Last Train from Liguria (2010) (15 page)

She watches as Alec traces one finger over the outline of each boy, as if he were drawing them, their faces and hands, the pots and pans sticking out of their knapsacks, the cleavage of a lake between two mountains behind them, the tepee of sticks blazing in the campfire to one side. He is bored, she thinks. He should have more to occupy his life than Christopher Wren and tennis with ageing ex-pats. Worse, he is lonely. He should have friends his own age. Proper company. Not just Edward and Elida and me.

Out on the platform, two men are easing a floral tribute up against a wall. It is jammed with scarlet chrysanthemums and is as big as a tractor wheel. Another hefty garland appears at the waiting-room door, a man’s voice behind it shouting, ‘
Permesso.
’

It passes right under her nose, the destination clearly marked on a label trimmed with black ribbon, along with Signor Lami’s name, many titles and honours. A third tribute in the shape of a globe brushes the outside window. The woman knitting in the corner sighs. ‘This country.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Bella says.

‘Everything has to be an exaggeration. I mean,
everything
. Even death. Honestly!’ she finishes with a roll of her eyes.

The waiting room starts to fill up. An old woman first, dressed in a black serge suit and a black silk turban hat. Tall and thin as an anchovy, a gold-tipped walking stick in her hand which glints and taps over to Alec. The woman speaks slowly, her words stretched and dry, so Bella can translate almost every one of them. She says she can remember Alec’s grandmother. Remember, in fact, when his grandfather built the villa on via Romano in her honour and name: Marcia Lami. A wonderful woman. Beautiful inside and out. A personal friend of the late Queen Margherita no less. They used to call on each other regularly when Her Highness was in residence at her summer villa on via Romana. ‘I hope you know that, young man,’ the old woman concludes. ‘I hope you realize that you have this blood in your veins, as well as any other.’

By now Alec has climbed down off the bench. The old lady steps back and others come forward speaking in the careful manner of sympathizers. A man with an attache case who works in the bank. A woman who says her grandmother used to own the ice-cream shop across the road when his father was a boy. A nun from the local orphanage, who first praises the family’s kindness, then pats out a prayer on the back of his hand. They continue to come and go with their condolences, until Bella can no longer tell one from the other, and the English woman, somewhat alarmed, stands up and begins stuffing her knitting into a bag. She fumbles her way over to Bella like someone being chased by a dog. ‘I’m most terribly sorry,’ she mutters. ‘I had no way of knowing, the poor child. I’m so ashamed. My name is Mrs Cardiff, by the way. Please do forgive me. I mean, had I only known.’ Then she is gone.

Bella watches the circle of sympathizers close in on Alec like a gate; throwing hugs on him, lavishing his face with kisses. When there is a shift in the crowd she catches sight of him, his shoulders twisting this way and that. She sees his eyes flutter like butterflies, thinks for a moment that she hears him call out her name. ‘That’s enough!’ she shouts then. ‘I mean -
basta!
’

She breaks through and pulls him away, then, pushing him ahead of her, brings him out to the ticket office to look for Edward. The queue is long. A woman at the top is holding the ticket-seller in some sort of a heated dispute. Edward stands behind her reading a paper, while behind him again the rest of the queue begins to fidget and groan. Then all eyes seem to turn to Alec. Here and there a hat is pulled off, a head bowed, a sign of the cross made. The boy is shaking all over. She pushes him on, until the queue is behind them and they are in the far corner, near the news-stand.

Bella doesn’t know how to comfort him. She wonders if she should risk touching him. He allows Edward to rough and tumble him, and Elida, as long as it’s in a functional way, to comb his hair or tidy him up before he goes out. He allows any of them to hold his hand to cross the road, help him on or off the tram, undress or dress him at the beach. But any needless contact, anything approaching affection, and he always pulls away, if not exactly upset, then certainly irritated. She has noticed this about him.

