by Louisa Young
*
The next morning Tom walked the same route with Riley, down the field to the lake, early sun hot on their shoulders, chicory nipping their ankles. It was his first opportunity to ask Riley if he’d read the manifesto.
‘The which?’ Riley asked. He was absent-minded.
‘What we were talking about last night,’ Tom said. ‘The Fascist declaration that Jews aren’t Italian and there’s to be no inter-racial breeding.’
‘Fascist,’ Riley said, and his tone, gentle but precise, stopped Tom in his tracks, and his words in his mouth.
For a moment he was silent, then, ‘I should have told you before,’ Tom said.
‘Yes,’ said Riley.
Tom bowed his head to the punishment.
After a while Riley said, ‘All these years, and not one of you has mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Tom stopped. And started again. And stopped.
‘I was publishing books on the evils of totalitarianism, Tom,’ he said. ‘A biography of Mussolini and the roots of Italian Fascism. About what a danger it is to Europe.’
‘Because,’ Tom said. ‘Because. Ah, because they always were, and I didn’t quite realise, because I was so young. And Fascism really wasn’t the same here as it is in England. And because it has always been presented to me, here, as something normal and good – it was just white socks and gymnastics and railways. Because I didn’t want to cause trouble, because Nadine was – very fond of him, and Nenna was like a sister, for Kitty and for me, and Vittorio and Stefano were little brothers. Because it was entwined with everything else Italian, which we all love.’
Riley said, ‘Reasons? Or excuses?’
‘Reasons, I think,’ Tom said. And pushed on: ‘Why didn’t you challenge him more, last night? You started but then – why didn’t you talk about the violence? About dictatorship? Mussolini admitted murdering Matteotti years ago, and nobody ever did anything about it; they outrage the League of Nations daily, Abyssinia, they’re allied with Herr Hitler, and the Blackshirts just beat people up who disagree with them. Why didn’t you talk about the ludicrous empire-building? I don’t understand why you let him off. He can patronise me, he still sees me as a boy, but he would have to take it from you—’
‘What, now, am I meant to do something about it?’
‘You’re angry,’ said Tom.
‘Yes,’ said Riley.
Tom bit his lip.
A lark was rising and falling over the corner of the meadow, pouring out its miraculous song, near where the chestnut horses still stood, ankle-deep at the edge of water as smooth as slate. Poplar leaves shivered, and the velvet folds of the hills beyond still held the deep shade of the night.
‘It’s too beautiful for all this, isn’t it?’ murmured Riley. ‘Different types of Jews, and different types of Fascists. Divide, divide, divide. Is it all right to be anti-Semitic against some kinds of Jews? Are some kinds of Fascism all right?’
‘No! But – I did think Fascism was good for Italy. For unity – for strength—’
‘What’s the point of strength if you’re not free?’ Riley said.
Tom stared.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I only properly realised a couple of years ago. It’s why I didn’t come back, these last years.’
Silence.
‘I didn’t want to upset the girls,’ Tom said. ‘Or you. I hoped it would go away. I would have told you if I’d known you were coming.’
‘Well,’ said Riley.
They kicked on in silence through the clover and grass, mentuccia and chamomile, livid green and wet from the irrigation channels after the early morning opening. Tom wanted to lie down and stare at them, as he had when he was young: at the tiny bright green clover leaves and spears of grass, and miniature flowers baffing about in the clean cold water rushing over them. He reached out and pulled a white lacey umbel from a patch of Queen Anne’s Lace. Drop of dark blood in the middle where the queen pricked her finger with a needle. And this pretty flower looks just like hemlock, and gives Kitty a rash.
After a while Riley said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t back you up. But all those reasons you gave are also my reasons.’ He stumbled a little on the Rs, which required a slight forward movement of the jaw which would always be awkward for him.
Tom turned his face away from Riley’s vulnerability. He expected so much from him. What he, Tom, had fretted over for three years, he was asking Riley to deal with overnight. On top of what Riley had been dealing with every day for the past twenty-one years, and dealing with so well that it became invisible to those who loved him best and should have helped him most.
