Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  Lilla sits up, wiping the tears with her soiled and shabby cuff. “No, I would have to go with them. I would have to see for myself. I won’t believe he’s dead until I have seen his body.”

  “Now, Lilla, you recall what that Russian officer said: the buildings are not safe, never mind the streets. I don’t think that’s a sensible idea.”

  “Ah, yes,” she replies, defiantly. “Sensible. You are so sensible. Always so practical, so prudent.”

  “It is true, Lilla. I am sensible and sometimes I am a fool unto myself as a result. Yet I understand your distress and I am not going to forbid you to go lest you forever hold it against me. That would not be a sensible manner in which to start our… our kinship.”

  “Does that mean you’ll let me go with them?”

  Prudence smiles. “Lilla, I am not yet your official guardian, so I could not stop you if I wanted to. I could, I suppose, ask for you to be detained so that you couldn’t go, but that wouldn’t get us off on the right foot, now would it?”

  Her smile changes from wistful reflection to one of begrudging admiration. “There’s something else I’ve noticed about you, Lilla, you’re headstrong, if not remarkably self–willed and, like me, in no little way stubborn. Perhaps that is why you have survived where so many others have not. However, if I’m right and you are as stubborn as I am, then I know only too well that whatever I say, you will find a way of doing exactly what you want.” She pauses, turning Lilla’s face to hers. “So, yes, in the morning we’ll ask one of these angels in blue jackets if they’ll help us.”

  “Not now? Not tonight?”

  “No, Lilla, not now. It will be dark soon and if Enzo has managed to survive these past thirty–six hours, I’m sure he’ll manage another twelve.

  Chapter 21

  The bottle of Malvasia is empty, the salami is gone and what’s left of the bread is so dry it is impossible to swallow in a mouth devoid of saliva.

  “How’s that for irony, eh, Ramfis?” Enzo chuckles. “Radames interred after all.”

  His legs no longer hurt; that is good; that is a positive. But he cannot feel them, so does that mean they have died? Surely that can’t be good; that must be a negative. And the cold? He has stopped shivering; that can’t be good either.

  Weighing the good against the bad! What else is there to do?

  Enzo is sleepy. Oh–so sleepy. Yet the thought of closing his eyes and surrendering to his fatigue frightens the devil out of him. “What if I never wake up?”

  He does though, fall asleep and quite naturally his subconscious turns to Lilla for comfort.

  They lie beneath a furry animal hide on the floor of a wood–panelled room, a fire flaming in the grate casting dancing shadows against the ceiling; they are warm, warm and close.

  The dream, a much–needed distraction, pursues a pleasingly erotic course, along which he imagines all manner of carnal possibility, thus restoring some warmth to his core in the process. They kiss, they touch, they caress and even though neither has yet seen the other without clothes, the confidence of their intimacy suggests they know the other’s form as well as they know their own.

  In the dark, the young man’s body glows with a carnal fervour. Nerves, previously crushed, come to life. Muscles regain their substance. A tremor ripples through his torso. His limbs tremble; his mind quivers with ideas.

  Enzo wants to see Lilla; he needs to see her. He can see her face but not her form: she is laughing at his blue marinière shirt and white bell–bottomed trousers; she is telling him he looks ridiculous and that he should take them off. Hurriedly, he drops his trousers and stands on one leg as he tries to free the other from the trouser leg. He is shaking in anticipation: shaking so violently that he finds standing upright impossible. Enzo trips, he staggers, he loses the battle and falls. His hands bang against a hard surface: pain. His back bangs against the same: more pain.

  “No,” he shouts, “one doesn’t feel pain in a dream.” Reluctantly, because he knows that in doing so he will have to surrender his fantasy, Enzo opens his eyes.

  There is fire, his world is lit and everything is shaking: the beams, the blocks, the bricks, the walls: everything is shaking.

  From above, there comes a great creaking, a raw tearing.

  He looks up.

  The sky! He can see the night sky: an aftershock must have disturbed the debris. He watches, mesmerised, as gravity drags a joist free from its remaining pockets, the black wooden beam suspending in mid–air for a second before twisting and tumbling down towards him.

  Enzo is helpless; he cannot get out of its way; there is nothing he can do to avoid the beam’s path. It is falling down, straight down, straight down towards him. It is coming.

  “Oh, please no.” He raises his arms over his head in a futile gesture of protection. He tenses. The end. The end is–

  The beam misses him by a hand’s breadth and it lands upright and vertical, as though a lance thrown by a funcitta down into the sea, and it lands on the end of the beam which for these past days has kept Enzo pinned in his prison.

  There is good news: the beam across his legs is flicked upwards like the unweighted end of a seesaw. There is bad: Enzo’s legs are its fulcrum.

  Pain. Pain more intense and more concentrated than before: in his legs, in his hips; in his everywhere, there is nothing but unadulterated, inhuman, vicious, diabolical pain.

  Enzo looks up at the sky and screams.

  Chapter 22

  “Prudence?” Lilla whispers. “Are you awake?”

  “In this cot? With all your fidgeting? How could I not be awake?”

