The Italian Romance (16 page)

He turned and picked up another cigarette from the bedside cabinet. He had to withdraw his hand to light the new one from the red-sparked remains of the last. She rolled on to her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was arched, tongue-and-grooved, pale yellow. She enjoyed gazing at it.

She said, ‘You don't mind that I'm living back at home, do you?'

He drew on the smoke. ‘Home?' he said.

‘You know what I mean. My old home.' She folded her hands
under her head. A fly walked up one side of the arch. As far as she could tell, it had no awareness at all of the two of them lying in bed, twelve feet away.

‘My parents don't like it,' he said.

She eased herself over slightly so she could look through the open doorway, to the kitchen. ‘Yeah, well, how was I supposed to get into work every day?'

‘You could have worked here. Plenty to do.'

‘But I always wanted to be a reporter. I told you that.' She felt his hand come down too quickly on her raised hip. It was supposed to be playful. It stung.

‘Anyway,' she said, ‘your mother doesn't like me.' She pulled at the sheet.

He laughed, a laugh she found particularly irritating. It made her feel foolish. ‘Don't be stupid,' he said. ‘Of course she likes you. She just doesn't know you, that's all. You never talk to her.'

‘Yeah, well, she never talks to me. And she came in and got all your clothes and washed them. She even cleaned your shoes.'

‘I thought the shirts looked like they were starched.'

‘I starch them!'

‘Yeah, but you don't do it properly.'

‘Well, it doesn't matter, does it? You'd think it was something important ... She didn't even ask me. That's the second time. I came home from town one day, a couple of years ago, just after you left for training camp and she was walking out the door with all your stuff. She dropped one sock on the verandah and another one halfway across the yard and she just says, “Pick that up for me, Lilian, will you”, like that. I didn't tell you about it.'

‘So?'

‘So, what do you mean so? How would you like it?'

‘Is that why you moved out?'

‘No!' She curled her legs up. She was staring at a green silk cloth which she'd brought with her to their house. It was hanging over the back of the couch. The warm breeze had caught it and it
danced very delicately. She danced her fingers and her wrist as if they were a leaf falling in the wind, her arm stretched out from the bed.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘Don't fight.' He put both hands on either side of her rounded bottom and pulled her.

She eased back into him. His arm went tight around her. ‘I missed you,' she said quietly.

He put his mouth against her hair and said, ‘I missed you, too.'

‘Are you interested at all in my father?' she says.

I am woken out of my reverie. Are we about to have a row? I've met one or two women who are like that. They seem to stew in their own juices overnight, and then throw the lot in your face the next morning. If she's one of those, our future is not assured. I'm too old for bloody nonsense.

I look up at her from my bed, which I took to a couple of hours ago, to leave them in peace. ‘What do you mean?' I say, I hope with steel in my voice, subtle but fair warning.

‘I mean this.' She waves a newspaper clipping.

‘Oh.' I sit up in the bed.

‘It's his obituary. It's only the local rag.' She is flushing.

‘The
Chronicle?'

‘Yes, not quite in your stratosphere, I suppose, but I think they did a nice job of it.' She glances at me, and away. Can my poor dear really feel awed by this old fraud? I ache to kiss her cheek.

‘I started work on the
Chronicle,'
I say.

She looks at the clipping, a long one, two columns and a wide picture, as if it might contain a vision of me, infant reporter.

‘Didn't you know that?'

She shakes her head. ‘No. I didn't know anything, really.'

‘I see.' I hold out my hand. ‘May I?'

She walks slowly over to me and I take it from her. ‘Sit down,' I say.

There isn't a chair in here at the moment. I appear to be engrossed, but I am waiting patiently.

She sits. The bed dips. With the utmost care, I ease my feet out of her way. She folds her hands on her lap. I can hear her breathing. I could die now, and be happy.

‘It's not a very good photo,' she is saying.

‘A bit grained, but it's all right.' I put my other hand under the paper so that I can see it properly. I feel my shoulders sag. This is him. I can hardly bear to look his photograph square in the face. ‘When was it taken?' I ask quietly.

‘That was three years ago. My daughter's wedding.'

I don't look up. Many years ago Nio and I were given a kitten, a refugee who was unsurprisingly wild at the world. He was caught between unsuitable us and a permanent swim in a bucket of water. For three days after he arrived, he skirted the living room, his body concaved into the wall, and I sat not looking at him as he approached closer, closer, barely stroked him as he finally brushed his fur against the back of my still hand. It was only when his tiny torso and his big, huge-eyed, beautiful head suddenly began to shiver uncontrollably in front of me that I risked it. I cupped him up and held him to my cheek. She's told me she has a daughter.

