The Metal Heart

by Caroline Lea

  In Cesare’s church in Moena, there is a painting of the Madonna and Child above the altar. Maria’s face is so peaceful, her eyes so full of warmth and hope, like the face on the prayer card he carries in his pocket.

  He will paint the same picture above an altar here, he decides, only Maria’s face will look like Dorotea’s. He imagines her peaceful smile, as the men sing. He remembers her hand in his as they walked through the mist. Her cold fingers, which had slowly warmed in his. He hasn’t seen her since. Perhaps he’d frightened her away, somehow. Their joined hands had felt . . . like peace. It is the same feeling he has now, surrounded by song, full of music, which is swelling out of the chapel and must be echoing through the air, over these islands.

  Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

  After the final notes have faded, they walk out into the cold, clear sunlight, blinking. Cesare feels cleansed somehow, as if the few moments in the church have drained some of the anger that has been storing over the past months. The other men’s faces are livelier too and they talk to each other – and to Stuart, in English, discussing how beautiful the church will look, how it will remind them of home.

  Stuart holds up his clipboard. ‘What will you need?’

  The men begin to list the bags of cement and sand, the quantities of metal and wood.

  ‘And paint,’ Cesare says. ‘I need paint.’

  Stuart writes it down and scans the list. ‘Major Bates has said you can have spare cement from the barriers and any other scraps you can find on the ships in the bay.’ He gestures out towards Scapa Flow and the sunken vessels from the last war.

  ‘But,’ Stuart frowns, ‘paint may be difficult to find.’

  Cesare tries not to let his disappointment show, as the glowing church in his mind fades and is replaced by a drab, gloomy building, where everything is the same colour as the barriers.

  He forces a smile. ‘It is good,’ he says. ‘We start with cement. No painting yet.’

  The next evening the men sit planning in the rusted hut, which will become the chapel. They have been allowed to light a fire just inside the doorway, and although sometimes the wind blows choking clouds of smoke into the structure, no one minds. They are here together, away from the itchy anxiety of the cramped sleeping huts, where fear always lurks: fear of the guards; fear of these strangers, from all over Italy, who must suddenly become something akin to family; fear of the weather; fear of the next morning and the shrill, insistent whistle that will drag you outside to face other, more brutal fears.

  Among them is a slightly older man, grey-haired and a little stooped, who had come to Cesare’s hut yesterday and introduced himself as a priest.

  ‘Father Ossani,’ he’d said. ‘You are building a chapel, they say.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Cesare had replied.

  ‘Well,’ Father Ossani said, ‘I would like to lead this church, if you do not already have a priest. And I’d like to help now too.’

  ‘With the building?’ Cesare looked doubtfully at the small man, his skinny arms and bowed posture – they couldn’t have him working in the quarry, surely.

  ‘Not the building,’ Father Ossani said, ‘but if you need supplies I can apply pressure to the major. No one likes an angry priest.’ And then he’d winked.

  Cesare gave a delighted laugh and assured Father Ossani that he would prove very useful.

  Now the priest is here, sitting among the other men in the shell of the echoing building. At first, the men were shy with him, but they are too excited to stay quiet and reserved for long.

  They have mixed a small quantity of cement in a bucket, taking turns to stir and mix it with a stick. Cesare watches as Gino beats too enthusiastically, tipping the bucket and splattering cement over Marco’s boots. Cesare expects Marco to shout and rage, but he laughs, cuffs Gino over the head and, with his forefinger, wipes some of the cement off his boot then smears it onto Gino’s. It is the same cement that they have been using to build the barriers, the same thick grey sludge that, along with the rock from the quarry, has bent their backs and made their muscles ache for months.

  But here, in this building that will belong to them, the cement has become something to laugh over, something to share. In the corner of the chapel, two of the men, Vincenzio and Alberto, have started to press a layer of cement against the rusting metal of the inside wall. Cesare has told them already that this will not be necessary, that Major Bates has promised he will find boards coated with plaster, enough to cover the inside of the chapel. ‘There will be a shipment in the next two weeks,’ he’d said, not meeting Cesare’s gaze.

