A Pair of Silver Wings

by James Holland

  Orfeo also had the help of his two nieces, Carla and Christina, who walked up to the farm and back most days from their home, some three miles away in the Setta Valley, the far side of the mountain plain. Most days, they reached the farm by around eight in the morning, but occasionally, if their mother needed help at home, they would be later, as they had been the day Edward came down.

  Carla had been born at Pian del Castagna. ‘Upstairs, where Nella and Rosa sleep,’ she told him one day, nearly two weeks after his arrival. The rain had stopped and Carla was teaching him by the well behind the house.

  Orfeo, she explained, was one of two brothers and for a while they had lived and worked on the farm together, helping their father. But first Orfeo had married Eleva, then his brother Federico – Carla’s father – had also married. Children had followed, and there was no longer the space or enough food to go round. So Federico had moved down into the valley taking his wife, Isabella, and two daughters – four-year-old Carla and baby Christina. That had been fifteen years ago.

  ‘Didn’t your father mind?’ Edward asked Carla.

  Carla shrugged. ‘No. He was the younger brother. He’d always known it would happen at some point. It’s just the way it was.’

  Federico had got a job working for the railway. There was a line that ran along the Setta Valley, and he became a maintenance man and moved his family into a small house in the village of Montalbano. Another child followed: a boy, Gino. Life was hard and money short but they never went hungry. And Carla never lost her love of the mountains. In the school holidays she used to go up to Pian del Castagna whenever she could, to help her uncle and aunt. She was close to her cousin Nella, as well. ‘She’s only two years older than me,’ Carla told Edward. ‘I’ve always thought of her as more an older sister than a cousin.’

  She had only recently come back to Monte Luna. ‘Just a month ago,’ she told him. ‘Before that I was in Bologna.’ She had first gone to the city on a school outing with their teacher, Sister Anna, when she was thirteen. It was Christmastime and she had never seen so many lights before, nor shop windows. ‘I thought it was amazing,’ she said, ‘and so beautiful. When I came home I asked my father whether we could move there.’ She laughed. ‘But I did go and work there.’ At fourteen she left school and through Eleva’s sister, managed to get an apprenticeship as a dressmaker. Every day, she took the train to Bologna. ‘Because my father worked for the railway, I got free travel,’ she explained. Then when war came, she moved there permanently, living with Eleva’s sister’s family. ‘Like Rosa, I came back when they started bombing Bologna. My father wouldn’t let me stay.’

  ‘Did you mind?’ Edward asked.

  ‘No – I wanted to come back. I’ve enjoyed being back here – working on the farm. Seeing my family.’

  ‘You’re close, aren’t you? All of you?’

  ‘Yes. My family are everything to me. I don’t know how you can bear it, being away from yours for so long.’

  Edward looked down at the well; he could just see a tiny glimmer of water caught in a fraction of sunlight. ‘I do miss them, but –’ He stopped, trying to think how to say what he wanted. Carla looked at him, her eyes watching his. ‘I went away to school. I have no brothers or sisters.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s different in England. Friends are also very important.’

  ‘And your friends are also away with the war?’

  ‘Yes. And some won’t be coming back. My greatest friend – Harry – he was killed nearly two years ago.’

  ‘Was he a pilot too?’

  Edward nodded. ‘We trained together and flew together. Then he disappeared into the sea one day. I keep hoping to discover he’s a prisoner of war somewhere, but I know he’s gone, really.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him intently. ‘So many people missing: Franco, Nella’s man, Enzo. Half the men from these mountains. It’s the same all over.’ She sighed. ‘So far, we have not seen much of the war here. Blackshirts come round occasionally and life is harder, but we’re lucky to live in a corner of Italy that the rest of the world seems to have forgotten.’

  ‘Long may it last,’ said Edward.

  ‘Yes,’ Carla smiled, ‘otherwise life could become very difficult.’

