The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom: A Novel

by Alison Love

  “Nina’s very attached to Filomena,” said Bernard. “She’s already lost her mother, I don’t see why she should lose Filomena too.”

  The mention of Olivia shut Lionel up. She had not been a suitable wife, there was no denying it, but he knew she was the kind of woman who got under your skin. It was not surprising that her death had thrown poor Bernard into chaos.

  “And before you ask,” Bernard said, “there is nothing between Filomena and me. She’s a very capable woman, that’s all. She’s had a difficult life and she’s survived it with great credit. I admire her.”

  “Of course there’s nothing between you,” said Lionel blandly. “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it. Ah, goody. Here comes the waiter with my liver and bacon. What could be more scrumptious?”

  “Bellissimo!” cried Nina as Filomena threw open the shutters, and she scrambled out to lean over the balcony. Below her, catching the late morning sun, was the shallow basin of the Fontana della Barcaccia, its ornate ship’s prow rising from the water.

  “Be careful, Nina, please,” said Filomena.

  She too was smiling, though, as she stepped into the brightness. She had forgotten how glorious the sunlight was in Italy, transforming all things with its heat, its glitter. It seemed to Filomena that she had been living in the twilight for years, cramped and bleary. Now she could expand, now she could relax.

  They had arrived in Rome early that morning. Bernard had told Filomena to book herself and Nina into the best hotel she could find, but even with money in her pocket she found herself incapable of crossing the marble thresholds of the Via Veneto. Instead she chose a serviceable pensione overlooking the Piazza di Spagna, a stone’s throw from the tawny house where Keats had died in 1821. Filomena did not know Rome well. To her it had always been the place where you got off the train, hot and tired and thirsty, and traipsed with your luggage to wait for the bus. Once, as a child, she and Paolina had been taken to St. Peter’s by their mother, but all she could remember was the hot swell of panic as the cathedral loomed above her, dripping with gilt and porphyry. It made her feel so small, so insignificant, a pinprick upon an infinite canvas.

  Filomena stepped back into the coolness of the room and began to unpack their clothes. Her plan was to spend a day or two in the city recovering from the journey before they set out for the village. In England she had been excited at the thought of seeing her family once more, but now that she was in Italy she felt anxious about the reunion. She was accustomed to her own independence: it would be irksome to have to bite her tongue at Paolina’s foolishness, Valentino’s arrogance. And she was afraid that it would stir up the memories of Antonio, of her father, which had at last begun to lie quietly in her heart.

  Nina was standing beside the window. “I don’t like that picture,” she said, pointing. Above the bed there was a picture of Jesus, doe eyed, soft haired, his heart glowing with a fleshy orange flame. Filomena kicked off her shoes, climbed onto the white cotton bedspread and unhooked the frame.

  “There,” she said, as she slid the picture behind the wardrobe, “it’s gone. Now, wash your face and hands, Nina. We’re going to send a wire to your father to tell him that we’ve arrived safely, and then we’ll explore.”

  —

  Rome had escaped the mighty devastation of London or Dresden, but it had been battered nonetheless by both German and Allied bombers. In July 1943, after a string of military disasters, Mussolini had been toppled by his own supporters. To the last they were fearful of his famous rages. Dino Grandi, once Italy’s glamorous ambassador in London, secretly took two hand grenades into the meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, and slid one under the table to his colleague Cesare de Vecchi, like schoolboys passing notes.

  Caught between the two sides in the war, the new government, led by the aging Marshal Badoglio, dithered. By the time they signed an armistice with the Allies in September it was too late to stop the Germans seizing Rome. For two more years the fighting continued as the Allies inched their bloodstained way along the peninsula. Mussolini, daringly rescued by Nazi paratroops, became the leader of a puppet state in the north, the Republic of Salo. As the Germans retreated, though, they had no further use for him. In April 1945, a week before their surrender, he was captured by Italian communists fifty kilometers from the Swiss border. The next day, he and his mistress Clara Petacci were shot and their bodies strung up by the heels above an Esso petrol station in Milan. Afterward it was whispered that the British had ordered his execution so that he could not reveal his secret wartime correspondence with Churchill in a public trial, but nothing was ever proved.

