Tell Me No Truths

by Gill Vickery

  ‘Sit down,’ Gaetano said.

  Roberto shook his head. He leaned against a tree and scowled down at Gaetano and the girls who sat dangling their hot feet in the pool’s cool water. Elena looked up at Roberto, her sweet face solemn. ‘I don’t want you to end up like Cristiano and die in a stupid war.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Gaetano said kicking at the water and accidentally splashing Ilaria.

  While they fooled around throwing water over each other, Elena, still looking at Roberto, said, ‘When you turn eighteen the Carabinieri Marshal will come looking for you and Gaetano to be drafted into the army.’

  Ilaria stopped splashing Gaetano. ‘Don’t worry about it, Elena. My father’s a friend of the marshal and Babbo knows he turns a blind eye if his friends’ sons mysteriously go missing when he’s out with a press gang. He thinks enough young men have died for no good reason.’

  Roberto shook his head. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Come on.’ Gaetano impatiently tugged his foster brother down. ‘We won’t be old enough for a couple of years anyway. Forget your beloved Duce for now. It’s too hot to argue.’

  Roberto pulled off his shoes, and slid his feet into the water. ‘Time will prove me and the Duce right,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Gaetano watched Elena tickle Roberto’s feet with her toes and smile at him. For a moment, he thought Elena’s teasing had worked and then Roberto’s face set in an expression Gaetano recognised all too well: the bright-eyed, fanatical look of those who fed hungrily on the Duce’s every word.

  CHAPTER X

  NICO SAT ON the top step of the building among its debris of leaves and moss. This was his mother’s worst nightmare come true: he was lost, alone, with no signal on his mobile and no one knew where he was. Nico didn’t care. The building and the hunters’ track meant there were people around somewhere – it wasn’t as though he was lost in the Amazonian rainforest. He was content to sit and look at the sumptuous Tuscan countryside rolling around him in great green waves.

  He got out his sketchbook and as he began to draw, a strong feeling of déjà vu swept over him. He took out the copy of The Shattered Mirror and found the passage he wanted:

  The white stucco chapel sat foursquare in the middle of a close-cropped area of grass studded with daisies. In front of it was a clear view of the hills unmarked by roads or habitations. On the other three sides, pine trees and cypresses nodded in the wind, the forest darkening behind them. Alessandro trod up the steps to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it wide open.

  Nico knew what came next – inside the chapel Alessandro discovered scaffolding built for a restorer working on decaying frescoes painted above the door. Hanging from the metal tubing was a body:

  The corpse swung gently, like a sack of wheat waiting to be lowered into a cart. Alessandro climbed the steel ladder and walked along the planking. He leaned down and pulled a wedge of paper from between the dead man’s teeth making the corpse jerk and spin. As Alessandro expected there was a drawing of a flower on the paper. This one was a ranunculus, symbol of death.

  Jade and Amber, with Caterina’s help, sketched out a family tree in Amber’s pink notebook. The complex relationships were easier to understand once they were written down.

  Jade looked at the names Nonno had never heard: his daughter Sofia, his granddaughter Caterina who was sitting here with her and Amber, his grandson Matteo, and his three great-grandchildren. It was cruel that Nonno hadn’t had a chance to get to know them.

  Coming to Italy was meant to be an end, a winding-up of Nonno’s life story. Instead there were puzzles and questions, lots of them: why did Caterina think Nonno was a fascist? What part did Gaetano have to play in this new story? Was he the person who’d threatened to kill Nonno if he came back to Italy? If so, why? Jade’s head was spinning. And there was another question, one Jade didn’t want to think about but which wouldn’t go away: what if the stories Nonno had told them weren’t true after all?

  From among the cypresses in front of Nico came the sound of a woman’s voice singing sweetly. The figure that emerged from between the trees took him completely by surprise. It was an oldish woman, quite bulky, dressed in tweeds and tartan, prodding at the ground with a metal-tipped walking pole as she strode along. She was too intent on staring downwards to see Nico until she’d crossed the grass and reached the chapel steps.

  ‘Sei perso?’ she asked in an English accent that made Nico wonder if she’d been taught by Mr Mowatt.

