The Italian Romance (7 page)

I feel the need to sit down. I don't suppose I had better do that. I prise my hands apart. I say, ‘I hear you're going to London.'

‘Any minute, now.'

‘I see. Well, I hope I'm not driving you out.' I didn't think I was going to say it.

‘In what way?' she says.

I haven't a clue in what way. I search my mind for something. ‘Well, I mean, I hope I didn't upset you the other night. If I did, I'm sorry.'

There is a beating of wings in the air. How else to describe it? She has listened, at least that.

I go on. ‘I was really very happy to have you there. It was ... very, very nice.' I am going to cry again. Oh, Jesus. I don't admire this part I'm in at all. But it looks like I have to play it out.

She picks up her make-up bag, peers in. ‘Well, I'm sorry to have left so abruptly.'

Alleluia. The angels sing. I know I have to be swift and simple. I say, ingratiatingly, ‘You didn't look very well.'

‘It wasn't that. You know what it was.' She throws the make-up bag down. My God, she's fairly frank, this daughter of mine.

I say, I hope not too quietly, ‘Yes.'

She shrugs again. She takes up the shoulder bag now, flips it open to re-pack. She's about to fly.

‘I'd like to offer you my place in Tuscany, if you'd like. For a holiday. It's in a lovely spot. When you get back from London.'

‘I don't know that I'm coming back here.'

‘Yes, but if you do. If I've caused you to cut short your work here, please forgive me. You can use the Tuscany house as a base, if you like. Or just relax.' Am I wearing her down? I am following every movement of her face. She doesn't want to look at me. I understand that. I don't know what I'd do if she looked at me the way I'm looking at her. I'm not good at this sort of thing. Not good at the emotional moment. ‘No strings attached,' I say.

I actually see a smile on her lips. Brief, but there.

She continues to retrieve her things from the bed, one by one, drops them into the leather pouch. She doesn't stop as she says, ‘I'll tell you what. I'll see how things go in London. I'll phone, or e-mail you if I decide to come back. Your address is on the card, isn't it?'

‘Yes. Yes, it is. All my numbers. Fair enough,' I say. My mouth is dry. This is my exit. I must leave while things are looking up. ‘So,' I say, ‘I'll await word from you. I'll have the place prepared.'

‘No, don't do that,' she says.

‘No trouble,' I say. ‘No trouble. My neighbours caretake for me. And if you come, there it is. If not...' I open my hands to the gods. ‘You'll love it, though, Francesca, I'm sure you will.' How I relish saying her name to her.

‘We'll see,' she says.

And that's it. I pat my own shoulder bag. ‘Well,' I say. ‘Hope to see you.'

She nods, still doesn't look at me. I walk the distance to her door. I don't want to go out into that cool hallway. ‘Have ... have a good trip,' I say.

‘Thanks,' she says.

I walk away. I might as well hurry. I stand at the elevator and press the lighted button. I am aching. The lift appears almost immediately. A young porter in uniform raises his head as the door slides open. He murmurs, ‘Buongiorno, Signora.'

‘'Giorno,' I respond. He brushes by me and heads down the hallway to Francesca's room.

A car's engine choked the summer silences, bringing the boy out of his reverie. He narrowed his eyes to scan the landscape. The hedges were full and tangled green, and the corn swayed. The roadways were apparent only when a vehicle, a farmer's cart piled high, or an army truck say, drew the eye.

The car's purr grew stronger, as if a cat nuzzled on his shoulder, not loud, but absolute. And there it was, a shiny black top glinting in the sun, the windscreen a mirror of light as the car veered left, four open windows. It looked to him like an upside-down boat, or a submarine perhaps. He couldn't see the wheels turning. There was a Fascist in the back. He could see the dark shirt the man was wearing. In the front seat, the driver's arm was resting on the window; he was in a white shirt and over it a dark vest. And there were two others that Gianni couldn't make out, on the other side of the car.

