With a biro, he jotted down his route in words on a piece of paper. He needed to avoid the motorway altogether this time. Instead, he had to aim for Sasso Marconi and then Pistoia. He wondered whether the valley of his memory matched the reality. Would he remember the place where his plane had been hit? The trunk road he needed was the 64 – yes, it was definitely the same road, hugging the valley with the Reno on its left if he was driving south. There had been a town just before they had seen that column of Germans: they’d flown over the town, then spotted them a short distance after. Mazzola. He circled the place with a pencil.
He slowly made his way out of Bologna. The traffic was better, and driving less fraught, then he realised he’d arrived the day before in the middle of rush hour. So of course it was busy. What did you expect? he chided himself. Pistoia, especially, was well marked and he found the road easily. Almost as soon as he was clear of the city, the mountains rose from the flat plains, looming ahead of him. Ten miles south, he reached Sasso Marconi, and just as he cleared the town, he saw the river fork – an old landmark that he’d last seen just a few hundred feet off the ground.
He continued south, the traffic thinning further. That old feeling of dread settled over him once more and when he reached Mazzola, he nearly stopped – a coffee would waste a bit of time and delay the moment he climbed into the mountains once more – but instead he drove on through until he saw the mountains away to his left and a peak poking up beyond the first line of ridges, and felt a lump rise in his throat. ‘My God,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Monte Luna.’
No sooner had he seen it than the road ahead began to weave and bend and he knew he was roughly in the place where the German column had been. The sheer side of rock into which the road had been cut – he could recall that distinctly, while across on the far side of the river, a much larger cliff of rock, too steep for any trees to grow, rose up from the narrow river valley with distinctive familiarity. He pulled over the car into a lay-by and got out. It was now mid-morning, the summer sun high and hot in the sky, so very different from that wet day of low cloud and poor visibility. He pulled an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and swung high and fast across the sky. Really, it was incredible that he’d been hit. Travelling at well over three hundred miles an hour – it was a one in a thousand chance, maybe more. He wondered who that man had been, the soldier whose bullet had lodged in the engine of his Spitfire; whether he had survived the war – whether he was still alive. Shaking his head, he ambled back to the car.
Just a few hundred yards further on, he turned off the main road and across a bridge over the Reno. The waters were shallow, but running fiercely over a multitude of small and large rocks; here and there were narrow islands of stones. A memory, long forgotten, now returned. Night time, with a sliver of moon – it had been about this time of year – and a small band of them were crossing the river by foot. He could remember struggling over the slippery stones, the sound of their splashes jarringly loud in the still night air. But no-one had heard them, and the following day they had surrounded the small fascist barracks, held everyone at gunpoint and taken all their arms and ammunition. Giorgio had shot the commandant in the knee and they’d tied and bound all the others.
Slowly the road began to climb, wiggling upwards into the mountains. His way became steeper, the hairpin bends more frequent. He drove through a thick mountain wood, and the landscape and terrain began to look increasingly familiar, until he crested a ridge and emerged onto the sweeping plain, the rolling fields once farmed by the many mountain contadini – the high ground above the valleys from which the peaks of the area rose. His hands tightened around the steering wheel of his car. It was as though he had walked out of a sealed kingdom and then fifty years later rediscovered the portal that allowed him back in. The shape of the peaks, the roll of the open slopes, the abundance of oaks, chestnuts and poplars and thick undergrowth, was all exactly as he remembered. And it was beautiful, truly beautiful, even after being baked dry by the harsh summer sun. The woods still looked green and lush; only the fields had turned sandy gold.
Reaching a junction, he saw a village sign that said ‘Sant’Angelo’ and so he turned and drove on, slowly. Besides the church, there were only a few houses; he remembered it as being bigger. Where were all the farmhouses? Nor did he see any sign of the barns that had once housed so many of them. Perhaps they had been away from the main road through the village. And of course, he reminded himself, that had been just a track then, a rough cart track and nothing more.
Edward turned around. There were two places he wanted to see above all, and they were in the opposite direction. He reached the junction again and drove straight on until the tarmac suddenly stopped and the road became the track he remembered it had been. The land was rising slightly; Monte Torrone was on his left, Monte Luna almost directly in front of him. Where is it? Where is it? he wondered, then as he approached another dense wood ahead of him, leading up towards the summit of Monte Luna, he stopped, pulled the car off the road, and got out.
Edward breathed in deeply. The air was fresh and clean. He squatted down and picked up a handful of dust in his fingers. He smelled it, then rubbed it between his hands. A few yards further on, a pathway turned left down an open field between Monte Luna and another wood. Well, well, he thought. The path was signposted to Monte Luna, and beneath it was a mounted map of the area with Parco Storico di Monte Luna written across the top. So it had become an official walking track. He shook his head in wonder, then set off down it, trying to keep his back straight and his legs steady, and wishing he had a stick to help him.
