2006 - Wildcat Moon

by Babs Horton

  At first she’d thought he was the Killivray ghost but he wasn’t a ghost. He was real. He was blood and bone and breath and heartbeats…She could see the pulse in his neck moving like an anemone in a dark rock pool. She knew who he was…He was the river man, the old man river who just kept rolling along…

  She loved that song. They had it on a record upstairs and sometimes she played it over and over again. It rattled her bones and filled her eyes up with tears. He must have heard them playing it and come to visit them to say hello. She wasn’t afraid any more. He was a good man, she could tell good men, she could always tell. Cissie looked across at Charlie and Freddie Payne and giggled. They looked funny with their eyes as round as marbles, their bushy eyebrows arched like old railway bridges.

  “Do any of you know where I could find a woman called Gwennie?” the man asked again.

  He had a voice like warm treacle sliding over the back of a spoon.

  “She moved away from here years ago,” Charlie said in a quiet voice.

  “Ay, that she did. And then she died,” Freddie said looking down into his pint pot.

  The man turned around slowly. His shoulders were wide and she could see the movement of his muscles through the doth of his shirt. The door banged shut and bottles rattled on the shelves.

  Cissie ran upstairs, two steps at a time and watched him walk back along Bloater Row towards Rhoskilly Village.

  The days in Santa Caterina passed quickly, built up into weeks and still there was no word from Martha Grimble. Sometimes Archie felt sad and his belly ached with the wanting of her. At those times he took himself off to his bedroom and Lena and Alfredo let him be because they knew he was missing his mammy, fretting in case she had abandoned him.

  Most of the time, though, he was blissfully happy living with the Galvinis. He went swimming most days with Alfredo and sometimes with Lena who shrieked and screamed all the while and made Archie weak from laughing.

  Soon he was swimming on his own and they had to coax him out of the water.

  Alfredo had promised him that once he was a good swimmer he would take him out fishing in the boat.

  That day had finally come. Lena packed them off with a bundle containing their supper and Alfredo rowed out through the dear green waters.

  They sat together in silence as the sun set dappling the water around them in gold and crimson. Alfredo showed Archie how to let the nets down into the water.

  Then they rowed bade slowly as night began to fall.

  Archie thought it was the most magical experience of his life.

  He loved it here in Santa Caterina, couldn’t think of a better place in the world. He sat entranced in the front of the boat, watching as they slid towards the harbour.

  The convent loomed above the houses of Santa Caterina, moonlight silhouetting it against an indigo sky. Oil lamps were lit in the houses and the candles in the small shrines glittered in the darkness.

  Later, as they wound their way home through the narrow streets he asked Alfredo about the man II Camaleonte.

  “How did he help the children, Alfredo?”

  “Well, in times of war, many people were taken away and maybe killed and they very desperate to save their children. Il Camaleonte works to get these children to places where they be safe.”

  “Was he brave?”

  “He very brave man and risk his life many times.”

  “Did any of the children come here to Santa Caterina?”

  “Can you keep secrets, Archie?”

  “Oh, yes, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye and all that,” he said with shining eyes.

  “In war very many children brought here to Santa Caterina. Very important that no one know. There lots of brave men and women who working with Il Camaleonte to bring them here and hide them. Many of these people lose their lives trying to bring the Jewish children here from all over Italy and France and Germany too. The children in great danger, you see.”

  “And they gave up their lives just to save the children?” Archie said in awe.

  “Si. Because they know what is right. They could have ignore children and nobody say they bad for doing this. But right is right and wrong is wrong. They know difference.”

  Archie nodded. “It’s called conscience, isn’t it, Alfredo?”

  “Si, conscience. And do you believe in this conscience, Archie?”

  “I do. Sometimes I know right from wrong from what my mammy has told me, but other times when I don’t know I stay very still and quiet and after a while I just know. Only sometimes it’s difficult because you need to be brave too.”

  Alfredo smiled. “Is not easy to be brave, Archie, when we afraid. Probably Il Camaleonte not always brave…Brave is like a muscle—you needs to work it to make it strong.”

  “What would have happened to the Jewish children if they hadn’t been helped?”

  “They would have been killed.”

  Archie stared at him in horror.

  “Alfredo, where were the children hidden?”

  “In the convent.”

  “With the nuns?”

  “Si. The children was brought to Santa Caterina at night and on the nights when they arrive the good people of Santa Caterina puts out the candles in the shrines, closes their shutters and then frightened little children is brought up through the dark streets and into the convent.”

  “Did they ever see their parents again, Alfredo?”

  “Most of them didn’t. They have to make new lives in new places.”

  Archie imagined how afraid they must have been. To have left their families and not know where they were going. He shuddered at the thought of not seeing his mammy again. He loved her to bits.

  “While they here in Santa Caterina the nuns keep them safe. The local people all keeps secret of Il Camaleonte. Many of them who lives here has been helped by him.”

  Archie looked up at Alfredo with sparkling eyes.

  “Alfredo, was it Il Camaleonte who helped you against the bad men from Naples?”

