The Captain's Daughter (51 page)

‘But, darling, you must eat,’ Ella pleaded, ‘or you’ll have a poorly tummy.’

‘If she doesn’t eat she will be hungry. Let her go hungry, but don’t give her anything else until luncheon,’ Celeste offered, hoping it didn’t sound too strict.

‘Poor thing will be starving by then,’ Ella replied.

‘Good, then she’ll eat. Think of all those children who never see an egg from one month to the next. She mustn’t waste food,’ Celeste continued.

‘But she’s only a baby,’ Ella argued back.

‘She’s not too young to be checked. It’s for the best.’

Ella stared at her coldly. ‘You’re so old-fashioned. Clare knows what’s best for her.’

‘Does she? Who’s in charge then, her or you?’ It was time to challenge her. ‘You must take control on some things. Just because . . .’ Celeste paused. Should she dare raise his sacred name? ‘Just because Anthony is missing doesn’t mean you must spoil Clare.’

Now she had Ella’s attention. ‘What you mean by that?’

‘Life has to go on, and if Anthony can’t come home, you will be her sole parent. I know you’d want to do things as he would have wished.’

‘It’s all right for you, you have Archie,’ Ella snapped.

You forget, I brought up Roddy on my own and it was hard. I had to work for both of us. Let’s face it, Ella, Clare is at a difficult age, but it will pass soon enough. You’ll blink and she’ll be in silk stockings.’ She tried to make light of things.

‘Oh, don’t say that. She’s all I have.’ Ella began to cry.

‘You’re doing a wonderful job but let us all help you and share the strain sometimes. The more she’s with other adults, the more you’ll have to rest and do things for yourself.’

‘I don’t want time to think or do. I just want to know Anthony is safe,’ she cried.

‘I know that, dear, but if he’s not coming back . . .’ The words hung in the air.

‘Don’t say that, I won’t have it. Don’t be so cruel.’

‘But it’s been nearly five months now. You have to face the possibility that—’

‘I can’t and I won’t. How can I go on living if it’s true?’

‘You will, you are and you must, for Clare’s sake, like your own mother carried on because of you.’

‘That was different,’ Ella argued, not looking at her, bristling with indignation.

‘No, it’s not. This is your
Titanic
moment, you must face the biggest loss of your life like thousands of others. But you’ll go on living because Anthony would want you to. How could you ever think of leaving his child? He’d want you to do all the things you did before you met him, to pick up the threads and weave something wonderful again. That’s the only thing we can do after such a tragedy. You keep going forward one day at a time. There’s a big push coming. Haven’t you seen all the convoys going south? The road’s lined with tanks, lorries, troops heading out goodness knows where. They say it’s coming soon and please God there’ll be an end to this madness.’

‘You don’t think he is alive, do you?’ Ella sat down, her head in her hands.

‘We should have heard something by now. It doesn’t look good, but I may be wrong. I hope I am,’ Celeste said without conviction as Ella picked up the plates and rose from the table, watching Clare tucking into her toast with relish.

Celeste looked up and smiled. ‘See, a child knows when it’s well off. Out of the spotlight and she just got on with it all by herself.’

They were still clattering about when the front doorbell rang. Ella sprang up like a gazelle. ‘The post!’

Celeste was making more tea when Ella placed a telegram on the table. ‘It’s for you.’

‘Not Archie?’ Celeste tore at it, all fingers and thumbs. She blinked in disbelief as she read the words, then threw it across the table. ‘It’s Roddy. He’s missing in Italy, presumed killed.’

Clare looked up, puzzled, crunching her toast as the two women clung together. ‘More soldiers?’

Italy, 1944

You get used to anything given time, Roddy thought as he stumbled out of the cattle truck, blinking in the harsh sunshine, at another camp somewhere in the hills of Italy. He hoped it was better than the last transit camp, the one they called the ‘Film Studio’ somewhere outside Rome, and about as near as he would ever get to the Holy City.

After the ambush, it was hands up and a long march with dogs snarling at his heels. They were lucky not to have been shot on the spot but the German officer was an aristocrat of the old Prussian military school with some respect for the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, they’d been stripped of valuables – watches, cigarette lighters, rings – and kicked around as they stumbled through the rocky terrain, before being herded into cattle trucks and driven for miles without food or water until they’d arrived, exhausted, at a holding camp. Men were standing around looking at the new arrivals with bored curiosity.

