It was ten-past seven. John was late, as usual. He hadn’t meant to be. He never did. He knew that this was an important night; he was taking Stella to meet his family. First, he’d stopped off at the library to get some more books for college and then decided to drop them off at his flat above the hardware shop. He could really do without the inevitable sarcastic ‘student’ comments from his brothers in front of Stella. Stella was astonished he didn’t live at home when his two elder brothers still lived with their mum.
‘Aye, I moved out when I was 16,’ he’d told her. ‘The week I started work.’
‘Why? Why not just stay at home?’ she’d asked. She couldn’t think of anything sadder than living by yourself when you could have your family around you. The thought of whole days and nights alone in the silent vacuum of your own company terrified her. John seemed to relish it though.
‘If you met my family, you’d understand why I left, petal,’ he’d said grimly.
For John, Stella’s life in the ice cream parlour was both engagingly genial and terrifyingly claustrophobic. Although he hadn’t been introduced to the family as Stella’s boyfriend, he would often watch their interactions from a booth in the ice cream parlour. Her family seemed to actually like each other. More than that, they genuinely loved each other’s company. When they were together, their chatter and laughter would rise and fall like the sea. They were tactile in a way that was extraordinary to John. Stella would kiss her father on his cheek when he made her laugh, Tony would chat to customers with his arm affectionately draped around his wife’s waist. Even Lucia, although obviously reserved, had a habit of gently reaching out and touching people’s hands when she spoke to them. For John, it was like watching another species in a zoo; a species that did not view emotion as a weakness to be drowned like an unwanted kitten. As he strode through the park, he almost regretted inviting Stella to meet his family. What on earth would she make of them and their sour, inhibited exchanges? Or the barbed resentment that seemed to crackle in the room when they were together like the thick, suffocating air before a thunderstorm?
Rita Coxon’s house was in the middle of a typical red brick terrace that sloped idly down to the sea. John led Stella down the ginnel at the back of the street and they entered through the drab back yard, with its coal shed, outdoor toilet and sagging washing line. He pushed open the back door and they entered a dining room off a narrow kitchen. There was a glowing coal fire, an oak table and chairs and a standard lamp with a gold velvet shade. The only sounds in the room were the crackle of the fire and the somnolent tick of the mantle clock.
‘Ma, we’re here,’ John shouted.
A small, flushed woman scurried out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. She had sharp, pointed features and short grey hair. She had a worn and pinched look, like a frail but malevolent pixie. Her gimlet eyes were as black as treacle and they darted nervously about the room as if she were a planning an escape. She reminded Stella of Rumpelstiltskin: spry and spiteful and full of agitation.
‘Hello, love,’ she said to John, who was taking off his coat and scarf, ‘And you must be Stella. Look at you, pet, you look as smart as one of those Littlewoods Catalogue lasses. You look like a vicar’s daughter, doesn’t she John?’
Stella smiled, but nervously fidgeted with the buttons on her camel coat. Unlike her mother, she was drawn to plain and understated clothes. Classics, she told herself. While she was still young, she had learnt that a sparrow can never compete with a peacock. She wondered now if she appeared plain and drab to John’s mother.
‘It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs Coxon,’ Stella said. ‘This is such a cosy room.’
‘Aye, well. I’ve built up the fire so we won’t be cold. Take your coat off, love. John, go and hang it up on the bannister,’ Mrs Coxon’s words sounded strangely thick and heavy, as if furred with moss.
‘Here, you sit by the fire, pet. I’ll see if the kettle’s boiled.’
‘Can I help you with anything, Mrs Coxon?’ Stella asked. She thought she would quite like to do something soothingly mundane like laying a table or pouring boiling water into a teapot. Being occupied might stop her nerves jangling like coins in a collection tin.
Mrs Coxon wouldn’t hear of it. ‘No, you sit and get warm. No doubt your sort feel the cold more than the rest of us,’ and with that she bustled back into the kitchen and started clattering pans and plates.
