The Metal Heart

by Caroline Lea

  In the day, he digs stones and heaves them into a wheelbarrow, which Gino then loads into a lorry. When Cesare grows tired, they swap roles. The guards shout orders and the men slowly obey – those who speak no English copy the others. If they move too slowly, the guards brandish their batons.

  One morning in late January, when they have been on the island two weeks, Cesare is trying to dig out a stubborn piece of rock. It is too heavy for him, really, and sharp besides – it teeters on his shovel. As his arms shake, it occurs to him that if he lets it fall on his foot he won’t have to dig any more. In the mornings, at reveille, he’s caught a glimpse of the rows of beds in the camp infirmary, felt the warmth from the two stoves as he walked past.

  He looks at the rock, watches it wobble, imagines it falling, imagines the thud and crush of it on his foot. The pain. The warmth. The rest.

  As he tips the shovel to one side and the rock slides off, there is a shout and Gino is suddenly there, grabbing his hand. The stone falls, glances off Cesare’s toes and rolls onto Gino’s foot.

  A beat, half a breath. The pain is exquisite. Cesare can hear howling – his own, and Gino’s, then the shout of the guard and hands pulling him upright, though he hadn’t been aware of falling to the ground. And the guard’s face is close to his, shouting words that Cesare cannot, for a moment, understand.

  ‘Let go! Let me see.’ The guard is pulling Cesare’s hands away from his foot and Cesare doesn’t want to let go, wants to hold onto the pain somehow, keep it trapped beneath his fingers. Someone yanks his hand away and the guard looks at his battered boot, curses, then turns to Gino, who is still doubled up on the ground.

  ‘Shit!’ the guard says, after seeing Gino’s foot, which, from the state of his boot, looks crushed. ‘Take them up to the infirmary.’

  And then there are arms supporting him: Antonio is on one side and on his other is Marco, the man from Cesare’s hut who had called him a traitor when he’d translated the guard’s orders. In the weeks since, Marco has occasionally glared at Cesare, but hasn’t pushed or threatened him – they have dug together, shivered together, torn through dry bread and thin soup together. On occasions, when Marco has wheeled the barrow towards Cesare, they have locked eyes and there has been a moment of understanding.

  Now his arm is slung across Marco’s shoulder and he can smell the other man’s sweat.

  Cesare’s foot throbs. Next to him, Gino moans. His boot is misshapen and blackening with blood. Cesare looks away. ‘Mi dispiace,’ he says to Gino. ‘Scusi.’

  But Gino waves away his apologies.

  When they reach the infirmary, warmth and light enclose them. Most of the twenty bunks are free. Antonio and Marco sit them down on beds near the door, then collapse onto beds themselves, panting.

  The nurse taps rapidly towards them, her footsteps sounding irritated. She introduces herself as Nurse Croy: young, neat and blonde-haired, with the strong accent of these parts. They try to explain what happened. She waves Antonio and Marco away, tight-lipped, pointing them towards the door, her eyes never leaving the bright red targets on their uniforms.

  After they have left – not without protest – she turns back to the two injured men. Gino has gone very pale and is lying on the bed.

  She claps her hands at him. ‘No, you don’t! No lying down in that dirty uniform.’

  She waits, hands on her hips. Then, when Gino doesn’t move, she leans forward and pokes him.

  ‘He is hurt,’ says Cesare, through gritted teeth, his own foot throbbing. ‘A rock falls onto his foot. My foot also.’

  ‘You speak English.’ Nurse Croy frowns at Cesare. Her eyes flick again towards those red targets, then away.

  He attempts to smile. ‘Some. A little.’ When her expression doesn’t soften, he says, ‘I learn in church.’

  ‘Well, you must tell your friend that he can’t lie down. The doctor will be across from Kirkwall later today, but your friend must put these pyjamas on if he wants to lie down. Otherwise, he needs to get off my clean sheets.’

  She throws a pair of pyjamas at each of them. The material is soft and slightly warm; Cesare has to stop himself pressing them to his face, stroking the fabric across his cheek and inhaling.

