SEPPE CAME AND STOOD next to Connie, careful not to get too close.
Was she married? Had he missed that? She certainly didn’t act like any wife he’d met before, but things might be different in England. She hadn’t mentioned a child, not once.
‘Not there! How am I going to show you from the side? Get behind me. In close, so that you can feel what’s going on.’ He held himself upright.
‘Come on! I’m not going to bite you.’ She slotted herself in front of him with barely a breath between them. He made himself as small as he could, but he could smell her, a sharp, tart scent underneath the traces of leaf and bark. To be standing, unsupervised, nestled into a woman in her condition – what if one of the guardsmen wandered past, or one of Frank’s men?
‘For God’s sake, relax a bit.’ Connie shuffled back and bumped into him as she resumed the half-crouch. To his horror he felt himself stir. He tried to inch away.
‘Keep still, will you? And pay attention.’ Connie grabbed his axe and pushed it forward. Apprehension at what she might do with it next swiftly resolved his ardour.
‘Get your hands on here too; we’ll swing it together.’
He mimicked Connie’s stance, her scuffed boots tucked in alongside his, the sharp points of her elbows needling the crook of his arm. It had been months since he had been so close to another person, and he’d forgotten the comfort that could come from simple physical contact.
‘Ready? Three, two, one –’ The axe swung up, up, up above his head and came plummeting down. Seppe was barely conscious of the motion, his whole body focused on staying clear of Connie’s. Her fair hair was escaping from under the beret and it tickled his nose, shivered away the forest smells and sounds until it was the only thing in his world. Her hair smelt different from the smells he was used to at Campo 61, different again from the whiff of her body. Clean. It smelled clean, the merest trace of sweat discernible. He’d missed such closeness, the sensation of someone else so visceral and real standing in such close proximity. He missed trusting someone enough that they allowed this almost careless nearness. He missed Alessa more with every passing day.
‘Not bad, but we need to get it going higher and faster.’ Again and again they swung the axe, each downward motion torture for Seppe as he contorted away from her. At last they stopped, the axe thumping to the ground beside them.
‘Phew! You know what? You might yet crack this.’ Connie swept the escaped strands of hair away from her face, grinned at Seppe. ‘You got a fag?’
‘Fag?’
‘You know, a ciggie. Woodbines – God, or Players if we’re lucky I’ve seen you smoking so you must have some.’ Connie mimed holding a cigarette to her mouth, taking a puff.
‘Ah, sigaretta. Yes, but only …’ Seppe pulled out the carton, held it out to his side so he didn’t have to be confronted with her expression. Fredo was keeping up his campaign to make Seppe suffer in every possible tiny way, and had yet again snapped the tubes like so many beheaded flowers.
Connie stared at the cigarettes, then back at Seppe as if he’d temporarily lost his mind. ‘What the hell happened here? A pretty daft thing to do to nicotine.’ She scrabbled around, one hand in the box, until she found a stub which was slightly longer than the others. ‘Still, waste not, want not, eh? Got a light there, have you?’
‘No, but I –’
‘No light? How were you going to smoke them?’
He hadn’t given that much consideration, had been focusing only on getting out and away from the camp. Connie dug into her pockets for a match. ‘That’s better.’
She yawned and stretched and he glimpsed the bulge of her overalls before she curved back round. He had to acknowledge her condition – it was rude otherwise. But why hadn’t she alluded to it? Or Frank?
He opted for a safer question.
‘Your husband, is he at war?’
‘What husband? If that’s a pick-up line it’s a pretty shoddy one.’
‘No!’ He whispered it. ‘Scusi.’ If only he could fold up and disappear behind the trees. ‘I thought only … with the baby …’
‘What baby?’ She faced him, eyes blazing, arms crossed against her chest, daring him. ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’
He held her gaze. ‘My sister – she was also – I think I see –’
‘You want to watch that, thinking you’re seeing things. They’ll cart you off to the loony bin sooner than you can say “Mussolini”.’ She fixed him firmly with her gaze. ‘No husband. No baby. Do you get me?’
Seppe nodded. What else was there to do? The curve of her stomach was unmistakable. But he knew about silence, about keeping quiet.
‘I understand.’
She studied him, nodded. ‘Now, are we going to get this tree down or shall we stand about all day creating fairy tales?’
