by Penny Feeny
‘They may be cousins,’ said Helena, ‘but Mimmo is not Bobo. He’s quite sensible.’
‘He’s three and a half.’
‘Quit needling me, will you.’
Liddy was suddenly all sympathy. ‘Hel, are you feeling rough?’
‘Yes. I am, as it happens. Thanks for your concern.’
‘I hope it’s not some nasty virus.’
‘It’s a fucking hangover, you idiot.’
Liddy nudged the straps further down her arms. Jake said, ‘Do you want me to go and look for him?’
‘Yeah thanks,’ said Helena.
Jake set off for the far corner of the beach, skirting the card players and the other family groups. He didn’t hurry.
‘When I said he was only three, what I was getting at was that he can’t swim yet. Not like Sara.’
‘So?’
‘So if he were to get inside one of those caverns which has water in it . . . I mean you don’t know how deep it might be. Suppose he fell in?’
Helena jumped to her feet. ‘Okay, okay. Why do you have to be so neurotic? The poor little sod wanted to play a harmless game, which, actually, as if you didn’t already know, involves not being visible. I expect he’s really proud of himself.’
‘Okay, keep your hat on. I’m sure you can leave it to Jake then. He’ll know where to find him.’
‘No,’ said Helena. ‘You stay here with the stuff. I’ll go too.’
The beach wasn’t large: a narrow band of shore flanked by two sheer gullies, the ascent steep and overgrown. In late afternoon the cliff threw its silhouette over the sand; the sun, though burning elsewhere, sank from view. The courting couple had already disappeared with their parasol and the other sun-seekers were readying themselves to leave. Helena could see Jake ahead to her right, talking to some of them. They scratched their chins and conferred with their companions. She scrambled over a pile of sharp shale, wishing she’d thought to put on her espadrilles.
She kept thinking she could see Mimmo – the flash of his royal blue swimming trunks, his wrist poking from behind a boulder or underneath the boat. She kept expecting him to spring from his cover at any moment, unabashed delight in his eyes. By now he should have lost patience, he should be running up to them in triumph. ‘Look at me! I outwitted you. I was too clever to be found!’
Unless he couldn’t get out. Unless he was trapped.
At the rock face she peered through a dark crack that was surely too small even for a child to wriggle through, then moved on. The surface was pitted like pumice: some cavities extended only a metre or so; others were more menacing, leading to infinite blackness. Could Mimmo have been tempted to hide here? She squeezed through a jagged aperture and shouted his name several times; a hollow echo floated back to her. Warily she progressed along a dark, constricted passageway. The wall glistened and was wet to the touch. She wished she’d brought a torch, but who thinks of taking a torch when visiting a Mediterranean beach in August? She’d begun by crawling but soon had to inch along on her stomach, her hands scrabbling against the clammy rock. There was an unpleasant putrid smell; something soft and wet clutched at her face.
No, she decided, calling his name one last time, Mimmo would not be in a place like this. He was too sensitive a child and the gloom would terrify him. There wasn’t enough space for her to turn around. She had to retreat backwards, scraping her knees and elbows and hoping she wouldn’t sting herself on jellyfish or sea urchin. It was with relief she reached the strip of white that indicated fresh air and daylight.
The next cave was potentially more dangerous. Although it seemed shallow at first glance, a tunnel at the back was full of water, like a mouth ready to swallow. She was glad when Jake appeared at her side. ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not usually squeamish, but . . .’
‘It’s okay; I reckon I can fit inside.’
‘Are you sure?’
In answer he stuck his head and shoulders into the maw and she heard a splash. ‘Jake? Are you okay?’
When he re-emerged he was shivering, despite the suffocating heat. ‘Inadvisable,’ he said with a grimace.
‘You couldn’t have missed him in there, could you? I mean, is it deep?’
‘You don’t need deep to drown. A couple of inches will do. But I don’t think he would have gone in. It nearly scared the pants off me. And it was only a game you were playing, right?’
‘Right.’
A game. An innocent session of hide-and-seek. Mimmo had probably fallen asleep somewhere, tired of waiting for discovery. Yet Helena felt as if a line had been crossed and in a single mind-snapping instant their quest had become a manhunt.
