Tell Me No Truths

by Gill Vickery

  ‘Please accept my apologies,’ the Signora said. ‘He is somewhat, how do you say it? Rimbambito? A little bit losing his mind because he is old?’

  ‘Senile,’ James said obligingly.

  Whatever else he was, he wasn’t senile, Nico thought. The light in his eyes as he’d glared at Luisa wasn’t madness, it was hatred.

  ‘Boys!’

  ‘Babbo’s ready,’ Gaetano said.

  Roberto ran out of the door and down the steps to the courtyard where Gaetano’s father stood by the white oxen harnessed to a cart.

  ‘Don’t be so eager to collect your uniform,’ he said to Roberto. ‘It won’t make you a man.’

  Roberto nodded, his expression blank. Gaetano knew he was trying to supress his excitement and finding it difficult. Now that the boys were fourteen they were getting rifles as well as uniforms; scaled-down rifles but real ones nevertheless. Even Gaetano was excited about that.

  Gaetano clambered into the cart and sat next to Roberto. As it rumbled down the track to the nearby town of Borgo Sant’Angelo, Roberto began humming a fascist anthem.

  ‘Shut up!’ Gaetano warned and nodded towards his father who was frowning. Roberto sighed and stopped humming. He’ll be happy soon enough, Gaetano thought. After they and the other young people had received their uniforms at the headquarters of the Youth Movement there’d be stirring speeches from the mayor and other dignitaries, and then there’d be singing – loud, joyful singing that Roberto wouldn’t have to hold back on or apologise for. Gaetano suspected that his foster brother was already silently rehearsing the words in his head.

  They reached the town and Gaetano nudged Roberto to draw his attention to the grand American car drawn up near to the Casa del Balilla, the headquarters of the Fascist Youth movement. ‘Look – Elena must be here already; that’s her father’s car.’

  ‘There she is!’ Roberto pointed. Elena, with Ilaria by her side as usual, was entering the building. Both girls had their new black and white uniforms piled in their arms.

  ‘Signor Tirone doesn’t look happy,’ Gaetano said.

  At the car, Elena’s parents were deep in conversation with Ilaria’s. It wasn’t only Signor Tirone who was unhappy: Signora Tirone was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and Signor and Signora Minardi were exchanging worried glances.

  ‘Idiots,’ Roberto said and jumped down from the cart.

  Gaetano glared. Though he knew his foster brother would never call Babbo an idiot, he also knew that Roberto loved the Duce too and one day he would have to choose between the beliefs of the two men. Uneasily Gaetano watched Roberto run to the Casa del Balilla. He was far too eager to begin his life as a soldier for the Duce and for the King.

  CHAPTER IX

  NICO WIDENED HIS eyes at the mirror by the door and drew a kohl pencil along his lids. He grinned at his reflection. Mum thought he was going with the twins to the library Michelangelo had designed for the Medici. The adults were on their way to the walled town of Lucca and didn’t suspect a thing; the false project plan was going perfectly.

  A booming knock at the door made him jump and he jabbed the pencil in his eye. He staggered back, pressing his palm into his streaming eye.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Nico peered through tears pouring from both eyes and fumbled the door open. It was the twins. He knuckled his bad eye. ‘What?’ he snorted, his nose as full as his eyes.

  ‘We’re going for the bus,’ Amber said. ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘I stabbed myself in the eye with my kohl when you knocked. It’s killing me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jade said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can’t wait,’ Amber said. ‘The bus goes in half an hour.’

  Nico didn’t care. All he cared about was the pain in his eye. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  ‘You’ll have to get a move on.’

  Bitch. Can’t you see I’m in pain? Nico thought. ‘I’ll get the next bus then,’ he snapped.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nico slammed the door shut. At that moment he didn’t care if he never went to Borgo Sant’Angelo again, ever, not even for the frescoes.

  ‘He was in a strop,’ Amber said as they walked down Via del Corno.

  ‘So would you be if you poked yourself in the eye – it hurts.’

