Hearts and Farthings Read online

  Hearts and Farthings

  Beryl Kingston

  About the Author

  Beryl Kingston is the author of 30 novels with over a million copies sold. She has been a writer since she was 7 when she started producing poetry. She was evacuated to Felpham at the start of WWII, igniting an interest in one-time resident poet William Blake which later inspired her novel The Gates of Paradise. She was an English teacher from 1952 until 1985 when she became a full-time writer after her debut novel, Hearts and Farthings, became a bestseller. Kingston continued writing bestsellers for the next 14 years with titles ranging from family sagas to modern stories and historical novels. She currently lives in West Sussex and has three children, five grandchildren, and ten great-grandchild.

  Also By Beryl Kingston

  Historical Fiction

  A Time to Love

  London Pride

  War Baby

  Hearts and Farthings

  Kisses and Ha’pennies

  Two Silver Crosses

  A Stitch in Time

  Avalanche of Daisies

  Suki

  Gates of Paradise

  Hearts of Oak

  Off the Rails

  Everybody’s Somebody

  The Easter Empire Trilogy

  Tuppenny Times

  Fourpenny Flyer

  Sixpenny Stalls

  The Octavia Trilogy

  Octavia

  Octavia’s War

  The Internet Revolutionary

  Fiction

  Maggie’s Boy

  Laura’s Way

  Gemma’s Journey

  Neptune’s Daughter

  Francesca and the Mermaid

  Non-Fiction

  Lifting the Curse

  A Family at War

  Hearts and Farthings

  Beryl Kingston

  This edition published in 2019 by Agora Books

  First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Arrow Books

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Beryl Kingston, 1985

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To RD

  Chapter 1

  The couple standing under the olive tree were kissing, he moving his mouth gently and languidly over hers, she holding his face tenderly between her hands, guiding and savouring. They were absorbed in each other, concentrating on their pleasure, and neither knew nor cared that they were being watched. They’d have been annoyed if they’d known but not very surprised, for the watcher was young Alberto Pelucci, the village nuisance, and everybody knew he was always to be found where he wasn’t wanted. But Alberto was keeping very still, and they were in another world of pleasurable sensation, so the kiss went on. The setting sun mottled their ecstatic faces and their encircling arms with patches of gold, and as the slight breeze of evening stirred the grey-green branches all around them, the dappled shapes shifted and swam with the same luxurious rhythm as their kiss. To Alberto, sitting above them in the olive grove, they seemed to be sparkling with pleasure, their hair glinting as they moved, their flesh edged with fire. With the reasonable part of his mind, he knew that they were only Giulietta, who was really no better than the village whore, and her idle cousin Enrico, who’d never done an honest day’s work in his life. But his senses were recognising them in quite another way. To his senses they looked like gods, and he was profoundly and tearingly jealous of them.

  He’d never been able to understand why the village girls had always rejected him. He knew he wasn’t much to look at, with his big nose and embarrassing lack of height, but he could love them so perfectly, if only they’d let him. But they never would. ‘Run away and grow up, little baby boy!’ they mocked. And when his brow darkened at their taunts, ‘Doesn’t he like it then? Run home to Mummy, baby! Little baby!’ Always this terrible insistence on his lack of size, lack of years, lack of experience.

  One day, he promised himself, watching the kiss as it started again, one day some girl somewhere would arch her body against his just like Giulietta was doing, would hold his face between her hands or wind her arms around his neck in the same beautiful abandoned way. Not here in Pontedecimo of course. In England. In his new life. Where he’d be a success, with a thriving shop full of happy satisfied customers and a grand new house full of the latest furniture, and a fine English woman to love him. Much better than Giulietta. A lady. With white skin and long fair hair. It would all be different in England. Nobody there would laugh at him behind their hands, or tell him to run away and grow up, or call him a pest, or beat him for the temper he couldn’t control, or tell him that times were bad and that the youngest son would have to fend for himself. In England he wouldn’t be a son, or the village nuisance, or stupid Alberto. In England he would be himself.

  Now that the time for his departure was so very close, his emotions were in such a turmoil that he couldn’t settle to anything. He couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t sit still for more than ten minutes and there was nowhere he wanted to walk. He couldn’t even listen to the end of a conversation, particularly when he’d heard it all before. This evening he’d left the supper table before the meal was over, an unheard-of crime in the Pelucci farm, and had wandered off into the olive grove without even being aware of what he was doing. Excitement, fear, regret, hope and impatience boiled in his brain and set his body into continuous alert. The occasional stab of anxiety only made matters worse and certainly didn’t cool him or stop the mill race of sensation that seemed to be sweeping through him at every second of the day and night. Tomorrow he would be on-board ship and bound for his new life. Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

  He stood up carefully, dusting the seat of his trousers with the palm of his hands and looking down at the dry familiar earth under his feet. There was no sound in the village below him. It lay subdued under lethargy, almost without life. The donkeys in the low pasture were asleep standing up. The breeze had dropped, and even the leaves hung from the branches all around him, heavy and somnolent. It was all so dull, so crushingly dull. How could anybody live in such a boring place?

