So now he had two pieces of advice for dealing with the situation-use his non-existent charm, or try to impose what this naive boy fondly imagined to be ‘masculine authority’.
They passed on to the next bar, and then the next, until it began to feel like time to go home.
Suddenly they heard a shout from the next street, then the sound of a child crying and an animal squealing and suddenly a crowd of young men came stumbling out of the shadows. The one in front was carrying a puppy that was squirming to escape. With them was a boy of about twelve, who continually tried to rescue his pet, but was thwarted as the lout tossed the puppy to one of the others.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Luke said.
They moved forward together.
The sight of them made the louts pause just long enough for Charlie to seize the puppy. Two of them tried to snatch it back, but Luke occupied them long enough for Charlie to give the animal to the child, who grabbed it and vanished, leaving him free to concentrate on the fight.
Two against four might seem an unequal conquest, but Charlie was furious and Luke was powerful and they managed to stop them chasing the fleeing child until there were further sounds from the narrow alleys, shouts, sirens, and all six were surrounded and carted off to the nearest police station.
The knock on the door could only be Mamma Netta Pepino. Nobody else knocked in exactly that pattern and Minnie was smiling as she went to answer it.
‘It isn’t too late?’ Netta asked at once.
‘No, I hadn’t gone to bed.’
‘Every night you stay up late, working too hard. So I brought you some shopping because I know you don’t have time to do your own.’
This was a fiction that they had shared for years. Minnie had an expensive law practice on the Via Veneto, and a secretary who could have done her shopping. But the habit of relying on Netta had started years ago, when she had been eighteen, the bride of Gianni Pepino, and this warm, laughing woman had embraced her.
It had been that way through the years when Minnie studied law, and had continued as her practice built up to its present success. Gianni had been dead for four years now, but Minnie had neither moved to a more luxurious home, nor weakened her links to Netta, whom she loved as a mother.
‘Proscuitto, Parmesan, pasta-your favourite kind,’ Netta intoned, dumping bags on the table. ‘You check.’
‘No need, you always get it right,’ Minnie said with a smile. ‘Sit down and have a drink. Coffee? Whisky?’
‘Whisky,’ Netta said with a chuckle, heaving her huge person into a chair.
‘I’ll have some tea.’
‘You’re still English,’ Netta said. ‘Fourteen years you live in Italy and you still drink English tea.’
Minnie began putting the shopping away, pausing as she came to a small bunch of flowers.
‘I thought you’d like them,’ Netta said, elaborately casual.
‘I love them,’ Minnie said, dropping a kiss on her cheek. ‘Let’s put them with Gianni.’
Filling a small vase with water, she added the flowers and set it beside a photograph of Gianni that stood on a shelf. It had been taken a week before his death and showed a young man with a wide, humorous mouth and brilliant eyes that seemed to have a gleam deep in their depths. His naturally curly hair was too long, falling over his forehead and down his neck, and increasing the charm that glowed from the picture.
Next to him stood another picture, of a young girl. Once she had been the eighteen-year-old Minnie, her face soft, slightly unfinished, still full of hope. She hadn’t known grief and despair. That came later.
Her face was finer now, elegant, more withdrawn, but still open to humour. Her fair hair, worn long in the first picture, now just brushed her shoulders, a length chosen for efficient management.
She changed the position of the flowers twice before she was satisfied.
‘He will like that,’ Netta said. ‘Always he loves flowers. Remember how often he brought them to you? Flowers for your wedding, flowers for your birthday, your anniversary-’
‘Yes, he never forgot.’
Neither woman thought it strange to speak of him both in the present and the past, changing from sentence to sentence. It came so naturally that they barely noticed.
‘How’s Poppa?’ Minnie asked.
‘Always he complains.’
‘No change there, then.’ They laughed together.
‘And Charlie?’
Netta groaned at the mention of her younger son. ‘He’s a bad boy. He thinks he’s a big man because he stays out late and drinks too much and sees too many girls.’
‘So he’s a normal eighteen-year-old,’ Minnie said gently.
In fact she, too, had been growing a little uneasy at her young brother-in-law’s exuberant habits, but she played it down for Netta’s sake.
‘It was better when he was in love with you,’ Netta mourned.
‘Mamma, he wasn’t in love with me. He’s eighteen, I’m thirty-two. He had a boyish crush, which I defused. At least, I hope I did. Charlie’s of no interest to me.’
‘No man interests you. It’s not natural. You’re a beautiful woman.’
‘I’m a widow.’
‘For too long. Now it’s time.’
‘This is my mother-in-law talking?’ Minnie asked of nobody in particular.
‘This is a woman talking to a woman. Four years you are a widow, yet no man.
‘It’s not quite true to say there have been no men in my life,’ Minnie said cautiously. ‘And, since you live right opposite me, you know that.’
‘Sure. I see them come and I see them go. But I don’t see them stay.’
‘I don’t invite them to stay,’ Minnie said quietly.
Netta’s answer to this was to give her a crushing hug.
‘No man ever had a better wife than my Gianni,’ she said. ‘Now it’s time you think of yourself. You need a man in your life, in your bed.’
‘Netta, please-’
‘When I was your age I had-’
‘A husband and five children,’ Minnie reminded her.
‘That’s true, but-ah, well, it was a long time ago.’
Netta had a generous nature. In all things.
‘I’m quite happy without a man,’ Minnie insisted.
‘Nonsense. No woman is happy without a man.’
‘And, even if I wanted one, it wouldn’t be Charlie. I’m not a cradle-robber.’
‘Of course not. But you could make him listen. Where is he tonight? I don’t know. But I’m sure he’s with bad people.’
‘And I’m sure that when you get home you’ll find him there looking sheepish,’ Minnie assured her.
‘Then I go home now. And I tell him he should be ashamed for worrying his mother.’
‘I’ll tell him, too. Come on, I’ll walk home with you.’
Minnie’s home was on the third floor, overlooking the courtyard. Some of the other homes were also occupied by Pepinos, since the family had always liked to live within hailing distance of each other. As they went out on to the iron staircase that ran around the inside of the courtyard, they could see lights in the other windows and shadows passing across them.
Then, up the stairs to the fourth floor on the other side, to the front door of the home Netta shared with her husband, her brother and her youngest son, when he was at home. There was still no sign of Charlie.
‘He’ll be home soon,’ Minnie said soothingly. ‘He’s just trying his wings.’
She kissed her mother-in-law and wandered back to her own little apartment. As always, it felt very quiet when she let herself in. It had been that way since the day her young husband had died in her arms.
She was suddenly very tired. Netta’s conversation had steered her close to things she normally tried not to think of.
