by Alison Love
Antonio, shown into the room by Avril, was bright eyed and composed. “I suppose it is not so bad,” he said when Bernard told him about Herr Fischer. “At least they have not locked him up.”
“Yes, that would have put paid to your singing lessons,” said Bernard, and then, realizing how offensive he sounded: “Antonio, forgive me, I know that is not what you meant. This damned phony war is getting on everyone’s nerves. And now I’m afraid I must leave you. I have an air raid warden’s shift tonight. No, don’t go. Olivia has nothing to do, she can entertain you.” He shook Antonio’s hand, glancing over his shoulder at his wife. “Don’t wait up, Olivia. You know I will be late.”
Olivia, on the sofa, raised her head and looked at Antonio. Their eyes locked. Neither of them spoke. Five, ten, twenty seconds passed. The front door closed with a thud. For another ten seconds they stared. Then Antonio crossed the room, and they were in each other’s arms, and it was as though their bodies were one flesh, reunited after a long drought.
“I cannot stop thinking about you,” Antonio mumbled into her hair. One palm was sliding upward along her leg, to the place where her smooth silk stocking gave way to her smooth silken thigh. Olivia stiffened.
“Not in this house,” she said fiercely, “never in this house.”
“Where, then?” Antonio’s hand was still on her thigh. Olivia groaned and buried her face in his neck. His skin smelled of soap and hair oil and, faintly, of the confectionery he had been selling. It was a real scent, thought Olivia, a delicious scent, complicated and personal.
“Oh, my love,” she said. “It will not be long, it cannot be long. I will find a way for us to be together. I promise I will find a way.”
—
As he walked home in the darkness Antonio’s nerves, his very sinews, fizzed and burned. The October sky was clear, with a pockmarked wedge of moon. He felt that his passion for Olivia was branded upon his forehead, visible to all, like the bands of white painted on the lampposts to guide wanderers through the blackout.
When he arrived in Frith Street his father was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking. His face was clay colored, and the ashtray was brimming with cigarette butts.
“What is it, Papa?” Antonio’s head was seething. It took a peculiar effort to sound calm. “Is something wrong?”
“I am glad you are home, Antonio. I need to speak to you.” Enrico drew on his cigarette and breathed out the smoke. “Next week the payment for our lease on the kiosk is due.”
“Yes, I remember.” Antonio crossed to the scullery and ran himself a glass of cold water. “Why does that trouble you, Papa? We have got the money. We set it aside months ago.”
“You are right, we did. But circumstances change, Antonio, my son. There may be other demands—more urgent demands—on a man’s purse—”
“What are you saying, Papa? That we don’t have the money after all?”
Enrico stubbed out his cigarette. He did it meticulously, as though it were a dangerous object that might otherwise do harm. “It was hard for your brother, Valentino, to return to Lazio. He talks passionately of his fatherland, but the truth is that he has lived all his life here in London. He is not accustomed to working with his hands, as the men in our village do. It will take him time to settle…”
He looked across at his son. At first Antonio could not take in what that pleading expression meant. When he realized it was with a thud of disbelief.
“You gave the money for the lease to Valentino?”
“Not all of it,” said Enrico. “Only half.”
Antonio sat down, winded. “But it is our livelihood, Papa. I make money from singing, I know, and there are Filomena’s wages, but without the kiosk—”
“We can borrow, Antonino.” Enrico’s voice was at once injured and eager. “It will not be for long. We will make economies and pay off the debt.”
“Who will lend to us, Papa? There is a war on, people do not take risks with their money. Especially lending to foreigners.”
Enrico cleared his throat. “I wondered—this English friend of yours, this Mr. Rodway, is a wealthy man. And he seems fond of you. Is it possible you might ask him to lend you the money?”
“No!” said Antonio at once. “Do not ask me to do that, Papa. Never ask me to do that.”
Enrico’s eyes widened, startled by the violence of his reply. “Well, there is another possibility, although you will not like it, Antonio. The fascio will lend funds to loyal Italians. The terms are favorable, too. Better than going to a moneylender.”
