by JH Fletcher
‘Might try my hand at farming.’
He had never given it a moment’s consideration, could hardly believe that he was expressing an intention that until that moment he had not known existed.
‘My father was farmer,’ she said.
He looked at her. ‘Was?’
‘The German soldiers killed him. My mother, too. That’s why I’m here.’
‘I didn’t know.’
He had invited her to go to the mountains with him, not even bothering to hide what the invitation might mean, yet knew nothing about her at all. His ignorance shamed him. ‘Your parents. Tell me what happened.’
‘There is nothing to tell. I was staying with an aunt. To get away from the war, you understand? I was not content — content, yes? — with her so I decided to go home. When I got there the farm was burning and my parents, I think, were dead.’
‘Don’t you know? Didn’t you see them?’
‘The house was on fire. They would have been inside.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘There was another woman in the yard. Marija’s mother. She was dead. She had been raped. My mother would also have been raped, I think. I prefer not to know. I would not have wanted to see that.’
‘Damn right.’
It made him realise how little he knew about what the war meant to the people who were its true victims, the countless inhabitants of towns and farms and villages who, because of the war, were homeless or vandalised or dead. We fly. We kill and are killed. We know nothing.
Even the child Marija he had assumed was Helena’s sister.
‘I am very sorry.’
Sorry for what happened, for not knowing, not imagining.
‘What will you do after the war?’
She shook her head.
‘My mother wanted good marriage for me. But now …’
‘Got any brothers? To run the farm?’
‘Cousin, only. But he wishes to be schoolteacher. He has no interest in the land. I do not think he would make a good farmer.’
‘You wouldn’t farm it yourself?’
‘Not now.’
He saw that she, too, did not want to go back to the old life. The only thing either of us can do is move on.
He had been on the edge of taking back his invitation for her to come to the mountains with him, even of apologising for suggesting such a thing. Now he changed his mind and said nothing, letting the invitation lie for her to take up or ignore as she chose. Because that, truly, would be to go on, for both of them.
2
That evening, her cleaning duties over for the day, Helena went back to the village. She had not made up her mind what she was going to do. Come to the mountains. Come for the day. Bring the child.
It would be possible to accept the invitation, to go and still not make a commitment to him or to anything, but she did not want that. She must go with him with a full heart or not at all. She prepared the evening meal without paying any attention to what she was doing. After Marija had helped her with the dishes she sat and stared out at the street and at the days set like beads upon a string that had brought her to this place, and that now, in one way or another, would carry her into the future.
She was tied to the past yet could not go back. All the traditions of her life warned against accepting Ted’s invitation but tradition was dead, like the way of life that had created it.
She went downstairs and spoke to Signora Gambetta. Afterwards she came back to the room and spoke to Marija. When it was time for bed she took off her clothes and lay down beside the child, holding her until she fell asleep. Her eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling above her head. She ran her hands repeatedly up and down her body, feeling the heat of her skin and blood, the muscle and bone beneath the blood, the sense of anticipation and — yes — trepidation within the unquiet flesh.
Towards morning she must have fallen asleep, because when she awoke it was full daylight and her first thought was that it was too late, that Ted would have left already. Then she became aware of the pristine stillness that came only in the first minutes of a day not yet sullied by heat or the sound of voices. Beside her, Marija still slept. She eased herself out of bed, dressed and picked up the small parcel containing all she intended to take with her. She tiptoed down the stairs and went out of the house.
And stood.
There was still time. She could go back upstairs, take off her clothes and lie down again. She might even sleep. Do that and she would be safe, yet she would have lost the opportunity to free herself from a past that no longer had any meaning but would still hold her prisoner, if she permitted it.
In the street nothing was stirring, yet there would be eyes, even at this hour. Go, and the priest would be told. He could cause her endless trouble, if he wished. He might even be able to drive her out, if he wished.
She could go and Ted could dump her. Or be killed.
She lifted her head. She turned her back on reproach and fear. She walked up the road towards the airfield.
3
Ted was waiting, packed bags and a box of provisions beside the car. ‘Where’s Marija?’
She did not answer him directly. She went to the car.
‘Are we going? Or not?’
He looked at her.
‘We’re going, all right. No need to worry about that.’
He stowed the luggage behind the seats. They climbed in and drove away across the sun-bright plain, the noisy thrashing of the engine their only companion.
They were stopped once at a roadblock. The red-and-white pole was across the road. Two Italian battle police stood beside it, hands resting ostentatiously on the butts of their pistols. They came and stood on either side of the car.
The bigger of the two thrust out his hand.
‘Carta d’identit …’
Ted knew a load of crap when he heard it. Or saw it.
‘What?’
‘He want to see your papers,’ Helena said.
‘Why the hell can’t he say so?’
‘He did say so.’
‘But —’
‘Don’t annoy him. He make plenty trouble for us, if he want.’
