by Wesley Stace
“Which one?” She smiled.
“That’s what he asked too.”
“Cinderella? I can’t do housework; my feet are too big. Sleeping Beauty? Insomnia. Jack? I hate cows.”
“Peter Pan, I said.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, I bet.”
After a few minutes, she asked sadly, “Have I outgrown Peter Pan, do you think?”
She needed Neverland. I pretended I was asleep.
“Good night, Georgie.”
The next day, the day of our excursion, a lazy morning passed in a haze that threatened rain it did not deliver. At noon the clouds vanished and the irrepressible sun shone again. As we came downstairs, Muria dangled matching pairs of goggles in our direction. I showed her the contents of George’s box, which she was considering in light of its relative size and the stowage options offered by our transportation.
“Ah, pupazzo,” she said with politely suppressed distaste.
“Have no fear,” I said. “He won’t return. He’ll have a new home here in Sicily.”
Misinterpreting our feelings, she shook her head in disbelief, as if to say, What pervert would want that hateful little incubus? When the box was closed and strapped to the back of the bike with two bungee cords, Muria (convinced that she was now safe from the dummy’s evil influence) stepped forward and, with a curtsy, offered us a paper bag containing two packed lunches lovingly wrapped in wax paper. We thanked her; “Nothing!” was her cheerful response.
The motorbike gave a throaty roar of approval as we left the grounds for the first time since our arrival, wreaking havoc on the recently raked gravel. Only three days into our stay, it was surprising to find a world beyond.
Frankie navigated, relying heavily on her own personal semaphore, though I could hear her perfectly well. It seemed appropriate to use old-fashioned hand signals, though I also had an indicator. “Young man,” she shouted into the wind, in tribute to one of Queenie’s oldest jokes, the one about the old woman on her first taxi ride through London, perplexed by the driver’s hand signals, “you concentrate on the driving; I’ll tell you whether it’s raining or not.”
The roads were exactly as I had imagined, wriggling hairpin turns, overhung with uncontrollable foliage. Every direction was uphill. We met few cars but found ourselves stuck behind a slow farm vehicle whose apologetic driver looked unhurriedly for somewhere we could pass. Free of him, I took the corners fast, as if making up for lost time. Frankie’s captivation with the Villa Leopardi and its many luxuries had taken precedence over this, the excuse for our holiday, but she was having the time of her life behind her fighter ace goggles.
“Where did you learn to drive like this?” she shouted.
“Brenda!” I shouted back.
“Three cheers for Brenda!” she yelled, surrendering to the onrushing wind. It was magical mystery tour and switchback combined.
Three quarters of an hour later, after a few wrong turns, and a brief hiatus for an impromptu picnic when the view finally overwhelmed us, we turned through the Ansalone gate and found ourselves in low gear on a long steep driveway where the rays of the sun couldn’t pierce the tunnel of soaring cypresses. This finally opened onto the circular driveway I recalled from the diary. At the top stood the house, looking a good deal newer than I had imagined it. Etna rose up behind a citrus orchard dotted with decrepit farm buildings; a dense arrangement of trees and rock obscured any view of the sea from the front of the house.
An old man was seated in a chair by a scullery door, peeling potatoes. As we came to a stop, he rose, leaning heavily on a stick, to alert those within that they had company.
“Lovely!” said Frankie in admiration, turning her goggles into a necklace. “How often does Vesuvius go off?” she asked, pointing. I had never seen her so relaxed and playful, except onstage with the child volunteers.
There was none of the dilapidation that Joe had described. The roof was newly tiled in neat parallel lines; beneath, each window frame fitted snugly into its surrounding stone. I tried to picture the house when a ladder had been the only access to the upper floor, and wondered through which of the windows Joe had hoisted the sleeping Valentina.
A woman with long grey hair opened the top of a Dutch door and called out to us in Italian. Her tone told us that unexpected visitors were rare. I walked towards her.
“Scusa. Non parlo Italiano. Signore Ettore Ansalone?”
