milk. Strong, capable legs, a bosom which had already attracted much comment, and a sweet, unformed face, kindly and tentative. She must have looked like the sacrificial victim of every male’s dreams.’
‘Do you really think men dream of that?’
‘Without question. Here in Sicily, at least. Sex isn’t really about pleasure for them. That’s just an extra. What it’s really about is power. Or, better, that is the pleasure — to captivate, to dominate, to penetrate, to master. Which is what he did with my mother. And it worked. She was crazy about him, she’s told me so. She was crazy. But he wasn’t.’
‘So he abandoned her?’
‘On the contrary. All things considered, that would have been a kindness, and men like my father are never kind unless it suits their purposes. No, he married her. She was pregnant by then, so he did the decent thing.’
‘I don’t see anything so terrible about that.’
‘Neither did she. Then he told her that they were going home.’
‘Home?’
‘To Randazzo, where he was born.’
‘And she agreed?’
‘Of course. She had never been out of England before, except for a day trip to the Isle of Man when she was nine. She was thrilled. Italy! The south! Adventure, romance! She longed to see her husband in his native environment, and to experience all the colourful festivals, traditions and characters he had told her so much about. The language would be a problem at first, of course, but Agostino had already taught her a few phrases and she would learn the rest soon enough. Besides, she was going to be a mother, and it was only right that the child should be born in its father’s own country. And if it didn’t work out, they could always come back.
‘They travelled by train. It took two days and two nights, sleeping upright in a series of packed carriages. As soon as they crossed the border at Ventimiglia, my mother noticed the change in her husband. In England, he had always been the stereotype Latin lover — sexy, confident, attentive, macho. But now they were in Italy, northern Italy, where he was marked out as a Sicilian peasant on the make, a wide-boy, probably a mafioso. He seemed to get smaller, my mother said. He became quieter and more wary, “like a snail withdrawing into its shell”.
‘When they passed Rome, his mood changed again. Now he was back in his territory. There would be no more snide glances and half-caught innuendoes about southerners. Down here, he could expect a little respect. Anyone from Naples and points south knew that you didn’t mess around with Sicilians. The second night passed, and finally they had reached the Straits of Messina. There it was, the fabled isle of which she had heard so much. From the ferry, to be honest, it didn’t look much more interesting than the Isle of Man. They disembarked on the other side and continued to Catania, where they changed to the little train that runs up around Etna.
‘It was then, my mother said, that Agostino started to change seriously. Until then, it had been gradual, a series of variations on a person she had always known. But from the moment the train started, he metamorphosed — my word, of course, not hers — into a creature superficially resembling the man she had married, only a dream double, the same and yet not the same, at once alien and fully recognizable. That was the worst aspect of the whole thing, she said. We all imagine horrors happening to us. We know horrors happen. But we imagine them happening in unforeseen circumstances, at the hands of people we do not know and would never — even as they killed or tortured us — acknowledge as fully human. But this was Betty’s lover, her husband, and before her eyes he was turning into somebody she would have fled from if she had encountered him late at night at a bus stop back in Manchester, with the rain falling and no one about.
‘There were plenty of people about once they got to Randazzo. More than enough, in fact. The whole community had turned out to welcome Agostino home, and to pass judgement on his foreign bride. First and foremost amongst them, of course, was Agostino’s mother. She and my grandfather were going to be sharing the family’s small house with the newly-weds, so she was naturally curious to see just what her son had dragged home from his adventures abroad. She was not impressed.’
‘God, it sounds like a story by Verga!’
‘This was thirty years ago, an hour’s journey from where we are now. My mother was very quickly given to understand that her mother-in-law ran the household, handled the finances, and made all the decisions. Her appeals to Agostino made no impression. He couldn’t understand why she couldn’t understand that this was normal and natural. As the days passed, his metamorphosis ran its course. Any remaining hint of romantic interest completely vanished. They were husband and wife, that was all. He would fulfil his side of the bargain, according to the local standards, and he expected her to do likewise.
‘She learned that she was not to leave the house without a valid reason and only after obtaining permission from him or his mother, and never alone. Such a thing would bring shame on the family, and she would suffer the consequences. He, on the other hand, was free to disappear for hours or even days at a time, without being expected to offer the slightest explanation. Husband and wife would go out together only for family or communal events at which their absence might be remarked upon. If she uttered a word of complaint, she would be reminded that there was plenty of cleaning, cooking or sewing to do, and that idleness breeds vice. Anyway, she would soon be a mother. That would take care of her strange foreign restlessness.
‘And for a year or two, she told me, it did. She was totally enchanted with me, totally absorbed by my needs and my company. Everything else ceased to matter. She named me Corinna, after a song by Bob Dylan which she was fond of, and she devoted herself to my happiness. She wanted to take me back to England, to show off to her family, but Agostino kept prevaricating, saying that it was too expensive. In the end her father sent Betty a ticket. Despite his previous reservations, Agostino bought one for himself, and off they went.
‘I was duly admired and cooed over, but in every other way the visit was a disaster. Betty’s parents had never approved of Agostino, and he now stopped making any attempt to ingratiate himself with them. He even pretended that he couldn’t speak or understand English any more. Even worse, my mother’s eyes were opened by this first taste of liberty since leaving England. It was sweet while it lasted, but the return to Randazzo was all the more bitter. She had bought a stock of contraceptive pills in Manchester, and now started taking them. There would be no more children with Agostino, she had decided.
‘The problem was the one that already existed. As I grew up, she became more and more overwhelmed by the stifling dimensions of the world she lived in — not only for her sake, but for mine. The idea that her daughter would grow up to be one of these local cloistered breeding machines and maids-of-all-work horrified her. She couldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.
‘She made several attempts to escape, the first by bus. It left at five in the morning, bound for Catania. There she planned to take the train to Rome and cable her father for money to fly home. Early one morning she rose quietly, dressed herself and me and sneaked out of the house with only her handbag, some money she had set aside, and her passport. The bus was waiting in the square, the door open and the engine running, but when she tried to board, holding me in her arms, the driver told her there was no room. The bus was almost empty, she pointed out. It was now, he said, but he was picking up a large group in the next village, a comitiva going down to Catania for a political rally. She told him to sell her a reserved ticket for the next day, but he told her she would have to apply in person at the head office.
‘The next time, she tried the railway. This was more difficult, because it meant slipping away in the middle of the morning. Somehow she managed to get to the station without being stopped, but once again it seemed that there was a problem. The train had been delayed, possibly even cancelled, the station master told her. He would make a phone call and find out what was going on before she wasted her money on a ticket. Five minutes later, Agostino appeared. He led us back to the house, where I was taken from her. She wouldn’t tell me what he did to her then, but that evening she was called before her mother-in-law.
‘“These adventures are pointless and stupid,” she told my mother contemptuously. “You may as well get that into your head right away.” My mother spat defiance. She was a British citizen and they couldn’t keep her here against her will. Agostino’s mother smiled. Of course not, she said. My mother was free to leave whenever she wanted — the sooner the better, her tone implied. But alone. She could leave, but they would never give up the child.
‘My mother threatened to go to the police, and the visible contempt of her mother-in-law deepened still further. The law would back the family all the way, she said, but people like them didn’t need policemen and judges to defend what was theirs. Agostino and his friends were perfectly capable of doing that themselves. And they would rather see me dead than taken from them. My mother said she had no doubt that they meant exactly what they said.
