The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  She wanted to say something to him, to offer sympathy, but found that tears were running down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly, acutely embarrassed. ‘I have intruded.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I must leave. I am keeping you from your work.’ His words came out clipped and awkward.

  Caterina wiped her face with the back of her hand, but could not bring herself to ask more about his father. ‘How is it that you speak such good Italian?’

  He seemed relieved at the change of subject. ‘For the first fourteen years of my life my parents brought me to Italy for two months every spring. They adored Italy, especially Italian opera at La Scala.’ He shrugged with a boyish smile, remembering. ‘I always had an Italian nanny. My father was delighted when I could speak Italian better than he could.’

  He looked ridiculously young suddenly. Too young for a soldier’s uniform.

  ‘Find out for me,’ she said.

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘Why someone is blaming my father.’

  He gave her a brief nod. ‘There is something else. Major Parr might not have told you, but I feel you have the right to know.’

  She waited.

  ‘A man’s body was hauled out of the oily waters of Naples dockyard last week, but he didn’t drown. His windpipe was crushed. He was a jeweller by the name of Orlando Bartoli. We were called in by the police to investigate because he had been caught with a stolen painting. When we interrogated others involved, your father’s name kept popping up.’

  Panic crawled up her throat.

  ‘That means nothing,’ she whispered.

  ‘I agree. But Major Parr is convinced that the connection means something.’ He paused, studying her face. ‘I apologise, Signorina Lombardi, if I have upset you.’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’ Her movements and her words had grown jerky.

  For a while they stood in the shade in silence, both aware that the conversation had changed things, both unable to find a way back on to solid ground. Then Caterina moved and led him back inside the house. She opened the front door for him and he stepped out into the narrow street, glancing up at the ribbon of blue sky above. Everything about him was awkward now. He lingered on the front step holding his cap and puffing out his cheeks as if he had more to say, but the words had lodged behind his teeth.

  ‘Goodbye, Captain. Thank you for coming. For being honest.’

  He looked directly at her, his blue eyes uncertain. ‘There is a dance at the Santa Lucia Hotel in Naples tomorrow night. We hold one every week. I wondered if you would care to come. With me, I mean. I would fetch you and bring you back in the jeep.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Of course. Damn silly of me to presume.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Naples or to attend a formal military event, but I’ll share a pizza with you at Georgio’s pizzeria round the corner from here, if you like. They are the best in Sorrento. Seven o’clock tomorrow night.’

  He grinned at her. ‘I’ll be there.’

  She closed the door and listened to his footsteps fade outside. Two soldiers in one morning. Papà, they must want it badly, whatever it is they’re after. She had started to head back towards the kitchen cupboard, when she remembered that the coffee still lay on the courtyard table.

  Every wood has its own voice when sawn. Its own fragrance when its flesh and veins are opened up. When Caterina walked into her brother’s bedroom that evening she could smell yew. Luca was lying on his stomach on his bed with his schoolwork, but his smooth young cheeks were flushed. She wondered why. Had he been whittling something out of a piece of yew and pushed it under his bed when he heard her step on the stairs?

  ‘I’ve brought you something.’

  He looked up. Their father’s eyes, round and dark as ancient oak. They brightened when they saw what she was holding. He sat up and she handed him a sfogliatella she had just baked.

  ‘Grazie.’

  He muttered the word through a mouthful of pastry, rolling his eyes with pleasure, but ended up, as he often did, staring at her hands, and she always had the feeling that he was trying to fathom why it was that she had inherited her father’s talent with wood, but he hadn’t.

  ‘What are you studying?’ she asked.

  ‘Geography.’

  Luca was not a keen scholar. He preferred to fish.

  ‘Can I help? What are you learning?’

  ‘The capitals of Europe.’

  ‘Do you want me to test you?’

  ‘If you like.’

  He was grinning up at her just as he did when they played chess and he had her queen cornered. Their father had taught them the game and Luca had spent intense hours over the board with him. He was far better at it than Caterina.

