'The train leaves Victoria at 8 a.m., Mrs Volpe – try to be there a little early,' said the travel agent, who had assiduously studied his printed European train timetables, worked out all the connections and booked, by telephone, the many elements of Lidia's urgent journey to Montecorvino in southern Italy. He had then, from his desk, produced (miraculously, as far as Lidia was concerned) ticket books for the French railways, Italian railways and the ferry company, writing them all by hand through carbon-copy paper.
His little travel agency sat next to the butcher's shop on the Goldhawk Road, and Lidia had never before had reason to use him, but she was ever so glad she had now. He was kind and decent, explaining carefully the things Lidia didn't understand, and he hadn't resorted to impatience or speaking slowly and loudly, as so many other people did. She'd arrived anxious and tearful in the agency but was met with empathy and kindness; she expected neither in her usual interactions, so this had put her more at ease.
Lidia's English was good, but the terminology of travel, of trains and transfers, confused her a little, so the agent went into great detail about how she should get across Paris from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon, where the trains to Milan and Rome departed. She couldn't even imagine herself finding the right bus and it taking her through the fabled streets of that great city, but the travel agent eased her fears a little: 'I've done it lots of times, Mrs Volpe, and it is very easy. Just make sure you get on the Number 20 bus.' He drew her a little diagram of the station so she would get to the right stop. Lidia was already emotional about the journey, and this man had sensed it. She wanted to hug and kiss him for his kindness, and she resolved to bring a dish of lasagne for he and his staff when she returned.
Lidia was also worried about the ferry. It brought back memories of the time Francesco, her now estranged husband, had thought it funny to hang her then two-year-old son Matteo over the railing of the high upper deck by his feet. Lidia had almost fainted with fear, but this time it was only Lidia and her youngest son Michael making the trip. He was just two and a half, so she would be sure to sit inside on the crossing, and there would be no excited walks on deck to look at the sea. He was a boisterous child – he would be safer inside, even if the floors were awash with vomit from a rough crossing.
As the final details were arranged and Lidia handed over the bundle of cash in return for an envelope full of tickets, leaflets and hand-drawn diagrams, she suddenly felt so weary and empty. A telegram had arrived two days earlier from her mother, Anna, telling her that her father, Nicola, was at death's door, and that she should get to Italy as soon as possible. Lidia remembered the story of Anna's famous death announcement telegram to her father, and how her mother would laugh about it to annoy and ridicule him. He always responded with, 'But I came, didn't I?' This time, the telegram was real, and Lidia had cried when it arrived, even though she still felt a deep anger for her father that meant she had even contemplated not going to see him. The cost of this trip took most of her savings, and, because she was on her own with four boys, she needed every penny for the basics in life. But something very powerful made her want to go home to be with him, and so her reluctance didn't last long. It would be good, she decided, to see her mother and siblings, too, even in a moment of such sadness.
It was just over two years since her husband Francesco had left her for the last time. He had done it before, and had even produced a son with the other woman, whose name Lidia cannot bring herself to speak and who had been a teenage friend. She'd needed somewhere to stay when she first arrived in England, and even though they had little space for her, Lidia and Francesco took her in, because that's just what everybody in the Italian community did – they helped each other and stuck together. Soon, Francesco's behaviour had begun to raise suspicions in Lidia's mind, and she became convinced he was having an affair. A rage always grew in her when she thought of how she spent hours crying and talking to this woman, who sought to reassure Lidia it was nothing to worry about, yet all the time…
Under their own roof.
Puttana!
Francesco eventually returned, begging for another chance, and in no time at all Lidia had become pregnant with Michael; she just couldn't find a way to resist trying again. She had hope, but maybe she just had no choice, and deep down she knew what was coming. Heartbreak was the overwhelming experience of his first betrayals, but when he left again, on Christmas Day, with Michael a mere six months old, Lidia felt fear.
Real, deep fear. How would she cope with four young children on her own, with only one meagre income? That morning, Lidia had demanded that her brother-in-law Matteo drive her to the flat where she knew Francesco would be found. Screaming up at the window from the street, with her six-month-old child in her arms, on Christmas Day, was as low a moment as Lidia had ever suffered, but it also put something else into her: steel and determination that she would never be humiliated and rejected again. When Francesco came down to the street, no doubt to beat Lidia, Matteo had stood between them and warned his brother firmly against touching her.
