Last Train from Liguria

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  They take the narrow route behind the Hotel Parigi and the backstage preparations for this evening's dance. Waiters in shirtsleeves pass back and forth behind open French doors. Further along, through a small square window, a pair of hands arranges flowers. Outside, a band unloads instruments from a van. A woman, a guest, with a towel turbaned onto her head comes out onto a first-floor balcony and frowns at the sky. They cut across the piazza.

  'Would you mind?' she begins. 'Would you mind, if we walked a little way through town. I'd just like—'

  'Of course,' Edward says.

  'Unless you want to…?'

  'No, this way is fine.'

  'You know, Edward, we may as well accept it – we really don't have a choice. I mean, we can't stay here, we can't leave Alec and—'

  Edward nods and walks a little ahead.

  Shadows of last-minute shoppers and children stiff in new uniforms. Strollers, just like they're pretending to be, talking about aperitivi. Outside the Terrasanta church there is a scatter of scarlet petals from an earlier wedding. A tram waddles towards them, they wait for it to pass, then a motorbike with a sidecar.

  'Hard to believe,' she begins to say, but then stops.

  Outside Gabrielli's, a woman shouts impatient instructions through the glass at an assistant in the window. 'Questo, sì, sì, questo. No! No! Non quello, questo!'

  Edward leans over the woman and raps angrily on the window. 'Questo!' He stabs his finger at the glass, pointing to a china bowl. The woman in the street stares up at him, open-mouthed. The woman in the window nods a wary thanks.

  Bella says it again as they turn right into via Roberto. 'Hard to believe, Edward, that this is our last day here.'

  'Yes.'

  'So sudden. Isn't it – so sudden?'

  They stop. Edward lights a cigarette. They are outside the tennis racket factory. The smell of wood and oil and paint through the open doors. Bella looks past him, at a view of the workshop interior. Splashes of soft light everywhere, on the pale wood of the workbenches and floors, the curve and turn of the rackets, the pegs where the frames hang all the way up the walls. She allows her eyes to stare for a moment. Then the man who made Alec's last racket comes to the door, carrying a stack of tennis presses. He gives her a nod and smile of recognition. The smile that she returns feels heavy on her face.

  'Yes,' Edward says as if replying to something she has asked, although she can't recall what that was.

  They continue up the hill towards via Romano, and she begins to notice the amount of birds. Telegraph poles are studded with them and all over the rooftops and gutter rims more and more seem to be squeezing themselves in. A man walking towards them twists his neck to look back at the sky, raises his hands and laughs. 'L'invasione delle rondini.'

  'What are they?' she asks Edward, lifting her voice against their increasing din.

  'Swallows. Going south.'

  The nearer they get to via Romano, the greater the amount of birds, until the sky over the Hotel Hesperia is just one huge black trembling patch. The noise. A deafening rant of metallic squeaks and flapping wings. People are coming out of houses and hotels to look at the sky. A little boy ducks down onto his hunkers and lays his two hands flat over his ears. A woman opens her double windows and the ticking hedge of hysterical birds on her balconette explodes and scatters. She sees the woman's mouth shape into first a scream, then laughter.

  They walk through the noise until eventually it starts to thin and they can hear themselves again.

  Bella tries a lighter approach. 'You know, I will release you from your marriage ties as soon as we get to London. I mean, if that's what's worrying you.'

  She notices he's only just finished one cigarette and is already fishing for another.

  Outside the Bicknell Library, he stops and lights it. 'Bella,' he says.

  'Yes?' She closes her eyes.

  'I can't.'

  'You can't what?' she asks, although in her heart she already knows.

  'I just can't.'

  After a moment he speaks again. 'Please, don't ask me why. But I can't risk going back into England. Certainly not on those bloody papers.'

  She looks up and down the road, then at him, then away.

  He says, 'The best I can do is – maybe see you over the border but as soon as, I'd have to leave you. Not even as far as Nice. Perhaps Menton or maybe Monte Carlo.'

  Bella tries to speak but nothing will come past the sick feeling in her stomach.

