The Tuscan Contessa

by Dinah Jefferies

  Maxine reached out. ‘No, not dead. No. He’s missing.’

  Sofia stared at her, aghast. What did that even mean?

  ‘He had planned to check in on your parents, your mother said, told them exactly when, but never appeared. They waited and waited but eventually had to move on. Nobody has seen him for nearly a month. His office doesn’t know where he is. Nobody does.’

  ‘He must be travelling for his job, tracking the movement of food supplies, checking grain silos, warehouses and so on.’ Although Sofia wanted to believe it, she knew she was grasping at straws. If that was what he’d been doing, he’d have been able to call her.

  ‘His office said not,’ Maxine continued. ‘He has simply vanished. The German officer he travels with has disappeared too.’

  There was a short silence during which Sofia stared at Maxine.

  After a few moments Maxine said, ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  Sofia fell back on to the sofa. She had told Maxine about Schmidt’s strange visit. This had to have something to do with what he had told her. ‘You mean Schmidt’s warning?’

  Maxine nodded then joined her on the sofa. Wrapping an arm around Sofia’s shoulders, she held her tight. Suddenly, the tears Sofia had been holding back began to fall and this time they did not stop. The sadness over Aldo, the terror of what had happened in Florence, her nascent feelings for James, but above all, her utter devastation and grief over her beloved husband. Like a bolt of lightning, it hit her. What he meant to her. And she thanked God nothing more had happened with James. Silently, she made a pact with the Almighty to never let anyone down again and then she whispered, ‘Keep my husband safe. Let him be alive. Please don’t punish him for what I had only fleetingly wanted to do. Let Lorenzo come back to me. Please.’

  45.

  Sofia dreamt of flying, swooping high above the mountains to the south, fixing her eyes on the fields, the hilltop villages and the farms below. Then plunging down only to soar once more, high into the sky above the clouds where everything shone, blue and peaceful. And where she drifted in the breeze. Floating free. Unburdened. Weightless. Divested of everything. When she woke, her cheeks were wet.

  ‘Lorenzo,’ she whispered. ‘You made me feel happy with myself, with my whole life really, and now I feel cut adrift. Not floating free as I was in my dream. Instead there’s a terrible feeling of being in limbo and utterly alone. Without you this emptiness sits in my very soul.’

  It had been a week. She had contacted all the hospitals, constantly made a nuisance of herself with friends and acquaintances, done everything she could think of to find him. And none of it had been easy. Aware that phonelines were often tapped, they used a strange kind of code. But there was no news. Could he be lying dead in a ditch, killed by Allied strafing? Or was it something even worse? In the still of night, she heard herself howling his name, even if it was only in her head.

  She sat up in bed and then, after a few minutes, went over to the window, where she threw open the shutters on to a beautiful early-spring day. But the lovely weather did not suit her state of mind. She turned from the window when she heard Maxine enter her room. She had been an angel through this dark time, encouraging Sofia to eat, to wash, and always thinking up ways to look for Lorenzo.

  ‘I’ve brought coffee,’ Maxine said, and, touched by her compassion, Sofia bowed her head for a second to blink back tears before looking up again.

  The room was silent, but Maxine’s eyes were full of pity and understanding. She didn’t need to say a word.

  Sofia took the proffered coffee and they both sat by the window.

  ‘I’m going to have to go,’ Sofia said. ‘To Rome.’

  Maxine took her hand. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Let me go instead. Let me see if I can find Lorenzo. To be honest, you’re in no fit state.’

  ‘It should be me.’

  ‘Your mother gave me the password to use.’

  ‘What, over the phone?’

  Maxine shook her head. ‘Yesterday. You were asleep. She gave me clues and I kind of had to guess, but she seemed to think I was on the right track. She doesn’t want you to go, Sofia.’

  ‘You’ll see her? Make sure everything is all right?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll see your parents and do everything I can to find out what’s happened to Lorenzo.’

  Sofia squeezed her hand. ‘You will keep safe?’

