by Penny Feeny
‘The harbour in Roccamare?’
‘Yes.’
‘We aren’t there. We’re on an island.’
‘What island?’ said Gerald faintly.
‘It’s the butterfly island,’ said Lily. ‘We came here to go fishing with Peppe but Harry didn’t feel well so we missed the ferry. We’re going to stay the night and get the first one in the morning. Carlotta’s car is in Marsala and she will bring us back.’
‘Get me Carlotta,’ barked Gerald. Lily held out the receiver but Carlotta was negotiating with the lady behind the bar, who owned the pensione, and by the time she came over the line was dead.
Lily rang later from the restaurant, with another gettone, while the sardines were being flipped on their skewers. Harry’s colour had returned and he was looking forward to peeling the charred flesh off the fishes’ backbones and popping it into his mouth. He was starving, he said. This time Lily spoke to Jess. She could tell she had been crying so she tried to comfort her. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Harry’s better now. You mustn’t worry about him.’
‘Darling,’ said Jess and her voice sounded like wood creaking. ‘You shouldn’t go off without telling anyone.’
‘But we didn’t. We told Dolly we were going with Marcello and we told Marcello we were going fishing and we told Gerald…’ Here she hesitated because she knew she hadn’t been frank with him. ‘It was a bit of a mix-up,’ she said. ‘We didn’t mean to miss the ferry.’
‘Is she… is Carlotta Galetti looking after you?’
‘Yes, she bought us lunch and gelato and now we’re having the fish Harry caught for our supper.’
‘Does she want to speak to me?’
Lily glanced over at Carlotta, who appeared to be listening intently to whatever Harry was telling her. ‘I don’t think so, not especially.’
‘Right,’ said Jess. ‘We’re going to come for you.’
‘You can’t come now,’ said Lily. ‘You won’t be able to get here.’ She felt very sensible and grown-up as she said, ‘We’ll be okay. We’ll see you in the morning.’
The room in the pensione had a red tiled floor and white painted walls. The wardrobe, chest and bedstead were made of heavy oak. The landlady put in an extra bed but it was only big enough for Harry, so Lily and Carlotta shared the double. The room was hot and stuffy, from baking in the sun all day, so they had to sleep with the windows and shutters open for fresh air. Lily was restless; she kept thinking about the bats in the caves and how they came out after dark. She imagined them circling and swooping through the window and sucking her blood – which was ridiculous because she was far more likely to be targeted by mosquitoes. Carlotta tried to reassure her and two or three times during the night Lily found she had snuggled herself into her arms and Carlotta’s lacy bra was pressed into her back and their hair was mingled on the pillows.
When she was woken early the next morning by the delicate pink sunrise, Carlotta was washed and dressed and wearing lipstick. She was sitting at the end of the bed, on the coverlet, watching Lily yawn and stretch and come to life. Harry had yet to stir.
‘I didn’t sleep much,’ confessed Carlotta with a wry smile. ‘Besides, we cannot be late on this occasion. It would be inexcusable.’
They roused Harry and the landlady gave them bread and jam for breakfast and they arrived promptly to catch the first ferry of the day. Lily had assumed Carlotta would drive them home to Roccamare, but Jess and Alex were already at the dockside in Marsala, waiting for them. Even though Carlotta was wearing yesterday’s clothes, her parents looked ten times more crumpled. Jess had piled her hair into a topknot, which gave her added height, and the pair of them looked gaunt as scarecrows. And angrier than she had ever seen them, quivering with a fury that was terrifyingly polite.
‘You know abduction is a crime?’ said Alex.
‘I thought Lily had explained on the telephone…’
‘You can’t blame the child.’
‘I don’t! I meant that there has been a misunderstanding. I would like to make some explanation. If I can talk to you or see you another time…’
Alex said, ‘I think you have burned your boats.’
Jess said simply, ‘No.’
Carlotta said in desperation, ‘Let me give you my address in Rome.’ She scrawled on a piece of paper and held it out beseechingly. ‘Please take it.’
Alex ignored her, placing one hand on Lily’s shoulder and the other on Harry’s. ‘Come along now, kiddies.’ And they were marched to the car without being able to say goodbye properly.
