Last Train from Liguria (2010)

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  There is no telephone number for the Avvocato. There is no forwarding address. He could be in Dusseldorf, or maybe Bonn. As far as the secretary is aware there are business matters to attend to in both cities, although it’s not his place to question his superiors. Naturally, as soon as the signori return or make contact he will pass the message on.

  Bella remembers then that Eugenia has relatives in Dusseldorf - presumably also related to the Signora. Eugenia isn’t at home either but her maid manages to find the number for Dusseldorf.

  Getting a call through to Germany is an ordeal. Edward and Mrs Cardiff have to go to the British Consul, who in turn has to go to the mayor of Bordighera, who then turns to a bishop in Genoa. Eventually they are allowed to skip the usual formalities, and the call is put through to Dusseldorf. After all that trouble - the relatives have moved away. Emigrated, in fact. When or where, nobody seems to know or give much of a damn.

  Nurse Willis makes a little hospital ward out of Bella’s room, complete with a steam tent that by now is the talk of Bordighera. All day, tubs and pots of boiling water are carted up and down the stairs by Elida, Rosa, Edward and even poor old bandy Cesare, until the corridor leading out of the kitchen begins to resemble a London alleyway in November. Neighbours have sent servants to lend a hand or have personally called with baskets of fruit he will never eat, and flowers he will never see. In one door and out the other, these gifts have been swiftly redistributed via a grateful Mrs Cardiff, to her various charities.

  Bella has been excused from water duties on account of her back problems and is kept upstairs to assist Nurse Willis, whose face pops in and out of the tent like a big boiled moon and gives her little jobs to do. Bella begins to wonder if Nurse Willis has won her reputation for having a special way with children because she treats everyone just like a child, even down to the way she delegates tasks and then lavishes praise on their completion. There is no doubt she is an excellent nurse - if at times irritatingly cheerful - and that she brings a much needed air of confidence into the sickroom. However, beyond taking his temperature or checking his pulse, Alec won’t have her near him. It’s the same when it comes to the doctor, any lingering and he begins to grow distressed. Weak and delirious as he now is, he makes it quite clear that Bella and Edward are the only ones he will allow to wash or change him.

  Nurse Willis accepts this rejection with good grace and in fact looks on it as a promising sign: ‘Shows he’s aware of the who’s-who and what’s-what!’ she beams. Then, instructing them on how best to give a sponge bath and change the sweat-soaked sheets and dry him as quick as ever and leave his pores closed awhile before steaming them open again, she plucks her cigarettes out of her bag and leaves them at it while she ‘pops out for a wee puff and a cup of tea’.

  On the night before Alec’s tenth birthday the doctor weighs the lollipop of his stethoscope in his hand and tells them the next twelve hours can go either way. ‘Any luck with the mother?’ he asks then and Bella feels as if he has shoved his fist through her stomach and twisted her guts.

  She tries Naples again, and again. Still no sign of Avvocato and wife. And then Sicily. This time the English housekeeper is seething. ‘Shoving him into a school with all sorts. I mean what’s she expect? It would never ‘ave done in old Signor Lami’s day, I can tell you that straight off. Then she buggers off with not a word to no one. What sort is she anyway? Well, no sort of a mother, I can tell you.’ There is a few seconds’ silence and Bella thinks they’ve been disconnected. Then she realizes the English housekeeper is weeping.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

  ‘I may never see him again. My poor little Ali Baba, my poor little lamb.’

  On the way back upstairs Bella meets Elida. Elida is also crying and for one awful moment Bella thinks the worst has happened. It turns out that Edward has ‘growled as a dog’ at her, only because she’s suggested the priest. ‘Growled as a dog, Signora Stuart, and say to me - get out of here with your stupid witch talk before Alesso hear and you frighten him.’