She hefted the axe high and swept the blade into the side of the trunk, barely clearing the ground. The metal whistled through the bright air and changed tone as it greeted the wood. Connie’s chopping possessed the speed and surety of all her actions, but it must be wearing her out. He leaned forward.
‘Let me do this.’
‘What?’ Connie paused to swipe sweat from her forehead.
‘This – this is big work. You will be tired.’
She rounded on him, a trapped animal, and he stepped back, fought the urge to bring his hands up to his face. ‘Didn’t I make myself clear? Keep your trap shut and your axe swinging.’
Connie helped herself to another cigarette from Seppe’s packet and stood off to one side, the lit end flaring against the grey-brown of the shadowed trees.
After a couple of deep, satisfying drags, she ground out her cigarette and spat on the butt.
‘Come on then. If you’re so clever, show me you’ve been paying attention.’
He swung the axe up until his arms were at shoulder length, aching to feel the axe in motion. He hung on for grim death, like they’d practised. The head arced, the flat steel glinting. Then – ‘whumpf’! – the axe bit, scattering needles of hardwood, tiny darts. He let them stick him.
‘That’s it.’ The tree rocked above their heads, the timber moaning and creaking and Connie smiled in satisfaction.
‘But the tree, it’s not coming down.’
‘No, of course not. We need to cross-cut now.’ Connie darted off, came back with the two-handled saw he’d seen before. ‘Come on then. Don’t want to leave that trunk dancing about, do we?’
The cross-cutting should surely have been easier than the axe, but he couldn’t make it work, not remotely. The only reason the saw moved at all was because of Connie on the far side of the tree evening out his futile attempts at any kind of regular rhythm. Seppe’s hands were raw from the axe and he winced every time it was his turn to draw the saw through the resisting wood. The oak was determined not to be vanquished; with every tug he could feel the opposite force from the grain. Stop being so sentimental.
‘Quick – skedaddle! It’s going!’ Connie scrambled to her feet and ran to the edge of the copse. From above came a sound like the rushing of water. Twig pummelled twig, tendril fought tendril, branch pushed against branch. It rushed on down, waiting for nobody, the whispering of branches at the top only matched by the creaking at the trunk as the weight forced its way free.
‘Tim-BER!’ Connie turned to Seppe and clapped him on the cheeks. ‘You did it!’
Seppe, finding no words, thrust his hands deeper into his overalls. The mighty oak barrelled its way downward, two saplings folding in its wake. All this because I took an axe to it. Tears prickled his nose, his eyes, and he pressed hard on the comfort of the whittling knife in his pocket. Ridiculous, to mind a tree coming down, but so much had shattered over these past months: Alessa, his home life, the endless and futile battles in Africa. He had seen men topple with less grace than the tree, night after night, thudding dully beside him on the desert floor. To inflict damage to this tree in the middle of the most peaceful place he’d ever known: it united all the grief and rage of what had gone before.
As the tree hit the ground with a shattering thud, a cloud of dust and twigs swirled up like a spell. Connie wrinkled her nose and peered through the chaos at Seppe. His cap was between his hands as he stood silently looking at the felled oak.
‘What’re you doing? It’s not a funeral, it’s our job. Get that hat back on before you catch your death and I have to start planning your funeral next.’ She slumped down on a moss-coated tree trunk and stared beyond the trunk. ‘Well, you can handle an axe now, so that’s something. But Frank’d suss you in a heartbeat if he saw how cack-handed you are with that saw.’
‘Sorry. I am wrong; I shouldn’t have –’
‘Too true. You shouldn’t have, should you?’ She yawned, lounging beside the tree, and looked at him with her head tilted to one side. ‘How easy is it for you to get out of that camp of yours?’
‘It is easy enough.’ Was this a lie? The guards seemed to care less than he’d imagined they might. Regardless of its truth, he would do whatever this woman required of him.
‘We’ll meet in the mornings before shift starts – can you do that without any grief? Get out here when it’s quiet and start practising? If we get a few extra trees down while we’re at it, that only helps Frank’s quota. Can’t see him kicking off about that.’
‘I will do this.’ There was no other answer.
‘Good. And we need to get it sorted out sharpish. If Frank saw you in this state, even once, that’d be the end of it.’
The end of it. But this needed to be the beginning. He nodded. ‘I understand.’ Connie would keep his secret, and he would pretend not to know hers.