Who's Sorry Now (2008) (2 page)

So how could Luc possible resist her?
 

There had been a time a few months back when the two of them had been practically inseparable. The Fabriani family were one of the many rivals of the Bertalone’s, but far richer. Much to Carmina’s disappointment, however, Luc was showing no signs of joining the family business. He worked on a building site, labouring on a development in Salford and each day at five-thirty precisely, she used to wait for him at the bus stop.

He would get off the bus, haversack swinging over one shoulder, all dusty and dirty in his working clothes, dark hair awry and grubby smears on his handsome face. Despite the grit and grime he had still looked incredibly sexy, acknowledging her presence with a non-committal grunt.

He would curl one arm about her neck, or capture her chin in his hand and give her a long passionate, tongue-in-her-mouth kiss right there at the bus stop before everyone. His mates would laugh and heckle and cheer him on but Carmina hadn’t minded one little bit. She’d loved all of that. It had made her feel wanted, as if she belonged to him.

He’d never actually said that she was his girl, but she’d known it in her heart. Why else would he have made love to her? Admittedly, Luc wasn’t the first boy she’d allowed to go ‘all the way’ but he’d certainly been the most exciting.

His kisses were very nearly as passionate as the ones Burt Lancaster gave to Deborah Kerr in that movie
From Here to Eternity
which Carmina had seen at least three times when it came out a few years ago.

Now he was kissing her sister.

She saw how Gina shyly turned her head away when he tweaked a lock of damp brown hair, how she dipped her chin as he bent his tall, lean body to peep into her eyes. Gina had lovely eyes, they were her best feature: large and trusting, the colour of cinnamon, although she would beguilingly mask their beauty with a sweep of long dark curling lashes.
 

Luc was smiling at her, that lazy, cocksure smile he used whenever he sensed a new conquest. Carmina would have killed to be on the receiving end of such a smile.

Then, to her complete horror, he planted a tender kiss on the tip of her sister’s small, snub nose, and another on her wide smiling mouth. Carmina felt physically sick.

She knew, in that instant, that she hated her own sister.

At just sixteen, fifteen months younger than herself and the nearest to her in age of the seven Bertalone girls, Carmina had always seen Gina as a rival.

Shy, and with something of an inferiority complex, Gina was the one to whom her four younger sisters would be most likely to turn to if they had a problem. In Carmina’s opinion, she was her parents’ favourite too, since she was so loving and affectionate, so special in their eyes. She’d suffered, and fortunately largely recovered, from a bout of polio. Now she exhibited the patience of a saint, always sickeningly determined to recognise the good in people, and to see their point of view.

Yet everyone marvelled at Carmina’s stunning good looks, particularly Gina, so how could her plain little sister
possibly
capture the attention of Luc Fabriani when she herself had so patently failed to do so?

Carmina’s insides knotted with such jealous rage she could hardly breathe. If it was a sin to loathe your sister, then so be it. She’d say three extra Hail Mary’s at Mass on Sunday.

Despite the damp chill, her soaking hair and the misery of witnessing what she saw as a betrayal, Carmina couldn’t tear herself away. There were several more sickeningly sweet and tender kisses in which Gina actually stroked the rain from Luc’s handsome, angular cheeks before laughingly pushing him away. Then the girl turned on her heel and, head down against the slanting rain, hurried along Champion Street as fast as her limping gait would allow, up the stone steps into the Bertalone’s tall Victorian terraced house.

In cold rage Carmina broke off a piece of the deliciously fragrant bread, tearing into it with her sharp white teeth while she contemplated revenge.

Chapter Two

From where she stood on the corner of Champion Street, Amy George could see Carmina Bertalone splashing furiously through puddles as she followed in the wake of her sister. The younger girl’s face had seemed to shine with happiness, but Carmina’s was another story. Sisters, Amy thought with a wry smile, recalling similar problems of her own. Almost as bad as a mother-in-law.

