Tell Me No Truths

by Gill Vickery

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’

  Roberto was right; celebrating townspeople or not, there was still no rice for sale. Food was getting increasingly scarce.

  The boys trudged back home. Without discussing it they avoided the Villa dei Fiori where Elena lived. Her family would be happy that the king had deposed the Duce. They headed for the pool in the woods. Elena was there, sitting under a tree. The boys sat, one on either side of her.

  ‘I know you’re sad,’ she said to Roberto. ‘But think how wonderful it is that there won’t be any more killing.’

  ‘General Badoglio . . .’ Roberto almost choked on the name of the Duce’s usurper. ‘General Badoglio said that we’re still going to be fighting with the Germans.’

  ‘No one believes that. Try to be glad. I’d hate to lose you. And Gaetano too, of course.’

  Gaetano didn’t miss Elena’s hurried addition, or the fact that thinking of Roberto first didn’t ease his foster brother’s despair.

  The situation grew worse a few weeks later when the Allies landed in the south and Italy signed an Armistice with them. It wasn’t only Roberto who was dismayed: the German reaction was swift and the army immediately requisitioned the Villa dei Fiori. The soldiers were friendly enough but Gaetano and Roberto were forbidden to go there even to see Elena.

  Then fortune swung round again: the Germans rescued the Duce and he set up a new government, far away in the north.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re happy about it,’ Gaetano said to Roberto. ‘The Black Brigades are sweeping through the country on a raking. You don’t really want them to force you into the army do you?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t. I’m going to hide in the hills with you like Babbo said.’

  ‘We’d better make sure we’re not seen – you know the penalty for running away.’

  ‘Execution,’ Roberto said. ‘I don’t intend to get caught any more than you do.’

  Still, Gaetano didn’t quite trust his foster brother and didn’t let him know when he joined the resistance. If Roberto suspected anything when Gaetano slipped away each evening to train with the partisans he made no comment. He continued to work hard on the farm and run for cover when there was danger of being caught by the Black Brigade.

  Ilaria also had plans: she went to work for the Fascist mayor of Borgo Sant’Angelo and acted as a staffetta or courier, passing useful information on his activities to the resistance movement.

  Elena stayed at the Villa dei Fiori, meekly carrying out her day-to-day chores and duties. Gaetano knew that because, despite Babbo’s orders, he and Roberto went there to see her.

  Nothing changed until one day Roberto went to visit Elena during a Black Brigade raking and didn’t return. His foster mother was inconsolable. Gaetano couldn’t help feeling relief; it meant that he would be freer to carry on with his partisan training.

  That was the situation I entered when I parachuted into the hills one gloomy winter’s dawn in late 1943. I was met by a group of partisans who escorted me to the farmhouse. There Gaetano’s family hid me until the fateful day when we were betrayed.

  CHAPTER XII

  MURDER IN THE Fifteenth Tower, set in the mediaeval hill town of San Gimignano, was Nico’s second favourite E. J. Holm novel. Alessandro was staying there with his friend Bruno whose daughter Tania was Alessandro’s goddaughter. During the visit, a wealthy jeweller was murdered and Alessandro was ordered to investigate immediately.

  Nico, Mum and Luisa went to the church of Sant’Agostino to see where Alessandro had begun his enquiries. A fresco near the doorway had made a big impression on the detective and he returned to it several times in the book. Remembering Mum’s jibes about the painting in the Uffizi, Nico let her and Luisa monopolise the picture while he sat on a pew and read a passage from Murder in the Fifteenth Tower:

  A small group of officials stood round a shrouded body lying beside the door.

  ‘It’s a strange one,’ the Carabinieri chief said as he pulled back the sheet covering old Franco Zilli’s body.

  Alessandro examined the thick gold chain digging deeply into Zilli’s scrawny neck. ‘Strangulation. What’s so strange about it?’

  ‘Not that. Look here.’ The officer jerked the sheet further back to reveal the jeweller’s right hand. A paper knife was thrust through the palm. Alessandro leaned closer. The knife was incised with a simple ‘Z’, the Zilli trademark. That was curious but Alessandro was more interested in the design of laurels etched along the gold handle.

