Riley watched the weeks slip away during that odd summer. He was reading the papers all the time, and taking everything in: Czechoslovakia in the spring, the end of the fighting in Spain, Mussolini and Hitler signing their ‘Pact of Steel’. Initially it had been going to be called a ‘Pact of Blood’. Dear God what is wrong with these people?
His mind of course turned to Aldo. Was blood and steel what Aldo had in mind? Of course not. Aldo, Nadine’s flesh and blood. Now flesh and blood was a pact Riley understood. Flesh and blood, or blood and steel … Hardly a difficult choice, you’d have thought.
He noticed that babies were being given little gas masks of their own. Evacuation plans were drawn up. The country was hovering on a starting line, waiting for a starting gun which didn’t go. It was terribly hard for everyone to concentrate, as their fears and desires and opinions flickered about the place, bouncing off each other, ricocheting. War or not war. The Up-And-At-’Em school; the Never-Agains. The young people who knew nothing, the practically minded, and those who were still like Peter used to be. He assumed there were others who were still like Peter used to be – in their sheds, their pubs, their back parlours, their street corners, saying nothing, paralysed, still, twenty years later. Not everyone had been able to heal up in Peter’s symbolic ten years. And here we are, another ten years on. He did not want to see a baby in a gas mask.
He found that he was fiddling with his splint more, unscrewing it, screwing it up. It was uncomfortable. Nerves, he thought. Nadine came in one day when he had taken it out, and found him just staring at the gap, in the mirror. She took the splint from his hand, and put it down, and kissed him.
It really did make him nervous, and then the fact that it made him nervous made him nervous again, in a slightly different key.
*
Nadine had arranged the family holiday. It was to be two weeks of calm and rest in a hotel on the Norfolk coast from the end of August. There would be walking, and bathing or sailing if they wanted. Kitty had agreed to come for a few days – they hadn’t seen much of her for months. He and Nadine were glad that she was coming. He wanted very much to keep tabs on everybody, everything. He had held his wife closer, since Kristallnacht.
A couple of days before they were to go, the Nazis and the Soviets signed their non-aggression pact. Well, that’s it, Riley thought. Hitler’s got nothing to be scared of now. He’ll just carry on, barging around …
He spent his time in the hotel library, reading and asking himself questions which the newspapers didn’t answer. What will happen? What will happen to Tom? What will happen to Kitty? He thought about how quick they had all expected it to be, last time, and how quickly those who had expected it to be quick had died. The term ‘last time’ took on a life of its own in his mind. Last time, he thought, it was the war to end all wars. He thought he’d better concentrate on the particular. What does a publisher do during wartime? There’ll be rationing, of paper almost certainly – there’ll be messages to be put across, propaganda – I can do that.
When Nadine told him to go and get some air, he did. Sometimes he sat in a deckchair on the breezy beach wrestling with his newspaper. It’s all set in place like buoys at sea, a runway, a flare path. This is the route; that’s all. Nothing to be done.
*
Kitty arrived a day later than the others, screeching into the hotel’s drive in a tiny car with the roof down. Johnny Carmichael was driving it. She looked utterly enchanted with herself as she burst on to the verandah where they were having tea: pink-cheeked, windblown despite her scarf, convinced of her own adulthood.
‘Darlings,’ she said. ‘I do hope you don’t mind, I’ve brought Johnny. Tom knows him and he’s quite adorable. He’s booked his room and everything, and will be perfectly happy to take people out in his simply fantastic car.’
Riley had to stop himself laughing at her – dear Kitty. He shook hands with Carmichael and wondered how he felt about this. A gentleman caller! Well, he looks like a gentleman, for what that’s worth. When Tom came in from striding the dunes, he was delighted to see Carmichael, and that sent the visitor up in Riley’s estimation.
The delight didn’t last long. Kitty had brought the post from Bayswater Road. ‘Here’s one from Nenna, I think!’ she said.
As Tom took the envelope from her his hand shook.
‘You haven’t heard from them for a long time,’ Nadine said. Tom was just staring at it.
‘Let me,’ she said, and he let her take it from him gently. She opened it, and handed him the flimsy sheet of paper.
