She carried with her only a black shawl, knotted and containing just a change of underclothes and a loose cotton dress. The idea had grown on her all morning: first during Mass, and then, more strongly, in class. Their ways are not my ways. All through embroidery, unpicking an unsuccessful point de venise, risking Sister Agata’s temper, she planned. Quickly, desperately. Home. Sicily. Loved ones. There had never been America in between, or Yorkshire. I want to go home.
Her first problem was money. The nuns held a small sum for her, but there was no way to get at it. To pay for the journey she would have to sell something. When she went up to her cell at midday she saw, lying at the back of her drawer, the brooch Eleanor had given her.
Could she, was it not rejecting Eleanor? In the end she sold it to a small shop near the Ponte alla Carraia, on her way to the station. Sadness and guilt, seeing it glow in the dark wood of the counter. She had no means of knowing if she’d received a fair price.
She had left a note pinned to her pillow. ‘Gone to visit my family for a little while. Then I shall be back. Please do not worry about me.’ She had no time to word it better, nor to think of any hue and cry there might be. The great, the only thing was to be away. Home. Sicily.
Safely on the train, she was still frightened (what have I done, what am I doing?) She felt a sick hunger in spite of the rice balls and when the train stopped at Rome late in the night, she leaned out – she didn’t dare alight – and bought a basket, more food than she could eat, and a quarter litre of chianti. She drank it hurriedly from the flask. For a litle while after, she dozed.
The train arrived in Naples in the small hours. She had not thought of that. She planned to take the day boat to Palermo. The station at Naples frightened her more than Florence. In the hall, a small man darted up to her. ‘You’re looking for a place to sleep? Sleep in the day too?’ She shook him off. Another, in spite of her simple clothes, addressed her in English, French, German. She wouldn’t answer. She wanted now only to be in Sicily. To be home.
She shivered in a waiting-room till it was time to go for the boat. Because she was afraid and tired, she took a cab to the quay. The boat was crowded. Livestock, children. She bought rolls and prosciutto, but her mouth even after coffee was too dry. I need wine, she thought, hoping to sleep the journey away.
Below deck it was hot and smelled. The water was calm but even the slight rocking made her feel queasy. Children ran everywhere. It was the first time for five years that she had heard the language of Sicily. Men played cards, muttering as they played.
She went back up. A group of men, women and children with tambourines were singing and dancing. They had several flasks of wine with them. She sat near, gazing at the water, her shawl of belongings on her lap. They were songs she knew but she did not join in. Lu me Sceccu. The crowd swayed as a young boy, his adam’s apple working, imitated a cock crowing. A gipsy-like girl offered her some wine. She drank thirstily. Her world blurred a little. An elderly woman, arms crossed, sang the descant, sad and haunting, of La Pampina di l’aliva. She tried to think of herself as the rich returning emigrant: the americana, that figure to be admired. But in trying to blend into the landscape, she’d failed to look or feel the part. She was the signora inglese. I am wearing a wedding-ring, she thought.
As the boat neared the harbour, she longed and longed to see Rocco’s face. Gaetano, Rosalia, her nephews and nieces … In Palermo it was too late in the day to make her way up to Monteleone. There was enough money from the brooch to pay for a hotel. She wondered in panic if she was even now being chased? She sat up in the night, heart beating, uncomfortable in the sagging bed, certain that she heard Father Grierson’s voice. They have sent him for me. Later she heard a church clock strike two.
In the morning very early she made her way to where she could find a carrier going up to Monteleone. The sun was high in a fierce blue sky. As the cart rattled up the rough path, its wheels stirred up white dust. She felt the jolting excite the baby.
The carter was a small elderly man, who showed no curiosity. They talked little on the journey. Tall blue-flowered thistles stood by the roadside, pink-tipped daisies, huge dandelion clocks. She smelled borage and wild garlic. Great white boulders, dazzling in the sun, broke the landscape. For a while two small hawks hovered above them. Later, sheep grazed among some olive trees, herded together closely, their long goatlike necks hanging. The sounds, the scents – she might never have been away.
