The Last Pier Page 5

  ‘Mama –’ began Franca.

  Anna held up her hand.

  ‘Now listen to me, all of you. The Maudsleys are going to have a big tennis party at the end of this harvest. The charity dance will take place as usual afterwards and we, of course will all be there for that. But the tennis party is just for a few close friends because of the selling of the land. So,’ she paused, ‘because Agnes does everything on her own, as usual, I thought it would be a good idea if you boys could help with getting the court ready for the match? Franca too?’

  Beppe guffawed.

  ‘Of course, Franca too! If Joe is there, certainly.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Everyone laughed good-naturedly. Carlo winked at his sister but she only scowled back.

  Straightening up, holding a stainless steel basin of ice cream, Lucio glanced briefly at his sister-in-law.

  ‘I can help too,’ he said, his face no longer severe.

  The Molinellos had moved to England in 1920. Their story was that of so many Italian families. Mario and Lucio were the sons of a poor farmer living in a village called Bratto deep in a lovely chestnut valley of northern Tuscany. Beautiful waterfalls, poor soil, harsh winters, landslides and storms. Not a bit like Suffolk. Not flat and delicate and full of fragile seabirds beside the North Sea.

  Long ago their mother, sensing her elder son’s restlessness, knew he would leave. The little hamlet surrounded by its peaceful green hills would never be enough for Mario. Life for him existed elsewhere. The town of Pontremoli, which to everyone else was a metropolis, with its grand old cinema and its town square, was too small, too provincial for Mario. Not knowing what to do, his mother went to ask the priest for advice. After that she killed their only calf. Then she visited her neighbour to enquire about their daughter, Anna Varoli. Anna was exactly the sort of girl her son needed.

  It had been a September wedding with grapes ripening on the vine and an accordion duo playing Santa Lucia. Even though he disapproved of his elder brother’s frivolous ways, the more serious-minded and recently married Lucio was persuaded to be best man.

  Outside the church, through the old stone archway overflowing with tubs of geraniums, the land appeared green and beautiful. The mountains of Lunigiana touched by a slant of Mediterranean light were at their best and for a brief moment winter was impossible to imagine.

  That evening the groom and his bride had danced under a moon that shone full and low in the sky. Shooting stars rained down their blessings while all across the valley came the sweet haunting echoes of owls, calling to one another.

  It was a night of wonder and promise. The sort to be taken out and remembered during the years of migration ahead. For, as he danced cheek-to-cheek with his new wife, Mario Molinello was already making plans. Overnight he had become a man of means. His wife’s family owned a mill for making chestnut flour. Anna was their only child, her dowry had been large, and while nothing would alter the beauty of the mountains, Mario knew, if they were ever to make a success of their lives, they would have to leave.

  ‘England is the place for us,’ he said.

  ‘And children?’

  ‘We can have dozens!’ Mario boasted joyously. ‘Let’s start tonight!’

  With growing shrewdness, Anna saw her new husband was a dreamer. It would be her job to make those dreams come true.

  In England, she began first to produce children at a daring rate and then to raise them with a fierce love that astonished the people who became her friends. One day, Anna informed her husband, their large boisterous family would grow up and become capable of many things. Capable of helping in the family business, capable of conversing in two languages, capable of straddling two worlds as they themselves never could. Mario was a little taken aback by Anna’s determination but in less than three years she had found a place to settle.

  ‘Italy has arrived in Suffolk,’ she announced, smiling and nodding at the neighbours while conversing with her husband in Italian. ‘This is where we will open our ice-cream parlour!’

  Mario hesitated. Somehow, without his realising it, his wife had become the custodian of their joint plans. He had wanted a vegetable shop, selling fresh produce.

  ‘Ice cream?’ he asked. ‘The ice cream here is disgusting, full of disease.’

  ‘Not English ice cream,’ his wife shrieked. ‘Are you insane?’

  Then reining in her voice because they were walking outside with the bambini, she whispered, ‘gelato Italiano, caro!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Certo! The English will love it. And there will be no diseases.’

  Mario knew when he was beaten.