  She prodded a finger at the map in front of him. ‘What is the capital of Portugal?’

  ‘Lisbona.’

  ‘Bene. And Finland?’

  ‘Helsinki.’

  ‘Molto bene.’

  But now he was chewing at his thumbnail and staring at her with concern. ‘What’s wrong, Caterina?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He shook his head. Her brother knew her too well. He was always quick to catch on to her mood.

  She put a hand in her pocket to distract him. ‘I have something for you, Luca.’

  His eyes brightened, clearly hoping for another sfogliatella. She pulled out a postcard. It was yellowed with age and its edges soft and blurred. On the front was a black and white picture of the magnificent fourteenth-century Duomo of Florence. She held it out to him. He took it and glanced at the picture, but when he flipped it over to read it, his mouth dropped open. His finger traced the looped black writing.

  ‘It’s from Mamma,’ Caterina said needlessly.

  She knew the words by heart. Having fun. Florence is party heaven. Your Mamma. It was addressed to Caterina.

  ‘She sent it to me when I was five. She went to Florence for her cousin’s wedding.’ She didn’t add that her mother didn’t come back for three weeks or that Papà didn’t eat or sleep while she was gone. He even stopped shaving. When Mamma finally returned, she greeted her husband with a wrinkle of her nose in disgust and the comment, ‘Antonio, you look like something a dog has chewed.’

  Caterina didn’t tell Luca that. Because he was smiling, not just with his mouth but with every part of himself.

  ‘You can keep it,’ she said.

  His face was bent close to the card, and he said an eager ‘Thank you’, but didn’t look up. So he didn’t see what it cost her.

  Caterina placed a glass of hot water and lemon at her grandfather’s elbow. He had fallen asleep in his chair, his head at an awkward angle, and the stubbled folds of his face had slipped sideways.

  ‘Time for bed, Nonno,’ she said softly.

  He jerked awake, his neck clicking audibly as he sat up straight, a legacy of the injuries of his fall years ago. He always sat straight. He constantly told Luca that slumping in a chair was not good for the brain.

  ‘My water?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s beside you.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  His long fingers searched for it, twitching like feelers. It was hard not to mollycoddle him, to place a drink safely in his hand, but if ever she did she was rewarded with a prod of his cane and a snort of disgust. She sat in the seat opposite him, sipping her own water, and waited for him to settle with his drink.

  ‘Nonno, do you know someone called Count di Marco?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you heard the name?’

  ‘Yes, I have. I think he lives over on Capri.’

  Her grandfather sipped his drink for a full minute in silence.

  ‘Did Papà know him?’

  His heavy white eyebrows swooped into a frown. ‘What is this about?’

  ‘I think he gave Papà an order for a table and I’m trying to find out a bit more about it.’

  ‘Why? What does it matter now?’ His voice was harsh. ‘Your
father is gone. No questions can bring him back.’

  ‘I know that, Nonno.’

  They drank quietly, her grandfather wary now, but Caterina had not finished.

  ‘Nonno, was Papà involved in anything illegal? I know times were hard after the war started.’

  ‘Wash those words from your tongue, girl. Don’t you ever speak like that about your father.’

  ‘Did he receive jewels from Count di Marco?’

  ‘Would we have been starving if your father had jewels? Is that what you think?’ His voice was rising. ‘Stop this right now. Whatever you think you’re doing, stop it. Your father was the finest man you’ll ever know.’ His hand was shaking. Water from his glass fell on his trousers. ‘He was my son.’

  ‘I know, Nonno. I know. I am not accusing him of anything.’

  ‘You are his daughter, Caterina Lombardi. You should be loyal.’

  ‘I am always loyal to Papà.’

  Her grandfather discarded the glass on the table next to him, snatched up his cane and rose to his feet. He turned his sightless face in her direction and rapped the tip of his cane on the floor.