  As he ducked under the low lintel of the farm door, he sensed his father’s brooding disapproval even before he saw it. A glance at the table showed him that his two sisters had already left the room, and he felt a flicker of relief that they wouldn’t be there for the row that was bound to break the minute he opened his mouth. Vittorio and Claudio had stayed behind with their father. All three faces were dark and disagreeable. I’m for it, Alberto thought, and comforted himself that this would be the very last scolding he would ever have to endure. Tomorrow, tomorrow, his mind sang. Tomorrow was freedom.

  But tonight certainly wasn’t. ‘Where the devil do you think you’ve been?’ his father demanded, leaning back in his tall wooden chair to send a look like a knife straight at his son’s face.

  ‘I’m sorry, father,’ Alberto tried. ‘I just had to get out. I felt stifled in here. I needed air.’

  ‘That’s your trouble my son,’ his father said. ‘It’s always what you want, isn’t it? You. You. You. Never anybody else. You’re so full of yourself you never give a minute’s thought to anybody else. You don’t care how you upset people just so long as you get your own way!’ The complaint went on in its wel
l-worn, familiar fashion. Alberto shut his ears to it and focused his attention on two flies crawling across the bread board. One stopped halfway over, to clean its head, stroking itself with legs like black thread, delicately, first on one side of its head and then on the other. Alberto wondered if it could hear his father’s voice droning on and on and on, and decided that it, too, had probably learnt the trick of not hearing sounds it didn’t like or didn’t need. The fly stretched out its back legs stiffly behind it, flicked open its wings and flew off. There was a pause in his father’s peroration. Alberto looked up to see if a response was required, so he was paying attention when Vittorio weighed in to have his turn.

  ‘You wouldn’t have behaved like this when Mother was alive,’ Vittorio said.

  Alberto was stung and replied before he could stop himself. ‘You leave Mother out of it,’ he said, and now his voice was shrill. ‘When she was alive, we were a family. I was welcomed at the table. I enjoyed being here. Because she wanted me here. That was enough.’ To his annoyance, he could feel tears rising in his throat.

  ‘Your mother spoilt you,’ his father said testily, drawing on his pipe again. He’d forgotten to smoke during his outburst, so it had gone out. ‘That’s your trouble. You’ve been spoilt. I tell you, you’ll need to mend your ways if you’re going to get on in England.’

  ‘He won’t last five minutes,’ Vittorio said. ‘You’ll see! I give him three months, and then he’ll be whining back here for us to give him a roof over his idle head and put food into his stupid mouth.’

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ Alberto shouted, ‘I wouldn’t take your precious food. I wouldn’t come back here if I was starving to death.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to work,’ Claudio said. ‘And mind how you behave. If you go sloping off in the middle of a meal in England, they’ll give you the sack, I can tell you.’

  ‘The whole things ridiculous,’ Vittorio said. ‘We’re simply squandering money on his fare. How will he ever get a job? He’s got nothing to offer. Nothing at all. No brains. No effort. He can’t live on dreams.’

  ‘He thinks he can,’ his father said, getting his pipe to draw, at last, and covering the bowl with his thumb to encourage it.

  Rage swelled in Alberto’s chest. They were talking about him as though he wasn’t there, as though he’d gone already, making him feel insignificant.

  ‘I’m here!’ he yelled. ‘I’m here! I haven’t gone! I’m here! In front of you! You just talk to me.’

  ‘Temper, temper!’ Vittorio said, mocking him. ‘You can’t even control your temper. Look at you.’

  ‘You treat me like dirt,’ Alberto shouted. ‘I’m your brother, damn you! Your brother! Treat me properly!’

  ‘Behave yourself properly then,’ Vittorio said, deliberately cold and very calm. ‘If you act like a baby, you’ll be treated like a baby.’

  ‘Naughty! Naughty!’ Claudio mocked. He got up from the table and advanced on his brother, grinning and enjoying the boy’s discomfiture. ‘Look at him, Father. He’s crying. Cry-baby!’

  ‘I’m not!’ Alberto roared, furiously. But he was. He couldn’t hold the tears back. He was shaking with fury and shame. ‘Leave me alone, you lousy bullies.’

  Vittorio joined his elder brother. ‘And you think you’re going to get a job in a foreign country. They won’t even look at you, a snivelling little worm like you!’

  ‘They don’t like cry-babies in England,’ Claudio said, tweaking Alberto’s ear to emphasise his words.

  The tweak was painful, but the taunt and the mocking expression were worse. Alberto seized the bread board in one hand and the bread knife in the other and lunged at his brother, beating him about the head with the board, weeping and shouting incoherently. Instantly, the kitchen was in uproar. Vittorio, trying to get out of the way of Alberto’s attack, fell back against the great table, scattering the pile of used platters onto the stone flags. One rolled back under Claudio’s foot and he lost his balance and fell backwards into the debris of the meal with Alberto on top of him, wielding the bread board like a man possessed. Their father put his pipe carefully on its rack, took off his belt and waded in to restore order, beating the thick leather thong onto Alberto’s back. At the first blow Alberto leapt from his brother and turned to face his father, knife aloft and snarling.

