by Penny Feeny
‘Yes.’
‘Then I reckon he’s going to want some gratitude.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do,’ said Lily. ‘I’m going to cycle into town and find him and thank him.’
They didn’t argue. Gerald rescued the least rusty bike from the lean-to shed. Alex checked the tyres. Lily rode off. For the second time that morning she cruised the streets of Roccamare, with an eye out for both the Fiat and its driver. She drew a blank with the Cinquecento because they were so many and so often beige and she couldn’t remember the registration. Cycling around the piazza and through passageways and up and down the promenade was much quicker than walking and she wasn’t going to give up her search, even if it meant dumping the bike and diving into the gloomy back rooms of every café-bar. But before she did that, she would try the beach.
She rode along the front again, slowly, looking for a figure swimming or sunbathing, hoping she wouldn’t make another silly mistake like muddling her father with her brother. When she finally spotted Marcello, he was strolling beside the shore with his hands in his pockets and his sunglasses tucked into the neck of his white tee shirt. She made him out easily. They had toiled as a team for a week and she’d become familiar with the rhythm of his movements, his lilting tread, the set of his shoulders, the shape of his head beneath the close-cropped hair.
She bounded down the steps with the bike. The wheels got stuck in the soft sand but she ploughed through it. She intended to hail him when she was within a few yards, but by then he had noticed her. ‘Lily!’
She thrust the bike towards him and he caught the handlebars before it fell. ‘Watch me!’ she said.
She sprang onto her hands, keeping her back and legs straight as a rod, and began to circle him. He lowered the bike and smiled. When she wavered, he caught one of her ankles to steady her and she completed another circuit. She was aware, from her upside-down position, of the interest of small children, many of them dipping their own heads to see what it would feel like. She jumped back onto her feet again and shook the sand from her hair. She was feeling dizzy and breathless and her face would be pink from exertion, but she was too proud of herself to worry about any of that.
‘Bravissima!’ said Marcello, clapping.
‘I didn’t know if I could do it, but I’ve been practising. What about you?’
‘You want me to make a fool of myself, here, in front of all these kids? Dream on, Liliana.’ He came closer. ‘You have sand in your eyelashes.’
She blinked and he drew his thumb lightly down her lid, flicking the curl of her lash. The caress continued, outlining her cheek and jaw, the contours of her mouth. She kept her eyes shut. He slid both his hands around her back so that he was squeezing her tightly again, as he had done in Castelvetrano. Then he bent his head and they repeated the kiss, leisurely and gloriously fulfilling. She didn’t want it to stop. She savoured every second, every nerve end tingling. Her insides were dissolving; it didn’t seem credible that her outer flesh could stay firm and tangible. His body was reassuringly solid too, muscular and scented with tomatoes. ‘That’s what I can taste,’ she said when they eventually pulled apart. ‘Tomatoes.’
Marcello lifted her hair and dropped a procession of kisses on the back of her neck, which made her quiver. ‘You smell even more delicious.’
She supposed that wearing expensive French perfume to perform handstands on a beach was a little eccentric. ‘It’s lily of the valley. A present from my father.’ She added hastily, ‘I must pay you back for the dress. I can’t let you buy it for me.’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘No, please, I insist.’
‘Come vuoi. As you like. I hope I see you wearing it.’
‘Absolutely! When? How long are you here? Shouldn’t you still be picking the tomatoes?’
‘They’re finished, more or less,’ he said. ‘We even worked on Sunday to gather the crop. That’s why I couldn’t come to the beach.’
He hadn’t abandoned her. He was always going to come back. Their fallout had been entirely in her own mind. ‘So now you’re free?’
‘Yes.’
‘But your family aren’t due for another two weeks?’
‘Who tells you this?’
‘Nuncia in the bakery.’
‘Ah, Nuncia! Well, in ten days, I think. But for me, is different. I can go there when I want.’