  Later that evening just after his steam bath, while they are changing his sheets, Bella on one side of the bed, Edward on the other, Alec seems to stop breathing. It’s just a split second; such a short time in fact that Edward hasn’t even noticed. Up to this point his breath has sounded like a tin of sewing needles being gently shaken from side to side. Now there has been that split second of silence. The steam is already on the wane and when she looks down through it, Alec is disappearing in front of her eyes. As if he is melting away with the steam. His narrow shoulders, the cage of his prominent ribs, even his thick coarse hair, all dissolving.

  She is about to put down the sheet and whisper his name. But then the needles resume shivering in his throat again. Bella, saying nothing to Edward, continues her task for a few more seconds. Then a large fat sob blurts out of her mouth. It just seems to fall out of its own accord. She puts her hand out as if to catch it and shove it back in.

  Edward reaches across and touches her arm. ‘You go outside,’ he says. ‘I’ll finish here.’

  She shakes her head and closes her eyes. ‘Is? Is he?’

  ‘It’s all right, Bella, it’s all right. He’s still here,’ Edward says. ‘He’s still with us.’

  *

  Suddenly out of nowhere Alec improves. His temperature starts to slide towards normal, his breathing eases, the colour on his face and chest comes up, as the mottled look recedes. The doctor says, ‘It’s a bloody relief - I don’t mind telling you.’

  Nurse Willis dismantles the steam tent. Edward apologizes to Elida. Elida, through her tears, graciously accepts - after she has made a slow sign of the cross and a pointed acknowledgement to the Madonna’s intervention. Rosa, who has hardly been home in a week, kisses everyone in the room including Dottor Inglese and says she is off now to see if she can find, never mind recognize, her own children.

  ‘The crisis is over,’ the doctor explains, ‘but that doesn’t mean he’s recovered. He needs peace, quiet. Vigilance. He should sleep now for quite a bit, but the minute he opens his eyes, telephone me, no matter what time it is. If I don’t hear from you I’ll look in again first thing.’

  Bella says she will sit with him, after all it is her room and she has more of a right to be there than anyone else. ‘So go,’ she says, pushing Nurse Willis and Edward to the door. ‘Go. Sleep. Eat. Smoke. Get drunk. Chase each other through the streets naked. Do whatever it is that pleases you. Just leave me.’

  She is light-headed with tiredness and a relief she is almost afraid to allow herself to feel. All she wants now is time on her own with Alec, a chance to absorb the shock of the past few days, to monitor and accept the hope for the days to come.

  Elida brings in supper, her large hand conducting a tour of the tray: ham, cheese, one or two other things on a plate. ‘It’s cooked prosciutto - not crudo - and soft the way you like, Signora, and a nice caraffa of Rossese to do you some good. There is the coffee pot with the English cosy to keep the warm in. And here at last is one of the peaches we preserve in September. So sweet, I can’t say it.’

  Bella turns off the main lights and puts a match to the night lamp. The wine goes straight to her head. She sucks on a peach and gets into her pyjamas, then changes back into her day clothes in case Alec wakes up sooner rather than later, and the room starts filling with visitors again. She pads the window seat with pillows and cushions and settles herself in. Then, afraid of getting too comfortable and dozing off, whips everything away again.

  With one cushion moulded into her back Bella sits upright where she can have a permanent view of Alec. She stares at him for a while and then begins to sing. Anything that comes into her head - ‘Silent Night’; an alphabet song; the dwarves song from Snow White; and the ditty the troops brought back from East Africa last year about the little black face looking out to sea - ‘Facetta Nera‘, which Alec never tires of hearing or singing himself.

  A few minutes later there is a tap on the door and she
opens it to Edward. ‘How long have you been out there?’ she asks.

  ‘Long enough to know you’re a crow.’

  ‘Very funny. Anyway - I thought I told you to get lost.’

  ‘Can’t bloody sleep,’ he begins, stepping into the room. ‘I did everything you said. Had a smoke - several smokes. Then something to eat. As you know it’s probably not a good idea if I get drunk. And I didn’t particularly want to run through the streets naked, especially with Nurse Willis running ahead of me - she wobbles a bit, you know.’

  ‘Does she indeed?’