And then Monteleone came into view. Nothing had changed. Mangy, hungry grey cats darted past open doorways and down alleys. Hens wandered from house to street and back again, pecking hopefully or rising with an angry flutter of wings. The sun beat down on her bare head. Her ankles, from that first night up in the train, were swollen still. She had forgotten her sister’s married name and would have to ask for Rosalia that had been Verzotto, then she remembered which had been her house: the second turning just near the square. The door was open. A small boy running out threw his arms round Maria’s legs.
‘Tiru, what are you doing?’ A woman in a torn black skirt came out after him. Maria noticed at once she was pregnant, but at first didn’t recognize her. This woman looked forty …
‘Yes,’ Rosalia said, ‘yes?’
‘I’m – it’s Maria, your sister. Little Maria.’
Rosalia’s face lit up momentarily. Then she looked doubtful. She frowned. ‘From England – from ‘Merica?’
‘England, from England,’ Maria said, in a rush to get the lies over with: ‘I’m married and visiting in Italy. I wanted – it seems silly – my husband had to go away on business …’
But Rosalia wasn’t listening, she was smacking another child who crept from behind her skirt. She said distractedly, ‘You know Rocco and Gaetano are back?’
‘Yes.’
‘They won’t stay, of course. Who’d want to? They’re lodging at the Randazzo’s … Are you spending the night here?’
‘A few days,’ Maria said, ‘I thought, a few days, to see the family.’ She stretched out a hand to caress the child. ‘How many?’ she asked.
‘Too many. Six, and this one.’ She struck her belly with her fist. ‘There’s no end to it, is there? And he’s proud of them, Nicu is. They always are. Men …’ She lifted a pile of linen from the table. ‘Get yourself a chair. You might as well stay around a little.’ She said in a rough voice, ‘You’re that way too. Is your husband – your husband’s pleased?’
‘Of course,’ Maria said. ‘I have it in September.’
Rosalia muttered something to an older child who ran off. Suddenly Maria was surrounded by people. A few she recognized but many seemed total strangers. She was an object of curiosity. People wanted to know more than she could tell them. A young woman who could have been only a child when Maria left, said, ‘Crucianu’s daughter, don’t you remember me?’ They all wanted to talk of Mamma and Maria’s life in New York. There was confusion: she hadn’t come from ‘Merica then? No, of course, she had been on that big boat …
‘The boat that sank,’ it was a wail almost. ‘Terrible, terrible. We heard you had no Mamma. But adopted – you were fortunate to be adopted by a rich man. And now you are married. And a baby on the way.’
Yes, yes, a baby. Of course she was happy and proud. Only, where were Rocco and Gaetano? But they’re coming, they’re coming. They had fought in the war, did she know? Now they spoke of going back to ‘Merica? Gaetano was with the wheelwright again. Rocco had some secret, some business work. Did she know Za Rosetta had died many, many Easters ago?
Then there they were standing before her. Rocco and Gaetano. They looked older than in their photographs. Gaetano slighter, timid almost. He laughed nervously as he embraced her but Rocco hugged her so tightly she wondered if perhaps he hadn’t noticed the baby. Standing back, he looked at her with pride, affection. ‘You never said. Never wrote of your marriage. Nothing. And now you come – like this. But it’s marvellous. How long can you be with us?’ A flask of wine had appear
ed. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Listen – tell me everything. Now. All about him, your husband, life in England, why you didn’t write. Everything.’
The tissue of lies. She wove it ever more intricately. Whenever she could, she asked questions herself: ‘What happened to this one, that one, the mother of old so and so?’
She was so tired by nightfall – wine, talk, heat of the day – she thought she might be ill. Rocco had found her a bed. She was to eat at Rosalia’s, where he and Gaetano usually ate.
That evening she felt, though she was to stay only two nights, that Rosalia resented her. Maria was another mouth. The plate of steaming pasta and fennel: stealing from tomorrow’s and tomorrow’s food.
She had come empty-handed. Her own family and she had brought them no gifts. But the little money left from the brooch was needed for the journey back. If she were to be stranded between Sicily and Tuscany …
Rocco’s appearance – not too smartly dressed, but very clean. He wore a belt with a large brass buckle showing a lion’s head. She shuddered, remembering Don Cataldo. The lion with the heart of stone, and Minicu.
