Hello chico!

'I was fifteen when I ran away from Nana and Ziu Joe, the people my mother sold me to.  Nana went to America for seven months to visit her son so I was out and about!  Shopping, boys and beach.  Then she came back and everything was how it always had been with her. I ran home to my mother. We all ran home to her eventually.  I wanted to get my own back, I hated everybody then. So I took a job in a cocktail bar.  It wasn’t the done thing.  They all said it was wrong so I wanted to more. You know?

The bar was owned by three brothers; Frankie, Paul and Josie.  While I was working Ziu Joe had people chaperoning me from the opposite side of the street.  Sometimes him, sometimes some priest or other who was a friend of the family.  They took turns.  At two in the morning my uncle would come and collect me.  So that’s how it went. 

One of your father’s friends, a painter – a sailor but also a painter – asked the brothers if he could paint a Muriel across the bar wall.

“A mural,” I correct her.

‘Whatever.  The thing is I didn’t actually like working in the bar -I was just doing it out of spite. And this painter, Benny Forber his name was, he says to me, “When you smile I will paint you. You never smile.”

One day a bloke comes in and he looks at me and then at Benny and he says to him, “Yeah, you’re right.”  He comes up to the bar and he says, “Hello Chico.”  He was horrible looking, with this big beard. I said, “That’s not my name.” He asks for a blue – that’s a beer. Then he pays me in pennies! I have to count them out. He goes away and he is talking quietly with Benny and looking over to me. When he comes for another beer I say, “You’re talking about me. Why?” He tells me, “Benny came on to the ship one night and he says to me ‘Do you want to meet a miniature Sofia Loren?’ I’m a big fan of Sofia Loren so I came to meet you.”

I really didn’t like him. His beard was huge.  And he always paid with pennies. I complained to one of the brothers and he said “Don’t count them then, just stick them in the till.” He told me sailors don’t get paid much. 

Over the next three nights he came in, bought blue’s and sat in the corner watching me and getting paralytic.  At two in the morning the three brothers would put him outside.  The P.O’s would come in a van and pick up all the drunken sailors.  My mother came to pick me up and saw him slumped against the wall. “Don’t ever go out with him,” she said.

“As if I would.”

Several times he asked me to go out with him.

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like you.”

One day he says, “We’re sailing for Venice. I’ll bring you a present. Maybe you’ll go out with me then.”

“No I won’t,” I said.

He came back on my day off.  I was at home, lying on my stomach on the floor in cut off jeans and a shirt reading a comic. Suddenly behind me at the door I hear, “Hello Chico!”  I jumped.

“I’ve brought you a present,” he said. He was in his uniform carrying a big box.  It was a big doll. Very frilly. I glanced at it.

“I’m still not going out with you!”

My mother heard me, came out and said, “Who are you shouting at?”  Then she sees the doll. “ Ah! Nice boy. Come in! You want beer?”

I just lay back on my stomach and keep reading.

She comes out with beer and a bottle of whiskey.

“Oh that’s all he needs,” I say flicking a page over. “You’re always drunk.”

“No I’m not,” he says.

Then mum comes out with a huge steak on a plate.

“I am NOT going out with him!” I shout.

The following day he comes to the bar again.

“That was a lovely steak your mother made me.”

“It’s not special,” I say.  “She does that for everyone.”

He stays until nine, then leaves, sober.

This happened for a few nights until he asks me to walk him to the ship.

“Walk me to the ship?”

“No.”

Benny stops painting for a moment. “Oh go on, for Christ’s sake, it’s only down the road!”

I sigh and frown. “Oh alright.”

Benny watches us from the door.  When we get to the ship he leans over and kisses me on the cheek. I hit him so hard across the face.

I storm back. “You see!” I say to Benny.

“Why did you hit him?” Benny asks bewildered.

“He kissed me!”

“Hardly!”

It’s impossible not to laugh and mum pauses whilst I recover myself.

‘One day he came in civvies. Grey flannel trousers, a blue striped shirt and a cravat.’

I’m moved that she remembers exactly what he wore.

‘He had shaved his beard off and I didn’t recognise him. Not at all.  I was thinking, he’s good looking. Who is he?  He said hello and ordered a beer and I’m all smiles. He keeps smiling back and winking at me.

I was very naive.

