The Italian Romance (6 page)

‘He begs to extend his regards to you all,' she said. ‘And he hopes for a speedy end to the war.'

Her father's eyes made her look away. He said, ‘As we all do.'

‘And he's well?' Rachel said.

‘Very well. They treat them with courtesy ... He says it is cold.' She touched at her hair. They were silent, waiting.

‘So. That is England for you,' her father said at last. ‘Let us have coffee. Where's Maria?'

Rachel, her hands useless now on her lap, said, ‘This terrible war. What are they all doing? It's ridiculous.' She lifted a hand to her hair, too, and combed her fingers up under the bounce of curl over her ear.

‘It's not that bad,' her father said. He walked to his chair, a soft-pillowed armchair covered in striped silk. He sat down and crossed his legs. ‘Not that bad,' he said again. And just as he did, the young maid, dressed neatly in a black dress with a little white starched collar, bobbed into a curtsey at the door.

‘Excuse me, Signori,' she said timidly, ‘may I ask if you would like refreshments now?'

Sonia caught the girl's eye and nodded to her. The girl dropped another curtsey.

‘Prego, Maria,' her father said.

‘Some rolls with it, if you don't mind, Maria,' Rachel said. She looked across the room to her son. ‘You must be hungry.'

Sonia addressed the girl. ‘Are the boys in the kitchen?'

‘Yes, Signora. Ruth is giving them some pasta.'

Sonia nodded.

The girl looked at the gentleman, but he was busy with a fingernail between his two lower teeth. She gazed then over at Rachel, who was leafing through a stack of music sheets balanced on the edge of the piano.

Sonia said to her, ‘Thank you.'

The girl, in her haste to escape, bumped into the sharp edge of the door. Sonia made a step towards her. No one else seemed to notice. The girl rubbed at her forehead and walked out, a little more slowly, into the hallway. When Sonia heard her steps fade, she said, ‘Who's that?'

Her brother was leaning his hands on the windowsill. He seemed to be examining the garden immediately below him.

‘Who?' her father said. He was using his tongue now to dislodge a remnant of lunch. Sonia was about to say, ‘The new maid,' when he said, ‘Oh, the new girl. Maria. Susanna left.'

‘Oh, no. Why?'

Rachel said, ‘Some nonsense about the Germans. She's gone to Sicily to get away from them.' She raised her brows again, and shook her head.

‘Little Maria is Guiseppe Tucci's daughter. You remember her, Son,' her father said to her. ‘She was born the year before Gianni, same day. Nervous little thing.'

‘Who's in Sicily?'

‘No, it's Sardinia,' Jacob announced from the window. ‘Family connections. You know young Matteo Levi was killed.'

‘Ssh,' Rachel said. She put a finger to her lips.

Her father whispered, ‘Partisans.'

‘Oh, no,' Sonia said to her father, also in a whisper.

He nodded.

‘He was a good man,' Jacob said. He turned around and sat on the wide windowsill. He looked at his shoes.

‘Poor Susanna,' Sonia said. ‘Was she all right?'

‘Poor darling,' Rachel said. She sighed, ‘Oh, I don't know.'

Her father said, ‘Ah, she was terribly upset, wasn't she, my dear? Poor child. They should have married a few months ago, as they'd intended. But then he got hooked up with all this business. Too late now.'

‘Too late,' Rachel said. ‘Take life when it comes, that's what you learn.' She tapped the sheets of music against her thighs to straighten them.

Jacob said again, ‘He was a good man.'

‘I just don't know who he thought he was fighting,' the older man said. His face was creased in struggle with this incomprehensible problem.

Rachel held up a finger to her lips. ‘Ssh, Primo, ssh,' she said.

He lowered his voice obediently. ‘We're all Italians, aren't we? Why turn on each other?'

