The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Well,’ his friend said, lighting a cigarette, ‘that went well.’

  Caterina ran up the stairs to the next floor. Up here at the top of the house were her own bedroom and the one that used to be her father’s. It was hot. The sun sprawled over the roof and raised the temperature of these upper rooms, so that sometimes at night it was impossible sleep, but she had always liked it here, high up, next to her father. She didn’t bother with her own room. Instead she immediately opened the door to her father’s bedroom, the handle warm to the touch as though he had been standing there with his hand on it. She forced herself to step inside.

  Since Antonio Lombardi’s death she only entered the room on the first day of each month to dust and fling the windows wide to air it. Always fast. In and out. Nothing had been touched or changed; it was exactly as her father left it the morning the bomb fell on his workshop, and she imagined she could still smell his hair oil, the leather of his boots, the wood-scent that always clung to his skin.

  Caterina began her search, quick and methodical. It was the only room in the house that still possessed a profusion of objects. Elsewhere everything that was non-essential had been sold. But here there were silver-backed hair brushes, leather-bound books, gilt mirrors, photographs in tortoiseshell frames of Luca and herself, and on the walls hung numerous beautiful inlay pictures that her father had created himself. Caterina turned her back on them. She couldn’t bear to look at his work. Instead she set about emptying the drawers of his dressing table, his bedside cabinet and the tallboy and searching through their contents. She found nothing.

  She lifted the mattress. Nothing. She left opening the wardrobe till last because she knew what it would do to her. She rummaged through the clothes, turned over shoes, searching inside them, but there was nothing there that should not be there, not even when she shouldered the wardrobe away from the wall to look behind it. It was with relief that she finally left the room, closed the door behind her and rested her head against its warm oak.

  ‘Papà,’ she murmured. ‘I know you. I am certain you would not have let it all burn.’

  We think we knSow the people we love. But what if she were mistaken? What if the father she had loved all those years was not the man behind the bright laughing eyes and the easy way of smiling? What if she had got it all wrong?

  She inhaled hard and her mind cleared. With clarity came anger. The anger was at the American soldier who felt he had the right to walk into a town and destroy a person’s life without a second thought. Her father was a decent and honest man who would no more connive with thieves or steal what belonged to Italy than he would cut his daughter’s throat.

  How dare Major Parr make her doubt her father for even a heartbeat? She pushed herself away from the door and hurried down the stairs, the sound of her father’s voice fading behind her.

  Her grandfather’s bedroom was next. It was on the same landing as her brother’s but she’d left it till last because she was reluctant to put a foot over the threshold. She knew that Nonno permitted nobody inside. It was his private territory: the bolt hole of a proud blind man within an all-seeing world. He kept the window open and the shutters permanently closed, cleaned it himself and changed his bedding, seeing and feeling with his fingertips. Sometimes Caterina wondered exactly what he saw with them.

  Did he see a grandson who missed his mother and father? Did he see a cane as his way to leave his mark on the world? Or was it that he had lost his only son two years ago and all his rage at that loss was hidden inside his cane, biding its time to strike?

  Nonno was a good man. A family man. A loving grandfather who had taught her as a child how to hold a chisel and had taken her into the fields and up into the mountains to understand that wood was a living thing with branches and leaves, with sap that rose through its veins like its heart’s blood. He had taught her to respect wood. It was her father who taught her to love it.

  She felt like a thief in his room. She switched on the light and worked uneasily, barely touching things, glancing in drawers, sliding a hand under his mattress, kneeling to look under his bed. She found a small leather case of military medals she’d never seen before, and his Bodeo gun under his pillow. Under his pillow? She frowned as her fingers brushed its cold barrel. What was it he feared? A man with a pock-marked face and a gold tooth? Or was it the darkness? Did he fear the black world he inhabited each day?

