a baby seagull. She stared up at Jennifer and silent gummy tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. Stranded at the top of the steps, Jennifer felt herself on display, as though she were the thing that had been finally reached at the end of the long journey. How very disappointing. She quickly descended the six steps to join the others, bending to kiss La Mamma’s damp cheeks. The old woman slipped her arms out of the grip of her two sons and held Jennifer’s head in her cold, strong fingers, shaking it slightly and letting out a low moan.

  “Mamma!” Vito said sharply, prising his mother’s hands off Jennifer’s face so that she was free to stand upright again.

  “She just so pleased to see you, Jenny,” said Paolo. “Look at her! She crying—all of us here together! She just a bit overwhelmed, aren’t you Mamma?”

  Once they’d manoeuvred her inside, Giulietta showed her to her room, pointing out the little efforts Jennifer had made to make the place feel like home: the flowers, the crochet cloths, the rosewood crucifix above the bed. La Mamma wasn’t interested though. She was slow and dazed like a doped elephant newly taken into captivity. Watching her from the door Jennifer pictured her alone in the house on Monday when she and Vito would be at work, shuffling slowly though the empty rooms, spreading her confusion and her misery.

  “She speak crazy now,” said Giulietta, when La Mamma started to mutter. “It make no more sense to me than it does to you. This rug is no good here.” She pointed with her foot at the small rag rug Jennifer had made long ago and at last found a place for. “It’s pretty but it’s no good, she gonna trip, she gonna break her neck on that.”

  The following Sunday there was a gathering at the Gambardellis’ to celebrate La Mamma’s arrival: friends of southern Italian stock who’d been scattered around this southeastern fringe of England like dice flung from the same cup. Over the years they’d found jobs and wives for each other, attended each other’s weddings, been godparents to each other’s children, and now, bound by all these bloodless ties, had earned a right to be present at every significant event in each other’s lives. They were people Jennifer knew from weddings and baptisms but she was not one of them: she and Vito had married late, quietly, and had no children. It was only through Paolo and Giulietta that they clung on, and now La Mamma, who’d given them a reason to play hosts for the first time.

  Together, the group was immediately at ease and at home in their house. The adults gathered in the kitchen around the long table Vito had formed from two of Jennifer’s dress-cutting trestles, while the children—now sullen, beautiful teenagers—slumped silently in front of the television in the other room. The table was itself divided: the men talking prosciutto and property prices at one end while the women discussed Southend’s new shopping centre at the other.

  “It’s much bigger than the one in Basildon,” said Rosa Scura.

  “I like the lifts best,” said Irene Rossetti.

  Giulietta, topping and tailing green beans with Jennifer across the other side of the kitchen, twisted her head round to join in the conversation:

  “You shoulda seen Nonna’s face when we take her up in one last week,” she said. “Anyone would think we was off to the moon!” She contorted her face into a cartoon look of terror and the women at the table threw their heads back in laughter. “When we get to the top I press the button and send us straight back down,” said Giulietta, hunching her shoulders and giggling impishly. “Couldn’t resist, it was so funny!”

  Giulietta had loved The Royals, as the shopping centre had been named: the high glass dome; the pink and green floor tiles; the shiny new shop fronts; the silver escalators smoothly connecting the galleried tiers; the much-talked-about food court where little round tables were bolted to the ground beneath green plastic palm trees. Jennifer had found it hard to summon the same enthusiasm. Wandering among the excited shoppers she’d felt a little sad: this would surely mean the end for Keddies.

  “Did you go to the food court, Ma?” said Paola, Giulietta’s eldest, who, married now and with a baby, had earned a place among the adults.

  “Ah! How beautiful! It’s like being on holiday,” said Giulietta, who had never been on holiday in her life.

  Jennifer felt a sharp rap on the back of her calves and jumped out of the way. It was La Mamma with her stick, who proceeded to flick a green bean dismissively with her finger. Giulietta sighed, put down her knife, and took her firmly by the shoulders. She wouldn’t have La Mamma interfering with the cooking. She led her back to the little round stool at the end of the table and pushed her down onto it, telling Paolo to keep her there this time.

  “Mamma!” Paolo said grandly, putting an arm round his mother’s shoulder and gesturing with the other in a wide sweep around the table. “Look at all your friends come to see you!”

