‘I got in a fight,’ Tom said, before Nadine or Riley could say anything. ‘Just a stupid thing.’
They accepted it, not that happily, and for that he was grateful.
It was Nadine who said, quite quietly, while helping him pack for university, ‘Aldo mentioned you left in quite a hurry.’
Tom paused for a moment, stared at the small pile of poetry books in his hand, Tennyson and T. S. Eliot, and said nothing.
‘That you didn’t say goodbye properly before you left. Nenna was upset,’ he said.
Tom cast his eyes up to the ceiling for a second, then broached the matter.
‘Did you say goodbye?’ he asked. ‘Before you left?’
She looked at him steadily, and thank God, he thought, did not say, ‘What do you mean?’ She knew what he meant.
‘I didn’t know what to say,’ she replied, after a pause. ‘I pretended I couldn’t see it, or that it wasn’t real, or that it wasn’t important.’
‘Then what happened?’ he asked.
‘I saw it through Riley’s eyes,’ she said. ‘I thought, what if I have to explain it to him? I felt that I was lying to him.’
Tom had been prepared to be angry with her. He had wanted to be – it could be her fault, as an adult, for not warning him, or explaining to him. But she disarmed him with her frankness and the look in her eyes.
‘And have you spoken to Riley about it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh no.’
‘But you should,’ he said. Then stopped. He was unaccustomed to moral ambiguity. ‘Shouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t see that there’s any point. It would upset him, on our behalf.’
‘But—’ he began – and stopped, because there was nothing to say. It wasn’t right, but—
But—
‘Sometimes things just aren’t right, darling,’ she said, and she folded a jumper. I’d better just look after myself, he thought, and then wondered where the thought had come from.
He and Nadine had been, in some way, got. And then they had jumped back, almost, each of them separately, like children caught in the act of some naughtiness, and assumed an innocent expression – who me? Oh, no, I don’t know anything about that. Do you, Nadine? No, Tom, I don’t. Perhaps they hadn’t believed that Jews could really be Fascists. Or that Fascists were somehow not as bad as some people thought. Or that Italian Fascism was really different to National Socialism in Germany.
Suddenly and strongly, Tom didn’t want to go to university. He wanted to go out, to be elsewhere: running, riding a horse, a motorcycle. Flying. Fighting. He wanted to shoot something. He wanted to be clean and fast and strong.
‘I’m going for a swim,’ he said. The green waters of the Serpentine would hold him, solid as glass as he powered through.
*
That first week in Cambridge, strolling into the Porters’ Lodge, trying to feel as if to the manor born, I’m familiar with the streets of Rome and London, Cambridge holds no fears for me, he found a letter waiting for him. The sight of her handwriting did give him a thrill of excitement, and he tore it open crossing the green and grey purity of Great Court, a satchel of books over his shoulder.
Caro Masino,
I have been thinking perhaps it would be best to forget the last hours you were here. What Papà did, and what you said. It seems so odd that I am not sure it happened it all. But you are not here. This much is real. I am so sorry for what Papà did. I don’t know what he thought – well, I do know what he thought. But I don’t know exactly what he thought. I am showing him my anger by not talking to him; he is showing his by not letting me go out. So I have all the time in the world to read a letter from, perhaps, you.
My friend, my brother, whatever you are, sayer of an important thing which perhaps you regret, perhaps you don’t feel is true now you are back in England, in the land of the cold—
Papa wrote to Zia Nadina. I don’t think he told her what he did.
Perhaps you have written to me, and a nice letter from you is caught on an Alp, fluttering in the wind … no letter has arrived here.
It seems a waste of postage not to fill the envelope, but I have nothing else to say until I know what is on your mind.
Write to me!
from Nenna with love
He stopped a moment in the draughty Gothic gateway, holding the flimsy piece of paper with a kind of respect. He liked how delicately yet directly she said what had to be said. He had never met a girl who was at all like her; who was human, and open, like this. But what did that mean – what could it mean? When only two days ago Mussolini’s troops – her hero’s troops – had attacked Abyssinia. The tune of the song sprang up in his head like a mockery: Faccetta nera, bell’abissina … Little black face, beautiful Abyssinian.
He had been laughing with her about those songs …
He was on his way to a tutorial, so he picked his feet up swiftly again as he strode across Great Court. His lecture schedule was full, and a chap on his staircase had said he was to try out for the boat club, but his first port of call was going to be the University Air Squadron … This is a different world …
He knew what he ought to do. He ought to write her a straight honourable letter saying look, Nenna, I’m not a Fascist, you are, in most cases political differences don’t need to make that much difference but in this case, I’m afraid our principles are—
How pompous!
