At the door of her house he paused.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
‘No. I have something to do.’
Fear and suspicion quavered in her voice. ‘Will you be long? Pippo, you must come in. You must let me explain.’
His manner softened. ‘Truly, it is not because of that. I told you before we came, I must go somewhere. A friend is in great trouble. I will come back later.’
She could not restrain a long sigh of relief. ‘Of course! I will wait for you. I will prepare a meal. Hurry back!’
She was alone. She sat down limply on the bed. Her love, her doubts, were a burden too great for her to bear. She shut her eyes, seeking a respite of peace. She must rest; and when she had rested she must think, and plan.
§§§§
‘We’ve got to get hold of him,’ said Craddock. ‘I went to look for him on my own once, after young Tiger thought he’d seen him. It was no use. But we’ve got to act quickly now or else he’ll be right down the pan. If he kills Broom, well, you know what that means. Even if he doesn’t, and he’s still on the run when we move out, he’ll become a deserter on active service. And you know what that means. He’ll be for it either way.’
‘He’s for it already,’ said Honeycombe.
‘So far he’s only absent without leave. He’ll have to answer for breaking arrest, as well, and for taking that pot shot at Broom. Still, what with extenuating circumstances, and all the rest of it, he wouldn’t come off too bad. We’ve got to get hold of him.’
‘And turn him in? asked Fooks.
‘And turn him in. I could square the captain to say he’d given himself up. That would make it a bit better for him.’
Honeycombe said, ‘Well, let’s go. We haven’t got all day.’
‘I suppose you two blokes realize,’ Fooks said to his companions, ‘you won’t ’alf catch it if the redcaps nab us. They can’t do much to me. I’ve ’ad more days in detention than I’ve ’ad ’ot dinners, and a few more wouldn’t make no odds. But you two ’ave got your stripes to lose. You’d both be back in the ranks peeling spuds with me an’ Sparrer.’
Craddock told him, ‘That’s our worry, Wally, not yours.’
Like most of the soldiers in town, they all had ‘bootleg’ pistols, and they went armed. They searched the whole of the quarter in which Jobling had been seen. They pried into the back rooms of wineshops, shone their torches into the dark recesses of street after street of hovels, pushed their way into brothels, clashing the bead curtains aside and shouting ‘Polizia!’ or displaying their pistols when a house bully tried to bar their way. They interrogated scared bawds and street-corner idlers. Late in the evening they returned, tired and dispirited; their search had been in vain.
§§§§
Graziella sang as she moved about the room, to dispel her loneliness and unease. She wanted to lift the baby out of his cot and hug him to her, to keep her company, but he was asleep. Nella usually came at this time of the evening. Graziella wished she were here, to bring comfort like a warm little kitten.
She went to the door. She called, ‘Have you seen Nella?’
Rosario looked up from a newspaper, and his face came alive with welcome. ‘Ciao, Graziella! She was here until a little while ago. All the evening she has been hanging about at the gate of the barracks, but just now she went away.’
‘Was she with someone?’
‘No, she was alone. She seemed to be in a hurry. I do not know what she was doing there. She was speaking to no one. But it seems to me that she is becoming too interested in the soldiers. People do not talk well about girls who wait for the soldiers.’
‘There is no harm in her. And if you do not want people to talk, do not talk thus yourself.’
‘I am sorry, Graziella. I meant only to help.’ He put the newspaper aside and came towards her, casually but with eagerness. ‘Have you been to the cinema this week? There is a good film at the Sala Roma. I saw it last night. It is very sad.’
‘I have seen it.’ She felt weary and annoyed. She wanted to escape, but she did not know how.
‘Did you like it?’
She shrugged her shoulders and grimaced.
‘There will be many more good films now that they have begun to send them again from America,’ he said. ‘The American films are magnificent.’
She did not answer. She leaned against the doorpost with her hands behind her back, looking past him.
