by Alex Brown
‘Ah, yes. When Gio died,’ Nonna Maria sighed. ‘Such a handsome, charismatic man, so young at heart and so full of life. Practically a boy, but the heart, it stopped beating. Just like that!’ she tutted, clicking her fingers dramatically. ‘But he adored Connie … until those bastards took him from her.’
‘What do you mean, Nonna? Who took him?’ Tom prompted tactfully, as Nonna Maria pulled a packet of long, thin cigarettes from her bag and lit one up. After tilting her head, she puffed a regal smoke ring up into the air, turned to Grace and told her.
‘When Gio died, his relatives couldn’t wait to drag his body back to the family plot in their private cemetery in America. Connie had no say in the matter and I tried to get her to fight but she was far too broken with the grief. They had worn her down. They never liked her.’ Nonna Maria pulled a face of disgust.
‘Why was that?’ Ellis said.
‘Where is your ice cream?’ Nonna Maria replied, tapping the table in front of Grace. ‘Get the girl her ice cream,’ she added, just as Georgie returned carrying two cups and spoons.
‘Sorry about the wait.’ Georgie grinned amiably, before sitting down next to Nonna Maria. ‘It’s crammed in there, but so worth it … wait till you try this gelato.’ And she placed a cup in front of Grace that contained a gloriously peach-fragranced swirl of creamy loveliness.
‘Thank you,’ Grace said, unable to resist scooping a spoonful into her mouth right away. The taste was sensational, of fresh, juicy peaches with a hint of warm cinnamon and vanilla, reminiscent of a peach cobbler with custard. Grace could see why it was Nonna Maria’s favourite. Hers too now.
‘You’re a good girl, tesoro mio,’ Nonna Maria said to Georgie, ‘and you are my favourite,’ before shooting another look in Tom’s direction. He just shrugged and smiled, as if he was used to being continually chastised by his grandmother and took it all in his stride. ‘Take your pick of my rugs when I die! And don’t let the vultures beat you to it.’ And then Grace realised that Nonna Maria was actually tipsy; she was slurring her words and almost toppling over in her seat … and she didn’t give a damn.
‘Oh, Nonna, come on, less of that talk. I don’t want your rugs, not when I’d rather have you.’ And Georgie patted Nonna Maria’s arm affectionately.
‘Nonna, you were talking about Gio.’ Tom surreptitiously smiled at Grace as if to telepathically tell her they’d be here all day at this rate …
‘Yes. They took him away from Connie. To punish her.’
‘Why?’ Tom said.
‘Because Connie was a Jew and they were Catholics. But worse than that … she was the mother of a bastard child born out of wedlock. When Gio fell in love with Connie, his father, of the wealthy Donato dynasty, was running for office, to be a US senator, and the scandal of his son marrying a Jew with an illegitimate child would ruin his chances. This was the Forties. Everything was different then,’ she clarified, shaking her head. ‘Not like today when a woman can go to a clinic to pick a father for her baby and we are all happy for her. A baby is always a gift!’ she declared passionately, before leaving them all to ponder on this thought while she took a long drag of her cigarette and exhaled another smoke ring away from the table and up into the air above her head. ‘That’s why they come here, to Italia. Gio was banished with his new bride. And because he was an artist. Not a lawyer like his father wanted him to be. The pink villa was the sweetener, somewhere to hide them away like a dirty family secret.’
‘Sweetener?’ Grace ventured, feeling intimidated, but in awe too of Nonna Maria.
‘A wedding present, his father said, but I knew it was a bribe. Connie adored the pink villa and made it into an exquisite home, landscaping the gardens and filling the villa with the finest furnishings, full of beauty, style and class, much like the lady herself. That’s why I bought it when they forced her to sell it – something in the deeds, they said, a stipulation, that the family home was only hers to live in while she was married to a Donato. Nonsense! But like I said, Connie had no fight left in her by then. Or money to pay lawyers to fight the wealthy Donato family. She had no money or assets of her own, just the gifts from Gio. She lived on in the villa for a while but it was never the same … not without her darling Gio, and with only the memories of happier times to haunt her.’