  Since Cesare’s time in the Punishment Hut, the major’s eyes always slide from his, and while he is eager to provide material, he doesn’t want Cesare in his office for long. His expression, as Cesare turns to leave, is one of pained relief. While Cesare lies awake in his hut at night, it has occurred to him that the war is horrific for everyone. The captors are almost as damaged as the captives. No one will leave this place unscathed.

  Now the two men in the corner are laughing while they try to make the cement stick smoothly to the metal wall, while the others are gathered around Cesare, watching as he sketches an outline of how he envisages the outside of the chapel.

  ‘So,’ he says, in Italian, ‘we will place the two huts together and we will layer concrete over them. From the front, it will look just like a stone chapel. But you must think how you want the inside to be, and how we will make these things from scraps.’

  ‘We will need an altar,’ says Marco, ‘and an altar rail.’

  ‘A font,’ says Gino, ‘and candle-holders,’

  Cesare writes it all down, then calls to Stuart, who is dozing in the corner. ‘We will have how much metal?’

  Stuart stirs. ‘Plenty. Plenty of metal, plenty of concrete.’

  Cesare nods, imagining a finely wrought metal screen to separate the ornate sanctuary and altar from the rest of the chapel. That is where he will paint his picture of the Madonna, as the central figure behind the screen. To anyone entering the chapel, the delicate metalwork will seem to protect the figure of the Blessed Mother. She will appear enclosed and untouchable.

  If he can get paint, of course – Stuart is still doubtful about this.

  As the men continue to talk, Cesare sketches a quick outline on paper. He captures the curve of her jaw, the upward tilt of her mouth as she smiles. But it is impossible to draw her eyes. Maria should look self-possessed, serene. Her eyes shouldn’t carry the intensity he sees every time Dorotea looks at him. The expression that is so close to hunger.

  As he finishes the drawing, leaving the eyes blank and expressionless, he makes a decision: if she does not return to the camp tomorrow, he will slip away from the chapel and look for her. He will go to her bothy alone and he will find her. He will speak to her. He will try to tell her how often he thinks of her, how he can’t stop wondering about her, wanting her.

  But how is it possible to say such things without frightening her away? How is it possible to talk about want and need, when those words, in any language, sound like demands?

  Cesare knows he won’t sleep tonight: he will lie awake, trying to find the right words. Although perhaps the right words don’t exist in any language. There’s no name for this feeling, just as there’s none for the sensation he has as he dips his brush into paint and runs it over canvas.

  Still, he has to find a way to tell her, somehow.

  Constance

  I am woken by watery winter sun creeping under the bothy door, carrying the faintest promise of spring. We have stayed here for three nights, Dot and I, and each night my sleep has been more restless. Each night I lie awake, listening to the laughter from over the hill – the knocking and banging and scraping from that chapel. If I fall asleep, briefly, then the sound turns into the slow, repeated clud of a shovel on rock, a grinding rasp, like a wooden box scraping past stone.

  Dot has lain awake too, sighing. Occasionally, if there is the
sound of laughter, she sits up. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m asleep, she creeps to the door, pulls it open a crack and stands staring out into the night. I watch the silhouette of her back. She looks so vulnerable, so alone.

  We don’t talk about the men or the chapel during the day. We round up the sheep and the chickens. We sweep out the grate and gather scraps of driftwood. We cut and gather blocks of peat to burn.

  Twice, in the quiet, firelit evenings, Dot has said, ‘I should check on the men in the infirmary.’ And by infirmary, she means chapel, and the man she wants to see is Cesare. I’m no fool and someone has to keep her safe.

  ‘Not yet,’ I’ve replied, both times. ‘The camp gives me nightmares.’

  And she nods, smiles at me, but I can feel her retreating from me, hour by hour. I want to tell her to come back. I want to tell her that I’m keeping her safe.

