Last Train from Liguria

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  She is light-headed with tiredness and a relief she is almost afraid to allow herself to feel. All she wants now is time on her own with Alec, a chance to absorb the shock of the past few days, to monitor and accept the hope for the days to come.

  Elida brings in supper, her large hand conducting a tour of the tray: ham, cheese, one or two other things on a plate. 'It's cooked prosciutto – not crudo – and soft the way you like, Signora, and a nice caraffa of Rossese to do you some good. There is the coffee pot with the English cosy to keep the warm in. And here at last is one of the peaches we preserve in September. So sweet, I can't say it.'

  Bella turns off the main lights and puts a match to the night lamp. The wine goes straight to her head. She sucks on a peach and gets into her pyjamas, then changes back into her day clothes in case Alec wakes up sooner rather than later, and the room starts filling with visitors again. She pads the window seat with pillows and cushions and settles herself in. Then, afraid of getting too comfortable and dozing off, whips everything away again.

  With one cushion moulded into her back Bella sits upright where she can have a permanent view of Alec. She stares at him for a while and then begins to sing. Anything that comes into her head – 'Silent Night'; an alphabet song; the dwarves song from Snow White; and the ditty the troops brought back from East Africa last year about the little black face looking out to sea – 'Facetta Nera', which Alec never tires of hearing or singing himself.

  A few minutes later there is a tap on the door and she opens it to Edward. 'How long have you been out there?' she asks.

  'Long enough to know you're a crow.'

  'Very funny. Anyway – I thought I told you to get lost.'

  'Can't bloody sleep,' he begins, stepping into the room. 'I did everything you said. Had a smoke – several smokes. Then something to eat. As you know it's probably not a good idea if I get drunk. And I didn't particularly want to run through the streets naked, especially with Nurse Willis running ahead of me – she wobbles a bit, you know.'

  'Does she indeed?'

  'Yes. So, I thought I might as well keep you company. How is he?'

  'Fine. Sleeping peacefully.'

  'And his breathing?'

  'Perfect.'

  'Good.' He walks over and looks down at Alec. 'Ah, the colour is back. That's a good sign, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Edward, that's a good sign.'

  'I suppose it's all right if we talk? We won't disturb him?'

  'It's fine. It might encourage him to come round actually, just to make sure he's not missing anything.'

  He turns away from the bed. 'Are you eating that?' he asks, his hand already stretched towards the plate on the tray.

  'I thought you had something to eat?' she says.

  'Still hungry. And there's no point in wasting it – you won't eat it.'

  'How do you know I won't?'

  He raises his eyebrows at her, then sits into the sofa, the plate on his lap. 'So,' he begins, leaning back to rest an olive on his lips, then sucking it in. 'How come you eat so little anyway?'

  'I don't eat so little.'

  'You eat nothing. You're too skinny, by the way.' He spits the olive stone out onto his palm and lets it fall on the tray. 'You ought to fatten up a bit.'

  'You shouldn't speak with your mouth full,' she says. 'It's very rude. And you're hardly Charles Atlas yourself, by the way.'

  'True, but at least I try.' He picks up a bit of cheese, sticks it under his nose, sniffs and then eats it. 'A bit mild for my taste. Elida gets it for you specially. In fact, if she thinks you don't like something, she won't rest until she finds an alternative.'

  'I have noticed, yes.'

  'You're very ungrateful. Poor old Elida.'

  'Oh, it's poor old Elida now? A few hours ago she was a witch.'

  'Christ, don't remind me. But all that talk about limbo and weeping souls wandering about for eternity – I couldn't listen to another word. Apparently, whatever the rest of us say, a meticcio has no chance at all on the other side.'

  'A what?'

  'Half-breed.'

  'Because his mother is Jewish? She said that?'

  'Actually no, Rosa said it. But Elida started howling for the priest then. It's just ignorance, it doesn't mean anything.'

  'It means something to Alec. Jesus.'

