Secrets in Sicily

by Penny Feeny

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘It’s fine, I don’t get jealous. I’m not the possessive type.’

  Alex would give you the coat off his back, he’d share his last crust, his last penny, but wasn’t this going too far? ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You wouldn’t care if I slept with your best friend? Are you so sure of me?’ As she recalled, things hadn’t turned out well for Jules et Jim.

  ‘If we’re strong together, nothing can beat us. Whatever you do, it won’t alter how I feel about you. I’d still love you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. But, as it happens, I don’t want to sleep with anyone else.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he’d said, pinning her arms behind her back with one hand and tickling her ribs with the other, as if the conversation had been a mighty joke.

  Toby Forrester was the kind of person who grew on you. Initially Jess had thought him nondescript – he was slight and bony, his features unremarkable – but he had a warm mellifluous voice and a cheerful presence. The very fact that he was in the car, tapping out a rhythm and performing his Elvis pastiche, helped her worries subside. Why was she being so selfish over Lily? Genuine love bred generosity. It didn’t follow, even if Carlotta Galetti was Lily’s biological mother, that they couldn’t come to an arrangement. It was a challenge they ought to be able to meet.

  When the radio programme ended, Alex said to Toby, with a hint of mockery, ‘We hear you’re the great Phoenician authority now. Gerald can’t decide whether to be pleased or miffed.’

  ‘Is that why he didn’t want to pick me up?’

  ‘Och, no, we volunteered. Though he has got disgracefully lazy in his old age.’

  ‘I couldn’t resist the summons,’ said Toby. ‘We want to cross-reference the new discoveries at Mozia with the ones they’re making at Carthage. The Tophet they’re excavating there is much bigger but they’re unearthing the same sort of funerary urns.’

  ‘What’s a Tophet?’ said Jess.

  ‘It’s a sacred burial ground, used for the remains of very young children. In fact, when the contents of the urns are analysed, we’re finding the bones of small animals in there too, mixed up with the babies. Only scraps of bone, mind you, after cremation. The jury’s out on whether it adds up to ritual sacrifice.’

  His tone was matter-of-fact, but Jess shivered in horror. ‘Of babies?’

  ‘Lots of ancient cultures practised child sacrifice,’ said Toby.

  ‘Oh, my God, that’s gross!’

  ‘The Phoenicians had a particularly bad reputation, although there isn’t any direct evidence. We know the Greeks and Romans accused them of it but there’s a strong whiff of propaganda.’ He noticed his pen was leaking in the breast pocket of his shirt, took it out and contemplated it. ‘Another possibility, if the babies in the crematorium didn’t die naturally, is that they were seen as not-yet-human – the way we might consider a foetus.’

  ‘Is that because they couldn’t survive without their mothers?’

  Toby put the pen back in his pocket; his fingers were now inky too. ‘Precisely. But I shan’t poke my head above the parapet until I’ve done more investigation.’

  ‘Go for it, man,’ said Alex speeding along an empty stretch of road. ‘Never accept the status quo.’

  Jess said, ‘Please can we stop talking about killing children? It’s making me feel queasy.’

  *

  On their return, Villa Ercole lay basking in the late afternoon sun like a sleeping cat and there was a general sense of torpor. Toby was staying in a guest room in the main house, rather than in the annexe the McKenzies were renting. The three of them strolled into the hallway and were puzzled by the silence that greeted them.

  ‘Did they forget I was coming?’

  ‘Gerald!’ called Alex.

  Gerald tottered out of his study and fell into his nephew’s embrace. ‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘Must have nodded off. But it’s good to see you, as ever.’

  ‘Where are the others?’ said Jess.

  ‘Oh, Dolly’s outside harvesting something. Beans, I think. Now, what will you have to drink? I’ve a couple of bottles of Pinot Bianco in the fridge. We’re used to sweltering here but the temperature must be a bit of a shock to you, old chap.’

  ‘Where are the kids? Are they still at Turi’s?’

