‘Shit.’ He pulled the wire out.
‘Get it back!’
‘I can’t, baby. Hey.’ She was crying. ‘Ssh. We’ll get it fixed. I swear to you, we’ll sort it.’
‘No. No, I’m sorry. Stupid.’ Her hand was up, rubbing at her face. ‘Ghosts. I thought I heard my cousin.’
‘Yeah? Maybe you did—’
‘No. Joe was killed. At Sant’Anna. Oh, I’m sorry. Don’t know what I’m thinking – I feel. . . my head is all fizzy, know? Inside. Like I have—’
‘Like you are in love?’ Kissing and kissing her.
‘Sì.’ He could feel the buzz along his jawline. ‘Like I am in love.’
Ten minutes to muster. If he drove like a dervish, he could do it. Frank Chapel could do anything with Vita at his side. Fate was a car crash, and the jury was out on God, but all the long lines of convergence, of dawns rising and stars coming out while the world ripped itself apart, had brought them together in this room. He would take her from this place, from every bad place. He was going to love her and look after her. Fuck it, he was going to marry her. Take Vittoria Guidi to his momma and make her proud. But first, he would get her to Barga.
‘Vita, I’m begging you one last time. Come with me. Let me keep you safe.’
She hesitated a moment, her fingers lingering, lifting up his hand. Holding it to her breastbone.
‘No, Buffalo. My papà also says I am thrawn. I will go to the Canonica tomorrow, because it is my job. But I am not leaving. You already have made me safe.’
The air hummed between them, musk-sweet.
‘Guess “thrawn” means pig-headed crazy?’
‘Aye.’ She went to open the back door. A strange, orange-coloured moon hung in the sky, making the snow blush. ‘Look. La Luna Rossa.’
He kissed her. ‘I have to go. On duty in ten. But, just so you know, this ain’t over.’
‘Good. Because I don’t want this to be over. Ever.’
Chapter Twenty-four
The blood moon followed the pull of the tide, trailing peachy fingers over the Versilia mountains, over the salt air of Viareggio. It glanced through an open door, where a man turned a dial and a lightbulb dimmed. Two sleeping children were swept orange as the light passed the skylight and on, over a promenade filled with Allied soldiers and burned-out buildings, over beaches lined with gun emplacements instead of deckchairs. It tinted an art deco palace, coaxing blackened walls back to ice-cream bright; it orbited the anti-aircraft guns and sandbags guarding a domed hotel; and it shafted colour on all the ruined factories and shipyards, on the wide streets and cluttered sea. Spilled fuel gleamed on wide flat water, as the coloured moonlight bounced off warships and mines, as it coated twisted railtracks and the wrecked railway station by the canal.
La Luna Rossa followed the man, followed him leaving the sleeping boys. He was almost running, running and running, because he was always running; a child under each arm, he couldn’t save them all but he could save these two, his two, I won’t let you fall, but he was running and running and leaving them all to die.
Only he wasn’t. Joe was carrying a cabbage, round and fat as the moon.
The blood moon passed him passing a group of Buffalo soldiers outside a bar. Muffled in their greatcoats, laughing and drinking, yellow light spilling as more came out, folk shushing: La porta! La lanterna! Two of them began a duet; voices strong, tuneful, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and Joe listened to their words, and the melody hurt. So did the giggling women, who nodded at the Americans, and laughed at him. At the state of him in his shiny trousers with the arse near out, and his dirty old coat. But he didn’t care. Aye, maybe he wasn’t fighting. But what did they know? What did any of them know?
He hated using the radio. Always brief, to avoid homing in on their position. No need to invite the Luftwaffe over. But his heart still raced. People, noise; anything could trigger the fear now. At least he was doing his bit. Hope and warnings, Gelato Boy. That’s what we broadcast from here. The Viareggio partisans had been kind to him. The news tonight was not. Thick lines of enemy artillery were on the move towards the Serchio Valley. Towards Barga.