Grace sat silently for a moment, trying to imagine the unbearable pain and hurt this must have caused Connie, to not only be cast aside by her own parents at such a young age, but then by her husband’s parents too. Banished in shame to a village called Tindledale when she was only seventeen years old, pregnant and alone and grieving for Jimmy, and then later banished to Italy so as not to shame the US senator of the wealthy Donato dynasty.
‘Oh poor Connie,’ Grace said quietly. ‘The more I find out about her life, the more my heart breaks for her. It was all so unfair.’
‘But you must not upset yourself, young lady. Connie wasn’t one for pity,’ Nonna Maria said. ‘No, she was stoic and always conducted herself with class and decorum. Not like us Italians with our fiery passion,’ and she did a deep, throaty laugh.
‘Did you know anything about Connie’s parents, or her child, Lara?’ Grace ventured, desperate to know anything at all more about Connie’s family, as it seemed they were running out of options to find a living relative, but Nonna Maria responded blankly.
‘Who?’ she said, the light seeming to have faded in her eyes.
‘Connie’s baby, she was called Lara,’ Ellis tried, but it didn’t help.
‘She was taken too. Everyone Connie loved was taken from her,’ was all Nonna Maria added.
‘Who took her, Nonna?’ Tom tried as well, but she carried on talking about Connie and Gio, leaving Grace to wonder if this meant that Lara never did come to Italy with Connie. Or did Nonna Maria mean that Lara had died too? But it still didn’t explain why Connie went to America with the necklace for a child and then presumably brought it back, only for it to be found in the jewellery box decades later? And from what Nonna Maria had managed to tell them about Giovanni’s family, it seemed highly unlikely that Connie would have been visiting them, let alone taking a Star of David necklace for another young girl’s bat mitzvah, when his family were Catholics and so opposed to Connie. So it must have been for Lara: who else could have it been for?
‘I don’t know,’ Nonna Maria said, bringing Grace back to the moment. ‘Connie didn’t have a baby when she came to Italia.’ Ah, so Grace’s suspicion was correct … Connie wasn’t allowed to bring her child. But how could her parents have prevented it? Connie would have been an adult by then. A married woman, too. Unless … and an awful, devastating chill ran right through Grace as she considered another possibility … did Lara die in the war? Is that why she didn’t come to Italy? Did Connie take her back to London before the war ended, when she was still a young child? Is that what Nonna Maria meant?
But this couldn’t be right, as Connie had been full of joy on VE Day at the end of the war, dancing and planning her future with Giovanni … and Lara. They were to be a family, together. So what had changed all that? Grace just couldn’t work it all out and vowed to speed-read through the rest of the papers from Connie’s unit that she had stored on her laptop. She had read most of the diary pages and ad hoc notes, but they had tailed off in the early Fifties, with just the odd words here and there on each page from then on – Glorious day. Sad. The warm sun lifts my spirit. Marvellous trip out. Party on the yacht, that kind of thing. Very bland compared to Connie’s emotionally descriptive earlier entries, and no mention of Lara, which in itself was very ominous … but people didn’t just disappear, Lara had to be somewhere, and Grace wasn’t about to give up now. Giovanni’s family behaving the way they had towards Connie just made Grace more determined to put right the wrongs that had been meted out to her.
Back at the hotel, and Grace opened her laptop as Ellis talked to Larry to explain that Connie’s jewels would be collected tonight, having made all the necessary arrangements with the ban
k. They were sitting at the table on the little balcony overlooking the seafront, the warm, evening sun bathing the palm trees in a glittery, golden sheen.
‘I’ll get some wine and snacks,’ Ellis said, having finished the call, but before Grace could respond, he had jumped up from the table and darted back through the green shuttered doors to his bedroom. She wondered what the rush was … it was as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. And he had been very quiet on the bus back from Portofino, staring blankly out of the window for the twenty-minute journey along the rugged costal road to right outside the hotel. Then striding ahead, barely waiting for her to catch up as he entered the lift.