That was in the past, and Lidia had recovered somewhat, but now she has other family matters to face and to try to exorcise.
***
As the train to Dover began to pull away from Victoria, Lidia was already missing her three other boys. The Tully family, neighbours in Woodstock Grove, were looking after Luigi, Matteo and Sergio, because Lidia couldn't afford to take them or remove them from school. The Tullys were good people, and Woodstock Grove, although little more than a slum where few had much at all, had provided Lidia with support and friendship, despite there being some who obviously detested immigrants. Gracie upstairs would sometimes babysit the kids until Lidia returned from her work, and occasionally Old Man Lacy would give her one of the chickens he bred in his back yard – slaughtered and cleaned, of course. Gracie's dog had probably given the boys ringworm – according to the doctor – but Lidia couldn't hold that against her. She was an elderly widow with a lovely heart, and she adored the children, but she couldn't manage all three for a week, which is why the Tullys had offered to take them.
Lidia had twenty-four hours of travel ahead of her, and she prayed Michael would be calm. She couldn't afford a cabin bed, so she would need to sleep sitting in an ordinary seat for the long leg from Paris to Rome, and would place Michael tightly between her and the window, strapping him to her wrist with a belt once he had nodded off because she was terrified someone would take him as they slept.
Lidia often felt anxious those days, especially where her children were concerned. One of the most amazing things England offered was a universal vaccination programme, so she at least didn't have to worry about diphtheria, cholera, smallpox or polio as she had in Italy, but her need to work constantly in order to keep their heads above water required her to take risks and let them be a bit more independent. They play on the building sites, the parks and streets around Woodstock Grove, and she forever carried an image in her mind of a policeman knocking on her door to tell her some awful news about one of them. The knot in her stomach was constant.
She would become angry when she thought of the way in which she has been treated – by her husband, by the world, by fate itself – but she didn't want to feel sorry for herself, so she took every small job she could find, because she refused to claim benefits. Above all, she wanted to prove to that pig of a husband that she didn't need him. The Italians she knew who had come to England visited her, or she went to them, and they all ate big meals and reminisced about their time together back home. Her brother-in-law, Matteo, had been a constant presence with his growing family, refusing to speak to his brother for deserting his children. Lidia wasn't alone, and while none in her community had wealth or could help much with material things, she felt lucky to have the job as a cook at Brook Green Day nursery, which also accepted Michael into the baby room. She loved being around all those children and the young women who looked after them.
Lidia could sometimes force herself to believe she was laying the foundations for a better life, even if the mice and damp in Woodstock Grove suggested otherwise. Only the other evening she had found a mouse crawling over Michael as he slept in his cot, but she had put her name down on the council housing list for a proper home, to replace the two-room basement slum she lived in. Although her social worker had told her it would be a while before one with enough bedrooms would become available, better times at least felt possible, because she believed with all her heart that Britain wouldn't let her fall into destitution as she might back home. Social services had taken an interest in the family – a lone young woman with four small children is the kind of situation they always take an interest in – and her social worker had helped Lidia fill in forms for things like bus passes for the kids, carefully explaining and simplifying more complicated documents for her. She was sometimes afraid of her social worker because she had heard of children being removed from families who couldn't cope. The kids were always clean, even though she had to wash them in the kitchen sink, with the door of the switched-on oven open for warmth; and if she had time, she would boil water for the steel bathtub – but that was rare, perhaps just once a month. All of the children were prone to hurt themselves, though, from playing in the street; there was the time Luigi came home with a dart in his chest. Matteo was frequently at the hospital with cuts and other injuries. Every time she took him to be stitched up, she watched the doctors intently, to see if they might be discussing her child's wounds in a suspicious fashion. Again, the fear would grip her, but even though there might be stern questions from the doctors at the hospital, nobody came for her kids. Lidia thought her obvious attachment to her children demonstrated that she herself would never hurt them, but she knew deep in her soul that her children were always at risk, no matter how fiercely she protected them.
But here, sitting on the train with Michael scribbling on paper with crayons, not half as excited by France rushing past the window as he had been, she wasn't sure how she would react when she saw her father. She was excited for her family to meet her youngest son for the first time, but it depressed her that it was imminent death that brought them together. Michael had not been intended, and naturally Francesco had laid the blame for yet another child at her door, but Lidia was a fierce mother and couldn't think of anything she was better at, though at the age of thirty-seven she was physically and emotionally exhausted. She tried desperately to imagine a time when that wouldn't be so.