He’ll have a room with a proper bed, thought Lily, not an old mattress on a cellar floor. Comfort as well as passion! ‘Does that mean we can go dancing tonight?’ The clubs in Roccamare wouldn’t have the surreal atmosphere of the derelict cinema, but there would be music and mellow lighting. ‘And I can wear the dress.’ She didn’t say anything about letting him take it off, but that was hardly necessary. A pleasure deferred would have its own appeal.
He must have shared her thoughts. He beamed and kissed her again.
‘You should come up to Villa Ercole with me now,’ she said. ‘They’ll all want to see you. Leave the car. Let’s walk. We’re not in a hurry, are we?’
He picked up the bike for her and carted it off the beach and onto the road. They took turns, one pedalling, the other jogging, interspersed with delays and diversions and flurries of electrifying kisses among the juniper bushes, to make their way to the villa.
Lily couldn’t have said how long she’d been absent but she didn’t think it was any cause for alarm. Marcello was greeted with enthusiasm; there were especial cries of rapture from Dolly that the two of them had reunited, but Jess couldn’t hide her agitation.
She took Lily aside. ‘He rang again,’ she said.
‘Who did?’
‘The man called Nicolo, the one I gave this number to. You need to call him back.’
36
In the world Carlotta had grown up in, convalescence was an indulgence. That was why her father had never recovered from the pneumonia that felled him. The giant in the leather apron, master of iron and fire, had become wheezing and grey-faced, but he had wielded his red-hot tongs until the end. Likewise her mother. After every miscarriage she’d had to get back to her chores; no wonder her energy was sapped and her heart overburdened. Even Carlotta’s own journey to Turin had been made in reckless haste, given the nature of her injuries.
Now, in contrast, she lay restfully in bed in her own pleasant apartment, attended to by solicitous friends. Washing, cooking and cleaning was taken care of. She didn’t have to get dressed and go to work. She could listen to music and watch television and eat grapes. She could open her shutters and hear the sounds of normal life proceeding, outside in the street.
Normal life.
Life.
Was that what she’d had inside her? A bunch of dividing cells, advanced enough to give her pain and vomiting, but incapable of taking human form? Not a miracle baby at all, but a malevolent organism, threatening rupture and internal bleeding, threatening to destroy her. It was her own fault: a punishment because she hadn’t looked after her first child properly. Nicolo would tell her this was nonsense, but she knew she had failed as a mother.
Immediately after the surgery, her dreams were distorted and populated by ghosts: her parents, Francesco, her in-laws, her old teacher from elementary school, the priest who had taken her First Communion. Nicolo explained that this was due to the effects of the anaesthetic and the delirium would pass. He would make sure she was getting the correct medication. But among the hauntings was another sequence of images, not so much a dream as a relived experience: walking up the path towards the door of the convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her feet hurting because new shoes had given her blisters; waiting in the anteroom to meet the nun she had written to; watching the shadows of the trees in the garden darken and lengthen; being watched by the painted Madonna hanging on the wall, with her chubby curly-haired infant on her lap and her eerily calm composure.
Every time Carlotta had heard a footstep, she’d jumped. She hadn’t wanted to be caught off-guard, but impatience had dr
awn her taut as a violin string. At last Sister Imelda had blown through the door as if there were a gale behind her, wringing her hands, her wimple awry. ‘Signora Galetti, I apologise for keeping you waiting so long when you have come to us all the way from America.’ She’d spoken the word with a mixture of reverence and disdain, as if America were a mythical place, a wonderland of temptations to be resisted.
When Carlotta had written her letter of enquiry, there’d been no point in mentioning Serafina by name. There’d have been nothing to identify the baby the nuns had taken in, but they were used to foundlings, orphans, the general unwanted. The child would have been given a saint’s name, a bed and an education of sorts. Embroidery and drawn thread work if they were nimble with their fingers, music lessons if they had an ear and a voice, instruction in laundering, cooking, growing vegetables, scrubbing floors – all for the glory of God.
‘The child I’m looking for,’ said Carlotta, speaking the words with difficulty, ‘would be four years old now. You have a little girl about this age?’