I reach for my glasses from the lamp table, manoeuvre them on to my face. I try to read the print though my eyesight is not the problem. I can see her hands. She is pinching her thumb. How remarkably strange! Of course, I have never experienced this before, except for the one brief, piercing moment, robbed myself of it, the recognition of one's own self, own blood, own cells, in the form and shape of this other. She pinches her thumb, as I do, to divert the pain, the discomfort.

I cannot read even the first line. ‘Was it quick?' I say.

She stands. The bed springs up, and feels empty. She walks to
the window, leans and looks out. ‘He was diagnosed three months before he died. We were all with him, on the night,' she says.

‘That's good,' I say inanely. I wish I had been there. I amaze myself. I wish I had been there, and I am jealous of all those ‘wes'. One chance for me, one chance for him, to say what might be left to say. Good God, I am crying.

I put the clipping on the bed. I take the stick, which is leaning against the bedhead, and hurry to the bathroom. I feel her turn from the window.

He watched her from the other side of the rise. He could hear the wet flap of the sheet as she billowed it; she took a wooden peg from between her teeth and fastened it to the line. And then she picked up the washing basket, balanced it on her hip, and surveyed her handiwork as if she were rather pleased. He rested his chin on the back of his hand. He was lying flat on his belly and had been there, watching the villa, for half an hour. He was waiting for the boy, and then out she came. She had been slow and careful, too careful for proficiency. She'd dropped two pairs of scanties. He'd laughed to himself as she shook the dirt out of one pair, pegged it up and brushed hard at its white delicacy, and promptly dropped another from where she'd pinioned it under her elbow. She stamped her foot and he heard her cry out something. She was adorable.

She swayed as she walked to the back door. In all that delight to the senses, the light-soaked stone of the house, the exquisite, quiet garden, deeply peaceful to the eye, the green hedge holding in the
house against the stretch of the fields to the horizon, the garrisons of cypress there, he could see only one thing, the swaying roundness of her hips, her slender, brown arm forming a perfect curved line as she hugged the wicker basket against her waist.

The kitchen door closed slowly. He heard leaves whisper together. The breeze was cool, and he was tired, hungry. Perhaps the boy was at school; perhaps they'd sent him away. He looked up at the sky. There were deep etches around his eyes from looking up at too many suns. It was about three o'clock.

He moved his right leg and cradled the knee. The damn thing was aching. He had walked a long way since dawn. Even if the boy didn't show up, he couldn't go much further today.

He slithered backwards down the rise, ankle, elbow. As the land levelled out, and where a wild hedge bordered an emptied field, he stopped and sat up. He peered through the brambles. The crops had been reaped only a few weeks before. The drills of clodded earth were ugly to him, the London man. And they reminded him of the thing he dreaded, the fall of winter, snow, hard and cold. The days of home were too distant. A fire in the grate, a glass of port, his leg thrown over the side of a leather chair, talk into the night. There was no returning to that. He felt the loss of it, the irrevocable shift that had happened. The world had turned and would never be in that place again.

There was nowhere for him to be but here.

He thought of the woman. He'd seen her before; he was sure she was the one who'd stood looking out through the French windows, though she'd been different then. She'd been someone whom a terrible wind had blown down from wherever it was that she usually lived. He'd understood that about her. He remembered clearly. Today, she was different. Not restored, no, he didn't think so. Perhaps like him she would never be restored. Perhaps no one in the world would go back there. But she was alive. She swayed as she walked, and his blood agreed with the music she must hear. That was something. That was nearly everything.

Who was she?

He could not risk going to the door. The boy would help him; he'd helped before. If the boy didn't appear, he'd sleep for a few hours, and move on. He was not on a path. His back was protected by the hedge. He'd wait, listen, stay alert for a while longer.

He felt the hand on his shoulder. He didn't understand for a moment. Then he shot his arm out and knocked the hand away. The boy was saying, ‘Americano, Americano.'

His heart raced. When he saw the boy stagger back, he closed his eyes with relief. He'd fallen asleep. It was dusk. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Are you all right? Va bene?'

The boy's face was creased with hurt. He'd recognised the American, his friend. His friend had come back. But when the man said something in American to him, he rubbed his arm where he'd been hit. And then the Capitano asked him if he was all right.

‘Si, si, no problem,' he said immediately. He took a step forward again. The man wanted to stand up. He had a bad leg. He must have got it in the war. His pants were ripped right up past his knee, and a cloth was wrapped round and round. The man held out his arm and Gianni took it in both hands. The man smiled. Gianni tugged at him till he hopped himself up from the ground.

