The Tuscan Contessa

by Dinah Jefferies

  After a moment she noticed Roberto was waiting for a reply or maybe waiting for her to do something. She hadn’t even heeded the question, if there had been one.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, and picked up a pamphlet, read part of it and then looked at Roberto. ‘You’d like me to take these?’

  ‘Well, you might as well, as you’ll be going north anyway.’

  ‘Rather than a staffetta?’

  ‘It’s complicated for our ordinary couriers at present. Pass the leaflets on to partisans to disperse wherever they can. You know where to go?’

  ‘Not yet. My liaison officer gave me your address, told me when to be here and that you’d give me further instructions.’ She didn’t mention the British radio operative she’d been ordered to contact in Tuscany. That information was on a strictly need-to-know basis. And she’d been told in no uncertain terms that Italy was not France, that the resistance was extremely scattered, which meant that the ultimate goal of figuring out where and how to supply them with arms and ammunition would be extremely difficult.

  ‘We need you to go to Castello de’ Corsi in Tuscany,’ Roberto said. ‘At the manor house ask for Sofia de’ Corsi. If you tell her we sent you, she will accommodate you. Her husband could be there too, Lorenzo de’ Corsi. You may talk to him but speak to Sofia first if possible.’

  ‘She doesn’t know I’m coming?’

  ‘Not exactly. Explain what you are really there to do, but away from the Castello keep quiet. You can tell her your real name but otherwise use your cover. You have your story worked out?’

  ‘I do. I had been thinking of telling people I was there to write a piece on how the war was affecting ordinary men and women. I used to be a journalist, you see. But my liaison talked me out of the whole idea.’

  ‘Just as well, I’d say, especially if you were to “bump into” any Germans. They’d think you were a spy,’ Roberto said and then continued, ‘From Marco here, we know the partisans in Tuscany are something of a ragbag – untrained, reckless, angry.’

  She noticed that Marco, the young man with the caramel eyes, was nodding vigorously and she smiled at him. So, he was a partisan.

  ‘You will work with Marco and he will give you all the help you need,’ Roberto continued. ‘Once it’s clear how viable the groups really are, how many men there are, where they are, who their leaders are, we can relay the information on to your Allied liaison officer or, if you can make contact, just radio direct to him at SOE’s subsidiary headquarters in the south.’

  ‘We believe British radio engineers and radios will be dropped in several locations,’ Marco said. ‘We need to rapidly expand our partisan communications network because the Allies need us to be ready.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘And your family originally came from?’ Roberto asked.

  ‘Tuscany. We always spoke Italian at home, English at school.’

  ‘Your accent isn’t bad. No German will be able to detect you’re from New York, though the locals might.’

  She gave him a smile. She didn’t tell him her heart ached for her mother whenever she thought of Tuscany. She sighed deeply, hoping she’d made the right decision to come. Against her entire family’s objections, she’d gone ahead and sailed for England as an accredited United States correspondent. Then, in a drab hotel room in Bloomsbury, it had all changed. A letter had been left at the news agency where she worked, mentioning just the time and place, and the name of the person she was expected to see. One Ronald Carter. The letter had been headed with the British Governmental official stamp of the Inter Services Research Bureau. It meant nothing to her, and during her first interview with the tall, dark-eyed and rather nattily dressed Ronald, she had remained just as mystified. He told her he had received her details from the Immigration Office, who controlled the waves of displaced people, screened refugees, enforced rules on exit permits and so on.

  He had narrowed his eyes and said, ‘I want to know more about you.’

  She had thought maybe her permit to work in Britain was being revoked and she would soon be sent home. But in the long second exploratory meeting with Ronald, when he’d grilled her about her personality, her allegiances and her grasp of Italian, she found out what he really wanted. He was bilingual himself and they had carried out half the interview in Italian.

  ‘We’re casting the net for young Italian nationals both in America and in London with the right attitude and personality to be recruited, trained and swiftly deployed under cover in Italy,’ he’d said in a serious voice.

  He then explained that if she agreed, she’d arrive with British troops by ship, disembarking in southern Italy, as would he. After that, she’d be dropped by parachute close to Rome. Partisans would take her to the city but then she was on her own.