  Giulietta had been there all morning helping Jennifer lay on the usual spread. There was lasagne and meatballs, parmigiana and pizza, sausages, green beans, and salad. The young ones sloped in intermittently to top up their plates to take back in front of the television, while the rest did their best to squeeze in around the table, a constant rearranging of bottles
and elbows and half-eaten dishes of food. Jennifer and Giulietta cleared and served, cleared and served, keeping the food coming until eventually they were able to sit down with a slice of cold pizza while the others tucked into their tiramisu.

  Exhausted, Jennifer sank into the ebb and flow of after-eating conversation. Her blood and nerves, shaken up from the day’s relentless preparations, fizzed in reaction to the atmosphere of sated repose around the dinner table. Her guests sat back in their chairs, offering the warm roundness of their bellies by way of thank you, for she knew by now not to expect any verbal show of gratitude. “What is this ‘thank you’ all the time?” Vito would say to her. “Don’t you ever thank me, Jenny.”

  Now came coffee, which Vito saw to promptly and proudly—it surprised Jennifer, and made her feel a little guilty too, to see how much he was enjoying tending and talking to these people. He selected the largest of their coffee pots, untwisted the bottom from the top, measured out the water, and then the ground coffee into the correct compartments. Jennifer rose to her feet to fetch their set of pink, gold-rimmed espresso cups from the dresser, a wedding present from Italy. Although their wedding had been a low-key affair, there had been many such gifts: glasses and china, trays, pictures and table linen. Jennifer found them odd and gaudy and cheaply made, but there was space enough in the house to hide them away and slowly they had insinuated themselves into her life so that she no longer questioned their presence: they were simply her things.

  The little cups drew admiration as she placed them on the table. Rosa lifted one by the handle and held it up, tilting it to catch the slight iridescence in the pink glaze.

  “These are beautiful, Jenny. Look at that, Luisa, see that shimmer?”

  These people loved anything small and pretty: coffee cups and serviettes, buttons and bomboniere. With her years in haberdashery, Jennifer knew the comfort of little things too. Over her time there she’d discovered a kind of solace among the tiny pearlised buttons in plastic tubes and the hanging rows of embroidery thread shifting smoothly through the spectrum of colours. In her contented moments she felt as if she were in a museum: cataloguing, displaying, taking care, for reasons more important than mere customers or visitors, who were incidental to some higher and more abstract respect for history or, in this case, haberdashery.

  She’d certainly rather be at this end of the table than at the other with La Mamma, who was perched on the outskirts of the men’s card game, the tears once more travelling silently down her cheeks.

  “What do you think about making a wedding dress, Jenny?” said Luisa Fieri. “You did know Mariangela’s engaged?”

  Jennifer shifted her chair into a position more congenial to joining in the talk. “Well, I’ve done plenty of evening gowns and a wedding gown’s much the same, there’s just a little more of it.”

  “Can you do a puff sleeve? Mariangela’s got her heart set on a puff sleeve, but the prices of the things we’ve seen so far!”

  “Puff sleeves aren’t a problem. You send your Mariangela in for a chat.”

  Luisa folded her arms and smiled. “I will, Jenny, I will. I was thinking, you know that little summer skirt suit you made for me last year? How do you feel about swapping the buttons on the jacket? Mother of pearl maybe. I do think the right buttons make all the difference, don’t you?”

  This crowd were good and loyal customers of Jennifer’s. Even the ones who lived up around Chelmsford and Colchester went out of their way to shop at Enid Scott’s rather than the local Marks and Spencer. “Why don’t you and Mariangela come in together? We’ll get out the pearly buttons and the bridal pattern books and get it all sorted out in one go.”

  Rosa leaned across the table towards Jennifer. “Bet you can’t wait to sort her out,” she whispered, gesturing with her head towards La Mamma. “Get her out of those rags, get some colour on her. Personally I think it’ll do her the world of good. How can she start afresh if she’s expected to be in mourning for the rest of her life? It’s not natural. And it’s not necessary over here either. People start thinking she’s dirty, wearing the same thing every day.”

  “Poor Nonna,” sighed Paola. And then, turning to Jennifer, “You want a cuddle, Zia?”

  The little bundle was halfway across the table before Jennifer could protest. She preferred to leave babies alone when they were this young. They were not her territory, alien little creatures without control of their limbs, occupying a strange noman’s land between the womb and the world. But she took the child—little Francesca—onto her lap, awkwardly cradling her head in the palm of her hand.

  “Look at those dear little fingernails!” said Irene, raising one of the baby’s tiny fingers. “Why can’t they stay this way forever?”

