V
Maddalena would have liked them to live with Aunt Ottavia, who was willing to turn out all her lodgers, and to let Maddalena their rooms. But a closer acquaintance with Coldbath Square, and with Aunt Ottavia, kind though she was, had decided Gian-Luca against this plan. For Coldbath Square was anything but clean, in spite of its hopeful name; and as for Aunt Ottavia, she never stopped talking; failing an audience she would talk to herself, Gian-Luca had heard her at it. Aunt Ottavia was all blacks and whites like a magpie, and quite as voluble, it seemed. She was piously shrewd and shrewdly pious, she gave, as a rule, that she might receive. She contributed nothing to St. Anthony’s Bread, for she liked to have something to show for her pennies, and this being so she would buy little candles. Three penny candles she would burn to the saint, and then proceed to tax his patience to the utmost by a long recital of her needs. She liked Gian-Luca and thought Maddalena lucky—a girl without a dot to secure so fine a husband! Yes, indeed, Maddalena was lucky!
Aunt Ottavia knew life, very thoroughly she knew it—for the most part it only made her laugh. She had come from a village in far-off Liguria, and there she had known what it was to be married to a cobbler who had liked to get drunk. He had been very funny on certain occasions, and had tried to lay her across his knees so that he might beat her with a newly-soled slipper; but as she had been agile and quick as a squirrel, he had fortunately never succeeded. Now she would laugh when she told of Pietrino; she would say: “He was a kind man, he did it out of love—they are funny, these men, they have their little fancies.” And then she would cross herself, remembering that he was dead, and would mutter a prayer for his soul.
Gian-Luca took the basement and the ground floor of a house that he had found in Millman Street. It was not too far from the church for Maddalena, and the Russell Square tube was convenient for him. Maddalena was pleased at the thought of having her own kitchen, for she happened to be an expert cook.
Fabio insisted on helping to furnish this new abode for his grandson. “Ma si,” he said firmly, when Gian-Luca demurred, “I will do at least this much for Olga.” Aunt Ottavia, who always pretended to be poor, was evidently not quite so poor as she pretended, for she purchased a huge sideboard in the Tottenham Court Road—it had carving and a kind of overmantel. Rocca and his signora sent a silver-plated bread scoop, engraved with maidenhair fern. Nerone broke all records and cashed a good-sized cheque; from him arrived a splendid parlor clock. Rosa bought two double sheets, and these she embroidered with a couple of large hearts entwined with flowers; she offered them with many words of love from her and Mario, and hopes that they would grace the bridal bed. The Padrone and Padrona of the Capo sent a cream-jug—solid silver with a suitable inscription. The Padrone said: “I will not be outdone by that man, Millo, I send this for the honor of my Capo.” But Millo, as it happened, gave a cheque for fifteen pounds—hard lines, for the Padrone could not well take back his cream-jug.