Secrets in Sicily

by Penny Feeny

  Her shriek rang in the still air and put Marcello off his aim. He hurled his final olive into the dust with a decisive thwack. Then he sauntered towards her.

  She stayed where she was, biting down on her bottom lip although the new pain didn’t lessen the old, which was like dozens of needles jabbing.

  ‘Cosa c’è?’

  She held out her hand helplessly.

  Marcello had bright, piercing blue eyes. He stared at the spines, which were scarcely visible, and then at her face. ‘It hurts?’

  ‘Yes. Molto!’

  ‘I think I can help.’

  ‘You know what to do?’

  ‘Però, you must keep still. Non ti muovere.’ Don’t move.

  He took hold of her wrist with one hand and steadied her fingertips with the other so her skin was taut. He bent his head forward as if he was going to nuzzle her palm like a dog. She was afraid he might be teasing her, but she had to trust him. One by one, he drew out the spines with his teeth. The tingling began to subside.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ she said, buoyant with relief. ‘Grazie mille!’ And she put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Fa niente,’ said Marcello. It was nothing. Then he said, diffidently, ‘Siamo ancora amici?’ We’re still friends?

  ‘Certo.’ And to prove it she gave him a second kiss. ‘Shall we go and see if the food is ready yet?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘Well, I’m starving, aren’t you?’ She slipped her hand into his and they stayed stickily together until they got near to the barn, when they edged apart in case anyone should see them.

  The gathering had swelled. The guests were drinking and smoking and the ground was littered with spent matchsticks because it was bad luck to light a third cigarette from the same flame. Somebody had brought a portable record player since there was no electricity on the site. The sound was tinny and Lucio Battisti’s latest album, ‘Io tu noi tutti’, was playing at a slower speed than usual but it didn’t matter because the dancing couples seemed happy to have an excuse to sway close together. Lily expected to see her parents among them. Their height made them stand out and Alex was wearing his red tee shirt with Che Guevara on the front. This was very old and Jess had deliberately left it behind at Villa Ercole for Dolly to turn into dusters. A year later it was still there, intact, and he had rediscovered it with glee.

  Dolly was standing over the fire with three other women, turning skewers that looked like spindles because they’d been wrapped with tubes of stuffed intestines called stigghiola, which Harry thought were disgusting but Lily rather liked. Gerald was in discussion with the young mechanics who fixed his VW when it went wrong and had the pick of the girls because of their fast shiny motorbikes. The mechanics liked working for Gerald because, being an English gentleman, he didn’t try to drive a hard bargain on price. Alex, she finally located in the midst of another football game. Marcello’s father was there too and Marcello ran to join them.

  Lily was left by herself again, scouring the party for her mother’s wide-brimmed straw hat. The sun was fierce overhead so she didn’t think she would have taken it off. Then she saw it, dangling on the end of a branch. Jess was sitting in the shade under a tree with her back against the trunk and her legs drawn up, hugging her knees. Her face was turned towards the person sitting nearby. It took Lily a moment to recognise her as the lady with the Polaroid camera.

  8

  Jess had watched Lily run after Marcello with amusement. She was no longer bothered about the pair of them disappearing from view. Since the visit to Santa Margherita, her attitude had relaxed. After all, Agnese had been adamant that Carlotta was the name of the young baker’s sister. She’d even given them her address in Palermo, though they didn’t see much use for it while the woman was in Roccamare. And even if she was related to Lily, an aunt didn’t have the same degree of attachment as a mother.

  She drifted into the barn to offer help and when her offer was rejected she drifted out to check on Harry. A gang of boys was jostling for position in a game of leapfrog. They’d found a handy tree stump, the right height for their legs to straddle. Harry leapt and landed neatly but stumbled over his shoelaces; she tied them up for him and he too brushed her away. She topped up her wine glass and leant against the warm stone wall of the barn.