  Following that meeting with Ronald, she’d been sent to train in a kind of parachute academy for two weeks where she’d passed with flying colours after three real jumps. It had been terrifying but exhilarating. More training followed during which she had to carry out practice covert assignments. She’d held her nerve and now here she was and her parents didn’t know anything about it.

  ‘By the way,’ Roberto was saying, interrupting her thoughts again and bringing her back to the present. ‘You’ll have to wear a dress.’

  ‘Why? I am going up on a motorcycle.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you’ll blend in with the women in Tuscany if you wear a dress,’ he said. ‘Elsa?’

  As Elsa got up and walked out of the room, Maxine struggled to control her irritation. Despite being tall and leggy, with a figure any girl would die for, she had a flair for slipping under the radar and felt most comfortable doing it in trousers.

  Elsa returned with a pile of clothes.

  Roberto stuffed a battered satchel with pamphlets.

  When he was done, Maxine took it along with the clothes. Elsa indicated she should change in the bedroom and, as Maxine pulled on a dress, she could hear the assembled men and women whispering. She edged closer to the door but couldn’t make out what they were saying. As she tied on a headscarf, the stamp of hobnail boots rose from the floors below. Then came the ear-splitting sound of gunfire and loud thumping on apartment doors.

  ‘Jesus. What in God’s name?’

  Elsa flew into the room. ‘Quick. Use the fire escape and please give this box to Sofia de’ Corsi; she’s our daughter and she lives in the villa – the manor, that is – at Castello de’ Corsi. Say that her father and mother remind her about the sweets. It’s important.’

  ‘Sure. But will you be all right?’

  Elsa gave a noncommittal wave of her hands. ‘I think the Nazis are requisitioning our building.’

  ‘You knew about this?’

  ‘We had warning.’

  ‘Christ, why didn’t you go?’

  ‘I didn’t want to believe it. None of us ever want to believe it.’

  They could both hear strident German voices barking orders and women wailing as their doors gave way.

  ‘Jump over the rail to the terrace below this room and there you will find the fire escape.’ She thrust the satchel into Maxine’s arms. ‘There’s money in there too.’

  ‘And the motorcycle?’

  ‘It’s rather battered but is where we agreed. Go to the Castello first, but remember you need to be in Caffè Poliziano, in Montepulciano, in ten days’ time to meet with Marco, who you saw earlier. Make sure to arrive by ten in the morning.’ She then whispered a new password in Maxine’s ear and Maxine gave her the thumbs-up.

  ‘Petrol?’ Maxine asked.

  ‘Yes. Go!’

  Maxine threw the satchel and her bag over her shoulder then made for the railings as a rush of excitement rose up alongside the nerves. This whole thing was strangely thrilling, and her entire body had begun to tingle.

  4.

  Castello de’ Corsi

  While Sofia was spending the evening with her husband, their cook, Carla, was busy arranging her shawl to k
eep the draught from her neck and settling her body into the chair by the door on this darkest of nights. Eight of them had secretly gathered in her daughter’s house in one of only two chilly upstairs rooms. With three-year-old Alberto finally asleep, the women were busy. Sara spinning wool in the corner, Federica unwinding the wool from the spindle, and the rest grouped around the table knitting socks and blankets. One oil lamp lit the room and a blanket draped over the window ensured no light could leak through the slats of the shutters.

  Gradually the rhythm of clacking needles and the spin of the wheel merged with Sara’s voice as she began to sing very softly. Because they were lonely, husbands and sons gone to war and nobody knowing where anyone might be, this time together warmed their hearts. This knitting, this sitting, bound them in solidarity as they worked, despite the curfew, for if they did not, the men hiding in the woods would freeze in the hard winter ahead.

