The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  The match arced through the air, flaring as it sucked in more oxygen, a firefly in the gloom. By the time it hit the oil and uttered a roar of pleasure, Caterina had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jake saw Caterina flying up the street towards him, speeding past pedestrians, wings on her heels. She was late, but she looked unstoppable in her too-big grey dress that billowed out behind her. He adjusted the muscles of his face to hide the rush of relief he felt that she had returned to him in one piece and opened the car door for her.

  ‘Nice shoes,’ he commented.

  ‘I didn’t steal them.’

  She didn’t enter the car immediately but instead stood on its running-board, inspecting him slowly from head to foot and then the small vehicle. He was wearing no uniform, just a soft white shirt, sleeves rolled up, cream slacks and canvas shoes, and the vehicle was a black Lancia Aprilia that had seen better days. She nodded approval.

  ‘Nice camouflage,’ she said with a smile, and slid into the passenger seat.

  He had brought trouble into her life ten days ago when he marched into her Sorrento workshop in his uniform, and he had no intention of doing so again this time, so he had discarded the khaki. He drove rapidly through Naples, aware of the extra polizia on street corners and military boots patrolling the piazzas. They were jumpy, nervous of another bomb. He didn’t point them out to Caterina but knew she would notice. Her sharp eyes missed little.

  A jagged wall from a bombed building had collapsed in Via Foriaso, which meant he had to do a detour through the backstreets behind the pedimented National Museum, but after that he put his foot down. The Lancia wheezed its way up the hills, rattling its windows in their sockets, and as they climbed, the wind off the blue waters of the bay snaked into the car, ruffling Caterina’s short hair and bringing the smell of wide horizons to them, instead of the stink of the city.

  They had just squeezed their way through the narrow streets of the flower-strewn village of Sant’Agnello when Jake asked outright, ‘Who was the curly-haired sheep you danced with last night at the nightclub?’

  ‘No one,’ she replied, staring ahead.

  ‘Does this no one have a name and a purpose?’

  ‘No.’

  Jake sighed. ‘His name is Giulio Macchione and he works for his father in the wine export business. More to the point, he is the brother of the ex-fiancé of your friend on Capri, Leonora di Marco.’

  He paused. It was a risk. This display. She might open the car door and leap out, or draw around her an armour of silence. He couldn’t predict. His gaze was fixed on the tight switchbacks that made the road feel alive, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Caterina turn her head to stare at him. She said nothing. Just stared. He could feel the heat of it on his cheek.

  ‘Okay,’ he admitted. ‘I checked the guy out.’

  She laughed, a real laugh that brightened the dowdy car.

  ‘Have you heard of the Caesar Club?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ He slid a glance at her. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It seems it might be involved in all this. Giulio Macchione is a member and claims it is nothing more than a Naples drinking club. You might see what more you can dig up on it, Mr Police Officer.’ Her damaged arm reached out and lightly her fingers touched the bare expanse of his forearm. They felt like feathers. Warm feathers on his skin.

  ‘I will make enquiries,’ he told her.

  ‘Discreetly.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Her fingers vanished. He became businesslike.

  ‘I will take you home first and then meet you at the bell tower. We should discuss what could have happened to the jewelled table if it did manage to survive the explosion in the workshop.’

  She wound down the window and let the sage-scented air buffet her face. ‘If it was ever there in the first place,’ she said softly and turned to him. ‘Are you all right? Should you be in hospital?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He shot a scowl at her. ‘Don’t I look all right to you?’

  She was smiling. ‘No. No, you don’t.’

  Caterina let Jake drop her at her house. At the end of the dusty street, to be exact. She wasn’t going to risk him getting her grandfather’s machete in his face for keeping her out all night. The heat was intense despite the shadows that packed the narrow space, and she looked forward to tearing off the heavy grey dress that had welded itself to her back. But she had scarcely laid her hand on the front door when it swung open and her grandfather’s firm grip dragged her inside the house. Instantly his fingers were on her face, feeling its curves and planes, scouring the surface of her skin with his calluses.

  ‘Where are the tears?’ he bellowed at her. ‘Where are the tears of remorse?’