Riley could see the tearstains. Oh, he thought, and Carmichael said, ‘Old man—’
Tom looked up at them, looked round. ‘I’ll read it to you,’ he said, and someone said ‘Oh Tom are you sure—’ and he shushed them, and said, ‘We’re all rather in this together now, aren’t we?’ so then everyone was quiet and he read.
Dear Masino,
I haven’t heard from you for so long. Have you given up on me? I wouldn’t blame you. But as things just get worse and worse I have to ask you again: please help us. Tomaso, I don’t know how to write this. These words. Vittorio is in internal exile. In other words, in prison. It is an island. He was
Here Tom broke off, and scanned the next few sentences. He paused a moment and blinked before taking up again:
I have no words – none beyond these, not good enough. Mama hit Papà. War is inside and out. She has gone to Termoli, the nearest she can get to San Domino, where Vittorio is. I don’t know what she thinks she can do there. Stefano says nothing – nothing. He wants to join the army but even if they want fifteen-years-olds (I don’t think they do) they do not want Jews. You may wonder about Papà. He is losing his mind. He looks at maps and plans all day, and he smiles at everything, and at the same time he cries. There is no Jewish doctor to look at him. Anyway the Jews are not talking to us. So I am cooking and holding the house together, a bit.
Did you get the photographs? They weren’t very good. I went to the Embassy: I spoke of Carmichael and the man said he knew him and gave me 50 lire, so if he asks for it back from Carmichael or you then you will know that I need your help. But when I went back he was no longer there.
I know you had ideas; I don’t know what has happened about them. But things are not going to get better. Soon we will lose on both sides: Italians, enemies of England; Jews, enemies of the Nazis. So then what, for us? I cannot imagine. I can only hope that the war will keep them so busy they will have no time for tormenting us. Again I ask the ridiculous question – are my letters not reaching you? I don’t understand why I do not hear from you. Please. I am sorry for all the times I didn’t listen to you. Is it that?
Please help us now.
Nenna
‘Is it too late?’ Riley said.
‘It was always too late,’ Carmichael said. ‘Sorry, Tom. For Fiore, certainly. We can have a go for the children. Do they have passports?’
‘She does. I don’t think Marinella and Stefano do.’
‘Their father would have to apply for them.’
‘Oh Christ!’ Tom burst out, and turned away.
*
Nenna, Nenna, Nenna. Tom’s legs felt a little lame. He’d been trying to put through a call to Rome: no luck. Just long empty noises hanging in space and distance. It didn’t sound as if the phone was even ringing. He pictured it, black and squat on the credenza in the hall. Aldo might answer, or Stefano. She is in such pain and trouble—
Tomorrow morning he would telephone to the Embassy in Rome; he would go back to London – he’d take Carmichael – and they could draw up an actual plan. Now she was willing – at last, thank GOD, she was willing – now they could get papers and money to her.
*
They were all waiting for lunch in the hotel restaurant, around a table with a slightly grubby cloth on it. It was a nervy group: Tom had been on the phone again all morning sending telegrams, and was jumping with frustration, about to head back to town; Nadine had insisted that he eat before he set off, which he didn’t want to do, and Kitty was trying to hide her disappointment that Carmichael was going with him. Lunch was to be chicken with white sauce, and treacle tart; Riley was thinking that he could probably manage the chicken when the manager came in, coughed importantly, and made an announcement.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Excuse us for the interruption but we thought you would like to be informed that we have just heard on the wireless that Herr Hitler has invaded Poland.’
Riley’s heart seemed to lie down within him, to spread and melt, to disappear almost.
Breaths were taken. Silences and murmurings ebbed and flooded around the room. ‘What?’ said someone, fractiously. ‘What?’
‘Is that it, then?’ asked Nadine.
Tom unfolded himself, raising his long pale self like some kind of wraith.
‘Tom,’ said Riley, and paused. Nadine put her hand out.
Tom touched it, gently, as he walked past on his way to the telephone cubicle. Carmichael rose and went with him. There was a glow in Tom’s eye. ‘Fighter or bomber?’ he said to Kitty, as he passed.
‘Fighter,’ said Kitty. ‘Knowing you.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Tom. ‘Could go either way.’
‘And me?’ Carmichael said.
‘Intelligence, of course.’
