The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (24 page)

‘The
other side
?' Connie nearly laughed. ‘They're not that narrow-minded, surely? Even Leyton has to get over the war sometime.' But as she said it she thought of Aunty Bea.

Mr Gilbert stopped and turned to her. The light under the door spilled across his shoes but made his face shadowy and serious. ‘Oh, they'll get over the war, alright. But what they won't get over is that Lucio is a Roman Catholic, Connie.'

She would have realised the Italians were Catholic had she given it any thought. But she'd only seen the Onorati as a product of the war, thought of them in terms of the war's divisions. Now she understood their foreignness ran even deeper. The villagers of Leyton didn't have a Catholic among them. It was an odd tic of religious history, of geography, perhaps. But when the lumpy effigy of Guy Fawkes was dragged from house to house on Bonfire Night, it was more than a tic that some villagers crossed themselves as they tossed their pennies to the lane kids and cried
burn the papist
. And as a child, she had seen itinerant Irish farmhands refused at the Green Man, Tommy Pointon's spit fizzing behind them on the pavement as the kids shouted, ‘G'on and piss off, bloody bead jigglers.' In her mind's eye, she saw the expression on Aunty Bea's face, imagined the fury over the Formica if news got out about these murals.

The lock turned in the oak door and Mr Swann's thin frame appeared backlit in the doorway, his miner's cap still on his head.

‘Swann,' Mr Gilbert said. ‘Hasn't anyone ever told you to take your hat off in church?'

The artist grinned at his friend and removed the soggy end of a roll-up from his lips. ‘Gilbert,' was all he said. He regarded them with blue eyes that might have been arrogant had they not been somewhat glazed. His mouth made a half-hearted smirk that gave the impression he found everything around him either mildly amusing or mildly distasteful, Connie could not tell which.

Mr Gilbert introduced her. ‘Hope you don't mind, Swann. She's a friend of the boy's. She'll be very discreet, I assure you.'

Mr Swann put the wet cigarette to his mouth and sucked tightly, examining Connie. When he stepped back to allow them in, she noticed he was unsteady on his feet.

‘Welcome to the house of God,' he drawled, pulling off his cap with feigned deference, ‘better known as the school of Swann.' Connie had the urge to cover her mouth from the fumes of whiskey as she passed him. ‘Don't mind if I pass you over to Botticelli for the tour, old boy, but I was rather hoping to catch last orders at the Green Man.' Mr Swann made an elaborate yawn and rubbed at his neck. ‘Not sure how he does it,' he said, motioning to the scaffolding, on which Connie saw Lucio adjusting a rig of stage lights towards the eastern wall of the transept. ‘Damned if the boy doesn't keep going all night. Like his life depended on it. Wish I could spirit him up to London to help me out with those bloody Drury Lane commissions' — he winced — ‘a tad overdue!' He replaced his cap and smirked at Connie again, as if she had just stepped out of her clothes in front of him. She shouldered past and made her way up the nave towards the scaffold. Behind her she could hear him asking Mr Gilbert for
a spare quid
.

From the raised platform, Lucio was looking down at her. The spotlights threw into relief the wiry tufts of stitches scything his eye, the blue that blossomed around it, the cuts in his nose and lip. He straightened and pressed his forearm to his chin, as though wiping sweat away, even though the church was cold as a tomb. The handles of the brushes in his fist ground together like teeth.

‘Can I come up?' she asked. He set the brushes across an upturned crate and squatted on the scaffold so he could take her hand. She climbed up beside him, the heat of the stage lights warming her a little. He dropped her hand and they angled themselves away from each other, studying different ends of the mural.