She shivered, soaked to the skin by the rain, auburn curls springing wildly out of control and a sneeze already tickling her nose. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave. She was far too fascinated by the protest marchers.
 

The ‘Ban the Bomb” banners were garishly painted in blood-red lettering a foot high, declaring support for the Aldermaston marchers. These were the valiant souls who had walked fifty miles or more to make their protest. Some had started in Trafalgar Square, the rest walking from towns the length and breadth of the country to merge on the Nuclear Research Base in Berkshire, waving their home-made banners and singing to a skiffle band playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In”.

Amy had read all about it in the
Manchester Guardian
: how they’d collected more and more people as they walked, and any number of blisters; sleeping in school halls or on the floor of stranger’s houses. Some people had given them food as they marched along, clapping and cheering them on, while others had heckled, jeered and booed them. It sounded so exciting, a real adventure.

In her heart, Amy secretly envied them.

Only once had she dared to rebel and that was when she’d run off to Gretna Green to marry Chris. What an adventure that had been! So romantic, even if they had come close to starving. Oh, but they’d been so much in love it hadn’t seemed to matter.

Now, a mere few months later Amy rubbed her hands over her swollen belly and wondered just what she’d let herself in for. Chris was working in the bakery with his father now and she seemed to spend more time with Mavis, her mother-in-law, than her new husband: polishing the linoleum covered floor, cleaning out the new Baxi grate, ironing, or else sewing on endless buttons. Amy was not, however, allowed to darn Chris’s socks as her stitches were considered to be too large and clumsy.

How had it all ended up like this? she wondered, giving a sad little sigh. Even their dreams of getting a home of their own had foundered. Chris insisted that the stress of moving was too much for her while she was pregnant. They seemed to be stuck with living over the bakery with his parents. Nothing ever turned out quite as one imagined.

The noisy crowd began to make its way between the market stalls, singing and laughing in a happy, carefree sort of way. It seemed to comprise mainly students in college scarves and brightly coloured stockings, although there were some young mums pushing babies in prams. Many of the young men sported beards and the girls had frizzy hair and big round spectacles. Amy almost wished she needed to wear glasses or went to college so that she too could appear so cool and intelligent, and ‘with it’.

They may well be idealist trouble-makers, but to Amy they seemed to be having such fun that she felt a strong urge to join in, despite her six month bump. What would Mavis say if she did? Perish the thought.

She put a hand to her mouth to stop a hysterical giggle. Her mother-in-law was not the most tolerant or liberal minded individual, ruling her household very much with a rod of iron. But then, even Amy’s lovely new husband, Chris, would object too. And he’d be sure to tell her off if she went home soaked through, no doubt lecture her about taking proper care of herself and the coming baby.

Amy looked around for shelter so that she could watch events from a more sensible vantage point.

‘Come and share my umbrella,’ said a voice in her ear and Amy eagerly accepted, although her friend Patsy looked almost as wet as she was, silver fair hair hanging in rats’ tails about her small elfin face.

As the two girls snuggled beneath it, warming each other against the cold, Amy said, ‘By rights I should be helping my mother-in-law peel potatoes for tea. And she’ll give me gip if I drip water on to her clean lino.’

Patsy Bowman chuckled as she hooked her arm into Amy’s. ‘I should be helping Clara tidy up the hat stall but she’s let me off to watch the demonstration. Look at you, as fat and round as a jolly robin, if a rather soggy one. You certainly shouldn’t be standing out on the pavement in the pouring rain, that’s for sure, nor peeling potatoes. Why aren’t you sitting with your feet up being fed milk pobbies, or whatever it is a mum-to-be craves.’

‘Because I’m bored out of my mind,’ Amy said with feeling. ‘Chris objects if I so much as lift a finger but Mavis is determined to turn me into the perfect wife and mother. She’s teaching me all those little wrinkles my own ma failed to do, being the messy creature she is. Though to be fair, as Ma herself would say, she built up Poulson’s to be the best pie makers in Lancashire, and has never claimed to be the best housekeeper.’

