‘And afterwards?’ Caterina asked.
Thrown out on the street, stripped of all jewels, rebuffed by those who had been her friends but who now claimed no kinship with Nazi whores. It was the women who had corralled her in a backstreet, tarred and feathered her, spat on her, tore her clothes, stole even her wedding ring. The tar burned her skin and the humiliation burned her mind.
‘Got a cigarette?’ Lucia Lombardi asked.
Caterina fetched the remains of Harry Fielding’s pack and lit one for each of them. Her mother drew on it as though it were her last breath.
‘Don’t look so sad, Caterina. Come and sit here.’ She patted the worn green velvet.
Caterina sat on the sofa. A gap of eleven years stretched between them.
‘You mustn’t be angry with your father.’
‘He was a thief.’
Lucia Lombardi sighed with exasperation. ‘Don’t be tiresome, Caterina.’
‘Tell me how much you know about Drago Vincelli.’
Her mother’s face went blank. ‘Stay away from that man, I’m warning you. Your father had dealings with him but had the sense never to turn his back on the bastard.’ Her ringless hand crept up to her mouth and stayed there.
‘Mamma, he is threatening me and our family if I don’t find a certain table that Papà is supposed to have made just before he died.’
‘No,’ Lucia whispered behind her fingers. ‘No. No. No.’ She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
‘You knew him?’
‘Yes, I knew that lying, murdering, thieving devil.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘Nowhere. Everywhere. Always moving around. Cunning as a snake.’
Caterina reached out and removed her mother’s hand from her mouth, so that she could see her full face. ‘Help me, Mamma. Think back eleven years. What was his weakness?’
‘What?’
‘What makes Drago Vincelli vulnerable? What does he care about? Everyone cares about someone or something. Is he married?’
‘Yes.’ Lucia waved a hand dismissively. ‘His wife lived somewhere in Sicily with a clutch of Vincelli whelps. He didn’t care for their whining.’
‘Think, Mamma. What else?’
Lucia closed her eyes, sinking into the past, her head tilted back. Caterina allowed herself to lean a fraction forward in order to study the fine profile more closely. A high forehead crossed by a small crease of concentration, a nose that was no longer quite straight as if it might have been broken at some time. Caterina wondered how. Cheekbones that made other faces look shapeless, and full sensual lips. It was a beautiful face, but a selfish face. Even she could see that. But it didn’t stop her wanting to touch those thick dark lashes that belied the blonde tint of her hair or to kiss the pale powdered cheek.
Abruptly Lucia jerked upright, blue eyes bright and sharp.
‘His car,’ her mother announced.
Caterina felt a thrust of excitement. ‘What car?’
‘Back then he owned a 1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom.’
‘He might have sold it by now.’
‘No. You don’t know him. It was the love of his life. He treated that flashy car of his far better than he treated the women in his life.’
Lucia stubbed out her cigarette harshly and something about the movement made Caterina wonder whether her mother had been one of those women. The idea tasted bitter in her mouth.
‘Where did he keep it, do you know?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t. But stay away from it anyway. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I’d take that risk.’
Her mother’s gaze lingered on her speculatively for a long moment. ‘Yes,’ Lucia said, ‘I rather think that you would.’ She released a loud burst of laughter.
An angry rap sounded on the ceiling above them.
‘Nonno’s cane,’ Caterina murmured.
‘Time is up, I’d better leave.’
‘No. Stay.’
Lucia Lombardi was curled up asleep under the blanket on the sofa. Her gleaming blonde hair hung loose and tousled, her face slack, the hardness having spilled out of the muscles of her cheeks and her jaw, leaving them soft and malleable.
Caterina knelt on the floor beside her mother and listened to her breathing.
She was more beautiful in sleep than awake. Caterina bent down and smelled her skin. There was the scent of jasmine on it and something else, something that carried her right back to when her mother used to come home from Naples. Restless as a cat. Flicking her hair off her neck. And with each flick the scent of cigars and hair-oil teased at Caterina’s nostrils. Her father wouldn’t look at her.