  ‘I think he’s a wuss.’ Amber wrinkled up her nose. ‘Look at all the fuss he made over his foot.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  Jade ignored Amber’s withering look and changed the subject. ‘I’m still worried about today, about Signora Biagi. She might be mad at us.’ It was old ground: they’d talked about it for half the night – the other half had been spent talking about the weird old man and the peculiar dinner at Il Nido.

  ‘So? What’s she going to do? Chase us with a kitchen knife?’

  ‘No, suppose not, I just thought . . .’ Jade was worried by what she thought. If she’s angry I’m not going to hang around the Villa dei Fiori and listen to her slagging my family off. She argued back at herself. No, she won’t do that – she’s too nice – the worst she’ll do is tell us to go away and never come back. And even if that happened at least she and Amber would have tried their best to tell Nonno’s Italian family the truth about him. If it failed it wouldn’t be their fault.

  Nico hurried towards the station, his eye still smarting. He took a wrong turning and found himself in the Piazza della Repubblica. He couldn’t resist going into the Edison bookshop to buy a new copy of The Shattered Mirror for Jade. In all the fuss made by the old man last night Nico had forgotten to pass on his copy and he’d thought later he’d quite like to keep his old book. He was used to it and he liked the way it fell open at his favourite passages.

  It took him a while to get served and he had to run to the bus station. He bought a ticket, squinted mistily at the destination and jumped on board just in time. The bus was soon out of the city and into hilly, wooded countryside. As it swooped round a bend on the narrow road, a gap opened up in the trees and Nico saw Florence rising from the valley below like the sweetest of mirages – lovely, tempting – its golden, red-roofed houses stretching out to the green hills that encircled it before sweeping back around the great domed cathedral, gathering up the graceful towers on their way. Nico knew he would never, ever forget that golden glimpse of his beloved city. He settled back to enjoy the rest of the ride.

  The bus went up and up in reckless spirals through the woods and steep rocky hillsides, the driver hauling frantically on the wheel as the front of the bus lurched over the edge of the road and back again. Nico decided not to look out of the nearside window.

  The bus swept on round hairpin bends. They passed a sign with a deer on it, and one with falling boulders. The trees got thicker and the rocks got bigger and crueller. The bus swung past a gap looking straight down into a steep, wooded gully falling away in a sheer drop. Nico’s stomach churned. The tightly packed trees closed in again and the hillside grew shadowy and dark. The bus climbed steadily up, and up, and up.

  This isn’t right, Nico thought, Borgo Sant’Angelo’s not on top of a mountain. I’ve got on the wrong bus.

  He had no idea where he was going.

  The door opened. ‘You are here!’ Signora Biagi said.

  ‘We told you we’d come back,’ Amber said.

  ‘Come in! Come!’ Signora Biagi flung the door open wide and ushered them into the kitchen. ‘Sit! Sit!’

  The letter lay open on the table, its folds smoothed out as though hands had stroked them over and over. Signora Biagi smiled. ‘You are very brave, coming here like this.’

  ‘We thought you might be angry with us,’ Amber said.

  ‘Angry? How could I be angry with you?’

  Jade and her sister had thought of quite a few reasons – trickin
g their way into the house, not revealing who they were, leaving the letter then doing a runner, the letter itself dropping a bombshell into Signora Biagi’s life, stirring up memories of what Nonno was supposed to have done.

  ‘I already knew a little about Roberto – your nonno – but I didn’t know he had an English family who would come to look for us.’ Signora Biagi reached out and took Jade and Amber’s hands.

  What was she going to say? Was she going to start accusing Nonno of some horrible crime?

  Signora Biagi beamed. ‘We are cugine – cousins. You can’t call me “Signora”. You must call me Caterina.’

  The driver took the bus slowly into a clearing in the dense woodland where a few small houses clustered in twos and threes. There was a tiny cafe as well, with a green bench in front of it. The bus stopped and the driver got out and lit a cigarette.

  Nico followed him. ‘Scusi,’ he said, ‘this bus is going to Borgo Sant’Angelo, isn’t it?’

  The driver shook his head. ‘No, it goes to Faenza.’

  Faenza? Nico had never heard of it.

  ‘How do I get to Borgo Sant’Angelo?’ Nico asked.

