The Italian Romance, page 17
‘How is everything?’ Mr Scanlan said.
‘Yeah, we’re just about ready to put it to bed.’
He went to his desk, shrugged off his jacket and slung it across the rounded back of his swivel chair. ‘Well, don’t. Has anything come in on the wire in the past twenty minutes?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Lilian almost ran to the telex machine at the back wall. ‘Oh, God, yeah, there is. I was out the back with Arthur.’ A long worm of paper trailed to the floor.
‘I just got a telephone call at the house. Go and tell Arthur to hold it.’
She hurried to the door, put her hand on the knob and waited. He was taking his glasses out of their case. Finally he said, ‘The Allies have invaded Italy.’
She pushed the door open. ‘Arthur,’ she yelled. ‘We’re in Italy. They’ve landed.’
His short leg thumped on the wooden floor as he careened across the comp-room. ‘You little beauty,’ he shouted. He tried to lift her off the ground. She stood on her toes to facilitate him. A veil of her hair had strewn itself over her left eye. He released her and turned his attention to the other man. ‘Just in?’ he said.
‘Got a telephone call at the house. Bobby Simpson on the Herald rang. Sends his regards.’
Arthur nodded. He’d worked on the Herald himself till the war had sent him home to help on the family farm.
‘Well, come on, everyone, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Lil, I want sixteen pars out of that. Twenty minutes, all right? I’ll do the head; we’ll go right across, Art. Allies in Italy.’
‘Seventy-two.’
‘Righto. I’ll give you a strap line.’ He sat at his desk, pulled the typewriter by its base towards him and rolled in a short sheet of copy paper.
The sound of the patten, the mechanical whirl of it, excited Lil. Arthur disappeared. Mr Scanlan’s typewriter began to chatter.
‘Oh, and Lil,’ he said. He typed with two thick fingers.
‘Yeah?’
He pulled the sheet out. Lil could see one perfect line typed across it. ‘Tomorrow, I want you to go down to the prison camp. Talk to Finch. Let’s get an idea of how the Eyeties are going to take this. See what he says, will there be any trouble.’ He circled a notation he’d made on the paper. ‘And have a look round.’ He hurled himself out of his chair. ‘Chop-chop,’ he said. She saw Arthur’s head appear above his bench as he lifted a case tray from the shelf below. He looked up as Mr Scanlan came into the back room.
‘You get on with that, Art,’ he said. ‘I’ll run this up myself.’ He sat down in front of the huge, chattering linotype machine which took up much of the back wall.
Lilian’s fingers flew over the keys of her typewriter. ‘American, British and Commonwealth Forces yesterday landed in Italy,’ she typed. She had to stick her finger into the works to release two spikes which had jammed together in her haste, ‘a’ on top of ‘e’.
The horses’ hooves clopped on the hard-packed, pale brown earth and the cart wheels turned and turned, jumped at a jutting stone. The birds whooped and whistled, and in the bush quiet that overarched them all, a sound came, a tree falling, falling slowly, grandly, lost leaves lifted in a gush of wind then dropping like rain, and the thud, thunder that sent birds screaming quietly into the high, green reaches, wings beating in aftershocks. Lilian grabbed the sides of the cart. She looked up, panicked. A rag of red flannel over their heads. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘It’s just rosellas.’ She laughed with embarrassment.
The militia man looked up, too. ‘They make a racket when they’re scared.’
Her heart was beating too fast. ‘Beautiful, though,’ she said. ‘The way they all suddenly fly up together like that. The red up there with the green leaves. You know, when you’re not expecting it.’
The man lifted the reins and brought them down with almost no force on the horses’ rumps. One of them swished her tail in annoyance. They clopped on, habituated to the rhythm of tree felling.
Silence came between them again. Lilian slid her hand from the cart’s side. The men were among the trees now, sleeves rolled up. An Australian guard nodded to her. He held his rifle with both hands, the leather strap over his shoulder. ‘Where’s the c.o., Steve?’ the driver said.
