‘SCALCO! YOU COMING?’
Seppe’s thumb caught against the scratch of his sleeve as he jumped and his mouth watered tinnily. Where had Gianni sprung from? The camp was usually half-empty on a Sunday these days, the guards laxer and laxer because they knew the prisoners would come ‘home’. Gianni was spending more and more time with his sweetheart, Mary, a good-natured girl whose father owned the pub in the next village. Word in the camp was that Gianni had fallen on his feet. Nobody was surprised by this and nobody begrudged him it, either. Relationships between campmates and civilians were strongly forbidden, but somehow none of the usual rules – however few they were – ever applied to Gianni, who was simply too charismatic to be bound by these things. Even those guards with relatives in the war, who hated the ‘foreigner’ prisoners and what they stood for with a fervour that matched Fredo’s reverse enmity, were won over. ‘We don’t mean foreigners like you,’ they’d say, opening the gate for him as he squeaked in a shade after curfew. It was a gift.
Blood dripped down the handle of Seppe’s knife onto the wood no matter how tightly he pressed his thumb into the wad of his sleeve. What a stupid thing to do, and after he’d worked on it for hours, too, as night slipped into beckoning dawn day after day. He’d had to hide it from Fredo. But despite the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of what Fredo would do if he discovered such evidence of friendship with the enemy, the urge to please Connie pervaded. At least the stain was on the underside of the carving. Connie would never notice, not once it was screwed into place.
Gianni plonked down next to Seppe. He smelled of pomade – how on earth had he procured that? Would Connie like it if he, Seppe, smelled like this? Seppe frowned at such base thoughts. Connie had a child to care for now. This was the important thing.
‘My cara Mary says the Bell has new cider now the apples are coming off the trees. We’re off to see if this apple drink is as good as the inglese claim.’
The bleeding had stopped. ‘Not me.’ Seppe’s mouth watered at the thought of the fruit. August was the ripest month in England, no question. But now his thumb was staunched, the end was there for the taking. This last carving to finish then he could deliver it. No resting now.
‘What? It’s Sunday afternoon. Come with us, play a little football, have a little fun.’ Gianni moved closer, peered. ‘What are you up to this time? Carving a feather?’
Gianni must be at an odd angle; Seppe turned it so that the latticing was more obvious.
Gianni peered.
‘Oh yes! Now I see; it’s more like a hand than a feather.’
‘Eh, idiota!’ Seppe scrabbled on bone-dry earth, thrust a handful of last year’s treefall and the smell of almost-gone summer in front of Gianni. ‘Look, it’s an oak leaf, like these.’
‘Well, up to you, my friend. If you’d rather stay here there’s nothing I can do. But you’re crazy; there are enough leaves in this place without you carving wooden ones.’
‘You have a good afternoon, OK? Tell me about this cider stuff.’
Gianni winked. ‘Don’t worry. If it’s good, I’ll be working out how to make it tomorrow.’ He picked up his pace to catch up the others as they neared the far gate.
Seppe pulled the sandpaper from his pocket and drove it firmly against the carving. Tiny filaments whistled and he swallowed hard.
Another twenty, twenty-five pushes and the leaf was acorn-smooth. He craned his neck to see the parade ground clock. It was listing again; must have got knocked by the football training, but he wasn’t fixing it today. It was time to get going. He took a deep breath and stood up.
Seppe pulled his fingers through his hair, shifting from foot to foot as the echo of the door knocker coursed from fingertip to toe. His boots were filthy and his hair stank where it straggled into his eyes. He should have scrubbed his boots, at the very least. It had been too long since he’d been to visit anyone in an actual house; where were his manners?
‘What are you doing here?’ The air coming through the crack in the door was dense, domestic, full of memory. Seppe’s voice seized up.
‘What you got there, then?’ Amos pushed the door wider, and crouched down. ‘A cot?’
Amos lifted the end closest to him and the cot creaked. Seppe stiffened, but there was no attendant crack.
‘Crikey-oh, lad, there’s some weight to this, isn’t there? Let’s get him inside.’
All of a sudden the cot looked so big, so polished here in the gloom of the tiny stairwell. Trepidation bittered Seppe’s throat, sludged his thoughts. Would he even be able to get it up the stairs? But Amos was at one end of it already, knuckles swollen around wooden slats, steps creaking as he crabbed his way up, the cot making its steady way behind him like a hearse on a cart. Seppe lifted the other end and heaved up the stairs.