  She narrowed her eyes so that the outlines of the boys and the trees and the people setting up the gramophone blurred into a pattern punctuated by bright shafts of sun. Inside her head she visualised a new design, vivid and curvaceous, a world away from the floral Laura Ashley sprigging that had dominated fabrics for so long. (Her second sister, Rosalind, often decked herself in violets and forget-me-nots, but she was exiled with her husband in Hong Kong and presumably wanted to be reminded of an English spring.) She sensed, rather than saw, a person approaching, a person in a swingy skirt that clung to her hips and high wedge sandals. She blinked and took a few seconds to focus on the form in front of her.

  ‘Ciao,’ said Carlotta, leaning forward to kiss her on both cheeks, a light perfumed kiss, barely making contact with skin, no need to rub away any smudge of lipstick. ‘I have heard your family will be here for Ferragosto.’

  ‘Oh, do you know the Campiones too?’ She didn’t need to. This was Sicily; no guest would be turned away. Did they even have a word for gate-crasher?

  Carlotta waved a hand vaguely towards the men shifting the trestle tables. ‘I come with my friend, Claudio,’ she said. ‘I hoped to see you.’

  ‘I could have met you with Alex,’ said Jess, still chafing at being excluded. ‘Anything you say to him you can say to me, you know.’

  ‘But he has told you of our meeting? I wanted to talk to him about his experience and now…’ She brushed her fingertips along Jess’s arm and her touch was transient like the kiss. ‘I must speak with you. Woman to woman, yes?’

  ‘About Lily?’

  ‘Also about myself.’ She gave an appealing smile. ‘You know nothing about me, is true?’

  Nothing about me is true? Jess moved from the wall to the shade of a tree. She took off her hat and hung it on a branch. She wanted to look at Carlotta directly, oblige her to be frank. ‘So tell me, then,’ she said.

  ‘What do you like to know?’

  Start with something neutral, she decided. ‘Well… um… What do you do?’

  ‘You mean my job? I work in a shop. We sell leather goods, mostly to tourists. I would like very much one day to have my own shop, selling handbags.’ She cast a glance at Jess’s crumpled canvas tote. ‘I think I have a good eye. I can recognise good quality, good design. This is my dream. Rome, però, is an expensive place to live.’

  ‘Rome?’ said Jess sharply. ‘Not Palermo?’

  Carlotta ignored the interruption. ‘It is hard to be all day on your feet but I don’t mind the long hours if there is possibility of advancement. That is the difference on the mainland, you see. There are not so many fingers in your till. On this island we have many problems with corruption. Also we are very vulnerable. We live on one of the earth’s fault lines. For us, it is always a struggle to keep our families alive.’

  Jess took a long swallow of wine, boldly tried another tack. ‘It must have been terrible what you went through, what happened in the earthquake.’

  A pattern of shadows cast by the olive leaves danced across Carlotta’s face. She spoke in a soft low tone that was almost hypnotic. ‘For a long time I thought it would be better if I had died with my husband and baby. I had no wish to continue without them. We loved each other so much, Francesco and I. We were childhood sweethearts. He was always tender, he never beat me.’

  ‘Why on earth would he do that?’

  Carlotta said simply, ‘To show his power. Women belong to men. They look after us so they must also control us.’

  Jess was appalled. ‘That’s outrageous!’ Although she and Alex had exchanged rings at the registry office, they never wore them. A ring was a symbol of commitment, but it was also a manacle. Th
ey viewed themselves as individuals who’d entered a partnership; they would not be chained. ‘Human beings are equal. No one belongs to anyone else – that would be outright slavery!’

  ‘Yes. I know now that life is different in other places, but here it’s very traditional. A wife must do what her husband says. Papa, in the bakery, if you saw him pound the dough, you’d understand what he could do with his fists, the strength he had.’

  Women’s liberation had not yet reached Sicily; Jess was aware of this, but Carlotta’s casual reference to domestic violence disturbed her. ‘Did he used to hit you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father?’

  Carlotta shook her head. ‘There was no need. My father was a blacksmith. Nobody argues with a man who works with hot iron.’

  ‘Hang on a minute! You said he was a baker.’

  ‘I was speaking of Papa Galetti, my father-in-law. My own father died many years ago, when I was a girl. There was only me and my mother.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jess was bewildered, her thought processes blunted by the heat and the wine. Carlotta’s story didn’t make sense in the light of what they’d heard from Agnese Fantoni and why wouldn’t the old woman be telling the truth?

