Devotion

by Louisa Young

  ‘I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘My eyes are open.’

  ‘I dare say,’ he said. ‘I believe you.’ And he shrugged, and moved away, leaving her there on the street.

  *

  It took Tom a while to notice that there were no letters coming from her. He read her old ones – the ones he liked, the recent ones – and he wrote to her, scraps of news when there was no time, longer romantic letters at the ends of his long and busy days.

  When he realised it had been ten days since he had received a new one from her, he was not too worried. It would be the post. He wrote to Bertolini, asking him to pop round if he didn’t mind, and see if she was OK. It was when that letter had no response, and then came back another three weeks later with ‘not known at this address’ on it, that he wrote to Susanna, and heard nothing back, and started searching his mind for other reliable people in Rome, someone he knew well, to whom it would be safe to write, someone he could trust, who was still there, who would not be put in danger by his writing to them.

  He rang Johnny. ‘Give me the name of somebody kind at the Embassy in Rome. I have to know she’s all right.’

  Johnny said: ‘Leave it with me.’

  *

  Another letter had come to the island. Official, from Sicily. Aldo opened it before supper; the pasta was boiling; Stefano was reading, Nenna was laying the table.

  ‘We write to inform you that Vittorio Elia Fiore of Rome was arrested … along with other men … a dance … a sexual aberration that offends morality and that is disastrous to public health and the improvement of the race … an evil which needs to be attacked and burned at its core.’

  Vittorio Elia Fiore of Rome had been tried, and found guilty, and he was now in internal exile with the other convicts on the island of San Domino in the Tremiti.

  Aldo read it out loud, disbelieving.

  Susanna fell to the floor, knees buckling, a puddle of woman, weeping and howling, hitting her face with her hands, pulling her hair.

  ‘A faggot?’ Aldo said, standing up. ‘My boy is a faggot? Impossible.’

  Nenna grabbed the letter from him and sat, reading it through.

  ‘Is it true?’ Aldo cried. ‘Susanna, you’re his mother – is this true?’

  She howled, shaking her head.

  ‘The little bastard,’ he said. ‘Catania! Fishing! With that little bastard Orazio – and him a squadrista! Serve them right, the perverts – the Duce—’

  And Susanna leapt from her swirl of misery on the floor, and sprang to where her husband was. She flung her head back and stared at him, and she slapped him. She clawed his face. She spat at him.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘You are the bastard, and you are the fool. YOU are the bastard.’

  Aldo put amazed hands up to his face.

  ‘Nenna,’ Susanna said, ‘go to England. Take Marinella. Find the Jewish people there, find a synagogue. Your Tom might help you but find the Jewish people. Jews have to help each other. You hear that Aldo? You remember? Jews have to help each other! It’s the law. I will go to San Domino, and your bastard father can rot in hell.’

  Nenna turned to look at him. Tears were rolling down his face, much slower, really, than this all merited.

  Susanna said: ‘Don’t you understand, Nenna? He’s lost it, everything. Gave it all up.’

  ‘So did you,’ Aldo said, very quietly.

  ‘At least I gave everything up for a man I knew,’ Susanna said. ‘For you. Women are meant to give up everything for a man. A man is not.’

  Nenna stood silent.

  ‘He gave up being Jewish, for Benito Mussolini. He gave up God. For a man. For a Golden Calf.’

  *

  For that evening, Nenna thought that the bursting of Susanna’s banks signified relief, clarification, change – possibility of improvement even. She sat upstairs with Stefano; they played scopa and pretended they did not have antennae out for the voices below, the shouting, the weeping.

  Stefano said, very quietly: ‘What has Vittorio done? What is a faggot?’

  Nenna looked at him. ‘You can ask him when he comes back,’ she said.

  ‘Will he come back?’

  There was a feeling at the back of her neck as if she was being gripped. ‘It’s not like murder,’ she said, but she couldn’t think of anything better than that.

  In the end silence fell below.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said to Stefano, and they cautiously stepped down the stairs.

  Papà will have listened to Mama, she was thinking. Things will be different now.

  But Aldo was sitting alone.

  ‘Where is Mama?’ Stefano said.

  ‘Gone out,’ Aldo said, smiling.

  ‘Gone where?’ said Nenna.

