The Italian Romance (17 page)

Bloody bastard. Bloody, bloody liar. It's a long time since I've been taken in, but there you are. Our private, one, solitary time together, she and I. Time to mend what might be mendable. And this bloody, cheating snake crawls in. I could beat his brains out.

There was a phone call for him. A woman who said she'd rung the consulate section and been given my place as his forwarding address. Bloody Frank gave her this number. She said it was urgent, and he was to ring home. I said, politely, who shall I say called? She said, his wife.

When I think of the look on Francesca's face as she saw him here in the kitchen. And there was I, gleeful. Matched that one well.

He drove her to Perugia for the day. She looked so lovely. What if I were to ring Dora and Vincenzo? I wonder if they'd drive up to Perugia, find them, and bring her back here. Vin can tell that wretched bushman to go to hell. They can take his bags back with them to Rome later.

I pick up the telephone, dial the Rome code, the first three digits of their number. I put the receiver back down.

No, calm down. I don't want anyone else involved. There's no necessity for anyone else at all to know what has happened. We'll
keep it in the family, she and I.

I will handle him. My God, I will.

Three o'clock in the morning. I am sitting outside on the loggia, still waiting for them. The wisteria seems to have nodded off. The sky is available to me through the stone-arch openings. For some reason tonight, I desire a different sky, the other one I knew aeons ago. Have I felt the loss before? I can't remember. The roof of this verandah is a frustration to me tonight. I want to look up, straight up, to be dazed and outdone by the universe, to be brought home to it, to turn my head sideways, or upside down so that I too spin on the axis of the Southern Cross. I didn't know I was lonely for it. What sort of a damn sky is this, this northern sky? Where is the tear in it, the tiny hole through which the stars of everywhere and nowhere fall, tumble out, Catherine-wheel across a vastness the ancient ones in this antique place only ever dreamed of, and thought a metaphysic? It's a long way away and a long time ago, and I'll never see it again.

I must be tired. I've got such a pain in my heart, suddenly. A lifetime of losses. Every step of the way, and something drops, discards itself. Or I dropped it, carelessly. Or its time was up, simple. All gone. Seems there's nothing left now but to climb back through the tiny hole, inch it open with my fingers. Back to you. Back to you.

Ah, now, here's the two yellow eyes turning off the roadway. The sound of the rubber tyres squashing stones under them, slowly, slowly. The car creeps up to the house, around the back, past the vegetable patch, and down the side. He pulls in near the foot of the front steps, and the two lights go out. If they stay in that darkened car for longer than a few seconds, I'll have to switch the bulb on and stand under it. He won't go pawing my daughter, plying his nasty little trade of business-trip seduction, thank you very much.

Oh, Lord, the doors are still closed. Please, dear God, don't let them be snogging in the front seat. I really couldn't bear it.

Her door opens. The interior light flickers on. They are talking softly, so they don't wake the old lady. I feel like a bloody fool, out here in my nightie.

She has seen me. She comes up, slower by slower step, as if I am an animal in the wild, keep her calm, don't spook her. She says, ‘It's three o'clock in the morning.'

‘It's hot,' I say.

‘What are you doing out here?'

‘Not a lot.'

She is stuck on the second step, looking up at me. I suppose I appear rather like a ghost, white gown, grey hair. Yellowed face, or so it was when I caught a glimpse of myself after a bath earlier, yellow with a purple cloud blowing up in the south. I don't want her to think I'm mad. I really don't want that. So I say, ‘I keep odd hours. It suits my work, you see.'

‘Well,' she says, and she moves. She heads for the wooden doors. ‘It's up to you, but I would have thought the doctor was reasonably right when he told you to rest. But,' she turns her hands palm-up; I can only see her from the back, ‘it's up to you.' She pushes one of the double doors and the light floods out. As if they'd been waiting for it, four or five moths and a convoy of smaller insects try to beat each other into the house with her. She doesn't quite close the door after her. The clever ones will squeeze through the crack.

