Fatman’s words now resurfaced to terrorize her. “If you suck my cock I’ll pay for your flight home.” She blushed as if he had only just said it. In the course of a few days her whole life had been turned upside down. Things she had believed in were no longer true. She looked at herself differently. She moved her head in the mirror and considered her new image. Like a snake, she had shed her old skin and felt renewed, liberated. No one could say she now looked like her mother. No one would comment on her beauty, either. She smiled at her reflection and wiped her face with a towel, then went downstairs to find Immacolata.
When Cosima saw her she squealed in amazement. “Alba’s cut off all her hair, nonna!” Beata came in from the garden and Immacolata bustled out of the salotto. Alba stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hair short and spiky and uneven, but with a poise she hadn’t had before.
“What have you done to your beautiful hair, my child?” Immacolata asked, shuffling over to her.
“I think she looks beautiful,” said Cosima with a smile. “Like a pixie.”
Immacolata walked slowly over to Valentina’s shrine and took the portrait in her hands. She sat down carefully and patted the sofa for Alba to join her. “You have been talking to Falco,” she said gravely. “Listen, Alba, your mother was a mass of contradictions. In spite of everything, she had a big heart and she loved you and your father very much.”
“But she tricked him. She had a lover.”
Immacolata took her granddaughter’s hand. “My child,” she said softly. “How could you possibly understand what it is like to live through a war? Things were very different then. There was starvation, death, barbarity, hopelessness, Godlessness, all manner of evils. Valentina was vulnerable. Her loveliness made her vulnerable. I could not protect her from soldiers. Nor could I hide her away. Sharing the bed of an important, powerful man was her only means of survival, you have to understand that. Think of her in the context of her time. Try.” Alba stared down at the face her father had drawn so blindly.
“Falco said she loved my father,” she said.
“She did, Alba. Not at first. I encouraged her. I told her that she could do a lot worse than marry a fine, handsome English officer. But she fell in love with him all on her own.”
“So, you knew all along?”
“Of course I knew. I knew Valentina better than I know myself. A mother’s love is unconditional, Alba. Valentina loved you the same. Had she watched you grow up, she would have loved you in spite of your faults. Perhaps even more so because of them. Valentina wasn’t an angel, she wasn’t a saint, she was a fallible human being like the rest of us. What made her different was her ability to change. But if any one of them got close to the real woman, it was your father because he made her a mother. That stripped her of all pretense. Her love for you was pure and unpremeditated.”
“I’m no better than she was, nonna,” said Alba. “That is why I have cut off my hair. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be beautiful like her. I want to be me.” Immacolata ran an unsteady hand down Alba’s young cheek, gazing upon her features with watery eyes.
“You still look beautiful, Alba, because your beauty comes from in here.” She pressed a clenched fist against her own chest. “Your mother’s beauty came from there too.”
“My poor father, he was only trying to protect me.”
“We all were. Your father was right to take you to England. As much as it hurt us, he did the right thing. It would not have been healthy to grow up under so dark a shadow. Everyone knew about the murder; they talked of nothing else. The papers were full of stories of Valentina’s affair. She was portrayed as a whore. Not one article mentioned her heart. How big it was. How full. Not one of them mentioned what she gave, just what she took. It would have been wrong for you to live with that. You grew up ignorant and free. Now you have come back old enough to cope with the truth. I have missed the first twenty-six years of your life, but I sacrificed them willingly, knowing you were safe.”
Now it was Alba’s turn to take her grandmother’s hands in hers. “It is time to let her go,” Alba said, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “It is time to set her free. I feel her spirit lingers here in this house, casting a dark and unhappy shadow over us all.”
Immacolata thought for a moment. “I can’t get rid of the shrine,” she protested.
“Yes, you can. You must. Let’s blow out the candles, open the windows and remember her with joy. I suggest we have a service in the little chapel to commemorate her. Let’s have a party. Give her a good send-off.”
Despite her tears, Immacolata grew enthusiastic. “Falco can share his memories. The good ones. Ludovico and Paolo can come and stay with their families. We can eat in the garden, a banquet.”
“Let’s give her a proper headstone and plant flowers.”
“Lilies were her favorites.”
“And violets would be nice. Wild ones. Lots of them. Let’s make it beautiful.”
Immacolata’s face blossomed. “You’re so wise, Alba. I could never have predicted that your coming would change so much.”
That evening the family stood together in the salotto. Cosima held Alba’s hand, Beata took her son’s, Falco remained alone with his thoughts. Immacolata took Valentina’s candle in trembling hands. The flame had burned constantly since the morning of her death, twenty-six years before. Even when the wax had melted right down to the wick, another had been lit with the same flame and put in its place. Immacolata had never once let the candle go out.
She mumbled a long prayer and crossed herself vigorously. She swept her eyes over her family, resting them on her eldest son. “It is time to let the past go,” she said, without taking her eyes off him. “It is time to let Valentina go.” Then she blew out the candle.
They all stood very still, staring at the smoking wick. No one spoke. Then a cool gust of wind blew open the window, lifting Valentina’s portrait off the wall, carrying it into the air for a moment then dropping it on to the floor where it lay, face down. The air was filled with the heavy, unmistakable scent of figs. The women smiled. Then the scent was gone and in its place was the common smell of sea air.