If war is coming, Tom thought, it will be mine. Not Riley’s.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ he asked.
Riley said: ‘To us here? Or … on the larger scale?’
‘Both?’ said Tom. Way behind them he could hear the voices of Kitty, Marinella and the boys, who were dragging Aldo’s canoe.
‘I don’t know,’ said Riley. ‘There are so many ways in which things can go wrong. But we have to stick with what’s right. As best we can.’
‘But – can you stay here, knowing he’s a Fascist?’
‘I think we can be idealists without being prigs,’ Riley said. ‘He’s a man, not a regime.’
‘But …’ said Tom.
‘Did you want me to save you from it?’ Riley said. ‘I’d like to. But you all love him, don’t you?’
Tom laughed. ‘Yes.’ Then, ‘Should I have kept quiet?’
‘No,’ Riley said.
‘Are you going to talk to Nadine about it?’
Riley walked on. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She’s not political, you know—’
‘There’s no such thing as not political,’ said Tom, hotly, and Riley smiled.
‘Well I agree with you,’ he said. ‘But Nadine doesn’t, and has a right not to. That’s what differentiates us from the Fascists.’
‘You know that’s not good enough,’ Tom said.
‘Yes,’ said Riley. Then, ‘You know, all I can think of is losing my temper, and I don’t think that will help. There’s a lot going on here. He paused to swallow. You need to think about what you want to happen.’
They reached the little strip of black sand, bright against the green meadow edge, and dropped their towels.
‘They’ll need encouraging to come to London,’ Riley said. ‘Your job, I think.’
Tom shot a look at him, then ran out, with massive splashing, tiny fish scattering, and flung himself into the water, a long low dive heading for the gap in the bright green reeds.
When he surfaced, rolled over and glanced back, Riley was up the meadow helping with the canoe. It was Nenna standing on the sand, staring at him.
Tom shook the water from his head, and swam slowly back in.
*
‘About yesterday,’ she said, as he brought himself awkwardly upright in the shallow water.
She wanted him to apologise, that was all. Apologise, she thought, and say it was all nonsense.
‘Which bit?’ he said, shortly, not looking at her, bending down for his towel. She watched him, the pearly white skin over the long slender muscles of his arms and back, droplets of lakewater running as he moved. His body, for a moment, disarmed her.
She passed him his shirt, and waited while he put it on, and buttoned it up. His hair was standing on end. They started to walk up the field.
‘Better?’ he said, and there was something in his bright blue eyes which made her blink and clench her teeth for a second before she said, ‘Are you anti-Fascist?’
‘Yes,’ he said, rather nonchalantly.
She couldn’t believe it. What madness! Is that how England is? You just say what you like with no thought for the consequences?
Beyond him, Riley went by with the canoe held over his head, laughing with Kitty and the others. Nenna could hear their feet splashing in the watery meadow. ‘Then we are not friends,’ she said, simply, and w
ith sadness.
He stopped. ‘What?’ he said, and she shook her head at his disbelief.
‘Why are you shocked?’ she said. ‘You are against our whole lives. Don’t speak of it again. I don’t wish you harm, so I tell you – don’t speak of it again for your own sake. And don’t come here again.’ She turned to walk on; he stopped her with a hand on her arm, and the feeling of it confused her.
‘Nenna!’ he said.
‘You are anti-Fascist. We are Fascist. So you are anti us. We are not anti you. You have put yourself there.’
‘Nenna, I am not anti-you! I could never be anti-you! I’m anti-Mussolini! And Mussolini is anti-Jew! Which means, and this really isn’t very complicated, that HE is anti-you.’
‘Shh!’ she hissed: an urgent short hiss.
‘Nenna!’ he said. ‘Why are you shushing me, in the middle of the beautiful countryside, far from anyone or anything? It’s ridiculous.’