In later years when Lily conjured up Favignana, their visit to it took on a mystical surreal quality. The boat trip, the swimming, the singing, the hot night in the pensione, even dunking Harry underwater to wash away the vomit, might have been part of a dream sequence, something that had never really happened. She knew it had happened, of course, that day on the butterfly island, because it was the reason the McKenzies never went on holiday to Villa Ercole again.
Part Two
1979 – 1982
14
1979
Carlotta Galetti unlocked the metal grille and raised it with a clang. Clangs reverberated along the street as other shutters were thrown up and shops opened. She went inside and adjusted the window display. The rising January sun illuminated every fleck of dust. She wiped a cloth over kidskin and hide, buffed a chrome clasp, some brass buckles. She liked polishing handbags, the warm tactile nature of the leather, the satisfaction of burnishing it to a sheen.
Claudio had gone. After two years and four months they’d unleashed their final quarrel. It hadn’t been vitriolic: they’d snapped at each other like bad-tempered terriers and admitted, with a sense of release, that their relationship was over. At least it should have been a sense of release – a new year, a new beginning – but Carlotta felt weighed down by anti-climax and, if she was honest, fear. After all, she was nearly thirty and, oh, the horror of it!
The morning trade was desultory. A couple, arm-in-arm, paused to look in the window. When they entered, her hopes rose. They meandered from one side of the shop to the other, picking up bags and putting them down again, leaving fingerprints. Carlotta smiled and waited with her hands folded. They ignored her and left. She called the nearest bar and ordered coffee for herself and Iacopo, who was sorting through the order books in the stock room. The boy delivering the coffee was the only person she saw in the next hour. The day weighed heavy on her. The shop was on a side street off Corso Vittorio Emanuele and footfall was erratic. Then a middle-aged man came in and her spirits lifted again.
This was the easiest of all targets. He would have money. He would have a wife or a daughter or a mistress he wanted to appease. He’d enjoy a bit of banter and demure eye-rolling. He’d watch her calf muscles tense as she stood on tiptoe to hook down a bag from one of the highest shelves (they always wanted a bag from the top shelf). She would spread out his selection and they would be surrounded by the soft flutter of tissue paper and the ripe earthy animal scent of the leather and his hand would accidentally brush against hers as she showed him how clever the clasp was. He would take much longer than necessary to make up his mind. She would take advantage of this by foisting the most expensive choice on him, but she’d reward him with praise as he counted over his lire. Cash was always preferred.
The new customer was burly and thick-set, with an arrogant air. He wanted a briefcase. He was carrying a folder bulging with papers and was impatient to find something more suitable. Carlotta fetched him a couple to compare and placed them on top of the glass counter. ‘I think the antique brown is a lovely colour,’ she said brightly.
‘Oh, do you?’ His tone was condescending and he barely raised his heavy-lidded eyes.
Carlotta bit back her temper. She wasn’t going to challenge a client and lose a sale. She flashed a charming smile. ‘It’s a Fendi, so we know the quality is reliable,’ she said. ‘And it’s very capacious. Let me show you.’
He put down
his folder at the same time as she opened up the briefcase. As the one knocked into the other, his papers went flying. He swore at her. ‘Stupid bitch.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Carlotta. ‘I’ll help you pick them up.’
She dropped to her knees and began gathering them off the floor. He stood watching, muttering, telling her to be careful. She could feel his contempt. She could also feel his eyes on her legs as she reached into awkward spaces and her skirt rode up. She became flustered. Papers slipped from her grasp, wouldn’t stack neatly and the whole operation took longer than it should. When she finished, he didn’t thank her. He pointed to the top shelf. ‘Get that one down, will you? I want to look at it.’
‘Which one do you mean?’
It was in the furthest corner. ‘And I’m in a hurry. I haven’t got any more time to waste.’
Any other day she might have ridden out this contretemps with a disagreeable customer, but today her heart was squeezed into a ball of pain and her spine was crumbling. It had nothing to do with Claudio. Today was the anniversary of the Belice earthquake. Her ears were full of the clamour of falling masonry; her legs wouldn’t move.
‘What in God’s name are you waiting for?’ said the man.