  If any of the household resented Edward’s presence, they never said, nor gave any indication of feeling so – perhaps it was because of this feeling of isolation, of being forgotten, that Carla had spoken of. After her initial shock at seeing him, Eleva seemed to treat him just like any other member of the household. She was a quiet woman, thin and lined, and with grey streaks in her dark hair; but she was kind, and while the men, Arturo and Orfeo, may have been the masters of the house, Edward soon realised that it was Eleva who kept the place together and who managed to the day-to-day running. Neither she nor Orfeo seemed much interested in politics or the war – they just wanted their life to continue as normal, for their son to come home, and for the Germans to leave Italy, and the Blackshirts to be swallowed into the ground. ‘Thieves, the lot of them,’ Orfeo told Edward one night, banging his fists on the table. Like most people, he’d had his fascist card, but so what? That didn’t mean he was a fascist; it meant he’d wanted his children to be able to go to school. For many years, he had accepted Mussolini – he didn’t much care for him, but he didn’t much care for any politicians. But the war had changed everything. ‘That stupid bastard brought ruin on Italy,’ he told Edward. ‘I was glad when they kicked him out, but now he’s back and it’s even worse than it was before.’

  Yet such outbursts were rare. The conversation rarely turned to war. Instead they talked about what they had done that day, what needed to be done tomorrow, or laughed at some incident recalled.

  There was music, too. Orfeo was also an accomplished pianist, and after supper, his head full of wine, he would take himself over to the upright piano and play delicate songs from his favourite operas. The girls would often hum along; sometimes, Eleva stood next to him, an arm on his shoulder, singing softly and swaying gently from foot to foot, while the old man, rooted in his chair, tapped his stick.

  Italy – April, 1944

  Edward began to believe that Pian del Castagno was a forgotten community all on its own. It was so insular, each person – Carla and Christina included – so wedded to the daily fabric of the place, that it was hard to think of it in any other way; and yet they had accepted Edward into their fold so willingly, apparently without question.

  Only very occasionally did the outside world penetrate this haven. When Edward had been there just over a fortnight, some Blackshirts suddenly turned up at the farm, and the precariousness of his situation – and even more so that of the Casalinis – was starkly demonstrated. Like a slap around the face, Edward realised he had been foolish to believe their existence there was anything but fragile.

  It was afternoon and he was in the loft when he heard the dog in the yard barking furiously and then voices entering the yard. Carefully, through the slit window, he watched them bang loudly on the door of the house. Eleva and Nella came out. He could see that they were frightened. Two of the men groped at Nella, who slapped one of them across the face. The other men laughed. Edward felt anger surge through him. Then one of the men began pointing at the chickens. Edward couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they seemed to be accusing Eleva of having too many. Then they turned towards the barn. Edward hurried as quietly as he could to the straw and hid himself. They were talking directly below him, quizzing Eleva about how many cows and oxen they had, then asking what was in the loft. One of the men banged the floor with a stick. Underneath the straw, Edward held his breath, not daring to move an inch. Straw and dust tickled his nose, and he knew he would sneeze. Slowly, as quietly as he could, he lifted a finger to his top lip and pressed hard. He prayed the movement would not send straw drifting down through a crack in the floorboards and give him away. Thank God, he thought as the desire to sneeze passed.

  The men went out into the yard again then climbed
the stone steps to the loft and the door creaked open. ‘There’s nothing in here,’ Eleva told them, ‘just straw and the remains of last year’s hay.’

  Seconds passed. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. He could feel their eyes boring into him. Any moment now, he thought, they’ll come over and shoot me and then shoot Eleva and Nella. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember if he’d put away his razor and mirror that morning. One of the men was walking around the far end of the loft – slow, steady steps.

  ‘All right,’ said the man eventually. ‘Now give us some wine.’ Edward remained where he was, rigid and not daring to move as he heard the door close and the man noisily walk back across the yard to the house. They remained there about an hour, and when they left, took four chickens with them. As they wandered back down the lane, Edward heard Eleva crying from inside the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, when he eventually crossed the yard.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, her eyes red with tears.