That’s what she smelled of now. Cigars and hair-oil.
‘Luca, come here.’
Her brother hung back in the doorway. He looked a mess. The dawn was only just creeping in with the first fingers of morning light and Luca had tumbled straight out of bed in order to hitch a ride on one of the fishing boats in the marina. He was doing what he’d promised, trying to help Caterina by earning money. He wore ragged shorts. Nothing else. No shoes. No smiles.
He stared at his mother with suspicious eyes, the way he would look at a scorpion in one of his comics.
‘Say hello to your Mamma,’ Caterina urged.
‘Hello, my darling boy,’ Lucia said with a smile that could melt lead.
She held out one hand, but he gave it a look that kept her at bay. Caterina could feel the turmoil within him.
‘Luca, Mamma has come to see us.’
‘So, Luca, how tall you are for eleven. You’ll soon be taller than your sister. Come and give your Mamma a kiss.’
He didn’t move. ‘You left Papà,’ he stated boldly. ‘You made Caterina do all the work when you should have been here.’
Caterina went to his side and rested a hand on the back of his neck to ease him forward. ‘Luca,’ she murmured, ‘you have been looking forward to seeing Mamma again one day. Well, today is that day.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Be kind, Luca.’
‘Why?’ His glistening black eyes looked up at his sister. ‘She is nothing to me. You are the only mamma and sister I want.’ He wrapped an arm around her waist.
‘Oh, Luca.’ Caterina held him close. ‘Mamma is helping me. Helping us. Come into the room.’
Caterina knew how much he ached for his mother’s arms but he remained where he was.
‘Holy mother of God,’ Lucia burst out, ‘you look exactly like your father when he was in one of his wretched moods.’
‘Moods?’ Caterina echoed. ‘Papà didn’t have moods.’
‘Don’t be foolish, girl. He was a man. Of course he had moods whenever he didn’t get his own way.’
Caterina walked to the front door. She unlocked it and held it open, Luca at her side.
‘Goodbye, Mamma. Thank you for calling on us,’ she said.
Without a word or a look, her mother marched out of the house. Caterina shut the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Army boots were out in force on the streets of Sorrento when Caterina emerged from her house. A wave of soldiers had transformed the town from its usual mellow ambers and washed-out pinks into a sea of harsh utilitarian khaki. It felt solid and oppressive. Uniforms marched in pairs down the pretty narrow streets and stationed themselves on corners with rifles slung on their shoulders. These were soldiers with an alert and wary look, men who were expecting trouble.
Caterina felt an uneasy stirring. What had happened?
The pavements hummed with anxious voices and military trucks patrolled the roads. There was a sense of being caged. Caterina walked quickly through the morning’s dusty shadows, cut down an alleyway where the smell of fresh bread set her stomach growling and arrived at her workshop.
It was the work of a moment to drag out the low handcart that she sometimes used for moving deliveries of timber. It was small but ran smoothly on miniature wheels and had a metal bar by which to haul it. She relocked the workshop and with the cart
rattling along behind her over the basalt slabs, she headed across to the northern edge of Sorrento. She hurried past the deeply wooded narrow ravine that looked as if it had been sliced out of the limestone heart of the town with a sharp knife, a ravine she couldn’t bear to look at. And then took the road back up to the cavern under the overhang of rock.
Daylight breathes life into places. When Caterina threw back the door of the cavern, sunlight immediately darted inside ahead of her. It gilded one dark wall and stretched out on the floor like a well-fed cat. She worked fast, eager to be out of there because she didn’t want to remember the lies her father had told her, while all the time he’d been gloating over the hidden hoard he’d stored here.
‘It was all that ghastly ornate antique furniture I hate,’ her mother had announced. ‘The kind that once belonged to a fat old cardinal wearing a red biretta or in one of those magnificent palazzos that smell of dirty money and even dirtier power.’ That’s how she’d described it. ‘No taste, if you ask me, just greed.’