  ‘You have to go back to Firenze then get another bus to Borgo Sant’Angelo.’ The driver pointed to the bench. ‘You wait there. In twenty minutes a bus it will come. You can use your same ticket to get back. OK?’

  ‘OK. Grazie.’

  ‘Prego.’ The driver threw down his half-smoked cigarette, ground it carefully under his heel, climbed back on the bus and drove away. The sound of the engine vanished in the muffling forest. Nico sat on the green bench. He tried his mobile. There was no signal. All he could do was wait.

  Caterina brought three photos to the table and passed a black and white portrait of a pretty, rather serious-looking young woman to Jade and Amber. ‘This is Elena, who you say Roberto loved. She was my nonna, my grandmother.’

  Jade noticed Caterina didn’t call Roberto her nonno though he was, just as much as he was hers and Amber’s. ‘Nonno did love Elena,’ she said firmly. After his second stroke Nonno had hurt Luisa badly by grieving loudly for Elena and his unknown child; the least Caterina could do was acknowledge he had truly loved Elena. ‘And he was always sad he never knew his baby.’ Caterina ought to be able to understand that.

  ‘He didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl,’ Amber said.

  Caterina pointed to another photograph. ‘As you see, it was a girl. Elena called her Sofia and she is my mamma. This is a picture of her as a child.’

  Jade expected to feel tearful when she leaned over to look at the photo but instead she felt a fierce, hot anger. The happy little face in the picture should have smiled up at Nonno not at some substitute father. It wasn’t fair.

  ‘And this,’ Caterina said, ‘is Mamma on her wedding day.’ She held up a colour photo. ‘Here is Mamma and my babbo, Davide, with his parents next to him. And here, on Mamma’s side, are her parents, Elena and Gaetano.’

  Gaetano – Nonno had told them he was his rival for Elena. Amber snatched at the picture and stared intently. Jade couldn’t look; she was still trying to tame the rush of anger.

  ‘You said you know a bit about Nonno – Roberto. What do you know?’ she asked.

  Caterina hesitated. ‘There are some things in your letter that are different from what I was told by my mamma and my nonno Gaetano.’

  ‘Oh?’ Amber snapped. Caterina flinched.

  ‘We loved our nonno,’ Jade said.

  ‘I understand. And I love my nonno, Gaetano, too. We should share our stories and see where things have become . . . confused.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Jade said. ‘You go first.’

  Caterina rested her forearms on the table while she thought for a moment. ‘This is the story I grew up with,’ she said. ‘Many years ago there was a young man, not much more than a boy really, named Roberto Volpe. He fell in love with my grandmother, Elena, and she with him. She became pregnant. He wanted to marry her but it was wartime and Roberto was . . .’ Caterina hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’ Jade coaxed.

  ‘He was a fascist and Elena’s parents would not hear of the marriage.’

  A second rush of anger mixed with shock hit Jade. When she clutched Amber’s hand under the table it was as chilly as her own. This isn’t right, she thought, this isn’t the proper story. Nonno wasn’t a fascist! He was a partisan fighting against the fascists!

  ‘Roberto joined a band called the Brigate Nere – Black Brigade in English.’ Caterina hesitated then continued, ‘Towards the end of the war he disappeared.’

  Jade, numb with shock, didn’t dare look at her sister.

  ‘It was a bitter and confused time here in Italy,’ Caterina said. ‘Many people were fascists, many communists; others were royalists – like Elena’s family – and many, many brave Italians helped British prisoners or spies. My nonno Gaetano was one of them. One young English spy whom he helped became his great friend.’

  Jade bit her lip to stop herself speaking out loud: Caterina had just recounted Nonno’s story – except for the part about being friends with an English spy. Why was this Gaetano spreading lies about Nonno?

  Caterina picked up the letter. ‘Now I know that Roberto made his way to England and made a life there. He married a lady called Grace who became your nonna, your . . .?’

  Jade managed to smile even though she was still numb from learning that Caterina believed Nonno had been a fascist. ‘Granny, that’s our word for nonna.’