“Ah! Un attimo, per favore!” she said, miming that she would go and find him. It was that simple. Here he was and here we were. The transaction was almost complete. She noticed the unfinished potatoes, slinging the peelings onto a small compost heap and taking the saucepan inside. I pinged the straps on George’s box.
The familiar figure of Ansalone emerged, blinking in the sun as he stooped to get through the door, wiping his hands on a tea towel. The older woman stood behind him, peering over his shoulder, unsure whether to accompany him or not, presumably deterred by her lack of English.
“Ah!” he said, and turned to her and explained. She scuttled back into the kitchen, and he approached, slinging the tea towel over his shoulder. “Mr. Fisher,” he said in welcome, but with the guarded smile of a gentleman who does not like to be taken by surprise. “My apologies. Did I miss a letter from you? Should we be expecting you?” His eyes fluttered around, settling not on Frankie or the bike, but on George’s box.
“No, I should be the one to apologize for the intrusion.” I spoke formally and slowly, so there was no miscommunication. “We are on holiday, and having considered your generous offer, I thought I could take the opportunity to deliver by hand.”
He cast his eyes over our mode of transport, before giving it his cautious seal of approval. “Very . . . intrepid, I think is the word? But on such a lovely day, why not? And this is?” He held out his hand in greeting.
“My mother. Frankie.”
“Surely not mother,” he said as though the word had only negative connotations, taking Frankie’s hand and kissing it. “But, Signore Fisher, there is a difficulty, a problem.” He furrowed his brow, shrugged in apology, and gestured to the box. “I am delighted to know your acceptance of my offer, but . . .” He showed us his empty palms and then pulled the linings from his pockets. “I am afraid that not even I can produce such money out of thin air. We were not expecting you.”
“Nothing up your sleeve?” Frankie asked him with a smile.
“Nothing, dear lady, I assure you.”
“Of course; I understand,” I said. “We are staying at the Villa Leopardi until Sunday. . . .”
“Leopardi!” said Ansalone in admiration, as if the word itself were a delicious homemade sauce.
“. . . and you can find us there, or perhaps draft the money directly to England through your bank.”
“Yes, yes. What am I thinking? You wait. You have come all this way, and I would like to invite you . . . We are in the middle of . . .” He whipped the tea towel from his shoulder as though this explained everything. “Un attimo, per favore.”
“Charming man,” whispered Frankie, as he walked back into the scullery, closing the door behind him.
“He seemed to like you.”
“George! Anyway, lost to womankind, I’m afraid,” she said, twanging her goggles. “I came third, after the dummy and the bike! Will you leave George here?”
“I think Ansalone’s good for it.”
Ansalone reemerged, this time through the portico of the front door, and ushered us within. The interior was perfectly restored. We sat at a large circular kitchen table, a huge slab of highly polished wood. Frankie leaned back in wonder to see the arched ceiling through the ruff of banisters two storeys above.
“Ah, yes,” he said, stamping on the floor to demonstrate the durability of the house. “Many, many years of restoration. The house was practically destroyed in the second war.” Ansalone opened a bottle of white wine as the grey-haired woman prepared a small plate of food. “This is my siste
r,” he said. Frankie caught my eye surreptitiously, confirming her previous analysis — unmarried man, living with sister — as the sister smiled in greeting and placed a bowl of olives before us. “Chiara. I’m afraid she doesn’t speak English.” Chiara sat down, although her folded arms told us that this was only a momentary respite from other tasks. As we exchanged pleasantries, she let her hair fall through her fingers, twirling it gently. What was she seeing, this once silent girl whose cascade of petals from the floors above had taken Joe by surprise, when she looked at us, his family? It was as though, despite the renovation of the house, I was going back in time.
“May I?” asked Ettore with a gleam in his eyes, once the wine was poured.
“Of course. Consider him yours now.”
