by Penny Feeny
This, thought Lily, is where he will tell her how he found me. She used to love hearing the story, the dramatic way Alex told it. Tunnelling through the fallen rubble, working by torchlight in the freezing January cold, not letting the chaos and the sobbing and the noise deflect him from his belief that he could hear a cry. A plaintive cheep, a bit like Moses in his basket of rushes, although she had been older than Moses and the reason her cry was so feeble was because she’d been trapped and hidden in a crater for two days and no one knew she was there. The aftershocks had continued and further stones had been dislodged and Alex’s ear had picked up the sound of her squawk, which no one else had noticed. And that was why she was here today with the father who had saved her life. She was a miracle baby!
For some reason, he didn’t say any of this to Carlotta.
‘You were one of the rescue workers?’ she asked, her voice rising incredulously at the end of the sentence.
He nodded.
‘One of the students who came to help?’
‘I wasn’t even a student any longer. I was a bum, drifting about, looking for a cause. I was glad to find one but I wasn’t doing anything more heroic than the next guy.’
‘They said I was lucky to be alive,’ said Carlotta. ‘To survive when so many others didn’t. My husband…’ This time she didn’t try to stop the tears. They rolled down her cheeks and Lily and Harry watched in fascination. Dolly often burst into luxurious sobbing, but hers was noisy and punctuated by invocations to the saints. Carlotta’s quiet flood was more troubling.
‘Oh, please,’ said Jess, reaching out to touch her shoulder. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about this if it affects you so badly. We’ll go and leave you in peace.’
Lily thought that if her parents took Carlotta home to the villa and chatted to her and let Dolly fuss over her, she might begin to cheer up. Instead, she was surprised at the speed with which they both downed their beers and rose to go.
‘You coming, kiddies?’ said Alex.
‘I haven’t finished my granita,’ said Lily.
‘If you should go somewhere I can stay with her,’ said Carlotta. ‘I need, in any case, to wait here for my friend.’
‘I want to stay too,’ said Harry.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jess. ‘You’ve already given us kittens once and the town’s so busy this evening…’
‘I will look after them,’ said Carlotta.
‘Can I have another ice cream?’ said Harry.
Lily started to protest that wasn’t fair, but a louder deeper voice drowned hers. Carlotta’s friend (Claudio, the driver of the car, not the old man in the cap) was hailing her from the dried-up fountain.
‘No, you can’t,’ said Jess. ‘Come on. We have to find Dolly and give her a lift back.’
Dolly would have no problem getting home. Lily knew that her mother was making excuses, but she stopped letting the orange crystals melt slowly on her tongue and shovelled the rest down her throat.
‘You know where we are,’ Alex said, ‘if you’re here for a bit longer and want to visit us.’ He stared at Carlotta very hard as if he might be able to penetrate her sunglasses.
Carlotta said, ‘Yes, thank you.’ She rose from the table to greet her boyfriend, who seemed annoyed that she had gone off without him.
Normally the McKenzies would have stayed for introductions because they liked meeting new people, but Alex rapidly propelled them away.
‘Why ever did you do that?’ said Jess.
‘Yes, why?’ said Lily.
‘Do what?’
‘Invite her to come over,’ said Jess.
‘She’ll come anyway if she wants to. She did before. Now she knows she doesn’t have to sneak around outside.’
‘Why would she sneak?’ said Lily.
‘Alex, you know something, don’t you?’
‘What could I possibly know?’
‘Surmise, then.’
‘What does surmise mean?’ said Lily. ‘Is it like surprise?’
‘That’s it!’ said Jess brightly. ‘I surmise that your dad’s going to devise a surprise.’
She was talking in riddles. Lily supposed they would have to wait till they saw Carlotta again to find out why.
4
Jessamy McKenzie lay naked on the bed in a darkened room. The heat enveloped her like a moist blanket. She’d undressed in order to shower but the water was reduced to an erratic dribble – not an uncommon occurrence. Alex had taken the children to cool off in the sea. Sweat was collecting in the hollow of her collarbone, soaking through the cotton sheet into the mattress. It was late afternoon, but she hadn’t been able to sleep during the siesta. It was far too hot and anyway her mind had been whirring, reviewing everything she could remember about the past nine years.