“She has gone to the light,” Immacolata announced. “She is at peace.”
That night when Alba went to bed she noticed at once that the air in the room no longer held the weight of Valentina’s troubled spirit, or her perfume. The window was open and the cool night air entered with the distant roar of the sea. It felt empty, like any other room, as if the memories themselves had gone. She felt elated. She sat on the bed and rummaged about in the drawer for a piece of paper and a pen, then began a letter to her father.
She was just signing her name at the bottom of the page when the door to her room opened with a creak. Cosima was standing in her white nightdress, clasping an old rag doll in her hands. “Are you all right?” Alba asked, noticing the child’s anxious face.
“Can I sleep with you tonight?” The small ceremony they held for Valentina had frightened her, Alba thought. She helped the child into bed and then began to undress.
“I used to sneak in here and look at Valentina’s clothes,” said Cosima, cheering up at the prospect of not having to sleep alone.
“You did?” Alba was amazed. She didn’t imagine the child would know very much about Valentina.
“I wasn’t supposed to. Nonnina said it was sacred. But I liked to touch her dresses; they are so pretty, aren’t they?”
“They really are. She must have looked beautiful in them.”
“I like the box of letters too, but they are written in English so I can’t understand them.” Alba looked at her cousin in amazement.
“What letters?” Her heart quickened at the thought of discovering her father’s letters to her mother.
“There, in the cupboard.”
Alba frowned. She had been through the cupboards pretty thoroughly. “I’ve looked in the cupboard.”
Cosima was pleased to divulge a secret. She opened the cupboar
d door, swept the shoes aside and removed one of the planks of wood that made up the floor. Alba dropped to her knees and watched, incredulous, as Cosima pulled out a small cardboard box. Eagerly the two girls threw themselves on the bed to open it.
“You are naughty, Cosima,” Alba exclaimed, kissing her. “But I do love you for it.”
Cosima blushed with pleasure. “Nonnina would be very cross!” she giggled.
“That is why we’re not telling her.”
Alba felt the same rush of excitement she had felt on first finding the portrait under her bed. She took the paper in her hand. It was stiff and white and when she opened it the address on the top of the page was engraved in black print. It was not an English address. Neither was the writing, neat and precise, in English. Alba felt the blood drain from her face.
“Well?” Cosima insisted.
“It’s in German, Cosima,” she said steadily.
“Valentina liked German uniforms,” said Cosima brightly.
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Daddy said so.”
Alba looked down at the letter. She was intelligent enough to work out that it was a love letter. Judging by the date, it was written just before her father arrived in Incantellaria for the first time. She turned over the page. It was signed in ewige liebe—with everlasting love. The name engraved at the head of the page was Oberst Heinz Wiermann.
Valentina hadn’t had one lover, she had had two. Perhaps more. When the Allies invaded, the Germans moved north. They lost their power. Colonel Heinz Wiermann was of no use to her anymore.
Alba put the letters back. She couldn’t bear to look at them. “I don’t think we should read her private correspondence. Besides, I don’t speak German.” Cosima was disappointed. “I’m tired. Let’s go to bed. Have you any more surprises?” she asked.
“No,” said Cosima. “I painted my face with her makeup once. That’s all.”
Alba slipped into her nightdress and climbed into bed beside her cousin. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she suspected that she had only scratched at the surface of a far bigger mystery. Had her mother been an innocent bystander in a Mafia hit over tuna prices? Nothing would be strange in a place where statues bled and carnations were magically swept up on the beach.
But if Valentina hadn’t been an innocent bystander, then who had killed her, and why?
25
London 1971
E arly summer was Fitz’s favorite season. The leaves on the trees were still fresh and new; the blossom had gone but the white petals of the blackthorn sparkled in the morning sunlight. The flower beds burst forth with color but were not yet overgrown. It was warm but not too warm and the birdsong rang out across the park. The air vibrated with life after the dead cold of winter. It filled him up and infected his step so that he sprang rather than walked. But with Alba gone, he didn’t spring. He strolled through Hyde Park and even the flowers and sprouting trees failed to move him. Winter lingered in his bones and in his heart.
He often thought of her among the cypress trees and laburnum, her face enflamed by the setting Italian sun, turning it a gentle shade of amber pink. He imagined her surrounded by her Italian family. Enjoying lengthy banquets of tomato and mozzarella pasta, languid afternoons among the olive trees, blending in with her dark hair and skin, only those pale, luminescent eyes betraying that she was a stranger in their midst. He knew she’d love speaking the language, tasting the food, savoring the scents of eucalyptus and pine, listening to the ringing of crickets and basking in the hot, Mediterranean sun. He hoped that after a while her spirit would hanker for home. Maybe even for him.
He tried to concentrate on work. He set up Viv’s book tour in France and, while she was away for the fortnight, sat on the wall of the Thames near Alba’s houseboat with Sprout, just watching and remembering and longing, thankful that Viv wasn’t at home to scoff at him. Viv argued that Alba was petulant, self-indulgent, wanton, egocentric—the list went on and on as if she were showing off her knowledge of words like a human thesaurus.