She was right; of course she was. Ted dug out his leave pass and gave it to the cop, who eyed it suspiciously. Again he spoke.
‘He ask where we are going.’
‘Gambordino. Near somewhere called Agordo.’
Apparently it was the right thing to have said. Suddenly happy, the cop smiled as he handed the papers back, speaking voluminously to Helena as he did so.
‘He say very nice place. He say you will be happy there.’
‘Say thanks for me. Tell him I intend to be.’
The two men went back to the barrier pole. They raised it and stood back. Both saluted lavishly, still smiling. Ted and Helena smiled back. Ted saluted more moderately. This Italian temperament, he thought. Never know where you are with them. They drove on in a gust of comradeship and hot engine oil.
Fifty kilometres beyond the roadblock, the road began to climb, snaking this way and that above precipices and through hills that grew steadily higher and more steep until, beyond a massive shoulder of rock, they caught the first distant glimpse of white floating against a background of blue sky.
4
They discovered Gambordino: at least, they thought it must be Gambordino. There was no way of being sure. There were no houses or shops, no people, nothing to indicate a settlement of any kind. There was a lake whose steel-blue waters reflected the white-capped peaks that surrounded it. The lake lay amid an expanse of sedge grass and green and brown moss puddled by marsh water and whipped by a needle wind. The cottage stood alone on a promontory that stuck out into the marsh like the prow of a stone ship.
The road had degenerated into a switchback-bucking track that meandered between hollows glinting with water. They followed it cautiously, the car swaying beneath the weight of the wind, and came at length to the cottage.
Ted switched off the eng
ine. For a moment they sat listening to the wind, the eerie bubbling of curlews in the distance, then climbed out, stretching the kinks out of their bodies after the long drive.
The cottage was built of sawn timber, each tarred plank set horizontally and overlapping the next. There were no windows on this side of the building but there was a locked wooden door.
‘I’ve got a key somewhere.’
He delved in his pockets, found what he was looking for. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. Inside, the cottage was dark and consisted of a single room with wooden windows that faced the lake. Ted grappled with latches and pushed the windows open to let in light and air.
‘At this time of year mosquitoes, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ It seemed very likely. ‘We’ll have to make a fire. That’ll keep them away.’
The previous occupants had apparently had the same idea; the stone grate was clogged with ash. Helena explored to see what else the cottage had to offer. It wasn’t much. There was a table and two sagging chairs, a basin and bucket, a wood-burning stove, a few pots and pans, some crockery that looked as though it had been there since Napoleon’s day, two tarnished brass oil lamps, a bed with army-style blankets, a fishing rod with hooks and a tangle of line.
They brought in their bags and the box of provisions. There was coffee, sugar, rice and bread, some vegetables, a few cans of meat, a slab of cheese.
‘Doesn’t seem much,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Plenty, plenty,’ she reassured him. ‘It will last.’
They only had four days, after all.
Ted looked at her assessingly. ‘When you turned up without the kid, I knew you wouldn’t be going back after one day. I told the lieutenant about it. About you being away for a few days, I mean.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wished us luck.’
‘You must be glad you don’t have to take me all the way back again tonight. So far …’
‘I’m glad for more reasons than that.’
Ted found a pile of cut logs under a tarpaulin outside the door. While he lit the stove, Helena remade the bed, found a broom and swept the floor.
‘Don’t you do enough of that at the airfield?’
She ignored him and swept on until she was satisfied.
‘You planning to eat off the floor?’ he said.
‘Cleaner than the table, I think.’
She made coffee. After they had drunk it out of the chipped mugs that were the only drinking vessels, she took them and the plates outside and washed them in the lake.
Ted watched her. He thought: Next thing she’ll be expecting me to change my shirt before we eat. With the fire burning in the stove, floor and plates polished, bed remade, they went out to walk around the lake. To mark the territory, as Ted said.
5
Helena walked beside the man in a stillness made up as much of disbelief as anticipation. Disbelief that she was here, in this place she had not known existed, that she was poised upon the edge of another place as unknown to her as the lake and mountains.
What was she doing here, with a man she did not know, whose history and culture were so far apart from her own? What was she thinking?
They walked a long way around the lake, and the evening was rising out of the wet ground by the time they turned back. They arrived at the cottage in a whining dusk.
‘You were right about the mosquitoes.’
They banked up the fire with green timber so that it smoked, driving the mosquitoes away. Ted coughed. ‘Damn near drive us away, too.’
Helena cooked up a stew with tinned meat and tomatoes and rice. They trimmed and lit the oil lamps, closed the windows against the darkness and mosquitoes. Decorously they sat at the table and ate the food that she placed before them and smiled and had nothing at all to say to each other. She saw the light of oil lamp and stove reflecting from his eyes, sensed his glance each time he looked at her. Still he didn’t do anything and she realised that he was waiting for her to make the first move, that he would wait all night, if needs be. She got up and walked around the table and put her arms around his neck — she who had never kissed a man in passion in her life, now guided by the same instinct that had caused her to make a home out of the sawn-wood cabin that she would always remember as the place where — and coaxed him to his feet and led him, still embracing, to the bed.
