Last Train from Liguria

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  'I'll take him,' Edward says.

  'No. He can't go while the train is stationary, the toilets are all locked. Wait till the train moves again.'

  'He can't wait – look at him. They've checked us already, Bella. We'll be fine. Listen, they've already moved on to the next carriage. We're through. I can't bloody believe it, but we're through. Ventimiglia station is only down the way, we'll be back in a few minutes.'

  'Yes, but what if they don't let you back on?'

  'Of course they will. Tell you what, I'll bring our tickets, just in case.'

  'Yes. I suppose so,' Bella agrees.

  Edward removes their tickets from the stack and hands the French visas and carte de tourisme back to Bella.

  'Come on, Al, lets go.'

  Alec shakes his head and looks at Bella.

  'It's all right, Alec,' Edward says. 'It's safe now.' He lays one hand on top of Alec's head and guides him through the door. The other hand he places on the top of Bella's arm. 'Fra poco, Bella,' he says.

  Bella looks out the window. Everything outside appears to be moving at a faster pace now. The queue at the door to the customs office is considerably shorter, the crowd on the platform greatly diminished. She can think of only one reason for this spurt of rare Italian efficiency – a glance at her watch confirms it – almost time for lunch. Out in the corridor she sees first-class passengers who have been already cleared beginning to stream along the corridor to the restaurant car. They speak lightly to each other as they go, in the easy manner of the English upper-crust tourist.

  Her head turns back towards the window of the train; her gaze falls upon the soldier standing at the door of the room where earlier she had seen the hands rummaging through a suitcase. Inside the room, an official is talking to a man sitting in the shadows. She sees papers being passed one to the other.

  The next time she looks at her watch, ten minutes has gone by. She reminds herself that Alec's nervy bouts of diarrhoea can take quite a while. She watches a man get off the train and go to the newspaper stand. A woman walks up the platform fixing her skirt as if she's just come back from the station lavatory. She stops, opens a compact and bares her teeth.

  Bella presumes Edward is still in the main station building. Maybe he slipped in for a coffee there, but she can't believe he would delay in these circumstances. The man comes back from the newspaper stand, flipping the paper under his arm, and jumps back onto the train. The woman closes the compact and also climbs on a little further down. Fifteen minutes – where are they? By now the stream of people in the corridor for the restaurant car has slowed to a queue.

  The baby distracts her with a whimper. 'Shh, shhh,' Bella soothes and sits down beside her, watching the little mouth open and close. Bella lowers her face into the deep sour smell of a dirty nappy. She decides to be prepared, going through the baby bag: nappies, pins, petroleum jelly, olive oil packed to one side. On the other side there's a tin of dried baby milk, two empty feeding bottles, two more already made up. She pulls the smaller bottle out just in case, along with a few things she'll need to change the nappy.

  As she lifts her head from the bag her eye falls on the soldier at the door again. He is beckoning at someone further up the platform to hurry along. The soldier takes a few steps forward, beckons again a little more forcefully; this time he leaves the door unattended for a few seconds. A gap. For a terrible moment she thinks she might have seen Alec in the room. Bella stands and goes to the window, but the soldier has returned to his place now and no matter how much she tries, she can't see behind him.

  The baby whimpers again. Then falls quiet again. Bella turns to look at her. When she comes back to the window she sees the soldier moving aside to allow two men into the office. One man is the porter from earlier on, the other a soldier. The porter is carrying her mother's green alligator travel bag.

  For a few seconds she dies. Her heart, mind, body, everything stops. Until Alec comes into sight to take a seat at the table. The bag lands in front of him. She sees an official sit down beside Alec, laughing and jok ing, tossing his hair. The official stands then to open the bag. Alec's hand goes in and pulls out his portafortuna, holding it up for the official to see.

  Bella tries not to panic. Her hands hit off each other as she goes back to the Moses basket, slides it off the seat, in her hurry knocking the baby bag onto the floor. There's a tumble of clothes and the thud of a jar; the tin of baby food rolls, then stops. The envelope with the false English papers flops out on the floor. The envelope with the money follows. The baby starts crying.