‘I expect he wandered off and lost his way,’ Jake said. ‘He tried to be too clever. He’ll turn up.’
‘You already asked if anyone had seen him?’
‘Everyone I bumped into.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Sure. There’s only that lot left now.’
The posse of young men were the last to pack up their possessions, pulling on their bleached jeans, leaving their shirts unbuttoned. They were picking their way back towards the path. Jake’s gaze followed them. ‘It’s the only other place he might have gone.’
‘What is?’
He jerked his thumb. ‘Up the hill. There’s plenty of undergrowth. Quite a lot of scope for hiding, I should think.’
‘But he knew he wasn’t supposed to leave the beach. It was one of the rules.’
‘No one obeys rules in this country. Anyway, there’s nowhere else he could be. So it’s either that or he’s been abducted.’
‘That’s crazy.’ Helena watched the young men begin their climb, stumbling occasionally and dislodging showers of scree. The bushes surrounding the track were unidentifiable scrub to her eyes; they also looked tough and impenetrable.
‘You never know. Your Fabrizio could have made some dangerous enemies.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! He’s a bourgeois architect who married a bit of money. He doesn’t bury bodies in concrete.’
‘He’d probably be prepared to fork out a ransom to get his little son back, though. Not like old man Getty.’
‘The Verduccis aren’t that rich. Piero Baldini is wealthier.’
‘Come on, no one, not even a desperate, destitute, mentally defective Sardinian bandit would try to kidnap Bobo.’
‘Sorry, Jake, but I’m not in a joking mood. This is too traumatic. Give us a fag, for Christ’s sake.’
He nodded towards Liddy who was serenely contemplating the goldtipped sea, unaware of the turmoil behind her. ‘I left them over there by the basket. And I think you should get her to go for help.’
‘You don’t think he’s gone far, do you?’
‘If he climbed up that way and got to the top, he could have wandered off in any number of directions.’
‘We should never have come here,’ she said. ‘Gabi’ll go bananas.’
‘No excuses, Helena. You made your own bed, you lie in it.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I will. I’ll get up to the road and thrash about in the bushes on the way.’
She’d never wholly trusted him, found him too glib and unreliable, yet in this crisis they’d both been pretending wasn’t a crisis, he was redeeming himself. She couldn’t have handled it without him. ‘I’m sorry I snapped. It’s just . . . this is . . . I am . . .’
‘Sure. Better get that search party organized.’
‘I will.’
When Helena returned to Liddy, Sara was still complaining of thirst. Bobo was joining in. ‘We’ll be leaving soon,’ Liddy told them. ‘Jake will take us home.’
Helena withdrew a cigarette from Jake’s pack and gagged because it tasted so foul. ‘Actually,’ she said, trying to sound casual so the children wouldn’t fret, ‘he’s gone up to the road to look for Mimmo. In case he went further than he meant to along the path.’
‘Oh Lord.’ Liddy threw her dress over her hea
d and struggled into it. ‘He really is lost then?’
Helena bit her lip. ‘He wasn’t supposed to leave the beach.’
Liddy stretched behind her back to pull up her zip. ‘You should have been watching more carefully.’
‘That would have been cheating.’
‘Oh get real, Hel. You didn’t want to play the game with him at all. You were snatching extra sleep.’
‘So I’m tired, I had a bad night. Okay, I’ve admitted it. But the point, the important thing, is that we have to find him. I’m going to join forces with Jake again. Can you get back to the villa and alert everyone?’
‘Can I what?’
‘Tell Gabi what’s happened.’
‘You want me to tell Gabi?’
‘Is that a problem?’
Liddy mulled this over. ‘She’ll go bananas, won’t she? And you don’t want to be in the firing line.’
‘It’s not about that! I thought you’d need to get the kids back anyway so it made sense for you to give her the message. And I can carry on looking for him here.’ She started to pull on her shorts. ‘And somebody should bring a torch so we can look in the caves again.’
‘Well, it can’t be me,’ said Liddy.
‘Why can’t it be you?’
‘Because I can’t take the kids home in the boat.’ She scuffed the sand with her bare foot, not meeting Helena’s eye.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m scared to be in the boat by myself.’
