‘He did,’ said Lottie. ‘It’s in her journal.’
‘I’ve nothing to add.’
Tom said: ‘Records show the general did not come to a good end. He was shot in his own garden.’
‘Is that a threat?’ Antonio tapped his chest with a fist and breathed audibly. ‘How crude.’
‘You tipped off the general,’ insisted Lottie. ‘At a dinner.’
‘Gabriele,’ his uncle’s voice softened, ‘I hated that you were a dupe.’
Gabriele was having none of that. ‘How did you do it?’
Lottie summoned up Nina’s shade, placing herself in Nina’s position – a woman who had a baby to protect and was frightened by her situation.
Despite this, and knowing the dangers, Nina went out to complete her mission.
Wars were fought in many guises. What characterised them were their hatreds, vendettas, uncertainties and violence and, paradoxically, the way they had of drawing out what was best in people. In Nina’s case a heroism and a gift for silence.
She glanced at Tom. What did he know?
Gabriele was incandescent. ‘Nina was careful about going out after dark. She always had a car pick her up. Or a taxi.’
Antonio slumped back in the chair. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he said. ‘And tired.’
‘Giuseppe, you’re no longer my uncle. You’re no longer Beppo. After this, we will never speak again.’
Antonio dropped his hands into his lap and stared down at them.
‘How and when did you lose your moral sense? Before I met Nina?’ Gabriele glanced at Lottie. ‘I think it was when you came to Rome and were corrupted by what you saw. I didn’t understand.’
‘I did what I thought best for you, Gabriele.’ Antonio shifted in the chair. ‘You had a future to be thought of. I tipped off Rasella that Nina Lawrence was using him. Told him about the child. Obviously, he and his confrères had no scruples about what they did to neutralise her. He reported afterwards it was simple to arrange to send a message saying that the child was ill and she had to come at once.’
‘The priest that was said to have been at the scene?’ asked Lottie.
Antonio shrugged. ‘It’s a good disguise. It throws lots of dust in the eyes.’
A stillness had captured the group as the secrets struggled into the light.
Antonio added, ‘He was clever, the general. Or someone was. That’s all that was needed. To rely on maternal feeling.’
Gabriele had dropped his head into his hands. ‘My God.’
‘But I did not arrange her death.’
Lottie and Tom exchanged glances. Nina’s death – a deeply troubling and heinous act.
And yes, some men were capable of luring a new mother to her death for the sake of political gain. Everyone knew that. It was of an altogether different measure to be faced with it.
Without warning, Gabriele reached over and slapped Antonio. It sounded like a gunshot. No one moved, not even Antonio, but, hard and vicious, it must have hurt.
‘That’s for Nina,’ said Gabriele.
Gabriele’s reserve, to which Lottie was accustomed, had burnt off and he blazed with anger, a savagery even, which she trusted would not spill over into serious violence.
The doors to the archive whooshed back and a porter with a trolley creaked down the passage.
Again, Gabriele slapped his uncle. Harder this time, and even more brutal. ‘That’s for my child.’
A single lick of moisture slid down one of Antonio’s cheeks. He put up a hand and wiped it away. ‘I did not deserve that.’
‘Yes, you did,’ said new Gabriele. ‘And still do.’
‘An error of judgement,’ said Antonio, the hand on his cheek trembling from shock and strain. ‘You would not have made a priest.’
‘Tell me where the child went.’
It took an effort for Antonio to heave himself to his feet. Once upright, he surveyed the group with a mixture of malice and resignation. ‘You’ll never know.’
Gabriele went white.
Tom barred Antonio’s attempted exit. ‘You don’t know? Or won’t tell?’
‘I had no interest in what happened to a baby that should not have been born,’ said Antonio, and the refusal to make his position more palatable was almost impressive. ‘It was not my business. Then, or now.’
‘But it was mine.’ Gabriele spoke in a low, passionate voice. ‘My child.’
‘If you insist on it,’ said Antonio, and unleashed the final insult: ‘But you can never tell with some women.’
He looked at Lottie. ‘Please give my greetings to Valerio Gianni.’
Unsteady on his feet, panting and forced to frequently steady himself, he managed to make his way down the passage to the double doors. No one helped him. The doors whooshed open and he was gone.
‘May he never sleep easy again,’ said Gabriele. ‘Ever.’
He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, tracing its contours as if he could draw strength from them. ‘Sometimes she’d look at you,’ Tom and Lottie did not need to ask who, ‘and it felt as though she was looking right through you. You knew you could have no secrets and I didn’t. I was too naive. I had not learned how to hide things. But Nina had.’ He was silent. ‘But she would have told me if she was having another man’s baby.’
‘But not yours,’ said Lottie. ‘She would never tell you that.’
He looked up at Lottie. ‘That’s precisely how I know it’s mine.’ His eyes were shadowed. ‘And that’s how I know she loved me.’
The seconds clicked onwards, falling into a silence.
Finally, Lottie said, ‘I will fetch the journal for you, Gabriele.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
BLINKING IN THE BRIGHTNESS, TOM, GABRIELE AND LOTTIE emerged into the daylight.