‘Seeing your face all lit up at that rally while that big oaf—’
No.
‘As long as you share your father’s attachment to—’
And then what? It was pretty common knowledge now what was happening to anti-Fascists – you lose your job, your—
The problem wasn’t Nenna. The problem was Italy.
In which case.
The solution was simple! And what a fool he had been not to have thought of it before!
He ran up the steps and through and out again into Nevile’s Court without a glance at the architectural beauty which floored the world, skirted the lawn, slipped under the arcade and into the College Library. At a dim desk among the book stacks he sat down and wrote to her.
Nenna, my love
Listen, I have had the very best idea. Why don’t you come to England to study? You liked it here, didn’t you? You could stay with the family. Of course I would be here in Cambridge but the terms are very short, or – even better, yes, this is it – you could come up here – there’s women’s colleges and language schools – though to be honest you could probably teach in one – earn while you learn! – and teacher training and a hospital – and there are lots of marvellous courses in London too, and you could learn anything you like. You could start after Christmas. Nadine and Riley think it’s a wonderful idea
(He hadn’t told them – he’d only just had the idea – but they would think it a wonderful idea, the moment he gave them a chance to.)
and only a nincompoop would disagree. You, not being a nincompoop, will of course recognise this plan as the best idea anybody ever had, and start putting it into practice. You know what you have to do! I will ask Nadine to send details of colleges, etc.
He raced back out: courts, lawns, Trinity Street, post office, letterbox. Done. He laughed out loud, breathless.
Damn. Late for his tutorial. ‘No running in Great Court, sir,’ smirked a bowler-hatted porter.
It didn’t matter. It was an inspired idea.
Later, he wrote to Riley and Nadine about it. Nadine in particular said Yes! what a wonderful plan, and took on the business of finding out about courses.
*
A second letter came. It seemed Nenna had not received the first:
L’Isola – Ottobre xx
Tommaso caro,
I know Papà can be a capoccia grossa. Is it because of him that you don’t write to me?
He is busy all the time, working down in his swamps and busy with party activities. The Duce came to open another new city. It is amazing the work they are achieving. But if you are angry with Papà, just remember I am not him! There are boys here making eyes at me; I don’t know if I can make eyes back, I don’t know if there is someone I like who has made a claim on me – Masino, listen, if you have made a claim on me, please, repeat it, make sure I have heard correctly. Because it’s not nothing, such a thing. And if you have not, I need to know. Because if you have—
Well.
Marinella sends her love and waves her little hands at you.
She had cried as she wrote that letter. To be stuck in her little room after school every day, the white ceiling and the white floor and her dark bed and outside all the sun and the cries and the people and the evening and the river.
And Aldo swinging about the place, and Mama just rolling her eyes and telling her to have patience, he’ll get bored, he’ll forget …
So she had nothing to do except schoolwork and thinking about Tom.
*
This didn’t change a thing. He did not regret the first letter at all. It all lay out before him like a beautiful landscape: she would be here, he would look after her, he would respect her and keep other boys off her, he would not try to seduce her, she could learn to fly too! And they would work hard and they would get married and have a beautiful exciting life together.
‘I am not him!’ He laughed at that. No, you’re not. You can be saved, I can save you.
Her next letter said:
Tommaso,
You are a genius. No idea has ever been better. I have asked Mama, she is going to talk to Papà. This would be so good! Tell me, please, which schools I can write to. I do want to be a teacher I think, Papà says it is a good work for a woman, so he is more likely to agree. Then I can teach English here and Italian there – does anyone in England want to learn Italian? Or I can teach little children – or be a proper professoressa. I am very excited and you are very clever. Thank you!
Your not-nincompoop (I had to look this word up. I like it very much), Nenna
Something about this letter made him so happy that he replied with the extravagance of a telegram:
Dear Non-nincompoop only fair to say when in England no English chaps allowed to make eyes love
When that went winging its way, he felt a great sigh; an expansion and a settling. A decision made. A path ahead, clear and well-lit. He felt happy.
*
Meanwhile, he acquired a motorbike. At first, he tried to talk Riley into talking Peter into paying for it.
‘Earn the money or ask your father,’ said Riley.