  He takes another pull of the cigarette then throws it to the ground where he twists his foot over it. 'I am sorry, Bella, and I wish it was otherwise but I just can't take the risk. You see, I did something, a long time ago. I know you've guessed there was something. And I don't want to tell you what it is, but it's enough that you understand the moment I put my foot on English soil, I've had it.' He runs his hands through his hair.

  'I thought you were Irish.'

  'Ireland, England, it's all the same when it comes to this sort of thing.'

  She nods and bites into her lip.

  'For Christ's sake. There's nothing I can do about it.' He raises his voice suddenly and she jumps. 'I mean, that's even if we get as far as England. Did you see the Italian papers they have for me? Did you see what they've put down as my profession, my job?' He has her by the upper arms now and she shakes her head. 'A carpenter, that's what.'

  Bella blinks at him.

  'A carpenter, Bella. For fuck's sake, look at my hands.'

  He drops his grip and shows his hands, smoother, whiter than her own.

  'They are so stupid,' he says quietly. 'They haven't a fucking clue. A carpenter and his family travelling first class to Nice to stay in a hotel for a week. Jesus! Talk about looking for attention. Anyway, it doesn't matter because once I get to England – that's it.'

  He reaches out to take her arm and she takes a step back.

  'Please. I can't tell you how sorry. How—'

  Bella feels her head repeatedly nod. 'Coward,' she says then and leaves him.

  *

  Coward. She nurses the word in her head all evening. As she tries to pack without Elida noticing. As she roots out all the jolly paraphernalia: swimming costumes and beach toys, sun hats and anything with a seaside stripe that happens to be in the house. Whatever it takes to convince the authorities that they are hip-hip-hooray holidaymakers. Coward. The word burns on and off her mind like a neon light, as she attempts to reassure Elida.

  'Please tell me, Signora, what is the matter?'

  'Nothing! Elida. Really.'

  'Where you were all day?'

  'I will tell you, Elida, in a day or two. Promise. You'll know everything by then. But it's nothing for you to worry about now.'

  'Were you crying?'

  'I was not!' And it crosses her mind more than once that she would have been better off had they decided to dress Elida up as a husband to go with her instead. Elida's hard-working hands would have been more convincing than the lily-whites on that. Coward. The word bounces off the walls of the room, and goes silently screeching through the house.

  She says no to dinner and asks Elida to look after Alec and put him to bed. Then she goes to her room. First she writes a letter to Elida explaining matters, insofar as she can do, and telling her to stay here in the house for as long as she wishes or as long as it remains safe to do so, also to use whatever money remains that she finds in the house, to keep herself going. She finishes by asking Elida to hold on to the envelope with all her documents until Sorella Ursula comes to collect it. Then she promises to telephone as soon as she can and signs off the letter to her friend.

  Bella then removes piles of magazines and linen from the bottom of her wardrobe and takes out a box, which she lays on her bed. She pulls out the money-tucks – these days made from men's long merino wool stockings; sturdy yet light. Bella drops them on the bed, picks out the ones full of lire and, pinning the letter to Elida onto one of them, slips them under her pillowcase, where she knows by next
washday Elida's hand will find them.

  She writes Edward a note next, digging the pen into the paper so hard it makes a tear and she has to start again, this time forcing herself to calm down, then printing her message in a careful, lighter hand. She thanks him for his kind offer to go as far as Menton or Monte Carlo and says that she's decided to go it alone. Coolly she wishes him the best with whatever he decides to do and whatever direction he happens to take.

  She goes upstairs and puts the letter under his door.

  Coming back to her room she lifts two suitcases onto the bed, begins to arrange money-tucks full of English money around the edges of their bases, then disguises them with piles of clothes and toys. She wraps a diamond tiara in a nightdress and packs it in, then stuffs four diamond rings into the toes of shoes. She closes the suitcases, straps them up and slides them in behind the door. Bella then takes her mother's old green alligator-skin travel bag out of the cupboard and, tilting it to the light, cuts an incision into the lining. She wraps a diamond necklace and bracelet belonging to Signora Tassi in a silk handkerchief along with a coil of pearls and three rings belonging to her mother. She works them into the hole and stitches it up. Pressing the last three money-tucks into the travel bag she stuffs it up with a few remaining bits and pieces belonging to Alec: his pyjamas, a pair of plimsoles, a sketchbook, a tennis sweater, a bucket and spade. Then she puts it with the cases behind the door all ready for tomorrow.