The boy was in a field of cabbage. His foot kept slipping from the grassy mound between two rows of vegetables. He held his
arms out. In the bright glare of the sun a hawk circled downwards, its wingspan making a shadow over him. ‘Get lost,' he shouted at it and his foot slipped again. He balanced himself and took off at a run, one foot perfectly in line with the other. It was then that he saw the head, its sandy hair, rising slowly above the hedge. It disappeared again. Gianni's feet slipped into the drills on either side of him. He trod on an over-large, yellowed cabbage leaf that had flopped to the earth. He stood still. His toes curled and opened on the ribbed smoothness of the leaf. He breathed through his mouth. He could hear the breath in the canyons of his ears.

And for some reason, he sensed real danger for the first time in his life. He dropped to a crouch, stared at the spot above the hedge. Nothing moved. He scampered like a spider to his side of the hedge. He was as silent as he could be, and as alert as a young horse. He peered through the briar tangles and the mass of rain-parched leaves, thick as a prince's forest. Where light peeped through diamond-sharp, his eye studied the field beyond.

A man's voice, almost in his ear, spoke some American words. Gianni toppled back.

‘It's only a kid,' the man had said to the other, and he was about to look into the adjoining field. The other man put a restraining hand on his companion's arm, and he sank to his haunches.

Gianni crawled up onto his hands and knees. He peered again through the tiny opening. He saw nothing but sun dropping in a haze on rows of lettuce. He suddenly shouted, his heart pumping hard, ‘Hey! Americani!'

The sandy one said, in a low voice, ‘He's all right, Jack.' The other, slightly older, dark, met his eyes. The sun had chiselled deep lines on Jack's face, the corners of the eyes, the forehead. The two men looked for the answer in each other's certainty. Finally, Jack tapped Sandy twice on the arm. Affirmative.

Sandy rose very slowly. He looked over the hedge. He could just see Gianni's behind stuck up in the air. ‘Boy,' he called. ‘Over here.'

Gianni sat back on his heels, gazed up to his right. The man was in the sun. He seemed to be very dark and very tall. Gianni held his hand up to shield his eyes. The man was beckoning him.

He jumped up. He knew he had to run in the other direction, the left, in order to get through into the next field. He pointed at the opening so the American would understand, and took off.

Sandy looked down at Jack. ‘He's running away.'

‘I told you.'

‘Now what do we do?'

‘High tail it out of here,' Jack said, ‘before he comes back with his father, the local Fascist mayor.'

‘Jesus Christ,' Sandy said.

‘And keep down this time,' Jack said. He eased up to a crouch. His legs were aching. He rubbed at his knee. And then he heard the boy. The youngster was running up the verge of the field, waving his arms. Jack stood straight. ‘Here he comes, the little scamp,' he said.

Sandy said, ‘Should we make a dash for it?'

‘No,' Jack said. ‘He's all right. He's staying quiet.'

Gianni was flushed, eyes bright as lamps, when he reached them. His breath came in short gasps. Jack put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Take it easy, boy,' he said. The child's face was broad with a grin. He rubbed at a dangle of sweat on his nose with the back of his hand.

‘You are Americani?' he said. He looked from one to the other. He guessed the dark one was the Capitano.

Sandy said, under his breath, ‘He thinks we're Americans.'

‘Don't disabuse him,' said Jack, ‘if that's what he wants.'

Jack put out his hand. ‘Sure,' he said.

Gianni thrust out his. His grin was wider. ‘Good morning. How do you do?' he said in English.

Sandy bent his head back and looked at the sky. He was almost certain it was about four in the afternoon.

Jack said, ‘Do you speak English?'

‘Perfectly,' Gianni said. He still grasped the man's warm hand. Jack obligingly pumped it a few more times. Released, Gianni opened his palm and circled his hand in front of face and said, ‘Hi!', just as he'd seen an American college boy in a movie do.

Sandy looked at the sergeant. He wanted to laugh. Jack, with a curt shake of his head, stopped him.

‘Hi,' Jack replied. ‘Do you live near here?'