‘Two hundred yards, Ron.’
‘Righto.’
The track veered to the left and the horses pulled around the bend. The driver slowed them up, and they stopped and snorted. ‘Need help getting down?’ he said.
‘No, I can manage.’ She hadn’t realised she would be stiff. She stepped over on to the running board and lowered a leg, feeling for the ground. It didn’t seem to be there. She looked down between her arms.
Someone’s hands viced on her waist. She could see a brown arm, hairs bleached in the sun. The man lifted her. She let go of the wooden cart and she sailed into the air. He placed her gently on the track, his hands on her waist still. She pulled away slightly and he dropped them. She turned her head. His face was beaded in sweat, laced above his eyebrows. His black hair, too long and curled for a soldier, covered most of his forehead, and it was damp, too.
‘All right, Joe, step back.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw a guard approaching them, walking up the track. She stepped back.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and as she did and his eyes caught her attention, she recognised him. ‘How’s ... how’s your leg?’ she said.
He glanced at the guard, too, and moved three or four feet away from her. ‘Much better, thank you. They say I might even live.’
The driver’s voice said, ‘She’s here to see Mr Finch. She’s the girl from the paper.’
‘Yeah, righto,’ the guard said. ‘He’ll be back up in a coupla minutes, love. They’re just loading down there.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll just wait here.’
‘Wouldn’t have a smoke on you, mate?’ the guard said to the driver.
‘Yeah,’ the driver said. ‘Could do with one myself.’ He levered himself up and over, and landed on the ground. The two Australians stood huddled together as they lit up with one match.
She turned to the Italian prisoner. He hadn’t moved. He was smiling. She felt his eyes on her skin. ‘So,’ she said. ‘They’ve got you out here now.’
‘I feel I am in a story I heard as a child. The woodsman, axe over his shoulder. The forest sings. He sings.’
She laughed. He spoke like a poet. He’d done that before. ‘Do you always talk like that?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Like what?’
She turned her eyes away from him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘You know what Mussolini says? This is the time for myths. Not history. The story has not yet been told.’
She turned her head slowly back. She had never heard Mussolini spoken of in such a way. She had never heard words spoken in such a way as this man spoke. She had read them. She had thought them. ‘What does that mean?’ she said. She hoped her disdain had shown.
‘Myth has power. It gets in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘And here.’ He put his hand on his heart.
She looked at his nose, how it did not turn up at the end. She said, ‘Did you see the rosellas? I heard them at first. I didn’t know what they were; I thought they were boughs breaking off over our heads.’
He kept his eyes on her. She said, ‘And I looked, and they were bursting out from the tops of trees, out from among the leaves and into the sky. They were a red heart. Someone’s heart, I don’t know whose.’ She took one step backwards, stunned.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is a great surprise, beauty.’
A leaf from a eucalyptus tree circled down, and touched her arm. She swept at it, grazing her skin. She saw Mr Finch climb the last few feet to the track. She said to the Italian, ‘I don’t like Mussolini.’
‘I don’t like him, either,’ he said, and he smiled again at the astonishment on her face. ‘But at least he gave me a trip to your beautiful country, free, gratis and for nothing.’
She laughed. ‘I thought we gave you that.’
‘Perhaps. The alternative was unpleasant.’
‘Mrs Malone,’ Mr Finch said. He gave a nod to the Italian officer, who turned without a word and walked off into the trees. ‘Sorry I wasn’t at the camp to see you.’
He looked around, and then he said to her, ‘Probably better off not speaking to them, Mrs Malone. Particularly at the moment. They’re edgy. They’ve got wind of it. News spreads like wildfire in a prison.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I didn’t say anything about it.’
‘Good girl. Come on, we’ll walk up the track, and you can ask me your questions.’
As she wheeled about, and tried to keep up with him, she looked among the trees. He was standing about thirty yards away, looking down at her.
Bloody bastard. Bloody, bloody liar. It’s a long time since I’ve been taken in, but there you are. Our private, one, solitary time together, she and I. Time to mend what might be mendable. And this bloody, cheating snake crawls in. I could beat his brains out.