  His breath smelled of too many cigarettes, she noticed, even while he rocked her head from side to side, as if to tear it off.

  ‘Where are the cries for forgiveness, Caterina Lombardi, for dancing your decency away in a nightclub in Naples, for letting grown men paw you?’ He shook her harder. ‘For staying out all night while your grandfather wept with shame for your honour.’

  Caterina placed her hands over his and pulled them from her face. Her cheeks were scarlet. He would know, despite his empty eyes, he would know by the heat of her skin.

  ‘Nonno, what do you know about my being in a nightclub in Naples?’

  He said nothing, but Caterina jerked free and swung towards the doorway of the living room. She could smell her. Even before she saw her, she could smell her. Her lies. Her perfume.

  ‘Hello, Mamma.’

  The air in the room was thick with a grey shroud of cigarette smoke. Her mother must have been there for some hours.

  Go away. That’s what Caterina wanted to say. Go away, Lucia Lombardi, before you rip my heart up through my throat and leave it bleeding in the dirt like you did eleven years ago.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

  ‘Is that the way to greet your Mamma, my precious bella?’

  Her mother’s full scarlet lips were set into a gentle smile, her voice smooth and silky as she rose from her seat and held out her arms.

  Don’t. Inside her head Caterina shouted the word at herself. Don’t move. Remain here in the doorway. Where she cannot touch you. Cannot blind you to her lies, cannot lay a trail of honey. There were tears glistening in her mother’s eyes as she stood poised, unmoving, her arms extended to her daughter in entreaty. No, Caterina thought, you do not trick me so easily. But her feet betrayed her and stepped forward.

  She had no recollection of crossing the distance between them. She stepped forward and felt her mother’s arms enfold her in the embrace she had dreamed of ten thousand times at night with only her pillow as witness. Her mother’s skin felt like gossamer against her cheek, softer than she had remembered, and her caress sent treacherous shivers of pleasure rippling through Caterina.

  ‘It’s such a shame that you’ve ruined your lovely long hair,’ her mother murmured.

  Carefully Caterina removed that stiletto from her heart and stepped back. Her mother had twisted her hair up into a sleek knot at the back of her head, her eyebrows were blonde and plucked to a thin line but her long eyelashes were dark. She wore a black dress, stylish and Rome-cut, with elegant cap sleeves and a dropped waist that skimmed her hips. She was slender but not thin. No hollows in her cheeks, no shortage of meat or cheese in her firm flesh. Caterina knew she was forty-one, but she looked younger, except for her eyes. There was nothing girlish about those steel-blue eyes.

  ‘You’ve seen her,’ her grandfather growled at Lucia Lombardi from the doorway. ‘Now get out.’

  ‘No,’ her mother said quickly. ‘Don’t be so cruel.’

  ‘Signora, you betrayed my son. You dragged the Lombardi name through the dirt. You deserted your children.’ His voice was rising, strung tight with rage. ‘Get out of my house and never come back.’

  She turned a sad smile on Caterina. ‘Is that what you want too, my darling daught
er?’ She put out a hand, palm up in gentle entreaty. ‘Forgive me.’

  Forgive me?

  This time Caterina’s feet didn’t let her down but did exactly what they were told. They walked over to her grandfather and she stood beside him shoulder to shoulder, and all the words inside her head remained locked there. They couldn’t escape.

  ‘Get out,’ Nonno said once more.

  Her mother’s smile faltered, struggled to remain on her lips, but failed.

  Why was she wearing black? The question slipped into Caterina’s head. In mourning for her dead husband? Her dead Cavaleri lover? Her dead German general lover? Or someone else? A thousand someone elses, for all Caterina knew, and she held on to that thought like armour to ward off the blue eyes.

  ‘My son,’ Lucia Lombardi said suddenly, her tone bright and determined. ‘Luca. Where is my son, Luca?’

  ‘Out on the fishing boats.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘This evening.’

  ‘Then I shall return.’