Tom, heartened by his new independence as an undergraduate and inviter of women (women! Women? Was Nenna a woman?) from overseas, asked his father. He made Riley go with him, and Riley smiled all the way through the conversation, because this was the first proper conversation Peter and Tom had had since – well perhaps ever.
They met for lunch, the three of them, at a little restaurant in Kensington. Tom realised he had hardly even seen Peter for months. Walking in, he felt for a moment like the small boy, the cross boy, that he used to be – but then – no – he had an overcoat now, and was as tall as his father.
He held out his hand: ‘Hello Father,’ he said. And Peter took it: ‘Hello Tom.’ And each saw what a matching pair they were, how very alike in looks, in manner, in carriage. Tom blinked. He had spent his entire childhood insisting he was not and would never be anything like his father. But his father was sober and clean, his face was in focus, clear.
‘How are you, sir?’ Tom asked, as the chairs were pulled out and napkins snapped.
‘I’m very well,’ Peter said, and gave him a little smile and nod, and something unspoken and very British slipped into place between them. Tom was mystified. Was it manhood, in some way? A silent acknowledgement of adulthood? He glanced at Riley, but Riley was looking at the menu.
Mild embarrassment, small talk and mutual observation covered the soup and the main course. Riley compèred, with chat about Nadine, and mention of the Italian girl who they hoped would come over to study. After the steak (shepherd’s pie for Riley) seemed to be the moment to bring up the motorcycle. Peter raised his pale eyes to Tom’s and said: ‘Tell me why you want it,’ to which Tom responded thus: ‘I will need it for taking Nenna around, and also getting out to Duxford, and I’ll need to get out to Duxford because I’m an Officer Cadet now, and I am to learn to fly, and if I can’t learn to fly I’m not staying at university. I could easily go to the bad in the London fleshpots, that would be all right for me but I don’t suppose any of you would care for that, but I think the best thing for me would be adventure. Travel, and so on. Souks and temples – from above, of course – the sky and the stars. I might volunteer with Miss Earhart, or fly the mail from Florida down to Rio. And then if there is a war I can come back and die heroically for the RAF. What do you think? Would that do?’
His head was just a little bit cocked; he felt defiant and certain, full of his own plans.
Peter blinked at him. ‘The RAF won’t let you die heroically without a degree,’ he said, not in the least bit truthfully. ‘I’d stick with the sciences if I were you.’
‘And the motorbike?’
Peter looked a little puzzled, and said: ‘Well of course.’ Then, as if it were an afterthought, ‘Just don’t crash it.’ And he gave his son a sudden, rare and tender smile, which Tom blinked at, before leaning forward across the table, to the peril of the salt and pepper, to shake his father’s hand and say, ‘Thank you, sir.’ Peter’s other hand rose, as if to touch his son’s arm – but then he stopped and said, without looking at Tom, ‘You can come and talk to me any time, you know. You don’t have to need something. You don’t even have to bring Riley.’
Tom sort of half raised his eyebrows, then dropped them again, as if they had surprised him.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said again, and sat down.
We don’t seem to be on bad terms, he thought. Everything seems possible!
He celebrated the feeling by collecting Kitty from school. She came out on her own among groups of laughing, self-aware girls, and the droopy unmoving angle of her head revealed her loneliness among them, her need to be wanted, and the desire to be left alone that had grown up around that, trying and failing to preserve some dignity. When Tom, elegant with his collar up, hailed her from across the road, every straw-boatered hairclipped head turned. He saw it, and called her ‘darling’ loudly, bestowing his handsome smile on all around, and resolving to pay a bit of attention to her, she looked terrible. ‘Today, my dearest,’ he said, loud enough to carry, ‘You are going to come and help me choose a motorbike’ – and the ripples swelled into waves of wonder and whispering – Kitty! Little fatty Kitty Locke!
Tomorrow I’ll bring her into school on the bike before I go back to Cambridge, he thought.
Of course she wasn’t really going to help choose. He was getting a BSA Empire Star – the one with the removable electric headlight on a cable so you could check for faults in the dark. ‘Though it has no faults,’ he said, gesturing, at the motorcycle showroom on the King’s Road, ‘because it’s the Masterpiece of the Industry. Look, it says so here …’
He did let her choose the colour of his extra crash helmet. ‘But I’ll tell you a secret. It’s really for Nenna. She’s going to come and live in England. She’s going to be my girl!’