Carlotta fumbled beneath the counter and rang the bell to summon Iacopo. He shuffled in, smoothing the weft of hair that he combed carefully into position on top of his head. He dressed in sober suits, but wore a vividly patterned tie to cheer the world. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said.
‘The gentleman wants to see that briefcase up there,’ said Carlotta. ‘But I couldn’t find the pole to hook it down.’
The pole was resting at an angle, in full view. ‘It’s here,’ said Iacopo.
‘Oh, how stupid of me not to spot it.’
He understood. ‘Are you feeling poorly?’
She pressed her hands to her abdomen. ‘Actually I have a stomach ache.’
Iacopo didn’t know the significance of this date, but he was a kind man. The di Monzas had no children of their own and she’d been grateful when they’d taken her under their wing. She didn’t dwell on the uncongenial jobs she’d had before she’d spotted their advertisement for a sales assistant who could speak English. They’d even helped her find a cheap apartment nearby (albeit a single room with a bed curtained in one alcove and a kitchen in another).
‘I’ll relieve you,’ Iacopo said now. ‘Take some chamomile tea and you’ll soon feel better.’
‘Thank you.’
She left without reference to the customer, who was grunting irritably, and went into the stock room. She opened the ledger Iacopo had been working through and checked the accounts. She picked up the phone and thought about cancelling her lunch with Eva. ‘I want you to give me every grisly detail,’ Eva had said when she’d rung last night to tell her about Claudio. ‘That man was never worthy of you.’
She was still holding the receiver, inert, when Iacopo came in and said, ‘He’s gone.’
‘Did he buy?’
‘No.’ He looked at her anxiously. ‘You’re very pale.’
‘Am I?’ In truth, Iacopo and his wife, Silvana, fussed over her too much, worrying about her health and her diet. They didn’t raise her wages often but they liked to treat her to delicacies that might remind her of Sicily: a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, a box of crystallised orange segments or an embroidered tea towel they’d picked up in the Porta Portese Sunday market. She had a drawer full of tea towels. They kept hoping, Silvana admitted, that one day she would have a full-size kitchen to use them in, because she would have her own family to feed.
‘Perhaps you should rest,’ he said.
‘Oh, no, I’m meeting a friend.’
She put down the phone; she wouldn’t cancel. Lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, who knew what thoughts from the past would haunt her? What could she remember of Francesco? Thick straight eyebrows; one tooth that overlapped another and gave him a lop-sided smile. A slim waist and deft hands; hungry kisses. A bag of flour bursting and covering him with a white film, through which his eyes smouldered like black coals. At the time, they had laughed and joked that he looked like a ghost. And for eleven years, that was what he’d been: a ghost.
She blinked back the image. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘The man was aggressive but I shouldn’t have let him intimidate me.’
Iacopo consulted his watch. Like his tie it was gaudy, the type of watch a child would pick. ‘Very well. I’ll mind the counter and you can do the stocktaking until we close for lunch. You’re sure you’ll be all right?’
‘Yes, perfectly.’
The bell jangled and he left her. At five to one she shut the ledger and took a postcard from a small selection kept in the drawer of the desk, along with business cards and headed notepaper. She chose a picture of the Fontana di Trevi because everyone knew that if you threw in a coin you would be sure to come back to Rome, so, in a way, it was an invitation. She scrawled ‘Auguri’ (greetings) and then, more carefully, she wrote the address. She needed to buy a stamp – that was if she sent it at all. Sometimes she would leave a card creasing at the bottom of her handbag, gathering fluff and smudges of lipstick until it became too dirty to post. It depended how reckless she felt.
*
Eva was waiting in the osteria where they’d arranged to meet, at the edge of Campo de’ Fiori. She hadn’t had far to come; she was apprenticed to her uncle, a tailor who rented a workshop in the warren of side streets that snaked away from the piazza. He’d been reluctant to take on a female: tailoring was a man’s job – practically precision engineering. Besides, all his clients were men so how could she take their measurements with decency? But Eva had persuaded him to teach her the skills of cutting and shaping and stitching so she could operate her own business as a dressmaker. Women’s clothing would give her scope to experiment – though her interest in fashion was purely technical. She was skinny and sallow like someone who didn’t get enough daylight and she always wore baggy shirts over jeans or dungarees so she’d have plenty of useful pockets.
