The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Don’t,’ he said sharply.

  Her gaze jumped to his face.

  ‘Don’t act,’ he continued, ‘as if we’re not in this together. We have six more days. On the seventh day I don’t want to scoop you out of the harbour in a net, so I am here doing the job I’m good at. And if that means questioning your mother – or your brother or your grandfather – then that’s what I do. Understand?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She came forward and for a brief moment she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. He felt the weight of it, the heat of it through his white shirt.

  He took her hand. ‘Let’s go.’

  A priest moved down the aisle in his black robe. In his hands he was carrying a vase of lilies and humming quietly to himself. Jake recognised the piece at once. It was Haydn’s The Creation and it made his fingers itch for the feel of piano ivory. He had ducked into Sorrento cathedral with Caterina to avoid a crowd of rowdy GIs who were approaching along Corsa Italia, several of whom he recognised. Colonel Quincy believed him to be still in the military hospital, so he had no wish to advertise his presence here in Sorrento.

  The cathedral was a plain boxy building from the outside, no great architectural enticement, but its interior was a glorious display of marble arches, intarsia panels and Renaissance frescoes.

  ‘Did my mother tell you why she came?’ Caterina asked.

  ‘Yes, she did. She said she had come here to see you. And your brother. She says she was missing you.’

  He thought she would be happy at that, and might even allow herself a flicker of pleasure that her mother, after all these years, wanted to spend time with her and Luca, but he was wrong. She snatched away her hand. Disgust settled in her eyes.

  ‘She is lying,’ Caterina announced. ‘But you can’t see it. She has snared you, like she snares every man.’

  She turned her head away and wouldn’t look at him.

  They were polite to each other. That was the best that could be said. Caterina felt the politeness like ice on her skin and she wanted to take a blowtorch to it. They were in her workshop, seated on stools on opposite sides of her worktable, and as they discussed a plan of action, each word was dipped in politeness before being handed across the table. Jake had a pen and small pad in front of him and jotted down notes. It looked efficient and professional, a routine he must have done a thousand times before, and it gave Caterina confidence.

  ‘Thank you for your help, Jake,’ she said politely. But she meant it.

  He looked up from his pad, surprised. His eyes were bloodshot and there were white patches around his mouth as if the blood was slowly draining out of him. Caterina felt a lurch of alarm and threw down her pencil.

  ‘Go home, Jake. Go to bed.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  They had set out the plan, starting at the beginning with Antonio Lombardi’s workshop again. Jake had drawn the short straw for that task, to revisit it and make enquiries of its neighbours and to put in a request to view the police report on it. But Caterina understood that right now what Jake needed was rest. She walked round the table, removed the pen from his hand, tucked it in his breast-pocket with a gentle tap, and closed his pad.

  ‘Jake, go home.’ She touched his springy hair. ‘You’re no use like this. We’ll start again tomorrow.’

  ‘Every hour counts.’

  She took his stubborn face between her hands and kissed his lips, tasted coffee and exhaustion on them.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ she whispered. ‘Go home.’

  Caterina jerked awake. Her hand had gripped a chisel even before her eyelids opened. The banging on the door had wrenched her off the cliff-face she was climbing in her dreams, and her mouth was dry, her limbs tense. She realised she was in her workshop, slumped over the work-table, the scent of linseed oil in her nostrils.

  She sat up and the banging came again. She advanced towards the door on silent feet in her soft new shoes, chisel-point out in front of her. It was almost dark outside, the last rays of the sun sliding through the high slatted window. The door was locked and bolted, and she stepped to the hinge side of it, so that she would be behind any assailant who burst in. She listened hard.

  ‘Are you there, Caterina?’

  It was Jake.

  She unbolted the door and threw it open. He was there in the doorway. His dark hair tousled by the wind.

  ‘Jake! What are you doing back here?’

  There was an air of exhilaration about him. He was still out of uniform, smiling at her and when he saw the weapons in her hands, the smile stretched into a broad grin.

  ‘Expecting me, were you?’ he laughed.

  She threw them on the table. ‘So why are you back here? I ordered you to bed.’

  ‘So you did. And I obeyed.’ She could see his eyes were clearer and his skin less grey. ‘But the only medicine I need is right here, Caterina.’

  For one fleeting moment she forgot the struggle to protect her family, she forgot the white blaze in black hair, she forgot her mother’s hard eyes and Sal Sardo’s indecent scarlet smile. All she could think of was the way he said her name. As if it belonged there on his tongue. As if he would devour it.

  He was standing still, just staring at her and the heat of it warmed a locked placed inside her that had been cold ever since the day eleven years ago when she had searched for her grandfather in the rain.

  ‘Jake, I’m sorry I was rude in the church earlier. I would take the words back if I could.’

  ‘You can make it up to me.’

  She gave him a slow smile. ‘What do you have in mind, Major Parr?’

  ‘I thought you might like to come out for a meal tonight. I found a great eating place up in one of the mountain villages and . . .’ He was talking too fast. He stopped and said more formally, ‘I’d be delighted if you would come to dinner with me, Caterina.’