Why was he being so distant? They had stood in the lift together and Ellis had barely said two words to her – mostly ‘sure’, ‘great’ and ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to her chitchat about how nice, if bittersweet, it had been to get an insight into Connie’s life from people who actually knew her when she was young and vibrant. And how they had promised to keep in touch with Georgie and Tom, who were also returning to England soon. She could hear Ellis talking on the phone again now, the sound of his voice drifting through the partially open balcony door to his bedroom.
‘Jennifer, hey, babe, I’ll be back tomorrow … yes, I can’t wait to see you too.’ And, unashamedly, Grace leaned across in her seat towards his bedroom door in a bid to hear more. But Ellis must have moved away from the door or indeed gone to get wine and snacks now, as all she could hear was the sound of the cicadas in the foliage below the balcony, mingled with the waves rippling over the pebbles from the beach across the road.
Grace returned her attention to the keyboard on her laptop and opened a folder titled ‘Connie’s Contents’. Scrolling through, she discounted all the diary pages that she had already read and moved on to the miscellaneous letters and papers folder to see if there was anything more left to read that she might have missed. Ah, here we go … She clicked on a photo and saw that it was dated March 1946, so after the war had ended and after Connie and Giovanni had married. The writing in the photo was like a diary entry but had rip marks down one side of the paper, as if it had been torn from the actual diary for that year. She slipped off her sandals, tucked her legs up underneath her and started reading.
Today is the day I will become a mother. A proper mother to my darling daughter, Lara. Giovanni is driving me to Tindledale to bring her home to London and then on to Italy with us when we sail next week. It’s all arranged with Mother and Father after I wrote to them soon after my last visit to see Lara, setting out my wishes to have her with me all the time. I’ve missed her so much these last two months without a visit, but it couldn’t be helped as Mother wrote back explaining that Lara was terribly unwell with measles and so it would be prudent of me not to visit in my condition. With the pregnancy so recently confirmed by the doctor in Harley Street, Giovanni agreed too that it would be wise to wait until Lara’s health is restored.
Ah, Grace felt her heart lift on knowing that Connie was pregnant for a second time, but then immediately wondered where that child was now. She found a pad and made some notes.
Another child.
Born some time in late 1946.
Grace read on, keen to see if she could find a name for the second child. But then, hold on, her heart sank all over again, for surely Nonna Maria would have mentioned Connie having a child born in Italy soon after she arrived here. Instead she had specifically said, ‘Connie didn’t have a baby when she came to Italia’ and ‘a baby is always a gift’; that’s what Nonna Maria had said, and so Grace felt almost certain that the pregnancy hadn’t succeeded. It seemed most likely, as there was no mention of another child in any of the diaries. Oh Connie, how did you endure such heartbreak after all that you had already been through?
Grace read on.
I feel so happy and cannot wait to wrap my arms around my daughter and tell her she is coming home with her mummy. When I think of this moment soon to come, my heart fills with an abundance of love, for she is such a sunny, cheerful little girl and one that her daddy would have been so very proud of.
Grace smiled to herself, revelling in Connie’s joy. But as she read on, Grace felt her body go numb, a feeling of fear trickling from the back of her neck, snaking a path around her shoulders and down her arms before settling in her throat as she held her breath …
She’s gone. I can barely bring myself to write the words. Mother and Father have taken her from me. My darling, sweet girl, Lara, with her twinkling eyes and treacle-coloured curls has gone. When we got to the cottage there was no answer to my knock on the door; the house was shut up and so Giovanni went to the manor house across two fields at the other end of the country estate to find Father’s friend. Lord Montague does important work for the Home Office and was rather terse when he arrived back at the cottage with Giovanni. But on seeing my distress, which was so terribly hard to hold in, he agreed to open the cottage door so that I could look inside for myself.
I tore through every room, checking inside cupboards, looking underneath and behind all the furniture like a wild woman, I even opened the door of the grandfather clock in the hallway, lifted lids off chinaware on the mantelpiece and thank heavens I did or I wouldn’t have found Lara’s tiny silver baby bangle. But I knew. As I frantically searched, I knew that it was pointless. Mother had taken my baby. The baby she never wanted me to have. The baby that she had brought up in the countryside and passed off as her own, as I later discovered from Lord Montague when he referred to my sister, little Lara. All that was left of my sweet, dear girl was the silver bangle, the pink teddy from her daddy, Jimmy, and the matinee set that I knitted for her, both forgotten in the airing cupboard on the landing. Of course, Lara is too big for baby clothes now, but I really can’t help feeling it a cruel act by Mother and Father to leave behind the only things she has from her proper parents, Jimmy and me.
