Days and nights, weeks and months merged. Mamma had a letter from Detroit and some money. Mamma was always hungry, always worried. Another family joined them and there was as little room as ever. Mrs Amato had four children and a baby. Her husband was in prison. She and Mrs Cusimano screamed at each other. Mamma tried to keep the peace.
Then the two younger Cusimano boys got into trouble and were put in the Catholic Protectory. Soon after the eldest was sent to Elmira Reformatory. Maria didn’t miss any of them. Their mother wailed and shouted. Mamma waited to hear more from Rocco and Gaetano but, apart from the money they’d sent for Papa, they never wrote.
Meantime she knew everything. As at home she’d known about animals, she knew everything, and knew it was nothing. She saw Gaspare Cusimano and the older Amato girl in the lavatory – the catch on the door not properly fastened. Gaspare waved his fist at her and laughed.
Lean time, bad times. She and Mamma huddled together in a makeshift bed. Cold and hungry. Hot and hungry.
One day a softly-spoken lady dressed in white came round the tenements. She brought them a coloured picture of Italy. A bridge over still water. ‘That’s Venice,’ she told them. She said the picture was theirs to keep. She read out the wording underneath: ‘A cough may lead to consumption.’ There was an address to go to for advice. Mamma fastened the picture on the wall, covering over the crushed bedbugs.
It must have been the spring of 1913 when another lady called. She was very elegant, much smarter than the lady in white. She was what they called a ‘do-gooder’ and she had with her a list of posts in the homes of well-off Italian families. There was a live-in kitchen help in Brooklyn Heights. Mamma said she couldn’t go because of Maria but the lady thought this might be all right. Mrs Cusimano, raising her fist in the air, said that she’d leave all her family willingly, and all those dirty Amato brats – to say nothing of Mrs Amato.
She and Mamma had gone to the Ricciardi’s house. She had loved their home from the start, though its grandeur had frightened her. She remembered Don Cataldo’s house in Monteleone. It also had frightened her. (Don Cataldo, the Lion she had once thought Golden. Forget now about Minicu. Never, never speak to anyone of what I heard.) There were luscious thick carpets, heavy velvet curtains, paintings, ornate furniture. She loved the scent in the house of wax polish, lemon oil, the exciting smells of meat cooking in rich sauces. There was always enough to eat in the kitchen. She began to forget the pains of hunger. The worry of hunger.
She was to keep out of the way, which had not seemed too difficult. She met Mr and Mrs Ricciardi, who were very nice to her and said they wanted to give as many chances as possible to immigrant families in distress. She was washed and scrubbed and deloused and given clothes and sent to school.
Then, a year later, came the day when Mamma saved Ettore’s life. Ettore, the new Ricciardi baby, who had cried, it seemed, almost every minute from birth. Who ailed and scarcely ate. Who might not live. Maria and Mamma, dressed in their best, coming back from Sunday Mass with the baby’s nurse. Nurse Maranzano, tearful from lack of sleep and apprehension: ‘And now Mrs Ricciardi cries too, all day and half the night.’
Mamma asked to see Ettore. She and Maria would visit the nursery and say an Ave Maria. Skinny, wailing child. Mamma putting her shawl aside. ‘OK, I pick him up?’
It was the Virgin Mary or the Lamb of God made the miracle, but miracle it was. Ettore hushed. And then half an hour later, still in Mamma’s arms, taking a bottle. Sucking greedily, contentedly.
From that day on, no one else would do. For Ettore had not changed. The miracle would work only with Mamma.
Mrs Ricciardi, with tears in her eyes, clasped Mamma’s hands, clasped Mamma to her.
And from then on, everything was different. Their whole life. Mamma was to have main charge of Ettore. Mrs Ricciardi’s gratitude, spilling over, became love for Maria too. Nothing was too good, too expensive, for Mamma, and her daughter. But Mamma wanted nothing much really, so it had been Maria of whom they (for it was Mr Ricciardi too now) had made a fuss.
Her clothes became expensive, her school changed. She was their pet. Their eldest child almost. She loved to be with them, to go on outings, picnics. Where once she’d dragged her feet, she skipped. Grew pleased with herself. Cheeky.
