“Yes, yes. The storm comes to its own end, but you cannot always wait for the winds to blow themselves out. We must go on, otherwise we stay caught in our storm and none of us are strong enough to weather such sadness. You blame yourself for Charlie’s death, why? What happened?”
She shakes her head so violently that the tower trembles and when she has finished, her eyes are wild with terror. “No, you don’t understand. I don’t blame myself for his death, I blame myself for not having the courage to do the one thing he asked of me: the one thing, the only thing, the one wretched bloody thing I could not bring myself to do.”
Antonio hesitates, uncertain of the wisdom in reaching out his hand to her in case his touch frightens her. “And why was this request of his so hard to honour, Caterina? What was it that Charlie asked you to do that you could not?”
Her eyes are glazed with tears and her face pale as dawn. “No, I can’t,” she says. “Don’t you understand, I can’t. I just can’t.”
“No, Caterina, it is not that you cannot; it is that you could not and it is now time for you put down the burden of your failing. Tell me, what was it Charlie asked you to do?”
She blinks, to clear her tears and whispers into the wind: “He asked me to end his life, Antonio. He asked me to kill him and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
Chapter 15
At first, the significance of what she has just said does not register with him and he looks simply back at her. But then slowly, perhaps like the swordfish harpooned, he comes to understand the gravity and the hopelessness of her situation. Antonio frowns and repeats very slowly, “Your husband asked you to kill him, why?”
“Because,” she begins, but then her voice fails her as she tries to recall the words she has worked so hard to forget; words she had banished to the furthest corners of her mind where, since Charlie’s death, they have lain and festered and multiplied and infected her entire being. “Because he was dying. Because he was dying, slowly and horribly and there was nothing anyone could do to free him from the captivity of his prison. Nothing anyone could do, except me.”
They stand, clinging to the tower; two people alone but for each other and the wind and the sea and the never–ending sky.
Now, he does lay his hand on hers and as he’d feared, her arms very quickly surrender their strength.
“Caterina, you must breathe, you must hold on and you must carry on. I want you to climb. Come on, I know you have it within you to do this. Move your leg up, take a step. Slowly, do it. If you cannot do it for yourself, then do it for me. For me, for your daughter and for Enzo who is watching us. Lift your foot. Do it now.”
Her legs, too, surrender their rigour and turn to jelly. Caterina pauses and looks through him. “I have to, don’t I?” she states, dreamily.
“Yes, you have to. You must go on. Now, lift your leg.” His voice is all at once intense and yet calm, comforting like a balm that takes the heat out of a burn. “There is only one way now and that is for you to go on. Come, move your leg.”
And slowly, she does; tentatively at first, feeling for and finding the next rung, easing her foot forward and settling onto it.
“Good. Now your other leg. Push. Stand up.”
And she does.
“Now your hand. Lift it. Reach up. Hold.”
And she does, gradually. And she starts to move as before, slower than before but with purpose and renewed strength and now, without faltering, Caterina climbs up and up.
“Ten more,” he says, rising beside her. “That is good, keep going. Count out loud. Speak. Lift your voice as you are lifting your arms and legs.”
“One,” she says. The temptation to wipe the tears from her eyes is difficult to resist; if only she could lift her hand to them. “Two. And three. Four.”
“Mind the stay,” he says. “Lift your arm inside it. Good. And again. Five, say it.”
“Five… Six… Seven… Eight.”
“Nine,” he says. “Just a few more.”
“Antonio, you said ten and we are not there yet.”
“Yes, but it is only a few more. Come on, Caterina, keep going. Pasquale, are you ready?”
“I am.” His voice is gravelled and raw. “Keep coming, signora. Keep coming. Now stop. Reach up with your right hand.”
She does so, feeling for his. He is there; their fingertips brush. And before she has the time to realise what is going on, Caterina feels the warm reassurance of his hand about her wrist.
“Be careful, Pasqua,” Antonio says.
“Careful?” the capobarca repeats, dismissively. “How can a man be careful in the face of such madness? Let go, signora. Let go of the tower, I have you.”
And she feels herself hauled upwards through the hatch as though she is a cork drawn from a bottle. In an instant, she is through the trapdoor and up onto the platform.
“Now,” he orders, “hold on to the rail. No, you cannot sit down; your legs must work first. Stand up, breathe and when you are ready, open your eyes, but do not to look down.”
Caterina feels Antonio’s hands at her waist, steadying her.
He encourages her to a small seat and when she can feel the lip of the seat against the back of her thigh, he eases her down. “Caterina,” he says, “you have been brave and you have made it. Thank the Madonna and all the saints. Now, as Pasquale says, open your eyes.”
And when she does and the wind has dried her tears and her eyes have found their focus, Caterina is met by the cerulean sky, a brilliant white disc of cloud perched above the green, green slopes of Aspromonte, the tall red and white pylon astride the yellow sands of Capo Peloro and an azure sea that glistens and sparkles as though Neptune has sprinkled the surface with diamonds.
“Oh Antonio. Oh Pasquale, I don’t think I have ever seen anything so beautiful. Can it be real? Am I on top of the world?”