  Once the armistice had been signed, the soldiers, no longer fighting the Allies, had deserted their posts in the Italian army, risking everything to get home. But then, when Germany occupied Italy, she wanted the men as her soldiers, as her labourers, as her slaves, here or in camps in Germany. Many men had made for the wooded hills and joined the partisans. Some had never wanted to fight on the German side but had been conscripted. Some didn’t want to fight for anyone, and many had simply had enough of fascism. Hordes of rural men were supporting the communist movement in growing numbers. So now, as well as the world war, there was also a civil war between those who supported the Fascists and those who did not.

  Carla glanced across at Anna, her elder daughter, twenty-five, tall and strong, slim too, unlike Carla herself, nearly fifty and showing it. But poor Anna’s husband, Luigi, was already gone, drowned when his ship, the Zara, sank in 1941. Anna had been told that Luigi had taken part in sorties to catch British convoys in the Mediterranean. The Zara, a heavy cruiser built for the Italian Regia Marina, had been disabled by a British airstrike. Later, in a fierce night of fighting, it had been sunk by the British Mediterranean Fleet.

  ‘Gabriella is in place?’ one of the more nervous women asked.

  Carla pictured her pretty, curvaceous, sixteen-year-old daughter curled up in the kitchen with Beni, her little three-legged dog, both hogging the only fire in the house. Gabriella had pestered to be allowed to act as their watch-out and, with her whistle so shrill it would wake the dead, Carla had given in.

  ‘Do you have any new messages from the men?’ one of the women asked Anna.

  Those in the room knew Anna was a staffetta, a courier, for the partisans, though Carla and Anna rarely spoke of it. Even though the village women were friends you never could be completely sure. Take Maria, the old biddy who lived on the corner of the square, the one whose grandson, Paolo, had recently gone off to be one of Mussolini’s Blackshirts. They were the voluntary militia for national security, not the army, and now nobody had a clue where Paolo was. At the start of the war, many local men had signed up for the regular army or navy and people had more or less accepted the call to arms, but the brutality of the Fascist Blackshirts against their own people was a different thing. They were loathed by much of the rural Tuscan population.

  ‘No messages,’ Carla said before Anna could reply, her rough country-woman’s voice hushed and low.

  ‘Who do you hate the most?’ Federica asked. ‘Germans or Blackshirts?’

  The room went silent for a few moments.

  ‘Blackshirts,’ Sara said. ‘I’ve seen them in the town pushing anyone they don’t like the look of into the gutter. Even pregnant women. Old, young, they don’t care.’

  ‘They think they can do whatever they want.’

  ‘Because they can do whatever they want. But, mark my words, we’ve not seen the worst of the Nazis yet.’

  As the women whispered, Carla’s thoughts settled on food, as they so often did. She’d pick wild mushrooms the next day and make a risotto of mushrooms and chestnuts. Foraging for wild onions, herbs, even berries, kept the farmworkers going in lean times. And her curly-haired son, Aldo, would soon be out hunting what was left of the wild boar.

  There was a loud knock on the front door and then a piercing whistle.

  ‘Quick, blow out the lamp,’ someone said.

  Carla sensed every woman’s fear as, in complete darkness, they listened, mouths dry, throats tightening, as rough male voices rose from the street. Blackshirts, no doubt, out for a bit of fun. The Germans didn’t run the risk of dark alleys in a Tuscan village at night.

  But if the Blackshirts came in and you were caught aiding the partisans …

  Carla heard the front door open and then close, after which, from outside, came a male guffaw followed by female laughter. Gabriella’s laughter? Surely not.

  5.

  A few days had passed and now, with Lorenzo likely to be away for a night or two, Sofia waved him off, then whistled for the dogs – both of them lovely chestnut-and-white Italian pointers, sometimes known as Bracco gun dogs, although theirs were rather too old for hunting now. They’d only just heard that the ancient village of Chiusi, on the border with Umbria, had been bombed by the Allies and it left an unshakeable feeling of doom. South of Montepulciano, it was a good fifty kilometres away, but still.

  It was crisp and cool, with a sky so bright it almost hurt her eyes. The ground crunched beneath her feet as she left behind the village walls where the pigeons squabbled, and then wound her way into the woods. In the valleys below her a white ocean of mist drowned out the view so all she could see were the trees sticking up like islands on the tops of the hills.

