by Jo Riccioni
‘Look, we’d just like to know his rights. His sponsor said he has to stay with him for seven years at least. Surely that can’t be true?’
The officer cleared his throat. ‘I’ve toold the young fella, as long as he has a letter from a sponsor and we only see hes face in here t’sign the register, we dunna care how he keeps heself ootta trouble.’
‘So he doesn’t have to wait seven years to change employers, then?’
The constable sighed and spoke slowly, as if Connie herself was the foreigner. ‘Seven years is t’apply fer residency. He can change sponsors if he can get another. O’ course, he could gae hoome … p’rhaps there’s better back in Italya?’
They left the station and stopped at Cromwells for tea and a bun. Vittorio still hadn’t understood what the sergeant had said, but before she would explain, she wanted to hear his reasons for leaving Repton’s. He was reluctant at first, but when she pushed him, she was taken aback at the sudden emotion of his confession.
‘He can pull out his hair and eat ashes, my father,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘England is the future, he told us. Machines for the harvest, machines to do the work of ten men. We can be something there. But what are we?’ He paused, like she might offer him a different answer. ‘Slaves for Repton, that’s all.’ His mouth had become hard in his face, making him seem years older. She stayed quiet, not knowing what to say.
‘In our village my father was better than podestà — do you understand? Like the mayor. Men came to him to stop arguments, to find answers; they respected him. We had electricity in our house, clean water. Now we live in a stalla — this animal shed, with a hole in the ground to shit. We work until dark, we sleep, and then we start again. And this Repton, we have to pay him for this! We have to pay him for bringing us to … questo cesso, Inghilterra. And he says we must stay for seven years with him, like this tractor or this truck, this machinery he owns. Maledetto bugiardo, figlio di puttana.’ He pushed away his teacup, which rattled indignantly in its saucer.
The loud flourish of Italian words made a nurse at the next table cough and stir her tea. The waitress blushed, her mouth open. Connie put one hand to her forehead, blocking them both from her view, and with the other she put a finger to her lips.
Vittorio glowered, petulant and unapologetic as he turned his back to the room and studied the view through the window. In the reflection she saw him wipe his mouth against his forearm, as if to press back the words that threatened to keep coming. Connie’s heart tightened with the injustice of it, with anger at the way he’d been misled, but she didn’t know how to make things better, feeling culpable on Repton’s behalf — on England’s behalf. Finally, she leaned towards him. ‘I can teach you if you like?’
‘What?’ he said sharply.
And she whispered, ‘All the swear words you need.’
On their way home, a few villages out of Huntingdon, Vittorio became preoccupied, scanning the scenery as they approached Spalewick. Ahead was Edwards Garage, with its two fuel pumps beside the open road.
‘There, see?’ He pointed at the filling station as the bus pulled into the stop a short way off. ‘I take the Hillman there to change the oil. Mr Edwards, he likes me. He says, Vic, you a smart boy. You work hard. He asks if I want to be apprentice to him — mechanic.’ The word sounded complex and important in his mouth. He tapped his chest with a thumb. ‘Mr Edwards pays me four times more than Repton gives my father. Four times! Now you understand this Repton?’
She couldn’t quite believe how low their wages were, even by Mr Repton’s standards. She nodded.
‘Tomorrow, I tell Mr Edwards yes,’ he said, as if she had given her approval.
‘It’s already lined up, then, the job? And you’ll leave?’ She tried to disguise the flatness in her voice by studying the view across the open fields. At thirty miles from Leyton, Spalewick was too far to travel by bus or bike on a daily basis. He would need to move, and how could she be indifferent to that? She had started to look forward to his visits, which punctuated the monotony of her day at Cleat’s, and to finding him straddling her bike in the evenings after work.
‘Mr Edwards has a room for me to live behind his workshop,’ Vittorio said.
‘But your father’ll be angry, won’t he? About you breaking with Mr Repton?’
