The Italian's Token Wife

Silence reined. Total silence. It was almost as unnerving as the noise.

Knowing, instinctively, that the only thing she could do was keep her head tucked well down beneath the parapet, Magda kept to her room. Gradually Benji cheered up, but it was not long before another need made itself increasingly urgently felt. He was hungry.

She rifled through her hand baggage, extracting an apple and some rusks. Benji wolfed them down, still hungry when they were all gone. For the next forty-five minutes Magda tried to mollify him, but in vain. Even juice could not sate him. He needed proper food, and milk. There was nothing for it. She would have to go and find some.

With her heart in her mouth she gingerly opened the door of her bedroom. It was dusky outside on the landing. Cautiously she went down the grand marble staircase into the deserted hall. Hoping to find Giuseppe, she went through what must be a service door into a stone-flagged corridor. A door stood ajar at the end, and she entered reluctantly. If it were just herself she’d go to bed hungry, but she could not starve poor Benji. Surely someone would take pity on him?

As she entered, she realised she was in a vast, old-fashioned kitchen. A cavernous fireplace at the far end was filled with a huge cooking range. Dominating the centre of the room, however, was an endless long wooden table. To the side, beneath an old-fashioned window, an elderly woman was vigorously scrubbing a huge copper saucepan at a stone sink.

As Magda hovered hesitantly in the doorway the woman turned to stare at her.