From the day she’d met Alex she had entered a different world. The one she’d grown up in was populated with socialite older sisters, school crushes, pony gymkhanas and parents who alternated between indifference and indulgence. Jess was a late, unplanned baby and, as the youngest, she was frequently patronised.
‘It’s a stage you’re going through,’ her bossiest sister, Dinah, informed her. ‘The need to rebel.’
‘You have to kick against the pricks,’ said Jess.
‘What pricks?’ said Dinah suspiciously, as if she might be deliberately insulting her husband. Dinah had been among the last generation of debutantes and the ritual had suited her; she’d accepted Johnnie Winthrop’s proposal at a hunt ball. A decade later, at a demonstration against the Vietnam War, Alex had scooped Jess from beneath the hooves of a police horse in Grosvenor Square. The age gap had set her on a different course from her sisters, but the meeting with Alex had yanked her into another stratosphere.
‘You don’t know anything about him,’ Dinah said.
‘I know enough.’
Alex contributed scurrilous articles to Private Eye and the underground newspaper, International Times. He also pulled pints in a pub and helped to organise radical poetry readings in the bar upstairs. Living in his world involved committing to positive activism, attending street rallies or meetings in sleazy back rooms (and, less frequently, sitting around getting stoned to Jimi Hendrix or King Crimson). It required passionate engagement and Jess threw herself into it.
The first time he took her to Sicily he borrowed Gerald’s VW and whisked her off on a magical mystery tour. ‘There’s someone I have to show you,’ he said. ‘Someone I want you to meet.’ And she recalled, with a lurch, Dinah’s warning.
Dinah had meant that Jess knew nothing about Alex’s family – antecedents were everything in her circle – but it wasn’t true. Jess knew that his father had been killed before he was born, in one of the last battles of the war, at Monte Cassino. That he had been brought up by a struggling mother, who was relieved to send him away to school when he won a scholarship. That he considered himself without ties. That his first trip to Italy had been to visit his father’s grave. That through his friendship with Toby Forrester he had visited Sicily and kept coming back. But she couldn’t imagine the mysterious person he wanted her to meet.
‘Who is it?’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?’
Alex liked springing surprises and he liked the way she reacted to them. He enjoyed an audience. ‘Guess away,’ he said.
They’d been driving past newly tilled fields; the feathery stems of wild fennel swayed along the verge; the spring air was fresh with promise. As they approached the outskirts of the town a high wall rose ahead of them, shielding a spreading magnolia and the peak of a terracotta roof.
‘Okay,’ said Jess. ‘Someone’s locked up here. Someone who needs help. Oh, God, this is an asylum, isn’t it? And a perfectly sane person is being incarcerated against their will and you want to set them free.’ (She had recently finished reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.) ‘What is this compulsion you have, Alex, always to be rescuing people?’
She was laughing as she spoke, but she was
also remembering the horse’s forelegs inches from her head when the anti-war placard had been knocked from her grip and she’d lost her balance. She’d been lifted in the rough embrace of a donkey jacket, seen fair hair spilling over a turned-up collar and the worried eyes of a stranger. She’d heard a gentle lilt asking her if she was all right, then saying, ‘Quick, we’d better get out of here.’ Pulling her to safety, away from the crush and the truncheons, spooning sugar into her tea to counteract the shock. How could she not have fallen in love after such an encounter?
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’re getting warm.’
‘Really?’ She darted a kiss onto his cheek.
‘Really.’ He pulled up in front of a pair of elaborate wrought-iron gates and she spotted a statue of the Virgin Mary set into a niche in the wall. ‘But it’s not an asylum, it’s a convent.’ He got out of the car and jangled a bell pull.
‘Are they expecting us?’
‘I got Dolly to ring ahead. She knows the Mother Superior.’