He jammed his hands under his armpits. ‘They live their life. I live mine.’ He thought for a moment. ‘First thing I do is pay Repton the cost of our passage — for all of us.’ He scoffed. ‘Buy back our freedom.’
His certainty made her envious. People in the villages were never that confident: they were practical, unambitious, stubbornly compliant because, she suspected, like her they thought little of themselves. He, on the other hand, had such self-belief, such a conviction of his worth despite the complete absence of privilege. How had he got it, this attitude that the world was his, and all he had to do was crack it open? Being around him, she felt pulled along in his wake, buoyant with possibility.
He noticed her examining him. ‘What?’
She shook her head and felt the engine changing gears, the spring in the seat, his knee knocking hers again. And when he took her hand in his, she let him.
As they reached the Leyton turn-off, Connie looked back at the main road, feeling his fingers touch her hair, the strange inevitability of his hands at her face. She turned to him and, though she found herself answering, she wasn’t thinking about the kiss, his tongue on hers. Instead she imagined staying on the bus, travelling on and on, far away into the drawing night, until dawn broke over the misty city inside her mind, peopled with older, more sophisticated versions of herself. It was a daydream she had often become lost in, but somehow, today, he’d made it seem unnervingly possible. She pulled away from him and gazed out at the dull cluster of buildings that was Leyton.
When the brakes of the bus hissed and the doors opened, she was ready behind them, preparing to jump off, anticipating the familiar handles of her bike, the effort of the cycle up Bythorn Rise. For she couldn’t deny the tug she felt in the pit of her stomach, not from his kiss but from something else. Something forgotten, holding her back. And as she stepped onto the high street, she found she was relieved for once to hear the bus grumbling away, back towards the open road.
Montelupini
1943
His mother was calling him. She was on a ladder against the peach tree in the Vigna Alba, handing Lucio a basket loaded with fruit. He had been gazing at the soldiers on the back balcony of the town hall, smoking in the heady afternoon sun.
‘Lucio, are you listening to me? I want to get these up to the padre as quickly as we can.’ She shook the basket at him irritably. Since he’d finished school the previous month, he’d been able to join her in the fields and vineyards, sharing her workload. But Padre Ruggiero only seemed to expect more from them. ‘He’s heard from La Mula that they’ve been ripe for days. As if I wouldn’t know a tender peach when I see one. I should have picked them hard off the tree to spite him.’
Lucio took the basket and passed her another, lined with fig leaves. She layered the leaves between the fruit to protect them. Despite her words, she did all the right things, everything she could to appease the priest. Her brown cheeks shone from the work, her skirts tucked up into her belt behind her. The stitching was coming loose at the side of her shoe and he made a note to fix it.
She was irritated more with Vittorio than with Padre Ruggiero, he knew. This was a chore she had set his brother, but they had argued again that morning, the same argument they’d had ever since Lucio had graduated: Vittorio wanted to leave school too, before his final year, but his mother refused. What good were books and reciting poems and useless dates, Vittorio demanded, if they were all going to starve to death? With the three of them they might turn over some of the meadow near the stable, increase their yield, and he would have more time to trade and hunt. But t
heir mother was adamant. In retaliation, Vittorio did what he always did and swung to the other extreme. He refused all his chores after school and, when questioned, said Lucio should do them so that he could concentrate on the education that was clearly so precious. Lucio couldn’t help seeing some truth in the argument and, wanting to keep the peace, had taken on his brother’s work, which made their mother even angrier.
‘I don’t know what Padre Ruggiero thinks I do with my days,’ she muttered to the branches. ‘Sunbathing, maybe? Or swimming in the lake at Montemezzo?’
‘Sounds like something worth doing on an afternoon like this.’ It was a man’s voice, close behind them. Otto Hirsch stood with his arms folded, gazing up into the tree. He must have spotted them from the balcony of the mess and come down through the orchards. Lucio saw his mother’s face peer out between the branches. There was a leaf curled in her hair. When she saw the German, she jerked back behind a bough and busied herself picking more fruit.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, signora. I was only wondering if you and Lucio needed another pair of hands?’ She didn’t answer, but she shook out her skirt and brushed a hand over her hair before climbing down the ladder.