  Curtained off with sheets in an area at the back of the warehouse, they have spent an uncomfortable night clinging to each other for warmth. About them, exhausted doctors and nurses grab a few minutes rest between shifts.

  “What is it, Lilla? What’s keeping you from sleep?”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Hmm. Nothing doesn’t do whatever something is doing to stop you from sleeping, now does it? So, come on, out with it: a problem shared is a problem halved.”

  “I keep thinking about the warships that arrived yesterday?”

  “Yesterday,” Prudence murmurs, keen not to disturb others. “Now what day was yesterday? I’ve been here so long, I can’t even remember what day it is.”

  “Today is Wednesday.”

  “And what of it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what day it is, Prudence, it was the ships I was thinking about; those big Russian and British ships with all those big guns.”

  “Go on. What about them?”

  “Well, I overheard two of the nurses talking and one said that there are so many people buried in the ruins we’ve no hope of digging them all out. The other one then said that this presented the doctors with something called a health hazard, because dead bodies can bring about a plague. She said all those warships have come here to destroy the city, to bury the dead beneath what’s left of the city so the plague can’t get out. Do you think that’s true?”

  Prudence scoffs, quietly. “Idle gossip. That’s what that is. You mark my words, young lady.”

  “But is it true? Can you get the plague from dead bodies?”

  “I believe it can happen. Typhoid. Cholera. Food poisoning and tummy bugs too. That’s why these sailors are working so hard to bring fresh water ashore.” She fixes Lilla with a calculating look. “That’s not what’s got you all anxious though, is it? You’re more worried that if they do start an artillery barrage, we’ll not get to find Enzo.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “In which case, there’s no benefit to be had by lying here worrying about it, especially with you wriggling like a hooked fish.”

  On their way out, Prudence approaches Dottore Roselli to ask if he can spare them for an hour.

 
The good doctor appears to have aged twenty years overnight. “Yes, you’ve done more than your fair share,” he states. “I am grateful to you, Prudence. Messina is grateful; she could not have managed without you. You and our queen. Fortunately for Messina, more naval ships are coming and each arrival brings more doctors and more medical supplies.”

  “Is it really all as bad as people are saying?” she asks, her brow furrowed in concern.

  “Worse than we could have imagined. From what I have heard of the devastation both here and across in Calabria, there may be as many as 200,000 dead or missing. They are saying that all the pupils in the College at Reggio have been killed.” He lifts his glasses up off his nose and wipes his eyes. “My nephew is there.” He winces. “Or perhaps was, I don’t yet know for certain; the confusion is considerable. You must go. If you have someone to find, you must do so as soon as you can. By now, anyone still trapped in the ruins is likely to be suffering from acute hypothermia.”

  Outside, the only blessing would seem to be that the sky has wasted itself of rain, the depleted clouds now crowding around the table of Aspromonte quibbling about which of them is responsible for their profligacy. And while they argue, more and bigger ships are arriving and detachments of Russian and British troops ferried ashore.

  Stepping over canvas covered bodies and fallen masonry, Prudence pulls Lilla with her along the ruptured esplanade. A barge of redcoat Royal Marines is tying up.

  “Excuse me,” she calls. “Lieutenant, could I have a word?”

  Mildly surprised to hear English spoken without any trace of local accent, the young officer turns. “Yes, Madam.” He tips his cap as he walks towards her. “How may I be of service?”

  “I’m perfectly sure you will hear what I am about to say many times over during the next few hours, Lieutenant, but I find myself in need of your assistance.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant Aubrey Lock, Royal Marines Light Infantry.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Prudence replies, “I can see by the colour of your jacket you’re a Lobster.”

  “Oh, er, well, I… We’ve come in on HMS Minerva. Left Valetta… Malta, late last night. Couldn’t have got here any sooner. Sorry.”

  “Yes, I know where Valetta is, thank you. I’m Prudence Robertson, pleased to meet you, and this is my companion Lilla Lunapiena; as I have already said, we need your help.”

  Lieutenant Lock raises his head to take in the scale of the damage to the once beautiful edifices that line the back of the esplanade. Several palls of dirty grey smoke give evidence to the fires that still rage through the city and a group of bewildered locals huddle together around a brazier, enviously eyeing the supplies the marines are unloading.

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying, Mrs Robertson, but I didn’t in my wildest dreams imagine this level of destruction. I thought initial reports must have been exaggerated.”

  “Quite so, Lieutenant, though as you can see for yourself, there are some of us who are very much alive; which is exactly what I need to talk to you about.”

  “Yes, of course.” His tone implies that whatever the size of the wheel, he will be only too happy to put his shoulder to it. “As I said, how may I be of service?”

  “I need you and some of your men to accompany Signorina Lunapiena and me to a house a short distance from the Duomo. We believe there may be a man trapped, a relation of Signorina Lunapiena’s who is very dear to us.”

  The Lieutenant smiles. “And just how far into the city is this house?”

  “Not so far,” she lies.

  Lilla gasps, glancing up at Prudence, who in return squeezes her hand rather too hard for comfort.