Hugging the little jacket, hat and bootees to my chest, I can still smell her beautiful baby scent and will treasure this for ever until I see my cherished Lara again. Dear Giovanni managed to persuade Lord Montague to spill the beans during a man-to-man discussion, on the proviso that I waited in the car, him not wanting to distress me further, and so I did, clutching the pink teddy that Jimmy had won at the fair.
Lord Montague told Giovanni that Mother and Father have gone to take care of Aunt Rachael in Manhattan. America. They said it was their duty to assist Aunt Rachael as her health is ailing and the children of their society friends in Germany and Poland are relying on her to help them secure safe passage to America and so cannot be expected to endure further suffering, for they are orphans now. Persecuted by Hitler for being Jewish, they have already experienced unimaginable pain and horror in the death camps the Allies have liberated them from.
Lord Montague assured Giovanni that he had arranged everything so Mother, Father and Lara had all the necessary papers to sail in comfort aboard the Queen Mary from Southampton in February. Whilst I cannot begrudge Mother and Father going to the aid of Aunt Rachael and all those who have suffered and now have nothing, they have still stolen my dear daughter from me. For she has been gone already for a whole month, likely never having had the measles, and so on hearing this news I cried openly, howled even, without giving a damn if my distress unnerved Lord Montague.
Grace could bear it no longer and so closed her laptop and stifled a gasp. Pressing her hand over her mouth, overwhelmed at the surge of emotion she felt on reading of Connie’s pain, she let tears trickle down her face and spill onto the table in front of her. How could they? How could Connie’s parents be so cruel as to take her child away? The betrayal enraged Grace. The matter-of-fact way this pompous-sounding Lord Montague had ripped Connie’s heart in two by telling her what he had done. For he did do it. He sent Lara away, whether it was unwittingly or not, he still did it. And so yet again, Connie was let down … no, much more than that, she was deceived by her spiteful, unfeeling parents who clearly had absolutely no regard for their daughter’
s feelings or wishes. Let alone those of her child, their grandchild.
How did this separation affect Lara? Did they even care? And did she even know that Connie was coming for her, to love and cherish her at the start of what could have been a wonderful life in Italy, surrounded by love and people who knew how to have fun and to laugh … not be stuck with a pair of puritanical control freaks thousands of miles away. For it wouldn’t have been like it was now, with flights to America whenever the fancy took you. No, Connie would have been bereft, knowing that it might be years before she could see her only child again. And indeed it was so, because Grace was now convinced that Connie and Giovanni had gone to America to visit Lara, to give her the necklace for her bat mitzvah on her twelfth birthday. So if Lara was born in 1940 and was six years old in 1946, then it would have been another six years before Connie would see her. That’s if she was even allowed to see Lara, but what if she wasn’t? What if Connie’s hateful parents had prevented her, and that’s why she returned with the Star of David necklace and hid it away in her jewellery box …?
‘Why would you do it? Why would you be so cruel?’ Grace whispered to herself as she made her way towards the edge of the balcony. With her elbows perched on the rail she let her body rest forward, cupping her face in her hands, her shoulders taut with sympathy as she imagined Connie’s distress. Then, glancing up, she gazed at the turquoise sky and whispered a silent ‘sorry’ to Connie, before wiping her eyes and resolving to find Lara … no matter what it took. And then at least she could try to reverse some of the damage that Connie’s parents had inflicted upon her. Grace would show Lara the diaries, the letters, the love her mother had for her, and pass on Connie’s carefully stored possessions too, which she was now convinced were all waiting there for Lara to inherit. Connie had gathered everything she had of any value and kept it safe for her daughter to find. All that was left now was for Grace to find Lara. And then she said a silent prayer … please let Lara still be alive.