  But if I do, I’m worried she’ll tell me I’m being foolish, that I need to forget what happened to me, that not everyone is the same. I’m worried she’ll tell me that what happened was somehow my fault. And even though I know it was, although I know I’m to blame, I’m worried that, if she says these things, it will sever something between us for ever.

  This morning, when I wake, the bed next to me is empty, and I know that she will have walked down towards the camp. I begin pulling on my trousers, ready to follow her, but then I hear a scuffling outside and I realize that it wasn’t the light that had woken me.

  The sunlight under the door is cut off and there is the scrape of a boot on our step.

  A sharp knocking. Tap, tap, tap.

  I freeze, one leg still in my trousers, breath held.

  The shadow shifts. A boot creaks. Angus? Is it Angus, looking for me? Is the door locked? Where could I hide? What can I reach? There is a metal poker for the fire, but I don’t know if I will have time –

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I pull my trousers on, as quietly as possible, then stand very still, my gaze flicking between the metal poker and the shifting shadow under the door.

  ‘Dorotea!’ calls a voice.

  Cesare.

  I stand absolutely still, ignoring the clenching panic in my chest. He will leave soon. He must leave. And then I must find Dot and make sure she is safe.

  The boot scrapes again on the doorstep. The slash of light reappears, and then is cut off again, and there is a rockslide beneath my ribs as I realize – Oh, God! – that Cesare is kneeling on our doorstep.

  I see his fingers – his workman’s fingers, grubby-nailed – appear in the gap beneath the door, and I glance at the poker again. It would take a moment. He would never expect it. My panicked breaths are loud in my ears and, for a moment, I’m back within those nights when I’d be woken by the sound of our father’s terrified shouts. Dot and I would huddle in our room, listening to him weeping. He would never tell any of us what he dreamed, but I guessed he was back in France, crouched in a trench. Some terror stays with you, in your blood and bones.

  Now there is another knock and a rustling as the man pushes something beneath the door. A piece of paper. I don’t move. I won’t touch it. It’s as if he’s entered the bothy himself and it takes all my strength to remain absolutely still and silent, when every jolt of my blood tells me I should scream or hide or run or –

  That poker!

  The creak and scrape of his boot as he stands.

  A rasp as he presses his face against the door.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he whispers, ‘if I have frighten you.’

  Is he talking to me? Or has he somehow terrified Dot? Is that why she has stayed here with me for three days? Is she scared of him? Has he hurt her? Some part of me knows that he cannot have, surely. She would have told me. I would have known.

  Some terror lurks in blood and bone.

  Unbidden, the feeling of hands around my throat. I force air in and out of my lungs and I watch the shadow under the door disappear, watch the sunlight return.

  I count to sixty twice, and then I tiptoe forward and snatch up the piece of paper from the floor.

  On it are two sketches. One is the outline of a woman’s face, and even though the eyes are blank, I recognize the angle of Dot’s jaw, the shape of her mouth. We are identical, but this is her without question. Somehow, he has caught the softness of her expression, the vulnerability she doesn’t know she radiates. The other sketch is of a pair of hands, the fingers interlaced. I have to study the paper carefully to see, in the confusion of linked fingers, that one hand belongs to a woman and the other to a man. Again, without needing to be told, I know that this is her hand held in Cesare’s. I am struck by how much bigger his hand is than hers, by how the veins and muscles and bones of his hand entirely envelop her tiny, pale fingers.

  I hold my own hand out in front of me, curling it into a fist.

  ‘Oh, Dot,’ I say aloud. ‘What have you done?’

  It fills me with terror, the thought that she has allowed this to happen – that she’s allowed this man to become infatuated with her, that she’s placed herself entirely at his mercy. And now he won’t leave her alone, just as Angus won’t leave me alone.

  I should have told her everything. I should have warned her. This is my fault, my fault.

