The Italian Wife (9 page)

She could hear the rasping sound of the horse’s breath but her feet seemed stuck in wet concrete and she gripped the child so tight he squealed. But at the very last second a figure hurled itself forward, seized the halter and yanked it sideways with brute force. The horse was forced to swerve.

It didn’t miss them. They weren’t that lucky. The massive muscles of the animal’s shoulder slammed into Isabella’s own shoulder and sent her sprawling on the ground with the boy, but they were still in one piece, not trampled flat for the crows to pick over. A blur of hands lifted her to her feet but she shook them off with thanks and ignored the stab of pain in her arm socket. The child was crying, but more from shock than hurt, and was scooped out of her arms by his mother. Isabella looked around for the horse and caught sight of it just outside the station gate being walked in wide circles to calm it down. It was still up on its toes, snorting through flared nostrils and trying to throw its panicked head around, but the man walking it held the halter tight.

He was leaning in close, murmuring words that only the horse could hear, rhythmically running his hand down its long sweating neck and gradually slowing the animal’s pace to his own. It was entrancing, like watching a kind of magic. She had seen men deal with difficult animals before, but there was something about the naked love that this man offered the horse, visible in every curve of his body and in every touch of his hand, that set up a dull ache within her. For a long shaky moment, she wanted to be that horse.

She walked up to him. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

His head was turned away, his attention focused on the horse, so all she saw were his broad shoulders in a light cambric shirt, and short wavy hair, the same chestnut colour as the horse.

‘
Grazie
,’ she said again. ‘I’d have been trampled to pieces.’ She gave a light laugh. It was awkward. She knew she was intruding.

Reluctantly, as if coming back from somewhere far beyond her range of vision, her rescuer twisted his head to look at her directly.

‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘It’s you.’

It was the photographer. His mist-grey eyes smiled but his mouth didn’t take part in it. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked immediately. ‘I saw you limping.’

So he
had
known she was there.

‘No, that’s an old battle-scar. I’m not hurt.’

‘Good.’ His mouth joined in the smile. ‘I’m glad to hear it. That wouldn’t be an auspicious way to start your life in Bellina.’

‘I’m not one of the newcomers. I was just helping the old lady on the platform. I already live and work here. I’m one of the architects.’

He shook his head. ‘My apologies. I should have known.’

‘Known what?’

‘That you weren’t a farmer’s wife.’

‘I’m from Milan.’

‘Well, that explains it.’

‘Explains what? Why I don’t have straw sticking out of my ears?’

He laughed at that, an easy ready laugh that made the horse utter a throaty rumble in response. They were still walking in slow steady circles and Isabella fell into step beside them.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked. It was a question everyone in this town asked each other because no one was from Bellina.

‘From Sorrento, down south.’

‘A farming family, I assume.’ She nodded towards the horse.

‘Not really. My father was a fisherman but my uncle owned a small farm in the hills. I was always either off on the boat or shovelling out the barns.’

‘A far cry from photography,’ she commented.

But just then a man wearing a flat cap marched up and clapped the photographer on the shoulder with evident relief.

‘
Grazie
, young man, for stopping my horse. The bastard gets the very devil in him some days.’ He slapped a hand heavily on the animal’s rump and a hoof lashed out but caught only air.

‘The poor creature was frightened,’ the photographer pointed out with an edge of annoyance. ‘All that noise – the train and the band.’

‘We’re all bloody frightened,’ the man said scowling at the nervous animal. ‘We’re all in a sweat about this place.’

He stuck out a hand to take over the halter but the photographer smoothly eased the horse forward and out of reach. ‘I’ll walk him to the wagon for you.’

Outside the station building – with its frontage curved like the great prow of a liner – stretched a whole row of horse-drawn wagons. They were to transport the peasant farmers with their families and chattels to their allocated new farmsteads, and any extra horses were being tied on behind.

‘Come along then,’ the man urged. ‘You can ride in the wagon with us to keep him quiet if you’ve nothing better to do.’ He hurried off towards one of the wagons that was already piled high with children and packages.

