by John Harris
The heat that came to them from the blazing garage was appalling now and Patch could feel it scorching his face as he laid the old man down on the wet grass. Cecilia was beside him, dirty, her eyes full of tears, and beyond her a woman with her hands full of looted clothing was muttering a De Profundis. One of the muleteers crossed himself as Cecilia began to cry quietly.
Old Leonardi opened his eyes. ‘Eccole!’ He lifted his hands weakly and showed them the ruined camera he held in his bleeding fingers. ‘The pictures here that have never been taken before.
‘Fancy,’ he said in surprise as his voice grew weak. ‘I was right all the time. After all those years.’
Forty-two
The ships were close inshore again now, the American and the British and the Italian and the Dutch. Already stores and food had been landed and even vehicles. A relief centre had been set up in the Town Hall for the people who had lost everything, and a crowd of shabbily dressed peasants sat on the steps and under the arches of the Archivio, lost and bewildered, watching the crates and boxes that were piling high round the headquarters of the first-aid parties, and demolition, electrical and mechanical squads from the ships.
No one was concerned with the election now. The papers which had been put ready for the voting, the symbols of Pelli’s futile will, lay forgotten in the Town Hall and in the various voting booths about the town. In the charred corners of the eastern streets where the lava was still steadily pushing its way to the sea, they were scattered about the pavements, trodden into the ash and sticking to the rain-wet walls.
Up there, where the houses were still crumbling before the inexorable thrusting of the grey stream, lorries were lining up to carry away the contents of the doomed houses. Englishmen, Americans and Dutchmen were carrying out chests and battered dressing-tables and kitchen furniture for aged Italian ladies, and cramming them into the lorries with the plaster saints and the faded photographs and the treasured wedding dresses. Some of the old people were even trying to cling to their homes, and the naval and civic officials had given orders for their forcible removal. There was blasting to turn aside the new streams of lava that were approaching and even talk of aerial bombing.
Stumbling groups of people in need of food and shelter were still heading into the town, shuffling through the ash and the dust and the sand the mountain had thrown out, halting at the information centre that had been set up in the Archivio for news of relatives, and then continuing in a straggling line towards the beach for evacuation.
A little procession went by, led by Don Gustavo, Don Alessandro’s curate. Following them came a group of men carrying a terra-cotta figure of the Virgin Mary dressed in dusty clothing and crowned with a wreath of fading laurel. Behind it trailed boys carrying incense and crowds of people from the Porto, beads and crucifixes clasped to their breasts, gathering numbers as they went.
As they entered the Piazza Martiri, the little carts from Fumarola began to pass them, pushed by red-eyed men and women with grimy faces, or drawn by jaded horses, carrying bundles or coffins as crude as packing cases. The priests from the Church of Sant’ Antonio were busy in the little graveyard above the town where the lava of 1762 still lay banked against the thick wall, waiting among the lopsided gravestones and the tombs which had been thrown open by the immense stresses of the earth as the mountain had heaved. The bell of the little chapel among the cypresses rang slowly and with a nerve-racking monotony over the rising and falling sound of grief.
All of Hannay’s inborn love of human beings, all that incredible desire to be at one with everyone around him that had driven him to plague Patch, flowed out to the pathetic little groups. He turned to Patch, who stood alongside him near the mole, his peeled red face glowing with a confident belief in mankind, not looking back on the destruction but, true to his nature, hopefully forward to the future.
‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘I got ’em all on board. Hayward and his wife and all their pals. I’ll look you up when I’m next on this run.’ He paused, his face worried. ‘Ain’t seen Cristoforo, have you?’ he asked. ‘He’s disappeared again. I expect he got whipped away with that lot going to the mainland and I don’t suppose he’ll come back now. Not if he’s got any sense.’
His voice crumbled suddenly in a way that didn’t go with his normal brash confidence. ‘I’d sorta like to have said good-bye,’ he concluded weakly. ‘That’s all.’