  “Si.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Alfredo laughed. “I don’t know, I never see him, nobody except a special few ever sees him.”

  “What did the children do in the convent?”

  “They looked after by the nuns, dressed the same as other orphans, they go to lessons and even to mass but they don’t take the sacrament because they Jewish.”

  “How long did they stay there?”

  “Sometimes for short time, sometimes for long. When time is right they was moved on, try to get them to safe places. Many goes to England and America.”

  “So the nuns were brave too?”

  “Oh, very brave! Santa Caterina nuns the bravest in whole ofltalia.”

  “Was Sister Isabella brave?”

  “Si. And Sister Angelica is best forger in the whole of Italy, whole of Europe even. Her father was a bad man, a gangster in Naples, good forger too. Sister Angelica no like him but she learn a lot from him. She can make you passport, give you new name, new identity just like that,” he said with a snap of his fingers.

  Archie looked at Alfredo with eyes full of admiration and astonishment.

  “A lot of people think they just silly women shut up away from the world but they not afraid to get their hands dirty, as long as they keep their souls clean.”

  “But isn’t making false passports against the law?”

  “Of course! But it’s God’s laws they obey, they have to break the rules of men sometimes.”

  “Do they still help people escape?”

  Alfredo nodded. “Not so much now, but Dio grazie there still brave people that carries on the good work of Il Camaleonte. Let’s hope there always will be, Archie.”

  At dawn, after their fishing trips Alfredo would creep into Archie’s room and wake him gently. They made their way through the sleeping town to the boat and rowed out to empty the nets.

  Alfredo showed him how to sort the fish and taught him the names
of all that they caught: stingrays and squid; sole and mullet; sea crickets and cod.

  And they took them all home in buckets to a delighted Lena. Alfredo explained that when they opened the restaurant it would be Archie and Alfredo’s job to fish most days and then Lena would make lovely dishes to sell.

  Each day Archie made the journey to fl Panettiere to fetch the bread and sometimes on the way back he stopped in the Silver Bird Cafe and practised his Italian on the old men.

  He helped Alfredo finish painting the inside of the restaurant and climbed the rickety ladder to hang the coloured flags above the doors and windows ready for the opening night.

  Painstakingly he wrote out the menus in his best handwriting and wished that Cissie was here to decorate them. He went with Alfredo in a borrowed three-wheeled van to a distant village to collect furniture from a restaurant that had dosed down. They spent days rubbing down the wood with sandpaper and then painted them a cheerful blue. While they painted, Lena, nimble with a needle, sewed pink-and-white-check table cloths and napkins to match.

  Eloise Fanthorpe sat in her study looking out to sea, an untouched gin and vermouth by her side. She glanced up at the photograph on the wall, and thought about a day in France a long time ago.

  The day the photograph had been taken…

  She had been out for a walk with Hermione. They’d been down to the market and passed the German soldiers in the square. There’d been a lot of activity going on, soldiers scurrying hither and thither, shouting out commands. There was an air of heightened nervousness, a tension that was born of fear.

  Suddenly Hermione had grabbed her arm as a truck had pulled up outside the German Headquarters. Four people were bundled out and marched inside. Two men and two women. They walked with pride, heads held high, eyes trying to maintain a look of bravery. Both the women, though, were looking anxiously over their shoulders towards the direction in which they’d come.

  Eloise remembered-the younger woman’s dress, a grey dress made of a soft material, stained across the chest. Eloise had put her hand to her mouth. This woman was a nursing mother, a mother whose milk was ready, her baby left behind God knew where.

  Sweet Jesus! This war was barbaric.

  It was strange as you got older, she mused, that events from the past could be so wondrously vivid in one’s memory.

  She and Hermione had made the long, hot walk back through the village in silence. The circus had arrived the day before and the Big Top had been set up on a piece of scrubby ground just outside the village. All the local children had been running around excitedly, pointing and squealing at the sight of the animals in the cages.

  She recalled the pungent smell of the lions and tigers, elephants and camels. The soft, sweet aroma of wood smoke curling up from the chimneys of the painted caravans, of sawdust and toffee apples.

  A man on stilts with a beatific smile had passed them and doffed his hat while a stocky woman turned cartwheels over and over on the scrubland.

  On the steps of a caravan a bearded lady had smoked a day pipe. Eloise had seen the face of a beautiful child looking out from the window of a caravan; a dark-eyed, dark-haired child with the most haunted expression on her face that Eloise had ever seen. Above the child’s left eyebrow there was an angry red scar and the fear in her eyes was electrifying.

  They’d passed the circus and then made their way back up the lonely track that led to the house.

  They’d been surprised to find that her father had company. A nun and a tiny man with an enormous moustache were at the house; the tiny man gently crooning to a feverish baby in his arms.

  The baby was the son of a local couple who had been arrested that afternoon and taken off. His sister had been found safe but terrified, hiding in the woodshed. She was being taken to a place of safety but the baby was too sick to be moved. They were still looking for another child whose parents had been arrested but despite the efforts to find her there was no sighting of her.