  Maxine nodded. ‘I’ve spoken to Marco about it already. He’ll come too. He has contacts in Rome. If anyone can help, Marco can.’

  Sofia looked into her eyes and saw the moisture there. ‘Thank you, Maxine, for everything.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for. You’d do the same … Now, enough of all this. Let’s see if Carla has anything for us to eat. I’m ravenous.’

  Sofia smiled. ‘You always are.’

  ‘And you need fattening up. Come on.’

  ‘I’ll follow. I just need a moment.’

  As she left, Sofia realized she didn’t know how she’d have coped without her. Carla was there, of course, kind, generous, nurturing, but there was still the difference in their relative status which could get in the way even now. She felt profoundly grateful for Maxine’s company.

  46.

  Rome

  Maxine could see that the bombing of the ‘Eternal City’ of Rome had already been extensive and she soon found out the air raids continued every night. People were saying the Americans had been critical of the destruction of Rome, but it was becoming very clear the British War Cabinet had not agreed. Now a terrifying place to be, she had chosen to arrive right in the middle of intense bombing, widespread deprivation and increasing brutality. Old and young were continually snatched under Hitler’s ‘Night and Fog’ decree, which meant anyone thought to be endangering German security could be arrested and shot or secretly abducted under cover of night. Plus, all fit males under sixty were being seized for forced labour. The air in the city was oily, infused with smoke, and gritty in her nostrils. Damp too, even in March, and danger prowled the streets day and night. Maxine had journeyed right into the heart of hell.

  German regiments continued to march; bombs continued to fall. Steel-helmeted soldiers armed with rifles stood guarding every cordoned-off corner and building. The previous July the Allies had targeted the San Lorenzo freight yard and steel factory, but the heavily populated residential district had been destroyed too and thousands of ordinary people had died. Now it was happening again.

  She and Marco had travelled by train where they could and managed to walk where they could not.

  Now she was on her way to the most recent address she had for Sofia’s parents, Elsa and Roberto Romano. As she walked, she thought of her own family, of what had happened to the brother she’d never known about and how it must have affected her parents. Apart from his violent outbursts, her father had never shown strong emotion or feeling, and she realized he must have simply been going through the motions of living. How could anyone live normally after losing a child so tragically? Her mother’s cantankerous streak had always been there, as if some hidden resentment was powering her. Maxine had had no idea what it was, but her mother had never been able to stop sticking pins into her daughter, figuratively speaking. Sometimes Maxine hadn’t even noticed it happening until the moment had passed, and by then it was too late to question or retaliate. She had learnt to pick out the barbs and not to smart for too long. The awful circumstances of their first son’s death explained a lot, but she wished her parents had told her the truth.

  She sighed deeply and carried on. In a city brimming with homeless and starving people, Marco would be making contact with a squad of local partisans in the hope of finding somewhere safe to stay. Maxine and Marco’s first refuge had been raided on the second night of their stay, a few minutes before they’d got there, so they’d slept in an unused outbuilding near the main railway station along with the tramps and beggars from bombed-out villages. Even some of those with homes had deserted them
from fear of identification and arrest, which was hardly surprising given the chilling Nazi propaganda posters plastered everywhere. People now lived in the air-raid shelters or the vile basements of governmental buildings close to the sewers or, if they were lucky, in cold, abandoned homes. By day she saw them huddled on the steps of churches, grey, ghostly folk whose hope had died along with their families.

  She and Marco were to meet in a small local café later, a ‘standing’ bar like the Caffè dei Ritti in Florence, he said. He’d also jokingly suggested they ought to meet at the Caffè Greco on Via dei Condotti, the oldest bar in Rome, but she’d snorted, picturing all the German officers there. The days of brazening it out were over.

