by CL Skelton
‘Captain Hardacre!’ A voice, amazingly like his financial conscience had it not been for the military form of address, grabbed his attention as only the sound of one’s own name in a crowded street can do. He turned, uncertain, wondering who from his wartime past had spotted him. But there was no one he recognized on the street; no one with that cheerful fatuous grin of army pals the world over. Perhaps he had heard wrongly; perhaps they meant someone else. He stood looking about, hands still in pockets, when the shout came again, a little nearer, and accompanied by a rumbling sound of metal-rimmed wheels. ‘It ees you. I know you anywhere …’
There was still no one he could possibly know in sight, but his eyes were now obliged to seek out the source of the voice and settled, baffled, on the swarthy young face of a black-haired, dark-eyed barrow boy, pushing a cart laden with crates of sweet-smelling fruit down the crowded street. The rumbling of the wheels stopped and the young man, face beaming a happy, white-toothed grin, released the handles, lowered them hastily to the street and, mindless of the irate cab driver blocked behind him, ran towards Sam with his long, lithe arms outspread.
‘Pardon?’ was all Sam had time to say, before he was enveloped in a warm, Italian, garlicky embrace.
‘Ah, mama mia, so many years, I never think I see you again. So, how ees life? Have you wife, bambini? Look,’ he released Sam with one arm so as to point to his cart, still blocking Dean Street. ‘You see, I am in beesness, as I say I will be. No? You remember?’ He beamed happily, pounding Sam on the back with one big, surprisingly tough hand. Sam escaped backwards just enough to avoid another affectionate bear-hug, and finally managed to interject a phrase in the barrow boy’s cheerful monologue.
‘Who are you?’ he begged. The beaming grin very slowly began to fade to uncertainty.
‘Captain Hardacre?’
‘I’m most terribly sorry, old boy, but I honestly don’t …’
‘You no know me?’
‘I’m sure I should …’ Sam ventured helpfully.
‘You no know Riccardo?’ Abject disappointment crowded the immensely expressive features. Behind the young man the taxi driver was leaning all his weight on his horn, and in the distance Sam caught sight of the tall black helmet of an approaching bobby.
‘Look, old son,’ he said, encouragingly, taking the now mournful-looking Italian by the elbow. ‘What say we move this cart of yours and discuss this later, eh?’ But the young man only shrugged. He looked at his cart then at the cab driver, who was now hanging out of the open door of the big black taxi screaming cockney abuse. The young Italian lifted a fist under his forearm in an expression of ethnic disapproval, but even the obscenity was delivered with disinterested dejection. Sam, feeling horribly responsible for ruining someone’s day, even if the someone was, as he was certain now, a totally mistaken stranger, went himself to lift the handles of the barrow.
‘Aye, aye, sir?’ said the bobby.
‘We’re just moving it, sir,’ Sam said, as Riccardo whoever-he-was jumped to his aid. At the same time his mind was racing to the incongruous possibility of missing his appointment at Lloyds because of a charge of handling a fruit-barrow without a licence. But the bobby passed by with a nod as Riccardo trundled the barrow off the centre of Dean Street and round a convenient corner into a narrow cobbled alley. He straightened up after lowering the shafts to the cobbles and, brushing his hands off, extended one apologetically to Sam. ‘Your pardon, sir, I beg. I do not mean to offend,’ he said with a continental formality that reminded Sam comically of Jan Muller.
‘No, wait,’ Sam said. ‘Surely there must be some explanation …’ Because he realized there must be more to it than mistaken identity. The man knew his name.
‘No, no. It no matter, now. Once, long ago, I know you, sir. You forget. You are big man. I do not intrude.’ He stepped back as if to depart, and bowed briskly. His eyes were hurt but not angry. Nor was there any retreat in them from the familiarity with Sam’s face they had first shown.
‘You do know me,’ Sam said uncertainly.
‘Long ago, Captain Hardacre. The war. I am little boy, then. Just bambino. I bring fruit to the fence, no? You call me Ricco.’
‘Fence?’ said Sam.
‘Big wire fence,’ said Riccardo, gesturing high with his hands. ‘So big. But no good at bottom. I crawl under … we play creekit … I still play. I very good now. Go to Lords, see England. Hey, we play again and I bowl you out, maybe yes?’ He grinned again, his good-humour returning.
