Giorgio never worked at the brickyards. Yet, this is where his story began.
We met him on our first night in Bedford, and he became our guide for the following days. Giorgio is a very active man, seventy years old but looking great for his age. He talks with the calm of a man from the south. He often smiles. When he shows us the large, open-plan living room, the garage and the long and well-kept garden, which goes down to the river, he is very proud, as if he built every inch of it with his bare hands. He pours us a glass of wine and tells us about work, love, community. About his father and how he came to Bedford there with thousands of Italians.
In the early 1950s there are no job opportunities in Petrella Tifernina. Giorgio’s father decides then to leave. He enquires at the employment office and they send him to the UK, specifically to Bedford. His father leaves on a train, while Giorgio says goodbye without knowing when he will see him next.
The son works as a shepherd, a barber and a tailor, receiving a letter from his father from time to time. He only knows that his work is taking the bricks out of the oven. In 1958 his father can finally bring the family to Bedford, and Giorgio and his mother are reunited with him. Giorgio now understands what taking the bricks out of the oven means. In the wide and dark living room, Giorgio tells us about his father who worked bare-chested stopping from time to time to get rid of the sweat congealed with brick dust which covered his shoulders. When he came back home every night, his boots revealed feet covered in dirt and blood.
Giorgio becomes extremely serious when telling us this story. He is very conscious of the sacrifices his parents made, and every time he talks about them, it looks like he is thinking of a debt he will never be able to repay.
He does not tell us his story, but prefers to show us the places he thinks are the most representative of the Italian community, in his splendid vintage Rolls-Royce. We go to the former Little Italy in Midland Road, the stadium where he trained with his friends, the motor mechanic’s workshop owned by his friend Lorenzo, or better Lawrence, Coladangelo. In the 1970s Lawrence used to go to work on a wrecked Bianchi moped, now he has a vintage Ferrari Testarossa, which is parked in one of the four enormous sheds of his company. Giorgio’s Rolls Royce next passes in front of the former prisoners of war camp, which became hostels for workers and are now stables, lost in the English countryside. Finally, we stop at the most archetypal places: the Italian clubs.
Finally, Giorgio starts telling us his story. He talks about the early discussions with his father, at the end of the 1960s; he wanted his son to go to the brickyards, while Giorgio wanted to open a barber’s shop. He was so convincing he persuaded not only his father and an uncle but two bankers he did not know to lend him the money he needed. The shop was a success and, out of curiosity, he decided to go to a commercial fair in Milan, where he saw some state of the art machinery, and asked the owners of the company to let him become their representative in England. After a few years he is so successful they invite him to fairs all around Europe and even ask him for articles. He participates in demonstrations in Europe for the thousands of goods he is able to sell. Including one in Russia, where a colleague asks him if he can have dinner with a Russian friend, who is in Moscow that night, alone. He meets her at the entrance of a luxury restaurant; she is beautiful, blue eyed and dark haired. The first revelation she makes that night is that she is not married as she is looking for a gorgeous, tall man. He answers that he has not married yet either as he is looking for a good, Italian girl. After a few months Giorgio, possibly a head shorter than her, accomplishes the difficult task of carrying her in his arms across the threshold of their new, big house in Bedford, just married. This was one of those moments when Giorgio, and perhaps the Italian community itself, realised that something had changed.
Giorgio’s Rolls Royce brings us to the station again. He says goodbye while the train goes southwards, but we do not pass the Stewartby station. It was built specifically for the brickyards and today only a few trains stop there. The rooms once belonging to the stationmaster and his family are now a tearoom, all in pink and lace.
— Photo: the local community at an Anglo-Italian wedding in Bedford.