  ‘Yes. So, I thought I might as well keep you company. How is he?’

  ‘Fine. Sleeping peacefully.’

  ‘And his breathing?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Good.’ He walks over and looks down at Alec. ‘Ah, the colour is back. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Edward, that’s a good sign.’

  ‘I suppose it’s all right if we talk? We won’t disturb him?’

  ‘It’s fine. It might encourage him to come round actually, just to make sure he’s not missing anything.’

  He turns away from the bed. ‘Are you eating that?’ he asks, his hand already stretched towards the plate on the tray.

  ‘I thought you had something to eat?’ she says.

  ‘Still hungry. And there’s no point in wasting it - you won’t eat it.’

  ‘How do you know I won’t?’

  He raises his eyebrows at her, then sits into the sofa, the plate on his lap. ‘So,’ he begins, leaning back to rest an olive on his lips, then sucking it in. ‘How come you eat so little anyway?’

  ‘I don’t eat so little.’

  ‘You eat nothing. You’re too skinny, by the way.’ He spits the olive stone out onto his palm and lets it fall on the tray. ‘You ought to fatten up a bit.’

  ‘You shouldn’t speak with your mouth full,’ she says. ‘It’s very rude. And you’re hardly Charles Atlas yourself, by the way.’

  ‘True, but at least I try.’ He picks up a bit of cheese, sticks it under his nose, sniffs and then eats it. ‘A bit mild for my taste. Elida gets it for you specially. In fact, if she thinks you don’t like something, she won’t rest until she finds an alternative.’

  ‘I have noticed, yes.’

  ‘You’re very ungrateful. Poor old Elida.’

  ‘Oh, it’s poor old Elida now? A few hours ago she was a witch.’

  ‘Christ, don’t remind me. But all that talk about limbo and weeping souls wandering about for eternity - I couldn’t listen to another word. Apparently, whatever the rest of us say, a meticcio has no chance at all on the other side.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Half-breed.’

  ‘Because his mother is Jewish? She said that?’

  ‘Actually no, Rosa said it. But Elida started howling for the priest then. It’s just ignorance, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘It means something to Alec. Jesus.’

  He pulls a strip of ham up and dangles it over his open mouth.’You know, when I was in the kitchen earlier she wouldn’t let me near this: “Is for Signora Stu-arta, she only like this one.”’ He drops it in. ‘If you like it so much, how come it’s still here?’

  ‘It’s not that I like it - I just hate it a bit less than the raw stuff.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ he asks, gliding a slice of roasted marrow off the plate and sucking it off his finger. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There’s a knife and fork there, Edward, please feel free to use them.’

  ‘I like eating with my fingers.’ He licks then plucks them at the napkin to dry. ‘Ahh coffee - do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all. You know, I thought my appetite had improved since I came here. My father was delighted with the weight I’d put on. I mean, you should have seen me a few years back. Then, I ate nothing. I mean really - nothing. I don’t enjoy food, not like other people seem to - funny to end up living in a country where it means everything.’

  Edward finishes the coffee, then pours her another glass of wine. The night goes by. They gossip and speculate about people they know. They laugh - at one point become almost hysterical - he is such a good mimic. The talk turns towards each other, drifts off elsewhere, then comes back again. Several times this happens. Once she sulks at something he says. Another time he tells her to mind her own business. But these are minor setbacks in a night-long conversation.

  Ages after it starts, and well before it’s over, she says, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever spent this long talking to anyone in my whole life. Have you?’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe. In drink. When I tend to like the sound of my own voice. But never mind that - you were saying?’ He wants to hear her.

  At first she has little enough to give: an episode or two from a former life. Mrs Jenkins and her father behaving like sneaks - which he finds hilarious. He tells a few stories about his travels in Germany, a fight he got into one night in a town in Bavaria with a pair of Brownshirts. Having to do a flit in the middle of the night when they returned in a pack threatening to burn down the inn where he was staying.

  ‘You fought with Brownshirts? Were you drunk?’

  ‘Of course I was drunk.’

