by Louisa Young
It’s so clever isn’t it that it’s the same word, fede, for faith and for wedding ring. I wonder who thought of it. Really, Masino, I wish you could have seen it. It was as if everyone is in love with him, and with Italy. It’s so personal. I stood with my girlfriends and we all wished we were married, so that we could give our rings too.
This letter made him furious. It made him think: there is no time. I must get her away from him, from them, from It. Before it poisons her any further.
There didn’t seem to be anyone he could talk to about this. He wasn’t going back over this ground with Nadine. Riley, clearly, must never know the levels of Aldo’s Fascism. Carmichael? No. Kitty crossed his mind for a moment, as a confidante, and that made him smile. But there was nobody he could think of.
*
Peter decided that everybody was to spend Christmas at Locke Hill. He was thinking about telling them about Mabel. Preparing the ground for telling them. The double life – it is a double life, he thought, like some sordid man in the papers. How did that happen? – was tiring him. He wanted to invite her for Christmas too, but she wouldn’t come. She had to stay with her mother, and he was to go ahead and have Christmas with his children and Riley’s family. She was quite insistent. So, he was looking forward to seeing everybody and was sorry when Riley rang to say that Kitty was not well, and they would have to delay their arrival at Locke Hill by a few days. Kitty was the pleasure he was looking forward to – she was so easy to cheer up.
Tom did not get the message, and Peter thus found himself, for three days, alone with his son.
Tom arrived halfway through dinner.
‘I don’t need anything to eat,’ he said, his hair sticking up and his eyes shifting. ‘Thank you, but really. I’m jolly tired, actually, so I’m just going to go on upstairs if that’s all right.’
He’s so formal. He’s so—
Peter sat on his own at the table laid for two, and ate his mutton chop. It seemed ridiculous. Mrs Joyce looked in and Peter didn’t care to catch her eye. He picked up the bone to gnaw it, listlessly, then wiped his hands on the napkin and went into the sitting room, where he collapsed on to the sofa. God, I’m making old man noises when I get up and sit down. He picked up the telephone receiver.
‘Mabel?’ She was out, of course – no answer, she’d be working. He read for a bit, knowing she would ring him when she came in, and she did. He spoke to her then at length about how much he wished he could be a better parent to his son, who was now almost grown, and whether it was all too late, and what he could do.
Mabel was quiet. ‘You always do your best,’ she said. ‘You can’t do more.’
Peter took those sweet words up to bed with him.
*
Tom heard his father’s footsteps passing. He wondered why Peter was up so late. He’d heard the telephone ringing – after midnight – and the low rumble of voices from the room below. It reminded him of being a child, that sound of adults talking downstairs, having dinner. That must be a very old memory, he thought. You left this house when you were, what, four? He wondered if this would be his oldest memory. He wondered who was calling his father at this hour. He wondered if he wanted to know, and why he didn’t know, and acknowledged that he simply didn’t know his father.
*
The next day Peter had to go to London, leaving early, back in the evening. But Tom that night went out with a friend in the neighbourhood; a longstanding promise, he said as he left, even his strides looking more and more cheerful as he headed off down the drive. Peter sat down alone to dinner again, and wished he’d stayed in town. He could have stayed the night with her.
It was embarrassing.
He could not bear it.
No, that was not what he wished. He wished his boy would sit down to dinner with him.
*
Peter had bought a clattery wooden backgammon board in Athens before the War, with a zigzag of dark and pale inlay and four vast dice. Before dinner on the third night he whipped it out, saying: ‘Come on, it’s about time I taught you something.’
Tom jumped slightly at this.
‘It’s what fathers do, isn’t it?’ Peter said, mildly. ‘Teach their sons?’
Tom raised his eyebrows and agreed to sit across the low table in the drawing room. The fire was blazing; the sherry dry. Peter had set it all up.
He laid out the board. Tom watched dutifully as the stacks of pieces took their positions.
‘Best of three, to start with,’ Peter said. ‘Throw the dice – ah! Three and five, very good. Classic move – here – five from here, three from here – and you’ve built a block, do you see?’
He guided his son through the game: ‘You go that way round, I go this. Don’t leave yourself open or I’ll take you. You want little stacks of two or more – ah! Five and a six – the lover’s leap – do this. You see?’
Tom smiled. The lover’s leap was a neat little move.
The thwack and rattle of the dice and pieces were a soothing sound.
‘Is it luck or skill?’ Tom asked.
‘The perfect balance of two,’ Peter said.
Tom won the first two games, with Peter’s direction, then lost two, then won two more on his own.
‘Extraordinary how various it can be,’ Tom said. ‘And rather more … lively … than chess.’
Dinner interrupted them.
After the ham pie, Peter looked up at Tom and said, ‘Tell me the most important thing.’
Tom was startled, but Peter said nothing more: just looked at him, clearly. And so, much to his own surprise, Tom answered honestly – thoughtlessly almost, as if bewitched.
