Page 16 of Daughter of Genoa (Escape to Tuscany)

The front doorbell rang early the next morning, three times, when the shop was still closed and Silvia and Bernardo and I hadn’t even started breakfast. Bernardo started downstairs to answer it while Silvia and I crept out into the hallway, craning our necks, listening.

‘It’s got to be him ,’ Silvia whispered. ‘Hasn’t it?’

I nodded, but I felt thoroughly sick. All I could think about was the remains of my old identity card, that battered scrap of thick paper – the wrong paper – without even a photograph, with nothing about it that might fool anyone. If it wasn’t Teglio at the door…

I acted before I could finish the thought.

I ran along the corridor to the bathroom – that quiet, flat-footed run I’d long since learned to perfect – slid the bolt across and went to the window.

My hands were slick with sweat, but I managed to unlock it and slide the old wooden frame upwards in a jerky but, thankfully, silent motion.

I knelt down, opened the cupboard and pulled out the rope, resting it across my knees.

I fixed my eyes on the back door of the house across the courtyard, the one I was to run to, and I waited.

After a far too long a moment, the stairs creaked and I heard footsteps coming up.

Heavy, slow, familiar footsteps, just one set of them.

It had to be Bernardo, surely; but I didn’t trust my senses and so I kept kneeling there, the rope clutched in my hands, until there was a soft knock at the door and Silvia’s voice said: ‘Marta, dear? You can come out now. You’re quite safe. ’

Now I got to my feet, letting the rope fall. I tottered the few shaky steps to the door, pulled back the bolt and walked out into Silvia’s waiting arms. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, patting me on the back. ‘But it doesn’t get any easier, does it? It’s just a whole new fright, every single time.’

‘That’s it,’ I said, and did my best to smile.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come back through. There’s been a delivery for you.’

Bernardo was hovering by the kitchen table, clutching a small parcel and looking quite pale himself. ‘Something from Mr X,’ he said. ‘It was a girl who brought it. A wee girl in a Red Cross uniform, with a bicycle. She looked about twelve.’

He held the parcel out to me and I took it, untying the string with trembling fingers.

I had lain awake all night, disaster scenarios playing out in my head: a night-time air raid, a visit from the Gestapo or the Fascist police.

I tore the paper off and found a small hardback copy of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World , again in Italian translation.

Tucked inside was my new identity card, with the Caltanissetta police stamp and the imprimatur in place.

I ran my thumb over the embossed surface, scarcely able to believe it was real.

‘Yes, yes, all right,’ Bernardo was saying in response to some protest of Silvia’s. ‘Maybe she was a bit older than that. But she was a funny little lass, anyway. Ever so serious. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her.’

‘Well, Marta?’ Silvia asked. ‘Is that your card?’

‘Yes.’ I stared at it for a moment, and then something in Bernardo’s words rang a belated bell. ‘Did you say she was Red Cross, the woman who brought this? Not very tall, medium-brownish hair? Quite a determined manner?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I think that’s Nurse Dora,’ I said. ‘She’s the one who found me, when… you know. I don’t think I’d have survived if not for her.’

‘And you called her a wee girl,’ Silvia said reproachfully.

Bernardo protested, and the two of them fell into amicable bickering while I went back to looking at my card.

I’d never seen a finished one before, and now I had one in my hand, and it was mine.

This is what I’m working for, I thought, and the thought made me happier than I had been in a long time. This is my purpose.

*

Vittorio came the next morning with his black bag. He put the bag on the table, opened it and took out a slender purple-and-gold stole, which he kissed and laid reverently to one side. Then he reached in again and brought out a little brown-paper parcel. He held it out to me.

‘The list’s inside,’ he said. ‘But this is also for you. Mr X asked if I had anything for you to read, and this is the best I could manage.’

I opened the parcel and found a paperback novel: an Italian edition of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock . The cover was a lurid affair with cars and guns and men in sharp suits, and the whole thing looked delightful.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thank you! Thank you, Father Vittorio.’

‘It washed up in our library, somehow – people bring us all kinds of things. I suppose Greene is a Catholic, at least. Thank you,’ Vittorio said as Silvia put a cup of tea on the table in front of him.

He sat down and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

He seemed better than the last time I’d seen him, at least. But there was something about the set of his mouth I didn’t like, and his chest was rising and falling in a rapid, shallow rhythm.

‘Drink,’ Silvia ordered him, and he brought the cup to his lips and made a wry face.

‘There’s honey in this.’ It wasn’t quite a reproach.

‘Of course there is,’ she said. ‘And now get on with your work, the two of you, and I shall get on with mine.’

‘Very well. Let’s get started, shall we?

’ Vittorio rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, Marta, I thought about trying a sophisticated system where you would tackle the first ten names on the list while I take the second, and then we would swap over and start again. But on reflection, perhaps we ought to carry on working in shifts, as we did before. We’ll tire quickly without breaks, and tiredness leads to sloppiness. What do you think?’

‘I agree,’ I said; and Silvia, who was knitting by the stove, nodded approvingly.

‘Good,’ Vittorio said. ‘Then I’ll let you take the first shift and perhaps drink another cup of tea.’

And so we embarked on our routine. It’s a strange thing, but I think of those mornings with Vittorio as one of the great constants of my life.

It seems as if we spent months, years together in that way, working comfortably at right angles to one another.

But it wasn’t like that at all; we had only a little time.

