‘LET’S GET THIS BEAST back to wherever he came from, shall we?’ Connie pushed herself up off the log they’d been sitting on to eat their bread and cheese. ‘I’m full to bursting with the extra snap Joyce sent up with Frank today.’
She frowned at the horse standing placidly roped to a log. ‘Don’t see why we couldn’t have stuck with the tractors. This dirty great animal gives me the shivers.’
Seppe pointed at the churn beneath their boots. ‘Even a tractor can’t move through this mud.’ Frank had been bitter about it when he’d assigned them the task. ‘Don’t normally get like this in July. We’ve been working the land too hard. Never mind destroying the enemy, we’re destroying our own country.’
‘What about the roads the Yanks are building out here?’
‘This is for their war work and not for ours. The horse is the best way.’ He patted the horse’s flank affectionately.
Connie eyes narrowed. ‘Farmer’s boy, are you? I’m surprised you don’t know your way around an axe better.’
‘No, I come from a big city. Big for Italy, anyway. Important in the north. But my father … sometimes it was better to be away from the house. Since a child, I have spent much time in stables. He does not think to find me there.’
The smell of the horse had Seppe half back in the stable, crouched in fear, the straw quivering as he trembled at the thought of being discovered.
Connie considered him thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes it’s better for us all to be out. My dad wasn’t scary, but he liked a drink, and there was no knowing what mood he might come home in.’
If they continued this line of discussion he might tell her things he’d regret later.
‘Come here – let me show you something.’
Connie frowned at Seppe but she moved forwards gingerly. She was brave under that tough exterior. Don’t bite her, he prayed in the horse’s direction.
Seppe took her hand. It was soft, softer than he could have imagined given the hours they spent felling. He pressed it up against Prince’s neck and together they stroked the horse. Connie’s shoulders dropped a little and she flashed him a smile – one he saw too infrequently these days. On the whole she’d been quieter recently, more thoughtful. She didn’t think he noticed when she stood off to one side sometimes, her gaze elsewhere, her thoughts with people or places he couldn’t access, couldn’t even imagine. They barely discussed their pasts, though now that her accent slid away from him less often, they were better able to talk from time to time. She was a hard worker, and kind, and he found himself seeking out ways to make her smile. Connie was someone you wanted to see smile; when she was happy, the glow captured everyone around her, too.
It made it easier to forget Fredo’s continued assault, the sting of his father’s letters. ‘Alfredo’s mother gossips about your sister; claims her son heard it from you in that coward’s camp. Your mother is very worried and has been provoking my mood, which is fragile after such concerning news.’
But the forest was where he came to escape these thoughts, and he mustn’t let them invade now. Seppe smiled at Connie.
‘Shall we get this horse home?’
Seppe set the pace, one hand on the bridle. He looked back as they met the first slope. Connie was pushing up the hill, flinching each time Prince’s tail swished, one hand supporting the weight of her belly.
Steam rose off the horse’s withers, mingling with Seppe’s breath as he clucked at Prince, slowed him to a halt. Connie pushed past the horse to his side, her breathing laboured. Despite the exertion she was milky pale against the sheen of glistening ferns. He caught a glimpse of her teeth, clenched tighter than a clamp, and an urge to protect her rose like sap. He had never seen her chatting to the other lumberjills; nothing beyond the superficial banter she loved almost as much as Gianni did. It was up to him to keep her safe, and her determination that she had to manage alone only made him want to help her more, not less.
How could she still be pretending this wasn’t happening to her? Why hadn’t Frank detected anything yet? Joyce had, he was certain of it; that’s surely why she’d sent the extra food. Had Connie confided in Joyce but not in him?
When he got back to camp he’d talk to Gianni, who knew how to find everything. He could barter his camp-issued postcards home. Gianni was always desperate to write to his family whereas Seppe never used his allocation. Then he, too, could bring Connie some eggs, perhaps a hunk of cheese. That would be something to be proud of.
But this wasn’t about him and his growing inclination to watch out for this maddening, caring young woman. Where would she live with the baby? What would Frank do?
How did Connie think she was going to raise a baby out here, away from her home, wherever that was, and without any obvious family, let alone a husband? She’d never mentioned a sweetheart killed in the war, so clearly whoever the father was, he was useless and not worth the time of day to leave someone as resourceful and funny as Connie to have to deal with this on her own. I would never have done it, the little voice in his head whispered.
Seppe opened his mouth, then shut it again. He’d broach the subject after they’d chopped down a few trees; that always calmed her. They were working on spruce today, which was always preferable. It stained your hands less than the crazy bluish tinge you got from cutting down oak, and it made him less guilty. Felling oaks that had stood for generations felt like the ultimate betrayal of these understated foresters who were nothing but kind to him. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would ever dare say in camp, where Fredo or one of the other black-armbanders would find a way to punish him for sympathising with the enemy.
‘What’s up with this weather? Don’t it know it’s summer?’
As they stabled the horse the first drops were falling. Before they knew it they were in the middle of a deluge. Plump raindrops bowled down, in a hurry to join the mud at their ankles. Connie’s hair plastered to her face and she stuck out her tongue to catch the drops, laughing, released by the downpour. But she was going to get drenched; they needed to get inside.
Seppe looked around him. Had Gianni and his gang left up a tarpaulin by some miracle? No, only trees as far as the eye could see, even their burgeoning summer canopies not enough to withstand this downpour. He cursed, softly this time. But wait – that would work, over there.
‘Vieni. We shelter here.’
The rain was thundering onto the boughs now; even if he yelled she’d never hear him over this. Instead he pointed at a huge yew whose trunk had split open years ago, probably even before the last war, to look at the regrowth. Branches criss-crossed in barbed arches above the splintered trunk, a cathedral of a tree.
