Ten

May

SEPPE CLENCHED THE TOKENS. The edges bit into his hand, proof he was alive.

‘Scum like you get nothing from this shop whilst I’m in charge, not with those traitors’ discs.’ Fredo’s eyes narrowed, his arm barricading the doorway, the black armband crowing.

‘I’ve earned these! They mean the same as money. You can’t stop me using them.’

Fredo laughed and strode forward until his lips were an inch from Seppe’s. ‘I can do whatever I like.’ It was and wasn’t true. Fredo was so devious and these camp guards so trusting that many of his transgressions simply went unnoticed.

The stink of him rotted the air. This close, you could see the lice crusting around the black of the armband and crawling in the brown seams of his uniform. Fredo refused to wash because that would mean defeat, giving in to the evil Allies. To reduce this dyed British uniform to nothing more than a fetid, creeping bug repository was his way of showing who was boss, even, apparently, if it meant itching and stinking and being covered in weals.

Seppe fought his own impulse to scratch. Fredo had terrorised and repulsed Seppe for a decade now, his political fervour only increasing his own belief in his licence to bully. But now they were both living on enemy ground, a place that brought Seppe comfort Fredo could never imagine.

‘What are you staring at?’ Fredo took a pace back, hoicked and spat, hitting Seppe square in the face. A warm trickle insinuated its way from nose to chin, bitter to the taste. The urge to scrub it off, or even to lick it away, was overwhelming. Don’t react. You reacted in the desert and it didn’t help.

Seppe emptied the tokens onto the counter, pushing them off his palms where sweat had stuck them. ‘Give me what I’ve paid for.’

Fredo was spiteful, but he wasn’t stupid. If he didn’t hand over the cigarettes, he’d be thrown off shop duty and given the job of incinerating the night soil.

Seppe exhaled as the cigarettes were slammed down. There they were. God knows, they wouldn’t lessen the reek of living cheek-by-jowl with 700 other POWs, but they’d make it bearable. With one hand he reached out for the cigarettes, the other already fumbling in his pocket for matches.

‘Not so fast, collaborator.’ Eyes still arrowing hatred, Fredo fisted the contents of the carton, the cigarettes poking out from his fingers like so many beheaded flowers.

‘Remind you of anything? Shame you make such flimsy chairs, wood pigeon. You’re a useless carpenter. Worthless, chickenshit soldier, too, and no sense of loyalty. You aren’t loyal to your fellow men, you dishonour Il Duce. You don’t deserve these.’ Slowly, deliberately, Fredo broke each cigarette in half, every muted crunch making Seppe sag with deflated hope. Today was going to be a struggle after all.

‘What’s the matter, soft boy?’ Threads of precious tobacco unfurled onto the counter, the smell sparking in the dank forest air. Could he scoop them up before they wilted? No, with Fredo in this mood, the best thing to do was to accept the loss and get away.

Seppe stuffed the fragments into his coat pockets and shuffled down through the rows of Nissen huts. He turned right at the mess hut and paused at the chapel. Should he retreat in there? But God had forsaken Seppe before, and there was no guarantee of safety in an enclosed space. Better to stay out in the open.

Seppe slowed when he reached the parade ground, scrubby and muddy, but exposed. Fredo couldn’t do much to him here, out in the open, couldn’t try and attack him with a broken chair, kick his shin viciously or tip the night urine into his boots. He cupped his hands to get the stub of cigarette glowing. He wasn’t going to waste these, whatever Fredo tried to do. The wind extinguished the spark. It was mild here, not like Egypt, where those whistling gusts had bulleted hot sand into every crack and crevice.

Seppe turned round out of the wind, sucked hard. There it was, the numbing bliss of the nicotine snaking down his throat even through those brutalised fag ends. It tasted better out here than it ever had in the desert, or back home in Livorno.

There was nobody else in sight, the air blown clear of the constant noise. The bulk of the men were out in the forest or working on the fields. He looked across at the darkness of the trees. After the forbidding expanse of the desert, no place to hide, the labyrinthine woods promised something that this camp, with Fredo in it, no longer could. Perhaps it would be better to be concealed in their depths than up here lathing endless pieces of furniture ready to be broken all over again. Fredo delighted in destroying each object, called it his ‘resistance effort’, and wore the ensuing restriction of privileges as a badge of pride.

This forest, the guards had told them, had been there for generations. Its history was vast enough that his concerns would be swallowed, concealed by everything they’d borne witness to. And to be amongst the trees, to listen to the symphony of their leaves, to inhale the rich scent of spruce and pine and yew intermingling … this was something that could nourish him, that Fredo could never take away from him. If only that were Seppe’s world.

‘Oi! Coward! You forgot these.’

Fredo strode across the parade ground towards him, a handful of papers clutched in his fist, in full sight of the perimeter guardhouse. Don’t react. Fredo forced these on anyone entering the shop: rudimentary leaflets proclaiming the greatness of Il Duce that he and his cronies scribbled late at night. They rained down onto Seppe’s head. He concentrated on the sweet path of the nicotine as it grated his lungs.