Gianni smiled. The man was talking American to him.

Jack rested his hands on his hips. ‘How old are you, boy?'

Gianni wiped away another dangle of sweat. His arm and wrist were also damp and glistening.

‘Right,' Jack said. Sandy turned his face away, and covered his mouth with his small hand; blonde down caught the sun.

‘What will we do with this boy, Sandy?' Jack said.

Sandy sobered himself and looked down at the boy, who beamed at him before the first doubt crossed his face. ‘I say we either eat him, or ask him to get us some food.'

Jack smiled at the two furrowed frown lines that appeared above the little fellow's nose. He put his fingers to his mouth and mimed himself eating. ‘Food,' he said. ‘J'ai faim,' he tried, and he chewed the pretend delicacy and rubbed his stomach. ‘Mmm,' he said, and raised his eyes appreciatively to heaven.

Gianni's face relaxed. ‘Ah, si,' he said. He nodded enthusiastically and put his own fingers to his mouth, slapped his lips together. ‘Okay,' he said. He stuck out his stomach and patted it. Jack watched his face as the boy strained for a moment and then delivered a rolling burp. His eyes glinted. He held his arms up in victory. Jack laughed, his first in a long time, a deep belly laugh.

Gianni said, ‘Okay, okay,' looking from one face to the other. Gianni was used to being a source of enjoyment. Sandy slapped him on the back. ‘Good man, good man,' he said. ‘Get us some food, understand?' Sandy's eyes withdrew from the boy. He studied the row of cypress beside the road which the two men had raced across ten minutes before. ‘Off you go, old chap,' he said.

Gianni understood none of the words. The Americans were speaking too quickly. But he sensed they had both become tense, almost jittery. He wanted to help them. He wanted to tell them to stay right here, and he would be back with whatever he could secrete out of the kitchen. He suddenly thought of Alphonso. He might be sitting at the kitchen table, and Berta might be cooking something on the stove. He had no idea of the time. Would they be awake again, after their afternoon rest? He gazed as if he were studying the rows of young lettuce. The frown had re-appeared on his face. Jack said, ‘What is it, boy? What's troubling you?' Gianni didn't realise that he'd disappeared with his thoughts. He was surprised by the man's voice. He looked back at him.

‘Signori,' he said. ‘Che ora é?'

‘Que ... what is it? Oro? Ora?' Jack looked to Sandy. Sandy shrugged. ‘Hour,' Jack said. ‘Something about time.'

Gianni heard the American word ‘time'. He nodded. ‘Si, si, tima,' he said.

Jack examined the young boy's face. ‘Do you want us to wait? How long?' He glanced anxiously at his partner. Sandy also tensed.

Gianni shook his head. He could not make them understand about Alphonso and the big, booming voice which would roar at him, ‘Ragazzo, what you got in your shirt? Come over here, briccone. Have you swallowed a hen, that your abdomen takes on such a shape?'

In the end, he shrugged his shoulders, defeated. He trawled in his mind for the American words he needed. He pointed to his chest. He said, ‘I,' and pointed again, ‘I get, si?' He frowned at Jack.

‘Si,' Jack said.

‘I get,' Gianni repeated. He held up both hands and gestured to them to stay.

‘Stay here,' Jack said. He pointed to the earth at his feet.

‘Si,' the boy replied. He pointed to the ground, too. ‘Okay?' he said as he walked backwards, looking at the man, and then he
suddenly turned and ran, his bare feet almost bouncing on the grassy path.

The men watched him. The boy turned and waved just before he disappeared into the laneway. Jack waved back.

‘What'll we do?' Sandy said.

‘I'll follow him. In case his father
is
the mayor.'

‘Just our luck,' Sandy said.

‘Better safe than sorry. You duck back across the road. I'll come and get you if all's well.

Jack's feet were in a bad way. The soles of his shoes had very nearly departed company from their uppers; he'd tied strips of canvas around them like bandages. When he reached the laneway, breathing hard, he held back for a few moments behind the border hedge; he could see the boy trotting down the avenue of bushes. On the other side of the lane, the land rose. He would find shelter up there, among a coppice of trees – the leaves were more grey than green in the harsh, summer light.

