‘He fell in front of a tram,’ Anna said, and she could hear herself apologizing. It was such a small thing, such a quick, stupid thing. A joke; an accident. Just like the way she heard the news, a girl at work the next morning, mouth open, eyes wide, as she related the story of Luca Magno, killed by a tram. It should have come by some other means; she should have known. Anna had felt something draining out of her, and her whole body turned cold. She had thought she might be sick, but she had had to go on looking down at her work – a boned, brocaded corset that she had been finding rough against her hands. She had to look away and pretend Luca Magno was no more to her than to anyone else.
She looked at Paolo. ‘He – Luca wasn’t looking. There was no mystery to it, not really. I’m sorry – you had to wait so long to hear it. But, you see, I hardly knew him, that’s how it seems to me now. You – you were the important thing.’
Paolo made as if to speak, but she shook her head. ‘There were all sorts of suggestions, of course. I mean, about Luca’s death. People like to make up stories about something like that, they can’t believe there could be just no reason. But I know. I do know.’
Paolo turned away, for a moment, dazed, but he felt as though something had fallen away and left him free. He breathed deep, and let the breath out. Over the stones appeared the two small wet heads of the boys, like seals, but he barely saw them. Sam was first up, Angus scrambling after him. They skipped towards him across the slab of warm stone, his own younger self reincarnated. Whooping with excitement they grabbed Paolo, butting their heads against his chest, a damp patch spreading on his shirt, reaching for his hands to pull him with them.
‘Come on!’ they said. ‘Come on, you too.’
Without looking down, automatically Paolo let his hand drop on to Sam’s head, and rested it there. He stroked the damp hair, and the boys fell silent.
OK, Mamma,’ he said. ‘Now I know, too.’
25
Wordlessly Lucien had gone over and hauled the rickety double gates open to allow the car in. Justine watched; Lucien narrowed his eyes against the dust that rose in the car’s wake, and looked down at Tom’s passenger. Louisa was standing beside Justine, leaning against her for support. She was looking at Tom, scanning his face.
The woman was the first to climb out of the car, stiff perhaps after a long journey to judge by her grimace as she straightened up. She was a tall woman, not Italian to look at, not at all, freckled and fair-skinned, with long, wiry hair, the colour of red gold, tied back at the nape of her neck. She looked around the group, her reception committee, and nodded very slightly. There was something like calculation in her clear grey eyes, Justine thought, as though she was looking to see who was there and who was missing. Justine wondered what she had been led to expect.
‘Rossella,’ said Martin, holding her lightly by both arms, and greeting her with a kiss. ‘I wasn’t sure – thank you for coming.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Rossella, her voice accented and surprisingly deep, and she smiled. Her pale face was illuminated by the smile; she looked beautiful, quite suddenly, and something about her, some warmth, or radiance, made Justine think of Evie. This is her friend, Justine thought wonderingly, and then she knew why Rossella was there. She’s going to tell us.
Tom had put his arms around Louisa, and Justine could see her shoulders trembling with relief, and the effort of not crying. He was murmuring in her ear, something gentle, and stroking her hair. Then he looked up from Louisa’s shoulder.
‘Where are the boys? And Dido?’
‘Oh,’ said Louisa faintly, her face softened by whatever it was he had said to her, ‘they’re at the river. I mean – I sprained my ankle, and – it’s a little bit complicated. But they should be back soon.’
Tom helped her into a chair and knelt to examine the ankle. To Justine’s eyes the swelling seemed much less now. As Louisa allowed Tom to minister to her she seemed to soften, to grow content.
‘Shall we go inside?’ said Martin, looking up at the sky. ‘It’s not quite raining yet.’ Rossella pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Better outside,’ she said. ‘There’s still a little summer left, I think.’
They sat down, the five of them, beneath the small tree; a light, persistent wind had got up, over their heads the leaves of the little oak were moving restlessly. Around the pasture the wind moved like a wave through the trees, flattening the leaves and turning them silver.