‘The police,’ Rosalia was saying, staring at her empty plate, ‘these days always suspecting someone or something. They come up here, searching. Cattle gone, sheep gone, some persons missing – they should mind their own business down in the towns and let us alone. We only want to feed the little ones, how we do it is our affair.’
Her husband, Nicu: ‘Your tongue. It’s too long. Your sister here, she doesn’t talk in that fashion.’
Supposing they come for me, Maria was thinking with horror: imagining Father Grierson, Sister Ignazio, making their hot sticky way up the mountains. Exposing her, telling all… Or worse, far worse, the carabinieri. She would be arrested, taken down to Palermo. To prison …
‘Are these all your belongings?’ Rocco asked, seeing the knotted shawl.
‘All I wanted to bring,’ she answered quickly. ‘I didn’t plan to come back the rich americana. I wanted just to slip in – as if I’d never been away.’
‘Except that you have …’ He pushed his hands out, shrugging his shoulders. ‘We shall go back, of course. You know that?’
The second evening, her last, she and Rocco walked out together as the sun was going down, beyond the village to where the path twisted up towards the mountains. They sat on the ground by a clump of ancient olive trees, grey-green, their gnarled roots spreading. The warm air was heavy with the scent of sage. Gaetano was to have come too but he excused himself. ‘He’s courting,’ Rocco told her. ‘It’s more or less arranged but he likes to spend time at the house. He’ll take her to the States. He’s discontented here, you see.’
Rocco too. ‘Some things I don’t speak of … But those who were not away fighting, they’ve taken everything. I name no names. But they’ve grown fat in our absence. And they don’t wish to share.’
They talked about America, their very different experiences. ‘We could have invited you to live with us after the boat sank. If you’d stayed with us in Detroit then maybe we wouldn’t have become soldiers. And now you’d be American. Instead – look at you. You’ve done well, though.’
He seemed to want to confide in her yet without telling her very much. ‘As I said, things here, they’re not right. We resent – you understand? I’ve had some ideas how Monteleone, how to bring some prosperity – but without the help of others, if they won’t share? Things aren’t going the right way. They grow dangerous. You understand?’
‘Rocco,’ she said, ‘what happened to the Lion?’ She had walked past Don Cataldo’s house, but, shutters fastened, it had a neglected air.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, casually. ‘Who cares?’ He picked up a stone and threw it lightly. ‘Dead. No, not dead … as good as. He had a fit, a stroke, a couple of years ago. A cousin nurses him. Why?
‘I’m just curious … What about his family?’
‘Gone. A long while back. The daughter who lived there, she’s dead. The others … There are grandchildren, of course. But not here, not in Monteleone.’
She said suddenly, ‘Does anyone ever speak of Minicu’s disappearance?’
‘I know nothing of that, Maruccia. Why should I? They found the body –’
She persisted, ‘And no one’s ever said they knew what happened?’
‘It’s never spoken of.’
She lowered her voice, as if the olive tree, so ancient, could tell tales. ‘I want to tell you – what I know. That I shouldn’t know. You see, I heard …’ She stammered over the tale, living it again, her fear suddenly as real as it had been then. ‘I think, you see, the Lion –’
His silence frightened her. He was breathing heavily, staring straight ahead. Then touching her shoulder: ‘It’s the first time you’ve spoken of this?’ And when she nodded, ‘Listen, never speak of it again. It isn’t … You should never have known this.’
She wanted to ask then, ‘Did you know?’ But she was afraid. After a moment, though, he answered for her. ‘I didn’t know. But it’s man’s knowledge – not woman’s. And as for a child. A child –’ He spat on to the ground. ‘But an order is an order. You understand me?’
She did. As if it were in her bones. I know, yet I do not know. (What wonder that, living in Tuscany, she should feel, their ways are not my ways?)
Morning, and time to leave. The blackness descended again, and with it a hopeless, helpless fear. Creeping back to the convent, facing the nuns, Father Grierson … If anyone had been sent from England!
Beneath a hot sky the stonecrop flamed gold, cow parsley, tall and flowery, ran rife. Rocco sat beside her in the cart. He had insisted on accompanying her to Palermo. Rocco, blood of her blood, and at the same time a stranger. Going down, they didn’t speak much. Often she felt his gaze on her.
