The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by Victoria Purman

Author:Victoria Purman [Purman, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781489246851
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-five

1957

‘What took you so long, Iliana? I send you out for flour and rice and it takes two hours?’

Agata Agnoli stood at the wood stove, waiting for a pot of water to boil. Her face was flushed from the heat of the fire, the sleeves of her dress were pushed up to her elbows, and there was a smudge of flour on her cheek. Iliana looked to the table, still dusted with flour, and saw the rows of orecchiette her mother had just rolled sitting like tiny puffy clouds.

‘Mamma, why didn’t you wait for me? I said I would help you when I got back.’ Iliana crossed the room to put the paper bag of groceries on the sink. She quickly reached for her apron and slipped it over her head.

‘What were you doing all this time in the shops, huh?’

Iliana avoided her mother’s gaze. She opened a cupboard door and took out a dinner plate, then scooped some of the little pasta ears onto it, before handing it to her mother. Agata slid them into the boiling water.

‘I forgot what time it was. The rain stopped and I went for a walk.’ That was half the truth. Being sent on an errand into the main street of Cooma had given Iliana the chance for some privacy and time to herself. The small house was barely big enough for a family of six and since she stayed at home helping her mother, she never seemed to be able to leave it. Her two little brothers, Stefano and Giovani, went to school each day. Her father, Giuseppe, and her big brother, Massimo, had jobs on the Snowy Mountains Scheme and they left every day too. Most of the time, it was just Iliana and her mother and while she loved her mother, sometimes she loved her solitude too.

While the pasta cooked, Iliana thought back to the dress she’d seen in Woolworths. She loved that shop. She hadn’t even cared that she had to scurry past the Australian Hotel next door and listen to the wolf whistles of the men on the footpath. She loved many things about Cooma that were so different from Italy. The saddler, the laundromat, the florist, the Hain’s department store and the wide main street with Holdens and Austins parked at angles on both sides. She had picked up a copy of the Women’s Weekly at the newsagents for nine pence, which she would flick through in more detail in the evening when her brothers were in bed and the day’s chores were complete. She loved looking at the photographs of the young Queen Elizabeth and was able to understand some of what was written in the stories in the magazine. It was hard to come by things written in Italian so she practised and practised and she had convinced her father that listening to When a Girl Marries on the radio would help her with her English.

The dress. Oh, the dress. She had thought about it all the way home.

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