He was working in the left of the view, on a bird taking flight between the branches of an ash. The wands of glossy leaves seemed to quiver as they drifted across the arch, and a feather shed from the bird's beating wings spiralled as if disturbed by a breeze, or by the bang of the door. The hoary tree trunk was a study in itself, the silver bark beset with patches of white and orange lichen, borers and beetles, and in one part, a shelf fungus that appeared so real she felt she might reach out and break off a white-tipped frill, the way she used to as a child, cutting through the spinneys on the bridle path to the schoolhouse. To her right, in the foreground, stood three women in robes of russet, sapphire and brown, one bent in grief, her companions regarding each other, their faces pencilled, as yet unpainted. A light caught the hand of one woman, clutching at the neck of her headdress. Her skin was chafed at the knuckles, thick-fingered — a worker's hand, the faint liver spots of age strangely familiar.

She felt the tremor in the platform as Lucio shifted his weight. ‘Have you done most of this?' she asked.

He glanced at Mr Swann by the western door, where Mr Gilbert was holding his hand up to them. ‘I'd better see him to the Green Man. Back in a half hour, alright?' They watched the men go, their footsteps sounding along the gravel path, leaving nothing but the hum of the stage lights, the hollow breath of the vaulted space around them. Lucio bent to clean his brushes on a rag, but she caught him observing her as she considered the work again.

‘There's so much here …' She heard the sibilance of her voice evaporating with her breath in the cold air. She tried again. ‘It's all so real, like it could move … it makes me …' But she couldn't find the words. All she managed was, ‘It's too beautiful for Leyton.'

He frowned. The muscles in his jaw were clenched.

‘Who are they?' she asked, indicating the figures.

‘Salome and Joanna.' He angled his head towards the third woman. ‘And Mary outside the tomb.'

She remembered Mr Swann's sketches with their descriptions in the memorial hall. ‘I know that,' she said. Again she examined the hand clutching the cloth, lit by the sepulchral glow, realising it would be enhanced cleverly by light through the south windows in the day. ‘But
who
are they?'

‘No one.' He shrugged. ‘Mr Swann's models. He does the figures, the faces.' He pointed behind them, to the western wall of the transept, where another scaffold stood before an unfinished scene. She could make out two figures before a wooded backdrop.

‘St John and St Peter in the garden of Getsemaní,' he said.

‘Gethsemane,' she repeated. She had always loved the name, and now the subtle difference of his Italian pronunciation.

‘Look.' He grabbed the handles of a light and aimed it at the mural. ‘You see Peter?' The faces flooded with colour and life, and she recognised Mr Gilbert's, the perplexed expression he wore in the shop when he had forgotten something. In the face of St John, she saw a rather noble, optimistic profile of Mr Swann himself.

She realised her mouth was open and she closed it. Lucio smiled at her, and she felt the blood returning to her face and hands, warm and tingling. ‘Do the committee know? Have they seen this yet?' she asked.

‘Mr Swann says —' He paused, a twist to his lips that might have been amusement. ‘He says they must sell more jam and cakes if they don't like it. He has no money to pay models.' She grinned. Despite the little she had learned and seen of Mr Swann, she could imagine him saying it. And she could also imagine the uproar once Mrs Cleat and the Christian Ladies found out they'd be singing
There Is a Green Hill
Far Away
to the image of the schoolteacher perpetually wondering whether he'd left behind his cheese ration. Not quite the transcendent aid to worship they might have had in mind.

She turned to him again. His face was in the shadow of the light shining on the mural, making his bruises seem all the worse.

‘I haven't seen you for ages,' she said, the echo of her voice sounding too loud, too accusing in the silence of the church. ‘I thought maybe … did I do something wrong, was I too outspoken — about the picture?'

He frowned and pushed his hair back from his face with his wrist. ‘No.'

She lifted her hand towards him, towards the curve of stitches at his eye, but he turned away and she let it fall again.

‘Why are you doing this?' she said. ‘I mean, for nothing. No money, no recognition. And the work at Repton's on top of it all. You should be going to art college.'

‘How?' he said flatly, like he was going through the motions of a tedious argument. ‘We still pay Repton money for our passage here.'

‘There are scholarships. If you're good, they pay for you. Mr Gilbert could help you.'

