A
NGELO DI Lucia flirted with
all his women customers while
he sold them cones and penny
licks at his Sligo ice-cream parlour
in the summer of 1914. Sometimes
he serenaded them loudly with a
Neapolitan love song he’d learned in
Italy many years ago as he filled scallop
shells with creamy white scoops.
He was a big man with oily black hair,
and a sensual mouth that could bellow
with laughter or narrow in fury. He’d
moved to Sligo two years ago with his
wife Rosa and their two babies, and had
built the Ratcliffe Street parlour into a
successful business. When war broke
out, Italy was an ally and townsfolk
often called in to wish his country luck
against the Austrians.
He and Rosa had been married
10 years, and she was now pregnant
with their third child. Looking at
her, he found it hard to remember
the 20-year-old beauty he had been
determined to bed. Her voluptuous
curves had caved in and these days she
stared at him from behind a curtain of
straggly hair.shirts?” he taunted Rosa in Italian,
dropping the smirk he’d been wearing
while talking to Jane. “Or is that asking
too much?”
As Rosa slunk away, Angelo took
Jane into the shop to show her how to
serve the ice cream. Handing her a fold
of waxed paper, he doled out a scoop,
and watched as she slowly and carefully
licked it clean, all the time fixing him
with her dark green eyes. In the days
that followed, he thought of little but
her tongue exploring his body.
Seventeen-year-old Jane had come toUnable to speak English, she could
only help behind the scenes at the
parlour and rarely left the house. She
felt homesick for the little village south
of Turin where her mother still lived,
and longed to feel the sun burning
her face instead of the Atlantic rain
that seemed to soak her whenever she
slipped out to the cathedral to pray in
the wonderful multi-coloured light of its
69 stained glass windows.
On good days, she sensed accurately
that isolation, loneliness and Angelo’s
sneering bad temper were leeching
her energy and confidence. On bad
days, she felt worthless and panicky
and begged God to stop her husband
hitting her. Maybe he was right when
he accused her of being ungrateful...She
was past knowing.
One Sunday afternoon in June, she
trudged home to find Angelo sitting at
their table with a pretty young girl. He
told her that Jane Reynolds was their
new “domestic” and that she would
help look after the shop as well as the
children.
“I suppose you can still manage
to peel some potatoes and wash mythe bustling town of Sligo three years
ago to work as a domestic servant. Her
family lived 14 miles away in Ballymote,
a wild and beautiful area of mountains,
waterfalls, shimmering lakes and
mysterious prehistoric remains.
Although it was more than half acentury since the great famine had
claimed 52,000 people in Sligo, Jane
had grown up knowing she had to seize
opportunities while she could. If I play
my hand well, she thought, Angelo di
Lucia could be a winner.
But she had to be careful. Angelo’s
17-year-old brother Pascali – or Patsio
for short – was living with the family,
and she knew Angelo could get jealous
if she paid him too much attention. Shealso had to keep on the right side of
Rosa, now four months pregnant, for a
while at least.
Over the next five months, Angelo
became infatuated with the girl he
called his “little signorina” and took
every chance to be alone with her, even
locking the doors between the shop
and the kitchen so he could fondle her
among the vats and churns.
He pressed her for sex, saying he’d
fallen in love with her, couldn’t live
without her, and would find a way
to marry her. He took her to picture
houses several times a week, and
occasionally to dances, never offering
Rosa any kind of explanation or excuse.
As Rosa’s pregnancy advanced,
Angelo’s behaviour confused and
bewildered Rosa. She couldn’t
understand what her husband and
Jane were talking about when they
exchanged secret smiles and looks.
Surely they couldn’t be lovers right
under her nose? She must be going
mad. It was all her fault. But even if
they were lovers, where could she go?
Who could she turn to? Her children
needed a father. She couldn’t leave,“My wife’s head is gone. I
think she’s crazy. Will you
kill her for me?...If you get
a noggin of whiskey it will
give you great courage and
you’ll be like the devil...I’ll
marry you once it’s done”22 Murder Most Foul “Don’t Hang Me, I Have A Little Child”