She kneels down on the floor beside him and, with Elida’s method in mind, takes to fussing. Hair, collar, coat, jacket, anything that is attached to him. She remembers the English woman then, and, removing his arm from his coat, reaches in and slips the black band off the sleeve of his jacket. She puts the coat back on, fixing the band on its sleeve where it could be seen and understood by all. At last his shoes. Lifting one of his feet onto her lap, Bella unties and reties his shoelace. Then, patting her thigh, invites him to place the other foot up. All the while she mumbles a few sensible words. ‘Now you be a good boy, and make sure you eat something on the train, give it time to settle before the boat, you know, in case the sea is rough, and let Edward know if you feel in any way sick, and I’ve packed your new crayons and some copybooks, a story book too in case you want to read. And cards, Edward and Grace will play with you. Snap. You like Snap - what do you call it again,
Rubamazzo
, isn’t it?’

He nods vigorously, his hand for balance pressed on her shoulder. She can smell the cologne Elida has used to plaster his hair into place, the lemon soap on his face and neck, his vanilla-flavoured breath. She can hardly look him in the face, but notices just the same that his lips are tightened as if he is trying to swallow everything back, but that his eyes at least are steady. She reties the second lace and says, ‘There now. We’re all set.’

He seems to pounce on her then, throwing his arms around her so that Bella has to steady herself to prevent them both from toppling over. She can feel the squeeze of his thin arms on her neck, a few sobs stirring in his chest, the thump of his heart against her arm, the pulse of his warm little body forceful yet fragile in her arms.

After a while, she opens her eyes to Edward’s hand on Alec’s arm. ‘We better get going, Allo,’ he is saying. But Alec clings on, shaking his head and sobbing into her neck. Edward gets down on one knee and leans closer to Alec’s ear - ‘Don’t want to miss the train now, do we?’ he says. ‘You won’t let me down now, will you? There’s a good chap - I’m relying on you now, you know I am.’

They stay for a moment, the three of them hunkered and leaning into each other. When Edward finally coaxes Alec away and lifts the child, openly sobbing now, up into his arms, Bella stays on her knees. She starts to her feet then, dizzy-legged, confused, hardly able to see a thing. Until Edward’s hand again leans down to take her by the arm and help her up. Faces everywhere, a woman crying to herself. A man with his hat held to his chest. Grace in there somewhere, mouth agog.

Out on the platform, the sounds of a station: whistles, bells, doors clapping into the distance. A woman with a hamper of squabbling chickens pushes her aside and asks Edward for help in boarding the train. He puts Alec down, who immediately takes Bella’s hand.

They walk further down the platform, searching for the first-class carriages. By now the wreaths have grown into what amounts to a small hill of funeral flowers. A priest splashes them with holy water as the porters pass backwards and forwards, loading them onto the train. A group of young Blackshirts come trick-acting down the platform. They stop when they see the priest, the flowers, the black band on the arm of Alec’s coat. Then, one by one, they drop down into a genuflection.

Bella helps Alec board the train and stands for a while on the platform looking up at the window at their three faces: Edward, inscrutable; Alec, dry-eyed now but still pale and stunned with incomprehensible grief; Grace, the cat who got the cream.

*

When she gets back Amelia is still in her room and has quite needlessly - as far as Bella is concerned anyway - left word not to be disturbed.

Bella goes up to the library; a room she has come to regard as her own. She has brought her few bits to it - three framed photographs, a shell-covered box, a silver Indian message holder on a stand, found years ago in a Hampstead antique shop.

She has made some adjustments. At first just a here-and-there tweak, a mirror removed, a few cushions brought in. But since Cesare has shifted all the unwanted furniture to another room, she has gradually rearranged the remainder into sections - one for schoolwork; another for sitting; one for her own private office; another close to the view, where she sometimes eats meals, alone or with Alec. And a day bed she keeps by the terrace door, for snoozes on hot afternoons. It has come to feel like her own apartment.