‘Thanks,' he said.

Gianni said, ‘Okay.' He was very pleased that he could speak American. He always knew he could. He gestured to the man to follow him. ‘Okay,' he said again.

‘Wait a minute, young fellow. Are you sure it's all right?'

The man was talking too fast, but that was not a problem. Gianni walked up the rise and said, ‘You.'

The boy would not betray him, he was sure of it. And so he followed, limped up, and in the darkening evening, his shape was a shadow on the crest.

Alphonso watched him from the kitchen window. He licked his finger and thumb and snuffed out the candle. Whoever the stranger was, he was alone. He was also injured. He had his hand on Gianni's shoulder. Gianni was not afraid. He was walking slowly, helping the man.

They came nearer. Alphonso stood back from the window. He was glad the two women were elsewhere in the house. He backed over to the table and gripped his hands around the rise of a wooden chair. He could swing it high and hard if need be.

The door opened. Gianni was looking behind him at the man. The man's eyes stared straight at Alphonso. He stopped dead.

Gianni said, ‘The Americans are here. I told you! This is one of them. He's my friend. His leg got shot in the war.'

Alphonso said quietly, ‘Come over here, Gianni.'

Gianni looked across to him. The man dropped his hand from the boy's shoulder. ‘Now!' Alphonso said.

‘But he's an American.'

The man raised his hands, just a little, no sign of surrender, just to let him know he wasn't armed. Alphonso stared down the man's body, and nodded. He released his grip on the chair, and gestured to it. The man, his eyes still on him, limped over.

‘American?' Alphonso said.

The man shook his head. ‘Inglese,' he said.

Alphonso's face slowly relaxed into a smile. He pointed to the chair again.

Jack was rushed with relief. He was safe. He almost fell into the seat. The old man clapped him on the shoulder, once, twice, three times, before he walked over to the inner door. He yelled something up the hallway, calling a woman.

‘Signora,' Alphonso called. ‘Signora, come down. We've got a visitor. An Englishman.'

‘What?' she said.

Jack heard her voice from somewhere in the house. He looked expectantly at the doorway.

‘An English prisoner. Gianni found him.' They heard footsteps running down the stairs. Gianni smiled at the man and said, ‘That's Mama.'

‘Berta,' Alphonso yelled. ‘Where are you?' Then he said in a quieter voice, ‘Gianni, light the candle.'

The two women arrived at the kitchen door almost at the same time, the older one, smaller, round, her hand over her mouth and just behind her, slowing to a stop, the Signora. Jack pushed himself to his feet.

‘Good evening,' he said as the candle wick caught light and suddenly his shadow reared up the wall and across the ceiling.

Messages from Berlin today say that the Germans expect a double second front, an invasion of Italy plus a simultaneous assault somewhere else in Europe. Large numbers of landing craft have been reported by the Germans at Bizerta, in Tunisia, while Rome has openly admitted that the next direct attack was expected against the Italian mainland.

The Germans were reported tonight to be still rushing reinforcements to north Italy. Messages say that there were already 15 divisions there, with another 15 from France waiting to move in.

‘Red Star', the organ of the Russian Army, said that the Allies had failed to take advantage of the opportunity given by the Red Armies' summer offensive. It pointed out that actual invasion was the only way to shorten the war. There were at present 211 enemy divisions, about 3,165,000 men in Russia, and 91 divisions, about 1,365,000 men elsewhere.

These included 35 divisions in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, eight or 10 in the Balkans, 10 in Norway, 20 in Austria, and the rest in Poland as reserves for the Russian front.

Soviet commentators have qualified a ‘second front' as action sufficient to force the Germans to withdraw 50 or 60 divisions from the Eastern front.

Lilian leaned over the forme. She read the page-one piece slowly, in mirror image. The compositor was on the other side of the bench, throwing metal blocks together into a second tray as if he were dealing cards. ‘All right?' he said.

‘Yeah. That's as much as I got over the telex. I don't think I have another three inches of it.'

‘Give me anything. A couple of one inch fillers and I'll sort it out. Of course, you could move the liver bile ad from page two. They could look at that over their breakfast,' Arthur said. He wiped an inked hand quickly on his apron.

‘Oh, no, Arthur, don't!' She put her hands over her ears.

‘You'll jump out of bed in the morning full of vim,'
he said. He knew it off by heart. He continued to concentrate on the half-filled case in front of him, lining up the third column.
‘The liver should pour out two pounds of liquid bile into your bowels daily. If this bile is not flowing freely, your food doesn't digest. It just decays in the bowels.'