  Just the wardrobe left. A brief look inside and she’d be finished. But when Caterina opened its door, she was astonished. Alongside the shadowy shapes of suits and shirts and ancient silk waistcoats, tucked in amongst the old-man smells, were piles and piles of shoe-boxes. She felt her pulse quicken. Here she would find the proof she was seeking to push under the American’s nose, the order book she needed to show him he was wrong. To make him apologise. Not to her, but to her father’s good name. If she could drive the American away, then the gold tooth would go with him.

  She lifted each box out of the wardrobe, all eighteen of them, and removed their lids. Her heart sank. Just shoes. Black, brown, tan, white, beige, cream, burgundy, so many shoes he never wore. Some were old and cracked. Others were highly polished and soft as butter, their smooth sheen catching the light. She covered them up again, confused by the profusion of them, aware of the fact that her grandfather wore the same black lace-ups day in, day out. Why all these?

  She checked the bottom of the wardrobe and noticed something there. A small brass ring. Curious, she tried to pick it up but discovered it was attached to the baseboard. She gave it a tug. A section of the baseboard rose in her hand, revealing a compartment beneath, about the size of a roof tile. Inside it lay a book.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Caterina sat at the kitchen table, determined to find out the truth. The book lay in front of her and her hand rested on its surface. The cover was a rainbow of burgundy and black, the twin of the order book that had burned in the workshop fire, except that this one was smaller. She opened it to the first page.

  There were columns, as she’d known there would be, and she scanned them with care. Names of clients on the right, ordered items on the left and their dates. In the middle there was one column for materials and one for costs. The words blurred as she stared at them, but her fingers lingered on the ink, sliding her skin over her father’s neat small writing – an accountant’s penmanship, it had always seemed to her. She could smell the tobacco from his pipe.

  The rich aroma was an illusion, she knew that, but still she looked quickly around the kitchen and felt the bite of disappointment at not finding him there. It was a dreary kitchen. A few plain cupboards lined the walls and a pine shelf, all utilitarian. Gone were the handsome cabinets that Papà had lovingly crafted and decorated with inlay for her mother, sold to pay for repairing the roof last winter. Only the walnut table remained with its fine scrolled legs and intricately grained surface that bore the marks of her childhood imprinted on it.

  She turned the page. And then another, her eyes greedy, and the memories came tumbling into her mind, crisp and colourful. A cabinet for Signor Lucente. A desk for Signor Vietti. A cigar box. A galleried tray. A pair of high-backed chairs. Wall panels. Tables of all shapes and sizes. A serving trolley. A coat stand. A set of library steps. And yes, the extraordinary birdcage for Madame Blanchard, the French dressmaker. All inlaid. All exquisite. Caterina remembered each one, the way you remember old friends.

  A child’s crib for Signora Marinelli.

  A travelling chest for Dottore Trento.

  The pages flicked past, faster now. She could feel the warmth of her father’s breath on the back of her neck, the way she used to when he leaned over her shoulder, observing the manner in which she wielded a chisel or pressed the tip of a gouger to a channel.

  ‘Patience, my daughter,’ he would whisper. ‘Have patience with your fingers. Have patience with the wood.’

  1939. That was the year these orders were written into the book. It was the year before Italy entered the war in Europ
e, but already the tourists had dried to no more than a trickle. No one came to buy the musical boxes she was making then.

  ‘Don’t fret, Caterina,’ her father had reassured her. ‘The war will be over quickly and people will always want pretty things.’

  But Papà was wrong. The next year everything changed. Italy entered the war, Mussolini sliding smoothly into Hitler’s back pocket, and it was the end of business for the Lombardi family. Her father’s TB lung meant he was not called up for military service but Caterina at sixteen had been required to work in the hated uniform factory. Suddenly the orders in the book dried up. The decoration of a piano in September. Nothing more till a small jewellery box at Christmas and then a firescreen and she remembered how hard it was for her to work mother-of-pearl for the first time, inlaying a white egret into the design. Papà had been patient. He was always patient.