Kitty was as white and as bold as her brother. Paper children, Riley thought, and mine, though I never deserved them. And now I shall lose them. He watched Tom go. They don’t know. How could they know? And everybody who used to know has forgotten. Everyone has forgotten.
Nadine stood up. For a moment she stared in the direction Tom had gone; she looked to Riley. It was a desperate gaze she gave him, her mouth hanging a little open, her eyes imploring but at the same time knowing that they must not implore. She was shaking her head.
‘It might not be,’ she said. ‘They might—’
‘But all this has been going on for so long now,’ Riley said.
‘Like in America,’ she said. ‘Where people dance day and night for weeks, hoping to win ten dollars, and falling over from exhaustion …’
‘Nadine,’ said Riley, helplessly. ‘Not much we can do about it.’
‘Are we just back to where we were?’ she said. ‘Is that it? We’re back there again?’
‘The Prime Minister will have something to say,’ Riley said. ‘This isn’t necessarily it.’ He didn’t believe himself.
Tom came back half an hour later. ‘Twenty minutes queueing and then I can’t even get a bloody operator,’ he said. ‘It’s no way to run a war. I should probably sign up as a telephone engineer – that’s what they need. What are you going to do, Kitty?’
‘I am in the Foreign Office, Tom,’ said Kitty. ‘I’ll see what they’ve got for me. What did girls do in your war, Riley? Nurses and typing I suppose. Perhaps they’ll let us drive and ride motorbikes this time round.’
This time round.
‘Oh, girls rode motorbikes,’ Nadine said.
Of course, Riley thought, of course Kitty will be brave and fine because Nadine, not her own poor mother, has been her model. And Tom will be brave and fine because the example of Peter’s turnaround is stronger than his weakness. They will volunteer, and go, wherever they have to go this time, and do their bit, whatever their bit turns out to be, and they will try to be as good as us, and maybe get their face or their mind blown apart too, and spend their lives trying to be as good as we have been at living with that. Better than us.
Children, he thought. Children. They know nothing. They’ve been nowhere. Oh God.
‘Might join the army myself,’ Kitty was saying now, grinning boldly; more boldly than she could possibly feel. Surely. Surely they understand? ‘If I could have a motorbike. Do the right thing!’
But girls were killed too, motorbike or no motorbike. Slit trenches full of nurses, Gothas raining down on them; Spanish flu, infections and syphilis and the sinking of the Marquette …
Riley looked up and saw Nadine, watching them across the room. How do they look to her, these children? Like her life’s work, about to be smashed to pieces? Are we really so stupid? Are we?
Riley dredged around inside himself for the courage he used to have. It must be there somewhere. Where is it? Has it melted away, because it’s not needed for me now, but for them? His heart beat fast and light: pitter pat, pitter pat.
Tom and Kitty remained, alert, strong, on the nice little armchairs around the low table. Not our war. Your war, Riley thought. Look at you, so beautiful. Your war, that we couldn’t prevent. Babies …
Kitty said: ‘And what are we going to do about Nenna?’
‘Everything we can,’ Tom said, pushing himself up again from the chair, and it was as much as Riley could do not to weep.
*
The day turned into a tangle of frustrations and indecision. Johnny’s car wouldn’t start, the phone lines were overloaded, Tom trying to telephone, Kitty deciding she wanted to get back to, there were no cabs to get to Norwich for the train, everyone wanting and failing to go here or there, and changing their minds, until in the afternoon Nadine made them all sit down and have tea, and said: ‘Enough. No point everyone running around now. Tom, you can get hold of them tomorrow. It still might not be … Go and get some fresh air,’ she said, as if he were twelve. ‘Go and stride about. I might come out. Kitty? Riley?’
‘Are we allowed?’ Kitty asked.
‘We’re not at war yet,’ Tom said. ‘And they won’t invade here. They have to invade at Thanet, or somewhere.’
‘Well someone thinks they might,’ said Kitty. ‘There’s rolls of barbed wire already out there on the beach.’
‘I rather think that’s for fencing, sweetheart,’ Nadine said.
‘They’ll come by air,’ said Tom. ‘Thousands of paratroopers.’ At which Riley got to his feet, feeling the weight of tiredness, anger, and sadness on him as he went towards the stairs. He trailed his hand along Nadine’s shoulder as he left, as if saying, ‘I don’t need you to follow me.’
