Copyright © 2020 Peter Crawley
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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By the same author
Mazzeri
Boarding House Reach
Ontreto
The Truth In Fiction
The Wind Between Two Worlds
To the people of Messina
Constant Tides is a work of fiction and, with the exception of known historical figures and events, any resemblance to persons either living or dead and other events is entirely coincidental. The views and attitudes expressed in this novel are in no way to be confused with those of the author, even and especially when written in the first person: these are merely the imagined views and attitudes of imagined characters.
Contents
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Book 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Book 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgements
Book 1
Lilla
1908
Chapter 1
Her heart thumps in her chest, her cheeks burn and her limbs lose their substance. The young girl falters in her stride, reaches out to steady herself and clings to the rocklike root of the fig tree in the Villa Mazzini.
“Come, Lilla,” she whispers, “be brave. You must. Where is your courage? Remember that time when you had to swim in the dark. That time you were playing dares with Rosario and Gaetano, and they said you were a coward and that you wouldn’t swim out to the boat and back because it was night and girls were afraid of the dark. Well, you proved who had the greater courage then, so now show yourself once more that you are brave.”
The sound of her own voice lifts her spirits.
That time, that time with Rosario and Gaetano, her first step into the inky–black water had been both frightening and enthralling. Was she to be swallowed beneath the waves as the sea monster sucked down the waters of the Strait? No, because like everyone else the monster was sleeping, so she had swum out and straight back without difficulty. And the boys? Well, that shut them up. They’d never again dared her do anything they hadn’t done.
This time things will be the same, only they will be different. The night is chilled, the end of December not the middle of the summer; and this night Lilla is leaving home for good, for a new life, for her new life with Enzo in…
“America. Oh, it sounds so grand. And I will wear a dress that will give me breasts like a pigeon, a dress that shows off my ankles, or maybe a high collar with a necktie or a hat with bird’s feathers; and Rosario and Gaetano will still be here with their baggy trousers and shirts made from heavy cloth. Oh, and Enzo will work in an office and he will be a man of distinction and we will be a couple other people want to know.”
Lilla lingers beneath the boughs of the fig tree and wonders. Her mother, her sisters, Rosario and Gaetano: what will they think of her running away?
Her father is a hunter, married both to her mother and to the tides that govern the narrow waters of the Strait between Messina and the Calabrian coast; a man of principle, a tough man with a kind heart, a man some called a peasant and others a king.
The previous evening, when Lilla had crawled into the bed she shared with her grandmother and three sisters, she had lain awake and overheard her father and mother discussing the day.
Apart from it being Sunday, there was much that had been peculiar. For one, her father had not insisted on herding his family to the Chiesa di Gesù e Maria del Buon Viaggio to pay their respects and pray for benign weather and good fishing. Instead he had forsaken his obediences and taken to his smaller skiff, rowing with his friend, Pipo Sorbello, up to the shallows at Contemplazione where, in spite of the clouds hanging low and the heavy rain, they had managed a bumper catch of fish.
“I tell you, Rocca, there is something very odd going on,” he’d said to Lilla’s mother. “The fish were behaving in a very strange manner; I have never seen so many large shoals so close inshore. In such weather, the fish normally make for the deep as though they cannot bear the drumming of the rain on the surface. Yet no, it was like they were all competing for room among the shallows, competing to get closer to the sky. All one had to do was cast one’s net and soon
the baskets were overflowing. And it wasn’t only the fish either: the seagulls, too, were wheeling and diving but not fighting for their share of the fish; they seemed reluctant to skim the water, as though it was in some way tainted.”
Something very odd, that was what he had said, something very odd. Did her father know of her intended departure? Had she behaved in an unusual manner? In being overly helpful with the supper and putting her sisters to bed, had she, inadvertently, given her game away?
In the next room, her father had slept fitfully. She’d lain awake and heard him turning and thrashing, a curious unease lying over him like a prickly blanket, and Lilla had waited until she was sure he was soundly asleep before stealing past his door.