He rubbed his hands together, with a suggestive smile for our benefit, and pulled George from his box, nodding as he did. He sat him on his knee. What was at first a look of boyish enthusiasm slowly gave way to the ruthless eye of appraisal. “Excuse me,” he said, as he bent George forwards, pulled aside his clothes, and shone a small torch into his back. Quite satisfied with whatever he saw, he continued his medical with the manipulation of each separate piece of the mechanism: the salute pleased him particularly. As this went on, Chiara drifted away from the table and, picking up the rest of the unfinished potatoes, disappeared into the farther reaches of the house as we sat in silent observation. Ettore indicated George’s blazer indifferently.
“The clothes?” he said.
“The original Romando clothes. Restored, of course, like your house.”
“We had thought he was in the museum.”
“A long story,” I said apologetically.
“Not the uniform?” asked Ansalone, without criticism.
“A long story. Not in our possession, but we know where it is. Does that change . . . ?”
“Niente, niente,” said Ansalone dismissively. He smoothed George’s trousers, feeling the replacement metal legs, the wire joints. “Sì, sì.” He smiled in approval. “Perfetto.” I was surprised that the prosthetic additions, which seemed a potential drawback, since they were clearly not the Romando originals, didn’t bring out the haggler in him. But it was the faces these experts wanted.
“We have a deal,” he concluded. “A wonderful deal.”
“It’s an awful lot of money,” said Frankie, the voice of reason.
“For a very remarkable ragazzo . . . boy,” said Ansalone, as though she needed to be persuaded to let him pay it all. Perhaps he suspected her of cold feet.
“A boy!” said Frankie. “That’s what my family has always called them. How did you become interested in ventriloquism?”
I saw my moment.
“My mother doesn’t know,” I interjected quickly. “I think she’d like to hear the story.”
Ansalone glanced at me, chewing the inside of his cheek.
“What don’t I know?” she asked, willingly teased.
“Yes.” He laughed. “What doesn’t your mother know?”
“About how your interest began.”
“Va bene . . .” He gave a laugh from which I inferred that I had put him in an awkward position, though I couldn’t see why. “The story of ventriloquism and me is quite well known. . . .” And he told a bland but charming tale, aimed specifically at Frankie, about his life in wartime Sicily, how his skill at ventriloquism and magic had helped his family survive: first the Italians and the Germans, then the Allies, and through it all the Mafia themselves — where there was laughter, there was hope.
Why, when I had specifically asked him, did he feel he had to lie? Why did he think that he could make no mention of her father, the ENSA performer who had sat where we were sitting now, who had a dummy on whom Ettore had showered a series of bizarre gifts? His caginess made me ill at ease; there were two Ettore Ansalones, and this one was as strange as the one in the dressing room.
“What a lovely idea,” said Frankie. “My father entertained the troops in Italy too. He was decorated for it.”
“I know. As of course was George,” said Ansalone matter-of-factly. “Don’t think that my offer is made naively. I am not an amateur. I know everything about this little boy, even his serial number. I am surprised only that you will sell him to me, though of course I do not discourage you. I will show where he is going to live. Come with me. Come.”
Following Ansalone up the elegant curve of the staircase, my hand on the cool of the marble rail, I caught sight of a terrace through the large window that faced the volcano. There I saw Chiara talking to the man who had been peeling the potatoes. Light glinted on them from a clear blue swimming pool.
“Here,” he said, as he reached for a key to the door of the room directly above the kitchen, “is where George will rest. It is, how you say, my life’s work.”
He flicked on a row of switches; first the room was bathed in the glow of indirect museum light. Then bulbs shone with searchlight precision on the various display cases and show posters that surrounded us.
“Welcome to my lair, Mr. Bond,” said Frankie with a wink. “How unexpected. You’re quite the collector. Very much our family history too. I wish Queenie were here.”
“Some men like skiing; others, if you will forgive me, keep mistresses. This is my vice. May I show you? For example, this” — he turned on one final light — “is where I will put George. I think you particularly will like this, Mr. Fisher.” In this central case, there was only one dummy, but there was room for two. “This beautiful girl, in her delightful riding gear, is Belle. American. Kember of Chicago, 1934. Absolutely unique.”