  ‘Yes, I am lost,’ he said.

  ‘You’re English.’

  Nico nodded.

  The woman planted the spike of her stick firmly between her tan brogues and leant on it. ‘Where are you meant to be?’

  ‘Florence.’

  ‘You’re a bit off the beaten track.’

  ‘I was on it – a beaten track – and it brought me here.’

  The woman’s vast bosom heaved up and down inside her tweed jacket as she laughed. ‘I’m Emily Baxendall and you’re on my land, sitting on my chapel steps.’ She smiled at Nico. ‘And you are?’

  Nico told her. ‘I got on the wrong bus,’ he added though it didn’t explain why he was stranded on top of a hill in the middle of a forest. It seemed to satisfy Emily Baxendall. She looked at him appraisingly.

  ‘You can’t stay here. Come with me and I’ll help you back to Florence.’

  Years of Hattie’s dire warnings made Nico hesitate even though Emily Baxendall was just an old woman with a stick. She pulled the pole from the ground and tapped the spike free of soil on the step.

  ‘You could, of course, try to retrace your steps though I wouldn’t recommend it. You’d probably find it difficult and there are wild boar and the odd wolf to look out for.’

  ‘There’s wolves?’

  ‘Yes, though I wouldn’t want to raise false hope. You’re much more likely to see them in winter.’

  ‘Oh, shame,’ Nico said.

  Emily Baxendall missed the sarcasm. ‘Yes it is, isn’t it? Wonderful animals, wolves. The boar, however, are not as timid as the wolves and you should do your very best to avoid them.’

  Nico decided to give both the wolves and the wild boar a miss and take his chances with the old lady. He stood up.

  With a cry of triumph Emily Baxendall lifted her wicked stick and lunged forward.

  Caterina put her coffee cup down. ‘Why was Luisa born such a long time after Grace married Roberto? My mamma and your mamma are sisters . . .’

  ‘Half-sisters,’ Amber snapped. Jade glared at her.

  ‘Yes, half-sisters of course,’ Caterina said. ‘But look, there are many years between them.’

  Jade ran her finger across the line from Elena to Grace. ‘Nonno Roberto married our nonna, Grace, in 1955 but she wasn’t strong and couldn’t have children for a long time. Our mum, Luisa, was born in 1959, five years before you.’

  ‘Granny Grace died having Mum,’ Amber added.

  ‘That’s very sad,’ Caterina said. ‘Roberto had to bring up your mother all by himself?’

  ‘Yes, and it was really hard,’ Jade said. ‘Then, when Mum was only eighteen, Nonno had a bad stroke and she had to look after him. It meant she couldn’t go to university or anything.’

  ‘And how did she meet your babbo?’ Caterina asked.

  Jade smiled properly for the first time since she’d sat down with Caterina. She looked meaningfully at Amber and was relieved to see she was smiling too; this was a family story they’d heard over and over.

  ‘Mum was a fan of a rock band called Xtreme Measures . . .’ Jade said.

  ‘. . . and Dad was their roadie,’ Jade added.

  ‘A “roadie” – I don’t know this word,’ Caterina said.

  ‘We’ll explain,’ Jade said, grinning wider than ever, ‘it’s like this . . .’

  Nico leaped from the steps and E
mily Baxendall sank to her knees, stabbing the metal spike into the ground by the chapel steps. Her tartan rear-end swayed as she began to dig systematically at the thin soil. Nico went to have a closer look. Emily Baxendall dropped her stick, scrabbled with her fingers for a bit and then sat back with a plant in her grubby hands.

  ‘What is it?’ Nico asked.

  ‘Viperina, Viper’s bugloss,’ she said with a sort of manic satisfaction. She began to lever herself up with her stick and Nico bent to take her other arm.

  ‘Thank you, m’dear,’ she said, still beaming. ‘This is a real beauty for Signor Filipepi’s garden. The one I had before died, poor silly specimen that it was.’

  Nico didn’t think Signor Filipepi, whoever he was, was going to be very thrilled with a weed.