Lucien brought out a small aluminium pot of coffee, a crumpled bag of biscuits and some tiny cups; he’d even found a half-full bottle of grappa somewhere. It appeared to Justine that all this fussing about with glasses and trays was a kind of diversionary tactic; perhaps it always had been. He put the tray down and held out his hand to Rossella, smiling his easy smile.
‘Lucien Elliott,’ he said.
Rossella looked at him gravely for a moment, before shaking his hand. ‘Rossella Bandini,’ she said. She continued to study him, but said nothing.
‘Rossella was a friend of Evie’s,’ said Martin, and Lucien glanced at him quickly, then looked away. Was it the first time Evie’s name had been out in the open among them all, Justine wondered? Lucien seemed to shy away from the sound.
‘Yes,’ he said, indistinctly, not quite looking at Rossella. ‘From Florence?’
‘How did you know?’ asked Martin.
‘I – didn’t you say? I think it must be the accent,’ said Lucien.
‘Actually, from Rome originally,’ said Rossella. ‘But I have lived in Florence since I was a small girl.’
Justine looked at their guest; she could picture Rossella framed in one of those Florentine windows with their great pointed stone arches, or sitting reading in an apartment with a garden, cool and green, everything in its place. Then she thought of their lives in London: taking the tube or the bus to reach each other through the dirt and the noise, trying to talk in each other’s crowded kitchens without being interrupted by children, or lodgers, or husbands. Or overheard. No wonder Evie had kept hold of Rossella, kept her secret; Justine found herself longing for such a friend, one who might sit and read her letters in the ancient, narrow streets of a distant city, consider her private joy or grief, find the solution to her dilemmas.
‘I wanted to meet you all,’ said Rossella in her slow, careful English, looking around the table. ‘I have heard about you, from Evie, of course.’ A single drop of rain fell, warm and heavy, darkening the linen of the tablecloth; for a moment they were all silent, waiting.
By the waterfall, Paolo, Anna and the two boys were walking in the hazel grove that ran alongside the river. It was still warm. Anna thought that perhaps by tomorrow it would have turned; that was usually how it went when autumn finally arrived. There was a last day of reprieve.
The boys didn’t seem worried; they were running in and out of the copse, whose roof of interlocking branches seemed, so far, quite weatherproof and which provided a dry, musty shelter. Paolo had taken off his jacket and the jersey he’d slung around his neck and each child was now draped in an oversized garment, empty sleeves flapping and whirling as they dodged and ran. Anna liked listening to the noise they made; she felt as though she could stay here until it grew dark, thinking things over. Somehow she felt that once they left this place she would have to pack it all away again and get on with her life.
She looked up at Paolo, handsome in his shirtsleeves beside her. ‘What do you think of the English, then?’ she said, smiling.
‘Funny lot,’ he said abruptly. ‘They don’t seem to be getting on very well.’
‘Yes,’ mused Anna, ‘it can’t be what they expected, Il Vignacce. Maybe they’re getting on each other’s nerves.’ She paused. ‘Pretty girl, though, don’t you think?’
Paolo shrugged, and looked away from her, bending a little to look out at the rain. ‘Which one?’
Anna laughed. ‘You know which one. The one who didn’t sprain her ankle. The dark one. I’m not blind, you know’
Paolo smiled. ‘Ye
s,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders again. ‘She’s nice. She’s – beautiful.’ He paused. ‘But she’s married, and they’re going home at the weekend.’
‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘the way she was looking at you…’ She tailed off. ‘And I didn’t think too much of her husband, did you?’
‘Good cook,’ said Paolo.
‘That’s not everything,’ said Anna, and Paolo laughed.
‘Mamma,’ he said, I just looked at her, that’s all, and she looked at me. We’re not engaged.’
‘Well,’ said Anna again, her head on one side, ‘a look – that’s how it usually starts, isn’t it? A look can do it.’ She looked wistful.
‘OK,’ said Paolo, laughing. ‘That’s enough.’