Connie came up so close he could feel her body outlining his, the heat coming off it, his arm against hers prickly with awareness of her warm flesh. She bellowed into his ear and with difficulty he pulled his attention to her words. ‘Under that? It won’t give much cover.’
‘No – inside. Come.’ Seppe squeezed past the florets of tiny twigs and leaves forming an archway into the ruined centre of the yew.
‘Here.’ He bent an errant sprig out of the way, flattened himself against the inner wall of the tree to make room for her. Here, inside the trunk, it was as if the rain had stopped, save for the pounding outside. Near the top, new branches had sprung up and across the split trunk, forming a vast protective canopy. Shiny emerald needles interwove above them to provide shelter.
Connie slid down the inside of the trunk, knees bent, hands clasped low on her stomach. He sped down beside her, eyes wide.
‘Are you OK?’ There was no mistaking what he meant.
Connie rested her head against the yew and met his eye.
‘I’m fine. Honest.’
She wasn’t going to confess; it was up to him to persuade her to talk. She mattered, that’s what it came down to. She mattered, and he couldn’t let her struggle on alone any more. Seppe hadn’t realised he could feel like this about someone, that winning her trust would occupy him to such a great extent despite his own struggles in the camp. To care about someone only led to danger. On the surface Connie seemed exactly the sort of person who didn’t need anyone’s help. But Seppe recognised a carapace when he saw one, had spent too long constructing his own, and he longed to reach out. The prickliness concealed vulnerability and his heart ached for her whilst at the same time he admired her, this girl he had known only a few months now. He minded very much what happened to her.
Seppe sat down beside Connie, the knowledge of what he must do next making him shiver. He put one palm on the clammy wood.
‘You know how I find this tree?’
Connie blinked at the change of subject and shook her head. ‘No idea how anyone tells any of these trees apart.’
‘It isn’t to do with the tree.’ His mouth was gluey, not wanting to relinquish the words. ‘It is because of me. I can find hiding places.’
‘What are you, some kind of spy?’ Connie leaned her head against the damp wires of the internal roots. They smelled of earth and mould, a warm, oddly welcoming scent.
‘No, not spy.’
Could he dare to say it aloud? The hissing of the rain outside the trunk was a thousand secrets being told. He pressed his finger against the soothing blade of the whittling knife. She needed a secret before she could tell a secret. He understood. He caught her gaze, held it, quelling the urge to look down, to focus on the knife.
‘My father – he is not a nice man. Very much not. He does bad things. All my life, since I can walk, I hide. Now it’s automatic to me. You, when you see a tree, you know this one is ready to fell, that one not yet. I look at the same trees, I can tell you which ones are good for hiding, which ones not.’
‘But your pa’s not going to get you out here, is he?’
‘In Campo 61 is a man from Livorno, he knows – he knows a bad thing my father has done, and he wants to make my life as hard as he can because this man, he is seeking vengeance on me. My father thinks me a coward, a collaborator; this is impermissible to him. And now he thinks I will spread bad words about him, so he will tell this man to make my life as bad as possible. He has done it before.’
The week after Seppe’s fifteenth birthday, he returns home from the Livorno city docks humming ‘Bella Ciao’, Renzo’s song of hope and resistance. The tune comforts him, keeps Renzo with him when he’s back in the Major’s house.
Seppe has barely shut the front door behind him, is lifting the bolt back into place, when his father is by his side, eyes narrowed, boring into Seppe.
‘What is that you’re singing?’
Seppe knows there’s no need to answer this question, unless to quell the anger. His father’s mood, already volatile, has worsened these past weeks, brought down by Ciano’s death and the increasing possibility of war. But before he can decide, his father speaks again. ‘Where did you learn this filth?’
‘At school.’ A lie, and a stupid one. His father takes a step away and undoes his belt. Seppe tenses, looks at the belt.
‘Keep your eyes on me when I’m addressing you!’ He snaps back to attention. ‘Don’t think you’re too old to feel the leather. Now tell me again – where did you hear this?’
Seppe is mute, cannot give away Renzo. He pictures Renzo, humming as he oils the stable latch, planing down the half-door in the heat so that the horses can stick their heads over for the breeze, and he gulps. The Major notices, snaps the belt in Seppe’s face, daring him to move away.
‘You tell me now or we use the buckle.’
Could he do this without betraying Renzo? ‘The docks.’
‘The docks! To consort with that scum. You little –’
There is no escaping the beating.
And worse than that, the next week the Major enlists Fredo, son of his closest ally in the fascio, to tail Seppe, ensure he never gets back to the port. Fredo, already long bedded-in as a bully and in awe of the Major, delights in this new opportunity to humiliate Seppe at every turn.
Seppe never sees Renzo again. All he retains from this period of safety is the whittling knife.
THE RAIN POURED ON outside, the sound of a thousand buckets being emptied over and over. Seppe tasted dank centuries of moss on his tongue, oblivious to the battles being fought, the war raging as fiercely as the rain. Connie looked away, touched her fingertips to the damp base of the yew. He pushed harder on the steady knife in his pocket. Stay brave. He waited. Had he said enough?
When she spoke it was as if she’d aged a generation.
‘When I said I’m fine – the baby’s fine, too.’ She leaned towards him, spoke with more measure than he’d heard from her before.
‘There’s nobody in the entire world knows about this but you and me and that’s how it has to stay. I think Joyce may have twigged, but I’m saying nothing until she asks. Do you understand, Seppe?’
‘But your family – the baby’s father –’
‘Dead and gone. One lot’s dead, the other one’s gone. This is my problem, and I’m going to deal with it my way. That’s all there is to know.’
Her eyes on his were fierce but underneath the rain he could hear her breathing, ragged and desperate. He nodded into the space between the two.