Sitting in a café on their way to the harbour: ‘Your ticket for the boat?’ He examined it, ‘Don’t they pay for you first class?’ When she said hastily no, he said resentfully, ‘You were first class on the Lusitania.’
‘That was different –’
‘Listen,’ his voice was urgent, ‘perhaps you don’t want to go back? Something’s wrong?’ Suddenly persistent: ‘You never talk of this man, your husband. You aren’t proud of him, are you? Love, all that, perhaps not – but you don’t think well of him, do you?’
She spoke from the blackness. ‘It doesn’t matter what he’s like.’
‘Was it a forced marriage?’ She knew he meant, had her husband been chosen for her by the family? He did not mean the other thing at all. In later years she never knew what possessed her, why she should have suddenly burst out, the urge to confide unbearable.
‘I’m not married. I don’t have a fiancè, betrothed. Nothing. It’s their son, the family who took me in. The younger one, Peter – the other would never. Peter, he … it was none of my doing.’ She turned to look at him. His face was drained, hard. Both hands gripped the buckle of his belt. She stammered:
‘I’m not wicked. I never, there wasn’t –’
‘He did that? He did that to you?’
She nodded dumbly. She had placed her hands over her belly. He asked in a harsh voice:
‘What do they do about it, what are they doing?’
She told him about Eleanor, the convent, the plans. ‘I’m going to be all right, you see. It’s all been taken care of.’
‘Let me go with you to Florence. I know where I can borrow money. I’ll travel north with you –’
But she wouldn’t allow it. ‘All that – it would only make it worse.’
He made her promise to call on him if anything should go wrong. ‘We go to ‘Merica certainly – perhaps there is some way you can join us.’ But she knew he knew that in that idea there was no future. ‘Listen, I shall be thinking of you always. And I forget nothing. Your visit – and the other. I shall never forget …’
Very late the next night, she took a cab up to the convent. The gates were locked and she had to ring twice. But her reappeara
nce was so important that Sister Ignazio was sent for. The portress, frightened, told Maria: ‘There’s been much trouble. The police, priests, telegrams …’
Later, she crept into her cell, an animal into its lair. In spite of the summer night she felt an autumnal cold. She lay awake shivering, waiting for yet dreading the morning. For she knew that now the prison gates were truly closed behind her.
9
Dick, looking down the agenda of the Board meeting, saw that they were scarcely half way. He felt he’d been all afternoon in the dark panelled room, shut in with Stanley Taylor’s pipe: dirty, wet, foul-smelling.
Outside, it was summer. Inside, not. The sun could be glimpsed only faintly, shafting through the small leaded window. He saw that Dad was watching him. Carefully, to show that pain was the cause, he adjusted his leg. Uncle Fred Rowland said fussily, ‘All right, are you? Not feeling seedy?’
No, not seedy. Just impatient. He could put his heart into the work itself, but never into the talk about it. How he hated all this necessary business … And the company he had to keep. Stanley’s pipe. Uncle Fred with his slow ways. Great-uncle Arthur, who had taken now to snoring through part of the meetings. Dad would nudge him, and he would wake suddenly, badtempered, ready to argue the toss with anyone. What he hadn’t heard while asleep had not been said.
‘The price for Admiralty Mixture,’ Dad was saying, ‘it’s way up. But it’s to rule till the end of September.’
Bernard Thorpe asked: ‘Anything there about Du Cros? They’ve instructed us to proceed with the same patterns …’
Summer. Maybe they thought he was restless, wanting to get away to Thackton? Last year, yes. But all he wanted now was to get over to Bradford. Since discovering the Adelphi Tea Rooms, he had taken any excuse to get there. He told Dad, ‘If there’s ever anything needed? I rather took to the place,’ and Dad, mildly surprised said, ‘Well … I’ll let you know.’
But nothing happened. There remained only the weekends. He began to find excuses for not going to Moorgarth. It puzzled the family. They asked if he was getting like Mother. And what about Eulalia? He who’d been so keen, who’d loved Moorgarth the best of them all from childhood. Maria – was it because she wasn’t there? Of course not, he’d said indignantly.
The Golden Lion Page 13