He comes up heavily. I look straight at him. He is aware, but does not understand the expression in my eyes, apparently. ‘What?' he says. He reaches the loggia, and now he looks down on me.

‘I have a message for you.' I walk over and pull the door completely shut. ‘You got a phone call from Australia,' I say as I watch his face.

‘What? Here?'

‘Yes, here. I presume you know who it was.'

‘Business?'

I shake my head. ‘Not business, no.'

He moves closer to me. So that we can speak in lowered voices, I take it. ‘Jane?' he says.

I could slap his face. ‘I presume so.'

‘Is she all right? What's wrong?'

‘I am not your secretary. I didn't ask for details.'

He steps back as if I have slapped him.

I lower my voice, lower it and fire it at him like bullets shot through a silencer, thud, thud, thud. ‘You told me you were free. You said there were no complications, no wife.'

‘I what?' He looks out into the dark night, as if it might offer him some much-needed aid. ‘I didn't speak to you at all about my private life, Lilian,' he says.

His tone unsettles me. I say, ‘You led me to believe you were free. That's my daughter in there. Have you lied to her, too?'

He shakes his head. He still looks out at the black garden, the moonless sky, not at me. ‘Apart from anything else, Lilian, and I do like you, enjoy your company, this really is none of your business.'

‘My daughter is my business. And I'm culpable here, too.'

He looks at me now. I see his eyes, the whites like lanterns. The light from inside has made a bright line under the door.

‘What do you mean?' he asks.

Now it is I who can't face him. I gaze down the staircase, to where I can see nothing. I sigh. ‘I thought if you and she ... formed a relationship, I would have a part in it. I thought it was a way of keeping her in my life.' I drag my eyes back to him. ‘I thought we were friends, Jim.'

‘I don't know what Jane said. I don't know what has happened, but I haven't lied to you. I didn't talk to you of my difficulties, any more than you spoke to me of yours.'

‘She didn't sound like a difficulty.' I am angry again now. The stories they tell. ‘She sounded like a wife.'

‘Wife! Jane is my daughter.'

‘Well, I...' I am a little taken aback, just a little. ‘Then it wasn't Jane. She just said it was your wife.'

‘Right. And she didn't say why.'

‘No, of course not. I presume it's private. I'm a stranger.'

He nods. ‘How long ago was this?'

‘Four or five hours. For goodness sakes, I don't care about your domestic dramas. I care that you are not who you say you are. I don't want my daughter hurt, and I want you to leave.'

‘To leave?' He seems stunned.

‘Yes, of course. What else?'

I hadn't heard the door opening behind me. Her voice is calm, calmer than mine. ‘What is the problem here? Jim, what's going on?'

He looks from me to her. Now let him explain himself. ‘There is a phone message. I suspect there's a problem with my daughter. I'll make a call. It sounds like it might be urgent.'

He is rattled. Good. He walks by me, and I turn to watch him. Francesca opens the door further and he steps inside. We both watch him go. And we both stay where we are. Eventually, she glances over to me.

She says, ‘What has happened?' I feel as if she's accusing me.

‘Someone rang.'

‘His daughter?'

‘No.' I leave it at that.

But she comes out on to the loggia. ‘What's wrong?'

I don't know whether to say it or not. I have got myself, and her, into a situation. It's just us, now.

‘Tell me,' she says, not kindly.

‘A woman rang for him, about four hours ago. I asked her who it was.'

‘And?'

The left side of her face is alive with light. There's a downy aura glowing off the borders of her hair and her nose and her cheek. I'm afraid he has made her happy.

‘For God's sake, Lilian. What on earth is going on?'

‘I don't know what he's told you. I just ... I just didn't realise he had a wife.'

Her head turns automatically towards the light. He is not there, of course. He'd be downstairs in his room. Making the call private. ‘He said...' She didn't finish. She looks at me again. ‘What did she say, exactly?'

