Last Train from Liguria (2010)

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  ‘Well, Aunt Lami would probably—’ Grace begins.

  ‘Oh God. Aunt Lami, let’s not even think about her.’

  Amelia carries on in a tired, distracted voice, turning her hips stiffly as she walks along, breaking here and there into a short sideways glide, like a coquettish child, Bella thinks, or maybe one of those new sporty-type film actresses. In fact the whole experience is beginning to remind her of the pictures, which is the closest, up to now, that she’s ever been to Americans.

  ‘She’s not our real aunt of course,’ Grace explains. ‘The first wife, Aunt Josephine, was. Mother’s sister - you know.’

  ‘Quite a looker too,’ Amelia says. ‘You won’t be surprised to hear. They met when old man Lami was staying in New York in one of Dad’s hotels - Dad’s an hotelier, you know. They fell in love, as the saying goes, and he took her back with him to Sicily.’

  ‘Mother never forgave him,’ Grace says, ‘and then poor old Josie died.’

  ‘Only gone five minutes,’ her sister continues, ‘when he took up with numero due. Well, the less said there… Except for this - I don’t think she ought decide what we may or may not call each other. Wouldn’t you agree? After all, we are not children. If my guess is right, we are all, in fact, a little older than our dear Aunt Lami. Worse luck. I certainly won’t be asking you to refer to me as Miss Nelson! You’ve met Aunt Lami of course, in Sicily? And we’ll be expecting a full and frank on that, let me tell you. Odd little item, isn’t she? Of course, he’s going to die soon. Wonder what’ll happen to her then? For all we know he’s gone already - was he still alive when you left? Would one notice at his age, I wonder? We would have had a wire if— at least one would hope they’d have the courtesy to wire if. Oh, please don’t think I’m callous, I certainly hope you don’t think that. It’s just, well, we don’t really know him. In fact, we don’t know him at all.’ Amelia finally stops and joins in with her sister in laughing like a horse.

  Bella nods and smiles and tries not to look too bewildered. Around them the afternoon begins to stir. Shutters fall open on upper terraces. Out of dark interiors onto glaring pavements, shopkeepers cart baskets and crates. A waiter comes out of a restaurant rolling a tabletop like a wheel before him. Behind, in the doorway, an old lady sits, folding napkins and frantically smoking. Deanna Durbin coos out of a wireless. Bella notes the avenue is called corso d’Italia.

  ‘You must forgive my sister.’ Grace struggles to speak. ‘She gets a little—’

  ‘Overexcited? Overwrought? Over-easy?’ Amelia suggests.

  Grace exclaims, ‘Oh now, that is en-ough.’

  ‘You may as well know - it’s why I’m in Europe,’ Amelia continues. ‘To calm my exhausted nerves.’ She throws the back of her free hand up to her forehead and pretends to almost faint. ‘Anyhow now that we’ve got my collarbone to worry about, my nerves are quite forgotten. Forty days, I’m told, before I can travel. These Italian doctors certainly know how to make something of nothing. Not even as far as Monte Carlo. I can’t tell you what a bore it all is.’

  ‘Pay no attention,’ Grace insists. ‘She just loves it here. You ought to know Amelia is this month’s Bordighera Beach Miss. Oh yes, this is her actual title. In the afternoon the beach clubs hold pyjama party competitions - quite the hoot! My sister’s picture? All over the wall of the Kursaal club. I mean, talk about il Duce! She is wearing this hat—’

  ‘Oh, must you remind me!’

  ‘Well, you were the one who entered, dear.’

  ‘Now, that’s only because I was drunk.’

  ‘For which you only have yourself to blame.’

  ‘Thank you, Grace, I am aware.’

  On the corso. Lamps and trees in perfect alignment, the pavement tiled like an outdoor floor. There are English names over some of the shops: Good English Cakes. Real English Tea. And two French shops; one selling hats, the other artists’ requisites. Outside the barber’s, a poster shows this week’s cinema attraction - Detectivi Crek e Crok, Laurel e Holiver.