  In the beginning the people in the town of Bly were wary of these strangers who breathed garlic as dragons breathed fire. But Anna, amused by her husband’s cautiousness, was undeterred.

  She set to work and found some premises. Then, two weeks before their third son Beppe was born, she bought a stainless steel counter (the first ever seen in England) and a huge refrigerator from London.

  And with that, Molinello’s Hokey-Pokey Ice-Cream Parlour was launched on Bly.

  Mario was delighted. Observing his wife juggle the baby and their two older children he realised he had totally misjudged the little peasant girl whom he had first met, wearing clogs, and making testaroli over a charcoal fire.

  The neighbourhood watched with interest, too. Suffolk, grey-green and beautiful, that most secretive of counties, stamped with ancient loyalty to the Crown, was notoriously difficult for newcomers to penetrate. But the sign-writer, taking a liking to this eccentric family, offered to write ‘Molinello and Son’ over the door.

  ‘We haven’t finished working on the family,’ Anna told him firmly.

  ‘My wife wants a dozen kids,’ joked Mario.

  The sign-writer offered to add the ‘s’ but Anna was superstitious.

  ‘Thank you, but we’re calling it the Hokey-Pokey Parlour for now,’ was all she said.

  Then, a few days after the shop was fitted out, on Assumption night, Anna had a dream. In her dream the Virgin handed her a lily.

  ‘You will have four sons,’ the Virgin said. ‘And a daughter.’

  The children would be healthy and full of energy. The Molinello business would thrive and the family would become well-respected members of the Italian community. The Virgin spoke softly, smiling at the sleeping woman.

  ‘You will grow to love this country,’ she predicted. ‘It will be as your own.’

  ‘And my husband?’ Anna mumbled.

  ‘Yes, he too. Everyone who meets him will love him.’

  Anna nodded, eyes closed.

  ‘You will be prosperous,’ the Virgin said. ‘All your children will be Suffolk born and bred.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You will want for nothing.’

  ‘But…?’

  The apparition shook her head placing a finger on Anna’s lips.

  ‘Be happy in your time of plenty. Many do not have as much.’

  ‘Well?’ Mario asked his wife when he heard of the dream the next morning. ‘Why don’t you sound happy, then?’

  Anna didn’t know. She could not understand why it was, when she woke with the scent of lilies pressed against her skin, she had felt so unutterably desolate.

  The Virgin had asked one thing, only. The Molinellos must build a shrine facing the sea. Then, telling Anna to prepare herself for her new life, the apparition had faded away, leaving behind a sense of warning in the air, a sadness that did not shift for some time. It lay like wet sand, heavy against Anna’s heart. As an untouchable, unreachable feeling of loss. In a country that had not been Catholic for so many centuries there was no one except Mario to tell.

  They built the shrine in time for Assumption Day of the following year and a statue of the Lady Of The Sea arrived from Bratto. Anna collected scallop shells on Bly’s white beach and with her two-year-old son Beppe began a lifelong hobby of decorating her sea-temple.

  In later years
this night-blue grotto would become something of a local attraction that had an undeniable fey charm. Seen from the water and helped by the rumour that it had saved two fishermen from drowning, it extended a calming effect on boats coming in out of a storm. Local men, buying a cone of ice cream at the parlour would often leave a lighted candle by the feet of the statue.

  By the time the older Molinello boys were teenagers, the Hokey-Pokey Parlour had become an affectionate symbol in the area, its openness and friendly foreignness a talking point. The ice cream itself was of the best quality and the fruit used came from the oldest fruit farm in the area.

  Palmyra Farm, famous for its strawberries, damsons and raspberries and its orchard of old-fashioned apples, was where the raw ingredients came from. Because of this, over time, both families, the Maudsleys and the Molinellos, became firm friends and very soon there emerged the Palmyra Water Ice, the Palmyra ice-cream cake and the Palmyra County Sorbet made from sun-ripened, locally grown quinces.

  Four more years passed and the Molinello family was complete at last with the longed for daughter Franca followed by a youngest son Carlo. Then quite by chance Mario was offered some empty premises.