The others stared east, as if the Nazi planes and troop carriers might already be massing just beyond the horizon.
*
In the end, Tom and Riley went out. By the time they got on to the marshes it was a beautiful evening: the sky so very high and deepening blue, the sun behind them in the west gleaming low and gold on the samphire-studded mudflats; the gilded pools rippling silently as the tide slipped in to fill them. There was the odd bird.
Tom was a little ahead of Riley, towards the base of the last bank of dunes before the open sea, and Riley could see his bare shining head, not in any damn uniform, with any damn hat, thank Christ, his boots clagging with wet sand as he trudged on. Somewhere over to the left – not far – shots were being fired – a poacher? A harrier suddenly rose, clacking its alarm, and along the beach in the distance someone whistled for their dog. Riley heard the dog barking just as the low, loud tide siren started to moan, and drown it out.
It all became terribly clear to him as the siren started, and the dark figure on the slope before him went to scramble up. Fillets of sand were crumbling beneath his feet, and a smell of cordite drifted on the air. Tom climbed on up, long legs, arms reaching, not even a tin hat on, and Riley saw, suddenly and as live as day, this son crucified on the parapet, in No Man’s Land, and all the other dear boys running towards him; he saw barbed wire and limbs, and the rain of bullets beyond, and he saw the sky falling in, again.
Riley thought, I could shoot him now. It would save so much time and trouble.
He shook his head clear. None of that. He gave it a minute.
A poacher’s gun. A tide siren.
He almost laughed. Leadswinging by proxy, now, is it?
That is the past. That is the past. What’s coming now is—
*
On the way back they stopped in at the pub; and it was such a silly thing that set it off. Such a silly thing. A man in an unfortunate jacket, standing at the bar with some other men, red-faced, been there since opening time by the look of them, excited about the news about the imminence of war, war war war, everyone was saying, eyebrows up and under-informed bravado at the ready, a kind of premature ejaculation, Riley thought – well, this one said, ‘But we should be with Herr Hitler. He can’t keep his flies buttoned when it comes to someone else’s country, but he’s some good ideas. He’s right about the Jews!’
So Riley turned to him, mildly, and said, quite clearly and identifiably sadly, ‘My wife is Jewish.’
The man looked at him, with a sort of sneer, which swiftly curdled up with the bewilderment of the ‘What’s wrong with your face?’ look, and so then he gave a sort of snort and, in a gesture of default self-defence, he waved his hand by his temple in the ‘he’s-bonkers’ twirl. So one of his mates said, ‘Steady, George,’ but Tom was on his feet towards him, and George, twitching, burly, old enough to know better even in a public bar, said, ‘Oh I stand by that, I do!’ and then, seeing the height, youth and expression of Tom, lashed out, flailing and useless, but he managed to catch Riley a wild hard crack on the right of his jaw.
The crack of bone, the thud of flesh, the cry of pain. Blood and teeth. And the splint, askew, falling weird and alien and semi-attached out of Riley’s poor mouth. He felt it. Mashed up.
‘What the fock’s that,’ the man said.
Riley had bitten his tongue. Oh, that taste of his own blood in his mouth!
A couple of blokes were holding Tom away. He dropped his head and came up calm. He turned to the men around him and said, with a nod to George, ‘Well, you’ll remember whose side he’s on. Attacking a decorated veteran of Ypres and Passchendaele, for having a Jewish wife.’
Riley tried to speak, tried to smile at his own attempt to speak, swallowed some blood and thought briefly about the curious effect your own blood has on your faeces when you swallow enough of it. He thought, I really wasn’t asking for it. Nadine can’t be angry with me, it’s not like in Wigan, and then he had to think about Ainsworth, and then he sighed, the vastest sigh.
Actually it hurt a lot.
*
Tom walked Riley back, holding him steady with a clean pub dishcloth against his face. The landlady had wanted to call the doctor, but Tom said no, his mother was a nurse, they’d go back to the hotel. Of course Riley remembered his long walk outside Zonnebeck.
Kitty ran to embrace Riley, and reeled back. He stood there, confused. He had reverted: wounded Riley, who does nothing. Someone else take charge. His grey eyes were emptying with the pain. He did not say anything, or give the small sideways smile.
