Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [81]
As there was so little room in their own apartment, they had asked Beth if they could cook it in hers, and suggested the Rossinis should be invited too. Beth asked Sam to invite his lady friend, but his look of horror suggested he had no intention of bringing his sweetheart to a dinner party with two whores and an elderly Italian couple who only spoke a smattering of English.
Yet as the day grew closer, Amy’s enthusiasm for this special meal began to win both Beth and Sam over. Sam brought home an old door and fixed it over a couple of trestles to make a table big enough for them all; they borrowed chairs from different people in the house; Ira lent them an embroidered tablecloth, and Mrs Rossini dug out her old family recipes to cook a special dessert.
Amy and Kate surpassed themselves in cooking the meal. By six o’clock everything was ready, the turkey a deep golden brown and vegetables perfectly cooked. They were all just about to take their places around the table when Jack turned up.
Beth had seen him a few times since they split up, mostly in Heaney’s when she’d only been able to wave from a distance, but he had come into Ira’s shop a couple of times to say hello. The first time he came she was afraid he was pursuing her, but when he made it clear he was only being friendly, even mentioning a girl he’d taken dancing, she was glad they could be friends again.
‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you had company,’ he said, looked a little embarrassed. ‘I brought you some meat and some fruit.’
‘It’s lovely to see you and you’re more than welcome to join us,’ Beth said, taking the bag from his hands. It contained a quantity of lamb chops, some sausages, and apples and oranges. ‘Thank you so much. It’s very kind of you.’
‘The boss gave us all a bag of stuff for Thanksgiving,’ he said a little sheepishly. ‘Too much for me to eat on my own.’
Jack’s unexpected arrival turned out to be a blessing for he turned what might have been a dull party into a noisy, jolly one.
He made Amy and Kate laugh a great deal, stopped Sam from feeling awkward about having to entertain all the women, and as he had learned quite a bit of Italian from some of his workmates, he could include the Rossinis in the conversation.
Beth observed that the callow youth with few social graces she’d met on the ship had become a self-possessed and very amusing man. Hard physical work had given him muscle, his angular face had filled out, and the scar gave his face extra character. He was also far more articulate than she remembered. He told them stories about the men he worked alongside with humour, yet they were tempered with a great deal of understanding of the problems many of these foreign immigrants were facing.
Beth watched him flirting with Amy and Kate and guessed that he’d gained all this poise through women. He laughed when she asked him if he had a sweetheart, and charmingly said that his heart was still in her keeping. But that remark in itself proved someone was responsible for polishing him up. He would never have said such a thing when they were walking out together.
Everyone had drunk rather too much wine by the end of the evening. The Rossinis kissed them all on both cheeks and thanked them profusely before they went off to bed. Amy and Kate left too, and it was only when Jack remained, sitting on Sam’s bed, that Beth felt a pang of anxiety that he was going to be difficult.
But she was wrong.
‘I hope you don’t think I come round tonight lookin’ fer a free feed,’ he said, looking from Beth to Sam. ‘It weren’t that, I came cos I heard sommat the other day what bothered me.’
‘About Beth?’ Sam asked.
‘No, not about either of you, just about Pat Heaney. There’s trouble brewing, he’s fallen out with a geezer name of Fingers Malone. Both Fingers and Heaney have each got a gang behind them, blokes they’ve bin in with since they was young.’
Sam nodded. ‘I’ve heard that much. I’ve met Fingers too — he used to come in the bar most nights when