  He pulls a strip of ham up and dangles it over his open mouth.'You know, when I was in the kitchen earlier she wouldn't let me near this: "Is for Signora Stu-arta, she only like this one."' He drops it in. 'If you like it so much, how come it's still here?'

  'It's not that I like it – I just hate it a bit less than the raw stuff.'

  'See what I mean?' he asks, gliding a slice of roasted marrow off the plate and sucking it off his finger. 'Nothing.'

  'There's a knife and fork there, Edward, please feel free to use them.'

  'I like eating with my fingers.' He licks then plucks them at the napkin to dry. 'Ahh coffee – do you mind?'

  'Not at all. You know, I thought my appetite had improved since I came here. My father was delighted with the weight I'd put on. I mean, you should have seen me a few years back. Then, I ate nothing. I mean really – nothing. I don't enjoy food, not like other people seem to – funny to end up living in a country where it means everything.'

  Edward finishes the coffee, then pours her another glass of wine. The night goes by. They gossip and speculate about people they know. They laugh – at one point become almost hysterical – he is such a good mimic. The talk turns towards each other, drifts off elsewhere, then comes back again. Several times this happens. Once she sulks at something he says. Another time he tells her to mind her own business. But these are minor setbacks in a night-long conversation.

  Ages after it starts, and well before it's over, she says, 'I don't think I've ever spent this long talking to anyone in my whole life. Have you?'

  He shrugs. 'Maybe. In drink. When I tend to like the sound of my own voice. But never mind that – you were saying?' He wants to hear her.

  At first she has little enough to give: an episode or two from a former life. Mrs Jenkins and her father behaving like sneaks – which he finds hilarious. He tells a few stories about his travels in Germany, a fight he got into one night in a town in Bavaria with a pair of Brownshirts. Having to do a flit in the middle of the night when they returned in a pack threatening to burn down the inn where he was staying.

  'You fought with Brownshirts? Were you drunk?'

  'Of course I was drunk.'

  'How did it start?'

  'I called Hitler a Schwuler.'

  'A what?'

  'A pansy.'

  'Edward!'

  'Your turn.' He grins.

  She tells him about stealing her mother's jewels; about being unable to bring herself to visit the grave; the food she used to throw out; the cats in the garden. He listens, makes a vague comment or two, once or twice laughs.

  'Now you,' she says.

  Another story about drink. He was sick in a wardrobe years ago, all over a stranger's clothes. He says he was alone, but she's not sure she believes that.

  'Are all your stories about drink?' she asks him.

  'It's the only time anything ever happens to me.'

  'Is that why you do it – to make things happen?'

  'I don't know. I do it because, well, I get fed up trying not to, I suppose. The constant bloody struggle of it. I just decide to let go of the ledge.'

  As the night progresses they move around the room. Yet she can't remember noticing either of them getting up to leave one place for another. She finds herself on the sofa, the next minute standing at the bed looking at Alec. Edward seems to pop up everywhere: on the window seat sitting like an Indian, then stretched out on the sofa, hands behind his head. On the floor with his back to the wall. Then standing at the door, as if he's getting ready to leave. She doesn't want him to leave. Another story.

  'This one is gossip,' she says.

  'That's perfectly acceptable.'
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  'About Amelia.'

  'Even better.'

  She tells him about Amelia's love bite and how she had stayed out all night. And the man Elida had caught sneaking down the stairs in the early hours of the morning.

  'Naughty Amelia!'

  He tells her about a heavy pass Amelia had made at him.

  'How heavy?'

  'Naked under the window, in the middle of the night, heavy.'

  'Completely naked?'

  'Well, wrapped in a blanket, but she let me know all the same.'

  'Did you let her in?'

  'Of course not.'

  'But then you go to brothels for that sort of thing, don't you?'

  'Mind your own bloody business,' he snaps.

  The night light fizzles out and the darkness tightens around them. Two detached voices.

  She says, 'I'll tell you a really big secret if you answer me one question.'

  'How big is the secret?'

  'Huge.'

