Early One Morning

by Virginia Baily

  As she wriggles round in the dark and struggles in the cramped space to get herself into a kneeling position, she pictures, as if above the surface of her pool of sadness, the lambent blue sky, bordered by the purple, wavering outline of the hills around her nonna’s house. She thinks again of their multicoloured layers and of how she thought of them as a thing to bind them, she and the boy and Cecilia. On top of the vivid green of the grass in the fields are the dots of moving crimson that are the crests of the chickens as they roam and peck, and the shining scarlet berries in the rose bushes that Nonna makes into a kind of tisane. That is where they are going. To a place where the country air, the freedom from the city, from rubble and deprivation, will give them all a chance to wait out the war, to find their pocket of peace.

  She fetches out the other cover from her sister’s suitcase and shuffles backwards into the aisle. She tidies and arranges the sleeping area she has vacated. Then she presses out a space for herself, with her feet in among the bags and bundles in the aisle, and she backs into it, curling between them, wrapped in the last cover. She whispers to the boy under the bench, talking now to the top of his head. She tells him that if he wriggles his way out, he will find a little bed made for him at Cecilia’s feet and that he will get cold if he stays where he is.

  He doesn’t move.

  She says his mother would not want him to catch cold and then waits quietly for whatever the next thing is. Still nothing happens, and the whole room of people sigh and breathe and mumble around her. The face of the boy’s mother standing on the back of the lorry comes to her. Instead of meeting Signora Levi’s implacable gaze, Chiara imagines, quite simply, closing her own eyes and waiting for the moment to pass.

  ‘Oh,’ she says aloud as a torrent of possible other outcomes tumbles through her mind.

  Then, as if the silent child could hear her treacherous thoughts, and because she will neither be party to his pact of silence, nor abashed by it, she starts to talk.

  ‘Once, when I was little, probably about your age,’ she whispers, ‘I went with my father on the train. No, I must have been a bit older. I was nine, because Cecilia was eleven. She’s two years older than me, but you wouldn’t think so, because she is smaller and her face is so smooth, but that is how it is with adults. Some of them stop growing before others, and some of them have sweeter faces.’

  She shakes off a monstrous image of Cecilia with her eyes rolling back in her head.

  ‘She kept having fits, like she did today, one after the other, and that summer she was in hospital.’

  She pauses because she has never framed this memory before. It has always been a bright, stand-alone moment, and only now does she grasp that while she was revelling in the rare treat of their father’s undivided attention, Cecilia was suffering. That was the price.

  ‘So, it was just me and my babbo, and we had the whole carriage to ourselves. The sun was shining in, and the light through the train window was white like smoke.’

  It doesn’t seem like much of a story now she is telling it, but she has held it dear for so long. This image can appear as if a door slides open in her mind and there he is, her father, in a shaft of sunlight, dozing opposite her on the train. He is always there, behind that sliding door. Later on that same journey, when she can tell by a pink tower they pass that they are approaching their station, she will wake him by kissing his warm forehead, and he will open his eyes and say, ‘Thank you,’ and she will say, ‘You are welcome,’ and they will both laugh.

  And at the station, instead of climbing straight onto the cart, they will go into the café where he will order a coffee, a double one to wake him up properly, and for her a strawberry ice cream, and she will say, ‘What about Cecilia?’ because she has never had an ice cream without Cecilia having one too.

  And he will reply, ‘I will buy her one when she’s better.’

  ‘And not me?’ she will say.

  And he will pat the end of her nose with his finger and say, ‘Do you want one or not?’

  And she will say, ‘Yes, please.’

  She doesn’t know now, as she didn’t know then, whether her father was thanking her for the kiss, or for waking him, or for watching over him while he slept, or perhaps for all three and something else beyond. But she knows she did watch over him. She stood in front of him, very close, and she picked up the hand that lay in his lap and stroked it. She straightened the ring on his little finger. She ran her fingers up and down the protruding veins on the back of his hand, pressing them softly, squashing them down and letting them plump out again. She examined the side of his face that was turned up to the sun. She looked at the creases around his mouth and the dark stubble just below his skin, waiting to spring forth like a miniature forest if not scythed back. It was as if she were a queen and he was in her power, belonging to her alone. She was regal and benevolent and inexpressibly tender.

  ‘It was just me and my babbo,’ she says, ‘and we ate strawberry ice cream and we were happy.’

  The child is wriggling his way out from under the bench. She can hear his panting breath. She heaves herself to her knees one more time, manoeuvres round and flips the blanket over his small, quivering form. At some point the lamp outside has been switched off, and it is too dark now to see him. Another phrase from her book comes to her, something about the comfort of allowing others to help you being ‘like the albatross sleeping on its wings’. She hovers over him, picturing him not as an albatross but as a tiny bird, a linnet perhaps, a fledgling fallen from the nest.