6
Even here she had to lead him, following her instincts without even thinking that this was not how she had expected things to happen. He stood while she undressed, slipping her clothes from a body that was neither cold nor hot, that simply was. She was naked, while Ted stood tree-like, staring at her with an expression that had something of awe in it. She came to him, delving clumsily as she tried to undress him, fumbling with unfamiliar buttons, pulling away with sudden impatience the constrictions of shirt and shoes and trousers until they stood, twin figures of ivory and rose and cream, in the shifting red and orange shadows of lamp-and fire-light. Their bodies formed a pattern of shadow and softly gleaming flesh, breath as well as shadow mingled, flesh touching, eyes touching with glances both ardent and cautious. She lay back upon the bed, feeling the roughness of the blankets against her skin. He joined her, touching her now until sensations like sparks from the stove circled and focused and …
There was time for apprehension, now, both a tightening and loosening amid a crescendo of sighs, tension climbing, sensation swarming over her before focusing in a union of yearning and a sharp and startling pain.
Afterwards …
I had not thought of blood.
Soreness lingered, a sense of pride and tenderness and, secretly — is that all there is? — a little disappointment, too.
7
Helena awoke to see the grey light of dawn showing through the cracks around the wooden windows. She got up, went to the door and looked out. The air was still, the white crests of the mountains shining against a pale sky, while here beside the lake the world lay in shadow.
She went out naked, her feet sinking into the cold moist moss, and waded into the lake that was as calm and cold as ice. When the water was deep enough she began to swim, the water growing colder as she went further out, as cold as anything her body had ever felt. Its coldness both embraced and penetrated her with a chill and sense of cleanliness that took away the lingering ache of mind and body that was all that remained of the physical conjunction that she now had difficulty associating with the actions of love or even of lovers.
Her teeth were chattering, her muscles taut in the first intimations of cramp. She turned and looked back at the shore and the cabin standing, silent and still as the encircling mountains, upon its tongue of land.
Had it not been this place it would have been somewhere else. If not this man, another man. She suspected that it would have made little difference. The significance of what had happened lay not in externals but in herself: the body that had changed, the knowledge, the attitude towards the world that said, yes, this has happened. Because I willed it.
She would have liked to spend the day by herself, to be consciously apart. Before last night she had been herself, inviolate. She had thought little about it but now she had become acutely aware of the body and being that were no longer exclusively her own. She wanted time and space to get used to the idea, to be naked and alone with the water and sunshine, the ice-white serenity of the encircling peaks.
It was not to be. Floating in the cold water, the morning’s fragile tranquillity, she saw the man come out of the cabin. He shouted to her, boisterously, and ran down the shore to plunge into the lake in a crash of waves that fractured the mirror-smoothness of the water, the silence, the sense of breath-held wonder at herself and the world.
He came ploughing towards her, splashing and laughing with the exuberant commotion of a child. She saw that his awareness of her had been both heightened and diminished by what had happened. He thought that in the sharing of their bodies they had been drawn so closely together that no space could r
emain between them. Because he had known her flesh, he imagined that was all there was to know. He knew nothing of her inner stillness. She had welcomed the prospect of sharing her stillness with him, imagining that this was the truth underlying the physical: to be of and with another being, to share the essence. Instead she had known only a joining of what was unimportant. Her inner being was untouched. In one sense she was glad, yet saddened, too, aware that she was now more alone than ever. She had seen the possibility of the true sharing that had both frightened and compelled her, yet at the last it had escaped her.
‘You’re up early. Sleep well?’
‘Very well.’
‘I woke up and thought she’s done a runner. Gone back and left me standing.’
She did not understand all the words but knew what he was saying, that he was laughing at her, not unkindly. She saw that he did not believe what he was saying: this, too, was an aspect of sharing. Perhaps it will be all right, she thought. Perhaps all we need is time.
They swam back to the shore and he turned to her hungrily — there, in the open, with the dampness of moss beneath her — and this time, yes, it was better. Not more significant, her inner self as inviolate as before, but more tender. Perhaps that would be enough. If they could share pleasure, tenderly, if they could lie as one and smile at each other, perhaps, in time, the rest would follow. The danger was that, knowing what she did not have, she might settle for second best because nothing more was possible. That, she did not want.
They put on their clothes. Ted made a fire. They brewed coffee, dark and smoke-tasting, which they drank standing. About them the mountains glittered in the sunlight. A hawk mewed, swooping overhead in a tilt of sickle wings. It was very lovely here. This man had brought her to this place, had in his fashion been good to her; they were able to share warmth and laughter as well as flesh. It was not for her to set objectives beyond the possible, to destroy the good they had for want of what might be for ever out of reach.