There was a phone call for him. A woman who said she’d rung the consulate section and been given my place as his forwarding address. Bloody Frank gave her this number. She said it was urgent, and he was to ring home. I said, politely, who shall I say called? She said, his wife.
When I think of the look on Francesca’s face as she saw him here in the kitchen. And there was I, gleeful. Matched that one well.
He drove her to Perugia for the day. She looked so lovely. What if I were to ring Dora and Vincenzo? I wonder if they’d drive up to Perugia, find them, and bring her back here. Vin can tell that wretched bushman to go to hell. They can take his bags back with them to Rome later.
I pick up the telephone, dial the Rome code, the first three digits of their number. I put the receiver back down.
No, calm down. I don’t want anyone else involved. There’s no necessity for anyone else at all to know what has happened. We’ll keep it in the family, she and I.
I will handle him. My God, I will.
Three o’clock in the morning. I am sitting outside on the loggia, still waiting for them. The wisteria seems to have nodded off. The sky is available to me through the stone-arch openings. For some reason tonight, I desire a different sky, the other one I knew aeons ago. Have I felt the loss before? I can’t remember. The roof of this verandah is a frustration to me tonight. I want to look up, straight up, to be dazed and outdone by the universe, to be brought home to it, to turn my head sideways, or upside down so that I too spin on the axis of the Southern Cross. I didn’t know I was lonely for it. What sort of a damn sky is this, this northern sky? Where is the tear in it, the tiny hole through which the stars of everywhere and nowhere fall, tumble out, Catherine-wheel across a vastness the ancient ones in this antique place only ever dreamed of, and thought a metaphysic? It’s a long way away and a long time ago, and I’ll never see it again.
I must be tired. I’ve got such a pain in my heart, suddenly. A lifetime of losses. Every step of the way, and something drops, discards itself. Or I dropped it, carelessly. Or its time was up, simple. All gone. Seems there’s nothing left now but to climb back through the tiny hole, inch it open with my fingers. Back to you. Back to you.
Ah, now, here’s the two yellow eyes turning off the roadway. The sound of the rubber tyres squashing stones under them, slowly, slowly. The car creeps up to the house, around the back, past the vegetable patch, and down the side. He pulls in near the foot of the front steps, and the two lights go out. If they stay in that darkened car for longer than a few seconds, I’ll have to switch the bulb on and stand under it. He won’t go pawing my daughter, plying his nasty little trade of business-trip seduction, thank you very much.
Oh, Lord, the doors are still closed. Please, dear God, don’t let them be snogging in the front seat. I really couldn’t bear it.
Her door opens. The interior light flickers on. They are talking softly, so they don’t wake the old lady. I feel like a bloody fool, out here in my nightie.
She has seen me. She comes up, slower by slower step, as if I am an animal in the wild, keep her calm, don’t spook her. She says, ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning.’
‘It’s hot,’ I say.
‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Not a lot.’
She is stuck on the second step, looking up at me. I suppose I appear rather like a ghost, white gown, grey hair. Yellowed face, or so it was when I caught a glimpse of myself after a bath earlier, yellow with a purple cloud blowing up in the south. I don’t want her to think I’m mad. I really don’t want that. So I say, ‘I keep odd hours. It suits my work, you see.’
‘Well,’ she says, and she moves. She heads for the wooden doors. ‘It’s up to you, but I would have thought the doctor was reasonably right when he told you to rest. But,’ she turns her hands palm-up; I can only see her from the back, ‘it’s up to you.’ She pushes one of the double doors and the light floods out. As if they’d been waiting for it, four or five moths and a convoy of smaller insects try to beat each other into the house with her. She doesn’t quite close the door after her. The clever ones will squeeze through the crack.
He comes up heavily. I look straight at him. He is aware, but does not understand the expression in my eyes, apparently. ‘What?’ he says. He reaches the loggia, and now he looks down on me.