  ‘Oh, she’ll be back soon,’ said Aldo, the smile in place.

  Never in Nenna’s lifetime had Susanna gone out of the house in the evening on her own. Looking at Aldo’s face, Nenna recognised that this was collapse.

  ‘Where?’ she shouted.

  ‘Oh, just, just – she’ll be back.’

  ‘It’s night-time, Papà. What do you mean?’

  ‘She’ll be back,’ he said. It sounded almost airy.

  She’s left us. She’s left Papà.

  ‘Has she gone to find him? What did she say? What did she say!’

  Aldo sat there, beaming. Nenna felt her strings cut, then. Her mother gone, her brother imprisoned, her beloved silent and so far away, two children to be cared for, and her father—

  ‘Come,’ she said to Stefano, and together they ran out into the night. To the tram stop, to the station, running, asking, panting. No sign. It was two before they got in, and Stefano was almost in tears.

  Nenna looked in at Marinella, fast asleep, angelic. She looked in at her father, lying fully dressed on the bed like a dead man, his breath soft. His hair looked a little thinner. She touched his hand. He didn’t stir.

  *

  In the next days, waiting (though she pretended she wasn’t) for her mother to return, she raised her eyes and looked around at the wider world. Larger items than her mother were making their moves. On August 23 Russia and Germany signed their non-aggression pact. On August 26 Belgium mobilises. On August 27 Hitler demanded Danzig and the Polish Corridor. On August 28 the Netherlands mobilised. Chess pieces were on the march; ingredients for the explosion lined up.

  She went to Aldo, who was sitting in his suit at the kitchen table, his curls limp in the heat, his jacket on, his briefcase on the floor at his side. He was reading a book, and weeping. Marinella was at his feet, picking through a little bowl of dried beans. When she saw Nenna, she jumped up and hugged her.

  Nenna picked Marinella up, and with the child heavy on her hip, told him the news. He glanced at them for a second, and said ‘Hm’, with a little shrug, still holding the book. That sight: the book, the jacket, the tears, the immediate return to the page he was staring at, made her realise that her father was actually being driven insane.

  ‘Where is Mama?’ Marinella asked.

  ‘Gone to see Vittorio,’ Nenna said. ‘Don’t worry, you have me.’ She smiled at her. ‘Here. Fold these clothes.’ While Marinella folded, Nenna wrote.

  28 August, 1939

  Dear Masino,

  I haven’t heard from you for so long. Have you given up on me? I wouldn’t blame you. But as things just get worse and worse I have to ask you again: please help us.

  Tomaso, I don’t know how to write this. These words. Vittorio is in internal exile. In other words, in prison. It is an island. He was with some men. This is a special prison for men like this, to remove them from ‘decent people’. His friend is a Fascist, but what they were doing was not apparently Fascist. He is there too! So at least the law is equal about that. I have no words – none beyond these, not good enough. Mama hit Papà. War is inside and out. She has gone to Termoli, the nearest she can get to San Domino, where Vittorio is. I don’t know what she thinks she can do there. Stefano says nothing – nothi
ng. He wants to join the army but even if they want fifteen-year-olds (I don’t think they do) they do not want Jews. You may wonder about Papà. My love, he is losing his mind. He looks at maps and plans all day, and he smiles at everything, and at the same time he cries. There is no Jewish doctor to look at him. Anyway the Jews are not talking to us. So I am cooking and holding the house together, a bit. Marinella is

  She paused a while, to think what she could say about Marinella. In the end she crossed it out.

  My love, did you get the photographs? They weren’t very good. I went to the Embassy: I spoke of Carmichael and the man said he knew him and gave me 50 lire, so if he asks for it back from Carmichael or you then you will know that I need your help. But when I went back he was no longer there.

  I know you had ideas; I don’t know what has happened about them. But things are not going to get better. Soon we will lose on both sides: Italians, enemies of England; Jews, enemies of the Nazis. So then what, for us? I cannot imagine. I can only hope that the war will keep them so busy they will have no time for tormenting us. Again I ask the ridiculous question – are my letters not reaching you? I don’t understand why I do not hear from you. Please. I am sorry for all the times I didn’t listen to you. Is it that?

  Please help us now.

  My love, are you my love? I am yours.

