Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  Lilla grows aware that they are being watched by Prudence, the officer and his men. “Thank you, Mr Spinetti,” she murmurs, “I thought there might have been a chance… I thought I knew he was… I suppose I didn’t want to give up on him. I couldn’t let myself. I’m sorry I made you risk everything for him and I’m sorry I made you see those things. I will always be grateful to you that you…”

  Spinetti hugs her one last time and, getting to his feet, he reaches down and encourages her to do the same. “Come, Signorina Lilla, we must leave now; we are not safe here. Say goodbye to your Enzo. Say goodbye and know that at least you have had the chance. So many have not been afforded even this much.”

  When Lilla tries to stand up, she finds her legs, particularly her right one, will not support her. She looks down and glares at it, angered by its refusal to obey her command. The bandage that Prudence had two days before tied so neatly and tidily around her calf, is now a more vivid red and splinters poke out from it like the jagged spines of an agave.

  “Is Lilla all right?” Prudence calls.

  “That doesn’t look so pretty, now does it?” Spinetti says, a gentle sympathy to his hushed tone. “Come on, I’ll carry you.” He reaches down for a second time and pulls her up and slides her piggyback onto his shoulders. “Hold on round my neck and I’ll support you.” Then, turning to face the group now gathering around them, he says, “She’s hurt her leg.”

  “My fault,” Sergeant Carson volunteers. “I had to pull her up quick otherwise we might not have made it out of the house. How you made it out is a miracle, Private Spinetti.”

  “Wouldn’t want to miss out on that extra tot of rum, now would I, sergeant.” He grins, cheekily. “We’d better get her back to the aid station, her leg’s not good. Mrs Robertson, would you care to have a look?”

  Prudence bends, examines Lilla’s leg and quickly straightens. “Oh, you poor thing,” she mutters, “that’ll need some attention.”

  “Sorry, Ma’am,” Sergeant Carson offers, “I–”

  “Not your fault, Sergeant Carson, it’s mine. I knew I shouldn’t have let her go up there in the first place.”

  As they pick their way across the Via Cardines, they notice that the Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani has fared better than the other churches, a sight which gladdens and encourages them.

  “Mr Spinetti?” Lilla asks, wincing and gripping him tightly around his neck.

  “Yes, Lilla.”

  “Why did you leave Naples and go to England.” Her head bounces against his shoulder and her leg pains her as they negotiate a zigzag path up the rubble–strewn street.

  He tries to shrug, then remembers he cannot do so with his arms supporting his burden. “I don’t know; why does anyone leave the place of their birth? Because they believe their lives will be better lived in another place, that’s why.”

  “But why England?”

  “Why England? Because my family had been making ice cream in Naples for many generations and the great Queen Victoria of Britain wanted people to do the same for her in England.”

  “I have met our queen, Queen Elena,” Lilla mumbles, dreamily. “She is a fine queen. Is this Queen Victoria like her?”

  “Not anymore. She passed on a few years ago. There was such a funeral, so grand.”

  “Did she ever visit Naples?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Then how did your family meet her?”

  “My mother told me our family made ice cream for Queen Carolina of Naples, one of whose friends was the wife of a British Envoy. This lady had a great liking for ice cream and she lived at the beautiful Palazzo Sessa, where she met and fell in love with an English Admiral. When she returned to England to give birth to his daughter, she told people about our ice cream and our family became so famous that some years later Queen Victoria offered my parents a place to live near one of her palaces so they could make ice cream for her. That is how we came to move to England.”

  “What is it like to move to another country?” Lilla asks.

  Spinetti sighs, a weary, perhaps wistful sigh, which suggests deep down he would rather things were other than they were. “Oh, it’s not so bad. It depends on what you have to leave behind. If you have friends, it is naturally very hard.”

  “Did you have friends?”

  “Yes, some.”

  “Was one of them a special friend?”