Sonia looked at Jacob. She was not unintelligent. But she had long ceased to wonder at the world and its doings, and now she could not understand it at all. Her brother raised his brows, just like their mother, and turned his back on them to examine the snail or the troupe of ants or whatever was causing such intrigue outside the window. She'd felt safe in this house, always. And always her father's presence, his deep voice and his smell of cigar and cologne, had given her all she needed to rid the world of demons. But not today. And she didn't know why.

Her mother said, ‘The Americans and the British are coming. That will put the cat among the pigeons.' She half-rose to straighten her skirt. ‘Mark my words.'

‘Mark your words?' Primo said. ‘Mark your words? What do you mean by that? You'll have to stop listening to all this gossip, Rachel. I told you.'

‘Well, you may call it idle gossip but everyone else seems to know it's a well known fact what these Germans are doing to Jews. Everyone knows.' She displayed her palms to the air, astonished at her husband's recalcitrance. It was a game they played.

Primo looked at Sonia. A smile of conspiracy brightened his eyes, and he nodded his head in the direction of his wife, shrugged his shoulders. Sonia was supposed to smile in return. But her gaze was restless. She looked at Jacob's back, at the cold marble fireplace. She thought she heard something. ‘Is that the boys?' she asked. She walked to the door.

‘Sit down, Sonia, sit down. You're making me seasick,' her father said to her.

Suddenly Jacob said, ‘All right, then, why did you ask us to come over? What's worrying you, if you're so unworried about ... everything?' He seemed to run out of steam at the end, unused to speaking with disrespect to his father. ‘Sorry, Papa, but
I
am
worried for my wife and my children. Sonia's all right, she's a Christian and her son's a Christian, and her husband is Italian.'

‘As are you,' Primo said.

‘I don't mean to disregard you, Son,' Jacob said. His own big, dark eyes looked at her with fear that he'd gone too far with her, too.

‘No, no,' she said. She wanted to walk down to the kitchen, to ensure for herself that the boys were ensconced around the kitchen table, with huge plates of steaming pasta and sauce in front of them.

Jacob continued, ‘But it's true, Papa, you know it. She's safe because of Francesco. My wife and my son and my daughters...' He raised his hands to his head. ‘What might happen?'

‘Oh, enough!' Primo clapped, just once. ‘This is what I mean. Listening to gossip,
ridiculous
gossip.' He cast a glance at his wife which was meant to cut the feet from under her. She did indeed seem struck by his admonition. She pulled her shoulders up almost to her ears. Primo got to his feet after a fight with the down-filling of the cushions under him. ‘No more of it, do you understand? Do you believe little green men will land out there in the garden? Then why believe such arrant nonsense? Number one,' he said, holding his digit finger, ‘if the Allies invade, Mussolini will no doubt see the good sense in declaring a peace. After all, he's done well for this country. Why would he want to see it destroyed? Number two, if there are prisons of some kind, either (a) they are for political opponents of the regime and after all, though I may not like it, in times of war extreme measures may be taken to safeguard the state, and (b) if they are, in fact, internment camps for Jews, we will find that is all they are. Internment. After all, I was in Berlin myself fifteen, twenty years ago.'

‘Yes, Papa,' Jacob said, ‘but not recently. You wouldn't get out with your life these days.'

Primo batted his hand at his son as if he were shooing away an
absurd little fly. ‘Where is this coffee?' he said. He walked to the door and peered out. As he came back, he stroked his daughter's hair. ‘Don't listen to him, little one. Your papa is here.' He kissed her forehead. Sonia flushed again, the whitened anxiety of the past minutes eased away. He turned to his son and to his wife. ‘Let us agree to disagree, eh? You were always the serious thinker, Jacob. Thank the Lord for it, eh Rachel? We have a son to keep us on the straight and narrow in our old age.' He rubbed his hands, two iron files flinting together.

‘So why did you ring this morning, Papa?' Jacob would not let it go. Sonia felt for him. He was not serious in any damp way. She knew him better than almost anyone, and she hurt for him that their father's words irritated a thorn caught in him since boyhood. Jacob stood straight now. The afternoon light shadowed him long across the rug. His hands bulged in the pockets of his jacket.