***
Isidoro was there to meet Lidia at Salerno station in his rickety old Fiat, and she gasped at how like their father he was becoming with age. He had a little of the same brusqueness, too, but seeing him made her begin to weep, which confused Michael, who watched her intently, perhaps trying to work out what this man meant to his mother. He had seen her cry before. Many times.
'How is Mamma?'
Isidoro just shrugged and tutted gently – traditional Campanian body language that meant 'as you would expect', or 'what do you think?' But Lidia didn't know what to expect of her mother or what her reaction would be, and she even thought that her mother might be relieved her husband was at the end of his life, that she wouldn't have to deal with him or compete with him any longer. Isidoro looked at Michael, sitting on his mother's lap, and reached across to tweak his cheek. The child pulled away and kept staring at him as Isidoro laughed.
'Bello!' he said.
As they arrived in Montecorvino, driving along Via Cappucin', before taking the left turn on to the steep road up to Pugliano, Lidia was struck by the new buildings that had gone up since she was last there. They were mostly moderate apartment blocks, stacked across the valley-side opposite the Via Cappucin', but it was unmistakably a time of renewal for the region. The old houses were still there, and her family lived in those, but who knew where all of this rebuilding would lead them? Her other siblings – Mario, Rolando and Ines – would all be at the house, taking turns to nurse Nicola and supporting their mother, and Isidoro said their father had very little time so they should go straight there. Lidia began to weep again, and Michael turned to look at her.
Once Isidoro had parked, Lidia took her son by the hand and led him up the steep little hill into the small courtyard beneath the Perillo house. As she walked, she could feel the eyes of people in their doorways on her, and one or two called her name in greeting. Lidia's stomach knot had tightened and grown on the journey from Salerno, and she felt sick. At the door of her childhood home was her mother Anna, her siblings behind her in the parlour, looking intently at Lidia as she approached. Michael pulled a little on her hand and tried to stop walking, but she gently coaxed him forward. 'Andiamo, Michele, andiamo. It's OK.'
Anna reached out and cupped Lidia's face in her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. Then her brothers and sister greeted her in the same way. Each took a turn to grasp a reluctant Michael and give him a kiss, but Rolando blew a raspberry into his neck and Michael giggled.
'He will be glad to see you,' whispered Anna, 'and the baby. How sweet he is!'
Anna said he could go at any moment, but he was conscious and able to speak a little. Lidia was becoming overwhelmed and was beginning to regret bringing Michael; she worried how all this grieving might affect him. Would he remember any of this? Leading Michael into her father's dark bedroom, Lidia could scarcely breathe as she pushed the door slowly and the corner of the bed came into view. She paused and tried to steady her heartbeat before pushing through fully to look at her father. Nicola Perillo, the fervent fascist of old, the angry man who drank too much, was shrivelled into the mattress, his arms over the covers, a crucifix above his head on the tall wall. Lidia looked at him through her tears, and he smiled back painfully. Then Nicola looked at Michael, who was staring intently at him, overawed by the darkness, the height of the room and the heavy atmosphere, and signalled to Lidia to open the drawer of the bedside table. In it she found some sweets, wrapped in gold foil, and Nicola took one from her and offered it to Michael, stretching out his withered hand effortfully.
'Here, take it, bambino.' At first Michael hid behind the leg of his mother, but eventually stepped out and took the sweet from his grandfather's hand.
Lidia had so much she wanted to say to her father but didn't know how to say it, or even what the point of it would be, and Nicola could hardly speak more than a few words in any case. She was pleased he had met his grandson before the end. Lidia always felt her parents had an innate love for their children but had difficulty expressing it. She had slaved to serve this man hand and foot when she was little more than a child herself, and his tenderness towards Michael had surprised her. She decided words were unnecessary, and she sat on the chair beside the bed and took Michael on to her lap. She clasped her father's hand in hers and sat silently with him.
Nicola died that night. He just drifted away with the doctor holding a stethoscope to his chest, with his children standing huddled together behind the doctor. The next day, people came to the house to view his body, with Anna sitting dutifully as sentinel beside the bed, welcoming visitors into the room. As she did so, she occasionally took a chocolate from a small box to chew or to hand to children visiting with parents.
