by David Elvar
He stood up, this guy, to thin applause and a few half-hearted Bravos. As it died down, he sat down. The silence was embarrassing. The leader cleared his throat again.
‘So tell us, Franco,’ he said, ‘what was it like being confined for so long?’
‘As nothing compared to the suffering I know our children go through every day by being deprived of their fathers,’ he replied nobly. ‘It was something that had to be done.’
General nodding and murmurs of agreement greeted this: this was the sort of stuff they liked to hear.
‘And how long were you locked in there?’
‘Six hours.’
‘Six hours!’ Suddenly, everyone was looking my way. The words had just come out, I hadn’t meant them to. But six hours!
The leader looked past me to my father. ‘Vittorio, there is some reason for this interruption?’
‘None at all,’ said my father, glaring at me. ‘Elisa is still, ah…not herself after her terrible ordeal.’
Terrible ordeal? I was so taken aback, I missed the murmured nod of understanding, the leader asking the one called Franco to go on. But I wasn’t listening. What terrible ordeal? The only one I could remember was being torn away from mum, and that would hardly count with this bunch of half-assed clowns.
I came to, brought back by another thin round of applause as the one called Franco came to the end of his tale of horror and deprivation caused by locking himself in a Sicilian craphouse for six hours. The leader went to speak, to continue the meeting, but was cut off short by the door opening. He looked round. We all looked round. The last member of the group had arrived. And he was not alone.
‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ he blustered as he entered. ‘mama was not feeling so well. The, ah…stress, you understand.’
‘My babies!’ his companion wailed. ‘My poor babies! I will never see them again!’
I guessed from this that this was mama, and the babies she was breaking her heart over were the guy’s children, her grandchildren.
‘This we understand and you are excused,’ said the leader solemnly and to general nods of agreement. ‘Please, take your place among us.’
They shuffled to the empty chairs and sat down heavily, the older bringing out a riot of a lace handkerchief and proceeding to dab her eyes with it. And the meeting went on.
There isn’t much to tell, just pretty much what had gone before, though no one else seemed to have gone to the extreme lengths of the toilet stunt. And all the while, like punctuation marks on a page of text, this latecomer grandmother would let out a heartfelt wail about her poor grandchildren and never being able to see them again, never being able to tuck them into bed at nights, never being able to serve them ice-cream on a hot day—the list was endless. Then at last, there was a pause, the leader looking directly at my father.
‘Vittorio,’ he said. ‘You have a major victory to share with us, I believe.’
I snapped round to look at him. A major victory? Suddenly, I had some idea of why I was there.
He stood up, puffed himself up as I’d seen him do so many times, breathing in the self-importance of the moment. He paused impressively, looked round at them all as though waiting to be cheered or something.
‘My friends,’ he said, his voice almost trembling, ‘as you know, my daughter Elisa was cruelly abducted by her mother and taken to England. My fight to get her back has been long and hard but I have succeeded. She is back in the country where she belongs. She is the young lady sitting beside me.’
All eyes were on me as they clapped. And yeah, they clapped. Not the half-hearted pattering of hands that greeted the toilet episode but the full-on works. I think I was supposed to smile or something, maybe even nod thanks for the attention, but I didn’t. I couldn’t believe it! I was being paraded, paraded like a goddam war trophy! But there was worse to come.
‘My friends,’ my father went on, ‘I am sure you have many questions but I ask you to hear me out, to let me tell the story. If at the end of it, you think I have missed something, please feel free to ask it of me.
‘It was nearly a year ago when Elisa was taken from me, ripped from my arms as she screamed Papa! Papa! Don’t let her take me!—’
Uh? What I remembered of that parting was a little different, something along the lines of him dropping us off at the airport and not bothering to wait with us until flight time because he couldn’t be away from his work that long.
‘—But the mother had two strong men with her and I was no match. They dragged her away, and her screams haunted my dreams for months afterwards.—’
Two strong men. They would be the two airline guys who’d checked us in at the desk, then.
‘—In the months that followed, I didn’t know where they were, but I managed to track them down—’
And while he didn’t know where we were and was tracking us down, he sent letters and money every week.
‘—They were living in a two-room hovel in a city centre—’
Better known as John’s house in Dorset.
‘—But this was only the start of it. The mother, vile and heartless creature that she is, denied me all access, denied me even the right to speak to my own daughter—’
Vile and heartless, huh? That was rich after the two calls mum had made to try to speak to me. This had gone far enough. I leapt up, faced him full-square in front of an audience that was lapping up every word of this crap.
‘You spoke to me every day,’ I shouted, ‘every day you could tear yourself away from your damn computer, that is!’
‘Elisa!’ he commanded. ‘Sit down and be silent!’
‘Go to hell! And you knew exactly where we were. We’d kept you informed right up to when mum told you she wanted a divorce and we moved in with John. And she sent you his address so you could stay in touch with me!’
‘Elisa!’ He was licking his lips nervously, licking his lips and darting anxious glances at the group leader. ‘Please!’
‘And don’t you ever speak about my mother in that way again. She’s got more parenting know-how in her little finger than you or this rabble of closet paedophiles have in all your bodies put together.’