‘Italy,’ said Sam, thinking quickly.
‘Scusi?’
‘A prisoner-of-war camp? In Italy?’
‘So?’ said Riccardo, confused at why Sam was stating the obvious.
‘That is where you know me from?’ Sam asked again, to be sure. The young man beamed again.
‘Grazie a Dio! So you remember Ricco?’ The white grin returned and Sam was pounded once more on the back by the broad affectionate hand. He gasped for breath. No, he didn’t remember Ricco, or Riccardo, or anybody from any Italian prisoner-of-war-camp. Sam had never been a prisoner-of-war. But he knew somebody who had.
‘Terry,’ he said.
‘Terry Hardacre,’ Riccardo shouted, delighted, as if Sam had finally agreed to be the person Riccardo had known he was all along. ‘I tell you I come to London, make a good beesness, no?’
‘No, wait,’ Sam cried, grabbing the bouncing Italian firmly by both shoulders. ‘Listen. I’m not Terry Hardacre.’
Riccardo looked at him. He raised one hand and slapped it against his forehead and closed his eyes. ‘Mama mia,’ he said.
‘You don’t understand,’ Sam protested. ‘It was Terry Hardacre you knew in Italy. I’m Sam Hardacre. We’re twins. Brothers. We look exactly alike,’ he added with emphasis, looking directly at the bewildered Italian. ‘Exactly alike,’ he repeated.
‘Fratelli?’ said Riccardo.
‘Brothers,’ said Sam.
‘You, Terry Hardacre, fratelli?’
‘Twin brothers,’ Sam said again, wishing he could speak Italian and make it clearer. But it was clear enough. Riccardo gave a whoop of joy and once again leapt upon Sam with his fervent embrace, this time embellishing it with a kiss on each cheek and a delighted cry of ‘Fratello!’ as if Sam were not only Terry’s brother, but his own.
Sam took him to Mama Rini’s. It was the obvious place, all considered, and he would be able to rely on Mama herself for translations if Riccardo’s limited English broke down entirely at any point in his related history. And so, with Mama Rini leaning over his shoulder prompting the young Italian from time to time, and with cup after cup of her good espresso coffee crossing the table in the quiet of the mid-afternoon, Sam learned the story of Riccardo Cirillo, which was his full name.
Riccardo had been born, just outside Naples, into a large family, happily blessed with a multitude of aunts, uncles, cousins and lesser relatives, in May 1936, the day before Mussolini’s troops captured Addis Ababa and brought the Empire back to Rome. It must have seemed to many a propitious moment, but by the time he was five Italy was at war, and the Cirillos had more to sorrow for than many in the conflict that had engulfed Europe. Half their family was in England, three brothers and a sister of Riccardo’s own father had emigrated in the twenties and by the time of hostilities were so involved with the London restaurant business, and London life in general, as to regard themselves as English. The Government of Britain regarded them differently, and the male members of the family spent the war in internment camps. Neither that fact, nor the aggression between the two nations that the family straddled much affected either their affection for one another, or their affection for Britain. Riccardo, raised on stories of wealth and opportunity, had set London as his goal by the time he was seven, war or no war, and when a party of British prisoners, captured in North Africa, were moved to a rather lackadaisical imprisonment centre near his slum home, he regarded them at once not as the enemy, but as compatriots. Among them was Terry Hardacre, whose
delight in children, and dismay at the miseries wrought by war so apparent around him, both found an outlet in the skinny boy who wheedled his way past guards and through shabby fencing into the prison itself. No doubt it would be a lot more difficult for a grown man in British uniform to make the same crossing made by a cheeky boy, but Riccardo Cirillo made his own rules, and was soon a regular visitor. He brought fresh oranges and lemons, stolen no doubt, and whatever treats he could imagine, and was always delighted by the occasional bar of chocolate from prisoners’ packages that found its way back with him. But he did not beg. He didn’t want anything from them but communication; to practise his handful of English words and to play English games and to find an audience for his post-war, English dreams. And so, as soon as the war was over, and the restrictions on enemy aliens were at last lifted, Riccardo got on the first boat from Naples to Cannes, cadged lifts across France and wheedled his way into England and the ‘care’ of one of his now-released restaurateur uncles and his English wife.