  ‘No more ice cream!’ he declared.

  And he opened a fish and chip shop instead. He had noticed other Italians in London and Edinburgh were beginning to do so and didn’t want to miss a chance. Anna, her hands full with their growing family, didn’t argue with him as, in a triumphant moment, he acquired the ultimate symbol of prosperity. A telephone. Now orders began flooding in, deliveries stepped up and the Molinellos were rushed off their feet. The time had come for Mario to invite his younger brother Lucio to take over the management of the shop.

  Some years before, Lucio Molinello’s wife had died in a boating accident. Afterwards Lucio had changed, becoming silent and uncommunicative. Their mother, desperate to help him, consulted the tarot-card reader but the news wasn’t encouraging.

  ‘He must stay away from water,’ the tarot reader had said. ‘And not be so interested in politics, either.’

  Lucio when he heard this laughed, carelessly. Water did not worry him and now that his life was finished, politics was all that interested him. At that their mother wrote to Mario.

  ‘Can’t you find him something to do?’ she asked.

  ‘He won’t listen to me,’ Mario replied. ‘He’s always been stubborn.’

  In the end it was Anna who went back to Italy to convince him of his duty to his brother and his nephews. So that, reluctantly, towards the end of 1937, Lucio packed his bags and joined the lengthy chain of migrating Italians arriving at Liverpool docks.

  He had two conditions.

  One that he would stay only three years, until the business was established.

  And secondly, on no account would he mix with the customers.

  For a while the two brothers seemed to get along peacefully. Lucio worked hard, kept himself to himself, going up to London often to meet with other like-minded Italians and eventually editing a small underground publication that fought against the rise of Fascism in Italy. The Molinellos left him to his own devices, hoping this passion was just a passing phase. What harm could it do in any case now that Lucio had left Italy? Unobserved, Lucio continued to go to Communist party meetings where, in the smoke-filled and excitable atmosphere of the back rooms of pubs, he and his compatriots worried about the rumours coming from Europe.

  Then, at the beginning of 1939, Mario came home one evening having made an important decision.

  ‘I am joining the Association of Cafe Proprietors,’ he told Anna.

  And he paused, waiting for the reaction.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Isn’t there a rumour that all Italian social clubs in England have come under Fascist control?’

  ‘It’s not a good idea,’ Lucio told him.

  ‘Nonsense! We are not Fascists.’

  ‘So why join, then?’

  Mario groaned. His brother was full of his usual conspiracy theories which only upset Anna. He had known all along it would not be a good thing to bring Lucio into the bosom of the family.

  ‘Oh don’t listen to him,’ he said. ‘You know he’s a Communist.’

  ‘Senti, Mario, don’t be a fool,’ Lucio said. ‘One day your foolishness will get you into trouble. Let’s hope it doesn’t drag your family with you.’

  ‘Why don’t you go back home,’ bellowed Mario, suddenly angry. ‘Go and fight Mussolini, all by yourself! We can manage fine without you.’

  ‘Papi,’ Carlo cried, dismayed.

  ‘It’s true,’ Mario said. ‘Your uncle just wants to frighten everyone. There is nothing wrong with me joining the Association.’

  He glared at Lucio. No one spoke. For all his good nature Mario had occasional bouts of rage and was best left alone when they occurred.

  ‘I can tell you one or two things,’ Lucio said at last. ‘About this country that you think is your home. About Mussolini’s party, too. If you’re interested…’

  Anna looked from one to the other anxiously.

  ‘Don’t fight,’ she told her husband.

  Mario shook his head. His brother’s obsessions, his wife’s fears, these were long-term issues. He, Mario, was interested in the here and now of life. Carlo and Franca were at the Italian school in Ipswich. By joining the Association they would be protected from any future discrimination by the Italian government.

  ‘It’s the long-term issues that we need to worry about,’ Lucio said.

  But Mario would not budge.

  ‘If we join the Party it will simplify everything for us,’ he argued. ‘We can renew our passports without problems and our taxes will be easier to organise.’