  ‘But my being here is putting you all at risk.’

  She suddenly sat up and stared at him. ‘You’re not leaving on their account. I won’t let you. I am not going to let them bully and intimidate us. One day soon this will all be over and then they will pay. In the name of the Holy Father, they must pay.’

  Edward felt torn. By staying there he risked putting people he had begun to care for in extreme danger. Carla, especially; he couldn’t bear to think of her being harmed, and yet all of them could be shot for what they were doing. But by leaving he would almost certainly be caught, becoming a prisoner, or possibly executed as well. There were no shortage of horror stories – at Termoli, a pilot who had successfully made it back to Allied lines had witnessed exactly that, when a solider he’d been travelling with was captured and gunned down just yards from where he had been hiding.

  The alternative was to join the partisans in the mountains. As his shoulder began to heal he’d started to think more about the offer he’d been made that first evening when La Volpe had visited him. He wondered what use he would be, however. He was a fighter pilot, not an infantryman. What did he know of such things? He’d barely lifted a rifle in his life; once he’d fired off a round of the Lewis gun on the balcony of the Xara Palace, but that hardly counted.

  Later that evening, however, Orfeo seemed to be of the same mind as his wife. ‘This is what we have to put up with,’ he muttered at supper. ‘They make everyone’s life a misery. They’re taxing us so much now we can barely feed ourselves.’

  ‘I really should leave,’ said Edward.

  ‘No, no,’ said Orfeo. ‘No, we want to help you. This is not your fault. And fortunately, they don’t bother us much – not up here. It’s the farms on the lower slopes who get regularly pestered by these creatures. But you must always be on your guard. Use your eyes and ears at all times.’ He tapped his eyes. ‘We all must.’

  Even so, by the next morning, he had made up his mind. He would join the partisans. When they next came to see him, he would tell them.

  The prospect depressed him. He liked being at Pian del Castagna. Despite the lurking danger, he had enjoyed the long days he had spent there, cocooned with the Casalinis. It had been a time to rest, a time to think. And his time with Carla was something he had come to treasure; more than treasure: he craved her company. His Italian was now sufficiently proficient for them to talk quite freely together, and he was doing everything he could to spend as much time with her as he possibly could. He found her easy to talk to, and was happy hearing her stories about growing up on the farm and in the valley, and about her life in Bologna before the bombing began. She was an attentive listener, too. He had talked more about Harry to her than he had to anyone since his friend had gone missing; he instinctively felt he could trust her. The others seemed to be aware of the friendship that had developed between them; and Orfeo and Eleva let them work together much of the time. ‘You must keep up the Italian,’ Orfeo told him with a wink.

  And so it was that later that afternoon, Edward was helping Carla to clean out the cattle stalls. April was now nearly over. Summer was coming. The first leaves were on the trees and the rain had begun to lessen. It was warmer, too. Before the war, the onset of summer had always lifted his spirits; there was always so much to look forward to. But now, all he could think about was the prospect of leaving Carla and the farm.

  For a while Edward hardly spoke; any proximity to her was now a kind of torture. He yearned to be with her so much yet he desperately wanted more: to be able to hold her and kiss her and tell her how much she meant to him. But friendship was better than nothing; soon, he would hardly see her at all. He felt desolate.

  ‘You’re quiet today,’ said Carla. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He smiled.

  ‘Your shoulder is much better,’ she said. ‘You can use both your arms.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward. ‘The doctor did a good job.’

  ‘So what will you do? You’re not going to stay, are you?’

  He stopped, and leant against a post. ‘I can’t. I’ve already stayed longer than I should. The other day those Blackshirts could so easily have found me. Imagine what would have happened then.’

  Carla stopped too, leaning against the stall opposite from him. ‘Uncle likes having you here. We all do.’

  ‘But my being here is making life even more dangerous for you. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened.’

  Carla looked away, then said, ‘So will you join Volpe?’