There was a roll call of sorts, dividing them into sections: British, American, French and others. It was like some rancher’s roundup, being corralled into compounds. All he could think of was food and water.

They didn’t stay long before it was back into rail trucks heading north to yet another camp, smaller this time, remote with a stunning view of the mountains. This view was masked by barbed wire fencing, guard posts and guns, reminding everyone they were going nowhere fast. Roddy gathered that they were near a battered city called Arezzo, famous for its paintings, but that meant nothing to him. He was just glad to be out in the fresh air, trying to get used to the idea of being a prisoner of war.

To be in the power of the enemy, reliant on him for food and shelter, to have to obey his orders and his whims and fancies, was a constant humiliation. There were rumours of escapees being shot and any peasants who helped them meeting a similar fate; a grim prospect that wouldn’t change until the invading troops pushed the enemy back north out of Italy. Easier said than done, as Roddy knew only too well.

The faces of his fellow officers said it all: suntanned, lean, gaunt and edgy. How would he cope with the boredom of it all? How long before they went further north to Austria or Germany? He looked round to see if there were any others from his division, any familiar faces from the landings, from training days, accents from Akron or Ohio, even. No one.

Roddy was glad he didn’t have a girl back home, worried sick by him being posted missing. Will and his mother would know some time soon. That was enough. He trusted that she would write on receiving his Red Cross postcard telling them he was a prisoner of war but not injured. He’d been lucky. His colonel still lay on the mountainside where he fell. He would never leave Italy. What Roddy would give to be driving some huge truck down an interstate highway, king of the road, stopping at a diner for steak and fries. Will and the Freight Express business felt a thousand miles from where he was standing.

Their chow was some sort of pasta soup slop, topped up with rations from their Red Cross tins. Funny how food, however meagre, becomes the focus of all your thoughts when you’re hungry, he sighed. There was so much time to fill. Time and boredom were the enemies now.

Books sent in were passed around carefully, but they were instructional, religious, classical literature, not the sort of books most of the men wanted to read. Any port in a storm, though; anything to take the mind away from the present had to be welcome.

He was messed in the officer compound. They were a mixed bunch with stories to tell of their campaigns that after a week or two you could reel off word for word. Everyone had plans to escape, but without a decent smattering of the lingo it would be impossible to make a run for it. No one would get further than the road end before being recaptured. In fact, they’d have a better chance dressed in German uniform, so many of them being tall, fair, blue-eyed, but would then run the risk of getting their throats cut in some dark lane by the partisans known to be lurking in the hills.

There were classes in everything, from chess, Italian, Hebrew and Polish, animal husbandry, beekeeping, nautical knots and kite flying. If you had some sort of specialist knowledge, it was shared with someone to keep their minds off flinging themselves at the wiring and getting shot.

What could he offer but stories of trucking round the States, the best stopovers, tyre manufacturing and the history of the rubber industry in Akron? Surprisingly, he did have an audience at his talk. There were church services for the devout but they did not appeal to Roddy. After what he’d seen in battle he doubted any universal deity was in overall control of this war. All he could think of was getting out of this pen.

He did go to the Italian lessons on offer because he never knew when it might come in handy. The Italian-American priest who took the class was more American than Italian, but he made a decent stab at it.

Despite his misgivings about religion, Roddy liked what he saw about the padre, Father Frank. He was short and dark, younger than he, but with a gentle calm way about him. He’d saved the lives of two soldiers in a dugout. Even German soldiers drew the line at shooting priests giving the last rites. His latest idea had been to start up a music club with some records and a wind-up gramophone that had been sent into the camp. The music was mostly classical, of course, but it did the spirit good to listen and let the images roll over in one’s mind.

Today, they were listening to Dvorak’s
New World’ Symphony
, full of folksy tunes and spirituals that made Roddy yearn for the wide-open spaces of Ohio.

‘I’m thinking we should start a choir,’ said the padre. ‘We’re hoping to have a concert, a show of sorts. If I can get ten or twenty voices together, we could do a spot or two.’

