by Caroline Lea
I walk up the path – my feet know the way, each step in my bones from the number of times I walked this path with him, my hand clasped in his.
I imagine Con alongside me, walking in easy silence, her hand in mine, or my arm around her shoulders. I have trodden the same ground as her for so long, breathed the same air, I don’t know how to continue without her.
My heart is flesh. It will not melt or crack or rust. It throbs onwards. My lungs take in air, my blood circles my body, my legs drive me forward and upwards.
Con. Con. Con.
I am not whole but I am not broken. Part of my life is lived for her.
I miss her the way a tree misses last year’s leaves.
I walk towards a mound that is surrounded by reeds and bog on one side and the cliff face on the other. Only if you know the way is it possible to pick a path over the safe patches of grass, to a rocky overhang. Even then, until you crouch by the rock, the mound looks like any other.
But behind the rock, hidden from view, is the tunnel into the mound. Thousands of years ago, people might have worshipped here, rising each morning to greet the sun and the sea that gave life. Or perhaps they buried their dead here and visited once a year, to remember the people who shaped them and made them who they were. Grief can feel like worship.
The grass has recently been crushed underfoot, and there’s the faint smell of a fire burning, or perhaps that’s just my imagination.
My hope rises.
I crawl through the tunnel on hands and knees. Con and I used to lie in the tunnel, planning what we would do when we left the islands. We talked about which countries we wanted to see. The world seemed so bright, from the close darkness of that tunnel. If I laid my head on the stones now, perhaps I would hear the echo of her laughter. Perhaps these stones hold the warm memory of her skin still. I run my fingers over the smooth rock and whisper her name, like a prayer.
Then I whisper his name, under my breath – I don’t have the courage to call out for him.
Everywhere, people believe in things they cannot see.
Please, I think. Please, please.
The main chamber is lighter than the tunnel and, for a moment, I think everything is just as we left it when we last visited, weeks ago. The cave is bare, the floor clean and the small hole in the roof allows a few rays from the sun to shine on the blank stone.
My heart plummets. He is not here.
Then I see the pile of blankets in the corner of the cave.
He is lying on a broken pallet, with old sheets pulled up to his chin. His eyes are closed.
My mouth is dry. What if . . .?
I step fully into the chamber and stand upright, watching him.
He doesn’t move.
Oh, God, I think. I can’t, I can’t . . .
His chest rises and falls; beneath closed lids, his eyes move back and forth, as if, even in his sleep, he’s searching.
Relief tingles through me. I crouch next to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He’s warm. He’s solid. He’s alive.
His eyelids flicker and then he looks up at me. Those dark eyes, which somehow always know me, have somehow known me from the first moment I saw him.
Cesare.
At first, he doesn’t move. His eyes travel over my face, which is more bruised than when he last saw me, and the scratches on my neck, which are new. He will only be able to see me dimly in this light. What if he is angry that I left him? What if he doesn’t understand, or if he, too, has been knocked on the head and has forgotten me?
‘I am dreaming?’ he whispers.
I shake my head, my throat too tight for words.
‘Dorotea.’ he says.
‘Yes.’
I put my hand on his cheek and he brushes his fingers over my lips.
‘Dorotea!’ he exclaims, and he wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tight, whispering something again and again into my hair.
‘Grazie, grazie.’ The word echoes around the cave, like the sigh of the wind, like the reverberation of a desperate prayer suddenly answered.
He kisses me, his mouth hot on mine. His skin tastes of salt and smoke from the fire.
He holds my face in his hands and laughs. ‘I think you are never coming,’ he says. ‘I think I have lost you.’
His face blurs, until I blink, wipe my eyes. ‘Never.’
‘They are looking for me? The guards.’
I shake my head. On the night of the storm, as I jumped into the sea, I saw the boat being carried through the barriers.
The sea takes everything north now.
‘The cave,’ I’d shouted, as I jumped. The wind and water swept away my words, but I thought he might have heard. I hoped he had. I hoped, somehow, he would find his way there.