Then he pays in pennies. I say to Josie, “Not another one paying with pennies!”

Josie rolls his eyes, “It’s him. It’s Pete.”

“No it's not. This one looks like James Dean.”

Josie shakes his head, “It’s Pete. He shaved off his beard.”

Pete smiles, “It’s me Chico.”

All my friends would come in and say “Ooh doesn’t he look like James Dean!”

Pete asks me to go to the cinema with him. I’m not so sure. Josie leans over and whispers “They are playing Jailhouse Rock.”

“Okay, but I only want to see Jailhouse Rock.”

Pete nods very quickly. “Okay,okay.”

Anyway, the next thing I know I get a letter from his mother.

“What?”

‘Yes. It says; my son is in love with you. I have never heard him talk about anyone the way he talks about you. I am looking forward to coming for the wedding.’

I can picture my Gran writing that letter and it makes me grin. She has such mischief in her.

‘I show the letter to my mother.

“You can’t marry, you’re not even sixteen.”

“Of course not,” I say.

The news spreads fast. All the aunts are saying ‘No No No’. And I’m agreeing with them.  I tell Pete, “I’m not marrying you. I’m marrying no one. Especially not you.”

He just looks at me and says, “But I want to marry you.”

We went on a few more dates and he kept crying.

“If you don’t I’ll jump ship. I’ll go to prison. I’m not going back to England without you.”

Then he shows up with a ring. Crying.

I said, “For Christ’s sake, you’re always crying! Okay, okay! I’ll marry you!”

Just like that.

Well.  Everything went berserk. Everyone is shouting, “No! You’re too young!”

Which of course meant I was absolutely going to do it.

Another letter comes from his mother. She is flying to Malta for the wedding.  I show it to Ziu Joe and he says to the family, “You know how stubborn she is.  She’s run away before. She will do it again. Let’s just deal with this.”  So he makes a search on the family. You know he worked for Reuters then? Yes. “If the family is no good we’ll lock her in a room until he leaves with the ship.”

He got good feedback. No ‘undesirables.’

So then they are all running around like headless chickens organising, planning, making things.  Auntie Chetta was crying. She cried a lot anyway but she was also saying, “ I have to make her dress, veil, two bridesmaids dresses and she won’t come in the house for a fitting!”  They got two people to catch me and hold me still so she could measure me.

All through this I think it’s hilarious.’

Mum says ‘heelarious.’ More than fifty years in this country and she’s still Maltese through and through.

‘I think it’s all a big joke.  Pete was taking it seriously.   He was twenty two.

I mean I was still going out on dates.  Everyone was so busy organising the wedding and I was gallivanting about on the beach with my boyfriends.

Two days later we go to the airport to collect his mother.  He always says ‘My mum’ when he talks about her. So when I meet her I say “Hello Mum.”

“Hello Chico,” she smiles. “I’ve been dying to meet you. You’re as beautiful as Patrick said you were.”

I’m thinking, who the fuck is Patrick?

We were married at six pm on Saturday afternoon the 27^th of December 1959.

As I was walking out of my mother’s house the clock on the wall behind me said five to six. And my mother is behind me wailing, “ She has no interest in this! She can’t be bothered!”

She stopped me. She said, “Nothing matters. Everything can be cancelled.”

I said, “Are you stupid? I’m getting married!”

“But do you want to?”

“It’s a party!” I grin.

She sighs. “Okay.”

Your father looked so relieved when I showed up. So did the priest. He was rubbing your Dad’s back. Pincher Martin was his best man.

“Good name,” I say.

‘After the wedding we went to our new place in Floriana.  I went to the bathroom and put on my interlock nightie. Up to the neck, down to the toes.’

I am crying with laughter. “You can stop there mum.”

‘Bu the story isn’t finished.’

“I know what happens next.”

‘When I realised. Oh good god. I ran all the way back home in my nightie. My mum was stood waiting on the doorstep with her arms folded.

“I’m not married anymore”, I say. “I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, I know,” my mother says.

The uncles go over with a bottle of rum to explain things to your father. I went back but I ended up sleeping between the two drag queens that lived upstairs. That was my wedding night.’

“How long between meeting and marrying was it?”

‘We met in August and married in December. A month after my sixteenth birthday.’

“That’s the way to do it.”

‘Yes, that’s the problem with your genera –‘