  Carlotta continued, ‘My father I don’t remember well, but my daughter I remember precisely. The folds and creases of her little plump legs, her skin so soft and perfect. Her lovely milky scent and the way she laughed. If I close my eyes I try to hear the laugh. The smell, the touch, they are gone, but I have the pictures in my head and, sometimes, the sounds. I miss her. I will always miss her.’ She removed her sunglasses, unveiling her nut-brown eyes, her sweeping lashes. ‘I lost everything. How could I stay in Belice? My mother nursed me while I was in the coma. One of her brothers works for Fiat in Turin. When I got better we went to live with him.’

  Still perplexed, Jess said, ‘Your mother wasn’t killed when the bakery collapsed?’

  ‘Not then, but our tragedy was too much for her. After we come to Turin, she have heart attack. You see how unlucky I am! One good thing is they give me passport. I have another uncle who lives in Brooklyn. He sponsored me for two years so I can work in his restaurant.’

  Donna fugata, Dolly had called her: the woman who fled. And she had been running further away each time. ‘So you went to America?’

  ‘I thought I was brave to do this, but really I was too scared to come home. I was very young, just twenty-one. I dreamed of a new life with a new family.’ Her head drooped and her mouth curved downwards. ‘I was wrong. My boyfriend, Ricky, and I, we planned to marry, but something happened that made it impossible… And then I have news of my daughter. That she may be alive.’

  ‘For the first time, you mean? You’d heard nothing before?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘A mother always knows her child, but it was not me who identified her body. At the time they said it was good that I didn’t see her injuries, they were so terrible. I should not have listened to them.’

  A few yards away, in sweltering sunshine, the festivities were boisterous and carefree, but the traumatic detail of Carlotta’s story chilled Jess’s blood. She ventured, ‘If you didn’t identify your husband either…’

  Carlotta said, ‘They gave me the wedding ring from his finger. I have it still. They found my baby’s shawl, but it was buried with her so I have no memento. Not even a curl from her hair.’ She tugged at a lock of her own as if it could anchor her. ‘Can you imagine how it feels to be given suddenly some hope? To learn, after all, there could be some mistake. Do you understand, I had to come back to Sicily, I had to see if it was truly her. But it was no good. I was too late. She was gone away.’

  Jess reminded herself that Carlotta had been severely concussed. Her memories were bound to be confused. Was that why she said her father was a baker one minute and a blacksmith the next? Was it possible she’d spent so much time taking care of her brother’s baby she thought of it as her own? Or was she suffering survivor’s guilt? That was more or less the conclusion she and Alex had come to, after speaking to Agnese. ‘She’ll be looking for reassurance,’ Alex had said. ‘Why would she choose to be saddled with a child she hasn’t seen for nearly a decade? Even if she could prove a relationship. Keep your cool, Jess.’

  She clasped her arms around her knees and said, very gently, ‘Our little girl loves being here for the summer holidays, but she has plenty of friends, plenty going on, at home. We will never know exactly where she came from, but the main thing is she’s happy now. That’s what matters and we wouldn’t want to jeopardise it. And I’m sure you wouldn’t either. So I hope you don’t mind me saying, but there’s really no need for you to pretend to be someone you’re not.’

  Carlotta blanched.

  Although Jess tried hard not to be judgemental (that was the preserve of her sisters) she couldn’t help blurting, ‘Oh, my God! You were trying to fool us! Why? Why would you lie about who you are when what we care about most – and you should too – is what’s good for Lily herself? I mean, how could you?’

  Carlotta said humbly, ‘Is not my fault. My marriage certificate, my ID papers were destroyed, but I gave correct information. The error was not mine.’

  ‘What d’you mean? What error? Whose fault was it, then?’

  It was bad timing. Lily came running towards them, her face streaked as if she had been crying. Jess was instantly alert to distress. She unfolded herself and rose. ‘Darling, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right… But I hurt my hand.’ She held it out, palm upwards.