  ‘No, we didn’t go in the end. They went off with Marcello Campione instead.’ He rubbed his eyes, inspected his watch and tapped the glass. ‘This humidity’s a pest. I told them to be back before you were. I’m sorry, my dear, we lost track…’

  ‘I’ll go and fetch them,’ said Jess, reluctantly deferring the treat of chilled white wine. ‘You’ve been driving all day, Alex.’ She was surprised they’d stayed out for so long, but the Campiones were a hospitable family and a couple of additional children would easily have been absorbed.

  She climbed into the car and drove towards Roccamare. The day’s heat was trapped in the furrows of the land and the stone of the buildings but the light had taken on a softer quality. The rays of the dipping sun burnished everything they touched: the fronds of the palm trees, the whitewashed cottages hugging the shore, the long ripples on the sand and the sea. The Campiones had a newly built single-storey villa on the outskirts of the town. Marcello’s sisters were sitting on the doorstep braiding each other’s hair.

  Jess said, ‘I’ve come for Lily and Harry. Do you know where I can find them?’

  Giovanna said, ‘They are not here.’

  ‘Are they at the beach?’ When both girls shrugged, she said, ‘I’d better speak to Marcello. Or your mamma? Is she in?’

  As Giovanna stood aside to let her knock, Marcello rounded the corner on his bike.

  ‘Ciao,’ said Jess. ‘Aren’t Lily and Harry with you?’ He shook his head and she began to be alarmed. She wondered if she could have missed them on her way down, if there was some mysterious alternative route to Villa Ercole that she didn’t know about. It was a ridiculous line of thought, but the brain clutches at straws when it doesn’t want to accept the unpalatable.

  ‘When did you last see them?’

  Marcello frowned, thinking. ‘Sta mattina.’

  ‘This morning! But that’s impossible…’

  He pointed at the wheel of his bike and said, ‘Aveva una foratura.’

  Jess didn’t know what he meant but she was determined not to show signs of panic. Not yet anyway. She thanked him and drove back slowly the way she had come, looking for clues. How could she have failed to spot the bike discarded by the side of the road? She pulled over to take a closer look at it. She could see the flat tyre. She could also see the crude attempts to cover it with shreds of vegetation. Why would anyone do that? What were they trying to hide? With mounting dread, she returned to the Campiones. The girls had now disappeared but Marcello was still riding up and down. She hailed him.

  ‘I’ve found the bike,’ she said. ‘Do you know what happened? Why did they leave it? Where did they go?’

  ‘They go in the car,’ said Marcello. ‘With the lady.’

  She knew who ‘the lady’ was, the only person it could possibly be. ‘What for?’ she asked and the words came out like a strangled yowl.

  ‘For fishing,’ he said.

  ‘Fishing! Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ She tried to smile and look grateful as she got back into the driving seat for the third time, and sped off.

  There was such a disjunction between Jess’s wild imaginings and the affable mood of the three men sitting out on the terrace, they might have inhabited two different stratospheres. She felt as if she were mouthing silent screams and hammering on an invisible wall and the others neither noticed nor cared. Toby was the first to become aware of her.

  ‘Good grief, Jessamy,’ he said. ‘You look stricken. What is it?’

  ‘They aren’t there.’

  Alex swivelled his head. ‘What do you mean?’ He pulled out a chair for her. She didn’t sit, but gripped the top of it so hard the wrought iron bit
into her palms.

  ‘You promised to look after them!’ she accused Gerald.

  ‘The kids? But I did,’ he protested. ‘I mean, Dolly did. And she rang me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lily.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Lord knows. Some bar somewhere. She told me they’d had a problem with the bike and they were spending the day with the Campiones. I told her to make sure they came back in good time. I regret, my dear, they didn’t stick to their side of the bargain.’

  ‘Regret! Gerald, what were you playing at? They’ve been kidnapped on your watch.’

  ‘Oh, no…’ His face deepened to an unhappy purple. ‘Surely not…’

  Alex rose and stood behind Jess. ‘Don’t rush to conclusions, sweetheart.’ He wrapped his arms around her like a cloak and she didn’t struggle. She allowed herself to be seated, to be given a glass of wine, which tasted like ashes on her tongue. Dolly was tracked down and fetched from the vegetable plot, but she wasn’t much help. She threw her apron over her face and sobbed wildly behind it, chastising herself and imploring intervention from the saints and conveniently forgetting a single word of English.