‘Really?’ Kitty said. ‘That’s wonderful.’ And though it came out wistful, she seemed to mean it, which stopped him for a moment, and made him look at her.
‘You happy about that?’ he said. Extraordinary that he should be asking her opinion, really, he thought, but—
‘I am!’ she said, and she smiled a real big glowing smile, with her blue eyes full of sweetness, and Tom gave her a sort of hug, and found he was ruffling the hair on her head.
‘Tom,’ she blurted. ‘Some girls at school said I was anti-Semite. They took my diary from my locker and read it and I’d written that I was glad Deborah Schwarz couldn’t come on the school trip because it was Passover and she’s Jewish so she couldn’t come, but I wasn’t an anti-Semitic, I just don’t like her because she was trying to get Eleanor Hardwick off me and Eleanor’s pretty much my only friend … if you can call her a friend … and nobody else likes her very much except for me, and I don’t think Deborah would like her for very long either, so I was glad she couldn’t come, so I said I can’t be anti-Semite, my mother is Jewish and they said well then why don’t you go to Jewish Prayers then, instead of ordinary prayers like everyone else, and I didn’t know what to say except tell them Nadine’s not my real mother but I wasn’t going to tell them that; they called Susan Mack Floppy-Doppy Baby and she wasn’t even really adopted—’
‘Would you like me to kill them?’ he said. ‘With my bare hands? I could, if it would help?’
She smiled.
‘Otherwise, it might be more convenient, you know, if you just – when they start talking like that – imagine them on the lav, you know, having a bit of trouble, straining … Then you’ll laugh, and that’ll spook them and they’ll run away.’
She smiled some more, and looked down. Pleased.
He gave her a sort of hug, and said: ‘Good oh! Now come on, Titch, put this on,’ and he helped to strap her into it, her yellow hair fluffing and her hairclip needing to be removed. He could feel Kitty’s joy all the way back to Bayswater, through the leather of his new jacket and the howl of the engine. How little it takes to make her happy, he thought. I shall be nicer to her.
*
All of which made Nadine’s news all the harder. She had had a letter from Aldo. Absolutely not, he said. Nenna was too young, she was needed at home, it was out of the question, an absurd idea. What father could allow it – a daughter that age, going to another country, living away from home? He was amazed Nadine would even suggest such a thing. No further discussion. Absolutely not.
Nenna’s letters were full of fury; her father’s injustice, her mother’s spinelessness, Vittorio’s passivity in his sympathetic agreement that their parents were outrageous; Stefano saying ‘well I never wanted you to go anyway’. Tom’s were full of Nadine’s advice: be patient, this can happen later. Time will pass. This wasn’t what he felt though. What he felt was pure incomprehension. It was such a good idea! Why would Aldo forbid it?
Tom didn’t write to Aldo to seek to persuade him. He still felt the look in Aldo’s eye before the second punch. The look which knew exactly what Tom wanted. Tom suspected – knew, really – that he, Tom, was the reason why Nenna was not permitted to come.
He closed his eyes at the thought, and decided to calm it all down. Cool off. Wait.
Trinity College, November
My dear noncompoop,
So we are not allowed to start our adventure yet. Never mind. Every day we get older and nearer to being able to do exactly what we want. Pacify your old dad, and let’s see how it goes. It all seems to have got rather heated so let’s keep our heads down …
Masino,
The reply came soon. Papà really has gone off you. I mentioned that we’d probably see you in the summer, and he blew his top. Partly I want to blow my top right back at him but why bother? He will always shout louder than me. But today has been a happy day – the Giornata della Fede. I went with Mama and Zia Seta to the Temple where she gave up her gold wedding ring, and was given in exchange a band of patriotic steel. Then we went up to the Vittoriale, to the altar of the Unknown Warrior. It was so beautiful! Thousands of women, with choirs, and braziers, and the Archbishop of the Armed Forces leading the ceremony. It was as if everyone was marrying the Duce, all of them – Mama, all the aunties, Christian and Jewish, old widows and young brides marrying the Duce and the army, declaring their faith and giving their wedding rings. And all the husbands looking on and approving. Papà wasn’t there though, he was at the inauguration of Pontinia, you remember, the fourth new city of the Agro Pontino. The Duce made a speech: ‘We inaugurate Pontinia today on the Day of Faith – the day on which all the fruitful mothers of Italy give, on the Altar of the Fatherland or other monuments to the fallen, their wedding rings – but a day also of the faith of the Italian people in their rights, a day of certain and undefeatable faith in the destiny of the Fatherland.’ They were both so happy when they came home, so proud and joyful to be part of something so powerful and productive. We are so lucky to have our Duce.