As they sat down at the square table John shook his head and mouthed, ‘Your sort. SORRY,’
‘It’s fine. I’m used to it,’ Stella whispered. And it was true. She was. To lots of Colliery folk, the Cichellas represented something curious and exotic. That they had left a country full of dazzling sunlight and supernatural beauty to live in the gloomy, damp warren of a Northern pit village was incomprehensible: a fairy tale in reverse. Of course, Stella knew the truth about the family’s life in Naples. She could still remember the poverty, the hunger, the stifling, dirty rooms that housed multiple families. She knew that for her father, life in the colliery, with his business thriving and his family clothed, fed and safe in their own flat, life was just about perfect. So, if he was teased daily about feeling the cold, or missing Italy he would simply shrug and gesture at the glowing bounty of his ice cream parlour, ‘What do I need the sun for? I’ve got all this!’ he would exclaim.
Upstairs in the tiny house, floorboards began to creak and groan like querulous ghosts. Someone began slowly, heavily making his way downstairs.
‘Brace yourself, pet. If you think me Ma is an oddball, just wait till you meet our Simon,’ John said with a grim smirk.
The door opened and a short, melon shaped man wobbled in. At first, Stella thought that John had been mistaken. The plump person standing in front of her was surely some dusty, ancient relative kept in the attic. She knew that Simon was only four years older than John, yet this sorry creature looked like an old man. Not only that, he looked like he had been an old man for hundreds of years.
Without a word, he sat at the parlour table opposite Stella and smiled benignly at her. He was dressed like a down at heel librarian from a bygone era; he wore voluminous tweed trousers and a home-knitted cardigan over a drab checked shirt. His shirt buttons strained where they fastened over his stomach, which wobbled like dough rising on a sunny windowsill. His eyes though were as sharp as a fox’s behind little round gold-framed spectacles. Underneath the glow of the standard lamp, his face was pale and moonlike and the few strands of hair he had left were slicked oilily to his head like seaweed across rock.
‘Simon, this is Stella. Stella this is Simon; the academic of the family,’ John said.
Simon smiled thinly at his brother.
‘Simon’s just back from university, Stella. Fat lot of good it’s done him,’ Mrs Coxon commented harshly as she carried in a steaming teapot.
‘Aye, Simon’s just back from University, what is it, four years now?’ John remarked pointedly.
‘Seems like longer. Serve the tea will you, Stella, pet. I need to supervise the cabbage.’
Stella poured the mahogany coloured tea into jade green cups. She smiled to herself. Mrs Coxon had put out the ‘best’ china for the occasion of her visit, just as her own mother would have done. Some customs were truly universal.
‘What did you study at University, Simon?’ she asked brightly, as she handed him his tea.
Simon smiled unctuously at Stella, as if answering a particularly retarded child, ‘Law mostly, but I dabbled in Philosophy too,’
‘Aye, Simon’s good at dabbling,’ John said.
Stella knew she was straying into slippery territory. A college education was something that was simply not available to colliery families. It was customary for male siblings to start working at the pit as soon as they were old enough, to bring home a wage. Simon, however, was the eldest and had received a scholarship to a private school so he had been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to go to university. Then a terrible explosion decimated part of the pit and their father was lost. Peter and John had been expected to start earning straight away to help their mother. John’s prospects of studying history or English at college were entombed in rubble deep under the North Sea. He was understandably reluctant to talk about the details and Stella hadn’t liked to pry too deeply into such a painful subject.
‘Do you want to be a lawyer, then, Simon?’ she asked politely.
‘Dear God no! Of course not,’ he shuddered at the thought. ‘I’m not sure I believe in the law any more. I thought I might write a book,’ he added loftily.
John rolled his eyes. ‘How many jobs have you had since leaving Uni, Simon? Exactly, like. How many. Don’t rush to answer. I’ll give you a minute to do your calculations’
Simon shifted uncomfortably on his chair. It creaked weakly in protest.
‘Still working it out? Let me tell you, Stella. It’s none. Zero.’
