Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  Caterina frowns. “Didn’t they have rationing. I mean, how did she keep the café open, I remember reading somewhere that during the war many people starved?”

  “Oh yes. For many, it was easier to find tomatoes than water. My mother told me there was an officer in charge of the guns at Capo Peloro – you recall I showed you the fort where we parked this morning. He was from Emilia Romana, in the north, and he was very sweet on her; very kind to her and her parents. He would give them food in return for the fish my grandfather supplied him; he also gave my mother coffee so she could keep her café open.”

  “Your mother had protection from the officer, too, then.”

  Angelica sits up. “Yes, I think that was right. Days of protection and provision, she used to call them. She told me, also, that she and her father had been hiding a foreign sailor and that this officer found out, but refused to give them away because he was so fond of my mother. You should have asked Beppe; he knows about such things.”

  “Beppe, yes. I’d almost forgotten about Beppe; there’s something I meant to show him.”

  The mezza con panna and brioche are brought to their table and Caterina stares in wonder at the cream and coffee. “This does look too good to be true.” She sits back to savour. “Oh, it is delicious. Angelica, are you trying to bribe me to stay?”

  “No,” she replies. “You have stayed with us long enough.”

  “Yes, long enough but not too long, I hope. I don’t know how to begin to thank you. Both you and Alberto; you’ve been so patient with me. And I don’t know how or where I would be if it wasn’t for your kindness.” She reaches across the table, takes Angelica’s hand and hopes the depth of her feeling is plain in her expression.

  “Your thanks are welcome, Caterina,” she replies, smiling warmly. “We are friends now; perhaps more than friends, perhaps even sisters.”

  “Angelica? I–” But the words catch in her throat and though she’d told herself she was done with crying, her eyes water once more.

  “Yes… Antonio, you want to talk about him. You can. Talk to me now as if I was your sister.”

  Caterina takes another sip of the mezza, hoping the lively flavours of the coffee and cream will inspire her to choose the right words. “Antonio, yes, well. As you know, the day we met he risked his life when he leapt into the sea to save me from drowning and yesterday, he risked his life again when he climbed the tower to save me from falling. But more than that, much more than that, by helping me to get to the top he made me realise there is so much more I’m capable of. He showed me that there’s nothing wrong in wanting to feel joy and love again – and yes, very probably fear and anger and pain and sorrow. All those emotions that I thought could only harm me, he made me realise I need to feel them, because that’s why we live, to feel, to feel alive.”

  She smiles, as the tears that had been coming are now dammed by her understanding of just how alive he has made her feel. “So that’s three times he’s given me my life back. I want him to know that and I want him to understand that I recognise all he has done for me; I’d like you to tell him.”

  Angelica, in much the same way as Antonio, turns her hand and holds Caterina’s, their palms together, each sensing the depth of feeling in the others affection. “I will, Caterina. Of course, I will.”

  A small grey Fiat sporting political posters and a large speaker on its roof rolls into the piazza. “Remember to vote,” a tinny voice urges them. “Take control of your lives. Make decisions. Make a difference, if not for yourselves, then for your children. Remember it is your right to care about your future.”

  *

  Angelica urges her little Fiat forwards and it seems as though she is in a desperate hurry, as opposed to the casual hurry with which she normally drives.

  “What time are we meeting your daughter?”

  “Not until midday. Are you sure you don’t mind taking us into Messina? I’m sure we can get a taxi.”

  Angelica checks her watch and in so doing forgets the curve where the large fulua and the little luntro are hauled up by the side of the lagoon. The Fiat veers across the road and a car coming the other way swerves and hoots.

  “Have you packed your things?”

  Caterina shakes her head. “No, but that won’t take me long.”

  “You said you wanted to see Beppe, eh?”

  “Oh yes, I did, didn’t I?”

  *

  She cannot see him, but when she calls, Beppe suddenly pops up from the middle of a large wooden rowboat, a brush in his hands, blue paint dribbling from it. He wears a loin cloth, several daubs of blue and a cigarette. He waves, sets down his brush and commences the protracted process of climbing out of the boat, down a stepladder and onto the beach.