I don’t know if I truly believed it was possible, then, but we have made it true, somehow.
Sometimes love allows impossible things.
I curl into his body. He wraps his arms around me. And I do not feel whole, but I feel less shattered.
There will be time to tell him of Con and how the sight of her bloodless body on a stone slab had hollowed me out and left my mind feeling like an empty cave, where thoughts and sounds and memories endlessly echo in the darkness. There will be time to tell him about Angus MacLeod.
For now, there is his breath, his voice, his smile. His body, keeping me warm in the dark.
We stay in the cave all that winter, making plans. At first, these are no more than what we will eat that day, whether we will walk or try to swim in the cold water.
We catch fish and rabbits; we gather kelp and bladderwrack. We talk, or we make love, or we sit in silence, remembering.
Gradually, as our bruises fade and our wounds become less raw, we begin to plan for a future, after the war, when we will find his family in Italy. For the moment, while the Italians are still the enemy, a runaway prisoner of war would be given a death sentence and it is safer to stay hidden. If we had escaped to Scotland on that night in September, I’m sure he would have been captured and punished. But the war cannot last for ever: one day, we will be able to travel south together.
Sometimes, when Cesare is restless at night, he walks over the island to the old camp, to the chapel. Sometimes I go with him. The camp is deserted now, falling into disrepair. In a strong wind, the sound of moving metal sings out across the sea.
Behind the barbed wire, the camp looks lifeless, desolate, hopeless. But we know that it never was. A bare concrete yard can be the start of a life; an old metal hut can be a house of God, or a prison, or a place to remember.
Cesare and I walk along the beach, hand in hand, listening to the waves, listening to our shared breath. Beneath the sea, somewhere, are the struts and ribs of sunken ships – the shattered Royal Elm and a hundred others, resting in the quiet darkness. Under our feet crunch empty molluscs and the sloughed shells of crabs – hollow bone clothes. But it is possible to shed your skin and still live.
Cesare puts his arms around me. He pulls me in close and holds me to him until my tears stop. He doesn’t ask me to explain. He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. He tells some joke to make me laugh. He presses a piece of driftwood into my hand. And then we walk on.
Sometimes, when Cesare and I lie down to go to sleep, we close our eyes, and we can hear the far-off growl of the planes, or we think we hear footsteps or the whispers of people coming closer. We think we hear our past coming to find us.
But then we realize it is the hush of the waves or the thud of our hearts, or our blood in our ears. It is the sound of time, which keeps going, and which is so precious, every moment.
We lie, side by side, holding hands, listening to the water, hearing life. One day soon, we will leave. We will take our boat and travel north, to Fair Isle, or south to Aberdeen, or further south to Moena. We will search out the places from our past lives, the places where our parents belonged. And we will not care how people look at us, or what they say, or if they whisper or tell stories about us. Between
us is a truth only we know, a language only we understand.
For us, together, every place will be home.
This kingdom, too, is ours, and in our blood
Its passionate tideways run . . .
and the wild flood
Of winter haunts our ears with spells that bind
Sea, sky and earth in one.
From ‘Orkney’, Robert Rendall
Author’s Note
The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm, Orkney, is a real place, built by Italian prisoners during the Second World War. While I used this genuine (and wonderful) work of art as an inspiration for the novel, this story is very much a work of fiction, as are the events and people in it.
The people of Orkney, many of whom were incredibly helpful and generous with their time and advice, will be quick to spot that I have fictionalized both the historical timing of certain events and the geography of the islands – the bombing of the Royal Oak (rather than the Royal Elm) took place in October 1939 and the construction of the barriers took place between 1940 and 1944, originally starting with Irish workers. However, I wanted the love affair between my characters to be constrained by time and intensified by the precipitous and perilous nature of war, so I took many liberties with timings and action. This was a very conscious decision: I’m painfully aware of the difficulties in fictionalizing real historical events and people and selling them as ‘fact’, especially when this involves taking on the voices of ‘real’ people: I was very certain that I didn’t want to do that.