Isabella didn’t want to see the photographer go. She wanted him to tell her about Sorrento and what it was like to sail in stormy seas. She wanted him to understand that not for one moment did she underestimate the danger he was in when he stopped that charging horse and above all she wanted to say thank you.
Thank you.
For risking your life. And a voice deep within her was whispering, Where were you ten years ago when I needed you to stop a charging bullet?

‘Goodbye, then,’ she said politely.

He had started leading the horse towards the row of wagons but he stopped in his tracks, suddenly realising she wasn’t coming too. She was aware of a sense of disappointment but wasn’t sure if it was his or hers, until she saw an expression of quiet amusement flit across his face.

‘
Milanese
, would you be so kind as to retrieve my equipment case for me? I abandoned the poor thing on the platform when I ran for the horse.’

‘Of course. I’ll fetch it.’

Isabella pushed her way through the crowd and located the camera which lay miraculously undisturbed on the station platform where he had left it. It was a long rectangular leather case with a shoulder strap, and was heavier than she expected when she picked it up. She ran her palm over its smooth surface and wondered just how much it had cost him to desert it the way he did.
The poor thing
, he’d called it. As if it had feelings. By the time she returned the equipment case to him, he had hitched the horse to the back of the wagon and was climbing up over the backboard. His eyes lit up at the sight of the case and he drew it to his side protectively.

‘Thank you,
Milanese
.’

Isabella smiled. ‘Thank
you
.’

The rain was falling harder now, big fat drops of it that speckled the ground. The horse edged sideways and stamped one foot, impatient to be gone.

‘Why don’t you jump in the wagon for a ride too?’ the photographer suddenly asked with a grin. ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

‘Ah, Signora Berotti,’ a man’s voice intruded as if in answer to the photographer’s request, ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

It was Davide Francolini from her office.
Not now. Please don
’
t talk business to me now.

Isabella half turned towards him. His hair was flattened by the rain.

Go away. Go away.
 

He placed a hand on her elbow. ‘I have a message from Colonnello Sepe for you. He has telephoned the convent and arranged for you to see the girl right away.’ He waved a hand towards a black car parked on the opposite side of the road and tried to draw her away but she hesitated.

‘Come now,’ he said.

Isabella felt a churning of something cold inside her but this time she let him wheel her away from the wagon. Nevertheless she turned her head.

The cart carrying the man in the flat cap along with his wife and excited children was already rattling off down the street, the horse still skittish behind it in the rain. The photographer was standing up at the back among the bundles of belongings. He moved easily with the sway of it, the way Isabella could imagine him doing on a boat-deck, and all the time he was watching her and her companion. She raised a hand and waved goodbye.

He didn’t wave back.

8

Convent living was not hard. Not for Rosa. Yes, it was cold at night; yes, the meals were only scraps to feed a starling; and yes, some of the girls were spiteful. But she had moved around from place to place so many times that she had learned how to make new friends quickly. And how to leave them just as quickly too.

What was hard was the nuns. With their angry eyes and their crepey cheeks and the ruler ever ready in their hands to smack down on soft young knuckles or to clip across the back of calves, stinging like a snake bite. The one good thing Rosa had to say for her own mother was that she never hit her, so these sudden casual physical attacks left her speechless with rage and misery.

Rosa liked mathematics, liked the symmetry of it, and she was in the middle of an arithmetic lesson with Sister Agatha when Sister Consolata stuck her cheery head around the door. Her cheeks were bunched into a smile that was at odds with her sour black habit and stiff white headdress. Sister Consolata was the exception among the nuns, a beam of sunlight in a dark and thwarted world. All the girls wanted to be in her sewing class because there were no rulers there and she would sing to them in her pure soprano voice while they worked.

‘May I borrow Rosa Bianchi for a while? Reverend Mother wishes to speak to her.’

Sister Agatha, a stout woman who preferred cold baths to children, frowned to demonstrate her disapproval but could not gainsay the orders of the Reverend Mother.

‘Very well, Rosa. You may be excused.’

‘Thank you, Sister Agatha.’

Rosa had learned that much, to thank them for every tiny sliver of mercy if she wanted to keep the skin on her knuckles. She glanced with lowered eyes at her friend, Carmela, sitting next to her, a pale-faced Venetian with unholy Titian curls, legs like stilts, and carrying the stigma of being born out of wedlock. Carmela tried to give her a tiny smile of encouragement but her eyes were huge with concern. Why? What did the Reverend Mother do? Whip you? Make you pay for your sins? Rosa shuddered because she knew she carried around a whole heap of sins.