*
Nadine’s head swam slightly at the sight of him, the napkins under his jaw, the look on his face. But her thought was, Thank God. Thank God we are in a peaceful place, we have a car, there is petrol, we are not so far from London, we are twenty years on, there are not thousands of him, we have Mr Gillies in his clean and tidy office, there is none of the crisis, none of the filth, none of the … She did not care to remember the things there were none of. She sent Kitty for the hotel first-aid kit; allowed a doctor to be called solely to provide some morphine, and carefully cleaned Riley up. He seemed to want to unscrew the splint on the other side, but she couldn’t hold the damaged side up in the right way for long enough, and even putting his finger in his mouth made him gasp and catch. She couldn’t really see what was happening in there. She thought the bones might be shattered on both sides. The blow had come from the left, Tom said; the splint could have jarred the bone on the right as well and … well. There was a fair amount of blood.
*
Tom telephoned everyone he could think of, to get Gillies’ home number. The lines were still impossible, and for a moment he had the illogical thought that he should be able to get a line, because the imminence of war should only be affecting telephone calls connected with imminent war. In the end they just drove off into the dark, Tom at the wheel, Kitty map-reading with a torch, Nadine holding Riley upright in the back. They got home after midnight and Tom half-carried Riley inside.
*
‘There was some kind of bust up,’ Nadine said. ‘I wasn’t there.’ She had never been to see Gillies with Riley before. It was early, before his clinic was meant to open. She hadn’t slept.
Riley pulled his bandage aside, and spat blood into an enamel kidney basin. He gestured for a pen and paper, and Gillies handed it to him, observing both of them.
Mortified. My fault entirely. Took exception to an anti-Semite.
Nadine slipped forward and took the paper from him with a gentle touch, and handed it to Gillies, who read it.
Riley leaned back, suddenly, and looked from one to the other. His face was white as bone.
‘Let’s take a look,’ said Gillies, and Nadine again stood away, and let them do what they had to do. Riley’s head fell back. Gillies washed his hands, unwrapped him, peered, dilated, murmured.
‘The splint is a goner,’ he said. ‘Which is good. I’ve been trying to get him to get rid of it for years.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nadine said.
‘So I can give him a graft,’ Gillies said. ‘Bit of rib, or tibia. Much stronger, more longlasting. This jaw is like the Treaty of Versailles – it was never going to hold, and it’s a miracle it’s lasted as long as it did.’
She didn’t understand.
‘We can finish his treatment,’ Gillies explained. ‘Do what we should have done in 1919.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘He wouldn’t let me,’ Gillies said, and her face told him, and he said, ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t know.’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I thought that was it.’ She glanced at Riley. She hoped her face didn’t look accusing, but she feared it probably did. He looked so helpless there, in the chair, throat naked, mouth adrift. I know he’s in the best of hands. ‘The best of surgeons and sisters’ – the phrase came to her, where was it from – ah – the field postcard. ‘I was admitted with a slight/severe wound in my … fill in as appropriate … I am now comfortable with the best of surgeons and sisters to do all that is necessary for me.’
She thought, looking at him, I will protect you and love you in every way it takes. Now, then, always, forever.
‘Well,’ Gillies said. ‘We’ll admit you now, Riley, and I’ll try to fit you in tomorrow. It doesn’t look too complex. Don’t worry!’ he said, and his smile was a bright flag of confidence. ‘We’re much better at it than we used to be.’
Riley made a noise Nadine hadn’t heard for years: the noise of bitter laughter through a wound.
*
The Prime Minister spoke on the radio. He told the country that the British Ambassador in Berlin had handed the German government a final note stating that, unless he heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between them. The Prime Minister said he had to tell them now that no such undertaking had been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. He said it was a bitter blow. He said, Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. He said, His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. He said, The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe, has become intolerable. He said he was resolved to finish it. He said, Play your part. He said, Calmness, and courage. He said, May God bless you all and I am certain that right will prevail.