‘Quite right! Why should women do all the scrubbing and cleaning?’ Patsy agreed with feeling.

Amy giggled. ‘I don’t think Big Molly could ever be accused of doing too much scrubbing, except in her precious kitchen. Anyway, I have to do quite a bit for Mavis, although I don’t really mind. I’m fit as a fiddle and if I sat about doing nothing all day, I’d go mad. Oh, but look at these people here, no younger than us and yet they’re
free
. They’re doing something worthwhile, not suffering heartburn and an aching back. Patsy, do you ever wonder if you’ve done the right thing by rushing into marriage so young?’

‘I haven’t ... yet,’ Patsy reminded her. ‘Although it certainly seems to be approaching with the speed of an express train. Marc’s mother seems to spend every evening stitching away furiously at my dress, the most glorious wedding gown you could ever imagine, not to mention six bridesmaid’s dresses for the Bertalone girls.’ Patsy sighed. ‘Sometimes, I envy you dashing off to secretly do the deed at Gretna Green. It would be so much simpler.’

Amy laughed. ‘Don’t you believe it. Exciting - yes, and utterly romantic, but also terrifying. I’ve never been so cold and hungry in my life! And we still had to come home, face our parents and resolve that dreadful family feud.’

‘But it all worked out in the end, so why all this doom and gloom? I thought you and Chris were “loves young dream”.’

‘Oh, we are, only - well, you know what they say: marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ Amy felt herself blushing.
 
‘The honest truth is, it’s his mother driving me up the wall, not Chris.’

‘Ah! Why don’t we grab a frothy coffee in Belle's Café and you can tell me all about it.’

‘I -I’m not sure I have the time. I promised Mavis that I’d help with the ironing before tea, sitting down of course, and ...’

‘Amy, what
are
you thinking of standing in the rain getting soaked to the skin? Are you quite mad?’ And suddenly there was Mavis, bearing down upon them with the kind of expression on her face which made the day seem suddenly warm and mild by comparison.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Amy cried, and Patsy could only watch in mystified disbelief as her sweet, stubborn friend, who had once defied her family to elope with the love of her life, scuttled obediently off to do her mother-in-law’s bidding. Now what was that all about?

Alec Hall likewise had been watching the marchers pass by, a sardonic smile on his face. Poor fools! Did these young idiots imagine they could change the world with the help of a few banners and protest songs? War didn’t go away just by wishing. And how could you ban something that had already been invented, already been used to decimate thousands of lives?

In any case, a great deal of harm could be done in ordinary warfare with guns and grenades. Would they ban those too? And would the other side obligingly do the same? Alec very much doubted it.

He’d seen action in two wars and the memories would haunt him forever, particularly of Korea, the most recent. He’d been barely eighteen when he’d joined up in 1941, and a seasoned veteran when he’d been called to fight for his country a second time. There were times now when he felt like an old man, for all he was still five years short of forty. But Alec knew he should be grateful he was at least alive.

Strangely, people never asked him about the Korean War. Plenty showed interest in what he did in WWII but it was as if the Korean never existed. It was a war people preferred to ignore, or forget. So far as they were concerned the war, the
real
war, was over.

A population still weary from World War Two had felt quite unable to show interest in yet another taking place in some distant, inhospitable land, far from their shores. Life was good, the hardships and rationing behind them and they wanted to think of peace and the future, not remember the bad times, the worries and anxieties of loved ones who never came back. He and his colleagues returning from Korea were often treated with little more than indifference, as if people were surprised they’d ever been away.

Alec deeply resented this attitude.

The national press had been equally negligent, showing more interest in the Coronation and Sir Edmund Hilary’s conquest of Everest, with far fewer column inches given over to the end of the war in Korea. Even the peace had been grudgingly made, signed on July 27, 1953, in a tiny, unknown village called Panmunjom.