  In the chestnut woods the harvesters were at work. Ripe pickings when the branches of the trees were weighed down by tons of chestnuts, now a staple food. The women dried them and ground them to make flour for bread, pane d’albero, tree bread, made from water, yeast and chestnuts. And they roasted them to add flavour to ground barley coffee. Caffè d’orzo. Sofia preferred it to chicory. No one had real coffee since the government had done their best to eliminate all imports, though some said the scarcity of coffee was really a result of the embargo the League of Nations had imposed on Italy. Either way, they fed the chestnut leaves to the pigs and chickens, at least those of them who still had animals did.

  She and Carla had hidden some of their supplies, not only to serve the manor, but to help the villagers too. This they’d kept secret. After Sofia had received the letter from Commandant Schmidt, she’d asked Carla’s son, Aldo, to build a thin wall at one end of their large larder. Since leaving school, Aldo had been their odd-job man. So now, behind the false wall they stored dried beans, bottled fruit, home-made salame and cheese, along with dried wild boar and grain. If German troops were billeted here, they would not consume everything.

  Sofia thought back to their bottling week in the summer, the only time Carla allowed her to work in the kitchen alongside her daughters, Anna and Gabriella. It was a chance to contribute in a practical way for what could be better than providing food for them all? Position and status suspended, she became one of the women, and although the rest of the time she tried her best to be ‘Contessa’, she loved dropping her guard. She enjoyed the comradeship as they prepared figs, peaches, cherries and tomatoes ready for preserving. Lorenzo didn’t know. His family had been noble landowners for hundreds of years and he’d been brought up to believe each must know their place. Although not one to stand on ceremony, and a thoroughly good man besides, he was nevertheless a little more aware of status than she. Not brought up to be a lady, it was different for her.

  They had bottled peppers, carrots and cabbages too, the kitchen bursting with steam and colour and the rich scents of harvest, and for those few days they laughed and sang and very nearly forgot about the war.

  Now, as she reached the chestnut woods, the women were hard at work. With the men gone, the work was in their hands, with the help of old men and young boys. One of the farmers’ wives, Sara, beckoned her over and asked if she would carry a bag of ches
tnuts up to the house for Carla. Sofia knew the woman well. She had received two letters informing her of two separate losses, a brother and a son. It was unimaginable how much pain she must be in and yet she carried on. Sometimes there were benefits to being childless, Sofia thought grimly, then she grasped Sara’s hand momentarily, took the bag and left.

  Back up at the Castello, she slipped round the side of the house and walked through the part of the garden lined with citrus trees, oleander bushes and a sweet little pomegranate tree guarding the kitchen door. From there the aroma of baking bread met her. She never used to enter the kitchen that way but now, working at tending vegetables – cabbages, onions, spinach and fennel – she used it more frequently. Carla had seemed unsettled for the last few days and Sofia hoped the new supply of chestnuts would cheer her up.

  The kitchen, cavernous with a great oak-beamed ceiling, ancient flagstone floor, walls lined with pale-green cupboards and a large scrubbed table in the centre, had always been a relaxed, comforting place. Twin leather armchairs nestled in alcoves either side of the range and, because the shutters were not fully open, she failed at first to see someone leaning back in one of them.

  Carla, standing by the range, hair tied back and wearing her usual white apron over one of her shapeless grey woollen dresses, was scowling.

  Seeing a batch of dough rising on the grilled shelf above the stove, Sofia guessed the cook would be itching to get on with kneading it. A large woman who made her feelings known without many words, Carla’s firmly folded arms said it all and, at Sofia’s questioning look, she rolled her eyes.

  Aldo, meanwhile, stood by the door, scratching his head. ‘I found him just outside the village. All he said was “Castello”, and after that went on like a crazy man, before he passed out.’

  ‘Castello? Us? You think us?’

  Carla wrinkled her nose. ‘Who else?’

  Sofia gazed at Aldo and thought, as she always did these days, that he’d turned into a real heartbreaker. A handsome lad, with black eyes, long lashes, full lips and dark brows. He was eager and cheerful too, and Sofia always felt energized whenever she saw him.