by Angela Petch
Some of the buildings along the narrow streets were still shells. One of them had been turned into a kind of walled garden where the rusting cab of a British army lorry was converted into a makeshift chicken coop. Along one wall of the bombed building, a vine was trained and an old man, a handkerchief knotted on his head against the sun, hoed a patch of ground where lettuces and tomatoes flourished; a patch of colour and promise amid the fallen masonry, seeds for the future.
The bus for Sansepolcro left from the square outside the station. It was really a converted Lancia truck with benches fixed on the back. Massimo desperately wanted to recognise somebody, to feel a sense of belonging, but despite scrutinising the faces of his fellow passengers, there was nobody he knew. He had to remind himself he’d been away for more than six years; much would have changed. He leant his back against the wooden sides, every now and again turning to peer through the slats at the landscape. As the truck laboured round the bends up into the mountains, the air was cooler and refreshingly welcome. He felt queasy and thirsty, but he guessed it was also apprehension causing his stomach to churn.
He wasn’t expecting a welcoming party – he hadn’t had time to warn anybody of his homecoming – but he hadn’t expected to feel like a foreigner in his own neighbourhood as he picked up the holdall Mrs Spink had given him and jumped down from the truck. ‘I shan’t be needing it, son,’ she’d said, ‘I’ll not be going away on holiday at my age.’
He looked around. The square at Badia had lost several of its buildings. The little town was like a gaping mouth with missing teeth, but the bar in the corner still stood, where four elderly men played cards at a table under the awning. They looked up as he approached, making his way over the damaged paving stones, and one rose from his seat and hurried over to Massimo. It was his uncle Giulio, thinner, hunched and much older than he remembered.
‘Eh, Massimo. Ben tornato!’ he said, turning to his friends. ‘Everybody! This is my nephew. We thought we had lost him for good to the inglesi.’ He called to the girl behind the bar to bring more wine. ‘Are you hungry, ragazzo? What can you give him, Elena? Pane? Formaggio?’
He pointed to the teenage girl, asking Massimo, ‘Do you remember your little cousin Elena?’
The girl came out with wine and a plate of bread and cheese, placing it shyly on the table. Massimo remembered his uncle’s young daughter, but not this pretty stranger. He smiled at her and, blushing, she scurried back behind the bar.
‘You’ll find Tramarecchia very changed,’ Giulio said. ‘Why don’t you stop with us tonight? Your parents have moved down to the borgo of Sansepolcro. There’s hardly anybody left in the village now. Stay with us! Your zia Rosa will rustle up a supper. Thank God we have our vegetable garden and a pig and chickens, for there’s still precious little in the shops.’
He spat on the ground. ‘Bastardi Tedeschi,’ he swore, and then made the sign of the cross. ‘Grazie a Dio, the war is over now.’
Massimo thanked him and the pair walked across the square to his uncle and aunt’s house. The town hall was pockmarked with bullet holes and the mayor’s house was gone, as well as a row of terraced houses that had once lined the street. Uncle Giulio followed Massimo’s gaze. ‘Yes, we have seen the war here.’ He pushed open the door and called, ‘Rosa, we have a visitor this evening. Throw some extra pasta in the pan this evening.’
Aunt Rosa cried as Massimo bent to be embraced. ‘You’ve come back. We all thought we’d never see you again.’ She wiped her eyes on her pinafore. ‘Wait until your parents see you. It will be the tonic they need. Oh, Massimino, my little Massimo, how we have suffered here.’
That first supper was the best of his life. Simple food prepared with love and natural ingredients. Little slices of home-made bread toasted over the fire, rubbed with garlic and half of them topped with chicken livers and sage, half with tomatoes and a hint of chilli pepper. He’d forgotten how good tomatoes grown under a hot sun could taste. That would have been sufficient, but his aunt next served up steaming bowls of home-made strozzapreti, known as ‘priest stranglers’ because they resembled twisted dog collars worn by priests. She had flavoured these with a sauce of courgette flowers. Slices of pecorino cheese drizzled with honey and eaten with quarters of pears followed. ‘Pour the boy more Vin Santo,’ Giulio declared, his words a little slurred, as he drained his glass.