  ‘It’s in the lower-right quadrant.’

  She’s mad, Nico decided, in a harmless sort of way.

  Emily Baxendall gave the plant to Nico, pulled a camera from her tweed jacket and took several pictures of the place she’d dug the plant from. ‘I should’ve done that before, photographed it in situ. It doesn’t do to get overexcited but it can’t be helped now. Come along, young man. We need to get this catalogued and planted out.’

  She strode off, singing, her pleated tartan skirt swinging jauntily over muscled calves in ribbed brown stockings. Nico followed, thinking it odd that such a robust old woman should have a sweet, young-sounding voice.

  ‘What does she do, your mamma?’ Caterina asked, still chuckling over the story of Luisa spilling beer over Kevin at a gig in The Seven Stars in Derby.

  ‘She’s a cook,’ Jade said, picking out one of Luisa’s part-time jobs and promoting her from school canteen assistant.

  ‘Do you have a photograph of your mamma and babbo?’

  Jade took a small photo out of her wallet and passed it to Caterina. ‘This is Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Your mamma and me, we look like sisters!’ Caterina said. ‘Oh, I would love to meet her.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jade said. ‘Like we told you, she gets upset when we talk about Nonno’s other family.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Caterina said wistfully.

  ‘At the moment, she thinks we’re in Florence doing a school project with our friend Nico while she’s in Lucca with Dad and Nico’s parents. We can’t let her know we’ve found you.’ And since Caterina thought Nonno was a fascist, Jade was even less keen on Mum finding out what they were doing.

  Caterina patted Jade’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, cara, I understand.’ She held up the photo. ‘Your father is very handsome.’

  Jade and Amber laughed outright; they would never, ever, call their father handsome.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Kevin,’ Amber said.

  Caterina sighed. ‘How lovely. I wanted to call Dario “Kevin” – after the American actor Kevin Costner – but my husband wouldn’t have a foreign name for his first-born boy. He said if I wanted a name like that it would have to be for another son.’ Caterina rolled her eyes. ‘I’m too busy with my business to have more boys. I’m sticking with Dario.’

  The oak woods gave way to olive groves, vineyards and orchards. Above them sat a large, sprawling building, almost a castle, set on the side of a long sloping hill.

  ‘Neat,’ Nico said, admiring the golden-grey stone of the solid towers and stern buttresses basking in the spring sunshine.

  ‘Don’t let looks deceive you,’ Emily Baxendall said as they reached a gravelled courtyard. ‘Only fifty years ago it was partially ruined by bombs, and the owner – who’d joined the wrong side in the war – left it deserted when he fled the Allied army.’

  Halfway across the courtyard Emily Baxendall yelled, ‘Teo!’

  The door of the main building opened and a man – who even Nico could see was astonishingly handsome – peered out. ‘Sì, Signora Baxendall,’ he said with a wide and charming smile that showcased his beautiful teeth.

  ‘We’ve got a real little treasure to catalogue.’ Mrs Baxendall waved the plant as they swept into a grand hallway with a marble floor. ‘And this young man who helped me to find it is Nico Collier. Nico, this is Teo, my gardener and general Mr Fixit.’

  Nico and Teo shook hands.

  ‘Teo, stick the kettle on.’ Mrs Baxendall thrust the walking pole into a stand by the door and strode into a sitting room with a huge window overlooking the hills. Nico itched to get out his drawing book.

  ‘Spectacular, isn’t?’ Mrs Baxendall said. ‘The Italians have a word for it: “incantevole”.’

  ‘Incantevole?’

  ‘Entrancing.’

  Entrancing – that was it. Nico felt this scene could hold him captive for ever.

  Caterina came back from the home phone. ‘That was my husband, Carlo. He’s seeing a lawyer about selling our house.’

  ‘You’re selling the Villa dei Fiori?!’ Amber said.

  Caterina waved her hands in mock horror. ‘No, no. We are selling our farmhouse further up in the hills. It really belongs to my Nonno Gaetano. He has no use for it and wants to sell it.’

