The Way Ahead

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘I’m happy that you’re happy,’ said Nick.

  ‘Ah, we are happy friends, yes?’ said Caterina.

  ‘As a friend, I’ll do something about that old bike sometime, say tomorrow, while you’re at church,’ said Nick.

  ‘But what is old is old,’ said Caterina.

  ‘I’ll give it a lift before old age collapses it,’ said Nick.

  ‘A lift?’

  ‘I’ll perk it up.’

  ‘What is perk it up?’

  ‘I’ll get rid of its creaks and make it sing sweetly instead,’ said Nick.

  ‘But who would bother?’ asked Caterina. ‘In Italy, everything is used until it falls to pieces.’

  ‘I’ll bother,’ said Nick, ‘and give it a few more years of life.’

  Caterina smiled and shrugged. What did a few creaks and jangles matter?

  All the same, Nick gave it a go. On Sunday morning, he took the bicycle to pieces while she was at Mass. He got rid of much rust, cleaned the wheel spokes and rims, oiled everything that needed oiling, took the kinks out of the mudguards with a muffled hammer, polished all metal surfaces, and reassembled the machine. When Caterina returned from church, the bike was shining. She tried it, and it hummed very sweetly. She expressed delight. For Nick, it had been something to do, since she insisted every day that he must not go out and show himself, however much he needed exercise, nor answer the door if anyone should call. She reminded him frequently that there were German SD men in the village, as well as the man Enrico Bonetti, who called himself a patriot, but was still a Fascist in her opinion. Friends of hers were watching him all the time, for she knew something had made him sneak up on her house and prowl around it. She had persuaded her friends to believe that Bonetti suspected she was a partisan herself.

  ‘That bike will last a few more years now,’ said Nick, while she was still purring over it.

  ‘Ah, you are a lovely man, Nicki,’ she said. ‘See, you have turned it into a new one. But you have not been outside with it, have you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t shown as much as a toe out of your door,’ said Nick.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘There are no whispers about you, but a toe would be enough to bring eyes to my door and then there would be many whispers. If only one reached the ears of Enrico Bonetti, it would be enough to satisfy him that you are here, and you would have to run.’

  ‘That’s the man you think is a Fascist?’ said Nick.

  ‘Yes,’ said Caterina. ‘He denies it, of course, and laughs at the idea, but if I ever found out he was the one who betrayed my Pietro, I would have to kill him. You would agree, Nicki?’

  ‘Yes, as long as you had an alibi,’ said Nick.

  ‘Who needs an alibi in such a war as this, when everyone is killing everyone else?’ said Caterina.

  ‘There’s no answer to that,’ said Nick, and thought of his parents, his resilient mother, his carefree father, and his likeable sisters. What was the war doing to them, was it changing them, making them hard and revengeful? He hoped not, although he knew himself to be very different from the young man whose world was happily governed by his enthusiasm for football and his love for Annabelle.

  ‘Nicki,’ said Caterina, ‘I heard after Mass that the fighting is very fierce, but that the British and Poles are pushing at the Germans every day. So they will be here tomorrow, perhaps. They are expected in this region, yes, because the guns are getting louder, and the German secret police in the village are getting ready to leave.’

  ‘Louder means nearer,’ said Nick.

  ‘Then so are your comrades,’ said Caterina. ‘It is not too bad for you, waiting here?’

  ‘If I’m impatient,’ said Nick, ‘I’m also well off. I’ll wait a day or two longer.’

  In the evening, they played another game of cards by the light of the lamp. Cribbage. Caterina knew the game and was quick at it.

  ‘Seven,’ said Nick, placing the card face up on the table.

  ‘Fifteen for two!’ exclaimed Caterina exultantly, showing an eight, and pegging her score.

  ‘Twenty-one for a run of three, six, seven and eight,’ smiled Nick, putting a six down. He was in fine fettle, his leg healing nicely, and he frankly found Caterina enjoyable company. ‘Got you there, Catie.’

  ‘Ah, you think so?’ she said, and put down a ten. ‘Thirty-one for two. Now who is winning this game?’