‘Hurry up, girl,’ Sister Agatha snapped.

‘We don’t want to keep Reverend Mother waiting,’ Sister Consolata added gently.

Rosa hurried to the door and down the stark corridor, scurrying behind the long black robe that moved surprisingly fast. She yearned to grasp one of its musky folds, to smell it, to let its incense drift into her head, to hold on to it. To hold on to
something
.

‘Rosa, dear child, let’s tidy you up.’

Sister Consolata had come to a halt in front of a large oak door carved with the image of Christ on the cross. Rosa lowered her eyes and was taken by surprise when the nun started attacking her hair with a hairbrush that appeared like magic from the folds of the black habit.

‘You have such lovely curls,’ the nun laughed, ‘and we don’t want Reverend Mother cutting them off, do we?’

‘No, Sister,’ Rosa whispered, appalled.

She submitted mutely to the tidying process, to being patted and pressed and brushed down, but her fingers managed to creep into one of the black folds where they nestled quietly for a few seconds. When finally satisfied, Sister Consolata rested a blue-veined hand heavily on Rosa’s head and closed her eyes in silent prayer. Rosa watched the way the soft layers of her face settled into stillness like ripples in a pond and the way the scarlet flares on her cheeks faded. She stared up at the nun for a long moment and wondered what she’d look like if she were dead.

‘Now, little one,’ Sister Consolata popped open her eyes, ‘the good Lord has brought you a visitor today.’

The nun’s words made the world outside – on which Rosa had slammed the doors tight to keep it out of her head – come sweeping back to her, but now it had changed: it was bent and twisted at the edges. Suddenly she felt as if she were drowning, something dark and heavy flooded her chest and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep tears away. Once again the stiff and savaged body of her mother on the cold slab flared up inside her head. She started shaking.

‘Courage, Rosa. Our dear Lord in Heaven is with you and knows all that is in your heart. Call on Him for strength.’

She patted Rosa’s chest right on the spot where her heart was hammering so hard she feared it would crack open her ribs and spill a crimson flood on to the clean scrubbed floor under her feet.

‘You’re breathing too fast, Rosa. Slow breaths. That’s better. Stand up straight now.’

Rosa took slow breaths. She stood up straight. She stared blindly at the door.

Sister Consolata tapped timidly on its oak surface and put her ear to it, her face tense within the tight circle of her wimple. A murmur came from the other side. With a bright smile pinned on her lips, the nun opened the door.

Dislike. It hung in the room, as grey as mist; the air was drenched with it. That’s what hit Rosa first when she stepped over the threshold of the large high-ceilinged room. The woman in this room disliked her intensely. And Rosa knew why. Sister Agatha had spelled it out to her. Reverend Mother was pure of heart. She talked to God every day. She read His Word every day. Whereas Rosa was nothing but the tainted offspring of a wicked woman who had condemned her own soul to eternal Damnation in the Fires of Hell. That’s what Sister Agatha said. Tainted blood careened through her veins. Did she bear a mark on her forehead too, like the evil Cain in the Bible? One that others could see but Rosa couldn’t? That thought tormented her.

‘Here’s Rosa Bianchi, Reverend Mother.’

When Rosa didn’t move, Sister Consolata placed a firm hand against her back and launched her across the expanse of Persian rug under the critical gaze of the vast oil paintings on the walls, all of them old men decked out in violent red or gaudy purple robes.

‘Come here, girl.’

Rosa warily approached the figure in black who was seated near the log fire. The room was far warmer than the corridor or the classrooms. Mother Domenica sat stiff as a poker in a carved chair that looked very old and extremely grand. She wasn’t tall but reminded Rosa of a giraffe because of her long skinny neck and pointed face. Her tongue kept flashing across her lips, grey and thin, but otherwise she remained totally still, hands folded like pieces of bleached paper on her lap. But a movement in the chair opposite on the other side of the fire caught Rosa’s attention and for a second her feet froze. Paralysed with hope.