  Her shoulders drooped with exhaustion but, determined not to succumb, she scurried across Rome, keeping her eyes peeled. Very few people roamed the silent, debris-strewn streets, although long queues formed around the public fountains. When she asked, she was told private houses had no water, but you could buy it at inflated prices from the handcarts in the streets. There was no gas and no coal either, nor were there any buses, though a few trams still ran. She spotted queues outside one or two grocers’ shops but the extortionate prices for the mere scraps you could still buy were hardly worth the trouble. ‘You can get soup from the Vatican,’ someone said. But soup was the last thing on her mind. She made her way past a group of swollen-bellied kids dressed in little more than rags and her heart ached for them. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she pulled the drab headscarf tighter round her head and knotted it beneath her chin. It wouldn’t do to stick out. Rome was far more frightening now than in November when she’d last been here.

  When she felt satisfied she’d finally identified the correct building, a three-storey apartment block, she wavered. Surely people weren’t living here? Peeling paint, cracks zigzagging up to the roof and one partially demolished section confirmed it had been struck by an Allied bomb. An interior staircase crawling up one wall was now obscenely open to the air. She picked her way over the rubble, entered through an open door, found flat six and knocked. The sound of an argument greeted her, a shrill woman’s voice answered by a gruff and increasingly irate man. She waited and eventually the door was thrown open by a large red-faced woman with wild frizzy hair.

  ‘What?’ she growled and took a step back to yell at the man again.

  Maxine stiffened in frustration. ‘I’m looking for Elsa and Roberto.’

  ‘No one of that name here.’

  ‘An older man and woman. Used to live on Via del Biscione.’

  ‘Ah.’ The red-faced woman paused. ‘But why should I tell you? Who are you?’

  ‘I am to say I have news about Gabriella.’

  The woman narrowed her eyes as if trying to decide. ‘Very well. They have gone south of the city to Trastevere.’

  ‘Do you have an address?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘How should I know? Ask at the Basilica di Santa Cecilia.’

  Maxine gave her thanks and then retraced her steps before heading for the west bank of the Tiber. She crossed the river by the Ponte Garibaldo and on the bridge twisted round to look at the synagogue. What had happened in the Jewish ghetto horrified her afresh. It had been October, the day after she’d arrived. She’d watched in wide-eyed horror as men, women and children had been forced from the cobbled labyrinth of the overcrowded Jewish ghetto and herded into waiting lorries, as if they were cattle. Vermin, the Nazis had called them. Rumours were rife but God knows where they’d been taken. Now, the houses with walled-up windows were possibly even more terrifying than before. These were the makeshift torture chambers of the Gestapo where souls were destroyed before bodies were slaughtered.

  She soon found her way to the centuries-old, working-class district of Trastevere and walked the narrow cobbled streets, surprised by the still-colourful buildings where, despite the war, ivy climbed the walls and balconies showed signs of early cascading geraniums. After asking once or twice, she easily found the Piazza di Santa Cecilia and the Catholic church the woman had mentioned. An elderly priest sat just inside the door talking to a poorly dressed, and clearly hungry, young girl. Once he’d found a hunk of bread for her and the girl had stuffed it into her mouth and fled, Maxine approached him directly and spoke the sentence Elsa had promised would work.

  ‘I have news of Gabriella.’

  He rose slowly to his feet. ‘And you are looking for?’

  ‘An older couple, Elsa and Roberto.’

  ‘I may know who you mean. Try Via Giulio Cesare Santini. It isn’t far.’ And he pointed her in the right direction. ‘Go left and left again. Try the house before the corner with Via Zanazzo Giggi.’

  Maxine did as she’d been instructed and found the house within minutes. It had been painted a rich terracotta sometime in its history but now, with paintwork peeling and the front door buckled and bleached dry, it looked very down at heel. She knocked and waited. After a few moments a stooped old man with an anxious expression opened the door a crack and peered at her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The priest sent me.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m Massima. I’m looking for Elsa and Roberto.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I have news of Gabriella.’

  He opened the door more fully. ‘You are alone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He looked her up and down. ‘You are a doctor?’ he added more in hope than expectation.

  She shook her head.

  He raised his brows and puffed out his cheeks, then indicated she should follow him through the rabbit warren behind the house. They eventually reached the back door of another house which he opened and then pushed her ahead of him.