‘Count me out,’ said the guy next to him. ‘Tone deaf, I’m afraid.’ Why then was he listening to music? Roddy pondered.

‘Can’t read music,’ said the next man, rising to leave.

‘Who said anything about music?’ laughed the priest. ‘We’ll just sing from memory until we get some sheet music sent over.’ He turned to Roddy. ‘How about you, Captain Parkes?’

Roddy was halfway through the door and held his hands up in horror. ‘The last time I did any singing in public I was in short pants,’ he laughed.

‘Where was that?’

‘Lichfield.’

‘Litchfield, Connecticut?’

‘No, Lichfield Cathedral in England. Be seeing you . . .’

‘Hold your horses. Sounds like I’ve got my first recruit, a choral scholar, no less.’ The padre went after him.

‘Hell – I mean, sorry – no, Padre. I’m not sure what will come out if I open my mouth now.’

‘None of us does, that’s the challenge. We’ll take what comes, Captain, and work on it.’

Suddenly it had become ‘we’. Roddy groaned. ‘Call me, Roddy, Padre.’

‘See you tonight at sundown, Captain Roddy. Might as well make a start. You never know what tomorrow will bring. We may have a Caruso hidden in our midst,’ he laughed, pleased with his new recruit.

How did I get myself into this? Roddy grumbled, knowing he’d turn up. What else was there to do in this hellhole?

Frank had finished his sick visits. There was a hospital of sorts, not very well equipped, but the doc eked out his first-aid kit and demanded they got their due supplies from Red Cross stores. He looked exhausted, in need of a rest himself.

‘You go and have a smoke,’ said Frank. ‘I can take over if you point out the ones who need attention.’

He’d heard confessions and written a brief note home for a guy who was flat on his back with fever. He was glad to be useful. The latrines here were a disgrace, little more than a board with holes in it, and the faeces were carried on the duckboards and into the huts no matter how careful they were.

‘It’s the infection I fear most, the big T, typhus,’ said the doc. It was hot. There were flies. The work parties in the fields came back sunburned, bitten and exhausted, but it gave the fittest men a chance to work off their frustration. Boredom was the true enemy here. No one knew anything of the outside world and what was going on. The latest arrivals to the camp were pounced upon for news of the coming Allied advance, but the push north was slow, too slow ever to overtake this place and set them free.

Frank was curious about the surrounding district. It was tantalizingly close to where his father had been born. He could not be far from the Bartolini farmstead. He tried to recall the letters that had come from his father’s family in Tuscany, how his father had said they had a smallholding clinging to the hillside near to the famous walled city of Anghiari, somewhere close to where Michelangelo was born. To be so near and yet so far . . . Why hadn’t he taken more notice of his family history?

There were a few locals in the employ of the camp after the declaration in September 1943 that split the Axis partners from each other. It had been a lax regime until the Germans had taken over and tightened security. There was a stand-off between the two sides now. There was an old priest who called on the commandant and was allowed to make contact with Frank. When he’d heard his surname was Bartolini, he’d offered, at great risk to himself, to make contact with the family through a secret network.

What was the point, though? Unless the Allies came soon the prisoners would be shipped north in trucks and he’d never get a chance to meet his father’s relatives. His choir was coming together, at least, with a bit of arm twisting, slow to gel in harmony. Captain Roddy had a decent bass voice, much to his surprise, and they’d found a few tenors. He was enjoying licking this motley crew into shape for the concert party, aiming for a barbershop harmony. They sang ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. Corny, but everybody knew those tunes.

He was getting along well with Roddy Parkes. They’d met at the lecture on the
Titanic
by some guy whose uncle had been on board, reeling off all sorts of facts and figures about the disaster. Most of the men had long forgotten the sinking. His lecture was as dry as dust until Roddy stood up and said, ‘My mom was on board,’ telling them the story of how she had befriended a woman and her baby in a lifeboat and how they had all ended up living in England together, and how he’d met the real ‘unsinkable Molly Brown’ in Washington, DC. They discussed how the First Class passengers got the best treatment while the Third Class men never stood a chance once the ship began to sink.