An elderly nun, wimple flapping, trundled down the path holding an enormous key. She unlocked the gate and let them in, on foot. The convent was a low plain white-washed building with no hint of the baroque flamboyance that characterised so many of the local churches. A short flight of steps led up to the main entrance and they were admitted to a tiled hallway with a strong aroma of beeswax – polish, or candles, or maybe both. Another nun led them into an anteroom and spoke to Alex in Italian. Jess couldn’t follow, but when she started to ask a question, Alex flashed a grin and said, ‘Wait and see. Pazienza!’
The nun returned with a child, scarcely more than a toddler, in tow. The child was wearing a navy overall and had cropped hair so Jess wasn’t certain whether it was a boy or a girl. Alex held out a hand and the nun gave the child a nudge. ‘Dai, Liliana,’ she said.
Alex smiled and said, ‘Ciao.’ He took his other hand from behind his back and presented it as a closed fist. ‘Sai cos’è?’
‘Caramelli?’ said the child and squealed when Alex opened his fist to show she had guessed correctly. She took the sweets and he helped her unwrap them.
Jess watched in astonishment. She knew how romantic Alex could be in private and how persuasive when he needed things to go his way. She’d also seen his fury when his view of social justice was challenged. But his tenderness with the little girl was so unexpected it floored her. The girl was now sitting on his knee, sucking her boiled sweets, quite at ease. She reached up and stroked the stubble of his jaw with her palm, as if intrigued by the unfamiliar sensation. In a convent, Jess supposed, she wouldn’t come across men, other than priests.
‘Who is she?’
‘This is Lily. Lily, meet Jessamy. My two flower girls.’
‘Is she a secret?’
‘No, why should she be a secret?’
‘Because I’ve been going out with you for six months and you haven’t mentioned her before. Is she yours?’
‘Mine?’
‘Don’t act dumb, Alex. You know what I mean.’
‘Hey, what are you getting at? Do you think I’d leave a kid in an orphanage if I was her father?’
‘You might not have known she existed… till afterwards.’ It was far worse to be an unmarried mother in Italy than in England – that was why families guarded their daughters like jailors and kept them at home after dark. But the girls must escape sometimes and you could have sex in the afternoon and still keep to your curfew.
‘You’re way off!’ he said, as if he were tickled to have confounded her. ‘Now let’s get moving. They’ve said we can take Lily out for the day as a treat. I’ll explain everything.’
Jess sat in the back of the VW alongside Lily, wide-eyed and bouncing with excitement. In the driver’s seat, Alex spun the steering wheel, spoke nonchalantly. ‘It was the story that turned me into a journalist. I never sold it – British newspapers wouldn’t have been much interested anyhow – but it felt… pivotal.’
And that was how Jess learned about his part in the post-earthquake debacle. ‘Almost as soon as I brought the baby out of the rubble,’ he said, ‘she was grabbed, passed around in the torchlight. No one could believe she was still breathing. Nearly three days she’d been underground. People wanted to take her into church to give thanks for the miracle but I managed to persuade them she needed a doctor.’
‘You knew where to find one?’
‘A field hospital had been set up, so we took her there. I didn’t stick around but I was as chuffed as anyone when I heard she’d been claimed by relatives.’ His voice dropped, though Lily wouldn’t have understood the words. ‘Trouble was, they got the wrong baby.’
‘You’re kidding me!’ She glanced sideways at the funny little creature in her institutional garb, at the curl on her neck missed by the scissors. ‘It isn’t possible! How could they not have known?’
‘Because they’d seen half their family wiped out and were off their heads with grief and panic. Besides, they were an aunt and uncle and Lily was in a pretty desperate state. It was the grandparents who eventually recognised she wasn’t theirs.’
‘So they handed her back?’
‘What else could they do? There must have been some surviving family somewhere, but no one else came forward. They probably couldn’t afford to look after her and anyhow there was nowhere to live. Half the valley was sleeping under canvas. So she ended up with the nuns. That’s why I call to see her whenever I’m staying at Gerald’s. I feel kind of responsible.’