  She thought about it for no more than half a second. ‘Thank you, Jake. I’d like that. But first I need to change my dress.’

  His eyes studied her carefully from head to toe. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you look perfect to me.’

  Caterina raised her glass and felt the knots loosen at the back of her neck. There were movements out there in the darkness and each one quickened her heartbeat, but it was the rustling of the leaves, she told herself. A bat flitting through the olive grove. An owl. Nothing more.

  ‘Jake, tell me something you did as a child that was bad.’

  He laughed easily.

  ‘That’s a long list you’re asking for there.’

  ‘Just one will do.’

  ‘Well, there was the time I went skating on the ice on the lake when I’d been told not to. It was too thin.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘And?’

  ‘The ice broke and I crashed through. I tell you, those waters of Lake Michigan are damn freezing in the winter.’ He laughed again and drank a mouthful of the local smoky gragnano wine. ‘I lived to tell the tale though.’

  ‘Not so bad then, after all.’

  ‘Except I took my kid brother with me. He nearly drowned.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Little rascal never stopped reminding me of that fact afterwards whenever he wanted something.’

  She liked that he had a brother. Someone close.

  There was a small hesitation, not much, but enough, and suddenly she cursed herself for asking.

  ‘He died at the Battle of Aachen in Germany last year.’

  ‘Oh Jake, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s war, Caterina. It happens.’

  That was all. But he knocked back the rest of his wine and signalled to the proprietress for another bottle. They were seated on a terrace high up on a mountainside, the silvery olive groves rolling away down into the darkness of the valley floor. Lemon trees, rich and glossy, spread a latticework of fruit and branches over their heads in the cheerful little trattoria, scenting the air and keeping the evening mosquitoes at bay. A candle shimmered on the table between them.

 
She had relished the meal of cannelloni ai funghi porcini and their easy flow of conversation about anything that had absolutely nothing to do with Sorrento or Naples. He informed her that the Kentucky Derby had just been won by Eddie Arcaro on Hoop Jr which made him a few bucks and she discovered that he liked Frank Sinatra songs and Ingrid Bergman films. But now, with the coffee, the darkness seemed to draw nearer.

  It was when they were alone on the terrace, and he leaned over to light her cigarette, his dark head close to hers, that he said in a low voice, ‘I dug up some stuff on the Caesar Club.’

  She exhaled a skein of smoke. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘They meet in the Palazzo Rudolfo. A drinking club, by all accounts.’

  She frowned. Shook her head.

  ‘But listen to this,’ he added quickly. ‘It was set up in 1922.’

  She waited. She could feel his excitement, see his breath on the candle flame.

  ‘What else happened in 1922?’ he prompted.

  ‘Mussolini and his Fascists came to power.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘There’s a connection?’

  ‘There could be.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There’s more.’

  She put out a hand and wrapped it tight around his on the table.

  ‘Caterina, I trawled through all the Naples police records I could lay my hands on, going back to 1922.’ He rolled his dark eyes with impatience. ‘They are in total chaos but I found the recorded thefts of antiquities from churches and museums. Guess what?’

  ‘They rose after 1922.’

  ‘Bull’s eye.’

  ‘That’s quite a connection you’re making there.’ She could feel his hand clench.

  He treated her to a cool police officer’s smile. ‘Let’s see where this takes us.’ He drew on his cigarette, focused on the thoughts in his head. ‘What if this group of men could see from the start that Mussolini would destroy Italy’s economy, so they started building a nest egg for themselves, organising the stealing and selling of priceless works of art. Against the day when the country was bankrupt and their businesses collapsed.’

  Caterina nodded slowly. ‘Yes, you could be right. They didn’t know a war would come and make everything even easier for them, with bombed churches and palazzos. You could stroll along a Naples street and pocket a Renaissance silver candlestick, if you had a mind to.’

  ‘And then we came. The Allied Forces.’

  She smiled at him, touched his cheek, and ran a finger along the line of his jaw. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she murmured.

  ‘To spoil it for them.’

  She raised her glass. ‘To spoiling it for them.’

  He touched his glass to hers. She knew what was coming next, but she didn’t want to hear the words on his lips. Not now. With the cicadas and tree frogs singing their love songs in the soft night air and her hand wrapped around his.

  ‘Your father,’ he said.

  She put down her glass.

  ‘Let’s talk about your father.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Caterina.’

  She looked out at the night. Somewhere a fox barked. ‘He belonged to the Caesar Club,’ she said flatly. ‘So did Roberto Cavaleri and Orlando Bartoli, the jeweller.’

  She heard Jake’s intake of breath. He hadn’t known about Bartoli’s membership.

  ‘All dead,’ she said.

  ‘The only death that could be connected to the club is Orlando Bartoli’s.’

  ‘But if my father was hiding a fortune away somewhere, I haven’t seen it.’

  The weight of her admission that her father was the thief that Jake believed him to be crushed something in her. She could taste the betrayal like acid on her tongue and she drank her wine, all of it, swilling the bitterness from her mouth.

  ‘He was selfish,’ she said. ‘Without honour.’

  ‘Have you asked your grandfather about what happened?’

  She shook her head. ‘He refuses to talk about it. But I will try again.’