He shook hands with Patch then he turned on his heel and marched down the mole, a short, square figure dressed in flannels, brown shoes, a captain’s square rig jacket and felt hat.
A few minutes later the old ship swung out and moved stern-first into the centre of the little harbour, neatly missing the group of fishing boats which bobbed at the far side. Then the siren boomed and the propellor thrashed the water to a yeasty foam as the ship began to head round the mole towards the sea.
Hannay stared over the stern from the bridge as the black basalt wall grew smaller, linked to the ship now only by the wake and the cries of the gulls. The island was basking in an unexpected sunshine. The smoke from the mountain still poured upwards into the sky towards the west and from the slopes where the lava lay in streams, but curiously he knew the danger was over. The worst that could happen now was the maddeningly slow destruction of a few more houses and a few more fields and gardens.
He suddenly felt lonely and began to think of what he and Mabel could have done for Cristoforo. The kid had possibilities. Distinct possibilities that he and Mabel might have done something with. He could have stayed on the Great Watling Street directly under Hannay’s eye and it would have been dead good to see him fill out on ship’s food and Mabel’s suet puddings. A bit more flesh would have improved him, a decent suit of clothes, some food in his belly, and none of those damn’ cigarettes he’d been smoking. All these things and a couple of years on his back and there’d have been a proper change in Cristoforo. Now it would all slip back into the routine of lack of hope, the easiest way, the little vices that gave comfort in hopelessness, until his spirit was sapped and he began to look like so many others on Anapoli, even as Devoto had looked.
Hannay walked gloomily along the deck towards the poop where he took his daily walk among the engine-room ventilators and the motor that worked the ship’s refrigerator. As he passed the starboard lifeboat he noticed that the tarpaulin was loose and at first he thought of passing on the information to the bosun, then he decided to make it fast himself.
He reached up for the cover to yank it straight, but as he lifted it he found himself staring first at the ginger cat sitting on the canvas of a folded sail, and then at two large dark eyes which peered out at him from beneath a fringe of black curls.
‘Cristoforo!’ He jammed the canvas down quickly and stood for a second with his hands on the edge of the lifeboat, resting on the tarpaulin, listening to the frantic shuffling that was going on beneath it. He stared at the hump made by a small body that moved farther under the tarpaulin towards the bow of the lifeboat, and the smile that started on his red face spread into an expression of amazement and pure delight as his troublesome conscience reminded him with joy that he had had no hand in this.
He glanced backwards briefly. Anapoli lay five miles behind him already, only a dwindling hump on the sea. Ten miles more and nobody in the world could make him turn the Great Watling Street back. Another hour or two and nobody could dispute his actions, even if they could find it in them to question him taking an orphan under his wing.
He patted the gunwale of the lifeboat with his two hands in a satisfied gesture.
‘Food,’ he said out loud. ‘That’s what this damned cat wants. No cat that’s nesting for kittens can go without food. I’ll bring you some up ’ere.’ He leaned closer, his face stiff and expressionless.
‘Stay ’ere, kitty,’ he said out loud. ‘Stay ’ere, and I’ll bring you some dinner.’
The Città di Salerno, lying among the other island boats that were helping with the evacuation, was already crow
ded with homeless people when Patch and Cecilia went on board. They were pushing into the saloon, demanding food, and spilling across the decks, blocking all the alleyways with their belongings. Most of them would never return to Anapoli.
The grey dust-laden water overside was stirred to a scummy froth by a jet of water from the engine-room, and nearby a group of bedraggled gulls fought among the floating pumice for a few scraps of food which had been flung overboard from the galley. Patch pushed through the crowd until they found a corner up against the entrance to the saloon, and he wedged Cecilia in there and stood alongside her. Neither of them possessed much more than what they stood up in. At the end of the Via Pescatori the six-foot-high bank of clinker was still spilling along the narrow street, flowing into doorways and burning the woodwork and the rubbish in the courtyards. The police had cordoned the place off while they were still at the Villa Forla.