  ‘Don’t,’ warned Lucio. ‘I’m telling you!’

  ‘Well, get used to it. I’ve already joined.’

  ‘You’ll regret it.’

  ‘Listen,’ Mario said, temper flaring again, ‘why don’t you give up that stupid newspaper of yours, huh? Then we’ll talk.’

  Recently it had come to light that Lucio was himself the editor of a left-wing journal called il Lotto.

  Anna was looking anxiously at them both but Mario had made his decision. There was nothing more to say. And in this way, all unsuspecting, the last spring of the decade passed slowly into radiant summer.

  5.

  THAT AUGUST PEACE hung on a thread like an acrobat, about to perform its last spectacular act. The future stretched above the hush of sleeping babies, ready to uncoil into a handstand; boneless, nerveless, recklessly on the brink of a disaster of its own making. On the marshes waterbirds came and went regardless. The sun shone as if its life depended on it and the river snaked its thinner, leaner, meaner silvery length between the flat white dry meadows. Beyond it stretched a row of pin-thin black poplars. And down by the empty part of the shore small breezes continued to eat at the sea. No one could imagine the lights going out in England. Or blackout blinds or ration books, or bombs.

  And a ban on ice cream was simply unthinkable.

  It was easy for those in the know to keep quiet and carry on in last-minute hope.

  Meanwhile at the Hokey-Pokey Ice-Cream Parlour on that August morning Anna Molinello waited for her boxes of strawberries. Hand delivered, handlebar-balanced and arriving with a dash of bare brown legs, summer frocks, and laughter.

  ‘Off to see those Eytie boys, I’ll be bound,’ said Partridge with a wink as he helped pack the boxes into the girls’ baskets.

  Bellamy, loading up the milk cart, out of sight and out of mind for the moment, stopped what he was doing and clenched his fists. And unclenched them, before moving the horse on.

  ‘What’s an Eytie boy?’ Cecily asked.

  Partridge chuckled.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Rose said, with a squeak of bicycle brakes. ‘Partridge don’t be so rude. They’re Italians!’

  The sea when it came into view at the bottom of the bridle path had a hint of aquamarine in it.

  ‘Ragazze!’
cried Mario, hearing their voices from afar. ‘Girls, pretty girls!’

  He called his daughter out from the back. Sea-light entered through the open door fluttering against Franca’s dress as she hugged Cecily with her big smile.

  ‘Is Carlo here?’ Cecily asked.

  The Italian brothers (some of them) came out from behind the bead curtain.

  ‘Cecci!’ cried Carlo, joyously.

  Then he saw Rose.

  ‘We are coming to your tennis party,’ he said, his grin changing to a grown-up smile. ‘And of course the dance. Will you dance with me, la bella Rosa? If I give a lot of money to the charity!’

  Everyone wants to dance with Rose, thought Cecily.

  ‘Who invited you?’ Franca asked, rudely.

  ‘Rosa’s mama did,’ her brother smirked.

  ‘And I did, too,’ Cecily said, reading some signs but not the others.

  She felt terribly sad. Just for a moment the sea-light became dull green and distorted while the day itself appeared covered by a film.

  Rose was busy examining the iced flowers on a wedding cake, pretending not to hear. She was wearing the defiant look usually reserved for their father Selwyn.

  ‘Ecco! la bella Rosa,’ cried Giorgio, entering. ‘We will make iced flowers for your wedding, too.’

  Rose blushed. But remained silent.

  When they got there the sea presented itself in a series of glittering white lines that seemed fixed against the strip of sand. The night breeze having done its homework had smoothed out the whole of the beach and the fair had begun to set up for the day. Lucio Molinello stood beside his stall watching the waves break against the old sea wall. Business was already brisk.

  Rose and Franca walked together, secrets and arms linked. Excluding Cecily.

  ‘Come on!’ called Carlo, grinning at Cecily. ‘Catch me if you can!’

  And at that, as if by magic, the day became a carpet, with all summer rolled up inside it. Cecily didn’t want to unroll it; she didn’t want to see what patterns it would make just in case they’d fade too quickly.