‘I have a message for you.’ I walk over and pull the door completely shut. ‘You got a phone call from Australia,’ I say as I watch his face.
‘What? Here?’
‘Yes, here. I presume you know who it was.’
‘Business?’
I shake my head. ‘Not business, no.’
He moves closer to me. So that we can speak in lowered voices, I take it. ‘Jane?’ he says.
I could slap his face. ‘I presume so.’
‘Is she all right? What’s wrong?’
‘I am not your secretary. I didn’t ask for details.’
He steps back as if I have slapped him.
I lower my voice, lower it and fire it at him like bullets shot through a silencer, thud, thud, thud. ‘You told me you were free. You said there were no complications, no wife.’
‘I what?’ He looks out into the dark night, as if it might offer him some much-needed aid. ‘I didn’t speak to you at all about my private life, Lilian,’ he says.
His tone unsettles me. I say, ‘You led me to believe you were free. That’s my daughter in there. Have you lied to her, too?’
He shakes his head. He still looks out at the black garden, the moonless sky, not at me. ‘Apart from anything else, Lilian, and I do like you, enjoy your company, this really is none of your business.’
‘My daughter is my business. And I’m culpable here, too.’
He looks at me now. I see his eyes, the whites like lanterns. The light from inside has made a bright line under the door.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
Now it is I who can’t face him. I gaze down the staircase, to where I can see nothing. I sigh. ‘I thought if you and she ... formed a relationship, I would have a part in it. I thought it was a way of keeping her in my life.’ I drag my eyes back to him. ‘I thought we were friends, Jim.’
‘I don’t know what Jane said. I don’t know what has happened, but I haven’t lied to you. I didn’t talk to you of my difficulties, any more than you spoke to me of yours.’
‘She didn’t sound like a difficulty.’ I am angry again now. The stories they tell. ‘She sounded like a wife.’
‘Wife! Jane is my daughter.’
‘Well, I...’ I am a little taken aback, just a little. ‘Then it wasn’t Jane. She just said it was your wife.’
‘Right. And she didn’t say why.’
‘No, of course not. I presume it’s private. I’m a stranger.’
He nods. ‘How long ago was this?’
‘Four or five hours. For goodness sakes, I don’t care about your domestic dramas. I care that you are not who you say you are. I don’t want my daughter hurt, and I want you to leave.’
‘To leave?’ He seems stunned.
‘Yes, of course. What else?’
I hadn’t heard the door opening behind me. Her voice is calm, calmer than mine. ‘What is the problem here? Jim, what’s going on?’
He looks from me to her. Now let him explain himself. ‘There is a phone message. I suspect there’s a problem with my daughter. I’ll make a call. It sounds like it might be urgent.’
He is rattled. Good. He walks by me, and I turn to watch him. Francesca opens the door further and he steps inside. We both watch him go. And we both stay where we are. Eventually, she glances over to me.
She says, ‘What has happened?’ I feel as if she’s accusing me.
‘Someone rang.’
‘His daughter?’
‘No.’ I leave it at that.
But she comes out on to the loggia. ‘What’s wrong?’
I don’t know whether to say it or not. I have got myself, and her, into a situation. It’s just us, now.
‘Tell me,’ she says, not kindly.
‘A woman rang for him, about four hours ago. I asked her who it was.’
‘And?’
The left side of her face is alive with light. There’s a downy aura glowing off the borders of her hair and her nose and her cheek. I’m afraid he has made her happy.
‘For God’s sake, Lilian. What on earth is going on?’
‘I don’t know what he’s told you. I just ... I just didn’t realise he had a wife.’
Her head turns automatically towards the light. He is not there, of course. He’d be downstairs in his room. Making the call private. ‘He said...’ She didn’t finish. She looks at me again. ‘What did she say, exactly?’
‘She said, “it’s his wife”.’ I feel as if I have slapped her, too.
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all. Just ring, and it’s his wife.’
‘And do you take it that he’s been economical with the truth?’
I shrug, impotent. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘I can’t really believe that,’ she says.