  ‘You are,’ said Nick, ‘but I warn you, I don’t like losing.’ He stiffened, sure he had heard a little noise outside the back door. Caterina heard it too. She sprang to her feet, darted and locked the back door with a silent turn of the key. She looked at Nick. He nodded and disappeared fast. Someone knocked on the door. Caterina took her time to answer it. From out of the darkness, a man smiled at her, then spoke to her. Caterina was friendly, responsive and natural. A few minutes later, she softly called from the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Nicki?’

  He reappeared and came silently down the stairs.

  ‘No trouble?’ he whispered.

  ‘A friend to tell me he has been listening to Allied short-wave broadcasts on his concealed radio, and that the Germans are now retreating fast. The Allies have broken through. He says the Canadians are going straight for Frosinone, that the British and Polish are east of the Canadians, and in the west the Americans are on the coastal roads that will take them to Rome if they can break the Germans again. It is good, yes?’

  ‘If it’s good for you and Italy, it’s good for me,’ said Nick.

  ‘My friend also told me it’s not known if either the retreating Germans or the advancing British will pass through Asconi, but if some of the Germans do, no-one is to demonstrate or to provoke them.’

  ‘Who is your friend?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Our priest,’ said Caterina.

  ‘Have you been to confession since my arrival?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Was that why he came to give you this news?’ asked Nick.

  ‘He did not say so, and would not,’ said Caterina.

  ‘But he knows I’m here?’

  ‘I never speak of my confessions,’ said Caterina. ‘But you are a good man, Nicki, and if someone brings news that is happy for you, let us be grateful. I will remember you when you have gone.’

  ‘We’ll remember each other,’ said Nick. ‘Shall we finish the game?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Caterina, ‘and with some wine, eh, my Inglese?’

  ‘You talk my language in more ways than one,’ said Nick.

  ‘I am pretty good, yes?’ she smiled.

  ‘Wizard,’ said Nick.

  They finished the game and what was left of a bottle of wine, and then Nick said he’d go up.

  ‘I’ll get some sleep in,’ he said, ‘in case the Eighth Army gets here at the crack of dawn.’

  Caterina, taking up the lamp, asked softly, ‘Do men of the RAF make much love to women?’

  ‘Not while I’m looking,’ said Nick. ‘Myself, I only make love to my wife, and that’s not been often this last year or so. It’s the bloody old war.’

  ‘Do you love your wife, Nicki?’

  ‘Yes, very much,’ said Nick, ‘and my children.’

  ‘Then I wish victory to the Allies and your happy return to your wife and children,’ said Caterina.

  She rode her refurbished bicycle to school in the morning. Three minutes after she’d gone, Nick swore to himself. He’d made a mistake, a mistake neither of them had realized. The damned bike. Her pupils and anyone else who saw it would want to know who had improved the look of the machine and done away with its creaks and jangles. What would she say to them, that she had done it herself? She must.

  A little after ten, when he was busying himself by cleaning the white-washed walls of her kitchen, the sudden noise of heavy vehicles stunned his ears. He ran up to his bedroom, the place of religious pictures, and from the window his view brought to his eyes two troop-carrying German trucks full of soldiers of the Third
Reich. They were preceded by two open cars containing officers, and followed by two German Tiger tanks that looked enormous against a cluster of houses roofed with warm brown tiles. Behind them were other military vehicles. People were out of their homes, staring at what was passing through. Germans in retreat. The people melted away. Germans in retreat were never good-tempered.

  The convoy stopped, and two minutes later Caterina ran into her house.

  ‘Nicki!’

  Nick was down in a flash.

  ‘The ruddy foe,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and the bicycle, and many questions about it, and I laughed but made no answer. Enrico Bonetti was looking on and smiling, and telling me the Germans are searching for an RAF pilot. How did he know they were unless he has been in touch with them? Now they are here.’

  ‘If they’re retreating, they won’t stop to look for an airman who might or might not be here,’ said Nick.

  ‘They are talking to the men, and Enrico Bonetti is among the men,’ said Caterina. ‘He will make a loud protest, they will drag him away, and then, having made himself look a good patriot in front of people, he will talk. He will tell them about an old bicycle on which someone has performed a miracle, and which belongs to the widow of a man who was hanged as a partisan. Nicki, we must both go, south over the fields, and quickly.’