As soon as Amos backed open the bedroom door, Seppe was cocooned in the smells emanating from it. It was far from the opera of the bark, worlds apart from the guttural notes of Campo 61. It was a lullaby. Seppe blinked it away and looked into the room.
‘What’re you doing here?’ Connie was in the bed, covers tucked under her arms. She didn’t sound any different. He craned further, saw only a bed, a rickety closet and a packing crate. No baby. What had happened to the baby?
‘If you’ve come to see me rather than prowling the landing, come in, why don’t you?’
Seppe’s pulse beat in his fingertips, already sore from heaving the cot through the forest. Amos tutted at Connie, moved to the end of the bed and picked up the crate. Seppe edged into the room, lifting the cot in the middle so that it didn’t scrape the floor.
Amos, crate cradled under one arm, stopped and spoke, apparently into the crate. ‘This is Seppe. Have a looksee at what he’s made for you.’
Seppe looked again at the crate. In the crate. A fist barrelled out at him and he flinched. Connie laughed from her throne of a bed. He smiled up at her, but she was looking past him, past the baby, towards the door, as if planning an escape.
‘He’s not going to get you, not yet, anyway.’
‘This is him?’ There was a baby in there. The one he’d helped survive.
‘That’s the one.’
Amos placed the crate down on the end of the bed. Connie edged up the pillows, fisting the covers tighter around her.
‘Don’t give him to me, he’ll start bawling.’
Amos eased out the baby as if he were birthing him again, smiling down at him with a gentleness Seppe recognised from that day in the dell. Seppe could barely watch, couldn’t look away.
‘Here, take him a minute.’
Did Amos mean him? Seppe put out his arms, elbows bending to meet the weight of the child. The baby was heavier than he’d have thought; and warm; really warm. He was the epicentre of this new scent, too. The newborn smell radiated milkily as Seppe pulled him against his chest. The baby squirmed into the crook of his arm, curled up against him like the first shoot of a germinating acorn. Seppe gazed down. He was so new, so untainted.
‘What in the name of God is that?’ Connie stared at the cot, which Amos had placed where the crate had been. Her voice was shrill, but tears brimmed. Had he upset her? Seppe reached for the comfort of the knife.
Amos gave Connie another of his looks and stamped off down the stairs. The urge to beg him to stay nearly overwhelmed Seppe. He couldn’t do this alone!
‘It’s a – a culla.’ He tensed, and looked at Connie. She met his gaze with a thousand spikes.
‘A what?’
‘A …’ Oh, come on, what had Amos called it? ‘A bed, for the baby. A-a cot.’
‘I can see that. What’s it doing here, I mean?’
She hated it; he’d got it all wrong. He needed to leave.
But the baby snuffled and squeaked in his arms and he couldn’t move his feet. This wasn’t about Connie.
‘It is for him. To say welcome.’ The cot loomed over the foot of the bed, looking much bigger in this cramped room so full of Connie. He’d tried to make it as much like an Italian cradle as possible, like the one that he had been sanding again in preparation for Alessa’s child. But it was a misfire, a palm tree amidst the old-growth.
‘The baby’s already got a bed.’ Connie gestured at the crate. ‘Don’t hear him complaining. What would he want with something that posh?’
‘I –’ The silence between them stretched, arced, sucked the air from him. The baby shifted in Seppe’s arms, snuggled back down. The movement triggered a new wave of the baby smell, fresh and so hopeful.
The door opened and Amos slipped back into the room.
‘Budge up then, Amos, let me see it.’
Joyce too. Oh, thank heavens. Seppe’s grasp on the whittling knife eased. Joyce read people the way Frank read trees. The little room full of newborn smelt again of the outside coming in, of bark and mulch, sharp and comforting. He could breathe now.
‘This it?’ She bent over, peered at the crib with its four pillars. ‘Them’s Forest of Dean leaves on each of the corners, aren’t they?’
She looked at Seppe and he nodded, careful not to dislodge the squirming baby. The air came back to his lungs but he still couldn’t meet Connie’s eye.
‘Ash, beech, oak and yew. I omitted the softwoods because Frank says they are new, not so much from our Forest.’
‘Frank’s right.’ Joyce straightened up and came over to Seppe, right up close. He tensed, ready to jump out of the firing line. She stroked the back of the baby’s head, her fingers cracked and red, smelling of carbolic. ‘This is a real nice bed you do have here, my poppet; you’ll know the names of our leaves before you can walk under them.’ Joyce straightened up and addressed Connie, one hand still on the baby’s head. ‘Proper heirloom, this is; do you well for however many more you go on to have.’