Perhaps Alba was all of those things. Fitz wasn’t blind to her faults; he loved her in spite of them. Her laugh was light and bubbly like foam, the look in her eyes mischievous, like a child who pushes to see how far she can go. Her confidence a shell to hide behind. When he imagined making love to her his gut twisted with longing. He remembered the wild times in the Valentina, the naughty time in the woods at Beechfield, the tender time she was unable to let go, when inhibition had crippled her, for Alba wasn’t afraid to shout; she was afraid to whisper, in case in that moment of intimacy she heard the echo of loneliness in her heart. What Viv didn’t understand was that he understood Alba.
Viv returned from her book tour revitalized and in devilish good humor. It had taken the years off her too. She shone like a descaled kettle, as good as new. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed; her obvious health was rude, shockingly rude. Fitz hadn’t seen her looking that good in years. When he commented on it she just smiled at him secretively, claimed she had bought a new face cream in Paris, then disappeared. No telephone calls, no bridge nights, no dinners with cheap French wine, just a gaping silence. There was only one explanation: she had found a lover in France. Fitz was jealous, not because he wanted her for himself, but because she had found love when he had lost his. He felt more alone than ever.
Then one hot night at the end of August he was slowly drinking himself numb in a pub in Bayswater, sitting outside on a bench beneath a fountain of red geraniums, when a pretty young woman approached him.
“You don’t mind if I share your table, do you?” she asked. “I’m waiting for a friend and it’s completely full.”
“Of course not. Be my guest,” he said, taking his face out of his beer glass.
“Oh, is that your dog?” she asked, spotting Sprout under the table.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “He’s called Sprout.”
Her almond-shaped eyes lit up, the color of sherry. “What an adorable name. Mine’s Louise.”
“Fitz,” said Fitz, shaking her hand.
They both laughed at the absurdity of such formality. Louise sat down and placed her glass of wine on the table, then dived beneath to pat Sprout, who wagged his tail contentedly so that it tapped the pavement, wafting the dust into a small cloud.
“Oh, he really is sweet,” she gushed, coming back up again. She had long brown hair held back by a yellow hair-band, and when Fitz ran his eyes over her neck and shoulders he saw that she was comely, with large breasts and white, silky skin.
“He’s an old man,” Fitz added with a tender smile. “In dog years he’d be sixty.”
“Well, he’s very handsome,” she replied. Sprout knew he was being discussed and lifted his ears. “Like men, dogs mature well.”
“So do some women,” Fitz said, realizing that he was flirting. He was still capable of it, after all.
Louise blushed and smiled broadly. She looked around, presumably for her friend, then turned back to Fitz. “Are you on your own?”
“Well, not entirely.”
“Of course, you’ve got Sprout.”
“I am alone; this is my local.” He didn’t want her to think he was one of those sad drunks who sit on their own in pubs and stagger home to grimy, neglected flats and failed lives.
“Lovely to live around here, near the park.”
“Good for Sprout.”
“I live in Chelsea. I’m waiting for the girl I live with.” She looked at her watch. “She’s always late. Born late, I think.” She laughed and lowered her eyes.
Fitz recognized her bashfulness as a sign she fancied him “I had a girlfriend, but she broke my heart,” he said with a sigh, conscious of the devious game he was now playing.
Her face crumpled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’ll mend.”
There are some things women like Louise find irresistible: a man with a broken heart, a child, or a dog. In Fitz’s case he h
ad two of the three. Louise stopped looking around for her friend.
Fitz poured out the contents of his heart, finding comfort in the fact that she was a stranger and knew nothing of his life. She listened, intrigued, and the more she listened, the more she was drawn to him, like a person on the edge of a volcano who cannot resist the temptation to peer over and watch the red and gold bubbling of lava. He bought more drinks and then ordered dinner. Her friend failed to turn up, which was a relief, for the more beer Fitz drank, the more appealing Louise became. He felt better for having off-loaded his mind. It felt lighter now that Alba wasn’t in it.
At ten o’clock it was almost dark. “What do you do, Louise?” he asked, realizing that he hadn’t asked her anything about herself all evening.
“I work for an advertising company,” she said.
“How exciting,” he replied, feigning interest.
“Not really. I’m a secretary, but I hope to be promoted to an account executive shortly. I have a brain. I’d like to use it.”
“And you should. Where do you work?”
“In Oxford Street. This pub’s almost my local too!”
“Stay with me tonight?” he suggested, suddenly serious. “You can walk to work in the morning. Much better for you than sitting on a bus in the traffic.”
“I’d love to,” she replied and Fitz was astounded at how easily she had yielded. He hadn’t lost his touch, then.
“Sprout will be pleased,” he said with a smile. “He hasn’t been this close to a pretty girl for a very long time.”
They walked back to his house. The air was heavy and humid; it would rain soon. He took her hand and it felt nice to have it there, in his. She giggled nervously and toyed with the hair that fell over her shoulder.
Last Voyage of the Valentina Page 28