  ‘Now, had Aunt Lami’s English doctor been here, my sentence may well have been lighter,’ Amelia resumes, ‘but he left a few weeks ago for Egypt. The English colony have to have their own doctor, you know - don’t trust the Eye-ties - in fact they have to have their own just about everything: church, clubs, shops. Frankly, I don’t know why they don’t just stay at home and turn up the central heating! Anyhow, the new English doc hasn’t yet arrived. Unmarried too, or so it seems, with all his own teeth and hair by the way, so we can expect quite a stampede there! So now you have it, forty days, just like Jesus in the desert. Mother wants me home. Dad says it’s best to stay, though he does have his concerns given the present political situation, I mean anything might happen at almost any moment - don’t you agree?’

  ‘Oh please,’ Grace says. ‘Please just let’s not go into all that again - I swear, once she gets started on politics.’

  ‘Oh Grace, really, everybody knows Europe is, well, in foul mood - is that a discreet way to put it? And anything is liable to happen. Except nobody wants to talk about it. So long as we all continue to pretend - we can continue to bask. And bask cheaply, at that. Oh, all right I’ll stop. Not that Anabelle minds, I’m sure. It is Anabelle, right? Yes, I made it my business to find that out. Actually, I peeked at your papers when they arrived the other day. Or rather I peeked at the envelope with the official Prefettura‘s stamp on.

  ‘My papers?’ Bella asks.

  They pause outside the tabaccheria where a man softly sweating is cranking at the hinges of a canopy. He bows, mutters, ‘Buona sera,’ and takes a long low look over the girls’ bare legs. Both his greeting and his greedy eye go ignored or else unnoticed.

  ‘Oh, you have to have papers for just about everything these days in Italy,’ Amelia explains. ‘Aunt Lami would have arranged it. You can’t go to the ladies room without your precious documenti. Otherwise, whooooff, they kick you right out on your you-know-what.’ Here Amelia lifts her leg into a high kick that almost makes her fall over and Bella is sure she hears the tobacconist gasp.

  She feels the squeeze and pull of Grace’s linking arm, the nudge of her elbow. Her mouth, wide with laughter, releases a smell of something warm and eggy, which Bella tries not to taste. Unlinking her arm and falling back slightly, she pretends to fix her shoe. When she catches up with the girls, arms folded firmly to her chest, they are still howling loudly. She is beginning to wonder if they’ve had a few drinks.

  They near the top of the corso. Real fruit trees on the street! Bella wishes she was alone. She looks up to see clutches of small soft oranges. Over a wall, a swag of beady green olives. On the corner two men dressed in black fascist uniform gossip like housewives, and fuss at intervals over a little girl with Shirley Temple hair. She can see now the large white hotel recede and a street begin to open out on the perpendicular: via Romano. An open-top tram edges across it, a woman on its upper deck, holding a black umbrella against the sun.

  Tall, narrow gates between pillars. The pillars topped with an urn of chipped stone grapes. A short pebble path to a few curved steps to a front door. The house, the colour of ivory with shutters of glossy green, set at an angle, making it look slightly askew, as if it has come off its thread. A comfortable garden, trees, bushes, and the same cerise blossoms that appeared to have been flung at random all over Bordighera. High stone boundary walls. One shouldering a lane which runs back down towards the sea and the town centre. A layer of trees just inside the walls: olives, figs, chestnuts, the - already by now - inevitable palms. A solid three-storey seaside villa. Nowhere near as grand as the house in Sicily. Far grander than anything she’s ever been used to. Bella crosses the gate into Villa Lami.

  On the way in Grace leans through the open front door and bowls the alligator bag across the polished floor of the hallway. Then she comes back down the front steps to order tea, which she does by shouting through a low window around the side of the house at somebody named Elida. A few minutes later a tray
is passed through.

  There is a well-positioned table in its own patch of shade near to the front of the house, marked out by vases of cacti and mandarin. But the cousins head off in the opposite direction, Amelia leading, Grace carrying the tray, away from the house, down a bumpy slope, towards the bottom of the garden. Wild roses and broom. A sudden curved wall of bamboo. A recurring glimpse of a building through the trees as they approach the back boundary wall - a garage with living quarters above; outdoor iron steps at the side. A few feet away from it Bella asks, ‘Who lives there?’

  Amelia turns with a silent ‘shhhh’.

  Bella notices then the chime of the tea tray in Grace’s hands and that for the past few moments neither cousin has uttered a squeak.