  Bella locks her bedroom door behind her, then goes upstairs to Edward's room and walks straight in. He is by the window reading her letter. 'Do you mean this?' he asks.

  'It's better if I say my husband has been delayed in work and I decided to take the holiday anyway rather than disappoint Alec or Alberto as I must now call him. I can say you – I mean he – will join us at the weekend. Also that your, I mean his, boss paid for a first-class train because he felt bad about postponing your holiday. It won't matter so much when it comes to leaving France or entering England. In any case, I'll think of something.'

  'You seem to be taking it all very well,' Edward says.

  'Yes I am – don't you think?'

  'You're sure you're—'

  'Oh please, don't give it another thought.'

  He looks at her carefully. 'I see.'

  'Do you, Edward? Do you see?' She walks across the room and slaps him across the face.

  Even in the blindness of her temper, his head seems surprisingly light as if she could have, with a bit more effort, whacked it away from his neck. She tries it again.

  'Leaving me on my own with two children.' Her voice is dry but still not raised.

  'I'm sorry,' he says.

  'You could have told them. You could have said it there and then, in front of that lawyer, in front of Tassi. Given them a chance to come up with something else. Coward. I hope you get whatever you deserve. I hope they catch you and that whatever you've done is so bad, they hang you.'

  'Yes,' he says. 'It is. They will.'

  She goes to the door, opens it, takes a step out and in a matter of seconds loses all of her composure. When she comes back to him she's crying. 'I don't even know one end of a bloody baby from the other.' This time she punches him on the arm. 'You never cared tuppence for me, Edward.'

  'I did. I do.'

  'Never enough to trust me. Never enough to allow me to get to know you. Every time you shut the door in my face. You never cared. And I cared, and you've always known it. You're a coward, that's what you are, after all. A bloody lousy coward. Whatever it is that you've done, I wouldn't have minded. I wouldn't have minded in the least – if only you had trusted me.'

  'You would have minded,' he says. 'Bella, you would.'

  She hits him again, this time repeatedly on the chest and head. 'You bastard, you lousy bastard. I hate you.'

  She throws herself at him and now she's down on the floor with him. Still hitting him, not sure if he's hitting her back or if she's hitting herself. Hitting each other, then kissing each other, sucking and biting lumps out of faces, necks, arms. She is clutching his hair and he's pulling at her clothes and she's tearing at his beard. She is drowning and he's on top of her. And she wants to kill him, and she wants him to kill her back, but more than that, she wants him to do whatever he does with the whores he visits in brothels. There are sounds shared between: breaths, grunts, sobs. And she can hear the words, 'This changes nothing, it changes nothing,' over and over and she thinks it might be her voice that's speaking.

  Then somewhere outside of them there's another sort of screaming and Edward is rising into the air and falling away from her and her arms are lifting to drag him back down to her, and she's screaming, 'Leave him! Leave him!'

  Alec sobbing in the doorway. Elida barking like a bereft goose. 'Maestro Edward! What are you doing to her? What are you doing to her? Basta, basta, basta.'

  Bella looks down and sees her dress is opened and torn, the skirt of it up around her hips. She tries to catch her breath. 'Elida. It's all right. Really, it's all right.'

  She gets up. At the door she looks back at Edward. His back is to the wall, head bent, hair fallen over his forehead, shirt open and hanging to one side, hands pressed down on his legs. He looks up at her through his hair, breathless.

  'It changes nothing,' she says.

  *

  The priest lets himself into the hall the next morning and she watches from the kitchen while he picks up the luggage she has hauled down the stairs in the middle of the night. He beckons, and she follows, dragging a still sleepy Alec behind her. When she gets to the gate Bella stops to take one last look at Villa Lami. She sees Elida standing in her nightgown at an upstairs window. They look at each other for a moment, then Bella blows a kiss and Elida nods and smiles to show she understands.