Gabriele stabbed at the lift button. ‘I would like to say I’m sorry about that display but I’m not.’ He wheeled around. ‘I think I’ll take the stairs.’
Tom put his hand on Gabriele’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘No need for apologies.’
The lift arrived and bore Tom and Lottie upwards, an uneasy silence stretching between them. Who are you? Lottie questioned silently.
Back on the ground floor, Tom bent over to kiss Lottie goodbye but she took a step back. Tom’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Right.’
Gabriele had climbed the stairs in time to observe the interchange. ‘I hope I’m not the cause of problems.’
She shook her head and, carrying the journal, she and Gabriele went up to her office.
Throughout his career he would have been faced with similar objects on which to work, but this would be of a different order of experience and Lottie had taken care to make it easy for him. There was coffee, water and a ban on the phone ringing.
Gabriele sat down in the lime-green chair.
‘I generally spend a day examining a project,’ he said. ‘Assessing the foxing, the staining, the marks, the burns, the wear and tear.’ He rested his hands lightly on the journal. ‘This is different.’
He leafed through the pages, pausing to look at an entry or an illustration, before settling to read, an intense process which Lottie felt she should not be witnessing. At one point, he got up and paced over to the window before resuming.
Lottie occupied herself with looking through reports from various departments.
When Gabriele reached the final pages, he looked up. ‘I didn’t know the half of it,’ he said. ‘I was blind. Very.’
‘Nina took care that you didn’t. She wanted to protect you.’
‘Listen to this … “To keep whole in the face of fear is almost too much. But I must do so. Fear is a terrible destroyer of confidence and ability. It muddles one and blurs the objective. Curiously, you can feel more fear for other people than you do for yourself.”
‘Nina was brave,’ he said. ‘I hope she knew that.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I should feel easier after reading this,’ his hand rested on the journal, ‘but I don’t. Sadder. And fur
ious. With myself especially.’
‘It was Nina’s other life that brought about her murder,’ said Lottie.
‘Maybe.’ He came to a halt. ‘But I’m good friends with guilt. When I’m at a low ebb, it doesn’t take much. Lovers in the street, a garden, a biscuit served with coffee, and Nina is there. You could accuse me of being addicted to it, dependent on it, even to enjoy it, however painful. As I told you, there have been periods in my life when I haven’t thought about Nina. But when I do …’
‘I understand,’ said Lottie. She set aside the reports. ‘Gabriele, if there had been no family urging you on, would you have wanted to be a priest?’
‘I thought so at the time. I was young and I liked the idea of a cause, but, after I left, I never had any yearnings to return.’
Compare and contrast, she thought with a touch of hilarity. Gabriele’s family had worked on him in one way. Her lack of family had worked in another.
She pitied Gabriele’s wounds. Old they may be, but they had been deep and terrible. And she pitied her own.
‘I’m sorry about your uncle.’
‘We had a long relationship. Now we don’t.’
She hesitated. ‘You must look for your child.’
He placed his hand on the journal – as if to draw sustenance from it. ‘He or she will have a life. I’m worried I’ll do damage by making contact.’
Lottie leaned over the desk. ‘You haven’t been listening to me.’
Again, the wry smile. ‘I have. I have.’
‘The need to know who you are never leaves you, however good the life you have.’
He frowned.
‘My birth certificate has no father on it,’ she said. ‘Only the name of the woman who gave me away for good. It is a big space in me.’
Lottie would probably never decide if her mother had taken one look at her new-born features and experienced repulsion. Or if she could not bear to give up the good times. Or if it had been a desperate and principled acknowledgement that she could never look after a child.
‘I’ll never know my mother’s reasons, but Nina, on the other hand, was generous,’ she said. ‘Cleverer and clearer headed than my mother, and she has laid a trail for you.’
She flicked up The Annunciation on her laptop screen.
She sat down beside Gabriele and caught the now familiar scents of leather and ink, with the faintest trace of paint.
‘First The Annunciation …’
The perfect maiden, the startling blue of the cloak and the luminous landscape behind the garden.
He looked at it for a long time. ‘It’s a superb pastiche. Nina knew what she was doing.’ He paused. ‘I should call her Estelle.’
‘You knew her as Nina. And Palacrino is your place.’
He pointed to the backdrop in The Annunciation. ‘My father had been ill. He never got over my mother’s death and I asked my supervisor if I could spend the night away to see him. I didn’t go home. Nina and I took the train to Palacrino. They say the first lie is the worst and it was a bad one. But I was never a good liar and my supervisor must have guessed. I sometimes wonder if it had been policy to allow their trainee priests out on a lunging rein, the better to bring them in.’ He shrugged. ‘Antonio’s approach.’
Lottie traced the outline of the undulating city wall, corralling delicate spires and sloping roofs, and the mountain beyond.
‘Our room overlooked the mountain,’ Gabriele continued. ‘It was warm, very warm, and it was often hazy. We promised ourselves we’d climb up it. We never did.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think we left the room.’
He indicated a window in one of the white-stoned turrets.