‘I’d be grateful for something to do — a reason to escape the mess,’ Otto added.
‘This is Signor Otto, Mamma,’ Lucio explained as he tried to take the basket from his mother. But she held on to the handle and waited, indicating she expected more from him. ‘I … We met at Collelungo. He saved Iana from a snake.’
‘Did he?’ his mother said, but instead of greeting Otto or shaking hands with him, she reached for her headcloth and began to twist it into a tight ring. Her eyes flickered over the soldier, more amused than suspicious.
Back on the balcony, the men in the mess had begun to call out to Otto, whistling and heckling in German. He adjusted his stance, palming the back of his neck and blocking them from his vision. There was something different about him, Lucio noticed, something uncertain: he had never seen his friend at such a loss before.
‘I saw you from the balcony and thought I should bring this back,’ Otto said, handing his mother a small package wrapped in waxed paper. ‘You left it behind at the stream — when you were washing your clothes.’ Lucio could smell the soap. It was his mother’s turn to fidget. She looked at the package like he had handed her one of her underclothes or a loose stocking in public. Over on the balcony, someone whistled again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Otto said, glancing up at the men. ‘I didn’t think. They’re bored, mischievous … it’s the heat, you know … Perhaps I should go?’
Viviana had wandered over, wagging her tail and whining at him, and Otto bent to scratch her ears, relieved to have something to occupy his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to doing so little.’ He let out an awkward laugh. ‘It seems a lot of waiting around, this life of a soldier. I think I might go crazy if I stay up there any longer.’ The words spilled out like a kind of confession.
Lucio’s mother considered him briefly, before bending down to swing the basket of peaches onto her head.
‘Please,’ Otto said. And he held the handles until she let him take it from her.
‘It’s going to be a tough walk up the mountain carrying it like that,’ she said, nodding at the way he propped the basket on his hip.
‘Well, I could use the exercise.’
‘You tell me when it gets too heavy, then.’ She pressed her lips together, and Lucio caught her eyes shining, black as wet ink.
His mother walked ahead of them, surefooted and steady, her neck long, her shoulders square, as if she was still carrying the full basket on her head.
As they climbed Collelungo, Lucio listened to their cautious exchanges, simple things he had not thought to ask Otto before, things he had never heard his mother put into words either.
‘How come your Italian is so good?’ she asked.
‘My mother was from Lucca,’ Otto said. ‘My father brought her back to Germany after they met. But she always spoke Italian to us when we were growing up.’
His mother eyed him over her shoulder. ‘You don’t look Italian.’
Otto laughed, shifting the load to his other hip. ‘And you don’t look like someone who could carry the weight of this basket halfway up a mountain either. But I’m sure you can.’
‘All the mountain women can. We learn it very young.’ Her voice was serious, but then she added, ‘My husband says our heads are flatter than men’s. So, you see, we’re pretty good beasts of burden.’ As she turned back, Lucio noticed the playfulness of her mouth, her sidelong glance. So did Otto, for his face seemed to come alive with it.
‘Is that so? And where is your husband?’
She ignored the question, and Otto’s expression darkened. ‘I’m sorry, signora. I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘You’re sorry a lot, aren’t you?’ It made him smile again.
When she began to leave the path and wander into the meadow, they stopped and waited for her. ‘If you’re lucky, at this time of year you can find wild strawberries in this spot,’ she called. ‘Tiny ones. Very sweet.’ She bent before a copse of brambles, searching, and Lucio and Otto set down their loads.
‘Nothing?’ Otto asked, when she returned.
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes someone else finds them first.’
‘I hope it wasn’t men from my unit,’ Otto said. ‘They’ve been told not to take anything from the local area … but sometimes they need reminding.’ He picked up his basket. ‘Once again, I’m sorry.’