*
Beppe is waiting on the beach inside the breakwater. He pats her arm, grins and scratches his head. “Women, eh? Like the sea, a mystery.”
“Yes, Beppe, and like the sea, eternal.”
The journey home to Ganzirri had remained fairly uneventful after the drama of La Signora’s ascent to the crow’s nest. The boys had wandered about below, looking up every now and again and shaking their heads in disbelief.
As far as Caterina was concerned, and once she’d grown used to the giddying elevation of her position, she had exalted in her freedom from the constraints of the secret by which she had been bound.
She had watched wide–eyed as dolphins had raced beneath the waves, leaping gracefully to spiral in the air before slapping back down in frothy explosions of white water. They had seemed to sense the joy of her abandonment; they had made her laugh and delight in their apparent immunity from the pressures of human existence; they had seemed to her carefree and she had shared in their lightness of being.
After a while, Antonio had left her and descended to oversee the offloading of their catch, and Pasquale, when he wasn’t concentrating on the feluca’s course, had eyed her warily.
At one point, just before he’d pulled back the levers controlling the engines and wheeled the helm to bring her head to wind, he had glanced at her and said, “You are crazy, you know that.”
And Caterina had looked back at him and smiled and replied, “Yes, Pasquale, I am. Perfectly crazy.”
Getting her down had proved a protracted affair. Giuseppe had scaled back up the tower and Enzo had run a rope up to him, which he had then fed through the trapdoor, secured through a shackle and looped around her shoulders. He’d pulled a face at her, a curious gurning with which he wanted her to understand that he was about to pull her leg. “Now, you don’t need to be afraid; I will hold you.”
In the end, he needn’t have worried, for Caterina had climbed back down without so much as a pause or slip – the boys had applauded, though thi
s was perhaps more with relief than any desire to show their appreciation of her ridiculous gymnastics – and when, finally, she’d set her feet on the deck, Caterina had found her balance removed and she’d staggered about like a Friday–night drunk.
“Perhaps it is better for you to spend the rest of the day on terra firma,” Antonio had said.
*
“Beppe?”
“Signora?”
“Antonio tells me that you remember a great deal about the war years.”
He eyes her, beadily, then shrugs. “Some would say.”
She waits and watches as the Salvazione motors back out into the Strait. The afternoon is baking hot, too hot for even a mad woman to be standing in the full glare of the sun.
Beppe grins; his odd collection of teeth seeming to Caterina to change place, as if in some bizarre game of musical chairs. “Why? What is it that you want to know?”
“There is something I want to show you,” she replies. “I don’t have it with me right now. I’ll bring it with me tomorrow. Will you be here in the morning?”
He rolls a cigarette between his gnarled, arthritic fingers, licks the paper, picks a few strands of tobacco from the ends and deposits them in his pouch. Beppe lights up, puffs and decides. “With the sun, I will be here.”
Caterina leaves Beppe to paint an odd assortment of oars, and strolls back up the beach to the lane. She stops by Antonio’s door; Aida sits preening herself in the shade of the step.
She bends and strokes her head, and the cat presses against Caterina’s hand in appreciation of her affection.
“You see it all, don’t you, Aida?” she murmurs, before turning and walking off in the direction of the lagoon and Angelica’s house.
“Good afternoon,” she says to the witch on the wall. “Must be hot in black.”
The Pasticceria is closed; it is siesta time; Ganzirri is dozing.
Barely able to contain the excitement born of her ascent on the feluca, Caterina floats on a tide of euphoria through the lanes and soon enough arrives at the front door.
“What do you think our Angelica will be up to, eh?” she asks herself. “Feet up? Resting?”
The little cobbled street is quiet, quiet and deserted and cool in shadow. The handle gives as she presses and Caterina enters slowly, trying not to make a sound that might disturb her host.
Someone is in the kitchen. Someone? No; two people are talking and judging by the halting conversation one of them is definitely not Sicilian.
“Caterina, is that you?” Angelica calls.
“Yes, it is me,” she replies, her foot on the first step of the stairs. “You have company, I’ll leave you.”
“No, come in, there is someone here to see you.”
She pauses, frowning in thought, and turns into the living room. “To see me? Who earth would be here to see me?” Caterina glances at Angelica, then at her guest.
“Lucy!”
“Hello, mum.”
Chapter 16
Caterina plays the guilty schoolgirl. “I know it’s late, I’m sorry.”
“Late?” Antonio smiles. “I think I have told you once already that you are never too late. Besides, I was expecting you, come in.” He stands back for her.
The cat looks up and mews in welcome.
“Aida, you’re still up.” Caterina bends and strokes. “Talking of which, is Enzo…”
“No, he is in Messina. Would you like coffee or a glass of wine?”
She grins, mischievously. “Both?”
They sit on the sofa, together and closer to each other than the evening before. His coffee is thick and on the sweet side; the Blandanino dry. And relieved of the hindrance of observers, they sip and revel in the flavours as though they are elements fundamental to the chemistry of their attraction.
“Your daughter is here,” he says.
“Yes,” Caterina arches an eyebrow. “Word travels fast.”