‘I’d never had a lover. Nina had. We were nervous and made bad jokes. Nina said she worried because she might be too old for me and I said she wasn’t to worry as I had no one to compare her to.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘We were both happy and nothing else mattered. You don’t often have that feeling. A true intense experience and wishing to be nowhere else. I wish she had told me.’
‘How could she? You were going to be a priest. She gave you the freedom of not knowing. I reckon she planned to finish her work in Rome and take the child home with her. The baby had changed her.’
‘And the other clues?’
The Nativity lay on Lottie’s desk and she picked it up and turned it over. ‘Gabriele … I believe Nina laid a painting trail. She was under pressure and it was unlikely she could think of any other way at this point. It’s possible it’s in here.’
The frame, which was of excellent quality, had small metal clasps on the reverse that had rusted and sunk into the cardboard backing.
Lottie began to prise up the first. ‘Let me.’ Gabriele reached into his bag, produced a micro-spatula. ‘Never without one.’
His hand was unsteady, which made easing open the clasps awkward. He lifted off the cardboard and Lottie gave a soft exclamation.
An envelope addressed to Gabriele lay underneath. Using tweezers, Gabriele prised it away and laid it on the table.
Lottie got up and went to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to read that in private.’
Twenty minutes later, she found him with his head in hands. Sheets of paper were spread out in front of him and he pushed them over to Lottie.
Rome
15 October 1978
Gabriele,
He arrived in this world after many hours close to midnight on 23 December 1977, accompanied by a cry from me.
There is comfort in remembering and I try to remember every second.
He was placed in my arms, a wailing, nuzzling enemy of my peace. A milky angel winging into my psyche and taking possession of my body and spirit.
I loved him.
I loved him, my Christmas baby.
The days were cold and dark, the nights colder and darker. I held him for hours, willing his eyes to open and for him to look up at me. He was, is, blood of my blood and bone of my bone. And of yours.
The pillows in the refuge were narrow and stuffed with hard wool. I lay back against them and contemplated the shift in everything I knew.
Nothing had prepared me for birth. Its power. Its relentlessness. Its mastery over the body. Towards the end, I thought I had already died except I remembered that, if you are dead, there is no pain.
I told him about his father, about his mother, about the life that I planned for him. He listened and then got down to the business of his existence, which is to feed. In the letdown milk reflex, I felt life transferring from me to him and it is the most extraordinary privilege.
After I was able to sit up, I would not let them take him away. I told them that I must do everything for him while I could. They looked at me and warned, ‘Don’t get too attached.’
The weeping arrived a few days after and I cried for hours, holding him close to my heart so its beat would comfort him.
The aftermath of giving birth is like gasping for breath in a stormy sea. I am post-partum. I grieve for his father, who is you. I am ever more conscious that our lives are surrounded by a darkness, which conceals I know not what. Give birth and it creeps closer.
I will shield my son.
I had no idea I could feel like this.
He is now in the safest place I could find and cared for by the perfect people. I visit as often as I can. At first it was every month. Then, because I could not bear it, every week, however difficult it is to arrange.
In between I yearn.
What would you say, my loved Gabriele, if you knew? I suspect you might take one look at your son and, in that single pulse of recognition, you would be divided from your vocation.
I know this because it has happened to me.
I wish I could see you. I love you, Gabriele. I love you. But I know it is over.
It’s a good thing, a necessary thing, to have an episode in a life when someone else matters more than you do. In that way, we become proper human beings. While we were together, although hidden, you were more important than
anything else. I told you and you pretended otherwise but you were pleased.
Now?
To have a child is to be pitched into a new level of empathy and terror. It cannot be a brief episode. The child is for life. Is life.
Gabriele, we differ in the matters of our faith, the religious and secular, but in one way I believe absolutely in yours. The birth of a child is about hope.
It is to climb the mountain – our mountain – towards the sun. It is to understand boundless and unconditional love.
I want to thank you for everything, including our son. I do not blame you. Nor do I have any claim on you, which leaves me free to act, and I will do my best to arrange matters so you are not implicated in any way.
I don’t blame you for your choices. They are hard ones. So are mine. That is life and they must be faced.
I confess that I am afraid, which makes me a little ashamed. Not just about the practicalities but about how being afraid affects the spirit. Fear is not a good companion. It’s always ready to inflict a wound.
I wish, I wish things were different … but it had been set in stone before I met you. Long before I met you.
When I can, I will fetch him and take him away somewhere safe.
My Oscar.
Your Oscar.
‘Oscar …’ Gabriele looked up at Lottie.
He seemed completely winded.
‘It’s dated the day of her death. She must have written it after seeing you in the church.’
‘You and I know each other much better now,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know Nina any longer. Where would she have taken him?’
She thought of the acquired skill and experience necessary to interpret the silent documents in the archive, silence broken only when the files were opened and the reading room filled up with their presences, often more telling than in life.
‘You do know her,’ she said.
‘Where would she take our son?’
‘I might be wrong.’ Lottie looked down at her hands folded in her lap. ‘Will you take that risk?’
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