It was as dark as a cave now inside the trees; overhead Anna could hear rain beginning to patter softly on the leaves. Out through a hazel arch she could see it falling silently into the river, spotting the surface of the dark water. It smelled clean, wet leaves not yet turned slimy, the sweet smell of damp wood. She wondered how long it would go on; idly she thought, soon we should go back.
‘We should go back soon,’ said Paolo, leaning against a stand of hazel, his head brushing the roof, and looking down at her. Anna smiled at his echo of her thought, but neither of them made a move.
‘Let them play a little more,’ she said. ‘It’s not cold, not yet. You used to come down here on your own, do you remember?’ she asked. ‘When we came to visit Nonna?’
Paolo nodded, watching her. Anna was looking at something far away; the boys brushed past her, the smaller one clung to her shoulder as if she was home in a game of chase, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anna, ‘that I didn’t bring you home to Nonna before. Sorry for you, and sorry for her. But I was afraid. At first I thought it would be easier – if it was just you and me.’
‘It must have been very hard,’ said Paolo. ‘Don’t worry’ He put an arm around her.
These days, of course, not so many hospitals were run by nuns, but then – it was hard to find one that wasn’t. At the Bambino Gesu, the maternity hospital, they rustled down the corridors like flocks of pale grey birds; now you’d be hard pushed to find a nun in a habit, even in Rome. Something about the band of white around their faces made them look – what? Pure, sweet, wise; at first anyway. Until you were pregnant, and unmarried, and frightened.
Anna had bought herself a ring so cheap it left a sooty mark around her finger, and she wore it when she went again to the doctor, after that first time. When she went into labour she put it on, just before she left the apartment with her little bag packed, a clean nightdress, baby things, napkins, soap. The ring was loose on her finger – she’d managed to grow thinner during pregnancy, with the sickness and misery – and she felt sure it stood out a mile that she had no right to wear it.
The Bambino Gesu was a long building that took up one side of a little piazza, elegant shuttered buildings around a crumbling fountain, near the river. The hospital itself was a beautiful, austere building of grey stone and white stucco, its frontage arcaded above three steps down to the square, and above each arch was a plaster plaque in blue and white of the holy child. Anna had told them that she was a widow when they asked where her husband was, standing with her bag in the gloomy marble hall, its floor dark red and green marble. The sister just nodded and wrote something in a ledger, a deep frownline etched between her brows. Anna carried it off better than a young girl might have, but since the occupation how many husbands managed to impregnate their wives then die before the child was delivered? Although in this case, it was nearly true. Only half a lie.
Anna followed the sister down a corridor, she could not now remember her name, called after a saint, Ignatius or Aquinas, a man’s name. Pausing once to lean against the wall as a contraction stopped her in her tracks, through the narrow slit of a window she caught a glimpse of green, an arcaded stone cloister around some grass, and she felt a tremendous longing to escape, to feel the air on her face. In the corridor a sallow young woman was pushing a bit of rag listlessly up and down with a broom. She wore a dirty apron tied twice around her thick waist, and Anna had wondered for a second whether she had come in here to have a baby and had never got out again.
They walked on past a series of looming statues: the Virgin and child, Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross, the figures gazing down sternly with their sightless marble eyes. The room at which the sister finally stopped was whitewashed, a band of pale blue painted at waist height, and it contained four narrow wooden beds, none of them occupied. It was unnaturally silent. Even if the mothers could be made to keep silent, surely the babies cried?
A doctor was brought to her after a while; a pale, seedy man in a white coat who looked as though he didn’t get out in the fresh air, a dusting of grey stubble on his chin. He didn’t ask about her husband or anything else, and looked at her with very little interest, just pulling up the thin, backless gown they had given her. He put his hands on her belly and pushed his clean, cold fingers hard into her lower abdomen to feel for the position of the head; Anna was shocked into silence by the abrupt, emotionless force of the examination. He nodded in her direction, not quite meeting her eye, and affected a smile.