‘Why, why, why? Can't a father see his children once in a while?' Primo looked at Rachel. ‘What is this, the Inquisition?' Rachel smiled and bent her head this side and that. She was still beautiful to him, and infuriating.

‘No, Papa, this isn't the Inquisition,' Jacob said. Sonia's blood quickened at the quiet anger in his voice. She did not want anger. ‘I know you heard the BBC last night, just as I did.'

Her father's face changed. He walked over to his chair to sit down, but he reconsidered and turned to them. ‘There's one thing I'd like to say and it's this.' He glanced at Rachel but she had taken to moistening her finger, to leaf through the sheets on her lap. ‘If by any rare chance, and I stress the unlikelihood,' he said as he shifted his glance to Jacob, ‘things go badly wrong over the next few months, we will talk again, all of us. If need be, you will all come here, and together we will be safe. I will talk to the Mayor, and to certain others. You especially, Sonia, as your husband is not here to protect you, will come immediately if there is an invasion. In fact, I wish you and Gianni would come now. I don't know
what delight you take in staying down there all on your own when you know your mother is so worried about you.'

‘Oh, Papa,' Sonia said almost silently, and she saw her brother look straight at her.

Primo clicked his tongue. ‘I don't understand you young people these days.'

‘It was the family before,' Rachel said. ‘Nobody seems to care anymore.'

‘Ah, well,' Primo continued, ‘that's all I have to say. And please try to remember, up to a handful of years ago I was a member of the Party. I know enough people, the Mayor, many others. That's all I have to say.' He looked at Jacob as he spoke. Jacob listened, waited, and finally bowed his head.

Sonia tugged delicately at the neck of her blouse; she felt there wasn't enough air in the stuffy drawing room. ‘I'll just see where ... Maria's got to,' she said.

Her mother stilled, glanced up at her. Sonia caught her eye as she turned to leave the room, and walked away quickly. As she closed the door behind her, she heard her father's voice raised in some pleasant distraction now, some amusing story to soften Jacob's surrender.

The large mirror in the hallway captured a perfect still-life: the afternoon sun drew silent shadows of the rosewood bureau on the papered wall, and yet glossed light reflected in the buffed bulging of its rounded edges; a vase of Lady-fern was etched in tender green, more tender, more mysteriously green in its mirrored self than in its own duller nature. As Sonia leaned over the high-backed chair to pick up her handbag, the fall of her hair caught the light too and glowed in the mirror, but she did not see it.

She sat down, slowly, opened the clasp again. She'd been waiting for months for the letter. Every day she'd listened for the slow, rhythmic wheeling of the postman's bicycle, held her breath as Alphonso's voice drifted up from the back door. And this morning she'd come running down the stairs, had tried to slow when
she'd noticed Berta through the half-opened doorway of the sitting room; the other woman glanced up from her work, the bottle of furniture polish grasped in her hand, the tang of oil and lavender around her. Berta, too, had spotted the young Rinelli lad a minute or so before, his head bobbing above the green hedge. She heard the Signora's high-heels clatter onto the stone floor of the kitchen, and she shook her head. She rubbed at a smear on the glass-like surface of the side table.

Sonia had stood motionless then; a pot of water simmered on the range, waiting for pasta. She saw them framed outside in the bright light of the kitchen garden. The boy's bicycle rested against the yellowed wall. She did not want to intrude too soon on Alphonso's enquiries, the important snippets of news, the goings-on. The postman was as good as the wireless these days. Better, even.

Alphonso had turned. He made the doorway dark. As he came towards her the Rinelli boy peeked in, smiling, eager. Her heart thumped very hard.

‘A letter,' Alphonso had said. The smell of his sweat became hugely strong as he approached. She held out her hand. He hadn't shaved that day, or for a few days perhaps, and his stubble was grey. His blade, mysteriously, was missing.

He'd slid the envelope between her thumb and fingers. He said again, ‘A letter.'