“Where are you going, my angel?” His voice had startled her.
“Nowhere, papà… just outside.”
“Then I will come with you.” And they’d stood together by the door of the small house, silent but for the barking of dogs and alone but for the comfort of the stars and each other.
Lilla had shivered nervously, aware that she could do little else other than wait and hope her father would soon return to bed.
“So, this boy, Enzo,” he’d said at last. “Enzo Ruggeri, the son of Don Carmelo, the strong man of the harbour…”
“Yes, papà.” She’d looked down at her feet as though, somehow, it was they who were responsible for the flight she was about to take.
“You are leaving us?”
Curiously, Lilla noted, there seemed no malice, no edge of temper in her father’s voice. “Yes, papà.”
“He is taking you away?”
The thought that the blame for deserting her family might be laid at Enzo’s door had angered her. After all, it was not Enzo’s decision that she should go; it was hers. “No, papà. He is going with or without me. He is not taking me away; I am going with him. We are not eloping.”
Her denial had contained something of a white lie, for she had already been as intimate as she thought proper with Enzo and that intimacy had sealed their love for each other. However, there was no doubt her running away would cause her family considerable shame among the community of fishermen.
“It is the same, Lilla. To elope, to leave with someone, to run away with another. But you must not worry: only fools and the wealthy worry about what others say.”
“I thought you would be angry with me; that is why I did not tell you.”
“I know, my little angel and I understand. And if you had told me, then I could not deny knowing when your mother asks me. And if I give you my blessing and she finds out, then she will have both of us to forgive.”
“Do I have your blessing, papà?”
“You will break your mother’s heart if you go.”
Lilla had wiped away the tears welling in her eyes. “I will break my own if I don’t.”
“Yes,” her father had sighed. “And your sisters will break your mother’s heart when they go. And go they will, one day. As sure as the Madonna provides us with fish, one day they will go.” He pauses, thinking. “This Enzo, he is capable and honest, and he has taught you to read and write; that is good. And I watched him when he came to work with us on the luntro: he works hard, he has a feel for the sea and he does not shy away from challenge; that is good, too; that will make my sadness easier to bear. You will go to Naples?”
“We hope to.”
“Hope,” he’d said, as though hope was something he had put down and now could not remember where. “Without hope people drown.”
“I must go, papà.”
“Yes, my little angel, you must.” And her father had hugged her so tight she thought he would crush the life out of her. He hadn’t, though she’d understood that the bruises of his love would never truly heal.
Now, she is cold, cold of body and cold of mind; for the devil of her conscience snarls in her head and even the barking of dogs sounds like a rebuke.
Lilla shivers, this time so violently she almost falls over and she has to cling once more to the solid root of the tree to stand upright.
Is that her guilt whispering in her ear? Are her misgivings nothing more than the ripples from the conflict raging in her core? Is it that her flight with Enzo is ill–conceived, or is something truly wrong?
The Corso Garibaldi is tranquil, which is to be expected for the hours that labour into dawn, and because Lilla is supposed to meet Enzo by the Hotel Trinacria, she steals across the road and heads down the Amedeo to where it opens out into the long and broad esplanade, which runs down to and curves around the sickle–shaped harbour.
With sails furled on angled yards and crews snoring loudly, a man lit ghostly by his lantern stoops to check mooring lines. In the shadows, a ship’s mate and his sweetheart embrace, pressing their bodies close so that each will remember the contours of the other’s avidity. And outside the deserted market, a wharf–rat yawns and stretches; he has passed the night sleeping rough so that he can be first in the line for unloading the many barges which crowd, like ducklings, around the mothers of their invention.
The port, too, is stretching and yawning, the acid–sweet fragrance of roasted coffee mingling with a haze of salt–seasoned soot.
Beyond the Municipio and the marble statue of Neptune, a steam ship is berthed side–on to the marina. Hope. Lilla hopes: perhaps this is the ship of her dreams, her transport to a new life, her ticket to her destiny.