Glancing back, he could no longer see his car. The track and the high plain were hidden. He stepped off the path and onto the field of dried grass. Yes, he thought. It was here, and he looked up, half expecting, half hoping, to see Carla and Christina walking towards him.
How much further had it been? Half a mile? Perhaps a little more. The field seemed longer than he remembered, but eventually he reached the end and another signpost directed him along a path with high banks on either side.
He continued until he met another signpost, and this time the official pathway directed him into the woods. The sudden realisation that he had found their hidden path filled him with both excitement and an overwhelming melancholy, and for a moment he paused and leant on the post, trying to steady himself and collect his thoughts. The path, once known to only a very few people in the entire world, and used by only two, was now the main track to the summit of Monte Luna. He wondered whether he had the strength to continue. ‘Come on, you old fool,’ he told himself. ‘This is why you’re here.’
Breathing in deeply, Edward looked up at the path as it rose up through the wooded slopes, then he began to climb.
He knew he was at the right place the moment he reached it: the sudden levelling off, the slab of rock retreating into the mountain and the still dank and dark overhang looming above. The two trees in front of the hut had gone – their stumps could be seen – as had the charcoal burner’s hut itself. There was no trace of it at all. Instead, there was now a long bench on which weary walkers could pause and look at the view of the Reno Valley through a clearing in the trees ahead. Well, what did you expect? he told himself.
Sitting down, he sighed once more. How many people had sat here since? Thousands, and yet this had once been such a secret place. Their place. Their refuge, where no-one had been able to reach them. Edward closed his eyes. Could he really be here again? After all these years. He felt the light pouring through gaps in the trees, flickering over his face. ‘Carla,’ he whispered.
That first assault by the Germans . . . He sat there, thinking, remembering. The day after that battle, when they’d been far to the south, the Germans had returned to Monte Luna and had pounded the mountain for much of the day with their field guns, shells whistling and screaming through the sky. The contadini had huddled in their cellars and wondered whether the end of the world was finally upon them. When the troops finally pl
ucked up the courage to climb up the slopes once more, they found the mountain deserted. No-one fired back, not even when they gingerly probed the woods.
After that the Germans gave up, pulling out of Mantalbano and disappearing to the south, while the Blue Brigade moved back north. For Edward, the return to the Monte Luna area meant one thing: seeing Carla again. ‘I need to see her,’ he told Volpe. ‘Carla and the Casalinis. I need to know they’re all right.’
‘Of course,’ said Volpe. ‘Go.’
It was just after one o’clock when he reached the bank by the hidden path. For the best part of an hour he agonised over whether she would come. Please, he prayed, please come, Carla. It had been a week since they had last been together – the longest time they’d been apart since his arrival on Monte Luna – and he yearned to see her. It was eating him up, occupying much of his thoughts, and now, in the knowledge that he might see her within an hour, knotting him even more. Over and over, he looked at his watch. Why was it that time slowed down the more one wanted it to speed up? And then if she did come, their brief time together would be gone in a trice.
When he finally saw her coming towards him, he stood up and ran to her. ‘Carla,’ he said, as he reached her and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Carla, I’ve missed you so much. Are you all right? Let me look at you.’
She was laughing and crying at the same time as he held her face in his hands and kissed her.
‘I’m all right,’ she said between kisses. ‘I’m so glad to see you, my darling Eduardo. Glad to see you safe – I’ve been worried sick. I thought being in love was supposed to bring happiness, but it just makes me miserable.’ She laughed again as they reached the hidden path. Having both looked to see no-one was around, Edward parted the branches and they stepped into their secret world once more. He held her hand tightly as they climbed the path towards the charcoal burner’s hut. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything. That you’ve been safe, that they’re all OK at the Pian del Castagna.’
‘We’re all fine – they haven’t touched us,’ she told him.
‘I was so worried when the Germans first arrived that you’d already started walking up towards the farm – that you and Christina would get caught in the crossfire.’
But they hadn’t. The Germans had started arriving in the night and had made a terrible noise – truck after truck and motorbikes had all rumbled into the village. Everyone had woken up. Carla’s father had told them all to stay where they were: all the children had gone to their parents’ bedroom and had sat huddled on the bed with their mother, while Federico Casalini had gone out to see what was going on. A German had yelled at him. Federico hadn’t understood exactly, but had got the gist: stay at home, keep out of the way. Soon after, the Germans began climbing the tracks that led up to the mountain.
‘All I could do was think of you,’ said Carla. ‘Mamma kept saying, “Don’t worry, he’ll be all right. They’ll have been warned. Don’t worry.”’
‘So they know about me?’
‘Of course – you don’t mind, do you?’
‘No – no, I want them to, I just thought that maybe they wouldn’t –’
‘That they wouldn’t approve?’ She laughed. ‘Eduardo, they want me to be happy. And, you know, there’s a large part of everyone around here that wants to better themselves. Their daughter’s dating a squadron leader in the RAF – an officer! Believe me, Mamma and Papa are delighted.’