  Nick noted her deep concern, thought about her husband, tortured before being hanged, and said, ‘Yes, quick, then.’

  They were out of the house and away in a very short time, Caterina wearing a jacket over her blouse and holding her handbag, Nick fully kitted and carrying a bottle of wine. He knew the necessity for keeping thirst at bay if their flight lasted all day. The weather was cloudy and fresh, the fields of common land running adjacent to vineyards. The uneven ground made the going a little rough, but they went at a good pace, alternately running and walking, Nick’s healing leg no great problem, and they left the village well behind after ten minutes.

  ‘It is only a kilometre and a half to the road that will take us south,’ said Caterina, flushed and heated.

  About a mile, thought Nick.

  ‘What are the odds, I wonder, on us meeting up with the Poles or my own lot?’ he mused.

  ‘Odds are always a matter of luck,’ said Caterina. ‘One can hope for good luck, but never rely on it.’

  ‘Well, if it arrives, we’ll both shake hands with it,’ said Nick.

  Away to their left, in the east, the heights of the Apennines merged with the sky. Ahead, the aspect was of level countryside, although the ground was a mixture of dips and tufty hillocks. He could not see the road, but it was there in the distance, Caterina assured him. They had to reach it and stay close to it, for it was the road by which the retreating German column had reached Asconi, and Nick assumed, reasonably, that some Allied forward units were also using it in their advance and pursuit.

  On they went, and the rough grassy ground gave way to the more difficult terrain that forced them to repeatedly veer and to skirt the tufty hillocks from which sprang thistle and thorn. They ran, they walked, they ran, they walked. A faint buzzing noise began to disturb them. They looked back. About four hundred yards behind them, a small tracked vehicle was eating up the rough ground.

  ‘There, that is bad luck,’ breathed Caterina.

  ‘Catie, bad luck is something you have to fight,’ said Nick, and they broke from a walk into another run. Nick wondered what good the road would be to them now, since it would put the chasing German vehicle hard on their tails. Germany’s treatment of prisoners of war was not always what it should have been, and as for a woman who had sheltered an RAF pilot, only God knew what might happen to her.

  Nick ran and Caterina ran, her skirt whipping, his leg now feeling sore and his hand letting go of the bottle of wine. The tracked vehicle dipped and lifted in its chase, its engine a loud buzz. What happened next was an assault on the senses and an attempt to kill or maim them. It was the noisy, repetitive spat of machine-gun fire. Bullets whistled above them and kicked at the rugged, tufty ground behind them.

  ‘Mama mia!’ gasped Caterina.

  ‘Run, Catie,’ hissed Nick, ‘it’s only an attempt to make us stop. Run.’

  It was reasonable, in any case, to assume the machine-gunner couldn’t line up his target while the vehicle was rising and dipping. That assumption held good when the next burst of fire went wildly awry. Nick glimpsed the road then, a thin dusty grey line intersecting the green ground.

  ‘There!’ panted Caterina.

  ‘Right, go for it.’ Nick saw the thin grey line broaden as they ran. Legs were tiring, and the unevenness of their going, the skirting avoidance of hillocks, became a serious handicap. Behind them, the tracked vehicle charged forward with obvious menace, then stopped. The machine-gunner lined up the target, a running man and woman.

  Propitiously, Caterina stumbled and fell at the moment the gun fired. Nick threw himself flat beside her. Flights of bullets passed close above them. The vehicle began to charge forward again, its officer suspecting the prey had been hit.

  Nick raised his head, saw the oncoming grey gun-carrier, came up on his knees and pulled at Caterina.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she gasped, and then they were both on their feet and running again. From around a bend in the road appeared another tracked vehicle, dark grey and huge, the long barrel of its gun pointing the way, a soldier’s head and shoulders visible, field glasses looped around his neck. He was riding a Sherman tank, one of many now being used by the British Eighth Army.

  Nick forgot his sore leg and rushed over the ground, waving his flying helmet and gesturing towards the German vehicle. Up went the field glasses to the eyes of the tank commander. He shouted something. The tank came to a halt, its gun turret swivelled and the long snout was laid on the target.