‘That’s not strictly true,’ their mother called from the kitchen. ‘He had a morning at the abattoir but complained it was too depressing.’
‘It was. Very depressing. I was only there to do paperwork. And all that mooing gave me tinnitus.’
‘I wouldn’t have liked that either. It must have been awful.’ Stella agreed.
Simon nodded. ‘So, no job, yet.’ He crossed his hands across his stomach and leant his moonlike face towards Stella as if confiding a great secret, ‘I just haven’t found quite the right thing.’
There was something fussy and feminine about Simon, she thought. He retained his Durham accent, but his voice was soft and almost lilting. Despite his size, he stirred the sugar into his tea with a fastidious daintiness. His fingers fluttered elegantly like little butterflies, when he spoke.
‘It’s hard, you know Stella, to find something for someone with Simon’s qualifications,’ Mrs Coxon said as she carried piping plates of panakelty to the table. Her face was beetroot red and she seemed to have some trouble setting the crockery down straight.
‘It’s not that fucking hard,’ John muttered under his breath.
Mrs Coxon slid into the empty chair and puffed out her breath exhaustedly. ‘I’ve forgotten the bread and butter,’ she groaned.
‘I’ll get it, Ma,’ John said.
‘This looks lovely, Mrs Coxon. Thank you. What would your book be about, Simon?’ Stella enquired.
Simon beamed at the interest, ‘Injustice!’ He pronounced the word emphatically, theatrically, like a tubby and imperious Roman emperor.
John returned to the room and set a plate loaded with bread and butter in the middle of the table.
‘Aye, I think I might have some insights for you on the subject of injustice, son.’ he said.
‘What kind of injustice?’ Stella persisted, ‘Racism?’
Simon put down his knife and fork and pressed his hands together as if deep in thought.
‘It would be an understanding of working class culture, I suppose.’
‘Maybe start by actually experiencing some work. That might help your understanding.’ John scoffed.
‘John!,’ Stella scolded teasingly.
Mrs Coxon took out a packet of cigarettes from her apron pocket and lit one. She stared at Stella with an expression of icy fascination as she inhaled the smoke. She observed Stella as if she were a rare creature preserved in formaldehyde in a laboratory jar. ‘Aye, just like one of them Littlewoods lassies,’ she whispered to herself, but her tone was mean and sharp.
As the evening progressed, Stella sensed Mrs Coxon was becoming more and more untethered from reality, more brittle and unpredictable. She had a nauseous feeling that the evening was about to spiral out of control. That the peaceful, fire-lit room they were sitting in was actually in the eye of a hurricane and that any second the storm would start raging. She looked at John. He seemed oblivious to the tightening mood.
‘Hang on a minute. Where’s Pete? I thought he was going to be here,’ he asked.
‘He’s gone to the pub. You know what he’s like.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ John swore, ‘Could he not have waited an hour? He knew Stella was coming for tea.’ He angrily put down his knife and fork and glowered at his mother. He turned to Stella. ‘Aye, well petal. I suppose you’re not missing much. He hasn’t said more than three words at the dinner table since Christmas 1957. He’s not exactly Oscar Wilde.’
Mrs Coxon’s beady eyes darted around the plates and her fingers tapped impatiently on the table. Stella sensed again the woman’s desperate desire for escape. Although she wasn’t finished, she put down her knife and fork. ‘That was lovely, Mrs Coxon. Thank you so much. I’ll wash up for you.’
‘No. You’re a guest. I’ll tidy up. You talk to Simon about this book of his. He doesn’t get much company. Especially of the female nature.’
‘I’ll just help you clear the table then.’
‘No! Sit down! I told you, ghastly girl.’ Mrs Coxon screeched sharply. Her voice was shrill and metallic. It sliced through the room like a butcher’s knife.
When she left the room, John reached across the table and took Stella’s hands in his. He looked at her tenderly. ‘It’s OK, petal. She didn’t mean it. She’s just. . . . tense.’