From the promenade, La Luna Rossa shone into a side street. It glowed on the Hotel d’Ancona, and its sweeping, generous gardens in which La Proprietaria kept the refugees no one wished to rehouse. Abandoned animals. Terrified cats and dogs, beloved horses, the occasional cow. Joe unlocked the gate. A donkey brayed a low welcome, trotted over; she was a strong, stocky girl, who nudged his coat, while two ponies came for a nosy. The moonlight turned peach to red as a chain of dogs barked inside the hotel, and he shared out the greens. The two ponies bunched into the huddle. He was flanked by flanks. Lovely, good-smelling flanks.
He rubbed the space between the donkey’s ears. Those stocky legs had carried two children across the mountains. The blood-tinted light covered him as he laid his head along her backbone, his cheek into her fur. On their journey here, he had slept this way sometimes, dozing in an awkward angle even as they stumbled forward and up and down.
It was Andromeda who’d found them. Paying him back for untethering her, as the bright tracer fire flew in unending vomits, Sant’Anna’s barns ablaze before the gunfire strafed. Joe kept seeing the bounce of curls lit by flame, and the woman diving after. Seeing her fall and fall and a child’s hand in the dirt. He kept seeing himself grasp the hand, pulling Dario by the wrist, Marino under his arm, bucking, struggling; so hard to hold them as they arched to reach their mother, but he kept running forwards, trying to outrun the whistling bullets, leaping over others who had fallen in the mud. He couldn’t save them all.
The moonlight poured on his spine. Joe had no recollection of how far they’d run. At some point his legs must have given out. Then it was daybreak. It seemed obscene that light still rose on Tuscany, but it had. The swollen sun shone in his face; he was in a cave, could see a crescent of daylight in the cave mouth, and the donkey licking moisture from the rock.
Joe couldn’t get those days to form any shape. Blank swathes where he’d thought of his mamma’s winter coat, of nothing but following its thick grey folds. The children sobbing. Wet mist. Andromeda had carried them all at some point.
The donkey’s back bumped his chest. His finger was throbbing. His trigger finger. He’d caught it in a buttonhole of his coat, been winding and winding a loose thread round. It had turned an ugly purple. He had to go. Men from here, partigiani with no connection to Barga, were rushing to her defence. La Proprietaria would look after the boys too, if he asked. He was making them an excuse, when they were the reason he should go.
Joe flexed his fingers, feeling pinpricks as the blood coursed in. Then he took out his pen, began to write. He told La Proprietaria who the boys’ next-of-kin were, and about the café in Paisley. If it was still standing, he wrote, it should be left to the boys.
The blood moon blinked. Slipped below the sea.
Chapter Twenty-five
Vita woke to the smell of snow, and a deep, unfurling content. Unaware at first of why.
Squeezing the tenderness between her thighs. Edging her backside off the mattress, trying to get used to this new feeling. It was like her bones had shifted slightly, then realigned. Bolts of cold shot up her leg, foot striking frozen linoleum, sending jitters all the way to her teeth. She didn’t care. Inside was on fire.
Chittering, she got dressed. Chipped ice from the basin on the washstand and splashed her face. Stared in the mirror at strange, wild eyes.
Fingertip-slow, he’d traced the front of her. Candlelight on his hands and the brown of him and the fawn of her, making a pattern of satin folds and overlap. Each pore opened in the chill as she recalled the whorls and tightness of his hair. He was fragile, this Francesco, he was tender hair and skin, he was brittle bone and smooth and rough; she had felt every bristle as it pocked her flesh, his tongue pushing past hers, undoing, tasting salt and sweat, the press of hard on soft, then feeling nothing but the shivers and her body c
orrecting itself, until she was not able to think at all.
Why then? Why would Joe come back to haunt her then? Hearing ghosts had unsettled her. Guilt for a dead boy who would never get to love. Guilt was like being caught in a snowstorm. All the flurries and hints of light that would disorientate you if you let them; would have you lose sight of where you were headed. Guilt was what kept the nuns pure and lonely, and made boys like Pietro climb on a war-bound train, and made her think she should be grateful, grateful and ashamed that Joe had killed two men, when she’d begged him not to.
The americano was not like that. He was the first person who did not decide what was best for Vita. Francesco listened to what she wanted, and that made her love him more.
She had had her fill of ghosts. Vita breathed on the silvered glass. Put her lips to the haze and kissed it. The trick was to keep breathing.