‘Heirloom? What does the likes of me want with an heirloom?’ Connie’s voice quavered the tough words and her fingers plucked at the covers. Did she not like it? Seppe scrutinised the cot again for the source of this fear, but could only see what he’d always seen. Joyce and Amos were clustered at it now, lifting bedding from the crate and fussing it into the cot.
Joyce ran her fingers over each of the carved leaves. Thank goodness he’d spent that extra time with the sandpaper. At Connie’s words, Joyce lifted her head.
‘You pack that in, Connie Granger. Bit of gratitude wouldn’t kill you; this much workmanship didn’t get done in a day.’
Could he make Connie understand? ‘I wanted to bring something for you.’ He looked steadily at her.
‘This isn’t much use to me, is it?’ She dropped his gaze. ‘It’s for the baby, not me.’
‘It is for you both. Joyce is right, it can last you for another time, another baby maybe.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Is that what you think of me? That I’m going to stay here, popping out sprogs?’
Joyce came to the rescue.
‘Rightio, then, let’s see what the baby thinks of it. Come on, Seppe, you put him in it.’
Him? Really? But he couldn’t resist the honour. He lifted the baby gingerly and hovered with him over the crib. ‘Here is your new bed, little – what is his name?’
Amos grunted.
‘Hasn’t got a name yet.’
Connie sat forward. ‘I know you think I can’t do anything right with the baby, Amos, but I’ve got this bit sorted.’ She darted a smile at Seppe, missile-quick but wavering. ‘What was it you said your name was in English? Joseph?’
Seppe nodded. His heartbeat drummed so hard the baby must be about to vibrate.
‘Well, then. He’s going to be Joe. Maybe he’ll build someone a swanky cot one day, too.’
There was a pause. Seppe blinked hard and handed the baby – Joe – to Joyce before the infant slipped through his hands. Had Connie been planning to name the baby for him, or had that been an impulse? Did it matter? She must think something of him to entrust her child’s name to him. He approached the bed, but words thinned and wilted away.
‘Connie – I –’ Dust motes danced in glistening rays. ‘I will take care of him. Of Joe. This is a distinction for me. If he needs something, you let me know and I will help.’
‘What’re you on about? Needed a name, didn’t he?’
‘Does he need something now? To be made clean? To go for a walk?’
‘He’s fine, Seppe. Don’t take it all so seriously.’ She couldn’t look at him again. Joyce threw a worried glance at Connie, but said nothing.
Every time Seppe looked at Joe he would know his responsibility. He wanted the weight of him in his arms again, but Joyce had placed him in the cradle where he seemed more than happy. It would be better not to disturb him, no? He had so much to learn.
‘Forest baby in a forest cot; born inside the Hundred and now sleeping surrounded by our trees. Not bad, is he, eh, Amos?’ Joyce beamed into the cot.
‘Now that you’ve all rearranged my room d’you think I could get a bit of kip?’
Joyce stepped over to Connie, put a hand on her forehead as if checking her temperature. ‘You need anything, our Con?’ Connie shook her head, spoke so quietly that Seppe had to crane to hear her.
‘Just to kip. Honest, Joycie.’
Seppe’s heart ached. She was going to cry the moment the door shut, he was certain of it. He had upset her, and there was nothing he could do to comfort her …
Amos peered at Seppe as if he’d never properly considered him before.
‘This lad here needs a haircut, Joyce.’ He took Seppe by the shoulders and steered him out of the room before he’d had a final chance to see Joe – Joe! – in the cot again, or to work out Connie’s reaction. Was the baby going to be all right, alone there at the end of the bed? Seppe would constantly be on the alert now. He listened hard as Amos led him downstairs, straining for every last gurgle. Maybe Connie had picked Joe up again, was singing to him? But there were no songs amidst the baby noises.
Seppe was so caught up that he barely registered being sat down onto one of Amos’s kitchen chairs, a dishtowel draped round his neck. Joyce prowled behind him.
‘Need to make this quick, like. I’ve got the washing half hung out and all the darned pegs keep falling apart. Don’t they have barbers up at that camp?’
They did, but all his tokens had been used on extra food for Connie recently. Chocolate was expensive, and the inevitable ‘tax’ Fredo levied cost him more, too. Seppe hadn’t visited the barber for weeks.