  Then nothing. The order book was blank for months. What had they lived on? What paid the bills? Certainly not her pittance of a wage. They must have lived off her father’s savings, year after year.

  No wonder all the money went. The bank manager had summoned her to his office after the funeral and informed her there was Niente. Nothing. He had lifted his hands in despair before replacing them on the snug cushion of his stomach. The account was overdrawn. With a drooping moustache, he declared there was not even enough to pay for the funeral. Caterina had sold everything she could lay her hands on, but as the years ticked past, they were slowly starving.

  Now the guns had fallen silent. The screams had ceased, and the tears had stopped. The war was over and the soldiers were here. Whether they were English, American, Australian or French, Caterina didn’t care, as long as they wanted to take one of her musical boxes back home to their loved ones.

  ‘I made it, Papà. I got us through this accursed war after you’d gone. But I need you now.’ She laid her palm flat on the page. ‘I need you to help me, to tell me what today was all about. What were you doing, Papà? I am afraid.’

  But she refused to allow a foreign soldier to blacken her father’s name or threaten his family. She plucked out a serrated knife from the knife drawer and sliced its blade across the muscled pad of her thumb, let it taste her blood. A thin red ribbon emerged and she pressed down hard on the page of the order book.

  ‘I promise to prove you are innocent, Papà. A blood promise.’ With sudden impatience she skipped to the last page of entries, and it was there. She found what she had been hoping for, as she read across the columns.

  Table. Wedding gift. Bird’s eye maple. And jewels. The cost column lay empty. In the right hand column was written the name Count di Marco, Villa dei Cesari, Capri.

  She leapt to her feet, dizzy with fear. The American was right about the table.

  Bird’s eye maple. And jewels.

  Jewels?

  At that moment a loud knock on the front door rattled through the house, startling her. She snatched up the order book and thrust it into a kitchen cupboard, right at the back behind the stewpot, her limbs rigid as she walked to the door.

  Caterina swung open the door. What she saw was an army uniform. All polished buttons, shoulder epaulettes and a heavy leather belt with a brass buckle that gleamed at her. He was back. She almost shut the door on him, but she blinked in time and realised that the uniform was British, not American, and the hair under the officer’s cap was fair, not dark. The eyes were blue and friendly. It wasn’t Major Parr.

  ‘Buongiorno. I’m Harry Fielding.’ The soldier’s smile was respectful. ‘We met yesterday.’

  ‘I remember you.’

  She didn’t open the door any further.

  ‘I know it’s a bit of an intrusion, but I understand that you had a talk with Major Parr this morning.’ He paused. She passed no comment. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You know it’s right.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He made a small gesture with his hand, apologetic. There was something gentle about this soldier, and about the set of his jaw. ‘But I would like to have a chat with you myself in private, if I may?’

  ‘What about?’

  One of his blond eyebrows lifted. ‘You know what it’s about, Signorina Lombardi.’

  She thought about saying no. This soldier was kinder than the American, more subtle in his approach, but he was here for the exact same purpose. Two women from the next street ambled past, swinging their hips, and eyed the handsome captain on her doorstep with interest, beaming at him when he touched his cap to them.

  ‘Come in,’ Caterina said sharply.

  ‘Grazie.’

  She permitted him into the tiled hallway, but she didn’t want him nosing around her house or staring, as he was doing now, at the set of portraits on the wall.

  ‘They’re beautiful.’

  ‘I doubt that Winston Churchill has ever been called beautiful before,’ she responded.

  He laughed, a soft refined chuckle that suited him. He had well-cut features and thick pale eyelashes. She couldn’t imagine him firing a gun. The portraits on the wall were of the wartime leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Stalin, Emperor Hirohito and, in the shadowy corner, the fanatical face of Adolf Hitler himself. They were created out of fine fragments of wood, inlaid slivers of veneer using more than fifty different varieties of wood to give shape and shade and texture to each face.

  ‘Your father was a true artist to do such fine work,’ Captain Fielding said sincerely. ‘You must be proud of him.’