‘That was the most special meal, Zia,’ Massimo said, leaning back in his chair, patting his belly. ‘I’ve missed Italian cooking.’
His aunt smiled and started to clear the table. Massimo insisted on helping her, despite her protestations of it being woman’s work.
‘The women in Inghilterra have been doing man’s work during the war, Zia,’ he told her. ‘Driving tractors, taking over men’s jobs in the factories, cutting down trees and helping with all kinds of manual labour. And I have been cooking and looking after myself for these past years. I’m sure I am able to help you wash a few pots.’
Afterwards he climbed the ladder to the bedroom on the floor above the kitchen, partitioned off by a thin wooden wall behind which his aunt and uncle slept. The traditional mattress, stuffed with dried corn leaves, rustled as he settled beneath the coarse cotton sheets, and within minutes he was sleeping soundly.
* * *
Despite his uncle and aunt begging him to stay longer, next morning he set off early down the hill to his home village of Tramarecchia. He whistled as he walked, breathing in the scents of wild thyme and mint that his boots crushed underfoot. The cicadas were a forgotten sound from the past, and the noise intensified as the morning heat increased. His heart beat a little faster as he rounded the final bend that led down to Tramarecchia, nervous about seeing Lucia after so long, wondering what they would make of each other.
‘Buongiorno,’ he said to three women washing clothes at the village fonts. The youngest pulled her headscarf over her face. The older woman, possibly her mother, stood up to shield her daughters. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘There is nothing here for you.’
He didn’t recognise her. ‘I am Massimo,’ he said, ‘Massimo Conti. My home is over there.’ He pointed to the far end of the little grassy piazza and noticed, with horror, the burned-out shell of his neighbours’ house. ‘I’m looking for Lucia,’ he said. ‘What has happened here?’
‘She’s gone,’ the woman said.
‘Good riddance, too,’ added the younger one from behind her scarf.
‘What do you mean, gone?’ Massimo asked, but the women turned their backs on him and resumed their washing without saying another word.
Twelve
Tuscany, Present Day
Massimo fell silent and shook his head. Clouds had gathered, covering the sun, and he shivered. Alba gently took his arm. ‘Let’s get you inside, and after I’ve tidied these things away, we’ll go back up to Badia,’ she said.
He didn’t seem to register where he was and looked at her, confused.
‘Massimo?’ Alba repeated gently. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Lucia and I were childhood sweethearts. There was an understanding between our two families that when she was old enough, we would marry.’
He fell silent again and Alba waited for him to continue. He seemed lost in the past.
‘When I returned from Inghilterra, I couldn’t find her. I hoped that by staying in our village, I would discover what had happened to her.’ He pointed to the ruined building and overgrown orchard next to the tower, opposite to where they sat outside his house. ‘They burned her house. It’s not been lived in since then.’
Alba noticed the blackened, fallen timbers for the first time and pulled out her drawing pad to sketch the ruin.
She looked up at Massimo, his expression replaced by the lined, beaten features of an old man. There were tears in his eyes. She put down her pencil and grasped his hand. ‘Are you all right, Massimo? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
He shook his head. ‘Talking to you in English is good. Do you think I’
m mad if I say that talking in another language makes those dreadful events seem more removed from me, Alba? Or do you think these are the rantings of an old man?’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Not rantings, Massimo, but I don’t want you to be upset.’
‘It is more upsetting to me to think that she is forgotten. My friends here, you see, they never want me to talk about those times.’
He allowed her to lead him into his little house and she sat him down, covering his knees with a blanket as he was still shivering. In the kitchen, she noticed for the first time the absence of a woman’s touch. No embroidered curtain panels at the windows or colourful oven gloves; no pictures on the walls, or bright tablecloth on the kitchen table. The place was sparse and Alba wondered how long ago it was that Massimo had lived there.