Riley was in Gillies’ office. Everyone knew an announcement was to be made, and Gillies, who shouldn’t really have been there on a Sunday, had invited him in to listen. As the words proceeded, Riley could feel something else in his face which was familiar from long ago: a lowering feeling, a cutting off, an accepted and unmentioned resentment. And so it goes. The freedom has all been a mirage; now all is boss and instruction and fear once again. Will they want me? Perhaps in ten years’ time when they’ve used up everyone else. No – I will have nothing to do with that side of it. I must stay while others go – boys—
‘Well,’ Gillies was saying.
Riley grunted.
‘What do you think?’
He wrote:
Nothing to say, is there?
Gillies was silent, and then said: ‘I think it was kind of fate to give us those happy years, before turning the lights off again and drawing down the curtain. Though there were those for whom the curtain never lifted.’
Riley wrote:
We always knew we’d have to fight them again.
Gillies was staring. Then he shook himself, and read the note, harrumphed, and said: ‘All the more reason to get you done and out of the way, eh?’
Riley’s cheeks tightened a little, and he covered his face with his hands. I have no choice, he thought. Gillies will cut bone off my leg and dismantle my face again to get it in, and finish off the job. He kind of, almost, laughed. Yes, best get it done now, before the crowds.
Later, he gazed out of the window. The high redbrick and white stucco buildings of the West End sat as they had sat for generations, scarlet geraniums in their window boxes, front doors and black railings shining. Those will be carted off for ordnance, sooner or later … A sense of terrible importance lay on the tense and muted streets. He felt rising from the people passing below a need to do, and no knowledge yet of what to do. Outside the pub on the corner men muttered, in low voices. Women clicked by anxiously, their shoulders nervous in their jackets, their shopping bags twitching as they rushed home.
They’re all ready to roar off from the starting line, Riley thought – but when they look over their shoulders, they’re running against nobody. Things should be happening, but nothing is happening yet. They’re all going to get prepared, with their new socks and gas masks and evacuation plans. All right, boys and girls, this term, we’ll be fighting the Hun … They’ve invaded everybody else and now they’re going to invade us.
But never mind. As Gillies had said, ‘We’re much better at it than we used to be.’
*
Peter and Mabel were at Locke Hill. It was Mrs Joyce, listening to the radio as she was ironing, who came hurtling from the laundry room, and called them. They all stood around the ironing board. At the end the women looked at Peter with the same expression, one he found helpless and irresistible. He said: ‘Well we knew it was coming, didn’t we?’ and Mabel said, ‘Did we?’ because she didn’t, really.
‘In a way,’ said Peter.
Iris was staring at a small pile of tennis balls, wondering whether this would affect her going to the Royal College. She remembered the moment for the rest of her life.
*
Rose had stopped in after church for a cup of tea with the vicar. He was a younger man, and he looked up at her with a glint of query in her eye, and she thought, I am a veteran.
‘I don’t know,’ she said to him, before he could ask. ‘I suppose it will all be very different. It’s not as if everyone just heads back to the Western front, or the Med, or Egypt. I have no idea what it means.’
Later, in her sitting room with Mr Mackesson and a glass of sherry, he said: ‘Bombs, is what it means. We will all be needed here as much as anywhere else.’ Rose had blinked, a lot, and he had held his arms out to her, so she had gone to him and leant against him, her head on his tweed shoulder and his arm around her, and to be honest her thought was not of war, but of love: Why didn’t I allow this before? Why did I protect myself from it, deny it to myself? Could I have had this, with someone else, twenty-five years ago?
And then: No. Because it is him. This is him, for me. And how much easier it is going to be to face all this with him here.
*
Kitty was in her flat, woken by Johnny on the telephone. When he told her, she felt, in order, vindicated, sick, and excited, and called to her flatmates to share the news. Cynthia rushed to the window to look out, wanting to see if the world had visibly changed. Ada told her to come away, she was in her dressing gown and people would see, before lighting a cigarette, and trying to look bored. Cynthia burst into tears.
*
Nenna, when the news reached Rome, cried and cried, she couldn’t stop crying. She could hear Aldo’s voice saying: ‘Sweetheart, Italy is not in the war. It is Germany with whom England wants to fight.’ And she shouted at him though he wasn’t there. ‘Blood and Steel, Papà – what you want and here it comes. We will all be killed.’