  He sighs again and shrugs, though this time he does so attempting to shift her further up his shoulders. “At the time, I thought so. But I was young, eh, and every young man likes to think that the first girl he falls in love with will be the last.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen. Perhaps not old enough to know what was best for me.”

  Lilla raises her head, leans forward and tries to look him in the face. “I am nearly sixteen,” she states, as though his musing has somehow offended her.

  “Well, young lady, at sixteen your life is just beginning, so there can be no better time for you to move to England.”

  Lilla tenses, sticking her legs out straight, like the buffers on a steam engine. Her reaction is ill–judged and a bolt of pain shoots up her right. She slumps back down against his back. “She told you.”

  “No, she didn’t. I overheard the lieutenant talking. Mrs Robertson told him that your family were killed by the enormous wave and I understand from what I saw in the house that there is no longer much that binds you to this wreck of a city.” Private Spinetti looks down at the blood–soaked bandages now hanging in tatters from her right leg, and quickens his pace. “Lilla,” he whispers, “in my forty years, I have learnt a great deal about women and I have learnt to recognize love when I see it.”

  “Oh, yes,” she scoffs, “a girl in every port. That is why men like to be sailors, I have watched them by the harbour.”

  Spinetti gently squeezes her thighs against his ribs. “That is unkind, Lilla, and not the kind of love I was talking about. No, what I meant was Mrs Robertson looks at you the same way my mother used to look at me in the last days of my leave. It is the look of a love that not even a thousand words can describe and it tells me she does not want to let you go. This was why you asked me what it is like to move to another country, wasn’t it, eh?” Spinetti squares his shoulders and bends his back. “Think of it this way, Lilla, I may be able to carry you to the aid station, but I can carry you no further. And when your leg is recovered and you leave the aid station, do you want to be taking your first steps all on your own or would you rather have another’s love to help you?”

  Now, even though the buildings near the station end of the Via Primo Settembre do not seem to have suffered as badly as those around the Piazza Duomo, their route is littered with still more canvas–covered human debris.

  At the aid station, the queue of gaunt, unhappy faces has lengthened and true to her nature, Prudence walks boldly and directly into the tent, where she wastes no time in informing Dottore Roselli that Lilla’s leg requires both cleaning and suturing.

  Spinetti lays Lilla gently on a cot. He kisses her on her forehead, smiles briefly and makes to leave.

  However, before he can walk away, she calls to him, “Mr Spinetti?”

  He turns back to her. “Yes, Lilla?”

  Her hair the texture of pale clay, Lilla’s eyes water and her lips tremble. “Thank you for risking your life to find Enzo. I will never forget your courage and your kindness. And would you,” she bites her lip in an effort to rein in her emotion, “thank Sergeant Carson for me; he risked his life to save mine.”

  The little man had borne her seemingly without effort, and without the slightest complaint, all the way from the Via dei Templari, and now, behind the bulb of his ruby–red nose, his eyes betray his affection for her. “Remember what I said, Lilla. One must embrace love when it is offered so readily.”

 
Spinetti melts back into the sea of people crowding the station.

  “Now then,” Prudence says, looming over her, “let’s get this leg of yours sorted out, shall we?” She frowns as, with a pair of long tweezers in one hand and a swab in the other, she examines the splinters and shards of brick poking out from the bandage. “I can’t put it any other way, Lilla, this is going to hurt; you’ll have to be brave. Try not to cry out. Try to set an example to the others hereabout.”

  Lilla nods, propping herself up on her elbows. “What were you talking to Dottore Roselli about?”

  “Oh, nothing. He just wanted a quick chat.”

  Instead of satisfying her curiosity, Prudence’s evasion pricks it. “No, please tell me. Didn’t you say it was important for us to be honest with each other? I saw you talking, he kept looking over at me. What did he want?”