She rinsed the glasses and coffee cups quickly, leaving them to drain and then, after padlocking the front door, she helped him into the front seat of the car. As she drove back along the dirt track, she made sure to avoid the holes, feeling the need to make the ride as comfortable as possible for Massimo, who was still silent, staring straight ahead through the windscreen, lost in his own world. She would have liked to ask him more about the war, and to tell him about finding the silver goblets at the partisans’ house, but now was not the time.
* * *
Walking back to where she’d parked the car, after dropping Massimo back at the care centre, she stopped in front of the town’s war monument, a sculpture of a young soldier leaning back in agony as he gazed over the mountains in the distance. Alba had passed by the statue so often and never registered how poignant it was. She stopped to read the inscription, dedicated to the fallen of all wars: ‘Make me a tomb where you want,’ she read, ‘but not in a land where man is a slave.’
She sat down on a bench nearby, deep in thought about Massimo’s story. Except it wasn’t a story. She considered how today the young think the war has nothing to do with them; that it’s something from the past, like the invention of the steam engine or scenes that belong in an old film or a novel. But it was such a defining moment for so many ordinary young people in the 1940s; it changed their lives radically, sending them overseas from remote villages dotted about the country. Wherever you set foot in the world now, there were always reminders within touching distance of wars, like this sculpture of a young man, or a shrine on a mountain path in memory of a partisan – someone who had been a lover, son or husband.
She drove down the hill to the stable, her head full of the Second World War, wondering what had become of Massimo’s wife, of Florian and the partisans, and if Massimo would find the energy to tell her the rest of his story.
* * *
Over a supper of porcini risotto that evening, Alba recounted details of Massimo’s war. Francesco said, ‘I read there were over 155,000 Italian prisoners of war detained in England. That’s about half the population of Florence.’
‘Just imagine all the stories we’ll never hear now that their generation is disappearing,’ Alba said, helping herself to salad. ‘There are so many questions I want to ask him. I wondered if he might know something about the partisans’ house up in Seccaroni, and the silver.’
‘But if he was a prisoner of war in England, surely he’ll not have known much of what went on here,’ Anna said.
‘But people talk after the event,’ Francesco said. ‘Somebody may have filled him in when he returned. It’s worth asking.’
‘If his story is too private, Alba, he might not want to tell you everything,’ Anna said, clearing the plates away and setting a bowl of fruit on the table. ‘Tread carefully!’
‘Of course I will. His carer suggested I visit him next week, to give him time to settle. But I think I’ll go and call Alfi now. He’ll be fascinated by Massimo’s story, and I want to fill him in on what I’ve found out.’ She got up to kiss her parents. ‘Night-night. Thanks for everything, you two.’
‘She’s looking brighter, don’t you think?’ Anna said after Alba had left the kitchen.
‘Thank heavens for this ruins project,’ Francesco replied. ‘And for Alfi – and Massimo.’
‘Sì?’ Beatrice’s voice answered.
‘It’s me again, Beatrice. Alba. Is Alfi… Alfiero there?’ She thought it strange that Beatrice answered the phone and not Alfi.
‘He’s in hospital,’ came the answer. ‘He’s had an accident.’
‘Oh no! What happened?’
‘He fell down the stairs. He has hurt his leg. I must go now. I’m fetching him from hospital.’
‘Give him my—’
The phone went dead and Alba ran down the stairs to tell her parents.
‘What’s up?’ Anna asked.
‘Alfi is in hospital with a leg injury. I’ll go and see him tomorrow, poor chap. His girlfriend sounded stressed.’
‘As she would be. I wonder how it happened,’ Anna said.
‘I have no idea. Apparently he fell down the stairs. I’ll find out more tomorrow. I hope it’s not the same leg he broke before. Remember the motorbike accident in our last year of school?’
‘Oh yes. Poor thing,’ Anna said, ‘he was in plaster for ages.’