That did it. Suddenly, they were all on their feet. Well, not all of them. Weepy grandma was still in her seat, letting loose another howl about her poor babies.
‘You will take that back, Elisa!’ my father was screaming. ‘You will take that back and apologise to everyone in this room!’
‘Go to hell!’ I screamed back. ‘You know as well as I do that most mothers are okay with children and their fathers. If they deny access, there’s usually a good reason for it.’
‘And the reason your mother denied me access?’
‘She didn’t and you know it! If you’d just divorced her like she asked and left me in England like I asked, you could have had all the access you wanted.’
‘But on your terms!’
‘What other terms are there?’
That seemed to stop him. No answer to that. While we’d been arguing, the leader was slowly bringing his meeting back under control. When at last we were all seated again, he glared sternly at my father.
‘It appears, Vittorio,’ he said, ‘that your daughter is untutored in the ways of meetings of this sort. Perhaps it would be as well to remove her until she is able to act with due decorum.’
My father, red-faced and embarrassed, nodded reluctantly and rose.
‘I apologise to all in this association,’ he said. ‘Come, Elisa.’
And we left. To thunderous silence, we left.
‘I suppose you think you did another beautiful thing in there,’ he growled as we dropped down into the street.
‘Well, what do you expect?’ I growled back. ‘You come out with that—that fantasy, you insult my mother and you expect me to just sit there and take it?’
‘I expect you to support me!’ he snapped. ‘There are fathers in there who have not seen their children in years. My task was to bring them hope.’
‘Yours, maybe. Mine, no. And don’t you ever try to use me in such a way again!’
‘Your mother’s influence is still strong in you, I see,’ he said shortly.
‘If you mean I still love her like crazy then you got that right, pal,’ I muttered.
‘Well, this can be changed. This at least can be attended to.’
‘Yeah? How?’
‘I was waiting for a more opportune moment to tell you,’ he said, ‘but this will serve as well as any other. You may as well know that I have started proceedings to apply for single custody.’
I stopped. Stood there. He stopped with me, turned to face me.
‘You—you can’t,’ I breathed.
‘I can and I have started the process. There is nothing you will do to impede this, Elisa. You will never see or have contact with your mother again. Now come.’
He started away again. Me? I couldn’t move. Shock. It takes you like that, sometimes.
SEVENTEEN
For days afterwards, I was in a daze. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t concentrate on school and sleep always seemed just beyond my grasp. What he’d said…I would never see or have contact with mum ever again—it couldn’t be possible, it couldn’t be allowed to be possible! It haunted me, chased after me during the day, prodded fitfully at me during the night. By the end of the week, I looked and felt a wreck.
If anyone noticed anything, they never said. I mean, why should they? My schoolfriends were still trying to decide if I was okay enough to get closer to, my teachers pretty much ignored how we students were and just got on with the job of cramming us with as much pointless crap as possible, and my father…well, like I say, if it can’t be explained through an equation, it doesn’t figure too highly in his list of priorities. I had to do something. The question was, what?
There was only one person who could help me, who knew enough of me and my situation to be able to give the right advice. The first chance to call her came one evening when my father went out. He didn’t say where he was going or how long he would be but I took the chance. I dialled her number and hoped she was in. She was.
‘Hello.’
‘Eliana, hi. It’s me. Elisa. I need to talk to you.’
‘Ah, my fellow black sheep. Have you recovered from the wine yet?’
‘Eliana, this is serious! I really, really need your help.’
‘What has happened? Tell me.’
‘We were at a meeting last night, some kind of fathers group thing—’
‘Ah, yes. Testosterone-filled nobodies who can’t accept they’ve been beaten. Go on.’
‘And it, uh…it didn’t go too well for him.’
‘You had a hand in that, I hope.’
‘You bet I did! He came out with this fantasy story about me being kidnapped virtually at gunpoint by a battalion of goons hired by mum and then he started slagging her off and I—I just lost it. I mean, he can live in his delusions as much as he likes but no way is he going to do that to her.’
‘It was ever so with your father, Elisa. Even as a child, he would make up his own version of events if the reality didn’t suit him. Go on.’
‘Well, we left in kind of a hurry—’
‘This I can imagine.’
‘—and on the way out, he told me something. He said he was tired of my mother’s influence on me and he was applying for single custody, and that I would never see or speak to her again.’
Silence. For a moment, I wondered if the connection had gone down, something that’s not unknown in the Sicilian telephone system.
‘Eliana? Are you still there?’
‘I am here. Just give me a moment.’
Another silence, but this time more reassuring. When she spoke again, it was with firmness, like she was sure of her ground.
‘This he cannot do. Even if he had full custody, your mother would still have access rights.’
‘You’re certain of this?’
‘I have it right in front of me, on an internet page dealing with custody issues.’
‘So—so why say that to me? I mean, he said it like he meant it, like he knew it was going to happen.’
‘He has started this?—In the legal sense, I mean.’
‘He says he has but I never know with him when he’s telling the truth.’
‘Something more that I remember from his childhood. Elisa, there is only one way to be certain. You must find the court papers.’
‘Court papers! But he’ll have sent them to the court, won’t he?’