  Nenna

  The letter was tearstained, and she didn’t like what she said, nor how she had said it, but there was no more paper.

  ‘Stefano, look after your sister,’ she said, as she left the house to post it.

  He looked at her, at the envelope.

  ‘What did Vittorio do?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Everything a Jew does is wrong now anyway.’

  ‘Who are you writing to?’

  ‘Tomaso,’ she said. ‘I’m going to England.’

  ‘What about me?’ Stefano said.

  ‘You can come too,’ she said, and pinched his cheek. She didn’t have to reach up; he was not tall.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘Ah, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s all bigger than us. Good that you can learn to see clearly now.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and set his downy chin firm. ‘It’s not that. I stole your letters. Lots of them. From England. I put them in the Bocca della Verità. I wish I hadn’t but I didn’t know how to say—’

  She slapped him, so hard, and he reeled.

  She closed her eyes and put her hands to her own face, biting her lip to stop unforgivable words coming.

  When she opened her eyes he had gone, footsteps across the piazza, nothing.

  Marinella was looking up at her.

  ‘Stefano!’ Nenna yelled, and ran out, Marinella at her heels. ‘Stefano!’ – the word echoing across the cobbles, between the buildings, yellow and grey over the river. Nothing.

  ‘Which way did he go?’ she cried, too loud, to Marinella. The little one pointed a shaky arm, and her face crumpled. Nenna picked her up, hushed her, lurched up to the road – looked to the bridge, and to the other. Nothing.

  ‘He’ll come back,’ she said to Marinella. ‘Come on!’

  She posted the letter. Then anger hit her again as they stormed down the Lungotevere and across to Santa Maria in Cosmedin to where the old stone face stared anciently, blandly out. Its size and dimness stopped her only for a moment – I didn’t kill Jesus – and she stared it in the eye before smoothing her hair and going to find a priest.

  No, he knew nothing about any letters. The signorina could call back. What name was it? Poverina. From her fidanzato?

  She could see he pitied her, thought her a dupe, and had observed her Jewish name.

  ‘I will come back,’ she said. ‘Thank you. It is important.’

  ‘They’re real letters,’ said Marinella. ‘Tom is real.’ She smiled up at the priest and he blessed her, automatically.

  *

  Standing outside the ugly church, fretting, Marinella at her side, Nenna hit the side of her head with the ball of her palm, and directed herself to the post office. She counted her coins. Her telegram read: WILL COME WITH MARINELLA EVERYONE ELSE MAD OR GONE STEFANO STOLE LETTERS SEND FOR US WHATEVER YOU SAY I LOVE YOU

  Later, when Marinella was asleep and Stefano wasn’t back, and Aldo was chuckling over a map and the house was quiet, Nenna went out again. In the ivy-leafed cotton dress she had had since she was fifteen, and despite her mother’s admonitions that she must not sit down on stone, it wore the seats of her clothes so badly, she sat on her favourite fallen column in the Forum, polished smooth by generations of backsides, and she asked the ghosts of Rome and the god of Israel what was to be done, and she wept.

  Chapter Twenty

  London, Summer–Autumn 1939

  Twice a month Nadine went to tea with Rose in her rooms behind her GP surgery. There they would talk. Not about Tom and Kitty, nor Peter, nor Riley. After an initial ten-minute exchange on everyone’s being all right, these subjects were banned. They would talk about politics, art, literature, music and about developments in medicine, and in social and health policy. Of course these topics did sometimes overlap with talk about Peter and Riley; Tom and Kitty. The two women had become far more interested in race relations, for example, since the arrival of Mabel and Iris, and of course the Woman Question was always coming back to Kitty, who had left her grandmother’s and moved in with some girls, and what on earth she was up to? And foreign affairs led to Nenna and the Roman family, and when the imminence or otherwise of war barged its way in, as it increasingly did, that of course led to Tom, and sometimes even to Riley. But today Rose had been reading an article about whether a girl should own her own tea-set, or did it give an undesirable impression of independence?

  ‘Did you see it?’ said Rose, pouring from her own teapot into her own teacups. ‘Quite droll. It made me think of Kitty in her flat.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Nadine. ‘Too self-aware. I’m glad she’s working though. It’s better for a girl to be thinking about things outside herself.’