  ‘No,’ Nonno raged, rapping his cane on the floor like a gunshot. ‘You will not return, Lucia Lombardi. Stay away from this house. You bring nothing but pain and misery to this family. Your son does not need you.’ His muscles were clenching and unclenching under the loose folds of skin on his face.

  ‘Nonno, Luca has a right to see his mother.’

  ‘No! Never!’

  ‘You are a cantankerous pig-headed bastard,’ Lucia Lombardi hissed and strode past him to the front door.

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘Ah, my Caterina, I hoped to stay here. So who knows?’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘Perhaps I will sleep in the gutter.’

  The door slammed behind her.

  Jake observed the mother as she emerged from the house and strutted towards the far end of the street. Judging by the speed with which her black high heels were clicking on the paving slabs, things hadn’t gone well. He stubbed out his cigarette and fell into step beside her.

  ‘Hello again, Signora Lombardi.’

  She flashed a glance of irritation at him, clearly not welcoming the intrusion. ‘Go away.’

  ‘Did you leave your daughter in one piece?’

  ‘Go to hell.’ She said it easily. As if she said it often.

  ‘Not yet. I have some questions to ask first.’

  She stopped walking and stared straight at him, hands on hips. ‘I remember you, soldier, even without your fancy uniform. You are the lover boy who kept my daughter out all night.’

  ‘I brought her home, that’s all.’ He considered adding, ‘I’m the one who saved your life last night,’ but he rethought that. Instead he asked in a casual way, ‘Tell me, Signora Lombardi, did your husband ever confide in you where he kept the antiques he was restoring? A secret storeroom somewhere?’

  Her hand lashed out and would have slammed into his left cheek, but he caught it, his fingers tight on her wrist. Anger made her eyes flat and colourless. Before he could start to release his hold on her, her other hand shot up and smacked his right cheek. Hard. The jagged pieces still loose inside his head from last night’s explosion crashed together and stabbed into the back of his eyeballs. Her laugh was quick, light and stiletto sharp. Her arm coiled itself through his, her face turned up to him appealingly, her mouth soft.

  ‘Soldier boy,’ she said, ‘you don’t get anything in this tawdry life for nothing. There is always a price to pay. You deserved the slap for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.’ She paused and stroked his battered cheek. She ruffled her shoulder against him in a good imitation of contentment. ‘Let’s get a drink, soldier.’

  ‘The question is, signora, do you have anything worth selling?’

  She laughed. Threw her head back and laughed with a freedom that was infectious, so that Jake was smiling as they walked down the street, her arm still through his. He heard a sound behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of the figure of Caterina standing in her doorway, her face as grey as her dress. She was watching him.

  Lucia Lombardi led him to a bar. Not in Piazza Tasso for everyone to see. No, this was tucked out of sight in the shadow of Sorrento’s ancient town wall, a tiny dark room with four rickety metal chairs outside jammed against the crumbling stucco for shade. Inside, two men in work clothes stained by cigarettes and sweat were hunched over beers at a counter and a half-bald goat on a tether lay in a blade of sunlight that sliced through the shutters. Lucia perched in a corner on a high stool which showed off her fine legs and drew the gaze of the bar owner when he brought the drinks.

  While her hands were occupied – an espresso in one and a grappa in the other – Jake risked the question again but he was all prepared to duck if the coffee came his way. ‘Did your husband have a secret storeroom?’

  ‘No.’ She downed her coffee, and the shot glass of grappa followed on its heels. She licked her lips. It was hard not to watch, she did it so expertly. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  The expression on her face was relaxed, with a professional friendliness to it that made Jake wonder what she’d been up to since the Germans pulled out. But there was tension in the hair-line creases around her eyes, a tautness that betrayed her. He could spot the lie before it came.

  ‘It was the Cavaleri family who had all the secrets,’ she said in a voice low enough to force him to move closer. ‘Not the Lombardis.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that black-hearted old witch, Signora Augusta Cavaleri. It’s no wonder her son’s wife committed suicide. I would too if I had to live with that evil old crone. She is a gaoler to her sons.’

  ‘Signora, as I understand it,’ he pointed out, ‘Roberto Cavaleri’s wife took her own life because you ran off to Rome with her husband.’