‘She said, “it's his wife”.' I feel as if I have slapped her, too.

‘That's all?'

‘That's all. Just ring, and it's his wife.'

‘And do you take it that he's been economical with the truth?'

I shrug, impotent. ‘I don't know what to think.'

‘I can't really believe that,' she says.

‘People don't always tell the whole truth.'

‘Is that experience talking?'

‘Oh, well. Perhaps,' I say. She is watching me closely now. Somehow or other, it's turned into me who's being exposed.

I am suddenly too aware of my thin cotton nightdress. My hair is an old woman's hair at this unspeakable hour; the daylight hides that fact, perversely. And I'm bruised and stiff and quite possibly hysterical. She is still watching me. I have a dreadful feeling that Jim isn't a pathological liar after all, a scheming no-good snake, out to destroy Francesca and me. I've probably come out of the closet as the bewildered, weary, stumbling-through-life individual that I am, and always have been. Though it seems I'm the last person to find out about it.

‘You are English?' Sonia said.

He sat back down on the kitchen chair. ‘Yes, Signora.'

His skin was contrarily bloodless under the weathering it had taken. And his eyes were shadowed with purple stains.

‘What happened to your leg? Is there a wound?'

‘I broke my ankle, Signora. My shoes.' He hinged his wrists together and flapped his hands open and shut. ‘I banged my knee when I fell. I went down a cliff. About two hundred yards.'

‘Have you seen a doctor?' She left Berta at the doorway and walked over to the table.

‘No. I couldn't risk it, and then it seemed to mend. I use the bandage to support it.'

‘Mama,' Gianni said. ‘This is the American. I told you the Americans were here. He's my friend, he and the other one with the yellow hair.'

She looked at the man's face. He didn't understand what
Gianni was saying, she could see that. She said to him, ‘Are there two of you?'

‘No. Only one. I'm alone.'

She gestured to Gianni. He walked over to her, and she turned him to face the man. The boy reluctantly allowed his mother to fold her arm about his shoulder. He said, ‘I found him.' He gazed around at her and said, ‘Out there.'

She said, ‘My son says there are two of you.'

The man looked at the boy. She thought he did not know how to answer her. She held Gianni tighter against her. She threw a look at Alphonso, who sensed her sudden unease. He wandered slowly over to the back door.

‘No, Signora. I've been alone for many weeks. Oh, of course!' He slapped his good knee. ‘We've met before, your son and I. Another fellow was with me then. When I fell and couldn't go on, I told him to leave. There was no point in his getting caught.'

‘A dark-haired man?' she asked. She reached her arm right across the boy's front.

‘Sandy? No, fair. Fair skin, fair hair.' He sat back against the chair and had a good look into her face. ‘Is that what the boy told you?'

She nodded. She smiled now. She released her son. ‘Yes. I'm sorry. I wasn't sure.'

Gianni immediately dragged a chair from the table and sat on it, next to the American. Sonia nodded to Alphonso, who limped across to the man, patted his shoulder again, and also sat. Berta came up behind her. ‘Who is he?' she said. Sonia replied, ‘An Englishman. He hurt his leg and had to stay behind.'

‘Oh, poveretto,' Berta said. ‘Does he want something to eat?' She bent over from the waist, put her hand up to her mouth and mimed her question for him.

The Englishman grinned. ‘Yes, Signora, please. I'm very hungry.' He looked back to Sonia. ‘If you can spare it. I know times are hard.'

She said, ‘We started off with more than others. So we have a little more left.'

He thought she was more beautiful this close, more translucent, more open, not like a sunflower, no, but an orchid perhaps. When she spoke English, along with the fluency of her words, her whole self delivered itself to him. He said, directly to her, ‘How do you speak English so well?'

‘My father had me tutored in it since I was about six.'

‘You are from one of the old families around here,' he said.