Carlotta knew they made an incongruous pair when they were together: she in her tight skirts and high heels and full make-up and Eva dressed like a garage mechanic. But Eva, as she pointed out, was kept busy in the back room, she didn’t have to woo customers. And if any men were to cast inviting looks in their direction she would soon curb them with a scowl. She waved as Carlotta approached, jumped up and embraced her. ‘Cara Carli!’ Then she tipped her head on one side, studying her, and said, ‘What’s the matter? I thought we were going to celebrate. Have you had a bad day?’
Carlotta shrugged off her jacket. Eva must have seen the unhappiness in her eyes. ‘It’s been a shitty morning,’ she said. ‘I lost control for a bit.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, I misread a customer. I thought I could flirt with him to get a sale, you know, exchange a bit of banter, but it backfired. He was a real bastard, but I’ve got over it now.’
Eva indicated the blackboard on the wall. ‘Pasta e fagioli is the special today,’ she said. ‘You need feeding up.’
Carlotta lit a cigarette. ‘Let me calm my nerves first.’
‘Just so long as you don’t regret ditching Claudio. Haven’t I been telling you to get rid of him for ages?’
Eva had a very casual attitude to the opposite sex, but she was still cushioned by her large extended family. Gaggles of brothers and cousins. Always a christening or an anniversary or a birthday to celebrate. She’d never had to cross the Atlantic bereft and alone – or fly back again with a second disaster behind her. ‘I seem to be lousy at picking men,’ Carlotta said.
The owner of the osteria deposited a carafe of white wine on their table and a basket of bread. He was stout and affable, the large belly beneath his apron a tribute to his wife’s cooking. She was in the kitchen, juggling saucepans. There were only the two of them so the menu was limited, but it was a cheap place to eat. Most of the clientele were either stallholders from the m
arket or artisans from the hive of nearby workshops.
Eva gave their order, poured the wine into their tumblers and then observed, ‘I don’t see why you need a man at all. What did Claudio ever do for you, apart from demand all of your attention all of the time? And maybe even that wouldn’t have mattered—’ here she rolled her eyes, screwed up her nose and sucked in her cheeks before blowing an explosive raspberry ‘—if he wasn’t so fucking boring. Did he ever give you a good time? Be honest.’
Carlotta smiled. ‘He was a good dancer. You know I like to go dancing.’
‘And in bed, I suppose?’
‘Actually, I think the reason we lasted so long was because of the break-ups. It was so romantic when we got together again, it would unite us for a while.’
‘I kept warning you not to take him back,’ said Eva. ‘And every time you ignored me.’
‘You were right.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘We should have split ages ago, after the visit to Roccamare. His behaviour there was impossible, even though he knew how painful it all was for me. It was crazy to have hoped he might give me some support… But I promise we really are finished now.’
Two dishes of pasta and beans were set in front of them, glistening with warm olive oil and pungent with garlic. Carlotta dipped in her spoon. Eva sloshed more wine into her glass and said, very soberly, ‘You know, Carli, I think you should leave the past where it is.’
‘But I do!’ Her voice faltered. ‘I can’t help that today is the anniversary.’
‘Of what?’
‘The earthquake.’
Eva looked stricken. ‘Oh, my darling, how dreadful! Why didn’t you let me know? We could have met tomorrow instead.’
Carlotta said, ‘I don’t think that would make any difference.’
Eva laid her hand on her arm; her fingers were scarred with tiny nicks and pinpricks. ‘I know it’s hard for you to take advice, but I’m your friend and I want you to be happy. That’s all.’
They talked often of the things that would make them happy. How Carlotta would take over the business when the di Monzas retired and build up the most exclusive selection of leather goods in the whole of Rome. And how Eva, in an elegant atelier, would develop a clientele that was both distinguished and adventurous, how her designs would feature in the pages of glossy magazines. They listed the luxuries they would buy if they had the money: jewellery, cars, holidays, extravagant bed linen. And then they would laugh at their fantasies and go back to work.