  And so it came that she and Hermione had become mothers to the baby for a few weeks and had cared for the poor little mite until he had died…

  Her mind went back to the beautiful child she’d seen looking out from the window of the circus caravan.

  And last night in the Pilchard Inn she’d seen that same child again! She was a woman now, of course, but she still had the same dark hair and eyes and the scar, although faded by the years, was still visible when she had pushed back her hair from her face.

  One Sunday in the middle of August Alfredo, Lena and Archie made their way slowly up the steep road to the convent and joined a crowd of people making their way in through the enormous doors of the convent church.

  They emerged from the dark church an hour later. Archie was sleepy and giddy with incense and his ears were ringing with the sound of the singing. As they left the church through a side door and stepped into the inner courtyard of the convent the enormous bells began to ring out and Archie covered his ears with his hands.

  He followed Lena and Alfredo reluctantly across the sundrenched courtyard towards the door that led into the convent. As if by magic the door opened with a rasping sound and a nun’s face peeped round it inquisitively.

  They were led through the dark corridors to a dim cave-like room that smelled strongly of camphor and candles, of roses and a fleeting whiff of marzipan.

  Sister Isabella was waiting for them there. She was old and gaunt and dressed in a severe black habit. She wore spectacles with thick lenses that magnified her beady eyes. She reminded Archie of a crow dipped in starch. She struggled to her feet with difficulty and her face creased up with pleasure. Alfredo hurried to her, embraced her warmly, and kissed her affectionately on both sunken cheeks. Then it was Lena’s turn. Archie squirmed with embarrassment, trying to hold his fears in check.

  His body began to shake and his breath caught in the back of his throat He balled his fists and struggled to batten down a scream of terror that was gathering behind his ribs.

  Sister Isabella turned to him, saw the look of fear in his eyes and was wise enough not to hug him but held him by the arms and looked him up and down with interest.

  “This our friend, Archie Grimble,” Alfredo said proudly.

  “I am very pleased to meet with you,” Sister Isabella beamed at Archie.

  Archie looked up at her in surprise and she threw back her head and laughed.

  “See, I still remembers some English from when I sent to convent in London, England! Sit down and I get Sister Angelica to bring us some drink.”

  She pulled a worn red rope that dangled from the flaking ceiling. An eerie jangling started up somewhere in the convent and very soon a buck-toothed nun appeared bringing a tray with a plate of biscuits and a pitcher of wine.

  Archie stared at Sister Angelica with wide eyes; he could hardly believe that she was a forger, the daughter of a gangster. She smiled sweetly at Archie and then left the room.

  Archie sipped his wine and nibbled at the tiny biscuits that tasted deliriously of almonds. He grew bored at the adult conversation as they jabbered on nineteen to the dozen in Italian until Lena said suddenly, “Dia mio! Look at the time. We must get back, Alfredo, I still has much work to do.”

  “Archie can stay with me a little while, I show him around the convent,” said Sister Isabella.

  Archie was too polite to protest but he followed Lena and Alfredo to the door and watched them leave with a sinking heart.

  He sat uncomfortably with old Sister Isabella beneath a tree in the courtyard, the warm sunlight flickering through the leaves, the smell of lemons making his nose tingle.

  “I think you afraid of me, Archie Grimble. You don’t need to be afraid, I won’t do you no harm.”

  Archie blushed and stammered, “I…I’m not afraid,” he lied. “It’s just, I don’t know, I used to have bad dreams about nuns.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “That one was trying to steal me away from my mammy. It used to make me afraid, but I’m no
t afraid any more, I’m a big boy now and I know it was only a dream.”

  He still had the dream sometimes and whenever he did he woke up howling, clenching his fists and dripping with sweat.

  “The nuns of Santa Caterina likes children, maybe you gets to like nuns while you here. You like living here in Santa Caterina, Archie?”

  “Oh, I love it and I don’t really want to go home, except for seeing my mammy. I would like to live my whole life here.”

  The old nun smiled at him.

  “You miss your mama?”

  “Yes I do, loads.”

  “You have explore Santa Caterina and starts to find you way around?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You find anything interesting here?”

  There was something in her voice that made him wary. She was trying too hard to be friendly and was watching him as if he were something unusual on a microscope slide.

  “What sort of things do you mean?” he asked innocently.

  “Ah, little boys is always looking for things, for adventures, for mysteries to solve.”

  He looked at her anxiously; he felt as though she could see right through his forehead and read his thoughts.

  The wine had loosened his tongue and he blurted out, “Well, I am interested in mysteries. Can I ask you some questions?”

  “Si, I no mind but you speak more slowly, eh? I rusty with English now.”

  “Did you ever know a boy called Thomas Greswode?”

  For a moment she looked flustered but then she sat up very straight, clapped her hands together and smiled with glee. “Si. I know Thomas but it very long time ago.”

  “You used to take him for walks in his pram, run really fast and bump him up and down.”

  “How you know this?” she said in surprise.

  “Well, it’s a secret really but if you promise not to tell, I’ll tell you.”

  “I promise,” she said gravely.