  Now in the lower garden, the wrought-iron table shows etches of rust, and on the ground a chain gang of ants traipses across the droppings from a former meal. A book has been left out to rot in the grass, and on a windowsill a dirty glass holds a slurry of rain-soaked cigarette butts. Bella asks after Alessandro and is told he is playing tennis at the club. She asks what time he is expected home and is given a shrug and a change of subject. She asks what time dinner will be, and she is told, ‘It all depends.’

  No sooner seated at the rusty table than nothing will do Amelia but wine. ‘Oh, you must forgive us - what can we have been thinking of!’ she declares, as if Bella has already made a strong complaint on the matter. ‘Tea? Forget it! It’s wine we need, to celebrate your arrival. To celebrate new friendship. Prosecco I think would be most appropriate. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s not champagne of course, but so what? Back home it’s against the law to drink alcohol - you’ve heard of Prohibition, right? Much too embarrassing to even discuss. It’s quite the novelty to be able to drink here. Well, without looking over one’s shoulder anyhow. Prosecco is easily my favourite - what do you say, Anabelle?’

  Bella says nothing.

  Grace waits a moment and then: ‘It’s probably a little early, dear. Oughtn’t we at least finish having our tea?’

  The garden, the short clips of the villa she’s managed to spot on the way, the haphazard routine of the household, all lack the pull of Signora Lami’s domestic rein, so apparent in the house in Sicily. It isn’t a question of neglect as such, Bella decides, more a sense of carelessness. Like a household run by grown-up children. She is beginning to see what the Signora had meant in her letter, by her son ‘needing structure to his day’. And Bella feels easier in herself somehow, leaning back in her chair and looking around. At least now she has a function; a right to be here.

  Overhead an umbrella of broad-leaved foliage, a scent on the air; deep, sweet. She thinks - almonds, a touch of thyme. She watches Grace chatter and serve, she watches Amelia smoke and sulk and gulp her tea.

  A short while later Bella looks up to see a woman appear through the clearing. Her large frame - black hair, black clothes - pours like ink over a bright spread of mimosa. There is a basket of washing in her huge hands and she is walking in their direction, shouting. But her voice, which seems way too old and laboured for her big fresh face, is aimed somewhere above and beyond.

  ‘Ah, Elida,’ Amelia begins, the second she sees her. ‘Now. Thank goodness. What we need here is some wine, for Signora Stuart, you understand, to welcome her - Pro-secco. Chilled, of course. I happened to notice a hefty box of ice was delivered today and took the precaution of storing a bottle or two inside - don’t thank me, ladies, you’re welcome. And so Pro-sec-co. Per favore. Please. Grazie. And pre-go!’

  Elida doesn’t acknowledge the cousins in any way, although she does allow Bella a little curtsey, and a laryngitic ‘Signora‘ before moving on, even as Amelia is still addressing her.

  Grace begins to snort into her hand. Her sister, leaning back in her chair, continues to call. ‘Elida? Prosecco?‘ But Elida has already disappeared. ‘Well, I like that! Was she making a point of ignoring me?’ Amelia asks, laughing at the idea. ‘My God, that woman. Insufferable. Do you know what we call her? Queen Kong - that’s what.’

  Then they are off again, chattering, screeching. Telling Bella things she has no business knowing, things she can’t help wanting to hear.

  The music turns everything. Notes from a piano falling slow and cold, like first snow. There is something acrobatic about it, a touch of the circus ring anyhow, and for a moment she thinks it could be a piece by Debussy, although it turns out to be neither amenable nor decisive enough for that.

  It silences the American cousins anyway. It lures other sounds out into the open. A water tap running in a nearby garden; a motorcycle lowing on the street outside. Crickets, birds, insects. She can hear them all now. The sip of tea on Grace’s bulbous lips; the fidget of Amelia’s fingers on the sail of her arm sling. And the notes, dripping through the overhang; individual, abstract, each one perfectly formed and independent of the other. Each one desperate to reach the one that went before it, to escape the one coming from behind.

  ‘Who was that?’ Bella asks when it stops.

  ‘That? Oh, that was the English maestro. Edward King,’ Grace says, glancing at her sister.