It’s so clever isn’t it that it’s the same word, fede, for faith and for wedding ring. I wonder who thought of it. Really, Masino, I wish you could have seen it. It was as if everyone is in love with him, and with Italy. It’s so personal. I stood with my girlfriends and we all wished we were married, so that we could give our rings too.
This letter made him furious. It made him think: there is no time. I must get her away from him, from them, from It. Before it poisons her any further.
There didn’t seem to be anyone he could talk to about this. He wasn’t going back over this ground with Nadine. Riley, clearly, must never know the levels of Aldo’s Fascism. Carmichael? No. Kitty crossed his mind for a moment, as a confidante, and that made him smile. But there was nobody he could think of.
*
Peter decided that everybody was to spend Christmas at Locke Hill. He was thinking about telling them about Mabel. Preparing the ground for telling them. The double life – it is a double life, he thought, like some sordid man in the papers. How did that happen? – was tiring him. He wanted to invite her for Christmas too, but she wouldn’t come. She had to stay with her mother, and he was to go ahead and have Christmas with his children and Riley’s family. She was quite insistent. So, he was looking forward to seeing everybody and was sorry when Riley rang to say that Kitty was not well, and they would have to delay their arrival at Locke Hill by a few days. Kitty was the pleasure he was looking forward to – she was so easy to cheer up.
Tom did not get the message, and Peter thus found himself, for three days, alone with his son.
Tom arrived halfway through dinner.
‘I don’t need anything to eat,’ he said, his hair sticking up and his eyes shifting. ‘Thank you, but really. I’m jolly tired, actually, so I’m just going to go on upstairs if that’s all right.’
He’s so formal. He’s so—
Peter sat on his own at the table laid for two, and ate his mutton chop. It seemed ridiculous. Mrs Joyce looked in and Peter didn’t care to catch her eye. He picked up the bone to gnaw it, listlessly, then wiped his hands on the napkin and went into the sitting room, where he collapsed on to the sofa. God, I’m making old man noises when I get up and sit down. He picked up the telephone receiver.
‘Mabel?’ She was out, of course – no answer, she’d be working. He read for a bit, knowing she would ring him when she came in, and she did. He spoke to her then at length about how much he wished he could be a better parent to his son, who was now almost grown, and whether it was all too late, and what he could do.
Mabel was quiet. ‘You always do your best,’ she said. ‘You can’t do more.’
Peter took those sweet words up to bed with him.
*
Tom heard his father’s footsteps passing. He wondered why Peter was up so late. He’d heard the telephone ringing – after midnight – and the low rumble of voices from the room below. It reminded him of being a child, that sound of adults talking downstairs, having dinner. That must be a very old memory, he thought. You left this house when you were, what, four? He wondered if this would be his oldest memory. He wondered who was calling his father at this hour. He wondered if he wanted to know, and why he didn’t know, and acknowledged that he simply didn’t know his father.
*
The next day Peter had to go to London, leaving early, back in the evening. But Tom that night went out with a friend in the neighbourhood; a longstanding promise, he said as he left, even his strides looking more and more cheerful as he headed off down the drive. Peter sat down alone to dinner again, and wished he’d stayed in town. He could have stayed the night with her.
It was embarrassing.
He could not bear it.
No, that was not what he wished. He wished his boy would sit down to dinner with him.
*
Peter had bought a clattery wooden backgammon board in Athens before the War, with a zigzag of dark and pale inlay and four vast dice. Before dinner on the third night he whipped it out, saying: ‘Come on, it’s about time I taught you something.’
Tom jumped slightly at this.
‘It’s what fathers do, isn’t it?’ Peter said, mildly. ‘Teach their sons?’
Tom raised his eyebrows and agreed to sit across the low table in the drawing room. The fire was blazing; the sherry dry. Peter had set it all up.
He laid out the board. Tom watched dutifully as the stacks of pieces took their positions.
‘Best of three, to start with,’ Peter said. ‘Throw the dice – ah! Three and five, very good. Classic move – here – five from here, three from here – and you’ve built a block, do you see?’
He guided his son through the game: ‘You go that way round, I go this. Don’t leave yourself open or I’ll take you. You want little stacks of two or more – ah! Five and a six – the lover’s leap – do this. You see?’
Tom smiled. The lover’s leap was a neat little move.
