Giorgio was a huge man with a spiteful face and a bullying nature. He was also blatantly on the make, and lost no time in telling Lorenzo about his family back in Sicily who’d been trying to sell their produce to Martellis for years, but had been scandalously rejected. He implied that now he expected this injustice to be put right.
Lorenzo fenced with him and escaped as soon as he could, giving a huge sigh of relief. That was one more reason to be glad he wasn’t marrying Helen Angolini. Even if she hadn’t rejected him first.
To be fair, he was beginning to understand her feelings. The men of the Angolini family were of a type that was becoming outdated even in Sicily where tradition still prevailed. In this household male superiority was still taken as the norm. Only the younger women, who spent their working lives outside in a different world, questioned it. The men, enclosed in the haven of Little Italy, thought nothing had changed.
The dinner was superb and Lorenzo was able to praise his hostess’s cooking with real pleasure. She smiled and accepted his tribute with a few words, but when her husband intervened to say that Angolini meats were second to none she retired and let him take the credit.
Lorenzo tried again, but this time it was Giorgio who butted in, interrupting Signora Angolini in a way that nobody would have been allowed to do with his own mother. Mamma’s reaction was to rise with a smile and a nod to her daughters to help her clear away. After that the party broke into two groups, women washing up and making coffee, and men gathering to talk.