Her father had impeccable taste. But it seemed he also had greed.
Right at the back against the wall lay a tangled heap that the torchlight had skimmed over last night, just a mess of discarded and broken scraps from tables and cupboards. A snapped chair leg. A mahogany drawer. An odd finial. Wafer-thin ribbons of cracked veneer and a sliver of mother-of-pearl jumbled up with a short section of white holly on which there were dark stains. She threw them all into the small cart, so that it was piled high, and covered them loosely with a length of sacking she had brought with her. She slammed the oak door behind her with relief and hurried back into town, hauling the cart at her heels.
The street market at the end of Corso Italia was crowded, the cramped space between stalls buzzing with noise. Shoppers hung around in tight huddles, whispers and rumours were spreading like wildfire.
What had happened to bring the army out to Sorrento in force?
Caterina scanned the faces, nodding to those she knew, but all the time she was searching for one person as she squeezed past colourful boxes of sweet peppers, watermelons and blood-red tomatoes. Everywhere there were bright splashes of colour. Netting sacks of beans and papery onions spilled into the aisles catching her cart, and huge vibrant lemons scented the air. Local growers had turned out to feed those who were lucky enough to have a handful of lire in their pocket.
‘Caterina!’
A hand touched her shoulder. It was her friend, Albertina Donati, whose brother, Paolo, was in the same class as Luca at school. She was wearing her waitress uniform.
‘Have you heard?’ Albertina asked, clearly upset.
‘Heard what?’
‘The terrible news.’
‘What happened? Why are the soldiers here?’
Albertina shook her head in mute dismay. ‘It’s the Rocco brothers. They’ve been murdered.’
Caterina froze. The Rocco brothers? They had been card-playing friends of her father. Both were in the blacksmith business and lived together near the spot where her father’s workshop used to be. She tried to grasp the fact of their death but her thoughts were scattering, fragmenting and coming together again in ways that chilled her blood.
Murdered.
Dear God, not more death.
Without warning, an image of the Rocco brothers shuffling along and carrying a rolled carpet over their shoulders rose from the depths of her mind. For a moment she struggled to place it, but then it came to her. It was the day she had taken Jake to Papà’s workshop, that first day when all this started. She could picture them ambling down the street, their hard-drinking faces warm with smiles of greeting for her.
She forced her attention back on Albertina. ‘What happened?’
‘They’re saying their throats were cut in their own back yard.’
A low groan escaped Caterina. Her mind was suddenly swamped by the image of a figure sprawled in the hot sun on a pile of Naples rubble, his throat cut into a scarlet smile. She swore under her breath, ferocious and profane.
Albertina was saying something more, but Caterina cut in. ‘But why the army? Surely it is a police matter.’
Albertina’s head didn’t stop shaking. ‘Two soldiers,’ she wailed. ‘Two American soldiers have been killed.’
Caterina gripped her shoulder, shook it hard. ‘What, Albertina? Tell me.’
‘The two soldiers were up in the area of Via Caldoni asking questions. Later a man was out walking his dog. He found them.’ Tears spilled down Albertina’s cheeks. ‘Their throats were . . .’
Caterina heard no more. She was running.
Via Caldoni was closed. A police car sat at each end of the street and a burly uniformed policeman barred her way, arms outstretched sideways to prevent her dodging round him.
‘Go back, signorina.’
‘I need to speak with . . .’
‘Go back, signorina.’ His tone was becoming less polite. ‘We are busy here.’
‘I know. Please, just tell me the names of the American soldiers who were . . .’
This time he put a hand on her shoulder and moved forward, solid as a truck, so she was forced to retreat. ‘Go back, signorina. Do as I say, please.’