Stella looked down. She could feel her eyes begin to swim with tears. She focused on John’s hands softly holding hers. They were warm and strong. His fingers were long and curiously delicate and his nails were short and clean. The skin of his palms was course and calloused, like the bark of an ancient tree. During the day, these hands carried and hewed timber that shored up tunnels deep underground. These hands kept hundreds of pitmen safe. These hands held the churning sea at bay. They were a grown man’s hands: powerful and steady. She loved that. But more than that, more than his capability and strength, was his curiosity about the world: his sagging shelves of second hand Penguin Classics, his notepads bulging with scrawled notes from his English and history night classes. She suddenly felt overwhelmed by a surging confluence of feelings towards him. She lifted John’s hands to her lips and kissed them. In that very second, everything was settled. Stella knew that she loved John. All other thoughts quietened and dimmed, like dusk falling on a winter afternoon.
In the kitchen, came the sounds of a sink being filled and a radio faintly playing.
‘So, howay, bonny lad. Tell us how much of this sociological masterpiece you’ve actually written.’
‘Well, truly I am still in the research phase. But I am not willing to discuss it with you, John. I know you’re only mocking me,’ Simon said haughtily.
John hooted with laughter. ‘Simon, you are absolute proof of what our father always said, the more education you get, the less work you actually have to do.’
‘What was your father like? It is tragic what happened to him. You both must miss him terribly,’ Stella asked. John never mentioned his father and she was hoping to learn more about this mysterious man who lost his life in an explosion under the sea.
The brothers exchanged a look. The mantle clock chimed eight times. In the kitchen, the radio was playing wartime dance music.
‘How do you mean, tragic?’ Simon asked, stretching out the word tragic as if it was a piece of elastic.
‘Well, the explosion of course. He was lost wasn’t he? Never found?’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking he was lost. John?’
‘She doesn’t know the full story, Simon.’
‘Ah! How thrilling. Shall we tell her the sorry tale?’ Simon beamed archly. ‘This story needs a drink. Sherry?’
Stella studied the two brothers. They were looking at each other wryly, smiling. For the first time that evening, Stella felt a warmth between them, an affection. It was tangible, and as welcome as the first days of spring after a long, dark winter. She laughed, caught up in the glowing intimacy of the moment.
‘What is it? You have to tell me.’
John was pouring sherry into mismatched glasses. ‘Howay, Simon. You’re the intellectual. You can tell this story better than me.’
‘Ah, but you are the student of literature. It’s really more your area than mine,’
Stella took a sip of the sweet, syrupy sherry. She winced.
‘Bloody awful, isn’t it? Only good for maiden aunts and trifles.’ John said.
‘Simon, you tell the story please. John’s obviously been keeping this terrible secret from me. I’d love to hear it from you.’
Simon lumbered to the fire and stoked it. The flames danced and crackled. He stood in front of it. Stella saw that this was to be his stage.
‘The great pit disaster occurred in 1951. Were you in England then, Stella? No? Just as well. It was terrible. Just terrible. I was 15. John would be 11. It happened at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We were home from school. In this very room. I was probably reading, or doing something challengingly intellectual.’ John hooted with laughter. ‘Your word, John. Your word. John was probably picking his nose or eating worms or something. Peter was probably out throwing stones at cats. Dad was at work. He was on day shift, you see. Mum was, I don’t remember what she was doing, do you John? Cooking tea probably, I expect mince was involved in some mysterious capacity. Anyway, the pit siren went off. It had never happened before, but we all knew what it meant.’ Simon stopped and shuddered. The mood darkened. ‘It truly was terrible. Ghastly. We all rushed to the pit gates. By the time we got there, hundreds of people were outside. The streets were swarming with people but it was oddly silent.’
‘Ma was shaking. I remember that. She couldn’t stop shaking.’ John said.
‘The rescue took days. Rescuers died too. Poisoning. Rock falls. Crowds just waited outside the pit gates. Day and night. They never left. Names of the dead became known. Neighbours. Lads I remembered from school.’
‘Weeping. I can remember people in the streets, men, women, children, weeping.’ John added.