‘We have two,’ said Sister Imelda, ringing a bell.
A few minutes later they were ushered in and introduced. The first, Federica, was surely too old; she was losing her baby teeth. The other, Teodora, had a slight cast in her eye. Carlotta should have taken more time to interact with them, but she knew instinctively that neither was Serafina.
‘My baby was perfect,’ she blurted, unable to contain her distress. Every mother’s baby was, naturally, but she was sure she would have noticed if Serafina’s eyes hadn’t been absolutely true.
‘God is not concerned with outward appearance. He sees the beauty of the soul.’ Then, belatedly catching Carlotta’s meaning, she said: ‘Your baby?’
‘I’m sorry if I didn’t explain properly.’
The nun said stiffly, ‘We understood you were an American lady wanting to adopt, like the English couple.’
Carlotta felt a wave of panic. ‘What English couple?’
‘You are married?’
‘Widowed.’ It must have been obvious she wasn’t a rich widow, though the painful shoes were well polished and her dress from Macy’s sale was a good quality cotton.
‘And you so young,’ said the nun in a show of sympathy. ‘Forgive me, signora, but I don’t think you’re in a position to adopt a child.’
She was a newly returned émigré, hoping to find a job as a waitress. How could she be responsible for anyone else? ‘It’s not a question of adoption,’ she said, ‘if the child is mine.’
Sister Imelda placed a hand on each of the heads of Federica and Teodora, who twisted their fingers in front of them but otherwise kept completely still. ‘But these two are not,’ she said.
‘Don’t you have another little girl?’ Carlotta had said in desperation. ‘Did the English couple take her? Do you have any pictures?’
The nun tried to be helpful. She shooed the children away and came back with a long photograph, which she unscrolled. It showed a row of orphans sitting on benches, but with their shorn locks and dark overalls they all looked exactly the same. Identification was hopeless and Sister Imelda could give no assistance. She put her palms together. ‘I shall pray for you, signora.’
Then the painted Madonna raised her hands in prayer too, as Carlotta’s mind fractured and her memories took on a hallucinatory quality, turned into a nightmare. The door of the convent was banging shut behind her; she was stumbling on the path in bleeding blistered feet; great black birds were swooping down from the sky, attacking her, pulling out her hair to line their nests. She heard a scream from behind the locked door, the guilty cry of the nun, she supposed, until she realised Nicolo was holding her hand and the scream was her own.
‘You are in pain?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
Her feet hurt, her head hurt, her abdomen hurt. ‘Everywhere.’
‘You need more rest. You need to be well for the wedding.’
The wedding seemed as remote as a mirage, a point she could never reach.
‘I know you’re disappointed,’ he said tenderly. ‘But there could be a good side to this.’
‘Really?’ She couldn’t see it.
‘We know you have viable eggs. If it’s what you want, we can make a baby another way.’
‘In a test tube, you mean?’
‘Exactly. So much is possible these days.’
She could hear the laughter of children, pretty and fragile as glass. School holidays had begun and they were everywhere. Skipping and jostling on the pavement, riding bikes, playing ball games. Luca might bound into the apartment at any moment with a friend or two. She knew it was afternoon because the sun had moved around the building, but she was sleeping at odd hours and her days had no shape.
‘I didn’t expect to get pregnant,’ she said. ‘But what I find so difficult… is coping with the loss all over again. The failure… I think it’s broken me.’
‘You aren’t broken,’ said Nicolo, rational as ever. ‘You’ve had a physical trauma, which is influencing the way you feel, but you’ll recover from it. And everyone who loves you is going to help.’
*
He was right; she wasn’t short of companions. Silvana and Iacopo came daily. Now they no longer had responsibility for the shop, the di Monzas wanted to look after her again and feed her up – just like the old days. Luca was in and out all the time, dancing around her bed in a show of exuberance, reeling off a terrible selection of jokes he thought funny. Eva often called by in the lunch hour and again in the evenings. She’d brought the bridal dress, which she’d finished according to Carlotta’s original measurements. It was now hanging from a hook on the back of the bedroom door, under a sheath of polythene, rustling when anyone entered and catching the light like a beam of early morning sunshine.