And now, as Sonia sat facing the huge, gilded mirror, holding the letter in her right hand which was shaking, strangely, and her eyes fell again on the elegance of his script, the brevity of the note, the perfect politeness of it, and on the ink-smudged word where one of her tears must have dropped as she'd first read it, some awful truth that she had not wanted to hear whispered from deep inside herself, water against stone. It rose like a wave. He was not hers. She was not his, no matter what she did, nor what passions she endured for his sake.

I thought I'd be late for the bushman and I caught a taxi to make up the time. Here I am now, five minutes early. I'm glad the young fellow showed me to a table near the pond. The tortoises move so slowly that I'm beginning to breathe calmly myself. I smooth my fingers across the almost imperceptible damask pattern of the white tablecloth. The black tortoise, repugnant little head, has been struggling to get up on that stone since I arrived. His pathetic neck bobs this way, that way. Now his mistress, a fast mover by comparison, has climbed on his back and he loses his tentative grip. He slides back. He's afloat in the water. He's better off, from the look of him, approaching grace even. He swims so slowly towards that damn stone. God knows what it is that appeals to him. His own crust, the egg-shell on his back, is infinitely more fascinating, curlicues and spirals, and a depth of black that's so engrossing I am tempted to pick him up and run my fingers over its hills and valleys. I wonder how long he has been around.

I am deeply embarrassed about what happened on the phone this morning. People forget things in time, that's to be borne in mind. He'll be terrified of me now – don't mention the war, seems to be the best solution.

Here he comes. He's standing at the doorway to the courtyard,
looking around; my young waiter is pointing me out. He can't quite see me with the sun in his eyes.

‘Over here,' I say. I wave my fingers above my head like an octopus.

He, meanwhile, looks like a bus has run over him. I presume I know the signs, though I am surprised it got to him quite so much and quite so quickly.

‘Sorry, Lilian, couldn't get a taxi,' he says. The chair grinds on the flagstones as he pulls it out. ‘Oh, God, good to sit down.'

‘Did you walk?' I say, surprised.

‘Had to. Thought I'd be quicker than waiting. Bloody hot.'

‘I'm not surprised you're hot.' I reach for his glass and the decanter. ‘Here. Have some water.'

He combs his fingers through his hair. He's not one to run to baldness. It looks remarkably as if those fingers are the first grooming his hair has had all day. He has shaved for the occasion, about two minutes before he left his room, I'd say. He's nicked himself on the neck. I'm beginning to feel better.

He downs the entire glassful. ‘That's better,' he says and slowly pats his forehead with the folded linen napkin. ‘Beautiful spot.' He can see below us a villa and its roof terrace, and geometric trees ranging down the hill. And a view of the Spanish Steps that I like very much, just a run of steps from here, that's all, quiet, the way it used to be years ago.

‘I like it,' I say. ‘I particularly like the tortoises.'

He looks at the pond. ‘Good Lord,' he says. ‘They don't eat them, do they?'

‘I recognise that black fellow from the last time I was here, so they mustn't.'

‘He looks a bit ancient, all right. Have you ordered?'

I hand him a menu from beside my place. ‘No, but I know what I'm having.'

‘Wine?'

‘Why not?' I say.

My pasta is in front of me, and we have yet to speak of her. My tension is returning. I dig at the meal with my fork. I feel like an adolescent. He's involved in his fettucine like there's no tomorrow.

To hell with this. ‘So Francesca is leaving for London,' I say.

He nods, head down, mouth full. He grabs for his wine.

I say, ‘Do you think that was her original intention? Or what?'

‘Or what,' he manages to say.

‘Right,' I say. I dry the corner of my mouth with my napkin. ‘You know, I really don't understand what I am supposed to do here. She turns up. I'm glad she turns up. And then God knows what happened, because I don't.'

‘I don't think she knows herself,' he says. ‘I think it all went a little too quickly for her.'

‘What do you mean?' I say. I am so afraid, he can't imagine.

‘Well, she probably thought, at best, that she'd find out your address. See you in the street or something like that.'