  ‘Second door on the right,’ he said and left her to it.

  She reached the drab brown door and knocked gently.

  A woman opened it cautiously. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have news of Gabriella,’ Maxine whispered.

  ‘Don’t say anything more. Come in.’

  With the curtains closed, the room was gloomy, and the air smelt rancid. At first Maxine didn’t see Roberto lying on a bed in the corner, under a thin blanket, but when she did, she took a step back in surprise.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.’

  He didn’t speak but coughed intermittently.

  ‘He has a chest infection, is all,’ Elsa explained, looking at Maxine’s stricken face. But Maxine could tell such a hacking cough, along with his appalling pallor, suggested something more serious.

  ‘He looks awfully thin. Pale too.’

  ‘I am here,’ he said, then spluttered.

  Elsa ignored his comment. ‘This is Maxine. You remember her?’

  ‘Of course,’ he grumbled. ‘Nothing wrong with my brain or my eyes.’

  Elsa raised her brows then smiled sadly. ‘He gets a little tetchy.’

  ‘But why are you here … living like this?’ Maxine glanced around her. There was a cracked sink in the corner, the floorboards remained bare and a small pile of threadbare bedding lay on the one wooden chair leaning against the wall.

  ‘It’s not so bad … we have an oil lamp.’ She waved vaguely at a lamp beside the sink. ‘The thing is, Roberto’s name has been leaked. We don’t know by whom, but the Nazis know he is one of the men responsible for hiding the printing press. They’ve been searching for him. We dare not stay in one place for more than a couple of days.’

  ‘How do you manage to move? I heard there were snipers on the lookout.’

  ‘It’s difficult. Fascist, Nazi or partisan. We never know which. And German reprisals all the time for anything, no matter how small. They shoot you as soon as look at you.’

  ‘Dear God, we have to get you out of Rome. Do you have fake documents?’

  ‘The priest has promised us. They should be here later today. But you don’t need to worry, we are all right. People are helping us. Now please tell me, how is Sofia?’

  Maxine bowed her head f
or a moment before speaking. ‘Distraught at Lorenzo’s disappearance.’

  ‘We have had no news of him, but I fear the worst.’

  ‘You have reason?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really, but when anyone vanishes so suddenly and without trace, we always fear the worst.’

  ‘Look, I have to meet up with a friend soon. I really want to help you both get to safety. Sofia would never forgive me if I abandoned you here. So, I’ll leave now and bring food later, hopefully with a plan.’

  The look on Elsa’s face was intense. ‘You’re very kind, but there’s no need … Just one thing … please don’t tell Sofia about this, not where we are, or anything about Roberto’s illness.’

  ‘She’d want to know.’

  ‘If she knows she’ll come and more than anything in the world I want her to remain safely at the Castello.’

  Maxine understood, deciding to say nothing about Sofia’s activities in Florence. She was beginning to realize that all families had secrets of one kind or another.

  47.

  Just before dawn the next morning Maxine and Marco listened to the sound of engines rumbling in the sky, growing louder and louder as wave after wave of Allied planes flew low. The shrill air-raid warning was followed by the high-pitched whistle of bombs shrieking and then exploding like claps of unforgiving thunder, as if the gods themselves were intent on blasting and shattering the earth below. Then came the staccato sound of machine-gun fire repeating and repeating. Maxine covered her ears as screams echoed from somewhere in the street and carried on ringing in her head. When it was over, they heard the whine of the all-clear siren. She crawled out of bed and went outside where the clouds of dust and smoke had cleared just enough to make out German patrol cars racing down the street.

  Soon they would try to spirit Elsa and Roberto out of the city. She and Marco had talked late into the night devising their plan. They would pose as a family taking a train as far as they could into the hilly villages north-east of Rome. Marco had a grandmother who still lived in a mountain hamlet south of Rome, which would have been better, but the southern exits were much too heavily guarded. And, at least, it would be closer for Maxine and Marco to get back to the Castello from the north-east.