by Gill Vickery
‘People still died,’ Jade said. ‘It wasn’t a game.’
‘No, cara, it wasn’t,’ the Signora agreed. ‘They were great adventures all the same.’
The Signora’s eyes shone. Were they lit by pride, Jade wondered? Or something else that Jade would never be able to understand. Jade took a deep breath; if the Signora, as a girl, had been brave enough to fight a powerful and vicious enemy then Jade surely had enough courage to ask a few questions? After all, it was only her feelings that were bruised.
‘Signora Minardi, what happened to Toschina? Did she die?’
‘No, my dear, she didn’t. Would you like me to tell you the rest of her story?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘After months of suffering at the Villa Triste, Toschina could no longer speak or even move very much. She was of no use to Carità and she was sent to a women’s prison run by nuns. The Mother Superior, Ermelinda, was ordered to nurse Toschina back to health and then tell Carità so that he could begin her torture again.
‘For some reason, Carità seemed to lose interest in her, even to forget her. And then, months later, a group of uniformed Nazis arrived with documents authorizing Toschina’s release. The guard at the prison picked up the telephone to check that this was correct. One of the “Nazis” pulled out a pistol and told the guard to drop the phone.
‘Mother Ermelinda heard the noise and came to see what was happening. When she realised the soldiers were partisans in disguise she made them release all the other political prisoners as well.’
The Signora smiled at Jade. ‘So you see, cara, Toschina’s mission, though it failed in its objective of killing Carità, saved many lives in the end – including mine.’
‘Yours? You were a prisoner there?’ Jade’s stomach twisted.
‘That’s right. I was a staffetta – a sort of messenger. We acted as couriers for the resistance because it wasn’t safe to use the telephone or the postal service. We carried ammunition in our bags or in cushions pushed into our skirts to make us look pregnant. Sometimes mothers took their babies out for a walk in prams lined with bombs.’
‘Didn’t the enemy suspect anything?’
The Signora laughed. ‘In those days women were thought to be passive, weak creatures without enough intelligence to deceive the military.’
‘Why were you in the prison?’ Jade asked.
‘I grew careless, too bold after the massacre at the farmhouse and eventually I was captured. They took me first to Villa Triste. I was not there for very long before I was sent to the prison. Later, as I said, I escaped with the others who were freed by Toschina’s rescuers.’
What did ‘not there for very long’ mean, Jade wondered. The Signora might’ve been there for days, weeks even. Jade wouldn’t have survived for more than a few moments, she was sure of it. ‘No wonder you hate my nonno,’ she said.
‘It is true that I hated Roberto – perhaps I always will – but as I said last night, never you or your sister or your mother. I am not a believer in the saying that the sins of the father shall be passed down to the third and fourth generation.’
‘Isn’t that the title of E. J. Holm’s latest book?’ Nico said, ‘Vengeance unto the Fourth Generation.’
Not again, Jade thought. Why did Nico have to bring everything, every time, back to E. J. Holm?
The Signora wasn’t fazed, and she didn’t pretend not to know what Nico was talking about. ‘Yes. It is called that because the book is about what happens when revenge is taken beyond what is reasonable and enjoyed for its own sake.’
‘That’s one interpretation,’ Nico said.
‘It is not an interpretation, caro, it is what I know to be true.’
Jade didn’t see how the Signora could possibly know that for sure unless she also knew who E. J. Holm was and he – or more likely, she – had told her. Nico can hardly challenge her on that, she thought; Signora Minardi was an elderly lady who deserved respect. She was wrong: Nico came straight out with, ‘I think Mrs Baxendall could be E. J. Holm – what do you think?’
‘It is not for me to say, caro.’
That was interesting. She hadn’t said, ‘I don’t know,’ which anyone who really didn’t know would’ve said.
‘I think perhaps you should ask her yourself,’ the Signora added.
‘D’you think she’d tell me if I did?’ Nico asked.
‘You will not know unless you try.’