‘You cannot talk like that to me,’ she said. ‘And you must not. People don’t like it. You will get in trouble and you will get us in trouble.’
At this, Tom laughed. ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s exactly it. The Blackshirts will come and beat me up? That’s exactly why I am anti-Fascist, Nenna! ANTI-FASCIST! ANTI-FASCIST!’ He shouted it out, in English and in Italian.
She was staring at him, her face tight. He’s lost his mind.
‘And you call yourself political,’ she said. ‘Is that your politics?’
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘The right to shout what I think in a field. That’s exactly it. Exactly.’
‘Tommaso,’ she said. ‘We are not friends.’
‘But—’ he said, ‘Or is there no room for but?’
‘Tommaso, we live in reality.’
‘And do you know about the reality?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what goes on? Which version of reality are you living in, Nenna?’
She flashed her eyes at him, and said: ‘Do not bring harm on us.’
‘It’s not me,’ he said. ‘Really, it’s not me. Did you see the manifesto of the racist scientists?’ ‘Did you read what they’re saying?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, but she knew what she had heard the night before. She wanted him to shut up.
‘Well you should,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said again.
‘Well, you should—’ But she was striding off. Little clouds of grasshoppers sprang away under her steps. She didn’t want to hurt them but she just needed not to hear.
‘Nenna!’ he was calling. ‘What do your friends think? Have you talked to them?’
But you went to him for clarity.
‘Nenna!’
No, I want him to shut up.
She didn’t stop marching, up the field, up the white road past the house, past the cow shed and the farm, past the cantina and the peach orchard and the orto, until she was far up into the woods, in the dim shade and the dead leaves and the muffled quiet, heading uphill, trudging. When she stopped she lay down, helpless, and wept her confusion until she ached and threw up.
*
‘It’s like with the sandwiches and pullovers,’ Kitty said to Tom, later. Nenna had gone somewhere with Aldo and the boys, and they were playing scopa on the terrace table. ‘You have to call them tramezzini and – oh, I’ve forgotten it. Apparently Benny Goodman is Beniamino Buonuomo, too. Everything has to be Italian. Except for Jews. Apparently. And you’re not allowed to call people lei to be polite, because it’s soppy girly to use a feminine form to a chap, and also too old-fashioned when everything has to be NEW.
‘Nenna’s not talking to me,’ he said, picking up the best card – the sette bello, and – Kitty saw – not even noticing.
‘I thought that might happen,’ she said. ‘She asked if I was anti-Fascist too.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I wasn’t political, and she hugged me.’
‘But you are anti-Fascist, aren’t you?’ he said, suddenly worried.
‘Of course I am!’ Kitty said with a smile. ‘But I’m also anti-family arguments, and anti-arguing with the people you’re staying with when it would only upset Nadine. I dare say it’s hypocritical but let’s be practical.’
‘That’s not enough,’ he said.
‘Well obviously not, but people are what they are, you know. You can’t go changing them. Eccoci qua—’ Here we are. But here we aren’t— He wasn’t even listening. Had he ever listened to her? She stared right at him as an experiment; he didn’t notice, didn’t raise his eyes. Maddening boy, she thought, and reminded herself: don’t be maddened by him. Don’t want anything from him. Tom does not give you what you want.
But he’s my brother – he’s my real family …
When she looked at Tom, she saw how her parents worked together: Julia’s big eyes, exactly the same as in the photographs. Peter’s elegance and languor, but young, and healthy. Something in her still wanted to cry when she looked at Tom. He looked like what everything going right between Peter and Julia would have looked like. But he still never looked happy.
‘Listen,’ he said, dealing the cards. ‘I’m not coming back to London with the rest of you. My life has to be here for a while. I’ve got to turn her round—’
‘Italy?’ Kitty asked, mildly acerbic. ‘Or just Nenna?’
And then he looked at her. ‘I wish I could save both,’ he said, with humility and self-importance combined, which infuriated her.