Then had come the news of a year in England. A year in England. She didn’t bother about the future, what she and Mamma would do when Ettore grew old enough not to need Mamma. Wearing her new white boots and her cream light silk coat, she had stood, with Mr Ricciardi, on the promenade deck of the Lusitania …
Restless now, she was about to make for the door.
‘Don’t go, dear,’ Aunt Maimie said, ‘I was so enjoying our little talk.’
But just then the tea came in. And with it, Jenny.
‘There’s a cup for me on the tray.’ She ignored her mother. Maria wondered if perhaps she’d been hovering outside. Elsie poured out and after they’d all drunk a cup, Aunt Maimie announced she was going up to rest.
Alone with Maria, Jenny dipped her fingers into the bowl of rose petals. She let them fall in a shower.
‘Ma doesn’t like you, you know.’ (But this was old stuff.) ‘And I don’t like you, either.’
‘What do I care?’ Maria cried, reaching for Rocco’s letter, hiding it.
‘You’ll care if you can’t live with us any more. I’ve heard Ma say you’re a cuckoo in the nest. But Aunt Dulcie sticks up for you, I wish she wouldn’t, it makes you stuck up … That’s a joke.’
Maria didn’t answer. Silence was her best weapon. She remembered one day two years ago now when they had fought. Maria hurling her stronger, heavier body against Jenny’s; Jenny who had insulted her family, her country. The two of them, beating each other about the head. Separated finally by a shocked Ida. ‘If Dad heard about this.’
There were tears in Jenny’s eyes now. Her voice harsh:
‘I want Aunt Dulcie to love me the best. She did before you came. She paid me the most attention of all. I was her special dear favourite.’
How I hate all this, Maria thought. Jenny was still talking: ‘I’ve wanted to say this for ages and ages, and now I shall. I wish Aunt Dulcie was my mother. Then she’d have to go on loving me the best.’
‘I’m going upstairs,’ Maria said. ‘Talk to yourself –’
‘You’re going to the bees later, aren’t you, why should you take Miss Dennison’s bees, why should you?’
‘No, I’m not. I shan’t go.’
‘There!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘I’ve made you not go.’
‘No. I made myself not go. I changed my mind –’
Jenny burst into tears. ‘I wanted to like you,’ she cried, running from the room. ‘I wanted to like you!’
Dear Eleanor [Dick wrote from France],
I’ve been most awfully slow about answering your last letter. Although I rag the piano in the evenings in the mess, life is really just eat, drink, sleep (sometimes) and fly. The only reason I’ve a chance to catch up with mail is this atrocious weather which has grounded us.
My friend Snelgrove has got the DSO. He seems to bear a charmed life. And his nerve is still pretty good – but can he go on? Rattler is still around but we lost Evans and Barker and Spence this last month. Part of me doesn’t want to make friends now.
You see, dear Eleanor, I’m not afraid to die, just of dying. And that sort of thing day after day, it eats right into you. You know some of my fears, don’t you? I keep thinking not just of the flames but if, say, when I was diving, a wing pulled off – or my motor cut out when we were trench strafing. I tell you about these fears because of our talk together that night last winter. (If we had died then! Except, they say it’s a very peaceful way to go.)
This isn’t really a very cheerful letter. I can only say I’m sorry. I don’t think somehow, from what I know of you, that you’d want me not to write it. Or not to send it you.
Rattler is just back from leave, and had a ripping time. There’s certainly no ha
rdship with food in London for people who have money. He ate at Romano’s on a meatless day and had – guess? Hors d’æuvre, and shrimp soup, and an omelette and then noodles and grilled salmon and vegetables and bread and butter pudding. He didn’t mind the shortage of rolls with the meal!
Is that more cheerful? Now I must end. I can’t believe it is already more than six months since you and I were Lost on the Moors. I only wish I were there now, or could believe I ever shall be again.
Your loving friend,
Dick Grainger
A month later, in the middle of August, his squadron moved to an aerodrome at Bertangles near Amiens. One early morning, a few bombs strung under his fuselage, he, Osborne, and newcomers Hammond and Marry at, flew about four miles across the lines, going after German transport. Machine-guns sprayed them from the ground with tracer, a few field guns took a crack at them, but they were back safely for bacon and eggs.