  “Soon be bringing boys home, causing trouble,” said Giulietta, standing behind Jennifer’s chair.

  Her sister-in-law had only just finished making babies herself. She’d managed a seamless transition from children to grandchildren, her own youngest, Daniella, only five years older than this little one, whose arrival had continued the constant trickle that was likely to carry on uninterrupted for at least the next twenty-five years, by which time Francesca would no doubt be popping them out herself.

  Out they came, these little ones, each of a little less value than the last, their newness dulled by the destiny presented by a string of older cousins and siblings with their mediocre college passes and changing parade of boyfriends and girlfriends. And yet, feeling the warm weightless body in her arms, peering into those strange inward-gazing eyes, Jennifer found herself believing that this one might really be different.

  Still, when the doorbell rang Jennifer was glad of an excuse to pass the baby back to Paola. She left the kitchen and walked through to the hall, opening the door to a rush of cold air that made her aware of the accumulated heat in her cheeks as it dissipated into the night.

  There was a girl on the doorstep. She stood stiffly with her hands pushed deep into the pockets of a thin red raincoat belted tight around her waist. Her cheeks were rosy with the cold, her face round and plump in a wholesome kind of way, her hair scooped into a pert little ponytail. Jennifer felt she’d seen her before but couldn’t place her. She guessed she was a friend of one of Paolo and Giulietta’s lot come to rescue them and take them away to a more exciting Sunday evening.

  “Hello!” she said in a smart, sprightly voice. Maybe she wasn’t from round here after all. “I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday evening, but I’m looking for a woman called Jennifer Mulholland.”

  Jennifer was silent, following the small puffs of breath her visitor’s words released into the night air.

  She laughed a little. “There’s no need to look so worried. My name’s Lucy Clarkson. I’m from the Sunday Times newspaper. I understand a Jennifer Mulholland lives here. Is that you?”

  Of course: the little headshot in the newspaper. That’s where Jennifer had seen her before. And here she was, a real person, standing on her doorstep.

  So she had come for her. Jennifer’s initial feeling was of anger. She hadn’t foreseen this and she felt intruded upon: how dare she turn up unannounced, interrupting her Sunday evening, asking for a response when all Jennifer felt like doing was curling up in a darkened room. She felt suddenly exhausted. Exhausted but nervy, jazzed up from strong coffee. Worn out from the shopping, the cooking, the making of beds, and all the other small unsuccessful efforts she’d made this past week to ingratiate herself with her mother-in-law. It was simply too much effort to bring herself back to that spacious place she’d felt open up above her head, to call before her that other face—her portrait—which had followed her home like a warm shadow and given her an intimation of a different life. Today was not the day for finding it, or even believing in it. From where she stood in the doorway of her little terrace house it all seemed like some shameful private fantasy that had somehow been found out.

  “My name’s
Mrs. Gambardelli,” she said, but she wanted immediately to retract it, throw it off, for it felt like a trap around her ankles.

  The girl narrowed her gaze. “Are you sure?”

  Jennifer felt flustered now, and mocked. “I should think I know my own name, dear, yes. Now I come to think of it there used to be a Mulholland at this address. I think we used to get letters for a Mulholland, but a long time ago, we haven’t had anything for a long time now.”

  “I see,” said Lucy Clarkson. But she continued to stand there and in the silence that followed she kept her eyes on Jennifer, who saw the beginnings of a dimple in her right cheek, and in it the suggestion of a smile. Maybe it was this knowingness, this hint of playfulness, that changed Jennifer’s mood. She felt suddenly a little bolder, powerful almost, and couldn’t resist:

  “What does the Sunday Times want with this Mulholland woman anyway? I didn’t know she was anything special.”

  On the train later, when the two of them were speeding towards London in the brightly lit carriage, Lucy had boasted she’d known all along it was her.

  The smile appeared fully now, the dimples deep little creases in each cheek. “Well, yes, she is kind of special.”

  “It’s all very mysterious I’m sure.”

  And now she laughed a little again, leaning in towards the open door. “Have you heard of an artist called Ray Eccles?”

  There, she’d said his name. In her well-spoken voice it was a small glinting thing, sitting between them like a diamond in a glass case. Jennifer felt instantly wary again, on her guard.

  “I can’t say I have but I’m not a follower of art, as I’m sure you can tell.” She could hear the baby’s disjointed cries from the hot house behind, the cacophony of the television in the front room, the low murmur of voices in the kitchen. But they sounded distant to her, as if she’d already left them far behind.