  Caterina smiled back, rather sadly. ‘What we were always told – my mamma and my brother and I – was that Roberto didn’t care about Elena and Sofia . . .’ Caterina held her hand up sharply as Jade protested. ‘. . . or, because he was far away from here, he didn’t know what had happened to Elena and their baby. And you say this in your letter too. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t try to get in touch after the war.’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ Jade said.

  ‘Couldn’t? Why not?’

  ‘Because somebody told him he’d be killed if he tried,’ Amber said bluntly.

  And I bet it was that Gaetano, Jade thought. I bet Nonno knew something about him that he didn’t want anyone else to know. Though she was seething with anger, she didn’t want an ugly confrontation – it would get them nowhere and if they antagonised Caterina there was a danger they’d never solve the mystery and Sofia would never know how lovely her real father was.

  ‘I did not hear that,’ Caterina said.

  Jade kicked Amber under the table to tell her to stay quiet for now. ‘What happened to Elena and Sofia?’

  ‘Gaetano also loved Elena and married her quickly to hide the scandal of the pregnancy. It was such a shameful thing in those days to have an illegitimate child that Gaetano and Elena always said that Sofia was their own child.’ Caterina shook her head disapprovingly. ‘Fortunately, as the years passed and times grew kinder, Elena felt she could tell Sofia the truth about her father and later Sofia told me and my brother, Matteo. We always wondered what happened to Roberto. And now you are here to tell us. I’m happy that you have done this. I hope you are not disappointed to meet me?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jade said. Truthfully, she was disappointed, bitterly, though not with Caterina; it was hardly her fault if this Gaetano had told lies about Nonno for some reason – maybe to get Elena for himself? They’d put him right if they ever met him. And man, would Amber be the right person to do that!

  The trees towered over Nico’s head, meeting far above him like the roof of a cathedral. Roots stirred in the rocky soil. It must be wild here in a storm, Nico thought. He remembered the bouncing rocks sign.

  He squinted through the cafe window. According to James’s guidebook, by law every cafe in Italy had to let you use their lavatory. But the law was no use if the only cafe for miles had a sign reading chiuso hanging in its window.

&
nbsp; Nico checked his mobile. Five minutes to go before the bus was due to arrive. If he was quick there’d be time for a pee in the woods. He jogged round the corner and up the leaf-covered ground into the trees. Undergrowth was sparse on the fringes of the wood and Nico had to scramble quite a way in before he was sure he was screened from the road. He unzipped and sighed with relief. Then he heard the sound of an engine.

  ‘Not the bus!’

  The sound grew louder. The bus swept by. Nico didn’t see it, he was too far into the forest for that, he only heard it rumbling away down the road back to Florence.

  Hurriedly zipping up, he ran as fast as he could to where the sound had come from. He scrambled through the undergrowth, past bushes, around trees. The noise of the bus faded away altogether. There was no sign of the road. Nico leaned against a tree trying to get his breath back. Where was the road?

  ‘OK,’ he said out loud. ‘I’m going downwards. The road is going downwards. I’m going to hit the road eventually.’

  It seemed a reasonable assumption if he ignored the fact that he ought to have reached the road already. The undergrowth grew denser and the trees closer together. Nico ploughed on with the forest getting more unruly round him. He found himself following a track going upwards. When had it started doing that? Further on, the track was worn very flat as though it had been well used. By hunters, maybe? James’s guidebook said that Tuscans hunted a lot though it was a bit vague on what time of year. Nico didn’t think it likely he was going to be mistaken for a wild boar and shot.

  Wild boar. What was it James had tried to tell him and Mum about them? Something to do with danger and unpredictability and razor-sharp tusks? Nico climbed faster up the ever-steepening track. It had to lead somewhere, maybe a hunting lodge or a house? The track became so steep and rocky that Nico was almost going hand over hand. His boots slipped on the loose earth and he was glad he hadn’t bought shoes yesterday; they’d have been useless here.

  At last the track flattened out and broadened a bit and the trees thinned. Nico found himself in a grassy clearing. On the far edge was a boxy, stucco building with a tiled porch over a round window. Nico knocked on the stout oak door. No one answered. It was as chiuso as the cafe.