Funerals in Italy take place the day after death, if possible, and so Lidia was able to be there with her siblings and many other family members and friends. Nicola was buried in the community cemetery on the road to the coast – when passing it, drivers always crossed themselves if they had family members in there – and afterwards Lidia felt desperate to sit down with her mother to talk. She missed her mother and considered how she could have done with the support of her family in recent years. Anna was hard and uncompromising on so many things, but Lidia still acknowledged her strength and wisdom from time to time.
'I told you,' said Anna, 'that Francesco Volpe would be no good for you, didn't I?'
'Mamma, please, not now,' replied Lidia.
'He has left you with four children, Lidia. You know you don't need him, right? He just wants a slave to look after him and wash his clothes and cook his food.'
Lidia was angry that her mother had chosen now to rub salt in her wounds, but she knew she was right, and that just depressed her more. When Francesco and Lidia had at first started dating, Anna was furious she had chosen a Volpe, a family she thought arrogant. Lidia never understood her mother's animosity, why she said he was useless and pointless and a gambler, but she understood now, and although that realisation had come too late, at least Lidia had four beautiful children to show for the catastrophe of her marriage.
'Mamma, I know I don't need him. I am never forgiving him again. So don't worry,' said Lidia.
'Are you sure about that, Lidia?' Anna laughed cynically as she said it.
Rolando, who was listening to them speak, became angry. 'I will kick his arse from here to Acerno if I see him,' he said.
Lidia really had moved on from Francesco's desertion, had decided he'd left her for the last time, and it was understandable that, having taken him back before, her family would worry she might do it again. But she didn't want Francesco to have the satisfaction of getting one of the Perillos put in jail.
'Rolando,' Lidia pleaded, 'I want you to promise me you will not go near him if you see him when he comes here. OK?'
Rolando loved his big sister and wanted to protect her, to punish her husband, but he had to agree to her wishes. In any case, he was worried he might even kill Francesco.
'How is life in London, Lidia?' asked Anna.
It was impossible for Lidia to describe to her mother just how it was she was living. She could explain the work she was always doing, the financial troubles, the relentless drudgery of survival, but it was harder for her to explain the environment in which all of this was taking place. London was so completely different from Montecorvino, the scale of a big city, the nature of the English, the society she was navigating. Lidia was glad she had learned the language, had found a community of sorts in Woodstock Grove and was always surrounded by Italians, so to set her mother's mind at rest, she explained only the positive things to her. Even though she was poor by English standards, Lidia had enough sense to realise she was infinitely better off than her family still living in Italy.
'Just remember, Lidia,' said Anna, 'you can always come home. Your children are young enough. They will cope.'
'That's not going to happen, Mamma. I don't want to come back,' replied Lidia with steel in her voice. Anna dropped the conversation because she knew why her daughter didn't want to live her life in Montecorvino Pugliano. Lidia herself couldn't see how that would improve things because in London she had regular work in a job with a pension, and she felt that returning to Italy would be an admission of failure, one she knew her mother would revel in a little.
'England does good things for people like me Mamma. The children are fed at school, I am waiting for a better house. The English are honest. Life is OK.'
'Does Francesco give you money?' Anna asked, even though she knew what the answer to her question would be before Lidia explained that he had been ordered by the court to pay her a weekly maintenance, but he never did.
'Mamma, will you be OK?'
Anna paused and smiled at Lidia. 'Oh yes,' she said.
Lidia would spend a few more days in Pugliano. It was good to see her family and friends, and her grief over her father lifted a little. But she began to miss her children desperately and looked forward to getting back to Woodstock Grove. Italy wasn't where she wanted to be, because so much had happened there, and she had become used to her home in England. She could always visit – maybe soon she could afford to fly instead of taking the long twenty-four-hour train journey. Lidia was proud of herself for what she had achieved, what she had come through. Leaving for England had been exciting and almost felt safe when she had done it with her husband, when they could face challenges together, but now the fear had replaced the certainty and security of a cohesive family unit.
She would face it; she would pull through the tough times. She looked at Michael, his innocence yet to be sullied by life, and wondered what would become of him and his brothers, who had their entire lives ahead of them but whom she would need to be strong for, to fight for. She would always fight. She knew she could do it, and she had no idea what life had planned for her, either, but she was sure of one thing: it would be a very long, hard, lonely road she would have to travel. For strength, and perhaps as a resolution to herself, she thought of one of her favourite songs:
You weep only if no one sees, and you cry out only if no one hears.