Leaving Catagnana felt like flying. Monte Forato blazed in the winter sun. Saucers of ice crackled as she walked down the pitted track. Every vibration pushed at the heat in her belly, at the melt of her limbs. She picked her way over leaves which reeked of decay when you kicked them, while the wind rubbed the black-stemmed trees. Ice gave way to slush. Swathes of forest on either side of the valley had been denuded – blasted, or chopped and dragged off for whatever hellfire the war required. Trees split white as bone.
Vita let herself into the Canonica’s kitchen. The ashes in the fornelli glowed. She gave them a poke; felt sparks where her legs rubbed. Put water on to boil. The sisters were at chapel, she could hear them singing through the dawn, could hear the faint, gorgeous ting of the glockenspiel that held their single note. The Monsignor shuffled overhead, floorboards creaking as he got up and moved about his room. A flashing thought came of his scrawny white ankles; that underneath his nightshirt he would be naked, everyone was naked. What a waste, not to share your body. Every person who’d ever lain with their lover – why did they not scream it from the rooftops never stop grinning and hugging themselves? Why was the whole world not singing?
‘It’s you.’ Nico shuffled in, rubbing his eyes. ‘Not hear the door then?’
‘Nicodemo. Buongiorno.’ She went to kiss him, but he evaded her grasp.
‘You deaf, girl? There’s somebody at the front door. I’m not going,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s too cold.’
‘Certo. Keep an eye on that water for me, will you?’
‘Better be for coffee. I hope you’re not wasting it on washing your hair or something.’
Click-clack along the hall to the front door. It was a Buffalo, a handsome, thin-faced man with a feather in his helmet. Frank behind him, wide-smiled, coy, and her flustered. Afire. How did you make your face say things you couldn’t find the words for?
‘Morning, ma’am. Is the Monsignor in?’
‘Sì. Please. Come in.’
The Monsignor was coming downstairs anyway, fiddling with his collar. ‘Vita, I have three funerals today. I need you to – ah, a delegation. Such an honour. And before la prima colazione too.’
Frank had brought real cheese and white bread for the Monsignor, who received the gifts graciously. ‘Put this in the kitchen, Vita. And can you muster up some coffee for our guests? Perhaps find some of the chicory essence?’
‘Sir,’ said the one with the feather. ‘Per favore. We brought you this too.’ Offering Vita a gaudy tin. She tucked it on top of the parcels of food, holding everything steady with her chin.
‘May I help you, ma’am?’ Frank stepped forward.
‘No, thank you.’ The Monsignor changed to speaking in English. ‘My housekeeper is perfectly capable.’ She saw him pointedly look, then look again, at Frank. ‘Now, gentlemen. Shall we go to my study, or do you prefer to conduct business in this raging draught?’
There was a sprig of winter jasmine protruding from Frank’s breast pocket.
‘Hurry along then, Vittoria.’
Back to the kitchen, balancing her load. Of course Nico had not stoked the fornelli. Vita stabbed urgently at it, added another block of precious charcoal. Stupid water. Boil, damn you. By the time she’d made the coffee, put the bread and cheese on a plate, they had gone. Her heart slowed. Only the Monsignor sat in his study, prodding gloomily at one of Sister Agatha’s pottery owls, which stood on his desk.
‘Well, our liberators have spoken. It seems we are to billet a quantity of Mori here now.’
‘Oh.’
‘Doubtless they won’t even be house-trained.’
‘It was nice of them to bring us some food, though.’
‘Easy enough to give away things that are not precious.’ His untwinkly gaze bored through her. ‘It’s probably stolen.’
‘Monsignor, I don’t think that’s true.’
‘They are simple men, Vittoria.’ He bit into a piece of cheese. ‘But not always good. Tell me. Did you know them at all? The taller one perhaps?’
She picked at a corner of the bread. ‘No, father. I don’t think so. Shall I take this away then?’
‘Well, I certainly don’t want food that bears your fingerprints, Vittoria. Stop that! Tell Nico he’d better start clearing a space in the basement for them. You might help? If you have no prior engagements?’
‘Sì, Monsignor.’
She closed the door, anxious to escape. The man was unearthly. Did God whisper gossip in his ears? Well, maybe God should pay more attention to all the bodies littering Barga instead. The tray was shaking; she laid it on the hall table. The whole tense length of her, shame-filled. Who had seen them?