  —

  The gears of the bus strained and whined as it climbed the steep hill that led to the village. Nailed to the trees on the boulder-strewn roadside were signs forbidding hunting. It was late in the afternoon; half a dozen women were standing beside the fountain in the square, filling their bronze water jars and gossiping. They eyed Filomena with curiosity as she descended from the bus, holding Nina’s hand. The heat reverberated from the walls of every building, the large ugly town hall, the church where her parents had been married. Filomena had come here for the summer all through her childhood, and the sight of the square was etched into her being, deeper than memory. And yet, she thought, here too I am a foreigner, here too I do not really belong.

  Filomena and Nina had spent two days in Rome. They had clambered up the Spanish Steps to the twin bell towers of the Trinità dei Monti, they had taken refuge from the midday heat in the Colosseum, they had visited the fruit market in the Campo de’ Fiori, where they gorged on dark red cherries as if they were sweets. Nina’s eyes were wide with wonder, drinking in all that she saw. From a shop near the Castel Sant’Angelo Filomena bought her a straw hat with a green ribbon, to protect her face from the sun.

  On their second morning there was an argument with the landlady at the pensione, who had discovered the sacred heart picture hidden behind the wardrobe. Filomena explained that it scared the little girl, but that appalled the landlady even more. What kind of godless child was frightened by a picture of Our Lord? Time to move on, thought Filomena, pulling their clothes from the musty chest of drawers. While she packed she could feel her shoulders stiffen, as though her body, like her mind, was bracing itself to meet her family once more.

  —

  The house where Paolina lived was on the outskirts of the village, beside the cindery road that led to the cemetery. A grubby flock of children, the oldest in his teens, the youngest about six, milled in and out, squalling. Their feet clattered in their zoccoli, rough wooden soles held on by a strap.

  When Filomena last saw her Paolina had been plump, her waist marked only by her apron strings. Now it seemed that the flesh had melted from inside her skin, leaving her with loose wrinkled skeins beneath her upper arms, a dewlap under her chin. She wept when she saw Filomena.

  “Oh, Mena. It’s wonderful to see you at last. You look so like our poor lost Antonio, he might be here in the room, alive.”

  Filomena knew that this was not in the least true, but she did not argue as she embraced her sister. “This is Nina,” she said. “Nina, say hallo to Zia Paolina.”

  Nina sucked her fingers and said nothing. A puzzled expression crossed Paolina’s face. “Who is that child?”

  “She’s my employer Mr. Rodway’s daughter,” said Filomena. “She has come with me for a holiday.”

  Paolina studied Nina for a moment longer; then she called to a couple of the children who were chasing a scrawny chicken about the yard. “Aldo, Laura, go and fetch some water from the well. Take Nina with you. Your aunt Mena and I are going to have a chat.”

  Filomena sat at the huge ancient table in the kitchen while Paolina heated some coffee. The table was clean but splintery; Filomena had to arrange her knees carefully so it did not snag her blue cotton skirt. “I suppose it was hard for you here, during the war,” she said.

  “I do not know how we would have survived without Valentino.” Paolina poure
d the coffee into small chipped cups. “He has been a good brother, he made sure we did not go hungry. There was always food on our plates.”

  “Black market stuff, I suppose?” said Filomena.

  “When you have eight mouths to feed you do not care where it comes from. Everything was rationed, potatoes, lentils, milk. I was more anxious that our brother would be found out. You could be shot for hoarding food.” Paolina pushed one of the cups toward Filomena. “I hope you don’t want sugar because we’ve used it all up.”

  Filomena took a mouthful of the coffee, which was burned and nasty. “What is Valentino doing? Is he still in the village?”