Up the hill the Porto lay in ruins, the Church of Sant’ Agata only a gaunt square of roofless walls now, the remains of its dome rearing starkly to the sky, its treasures buried beneath the debris of the collapsed roof. The schoolroom lay broken under the fire-scorched houses, its contents scattered under the bricks and rubble and shattered furniture.
In the two days since the eruption so much had happened Patch no longer felt he was completely whole again. Individual fragments of him seemed to be scattered about the island. Anapoli had become a part of him, its experiences his, its sufferings scarred on his flesh. Too many of his emotions had been left behind in those shabby little streets where private lives had been thrown open to the passer-by.
But, with true Italian resilience, everyone was already accepting their loss and he drew courage from the sight of Mamma Meucci seeking out a new home, her arguments with the old woman from across the Via Pescatori going on uninterrupted every time they bumped into each other; and from Emiliano painting new phrases among the daubed pillars and frescoes on the tower of his bar in the Piazza Martiri, which had miraculously escaped damage.
‘O, Gioia,’ he had painted. ‘O, Fede,’ and he was now at work on the final words, ‘O, Speranza.’
‘Oh, Joy,’ Patch had read. ‘Oh, Faith, Oh, Hope.’
Beneath all this he had hung a wreath for the Virgin he was convinced had saved his property and, dissatisfied with its size, had improved it with painted flowers on the wall behind. It seemed a symbol for the future.
Forla was gone and with his palace destroyed, his vineyards laid waste, his sulphur buried, would not be back. Pelli was gone. Bosco had left the island, his part in the disaster as well known as Pelli’s. It was said he had been offered a political appointment on the mainland but it would never amount to much now. Don Alessandro would never be a bishop. They’d all disappeared into the limbo of ordinary and over-ambitious politicians who had guessed wrong, and the parties had declared a truce.
Tomorrow or the day afterwards, someone would say something which would bring a hot reply and probably a loudspeaker car from the courtyards from behind the party offices. Then they would all be at each other’s throats again, forgetting the tragedy about them in their passionate gift for living, for the dead didn’t stay dead long in Italy. The people were as fertile as the soil and all those who had disappeared would be replaced, their spirit and their vitality untouched, for they had the kind of courage that stemmed from faith as deep as the roots their own writhing vines pushed down. They would rebuild what was left of their life, brick by brick, and stone by stone, enduring, because they’d endured before, as their fathers had, and their grandfathers.
Patch glanced at Cecilia. Her face was calm, her eyes steady as she smiled back at him. She’d had no qualms about putting the old life aside, and the fact that they were starting with nothing in no way dismayed her. She had Patch. In that sad world about her only two people existed just then.
They had not even tried to save their belongings. By mutual consent, they had made no attempt to conceal what had had happened between them, moving into the little hotel in the Piazza Martiri, not excusing themselves, satisfied to be together. For the first time in his life, Patch wanted a home. He wanted to shake off the old life completely and put on the new.
He felt selfishly happy. There was still the whole of Italy before him. The world still had meaning and stability and he had got Cecilia out of the catastrophe. He had got more than he deserved, he thought, and a man was entitled to be selfish once in a while.
A blast from the ship’s siren made them jump and, as the engine-room bell clanged, the ferry began to head out into the harbour, its mooring ropes splashing into the water. A few minutes later, the ship cleared the end of the mole and headed north-east towards Naples.
By the evening, they’d be picking up the lights on the twin bastions of Ischia and Capri that stood astride Naples bay and an hour or two later disembarking hard by Santa Luci. By midnight they would have been swallowed up in the teeming mass of people who made up the city, from the Vomero to the Via Roma.
Patch took a deep breath, thinking of all the places he could sit and draw, thinking of all the people around him jamming the ship he could draw too if only he had the paper and the pencil – but even those simple necessities were missing at that moment, and he turned and took Cecilia’s hand.
She smiled and put her arm through his, so that he could feel her warm flesh against his own, and he was oddly content.