  And then I tear the sketches into tiny pieces and I scatter them into the glowing embers in the grate. When I prod them with the metal poker, they flare, flicker and blacken.

  Soon, the only remaining sign of the drawings is my own laboured breath and the images in my mind, which I cannot shake.

  I finish dressing quickly, pulling on two sweaters and gloves: though it is warmer than it was, the bite of winter still lingers in the air.

  Then I walk over the next hill, in the direction of the infirmary. I won’t tell Dot about the drawings or Cesare’s visit, but I must see her, must see that she is safe and well.

  As I near the breast of the hill, I hear men’s voices and I stop.

  There is banging and hammering, and a shout of laughter. And then, under those noises, the sound of . . . singing.

  Men on our hillside, the prisoners apparently allowed to roam free. Men laughing and talking and planning . . . God knows what they could be planning. My first thought is to return to the bothy, to close the door and wait for Dot to return, then tell her we must leave – even if it means returning to Kirkwall.

  But the singing grows louder. It is a simple melody and reminds me of something my mother used to sing:

  I would spin a web before your eyes,

  A beautiful web of silver light,

  Wherein is many a wondrous sight.

  The tune the men are singing is not the same as my mother’s, but is similar enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  I should have stopped her going, I think. I should have stopped them both.

  And suddenly I am lying face down on the turf, half crawling to the top of the hill, where I will be able to see the men, the foreign prisoners who are singing this familiar song.

  They are gathered outside the two metal huts, seated in a circle on the ground. Most of them sprawl, half lying down, as if they are on a picnic with friends, and they don’t look like soldiers. They could be men from anywhere at all.

  One man is standing in the middle, hunched over something. He points at a grey lump of cement in the centre of the circle, and the others cheer and applaud. Then he pulls one of his friends to his feet and sprawls in his place at the edge of the circle; the next man takes cement from a bucket and layers it onto the grey lump.

  What are they building?

  They begin to sing again, and suddenly it is as though I am watching my father, sitting around a fire with his friends as they passed around a ripped fishing net and a jug of beer. I used to love sneaking onto the beach to watch them repairing the nets and boats. Each man was suddenly friendly with the others. It didn’t seem to matter which men were there, and how they might gripe at one another during the day. There was something in that making that was about more than the net, more than
the boat.

  And now, watching the prisoners, my stomach pressed hard against the cold soil of my home, I see, suddenly, how lonely they must be, in this strange land, so far from everyone they love. And I feel my own loneliness anew, like the hollow, aching socket from a dug-out tooth.

  I touch the spot at the base of my throat where my breath suddenly feels tight, as if something – someone–is squeezing the air from me still and always, long after those fingerprints have faded. But I can feel the ghost of something else there too, as I watch the men. Another presence. Another absence. The trace of the necklace I’d buried three nights ago behind the bothy.

  Part Four

  We never find what we set our hearts on.

  We ought to be glad of that.

  From Beside the Ocean of Time, George Mackay Brown

  April 1942

  Cesare

  Someone is calling his name. He is back in Moena, running through the streets towards the church, knowing he has to get inside, away from the bombs that are falling. All around, the streets are on fire, but he knows his family are safe in the church, waiting for him. And, somehow, Dorotea is there too. She calls his name again, reaches out her hand and shakes his shoulder. He twists around, trying to catch her fingers in his, trying to put his arms about her, but she moves out of his reach.

  He wakes, with a start, to see Gino’s face close to his – frowning, his dark eyes worried.

  ‘You can’t sleep here. You were supposed to come back to the camp hours ago.’

  Cesare stretches, looks around. It is dark outside and he is in the chapel: the new plasterboard wall is cold against his back; there are faint pencil marks where he has etched out the beginning of some of the pictures – when he has paint, they will glow like the walls of the finest churches in Italy.

  ‘Come on,’ Gino says. ‘You’ll get us both into trouble.’

  Cesare shakes his head. ‘Major Bates has said I can stay in the chapel late. There will be no trouble.’