The Italian Wife

  ‘The gateway,’ Grassi snapped. ‘Now!’

  Roberto didn’t argue. He walked Grassi down the road. Away from Isabella.

  19

  Isabella ran. She wasn’t good at it. Even when she strained every muscle and sinew, it came out lopsided and threatened to tip her over. It shamed her. That she couldn’t do what even a child could do with ease. She never attempted it in public. Never. But now she was running in full view of everyone.

  As she drew near the convent, the streets became deserted and the roads oddly silent of traffic. Everyone was crammed on to the parade route, so she took advantage of it and pushed her precarious gait even harder, ignoring the white-hot ball of fire that had lodged at the base of her spine. Above her the sky was a lazy blue and the red-roofed houses seemed to preen themselves in the sunshine. Mussolini was going to be proud of his fine new town. He had sunk so much money into the place that he could not afford for anything to go wrong but in some way that Isabella didn’t yet understand, Rosa had slipped into one of the unwanted cracks.

  She fretted as she ran because she had not had the chance to thank Roberto in front of Grassi for the information about Rosa being in the convent. He had been forced to return to work with his camera but she couldn’t stop herself from imagining him running alongside her now, his long lean legs eating up the pavements, his warm voice urging her on. The difference it would have made.

  Yet it shocked her. That she needed him. Wanted him. She had not needed or wanted anyone running alongside her for ten long years. So why now?

  A beam of sunlight latched on to the great iron cross on the wall above the arched doorway of the convent, turning it to gold. A good omen? Isabella decided to take it as such. She stood in front of the small hatched grille, catching her breath, heaving air back into her lungs and waiting for the zigzag lightning bolts of pain down her right leg to subside. She flexed it, nagged it to behave, then rang the bell.

  Five minutes passed. She pressed the bell every thirty seconds after that. Eventually, reluctantly, the hatch in the door slid open.

  ‘Yes?’

  Two timid black eyes gazed out at her from a swarthy face, held tightly in place by a bone-white wimple.

  ‘Buongiorno, sister. I have been sent by Mother Domenica with a message for Sister Bernadetta.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blinked slowly, like a cat waking up. ‘I was at prayer.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb your prayers, sister, but it’s urgent that I speak with Sister Bernadetta.’

  The timid eyes became more fearful. ‘You can give me the message. I’ll pass it on to her.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry but Mother Domenica made me promise to deliver it myself.’ Isabella shook her head, as if disappointed in the young nun. ‘We wouldn’t want to disobey the Reverend Mother, would we?’

  The thick eyebrows behind the grille shot up. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. So please let me in.’ Isabella smiled encouragingly.

  ‘The Reverend Mother ordered me not to open the door to anyone while she was away.’

  ‘She meant to strangers. I am not a stranger to her, I promise you.’

  ‘But you are a stranger to me, so…’ The hatch started to close.

  ‘Very well, sister. I shall go back and report your action to Mother Domenica immediately.’ She started to march back down the path, cursing the limp which diminished the effect.

  ‘No, wait.’

  A key turned in the lock and a bolt shot back, allowing the heavy oak door to open.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  The convent was cool. But its corridors were elegant with speckled marble tiles on the floors and high ceilings where there was room for spirits to whisper and prayers to accumulate. The young novice glided ahead of Isabella and stopped at an arched door of exquisitely grained walnut that bore a wooden tablet with the word refectory carved into it.

  ‘She’s in here,’ the nun informed Isabella. ‘I’ll let you go in on your own.’ She scurried away, eager to be gone, black shoes tapping on the floor as she fled back to her prayers.

  Isabella knocked on the door. No answer. She let a minute tick past then knocked again.

  ‘Rosa, are you there?’

  No answer.

  After her third knock remained unanswered, she called again. ‘Rosa?’

  A faint sound seeped under the door, unmistakably a child’s voice. It lay between Isabella and the door and she stepped over it without hesitation to swing the door open.

  Rosa saw the door leap wide and the architect step into the room, up on her toes and hands out in front of her as if expecting a fight. Rosa felt a greyness ripple through her mind, fogging her thoughts because suddenly she realised there was a God. She had prayed. Hour after hour. And this time He had answered her prayers. Like Daniel in the lions’ den, she was delivered. Happiness flowed out of her in the tears that poured down her cheeks.

  Thank you, God. Grazie, grazie, Dio.

  She never cried. Never whimpered. However hard the nuns smacked her knuckles with their rulers. But here, in front of the architect, all those unshed tears came at once.

  ‘Rosa!’

  Isabella Berotti hurried across the room. She was wearing dark colours, a coat and headscarf, the same as Rosa’s mother always did, but there the similarity ended, because Mamma never wore an expression on her face that came even close to the concern on the architect’s. But she halted abruptly halfway across the room and Rosa heard her intake of breath, as loud as the wind in the chimney. She was staring, blue eyes frozen wide, at the other figure in the room.

  Rosa and Sister Bernadetta were seated at opposite ends of a long refectory table with nothing but emptiness between them, an emptiness so solid that Sister Bernadetta had rested her head on it. The nun was young with a soft unhealthy sheen to her skin. She lay slumped forward with her cheek on the oak surface, her wire spectacles crooked on her nose and a little puddle of spittle gathering under her crumpled mouth. She was snoring loudly.

  ‘She’s drunk,’ Rosa whispered.

  On its side lay an empty wine bottle and the smell of it leaked into the room.