  'What question?'

  'Are you Irish?'

  'Oh Christ, not this again.'

  'Oh now come on – are you?'

  He doesn't answer and she presses him. 'Just tell me, I won't ask the whys or how-comes, I won't tell anyone. I just would really love to know.'

  'A simple yes or no – you'd leave it at that?'

  'I promise.'

  'In that case yes, I am.'

  'Yes?'

  'Yes, I said.'

  'I knew it, I knew it! From Dublin?'

  'You promised that would be an end to it. But yes, Dublin.'

  'All right, that's all.'

  'Now I'd like to ask something – if you don't mind?'

  'Yes?'

  'Did you break into my room when I was away?'

  'Yes. I—'

  'Why?'

  'I thought you weren't coming back and just wanted to see. I'm sorry.'

  'That's all right. It doesn't matter. The next time I'll invite you in – that is if you're not afraid to come in.'

  'I could never be afraid of you, Edward.'

  He says nothing for a moment then: 'Come on, what about your huge secret then?'

  Into the darkness she starts to speak. 'There was this man, this professor. From Edinburgh. He was married to my mother's cousin and was staying in our house. They were all terribly proud of him, always boasting about his brilliance and that. Anyway, I was young, a girl, only gone fourteen—' She stops then, realizing that if they can't see each other then they can't see Alec. If his condition changes how will they know? Or what if he is lying there awake now, listening to her?

  Edward puts a match to the night light and when it comes back up it startles her. I'm saying too much, she thinks to herself. Then out loud to him, 'I'm saying too much.'

  He replies, 'You haven't said anything yet!'

  'In a while, I will. I promise. Give me a little while.'

  Just before dawn she nods off. When she wakes he's there with a cup in his hand, and she remembers then that he'd gone off to make tea. She takes the cup and then says, 'All right, my secret now. The real reason we moved from Dublin to London. Ready?'

  'All ears.'

  *

  He is so quiet when it's over, when she's finished telling her story. He waits just long enough before saying anything. Long enough for her to know that she's made a terrible mistake.

  'You were only a child,' is what he finally says.

  'Not really. Not so much.'

  'You were fifteen.'

  'Fourteen.'

  'Fourteen. It wasn't your fault.'

  'No?'

  'No. Of course not, Bella, think about it for Christ's sake. He was the adult. He was the one who was responsible.'

  'Yes, but if I hadn't gone to him. If I hadn't always been at him. You know, I was always, always. At him.'

  'You were a bloody child. That's all there is to it.' He closes the night-long conversation.

  She has told much more than she meant to tell. He has told a lot less than he seems to have done. Things may have levelled out had Alec not opened his mouth to speak, his voice dry and confused: 'Why am I in this room, and why is this room so dark?' His little voice.

  It seems like only a few seconds later when the doctor arrives, the nurse soon after him; a fairground bustle breaking around the bed for what seems like an age. Edward withdrawing to the rear wall. She goes back to the window seat, the curtains now open, the shutters pinned back to let in the light that no longer hurts Alec's eyes.

  Bella remains there, returning Elida's occasional smile, nodding intelligently when the doctor looks over his shoulder to make a comment on Alec's condition. Each time she catches a glimpse of Alec his eyes are on her. In the course of the examination he is turned from side to side, but his eyes come straight back to her face as if they've never left it. She begins to worry that maybe he's heard something. Yet she can't remember exactly what he could have heard, the words she used, or if they were words that a child would understand. There are certain things she could not have brought herself to say to Edward, or anybody else. There are certain words she has never spoken, not even inside her own head.

  *

  The man in the secret. The professor from Edinburgh.

  He had been invited to spend a month as a visiting professor and consultant at the hospital where her father worked. He would also be their guest during this time. Her father looked forward to the visit with boyish enthusiasm. Her mother, however, retreated into one of those gloomy moods that demoted her from barely adequate to completely incompetent hostess. In other words, got herself off the hook again.