‘You really did this?’ She was finding it hard to take in.
‘Aye, I did.’
Reaching across the seat to squeeze his shoulder, Jess said solemnly, ‘It’s a powerful thing to have saved someone’s life. Why didn’t you tell me?’
He met her eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d believe me. I wanted you to meet her first. But I’m telling you now right enough.’
‘What happens to them? When they get older?’
‘The orphans? They become skivvies probably. Or nuns. Not a great future.’
Jess turned to Lily again and was met with a disarming smile. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘This is going to take some digesting. What you’ve done here… and keeping in touch like this, it’s fantastic! I mean, it’s all very well thinking we can save the world, isn’t it? But in practice, if you can do something to make life better for just one person…’
And that was the seed sown, the kernel that grew on their subsequent trips: visiting Lily in the convent, taking her out for the day, buying her toys and ice cream, a pair of shoes, going to the beach, to Villa Ercole, introducing her to the new baby. It was after Harry was born that their vague fuzzy notion bore fruit. Lily was so good with Harry, so attentive, the ready-made older sibling. Their decision to adopt was taken in a rush of adrenalin and a warm glow of good intentions. The process was complicated and there was plenty of opportunity to change their minds, but the more often they were told they were mad, the more determined they became. Neither of them had ever regretted it.
*
The Polaroids were on the cupboard beside the bed. Jess had winkled them from Lily’s possession, promising to keep them safe. She propped herself against the pillows and examined them for the hundredth time. Lily was fully aware of the circumstances of her adoption; she had never been lied to. And hadn’t the McKenzies always hoped that a relative might be discovered to link her with her heritage? Wasn’t that why they kept returning to Villa Ercole?
Jess stared at the images in the gloom: black and white and indistinct. You couldn’t judge the colouring, let alone the features, of the subjects. Anyway, she had seen Carlotta Galetti with her own eyes; she didn’t need a photograph to know what she looked like. The woman was sultry and striking, but there was something unnerving about her too. The speed, for instance, with which her manner had changed from vivacious to withdrawn. Yet it was Carlotta who had sought out the McKenzies – the children at any rate – and not the other way aroun
d.
The photographs were sticking to her fingers, so she put them face down in a pile. She was still lying, chewing her lip, in a defeated position when Alex came back from the beach.
‘Lazy mare,’ he said, swiping a towel at her, stiff with sand and salt. She grabbed the end of it and they tussled briefly. The bedstead was standard metal chain-link, inclined to sag in the middle. ‘You haven’t moved since we went out.’
‘The water hasn’t come on yet,’ she said.
‘Excuses, excuses.’
She knelt in the dip of the bed. Her limbs were slick and slippery as fish. ‘And… I’ve been thinking…’
‘Thinking is not what we do on holiday, Jessa-mine.’ (He called her this sometimes, referring to the song that had been a chart hit the year they met.) ‘Thinking is for the rest of the year. This month is for Being.’
‘I know, but… were the kids okay?’
‘Fine. They’re pestering Dolly now. They spotted some sea urchins on the rocks and wanted to tell her about them.’
‘No jellyfish?’
‘Not a single one. Is that what’s bothering you?’
‘You know what’s bothering me. You always know. I mean, who is she? What does she want?’
‘Speculation,’ he said, ‘is not worth the angst.’ He dropped his swimming trunks on the floor. ‘I’m going to try the shower again.’
‘If you strike lucky with the water don’t take it all.’
‘Then come and join me.’
The bathroom was a primitive space between their bedroom and the children’s. Its small high window was shrouded outside by a creeper. It had no shower curtain or cubicle and there was a dank smell of drains. She followed him and they rubbed soap into each other’s chests and armpits. A spasmodic trickle of water gradually rinsed away the suds and stuck their eyelashes together. Alex hoisted Jess up so she could wind her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck. For extra support he pinned her against the wall beneath the window and the ceramic tiles sent a blissful chill through her shoulder blades.
‘I love you,’ he said.
