‘It’s the water, I think,’ says Gerald. ‘Look in there.’
Esmond looks. The tank is empty. The roar of engines is closer and, looking back down, he can make out that the cars are Fiats, in procession, coming out of the sky to the east.
‘Let me see if there’s anything in the back.’
He opens the boot and finds only a small can of petrol, a few maps. ‘Nothing,’ he says. Douglas is staring backwards, down the road to where the Fiats are, closer now, their rumble building with each turn. ‘Piss in it,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Piss in the tank. Always works. Had a Siddeley Special Six back in Blighty. Was forever blowing up. Piss, I tell you.’
‘Are you sure?’ Gerald asks, looking at Esmond. He shrugs and closes the boot. They stand, side by side, cocks out, watching the Fiats approach. Esmond whistles, trying to drown out the sound of the engines. Gerald is the first to send down a heavy stream onto the hot metal, splashing and fizzing around the mouth of the radiator tank. Esmond follows shortly after. Fiamma has her hand to her mouth. Douglas is watching around the side of the raised bonnet. They finish, shake and leap inside the car. Gerald turns the key in the ignition.
The Fiats have pulled abreast of one another and are perhaps two hundred yards away. Blackshirts lean from the windows of each car and Esmond can see revolvers in their hands; one of them carries a shotgun that he waves from side to side like a baton. The Alfa’s engine turns over, fails. The sun has begun to rise behind them as the cars close in. The engine turns over again and fires a plume from the exhaust. Gerald stamps on the accelerator and, with a spray of pebbles, they pull away.
The Fiats are yards behind them. The Alfa is heading up a slope towards a coppice, harried by the two cars. The sun appears above the dark mass of the Sienese Clavey and light floods the plain, pouring down like water from the peaks. There is a sound like a sharp intake of breath followed by a high whistle. Esmond looks back at the cars and, as he does, there is another whistle and the front windscreen of the Alfa shatters, sending shards of glass splintering over hands and faces. He can see that Douglas is badly cut: a wide gash has opened above one eye, his cheeks flecked with blood. The old man sinks down, trying to curl into the footwell, shivering and sobbing.
Bullets ping off the bodywork of the car, fizz overhead, explode in the tarmac on the road beside them. The Blackshirts shout and one of the cars pulls alongside the Alfa. Esmond looks over and sees Carità at the wheel, a snub pistol in one hand, the white tuft in his quiff fluttering in the wind. He grins eagerly and steers the Fiat into the side of the Alfa. There is a crunch of bent metal, a shudder as the two cars scour and then the Alfa lurches on. Carità is standing up in his seat, steering with one hand and popping at them with his Beretta. Esmond puts his arm around Fiamma and hauls her down into the cramped space behind the front seats, pulling the tartan rug across their backs. Fiamma is moaning quietly, her cheek pressed against his in the rumbling darkness, her breath in quick pants.
‘Fascist bastards,’ she mumbles.
They are down there for what seems like hours. Esmond thinks of trips to London with his parents as a child, when Anna and he would curl up in the back seat of the car as their father drove the Lagonda home to Aston. He remembers the feeling of weightlessness, the sense of flying through the night as they snuggled under blankets, his sister’s head on his shoulder. And then, pulling into the gravel of the house’s turning circle, he would pretend to be asleep so that his father would have to carry him from the car, hauling him over his shoulder like a fireman and gripping him with his good arm until he laid him out on the bed, helped him from his clothes and smoothed his hair.
The car slows. He hears Gerald and Norman speaking and lifts himself carefully onto the seat. They are coming into the outskirts of Pisa. There are other cars on the street, a bus taking workers to their offices, but no sign of the Fiats. The car is covered in scratches and pocks. A few pieces of glass hang tremblingly from the metal frame of the windscreen. Gerald and Douglas are ashen, their hair clumped with blood, their mouths and teeth stained with it.
‘Turn here,’ Douglas says. ‘Now there. On the left.’
They make their way through a gateway into the courtyard of a long house. Gerald brings the car to a halt and turns off the engine. There is a mulberry tree in the centre of the yard with a car parked beneath it. Gerald begins to laugh.
‘Christ. I mean, Norman, bugger. I thought we were goners. What in God’s name are we going to tell the priest about his car?’
Douglas begins to laugh, too, and Esmond joins him, reaching down to draw back the blanket from where Fiamma is crouched in a terrified huddle on the floor, her face pressed into Gerald’s seat.
‘You can come out now,’ he says. ‘We’re safe. We’re all safe.’
He leans down to help her, reaching behind her head. He feels wetness.
‘Fiamma?’ he says, with a sudden lurch in his chest. ‘Fiamma?’ He turns her over and sees the whiteness of her face, the dark red, almost black pool formed beneath her. Gerald has turned and looks down at the girl now stretched out on the seat as Esmond searches her neck for a pulse.
‘What do we do?’ Esmond asks, looking first at Gerald and then at Douglas. She is not breathing, there is no heartbeat, just a small hole in the nape of her neck through which blood is seeping in a slow trickle. Esmond reaches round and puts his finger into the hole, but there is little blood left, and he prods through to tendons, wet gristle. His mind feels as if it has lost its surface, its ability to grasp hold of the car, the dusty courtyard, Douglas or Gerald. It is all depths, horror, and he lowers himself down to lie against her frail, sunken body.
Douglas turns to get out of the car.
‘I can’t have anything to do with this,’ he says. ‘After everything else. They’d kill me.’ He backs away towards the house, leaving the boys with the body of their friend. They hear a door slam, the sound of conversation. Douglas comes out of the house followed by a small man with yellowed hair and thick-rimmed spectacles. They get into a Topolino parked underneath the mulberry tree. Neither of them looks at the Alfa or its contents as they pass.
Esmond presses himself against Fiamma’s chest, Gerald reaches over to stroke her blood-matted hair. They stay like this for a long time as the city wakes around them and, even in the warmth of the morning, her body is so cold that Esmond begins to shudder. Gerald is crying and the tears clear furrows in the blood on his cheeks. Someone in the house turns a radio on and there is the sound of a ukulele. The voices of the Trio Lescano seep out into the still air of the courtyard. Finally, hopelessly, Esmond turns to Gerald and asks again, ‘What do we do now?’
Part Three
Esmond Lowndes, Selected Correspondence, 1937–1939
(Italian translation by Ada Liuzzi)
Shrewsbury, Salop.
13/10/37
Dearest E –
It’s all just too horrifying for words. You must be undone. The poor girl; her poor mother. I wish I were out there to help you, darling. I had no idea the Blackshirts in Italy were such monsters. This Carità fellow sounds like a fiend — do watch out for him. Did you love her, this Fiamma? I imagine you did. At least Goad sounds like he’s been a brick. I do think you ought to write to daddy about it all. Goad is sure to let him know why you aren’t at the Institute any more.
Sorry this is rushed. I’m back in the cursed hospital. First cold snap of the autumn and I’m gurgling like a drain. Perhaps they should send me out to join you in the sunny South!