  Jake refilled her glass but she pushed her chair back and stood up, taking the few paces to the rail at the edge of the terrace, moving closer to the darkness.

  With her back to Jake, she whispered, ‘Beware of me, Jake. I have a father who was a traitor, robbing his country of its treasures, and a mother who destroyed a family. Not just mine. The Cavaleri family. It is because of her that a woman committed suicide and their business was ruined.’

  She heard his step behind her, felt his arms wrap around her, his broad chest warm against her back. He kissed her hair. ‘I’ll take my chances,’ he said.

  ‘Beware of me. I mean it, Jake. There are things in me that I didn’t know were there. Things I am capable of doing to protect my family.’

  ‘Caterina,’ he said softly, ‘we are all capable of things we never dream of. But I am here with you.’ She turned to face him within the circle of his embrace, her lips finding his as he murmured, ‘Whatever needs to be done, we will do it together.’

  Caterina waited. Despite the late hour, the room was stifling. A wind had blown up straight from the heart of Africa, hot as the devil’s breath, and was rattling the shutters. She was waiting for Luca to go to bed and for her grandfather to finish listening to the wireless. For the right small space of time to open up.

  Or was she waiting because she did not want to ask the question?

  She couldn’t tell.

  ‘Nonno.’

  The white head lifted to her voice, his lined face turned towards her, just as it used to in the days when his eyes were not covered with a milky white film.

  ‘Nonno, what do you know about Drago Vincelli and Papà working together?’

  The old man flinched as though she had hit him with his stick and the glass of warm lemon-water that he was drinking spilled over his shirt-front, but he didn’t shout, didn’t even raise his voice. Instead he held out his hand.

  ‘Caterina, come here.’

  She left her seat and crouched down on her heels in front of her grandfather in his carved armchair. His gnarled hands reached out and stroked her spiky hair, smoothing it flat as though to quieten her thoughts, while the other hand touched her face. His fingertips felt for the knots under her skin, between her brows, under her eyes, at the corners of her mouth. Reading her face. His fingers saw better than most people’s eyes and after a minute of silence he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. The gentleness of it touched her. She wrapped her hands firmly around his and lifted them to her lips.

  ‘Nonno, help me. This family is in danger. I need to know more about what happened back then.’

  But his hands broke free from hers. One came down firmly over her mouth, silencing her, the other rested on her eyes, holding them shut.

  ‘Don’t, little one. Silence. See with your mind, not your eyes.’

  She made a sound of protest behind his broad fingers.

  ‘Silence,’ he whispered, ‘is the only answer.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hell and damnation!

  The chairman did not expect her.

  Not her.

  He could still see her in his mind as he locked the door of the banqueting chamber. As he uttered the toast to the king who no longer deserved to be King of Italy. As he lifted the cognac to his lips, she swam in the glass and his anger swayed his judgement.

  He made the men at the table take risks.

  He blamed everything on the bomb.

  He clutched at his silences the way other men clutch at whores. Today her daughter had sat as close to him as the wealthy funeral director on his left, the one who will bury a man alive for the right fee.

  And he didn’t break her bones.

  Or carve her throat into smiles.

  He gave her a chance.

  He narrowed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts and let the men around the table argue where the next shipment would go. To Paris? To London? To New York? But he had already chosen. To Calcutta, where a maharajah
with rubies the size of pheasant eggs was building himself a palace greater than all others and he needed the treasures of the ancients to glorify it.

  The deal was done.

  He was silent. Let them argue. Let fear goad them. Let greed guide them.

  Acquiring the goods was easy. In these days of chaos and confusion, they fell from the trees like autumn leaves in a storm. Storing them was hard, the searches coming always closer. Shipping them was harder still. The military controlled ships. He nodded at the uniform at the bottom of the table. So he would know that the deal was done.

  ‘The bomb in the nightclub was a disgrace,’ declared the dentist with a lisp and a weakness for injecting chemicals into his veins. ‘I accept no responsibility for it. We should have been warned.’

  ‘He’s right. I was there only minutes before it exploded.’

  ‘Christ, that was close.’

  Others muttered. And murmured. And whined.

  The chairman held up a hand. Silence fell.

  Let them shift their sins on to him. Let them shrive their blackened souls. Hell was big enough for them all.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, calming them. ‘Let us not talk of blame. Let us talk of profit.’

  Their pricks rose. Their smiles came. They had no time for the problems of shipping permits. He pushed them. Into danger.

  And all the time she was there in his cognac. Laughing at them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sleep didn’t come to Caterina. She lay in bed, tangled in the hot sheet, but her mind would not let go. Piece by piece, it took apart her grandfather’s refusal to help her. She could feel the weight of his hand forcing her eyes closed, sealing her lips shut.

  Why?

  Why would Nonno do that? What was he frightened that she would see? That she would say? She didn’t doubt for a minute that he loved her, but why silence her? Her thoughts were occupying her mind, so that she almost missed the faint noise in the silence of the Sorrento night. There were no cats or dogs in the streets, all devoured long ago, and this noise was something that didn’t belong here. Her mind leapt instantly to Aldo.