The photographs are of her family; her mother, plumpish in the first stage of pregnancy, making her look younger and prettier than she really would have been. Another of her parents, standing at a monument near the hospital where her father used to work in Dublin. He, matinee-idol handsome, her mother, by comparison, pinched and plain. Although both seem happy enough. The last picture shows all three of them, outside the tearooms in the Phoenix Park. It isn’t a good photograph, but the only she had been able to find of them as a family. Her mother and herself seated on a bench, her father standing behind them. In all, a surly over-dressed trio, recalling any other vaguely unhappy Sunday afternoon.

Bella stands at the library table looking down at the scatter of Alec’s nature books and sketch pads. He has a good hand for a child his age, an eye that seems to understand colour. At least, she thinks, as she runs through the pages, he seems to know the world isn’t composed of flat blocks, but of colour shaped by weight and light. Colour that moves. He sees light and shade in everything. Red in a night sky, blue in the grass. He sees depth. Or he acknowledges it anyway, even if he hasn’t yet found the knack of capturing it.

She picks one book up, flips it open on a drawing of a place she recognizes. The garden of the Bicknell Library where they had spent an afternoon last week. All the details are there: the wide-armed African palm, the arcade with its soft fringe of mauve flowers, the bush of ox-eyed daisies. And the stone bench where they had sat, drowned in shadow. At the side of the picture is a man, woman and child. Over each head hangs a name: ‘Maestro Edward. Signora Stuart. Alessandro P. Lami.’

In the picture Alec is wearing a striped sports shirt, just as he had done that day. She had pressed it for him herself. She is wearing her navy dress with the red flowers and collar. He even remembered which shoes she had on. Everything just as it had been. Except for one thing - Edward had not been with them.

She closes the book. From lower down the stack she pulls out a nature copybook and drops it open on a page: a group of palm trees on the capo near the old town. Underneath he has written:

*

Amelia tells her about Signora Lami, one evening out on the
passeggiata
. A few days in an empty house and they have fallen into each other’s company well enough, once Amelia is over her sulk that is, and it has been established that Bella will not be substituting Grace as her Prosecco-swilling partner. In any case Amelia has her own holiday friends for night-time excursions or the occasional cruise to Alassio or a spin in somebody’s roadster up and down the Riviera: wealthy Americans mostly or middle-aged English toffs en route to smarter places.

They have some meals together, but as neither is all that interested in food these are rare or at least brief occasions. Otherwise it is the evening walk, then on for an
aperitivo
at Bar Atu where they sit on the terrace both watching and waiting, unashamedly, for one or more of Amelia’s cronies to happen along and claim her.

This allows Bella to leave. Home to a tray in the library, or a cafe she has found near via Lombaglia, run by the elderly Luzzati couple and frequented by English Dots. There the food is simple, the plates small, and, as Mrs Cardiff has pointed out, ‘There is no obligation to be seen making a display of enjoying oneself.’

Bella is always pleased to do the
passeggiata
with Amelia but equally pleased to leave her, which is just as well, she often thinks, seeing how she has never once been invited to stay.

In light of the collarbone injury, Bella had offered to help Amelia dress or take care of more personal matters but had been told that make-up and hair would be taken care of by a girl from the English hairdresser’s who knew about such things, and as for other, more personal matters, Elida, as a servant, would be better suited. If this means Amelia doesn’t regard Bella as a servant, it certainly doesn’t mean she looks on her as a friend. Since that first day in the garden, it has been ‘Miss Stuart’ all the way.

Sometimes Amelia doesn’t come home all night. Once she arrived still drunk at half past eight in the morning, her dress soaking wet and the side of her face dirty and scratched. Another time there was a bruise on her neck the size of a half-crown, which Elida, with much disgust, identified as a
succhiotta
- or a love bite, as it took Bella a few minutes to work out. About Amelia’s behaviour Bella asks no questions and makes no comment, although she can’t help feeling that for someone with her arm in a sling, Amelia leads an impressively active life.