  Prudence tut–tuts. “Now then, young lady, the conversations that go on between doctors and their nurses are confidential, so I don’t have to repeat what he said. But, if you can’t control that busy mind of yours and you won’t lie back and rest, Dottore Roselli said he is running low on a certain type of serum and he wants me to go down to one of the other aid stations, the one in the Villa Mazzini, to see if they can spare any.”

  “What’s a serum?” she asks, not yet wholly satisfied with her explanation.

  “It’s a liquid made from the blood of horses and, if you must know, it’s called Anti–Tetanic Serum. It’s a modern medicine; not been around for long. Dottore Roselli says you should have an injection of it to stop you from developing the bacteria that cause Tetanus.”

  “What happens when you get Tetanus?”

  “My, aren’t we the one for questions. Well,” Prudence pauses in drawing a splinter, “one symptom is that you get muscle spasms, most commonly in your jaw. Lockjaw, they call it, a little dose of which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for you at this moment. Now lie back and think nice thoughts while I pull this wretched sliver of wood out of your leg; enough with the talking.”

  Chapter 24

  Whispers. All Enzo can hear are whispers. And beyond the soft yet sharp, breezy yet harnessed tones he can hear, he can see only the same patch of what his eyes tell him is a khaki–coloured square of canvas. As far as feeling goes, he can, if anything at all, only feel the strangest rigidity in his limbs. No, feel is too categorical, too definitive; perhaps detect or vaguely sense are more accurate descriptions.

  “How is he doctor?” a woman whispers, concern very plain in her tone.

  Enzo attempts to move his head so that he can see who it is that is talking; however, the orders his mind wants to despatch to his muscles seem to be stuck fast in the very centre of his brain.

  The doctor sighs, the demoralised exhalation of a man who labours at a task he believes futile. “His injuries are severe, as is his hypothermia. You can see by the blankets and the intravenous solution that we are trying to warm him, though we will not know how effective these measures are for some time. His temperature is dangerously low.”

  Dangerously low. The words echo through his head the way a priest’s eulogy echoes through the hollows of a church. He tries to make sense of the words and even though their meaning is perfectly clear, he is confused by the doctor’s prognosis. Enzo does not feel cold: his teeth are not chattering, he is not shivering, and yet he has not the wherewithal to summon the correct language or move his mouth to articulate his objection.

  “What state was he in when they found him?”

  “The Russians who brought him in said he was only partially conscious. They said he persisted in trying to crawl into a small cupboard that lay nearby, that he kept trying to throw off his clothes and that he was delirious to the point of hallucination.” The doctor pauses and sighs once more. “This we call hide–and–die syndrome; and the throwing off of clothes, this is paradoxical undressing; these are normal manifestations of severe hypothermia. The hallucinations? For someone who has been trapped in such cold for so long, they are also to be expected.”

  To be expected. Of course, his incarceration, his treatment at the hands of the criminal, his isolation! At times he had to let go of his mind like a man untying the knot tethering a kite. How could he do otherwise when his mind was all that appeared to function?

  “He must be malnourished,” the woman says. “Malnourished and exhausted. He can’t have eaten or taken on fluids for nearly three days.”

  “Inanition, you mean? Yes, to a degree. But only to a degree. When we examined him, there appeared to be scraps of salami in his mouth and his breath smelt very heavily of alcohol. The food may have sustained him, but the alcohol has only exacerbated his condition.”

  Exacerbated his condition. The Malvasia? How can the wine have done any harm? Without it, he would surely have died of thirst and, in all probability, boredom and frustration.

  “Doctor, you said his injuries are severe. What exactly are his injuries and how severe are they?”