Edward grinned. ‘I’m not very rich, you know.’
She clasped his arm. ‘I don’t care. I just want you to be safe.’
In Montalbano they’d heard the battle. Everyone in the village had stood in the square and listened in silence as they heard the shots chatter away, but then they had quietly gone back to their homes when the Germans had come back down again. There had been a renewed sense of alarm when the guns arrived and when, the next day, they had bombarded the mountains. Carla and her family had then turned their fears to those trapped at Pian del Castagna.
‘They’ll be all right,’ Carla’s father had reassured them. ‘Orfeo’s no fool. He’ll make sure they hide up somewhere.’
‘And that’s what they did,’ said Carla. ‘Orfeo took them all into the woods below the farm, even Grandpapa. But as it happened, not a single shell landed anywhere near. The troops searched the place and took a couple of chickens, but otherwise . . . well, they’re all fine. Grandpapa is still cursing all Germans and waving his stick around. We were glad to see them, though. Glad to see them safe and sound.’ She turned to him. ‘I’m even more glad to see you alive and well. Tell me, Eduardo, tell me what happened.’
He did so, briefly, but sparing her the details: the blood, the dying Englishman, Parky; the scavenging after the battle.
‘Did you –?’
‘Did I shoot anyone? No, no I didn’t. I’ve discovered I’m a hopeless shot, I’m glad to say. I’m all right when I’ve got an aeroplane, but with a rifle – well, I’m hopeless.’
They reached the ledge of rock by the hut and Edward was conscious that they had suddenly fallen silent and that Carla was leading him towards the door. It creaked as she pushed it gently open. It was dark inside, but shafts of light shone through a number of gaps in the roof and above the door; dust particles swirled idly. On the floor were several woollen blankets, laid on top of one another.
‘I brought them up here,’ she said. Half her face was caught in light, and it ran down her neck and across her chest. Her chest was rising and falling, her mouth slightly apart; Edward could feel his own heart beating faster in his chest, but this time not because of any fear.
‘Eduardo,’ she said, drawing close to him so that he could feel her breasts press against his chest, ‘I love you so much. More than I ever knew was possible, and I –’ She left the sentence unfinished, instead lifting her head slowly towards his, until her lips were brushing his and he felt her tongue in his mouth, and her hands around his neck and running through his hair. He kissed her back, urgently, and then he felt her take his hands in hers and pull him down. Together they dropped onto their knees. Her fingers pulled the braces off his shoulders then began undoing the buttons on his shirt, pulling the tails from out of his trousers. When his shirt was free she pushed it gently off his arms, while kissing him still, then tugged at his vest, so that for first time her hands were gliding across the smooth bare skin of his chest and back. Lifting his arms, she pulled the vest over his head and dropped it on the floor.
There were buttons on her dress, too, and as he kissed her neck and felt her hands caress his back he slowly began to undo each one. Fumbling fingers made him clumsy, but gradually the cotton parted and he kissed her chest and shoulders as he eased her arms out of the dress and let it drop to her waist. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she breathed.
‘Nor have I,’ he said, and for a moment paused, and they looked at each other and laughed – a giddy, happy laugh. An old and worn brassiere covered her breasts, and she leant behind her and undid the clip, then slipped it down her arms, so that her entire top half was naked. She shifted so that a beam of light fell across her and Edward gasped. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, staring at her – her bewitching face, her hair loose around her shoulders, the pale skin of her body and the round, firm breasts. They kissed again, Edward moving from her mouth to her chin, her chin to her neck, and her neck to her breasts. Her skin felt young and smooth, unblemished save for one small birthmark above her left breast. Her breathing quickened once more and she gasped and then broke away and lay down on the blanket, drawing her legs to her chest as she untied her boot laces and kicked them off. Edward did the same, frantically, not wanting to waste a moment of time. They laughed as their boots banged against the floor of the hut, then Carla was pushing off the rest of her dress and underwear as Edward did the same with his trousers. For a moment he felt overcome with embarrassment as he knelt there over her, naked in front of a woman for the first time in his life. But she grabbed his hand and pulled him to
wards him, entwining her legs with his so that he could feel the rough, darker hair of her crotch against his thigh. His joy was so intense he wondered how long he would be able control himself. She had wrapped herself around him, so that he felt as though they were almost one. ‘Now, darling, please now,’ she said, and she took him and guided him into her. Her rough nails dug into his back and she gasped, so that he briefly stopped, worried that he was hurting her.
‘No, my love, don’t stop,’ she whispered, and so he continued, an uncontrollable yet ecstatic sensation coursing down his body. Her back arched and then he could control himself no more and he felt himself spasm and explode inside her.
For a few minutes they lay there, clutching one another and not saying anything, until Carla pushed him over and lay beside him, one leg over his and her head resting on his chest. ‘I’m so glad it was you,’ he said at length. ‘Now I can die happy.’
She lifted herself up and looked at him. ‘Don’t say that.’
A Pair of Silver Wings Page 37