  “He’s working for Guido Rossi, who used to be the mayor here. It’s his son Franco that Giulia is going to marry. She’s staying with the family now, choosing furniture for their apartment. Valentino was Signor Rossi’s right-hand man all through the war, that’s how he managed to help us with food and money. Signor Rossi is very well connected.”

  “I’m surprised that he hasn’t been arrested,” said Filomena, “or murdered, come to that. Wasn’t he the leader of one of those fascist gangs, the squadristi? The ones that used to roam the countryside attacking anyone opposed to the duce?”

  “Oh, nobody cares about that anymore, apart from the communists. Guido Rossi is a man of the future, Valentino says. He’s got business interests in Rome, something to do with the reconstruction of the city. Valentino spends a lot of his time there now, it seems Signor Rossi can’t manage without him.”

  “Valentino’s still got the house, though, hasn’t he? Our nonna’s old house?”

  Paolina sniffed. “Well, for the moment he has. That house is yours and mine too, you know, Mena. If I wanted I should be able to go and live there.”

  “What do you mean? Is Valentino trying to take it from us?”

  “It’s not Valentino, I don’t blame Valentino. It’s Danila. Don’t you read my letters, Filomena? I explained it to you. Danila moved into Nonna’s house right after the war, when her mother died. Valentino claims it’s because he needs a housekeeper, but I can see straight through that story. Danila’s so sly. I swear she had her eye on Valentino even before our poor brother Antonio was lost.” Paolina crossed herself in a perfunctory way, as though the gesture had become an automatic accessory to Antonio’s name. “And now—well, you know what Valentino’s like. He can’t resist a pretty face.”

  “Ah,” said Filomena, “so that’s the secret, is it?” She remembered how Valentino had revered Danila when they lived in Frith Street, how Danila had listened entranced as Valentino talked to her about fascism. At the time it had seemed quite innocent, the devotion between a brother- and sister-in-law. Perhaps it had been innocent, at the time. We were all so young, thought Filomena, we knew so little of the world.

  “Hardly a secret. It’s been going on for months.” Paolina sniffed. “I’m glad you’re here, Mena. You can talk to Danila, you can tell her that she’s to keep her hands off our nonna’s property. She never listens to me.”

  “I don’t suppose she’ll listen to me either,” said Filomena, “but yes, I will pay her a visit. I’ll go tomorrow. I’ll have to see her sooner or later, after all.”

  —

  Bernard was in his study, looking out at the sunlit trees in the square. It was one of those gilded summer days when it seemed impossible—ungrateful, almost—not to feel joy. A flicker of pleasure touched Bernard’s heart, as if from a great distance. Well, perhaps that is all that remains of happiness, he thought, when you are middle-aged, when you have suffered great loss. Perhaps the fires of delight really do burn themselves out.

  That morning he had booked the tickets for his journey to Rome. When he first proposed the trip Bernard had only half intended to go through with it; in his mind was the comforting idea that he could send a telegram at the last minute, claiming some emergency. Now, though, he was looking forward to it. To his surprise he was missing Filomena. He often passed weeks without seeing her—she and Nina visited London about once a month—but it irked him to think that he could not see her now if he wished, he could not catch the train to Lewes or summon her to Bedford Square. He thought of what he had said to his brother, Lionel. She is a very capable woman…I admire her. Then he remembered the confusion in her face when he had teased her about running away. The memory filled him with an unexpected tenderness. There was something disarming about seeing so unruffled a woman thrown off guard.

  The afternoon post fell through the letter box with a clunk. Bernard got to his feet. Avril, who usually brought up his letters, was in bed with a sick headache: one of several ailments she had acquired since her heartbreak in Egypt. Bernard wished her misery were not so conspicuous. It was as though her nose were perpetually dripping, and she did not have the wit to pull her handkerchief from her pocket.

  On the doormat was the usual clutch of envelopes: three stiff ivory invitations, a typed note from his publisher, six or seven handwritten letters, probably fan mail. I ought to get a secretary, thought Bernard, to deal with this kind of thing. He scooped up the envelopes and took them back to his study. As he dropped them upon his desk he saw that one was an airmail envelope, with an Australian stamp upon it.