  His foot throbs. He heaves himself upright, then rouses Gino enough for him to stand and for them to hobble together behind the curtain where the nurse had indicated they should get changed. They nearly fall on two occasions, but Cesare manages to lean Gino against the wall and a filing cabinet, then encourages him to step into the trousers. He daren’t take their boots off, daren’t look at the damage.

  His throat is dry with guilt. It is hard to swallow, hard to know what to say to Gino, whose face is pale and gleams with sweat. Cesare whispers apologies with every breath.

  He doesn’t know where to put their uniforms, but is ashamed to leave the muddy clothing on the floor for the young, harried-looking nurse to pick up, so he hangs them over the back of a chair, half folding them so that the red targets are hidden.

  They limp back through and Cesare helps Gino onto a bed, to lie diagonally so that his boots don’t touch the mattress, before he himself sinks onto the crisp white sheets.

  When Nurse Croy marches back through the ward, she eyes their pyjamas, glances at their boots and nods.

  ‘That’s better. The doctor will be across soon.’ Her voice is softer now and, as Cesare watches her giving water to the other three prisoners in the infirmary – all of whom have a hacking cough – her hands are gentle.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, when she brings him the water. ‘You are nurse for a long time?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve three younger sisters and two little brothers, so we need the extra food and the money. I didn’t want to work with the prisoners, but now you’re all coming across to Kirkwall anyway.’ She shrugs.

  ‘Italians in . . . Kirkwall?’ He forms the unfamiliar word. ‘Where is this?’

  ‘The Orkney mainland.’ She gestures. ‘Just across the water.’

  He’s heard nothing of it: the men are put into their groups in the morning in the camps and who knows where they go?

  ‘Who is going to this Kirkwall?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, no one yet,’ she says. ‘They decided it just two days ago. Some of you will be coming across to help with the farm work, so we all have more food. No one’s happy about it. But my mother said that if we were having prisoners among us anyway I should try to earn some extra food for the family.’ She is staring at the glass of water in her hand, and seems to have forgotten Cesare’s presence altogether. He waits, his mind whirring, his toes throbbing.

  She continues: ‘It means me coming across to this island, of course, but then there’s no truth in the stories, at least that’s what my mother said. Although she did give me this sprig of white heather for protection. It’s usually above our door.’ She brings out a bunch of dried-out leaves – brownish, not white, then nods, half smiling. ‘And those twins have been safe enough, living here.’

  ‘Twins?’ Cesare is suddenly alert: he can’t help himself. But then he wishes he hadn’t spoken, because the girl’s eyes focus on him again and her smile fades. She straightens her skirts.

  ‘I don’t have time to be talking to you. I must write my notes for the doctor.’

  She taps away, tutting.

  Gino is sleeping. The square of light from the window creeps down the wall. Cesare counts the beat of his pulse in his foot.

  He is beginning to think that the doctor might not come after all, when he hears footsteps again, two pairs, and Nurse Croy is back with a tall man – elderly but straight-backed and sharp-eyed.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he says, bending to take off Cesare’s boot. The pain ricochets up through his leg and he clenches his jaw to stop himself crying out. The doctor prods his swollen, blackened toes firmly and instructs Cesare to bend them, which he does with difficulty and a groan through gritted teeth.

  ‘Possibly broken, or badly bruised if yo
u’re lucky.’ The doctor speaks slowly and clearly. ‘I’ll bandage them. Rest. Two days, then we’ll see.’ He mimes bandaging and holds up two fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cesare says. ‘My friend, I think, is worse. There is some bleeding and he cannot walk without help.’

  ‘Your English is very good,’ the doctor says, eyeing Cesare. ‘Can you write?’

  Cesare nods.

  ‘You have good relationships with the other prisoners?’

  Cesare pauses, thinks of Marco, and nods again.

  The doctor taps his pen on his paper. ‘Major Bates will come and see you later today, I should imagine. If you want to avoid breaking more toes in the quarry, I’d suggest best behaviour.’

  And with this mysterious instruction, the doctor moves on to examine Gino, who has indeed broken his big toe, the doctor is almost certain, and has significant trauma besides. The nurse frowns as she writes this down, and Cesare rolls the words around his tongue – such beautiful words to describe something so damaged.