‘No,' she said. She saw that he was looking at her hands, for a ring, perhaps, a wedding ring, a family ring. ‘My father is a businessman. I am a Jew,' she said. She did not know why she said that. Or why so baldly.

He raised his eyes. ‘Then perhaps it's good that I'm here.'

She was intrigued by his eyes. They were completely open to her. She had never experienced such a directness before, except when the infant Gianni had gazed up at her. It made her forget that there were others in the room. And he had just said a curious thing. She said, ‘Why?'

‘I can protect you,' he said.

She felt herself rise and fall on the waves of her breath. He was relaxed now, too, watching her face. She realised she could hear the tick-tocking of the clock through the house.

Gianni tapped the man's arm. ‘Signore,' he said. ‘The Americans come?' He held his hands as if he were holding a rifle. ‘Pow, pow.'

‘Soon,' the man said. He leaned forward in his chair and rubbed the boy's head. The black curls flopped between his fingers.

‘Yes?' Gianni said.

Sonia said to him, ‘He said they won't be long, darling. A few weeks, perhaps.'

‘Is he the scout, Mama?'

Alphonso said, ‘Gianni knows more about it than any of us.'

‘It's the movies,' Sonia said. ‘The westerns. We saw one about Indian scouts a few months ago.'

‘Yes, but Mama, they have scouts in the war, too. I know more about it than you, don't I, Alphonso?'

Sonia looked back to the man. ‘He thinks you're on a scouting mission.'

The man shifted his leg. The bandage he'd wound about his ankle was filthy. ‘Oh,' he sighed quietly. She stepped towards him. Berta suddenly flurried into life, and opened the pantry door. ‘Poor boy,' she said. ‘Starving.'

He said, ‘I presume you realise I'm an escaped prisoner. If I put you in danger, you must tell me now.'

‘I heard they were letting prisoners go,' Sonia said. ‘Opening the gates and looking the other way.'

‘Yes, I heard that, too. But we were in the North. A lot of our poor beggars were shunted off to Germany. A few of us managed to get away.'

Sonia looked across to Alphonso and told him what the man had said. She said to Alphonso, ‘Will I ask him about Jacob?'

Alphonso said, ‘He won't know anything about that. How could he?'

‘No, but he might have heard what is happening to people up there.'

Alphonso looked her in the eye. Then he shrugged.

She said to the man. ‘My brother was in Milan. He was arrested.' She followed the narrowing of his eyes. ‘My father went up to try and find him.'

‘And did he?'

‘No. He stayed for a few days the first time, and now he's gone up again. And he won't come home. He says he'll stay there till he gets him back.'

The man looked at his knees.

Sonia said, ‘What do you think they did with him?'

‘Germans?'

She nodded. ‘Yes.'

The man turned his head just a little towards Alphonso, who
was looking straight at him. The man said, ‘I don't know, Signora. But it might be safer for your father to stay away from the Germans.'

Sonia was silent for a moment. ‘Because he's a Jew,' she said.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I read his book, you know, Hitler's. When I was up at university. It doesn't do to underestimate things.'

‘My father says there are always rumours in a time of confusion. Nothing's ever that bad when the dust has settled.'

The man did not seem to want to look at her. Instead, he became interested in Berta, who was pouring water in to a bowl of cornmeal. He said, ‘Who knows? Your father may be right.'

Alphonso said to Sonia, ‘Tell him the Germans were here a few days ago.' His eyes met hers and he jerked his thumb towards the Englishman.

She said, ‘Alphonso says to warn you that some Germans were here a few days ago.'

‘In this house?' He pointed to the table.

Gianni said, mistaking the gesture, ‘No, no, Signore. We didn't give them any food. My mother told them to go away, and one of them got killed. I saw it.'

‘Ssh,' Sonia said. ‘I thought I told you never to mention that.'

‘But he's an American. We can tell him. I can show him where it happened.'