  When Elida comes up from the rear of the garden, she is swinging the empty washing basket in her hand. She resumes shouting, pitching and forcing her voice, head lifted towards the place where the music has been playing. Her words struggle and crack as if they are crumbling in her throat. Bella feels like standing up and shouting on her behalf, whatever it is Elida seems to want to shout so much.

  ’Maestro? Maestro? Aspetta Alesso.’

  After a moment a man’s voice comes back. ‘Arrivo,’ it says. ‘Arrivo subito. Elida, cara mia. Arrivo. Arrivo. Arrivo!’

  When Elida passes again, she is smiling.

  *

  She leaves them in the garden, the cold sweat running off their bottle of Prosecco which, in the end, Amelia has to fetch herself. Grace doesn’t appear to mind too much. Amelia, on the other hand, seems to take it almost personally.

  ‘I should really be going,’ Bella says, closing her hand like a lid over her barely touched glass.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s lovely, really. But I’d like to meet Alessandro.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s at tennis, I told you.’

  ‘Yes, but still.’

  ‘Grace - will you please explain? Edward will be going to pick him up soon. Unless he’s gone already - has he? I mean I didn’t notice him come out, or anything - did you?’

  ‘He most likely went the other way. That door in the back wall? Well, it’s been fixed up.’

  ‘Oh? You never said.’

  ‘Was I supposed to?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She glares at her sister for a moment, then returns to Bella. ‘Where was I? Yes, they almost always stop for ice cream. They may even go and listen to a band on the promenade, they often do. Could be at least an hour. More. You’ve got plenty of time. We can all have a cosy dinner later on together, you’ll meet him then. Edward too. He won’t go anywhere without Edward by the way, except to his precious tennis lesson. Why not relax, help yourself to a cigarette.’ A box of Turkish gold-tipped is pushed across the table.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Goodness - but how you do show us up!’ Amelia pulls the box of cigarettes back and redirects the neck of the bottle from her own glass to Grace’s, then back again.

  Grace says, ‘Of course, we understand if you’d prefer to freshen up, Anabelle. You must be quite exhausted. All that travelling! Would you like me to go with?’

  ‘No, please stay. I’ll find my own way. I need a rest, and to unpack of course before Alessandro—’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want. But you know Amelia is quite right. They do take their time coming home. Edward prefers to walk now, while the Italians are taking their passeggiata - which is what they call this before-a-dinner walk thing they do, in case you don’t know. The English tend to come out a little later and he says they give him
a headache with their constant twittering. Isn’t that amusing, not to say a little unpatriotic?’

  Amelia looks up. ‘He said that? When did he say that?’

  ‘Oh, he mentioned it to me once.’

  ‘Really?’

  Bella begins to rise from her chair. ‘Just the same. I should… First day and all that.’

  ‘And all that,’ Amelia sneers, her eye following the latest surge of Prosecco expanding in her glass. ‘By the way, he’s called Alec.’

  ‘I’m sorry - who is?’ Bella asks. She waits for Amelia to take another pull of her cigarette.

  ‘His mother prefers if we call him Alec. Not Alessandro, which she thinks an ugly name. And I must say, I quite agree. He’s called Alec. Al-ec. Not Alessandro.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well, you do now, Miss Stuart.’

  *

  Whatever he is called, he’s a beautiful child. Much more striking than the photographs in Sicily had allowed. And yet if she were to attempt to write his face into words, it would make for plain reading. Eyes: smallish and slanted, an unusual turquoise colour. Mouth: full, the top lip having a lift to it, shows the first squeeze of grown-up teeth through his gums. Hair: dark blond, thick and all over the place, despite the obvious efforts that have been made to control it. Face: full, cheeks pinkish, dashed with tiny freckles; skin lightly tanned. He might have been just another cute little boy. Except for his eyes. They are not the eyes of a child, but they are what make him beautiful.

  By the time she gets to meet him it’s past eight o’clock. He is waiting for her on the terrace just off a room Elida had called the library, although apart from an atlas, a few French fashion magazines and an ancient German-Italian dictionary, there is little to merit the description. It’s across the way from Bella’s bedroom, which is a manageable rather than small room, with a good window seat, an accessible English bed and practical furniture. There is also a small balcony with a view over the lesstended side of the garden.