  By the time Beppe has hitched his bandy legs over the side and onto the stepladder, Caterina is holding it firm so that it no longer wobbles.

  “La Signora Caterina!” He smiles, his few and separated teeth once more having assumed in his gums alternative perches to those of the day before. “I am told you are leaving us. Tell me, what have we done to deserve your inflicting such sadness upon us?” He takes the roll–up cigarette from between his thin lips, examines it and looks more than a little offended that he now needs to relight it.

  “You have done nothing, Beppe,” she replies, returning his smile, “I can assure you it grieves my heart just as much to leave you. Family calls.”

  “Family. Yes. Families are important. Without family, the world falls apart. So, goodbye or as we say ciao and please don’t let the sun rise too many times before you return: beauty such as yours should know sunlight.”

  Caterina is driven to kiss the old man and hug his spindly frame, though whether she might break him in two or never manage to remove the paint from her clothes, she isn’t sure.

  “Beppe, before I go, there’s something I’d like you to look at for me.” She hands him the silver signet ring.

  He gives it only a cursory glance and then looks back at her. “You expect me to look at this?”

  She is only a little offended by his reaction – after all, who could possibly be more than only a little offended by a charming old man such as Beppe, so she says, “Yes.”

  He grins. “Then I will need my glasses. They are in my hut.”

  They walk up between the upturned boats to the wooden shack in which Beppe spends his afternoons resting and in which he maintains his treasure–trove of nautical paraphernalia.

  “There,” he says, pointing.

  Caterina picks up a pair of scratched and worn half–moon glasses, and decides they will require cleaning before they are of any use.

  A paraffin–soaked rag and a good deal of spitting and polishing later, they are ready and she plonks them on his small nose.

  “Ah! These are not mine: I can see with them. Now, this ring, please.” He turns it over and examines it. “A templar ring: a simple design, no hallmark or Sterling mark either. However, I think it is solid silver, not electroplate.” He weighs it in his hand, picks up a magnifying glass and subjects the ring to further scrutiny.

  Preferring the intense glare of the sun to the heavy, pungent aromas of chemicals one associates with paint, Caterina decides to step outside while the old man takes his time.

  She gazes out across the water and beyond the breakwater, the feluche – feluche other than the Salvazione – are out patrolling the Strait and she fixes the image in her mind.

  “Signora?” He startles her.

  “Yes. Sorry, Beppe, I was miles away.”

  “How did you come by this ring?”

  “My father left it to me when he died. Why?”

  He eyes her with the same scrutiny he had just a moment before been applying to the ring and says, “Then your father’s name was Nicolas and he was blind. And not only that, his mother’s name was Lilla and she was from Messina.�
��

  Caterina is wide–eyed with disbelief; a heady giddiness affects her and she feels as she did when looking down from near the top of the ‘ntinna. “From Messina? But how on earth can you tell all that by looking at the ring?”

  “Because I saw this ring on your father’s hand.”

  “My father was here, in Ganzirri?”

  “Yes, to be exact, he was right there,” he lifts a gnarled finger and points at the front door of Antonio’s house, “seventy–six years ago. Mira, Antonio’s mother, and her father, Enzo, looked after him in that house. He had been blinded by an explosion out in the Strait and he was brought ashore by an Italian sailor; a sailor who for his trouble was then killed by a Fascist corporal. Old Dottore Roselli and Mira cared for him; without their medical knowledge, there is no doubt he would have died.”

  “Dottore Roselli?”

  “Yes, Dottore Roselli. His grandson is now a doctor at the Azienda Ospedaliera Papardo. This is perhaps why he placed you in the care of Angelica. Our families, the Ruggeris, the Sorbellos and the Rosellis, we go back many years.”

  “Hold on a moment for me please, Beppe. This is all a bit much to take in in one go. We are talking about my father, Nicholas Lock?”