  Significant trauma.

  And as he tries to ignore the pain and drifts off to sleep, the words blur with those of the nurse earlier.

  Protection. Those girls have been safe enough. Significant trauma.

  And he remembers, again, the red-haired woman. The sensation of her fingers gripping his shirt, pulling him upwards towards air and life. He remembers her hand under his chin, her breath loud in his ear as she’d whispered, Please, please, please.

  Early the next morning he is woken in the darkness by the whistle in the yard and the sound of the men stumbling from their huts into the cold to be counted.

  Gino is awake too, his face tight with pain in the dim lamplight.

  Cesare reaches across to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, in Italian.

  Gino gestures at the warm room, the beds, the clean sheets. ‘I’m not.’

  They both laugh softly and Cesare sleeps again.

  When he next wakes, a tall uniformed man is standing next to his bed, scowling at him.

  Major Bates.

  Out of habit, Cesare tries to stand, then cries out at the pain in his foot.

  ‘Not too clever, putting all your weight on an injured foot,’ the major half smiles, but not unkindly. ‘Lie down, at ease.’

  Cesare nods, sucks in air, and waits for the nausea to subside.

  ‘Now,’ the major says, ‘Dr Tulloch tells me you speak English.’ He indicates the nurse. ‘And young Bess here says you’ve nice manners – for a foreign chap. Would you say that’s fair?’

  ‘I . . . I speak English, a little, and . . .’

  ‘You’re modest, good. I like that. You’d be able to translate for your fellow prisoners? Talk to them about their skills and so on, and give them my orders?’

  He doesn’t understand what he’s truly being asked, but still Cesare nods. It is unthinkable to do anything else, when he is faced with those medals and dressed in pyjamas, in this warm bed, and all the while, from somewhere in the back of his skull, he feels the reverberating thunk, thunk, thunk of spades on rock. As if the endless act of digging, and the danger and the fear, have sunk into his bloodstream, into his bones.

  ‘Very well, then,’ the major says. ‘You’ll be sitting at a desk and you’ve not far to hobble to get to my office, so what say you start this afternoon? Nurse Croy here will help you across the compound. After lunch should do nicely.’

  Nurse Croy bobs smartly and both of them turn to Cesare.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says, finally. ‘Thank you.’

  After they have gone, Gino turns to Cesare. ‘What were they saying?’

  Cesare shakes his head, not daring to hope. ‘I think I’ve found a way to survive.’

  Later, Nurse Croy holds his arm as he walks across the yard to the major’s hut. Cesare has dressed in his uniform, which has been washed, and Nurse Croy speaks more tersely than before, taking care to touch him as little as possible.

  ‘Now, the major has a short temper, they say, but he’s not unkind.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Cesare says. ‘You will look after my friend, Gino?’

  She nods, helps him up the step and opens the door for him. It bounces off a heap of letters and dislodges some envelopes, which flurry into the air and come to rest on the floor, along with the piles of paper, files and boxes that already crowd the room.

  The major sits behind a small wooden desk, which is loaded with yet more papers. A single lamp gives off a dim light and the hut is as draughty as the one Cesare sleeps in. Major Bates’s eyes are red-rimmed and he blinks at Cesare for a moment, before standing.

  ‘Ah, yes. There’s a small table for you in the corner. Thank you, Nurse Croy, you can return to your patients. And you . . .’ He looks at Cesare. ‘I don’t suppose you can help much with this just yet.’ He bends and picks up a sheaf of papers and passes them to Cesare. ‘But if you can try to get at least some of the floor clear. The islanders are sending a man over with a list of jobs and then we can get started. Ah! This’ll be him.’

  Cesare turns as the door opens, hoping that this local man will be able to explain something of what he is supposed to do, will be able to tell him how to make sure that he can do what is asked of him – whatever it is – so that he can stay in this draughty office, with its snow of paper and Major Bates, who seems such a different man from the one who had shouted threats and commands when they first arrived here. He needs to know how to do his job well, to be useful, to stay out of trouble.