‘Not for people like me — not for aliens. Mr Gilbert says I need a British passport first. Only six more years to wait.' His laugh was sharp, ironic. ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Why do you always say that? Stop saying that,' she said, and the force of it surprised her. She found she had grabbed at his wrist, as if to shake him. ‘Look at this.' She thrust her other hand towards the walls. ‘You need to get away. From Repton's, from Leyton. Can't you see?'

His eyes scanned the sweep of the ash branches, the dove's wing, the falling light in the garden at Gethsemane. ‘I do get away,' he said.

‘But they can't appreciate this here. Not in Leyton. Don't you understand? You'll waste away here.'

Her fingers still gripped his wrist, and he laid his hand on top of hers. ‘I think maybe it's you who waste away here,' he whispered. But she couldn't be sure whether she heard the words or simply felt them, saw them forming in the cast of his black eyes. She snatched her hand away.

‘Connie,' he said. For the first time, she heard the sound her name made in his mouth, like something new, a name too exotic for the lanes of Leyton. And she wanted it to reinvent her, to remake her somewhere else: in Gethsemane or Israel, Damascus or Egypt, Antioch or Cappadocia. But the door creaked, and when she looked about her again, she was still in the stony chill of St Margaret's Village Church in Leyton, Mr Gilbert observing them with ruddy cheeks and chapped lips, his bicycle clip attached to his leg, his trilby turning in his hand.

Montelupini
1943

The festival of Ferragosto took place on one of the hottest days Lucio could remember. Even at sunset, he could feel the heat of the cobbles through his sandals as he and Vittorio trailed back along Via del Soccorso towards the village. An irritable Professore Centini had caught them lounging in the cool air by the fountain and set them to putting up trestle tables and hanging lanterns down on the campo for the evening's celebrations. Now they were sweaty from it, and while the rest of the village made their way to the party, Vittorio had insisted on going home to change. They approached the village just as the sun slotted behind the hills, and Lucio could almost hear the stones of the houses, the church, the battlements sigh their relief. On days like this, the whole village held its breath for nightfall.

As they climbed the steps to the piazzetta, they heard laughter coming from the osteria: a voice, German and loud, crowing in victory. Under the single light bulb of the pergola, Lucio could see Captain Schlosser's head, throwing back the remains of his glass, and Otto, bent towards the cards on the table. They seemed to be the last ones left at the bar, finishing their game. The rest of the unit had sauntered past Lucio and his brother in dribs and drabs, making their unsteady way down to the festival, red-faced from an afternoon's drinking in the heat.

‘Idiot crucchi,' Vittorio muttered once again. It was his favourite comment these days. He leaned against the entrance to Vicolo Giotto and eyed the two senior officers with disgust. ‘Anyone would think they were tourists on holiday. Do you think they've even heard that Mussolini's behind bars?'

Lucio didn't answer. He had no doubt the captain knew, but if he'd received any specific orders following Il Duce's arrest, he was keeping them very close to his chest. He and his men continued to frequent the osteria as they always had, while behind his back the villagers fretted about the German reinforcements arriving in Montemezzo and the larger towns, the hostile attitude of the new troops, and the withdrawal of courtesies and trading.

‘Here we are, pussyfooting around them, like some unexploded bomb in the piazza, but all Schlosser does is sit in the tavern and get everyone drunk for Ferragosto.' His brother was right. If tensions had increased between the Germans and the Italians elsewhere, the captain's answer was simply to drink the edge off them. In a gesture of goodwill to the Montelupinese, he'd even gone so far as to procure a piglet through his connections in Montemezzo, so that the pig jousting — the highlight of the festival — could continue as it always had. The fact that most of the village would rather eat the beast than play games with it seemed irrelevant to the captain.

Vittorio kicked at the heel of his sandal, as if to dislodge a piece of grit. ‘Well, if that crucco's so desperate to see the jousting, we'll give him a joust.' He entered the alleyway, but glanced back at Lucio from the shadows. ‘And we'll be hanging a nice fat porker in the cellar by winter, you'll see, Guf.' He thrust his hands in his pockets and began to walk home. But Lucio, hearing shouts again from the osteria, lingered under the arch of Vicolo Giotto.