I wanted to write about war, memory and art. There are so many war monuments to the dead, so many battlegrounds memorialized, so many landscapes that have been utterly changed by conflict. But the Italian Chapel seems, to me, to be something different: it is an object of hope, made during a time of war and darkness; it was conceived and crafted by men who were prisoners in a foreign country and had no way of knowing when they would return home. It is a creation born of expectation and love. It still stands today and has been beautifully maintained – I’d encourage everyone to go and see it.
The metal heart is also a real object: it was created by an Italian metal worker, Giuseppe Palumbi, as a symbol of his love for an Orcadian woman. He had a wife and family in Italy, so left his heart behind in Orkney. While I used this as inspiration for Cesare’s story, I didn’t base my character upon any single prisoner, and his fate in the novel is very different from that of the Italian prisoners, who returned to their families. I have changed many other details too: the painter of the real chapel was called Domenico Chiocchetti and he did not have an affair with an Orcadian woman. The commander of the camp on Lamb Holm was called Major Buckland, and historical sources show him to have been kindly and intensely human, encouraging the prisoners to build a chapel, as well as a small theatre and even a concrete billiard table. Although the influx of hundreds of prisoners must have been a huge challenge for the people of Orkney, sources from the time say that they were both welcoming and kind to the foreign men: the brutal character of Angus MacLeod is entirely fictional. I have also made Selkie Holm much bigger than Lamb Holm, where the real chapel stands, and have changed other details for the purposes of fiction: Catholic Mass would not have been taken with both bread and wine until the mid-1960s and I’ve added the words ‘Body and Blood of Christ.’
While researching The Metal Heart, I came across a story of a man who, in response to feeling increasingly trapped in his father’s business, failed to go to work one day, then found himself in New York, with no memory of who he was or why he was there. This led me to explore the idea of a dissociative fugue, where, in response to stress or an injury, an individual loses all knowledge of their identity and often wanders far from home, sometimes having formed a new or different personality. These genuine cases have intrigued psychologists for years and are distinct from instances where, in attempting to escape the consequences of a crime, an individual may feign memory loss. Arguably, both responses are the brain’s way of coping with trauma. I’m fascinated by the idea of how we respond to crisis and how very clever our own brains are at concealing information and hiding memories. I wonder, too, if this is something at which the brain becomes increasingly adept: a well-worn pathway of concealment. In the same way as I cannot recall large chunks of stressful times during my childhood, even now, after having an argument, I can rarely remember what was said afterwards.
Like many writers, I find that my characters reveal themselves to me slowly, and over a number of drafts. Gradually, I grow to learn their likes and dislikes, their desires and motivations and, as part of this process, a voice develops. This novel was different, in that the character’s ‘voices’ made themselves clear very early on, as did their longings and animosities. But, as I wrote, I discovered that most of my characters were hiding things, even from me. I’m aware that this sounds irrational, but it led to a writing process full of surprises, and of the same theme of concealment and discovery occurring in different characters, as well as the idea of pairs, doubling and repetition. This wasn’t something I’d intended but I was pleased to find, when I reread the whole of my first draft (much of which, ironically, I barely remembered writing), that similar ideas made themselves clear in each of the character’s narratives. When paired with the ideas I’d started with, of twins, doubling and concealment, and of men creating art during a time of destruction, I felt I had something that was richer and more complex than I’d originally envisaged. It led me to question the extent to which we ever truly admit to (or even understand) our own motivations.
I wanted to write about how war, trauma and death affect people: the idea of someone being ripped out of the fabric of existence and how that changes every other thread. I’ve thought a great deal about how war often creates a hollow absence rather than a death, particularly when there is no body: when people are cut off from each other and simply ‘disappear’. My great-uncle died at El Alamein; his body was never returned home. I know that his sisters (my grandmother and my great-aunt) and his widow were all desperate to visit his grave, hoping it might close the raw wound left by his absence. But seeing the grave only made his loss more haunting. The inscription on the wooden cross that marks his grave reads, Where the road breaks off and the signposts end.