Silvana insisted that Carlotta lie down after lunch each day to conserve her energy. She reminded her that Nicolo had suffered too. The fear of losing a woman he loved twice over was more than enough for any man. He was staying strong for her benefit and it would be unreasonable of her to neglect her recovery and jeopardise the wedding. She’d go obediently into her bedroom but she tried to avoid sleep; in the daytime it was shallow and superficial and brought with it the hauntings and bad memories that had troubled her. She was glad when Silvana knocked and called her to the phone.
She padded into the sitting room and picked up the receiver. ‘Pronto.’
‘This is Lily,’ said the voice at the other end, in English.
Carlotta staggered and reached for something that would support her. Silvana swiftly pushed forward a chair and helped her into it. ‘Lily?’
‘I didn’t know who Nicolo Morandi was,’ said Lily. ‘But he’d been leaving messages so I rang him back. My Italian isn’t as good as I’d like it to be, but I think I understood most of what he was saying. I wasn’t aware you weren’t already married to him, that the boy in the photos…’
‘Luca.’
‘Yes, Luca. That he wasn’t yours. That you had problems with pregnancy…’
‘You are calling from England?’
‘No, I didn’t go back there after I left you. I’m in Sicily. I came to Roccamare instead. And it’s been a good thing to do because I’ve met up with people I hadn’t seen in years. Do you remember the Campiones, who had that big party for Ferragosto? And the boy who was my friend, Marcello?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, it’s great we got together again because now…’ She broke off. The happiness leached from her voice. ‘But that’s not why I’m ringing. I’m so sorry you lost the baby. It would have been a miracle, Nicolo said.’
‘There was only one miracle baby,’ said Carlotta, taking a deep breath. ‘That was you.’
The silence was so long she was afraid Lily had gone away. She rose from her chair and wandered towards the window. The cord of the telephone snaked behind her. ‘For my operation,’ she said into the void, ‘they used keyhole surgery. Wha
t they do, they make tiny cuts in your tummy and they send a camera through your belly button. This is so they can discover the site where they need to operate. Do you remember, on Favignana, you said you didn’t see any use for a belly button after you’d been born? Well, you see, it’s not true.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You didn’t like the way yours stuck out.’
Lily’s tone was peevish, as if she resented Carlotta bringing up childish complaints. ‘I was a silly self-conscious kid.’
‘But for me this was very important. When I saw it I knew you were mine.’ The silence was even longer this time. Carlotta continued, ‘However, I will do the test with you. I’ve had so many blood tests in these days, one more will make no difference.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Lily. ‘I met Tina Roselli and she promised to do it too.’
‘Carlottina?’
‘Yes.’
‘Matre santa!’
She wished she could see Lily’s face when she said, ‘She took me to the cemetery. To Francesco’s grave. We gave him a white rose each.’
Carlotta would not cry. Her gaze travelled around the salone, from one vase of flowers to another, in all the colours of the rainbow; her friends had been generous. ‘I carried white roses in my wedding bouquet,’ she said. ‘But I missed his burial.’
‘That must have been awful.’
‘When something so terrible happens,’ said Carlotta, ‘it takes a long time to rebuild trust in the world.’
‘But you are getting married again? To Nicolo.’
‘Yes, in two weeks. I have been given instructions to get well because it’s too late to rearrange everything.’ She spoke ruefully. The event, once a source of anticipation and delight, had become tainted.
‘He invited me,’ said Lily.
‘Nicolo did?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know whether it was a good idea. I wouldn’t want to spoil anything.’
He had followed up his suggestion; he had known what would make her happy! Carlotta said, ‘I would love to see you there. And I would love you to meet Nico and Luca properly. I know you will like them both. It’s a simple ceremony. Not a big traditional church wedding as in Sicily. We will go first to the Campidoglio to make registration and then to a restaurant. I won’t wear white and you don’t have to wear black.’