‘I'm leaving, Arthur. I'm going.' She walked to the door of the compositor's room, her hands still clamped against her head.

‘Wind bloats up in your stomach. You get constipated. Your whole system is poisoned and you feel sour, tired and weary and the world looks blue.'

‘You're not allowed to move ads,' she said. ‘Anyway, I can't hear you. I'll slide the fillers under the door.'

‘Ask for Little Liver Pills by name. Stubbornly refuse anything else.'

She closed the door on Arthur's laugh. The front office was empty. The blackout blinds were down. A piece of copy paper hung from the patten of her typewriter. She walked to her desk and wound it off. It was one paragraph, stating that Trooper Graeme Fernshaw, son of Mr and Mrs Dick Fernshaw of Boronia, had had a successful operation on his leg this week. He had been in a military hospital for seven weeks. That would do for one filler. She picked up her pen and scrawled ‘10/11 Roman' across the top of the small sheet and circled the instruction.

The front door opened, just a crack. Mr Scanlan said, ‘Turn the light off, Lil,' and closed the door again. She hurried across the room and pulled the cord, putting her hand out to the wall to steady herself in the shock of complete darkness. He slipped in and closed the door behind him. When she heard the click, she tugged at the cord again.

‘How is everything?' Mr Scanlan said.

‘Yeah, we're just about ready to put it to bed.'

He went to his desk, shrugged off his jacket and slung it across the rounded back of his swivel chair. ‘Well, don't. Has anything come in on the wire in the past twenty minutes?'

‘No, I don't think so.' Lilian almost ran to the telex machine at the back wall. ‘Oh, God, yeah, there is. I was out the back with Arthur.' A long worm of paper trailed to the floor.

‘I just got a telephone call at the house. Go and tell Arthur to hold it.'

She hurried to the door, put her hand on the knob and waited. He was taking his glasses out of their case. Finally he said, ‘The Allies have invaded Italy.'

She pushed the door open. ‘Arthur,' she yelled. ‘We're in Italy. They've landed.'

His short leg thumped on the wooden floor as he careened across the comp-room. ‘You little beauty,' he shouted. He tried to lift her off the ground. She stood on her toes to facilitate him. A veil of her hair had strewn itself over her left eye. He released her and turned his attention to the other man. ‘Just in?' he said.

‘Got a telephone call at the house. Bobby Simpson on the
Herald
rang. Sends his regards.'

Arthur nodded. He'd worked on the
Herald
himself till the war had sent him home to help on the family farm.

‘Well, come on, everyone, we've got a lot of work to do. Lil, I want sixteen pars out of that. Twenty minutes, all right? I'll do the head; we'll go right across, Art. Allies in Italy.'

‘Seventy-two.'

‘Righto. I'll give you a strap line.' He sat at his desk, pulled the typewriter by its base towards him and rolled in a short sheet of copy paper.

The sound of the patten, the mechanical whirl of it, excited Lil. Arthur disappeared. Mr Scanlan's typewriter began to chatter.

‘Oh, and Lil,' he said. He typed with two thick fingers.

‘Yeah?'

He pulled the sheet out. Lil could see one perfect line typed across it. ‘Tomorrow, I want you to go down to the prison camp. Talk to Finch. Let's get an idea of how the Eyeties are going to take this. See what he says, will there be any trouble.' He circled a notation he'd made on the paper. ‘And have a look round.' He hurled himself out of his chair. ‘Chop-chop,' he said. She saw Arthur's head appear above his bench as he lifted a case tray from the shelf below. He looked up as Mr Scanlan came into the back room.

‘You get on with that, Art,' he said. ‘I'll run this up myself.' He sat down in front of the huge, chattering linotype machine which took up much of the back wall.

Lilian's fingers flew over the keys of her typewriter. ‘American, British and Commonwealth Forces yesterday landed in Italy,' she typed. She had to stick her finger into the works to release two spikes which had jammed together in her haste, ‘a' on top of ‘e'.

The horses' hooves clopped on the hard-packed, pale brown earth and the cart wheels turned and turned, jumped at a jutting stone. The birds whooped and whistled, and in the bush quiet that overarched them all, a sound came, a tree falling, falling slowly, grandly, lost leaves lifted in a gush of wind then dropping like rain, and the thud, thunder that sent birds screaming quietly into the high, green reaches, wings beating in aftershocks. Lilian grabbed the sides of the cart. She looked up, panicked. A rag of red flannel over their heads. ‘Oh, God,' she said. ‘It's just rosellas.' She laughed with embarrassment.

The militia man looked up, too. ‘They make a racket when they're scared.'