In some ways, he continued to exist because he simply disappeared. I don’t think they ever stopped hoping for his return.
Which brings me back to the Italian Chapel, the barriers built in Orkney in the Second World War and the way that war changes people and landscapes for ever.
To the people of Orkney, who maintain their beautiful memorial, and to the Italian prisoners who built the barriers and the chapel: thank you.
Acknowledgements
This novel wouldn’t have come into being without inspiration from my incredible editor, Jillian Taylor, who, when I said I wanted to write a story about wartime imprisonment, showed me pictures of the Italian Chapel and spent a lunchtime enthusing with me about the creation of art during war. Over the next two years, Jill has continued to be the most inspiring, exacting, wonderful and insightful editor, guiding me through the process of rewriting most of the novel multiple times, without ever losing her enthusiasm for my work. It’s impossible to articulate quite how empowering it is to have an editor who believes in me so absolutely, and my thanks to you will always feel inadequate.
Endless thanks also to my equally brilliant agent, Nelle Andrew, who pushes me to find and write the best story I can, who always tells me the truth (however painful that might be), and who is fearless and utterly indefatigable on my behalf. Superwoman: I feel ridiculously lucky to have you in my corner.
Thanks to my first and most enthusiastic cheerleader, my lovely mum, Sue Lea, who fed my childhood reading obsession and continues to talk about books with me. To my sister Annabelle, who reads so much of my work and is so enthusiastic and kind; to my sister Sophie, who is so enthusiastic and sarcastic.
Enormous thanks to Bill Gurney, for brilliant and brutal advice and so
many laughs. Sadly, your critiques are always spot on.
Huge thanks to my amazing friends Cathy Thompson and Sachin Choithramani for reading an early draft and being so kind, patient and perceptive over wine. And enormous thanks to the lovely Luisa Cheshire for providing such insightful advice on the draft and all my other writing woes. Thank you to Nicky Leamy for reading parts of this and being so encouraging, and to the rest of Gin Club, for being endlessly kind, funny and supportive: Laura Baxter, Jane Guest, Alison Hall and Adele Kenny. I adore you all.
I’m very lucky to have a number of wonderful friends, who provide constant support and advice. The alphabetization of your names is no reflection of who I love most. Thank you to Holly Alexander, Sandy Ameer Beg, Jen Bayley, Penny Clarke, Jo Davies, Andrea Docherty, Hazel Fulton, Anna Hardman, Jackie Hope, Bansi Kara, Sarah Lewsey, Luke Moore, Emma Ritson, Sarah Richardson, Duncan Vaux, Robert Ward-Penny, Claire Williams. And thank you to my book-club friends: Harriet Gott, Claire Revell, Jenny Mitchell-Hilton and Jane Tracey. Thank you to Helena Lönnberg for the lovely (fictitious) ritual of sprinkling a line of salt across the doorway. Thank you to Nana (Pam Lyddon) for all the love. Thank you to Liz and Doug Day for your constant love and kindness towards my lovely boys. Thank you to John Wood for all your support and co-parenting.
Thank you to all the bookshop owners who have been so tireless in supporting my writing, particularly Mog and Pauline at Warwick Books, Tamsin and Judy at Kenilworth Books and all the staff at Waterstones in Leamington.
Thank you to my Warwick Writing Programme friends: Gonzalo Ceron Garcia, Tim Leach, Sarah Moss, Lucy Brydon, Will Eaves, Maureen Freely and David Morley.
Thank you to Orkney Library, for letting me browse articles and photographs in the archives for hours, and for answering so many of my questions.
I’m hugely grateful to the whole talented team at Penguin, Michael Joseph – I feel so lucky to have such endless champions of my work: Laura Nicol, Jen Porter, Bea McIntyre, Hazel Orme, as well as Jane Kirby and the rest of the wonderful rights team; thank you all. And thank you to my brilliant US editor, Erin Wicks, and all the team at Harperbooks. I’m so very lucky.