You cannot desert your father … she whispered … then she closed her eyes, spat three times, and made her mind up. The men could do what they wanted – Papà, Vittorio, even Stefano, who had not come back, and whose friends said he had gone to Naples. Naples! Why? It was beyond her. This was men’s work and men’s fault – to hell with them all. Blood and steel would separate her from them, whether they loved her or cared about her or remembered her at all or not. They must look after themselves.
And Tom? A trail of memories flared up in her heart, right back to the beginning: Tom and her as children together by the river; when she asked him in the church if she had killed Jesus, and he wrote down the words to look them up. Him shouting in a field, his hair shining in the sun. His face when she produced the marriage certificate – his voice cracking as he shouted down her father – the intensity with which he had tried to help her, for so long, despite all her resistance. His kisses. And now he had to be the enemy and she had to be with the Italians fighting alongside the Nazis – Such nonsense! Such hideous nonsense!
The world became very small to her, suddenly. Shrinking what you cared about to manageable proportions seemed the only possible response. My mother, and my little sister. Feed them, comfort them, keep them safe. Marinella and Mama. That’s what matters. So that meant Marinella, as Mama had not come back from her dockside vigil for Vittorio. So. Head down, hard work, Marinella. That might be achievable.
And England. She didn’t know. She waited to hear. He must have had her letter by now, her telegram.
The following day a telegram came: GO EVERY DAY TO EMBASSY MENTION CARMICHAEL TAKE PASSPORTS LOVE ALWAYS TOM
Marinella had no passport. Aldo would have to sign for her to get one. Pah. Tullio would have to make her one. She would do whatever it took.
And she would go. Every day.
*
Aldo was in Pomezia. Just watching. He just wanted to see. It was looking beautiful. He’d come down a few times now. One evening, he had seen the Duce on his Moto Guzzi: he’d heard the rumble, the cracking echo of the big V-twin echoing across the plain, unmistakeable. He’d chased after him – like a fool. He just wanted to ask him face to face, to make absolutely sure; to see if the Duce could give him any idea about when he’d be able to reverse it all, when he’d want him back – he was going to tell him how he was using his time constructively, studying, keeping up with things – he was pretty sure what the plan was: stick with Germany, then when they had won the war together, everything could go back to normal.
People were sitting out on the bridges and the low walls and along the embankments for the evening passegiata. They stared at him.
He’d helped to build five of these cities, and the canals that permitted them and gave them strong foundations, and the roads that linked them. The flag of the new city was to be red and blue, for the earth and the sea. This afternoon he saw three people he knew: a tractor driver, who waved and yelled a greeting. A foreman, who looked embarrassed, and frowned. And on the other side of a gleaming white canal channel full of murky water, he saw an old man he hadn’t seen for years, thin, poorly dressed. Aldo squinted, trying to recall him, his name or face or function. It came to him: it was Olivieri, one of the brothers who used to sell him frogs, right at the beginning. Aldo cried out to him, cheerfully; Olivieri squinted back at him, raised his hand in a knowing and weary salute, and walked on. There was no bridge nearby, or Aldo would have gone to talk to him.
*
Nadine was at home, alone, packing a small bag of things to take to Riley. She listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s voice, and took three long silent breaths as it came to a close. Tension rose off her shoulders. So. Now. What’s to do?
She would speak to Mrs Kenton. She would remind her that no foreign soldier has invaded England for nine hundred years. And to her father, and she would telephone Rose. Then – carry on. She would take Riley’s things down to him: the operation was tomorrow morning, and he would stay in for a couple of weeks. After that she would nurse him at home. The supplies had been ordered. They were giving him a naso-gastric tube with a little pump, through which he could have broth and beef tea and eggs and cream, bypassing his mouth completely.
She wondered how soon rationing would be introduced. Is this going to be a long haul? It feels like the start of long haul. They would give her instructions: recipes, amounts for a balanced diet. He would manage the pump himself. It would give him something to do during healing, which would take a while.
Lots to be done. Lots to be done.
We fight all our individual battles alongside this big one. How big will this be?
Another long silent breath.
It will be hard. It will be hard. But we know what to do. So do it.
