‘She is well, Philip. She sends her love. I, I… this…’ he said, showing Dryden a printout from a computer. It was an e-mail from Laura: Come immediately if you can. Come alone.
‘But she won’t say anything – I have been here all day. Nothing.’
‘Sometimes it happens,’ said Dryden. ‘The doctors always said it would – sometimes for weeks. We have to be patient.’
‘But there is something on the screen – for you,’ he said, biting his lip.
He was right. Laura always kept a document on screen called MESSAGE BOARD. During the day she added thoughts as they came to her and Dryden could read them when he arrived in the evening.
There was only one new message: P. PRIVATE DOC OPEM. LET HIM READ IT ALONE. LX.
Gaetano was by the window, looking out at the monkey puzzle tree.
‘She wants you to read something.’ Gaetano came to the bedside and Dryden put the cursor on the document, hitting the print button. ‘She wants you to read it alone. I’ll be outside – by the cab.’
He gave his father-in-law the printout and fled. Outside he drank in the air, trying to counteract the lingering effects of sleeplessness. He glanced at the Capri, but Humph was asleep, his head back on the seat rest, his language tape playing. He fingered the button in his pocket and thought of the family secrets he’d uncovered at Il Giardino. Should he tell Cavendish-Smith everything he knew, everything he suspected? He watched the moon, remembering Valgimigli’s butchered head, steaming in the cool night air.
Suddenly Humph’s tape ended, the Capri’s interior light showing that the cabbie was slumped in innocent sleep. The silence was punctuated by the crunch of footsteps on gravel and Gaetano appeared from the circle of light surrounding The Tower’s foyer. He sat with Dryden, a piece of paper crunched tightly in one fist. Even by moonlight Dryden could see the pallor of his skin, and his hand trembled slightly as he searched for a cigarette in the breast pocket of his shirt. Dryden took one too, happy to share the moment wordlessly.
‘She said it was my choice,’ said Gaetano, and Dryden could tell he’d been crying. ‘I could show you – or it would be our secret. A family secret. But you are family, and I want you to understand, as she does not.’
He handed Dryden the piece of paper. It was a list of names found on the internet, sheet number 75 out of 87. The list had got to R and Dryden scanned quickly to find what he was meant to find. There, half-way down the page, was Serafino Ricci – the deserter of Agios Gallini. A dozen names above him he saw Gaetano Raffo.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dryden, playing for time. There was only one list upon which Laura would have plausibly found Serafino’s original name: a list of deserters from the Italian army.
Gaetano rested a hand on his son-in-law’s arm. They had never been close, but they had respected each other, and the future had always held the promise that they would be closer.
‘Please, I think we do. This is a list of dishonour, a list of cowards. I have not been honest. Laura is… disappointed in this.’
Laura’s judgements on her father had always been equivocal. She had loved him, and loved him for loving her mother. But he had treated his daughter differently from his sons, even if it was, simply, with a different brand of the overbearing authority he imposed on them. In the appliance of this authority Gaetano’s military past had figured large: he was proud to have fought for his country, and extolled the virtues of the discipline it had taught him. Their north London flat had displayed several pictures from Gaetano’s time in uniform, and in pride of place a list of battle honours for his division, which had taken part in the glorious march into Egypt of 1940.
‘What happened?’ asked Dryden. The reception floodlight clicked out, leaving them in the moonlight, although the Capri’s lamp still flickered.
Gaetano drew on an Italian cigarette, making the tip burn an angry amber. The silence lengthened from a minute to two. Then he took a deep breath.
‘My last day as a soldier was in a trench, in the desert. It was dusk. Yes,’ he said, seeing it. ‘The sun was down. We were looking forward to falling back, perhaps to go home. We were due leave – and the rumour was that the ships would take us, quickly, away from the battle. I was talking to a man from my village, young Biasetti, the son of my father’s best friend. We shared a cigarette like this. We were very happy, the two of us, in our trench.’
He watched the moon. ‘It is true, but I rarely heard a shot in anger in that war till then. I lit his cigarette, there was a high-pitched noise – unlike that of the bullets I had imagined, and his face just… stopped. Still. The eyes without life. Then the blood appeared, from underneath the helmet, like a curtain falling over his face.’
He took another deep breath. ‘I must have screamed. They dragged me away. To a field hospital. I was covered in blood, but it was all his. I deserted that night, just walking back through the lines. No one stopped me at all. On the coast, there was chaos then. The battle had gone badly, there were many wounded. I tried to get on one of the boats for home. I don’t remember much. They took me home though – to gaol. Sometimes I wish they’d shot me then, Philip. In Africa.’
He glanced back at the brooding mass of the old hospitaclass="underline" ‘She thinks I’m a coward for not fighting.’
‘She thinks you’re a coward for not telling her,’ said Dryden, pressing the old man’s hand.
They had another cigarette and Dryden offered to take his father-in-law back to PK 129, to the spare bunk, and a sleepless night. They stood, arm-in-arm, and walked to the cab.
He knew something was wrong when he opened the Capri’s passenger door. Humph’s face lolled towards him, lard white, the sweat on his brow dry, one hand held in a claw at his chest. Dryden was no expert, but as he reached out for his friend’s wrist, he was certain Humph was dead.
Autumnal Tuscan sunshine falls on the city walls of Lucca, and the last tourists of the season linger under the shade of the olive tree perched improbably at the summit of the great tower of the Palazzo dei Guinigi. When they leave, the songbirds will peck at the crumbs of their sandwiches. Below, the shadow of the tower reaches out across the tiled roofs of the city, until it touches the church of St Michele.
Inside, the woman with the grey bunched hair crosses herself, collects her mop, pail and bag, and leaves by the leather-padded northern door into the Via Del Moro. The day has been long and arduous and, although she has struggled to find some joy in it, as the priests said she should, it has been dreary. There was only the little blonde girl who played on the steps, to whom she had given a postcard of the saint. That would be what she would remember of the day, even as she walked to her last job in the cool breeze of the evening.
A child’s smile. It was all she had.
She crossed the Piazza Del Carmine towards the university, trying not to smell the pasta dishes the tourists ate in the shade of the almond trees. They ate so early, these foreigners, while the sun still shone. Her own stomach ached, but it would be another two hours before she was home, and could eat alone.
She followed the steps of a street cat up to the familiar door, punched in the security code and expertly wheeled her pail, mops, and work basket through the door before the alarm was triggered. She punched in the code, thought about her work, and decided instead on a cigarette.
A weekend, the university was empty. But here, it was almost always quiet, although the archaeologists were like their artefacts: always in need of a light dusting. She dragged her things up the stairs to the first office where the nameplate shone: Prof. Azeglio Valgimigli. He was in England, she knew, and here she could have privacy for the small ceremony of the cigarette, the little sin she allowed herself. She opened the window, careful not to lean too far forward in case she might be seen by one of the university officials. Below, by a fountain, two teenagers kissed. She thought of the cemetery, and drew deeply on the cigarette. She would visit tonight, and tell him about her day.