  The German vehicle was turning in hasty retreat, tracks gouging the ground. The Sherman’s gun fired. The shell struck the rear of the German carrier. The explosion that followed caused it to lift off, to split apart and to burst into flame. Bodies tumbled.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ breathed Caterina, white and staring.

  ‘This time, Catie, good luck came our way,’ said Nick, hardened to that kind of picture. He put an arm around her shoulders, gave her a squeeze, then ran to speak to the tank commander, a captain, who was leading a detachment of advance armour of 13 Corps, of the British Eighth Army. Nick, having quickly stated who he was and how he came to be here, imparted the news that there were Tiger tanks and some German infantry in Asconi.

  ‘Thanks. We’ll chase them out. Get yourself aboard a rear vehicle and we’ll drop you in Frosinone in a couple of hours. Who’s the lady?’

  Nick thought of Bobby and what he had said about Helene.

  ‘The lady’s my saviour.’

  ‘Straight from heaven?’ asked the unshaven lieutenant.

  ‘No, straight off a bicycle in Asconi,’ said Nick.

  ‘Get the lady aboard our medical transport, and we’ll drop her back home. What about those buggers over there?’

  ‘I think those buggers over there are all stone dead,’ said Nick.

  ‘Can’t stop for a look. I’m pushing on. Hope your squadron leader can find you a new plane. Better for your record than mucking about in the wilds of Italy with a beautiful saviour and her bicycle.’ The tank commander grinned, issued an order, and as the Sherman began to grind forward again, he gave Nick and Caterina the V for Victory sign.

  ‘Ah, thank you, yes!’ called Caterina. ‘Viva Winston Churchill!’

  It was back in Asconi a little later that she said goodbye to Nick, while a waiting truck driver gave him five minutes to make his farewell.

  ‘After the war, come to England, Catie, and stay with me and my family for a while,’ he said.

  ‘After the war, who knows?’ she said. She meant who could tell what might happen to either of them before the war was over?

  ‘You’ll get an invitation,’ said Nick.

  ‘To meet your wife, Nic
ki?’

  ‘To meet her and my family,’ said Nick.

  ‘Hurry it up, Admiral, I ain’t got all bleedin’ day!’ hollered the truck driver, a veteran Desert Rat who wanted to get to the morning brew-up, which wasn’t as easy in Italy as in the Sahara. There, where you and your mates could have umpteen square miles of the desert all to yourselves, you spilled sand into a pan, soaked it with petrol, lit it and brewed up on it.

  ‘Goodbye, Nicki,’ said Caterina.

  ‘I don’t like goodbyes at the best of times,’ said Nick, ‘and this one’s a swine. What can I say except thanks for everything, and for the privilege of knowing you?’

  ‘That is so English,’ said Caterina with a little shake of her head and a smile. She did what came naturally to an Italian woman. She kissed him, full on the mouth, and with warm Latin affection. ‘That is to tell you you are a fine man, Nicki, and that my Pietro would have liked you very much.’

  ‘And you are a fine woman, and a great runner,’ said Nick. ‘Ciao, Catie.’

  ‘Ciao, Nicki,’ said Caterina, and watched him walk to the truck and climb aboard next to the driver, a British Army corporal.

  The truck moved off. Nick waved to her. She blew him another kiss.

  She watched until the truck disappeared.

  The Germans had gone, retreating in disciplined fashion and without panic at the approach of the British armoured units, and the people around the square were laughing and shouting. Their village had been liberated.

  Enrico Bonetti was not there himself. He was dead, along with a German officer and machine-gunner out there in the fields.

  Caterina Angeli sighed and went home.

  Chapter Twenty

  Late May

  ‘A WEEK FROM today?’ said the man known as Roget, leader of Marne’s main Resistance group.

  ‘A week,’ affirmed a woman known as Lise, a leading light of the Epernay cell. They were drinking wine at an outside table of a café in the main square of Epernay, the classic capital of the champagne industry. The afternoon was warm and caressing. ‘The train will leave precisely at ten in the morning. The information comes from our most trustworthy source in Paris.’