Last Train from Liguria (2010) (29 page)

‘Doubt it. I’ve to collect Alec’s new school blazer and I want to see if the bangle I bought for the Signora’s new baby is back from the engraver’s. Leah, it’s a lovely name - don’t you think?’

‘But not an Italian name.’

‘It’s the Signora’s name. Have you seen my purse, Elida?’

‘Top shelf, on the right, as always.’

Bella finds her purse and stuffs it into her pocket.

‘I’ll pick up Alec on the way back - he’s hardly had a wink all night, thinking about the musical picnic today. The Almansi girls have tambourines
and
a recorder, he’s brought his harmonica. They’re calling themselves the Beach Blues Trio. God help any sun-worshippers. Anyway, I’m off. See you later, Elida.’

Elida follows her out to the door, wiping her hands on her pinny. ‘Will you go to the office of the
Prefettura
?’

‘If I’ve time, why?’

‘I see the letter.’

‘It’s only a reminder to have my documents verified, nothing to worry about.’

‘I think.’

‘You think what, Elida?’

‘Nothing. But maybe speak to the Signora first.’

‘Why?’

‘The
Prefettura
, they don’t just want to know about you. Also this house - who lives here, why, how long, this and that - you know? The Signora, she always change her mind so much. And better to wait until you have one story only.’

‘All right. A day or so won’t make a difference. Anyway, I best get—’

‘Wait until later, please, Signora Bella, it’s too hot for you now.’

‘Really, Elida you’re in an odd mood today - what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing, is so hot.’

‘Elida, I have just had coffee in the garden and believe me it’s not half as hot outside there as it is in this kitchen. God - how can you breathe?’

‘Crazy heat for September,’ Elida mournfully agrees.

Elida walks with her out to the garden, her big face reddened with worry, heat and exertion. There are caps of flour dust on her elbow and nose, a pulp of tomato sauce under her heart, a stain of plum juice on her lips. She looks, as she always does when she comes out of the kitchen, as if she’s coming away from a fight. She pushes her voice at Bella. ‘I hope they don’t think they are coming here again.’

‘Who?’

‘The American misses - I see the letter.’

‘Well, of course you did! Don’t worry, Elida. People are trying to get out of Europe, not into it.’

‘There’s no rooms for them. With the Signora and the bambina and if she brings with her any of that Sicilian band of—’

‘I’m sure it will be just the baby.’

‘And the new husband, don’t forget that one.’

‘He won’t be arriving till next week. I told you this already. And Elida, we could stop calling him the new husband, his name is Signor Tassi - they have been married two years, you know.’

’
Un napoletano
.’ Elida closes her eyes and blows through her teeth. ‘A woman who could have marry anyone. And what about that English housekeeper, her - I suppose she will arrive with her face on her feet?’

‘My God, Elida, is there anyone you like?’

‘I like you, Signora,’ Elida says, patting her on the cheek.

Bella moves towards the gate. ‘Please stop worrying. And by the way, the letter from America? It’s from Grace wondering if we’ve heard anything from Amelia. She’s in Berlin it seems.’

‘Why?’

‘Who knows with Amelia? And before you ask - the other two letters? One is from my father telling me to come home at once - which I have no intention of doing, regardless of whether Hitler invades Czechoslovakia. The other is from the Signora postmarked three weeks ago so whatever it says will no longer matter.’

‘Your letters are your own private affairs, Signora.’ Elida sniffs. ‘And make sure you eat lunch.’

‘I will.’

‘Make sure you do. But not in La Marita. Those Venetians - they don’t know how to cook. Only poison.’

’
Ciao
, Elida.’ But Elida is not finished yet. ‘Signora Stuart?’

Bella turns back.

‘Up there,’ Elida says, pointing her finger towards the old city. ‘Up there in the
citta alta
, they wear each other’s trousers.’

Bella laughs. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘If Rosa is sick, they all know it. Someone would come tell us by now.’