  Caterina turned away. She did not want this man in the house and certainly nowhere near the kitchen cupboards, so without a word she led him down the corridor to the back of the house. In her mind stretched the hundreds of hours she had spent creating those portraits herself. It was during the war, after her factory shift each day, when the bombers droned overhead and her emotions ran high.

  They stepped out into a small courtyard that sat in the centre of the group of tall thin houses. There was a cobweb of iron stairs that zigzagged between floors, and slabs of black basalt underfoot that had soaked up the heat of the morning. A glossy-leafed lemon tree scented the air and a riot of magenta bougainvillea blooms sunned themselves in the triangle of light that slid over the roof.

  ‘This is pretty,’ Harry Fielding said with surprise.

  Caterina steered him over to an oak table and chairs that stood in the shade.

  ‘Please sit down.’

  It was easier with him sitting down, not as much uniform to stare at. He removed his cap which left an indentation across his forehead and there were beads of sweat gleaming among the short blond hairs at his temples.

  ‘What is it you want to chat about?’

  ‘Major Parr informed me that he has spoken with you about your father.’

  ‘Whatever it is that you and your Major Parr believe my father has done, you are wrong. He would never . . .’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to talk with you. You are Signor Lombardi’s daughter, so you of all people are in the perfect position to clarify what was going on. We could be mistaken.’

  He smiled and it was reassuring. This Captain Fielding was easy to like. His edges were smooth and his smile was warm. But she didn’t want to like him.

  We could be mistaken, he’d said.

  It gave her hope.

  ‘My father would never do anything so despicable.’

  The Englishman nodded, as if he accepted her word. He reached into a leather satchel at his side and took out a packet, which he placed on the table. It was coffee. He slid it across the table.

  ‘For you.’

  The rich heavy aroma that seeped from the packet made Caterina’s stomach clench and sent a craving for caffeine fizzing through her blood. This was real coffee, not the bitter makeshift sawdust she bought yesterday. Firmly she pushed it back to his side of the table.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He glanced from her to the coffee, surprised. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as if he had insulted her and he pushed the packet to one side.

/>   ‘Why are you here?’

  He smiled patiently. ‘I told you. To listen to your side of the story. I’m not convinced by the accusations that I’ve been hearing from a bunch of thieves and crooks.’

  ‘Major Parr is convinced.’

  ‘I know. But these men who are pointing the finger at your father would sell their own sweet mother to save their blasted skins. Believe me.’ He frowned. He seemed on edge. ‘They’d hang if I had any say in it.’

  It stunned her. The sudden brutality of the statement. Yet when she recalled the thick arm looped around her neck in the street doorway, she found herself nodding. Yes, hang them, if that’s what it takes.

  Captain Fielding was regarding her narrowly and only then did she realise she had spoken it aloud. Yes, hang them.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘Just small fry. Men involved in trading stolen ancient artefacts. Small links in the chain who panic when we haul them in and interrogate them. The big criminals stay in the shadows.’

  ‘I can’t help you.’

  She shut her mouth tight before more words fell out. About a man with a white slash in his hair and a desire to kill in his eyes. She placed a hand over her lips to keep them closed because if the words tumbled out, it would be Nonno or Luca who suffered. He had made that clear. She clenched her teeth tight. Captain Harry Fielding was giving her a hard stare, as though he had heard something not quite right in her voice. He closed his hands together on the table and looked down at them.

  ‘When I was fourteen,’ he told her, ‘I was at boarding school in Marlborough in England, a lovely ancient red-brick town. One afternoon my headmaster summoned me to his study to tell me that my father had shot himself.’

  Caterina could not silence her gasp.

  ‘It was 1929. Just after the Wall Street crash,’ he continued in a flat tone. ‘Pa had lost everything. Oh, my headmaster was kind and considerate, but nothing prepares you for the shock of losing your father.’ He spoke softly. ‘I know that.’