He said, ‘I saw a funny thing this evening. You know the bald little soldier, who goes with Fat Lina? Their door was open, and I saw him bathing the children. He had one of them in the tub in front of him, all covered with soap. The baby was rolling on the floor, still dirty. The other three were all sitting up on the edge of the table like little dolls on a shelf, all washed and combed. Each time one of them fidgeted he took his pipe out of his mouth and waved it at them like a stick, and shouted to them in English. And, do you know, those children understood him! As soon as he spoke they sat still, and they looked at him with big solemn eyes, and they said, “Yes, pappa”.’
She said dully, ‘It is very funny.’ She was unmoved by the disappointment in his face. To her all men but one were contemptible; Rosario most of all. She knew these conversations, with his mouth uttering banalities and his eyes pleading like a dog’s.
He was trying desperately to keep the conversation from flagging, to be with her a little longer. He said, ‘I have olive oil in the shop.’
She said to herself, ‘I wonder where she is.’
‘I could let you have as much as you want.’
‘I have olive oil.’
She was about to make her excuses. He spoke again, hastily, ‘The children in hospital are out of danger. My mother has been to see them. She took eggs.’
‘Your mother is a good woman.’
‘She is in bed now. The walk was hard for her. She is not well, her chest troubles her a lot. All night long I hear her struggling for breath. She will not be able to get about much longer.’
‘You can manage with the shop on your own?’ She was talking absent-mindedly, keeping him at bay with empty words while her thoughts wandered.
‘Yes, but she cooks and cleans, and I cannot do that. Nor have I time to look after her.’
The commonplace reply came out of her mouth before she could check it. ‘Well, take a wife!’ She awoke in a panic: she must retreat before he answered her.
It was too late. He said, his eyes intent on her, ‘Who?’
She mumbled, ‘Oh, anyone. There are plenty of women,’ and sought to back away from him into the doorway. He moved quickly to intercept her and checked her with his hand. There was a terrible urgency in his bearing. ‘Graziella, I must say this.’ His voice was hardly audible and the words poured from him so rapidly that they were almost unintelligible. ‘It humiliates me. Every word I speak will make my humiliation worse, but now I must speak. Graziella, for the love of God, be kind to me!’
She whispered, ‘What do you want?’
‘Graziella, please, I beg you, you do not know what my life is like. You have no idea of my torment. I cannot bear it any longer. Be good to me, just once, for an hour, for a little while.’ He paused, gasping, and at the sight of the horror in her face the words came tumbling from him again. ‘What difference will it make to you? It will not hurt you. It is nothing for a woman!’
She stood as if petrified. He said, in a frenzy of shame, ‘Does the idea disgust you, then?’ She did not answer. He leaned back from her. The strength and the wild hope died from his voice. ‘Do you hate me?’
‘No.’
‘Do you despise me?’
She shook her head indifferently.
‘What then?’
She raised her eyes and looked at him out of their remote depths. ‘I do not see you.’
The words were like a blow. He said, choking, ‘When he goes away you will be a woman to spit upon.’
She tried to pass him. ‘Get out of my way!’
&nbs
p; ‘Graziella, the man who takes you when he has gone will be laughed at by everyone. But I will take you. What is the humiliation compared with my love for you?’ She squirmed past him and tried to close the door on him. He jammed his body into the doorway like a beggar. His voice became harsh with anguish. ‘I would crawl at your feet! I would let you trample on me!’ She forced the door shut. She heard him cry, from outside, ‘He will go away!’
His footsteps faded. Through the thin plaster wall that separated the two houses Graziella heard the voice of his mother, querulous and insistent, and his brief reply; the mother’s voice again, trailing off into a rumble of coughing, and a snarl of anger from Rosario.
Graziella busied herself spreading a tablecloth and laying out plates. She felt more alone than ever. She could not steady the racing beat of her heart; each time she remembered Rosario’s last words the icy fluttering in her breast began again. Mentally she was utterly befogged. She longed for Nella to come and console her.