  ‘Caterina, if you continue with this,’ he waved his strong hand through the air to encompass this, as if it stretched, like the darkness in his head, beyond the room, ‘I tell you, you do not deserve to be Antonio Lombardi’s daughter.’

  He made his way to the door and flung it open, his cane tapping like someone asking to come in. Caterina listened to his heavy footsteps on the stairs, but she continued to sit there. Remembering.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Caterina left the house with Luca the next morning, a smile on her face.

  ‘You don’t need to walk to school with me,’ he moaned at her side. There was not much difference in their height these days. She was small and slight, while her brother was shooting up.

  ‘I know, but I want to.’

  ‘My friends will laugh at me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t come as far as the school gate.’ She ruffled his clipped hair.

  To her surprise he didn’t protest further and it occurred to her that he actually wanted her company.

  ‘Luca, will you do something for me?’

  There was something in her voice that wasn’t meant to be there. Her brother heard it and looked at her instantly, his dark eyes bright with curiosity. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt that had been washed too many times, a scruffy pair of shorts and worn-out sandals, his limbs as lithe and brown as a colt’s. He badly needed new clothes.

  ‘What?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I want you to come straight home after school instead of going down to the boats.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You spend too much time on the streets. I worry. So come straight home after school and we’ll work on your school books together.’

  He pulled a face but didn’t say no. ‘I wanted to catch you a big fish for dinner.’ His eyes skimmed over her and he tutted softly in the way her father used to. ‘You’re too skinny, Caterina. Eat some of Nonno’s chocolate.’

  Such a small comment, but it meant a lot to Caterina. Her brother was growing up. But he was in that awkward stage where he was trying to learn to be a man, without a father to show him how. At the corner of the street where his school was, she stopped to let him go the rest of the way alone, but he stopped with her and faced her.

  ‘What is going on, Caterina? Why are you so . . .’ he paused, searching for a word that came close, ‘so unhappy?’ he finished.

  ‘I’m not unhappy, Luca.’

  He frowned. ‘I am your brother. Do you think I don’t know by heart every expression on your face?’

  He turned and set off towards the school.

  ‘Don’t forget, will you?’ she called after him. ‘To come straight home.’

  He glanced back and grinned at her over his shoulder. ‘Nor you. You forget the time when you’re in your workshop.’

  She wanted to run after him and wrap her arms around his bony frame and hold him close. But he wouldn’t thank her for it.

  The sea was still as glass, as if it had fallen asleep. Caterina stood in the queue to buy a ticket for the ferry to Capri and was staring up at the cliffs that soared above her. At the top of the vast slabs of pale limestone the town was bathed in the golden light of morning as it peered over the edge.

  Nothing looked out of place. Nothing to set her heart hammering.

  No unexpected figure gazing down from a balcony or terrace. No splash of sun from binoculars or the black gleam of a pair of sunglasses that was staring too long. Just the breeze ruffling the fronds of the lazy palms and a spiteful swirl of dust that lifted from the flowerbeds that adorned the town.

  There was no reason for her to feel watched. None at all. But she didn’t turn her back on it. Not for one second.

  From the rail of the ferry that stank of diesel fumes, Caterina watched the waves roll and stretch and chase each other in an endless rhythm that soothed her mood, the way the moon did at night when it rose fat and powerful over the mountains. The great sweeping expanse of vivid blue water spread itself out around her and made the Sorrentine peninsula dwindle to nothing, to just a blur on the horizon, no more than a thumbprint. Her anger and her fear dwindled with it.

  The isle of Capri rose from the Gulf of Naples in a great shoulder of rock, green and silvery grey, shimmering in the sun. A cornflower blue sky wrapped itself around the island and Caterina felt as if she were entering into an older world as she stepped off the ferry, a world where the imperious voices of emperors of Ancient Rome still whispered among their palatial villas and lavish gardens. Where lives were ended by the turn of a thumb.