‘I know my brother, Elisa, and if he has sent papers, there will be copies somewhere. He is methodical to a fault, always has been. Look for them. They will be there.’
I thanked her and hung up, but only after she made me promise to let her know what I’d found.
I stood there pondering. Sure, I could find them. If she said they would be there, I could find them. The problem was, where to start? I had time, yeah, but what I didn’t know was how much. There could only be one place: his study. He kept everything there. His work, his personal papers—you name it, it’s there.
I tiptoed down the hallway, which was really a dumb thing to do since he was out and Anya was in her room, probably asleep but also indifferent to anything I might be up to if she wasn’t. I clicked the door to his study open, slipped inside and homed in on his desk.
I was thinking. Methodical, Eliana had said. Okay, so he’d store stuff in order of importance, wouldn’t he—most important at the top and decreasing in importance as you went down? And since I figured pretty much at the bottom of his list of priorities, that could only mean…I yanked open the bottom drawer. Bingo. It was a folder, lying alone but clearly marked with my name—ELISA. So I’d been reduced in his thinking to a file, had I? I should have been surprised but wasn’t.
I pulled it out, set in on the desk and opened it. It was all there, just as she’d said it would be. But just what it was I was supposed to be looking for, I didn’t know.
I skimmed over the first of the papers. This was just his deposition to the court, the outline of his case saying what he wanted and why he wanted it. And yeah, like he’d said, he was asking for—no, demanding—single custody of the child Elisa Cecilia Consuella Pellegrino. He had evidence, he said, evidence of the unsuitability of the mother’s fitness as a parent, which was attached separately. He particularly drew the Excellent Judge’s attention to Allegato 4, which illustrated more than anything else the mother’s depravity and general indifference to the child Elisa’s welfare. Yeah? This Allegato 4 I wanted to see.
It was there, at the back of the file along with all the rest of the “evidence” he’d gathered. It was a letter to him. Typed. And from…from mum? I squinted at the signature. It was her name all right but—I scanned the page, took in as much as I could as quickly as I could—but this wasn’t her, no way would she have written something like this!
I read more slowly, couldn’t believe what I was seeing—…glad to be away from a stifling marriage…enjoying the uncomplicated attentions of a much younger man…planning to move to a commune…specialists in liberating the mind through the use of narcotics…Elisa will be going, too—I didn’t recognise any of this! When we moved in with John, we used to sit and plan the future, yeah, all of us together. Mostly, it centred round moving to the coast—“by the seaside”, John would say with a wink to me. His job, a good one, meant that we could probably afford to do it. And mum would say she’d find a job, too, even if it was only cleaning somewhere. And John would say not to worry about that, he just wanted her to be happy. And she’d smile. Yeah, that’s how it was. Communes and drugs never figured anywhere. So what was this I was holding?
It was then that I noticed something. It was in Italian, not English. And being so intent on the content, I hadn’t noticed that the spelling was perfect. If anything, it looked like it had been written by someone who was totally at ease with the language, which mum was not, never had been. In fact, it looked almost like it had
been written by…
I froze, tried hard not to believe what I was thinking.
…by my father?
I couldn’t believe he’d stoop so low—no, scrap that: I could believe he’d stoop so low as this, I just never thought he would. My father had forged a letter from my mother and was presenting it as sworn testimony. In short, he was lying to the court. And that’s kind of illegal.
I had to do something with this. First things first, I had to get this to Eliana, see what she made of it and what she suggested I should do with it. But how? I couldn’t just take it, he might notice it gone. But what to do…?
As I gazed round, I saw it, sitting purposefully on a table to one side of the room, a scanner/photocopier. Yeah, that’d do it. I was on it in a flash, switching it on and glancing up at the clock as though expecting it to tell me if I had time to do this.
It took its time in warming up. At long last, I was laying the sheet down and closing the lid down, then pressing the green button that would lead me to getting what I needed. The scanner light dragged across the screen, the machinery whirred, a sheet of fresh paper was sucked up and inside then slowly spat out again. It finished, the paper settling in the tray. I picked it up, scanned it briefly. Yep! Perfect copy. But I wasn’t finished yet.
I flicked through the case notes one more time, just in case there was more I could use. His deposition was four pages long. He had a lot to say, mostly about mum’s failings, none about his own—he even had the nerve to call himself “a model husband and affectionate father”! Yeah, he’d actually set that down on paper. But beyond that and the rest of what was really nothing more than a long and lamenting rant, there was nothing. Then I saw it, three words heading the final statement to the judge setting out what was required of him in this case.
INAUDITA ALTERA PARTE
My Italian was pretty good—too many years of living here had ensured that—but these were three words I’d never seen before. I didn’t know what they meant but they were in block capitals and bold text and centred on the page so I figured they must be important. Yeah, that would go to Eliana, too. I set the page on the copier screen and pressed green again.
It was just as it was winding down that I heard it, the slam of a car door. It might have been my father, it might not, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I gathered the papers together, thrust them back into the file and shoved it back in its drawer. And I was gone from that room before the front door opened, flitting silently upstairs with my two pages of pure evil clutched tightly in my hand.