‘So can I have your motorbike?’ she said, gaily. Save Italy! Marvellous. God!
‘No,’ he said.
*
She thought about it all later.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Italy. Italy was glorious of course; blah blah we know all about that, and Rome, good Lord. She and Nadine had taken a day trip in on the train: the flower stalls everywhere and all those handsome men in white suits, and the lovely horse-drawn carriages, and the compliments, heavens, the compliments – Well, she knew she’d emerged, as it were, gone was the dumpy duckling, and here was some kind of swan, but to walk down the street and have these good-looking cheerful men just offering you the gift of their admiration, in that somehow innocent, old-fashioned manner, well it was charming. You know they weren’t going to do anything, or be unpleasant. Except sometimes the older men, in cafés. They had sat at a place in Piazza Navona which turned out to be full of horrid old roués in bow ties trying to pay for one’s drinks. Johnny Carmichael had very gallantly rescued them there, swooping down just as some particularly ghastly old prince had put his hand on Kitty’s knee even though Nadine was there! And afterwards Nadine said he had his other hand on her knee!
But no, she was seeing, this summer, how things had changed for her in Italy. Tom had claimed it. He’d claimed the country when he had claimed Nenna as ‘his girl’ three years ago, and now Italy and Nenna like most things – Italy, and Nenna, were all his, and not interested in Kitty. And she couldn’t make them so. She didn’t want to. She was proud. Her confidence was still not up to actually claiming things, or people, for herself. Plus the Fascists were just unbearable now, everywhere you look, throwing their weight around. No, Italy was absurd, and Tom was obsessed. She would look elsewhere.
She shivered a little though at the thought of returning to London. What on earth does one do?
I shall develop a passion, she thought. I shall … focus my desires. And I’ll have a love affair. It would be shameful not to have a love affair. I’ll get a job in a place full of fascinating men; I’ll do something fascinating there, I’ll live in a flat with girlfriends, and …
But she wasn’t trained to do anything. No matter. I’ve got all my certificates, I’ll just – I’ll—
I’ll get confident, she thought. That’s what I’ll do. It’s just a decision, isn’t it? I’ll flick that switch. I’m not stupid. I’m not ugly. I’ll buy that book about how to win friends and influence people. Vera and Jennifer aren’t ro
und my neck any more – I’m going to go back and find something important and give myself to it.
And at the back of her mind ran this thought: and if there is war …
War is passionate and important. War is fascinating. War is full of men. Peter and Julia had their war; Riley and Nadine had theirs. Aunt Rose found her career in war. War is big. She closed her eyes for a moment, and felt half ashamed, because it was as if she longed for the war, but she didn’t. It was – If war comes, I will find my place in it, and it will form me.
*
Nenna was mending a dress later that afternoon at a table on the terrace, when she felt Tom touch her gently on the arm. ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘that night we saw the spider eating the firefly?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘How it kept on flashing, and in the dark we all thought it was so pretty, even though actually it was being eaten alive?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And if we hadn’t chosen to cast a better light on it, and look closely, we would never have known?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He put down in front of her the battered copy of the Giornale d’Italia.
‘Page three,’ he said. ‘Read it now. Please.’
She glanced at it.
‘Is that what you were talking about last night?’ she asked.
He looked puzzled, so she snapped: ‘I was there, Tom, when you men were talking after dinner. I heard you! “Doesn’t the Nazi policy on the Jews worry you?”’ She said it in English, mimicking his accent.
‘And doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘No!’ she cried, exasperated. ‘That’s the Nazi policy! Not the Fascist policy!’
He is so dim sometimes.
‘You’re not concerned for the Jews in Germany and Austria?’
‘Well of course, but what am I meant to do about them?’ she said. ‘I thought we were talking about here.’
‘Read it,’ he said, and because her father had read it and dismissed it, she picked it up, made a face at him, and read it. It was the sort of thing people – politicians, men – said when they’re not really saying anything. She read it calmly. And then, towards the end, she cried out.