  “Oh, I did not know his surname, I only knew him as Nicolas: it was what Mira called him.” Beppe grins. “He was Colapesce, come back to us from the sea. You know, Nicola the fishboy; the legend, the boy who keeps Sicily afloat.”

  “Yes, the subject of Guttuso’s painting on the ceiling of the Teatro?”

  “Exactly, yes, I told you to see it. Well, Mira had a romantic notion that this Englishman had been given up to her by the sea; she fell in love with him and when he had to go back to England after the hostilities finished, her heart was broken. Of course, there was no way he could have stayed.” He shrugs and spays his palms. “First, he was in the navy and second, he was blind. It was not until many years after the war that she remarried.”

  “Remarried? She was married to my father?”

  “No. She was married first to a local man. He died before the war; a tragedy of Mussolini’s hubris; I have only a vague recollection of her first husband. It was their café in Torre Faro where Mira worked with Maria, my sister.” Beppe fetches a couple of old wooden chairs and wipes the seat of one. “Antonio and Angelica’s father was also a local man, a fisherman: Mira married him after the war but, sadly, the Strait claimed him.”

  Caterina sits. “So, Antonio and Angelica’s mother knew my father.”

  “Yes, signora, Mira. And her father, too. Did I not say your nonna’s name was Lilla and that she came from Messina?”

  “Yes, Beppe, you did. How do you know that?”

  “Because the ring originally belonged to Enzo, Mira’s father. He told me the story of how Lilla came by the ring in the days after the great earthquake, of how she went to England and he became a fisherman, just like her father.”

  “Enzo?” she asks, repeating the name as much to buy herself time in which to absorb all the extraordinary information.

  “Yes,” he confirms. “And to think of it: all those years ago, they were separated by events far beyond their control: Enzo and Lilla by the capricious energies of nature, and your father and Mira by man’s inhumanity to his brother.”

  “You are sure about this, Beppe?”

  “Yes, that’s why I needed the magnifying glass: the shape, the design, the Templar cross. I have no doubt it is this ring that brought you to Messina, to us.”

  Chapter 18

  The day has been long, just as whenever they are out fishing all the days are long, and the sun is now falling towards the cradle of the Peloritan Mountains.

  “Enough,” Antonio shouts up to Pasquale.

  The capobarca does not need to acknowledge his instruction, he simply flicks the silver helm over and the nose of the feluca comes around, edging towards the Sicilian coast.

  “A good day,” Enzo says.

  “Yes,” his father agrees. “A good day.”

  “Although perhaps not so good for you, papà.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, La Signora Caterina. Come on, papà, there is no profit in playing games, I know you too well. You are sad. Why else would you spend most of the day out alone in the sun on the passarelle?”

  Antonio does not scoff as Enzo expects him to, he simply shrugs his broad shoulders and says, “Yes, to you I would not deny it. She was… There was… No, I am wrong, there is something in her way, something about her. It was as though she reminded me of someone I have always known; as though I had once loved her even though we had never met. I don’t think I have felt such peace since the day you were born.” He ruffles his son’s hair and smiles.

  “Then you have every reason to feel both happy and sad.”

  “How so?”

  “Papà, I am learning love is like that; it is a sea of conflicting emotions. You are at the same time happy that you spent time with her and yet sad that she is gone. Do you think she will come back?”

  “Oh, all things are possible. At least I have always believed so.”

  A few minutes later, the feluca Salvazione noses her way round the breakwater: the engines reduce their moaning, the deck surrenders its trembling and the boys make ready with boathooks to catch the mooring lines.

  The shadows on the beach are long now and Beppe waits patiently to greet them. He is smiling, though it is impossible for those on the feluca to judge the true sense of his expression.

  Leaning, one foot on the gunwale, his hand holding a wire stay, Antonio raises his hand and waves, and it is then that he notices a figure sitting in the long shadow thrown by the hull of an upturned dinghy.

  Enzo, studying his father, feeling his loss as intensely as if it was his own, follows his line of sight and he, too, notices the figure. He rubs the salt from his eyes, looks again, and his face adopts a broad, relieved, joyous smile.