  In the flare of bright light from the open door, it takes him a moment to register that the figure is not a man at all. It is a woman, in a long, full skirt and a heavy fisherman’s jumper. She walks into the hut. The lamplight falls on her face.

  His heart leaps. His breath catches. There she is, just as he’d remembered her.

  The red hair, the pale skin, the firm mouth, the delicate hands. And those blue eyes. The eyes that meet his, then widen slightly as she stops and stares at him.

  ‘You!’ she says.

  Dorothy

  ‘You!’ I say, before I can stop myself, and the man stands in the shaft of golden light from the open doorway, squinting at me. It is as if, by thinking about him daily, I have summoned him. The hairs on my arms rise and I think about the stories they tell of this island, the stories I’ve tried not to believe, of selkies and curses and people who appear and vanish in the swirling mists.

  The English commander steps forward, blocking my view of the office and the Italian man.

  ‘I think you are in the wrong place, young lady,’ he says sternly. ‘How did you get into the camp? I’ll be having words with the guard on the gate.’

  ‘Don’t!’ I say. ‘It’s not his fault. I told him I had a message for you.’

  ‘You can make an appointment to see me –’

  ‘It’s urgent.’ My mouth is dry, my blood thrumming. ‘Please, I . . . I’ve an important request.’

  ‘Ah.’ The commander folds his arms. ‘So you’ve a message from Kirkwall? I thought they were sending a man across. John O’Farrell.’

  ‘I . . .’ I can feel the Italian man’s eyes on me, like a touch. ‘I don’t live in Kirkwall –’

  ‘Well, then, you’ll have to go –’

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘I live here, on the island, in a bothy – a shepherd’s hut. The roof is falling in and the weather has made it worse and I’d heard some of your men – they said, in Kirkwall – that some of the prisoners were going to help with jobs there. Repairing fences, and so on. I thought . . .’ I swallow.

  Behind the commander, the Italian man is still watching me. It is searching, his stare, as if I am standing in the dark and he is holding a lamp close to my skin. I can feel the heat of it and my skin warms. Something in me wants to turn away, but the commander is watching me, too, frowning, and I can tell that he is going to refuse me, and he must not. He must say yes, because back in the bothy, the hole in the roof is growing with each passing day of wind and rain,
and now Con has a cough that wakes us both at night. The sight of the tendons in her neck straining as she tries to breathe is terrifying.

  ‘Please,’ I say again to the commander, before he can speak.

  He shakes his head. ‘You can’t simply barge in here asking for help. We’re only releasing prisoners for agricultural work, or related matters – lots of mouths to feed here, so our men will help to grow their own food. I’m sure there’s someone from Kirkwall who could mend your roof.’

  ‘No. They don’t like the island and they won’t come to the bothy. You must be paying well to persuade anyone to work here.’

  ‘I . . . Yes, well . . . I’m sorry I can’t help you.’ And he does look sorry, suddenly, this commander, in a uniform clustered with medals that he must have won for killing a man – or perhaps saving a man. Or both.

  I nod, glance at the Italian, with his dark hair and his warm eyes, and I open the door to the frost-rimed yard. I’m suddenly desperate to get away. Away from the pitying expression on the commander’s face, away from the searching gaze of the Italian man.

  The yard is cold and I hunch my shoulders, trying to ignore the hollow disappointment inside me, and the heat in my cheeks, which feel as though I’ve been slapped.

  A shout from behind me.

  I stop, turn.

  There is the Italian – again, as if I have conjured him with my thoughts. He limps across the frozen compound and stops three paces away, resting his weight on one leg. He looks thinner than when I saw him last, his face sharper. On his cheekbone, the faint shadow of a fading bruise – something has struck him, hard.

  ‘You are injured,’ I say.

  ‘A rock falls on my foot. It is not bad – not broken. Your roof is broken.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, still wondering about that bruise on his cheek.

  ‘You are cold. And is dangerous for you.’

  ‘A little, yes, but –’

  ‘I will like to mend.’ He gestures with his hands, lacing his fingers together. His hands are strong and broad, marked with cuts and bruises.