  ‘Like we were at her age?’ said Rose, with a look, and suddenly they were in the subject, the unavoidable subject that was lurking round every corner, at the end of every innocent comment.

  ‘Ha!’ said Nadine, with a touch of bitterness. ‘God forbid.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘But when you look at the world …’

  ‘It won’t be how it was for us,’ Rose said. ‘Even if it comes to it. There won’t be trenches.’

  An image came to Nadine: looking up, from underground, after that god-awful terrifying night at Étaples, and seeing almond blossom against the pale Flanders sky.

  ‘Won’t there?” she asked. She considered, for a moment: Kitty, smart little Kitty, in the chaos of the mud and the terror of a bombed-out slit trench … It gave her a swirl of sickness inside. Why are we so powerless, over and over? ‘Do you promise?’ she said, with a bit of a smile.

  ‘Aeroplanes,’ said Rose. ‘It will be very different.’

  ‘Will,’ said Nadine.

  ‘If,’ said Rose.

  After the requisite little silence Nadine jumped up and gave a little kind of ‘aaagghh’ sound of frustration. Then, ‘Oh, Rose,’ she said. Then, ‘Do you think—’ but Rose cut her off.

  ‘I’m just fighting my own little war down here,’ she said. ‘Against measles and flu and polio and rickets and syphilis and drink and black eyes. I don’t know. There’s nothing for us to do about it, and if there is, I dare say they’ll let us know.’

  ‘Will they want us again?’ Nadine was forty-two now; a strong and capable woman. Rose was fifty; in the prime of her knowledge and capacities.

  ‘No!’ said Rose. ‘You have children and a husband, and I’m still treating the wounded from the last war.’

  ‘The last war,’ said Nadine. ‘It used to just be called the War.’

  Rose laughed at that, a little bitter laugh. ‘Nadine,’ she
said. ‘Remember your technique. Don’t worry about anything unless you’re able to do something about it, in which case do something about it, and stop worrying. How’s Tom?’

  ‘Flying,’ she said, and looked up. ‘Flying! As if he can’t wait! He’s signed up with the RAF in some way through the UAS, you know, making himself available … I won’t – can’t – listen when he talks about it – He looks more like Peter every day, only with Julia’s cheekbones and her great eyes … He might as well be carrying a gigantic banner saying “sacrifice me”. Aeroplanes, Rose! Aeroplanes and bombs and weapons up in the air! And human bodies!’

  Rose observed her, kindly, and Nadine shook her head briefly to shake off the images.

  ‘Anyway, how are you?’ Nadine asked.

  Rose turned bright red, and started to speak, but stopped herself.

  ‘Rose?’ Nadine asked.

  Rose started laughing, and then said: ‘Oh Lord,’ and then, ‘Nadine, I’m to be married, don’t laugh.’

  Nadine laughed and laughed. Rose laughed too. He was a cardiologist. She had known him for a while. A childless widower. He did not want her to give up work. His name was George Mackesson. He played the violin and liked Thackeray. She liked him very much. They would live in Bloomsbury, to be near his hospital. She would join a practice nearby, perhaps in Camden. She was very happy.

  ‘You’re very happy?’

  ‘I’m very happy.’

  Nadine too was very happy. Something like that, at a moment like this. Priceless.

  *

  Mabel and Iris were doing their best at Locke Hill.

  Mabel had been finding it hard even before Iris agreed to come down; now, seeing her daughter also subjected to the … limitations … that she herself had hoped to see off, it was worse.

  At first she had gritted her teeth and accepted that she had to give it a go. Nature, she thought. The lovely piano. The beautiful garden. Lots of room. Um, walks. And above all, Peter’s sense of home.

  Iris had come for Christmas, though she maintained her chill, which made Mabel miserable and compounded the chill she felt all around from neighbours. When the vicar called, his confusion was so total that he stayed only five minutes and couldn’t exchange a word with Mabel beyond a greeting. At least the Purefoys visited, with Kitty, occasionally, and Sir Robert, and Rose. Mabel had feared feeling like an exhibit; personally responsible for the success or failure of race relations in Britain for decades to come; if this family fails, she thought, I will have proved that negroes have no value, and whites have no heart. Or vice versa. But it was all right. They all got to know each other better, and that actually was all that was needed.