“Oh, Papa,” said Antonio, and he put his head in his hands.
“I spoke to one of the officials this afternoon, to see how the land lies. Signor Follini, his name is. You may remember him, he called in at Bruno’s bachelor party. He asked after your brother, Valentino, very warmly I thought.” Enrico paused before he went on, doggedly: “There is only one condition. I am an old man, you know that, I am not in good health. Signor Follini wants you to guarantee the loan, in case anything happens to me.”
“What?” said Antonio, looking up. His father’s gaze was fixed upon him, anxious, beseeching.
“You will have to sign a paper, Antonino, that is all, promising to repay the money. You do not have to join the fascio, they do not ask that.”
“They do not ask that yet,” said Antonio. “But what if we are late with our payments, eh, Papa? What will happen then?” He pictured Signor Follini, with his cold bright blue eyes. This is how it starts, he thought. They will reel me in like a hooked fish.
“We will not be late,” said Enrico. “We will work hard, Antonio, we will find the money, I promise on my life.”
Another scene ran through Antonio’s head: of himself, asking Bernard Rodway for the loan. He imagined Bernard reaching comfortably for his wallet, just as he had done in the Lyons Corner House, and peeling off the white five-pound notes. Of course, it is a pleasure. Why didn’t you ask me before? He let out a groan.
“Well, Papa,” he said, “it seems that I have no choice.”
Enrico’s face broke into a smile. Reaching out he squeezed Antonio’s forearm. “It is your name upon a piece of paper, nothing more. You are a good son to me, Antonino. I knew that I could rely upon you.”
The first winter of the war was a cold one. Petrol was rationed; so were bacon and butter, and there were whispers that sugar would be next. Coal was hard to come by, and Filomena struggled to keep the stove alight in Frith Street. As the icy months passed Enrico was dwindling before her eyes. In February he was admitted to the Italian hospital in Queen Square with pneumonia, although there was not much that they could do for him, according to the tired young doctor from Verona.
“He needs a warmer climate,” he said, when Filomena arrived to fetch her father home.
“Well, and I am afraid he works every day,” said Filomena. “He will not stay at home in bed.”
“You must try harder to persuade him, signorina.” There was a restlessness about the doctor, as though there were a dozen, a hundred, other cases to which he should have been giving his attention, and every moment spent with Filomena was stolen from someone else. It made her wish perversely to extend the conversation. At the same time she was sorry for the doctor, who must feel that he had never truly finished his day’s work.
A month later, in March, Bruno lost his job. Prejudice against Italians, he said bitterly. It is the fault of the newspapers, whipping up hatred toward us. No other hotels were hiring staff, and at Antonio’s suggestion Bruno began to help in the kiosk. It eased the burden upon Enrico, so that Antonio could continue his singing engagements.
After the first stunned shock of war it seemed that everyone in London was desperate to go dancing. The Golden Slipper had reopened, and Antonio found himself in demand in dance halls from Victoria to Tottenham Court Road, standing in for singers who had joined up. He no longer exaggerated his accent now, but tried to sound as English as possible.
Meanwhile Bruno and Renata moved back
to Frith Street, to live with Uncle Mauro. It was cheaper, and since Renata was expecting their first child she wanted company. She had been frightened by the shift in Bruno’s fortunes. There was no question of her gloating over her status; it was Filomena who was in the ascendant once more. Her hours at the laundry had been reduced, with so many people gone from London, but she was still earning, and in Danila’s absence she ruled the roost in the Trombettas’ kitchen. For all the hardships of war, for all her fears over Enrico, she felt herself to be that fine thing: a strong, resourceful woman.
And she had a secret, which filled every day with a sweet, solid joy. Over the months the letters she and Stan exchanged had grown longer, warmer, more expansive. She wrote to him every week, wearing a cardigan and gloves as well as her dressing gown to avoid burning coal. His letters arrived more erratically at the post office in Charing Cross Road. He wrote carefully to avoid the pages being sliced by the censor. His division was still in Britain, kicking its heels, waiting to be sent to France or perhaps to Finland, which was under attack from the Soviet Union. He described the friends he had made, and the boredom. I miss the force, he wrote, there was always something happening in the force. He did not say, And I miss you too, but his letters ended, Chin up, keep smiling, from your loving Stanley. Filomena hoarded them like jewels, tucked in her drawer beneath her badly darned stockings.