  ‘Granny Bianchi!’ Vittorio screamed. ‘Granny Bianchi come quickly! Alberto’s murdering Papa!’

  Granny Bianchi, Pina and little Maria were in the kitchen before he’d finished shouting, and Granny had taken the bread knife from Alberto’s upheld hand almost before he knew she was there. ‘Calm yourselves,’ she said. ‘Calm yourselves, you bad boys. When will you all learn to behave?’

  ‘When this maniac has gone to England,’ Claudio said, rubbing the side of his head. ‘I should think he’s given me a black eye.’

  ‘And what have you done to me? Do you ever think of that?’ Alberto said, still bristling. ‘No, you never do.’

  ‘Come away with me,’ Granny Bianchi said quickly to Alberto, putting an arm around his shaking shoulders, just as she’d done so many times during his childhood. ‘I’ve got a job that needs doing. Come along.’ She turned to her son-in-law. ‘Is the farm running itself now that you’ve got time to brawl?’ she asked.

  Alberto followed his grandmother out of the kitchen, thankful as usual for her authority and the speed with which she could calm them all down when their passions were running too high. She was the only person he would really miss when he left Pontedecimo, and he knew that he would miss her sorely, her strength and her good sense and her affection. Now the moment was approaching when he would have to say goodbye to her, and he didn’t think he could bear it. They crossed the courtyard to the barn.

  Alberto settled into the routine of milking, brushing the two goats, and putting feed in their stalls to occupy them while Granny Bianchi milked. He was calmed by the familiar work and the familiar sounds, the swish of milk into the pail and the steady chomp and rustle of feeding. Granny Bianchi rested her head against the warm flank of the senior goat and looked at her grandson.

  ‘Off tomorrow then, my dear,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Granny,’ Alberto answered, suddenly overwhelmed by the misery of parting.

  ‘I shan’t see you again after tomorrow,’ Granny Bianchi said, looking him steadily and lovingly in the eye.

  It was too much. ‘Oh don’t say that,’ Alberto pleaded. ‘Please don’t say that,’ and he rushed towards her, arms outstretched.

  Granny Bianchi turned on her stool to accommodate him, taking his head into her hands and down into her lap. ‘Things must be said, my little Alberto,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m an old woman. I shan’t last very much longer and I’m never likely to travel. Even if you come home to visit us when you’re rich and famous, I shan’t be here to see it. So we are really saying goodbye, you and I.’

  Alberto was weeping now and quite unable to answer. Granny Bianchi let him cry for a little, then she wiped his eyes on her milky apron and brushed the thick damp hair out of his eyes. ‘I’ve something to tell you Alberto,’ she said seriously.

  ‘Yes, Granny Bianchi,’ he said, loving her more than he could bear.

  ‘I don’t know anything about London or England,’ Granny Bianchi said. ‘I don’t really know anything about Italy, if the truth be told. Only Pontedecimo. But I know about human beings. And one thing I can tell you for sure is that nobody likes a foreigner. We don’t trust somebody who’s different. When your grandfather first brought me to this farm, I was a foreigner. I was different. I didn’t fit in. I wore different clothes and I spoke a different dialect and people kept their distance. It was very upsetting and very lonely, but I learnt what to do about it. After a very long time, it’s true, but I learnt. Now when you get to England you will be a foreigner. Different. And they won’t like it. You must make it your business to stop being foreign as quickly as you can. Find out how they behave and behave like them. Eat the same food. Wear the same clot
hes. Speak the same language. Worship in the same church. But be the same. Then they won’t be afraid of you and gradually they will like you. Have you understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alberto said. ‘I’ve understood.’ He kissed her solemnly, feeling that it was almost as if they were in church, and he was making a vow. He didn’t really understand her argument, but he knew, with his instincts, that her advice was sound, and resolved to follow it. He had already thought himself halfway towards it anyway, because he was so determined that his life in England would be totally unlike his life in Pontedecimo.

  At breakfast the next morning conversation was sparse, limited as it always was to the state of the livestock, the progress of the fruit, last night’s milk yield and the morning’s crop of eggs. Alberto drank his coffee slowly, savouring every sip, but he was too excited to eat.

  Then the morning chores demanded all their attention and activity excluded speech, as it always did. Eggs and olives were packed for market, and the donkey was persuaded and coaxed until he finally allowed himself to be harnessed to the cart.

  Granny Bianchi handed Alberto a bundle of food for the journey. ‘Eke it out, my dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t gobble it all up on the first day. You’ve got a long way to go.’ Alberto was folded into her black serge embrace and kissed firmly. Her faded eyes were bright, but she didn’t weep and neither, to Alberto’s surprise, did he. After all the emotions of the past twelve hours, he felt numb, saying goodbye as if he were in a dream. His brothers kissed him on both cheeks and thumped his arms. ‘You’ll be all right! You’ll see!’ Claudio assured him, and Vittorio said, ‘Good luck! We’ll be thinking of you.’ Little Maria stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and said, ‘Come back soon!’ as though he were going on a holiday. Then only his father remained, standing apart, small and awkward in his earth-stained jacket, with his trousers tied at the knee ready for the day’s work.