Later that same day all four of them went on a high patrol. Within easy reach of their own lines, Osborne chased after a two-seater ‘plane. And then at fifteen thousand feet Dick spotted below them a group of Fokkers: the dread, Mercedes-engined DVIIs, so able at high altitudes.
For the moment cloud hid the four of them. To escape, he and then the other three climbed. Up, up, to twenty thousand feet. But the Fokkers – as many as five – climbed higher. And higher. At altitude the thin air was exhausting. I can’t breathe, Dick thought. He swallowed desperately, to clear his ears. The Fokkers were right above now. Then he saw Marry at go down, Turning, Dick lost height. His engine spluttered. He turned again. Down now to twelve thousand feet. In the rear, Hammond was picked off.
And it was then it happened. A searing pain in his right shoulder. Seconds later, a blow to his jaw. His whole head, hammered. Blood spurted, soaking his jacket. Pain. Confusion. His right arm would do nothing. Faint, dizzy, he fought the blackness as the world spun – as his ‘plane spun. Blackness rushing at him from all sides. Again the world spun. His plane spun. Falling, falling now.
A rush of cold air, and pressure, as suddenly he was conscious again. Beneath him was the ground. Near. Too near. Somehow – afterwards he could remember little of it – he pulled his ‘plane out of its spin. He hit the ground at nearly a hundred miles an hour, just the right side of the British line. Bouncing and sliding, his Camel, its undercarriage torn away, flung its fabric for yards around. Then it turned over. It did not catch fire.
Osborne, Hammond and Marry at were all killed.
He was in his room at Thackton, hidden inside the Golden Lion. He could not see through the crystal eyes. He heard banging of loose floorboards as they were lifted. Now he was being carried down. A door opened. A passageway. Another door, another passage. Where am I? Inside the Golden Lion, of course.
He thought: The story has a happy ending. But the pain, what about the pain? The pain was only that it was dark and he was inside the lion, and afraid. The lion who was made of gold. He ought to be able to see through the crystal eyes – only it was dark, so dark. Cramped inside the lion, he felt only pain, advancing, retreating. Pain.
The hall – this was the ‘lovely hall’ of the story, but he couldn’t see it. Here somewhere were the Princess and her eleven friends. He could hear music. Laughter. Voices of women. A face appeared before him and then was gone. He struggled to get out of the dream. The face came again. He fought his way into the light.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘hello, are you the Princess?’
‘No, love. I’m Nurse Ackroyd. We’re looking after you. You’re very poorly.’ A hand touched his forehead. He knew it was the Princess’s hand, just as he had known it was her voice.
Now he was awake properly. He saw his legs before him but couldn’t recognize them. White objects. One of them hung from the ceiling. His head aching, stabbing: too stiff to move. Face raging with pain. No hands. Where were his hands? Then a voice, from far away. His own?
‘I always thought it was going to be fire,’ he said. There was a different face now. Not the Princess. She said absent-mindedly, adjusting his hoist, ‘What’s that? What fire?’
‘Orange Death,’ he said.
‘There, there,’ she said soothingly. He could see she was young and pretty with fair curly hair beneath her cap.
They told him later what had happened to him. He was in No. 4 General at Amiens. He had been unconscious for four days. He had a flesh wound in the cheek, quite clean, a severe wound in the upper shoulder, a scalp wound, and two very badly fractured legs. He was told also about the rest of the patrol.
After that he seemed to go in and out of consciousness. Light and dark – sometimes it was dark and yet there were daylight noises. The sound of a gramophone, loud, raucous. ‘Where does Daddy go when he goes out?’ Men’s voices joining in, ‘It must be nice where Daddy goes…’ Sometimes an unbearable brightness. Once he heard some poor chap shouting, then his own name in a sharp tone: ‘Lieutenant Grainger, can you hear me? You’re disturbing your brother officers.’
The days passed. Letters came from home. A hamper from Self ridge’s. He was put down for a bottle of Guinness a day. He heard that some friends had been to see him but because he was unconscious at the time, they had had to go away. He felt ashamed of the times he hadn’t visited comrades, when he had superstitiously kept away. (‘They’re all right. A Blighty one. Soon be going home.’)
‘When am I going home?’ he asked.
‘What a question!’ It was a nanny’s voice, like a nursemaid that he remembered, a girl called Maddie with rippling wavy hair and a voice that was always like a reprimand even when she praised. ‘What a question! And you with two legs like that –’ She was the pretty fair one, Nurse Lewis. She and Nurse Maxwell, a stocky, efficient redhead, were the ones he saw the most of.