*

Bella steps out onto via Romano. Heat that would skin you alive. Along the pathway, placed at intervals, there are benches under trees. Far down the road one solitary old man, the picture of peace, sits in a snooze opposite the Hotel Angst. To have to trudge all the way up to the old town now, leave the merciful shade of via Romano behind, turn onto the spiral road; round and round, up and up, further and further from the sea’s constant breeze. Her mind starts to jiggle with second thoughts.

She could always leave the matter of Rosa for later when the air has cooled down, sit on one of these benches and finish reading her letters instead, feel the shade glide like a silk slip over her face, throat, arms. Or. She could go down to the centre, have an iced coffee in the Caffe delle Onde, sit among the elite shoppers, with their small ridiculous dogs and fragile parcels of pastries. Read the letters there. Or. Stroll down to the seafront, throw a sly eye over Alec and the Almansi girls, then into Bar Atu; the brush of the sea breeze as she reads, the flimsy overseas pages in her hand trying to slip off back to Sicily, England, America. Or she could tear the wretched things into confetti, fling them over a wall; not bother to read them at all.

A bicycle bell clucks behind her. She turns to see the water salesman on his way back up to the mineral springs at Madonna della Ruota. Big purple face breathing sharp and slow as a carpenter’s saw. The tremble of bottles all around him; dangling in nets from the handlebars, crossbar, his wrists and around his neck. He passes and she reads the familiar, if unfortunate, sign on his back: ‘
Aqua della Madonna
‘.

Bella folds the letters and shoves them into her dress pocket, then crosses to the other side of the road.

From a side road that leads up to the
colli
, a large group of middle-aged hikers pour out. She stops while they pass. Brawny and pink, moist faces beaming, knapsacks hoisted on backs. They are holding their alpenstock at the ready although the rough ground is well behind them now. Germans; more this year than ever. The visitor columns in the newspaper are crammed with Herrs, Fraus, Von this and Von that. Herd-like, they continue to cross her path, hearty nods and eager grins, until it occurs to one man to call halt and, arm graciously extended, he invites her to pass.

The road takes a bend. On her left, the rising walls of the villas: Vera, Valentina, Cordelia. A little further on Villa Capella, a sign on the gate: ‘Oranges, sweet and bitter. Apply the gardener’s house.’ Across the way on the corner is Luzzati’s old cafe. The ‘
In Vendita
‘ notice has finally been taken down. The cafe sign on the ground, sun-faded and cracked. A ladder leans against the outside wall, and from inside comes the dull determined sounds of reinvention: hammers, saws, planks of wood being dragged across bare floors. Through the murky curtainless windows she sees men in overalls drift.

A workman comes out holding a large framed picture in his hand. She crosses the road to ask him if he knows where the Luzzatis have gone.

’
Non so.
‘ He shrugs.

’
Sono tornati a Trieste?
‘ she asks him.

’
Non lo so, Signora
.’

A voice from inside the shop suggests, ‘
America?
’

’
Ah si
.’ The man with the picture in his hand is suddenly certain. ‘
Si, si, America. Certo. Tutta la famiglia e andata in America
.’

He adds the picture to the stack already resting on the wheel of his truck. It is a large red poster-picture of a dancing clown eating a bowl of spaghetti. It used to hang in the corner above a table where she often sat, looking up sometimes from the book by her plate, to relieve the strain in her neck. Even after she had become friendly with Mrs Cardiff and they had taken to joining each other for dinner, she would still find herself glancing up at it. She knows this picture as well as she knows the view from her own room. Bella thinks about asking him if she could buy it, but he has gone back inside before she can decide if she wants it at all.

Under the ladder buckets of paint are covered with lace to keep the flies at bay. The lace torn from a communion dress or maybe a veil. Beside it an ormolu vase holds a quartet of damp paintbrushes. Two silver-service knives, smeared with paint, lie on the ground. In the back of the van a plump hunting dog, tongue pulsing against the dirty glass of the window, a glitter of sweat on his fur. Bella stands for a moment and considers all this. What Mrs Cardiff would call ‘the small everyday brutalities of Italian life’.