  'Sshh,' Bella says. 'Oh God. Don't do that. Don't cry. Don't. Not now.'

  She lifts the baby out of the basket and into her arms, rocking her a little. This only seems to make the baby worse. Bella stoops to the floor to pick up the envelopes, the baby balanced over one knee. She is aware that she's beginning to attract attention from the queue for the restaurant car. She begins stuffing things back into the bag with her free hand.

  The train rumbles beneath her. Bella throws the bag onto the seat, unsteadily gets a hold of the baby in her arms, then gets herself back onto her feet. She can feel the engines struggle and fuss. She grabs the baby bag and makes a rush for the door.

  She hears the stutter of the warning bell, the lengthy screech of a whistle. 'No!' she shouts out and turns to look out the window. The platform is moving. She jumps at the window, bangs her fist against the glass, shouting for Edward and Alec, for the soldier in the doorway, for the old man passing by, pushing a bicycle, for the woman closing up the newsstand. Anyone who might heed her. She rushes back to the door of the compartment, begins tugging on the door handle. The whistle screeches again. She knows she is sobbing now and that her behaviour is startling people in the queue who are avoiding her eyes and looking at each other instead.

  The baby cries louder. A violent tremble coming up from its tiny bootees. Bella feels it vibrate through her arms into her body. She sobs back at it, 'Stop. Can't you just stop?'

  Eventually a young couple step out, the woman first, followed by the man. The woman tries to open the door from the corridor side.

  'Let go of the handle,' the woman shouts in at her. 'I can't open the door unless you let go of the handle.' Then to the man, 'The poor thing doesn't seem to understand what I'm saying. I wonder where she's from, maybe we should see if we can find someone who speaks her language.' She looks up the corridor as if she's hoping a linguist will step out of the queue.

  Bella is frantically nodding: I do understand, I do. But she can't seem to let go of the handle and she can't seem to speak.

  The train stumbles forward and she almost loses her grip on the baby. She feels herself jerk, puts her hand out to stop herself falling, and then a pain like a knife stabs into and scores up her spine. Bella falters and falls back on the seat.

  The door opens and the couple come in. They look at her, and then at each other. Bella tries to get up, but the pain in her back won't allow it. By now the baby is hysterical, her skin almost purple and there's one fat vein on the side of her head like a pulsing worm. Bella hears the word 'permesso' echo along the corridor.

  The woman asks where she's from, but Bella can't catch her breath to reply.

  'I believe. You may. Be holding. The Baby. Too. Tightly?' the woman says slowly and loudly. Then, turning to her husband, 'Oughtn't we see if we can get a doctor? How do you say doctor in French – would you say that's what she is?'

  'I have no idea,' the husband says, 'on either count. You best get that child away from her though before she squeezes the poor thing to death. She's obviously not right in the head.'

  'Stop the train,' Bella says.

  'Oh, you're English, thank goodness for that,' the woman says, while at the same time throwing a scornful look at her husband.

  'Please. Stop. Please stop the train, the emergency cord, over there – see. I can't. Can't get up. I must get off. I have to.'

  'Would you like me to take the baby?' the woman asks. 'You
do seem in rather a state.'

  The word 'permesso' comes closer now and Bella looks up to see the crowd of English tourists part and the porter push his way through. He closes the door behind him.

  'Prego, Signora, tranquilla, stia tranquilla.'

  She is shouting now. 'No! I will not be tranquilla. You gave them… the bag. I saw you give. Give them. La valigia. Perché? Perché?'

  'No, no, no. Signora, che cosa fa? Allora, attenzione alla bambina.' He gestures towards the baby.

  'I want to be with them, I want to go with them. Take the baby, please take the baby and let me go. I don't know this baby. I don't want it. I don't bloody want it! That woman there said she will take the baby.'

  She holds the baby out but can't seem to loosen her grip. Bella hears her own voice wailing over and over, 'I'm not able, I'm not able.'