‘Where’s Nurse Ackroyd?’ he asked, suddenly remembering.
‘Nurse Ackroyd’s on leave. Gone to be married.’
Days passing. Dressings, pain, sleeping draughts – and more pain. The hospital was his life. And the routine, there was something almost like hope about the routine. He could be certain that at eleven every morning, Sister would pass and say, ‘Did you get your Guinness today?’ Or sometimes: ‘You look a little plumper. But isn’t that lying in bed being fed potatoes, and milk and butter? Like a pig,’ she would say, laughing. Yes, like a pig. Except that he wasn’t being fattened for slaughter any more. All that was over.
Over, and then what? His legs. What about his legs? He didn’t like to ask. They had told him nothing more. The surgeon spoke to Sister in vague terms: ‘… don’t like the look of … think perhaps we ought … the hoist.’
Nurse Ackroyd came back. She appeared one unexpectedly chilly morning: dark cardigan with red piping, thick waving hair showing beneath her cap. It was her face all right. She had the voice of the Princess too. Low, quiet, firm. She wasn’t pretty, though. Large features, too high a colour. She was older than the other nurses.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ve improved! I’d never have recognized you.’
‘I’d know you,’ he said boldly. ‘Anywhere.’
‘It’s my nose,’ she said, ‘I’ve this large conk. My husband –’ she repeated proudly ‘– my husband says, sailors at sea would be happy to catch sight of it.’
Nurse Maxwell brought him his medicine. She told Nurse Ackroyd, ‘Our birdman’s been asking after you, Gwen. Twice.’
‘Well I never. And I thought you didn’t even know I was there. It’s odd the things people remember.’
He realized then she had a Yorkshire accent. Later he asked her: ‘Is it true you went on leave to get married?’
Her eyes lit up. ‘They told you, did they? Really, they’re … I’m so happy,’ she said. And indeed she looked it. He could see it in the glow of her skin. ‘I’m really Nurse Latimer now but they call me Ackroyd here still. That way folk don’t get confused.’
Standing by the bed, keeping an eye open for Sister, she talked about her husband. ‘Cyril – Capta
in Latimer – he’s back in Belgium but he’s due for a staff job any moment. Before we wed, he’d been out thirteen months without leave. They kept cancelling, you see … But in the end we’d ten days together. It was grand –’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Tenby, in Wales. Cyril has cousins there. It was quite wild. We went over to Caldey where the monks are and got caught in a storm. The war seemed a million miles away. I’m so happy,’ she said again. ‘We’re both so happy.’
‘You look it,’ was all he could say. He could smell it: the scent of happiness, overcoming the bitter astringent disinfectant, and the sickly sweet gas gangrene (not his, thank God, but the poor devil on his right).
He lost count of time. How many weeks had he been here? He heard from home that Aunt Dulcie had made attempts to come out to him. (Dear Aunt Dulcie.) About his health, no one told him very much. He supposed he was making progress. Some nerve, peroneal they called it, had been crushed in his leg and there was question of its long-term effects.
A slight lull in the action gave the nurses more time to talk. Nurse Maxwell confided in him her plan to go to Girton, Cambridge, after the War. Nurse Ackroyd showed him photographs of her honeymoon. Her husband was a large moustachioed man, smiling in every picture, pipe-smoking in some. She said, ‘Cyril’s really clever … Anything to do with motors. He’s very inventive. After the war there’s bound to be openings.’ She had lost both her brothers on the first day of the Somme. ‘They were in the Bradford Pals. Joined the same day. Mother took it very hard.’
He smoked a lot, read John Buchan and Baroness Orczy, and made friends with his neighbours. ‘When can I go home?’ he asked almost daily.
There was a sing-song and entertainment in the ward. An elderly Englishman, an elocutionist who’d lived in Amiens for twenty years, recited a dreadful monologue about a puppy that carried messages through the trenches. Many of the patients were too ill to give him the bird. Dick was too polite. Later, walking the ward, he stopped by Dick’s bed. Seeing the notice at the foot: ‘Ah, Icarus is amongst us!’ he declaimed.
The Golden Lion Page 8