‘But you’ll be with Sara and Bobo.’
‘That makes it worse. Suppose one of them went over?’
Helena gaped. She turned to Sara. ‘You know this is an emergency? You will take care of your brother? You won’t do anything stupid?’
‘Certo, Elena,’ said Sara demurely.
‘It’s perfectly calm,’ Helena said. ‘All you have to do is follow the line of the coast back to the villa. We’ve done it a thousand times and it will be easier with fewer people on board. They’ve got life jackets, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Liddy. ‘But I can’t take the risk.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
Liddy picked up a towel, shook it out and folded it into a neat square. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well we can’t stay here for ever!’ They were speaking too rapidly in English for the children to follow, but the corners of Sara’s mouth puckered; Bobo cried that he wanted to go home.
‘You could take them,’ said Liddy. ‘And I could help Jake.’
Helena stared at her friend’s stony face. ‘Looks like I don’t have any choice.’
‘You’d better come back,’ added Liddy as Helena untied the mooring and refloated the dinghy.
‘Come back? Good grief! We’ll probably bring a flotilla of yachts, a squadron of helicopters, and every damn carabiniere on Ischia. Do you really think Gabriella Verducci wouldn’t go the whole hog? Will you help me push?’
The sea lapped gently against the wooden panels of the boat. Helena lifted in the children and then their possessions. She climbed into the stern and jerked the cord of the motor. The hem of Liddy’s dress was getting wet. She gave a final shove and leapt backwards. Helena tried to shout instructions but her words didn’t carry over the noise of the engine. Part of her felt trapped in a nightmare, a surreal fantasy. Here she was with two attractive children bouncing across a turquoise sea, while their cousin had apparently been whisked into thin air. Or was he floating face down in a subterranean pool? Or being bound, gagged and blindfolded in a bandit’s lair? No, that was nonsense. Mimmo had probably twisted his ankle in a rabbit hole. Could any child be more accident prone? He would reappear.
6
The climb from jetty to terrace had never seemed so daunting or taken so long. Sara was carrying too many items and kept dropping one after the other. Bobo whimpered that he felt sick. ‘I feel sick too,’ Helena said. ‘And I didn’t even eat any sweets. We have to hurry.’
All was quiet in Casa Colonnata, so she proceeded to the Baldini villa where Maresa and Rosaria were discussing at great length whether they should have scaloppine with lemon or Marsala for dinner. Sara burst into tears as soon as she saw her mother and Bobo ran to bury his face in her lap. Maresa stared at Helena who was looking, she knew, even scruffier than usual. ‘Che succede?’
‘Where’s Gabi?’
‘She will return soon. Tell me what’s wrong.’
Perhaps it was better this way, easier to explain to a person one step removed. Even so, she didn’t mean to blurt out the news so crassly. ‘We’ve lost Mimmo.’
Rosaria screamed. Maresa, ever practical, said, ‘Where? In the playground? The shops?’
‘No, we were on the beach, not this one, further around the coast and –’
‘In the sea?’
‘No, no, definitely on the land. We were playing hide-and-seek but somehow he managed to hide so well that we haven’t found him. We’re afraid he might have got stuck somewhere. Jake and Liddy are still looking, but we thought I should bring the children back. And raise the alarm.’
Maresa’s hand tightened on Sara’s shoulder. ‘I will telephone the police, immediatamente,’ she said. ‘Also my brother. You should go and wait for Gabriella to return.’
So Helena, after explaining how the beach might be accessed, sat chewing her fingernails on the front steps of Casa Colonnata until a car drew up. It was a car she’d noticed before. She’d never caught close sight of the male driver, but his very existence had freed her from guilt when Fabrizio came into her room late at night or they had a fast fuck in the shower. It didn’t free her from guilt now. There was no one else to blame for Mimmo’s disappearance. She had no excuses.
Gabi was parting tenderly from her chauffeur. She was taken aback, as she stepped outside, to find Helena, but she approached her coolly. ‘You have no keys?’ she said. Then, glancing around: ‘You are alone?’
‘Yes, I came back to tell you. Mimmo . . .’
‘What?’
The car reversed down the drive, as if trying to make an unobtrusive exit.
