Mothers and Daughters Read Online Free PDF

wimple, fussing over her favourites with their sashes and big busts. She would like a Sabrina bust one day, but not until she was famous. Busts got in the way of jetés and entrechats ; they bounced and wobbled and hung over flimsy tunics. Sister Gilberte said they were bodily parts that gave occasions for sin and lust, and must be bound over at all times.
    Hers were like two half lemons but they still had to be encased in a tiny cotton dancing bra so that nothing showed under the white leotard. Her body was changing and she hated the hair sprouting at thetop of her legs; it was coarse and dark, and showed through her leotard without a lining sewn into it.
    Nuns didn’t have busts but wore long white spatulas over their habit like penguins waddling down the shore in squeaky brogues that looked like coal barges.
    Sister Gilberte had spies everywhere feeding her morsels of information. How else did she know that Rosaria cavorted in ice-cream parlours with Protestants and danced to juke box music, which everyone knew was of the very devil himself? If only she could fit in with the rest of her class.
    When she giggled with Maureen, who was clever and wanted to be a teacher, they were separated and Rosa was told she was a bad influence so she was sat next to poor Celia Whitehouse, who had red hair and spots and was working hard to be a saint, and whose parents had a sweet shop and tobacconist’s and gave the school lots of prizes for the Christmas parties.
    Somehow Sister Gilberte knew all about the Santini scandal and the Big Fall-Out after Dada went to heaven. How her mother had left the café and had a baby and lived with Protestants before Sylvio Berterolli made an honest woman of her. The Santini stock was not rated highly after cousin Marcella left at fifteen before her exams to work in the café. Enzo went to St Vincent’s so no one was expecting much from this humble offcut. Rosa’s scholarship had beena surprise even to herself. It was a burden she had to bear.
    ‘I hope you last longer than your cousin,’ sniffed the nun. ‘Girls from your background should not be entered for scholarships. They take up valuable places. You will do cookery and extra religious studies to nip any contrariness in the bud. The Sorrows girls are the future homemakers of Catholic Grimbleton, shining beacons of motherhood within the sanctity of holy matrimony fortified by Papal Blessing and Nuptial Mass. I can’t see you qualifying for anything much. Good Catholic girls do not go on the stage and we don’t want show-offs in our midst. I shall be watching you, Santini.’
    It was hard enough kitting her out for the grammar school now that baby Serafina had followed Salvi and they were bursting at the seams living above the salon. Mamma was so busy downstairs seeing to customers that Rosa was lumbered with watching the babies whilst trying to practise her barre work on the banister rail in the hallway.
    A place at the Royal Academy would change all that. School was just something to do between ballet lessons and listening to the juke box, but she still needed a letter to get her off classes so she could catch the bus to Manchester.
    Mamma was not good at spelling, and Sylvio was even worse. In the end it was Queenie Quigley, one of the Olive Oil Supper Club, who came to therescue and wrote the letter on peach-coloured scented notepaper, which was all they had to hand, and Mamma signed it. Rosa handed it in to the school office and thought nothing of it until she was summoned by her form teacher at the end of registration.
    ‘We don’t give days off to go cavorting with theatricals, Rosaria. There aren’t enough days in the week to drum the basics into a schoolgirl’s head if she is to avoid all the temptations of the flesh and the devil in this day and age,’ said Sister Gilberte drawing herself up into a puffball of indignation. ‘Dancing and prancing half naked on a stage for men to lust after – is that what any good mother wants