Chapter 2
Although the sun still sleeps behind the mountain of Aspromonte, stallholders are stirring in the market. Black–skinned pigs from Nebrodi, acidic capers from the Aeolian Islands, aromatic herbs and vegetables, a profusion of fruit and every size and shape of fish harvested from the bountiful waters of the coast, all brought to Messina by the tram which runs fifty kilometres from Villafranca Tirrena on the northern coast; the tram which runs on the rails Lilla now follows.
Her gait alternates between the stride of the confident and the shuffle of the uncertain. Enzo will be waiting for her. Enzo won’t be waiting for her. Enzo must surely be there.
He isn’t, not yet.
Lilla waits patiently beneath the tall façade of the Trinacria hotel and watches as the crew go about their business preparing the steamer for the voyage to Naples.
Footsteps behind her. She turns.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says. “You are cold. Here, take my jersey.”
“Oh, Enzo.” But rather than the jersey, she takes his hand and holds it up to her face, feeling the cool of his signet ring against her cheek.
In turn, he hugs her and kisses her and whispers, “Did you think I was not coming?”
“No, my love, I knew you would come; it’s just… your father, I…”
“He left us after the theatre, probably gone to see his mistress across the Torrente Portalegni. I had to stay for a while and calm my mother; she knows our intentions, but she will not let on; you mustn’t worry.”
“Now you are here, I have no reason to worry.” Lilla stands back and studies him. She giggles. “Enzo, why are you dressed like a sailor?”
“My mother. She wanted Vittorio and me to wear this uniform to the theatre and I thought… Well, I thought I wouldn’t look out of place.”
“Is this our ship?” she asks, hoping.
“Yes. Come, we must be quick, they will want to leave. The captain told me he will hide us until we are out of the harbour.”
They walk swiftly towards the steamer. The boilers are lit, shimmering sparks and an eerie crimson glow rising from its funnel.
Enzo takes her bundle of clothes, slings it over his shoulder and Lilla hangs onto his arm, reassured by his presence, excited by the promise of their future.
A sailor loiters by the gangplank.
“The captain is expecting us,” Enzo says, his tone pleasant if assertive.
The man stamps out his cig
arette and looks them up and down. “Wait here. I will fetch him.”
“I said, your captain is expecting us. Please, permit us to board.”
He smirks and looks down his thin nose. “And I have been told you must wait.” The sailor walks slowly, the wooden gangway rattling beneath his feet.
A metal door opens, light floods out from inside and the door clangs shut.
Lilla shivers again and pulls closer to Enzo. “What if…”
“No, I said not to worry.”
“But Enzo, this ship will come to Messina again; what if it comes back and your father refuses to unload it because he finds out this captain allowed us passage?”
“I have paid him handsomely, this captain. And besides paying him, I managed to get my hands on a few bottles of his favourite amaro. It will be in his better interest to keep our secret.”
The door through which the sailor had entered, opens. Three dark figures emerge and head back down the gangplank. One, judging by his cap and the shiny gold buttons of his jacket, is the captain: of the other two, one is short and stocky, the other tall and rangy.
Enzo stiffens. “Ullo. And Virgilio.”
When the men step down onto the quay, the captain stands square as if he is about to confront a storm. “There has been a change of plan, I’m sorry. These men would like to speak to you.” And he turns about and heads back up the gangway, barking orders, pointing and cajoling his crew.
Piero Ullo is the shorter of the two and though he has to look up to address Enzo, his hard expression and the way he flicks his hand dismissively suggest he is no mood to compromise. “Leave the girl, you are coming with us.”
“So,” Enzo begins, “my father has sent his bootlickers to do his bidding. I must say I am saddened he lacks the courage to do his own dirty work.” He stands his ground in much the same way the captain had stood his a few seconds before. “Piero, please, we have known each other how long?”
When Ullo ignores his question, he turns to the taller man. “Virgilio, how many ships have we unloaded and loaded together? And do you not remember that time I paid your bill and hauled your drunken bag of bones out of that bar before the owner handed you over to the Carabinieri?”
Constant Tides Page 1