Oh, God, I don't want to hear this. But I plough on, a carrot volunteering for a rub on a grater. ‘You mean she didn't actually want any contact. Not dinner, certainly.'

He shook his head. ‘I don't know.'

‘Just wanted to take a look at the witch,' I say.

‘Don't be like that,' he says. He glances at me over his wine glass.

I pick up mine and take a slug. ‘Sorry,' I say. My eyes are filling with tears. Damn.

‘Maybe she just wants to understand,' he says.

I raise my eyebrows. ‘There aren't those kinds of answers,' I say. ‘To anything.'

He shrugs his shoulders and looks away. He is beginning not to like me. That makes me feel very lonely. Foolish to pin your hopes on a stranger. I wind pasta on my fork and deliver it to my mouth. It might as well be a length of over-used string. I'm acutely aware that a tear might drop free from one eye. I couldn't bear it.

He speaks again. ‘I thought, from our conversation earlier, that you were ... eager to reconcile things with her.'

I keep my head down as I try to swallow. How to look up when my nose is running? I pluck a tissue from the pocket of my trousers. I will just have to blow. ‘Excuse me,' I say. ‘Sure, I'd like to do what I can. Clearly,' and I dab at the corners of my eyes as if dust particles have just winged into both of them, ‘clearly, she's made this attempt for some reason.'

‘Yes, but for your own sake, Lilian, too.'

I don't know what to say to that. I try to think of something. I look down at the tortoises. Blackie and his mistress are happy enough, floating in the water side by side. The mythical stone has lost its allure, temporarily I expect. I say, ‘I don't have a sake, Jim.'

He is hesitant. ‘You mean you don't care?'

‘No, I don't mean that.' I shake my head. There's nothing else I can say. ‘But I will ring her. As you so rightly said, I have nothing to lose.'

‘What will you say to her?'

He really is in a bad way. ‘I'll just try to smooth things over. I thought I might offer her our house in the country for a week, or a month or however long. She might as well have a holiday, or at least a quiet place to work while she's here.'

‘Good,' he says. ‘Good.'

I almost laugh. In fact, I do laugh. ‘You want to see her again, don't you?'

He laughs at himself, too, but is shy about catching my eye.

‘Can't you arrange to see her when you both get home?' I do like him. I feel more than a little protective towards him.

‘Ah,' he says. He still won't look at me. ‘She's not sure about that.'

‘Is there a family?' I ask.

‘What do you mean? Her?'

I nod.

‘She's told me a little,' he says and he does look now. ‘But I'm ... I'm not sure what to...'

‘You don't want to betray her confidences,' I say.

‘I'm sorry,' Jim says. ‘That must sound very pompous to your ears. A bit cruel...'

I raise my hands in an Italian gesture that signals the acceptance of fate. ‘I'm sure you're quite right to keep counsel.'

‘Would you like to ring her now?' he says.

‘Now? Here? I don't have my phone. I wouldn't like to use theirs.'

‘No,' he smiles at me. ‘But I have mine.' He takes it out of his shirt pocket and leans across the table to place it by my wine glass.

I look down at it and then turn away. A young woman has stepped out on to the roof terrace below us. She is vulnerably unaware of her audience. She has a glass in her hand. With the other, she drags a sun-chair into the shade of a fruit tree and she flops down on it. I don't think I can possibly pick up that phone and ring Francesca.

‘The number's in it,' he says. ‘Under F.'

‘That was quick,' I say.

‘Yes. It's my lifeline, that phone.'

‘What do you do if you lose it, or somebody steals it? All your numbers are gone.'

‘I have them all written down in my diary. All you have to do, Lilian, is pick it up, press a button, and it will be done.'

‘You sound like my mother.'

‘It will be easier than you think,' he says.

‘Why don't you do it?'

‘I already have,' he says.

I put my fingers on the screen. ‘No wires,' I say. ‘Isn't it marvellous.'

‘No wires,' he says and smiles at me.

‘Intergalactic.'

‘Bit different from your day, eh, Lil? You used pigeons, didn't you?'

