‘Did you ever have me followed?’ I ask one day, suddenly pricked by the memory of the time when fate again caused a timely diversion as I was near to being caught harbouring radio parts.
‘I might have, once or twice,’ Gio says slowly, and squeezes my hand as he lies lazily on the grass. ‘I had to be sure you were safe. It meant more to me than you could have ever imagined.’
Then, I look at him squarely. ‘You know, I could never read you, from one day to the next. You were a master of disguise, under those blasted glasses.’
He takes them off and brings his lips to my face. ‘All in the training, my lovely Stella,’ he says. ‘Inside, I was burning to drop my guard, be myself with you. I wanted to do this all day, every day.’ And he kisses me, far more deeply than on that Venetian doorstep.
In more melancholy moments, I tell him about my parents, and how they died within a year of each other in 1947, but that at least I got to see them one more time, a year after the war’s end. The temptation to stay in Venice then was almost too much, but I also had a yearning to see something else too. Neither of them had a long illness – grief meant the life seeped slowly from their hearts; both their bodies simply got tired and ran out of steam.
Mimi was already gone from Venice by the time I returned in 1946 – the news that my poor, courageous brother died of his wounds late in 1944 broke her in every way. I heard later that she lost the baby only weeks after, and I’m only grateful Mama and Papa never did know of its brief existence; to be given that last link with Vito and then have it robbed would have killed them instantly, I’m sure.
Broken spiritually, Mimi entered a convent to recover and never left. Friends told me her spark had gone, and she lived out her sad days in a closed order. I didn’t try to see her on my return – I think it would have made me grieve for my old Mimi even more.
There are many regrets; that I wasn’t there to witness the liberation of Venice in April 1945 by partisan groups banding together in force – hurtling up the steps of the Rialto Bridge with fists aloft – or see the sight days later of the Allies racing over the causeway in their tanks, and the subsequent victory parade in San Marco. I like to imagine Vito as one of those emerging from the rubble covered in brick dust, the largest grin on his face, and I might have been a girl in oversized trousers and a bandana around my neck, rifle cocked, looking like a true Resistance soldier at last, my heels abandoned. But it wasn’t to be. The fact that we won back our city has to be enough.
I’m sad too – and guilty – that I didn’t care for my parents in the Italian way through their last years. I often try to analyse why, when the war ended, I felt unable to permanently return to a place that still holds a part of my soul captive. It’s a cliché, but a very apt one for Venice: simply a lot of water under the bridge. I both relished and dreaded my return at war’s end, and the longer I left it, the more of a mountain it became. It was Mama’s younger sister who moved in to look after my parents until their deaths. It’s a guilt I may never resolve.
Eventually, Gio and I return to what we both think of as ‘our city’ – though Gio’s parents are still happy and healthy in Naples – and we take what Jack calls ‘the plunge’ and are married in a large empty church on Campo Santo Stefano in June 1950, with only the priest and the church warden for witnesses. We eat gelato from the parlour next door and Gio takes a picture of me being silly in San Marco, in my best suit, engaging a tourist to snap one of us together, me surrounded by pigeons and him playing the clown. I think I remember jokingly marking the picture with a ‘C’ on the back, though why I don’t know, since he is now so far removed from the Cristian De Luca I knew back in wartime. Afterwards, we go to see Paolo and drink the best coffee, now he has good beans to work with again.
Back home in London – yes, it becomes ‘home’ – we are happy refugees from the war. It’s only when Sofia is born that perhaps I think I may never go back. I adore Venice, I love its beauty, history and tenacity, the labile nature of its people and its water, crafting a new base for itself every day. But our unity and our solid life is in London, and I’m happy to be an Italian with half a continent and a channel between me and my country, because it sits permanently in my heart.