  Filomena visited Danila after siesta, on her second day in the village. She took Nina, still drowsy from her nap. The little girl had spent the morning roaming with Paolina’s wild children, tumbling into the moss-edged springs where they stopped to drink, poking sticks at the chickens and the scrawny local cats.

  The house that had belonged to Filomena’s grandmother stood at the top of the hill, along the crooked cobbled path that climbed through the village. As they passed, half a dozen people came out of their houses to stare. They did it openly, not pretending that they were doing anything else. Like Paolina they looked thinner and shabbier than Filomena remembered.

  “Ciao, Filomena,” they said, raising their hands in greeting, and they fixed their eyes upon Nina, examining her face, her hair, her clothes.

  “Why are they looking at me?” said Nina. “I don’t like it.”

  Filomena tightened her grip on the child’s hand. “It’s because they don’t know who you are. It’s nothing to be frightened about.”

  —

  Danila had lost her kittenish plumpness but Filomena had to admit that in its place was a piquancy that made her more alluring than ever. She wore a black and white checked dress with a sweetheart neckline, and her hair had been cut and jauntily permed.

  “Filomena, at last,” she said, as though she had been kept waiting, “come in.”

  Filomena stepped into the room that had been her nonna’s proudly guarded parlor. The brown chenille curtains had been pulled half-shut to protect the furniture from the brutality of daylight. Everywhere Filomena looked, she saw signs of Danila’s presence, Danila’s taste. On the sideboard there was a battalion of ornaments, gilt-painted china animals, little vases of Murano glass. Among them was a photograph of Antonio, taken on his wedding day. The sight caught Filomena unawares, and brought sudden salty tears to her throat.

  “Rico,” called Danila from the kitchen, where she was clattering with plates and glasses, “come and meet your aunt Filomena.”

  A slim, dark boy of ten wandered shyly into the room: Enrico, Antonio’s son, named for his grandfather and for the singer Caruso.

  “Zia Mena,” he said, lifting his face to be kissed. He was beautiful: so beautiful, thought Filomena, that you feared for him, with his long-lashed eyes and his curls like glossy purple grapes. Nina put her fingers in her mouth and gazed idolatrously.

  Danila returned with a plate of almond biscuits, the kind you had to dip into coffee or Marsala, or else they would break your teeth. Then she settled herself against the beige plush cushions just as she used to settle into the comfortable chair beside the stove at Frith Street.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Mena. There is something I need you to do for me. It’s seven years since Antonio died”—like Paolina she crossed he
rself briskly as she spoke her husband’s name—“and still I do not have the papers to prove it. There did not seem much sense chasing them during the war, but it is different now.”

  “I am not sure that I can help,” said Filomena. “We have never had official confirmation of my brother’s death, not like poor Papa’s. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Oh, not you, Filomena, I know you can’t do anything. But this employer of yours, this Mr. Rodway. He’s an influential man, isn’t he? Surely he can make inquiries, ask the authorities to send the papers I need?”

  Filomena remembered, across the gulf of time, how annoying she found Danila. “Why?” she asked ingenuously. “Do you want to get married again?”

  Danila flushed. “Of course not. But if I did want to marry—well, I have a right to do it, Mena. Your sister, Paolina, may think that I should wear widow’s weeds for the rest of my life, but in my opinion I deserve some happiness after all I’ve been through. You have no idea what it’s been like here.”

  “I can imagine,” said Filomena. “Life has been hard in England too.”

  “Yes, but England wasn’t occupied. That’s the difference. You didn’t have German tanks rolling along the streets. Everywhere we went we saw posters on the walls, threatening to hang ten Italians for every German soldier who was killed. Even after the Allies marched in we didn’t know what would happen next, we had to live with the uncertainty. It was terrible.”

  Filomena said nothing. She was not going to remind Danila that once upon a time she had applauded the Germans as good fascists. She felt a great desire to be at home in England, reading stories to Nina, drinking gin and Its with Bernard.