“Yes, she is lovely,” said Frankie. “Isn’t she, Georgie?”
She was. I had never seen her before and I felt like George in Duke Duval’s waiting room the moment he laid eyes on her: his dream, his able equestrienne. I caught sight of a small accompanying framed portrait of Bobbie with Belle, on a London stage, happy, alive.
George (Joe) had written that he knew he would see her again: “You are dead. And I will soon be dead too. Find me in Paradise, where we shall never be parted. I know you will. Arrivederci.” George’s story was done. Somehow he had known that they would be reunited. And here they would be, finally: an appropriately bizarre double grave for such impossible lovers. George and Belle next to each other for eternity: were we in Paradise? Sicily had seemed a paradise from the Villa Leopardi — and given all I had read in the diary, this was a kind of happy ending, yet it left me distinctly uncomfortable. Had Ansalone gone to the ends of the earth to find Belle? How had he known to? How had he known where to go?
“Georgie?”
I couldn’t answer, and I felt the indigestive nausea that had occasionally accompanied my failed attempts to speak. Ansalone, who noticed the change in me, began to explain something for Frankie’s benefit, as if diverting her attention. I couldn’t communicate to her the shock of seeing Belle. I submitted to a nagging chain of thoughts, what ifs — the presence of Belle in pride of place in this museum, the sum of money Tower had offered, the familiar nature of his stage act, his behaviour in the dressing room, his reluctance to tell Frankie his memories of her father, even his lack of complaint about the prosthetic legs. What was it all telling me? One thing was certain: I hadn’t even bothered to consider that Ansalone might know about the diaries, that he was prepared to pay so much for George because he wanted them. How could he possibly have known? Would Joe have told the Ansalone family? It was absurd. And, come to that, what would Ansalone do when he found the diary was missing?
There was only one conclusion that made sense of everything. I needed time.
“Georgie?”
Small talk was out of the question. I couldn’t summon the socially correct response, and my reaction, dragged from me, was inappropriately dismissive. I wanted to be alone, to think things through. Above all, there was Frankie. I hadn’t meant to drag her into this, thinking only that she would be charmed by happy tales of a wartime friendship with her father. And if I was right
about the conclusion to which the facts pointed, how could everything stay the same for beautiful Frankie, as she had asked, as I had promised?
“And this is where we shall put George, of course,” said Ansalone. “Next to Belle.”
“I’ll go and get him,” I said.
“No, no, not yet. Certainly not until the transaction is complete, and, of course, George will have an appointment in my workshop before any such ceremony can take place.” Ansalone led my mother persuasively by the arm to the far corner of the room. “Now, this, signorina, you really will be interested in. . . .”
My heart was beating faster, unbearably faster, until I calmed myself by repeating my conclusion slowly, over and over. I wanted to eliminate it on the grounds of being impossible. But it wasn’t. It was just horrible. And it was the only answer.
Ansalone was showing off a wall full of historic photographs of various ventriloquists and conjurers. Amongst them, I spotted a black-and-white picture of a young Joe, sitting on a well in the marketplace, smoking a cigarette; next to him was a young boy working a dummy too big for him. Frankie, charmed by everything she saw around her, was oblivious to this needle in the haystack: she wasn’t looking for evidence of her father, as I was. Ansalone insisted on bringing it to her attention. It was as though the wine had gone to my head.
“And you know this one, I think,” he said, pointing to the photograph.
“Georgie!” said Frankie with delight. “It’s Dad.”
“Yes,” said Ansalone. He pulled out a portfolio and flicked idly through some ENSA handbills. “Very famous in Italy in the war. Here you see, Joe Fisher and George, in Bari. Also on the bill, the night before, Echo Endor. A little piece of family history, I think. I give this to you.”
“Thank you,” she said, humbled.
There was silence as we looked at Joe.
I was convinced. There was one thing left to find out.
“Is he forgotten in Italy now?” I asked with care.
“Oh, yes,” said Ansalone. “I’m afraid so, quite forgotten. As with many of the war entertainers, forgotten by the whole world.”