She turns to cross back. The road, so long from left to right and as far as the eye can see, is deserted. Bella notices the amount of houses that have remained vacant this summer, houses that would usually have been taken by English holidaymakers. Even the Villa Cordelia is silent, a long thick chain and lock dangling from its gate, behind which a tangle of garden shows. For years it had been rented by an extended English family. The father, a peer of the realm. Grandmothers, uncles, aunts, children who behaved like savages, throwing water bombs over the wall. They had caught her father slap on the head two summers ago. He had called to complain but had been given short shrift for his trouble. Later he had written a letter to the English
Riviera Times
. ‘One expects more,’ he had said, ‘from British children.’

A small orange Fiat turns out of a driveway and judders off towards the high road like a piece of fruit on wheels. From the opposite direction a cart returning from the San Remo market appears, baskets of unsold flowers and swaddles of palms roped in at the back. A woman drives the mule on, one foot on the rim of a smaller basket to keep it from toppling over. As it passes Bella sees there’s a baby inside. The woman looks old enough to be the child’s grandmother, but her heavy breasts and the stain on her blouse show that she’s not. The cart and the Fiat pass each other with an exchange of rattles and jangles. Then the road is empty and silent again.

She follows the curve into via Pineta. Above is the pine garden where she promises herself a little rest, higher again is the old town, the
citta alta
. Looking down to the right - a shuffle of terracotta rooftops all the way to the centre and the seafront. She hears the first stirring of the parade below, sees the stragglers emerge from their different angles. Unaware of each other, yet behaving like each other - berets pressed into heads, Sam Browne belts adjusted across chests, feet lifting to buff a shoe on the back of a leg before rushing to catch up, slip in, without drawing notice.

At the newspaper kiosk a van is parked. A man swinging low from the hips unloads bundles to the ground; another man flicks his knife through the twine that holds them together. She reminds herself to stop on the way back for Edward’s newspapers. Under the curved half-wall of the gent’s latrine a pair of lower legs dressed in green linen gingerly slips into position.

Bella places her hand on the rail in the centre of the first stair alley, already hot to the touch. She braces herself for the climb. Her shoes suck on her feet; the cloth of her dress pastes itself to her legs.

A few moments later she slips into the pine garden, where she stands with her hand for a while against the giant Indian fig tree, gently gasping for air. The Luzzatis come into her head again. The Day of the Faithful - was that the last time she had spoken to them? The cafe had closed soon after and about a year after that again, the For Sale sign had gone up. She had spotted them through the window a few times, but they never seemed to come out. Once she had even tried knocking on the door.

Regaining her breath Bella wanders through the rockeries, passing the punier spits of water until she finds a good healthy rope of it, which she breaks with the cup of her hand. It fills and she sucks the water up, taking pleasure in the sound it gives her, the privacy in here that allows it. In the distance the band is warming up. Notes rub, bump, scrap off each other, jostle for a moment, then suddenly catch. Finally a tune stumbles into shape. Now voices. ‘
Siamo l’eterna gioventu, che conquista l’avvenire
. We are the eternal youth, who will conquer the future.

Now on a bench, surrounded by umbrella pines, chestnuts, all sorts of trees set close to each other. It’s like sitting in a room with walls made of shadow. Baubles of sunlight prowl outside. She can see downhill, a thin weave of ocean through the pines and on the verge of the via Pineta, bunches of aloe and agave, their long arms extended, like octopuses trying to crawl back to the sea.

Bella closes her eyes and sees the Luzzatis. She does not for one moment believe they have gone to America.

*

The Day of the Faithful. An unusually cold day for Liguria, it had been, a day of startling December light. She had thought it might be a bit of fun for Alec, breakfast in town and then off for a look at the proceedings. Edward would have none of it. A farce without comedy, he had called it. Married women queuing for hours to donate their gold wedding rings to Mussolini’s African campaign. Then receiving a steel band in its place and muttering a coy oath of fidelity on the exchange - ‘as if he was marrying the whole stock and breed of them’.