  She smiled, wide and nonchalant. ‘Yes, there was that too, I suppose.’

  She sat straight-backed on her stool, composed in her elegant black frock. He offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. The awful thing was that he found himself liking her, even though he didn’t want to like her, this woman who had deserted her children.

  ‘What secrets,’ he queried, ‘did the Cavaleri family have?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the Cavaleri witch herself.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  She shrugged. ‘If I knew them, they wouldn’t be secrets any more, I promise you that.’

  Quietly in the dim smoky bar, he questioned her about her husband, Antonio Lombardi, and to his surprise, she answered. Crisp and precise. Antonio’s business was intarsia, a form of wood-inlay, and to her astonishment he had become renowned, with customers coming from all over Italy, all over the world. Americans were passionate about his work. He’d spent his life scouring through catalogues for rare veneers. Yes, parcels came and went, but no, she never enquired about them, and she detested his workshop. Never went there. A place for donkeys, for people who thought with their hands instead of their heads.

  But when he mentioned the daughter, it was a different matter. That subject ruffled her smooth feathers and she withdrew another cigarette from his pack on the table, shrugging her shapely shoulders again.

  ‘Antonio was an idealist,’ she remarked, using the term as an insult. ‘Not a realist. He hated Mussolini and his Fascists with a fury that would summon the demons from hell. It’s why that daughter of mine idolised her father. They both believed that all the world’s ills could be cured.’

  ‘What drew you to come back here now?’ he asked.

  She snapped her fingers at the barman and another grappa materialised in front of her which she drank down. ‘My daughter and son, of course.’ She narrowed her cool blue eyes at him. ‘I miss them.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I need a job,’ she stated. ‘The Pompeii Club is closed for repairs because of that filthy bomb.’

  So that was it.

  ‘A body has to eat.’ She glanced at the empty glass on the table. ‘And drink.’ Her scarlet lips spread i
n a teasing smile. ‘You Yanks hold this country’s purse-strings now.’ She slid her fingers over his hand.

  Jake rose to his feet, brushing off her touch.

  ‘I will see if I can find you work,’ he promised.

  ‘Not donkey work. Something decent. In Naples.’

  He nodded. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘You can leave a message for me at the Pompeii nightclub.’ She flashed her tongue across her lips.

  ‘Have you heard of the Caesar Club?’

  She frowned, making one beautifully arched brow swoop down. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  She was lying. Exquisitely done.

  ‘Does the name Drago Vincelli mean anything to you?’ he asked.

  This time it was as though he’d slapped her pale cheek. Her head rocked back and her elegant black dress seemed to grow limp, a loose strand of blonde hair trailing down her cheek. The sheen was all a disguise, he realised. A good disguise, but still a disguise. Underneath it Jake now caught a glimpse of someone else, someone who wanted to put her head on the table and weep.

  ‘What is it?’ He took her hand and it lay curled in a tight ball, the scarlet nails sunk into his palm. ‘What did Drago Vincelli do?’

  Time slowed. Stretched. Each blink of her eye took an age.

  ‘Drago Vincelli,’ Lucia Lombardi spat a silvery jet of scorn on the grubby tiles of the floor, ‘is the reason I left Sorrento.’

  Caterina was there, waiting for him. As he sprinted up Corso Italia he spotted her standing at the base of the Byzantine bell tower. It rose above her like an elaborate red and yellow wedding cake, tiers and arches piled on top of each other, dwarfing her small figure in the plain cinnamon dress. She looked tense and angry. She knew he was late because he had spent so long with her mother and that was something, he suspected, she was not in a hurry to forgive.

  He stepped out of the harsh glare of the sun and joined her in the shady archway.

  ‘Okay,’ he said briskly, ‘we have work to do. Let’s go.’

  She didn’t move, her face still as stone. ‘You don’t have to help me, Jake. You can go and join Harry Fielding and your unit up in the hills at Sant’Agata.’ She was speaking softly, staring out at a child on the street struggling to carry a watermelon bigger than her head. ‘That’s where you’re meant to be, isn’t it?’