—
Early in April, as the phony war continued, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, declared triumphally that Hitler had missed the bus: there would be no invasion now. Four days later they began to put out the deck chairs in the scarred landscape that was Hyde Park. Olivia watched them do it, wrapped in a thick white towel, from a high window overlooking the park.
“What are you doing?” Antonio raised his head from the pillow. He always fell asleep as soon as they had made love, plummeting into a deep short-lived chasm of unconsciousness.
Olivia looked over her shoulder. “I have to go, my darling. Lionel—Bernard’s brother—is staying with us tonight.”
Even as she spoke she crossed toward the bed once more. The peach-colored carpet was cloyingly soft beneath her bare feet. They were in an apartment overlooking the park, a grand apartment where half the furniture was eerily swathed in dust sheets. It belonged to a friend of Penelope Rodway’s, a wealthy dowager who had quit London in a panic as soon as war was declared. The dowager was too mean or else too mistrustful to install a servant, and Penelope had volunteered Bernard’s help in keeping an eye on the flat. I’ll do it, Olivia had said when he complained, languidly putting out her hand for the keys. I can call in once a week, to make sure the place hasn’t been looted. You have far too much to do already, Bernard.
“Can’t you stay a little longer?” With one fingertip Antonio touched the pleat of the towel where she had tucked it between her breasts. “Bruno is at the kiosk this afternoon. They all think that I am meeting a bandleader in Pimlico, to talk about a job.”
“Oh,” said Olivia, “we are such liars.”
“I know. I have never been a liar before, I have always told the truth. Does it trouble you?”
“Yes,” said Olivia, as she let slip the towel and climbed back into the bed. She smelled of the soap she had brought with her to the apartment, the same soap that she used in her bathroom at Bedford Square. She bathed scrupulously every time they made love, so that no hint of Antonio, his sweat, his sperm, could be scented on her body.
Antonio put one hand upon her breast, running the other down to the fork of her thighs. These were all things Danila had never permitted him to do. He could kiss her, yes, and nuzzle her throat, and when the moment came he could lift her nightdress and enter her, but if he tried to caress her she would squirm out of his grasp, as though it were forbidden. He had never seen his wife entirely naked.
“We do not lie to each other, though,” he said. “We have never lied to each other.”
Olivia gazed up at him. “I could not lie to you. Even that first night, the night we met, when I was bleeding—I wanted to hide the truth from you, and I could not do it. I can hide nothing from you.”
The sun inched between the curtains, not an intruder, but a witness. The war seemed more than ever like a phantasm, a bad collective dream that would not come to pass.
—
“We should not be lulled into a false sense of security.” Lionel Rodway cradled a glass of claret between his plump fingers. Like every man in England he had a clear opinion about what would happen next in the war. “If Hitler does attack, the French will send him packing, they have the strongest army in Europe. But we should be braced nevertheless.”
They were having dinner at Bertorelli’s in Charlotte Street. Olivia would have preferred to dine at home—she wanted to dazzle Lionel with her skills as a hostess—but Bernard had insisted on eating out. Meat rationing, introduced in March, did not yet apply to restaurants—a source of much grumbling about the privileges of the wealthy. It’s unfair, I know, Bernard said, but let’s face it, we’ll get a better dinner if we go out. And he was right, Olivia thought grudgingly, as she tasted her veal cutlet, the sauce delicately flavored with tarragon. She had been late returning home—she had had to bathe again before leaving the apartment in Hyde Park—and she was out of breath from the scramble to get ready, climbing into her slippery red satin dress, twisting up her hair into a knot. She remembered what she had said to Antonio, in bed this afternoon: We are such liars.