  The porter kneels down and holds her arms while the train takes up more speed, pushing faster and faster. Slowly he prises the screaming baby from her hands. The woman takes the baby from Bella while he continues to hold her down. 'Niente da fare, Signora. È troppo tardi, Signora. Stia tranquilla, stia tranquilla. È troppo tardi, troppo tardi.' It's too late. Too late, too late.

  LONDON

  SHE REMEMBERS THE TAXI and crossing London in the web of first light. Every moment of the journey in fact, as far as the checkpoint near Ventimiglia; the long, low building with the soldier at the door and shadows through the window she can't bring herself to name. It's the rest of the journey, the countless hours that have taken her from there – through Paris, Calais, Dover – to here, a guest house off the Bayswater Road. That part is not always clear in her head.

  She knows she was looked after; the honeymoon couple, the nurse and of course the porter. Later there would be the guest house owner. Without their help she would never have managed. The English passengers in first class too, who had all, in their own quiet way, colluded. And that somehow she had passed safely through the checkpoint on the French side and, even more astonishingly, managed to get through English customs without a hitch. Although this may have been down to her dodgy papers being slipped in with those of the English party.

  The newly wed couple – not that young after all. The man's name, Peter. The woman – a pillbox hat with a demi-veil of lace, sharp-nosed and pretty beneath it – Audrey. Frilled cuffs on her blouse, a little jacket, gloves. She kept looking at and touching her clothes. There had been an air of self-congratulation about the way she did that, as if no one else could have quite carried off such an outfit. The nurse, a far plainer woman, had materialized out of nowhere. Dolores. She had been making her way home after a stint of private nursing in Venice, getting out before Europe blew up in her face, she said, then told them she was Irish, from Dublin. Bella hadn't bothered to mention the connection.

  The nurse had taken charge of the baby then given Bella a pill. 'Don't ask,' she said as she dropped it onto her palm, with a mischievous gleam in her eye. Not that Bella had any intention of asking. Arsenic, for all she had cared.

  The man, Peter, had brought her a brandy and told her to rest. 'I'll keep her company,' the nurse said, 'while I feed the baby. What's her name by the way?'

  'Katherine,' Bella had said, thinking it best to go with the name on the English papers.

  'Kay or a Sea?' she asked then. And Bella hadn't known what she meant. 'Spelling?'

  'K,' she had said, taking what would turn out to be a lucky guess.

  The sound of the baby tutting on the bottle, loud and alien.

  Not far into France, she had looked down through the window on the outskirts of a town. A circus tent surrounded by a field. Acrobats and a tightrope walker practising out of doors. And the music of Satie had flooded into her head. The way it had been flooding into the Signora's sitting room over the past weeks.

  She could hear one particular piece then – the one she had heard, her first day in Bordighera, having tea with the American cousins. And she could see, too, the Almansi sisters dancing around to it, barefoot in the garden. Even though there could have been no music that day – Edward was the one who had taken the photograph. And besides, the Almansi girls always danced to their own little made-up songs.

  'Gymnopédie,' he had said it was called when she'd finally got around to asking him. He had been impressed that she could recognize it from a distance of five years – 'Gymnopédie' – and had laughed because she thought he had said – 'Jim Nobody'.

  Later in the restaurant car the couple had helped her decide what to do, voices low to the table. The woman had removed her gloves and was working the knife over the butter, flicking off smuts then swiping them off the side of a napkin already speckled with soot.

  Bella couldn't always hear what they were saying. There was so much else besides. The smell of the brandy. The crockery chattering like teeth. The hard dry sobs coiled in her chest that were itching to get out. Across the table she exchanged answers for questions as best she could. The woman's small mouth never stopped moving. And the music of Satie played on and off in her head; so she could think of nothing else then except his music, his peculiar titles, what they might possibly mean, as the train pounded and shrieked through tunnels, on and off, on and off. Black to unyielding blue.

  She must have given them a story they liked, devising it as she went along. Enough truth to scaffold the lies or to make them want to risk helping her. Clearly she had said she was married because they had used the words 'your husband' on more than one occasion – and there was the Signora's wedding band. And she must have mentioned her father because they knew she was going to Chelsea. Whatever else had been part of the story, Bella has long since forgotten.