‘That’s true,’ Nico said, his eyes very bright. Jade knew that now the Signora had practically given him permission, Nico was going to be visiting Mrs Baxendall as soon as possible.
Nico waited for Jade in the apartment garden while she visited the hospital to talk to Amber about what she’d learned from the Signora. She didn’t look all that happy when she got back.
‘How did she take it?’ Nico asked as Jade flopped into a chair.
‘My sister,’ Jade said grimly, ‘is not the same since Dario.’
Nico thought that was a bit cryptic. ‘What?’
‘I mean before, any suggestion Nonno was even a little bit guilty and she blew like a volcano and now . . .’ Jade shook her head. ‘It’s as if she’s accepted it because Dario says it’s all true and whatever Dario says is bound to be right.’ She wrinkled up her nose in disgust. ‘It’s like he’s God or something!’
‘Isn’t that a bit unfair . . .’
Jade glared at him.
Nico hurried to repair the damage. ‘I only meant she’s had time to think about it and it’s hard for her to keep denying the facts.’
‘Nothing’s convinced her before.’
‘What about you? How do you feel?’
‘Blank mostly. But I keep coming back to Elena’s letter – why it was in that tin and why it never got delivered.’
‘I think you’ll have to show it to Gaetano.’
‘I guess. Will you come with me? I don’t want to face him on my own, he’s such a, such a . . .’
Nico used the very worst Italian expression Jade and Amber had taught him.
‘That’s the one. Will you come with me?’
‘Only if you come with me to Mrs Bax’s tomorrow.’
‘I’m really sorry, I can’t; I promised to spend the day with the family.’
‘It’s OK,’ Nico said as casually as he could, hoping his disappointment didn’t show.
‘Are you really going to ask her straight out if she’s E. J. Holm?’
‘Yep.’
‘D’you think she’ll admit it?’
‘Yes.’ Nico’s quirky smile crept back. ‘I’m certain because . . .’
‘What?’
‘I’ll tell you afterwards when I’ve got my answers.’
‘That’s not fair!’
Good, he’d piqued Jade’s interest and provoked a reaction. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to read this.’ He pushed Revenge unto the Fourth Generation towards her.
Jade picked the book up. ‘It’s even fatter than The Shattered Mirror!’
‘Get reading,’ Nico said. She opened the book unenthusiastically. Nico took out his drawing book and doodled idly for a while. When Jade was hooked into the story he began to draw her, confident that she was no longer aware of him or what he was doing.
England – a room with white walls, a large window – people coming and going – strangers – silence
The memories come again. Noises: screaming, commands shouted in Italian, Polish, English – gunfire – the smell of cordite – the ping and smack of bullets against stone
A girl slamming a door, turning, what’s her name? Ilaria. The boy’s face, laughing – the shotgun – why can’t I remember?
A cool wind and the susurration of leaves – the sound of hooves on a dirt track, on shale and scree, on rock – jolting along – rock and more rock
; Thirst and pain
A girl slamming a door – turning – Ilaria. The boy’s face, still laughing – the shotgun – why can’t I remember? Why? Why?
‘What are you trying to remember?’
I turned my head and it hurt. I found myself looking at a nurse, an English nurse in a blue uniform with a white cap and apron. She was young and had large, round eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled. Thinking was too hard, my face hurt and something was wrong with my eyes. I closed them and went to sleep.
When I woke again I was fully conscious and aware of my surroundings: a room in what was obviously a hospital, the walls white, the curtains green, the bed metal-framed, the linen crisp and clean and the mattress far more comfortable than the hay I had grown used to sleeping on. The smell was largely of disinfectant. There was a vase of tulips on the table near the window. It was all very British.
I called out, or rather I tried to call out. Pain lanced down my face as I opened my mouth and at the same time I realised that it was bound with dressings. I felt tentatively at the bandages and found they extended over my left eye.
The memories intruded again: a girl – Ilaria – slamming a door, turning – a boy’s mocking face – the shotgun – he said something and then fired. Why couldn’t I remember what he said?