‘So,’ he beamed, ‘I am here.’ He raised his hands, palms upwards. ‘You see the fruit-barrow, that is my beesness, it very good, make lot of money already. I am here already three months, already rich man,’ he laughed, stretching luxuriously in the cane chair of Mama Rini’s, as if reaching out for how far he could go. ‘But please tell more of Terry. He very good man, I think. Good man for God. Maybe he become a priest?’
Sam shrugged. He had not mentioned the years that he too had spent in Ampleforth Abbey. ‘I think he is a good man, too, Ricco. Perhaps, who knows, perhaps he will become a priest.’ It was a thought that had never really occurred to him and somehow it frightened him, both in its essential likelihood and the added distance it seemed to place between him and his brother. ‘I will telephone him, and tell him all about you,’ he said, and Riccardo beamed. Sam paused and then said, ‘Tell me your plans.’
‘My plans?’ Riccardo said innocently, but his eyes were lively.
‘You did not come all the way from Naples only to push a fruit-barrow.’
Riccardo grinned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I come to buy the Savoy Hotel, maybe.’ He laughed richly and finished his espresso, protesting only lightly as Mama Rini refilled it. She went off to the bar and came back with a bottle of Sambuca liqueur and three tiny glasses, which she filled. Riccardo grinned again and lifted Sam’s matches from the table and, striking one, carefully lit the surface of the liqueur, which flamed bluely. He nodded to his two companions and did the same for each of their glasses, and then he raised his, still flaming, in a toast.
‘My new friends,’ he said.
‘To your ownership of the Savoy,’ said Sam, in reply.
They all drank, Riccardo gulping the blue flames as well. He said then, seriously, ‘While I work, I learn from my uncle. I have the barrow for daytime. At night I work in the kitchens, learn the way to do things.’
‘When do you sleep?’ Sam said.
Riccardo shrugged, ‘When I am older, there will be plenty time to sleep. When I am dead, even more.’ Sam smiled and Mama Rini fussed, saying it was no good, he would be ill, he needed good cooking and a wife. Riccardo only laughed, and Sam watched him, and slowly gathered together the threads of an idea.
There was still almost an hour left until five o’clock. Sam suddenly rose, thanked Mama Rini for her hospitality, offered to pay for the espresso and had his offer refused by a big friendly push from her fat, playful hands. He thanked her once more, as did Riccardo, and then he led the young Italian back out on to Dean Street. ‘I want to show you something,’ he said.
They walked for fifteen minutes. When he found the building he was actually quite relieved. He had only glanced at it in passing once or twice. Like the Jaguar showroom it was something he’d only taken faint note of for future reference. He had not really expected to need a London ground-floor site just yet. It was a small building, the plate glass windows whitewashed over, the abandoned door firmly locked and chained. He stood beside Riccardo, peering into the interior through a gap in the fading curtains still hanging from a brass bar midway down the window. The name of a vanished café was yet painted in faded red letters across the glass. He looked at Riccardo.
‘There’s no doubt a kitchen at the back. It won’t be much. And I’ll have to see that the lease is reasonable. But the main question is, could you make a restaurant out of this?’
Riccardo looked at him and at the tatty building, the delight in his eyes showing that he was seeing it in the rosy light of his own dreams. ‘Of thees?’ he cried. ‘Thees is a palace! I could make a restaurant of a hole in a wall. From thees I make the Savoy Grill!’
Sam left Riccardo once more pushing his barrow on its interrupted journey along Dean Street. He had Sam’s address in his pocket and was singing ‘Santa Lucia’ at the top of his lungs. Very badly, Sam thought, denying the cliché of the universal musicality of Italian tenors. Sam glanced at his watch, and hurried off to the nearest underground station, knowing he’d just have time for his appointment at Lloyds. On his way he passed the Jaguar showroom he had intended to visit before his meeting with Riccardo. He slowed for an instant and glanced in. She still sat there, pristine in British racing green, an XK 120, a twin to Jane’s. He smiled at the smooth graceful swoop of bonnet, the curving wings, the fairylight glitter of wire wheels, the pale luxury of tan hide upholstery. He slowed to a stop. Whatever funds he had earmarked, even playfully, for its purchase, would go into the lease for Riccardo Cirillo. He smiled wryly.