Our happiness brings words, for both of us. Gio is busy on his academic texts, published to great acclaim and small sales, and I slide in some writing time between my day job and Sofia. Charles seems genuinely to like my material and is gracious in publishing it, to a moderate success. I’m an acquired taste as an author but I have a loyal band of book-buying followers. Gio and I agreed that his foray into fiction was a one-off, and not written for general release. Our story – for us. Besides, who would ever believe it anyway? It reads like a fantasy. I donate a slightly smudged carbon copy to the lovely Paolo – my Venetian bedrock – and the original sits on a shelf in the house, gathering dust and perhaps lost in a box on a later move.
Occasionally, Gio and I work together in our house, sometimes late into the evening, when Sofia is asleep on the second floor and she can’t hear the double clatter of two great machines side by side; I still work better when there’s something like the sound of a newspaper office nearby.
As for the typewriter – the one that sits on the side in our living room, dusted regularly and with her wayward arm a little more bent out of shape – she is retired but never forgotten. Silent, but proud. And no longer hidden.
Acknowledgements
As with so many books, there are more influences than pages to print. This book, however, would be a mere shadow without the generosity of Venetian historian Giulio Bobbo, of the Giudecca-based IVESER – a huge thanks for his prompt replies to my probing questions, tapping into his font of knowledge about the Resistance in Venice. The details he provided would have been priceless for any writer. I hope I have done justice to his city and to the turmoil it endured.
I can’t stress enough how grateful I am to my brilliant, positive and always encouraging editor, Molly Walker-Sharp, and the entire team at Avon Books. Their faith in my writing has changed my life beyond belief; I now think of myself as a writer as well as a midwife, and that’s down to the shaping, marketing and publicity of book number one – A Woman of War (or The German Midwife in the US and Canada) – leading to this book. Ongoing thanks for your patience in my lack of IT skills and anything else I haven’t yet grasped fully. Also to their HarperCollins colleagues worldwide, in Canada and the US especially.
I’m delighted to be able to thank my agent too – Broo Doherty at DHH Literary Agency. Navigating the publishing world without an agent initially felt like embarking on a pregnancy without a midwife by my side – necessary at the time but slightly scary. I now feel that I have my very own experienced and knowing midwife looking after me in the book world!
My draft readers were once again invaluable and patient: Michaela, Hayley and Kirsty – you are amazing. A special thanks to my writing buddy Loraine – LP Fergusson in print – who lends her IT expertise to an idiot, alongside her wisdom and sanity as we negotiate the writing world together. My thanks also to Katie Fforde for ongoing encouragement over that tricky second book – I hope I have as many in me as you do.
Buffering me day-to-day are my family – Simon, Finn, Harry and Mum, who afford me space and tolerate my lack of domestic prowess in allowing me to write. My colleagues too, at Stroud Maternity – you are saints to put up with me in the last crazy year since publication and remain my biggest supporters.
My thanks also to the lovely crew at Coffee #1 in Stroud, topping me up with the best coffee and smiles. This book was formed amid the chatter of one of the friendliest cafés in Stroud and beyond.
Thanks also to you, readers – the success of book one has made me a happy little scribe. To be given even the opportunity to write and publish a second is proof positive that dreams really do come true.
And lastly, though not least, thank you to Venice and Venetians: for tolerating tourists, like myself, to be able to enjoy surely the most
magical city on this earth.
Keep Reading …
Germany, 1944. Anke Hoff is assigned as midwife to one of Hitler’s inner circle. If she refuses, her family will die.
For readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz comes a gritty tale of courage, betrayal and love in the most unlikely of places.
UK readers click here.
US and Canadian readers click here.
About the Author
Mandy Robotham saw herself as an aspiring author since the age of nine, but was waylaid by journalism and later enticed by birth. She’s now a practising midwife, who writes about birth, death, love and anything else in between. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University. This is her second novel – her first, published as A Woman of War in the UK and The German Midwife in the US and Canada, was a number one Globe and Mail bestseller.
By the same author:
A Woman of War (published in the US and Canada as The German Midwife)
About the Publisher
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The Secret Messenger Page 30