The other memories began to make more sense: a mule carrying me through the chestnut woods, sure-footed on the scree of the higher slopes of the hills and then I was struggling on foot, sometimes being carried, over the Marble Mountains. Finally, blessed relief in reaching the Allies who airlifted me – where? My thoughts continued, strained and jumbled, until I fell asleep again.
This was the state of affairs I found myself in for some time: sleeping, waking, struggling to remember; remembering too much. In time, I learned most of what had happened. The boy had used a shotgun – one of the miscellany of arms commandeered by the Black Brigades during a rastrellamento or raking – and shot me in the face. Fortunately for me, even at close range, his aim was hasty and went wide. Most of the discharge whistled past my ear but the spread of pellets ripped into the side of my face, stripping much of the skin, damaging parts of the underlying muscle and inflicting some nerve damage also. My left eye was irreparably damaged.
Somehow – I couldn’t remember how – I was got out of the farmhouse and through the woods behind it. I was treated, as far as was possible under the circumstances, by the local doctor (thankfully a partisan supporter) before being helped to safety and an Allied field hospital on the other side of the mountains. After patching me up, they flew me out to a military medical centre set up by the British in Naples. After that, I was flown back to England and cared for in a specialist plastic surgery unit.
The left side of my face remained badly damaged. I was scarred and unable to move some of the muscle properly meaning that my mouth was left permanently twisted. Though my left eye was saved I was never going to recover its use.
As I went through the surgery, the skin grafts and the periods of recovery, I brooded on my confused memories, always tormented by that question: what was it that the boy said before he shot me?
CHAPTER XXI
JADE LOOKED UP as Dario came into Amber’s room. Now she was going to feel a real gooseberry while they sat and held hands. It was a shame Mum and Dad had gone to discuss Amber’s discharge date with the doctors.
‘Gaetano would like you to go and see him,’ Dario said to Jade.
‘Why?’
‘There’s someone he wants you to meet.’
‘Who?’
‘You’ll see.’ Dario slipped into the seat next to the bed as Jade left it. Bet you wouldn’t jump into my grave as quick, she thought, then felt mean. It was hardly Amber and Dario’s fault if they had feelings for each other.
She knocked on Gaetano’s door and a woman’s voice called, ‘Avanti!’ Jade went in and stared in surprise at the two people sitting either side of Gaetano’s bed: one was Signora Minardi, the other the scarred man Jade had seen in the garden. By daylight the extent of his horrible disfigurement was clear: the left side of his face was distorted: scarred and twisted, the eyelid almost closed over a blank, bluish mass. Even his carefully cut, thick white hair couldn’t disguise the furrows running from his eye socket and along the side of his skull. He stood, the mobile half of his mouth smiling at Jade. ‘How do you do.’
‘Pleased to meet you properly,’ Jade said wondering who the man was and what he had to do with the Signora.
The old man chuckled. ‘I’m Alec, Emily Baxendall’s father,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ Jade was more confused than ever. She couldn’t think of any reason why she should be introduced to him or even why he was here with the Signora.
‘Come, come.’ Gaetano beckoned impatiently to her.
Too bemused to protest, she went.
‘I have this for you.’ He thrust the battered tobacco tin at Jade.
She took it. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I told you I would give it to the person who owned it but now you are here while he is visiting me I decided that you can give it to him yourself.’
‘I still don’t understand – who do I give it to?’
‘Him.’ Gaetano pointed to Alec. ‘He left it behind when we took him to the hills.’
Mrs Baxendall’s father was the English spy? Jade gave the tin to Alec. ‘I found it hidden in a gap over the stable door.’
Alec prised up the lid and took out the silk map and the photograph. As he read the inscription on the back of the picture a smile tugged at the undamaged side of his face and Jade saw a shadow of the young soldier in his features. ‘I carried this with me through the war. It never occurred to me that it might come to light after so many years. I thought it had gone for good.’
The Signora spoke: ‘I’m glad it’s been found again, Alec. I know it was precious to you.’