During the final stretch of that particular morning, while Vittorio was applying signatures to the last ten cards, I glanced over at Silvia and realised she’d fallen asleep with Tiberio curled upside down in her lap.

I found myself wondering if she had stayed as a sort of chaperone: a way for Vittorio to be alone with a woman without infringing his Jesuit discipline.

But is a chaperone still a chaperone if she’s unconscious?

What would Ignatius of Loyola say about that?

I smiled to imagine it, and then realised I was smiling and stopped.

Vittorio set down the last of the cards. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Another batch done. We are getting very efficient.’

The vivid cover of the paperback caught my eye.

It was so very un-Jesuit. And yet Vittorio, who barely knew me, had lit on just my sort of book.

Had Teglio told him something, even though he’d promised he wouldn’t?

Was that even a real promise he’d made, or was it all part of his charming-Mr-X routine?

I thought back to our first conversation and how I’d let my guard down with him, how I’d chatted on merrily about Conan Doyle and Machiavelli while he took notes in his head, and I felt suddenly exposed.

‘Have you read it?’ I asked before I even knew I was asking. ‘ Brighton Rock , I mean.’

‘Oh. No. No, I haven’t read any Greene at all. But I have read his great preceptor, G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed the Father Brown stories very much.’

‘Did you read them in Italian, or…’

‘In English.’ He was looking at the table, but he was smiling. A soft, involuntary smile. ‘I like to read in English.’

I have rehearsed that conversation so many times since then, playing it over in my mind.

I should never have said what I said next.

But I wanted to know exactly what he knew about me – what Teglio, whom I was already coming to like and to trust like I hadn’t dared to trust anyone in years, might have given away without my knowing.

‘ Then we can speak English with one another .’

For one startling moment, his green eyes were fixed on mine. I knew then that Teglio hadn’t said anything about who I was. He had kept it all to himself, and I felt thoroughly disloyal.

Vittorio looked at the kitchen door and said: ‘ Well, I… my English isn’t very good. Sorry. I try to speak when I can, but I have few chances. ’

‘ You speak it very nicely ,’ I said. ‘ How did you learn? ’

‘ I spent time in London many years ago. At Heythrop College, for my regency. After I was a novice ,’ he explained – simplifying it, I suspect, so that I could understand.

‘ But before I was a priest. And then also I have been to St Beuno’s in Wales, where was Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I do not much like his poetry. But you speak better than I ,’ he said, still talking to the door.

‘ Like an Englishwoman, or perhaps not quite an Englishwoman. ’

I hesitated for a moment, weighing up what to tell him. ‘ My mother’s from Edinburgh ,’ I said at last.

‘ I see. And she… she is… ’

‘ She’s with my father and brother in America. They’re all safe, so far as I know. She’s a Protestant ,’ I couldn’t resist adding. ‘ My mother. She’s a good person, though .’

Vittorio laughed, a sharp, sudden laugh that turned to coughing. Silvia awoke with a snort and sat upright, her hands going to her hair. Indignant, Tiberio fled her lap and retreated to a corner of the kitchen, where he sat primly on his haunches and began to wash himself.

‘Sorry,’ Silvia said. ‘This weather… Have you finished?’

‘Yes, we have.’ Vittorio rose to his feet, gathering cloak and stole and bag. ‘Mr X will come past later. Good day, Silvia; good day, Marta.’ He nodded to each of us and went out.

Silvia leaned towards me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I just closed my eyes for a moment and then I was gone. Was it horribly awkward? Or didn’t he notice?’

‘I’m quite sure he didn’t,’ I said, although in fact I had no idea. ‘Don’t worry at all. We were busy working.’

‘Oh, good. That is a relief. And now you shall see Mr X again, and so soon. I won’t have to play at being a duenna then.

’ She bent down to pick up her knitting from where it had fallen on the floor, and settled back in her chair.

‘By the way, I don’t mind you two drinking my brandy, but if you are going to be alone together then I must insist you leave the door open. ’

‘Of course,’ I said. The suggestion of impropriety made me blush, a fierce hot-cold blush, and I hoped Silvia wouldn’t look at me. She didn’t, thankfully. She seemed to be busy counting her stitches.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I know you’re a grown woman, but…

’ She trailed off, and I wondered what she was about to say next.

But those are the rules. But this is a respectable house.

But I would tell my daughter the same. Except that she didn’t have a daughter, did she?

Or was there one who’d grown up and married, or gone away to work, or simply…

gone away? I thought of my own mother, who hadn’t seen me in ten years – who didn’t know whether I was alive or dead – and the thought was almost unbearable.

‘Silvia?’

‘Yes, Marta dear?’ Her attention was still on her knitting.

‘I wanted to ask…’ Now she looked at me, and I realised that I was being foolish. I couldn’t actually ask her if she had a child, or children. It wasn’t any of my business; and besides, who knew what painful feelings I might stir up. ‘Can I help with anything?’ I offered.

‘You can cut up some bread, if you absolutely must.’ Silvia nodded towards the loaf-end sitting on the counter. ‘Nice and small. I’ll fry it up and we can have it in our soup.’

‘All right. Is there anything else?’ I said it far more earnestly than I meant to, because the thought of my mother had shaken me up. ‘Anything at all.’

Silvia reached across and patted my arm. ‘You’re a kind girl,’ she said. ‘But no, the bread will do.’