‘Lily-livered disgrace.’ Fredo’s breath was so close now that it was forcing the words right down Seppe’s ear canal, their poison dripping into his very core. He cringed, and Fredo hissed in satisfaction.

Don’t reply. Don’t give him the pleasure.

‘What’s the matter, mummy’s boy? Can’t speak now, is that it? I’ve been hearing things from home about your sister, you know. If I thought you were despicable before that’s nothing on what I think now. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.’

Seppe whirled round, fists raised. Fredo couldn’t – mustn’t – bring Alessa into this. The ever-present guilt beat his pulse faster, and his blood surged. ‘You leave my sister out of it!’

Fredo laughed and idly sidestepped a jab. ‘Ah, so it’s not just a Livorno rumour. Think you’re so clever, not writing home, don’t you?’

Cleverer than you, you piece of shit. I saw you, tongue sticking out, frowning over every word.

‘If you believe that’ll keep you safe from Papa, you’ve got another think coming. No chance; no chance at all. I told my family you and I had been reunited here, two Livorno boys back together again to represent our esteemed city. I took extra care to express my great sorrow that you’re a collaborator for the English now. My mother will be delighted to inform your father you’re safe – what an honour, to take news to the Major! The Major has friends everywhere. There will be only too many campmates willing to make life that little bit harder for the disgraceful son of a northern dignitary, a founding member of the fascio. All your father has to do is send instructions.’

Fredo had got word to the Major? Seppe’s fist shook; he jammed it into his pocket, feeling for his whittling knife. Fredo was right. There would be innumerable devotees of his father and his father’s more powerful cronies. Would his father send word to Fredo and the like? Would he even bother? The Major’s concerns were normally much more immediate. But Fredo was clearly determined not to let it lie, and that was enough.

Seppe turned and ran. He wove between the rows of latrines and hit the main passage between the accommodation blocks. His legs were pumping now, his heart dictating the pace. Running away again, are you? His father’s voice, taunting. And now the Major knew how to reach him, after months of ignorance.

The boundary fence stopped his flight. ‘Che cazzo è!’ Seppe bent double, panting, looked through the chain-link at the diamonds of the world beyond. How could he get out there? If he was out there, beyond Campo 61, he’d be safe, away from Fredo. The camp wasn’t benign any more.

Fredo hadn’t followed him. He hooked his fingers on to the wire and looked out. The spring drizzle caressed his face. The camp sat at the top of a hill, Wynols Hill, the guards called it. Those bushes a few feet from here must be marking a perimeter of some sort, though they were pretty straggly. There were a few houses beyond the hedge, away across the fields, black eyes staring in at them over here on the camp, the shrieks of children audible from time to time when the wind blew their merriment up towards them. Sometimes, before curfew, some of the older, more embittered captives would come here and jeer at the distant houses as if this lack of liberty were their fault.

Down there alongside the houses must be the road they’d come in on. The trucks weren’t transporting new arrivals now as much as they were taking the campmates to their forest work placements. The trucks arrived back as he finished in the carpentry shop each day, the men jostling to wash before the meagre evening meal was doled out.

Off to the left lay the reason Campo 61 had been built here: the expanse of dense forest. It seemed like something out of those fairy tales Alessa had loved as a kid. No, don’t think of Alessa now. The woods stretched as far as he could see, their verdant promise darkening as the light was lost to the density. He needed to get out there, in the forest. If he stayed up here with Fredo he might lose control and become his father. At the core of the shame and self-doubt that he whittled and smoothed to forget, was this most humiliating fear of all.

The guard on the gate of Campo 61 was asleep, his snores rumbling below the birdsong. Seppe tiptoed towards him, examined the lock. It would be easy enough to eke in the blade of his whittling knife and persuade the padlock open, but why would he? He wasn’t escaping, not really. There was nowhere he could go. But the promise of a few hours in the forest was intoxicating. Could he get away with it?

Seppe rattled the lock, jangled it again until its clinks punctuated the guard’s sleep; his head jolted forwards, cap in danger of tilting off.

‘Where do you think you’re off to?’

Seppe tilted his head in the direction of the forest. ‘To the trees. To work.’

‘Miss the truck, did you? Fair play to you for walking down there; there’s plenty who wouldn’t.’ He unlocked the gate, waved Seppe through, shivered back down into his seat, chasing sleep.

The track and spiky emerald hedgerows behind the camp quickly gave way to trees. They rose in their hundreds, oak and beech, ash and yew, careless and lurching, twisting and turning him on the path. The walk wasn’t a problem, not after all those miles in the desert, sand scissoring between his toes while the pack on his back sweated into him. Seppe delved in his pocket for the whittling knife and pulled out the little piece of wood that slowly, surely, was becoming a tiny owl like the one that perched on the fence of Campo 61 at night. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was outside. He strode more upright. So this is what freedom might feel like.