  Jess couldn’t see anything wrong but she took it anyway and brought it to her lips. ‘There, I’ve kissed it better.’ She held onto it, keeping Lily close. ‘Shall we find Harry and see what Dolly is up to? I’m sure she’ll have some nice snacks ready by now.’

  She didn’t want to hear any more of Carlotta’s excuses. She wanted her to see that the McKenzies, like the Campiones, like myriad Sicilian families, could not be broken up.

  9

  The night after Ferragosto, Jess, Alex and Gerald sat drinking under the vine-covered trellis, surrounded by candles flickering in glass jars and aromatic cones smouldering to keep mosquitoes at bay. They had moved from white wine to red and on to rich sweet Marsala. The children and Dolly, early risers, were in bed asleep. Jess had spent all day trying to analyse her conversation with Carlotta, her mind beetling around in circles. Alex and Gerald were discussing Toby’s imminent arrival. He was flying into Palermo on his way to help catalogue some new finds on Mozia.

  ‘Said I’d pick him up tomorrow, bring him here for a night.’ Gerald spoke with the deliberation of a man trying not to slur his words. ‘He doesn’t want the bother of a car, it’s no good to him on the island and he’s important enough these days for other people to drive him around.’

  Gerald’s tone made Jess wonder whether he was jealous. He had taken pains to create his classical idyll and scholarly persona – a life that wouldn’t have been possible outside western Sicily – but he was always complaining about it: the heat, the inefficiency, the chaos, the bloody Church, the bloody Mafia, that bloody woman (Dolly).

  Alex was drumming his fingers on the table top. ‘We’ll get him, if you like.’

  Jess sat up. ‘Will we? What about the children?’

  ‘Kind of you, dear chap,’ said Gerald. ‘Traffic round Palermo is always a blasted nightmare and you know how my engine overheats. But I wouldn’t want to let the boy down and it will be good to see him.’

  ‘We can take the kids with us,’ said Alex. ‘We usually do. They like seeing Toby too. Also…’

  ‘Also what?’

  ‘We could do a bit of detective work.’

  Jess said, ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘It might lay things to rest.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles,’ said Gerald. He poured another slug of Marsala; in the half-light it had given his teeth a purplish stain. ‘Aah… is this about the Polaroid
woman?’

  ‘We’ve been given conflicting stories,’ said Jess. ‘We don’t know what to believe, though I’d rather let the whole thing drop.’

  Alex disagreed. ‘There’s a way we could check her out. Agnese Fantoni couldn’t tell us what happened to the baker’s wife, but she gave us an address in Palermo for his sister. If we go there we might be able to find out if Carlotta Galetti’s the person she says she is.’

  ‘Galetti is a very common name,’ said Gerald. ‘It wouldn’t be surprising if there were several Carlottas too.’

  ‘According to Agnese she’s married and has a different surname now anyway. Though our Carlotta told Jess she lives in Rome, which adds to the confusion. We could be barking up the wrong tree altogether.’

  Jess wished he wouldn’t say ‘our’ Carlotta.

  ‘Agnese’s information might be out of date,’ said Gerald. ‘The girl could have separated from the husband and gone to Rome off her own bat, which is why she’s after money… Just playing devil’s advocate, my dears.’

  ‘But we don’t know she’s after money!’

  ‘I thought she’d said something?’

  ‘Well, she hinted about wanting her own boutique… Oh my God, what are you suggesting?’ Was Carlotta constructing a subtle form of blackmail, layer by layer? ‘Good grief! We don’t look rich, do we?’

  ‘To a Sicilian,’ said Gerald, ‘yes. They think I’m Croesus.’

  ‘Then if we go to Palermo, it will help us know where we stand,’ said Alex firmly. ‘Clear things up.’

  ‘You really think,’ said Jess, ‘we should visit that address?’

  ‘What’s to lose?’

  There came a distant rustle of wildlife in the undergrowth beyond the terrace – a snake perhaps? She tensed but she wasn’t going to let it frighten her. ‘Okay, you win… There probably won’t be anyone home anyway, because she’s here, isn’t she, in Roccamare? But I’m not sure we should take the kids.’