  “Yes, son,” Antonio says, “Caterina! You were right, it is a good day. A very good day.”

  Acknowledgements

  Constant Tides would not have been written without the assistance of many people, first and foremost Tony Freno and Christine Merel, who introduced me to Messina, arranged interviews with historians and journalists, and regaled me with spellbinding stories; their inspiration and patience was fundamental to my learning about the great city, the coastline of the Strait and the character of its communities. I owe them a significant debt.

  Francesco Libro, a font of knowledge who has very generously permitted me to use his beautiful photograph for the cover of this novel, kept me honest when indolence tempted me to err and made it possible for me to spend time on a feluca, a swordfish fishing boat.

  Nino and the crew of the feluca Antonio Padre welcomed me on board and ensured I neither dehydrated nor fried to a crisp. Through fifteen-hour days of relentless sun we gained each other’s respect and confidence; they have left their mark upon me.

  Angelica Nuccio and Francesca Quatarone provided me with a wealth of information, put up with my feeble attempts to converse in Italian and allowed me a deeper insight into the people, the architecture and the cuisine of the region.

  Leading historian Dottore Franz Riccobono gave me his time and in so doing pulled back the curtains to the stage that was the catastrophe of Il Terremoto dei Terromoti, the Earthquake of Earthquakes in December 1908; his depth of knowledge is profound and his book on the subject is the most consummate narrative and photo record of those dramatic events.

  Direttore Responsabile Geri Villaroel of the cultural journal of Messina, Moleskine, answered my queries and subsequently furnished me with copies of his articles from the newspaper Gazetta del Sud; his contribution, particularly in my understanding of feminine attitudes to Mussolini, proved invaluable.

  In Taormina, Il Direttore Francesco and Signora Mimma Spadar
o, Maria Puglio and Magdalena Polewska opened the doors and my eyes to what is perhaps the most culturally significant European home of the last century. Having read Daphne Phelps’ A House in Sicily, I thought I knew all there was to know about Casa Cuseni; I was wrong but, fortunately for me, Maria and Francesco decided a presumptuous English writer worthy of their education.

  Dr Tina Grayson leant me books, produced articles, answered questions and provided vital insight into relevant medical conditions.

  H.F. (Bert) Cooper RNVR, my uncle and co-author of MTBs At War (Sutton Publishing in association with The Imperial War Museum), served in the Mediterranean theatre during the Second World War. His memoir and manuscript Dusk To Dawn is a frank and vivid account of operations in the Mediterranean and the Strait of Messina, and I am grateful to his daughter, Carol Scoble, for her permissions.

  Roger Perkins and John Wilson’s book Angels In Blue Jackets (Picton Publishing) contains a detailed account of the extraordinary international relief effort in the days following the great earthquake; The Times newspaper of the period reported many eyewitness accounts, both of the earthquake and later the Allied invasion of Sicily; and the works of authors too numerous to mention helped ensure the accuracy of this historical novel. If there are mistakes, they are mine and mine alone.

  Finally, I must thank the people of Messina who have welcomed me into their homes and their hearts, and encouraged me to tell their story.

  One afternoon in the Piazza Cairoli, I asked Christine and Tony the species of the trees shading us from the glare of the June sun. Christine suggested they were a variety of fig tree; however, not being one hundred per cent certain, Tony approached a gentleman strolling by and asked him if he knew. He replied that he didn’t and apologised for his lack of knowledge. We stood for a few minutes examining the leaves, before retiring to a table outside the Bar Santoro where, after several coffees and much debate, we were still none the wiser. Then, to my surprise, the gentleman reappeared to inform us they were Ficus benjamina, weeping fig trees: his brother was something of an authority and the man had gone to the trouble of calling him to gain the answer to our query. This, I came to understand, is how the citizens of Messina are: they are charmingly polite, invariably interested and only too happy to invest their time in helping others learn about their city. The people of Messina are also incredibly enduring and rightfully proud of their heritage. I thank them.