‘Later,’ he whispered, and broke into a trot as he hurried on his way.
Chapter Fifteen
The dreamy stillness of Ampleforth Abbey, Virginia creeper-draped grey stone against a blue May sky, was rudely shattered by the throaty roar of a healthy three-and-a-half-litre engine, as the black Jaguar drophead coupé roared away, scattering gravel with irreligious disdain. At the wheel, his black habit surprisingly appropriate against the black Connolly leather interior, was Brother Erkenwald, OSB, and, in the passenger seat, his twin brother, and the Jaguar’s owner, Sam Hardacre.
‘Oh, a bit of all right,’ exulted the delighted monk, whipping through the gear change with a hand not at all rusty from lack of practice. He threw the car round one bend in the short steep driveway the schoolboys called ‘the snake’ and clipped a bit of privet hedge on the next.
‘I hope Father Abbot is somewhere else,’ Sam moaned, hanging on. Terry seemed oblivious, out on the open road, his eye on the next curve. Sam’s eye was on the speedometer, touching sixty. ‘You could at least bloody wait until we’re out of the place!’ he shouted. ‘They’ll never let you out with me again.’
But Terry was in a private paradise, slowing only briefly for the turn and then tearing off, with another sure-handed melodic climb through the gears, until they were flying eastward, towards the coast. Sam let him be. If there was one thing possibly he enjoyed even more than driving his new car himself, it was watching the joy it gave Terry. It was 8 May 1955, and they were on their way to The Rose at Kilham for the annual family gathering on the anniversary of VE Day. The custom, begun accidentally, like most customs, by a spontaneous party attended by all the family who could gather in London on that date in 1945, had genuinely stuck. Now, none of them would even consider not being together on that date. But, for the first time ever since ’45 the venue was not Hardacres.
‘Do you know,’ Terry said suddenly, slowing as they approached Malton, ‘it’s ten years. Can you imagine?’ Sam nodded.
‘I’ve been thinking the same. It seems far longer, and, in a funny way …’ he paused.
‘And not as long,’ Terry finished for him, in the habitual twinned way they had of completing each other’s thoughts. ‘So much has happened,’ he added, driving almost sedately through the village, with the rumble of the Jaguar engine like the purr of an immense and impatient cat. It took off again as they left the last straggle of town buildings behind, with seemingly little encouragement from Terry. ‘Oh this is a motor car,’ Terry
breathed delightedly. Sam nodded, childishly pleased that Terry was pleased. He liked giving things to Terry, and now that Terry was a religious brother without worldly possessions there wasn’t much one could give him, other than temporal pleasures, like good meals, and the sensation of a superb motor car. Sam held, all his life, a conviction that Terry was a better person; a conviction perhaps rooted in nothing more than the simple fact that, although they shared much, their deepest consciousness must naturally be separate, and Sam never credited Terry with any of the less worthy thoughts and desires that crossed his own mind. In truth, Terry was a very gentle soul, and subject, in their childhood, to being the victim of pranks, and the inheritor of guilts and punishments meant for his brother. As ten-year-olds they had once fought, quite viciously, with the result that Sam had obtained a cut and bleeding lip which, in its healthy bloody flow, had terrified Terry, and Sam had played on that terror. In the end, to win a promise that the source of the wound would not be revealed, Terry had handed over his total financial treasure, a shiny half-crown given him one Sunday by Uncle Harry. Sam had received the same, of course, but had spent his while Terry, entranced with its silvery round promise, had, as he often did, hoarded his own. Sam had accepted it, heartlessly, but kept to his promise of silence over the cut lip. Afterwards he’d spent it greedily, forgetting its source, and then later, regretting it, saved from his own pocket money until he could replace the sum. It took a long while and by the time he returned the half-crown, Terry could barely recall what it was for. Reluctantly, he accepted it, but Sam had found that his guilt was not so simply alleviated. He tried again. At Christmas he slipped a half-crown into Terry’s Christmas pillowcase. At Easter the following year, he managed to present him with another. At odd occasions throughout their adolescence he would find some pretence to slip a half-crown Terry’s way. He did it so subtly that Terry probably never guessed the reason why. Nor did he ever manage to clear from his mind that tiny, guilty debt. Some things could not be paid back, regardless of one’s wealth. It was a lesson he had still not fully learned.