  Had Mum finished? No, she was talking in respectful whispers to Luisa who had lit a candle. Nico supposed it was to remember her father. He flipped to another passage in the book, towards the end where Alessandro, spiritless and bereft, stood for a long time in front of the painting.

  When Nico next looked up, Mum and Luisa were gone. He went to the fresco and saw immediately what had mesmerised Alessandro. Although the painting was a crucifixion it wasn’t The Man of Sorrows who had held Alessandro’s attention, or the mysterious floating hands and disembodied heads; it was the face of St John, transfixed by silent grief. It mirrored Alessandro’s feelings about his beloved Semiramide exactly.

  Nico stayed with the painting, thinking about grief. His life had been mercifully short of it; no one he knew well had died or suffered. What would it feel like, he wondered? He hoped he wouldn’t find out for a long, long time.

  Outside the city gates Jade and Amber sat on a parapet, swinging their feet from side to side. It was hard to be angry when you were perched on a wall overlooking miles and miles of peaceful countryside dotted with cypress trees and vineyards and with the sun softly stroking your skin. Jade sighed and blew her fringe away from her forehead. ‘Don’t be mad, Amb.’

  Amber stared straight ahead. ‘Oh, I haven’t got anything to be mad about, have I? Only that my sister thinks our nonno was a fascist and a liar.’

  ‘I don’t think either – I told you that last night.’

  They’d argued about it for hours. Because Jade said they should ask more questions about Nonno and what he was supposed to have done, Amber had lost her temper, big time. She was still angry.

  ‘I’m just saying, Caterina might’ve been told the wrong story and we ought to ask her for more details, so we can get it sorted.’

  Amber shrugged. Jade knew the subject was closed. ‘You want to go for a walk or something?’ she asked.

  Amber shrugged again and carried on glaring into space.

  There was only one thing to do with her sister in this mood – leave her alone. Jade jumped off the wall and went through the gates into the town. She switched off her mobile. If Amber was in such a strop, Jade didn’t even want to speak to her.

  All E. J. Holm’s books had maps of the places Alessandro visited and Nico used the one in Murder in the Fifteenth Tower to find his way round the twisting streets of San Gimignano. The one thing he couldn’t do was go to the fifteenth tower: E. J. Holm had made that up. Only fourteen out of the original seventy-two straight-sided towers that had once swaggered against the skyline were still standing. Nico thought it must have looked like a scaled-down medieval version of Manhattan. When he got to where the fifteenth tower should have been he found a shop selling traditional ceramics. He went inside to get a present for Mrs Baxendall and chose a blue bowl. She could put some of her flowers in it – if she ever cut them. He’d doodled pictures of her strange garden while he was writing about the viperina. He was sure he’d seen it before and it was driving him mad trying to think where.

  After he’d paid for the bowl he wandered round the town still thinking about Mrs Baxendall, and Teo. It was strange that he’d turned out to be related to the twins. Had Mrs Baxendall somehow recognised the girls’ names, made the connection and then sent Teo to check them out? Nico didn’t see how it was possible. Anyway, just why were so many people interested in the Thompsons? The Signora had obvio
usly set up the dinner at Il Nido so that all those ancient people could inspect Luisa, and now Teo had been dragged in as well. And Nico was certain that the angry old man at the restaurant hadn’t been part of Signora Minardi’s plan; she’d been as startled as everyone else when he turned up and started ranting. Who was he and where did he fit in?

  Jade turned up a steep alleyway with wide steps at the top leading to an even steeper street where she bumped into Nico who was coming down the other way.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Are you lost?’

  ‘No, I’m looking for a gelateria. I fancied an ice cream.’

  ‘Follow me!’ Nico led the way to a busy ice cream parlour with Pluripremiata Gelateria painted over the door.

  ‘That’s an unusual name,’ Nico said.

  Jade laughed. ‘It’s not a name – it means multi-award-winning.’

  ‘Oh. That’s another minus for my Italian teacher.’