  Someone shakes her awake from a dream of underground caverns and unlit tunnels. She blinks at the weak morning light as if it hurts her eyes. In her dream, she was a nocturnal creature. She could see in the dark. She sits up and immediately looks at the corner behind the bench. Neither Cecilia nor the boy is there. She puts a hand over her mouth as her flailing heart thumps.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ a man’s voice says, ‘she is all right, your sister. She has gone with my wife to use the facilities.’

  She recognises the gentleman who gave her the wine the night before. He looks crumpled and pale.

  ‘There is quite a queue,’ he says.

  She pulls herself up. ‘Where is the boy?’ she asks.

  ‘What boy?’ the man says.

  In her dream she was a bat, she remembers, and she slept hanging by her toes. She had a different perspective. She swings her head down now and peers under the bench, under all the benches, but the boy isn’t there. When she swings her head back up, the man is still there, watching her.

  ‘The train for Rome has come in,’ he says, ‘and it is leaving in ten minutes.’

  She pulls herself to her feet. The population of the room has thinned. People are packing up and donning coats, coming in and going out again, and she sees that there is a train outside, waiting.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, scanning the room one last time in case there’s a cranny the boy has squeezed himself into, ‘but we’re not going to Rome.’

  ‘Oh, we are and I thought you were too,’ he says. ‘I don’t know why.’ And then, watching her tug her boots on, ‘That was a funny business last night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve got to… ’ she says, picking up her small bag and slinging it over her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry, signorina. She will be fine with my wife. You just take your time packing your things up and getting yourself ready. Your sister is in safe hands.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Chiara says. ‘I, er, I need to go myself.’

  ‘It was our son, you see,’ he says, confiding.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, clomping away from him without even lacing her boots.

  She pushes the door open. Outside, the train’s engine is hissing and chuffing. Smoke and steam puff out into the chilly air, and she can smell burning coal. The doors stand open, and a few people are already on board. She looks up the platform in one direction and eyes the noisy bundle of women and children queuing for the washroom. All the outlines
are softened by the steam and the smoke, but she spies Cecilia and the old man’s wife at the front of the queue. They disappear inside as she watches. She stares at each individual a micro-second, allows each face to imprint itself on her consciousness, and then moves on.

  She looks in the other direction. At the water fountain, a youth is holding his finger over the tap to keep the water spurting, and another has his head beneath, getting thoroughly doused. He comes up for air and shakes his head, droplets of water flying off in all directions. Her gaze lingers on the two of them, although they are the wrong size.

  At the far end of the platform, a man emerges from behind the furthermost building, doing up his belt and adjusting his coat as he walks. It’s the man who made a fuss the previous night, and she feels a surge of ill-will towards him as if everything is his fault. She moves speedily towards and then past him, her boots flapping around her ankles, aware of him swinging up and into the train. A quick glance reveals that there is no one else in the area beyond the building from whence the man exited. The wet patches against the wall between the bins, and the ammonia smell, show only that this has served as the men’s urinal.

  She hurries back down the platform. She has again the sensation of being watched, glances sideways, expecting to see the man again, looking out of the train, but there is no one at the window. She can hear her own breath labouring in and out of her body, as if the act of walking itself now requires a disproportionate expenditure of energy. Panic has her in its grip.

  Two guards step out from an office door. They are different from the one the previous day. She can see behind them into the office. There is no sign of the soldiers. The troop train must have come and gone during the night. If she asks for assistance, will she raise the alarm? She dare not draw attention to herself.

  The guards pause to confer, and Chiara drops to one knee behind them, using them as cover, as Cecilia and the lady come past on their return to the waiting room. She cannot afford to get held up with niceties now. She must find the child. Cecilia’s arm is tucked into the other woman’s, and her face is red as if her cheeks have been scrubbed. The other woman is trying to hurry Cecilia along. Cecilia doesn’t like to be hurried.

  Chiara quickly laces her boots and rises just as the guards set off in opposite directions, walking the length of the train and slamming the doors shut as they go. She stays where she is another second, the clanging of the doors, metal against metal, drumming through her body. She has to move now, act now, but do what, go where, she knows not. As she falters, door after door clangs shut.

  She turns her head to the left and scans the people milling about on the platform again, to the right to do the same and then, suddenly, veers back to the left because there, at that empty window she passed earlier, didn’t she see a little face disappear?

  She starts to run down the platform, and at first it’s like running in a dream, all effort and pumping of limbs but no forward propulsion, her feet sticky on the tarmac. Then she breaks through some invisible barrier and she is racing. Her body is in tune with itself, her strong, pliable, lightweight body that carries her about from dawn to dusk, day after day. She overtakes the guard, jumps on board at the next open door, thunders along the corridor and into the second carriage.

  The boy is standing just within the door of the otherwise empty carriage. He flinches when she bursts in.

  ‘This is the wrong train,’ she shouts.

  She takes in the dark hollows of his watchful eyes, a great smear of dirt down one side of his face, a matted clump of dusty cobwebs stuck to the sleeve of his coat, his hunched shoulders, his fists bunched and raised in front of him as if he is ready to land a punch. A feeble, little-boy punch. The ridiculous old-fashioned hat with the earmuffs is crammed on his head.