‘He’s, um, missing.’
‘Missing! What does this mean? Missing?’
‘From the beach. We’ve been searching everywhere. Maresa’s already called the police. Let me show you where we went, where we think he might be. If your car’s working.’
Gabi’s Alfa Romeo was parked under a lean-to in an attempt to keep off the sun. Its fender, poking forward, glistened in the late afternoon heat. ‘Why do you think there is a problem with my car?’
‘Really, I don’t. I . . .’
Gabi fished in her bag for her keys but didn’t enter the house. She unlocked the Alfa. ‘Get in!’ she ordered. ‘We must hurry, yes?’
The leather seat scorched the backs of Helena’s legs. ‘Yes.’
Gabi revved the engine so loudly neither of them could speak until they were out on the road. She gripped the steering wheel as if it were Helena’s throat, her thumbs splayed white against its rim. ‘How is this possible?’ she demanded. ‘You have one simple job. To take care of my son. Twice now you have failed to do this.’
‘We were playing a game,’ Helena pleaded. ‘Hide-and-seek. I didn’t expect him to be so good at it.’
‘Everyone knows,’ said Gabi severely, ‘that when you play hide-andseek with children, you must watch where they go. Else you will find them too quickly.’
‘I know. I’m so so sorry I didn’t do that.’
Gabi had the slender bones of a greyhound; her features were finely chiselled and her profile always had a certain precision. Now her nose quivered, her chin was thrust forward at a furious angle, but her eyes were dry. When panic mounts, Helena realized, it drains the body. There was no saliva in her mouth to swallow; no tears available – nor any relief they might bring.
Jake was waiting for them on the road above the beach. Helena had been imagining this moment: imagining Gabi slamming on her brakes, Jake semaphoring, indicat
ing a weary bundle beside a clump of oleander, coming up to say: ‘It’s all right. He’s over there.’
Instead he stooped to the car window and admitted: ‘I’ve had no luck so far, but the police have sent for reinforcements.’
Further along they could see a police car, two motorbikes. Gabi manoeuvred herself stiffly from driver’s seat to a standing position. She leaned against the Alfa’s bonnet as if she needed its support. ‘What is he wearing?’ she asked in a tight voice.
‘Who?’ Helena was confused. She thought she might be referring to Jake whose T-shirt was black with a motif of snarling fangs: a souvenir from his stint as an extra on a B-movie about werewolves.
‘My son.’
‘Oh, er, his blue swimming trunks.’
‘And that is all?’
‘Yes.’
‘No shoes?’
‘No.’
Gabi shaded her eyes and stared down the cliff. The scrubby undergrowth was the kind that would rip into your flesh. The rough ground would be painful underfoot.
‘It’s possible he’s still on the beach,’ said Jake. ‘Liddy’s down there with a couple of carabinieri they sent over. At least there’s no tide to cut him off. But the most likely thing is that he’s fallen and got trapped somewhere. If there’s enough manpower we should be able to find him.’
Another police car, noisy with siren and flashing lights, drew up. Gabi demanded a helicopter patrol and at least two motor launches. Helena wondered that she could even consider the horrendous prospect of drowning, but Gabi was a woman with a mission – one who couldn’t conceive of letting a single opportunity to find her child pass her by.
A mixed line-up of volunteers – fishermen, farmers, holiday-makers and policemen – spread over the hillside, armed with sticks to prod the terrain. Motorbikes cruised up and down the twisting roads, calling at local bars and hamlets to see if anyone had come across a small child – un ragazzo sperduto– wandering and disorientated. Divers in wetsuits with torches on their foreheads investigated the grottoes along the shoreline. The helicopter swooped and whirred overhead.
The day dimmed and the sun set, throwing deep shadows across the surface of the land, though the humidity continued to increase. More torches were called for. To Helena, scuffling along the route she’d been designated, these efforts seemed increasingly futile. Mimmo, as everyone agreed, was no daredevil. He was spirited, but cautious. He had a measure of his mother’s highly strung disposition and his father’s acute pragmatism. He didn’t take unnecessary risks. He couldn’t have achieved this mysterious absence all by himself: a three-year-old hadn’t the stamina to outwander the patrol of several dozen adults.
