Never Forget by Angela Petch

Author:Angela Petch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authors On Line Ltd
Published: 2013-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

‘Keep still, Ines...if you wriggle I shall be sticking the pins in you instead of in the material.’

‘Nobody will realise it was a nightdress, Mamma , it’s just perfect. The material is so fine.’ I ran my fingers along the lace-edged hem, the silk soft and cool against my skin. I had never worn anything made of such fine material. I was used to wartime ‘make and mend’ working clothes, hand-me-downs from my brother. I felt beautiful. I turned to look at myself in my mother’s cracked mirror.

‘If you bend like that again, the hem will be up in front and down at the back. You’re worse than a child today.’ My mother had pins in her mouth, making it difficult for her to talk. ‘I can’t spend too long on this, so hold still. We still have so much to do before tomorrow.’

The next day was to be my wedding day. There had been very few occasions in the last years for celebration and what with the relief of the war coming to an end and the announcement of our marriage, everybody had rallied to help us prepare a special feast. Neighbours had been leaving baskets of vegetables, jars of jam, bottles of wine – anything they could spare – on the steps to the mill for days since Norman’s return.

‘I can help you make the cappelletti afterwards, Mamma.’ We had been given a basket of fresh eggs the night before to prepare the traditional hat-shaped ravioli for our wedding breakfast.

‘Why do you think I got up this morning at five o’clock? While you were sleeping, I was busy rolling the pasta. But we still have to decorate the stable for the party afterwards. I cannot believe it is twenty years since Papa and I danced in there for our own wedding.’ She had removed the pins from her mouth and was rummaging in the trunk at the end of the cherry-wood double bed where she and Papà had slept since grandfather passed away. ‘Come here, child. Let me fix this on you.’ She held up the veil she had worn on her own wedding day. It was yellowed with age, hand-embroidered by my great grandmother who had been the first woman in our family to wear it on her special day. ‘I’ll wash it carefully and soak it in lavender water and it will come up fine. Today is sunny and it will dry on the bushes in no time’.

My father shouted up the stairs, ‘Assunta, there’s nothing here! Somebody has stolen our things!’ Mamma went to the top of the ladder leading to the floor below and shouted down. ‘You’re searching by the wrong tree, Aldo. Look for the oak tree with the arrow.’

A few months after the start of the war, when the Germans had rolled into our town with their half- tracks to occupy Badia, we, like many other villagers, had buried possessions in boxes in the woods to stop them from being looted by the soldiers.

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