  They bought their ice creams and wandered away from the milling tourists.

  ‘Does it bother you, not telling your mum what you’re really doing in Florence?’ Jade asked.

  ‘In principle, yes,’ Nico said, ‘but it makes life a lot easier so, no it doesn’t, not really. What about you? Are you going to tell your mum about Caterina and the rest of the family?’

  ‘Amber says we ought to stick to our original plan and not let Mum know anything. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Meeting Caterina and the others turned out all different from what we expected.’

  ‘Why? What did you expect?’

  ‘We thought they’d be mad at us just turning up without warning, or not interested. And we only planned how to get to the Villa dei Fiori, not what was going to happen after that or what to do if things went wrong. It’s all got so, so . . .’ Jade waved her ice cream cone around in frustration.

  ‘Intense?’ Nico suggested.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, intense. Now we don’t know what to do. All me and Amber have done since yesterday is argue. I don’t even know what to think any more.’

  ‘There’s a place where we can talk privately if you want to,’ Nico said. ‘La Rocca – it’s where Alessandro went for peace and quiet in one of the books.’

  ‘Alessandro! I might’ve known.’

  They walked in friendly silence, finishing off their ice creams as they made their way to a hollowed-out fortress with fig and olive trees growing inside.

  ‘You know good places,’ Jade said.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s Alessandro – and E. J. Holm who puts him in them.’

  They perched on a tomb-shaped stone bench set in a large alcove in the wall and basked in the sun.

  ‘Have you started The Shattered Mirror yet?’ Nico asked.

  ‘Give me a chance – you only gave it me last night!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to pressure you, it was just you said you wanted to read about the partisan stuff.’

  Jade relented and touched his arm to show she was joking. ‘I was going to read it, honest.’ She pulled a face. ‘I didn’t get a chance – I got into an argument with Amber and then I was too tired. I’ll read it tonight.’

  ‘No hurry, you’ve got other things on your mind.’

  Jade decided to go straight in with her problem before she lost her nerve. ‘You know we told you why we didn’t want Mum to know we’re seeing Nonno’s relatives?’

  ‘Yes, because she gets upset if anyone mentions his Italian family, right?’

  ‘Right. But things have got even more complicated.’ Jade told Nico everything she’d kept quiet about after he’d turned up at the Villa dei Fiori with Teo, including the fact that Caterina thought Nonno had been a fascist and that somebody had threatened to kill him.

  ‘Is that what you and Amber were rowing about?’

  ‘That and the fact I think Caterina’s nice. Amber doesn’t trust her.’ Jade sighed. ‘She’s right about one thing: I can’t really see Mum believing the family want to be friends with us now. And she’s never going to have it that Nonno was a fascist.’

  ‘Even if it’s the truth?’

  Jade winced. She didn’t want to admit to herself that it might be true, let alone to Nico. How could she? Nonno had helped bring her up and he loved her. ‘It can’t be true. He loved me and Amber. Really loved us. He was so proud of us. He used to call us his little treasures and take us down to the Italian Club in town to show us off. We used to dance and sing . . .’

  Jade’s eyes blurred with tears and two small and slender saplings in front of her seemed to sway in a dance as she and Amber had danced for the lonely exiles in the smoky club far away from their homeland. Grief sprang at her from out of nowhere, clutching with a grip as strong as fear. ‘I miss him,’ she whispered. ‘I miss him so much – I miss his smile, I miss his voice. I just miss him.’

  Jade felt Nico’s arm round her shoulders. She leaned gratefully against his chest and wept.

  Nico’s phone rang.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said and Jade sat up.

  ‘Yes?’ he snapped. ‘Yes, Mum, Jade’s here . . . But I haven’t had time to draw even! All right – we’re coming.’ He flipped the phone shut. ‘I’m sorry; we’ve got to go. They’ve rounded up Amber and they’re mad because they can’t find us.’

  ‘It’s OK, I feel better now.’ Jade sniffed and swiped at her eyes with a tissue. ‘Does it show I’ve been crying?’