  “I see,” the Royal Marines officer says, considering. “Slight fly in the ointment is that I have my orders and they are to bring this cargo of food, blankets and medical supplies ashore and thence to return to HMS Minerva with all the British nationals who are ready and waiting for disembarkation. A further issue is that the Russians have been delegated the sector around the basilica and we have been allocated ours, which is to the south of here. The Russians have already lost a dozen or so of their brave souls, killed while trying to free people from their houses, and I wouldn’t want to go treading on their toes, so to speak.”

  “No, Lieutenant, I can see how that would make life uncomfortable for you. Although,” Prudence breathes deep, stands as tall as she can manage and squares her shoulder, “you might like to give some thought to what it must be like to be trapped in the cellar of a collapsed house for forty–eight hours without food or water. And in the middle of winter.”

  The Lieutenant wilts. “Yes, I can only imagine that must be ghastly. Might I inquire as to whether this, er, relation is a–”

  “A British citizen?” she interrupts. In order to curb her reaction to the coming white lie, Prudence is already squeezing Lilla’s hand. “Yes.”

  “I see. So, is this individual registered with the British Consul?” He scratches his chin.

  Prudence breathes deeper. “My dear fellow, I was a personal friend of the late Ethel Ogston, wife of the British Consul, and Mr Alfred Ogston has sustained life–threatening injuries and has been evacuated to Palermo along with his niece, now the only surviving member of his family. Whatever protocols you might want to adhere to are simply no longer relevant.”

  “I see,” he says.

  As far as Prudence is concerned, he doesn’t, yet. “And if that doesn’t inform you sufficiently as to the general breakdown in order, then you might like to give some thought to the Captain of the Piemonte?”

  “The Piemonte? The Italian cruiser out in the bay? What about her?” he asks, intrigued.

  Prudence squeezes Lilla’s hand one final time. “Captain Passino of the Piemonte lives at an address adjacent to the house we need to visit. He was ashore the night of the earthquake and hasn’t been seen since. If I showed you where he lives and you were fortunate enough to locate him, wouldn’t that prove a considerable feather in your cap?”

  The Lieutenant’s detachment is watching the battle of wills with open humour. He glances down at Lilla, frowning. “Is your good friend always this insistent?”

  Lilla looks up at Prudence, “What did he say?”

  Prudence translates and Lilla nods, “Always. It’s no use arguing with her. She’s a personal friend of Queen Elena, too.”

  Lieutenant Lock looks back at Prudence, “What did she say?”

  Prudence translates and the Lieutenant’s face crumbles in surrender.

  He turns to his men. “Sergeant Carson,” he barks, evidently keen to be seen to reassert his authority, “get a message back to the ship with one of the other barges that we’ve been detained on an errand of mercy. Set two men to stand guard over these supplies and make them aware that they must not leave this mooring until we return. Not under any circumstances, is that clear? The rest of you, follow me.” He turns back to Prudence, bows, smiles and extends his right hand as though requesting both women join him on the dancefloor. “Right you are then, after you Mrs Robertson, Signorina Lunapiena.”

  They lead the Lieutenant and his marines along the debris–strewn front, and when they turn away from the sea, up towards the theatre, they are reminded of the unfortunate man they had come across the day before; the man sitting in his underclothes and opera hat, nestling the corpse of the young girl in his lap.

  “Doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago?” Prudence mutters.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs Robertson,” the Lieutenant calls, as he struggles to keep up, “didn’t catch what you said.”

  “I said, there must be a factory somewhere beneath the city making all this broken brickwork; these mountains of rubble seem to have grown taller overnight.”

  “You mean, you were here yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “What on earth for?” he asks, his measured King’s English gar
ishly at odds with the anarchy of his surroundings.

  Prudence glances up at the smoke obscured sky.

  Lilla, though not knowing his language, understands his tone and rolls her eyes. Hurrying on, she leaves the novice and his retinue in her wake, and returns her attention to her climbing, clambering, scaling and scrambling. “Enzo. Oh, Enzo,” she whispers, picking up her pace.

  If the once beautiful Via Pozzoleo that runs up beside the Teatro is disordered and dishevelled in raiment, then the Garibaldi has shrugged off not only its garments but also its flesh, leaving the skeleton of its insides now starkly exposed. One of the houses in the Corso Cavour has been opened up as though the front wall was nothing more than a hinged door, now pulled back and discarded into the street. A naked man hangs by a coat hook, a look of surprised annoyance on his face, as if his situation is but a minor irritation. They all stand and gawp, before realising that in spite of the unusual and gruesome nature of the spectacle, it is disrespectful to stare.

  “Someone should bury him,” Lilla says to no one in particular. “How can he begin his journey to heaven when he is trapped in hell?”

  And as they are picking their way gingerly around the carcass of the property, each one of them stunned into silence by the painful enlightenment that God can be both benevolent and yet beastly, her call is answered and the house emits a whining creak and despairing groan, and very suddenly sinks like a weary horse down into the street. A fog, like that of ground pumice, envelopes and suffocates them.

  When the dust has settled, Lieutenant Lock pats himself down, checks none of his men are injured and turns to the ladies. “Is this place far, Mrs Robertson? I really don’t think this is such a good idea, these streets are awfully narrow and these houses are very unstable, any one of them could come down without the slightest warning.”