  Although it was irrational Jade was relieved. It wasn’t as if she was going to come back to the Villa dei Fiori after this holiday so what did it matter to her if it was sold? Why shouldn’t I come back one day? Jade thought defiantly. I can always stay in touch and visit again, on my own, in a few years’ time. Then I won’t have to worry about keeping secrets from Mum.

  ‘What’s the farmhouse like?’ Amber asked.

  ‘Abandoned and run-down: the windows are broken, the tiles are slipping off the roof, and there is no hot water or central heating. There isn’t even a bathroom. Gaetano had no use for the farmhouse after the war. He and Elena came to live here, with her parents, and Gaetano got a job in a bank, which paid well, much better than working the land.’ Caterina laughed. ‘Foreigners, they like these old houses. They make them beautiful and use them for holiday homes. I have pictures.’ Caterina fetched a glossy folder from the dresser.

  Jade and Amber recognised the stone building with its central tower immediately. ‘Nonno told us he used to play in a place exactly like this when he was a boy,’ Jade said.

  ‘Oh yes, I had forgotten. When he was orphaned he went to live there with Gaetano’s family. Roberto and Gaetano were good friends then.’

  Jade felt her head spinning. Nonno had lived with Gaetano and been his friend! No wonder he’d never mentioned the name when he told them stories about living in the farmhouse and the mischief he and his friend used to get up to there.

  ‘Nonno said he had a best friend but he never told us his name,’ Amber said coldly.

  Jade recovered her senses. ‘He told us his friend’s family took him in and treated him like a son. He really, really loved them.’

  The strangest expression flitted over Caterina’s face; it was incredulous and sad together. Then Caterina was smiling again and Jade wondered if she’d imagined it.

  ‘Can we see it, the farm?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Caterina said. ‘I haven’t seen the old place for years and I’d love to go there again. You would like a tour of the countryside?’

  ‘Yes!’ Jade and her sister chorused.

  Caterina gathered up the sales brochure. ‘Andiamo,’ she said.

  CHAPTER XI

  AS CATERINA DROVE into the overgrown courtyard and stopped by a well Jade wondered how anywhere could be as romantic as this old house set in its clearing among oak trees. The stone façade had been patchily plastered over in places, the roof was missing some of its terracotta tiles and the peeling green shutters were lopsided on their rusty hinges, but the central tower was solid enough to keep a captive prince in. ‘It’s amazing!’

  ‘It’s really nothing special,’ Caterina said. ‘There were lots of these abandoned houses in the countryside.’ She pointed. ‘There’s
always a barn opposite the house, and a place for the chickens and the pigs.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘The pigsties were built away from the house – and the lavatories too.’

  ‘Can we see inside?’

  ‘Of course – it’s not kept locked – usually only my Nonno Gaetano ever comes here.’

  They scrambled out of the car and up the stone steps to the first floor. ‘Is it very old?’ Jade asked.

  Caterina nodded. ‘It’s mediaeval, built over an Etruscan site. The Etruscans were people who lived here before the Italians, even before the Romans.’ That was exactly what Nonno had told Jade and Amber.

  The steps were steep and they had to press one hand against the wall for balance. ‘Why are we going to the first floor?’ Jade asked.

  ‘It’s where the living area is. The stables, they are on the ground floor.’

  Stables! Jade imagined horses, sleek and glossy, chomping fragrant hay in their stalls while they waited for knights to ride them on fantastic quests. She laughed at herself; according to Nonno there were never any horses here, only a mule and oxen for pulling carts and ploughs.

  She stopped at the top of the steps and read an inscription carved into the lintel across the doorway:

  VIVA IL DUCE VIVA IL RE IMPERATORE

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Long live the dictator and long live the emperor king,’ Caterina translated.

  ‘I didn’t mean that exactly – I mean, why is it there?’

  ‘It was done during the war by the Black Brigade. They came to the farm because they suspected Gaetano was a partisan and hiding a British spy here. They carved the message as a warning to others. Nonno left it here as a reminder that evil is always with us and we have to fight it.’

  No, Jade thought, our nonno said he was the one who hid an English spy. They couldn’t both have done that – could they? Maybe it was the same spy and they looked after him together?