  In the back of the car Sorella Ursula waits, the baby in a Moses basket beside her. She tells Alec to sit on the other side of the basket. 'Come, Alec, see your new sister.'

  Alec peeps into the bundle and nods. 'Which part of her is the Jew part?' he asks.

  Sorella Ursula looks over his head at Bella.

  'What's her name – is it Leah?' Alec asks then.

  'Oh no. It's Edda, like il Duce's daughter.'

  'Then is she not a Jew?' he asks. 'But that's not fair! Why do I have to be one, and she is not?'

  'I'm sorry, sister.' Bella begins taking her place beside Alec. 'I had a little talk with him a few days ago about why he couldn't go back to school, and ever since he's been going on non-stop about what's Jewish and not.'

  'Alec,' the Sorella says, 'you must not say that word again.'

  'You see?' he says to Bella. 'I told you it was bad to be a Jew. That's why il Duce doesn't like them.' Then he turns and sulks out the window.

  'I haven't explained things properly to him yet, where we are going or how,' Bella says. 'I thought we could use the car journey to do that.'

  'Of course,' Sorella Ursula says, then looks out the back window. 'Where's Edward?'

  Bella shakes her head.

  'He's not coming? He has changed his heart?'

  'His mind.'

  The nun makes a move for the door.

  'It's no use, sister, he left late last night. He could be anywhere by now. But it's fine. We'll manage, really. I have it all worked out.'

  'It's too dangerous.'

  'Oh, sister, what choice do we have?'

  The priest has turned and is resting his elbow across the back of the seat looking at Sorella Ursula. After a few second she nods and the car moves away.

  Somewhere after San Stefano they turn into a quiet side road so that Sorella Ursula can give her a quick lesson in changing and feeding the baby. 'Everything you need is in this bag,' she says, 'also the envelopes with your papers. The Italian papers are in this side pocket here so you can easily put your hand to them. The English papers for the next part of the journey are hidden under all the things for the baby, at the bottom of the bag. Also the money we spoke about. Now – I have put a little somethin
g in the bottle to keep baby asleep for some time so you shouldn't have to worry until you get to France. Hopefully there won't be too much of a delay at the frontier near Ventimiglia.'

  'Hopefully,' Bella agrees.

  *

  They pull up at the side of a small country station. A porter, who looks as if he's been expecting them, rushes forward and the priest gets out of the car to have a word. Bella takes the Moses basket from Sorella Ursula, then the baby bag. She tells the porter she'll keep the alligator bag with her, but then finds after all she can't manage it along with everything else. In the end she gives it to Alec to carry. They walk into the station, Alec tilted to one side by the weight of the bag. She does not say goodbye or look back.

  Ten minutes to go before the train.

  She sits on the end of a bench away from the other passengers. Alec stands beside her, keeping a watch for the train.

  'Remember all we said in the car? In a minute we're going to stop speaking English. Will you be able do that, keep it up until tomorrow?'

  'What time tomorrow?'

  'Well, it depends, but I'll give you plenty of notice. You call me Mamma and I call you Alberto. If anyone speaks – don't answer. I'll say you're shy and answer for you.'

  Alec smiles, liking the game.

  'And I'm going to have to leave you in charge of this bag. This was my mamma's bag and for now anyway it's yours. Look, it's made out of an alligator.'

  'An alligator! Where's his teeth?'

  'The dentist took them out,' Bella says and Alec laughs.

  'Are my things in it?'

  'Actually yes, some of your things are in there. So you must carry it on and off the train, and keep a good eye on it at all times.'

  'Should I put my portafortuna in it?'

  'If you like – where is it?'

  'In my pocket – here.'

  Bella takes the tennis ball from him and slips it into the bag.

  He cups his hand over her ear. 'May I play my harmonica on the train?' His voice drifts into her head. 'May I? Please.'

  'No, Alec, it will only annoy people. And we want to be invisible – remember?'