  She walked briskly along the marina, inspecting the sailing yachts as she did so, and the brightly coloured fishing boats that bobbed and tugged at their mooring ropes. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she was taking no chances. Alert for any sign of something unusual or any dark head with a white streak at the temple. But people were going about their business as usual, a smattering of military uniforms idling in the sunshine. A number of Capri’s larger villas, including the one owned by the English singer, Gracie Fields, had been requisitioned as recuperation centres for wounded Allied soldiers, but there was nothing much to do on the island expect smoke and watch the crabs being hauled in.

  Caterina had not taken the half-hour boat ride from Sorrento to Capri since before the war and she had forgotten how beautiful the island was – or perhaps she’d been too young to appreciate it – with its perpendicular limestone cliffs soaring out of the serene waters. She could smell the scent of its wild herbs and wooded slopes and see the rocky ridge of its back that ran across the island and up to the small town of Anacapri. In the Marina Grande she headed straight for the funicular railway and took a ride alongside a bunch of military uniforms up to La Piazzetta in the town of Capri.

  ‘You live in this lovely place, signorina?’ a shiny-faced sergeant asked politely as the funicular carriage eased itself to a stop.

  Caterina shook her head. She had grown jumpy around uniforms. But she walked into the pretty pastel-painted square and immediately asked a local, who was selling strings of garlic from his bicycle, if he knew of the Villa dei Cesari. He pointed his cigarette to a headland further up the rugged cliff.

  ‘Along there,’ he said with a gap-toothed grin. ‘But Count di Marco only hires male staff, signorina. Everyone knows that. He doesn’t like women.’

  It didn’t bode well.

  Caterina halted, sweat gathering in the hollows of her neck. The climb up from the town had been steep. She was standing in front of two bone-white marble pillars and a pair of iron gates, twice as tall as a person. She tried them. Locked. She inspected the stretch of road beyond them, a black tarmac driveway that seemed to bend and melt in the shimmering heat, but no house was visible. A dense tangle of juniper trees bordered the left side of the road, and on the right ran a white wall, chest-high. She couldn’t see over it from
here but knew that on the other side must lie a sheer drop to the rocks far below.

  Villa dei Cesari. The words glinted in huge brass letters that straddled the pillars, big enough and bold enough to be seen from a hundred metres away. So this Count di Marco was a man who liked to protect his privacy, but enjoyed shouting out his importance to the world. She pressed the button on the intercom that was set into one of the pillars and immediately a female voice crackled out of it.

  ‘Buongiorno, please state your name and your business.’

  ‘I am Signorina Lombardi. I wish to speak to Count di Marco about a table he ordered from my father.’

  ‘Wait one minute, please.’

  One minute passed, followed by two more. After five minutes of standing in the hot sun, Caterina was just contemplating pressing the button again when there was a loud metallic buzzing and the voice said, ‘Please enter.’

  She pushed open the gate.

  She was right about the sheer drop. It was there on the far side of the white wall, where seabirds skimmed the thermals rising up the cliffs from the sea, their wings like flashes of sunlight, their cries piercing. Caterina walked fast, past a row of statues that lined the left side of the road, arrogant life-size marble figures of Roman caesars in flowing white togas and wearing delicately carved ivy leaves on their heads to symbolise their power. Was that an indication of what mattered most to this Count di Marco? Power.

  She turned her head and looked out to sea, dazzling to the eye, aware of the profusion of scarlet geraniums that trailed down the white wall like splashes of blood. It occurred to her that living here, high up among the ancient ruins, could easily turn a man’s head and make him believe he was a Roman eagle.

  Eventually the road abandoned the cliff edge and swung inland through an avenue of elegant cypress trees. For the first time Caterina caught sight of the house and she felt a rush of excitement. It was a vast sprawling mansion, all soaring white columns and arcades of arches. A Roman villa fit for an emperor.

  ‘Buongiorno, signorina.’

  The great oak door swung open before Caterina had even finished climbing the wide semi-circular front steps, and an elegant woman wearing long silver earrings and a man’s black suit and waistcoat stood ready to greet her.