  ‘Your eyes are a bit puffy, and your nose’s pink. I’d do your make-up if I were you.’

  ‘What about your mum?’

  ‘She can wait,’ Nico said firmly.

  Jade thought Nico was doing a good job of standing up to Hattie.

  As the hot and stifling bus lurched its way back to Florence, Mum went on justifying dragging Nico away from San Gimignano. ‘There wasn’t much point in staying – we’d seen the sites to do with Alessandro. Going back to Florence now means we can go across the river and find the places in The Shattered Mirror.’

  Nico could hardly say he’d found them already. ‘I wanted to stay longer, to see the medieval chemist’s and the Etruscan horses.’

  ‘We did those while you were busy sunbathing in La Rocca,’ James said.

  Nico wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘It doesn’t matter. I saw the most important thing, in Sant’Agostino.’

  Once the words were out of his mouth he realised they were true: the fresco in Sant’Agostino was at the heart of Murder in the Fifteenth Tower. And spending time with Jade instead of being a sad tourist like James meant he and Jade had . . . had what? Holding Jade when she was upset didn’t necessarily mean anything. She hadn’t sat next to him on the bus – she was next to Amber at the back talking quietly. That was good, they were friends again and he didn’t want to butt in.

  He thought about his conversation with Jade, about how she missed her grandfather. He wasn’t close to his grandparents – literally: Mum’s parents had retired to rural France and were a remote if kindly presence and his father’s parents had died before Nico was even born.

  Nobody means that much to me, except Mum and Dad and that’s only in the holidays, Nico thought. He had friends at school and the house masters were OK but they were temporary family; Nico would never grieve for any of them the way Jade was mourning her lost nonno.

  Nico found the page in Murder in the Fifteenth Tower where Alessandro organised a search for Bruno and Tania who had disappeared. Their bodies were found early next morning on a riverbank.

  Tania lay sweetly in her father’s embrace at the water’s edge, a faint breeze teasing a strand of her dark hair. Alessandro stooped and pulled out the paper clutched in his goddaughter’s small hand. On it was an exquisite painting of a forget-me-not. Alessandro crushed it in his fist, hurled it into the river and walked away.

  The Signora was having a party. Jade leaned o
ver the balcony, listening to the old lady’s guests having a good time. She felt a bit resentful; Amber was fast asleep despite the noise while she was stuck listening to these wrinklies laughing and joking and clinking their glasses. She’d had a difficult day thinking about Nonno and she was angry that the world in general wasn’t as sad as she was.

  One of the guests came out into the garden. He walked in the careful way of the old and frail to the table and chairs at the end of the tiny garden. He sat, lit by bright moonlight, and sipped at a glass of wine.

  He’s got a nice face, Jade thought, examining his serene profile, a bit like Nonno’s. She felt a tad stalkerish, observing the man while he had no idea she was there. She moved to go back inside and jolted the washing line. The rattle of the pulleys caught the old man’s attention and he turned and saw Jade. Half his face broke into a gentle smile. He lifted his glass. ‘Buona sera, Signorina.’

  Jade returned his salute with a wave. ‘Buona sera, Signor,’ she said and went back inside.

  She sat on her bed, stomach churning. The old man only had half a proper face; the other half was ravaged, distorted, the eye a blank socket, the left side of the mouth twisted into a grimace. Gradually her shock drained away and she began to feel ashamed of her reaction to what she’d seen and for shrinking into self-pity over Nonno. Whatever pain she experienced was insignificant compared with the physical pain the old man must’ve gone through to end up being that disfigured. She shivered; she needed a distraction from disturbing thoughts. Nico’s book would do it. She picked it up from her bedside table and got into bed. She’d only read a couple of pages when her eyelids drooped and the book slid out of her hand onto the floor. I’ll get it in a minute, she thought as her eyes closed. Within a minute she fell into a deep, mercifully dreamless, sleep.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Mum and James were looking for the guidebook in their room. That was good – Mrs Bax wasn’t due to pick Nico up for another half hour and Mum was bound to have found the book before then. Nico opened his journal and re-read the last entry.