  Toby, who was a believer in the value of method and patient deduction, took a pad of paper and a pen from his bag. ‘Let’s analyse this rationally,’ he said, and began writing things down. ‘They left with Marcello on the bike? And then they got a puncture? They were picked up by a woman they clearly knew. She agreed to take them fishing. Marcello went home. Lily rang to tell Gerald about the bike and he told her not to be late. She didn’t sound scared, did she, Gerald?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And she didn’t say who she was with?’

  ‘She mentioned an expedition of some kind. I presumed with the Campiones… My mistake.’

  ‘So who is this mysterious woman?’ said Toby. ‘And what makes you think she’s a kidnapper?’

  Alex was sitting next to Jess, clasping her hand, not letting go. He said, ‘Her name – at least the name she gives – is Carlotta Galetti. It’s hard to see how it could be anyone else. She’s been hanging about the past few weeks, shadowing us. She used to live in Santa Margherita and she’s told us she lost her baby daughter in the earthquake.’

  Toby put down his pen. ‘Am I following your drift correctly?’

  ‘You remember the chaos?’ said Alex.

  ‘Of course I do. So where’s she been all these years?’

  ‘You may well ask!’ said Jess fiercely. Carlotta had forfeited all her previous sympathy. ‘And now she’s taken – stolen – both of them.’

  ‘They must have gone willingly,’ said Toby. ‘Or the boy, Marcello, would have said something.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ said Jess, as the significance struck her. ‘Remember how Harry’s been nagging us about a fishing trip? And we never got around to organising one. That must be how she persuaded them.’

  Toby said, ‘Isn’t it possible that’s what they’re doing? It’s probably taken longer than expected to catch something, but the pair of them the door any could walk through minute.’

  ‘There you have it,’ said Gerald. ‘A sensible suggestion at last.’

  Alex said, ‘You only drove as far as the Campiones’. You didn’t go into Roccamare. If we head off to the harbour the lads there are bound to know whether the kids went out in a boat.’

  ‘With Carlotta?’ Jess was unable to picture her fishing with either a line or a net.

  ‘She’ll know somebody, won’t she? Or press-gang that boyfriend of hers to take them aboard. What do you think, Doll?’

  Dolly, red-eyed and puffed up like a turkey, gave a little bleat and crossed herself. Despite living close to the sea, few locals ever learnt to swim: drowning was a perpetual fear.

  Jess refused to envisage a boat capsizing. She was more concerned that Carlotta was going to make some outrageous demand, holding the children to ransom in the middle of the Mediterranean. And how could they negotiate anything with her, with a person they didn’t trust? ‘Oh, my God, what might she do to them?’

  Alex said, ‘She won’t harm them.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ She lurched to her feet. ‘Come on. We’ll both go this time.’

  They headed directly for the harbour. Some mornings they would go with Dolly to the fish auctions held there – all theatre and clamour as crates stuffed with shining silver booty were slapped down and auctioned off. Now, in the early evening, a strong breeze was getting up and the boats tied to their berths were straining restlessly, like horses, in the scurry of the wind.

  Alex approached Gaspare, whom he knew from games of table football in the Jolly Bar. Gaspare consulted Renzo, who was sluicing out his cabin. Neither of them had seen the children; they weren’t aware of a woman trying to arrange a fishing trip, but Benito could have taken some extra crew. That was his boat in the distance. It might be worth waiting for him to dock.

  What choice did they have? The speck on the horizon crept forward at an infinitesimal pace, rolling with the swell of the sea. The wait was agonising, but as long as they could make out the chunky little craft getting closer they couldn’t think of leaving. The wind blew Jess’s hair into her eyes and made them smart, but it was a warm wind from Africa – not vicious, she told herself, not destructive, but, sweet Jesus, why was the damn boat so slow?

  It was still some yards away when it became clear that Benito carried no passengers. Lily and Harry would have been gambolling about on deck, eager to land. Jess recalled Harry that morning, the mischievous twinkle as he licked jam from the knife, the strawberry tip of his tongue. Her own tongue was welded to the roof of her mouth; her throat was too dry to swallow.