‘Ssh,' she said again. She smoothed his dark hair back. It sprang forward. She said to the Englishman, ‘There were three officers and a number of trucks and outriders. They were here for only a few hours. They were in a hurry to go south.'

Alphonso stood up. He said to Berta, ‘I'll get a bed ready for him in the stable.'

Berta looked at him. She said, quietly, ‘Are you sure there's not more of them outside?'

He shook his head. ‘No, he was left on his own.'

The old woman used her finger as a spatula to clean the
wooden spoon. Damp yellow meal fell to the baking tray. She said, ‘Just be careful.' He nodded.

The Englishman turned his head as the man went out the back door. Then he looked again to the Signora and said, ‘Do you know where they were going?'

‘Rome,' she said.

‘Have you seen any others?'

‘No. But neighbours have seen them.'

‘What's the news? Are they fighting in the city?'

‘There's no one to fight, Signore,' she said. ‘The Allies are still in the South.'

‘The Germans have Rome?'

‘Yes.' She was using both hands now to knead Gianni's fresh-skinned forehead. The curls were ironed flat as she brushed them back. He was settled against her, mesmerised by her movements.

‘Ah,' the man said. He put his elbows on the table and leaned over it. His fingers scratched at his head. She could not see his face. ‘Too late,' she heard him say.

Her hands stopped, clamped on her son's head. ‘Too late?' she said.

The man widened the gap between his hands and looked at her. ‘How will I get through?' He leaned back against the chair. ‘I thought I had a bit of time.'

‘Didn't you hear? Italy has signed an Armistice with the Allies. A week or more ago.'

‘I see.' He nodded. He stared at her honey-coloured hands on the boy's dark hair. ‘When my leg was good enough to walk on I left...' he looked at her eyes, ‘...where I was. I've been living in the woods for a fortnight or so. Haven't seen anyone.'

She smiled at him. That he would not tell her who had taken him in promised her own security.

‘I saw a German convoy on the road I'd intended to follow. I cut back this way. I remembered your son.' He tried to smile at the boy. ‘I hoped I'd be able to get across to the coast.'

‘Alphonso will know,' she said. She intimated with her head
that she meant the old man who'd gone outside. Then she said shyly, and the shy duck of her head shot to his heart, ‘I don't know your name.'

‘Forgive me,' he said. He stood. ‘Hugo Kemp, sergeant. I'm called Jack.'

‘Jack,' she said. She thought it funny to have two names.

‘And may I ask?' Jack said, formally.

‘Signora Sonia da Fogliano. My son Gianni. Berta. And the man who was here is Alphonso Sabatini, Berta's husband.'

Berta turned her head. She was bent over, her beam large and bulbous as she slid the tray inside the oven. Jack said, ‘Signora Sabatini,' and her face creased. She said, ‘I'll have something hot for you soon, poor thing. Tell him to sit down and rest that leg.'

‘She says to sit down and rest.'

He put out his hand to her. Sonia released one of hers from Gianni and gave it to him. He bent and kissed it and said, ‘Signora.'

She saw the matt his dark hair had become. The back of his neck was reddened by the sun. The collar of his shirt fell away from the bony beginning of his spine. She astonished herself by a wish to slide her hand under the shirt, down his back, to feel the sharp bump of his shoulder blades. ‘You're thin,' she said, softly.

He straightened up. He still held her hand. He said, ‘I saw you before.'

He felt her hand begin to withdraw. He tightened his grip. ‘When I was here the first time. You were standing in the doorway. At the side of the house.' Her hand was like a bird. His fingers could feel the pulsebeat at her wrist.

‘Oh?' she said. She looked at her hand. At his hand.

‘You looked very sad. I thought you looked sad.'

She raised her eyes. ‘I've been ... sad,' she said.

‘Did something happen?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Nothing has happened.' He felt her thumb, velvet, slide a little up his wrist. She did not seem to notice that she'd done it.