Return to Paradiso (The Paradiso #2) by Francesca Scanacapra

Author:Francesca Scanacapra [Scanacapra, Francesca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silvertail Books
Published: 2021-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The whole village descended upon Paradiso once the news of my mother’s death was announced. People came to offer their condolences, bringing gifts of food and flowers.

When I broke the news to Gino he said he would take time off work and come down to be with me for the funeral. I was touched, but I told him not to trouble himself. He turned up a few hours later anyway. He must have left home minutes after speaking to me.

‘What are you going to do now?’ he said.

‘I have to organise the funeral, then I’ll go back to work.’

Gino reached forward and took my hands. ‘Come to Pomazzo,’ he said. ‘We can get married and live with my parents until we have enough money to get our own place.’

‘What?’

‘I love you, Graziella. Let’s get married.’

It seemed like such a ludicrously rash, foolish suggestion that I did not reply, but nor did I express a clear refusal – and for Gino, that was sufficient.

The church was filled with so many mourners that there was not enough room for everybody to sit. People packed the pews, leaned against the columns and crowded at the back. I was overwhelmed by the number of people there. My mother was not native to Pieve Santa Clara and had never been particularly sociable, or a collector of friends, but it seemed that the whole village had taken time to come to pay their respects. Some of the shops even closed for the afternoon.

One after another they expressed their admiration for her – for the strength she had shown when faced with my father’s disabilities, for the way she had risen from the misfortune of widowhood, and for the way she had raised me without assistance. They praised her modesty, her dignity and her dedication to her work.

It was not Pozzetti, but the municipal mortuary who prepared my mother for burial. I went to see her only once and decided that I would not offer her body for viewing. She would have been unrecognisable to anyone who had known her before her illness and I did not want her to be remembered like that.

My last image was of her shrouded in pale pink satin. It was a colour she had never cared for much. The undertakers had arranged her hair in an odd bouffant style, rouged her cheeks and applied lipstick to her lips. She looked like an old, grotesque china doll.

So many flowers were brought to the church, from formal bouquets and wreaths, to bunches picked from gardens and little posies gathered from fields and hedgerows. As I looked at the mountain of blooms which covered the casket and spilled down the altar steps, I thought that there was probably not a single one which Mamma had not reproduced at some time in her embroidery.

It was Don Ambrogio who took the service, something which stuck in my gullet as I knew Mamma would have preferred it to have been a different priest. Nevertheless, he spoke kind words and I believed them to be heartfelt.

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