  ‘They’re not there,’ said Alex. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is.’ He grabbed Jess, pulling her away from the edge of the harbour wall, and ran with her towards the car.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Benito? Ask if he knows anything?’

  ‘I’m not making any more fucking useless enquiries.’

  It was as if a switch had flipped. Rarely unleashed, Alex’s temper was a wild and volatile thing. He thundered back up the hill to Villa Ercole and Jess clutched her seat-belt thinking: Wherever they are, we’re six hours behind them, at least; whatever chance have we got? She didn’t speak aloud.

  It was hard to keep pace with Alex when he was in a rage and he stormed ahead of her into the villa. The others were waiting in the hallway and she was afraid that her husband, looming over Gerald, was going to pick up their host like a puppet and throttle him.

  ‘Alex,’ said Toby, trying to intercede from the wings.

  ‘They’re not in Roccamare,’ Alex yelled at Gerald. ‘They’ve not gone on any fucking fishing trip. You promised us you would look after those wee kiddies, but did you, fuck. All you are is a drunken sodomite who fools himself he’s got a brain superior to other people’s. So fucking superior you can’t sell a single bloody thing you’ve written… let alone manage normal human interaction.’

  ‘Alex, don’t!’ pleaded Jess.

  ‘It must be fucking brilliant up there in your ivory tower,’ went on Alex remorselessly. ‘So blindingly brilliant you never have to bother dealing with anything so tiresome as a six-year old.’ Dolly was standing open-mouthed and he wheeled round to her. ‘We should have known better than to trust Gerald,’ he said. ‘But you, Dolly. What the hell were you thinking—?’

  Toby interrupted again. ‘Now, listen, Alex.’

  ‘Fuck off, will you? I haven’t finished.’

  ‘No,’ said Toby. ‘You fuck off. You can’t just come in and lambast people.’

  ‘In a situation like this, I’ve every bloody right to lambast who I want.’

  ‘Gerald has something to tell you.’

  ‘Does he now? It’s a bit too goddam late for apologies.’

  Toby said, ‘Tell them anyway, Gerald, if you can get a word in.’

  Gerald coughed and squared his shoulders nervously, although he was always going to
look weak and crumbling next to the avenging Alex. ‘While you were out, there was another phone call,’ he said.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Um, Lily, as it happens.’

  12

  As it turned out, Carlotta wouldn’t have been able to identify Peppe’s boat because it had a fresh coat of paint and a new name. It was painted a glossy forest green with a white line running around the bow, and in black lettering on the white line was written, not Concetta, but Donnafugata.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Harry, jumping up and down on the spot and flapping his hands in anticipation the way he used to when he was three or four.

  ‘Oh, Peppe…’ said Carlotta sadly.

  The two of them talked together at some length in Sicilian, which Lily found difficult to follow. She didn’t see any cause for dismay, she’d seen boats that were far scruffier and stinkier, but she could sense an undercurrent as their argument escalated. She’d thought Carlotta was pleased to find Peppe, but what had started out as a nice idea now seemed fraught with disaster. She and Harry stood to one side to let them get on with it – that was what they did when Dolly was in full flow, until the row, like a storm, had blown through.

  Carlotta called them over to her. ‘I’m sorry you will be disappointed,’ she said.

  ‘Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Peppe and I…’ The muscles of her throat quivered as she swallowed. ‘I mean, it’s not a good idea for me to go on his boat.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Harry pointed out. ‘It’s me who wants to go fishing. Me and Lily.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Lily. ‘I’m not that keen.’

  ‘Well, I am.’ He glowered at Carlotta. She didn’t really know Harry, that was the problem. ‘You promised!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought it would be fine, that Peppe would be glad to see me after so long. But, instead, he is angry.’

  ‘Why’s he angry?’

  ‘He says I don’t care about family any more, as a good Sicilian should, but, on the soul of my mother, this is not true!’

  Harry nudged Lily. ‘Ask him if he’ll take me anyway.’

  ‘Ask him yourself.’