He said, ‘If you love a girl who has filthy politics, but only because her family and background have filthy politics, do you save her from herself or throw her over?’
Peter felt a weight shift inside him.
‘How filthy?’ he said. ‘The filthier they are, the more you have to save her.’
He saw that Tom had not expected that, and sat quiet for a moment. Perhaps he had jumped in too bumptiously.
‘Italian Fascist,’ Tom said.
Peter thought a moment.
‘The cousin,’ he said – and Tom threw back his head, and acquiesced.
‘Oh dear,’ Peter said.
‘Do you see?’ Tom said.
But Peter was so happy to be confided in that he almost could not hold in his heart at the same time sorrow for Tom’s dilemma.
‘She wishes she were married so she could give her wedding ring to Mussolini.’
Peter recalled Nenna’s long hair and bright eyes.
‘Then why do you love her at all?’ he said, and Tom acknowledged his injustice, and said, ‘Of course she is more than that.’
Of course, Peter thought. Of course she is more than that and he saw in that bright moment that his son was in the same situation as he was – he loves someone he shouldn’t. He loves where there is a problem.
But it is not the same. There is nothing wrong with being negro. The wrongness is all in how you are treated. Mabel being a coloured woman is immutable. The Fascist girl chooses to be Fascist. It’s in Mabel’s body; it’s in this girl’s mind. There’s something to think about.
‘Love is not to be sniffed at,’ he said, buying time.
‘No,’ said Tom.
Peter wanted, suddenly and very strongly, to tell Tom about Mabel. He didn’t. This is Tom’s moment to talk to me. Not mine to as it were trump him.
‘I was in love all the time at your age,’ he said. ‘Different girl every week.’
‘I do like Nenna, as well,’ Tom said. ‘And she’s like family.’
Peter wanted for Tom never ever to be hurt. That was all. There had been enough pain in this family. Admitting that dashing Italian to the inner circles would, he could see, bring more pain. Riley was putting out another bunch of pamphlets, on Abyssinia, on Mussolini’s policy in Spain – he would not be welcoming a Fascist girl into the family – but then—
‘Does Riley know they’re Fascist?’ Peter asked suddenly.
‘For God’s sake don’t tell him!’ Tom burst out. ‘Please. Please.’
Peter was taken aback by the strength of it, and the pieces fell into place.
‘Does Nadine know?’ and Tom’s expression told him the answer.
Good Lord. That is a mess already. That’s why she stopped going there. And Tom insisted on continuing – well.
‘I see your dilemma,’ he said after a moment. ‘I know you like them but my feeling is you should have nothing more to do with them. For your family’s sake and your own. If they – or she – change their politics, of course, that’s a different matter. But people have to change themselves, in my experience.’
Tom was looking at him.
Peter smiled low and gave a dry little laugh and thought – oh – I’m going to say something now – and he did. It leapt from him like something released.
‘You may remember something of how very hard a lot of very fine people tried to change me,’ he said. He looked up. ‘Do you remember any of that?’
The air around them, between them, had shifted. There was heaviness suddenly, as if ghosts, for years concealed in the long velvet curtains, had stepped quietly forward to listen more closely to their conversation. Peter felt underwater.
‘I see that you have changed,’ Tom said. It came out stilted. ‘And that it took a long time.’
‘I changed because of other people,’ Peter said. ‘You, for example. Your mother’ – he blinked – ‘Rose, and Riley – but other people did not change me, or force me to change. Despite their best efforts. And believe me their efforts were the very best.’
‘Me,’ said Tom.
‘Yes,’ said Peter ‘And I’m sorry, for all of it.’
Tom looked confused.
It’s too much for him, Peter thought.
‘Tom,’ he said. ‘If you are even asking these questions about the girl, thinking in these terms, perhaps this is a love you are thinking about sniffing at. We can talk about this again if you like, but now let’s have our rice pudding and then you can thrash me some more at backgammon.’
‘Of course,’ Tom said, still sort of paralysed. He looked up at Peter in a kind of shock, and saw him for the first time.
*
Tom read the Giornata delle Fede letter again, and thought about what Peter had said.
I’m thinking about what my father has said! Quite extraordinary.
Am I getting a father? Something of a father?
The idea thrilled him. He apologised! He said he changed, for me, because of me.
Am I to forgive him, and get to know him?
Am I forgiving him?
*
After Christmas, back at Cambridge, Tom got this letter:
Epifania, 1936
Masinuccio mio,
I will not be cast down. You may not write to me often enough but I will write to you. Things are the same here. Papa is well and bossy; Mama is well and quiet, the horrible boys are well and getting bigger, the lovely little girl is well and lovely. The Nenna is pretty well, though she misses her friend. You know Faccetta Nera is not to be sung any more? They’re worried about the slavery of love bit in the lyrics. And the quando saremo insieme a te. They want to change it to quando saremo vicino a te. Near you, instead of with you. It’s because of miscegenation. They don’t want to encourage brown babies. Why? Brown babies are so pretty. Insieme is a very personal word! Sounds like inserire/insert and inseminate/ inseminare. And inside, in English. And there’s all that being kissed by the sun and wearing the Blackshirts’ shirt … it sounds like a marvellous romantic escapade. Are you impressed with my English? I am working hard on it and reading Dickens.