Her knuckles drove into hot, hot cheeks. Why would God make a thing so beautiful, then make it bad? Nobody could have seen a thing. The Monsignor was simply testing her. The Sacro Cuore above the coat stand looked down reproachfully. A minature San Cristoforo joined in. Vita shook out her hair, long and knotted with the smell of Frank. The entire hallway smelled sweet. On the table, part-crushed under the tray, lay the jasmine, wrapped in another page from his notebook.
Got 24 hour pass, starting 5. What’s for dinner? x
She snatched it up, lest some greedy watcher see.
All morning, Vita skimmed above the Canonica’s dusty floors as she worked. She floated across the piazza to glide the corridors of the Conservatorio with more grace than all the sisters, and the diamond-hard knowledge that she knew something they never would. Never had a housekeeper moved so beautifully, dancing an unseen dance. Until it was four o’clock, and she calmed herself. Walked slowly to the Monsignor’s study with a cup of coffee.
‘Monsignor, I’m not feeling so well. Can I go home?’
He looked up from his papers. ‘What ails you, child?’
‘I just feel. . . not myself.’ The telltale heat in her cheeks again. The Monsignor removed his glasses. Stared at her. Staring and staring, willing her to break.
‘Vittoria. May I speak freely?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sometimes, our grief can feel very much like fear. And in our fear, there is an intensity – a panic, if you will – that makes us not be ourselves. Nor act like ourselves.’
Even when he lectured, the Monsignor was kind. He used his goodness like oil; carrying and easing, his underlying gleam making things better. He was a good man. Yet he could say those things about the Buffaloes.
‘Father, it’s women’s pains that I feel.’
‘Ah.’ His coffee cup clattered in its saucer. ‘Well then. Hurry along.’
There was no pleasure in upsetting him. But the pleasure she felt inside obliterated everything else.
From five in the evening until five the next, La Limonaia was their own. No vase in the window; instead it sat on their dinner table, filled with winter jasmine. Vita had gathered porcini at the rim of the forest. Stolen a handful of farina – taken it from the mouths of starving refugees – to make a batch of fine-stringed pasta. Frank brought wine and unpleasant, dry biscuits. One hour lapped into two, one kiss became a river, a sea of tenderness and crests and riptides pulling. They woke, walked bare
foot, Vita wound in a blanket, the fabric trailing over her breast. Frank, tugging the fabric slowly from her, Vita hooking it over his neck to pull him in, thumbs pressing his collarbone. They lay, tangled, kissing murmurs, her resting against his beating heart, the ball of his foot nestled on her shin. And when they rose again and ate, naked, at the table, they barely broke contact, his hand between her thighs, his heavy-lidded eyes on the flex of her muscles as she moved.
‘Keep the shutters closed,’ he whispered.
But Vita did not wish to live in the dark. Conscious that there may not be many days when a husband and wife could love and cook and laugh. Even when they weren’t touching, she was sharp to his presence; no matter where in the room he was, their thoughts caught hold of one another. It felt like spinning in a tunnel of light. When Vita looked back on that perfect day, it was unbroken light she recalled.
And when it was time for him to leave, she wept.
‘Come with me, then.’
‘But you won’t be in Barga.’
‘I will till noon tomorrow.’
‘Then where?’
‘They’re sending us to Gallicano.’
‘How long for?’
‘Few days? A week maybe.’ He rested his head against her cheek.
‘Then I will be here till you come back.’
They agreed to meet in the morning. One last kiss before he left. She arrived in Via Mura before Frank. The bulk of Barga’s walls made the street somehow clandestine. Vita leaned against the wall, enjoying the cold of the stone on her buttocks. Her whole body felt alive. She heard the low putter of an engine; could see the top of a khaki windscreen bump into view. Frank was driving. Her mouth ran dry; a beat when his eyes found hers. Vita raised her hand, enjoying the lushness of movement, because soon, at last, in perhaps thirty seconds, he would touch her again and—
There was another person with him. A mirror-hand waving. Not her own. Smaller, with her mother’s oval fingernails.
Francesca. Defiant Cesca, sitting in the passenger seat. Scarlet-rimmed eyes.
The Sound of the Hours Page 29