Alec turned the photo towards the Signora. She waved it away. ‘Gaetano showed me yesterday.’
Alec put the photo back in the tin and snapped it shut. ‘I’m glad to have it,’ he said in a soft voice.
That’s all peachy, Jade thought, but it still doesn’t explain why Nonno never got the letter. She plucked it out of her bag. ‘What about this?’ she said, her voice coming out louder and more challenging than she’d meant it to.
‘What is it?’ Signora Minardi said.
‘It’s a letter from Elena to my nonno.’ Jade said. She was gratified to see the effect that had: Alec puzzled, Gaetano taken aback, the Signora – what? Angry, from the set of her mouth. Well, Jade was angry too, so angry she was surprised her hands didn’t shake as she read the letter out. When she got to the part where Elena talked about marriage to Gaetano she folded the paper over and used her own words. ‘Elena says if Roberto doesn’t come for her she’ll marry Gaetano instead because she loves and respects him.’ Though it was hard for her to say that when she knew how Elena really felt, she couldn’t hurt the old man, not after all this time and especially not after what he’d done for Amber. ‘She says she’s going to ask someone she trusts to post the letter.’
She put it away. It was addressed to Nonno and no one was going to read it except his family. ‘What I want to know is, who was the person who was supposed to deliver the letter and why did it end up in the tin?’
‘I would like to know these things also,’ Gaetano said.
‘I can tell you,’ the Signora said.
‘You?’ Jade frowned.
‘Elena gave the letter to me,’ Signora Minardi said calmly. ‘I worked in the town and could post it for her, and she trusted me. I took it first to show Alec.’
‘Why?’ Gaetano said.
‘I didn’t trust Roberto and wasn’t sure if I should send it to him. I hoped Alec would know what to do.’ The Signora smiled at Alec. ‘Do you remember? You had no more idea than me; you put the letter in
the tin and said, “We’ll talk about it another time and decide what to do then.”’
‘I do remember that,’ Alec said slowly, his eye focussed on somewhere far away as if trying to envisage that moment. ‘I hoped that you’d realise for yourself that it was far too dangerous to take the letter direct to Volpe in Florence. In the end, there was no “other time” to talk and then it was too late.’ He gripped Gaetano’s shoulder. ‘You married your Elena and I forgot about the letter till now.’
‘That’s convenient,’ Jade said. Alec might seem a cuddly old man with a nice smile, but he’d been a soldier and a spy. He’d held onto that letter and stopped Nonno from having the chance to go to Elena. She didn’t believe he was absent-minded. He agreed with her.
‘Age hasn’t made me forget,’ he said. ‘Some of my memories of that time are hazy because Roberto Volpe shot me in the head.’
The ravaged face in front of Jade was like a reproach and she felt sick. Nonno had done that to Alec? No, no! He couldn’t have; she wouldn’t believe it.
‘I’ve recovered most of my memories now,’ Alec said gently, ‘though I still have no recollection of anything in the moments before it happened.’
Signora Minardi spoke coldly. ‘Whether the letter was delivered or not makes no difference – Roberto Volpe chose to betray us and everything changed: the partisans fought to get Alec away to the hills and over the mountains to the Allies. That put an end to operations for some time while the partisans regrouped and more agents were parachuted in. Who knows how many innocent people the Black Brigades killed as a result of that? And there were reprisals: a tenth of the local people were executed as an example of what happened to those who defied the fascists. And I – I was eventually taken to the Villa Triste. After what happened at the farmhouse, Elena had no more love for Roberto Volpe than we did.’
‘You don’t know what Nonno would’ve done!’ Jade protested. ‘You didn’t give him a chance. If only you’d told him straight away he might’ve come for Elena and that might’ve changed him.’
Gaetano snorted in contempt.
‘You think you know all about him,’ Jade shouted. ‘You don’t. He loved his wife – my grandmother Grace – and my mother, and he loved Amber and me. Who are you to say he wouldn’t have loved Elena and the baby just the same?’