Caterina looked past him, up the street to the ragged mound of rubble where she had once worked on the scannella alongside her father. There were soldiers striding up and down the forbidden stretch of the street, talking in low voices. American voices. For a moment everything seemed to fade from sight except the khaki uniforms, the grim faces under the military caps.
‘Jake,’ she whispered.
‘Go back!’ the policeman ordered.
She registered that a crowd of onlookers had come to stare. Women in black with cobwebbed cheeks hunched over their rosary beads, and men removed their caps as a mark of respect. The narrow street of workaday houses felt shabby and claustrophobic as Caterina turned her head to study the nearest soldier. He was seated in the front of a jeep, writing notes on a pad, three stripes were visible on his arm.
‘Sergeant!’ Caterina shouted in English.
The jeep was more than fifteen metres away. He didn’t look up.
‘Sergeant!’ she yelled again. ‘Come here.’
Others in the crowd swivelled to look at her. The policeman scowled.
‘Stop that noise.’
She ignored him. ‘Sergeant! You in the jeep.’
The soldier raised his head. A fine-boned face, more like a scholar than a soldier, his eyes scoured the crowd for the owner of the voice. She called again, and this time his attention fixed on her. He jumped from the jeep and came over at a half-run, picking up on her urgency. He swept the Italian policeman aside.
‘What can I do for you, ma’am?’ He spoke English.
‘I look for American soldier.’
‘Well,’ he gave her a teasing smile, ‘there are a lot of us to choose from.’
‘No. I need names of soldiers who died. Here.’ She pointed up the street.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’ The humour had drained from his face. ‘I can’t give out that information.’
‘Please.’
‘Tell me who it is that you are searching for and maybe I can help you.’
She opened her mouth to answer. To say his name. As if saying his name aloud would keep him alive, but before the words passed her lips, a voice behind her said, ‘Hello, Caterina.’
She turned.
‘Jake.’
He was standing there, tall and uniformed, his throat uncut. His face was solemn, his eyes dark and deeply angry. Her instinct told her to leave him alone, to move away and let him get on with his grim job without interruption. Now was not the time. She knew that. The air around them hummed with heat and horror, and five seconds slid by in silence, but she couldn’t walk away any more than she could stop the beat of her heart.
In front of everybody she stepped forward and pressed her body against his chest, breathed in the scent of the skin of his neck, while her hands gripped his shoulders
hard so that she could feel the living muscle and bone beneath his khaki jacket. She felt, more than heard, his intake of breath.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.
Caterina stood in the marketplace once more and thought about the look on Jake’s face when he detached himself from her grasp and said quietly, ‘I will come and see you at your workshop later, Caterina.’ It was the look of a stranger.
She retrieved her cart from Albertina, and continued to search for one particular black-clad figure but it was nowhere in sight. She waited, exchanging comments with the man who ran a stall selling inky aubergines, so silky it was hard not to stroke them. Thirty minutes she waited before she spotted a tall elderly woman swathed from head to toe in deepest black enter the market, her bearing erect. The lines on her stern face seemed to have grown deeper since Caterina last saw her and to Caterina they looked like lines of agony.
With her cart in tow, she approached, before the woman had a chance to start bargaining for the fruit and vegetables. She would be a hard bargainer. Caterina could see that. There was a quality of stone about her, stiff and unyielding. Caterina moved out in front of her, blocking her path.
‘Buongiorno, Signora Cavaleri. No, please don’t back away, I have something to say to you.’
‘Nothing that a Lombardi has to say is of the slightest interest to me.’ The woman started to turn, face averted.
‘My mother has come back to Sorrento.’
An infinitesimal jolt passed through the woman’s body as though something had snapped inside, something vital.
‘I thought you would want to know,’ Caterina added softly. ‘Before you see her in the street or in a shop.’
‘Go away.’
Caterina had no wish to hurt this old woman. She had been hurt and humiliated enough when her eldest son abandoned his family for Caterina’s mother, and further disgraced by the suicide of her deserted daughter-in-law.
The Liberation Page 30