  ‘How did it start?’

  ‘I called Hitler a Schwuler.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A pansy.’

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘Your turn.’ He grins.

  She tells him about stealing her mother’s jewels; about being unable to bring herself to visit the grave; the food she used to throw out; the cats in the garden. He listens, makes a vague comment or two, once or twice laughs.

  ‘Now you,’ she says.

  Another story about drink. He was sick in a wardrobe years ago, all over a stranger’s clothes. He says he was alone, but she’s not sure she believes that.

  ‘Are all your stories about drink?’ she asks him.

  ‘It’s the only time anything ever happens to me.’

  ‘Is that why you do it - to make things happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. I do it because, well, I get fed up trying not to, I suppose. The constant bloody struggle of it. I just decide to let go of the ledge.’

  As the night progresses they move around the room. Yet she can’t remember noticing either of them getting up to leave one place for another. She finds herself on the sofa, the next minute standing at the bed looking at Alec. Edward seems to pop up everywhere: on the window seat sitting like an Indian, then stretched out on the sofa, hands behind his head. On the floor with his back to the wall. Then standing at the door, as if he’s getting ready to leave. She doesn’t want him to leave. Another story.

  ‘This one is gossip,’ she says.

  ‘That’s perfectly acceptable.’

  ‘About Amelia.’

  ‘Even better.’

  She tells him about Amelia’s love bite and how she had stayed out all night. And the man Elida had caught sneaking down the stairs in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘Naughty Amelia!’

  He tells her about a heavy pass Amelia had made at him.

  ‘How heavy?’

  ‘Naked under the window, in the middle of the night, heavy.’

  ‘Completely naked?’

  ‘Well, wrapped in a blanket, but she let me know all the same.’

  ‘Did you let her in?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But then you go to brothels for that sort of thing, don’t you?’

  ‘Mind your own bloody business,’ he snaps.

  The night light fizzles out and the darkness tightens around them. Two detached voices.

  She says, ‘I’ll tell you a really big secret if you answer me one question.’

  ‘How big is the secret?’

  ‘Huge.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Are you Irish?’

  ‘Oh Christ, not this again.’

  ‘Oh now come on - are you?’

  He doesn’t answer and she
presses him. ‘Just tell me, I won’t ask the whys or how-comes, I won’t tell anyone. I just would really love to know.’

  ‘A simple yes or no - you’d leave it at that?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘In that case yes, I am.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, I said.’

  ‘I knew it, I knew it! From Dublin?’

  ‘You promised that would be an end to it. But yes, Dublin.’

  ‘All right, that’s all.’

  ‘Now I’d like to ask something - if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you break into my room when I was away?’

  ‘Yes. I—’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming back and just wanted to see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. It doesn’t matter. The next time I’ll invite you in - that is if you’re not afraid to come in.’

  ‘I could never be afraid of you, Edward.’

  He says nothing for a moment then: ‘Come on, what about your huge secret then?’

  Into the darkness she starts to speak. ‘There was this man, this professor. From Edinburgh. He was married to my mother’s cousin and was staying in our house. They were all terribly proud of him, always boasting about his brilliance and that. Anyway, I was young, a girl, only gone fourteen—’ She stops then, realizing that if they can’t see each other then they can’t see Alec. If his condition changes how will they know? Or what if he is lying there awake now, listening to her?

  Edward puts a match to the night light and when it comes back up it startles her. I’m saying too much, she thinks to herself. Then out loud to him, ‘I’m saying too much.’

  He replies, ‘You haven’t said anything yet!’

  ‘In a while, I will. I promise. Give me a little while.’

  Just before dawn she nods off. When she wakes he’s there with a cup in his hand, and she remembers then that he’d gone off to make tea. She takes the cup and then says, ‘All right, my secret now. The real reason we moved from Dublin to London. Ready?’

  ‘All ears.’

  *

  He is so quiet when it’s over, when she’s finished telling her story. He waits just long enough before saying anything. Long enough for her to know that she’s made a terrible mistake.