‘You can hardly punish them for taking a few wild strawberries, Signor Otto. Anyway, I doubt they got there before one of the villagers did. These days people are hungry enough to pick them green.’
Otto motioned at the peaches with his chin. ‘Then where are we taking all this?’
‘To Padre Ruggiero,’ she answered.
‘The priest? Why?’
‘His land, his tree, his fruit,’ was all she said.
At the path beside Rocca Re, his mother stopped. She asked Otto to wait for them on the outcrop. ‘In our village, Signor Otto, women do not walk with men who are not their husbands — and sometimes not even with men who are, if they can help it.’ She started her climb towards the priest’s house.
Lucio walked backwards along the track beside her. ‘Stay, Iana,’ he said, and his dog collapsed in the shade of the brambles and began to pant in the last of the afternoon heat. He looked to Otto for confirmation that he would watch Viviana, but his friend’s eyes were on the chalk track, the back of his mother’s neck, brown and smooth as honey, the sway of her skirts as she turned the bend.
An army jeep was parked outside Padre Ruggiero’s villa, a German soldier propped against it, smoking in the sun. He didn’t bother to stand up when they approached. They’d seen the jeep and driver before when the priest was entertaining Captain Schlosser. They could smell brewed coffee — not the blend of acorn and chicory grinds that the villagers drank, but the sultry aroma of the real thing. Lucio saw his mother raise her chin, savouring the smell of it.
They walked around to the cellar door as Padre Ruggiero and his guest emerged on the balcony above them.
‘… I find it a rather barbaric ritual, myself,’ the priest was saying, ‘but it’s part of the summer festival and the villagers are very protective of their traditions. Your men might enjoy it. I’m sure they’re in need of distraction.’
‘They are, Padre,’ the captain replied. His Italian was laborious and heavily accented, but doubtless good enough for socialising with priests. ‘Thank you for the grappa. It’s the best I’ve tasted in this area.’
‘Not at all, not at all. The least I can do in return for your generosity.’ Padre Ruggiero caught sight of them. ‘Ah, Letia, my dear,’ he called. ‘Wait there, would you?’ His mother sighed as they set dow
n the baskets. These days they delivered their produce to the cellar and left as quickly as they could, avoiding the priest for fear of what he might ask of them next, what he might decide against them.
The two men appeared through the kitchen door, the captain with three large bottles of Raimondi Gold in the crook of his arm. Lucio sensed his mother stiffening beside him.
‘Please, Hauptsturmführer. Take some peaches from my orchard.’ Padre Ruggiero flicked a finger from Lucio to the idling jeep, where the driver had extinguished his cigarette and was standing to attention. Lucio carried his basket back and loaded it into the vehicle. ‘You won’t find better peaches anywhere in the Lepini ranges, I assure you.’
Captain Schlosser reached down to take a peach, running his thumb over the downy yellow skin. ‘A messy fruit,’ he mused. ‘Not so much to my taste. But the men will like them.’ He tossed the peach back in the basket, where it bounced against the others and split its skin.
‘I look forward to the festival,’ the German said, folding his legs into the jeep. He put on his cap and tapped the dashboard, signalling the driver to leave. As they set off, Lucio saw the captain twist around, not to farewell the priest, but to glance again at his mother, who had bent to lift her basket.
When the soldiers had rumbled out of sight down the rutted road, Padre Ruggiero took Lucio’s mother by the elbow and led her to the cellar door. ‘Letia, my dear, as for the grappa. You must have noticed how my stores have become depleted.’ He gestured in the direction of the jeep and the settling dust. ‘I have my reasons, you understand.’
‘What reasons would they be, Padre?’ she asked, deliberately obtuse.
‘Now, Letia, don’t play with me. You know very well that times are … well, strained, to say the least. We need to remain on the best of terms with the Germans — as your husband himself would stress if he were here to guide you.’
‘Well, he isn’t here, Padre.’ His mother took her basket into the cellar and they prepared to leave.