Bernard dabbed his lips with his napkin. “Oh, I think we’re pretty well prepared. Here in London everyone takes the blackout damn seriously.” In fact two days before he had complained that householders had grown far too cocky about showing a light, but he liked on principle to disagree with his brother.
“And we have to be on guard against the enemy within,” Lionel went on, as if Bernard had not spoken. “There are so many foreigners now, especially in our cities, Glasgow and Manchester and so forth. Many of them claim to be refugees—”
“Many of them are refugees, Lionel,” said Bernard. “Our friend Konrad Fischer for one. He is a gifted musician who had to flee Vienna, leaving everything behind. And how do we treat him? We forbid him to travel more than five miles from his home, and we require him to register with the police like a common thief.”
“Ah, but, Bernard. We cannot be too careful. What better device for the Nazis to plant spies among us, knowing how we always help the underdog? I am not saying that these fellows are dangerous necessarily, only that we do not know. It is the same with the Italians.” Lionel gestured airily toward the dark-haired maître d’hôtel at the restaurant door. “Whose side will they be on, if Mussolini declares war?”
“Actually, the proprietors here are British citizens,” Olivia remarked. “Their sons have just joined the army.” Bernard laid his hand approvingly upon her wrist. All through dinner he had been making gestures like this, displaying their marital harmony as a peacock flaunts its green and blue tail. He had touched her more this evening, Olivia thought, than at any time in the last six months.
The remark, or perhaps the gesture, irritated Lionel. He found Olivia disconcerting: you never knew what she was thinking, damn it.
“Well, that may be so,” he said, “but you take my point. We are too soft on the Italians. We think them charming, but that is just a smokescreen. In their way they are as great a menace as the Germans, especially as there are so many of them here. Café owners in Soho, ice-cream men in Glasgow. We should be locking up the whole crew.”
“What?” said Olivia. “All of them?”
“Better safe than sorry, Olivia. Our friend Musso is a treacherous fellow. He could throw in his lot with Hitler at any time. And if we wait until he does it will be too late, half the fascists in Britain will have slipped through our fingers.” Lionel, who had been loading his fork with steak and fried potatoes, filled his mouth with an air of finality.
“Don’t worry, my sweet,” said Bernard, his hand still clasping Olivia’s wrist. “Anton
io will be all right. He’s not a fascist.”
Neither is Herr Fischer, Olivia wanted to say, but the thought of Antonio’s arrest made her stomach cave in, and she was afraid that if she said any more she would give herself away. Dispassionately she watched Lionel eat. As she watched, she imagined his padded frame swelling like a balloon, his face growing redder and damper, until he gave a last desperate gasp and burst.
The following morning the news broke: Hitler had invaded neutral Norway. Within a day Oslo had fallen. The war had begun in earnest.
The British were incredulous, especially Churchill, who as first lord of the Admiralty had declared that the Germans were incapable of landing in Scandinavia. A week later, wrong-footed, British troops arrived in central Norway. Their transport ships were too bulky for the narrow fjords; men were decanted into destroyers to reach the port of Namsos, losing half their kit in the process. From there they headed south toward Trondheim, without skis or snowshoes, weighed down by their heavy lambskin coats. The engines of the planes that should have given them air cover froze in the Arctic night. There was nothing to stop the Luftwaffe bombarding them as they struggled onward through the snowdrifts, frostbitten, snow-blind.
Among those soldiers was Stan Harker, although Filomena did not know that. She knew only that his letters had ceased. Now when she went to the post office in Charing Cross Road the clerk would check the pigeonholes and shake his head briskly. She saw him do the same with other women, women she had begun, over the months, to recognize. Some were young girls who, like Filomena, were not meant to be writing to their sweethearts; others were older women, unacknowledged mistresses or faithless wives. None of them looked at each other. Late in April one of the women, a freckled creature in her thirties, began to weep when the clerk told her she had no letters. Filomena, seeing the tears drip from her chin, stepped instinctively toward her. The woman turned away at once, hiding her wet face beneath the brim of her hat. Well, thought Filomena, perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps we should keep our own secrets, after all.