Thinking about Tucek, I forgot myself, and it was not until the sound of the engines slackened and the port wing dipped that I looked out of my window again. Milan lay along the horizon, sunlight glittering on long streamers of smoke blown by the wind from the tall factory chimneys on the outskirts. The solid bulk of a gasometer came up to meet us. Then we were skimming the spire of a church and running in towards a line of pylons. The lights came on in the indicator ordering safety belts to be fixed. The door to the cockpit slid back and one of the crew repeated the order. The sun-baked flat of the airfield came up to meet us and in a moment the concrete of the runways was streaming by and we had landed in Milan.
The main hall of Milan Airport looked very much as it had done when I passed through it on my way down to Foggia in May, 1945, after the German capitulation. The same air maps sprawled across the walls publicising Mussolini’s empire. But now the sun shone through the tall frosted windows on to the motley of civilian dress and the public address system announced the flights in Italian and French as well as English.
I checked baggage and passports and was just going out towards the waiting bus when I saw Reece. He was over near the airfield entrance talking to a small, bearded Italian. Our eyes met across the heads of the crowd. I saw sudden recognition and the shock of surprise in his eyes. Then he deliberately turned away and continued his conversation with the Italian.
I hesitated. I had a message to give him and the sooner he got it the better. But somehow I couldn’t face it. The blankness that followed that sudden glance of recognition seemed to block me out. I found I was trembling and I knew then I must have a drink before I faced him. I went quickly out to the bus and climbed in. ‘Dove, signore?’ The attendant stared at me suspiciously.
‘Excelsior,’ I answered.
‘Excelsior? Bene.’
A few minutes later the bus moved off. I knew then that I ought to have gone over to Reece and given him Maxwell’s message. I cursed myself for letting my nerves get the better of me. After all it “was a long time ago and … But all I remembered was the blank look that had followed recognition. It had taken me straight back to that little room in the Villa d’Este. He didn’t seem to have changed at all. A bit fuller in the face perhaps, but the same broad, stocky figure and determined set of mouth and chin. Well, I’d got to face it sooner or later. I’d have a drink or two and wait for him at the hotel.
The Excelsior is in the Piazzale Duca d’Aosta, facing the Stazione Centrale, that exuberant monument to Fascist ideals that looks more like a colossal war memorial than a railway station. A porter took my two suitcases and I climbed the steps and entered the marble-pillared entrance hall of the hotel. At the reception desk the clerk said, ‘Your home, please, signore?’
‘Farrell,’ I answered. ‘I have accommodation booked.’
‘Si si, signore. Will you sign please. Numero cento venti.’ He called a page. ‘Accompagnate il signore alcento venti.’ The room was small, but comfortable. It looked out across the Piazzale to the railway station. I had a bath and I changed and then went down to the lounge to wait for Recce. I ordered tea and sent a page for my mail. There wasn’t much; a letter from my mother, a bill for a suit I’d bought before leaving England and the usual packet from my firm. The last included a letter from the managing director. We expect big things of you in Italy…. When you have been in Milan a week send me a report on the advisability of establishing a permanent agency…. You have my permission to take a holiday there as and when you please and trust you will be able to combine business with pleasure by making social contact with potential customers for our machine tools. It was signed Harry Evans. I folded the letter and put it away in my briefcase. Then I sat back,’ thinking of the possibilities of a holiday in Italy, and as I did so my eyes strayed over the room and riveted themselves on the far corner.
Seated alone at a small table by the window was Alice Reece. The sight of her hit me like a blow below the belt. As though drawn by my gaze, she turned her head and saw me. Her eyes brightened momentarily as they met mine across that dimly-lit lounge. Then they seemed to go cold and dead, the way her brother’s had done, and she turned away her head.
I think if I’d hesitated I’d have fled to my room. But I was gripped by some strange urge to justify myself. I got to my feet and walked across the room towards her table. She saw me coming. The green of her eyes was caught in the sunlight from the window. She looked into my face and then her gaze fell to my leg. I saw her frown and she turned away towards the window again. I was at her table now, standing over her, seeing the sunlight colouring the soft gold of her hair and the way her hands were clenched on her bag.
‘Do you mind if I sit down for a minute?’ I asked, and my voice was trembling.
She didn’t stop me, but as I pulled out the chair opposite her, she said, ‘It’s no good, Dick. ‘She had spoken in a tone of pity.
I sat down. Her face was in profile now and I saw she was older, more mature. There were lines in her forehead and at the corners of her mouth that hadn’t been there before. ‘Eight years is a long time,’ I said.
She nodded, but said nothing.
Now that I was here, sitting opposite her, I didn’t know what to say. No words could bridge the gulf between us. I knew that. And yet there were things I wanted to say, things that couldn’t have been written. ‘I hope you’re well,’ I said inanely.
‘ Yes,’ she answered quietly.
‘And happy?’
She didn’t answer and I thought she hadn’t heard. But then she said, ‘You had all there was of happiness in me, Dick.’ She turned and looked at me suddenly. ‘I didn’t know about the leg. When did that happen?’
I told her.
She looked away again, out of the window. ‘Alec never told me about that. It would have made it easier — to understand.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t want to make it easier for you to understand.’
‘Perhaps.’
An awkward silence fell between us. It grew so that I felt at any moment our nerves would snap and we’d cry or laugh out loud or something equally stupid.
‘What are you doing in Milan?’ I asked.
‘A holiday,’ she replied. ‘And you?’
‘Business,’ I answered.
Silence again. I think both of us knew that small talk was no good between us. ‘Will you be here long?’ I asked. ‘I mean — couldn’t we meet some—’
She stopped me with an angry movement of her hand. “Don’t make it more difficult, Dick,’ she said and I noticed a trembling in her voice.
Her words took us over the edge of small talk, back into tine past that we’d shared; a holiday in Wales, the Braemar Games where we’d first met, her fair hair blown by the wind on a yacht on the Broads. I could see her slim body cutting the water as she dived, see her face laughing up at me as we ay under the shade of an old oak in the woods above Solva. Memories flooded through me bringing with them the bitter thought of what might have been between us — a home, children, life. Then her hands were on the table, moving blindly among the tea things, and I knew she had not married.
‘Can’t we go back—’ I began. But the look in her eyes flopped me. She hadn’t married, but there was no going back. The eyes that met mine were full of sadness. ‘Please go now, Dick,’ she said. ‘Alec will be back soon and—’
But suddenly I didn’t care about Alec. ‘I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I’ve a message for him — from Maxwell in Czechoslovakia.’
Her eyes tensed and I knew then that she had some idea what her brother was doing. ‘Are you in this, too?’ she asked. ‘I thought—’ Her voice stopped there.