  “They are similar to most of the injuries we are treating: classic fractures of the vertebral column, the pelvis and limbs, many of them compound; nerve compressions that cause paresis, by which I mean either partial or permanent paralysis; and pressure sores and cellulitis which inevitably lead to gangrene. In this young man’s case, some part of the structure of a house fell across his legs, immobilising him for a sustained period. And, because of his resulting hypothermia, he seems to have lost the ability to communicate. So as yet, we have been unable to ascertain both the extent and the seriousness of his injuries; this inability to speak is in itself not unusual, what with his body temperature being so drastically reduced.” The doctor sighs again, this sigh even longer and even more resigned than the last. “I was told that when they found him, he was crawling, using only his arms. Perhaps this is why they are in such a terrible way; it would provide a logical explanation for why they have suffered so many contusions and lacerations. But, as yet, we have been unable to ascertain whether his greater paralysis is caused by nerve compression or some more substantial injury to his lumbar vertebra or pelvic bones. Until he can communicate otherwise, we can only assume they have suffered some critical damage.”

  Critical damage. How can they be so damning in their diagnosis? Using only his arms, hadn’t he climbed out of the cellar past his brother’s lifeless form? Oh, poor Vittorio, still wearing the same uniform their mother had insisted they wear to the theatre. Hadn’t he had to crawl past the lifeless form of his little sister? Oh, poor Lucrezia, her hand mutilated by that craven individual. Hadn’t he crawled through the rubble like a lizard? And now, after all his courage, his effort and simply because his legs refuse to obey his instructions, they can only assume he has suffered some critical damage.

  The woman falls quiet for a while, no doubt shocked by the catalogue of the patient’s injuries. “What about Tetanus? Have you given him an injection of Anti–Tetanic Serum?”

  “No, we have run out. I am told there are a number of American warships on their way here; we are hoping they will bring us a supply of the serum. If he develops the symptoms, or perhaps I should say if he lives long enough to develop the symptoms, we will have anywhere between one and four days to begin treatment; by that time, we hope to have the anti–toxin available. That he should have survived so far is as much down to his physical strength as it is to what God has planned for him.”

  What God has planned for me. So many plans! They’d had so many plans. What use are they now?

  “Leaving God aside for a moment, doctor, what is your prognosis?”

  “In the short term, he is stable. But his temperature is thirty percent below what it should be and if that decreases further and his blood pressure drops, he will fall into a coma. As to whether he will walk again? I’m afraid we will not know that for some time.”

  For some time. But how long is some time?

  “Do you know where he was found?�
�� The woman has dispensed with her whispering; her voice is now clearer, stronger, more pressing.

  “No, Mrs Robertson, sorry. As you can see, there are too many of them for us to bother with where they have come from. They just keep coming.”

  “Do you know his name, doctor?”

  “No. No, we don’t. All I can tell you is that in his delirium he kept repeating the name Lilla. That was all he said, over and over again, Lilla.”

  Chapter 25

  All of a sudden, she wakes up.

  At first, Lilla isn’t properly certain what it is that has rescued her from her nightmare; a nightmare in which she found herself standing on the edge of a tall parapet, watching Enzo fall away from her, an expression of horror and of finality screaming from his eyes as he is consumed by a sea of swirling smoke.

  Then, just as suddenly as she wakes, she realises that what has woken her is the excruciating pain in her right leg. The pain, though, seems peculiarly ambiguous in its nature; for it is at once both harsh and yet merciful. Harsh, because the sheer terror of the nightmare has caused her to squirm in her sleep and rub her injured leg against the frame of the cot. And merciful, because the intense pain has woken her, rescuing her from the ghastly dream.

  A child lying in a cot nearby whimpers, reminding Lilla that she is not the only one to be suffering.

  Something is poking against her thigh, adding to her discomfort: a stone or a little lump of brick perhaps. She feels for it.

  “Oh, Enzo!”

  To distract from the pain, she draws from her pocket the signet ring.

  Lilla toys with it, slipping the ring first on one finger and then on the next until she comes to realise that whichever she tries, the ring will not stay firmly in place because her fingers are too slender. She studies it, turning the ring over and over, exploring its firm texture, caressing and fondling it, pressing it in her palm, appreciating the broad circularity of its shank and enjoying the solidity of its weight.