  'Look – why not just stick with us?' the woman had said, obviously growing bored. 'Stick with us and we'll see you safely to your father's doorstep in Chelsea. All agreed? Marvellous! Not another word about it now. Well, thank heaven that's settled. Shall we have a little drinkie-poo, on the strength of it? Another brandy? Why not!'

  Bella had agreed. There was really nothing else she could do.

  When they returned to the compartment Dolores had been reading a magazine, the baby tucked up in the Moses basket.

  'Oh good,' Audrey said. 'You've tidied the child away.' Then she sat down and beamed. 'Well now – isn't this cosy?'

  Bella, leaning into the corner by the window, pretended to be asleep. Behind her closed eyes she held an imprint of the compartment: the outline of the couple, the nurse, the curve of the Moses basket. On the overhead rack, the shape of Edward's knapsack that he had bought for his walking trip two years ago and Alec's harmonica tucked into the top of the baby bag, his comic book in among the neat pile of magazines that had been arranged by Dolores on top of the fold-down table. She could taste the orange and orange peel in the bin, for a moment thought she was going to be sick.

  Audrey started talking about Venice. A voice that could pass under a door. 'I was there myself, of course. Several times. I must say I don't see what all the fuss is about. Quite frankly I find it damp and, well – morbid.'

  'Well, it is Venice,' Dolores mumbled.

  'Why, of course! But really, don't you think it's rather much, you know – overdone?'

  'And don't you think you ought to pipe down for a bit?' her husband said then. 'Can't you see they're both sleeping?'

  'Oh bugger off, Peter,' Audrey snapped back. 'Why do you always have to make a point of being so bloody considerate?'

  At some stage the porter came in to say he was sorry. 'Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, mi dispiace.'

  And Bella felt if there had been a gun nearby she could have easily shot him in the face. He said he'd be getting off soon to take the return train back to Italy. Then he begged her to allow him to change the tags on the luggage using the name on her English papers. 'Le due altre,' he explained when she looked blindly at him. The two other suitcases. She had forgotten they were still out in the baggage car.

  He went on to swear he had done the best he could under the circumstances
. The authorities had the man and the boy, nothing would have changed that. Besides, the man with the beard had encouraged him to pretend there was only himself and the boy. 'Siamo in due,' il barbuto had said, and the porter had simply backed him up. At least she was safe, also the baby. 'Mi dispiace, mi dispiace.'

  He had given them the bag because the officials had asked him to bring the luggage from the train. He had to give them something – one bag at least.

  He hadn't realized it would be so incriminating – a child's bag after all? He would telephone the Padre as soon as he got back to Italy tomorrow, ask him to send a message for her anywhere she cared to name. The Padre would fix everything, she would see. 'Mi dispiace, dispiace, dispiace.'

  'A Villa Lami,' she said, closing her eyes again. 'Si puo lasciare un messaggio a Villa Lami.'

  Her companions were impressed with her command of the language, their eyes following every word, mouth to mouth. But she sensed they were a little less forthcoming for a while after the porter had left. As if they couldn't, no matter how much they wanted to, quite trust anyone who could speak a language other than English, so well.

  *

  They changed trains in Paris. The English holidaymakers surrounding her like a movable wall as they passed through checkpoints and platform barriers. Hours to kill before the next train. Dolores went off to see the Eiffel Tower, Audrey to take a tour of the shops. Bella stayed where Peter left her, in a corner of a café near the station.

  Frenchmen staring at a wireless set, some standing in a semicircle around it, others twisting out of their chairs and leaning back towards it. Behind the steady voice of the translator she could hear Hitler's manic screeching and the men in the café sometimes shouting angry comments at the radio. Sometimes falling silent.

  At a nearby table two red-haired English women, about to join the train, argued about the departure time, then argued about the exchange rate, then argued about the luggage. One freckly arm, wobbling with rage as it tried to keep a fly from a cake. 'Nothin' short of disgustin', that's what it is, bleedin' flies everywhere.'