‘But, after 6 days, we’d still heard nothing about dad. Mam was told that all the bodies from the accident had been recovered. He wasn’t there. In fact, she was told he hadn’t even been in work that day. Never turned in. She said that was ridiculous. He’d left at the usual time. She’d packed his bait as usual. Every other man was accounted for, but not our wonderful Bobby.’
Simon paused to take a sip of his sherry. Stella looked from him to John, enthralled.
‘Where was he? What had happened to him?’
‘Howay, Simon. This is the best bit. Tell the lass where he was.’
‘Hartlepool.’
‘Hartlepool?’
‘To be precise, to be really precise,’ John continued, ‘He was in a flat above the Rialto Betting Shop on Hart Road, giving the Rita Rialto, the manageress, a good seeing to.’
‘Hang on, she wasn’t really called Rita Rialto, was she?’ Stella asked.
‘She was called Rita. I don’t know what he second name was. That’s not important. Focus on the important stuff, petal.
Simon continued, ‘When he heard about the pit disaster, he didn’t dare come home. He might have dodged death once, but he wasn’t going to risk running in to our mother the mood she was in. We never saw him again. None of us. Ever’
‘I did once.’ John said. ‘I was in Hartlepool and saw him in the street. He saw me too. I know he saw me. He looked straight through me. Like I was a ghost. Like I didn’t exist. He was with some brassy tart. All chest and earrings.’
‘Rita Rialto,’ Simon added.
‘Yup. Rita Rialto, I suppose. So that is the full story, pet. Yes, we lost our father in the 1951 pit disaster. Just not in the way you imagined. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. Truth is, I just can’t stand the cunt and I don’t even like to think about him.’
As Simon returned to the table, he momentarily rested his hand on John’s shoulder. ‘He is a ne’re-do-well. I agree. Wasn’t much use when he was here anyway.’
They sat in silence for a while, in the flickering amber firelight. John left the room and returned with their coats.
‘Ma, we’re off,’ he called. When she didn’t reply, he went to the kitchen. ‘She’s asleep in the chair. We’ll just go.’ He reached over and shook Simon’s hand. ‘See you soon, bonny lad.’
‘It was nice to meet you, Simon. Please come to the ice cream parlour. It’s quiet during the day when the children are in school, so maybe you could do some writing there, or research, whatever you like. Coffee will be on me.’ Stella said.
The moon was full and red as they walked home hand in hand through the empty colliery streets.
‘Next week, you’ll come to tea and meet my family. Properly.’ Stella said. She was no longer worried about what her mother would think.
‘Christ. You mean meeting my family of misfits hasn’t put you off me?’
The shadowy back streets were silvered in the light of the moon. It touched everything lightly, making the drabness magical.
‘You didn’t even meet the craziest one. Peter’s got a screw lose. He’s crackers, he’s the angriest person you’re ever likely to meet. He takes after our father, he’s just interested in birds and booze and fighting.’
‘I liked Simon. He wasn’t what I expected, but I liked him. He’s gentle . . .eccentric.’
John laughed. ‘He’s a bloody tweedy fuckwit. Utterly unemployable. Come back in 25 years and he’ll still be talking about the book he’ll never write. He’ll still be wearing that bloody cardigan me gran knit him and he’ll still be living with me ma. Listen, don’t be upset by me ma. You can see how it is. She’s drunk most of the time. It’s why she can’t keep a job.’
‘Drunk? I had no idea.’
‘Christ, you’re naïve, flower. Is it Italy you came from or Fairyland? She was three sheets to the wind on Tio Pepe tonight. Surely you saw that?’
They had reached the back door of the ice cream parlour. John wrapped his arms around her and Stella was fluttery with longing for the bulk and strength of him.
‘I decided tonight that I love you,’ she said.
‘You decided that tonight? During that debacle?’ he kissed her so softly.
‘I did,’ she rested her head on his shoulder.
‘Well, if you love me after all that, I suppose I am a very lucky man indeed.’
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