She finished laying the table and went to stir the pasta in the pot. Her impatience became a physical discomfort. She went about her housework with greater energy, hoping to banish the overtired feeling that oppressed her and to leave herself without time to brood; but time dragged, and the pop and bubble of boiling water, the cries echoing distantly from the streets, the stertorous breathing of the old woman next door emphasized the silence about her and made her solitude more burdensome.
The meal was cooked, the floor swept and the bed unnecessarily remade by the time Nella arrived. Graziella experienced a hot surge of relief as her cousin entered, but she said irritably, ‘Where have you been?’
Nella answered, in a flat voice, ‘I did not think that you would be alone. Where is he?’ She moved about the room, toying with the ornaments on the shelves, as if she were not interested in receiving a reply.
‘He is out. He is coming later for supper. Where have you been?’
‘Walking.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you keep asking?’
‘Rosario is talking about you. He says that you are hanging about the gate of the barracks.’
Nella’s eyes flashed, in the shadows, in sudden pain and fury. ‘You have a spy, now, to watch me?’
‘No. Why do you shout so? I have never seen you so bad-tempered. Aren’t you well, dear?’
Nella turned away with a child’s petulant movement of the shoulders. ‘I’m all right. Leave me alone. You drive me mad with your questions.’ She turned, and a momentary light of interest appeared in her eyes as she studied Graziella. ‘You don’t look so well yourself. What is the matter with you?’
Graziella glanced at the mirror. A haunted face looked back at her, the eyes red with rubbing, the hair neglected, clefts of anxiety in the full cheeks. She said, ‘I have been working, and before that I slept for a while. I must make myself tidy. I am sorry I could not come to see your mother today. I was at the market. Did you give her the flour?’
‘Yes. She is making a polenta.’ Nella was staring at her with the cunning curiosity of a child. ‘I think you are in trouble.’
Graziella pushed her hair up wearily and rubbed the flat of her hand beneath her breasts. ‘Oh, I’m all right.’
Nella continued to walk about the room, like a wary little animal keeping out of reach. There was something strange about her today; there was no comfort to be had from her, no relief in her presence after the day’s buffetings. Her mouth trembled as she spoke again, but it made almost the shape of a cruel little smile. ‘Perhaps your man has left you?’
Graziella forced herself to reply, in a pitying tone, ‘Oh, you foolish child! What a thing to say!’
Nella said, with unexpected violence, ‘Why foolish? He will leave you. They all do.’
Graziella stooped and painstakingly straightened the edge of the counterpane. ‘When you are older you will know what you are talking about.’
‘They all do! All the English!’ Again it was the child speaking, in a half-weeping anger at being contradicted. ‘In any case, they will all go away soon, and you will lose him then!’
Graziella thought that she was going to faint. She was beset; one blow followed another. Why was the child trying to hurt her so? She told herself that she must not lose control, but she could not prevent herself from answering desperately, ‘He will not go away!’
‘Who is the child now?’ muttered Nella stubbornly. ‘You know he must go, but you are afraid to admit it, and so you talk like a child.’
Reason fled from Graziella. It was her own thoughts that she was trying to deny, rather than Nella’s words. She said, in a harsh, loud voice, ‘He will not go away!’
‘Stupid, when they are called, they go. Vincenzo was called, and he went. All these, they will be called soon. They will go, and your man will go with the others.’
‘He will not go. I have lost one. This one I will not lose!’
‘You are mad. He is a soldier.’
‘Rosario is a soldier.’ Graziella was speaking without conviction, but there was no trace of this in the vehemence of her voice; she found a mysterious relief in hearing the futile words coming from her lips.
‘This one is an Englishman.’
‘And Francesca’s man?’ Graziella’s voice rose. ‘What is he?’
Nella crept closer and looked up at her in terror. ‘What is he?’