Her heart was beating too fast. ‘Beautiful, though,' she said. ‘The way they all suddenly fly up together like that. The red up there with the green leaves. You know, when you're not expecting it.'

The man lifted the reins and brought them down with almost no force on the horses' rumps. One of them swished her tail in annoyance. They clopped on, habituated to the rhythm of tree felling.

Silence came between them again. Lilian slid her hand from the cart's side. The men were among the trees now, sleeves rolled up. An Australian guard nodded to her. He held his rifle with both hands, the leather strap over his shoulder. ‘Where's the c.o., Steve?' the driver said.

‘Two hundred yards, Ron.'

‘Righto.'

The track veered to the left and the horses pulled around the bend. The driver slowed them up, and they stopped and snorted. ‘Need help getting down?' he said.

‘No, I can manage.' She hadn't realised she would be stiff. She stepped over on to the running board and lowered a leg, feeling for the ground. It didn't seem to be there. She looked down between her arms.

Someone's hands viced on her waist. She could see a brown arm, hairs bleached in the sun. The man lifted her. She let go of the wooden cart and she sailed into the air. He placed her gently on the track, his hands on her waist still. She pulled away slightly and he dropped them. She turned her head. His face was beaded in sweat, laced above his eyebrows. His black hair, too long and curled for a soldier, covered most of his forehead, and it was damp, too.

‘All right, Joe, step back.' Out of the corner of her eye she saw a guard approaching them, walking up the track. She stepped back.

‘Thank you,' she said, and as she did and his eyes caught her attention, she recognised him. ‘How's ... how's your leg?' she said.

He glanced at the guard, too, and moved three or four feet away from her. ‘Much better, thank you. They say I might even live.'

The driver's voice said, ‘She's here to see Mr Finch. She's the girl from the paper.'

‘Yeah, righto,' the guard said. ‘He'll be back up in a coupla minutes, love. They're just loading down there.'

‘That's all right,' she said. ‘I'll just wait here.'

‘Wouldn't have a smoke on you, mate?' the guard said to the driver.

‘Yeah,' the driver said. ‘Could do with one myself.' He levered himself up and over, and landed on the ground. The two Australians stood huddled together as they lit up with one match.

She turned to the Italian prisoner. He hadn't moved. He was smiling. She felt his eyes on her skin. ‘So,' she said. ‘They've got you out here now.'

‘I feel I am in a story I heard as a child. The woodsman, axe over his shoulder. The forest sings. He sings.'

She laughed. He spoke like a poet. He'd done that before. ‘Do you always talk like that?' she said.

He shrugged. ‘Like what?'

She turned her eyes away from him. ‘I don't know,' she said.

‘You know what Mussolini says? This is the time for myths. Not history. The story has not yet been told.'

She turned her head slowly back. She had never heard Mussolini spoken of in such a way. She had never heard words spoken in such a way as this man spoke. She had read them. She had thought them. ‘What does that mean?' she said. She hoped her disdain had shown.

‘Myth has power. It gets in here.' He tapped his head. ‘And here.' He put his hand on his heart.

She looked at his nose, how it did not turn up at the end. She said, ‘Did you see the rosellas? I heard them at first. I didn't know what they were; I thought they were boughs breaking off over our heads.'

He kept his eyes on her. She said, ‘And I looked, and they were bursting out from the tops of trees, out from among the leaves and into the sky. They were a red heart. Someone's heart, I don't know whose.' She took one step backwards, stunned.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It is a great surprise, beauty.'

A leaf from a eucalyptus tree circled down, and touched her arm. She swept at it, grazing her skin. She saw Mr Finch climb the last few feet to the track. She said to the Italian, ‘I don't like Mussolini.'

‘I don't like him, either,' he said, and he smiled again at the astonishment on her face. ‘But at least he gave me a trip to your beautiful country, free, gratis and for nothing.'

She laughed. ‘I thought we gave you that.'

‘Perhaps. The alternative was unpleasant.'

‘Mrs Malone,' Mr Finch said. He gave a nod to the Italian officer, who turned without a word and walked off into the trees. ‘Sorry I wasn't at the camp to see you.'

He looked around, and then he said to her, ‘Probably better off not speaking to them, Mrs Malone. Particularly at the moment. They're edgy. They've got wind of it. News spreads like wildfire in a prison.'

‘Yes, sir,' she said. ‘I didn't say anything about it.'

‘Good girl. Come on, we'll walk up the track, and you can ask me your questions.'

As she wheeled about, and tried to keep up with him, she looked among the trees. He was standing about thirty yards away, looking down at her.