  Don’t rush him, she thinks. Don’t shout.

  She holds out her arms.

  ‘Come with me,’ she says.

  From the front of the train, there is an unmistakable build-up of steam, the hiss-chug of the engine as if the train is clearing its throat, a sensation of gathering momentum.

  ‘Please,’ she says.

  In a minute the whistle will blow. There is no time for reasoning and explanations. And, anyway, he is acting beyond the boundaries of reason. Stupefied, dumbstruck in his own no man’s land.

  She darts forward and grabs him. He squirms in her grasp, twists away so that his back is against her, and she holds him tightly as he silently wriggles and then, adjusting her clasp around his chest, she starts moving backwards. She tries to imagine herself as a fireman saving a small, mad person from a burning building.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  She is going to repeat her refrain about what his mother might have wanted him to do but as she drags him along the corridor, he starts banging his head against her chest, thumping his hard skull into her breastbone.

  The carriage door is shut. She daren’t let go of the child. Still he is straining to be free of her, although the head butting has stopped. She tries to push the handle down with her elbow but she doesn’t have the strength, one-armed and battered and facing the wrong way. There is the clunk and chink of couplings moving apart and pulling out to capacity, and the train, with a lurch and a shriek, starts to move. She bellows for help.

  ‘We’re on the wrong train,’ she shouts.

  She cannot let this happen. She cannot be transported back to Rome and abandon Cecilia. Her breath is coming now in great gasping sobs, and boiling-hot tears spurt from her eyes, and she thinks, Let him go. Let him go before it’s too late. Turn, open the door and leave now.

  Then a man reaches past and over her and he’s saying, ‘Let me,’ and ‘Careful, signora, careful how you land,’ and the door is flung wide open.

  By the time it crashes against the side of the train, they are already airborne, she and the boy. Somehow he is with her still, his hand is in hers, and she clasps it. She has the impression of their unbuttoned coats streaming behind them like wings, of the ground falling away from them instead of rushing up to meet them, of their potential to soar upwards if they were so minded.

  I will never let him go, she thinks.

  They are inside a billowing, grey puff of smoke and they are flying. Then their feet hit the ground and they are forced to keep moving, in an ungainly canter. Somehow they manage not to fall. Their legs catch up with their bodies, until at last they slow down and then come to a halt. The train picks up speed and chugs out of the station, hooting and puffing as it goes.

  They are cocooned still in the puffs of grey smoke. She drops to her knees, gathers the child’s reluctant hands in hers. His face is glowing, and he is breathing hard. Now, quickly, while there is still the shine in his dark eyes from the flying leap and the running, she needs to say something clear and simple and true in words that a seven-year-old can understand.

  ‘Listen,’ she starts. ‘I’m on your side.’

  In the distance the train hoots twice.

  ‘I’m only trying to look after you.’

  These aren’t the words that will do it. There is a thing he does with his eyes, a partial lowering of the lids, a hooding and dulling, and she wonders when he learnt it. Did he already have that trick in his repertoire or was it something he acquired yesterday, in her kitchen? Like a lizard. Does he even know that he is doing it?

  ‘They are not in Rome,’ she says, ‘your family. The bad soldiers took them, didn’t they? And your mamma gave you to me to look after, didn’t she?’

  She tugs at his hands.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ She yanks him, not harshly but so he will pay attention. ‘Did you hear me?’

  He nods.

  ‘So for now, it’s like I’m your mamma.’

  As soon as they are said, she wishes the words unsaid. His head twitches. It’s not what she meant to say at all.

  ‘Not really,’ she says, ‘just pretend, so that the bad soldiers won’t catch us.’

  Words, she thinks, as a way of conveying meaning, are
overrated.

  The smoke around them is dissipating. She drops one of his hands but keeps hold of the other, straightens, looks around and sees that they have hardly travelled at all. They are only a few metres beyond the last railway building, by the place where the men urinate.

  She makes as if to walk down the platform, but he has planted his feet, his legs akimbo, refusing to budge. He is not looking at her but at their conjoined hands stretched between them. With his free hand he starts picking at her fingers, unfurling them one by one. She thinks of his mother, the day before, plucking his coiled fingers from her coat. Chiara stands there stupidly and watches him with the feeling that sense is slipping away. Each time he lifts a finger, she snaps it back, but he continues, dogged, starting over.

  It is as if his hand were a small animal caught in a trap that he is trying to free.

  Her hand springs open and she releases him. She turns away, her eyes momentarily blinded by tears. She tugs her coat sleeve down over her hand and uses it to wipe them away. Down the platform, she sees the elderly couple shuffle out of the waiting room carrying their suitcases, and Cecilia is between them.

  ‘Oh, my Lord God,’ she says.

  She turns to the child again.

  ‘I don’t want to drag you and I don’t want to carry you, but I will if I have to,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to hold my hand but we have to run now. How about holding my scarf?’ she says.

  She whips it from around her neck and flicks the end towards him. He misses it but bends and picks it up.

  ‘Come on,’ she says and sets off charging down the platform again.