(Tom, sitting in the corner of the Eagle with a pint of bitter, thought, yes. I am impressed with your English.)
I was thinking, about the night you left, when Papà thought you were kissing me. Before, I thought Papà was wrong – but now I was thinking – you did want to kiss me, didn’t you? I recognise it now.
(A worm wriggled in his guts. Why do you recognise it now? What has happened, that now you know more about kissing?)
And anyway, here comes 1936, cold and damp so far, a New Year and what will happen? La Befana – who despite our being 1) atheists and 2) Jewish always used to bring me something, has this year brought me nothing – because my mother says I am too old. Perhaps she – la Befana, not la mama – will bring me something else nice, something direct to me, suitable for a more grown-up girl.
Auguri to you, Masino, even though it is hard to speak to you when you don’t answer. I am here.
Nenna
He wrote:
Cara Nenna, noncompoopa,
I mean it. I meant it. I love you. Don’t kiss anyone else.
He didn’t post it.
Want, not want. Push me pull you.
What could he give her? Aldo is right: she’s too young. And I’m too young. And Peter is right: she’s a Fascist fool in complete thrall to her daddy who is in complete thrall to Daddy Duce and oh, God. I don’t need these people.
And anyway he was very busy.
*
Come spring, Tom saw on the newsreels the scenes of mad delight in Italy when the Italian army entered Addis Ababa – the Duce stepping out on to his balcony like some high priest being adored in a vast temple. Riley gave him copies of the new pamphlets, which he accepted with a feeling of grubbiness. He read Haile Selassie’s denunciation of the Fascists’ use of poison gas against the civilian population. He noticed, wearily, that Fascist Italian troops were fighting republican Italian Brigades at the Battle of Guadalajara, in the Spanish Civil War. He read, not long afterwards, how Carlo Rosselli, head of the Matteotti Battalion, and a Jew, had been murdered by a Fascist gang in France. He saw the Duce parading around Berlin with Hitler, the puffed-up pigeon alongside the cat that got the cream. He saw newsreel of Florence draped in swastikas along with the beautiful Florentine lily, and felt sick, physically sick; Donatello’s Perseus gazing on with eyes blind to history. We were going to go there, he thought, and be in love.
No. Push it away. She wants to give her wedding ring to Mussolini. Forget about it.
A person being deluded doesn’t mean, does it, that there is nothing good in them? That they’re not your friend any more?
Forget about it.
Forget about it?
What, really?
Then, what, write to her and tell her you’re forgetting about it?
He wrote less, and shorter.
He bit his lip, and re-read the letter about the Giornata delle Fede.
He thought, and considered, and decided one way, and then another. He wrote a long letter to Aldo and Susanna, and didn’t send that either.
When it came down to it, it was her choice, between him and Mussolini. And because he knew she would choose Mussolini, he didn’t ask.
He missed her. He felt evil, as if he had left a child in the care of a wicked old man, with pinch marks all up her arms.
Part Four
1938
Chapter Twelve
London, Summer 1938
In the spring of 1938, Betty died gently, kissed and blessed, with Mabel at her side. Mabel’s sorrow was bitter and dusty: yes of course she knew it was going to happen, but now? Now? Now she was alone, without her mother. When an old lady dies, having lived a life which had improved incredibly, then it is a passage, Lord yes, as history slips away with her deep eyes, but it is … normal. Mabel hadn’t thought very far ahead, though. Now, through her mother’s slipping away, she, Mabel, was a different generation. She held Iris very close, and thought, Perhaps God is true. Even though I don’t think God is probably true for me, please may it be true for Mama?
Rather to her own surprise, after the initial grief Mabel’s response was to grow suddenly bold. Without Betty, there was nothing, it seemed, to hold her back. Nothing to stay polite or careful for. What, not Iris? No. Iris, she fe
lt, could now only benefit from boldness. She’s eighteen years old!
This, Mabel knew, was a turning point, if she wanted one. And she decided she did. The past has glided on by; the future is a strange beast: how about tackling it directly? It was as if Betty had taken with her old ancestral notions of shame and behaviour, of keeping your head down and operating within some invisible architecture of properness and fear. Mabel felt fearless now. Now, she was the mother – the only mother. Betty had borne her burden for decades, back in the States and here in Europe, she had been a God-fearing woman, a strong hardworking woman, and she had placed herself just so in everything she had done, because she had to, to survive. Just as Pixy had in her day. Nineteenth-century women. But I am twentieth century, Mabel whispered to herself. I hold the power and the responsibility now. And I’m coming free. My girl grown and my mama gone.
It was about one thing, really. It was wrong that Peter didn’t know, and that Iris didn’t know. Times had changed, and needed to be changed a little more.