*
Tom was on a train south with a package of papers and cash. He had four return tickets in his pocket and a tune stuck in his head: ‘Lucciola lucciola vien da me io ti daro il pan del re …’ His heart rattled like the train itself for the thousand miles he travelled. He blocked it all from his mind for the duration, and slept like an exhausted child after a long sickness. He woke, he ate, the trucks coupled and uncoupled, he stepped off one train and on to another. Day into night into day. And then St Peter’s appeared in his window, and fled again, and he stood, and stretched, and checked the times for the return train that afternoon.
He went directly to the island, and told the cab to wait. The door was open to the piazza, late summer sun drifting in. She was in the kitchen, looking at some chickpeas. Marinella was at the table. Aldo was singing softly in the next room.
Tom went to Marinella first, and said: ‘Go and get a bag, put your favourite book and toy in it. And some clothes.’
Nenna turned.
‘You too,’ he said. ‘Now.’
They went. Nenna moved as if in a trance, wading through something. He didn’t open his arms to her; he didn’t kiss her. He could hear her speaking softly to Marinella.
‘Passports!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘Anything valuable. If you’re not going to bring it, hide it.’
All right.
He went in to where Aldo was, and saw him sitting, staring, crooning.
‘Are you coming?’ Tom said.
‘Tomaso!’ cried Aldo, with a kind of joy in his voice and Tom said: ‘If I try to push you into the cab, will you come?’
‘Come where?’ Aldo said. His voice was a soft echo of the joviality of former times. It made Tom flinch, and feel sick.
‘Or will you hit me again?’ Tom said.
‘Tomaso!’ Aldo said, and his smile was idiotic, his eyes dull.
‘Here’s your tickets,’ he said. ‘Visa, letter with a job offer. Get your passport, and go and get in the cab.’
Aldo sat there.
Nenna and Marinella appeared behind Tom.
‘Papà?’ she said, so gently, and at that Aldo scowled, and stood, and said: ‘I’m going to the bar.’
‘Papà!’ she cried, and Tom felt that if he heard her cry out one more time to her father.
‘Nenna,’ He said.
‘You won’t get any other answer from him.
Her eyes flared.
‘Coming, Marinella?’ he said. He held out his hand and she took it. She turned, looked up at Nenna.
Marinella and her little suitcase.
He picked up Nenna’s case, and said ‘Got everything?’
Outside the driver helped him put the bags in the boot. Marinella clambered in the back. Nenna stepped forward. He didn’t offer her his hand. It’s your decision, he thought, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare.
She climbed in.
Triumph? Not yet.
He looked around. ‘Aldo?’ he called, but Aldo was not there.
‘Keys,’ he said to Nenna, and he went and closed the door, and locked it. Leaning against it, he scribbled a note, and went to tuck it under the Setas’ door.
‘They’ve gone,’ she said. He glanced over at her, and moved across to the next house along.
Nenna was frozen immobile when he got into the car beside her.
‘Budge up,’ he said, and she budged.
‘To the British Embassy,’ Tom said to the driver, and he ducked his head, as if to avoid anything Nenna might say or do, as if hiding from her potential to change what was happening.
‘Where are we going?’ Marinella said.
This is where I pretend it’s all a huge adventure, he thought.
‘As far as we can,’ he said, and smiled.
*
He held his breath on the train until it started up, shuffling and shuddering, and left the station.
Somewhere north of Civitavecchia, Nenna started crying, and he put his arm around her, and couldn’t tell her shaking from the train’s. Marinella leapt up from her seat and stood by them, patting her, saying, ‘Nenna, Nenna, what is it?’ in that insistent, plaintive way, until he said to her, ‘Marinella, sweetheart, it’s all right. It’s difficult, but it’s all right.’ Somewhere north of Bologna he felt Nenna go to sleep, and he held her head close to him. Marinella curled up as best she could on the other side, trying to lean on Nenna, each of them trying to negotiate the hard seats and the stupid armrests.
He remained nervous and wakeful. The border loomed ahead in his mind: the mountains, the queues, the officials, the trolley-bus lines which stopped where Switzerland began. Muscly thighs and unpleasant magazines. A stamp saying COMO, crossed out. Beyond all that, a memory of clear cold water, wild strawberries in an impossibly steep green meadow, an eagle circling overhead. But somewhere north of Milan he too slipped into sleep, and the train rattled on, carrying them towards the mountains, into the night.