  'We shall just have to call on your Aunt Margie to step into the social breach,' her father sighed. 'Your poor mother, I'm afraid, lacks the confidence required in these matters – Professor Fallon is a man of considerable reputation and position, you know.'

  Even to Bella's young mind it seemed unlikely that her mother would be daunted by the professor, her own late father having been a Master of the hospital in question, who had only narrowly missed a place on the honours list because he was regarded as occasionally seeing matters from a 'Fenian point of view'.

  Her mother simply disliked having strangers in the house. She was resentful of their endless expectations and continual little intrusions. She particularly hated what her father termed as 'making the effort', and what she termed as 'chit-chat and company'.

  Aunt Margaret was the woman for chit-chat and company. She was her father's youngest and only unmarried sister. Also his favourite – even if he did believe her tendency to be 'a little too well informed for her own good' was keeping her on the shelf.

  Bella took one look at the distinguished professor and at fourteen years old had fallen madly in love. Years later, she still couldn't say why it should be Professor Fallon – other than he happened to arrive in the middle of what she would recall as a time of constant yearning.

  For months she had been fretful and over-aware of her body, which had been pushing and shoving itself out of all proportion. Her aunts had referred to this process as 'developing' and there had been frequent remarks such as: 'I see she's beginning to develop…', 'She's still developing, then?' and, 'My goodness, she'll burst if she doesn't stop developing soon!'

  Bella, by turns, had been excited and repulsed by this transformation. If she stood naked in front of the mirror and squeezed her arms together she could make a cleavage – just like one that might feature in a grown-up woman's ball gown. And if she looked down there was a growth of hair that reminded her of the chin on the pimply boy who delivered the papers. Behind this new chin, a warm sturdy butterfly was forever beating or getting ready to beat its wings. A further flock of butterflies, smaller but much hotter, seemed to be twittering away inside every nook and cranny of her body.

  Her mother had given her a little talk – Bella guessed this had come about on her father's orders. A shamefaced mumbling about monthly carry-on and tender breasts – both of which Bella had already been experiencing
first hand, for over a year now. There was advice about modesty, and unspecified warnings about men. There had been nothing about love and hot butterflies.

  Professor Fallon was not in the least attractive. He was not even a personable man. Middle-aged, chubby-cheeked, a bald head with a clown-like tuft on each side. He wore a moustache – but no beard, which Vera, the maid, said was a sign of vanity and probably to show off that stupidlooking dimple on his chin. He had girl's eyelashes and bland eyes. For the most part his expression was surly. When Vera said there was a bit of a smell off him, Bella could not, in all honesty, disagree. Nevertheless, she thought she would die of love whenever she set eyes on him or even so much as heard his footstep in the hall.

  At table he did most of the talking, usually on matters scientific or political. Sometimes he showed his artistic side by reciting long poems. When he did this her mother stared at her plate in horror. Aunt Margaret put her head to one side and gently nodded. Her father, who had long since lost enthusiasm for his guest, boyish or otherwise, looked away to the distance or continued to eat. Bella thought he had a beautiful purring voice. She said it one day to her father. 'Hasn't the professor a beautiful voice?'

  'Mm,' her father replied. 'And by God does he know how to use it!'

  Bella knew then her professor was considered a bore. For some reason this made her love him all the more. She became a compulsive daydreamer; exquisite little episodes running around inside her head, which never seemed to reach a conclusion. They were all about the lead-up to something indefinite, but wonderful. There would always be a passionate declaration, a surrender of sorts, of course an embrace, the very thought of which set the butterflies flapping like mad. After that, things became a little hazy and the daydream would have to go back and find another beginning.

  In the end Bella imagined her way into almost believing a romance existed. She took to writing love letters. At first she had the sense to burn them as soon as they were placed in envelopes, stinking of perfume and decorated with sweethearts. When this stopped being satisfactory, she took matters a bit further. This time she cut the little love words and phrases out from the letter, and slipped them into his overcoat pocket whenever she passed it hanging on the coat stand in the hall.