Amos swatted at Joyce.
‘You saw that cot; it must have taken hours to build. How’s the lad had a chance to worry about his grooming? He needs a quick tidy up same as you always give our Billy.’
‘All right, all right, keep your hair on.’ Joyce laughed and there was a tug on the back of Seppe’s head as she ran the comb through his hair. ‘Get me a jug of water, Amos, there’s a love? Tangled as a ewe in gorse, this is.’
When had Seppe last washed his hair? He’d avoided the ablutions huts as much as he could since last week, when Fredo had jammed his uniforms into the drain. Please God let there be no lice crawling white and blind over the silver of Joyce’s blade.
The scissors tickled his neck and he tensed. With his hair gone, Joyce would see how filthy his collar was. Seppe willed himself not to cough, to be still. The silence was thick like leaf sediment, but soft as it, too, no threat pending. Fear of lice, shame about his collar, worry about Connie’s reaction; they were all clipped away with his hair, for now at least. How long since he’d been taken care of like this? He closed his eyes and let himself be seven again, sun streaming in through the kitchen window in Livorno, his mother relaxed for once, singing Rigoletto as she cut his hair ready for communion. The tune came up his throat; he hummed along sotto voce with its memory. The heat warmed his face and he could smell the polish on the hard back of the chair, hear Alessa chattering in the background about all the curls she’d have to keep once her hair was cut. If things could only have stayed like that. If he could preserve seven for ever – but it didn’t work like that. A sadness settled around him.
‘There!’ Joyce broke the moment just in time, stepped in front of him to admire her own handiwork, her expression his mirror. ‘Not bad, if I do say so myself.’
Amos joined her. ‘You’ve sheared the lad as if he’s a sheep. Bit late in the season for that, mind.’ He smiled at Seppe, tentative.
‘You do be welcome here any time, lad, you hear that? No matter what them guards say about POWs not being allowed in people’s homes; if you want to see that babby, you come here and you see him.’ Amos patted Seppe on the shoulder and for a moment he almost believed it was achievable. To see the baby again, to be near all that possibility, the newness and cleanness of him. A bead of optimism pooled.
Then he remembered Connie, arms folded tight across her body, a deep frown as she considered the crib.
‘But Connie –’
‘Connie gave the baby your name, didn’t she?’ Amos jerked his hand. ‘Yours, nobody else’s. Looks like she could do with all the hands she can get, tell you the truth. Don’t you go worrying about her.’
Seppe was too choked up to speak the words if he’d known them, so he nodded, almost a bow. He would make them things; a crook for Amos, perhaps a scoop for Joyce’s chicken feed to replace that jaggedy old can she used.
‘Goodbye, Amos, Joyce. And thank you.’
The distance to the camp was shorter on the way back.
The baby and his mother were both fast asleep and the kitchen was clean enough to suit the king – or his May, more like – so there was nothing left but to get on with it. Amos sat down at the table and smoothed the notepaper over the grain of the oak. Could you use normal paper to write to soldiers? Soon find out, he would.
The light hadn’t faded yet from the bottom of the garden. That bit of wall still needed fixing where a branch had fallen onto it in the last of the spring storms. How was he supposed to start this letter? ‘Dear son, Sorry I haven’t been in touch. There’s a baby living in your bedroom …’
He sighed and rested the pen on the table. The look on Seppe’s face when the girl had named the baby for him. It was spur of the moment, any fool could see that, but that hadn’t bothered the lad. He was a loner by Frank’s account, kept himself to himself, and now he had something that mattered to him. Must be hard being away from home, and being a prisoner and all. Didn’t seem the type to have ended up in the war – there must be a story behind that, just like there was with his Billy.
Billy wouldn’t mind the baby. Frank was right: Billy had always loved lambing time, insisted on bringing home any orphaned lambs and bottle-feeding them. He’d probably missed hearing about them. If Amos wrote to Billy about the goings-on here, it would give him something to hold on to. You needed that if you couldn’t be at home, even if you’d chosen to go, Amos saw that now. His Billy hadn’t had a crib nearly as fancy as that, but he’d been a right bonny baby, and it wasn’t just Amos and May as did say so. Happy little chap, he’d always been; terrible to think that he might be feeling lonesome and fearing that Amos had all but abandoned him.
Foresters didn’t bear grudges; living with the trees showed you how it all kept moving on whether you wanted it to or not. He picked up the pen again.