  Edward nodded. ‘I don’t think I’ve much chance of reaching Allied lines. They’re too far to the south at the moment, but hopefully not for long. With summer nearly here, they’ll be on the march again in the next few weeks.’ He looked out; large white clouds drifted across an otherwise clear blue sky.

  ‘Well, I think you should stay.’

  Edward picked up his fork again and continued shifting the hay, his heart dancing: she minds me going, he thought, but at the same time he felt miserable. ‘I’ll wait until they come for me, though,’ he said.

  ‘You have to still be here on Sunday,’ said Carla. ‘My family are coming up for the day. They want to meet you.’

  ‘All right, Carla,’ he smiled, ‘you have my word.’

  As he leant down again, he caught his jacket on an old nail, and cursed.

  ‘Here, let me see,’ said Carla. She frowned and looked at the shoulder of his jacket. Then she lifted her hand and touched him. As Edward’s heart began thumping in his chest, she said, ‘I can mend that for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll get a needle and thread.’

  It was an old jacket of Orfeo’s, part of a suit they had given him. It was dark, charcoal grey, and ill-fitting, although Carla had done her best to lower the trousers and arms; without turn-ups, the trousers were just about the right length.

  She reappeared soon after and sat next to him on the edge of the wooden trough outside the barn. She was so close to him; one of her arms was touching his, while her face, her brow knotted in concentration, was just inches away. He felt quite overwhelmed by his desire to kiss her. He could barely stand it. She liked him, he knew that, but he was an English pilot, from a different country, with a different religion. Religion seemed to infuse every part of their lives: the crucifix on the wall outside the house and in the kitchen, the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus; the talk about Sister Anna, or Father Umberto, the priest at Capriglia, the village the other side of the mountain. It all meant one thing: she would never be able to love him. It was impossible. And soon he would have to leave. A few days. A week at most. That was all he had. He wished time could slow down.

  ‘There, done!’ said Carla. She looked at him and smiled.

  Sunday, 30th April. After Mass in the church at Capriglia, a mountain village the other side of Monte Luna, the entire Casalini family returned to Pian del Castagna. Edward was reading in the hayloft when he hea
rd them coming down the path into the yard, and so putting down his book, went outside to join them.

  On seeing him, Carla hurried towards him, took his hand and led him to her parents.

  ‘This is Eduardo,’ she smiled as Edward held out his hand to Federico and Isabella.

  ‘We’ve heard much about you,’ said Federico. He looked much like Orfeo, but a few years younger; his hair was fuller and his face less craggy. His wife was much like Carla: Isabella’s hair was greying, but she had been flaxen once too, and her face was the same oval shape as her elder daughter’s. Like Carla, she seemed gentle, but was softer spoken.

  A boy ran over and wrapped his arms around his mother’s waist, grinning at Edward as he did so. ‘And this is Gino,’ Isabella smiled.

  ‘Are you really a pilot?’ Gino asked him.

  ‘Yes. At least I was, before I was shot down.’

  ‘I want to be a pilot,’ said Gino.

  ‘He’s always been crazy about aeroplanes,’ said Isabella. ‘Ever since he was little.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful thing – to be able to fly,’ said Edward. ‘The world looks very different from up there.’ He pointed to the sky, now deep blue without a cloud to be seen.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ said Isabella, and shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t go up in a plane if I was paid to do so. They seem terrifying to me.’

  ‘Well, when the war’s over, perhaps I can take you up in one – see if I can change your mind.’

  ‘Can I come?’ asked Gino.

  Isabella laughed, and ruffled his hair. ‘We’ll see, darling.’

  There was roasted chicken for lunch – two of them. ‘Don’t go getting ideas, brother,’ Orfeo told Federico, as he carved the two birds. ‘I’m not doing this every time your family pays a visit. I love you all, but not that much.’ Everyone laughed. ‘We had a visit from the Blackshirts,’ he explained. ‘I’m damned if my birds are going to fill the stomachs of those thugs. Better we eat them now, even if it means less later.’