She heard her own voice, loud and quivering, as if someone else were speaking. ‘You know what he is? He is one of those others. Francesca has told me. She knew she could trust me. She knew that I would understand. He is one of those others. They are soldiers. They are more warlike than the English. And Francesca has kept him.’
Nella whispered, ‘You are mad!’
‘I am a woman, and I know how to keep a man. This one I will keep!’ She saw Nella crouching at her feet, looking up at her with big, scared eyes. The tension drained out of her and she said, ‘Oh, what am I doing? I am so tired. Put some water in the bowl for me, dear. I must wash. He will be back soon, and I do not want him to see me like this.’
Nella went humbly to the sink. Graziella said, ‘You will not tell anyone what I have told you?’
Nella opened her mouth, but her voice had deserted her. She shook her head violently.
‘Francesca is a woman,’ Graziella said. ‘It would be a wicked thing to betray her.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I will wear the comb, he likes to see me wear it. Find it for me. And you can play the gramophone if you like. I know that pleases you.’ She went to the sink and began to wash. ‘You will stay for supper with us, and we shall have a good evening.’
Chapter Seventeen
BY the last week-end in August, the company’s training was in full swing. Captain Rumbold was bringing his men up to fighting pitch with the unhurrying certitude and confidence of an orchestral conductor. He measured their progress by the morning run with which he now began each day’s training. He had begun by taking them out, dressed only in gym kit, over short distances. Day by day he had added to the weight of their attire and increased the distance until now they were going out for five-mile runs in the sun’s full heat in complete battle order, burdened with packs, weapons, grenades and ammunition. At the beginning each run had been an ordeal, a struggle against unwilling muscles and lungs; now he would watch them swinging easily past, without effort, and know that every one of them shared with him the joy of endurance and self-command. They would return to the billet grinning with confidence, all thought of the purpose of these preparations drowned by the blood’s hot pride. Even their arms drill was vigorous and precise, although they only had ten minutes of it each day. The captain remarked to Mr Perkington, ‘You see, a pennorth of pride does more than a pound’s-worth of practice.’
All around them military activity was becoming more intense. Flotillas of landing-craft came sliding into the harbour and anchored hull to hull. Lorry convoys loaded up with petrol and ammunition, and vanished mysteriously to the north. Swarms of bombers
flecked the sky throughout the day, and the radio bulletins told of ceaseless raids on the southern tip of Italy. The brigadier was going off to conferences and the colonel was driving to and fro between the companies, with a preoccupied look on his face, checking up on training and equipment. Rumours multiplied.
A Commando unit had appeared in town, and one day it engaged the company in a street-fighting exercise. The exercise was so realistic that it degenerated into a gigantic hand-to-hand brawl among the rubble. The men returned to the billet with sore heads and bloodied shirts, but they were savagely content.
Day after day they practised beach landings. A man was drowned during one of these exercises; his disappearance was hardly noticed; he might as well have gone on leave. The landings, clumsy and muddled at first, became models of timing. The men, old hands and newcomers alike, learned to reach and cross a beach with the dash and the instinctive unity of an attacking football team.
A handful of burned-out men had straggled into the town, a collection of individuals who had wearily carried out certain duties in common but who, each evening, had dispersed and disappeared into the swarming civilian life around them. Now they were drawn together again into a functioning, human unit. They felt a living comradeship again. Each recognized among his companions the same schoolboy exuberance that stirred within him, the sense almost of sport with which each day’s fresh trials were surmounted, the banishment of thought. They were storing up energy like fuel.
§§§§
On the Saturday evening, after football, Craddock went to see Graziella. He was tired after the game, and glad to relax in domestic surroundings. He greeted her with constraint; the memory of their first quarrel still survived as an irritant in his consciousness; but, grateful for peace after the heat and the glare and the male excitement of these recent days, he surrendered to her presence, feeling a little guilty when he recalled how he had acted towards her.
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