‘Hurts now, eh?’ he said, still smiling. Then he turned and said something to the sister that she did not hear, before leaving the room. She didn’t see him again.
When Anna was in labour, she thought she might die; that was the thought that circled monotonously in her head as the pain rose and fell, but by then she hardly minded. The sisters came and went angrily, slapping things down on an iron trolley in the corner of the room, and after an hour or so she decided to ignore them. It was as though her vision had narrowed to a small spot ahead of her on the pale cracked plaster of the wall, and her life depended on her keeping it in her sights. Then there was a nun there all the time, standing beside her, as though they knew something she didn’t.
Anna remembered looking up at the sister at her bedside, a woman in late middle-age, her blue eyes the only distinguishing feature in the otherwise uniform grey of her appearance, like the window on an outside world that was no longer accessible. Anna looked up at her as if to ask what it was that they knew, but she found she couldn’t speak. Then the pain changed and it was as though something was turning and expanding inside her, there was nothing she could do to act against it. Then there was a great surge, and there he was: a thin, bleating cry, and an unfamiliar presence in the room that sent shock waves through the air. For a fraction of a second as Anna looked down between her knees he seemed to her no more human than a puppy: eyes creased shut but a red mouth wide open in silent rebellion, his arms flung out wide, his tiny fingers curling inwards.
‘Un maschio. Male,’ the sister said, disapproving of him already.
Then something moved into place in Anna’s mind, something she had not been able to locate until now.
‘A baby,’ she’d murmured, hardly aware of what she was saying.
The sister made a contemptuous sound. ‘What did you think it would be, Signora?’
They knew, all right.
‘You might as well take that off,’ the sister had said, briskly, tugging at the ring, after Anna had been washed and they’d taken him away somewhere. She wanted to know where, but they wouldn’t tell her, not to begin with.
‘No,’ she had said, grateful for once that she was not a girl, but a grown woman. ‘Get him back.’ There was a room in the convent, in every convent, where unwanted babies could be left anonymously, to be treated as orphans.
‘I want him,’ she said again. And eventually they had brought him back. Perhaps they thought it was punishment enough, that she should have to live with the evidence. Even now Anna marvelled that she had made them do it, the freakish luck that she had found the determination at the exact moment she would need it.
Anna had sewn just one little smocked nightgown; made of wool she had lined it with cotton so as not
to scratch, and embroidered it with lilies. She had worked almost in her sleep, unable to think what she was doing it for, finishing it in a hurry before she was overtaken by superstition. She marvelled when she took it out to dress him, trying to maneouvre his arms into the sleeves, at how little she had imagined this. A baby. He had lain there, silent on the pale blue hospital blanket, staring up at her with a dazed look.
Anna left the Bambino Gesu before Paolo was six hours old. Barely able to walk herself, she held him folded tightly against her as she walked back down the endless corridor, past the statues standing guard and out into the mild spring air, and she didn’t stop until she was back in her own home. Their home.
‘I took you home, before they could make me change my mind,’ Anna said to Paolo, the rain falling heavy now over their heads, looking at him. He put his arm around her.
‘It wasn’t easy, of course, you’re right,’ she went on slowly, pulling back as she remembered the questions, the struggle to find the money for everything. ‘But it’s not as if I was the only one. In those days – it happened. The difference was, I was older; Nonna couldn’t have passed you off as her own, she was nearly seventy. I thought – well, I thought it might be better to wait. Before I told her.’ Anna sighed, admitting that she had thought this more than once, and had been wrong each time.
‘I got along all right, at work. No one said anything to me; they wanted to help.’ A blanket shyly presented, baby clothes, a home-made cot outgrown. The girls at work, pressing Paolo to their faces as though they wanted to eat him. ‘I managed. So I didn’t go home; I didn’t tell her. Nonna.’
‘When did you come back, in the end? Come back here, I mean.’ Paolo put a hand to the corner of his eye, rubbed something away.
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