Jack was tired. Alone, without the breath of young Sandy at his shoulder, he was suddenly swamped with a killing desolation. There was a dark urge in him to lie down on the tough grass, the hard dry earth, and sleep and sleep and let a division of tanks caterpillar by him, drumming up a hurricane of dust, troops boot-march inches from his head, and let him sleep, sleep himself away. It had gone on too long. Alone, he was drained of life-blood. He never thought it would happen to him. He was a tough man, even a happy man by nature. He'd had his knocks. He'd picked himself up, dusted himself off. But he didn't know himself anymore. Or if he did, he was frightened by the blackness that was him. He hadn't known it about himself. That was what terrified him more than anything, more than being recaptured, or shot. What would his own blackness drive him to? Was there an edge that it knew, had known always, he'd be led to? And after it, there was nothing. The nothing terrified him. All the rest, the good spirits, the good
deeds he had tried to do, buoying up his father all those years, the infinite excitement he'd felt in his gut when he went up to university, the patching himself together after the heartbreak of Serena's goodbye letter, the nights of plying himself and his mates with whisky in the melancholy of young men intent on cutting out the diamond, the willing himself into life again in the army, life that would stretch his soul, and then effort after effort to protect his men, from the thirst as much as anything else in that miserable, godforsaken desert, pushing on, on. Was it for nothing? Nothing the destination after all? And all the rest the dream? Who was this, who knew this terrible thing? Jack, in his mind's eye, saw himself drop to his knees, put his face in the dirt.

But he didn't. He darted across the pathway, and made his way up the grassy rise. He sank to his haunches as he entered the coppice. He could hear his breath. He heard the lonely rise and fall of it. Below him he saw the house, and the boy, stopped in his tracks now, balanced on one foot while he seemed to be picking a splinter out of the other, little beggar. There was a well-tended garden. It surprised him. Bushes, and real hedges, English hedges. If he could get down to that garden before the boy reached the house, he'd see what was going on. He rose and ran at a half-crouch, his eyes on the open French doors at the side of the house.

The boy was running again, too. As Jack threw himself behind a flamboyant bush, four or five feet thick, the child looked around, hearing something. Jack tried to get his breath. He wiped his arm across his forehead. The sun was cruel, lost in its own haze. He made the mistake of gazing up at it. He was blinded for a number of seconds. ‘Christ,' he said softly. He held his arm against his eyes, closed them. His shirt smelled of his own skin. He was so thirsty. Unconsciously, he moved his mouth to make saliva.

He reached out his fingers to hold down a branch, so he could get a clear view. The boy had moved. He'd come to the back door and he seemed to be creeping in on his toes. Jack smiled. ‘Little beggar,' he said.

Jack's thighs were tightening. He danced his feet around to a slightly different angle and held the branch a little firmer, trying to see in through the French doors at the side. A white, fine curtain blew out and tossed in the air. His heels were chafed; the makeshift shoes were a misery. He put his thumb into the back of his shoe, to give the heel relief. And then he saw the woman. He knelt, and concentrated. She had walked across the doorway. Was she with someone? She didn't appear again for a full minute, then she stood still, and looked out. Her hands were by her sides. Limp by her sides, he said to himself. What was wrong with her? He could feel it from two hundred yards away. It was the way gravity pulled at her, though she stood erect, the way blood drained into her limp hands. He thought he saw some strands of her hair fall to her neck. Yes, she slowly raised her hand now and combed the hair up into the loose bun on her head. She was dark. Her white blouse threw her skin into shadow. She gave up on the hair and let it fall down again. She must be too hot to have all that hair, the dark, thick winding of it, loose about her neck and shoulders.

And then she looked straight at him. He carefully withdrew his hand from the branch. She can't see me, he said to himself. He looked up quickly to the rise. He wouldn't make it with her standing there.