Together they went into the saloon and out of the cool wind that was blowing over the tip of Amarea, bringing with it the last scent of cinders before they caught the damp smell of the sea.
Synopses of John Harris Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Army of Shadows
It is the winter of 1944. France is under the iron fist of the Nazis. But liberation is just around the corner and a crew from a Lancaster bomber is part of the fight for Freedom. As they fly towards their European target, a Messerschmitt blazes through the sky in a fiery attack and of the nine-man crew aboard the bomber, only two men survive to parachute into Occupied France. They join an ever-growing army of shadows (the men and women of the French Resistance), to play a lethal game of cat and mouse.
China Seas
In this action-packed adventure, Willie Sarth becomes a survivor. Forced to fight pirates on the East China Seas, wrestle for his life on the South China Seas and cross the Sea of Japan ravaged by typhus, Sarth is determined to come out alive. Dealing with human tragedy, war and revolution, Harris presents a novel which packs an awesome punch.
The Claws of Mercy
In Sierra Leone, a remote bush community crackles with racial tensions. Few white people live amongst the natives of Freetown and Authority seems distant. Everyday life in Freetown revolves around an opencast iron mine, and the man in charge dictates peace and prosperity for everyone. But, for the white population, his leadership is a matter of life or death where every decision is like being snatched by the claws of mercy.
Corporal Cotton’s Little War
Storming through Europe, the Nazis are sure to conquer Greece but for one man, Michael Anthony Cotton, a heroic marine who smuggles weapons of war and money to the Greek Resistance. Born Mihale Andoni Cotonou, Cotton gets mixed up in a lethal mission involving guns and high-speed chases. John Harris produces an unforgettable champion, persuasive and striking with a touch of mastery in this action-packed thriller set against the dazzle of the Aegean.
The Cross of Lazzaro
The Cross of Lazzaro is a gripping story filled with mystery and fraught with personal battles. This tense, unusual novel begins with the seemingly divine reappearance of a wooden cross once belonging to a sixth-century bishop. The vision emerges from the depths of an Italian lake, and a menacing local antagonism is subsequently stirred. But what can the cross mean?
Flawed Banner
John Harris’ spine-tingling adventure inhabits the shadowy world of cunning and espionage. As the Nazi hordes of Germany overrun France, devouring the free world with fascist fervour, a
young intelligence officer, James Woodyatt, is shipped across the Channel to find a First World War hero…an old man who may have been a spy…who may be in possession of Nazi secrets.
The Fox From His Lair
A brilliant German agent lies in wait for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. While the Allies prepare a vast armed camp, no one is aware of the enemy within, and when a sudden, deadly E-boat attacks, the Fox strikes, stealing secret invasion plans in the ensuing panic. What follows is a deadly pursuit as the Fox tries to get the plans to Germany in time, hotly pursued by two officers with orders to stop him at all costs.
A Funny Place to Hold a War
Ginger Donnelly is on the trail of Nazi saboteurs in Sierra Leone. Whilst taking a midnight paddle with a willing woman in a canoe cajoled from a local fisherman, Donnelly sees an enormous seaplane thunder across the sky only to crash in a ball of brilliant flame. It seems like an accident…at least until a second plane explodes in a blistering shower along the same flight path.
Getaway
An Italian fisherman and his wife, Rosa, live in Sydney. Hard times are ahead. Their mortgaged boat may be lost and with it, their livelihood. But Rosa has a plan to reach the coast of America from the islands of the Pacific, sailing on a beleaguered little houseboat. The plan seems almost perfect, especially when Willie appears and has his own reasons for taking a long holiday to the land of opportunity.
Harkaway’s Sixth Column
An explosive action-packed war drama: four British soldiers are cut off behind enemy lines in British Somaliland and when they decide to utilise a secret arms dump in the Bur Yi hills and fight a rearguard action, an unlikely alliance is sought between two local warring tribes. What follows is an amazing mission led by the brilliant, elusive Harkaway, whose heart is stolen by a missionary when she becomes mixed up in the unorthodox band of warriors.