The thwack and rattle of the dice and pieces were a soothing sound.
‘Is it luck or skill?’ Tom asked.
‘The perfect balance of two,’ Peter said.
Tom won the first two games, with Peter’s direction, then lost two, then won two more on his own.
‘Extraordinary how various it can be,’ Tom said. ‘And rather more … lively … than chess.’
Dinner interrupted them.
After the ham pie, Peter looked up at Tom and said, ‘Tell me the most important thing.’
Tom was startled, but Peter said nothing more: just looked at him, clearly. And so, much to his own surprise, Tom answered honestly – thoughtlessly almost, as if bewitched.
He said, ‘If you love a girl who has filthy politics, but only because her family and background have filthy politics, do you save her from herself or throw her over?’
Peter felt a weight shift inside him.
‘How filthy?’ he said. ‘The filthier they are, the more you have to save her.’
He saw that Tom had not expected that, and sat quiet for a moment. Perhaps he had jumped in too bumptiously.
‘Italian Fascist,’ Tom said.
Peter thought a moment.
‘The cousin,’ he said – and Tom threw back his head, and acquiesced.
‘Oh dear,’ Peter said.
‘Do you see?’ Tom said.
But Peter was so happy to be confided in that he almost could not hold in his heart at the same time sorrow for Tom’s dilemma.
‘She wishes she were married so she could give her wedding ring to Mussolini.’
Peter recalled Nenna’s long hair and bright eyes.
‘Then why do you love her at all?’ he said, and Tom acknowledged his injustice, and said, ‘Of course she is more than that.’
Of course, Peter thought. Of course she is more than that and he saw in that bright moment that his son was in the same situation as he was – he loves someone he shouldn’t. He loves where there is a problem.
But it is not the same. There is nothing wrong with being negro. The wrongness is all in how you are treated. Mabel being a coloured woman is immutable. The Fascist girl chooses to be Fascist. It’s in Mabel’s body; it’s in this girl’s mind. There’s something to think about.
‘Love is not to be sniffed at,’ he said, buying time.
‘No,’ said Tom.
Peter wanted, suddenly and very strongly, to tell Tom about Mabel. He didn’t. This is Tom’s moment to talk to me. Not mine to as it were trump him.
‘I was in love all the time at your age,’ he said. ‘Different girl every week.’
‘I do like Nenna, as well,’ Tom said. ‘And she’s like family.’
Peter wanted for Tom never ever to be hurt. That was all. There had been enough pain in this family. Admitting that dashing Italian to the inner circles would, he could see, bring more pain. Riley was putting out another bunch of pamphlets, on Abyssinia, on Mussolini’s policy in Spain – he would not be welcoming a Fascist girl into the family – but then—
‘Does Riley know they’re Fascist?’ Peter asked suddenly.
‘For God’s sake don’t tell him!’ Tom burst out. ‘Please. Please.’
Peter was taken aback by the strength of it, and the pieces fell into place.
‘Does Nadine know?’ and Tom’s expression told him the answer.
Good Lord. That is a mess already. That’s why she stopped going there. And Tom insisted on continuing – well.
‘I see your dilemma,’ he said after a moment. ‘I know you like them but my feeling is you should have nothing more to do with them. For your family’s sake and your own. If they – or she – change their politics, of course, that’s a different matter. But people have to change themselves, in my experience.’
Tom was looking at him.
Peter smiled low and gave a dry little laugh and thought – oh – I’m going to say something now – and he did. It leapt from him like something released.
‘You may remember something of how very hard a lot of very fine people tried to change me,’ he said. He looked up. ‘Do you remember any of that?’
The air around them, between them, had shifted. There was heaviness suddenly, as if ghosts, for years concealed in the long velvet curtains, had stepped quietly forward to listen more closely to their conversation. Peter felt underwater.
‘I see that you have changed,’ Tom said. It came out stilted. ‘And that it took a long time.’
‘I changed because of other people,’ Peter said. ‘You, for example. Your mother’ – he blinked – ‘Rose, and Riley – but other people did not change me, or force me to change. Despite their best efforts. And believe me their efforts were the very best.’
‘Me,’ said Tom.
‘Yes,’ said Peter ‘And I’m sorry, for all of it.’
Tom looked confused.
It’s too much for him, Peter thought.
‘Tom,’ he said. ‘If you are even asking these questions about the girl, thinking in these terms, perhaps this is a love you are thinking about sniffing at. We can talk about this again if you like, but now let’s have our rice pudding and then you can thrash me some more at backgammon.’