* * *
Alba couldn’t visit the hospital today, so she decided to pay another visit to Seccaroni. There was something about the place. Her parents decided to accompany her as Francesco wanted to hunt for funghi. After the rain of recent days, the air was perfumed, the grass patterned with a mass of purple, yellow and pink flowers. Summer had arrived like a bride. There was field scabious, sainfoin, which was used in the past as a cattle crop, as well as orchids and helleborines. Ruts of freshly churned soil showed where wild boar had recently dug up roots. Bright yellow blossom hung from laburnum trees. The name in Italian, maggiociondolo, trinkets of May, was very appropriate, Alba thought. The blossom resembled dangling bracelet charms.
‘I’d forgotten how beautiful it is up here,’ Alba said to her parents as she gazed up at the Mountain of the Moon. ‘It’s like being on top of the world.’
‘Do you miss London, Alba?’ Anna asked. ‘It’s so quiet here in comparison.’
‘No, I don’t. It feels like another life,’ Alba said, sitting down on a rock to enjoy the view.
‘What about the gallery? Your work?’ her father asked.
‘I’d grown tired of that, too, really. It was a means to an end.’
‘To stay with James?’ Anna said.
‘Yes.’ Alba didn’t want to talk about him. She wasn’t sure how she would react if she started to think about him again. It was better to concentrate on other stuff.
‘But I’m loving exploring the ruins,’ she continued. ‘When I lived here before, I took it all for granted. But they’re a kind of gateway to the past. Look what it’s thrown up already.’
‘Yep, I get that,’ her father said. ‘Just to think of partisans up here, a war going on, youngsters of your age engaged in a cause. It’s hard to conceive of.’
‘I think about the young German soldiers, too,’ Alba said. ‘I expect many of them had never been abroad before. To end up in a place as beautiful as this and not be able to enjoy it. To come here to kill…’ She shuddered. ‘It’s impossible to imagine.’
‘Right! Enough about the past,’ Anna said, producing a flask from her rucksack. ‘Who’s for coffee and flapjack?’
‘Yay, you’re a star,’ Alba said. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Once they’d enjoyed their break, she was content to let them go off and do their own thing.
She watched them start the steep ascent to the spot where Francesco had been successful with mushroom hunts in the past, and then wandered into the ruin. For a while she sat on the box that she and Davide had found at Christmas. It wouldn’t take any weight at all for much longer. Like the fabric of this old house, it was crumbling. A lizard scuttled across the remains of a worm-eaten ledge, scattering flakes of plaster. It had a scorpion in its mouth and Alba was amazed it could do that without being s
tung.
There was nothing much left inside the house to show this was once a place where people had lived. Soon even the bare bones would be swallowed by nature. Finding her sketch pad and coloured chalks, she decided to try and capture some life for this place, some memory. Closing her eyes, she let her mind wander to somewhere in the past. Slowly, the sounds and senses of evening came to her: a fire crackling in the hearth, food stirred in a cauldron resting on a trivet, a metal ladle scraping against the iron pot. Somebody was singing a bawdy song and she heard the laughter of young men, then an older voice urging them to hush. Their voices stilled and then there were murmurs, but she couldn’t catch what they were saying. In the firelight, their features were soft and beautiful. She thought she saw a young girl among them, but more likely it was a fresh-faced youth; a couple of the group looked no older than children. An older man, his face dark with stubble, had a fresh scar across his right cheek. It was he who was talking, his half a dozen listeners intent on his words. She thought she caught a likeness to the young man she’d drawn in her earlier sketch, the one she was convinced was called Basilio or Quinto, but the scene was fading from her imagination fast. She opened her eyes and for the next half an hour she concentrated on the images her chalks conjured, choosing bright colours, filling the page with movement, trying to bring warmth to the scene.
On several evenings, in the quiet of her room, she’d googled about war ghosts. There were lots of stories of sightings: phantom Spitfires that haunted the skies above British airfields; ghosts of soldiers hovering in the trenches of Normandy, appearing only to children. The persistent comments about these paranormal happenings were of restless spirits with unsettled business. She watched a film clip made by a group of death seekers, as they called themselves, playing siren sounds in an old pillbox in Cornwall, hoping to conjure up ghosts they felt were somewhere present. Part of her was sceptical about these paranormal investigators, and yet she had pangs of disquiet. Could she too have come upon a tormented spirit in these ruins?