“Angelica called me. She said you were surprised to see her. You didn’t know she was coming?”
“No, a complete surprise.”
“Angelica, too, was surprised: by you, by your enthusiasm and by how pleased you were to see your daughter.”
“I was pleased to see her.” Caterina frowns at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Ten days ago you would not have been so pleased.”
She considers this for a moment. “Mm, you may have a point there.”
“Angelica said you looked like a woman who had been delivered from sin. Redemption, I believe that was the word she used.”
Caterina hides behind her glass, as she searches for her own words to describe her moment of madness on the tower. “Or perhaps a conversion. Perhaps I won’t feel the need to persecute myself any longer. Maybe I have rediscovered my faith: my belief in myself.” She gazes at him, remembering. “You showed me that light, Antonio; without you I would still be stumbling down the road to Damascus.”
“Where is your daughter staying?” he asks, batting her compliment, her acknowledgement, aside. “At Angelica’s with you?”
“No, Angelica managed to get her a room at the Donato and I took her for dinner in a restaurant by the lagoon. Actually, no, come to think of it I should say she took me for dinner and she talked; I listened.”
“What did she have to say?” If he is steeling himself to hear news he would rather not, Antonio shows no sign of it.
“As you can imagine, quite a lot.”
“She thinks you are behaving in a childish manner and that you should return to England with her.”
“Of course, though she stopped short of looking down her nose at me and calling me an idiot; that was some small consolation, I suppose. Antonio, there’s not much point in me repeating her monologue, except to say that the more important news is that she is getting married. Her boyfriend, or fiancé I should now say, wanted to come down here and ask my permission; that’s why she’s been so desperate to get in touch.” Caterina pushes the hair back from her face and glances across at Aida, sleeping soundly in the armchair. “Silly me, eh? And there I was thinking she was worried about where her mother had got to. No, that’s not fair of me, she was concerned, it’s just that… Oh, I don’t know. She seems to have made everything that bit more complicated. It’s like the moment I thought I’d at last found some direction, I suddenly find myself pulled in another.”
Antonio lowers his head, the schoolteacher about to ask his pupil to own up to a misdemeanour. “Did you tell her about what happened at Capo Peloro? Or perhaps I should ask how much have you told her about what happened?”
She smiles, though not so mischievously as when she’d met him at the door, but… “Yes, I told her. I told her I had gone swimming in the wrong place at the wrong time and that a charming man had appeared out of nowhere and rescued me.”
“Did you tell her you were some time in intensive care?”
“Mm.” Caterina glances at the ceiling, her tone suggesting she cannot remember the detail.
“Did you tell her you were in the hospital?”
“I, er…” Surely, the answer to that one is written somewhere on the ceiling.
“And did you tell her that the doctor was under the impression that you may have been trying to take your own life and that the only way he would agree to signing your discharge was if you were released into someone else’s care?”
She sits up straight, her legs crossed, her expression sincere. “Look, Antonio, there’s no profit in my scaring the hell out of her. Knowing Lucy, she’d return with a court order and half a dozen men in white coats to drag me onto a private jet and deposit me in some nuthouse.”
“Can she be that bad, your daughter?”
“No, of course not, I’m exaggerating. But there’s nothing to be gained by frightening her; particularly when she’s feeling so rosy about
her own future.”
“And you did not tell her about your ascent today?”
“No. Even I think that was a bit crazy. Look at it this way, Antonio, if she thinks I’m happy here, there’s half a chance she won’t worry when I tell her I’m coming back here.”
“Coming back.” His surprise is muted, controlled, understated. “That means you are going. Good. I think this is the right decision for you; I think this is best for you.”
If ever a man has said one thing while meaning another, it is the man who sits in front of her with his arms folded and a resolute yet resigned look on his face.
“Best for me? Best for you? Or best for us?” Caterina leans towards him and places her hand on his knee, his broad, thick, dependable, reliable knee.
He drops his arms and very gently places his hand over hers. “If you go, you will not return, you know that.”
She gazes deep into the blue pools of his eyes; eyes the same colour as the sea in which she’d nearly drowned and in which she’d watched the dolphins play.
“I’ve thought about it and yes, it’s possible.” Caterina smiles through her frown. “It’s possible, but not probable, because the thought of not seeing you again tears me in two.” She sweeps her hair from her face and winces at the ceiling, embarrassed by her openness and amazed by the ease with which she has said exactly what she feels. That she does not feel inclined to apologise for her honesty encourages her. “I suppose I could tell Lucy to get on with her life in the same way I suddenly find myself wanting to get on with mine, but that wouldn’t be very… generous, very loyal, very… motherly of me. Not when she’s already lost her father.”
Although Caterina is now looking at Antonio, she is talking to herself as much as to him, for she is remembering her first day on the feluca, sitting in her white plastic chair beside the ‘ntinna, the sun on her face, the breeze at her cheeks and the salt on her lips; watching him shape the metal into small strips, watching him meticulously and delicately attach the strips to the small wooden fish, watching him weigh the lures in his hands, no scales, no machine, no technology, simply his hands and a greater sense of knowing when something is right.
Constant Tides Page 51