‘Of course,’ Tom said, still sort of paralysed. He looked up at Peter in a kind of shock, and saw him for the first time.
*
Tom read the Giornata delle Fede letter again, and thought about what Peter had said.
I’m thinking about what my father has said! Quite extraordinary.
Am I getting a father? Something of a father?
The idea thrilled him. He apologised! He said he changed, for me, because of me.
Am I to forgive him, and get to know him?
Am I forgiving him?
*
After Christmas, back at Cambridge, Tom got this letter:
Epifania, 1936
Masinuccio mio,
I will not be cast down. You may not write to me often enough but I will write to you. Things are the same here. Papa is well and bossy; Mama is well and quiet, the horrible boys are well and getting bigger, the lovely little girl is well and lovely. The Nenna is pretty well, though she misses her friend. You know Faccetta Nera is not to be sung any more? They’re worried about the slavery of love bit in the lyrics. And the quando saremo insieme a te. They want to change it to quando saremo vicino a te. Near you, instead of with you. It’s because of miscegenation. They don’t want to encourage brown babies. Why? Brown babies are so pretty. Insieme is a very personal word! Sounds like inserire/insert and inseminate/ inseminare. And inside, in English. And there’s all that being kissed by the sun and wearing the Blackshirts’ shirt … it sounds like a marvellous romantic escapade. Are you impressed with my English? I am working hard on it and reading Dickens.
(Tom, sitting in the corner of the Eagle with a pint of bitter, thought, yes. I am impressed with your English.)
I was thinking, about the night you left, when Papà thought you were kissing me. Before, I thought Papà was wrong – but now I was thinking – you did want to kiss me, didn’t you? I recognise it now.
(A worm wriggled in his guts. Why do you recognise it now? What has happened, that now you know more about kissing?)
And anyway, here comes 1936, cold and damp so far, a New Year and what will happen? La Befana – who despite our being 1) atheists and 2) Jewish always used to bring me something, has this year brought me nothing – because my mother says I am too old. Perhaps she – la Befana, not la mama – will bring me something else nice, something direct to me, suitable for a more grown-up girl.
Auguri to you, Masino, even though it is hard to speak to you when you don’t answer. I am here.
Nenna
He wrote:
Cara Nenna, noncompoopa,
I mean it. I meant it. I love you. Don’t kiss anyone else.
He didn’t post it.
Want, not want. Push me pull you.
What could he give her? Aldo is right: she’s too young. And I’m too young. And Peter is right: she’s a Fascist fool in complete thrall to her daddy who is in complete thrall to Daddy Duce and oh, God. I don’t need these people.
And anyway he was very busy.
*
Come spring, Tom saw on the newsreels the scenes of mad delight in Italy when the Italian army entered Addis Ababa – the Duce stepping out on to his balcony like some high priest being adored in a vast temple. Riley gave him copies of the new pamphlets, which he accepted with a feeling of grubbiness. He read Haile Selassie’s denunciation of the Fascists’ use of poison gas against the civilian population. He noticed, wearily, that Fascist Italian troops were fighting republican Italian Brigades at the Battle of Guadalajara, in the Spanish Civil War. He read, not long afterwards, how Carlo Rosselli, head of the Matteotti Battalion, and a Jew, had been murdered by a Fascist gang in France. He saw the Duce parading around Berlin with Hitler, the puffed-up pigeon alongside the cat that got the cream. He saw newsreel of Florence draped in swastikas along with the beautiful Florentine lily, and felt sick, physically sick; Donatello’s Perseus gazing on with eyes blind to history. We were going to go there, he thought, and be in love.
No. Push it away. She wants to give her wedding ring to Mussolini. Forget about it.
A person being deluded doesn’t mean, does it, that there is nothing good in them? That they’re not your friend any more?
Forget about it.
Forget about it?
What, really?
Then, what, write to her and tell her you’re forgetting about it?
He wrote less, and shorter.
He bit his lip, and re-read the letter about the Giornata delle Fede.
He thought, and considered, and decided one way, and then another. He wrote a long letter to Aldo and Susanna, and didn’t send that either.
When it came down to it, it was her choice, between him and Mussolini. And because he knew she would choose Mussolini, he didn’t ask.
He missed her. He felt evil, as if he had left a child in the care of a wicked old man, with pinch marks all up her arms.