‘Oh, yes, I had my own clutch. A dozen or so. I was an avid letter-writer.'

He laughs. We are all right again.

I say to him, ‘I haven't lived all these years without thinking of her.'

‘I don't suppose you have.'

I don't know what he sees when he sees me. And he is looking intensely. I shake my head. ‘Some things can't be fixed, Jim, you know. No happy endings.'

‘Maybe,' he says.

And now I look at him. He is desperate for her, or for something. For a happy ending, maybe. God help him. He has been rubbed raw on a grater, too. I don't need to know how or who. It doesn't matter at my age.

‘Just tell me one thing,' I say. ‘Are there possibilities, on both sides, for you and Francesca?'

He nods. ‘I think so.'

I lift my glass. ‘Then I wish you luck, Jim, I really do.'

He grips his own glass, but can't seem to raise it. ‘Thank you,' he says. His voice is thick. He stares at the tablecloth.

I take up his phone and hand it to him. ‘I'll do it later. I need to compose myself,' I say. That is honest, at least.

The first time I gave a public reading after my novice book was published, I felt just like this. I thought I was going to faint. My hands were shaking so much I could barely turn the pages. I can't believe I'm lurking in the hallway of her hotel, too afraid to knock at her door, too aware of how I'll feel later if I don't. The number is etched out in brass. The staff obviously polish it with metal cleaner. Two eighteen, buffed with a soft cloth, just a little too much polish – the eight has some milky white build-up caked on its insides.

What will I do if she opens her door in half an hour, heavy suitcases gripped in her hands, keys in her teeth, and finds me standing here wild-eyed? I suppose I could pretend I'd just arrived. I wonder if she'd believe me.

The hallway is so silent that as the elevator door opens, I jump. I turn my head, almost involuntarily. A man of about forty emerges. He's combing his hair. He freezes when he sees me. He slips the comb back into his pocket, embarrassed at being caught out in his vanity. This gives me the edge, but unless I take it he might slide into suspicion. He might think I'm a jewel thief. Or that I'm in my dotage and have lost my room. He's watching me as he searches his pockets for his key. Heaven forbid he comes up here and volunteers to help. Then there'd be two of us if Francesca suddenly swung the door open. I have to knock. I raise my fist, give a cool, last look down the hallway. As I rap, he disappears inside. Now my heart is thumping. What will she say to me? More urgently, what will I say to her? Dear God, don't let me open my mouth and the wrong words jump out.

And there she is. She is visibly shocked.

‘I'm sorry,' I say.

She steps forward a little. For a tiny portion of a second I think she may want to kiss me. I am afraid I move towards her, trying to meet her halfway, so to speak. She casts a glance, not even quite at me, so beside the point am I, that allows me to see my mistake. I am chastened. She leans out to look down the hallway. ‘I thought you were the porter,' she says.

‘No,' I reply.

She simply has turned on her heel and walked over to the huge bed where the contents of her shoulder bag are strewn. She's pulled up the green shantung coverlet. I usually strip the bed when I leave a hotel.

I'm still standing in the hallway. I don't know what to do. I gaze at her as she picks up a silver pen, thumbs the nib down, tries the ink out on her hand, thumbs the nib up again, satisfied. I knock,
really very foolishly, on the wide-open door. She stops, stares at me. I know she didn't forget I was there. She says, ‘I have an awful lot to do.'

‘I won't keep you,' I say.

She picks up a sweater now, folds it not very well, and hugs it against her. ‘Do you have something to say?' she says.

I upset her, it seems. How could I possibly do that to her? I am wringing my hands in anguish for it. We are worse than two creatures in a play.

‘May I just...?' I say. I edge in.

She shrugs, puts the sweater back down on the bed.

I take a few steps further into the room. The carpet is a deep green. Soaks up the light. The curtains are heavy, too. She hasn't pulled them completely open. A medium-sized suitcase is by my legs. She travels well. Perhaps she has travelled a lot. I have no idea.