  Suddenly the architect came close and her hand shot out towards Rosa’s face. Instinctively Rosa flinched, ready for the slap that would knock her head back, but instead the fingers wiped the tears from her cheeks. She had forgotten she was crying, forgotten what it was like not to be slapped for no reason, forgotten most of all what it was like to be touched with affection and kindness. Something melted inside her. She didn’t know what it was but it was running thick and sweet in her veins. She started to tremble and couldn’t make it stop.

  ‘Rosa, don’t be frightened,’ Isabella Berotti said firmly, as if the motionless figure at the other end of the table were nothing more than a scarecrow.

  Her arms wrapped around Rosa who caught the scent of the outdoors on her skin and could smell sunshine in her hair where it had unravelled from the scarf. It’s what her father always smelled of when he twirled her high in the air as if she were as weightless as a feather. That and black tobacco. Mamma had forever smelled of the bitter lemons she squeezed into hot water at breakfast.

  ‘Come, let’s leave here,’ Isabella Berotti announced.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t be frightened, little one. I won’t let any of them harm you or —’

  ‘No. I can’t.’

  Rosa pointed to her foot. It was chained to the table leg. The architect’s face didn’t alter. Yet in some invisible way it did. It was as if a light had been turned off inside her.

  ‘Good God,’ she hissed, ‘you are not a dog.’

  Shame swamped Rosa and her cheeks burned. She had not thought of it like that.

  ‘Where’s the key, Rosa?’

  ‘There.’ She pointed.

  It hung on a leather thong looped loosely around Sister Bernadetta’s pale wrist that lay motionless on the table. At once Isabella Berotti moved down to the other end of the refectory table, her feet s
wift and silent on the wooden boards. She paused beside Sister Bernadetta, staring down at the key and at the nun’s limp hand, and in that moment Rosa forgot how to breathe.

  Don’t.

  Please don’t.

  Sister Bernadetta will wake. She will snatch away the key and she will flee to the chapel with it as an offering to God in penance for her sins. I will be chained here for ever.

  Don’t.

  Or they will lock me in the —

  Her mind froze as the architect’s fingers reached out and hovered no more than a hair’s breadth from the key. Her eyes flicked for a second to Rosa and there was no fear in her clear blue gaze. Only determination. Rosa shook her head violently.

  Don’t. She mouthed the word.

  But the architect hooked a finger around the leather thong on the pale wrist and, working slowly and smoothly, she started to ease it over the sturdy bones of the nun’s hand. Rosa watched, unable to look away. She didn’t dare blink or breathe or believe it could be done, and when Sister Bernadetta suddenly moaned and curled her hands around her head as though warding off some imaginary blow, a silvery string of saliva stretched from Rosa’s lips and she was convinced the end had come. If she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have vomited it up right there on the table.

  But no.

  Sister Bernadetta slept on. Her eyelids fluttered, nothing more, and the architect’s finger remained hooked around the leather strap. She didn’t let it escape. She kept her eyes on the nun’s slack features as a barrage of snores started up again. With a steady hand Isabella Berotti edged the leather strap over the knuckles and very gently she lifted the nun’s hand the merest fraction off the table, just enough to allow the thong to slide underneath it.

  Abruptly the key was free.

  Rosa started to breathe again. Isabella immediately tiptoed back, a smile on her face, and crouched beside Rosa’s foot. But the smile turned to a frown as she turned the key, unravelled the chain from around her ankle and saw the blood glistening on the metal. Rosa took no notice of it. Her heart was hammering as she let her hand rest as light as a raindrop on the back of her rescuer, on the dark warm wool of her coat. Isabella looked up at Rosa and gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile. Was she angry? Had that touch broken some unspoken rule?

  Panic rolled like a wave through her mind. But she jumped to her feet and obediently followed Isabella Berotti out of the room. Like a dog.

  Isabella had never owned a pet. No cat, no dog, no bird in a cage. She had never loved something small and defenceless. Only her unborn child. So she didn’t know which words to say, what tone of voice to use, how much to ask, which things to leave unsaid. What would hurt? What wouldn’t. She wanted to run her hands over Rosa, inside and out, to seek out the pain. Then she’d know. She’d know what to do and say to help this girl. She’d know what to touch and what to leave alone.

  She took hold of Rosa’s small hand. She knew from Roberto’s photographs that the front door of the convent was kept locked and bolted, so using the mental map that his pictures had provided, she navigated her way to the convent kitchen and from there to a storeroom with a side door, which was left unlocked for deliveries, to the courtyard outside. She led Rosa to an area behind the chapel where a patch of land had been dug over and planted with winter vegetables; the odour of its loamy black soil hung ripe and musty in the fresh autumn air.

  Only then did she allow herself to pause for breath. Beside her the small pointed face looked pale and uncertain under the brutally cropped fuzz of black curls.

  ‘Why did they cut your hair off?’ Isabella asked gently.

  ‘I was bad.’

  ‘Bad? No, Rosa, no. It’s Mother Domenica who is behaving badly.’

  What kind of person would do such a thing to a child?

  Rosa’s fingers clung fiercely to Isabella’s but she wasn’t crying any more. Isabella abandoned words, in case they were the wrong ones, and she drew the girl over to a long stone shed where it was clear that garden equipment was stored. A wooden ladder was propped inside against its dusty window, just as Roberto’s photograph had shown. At least she could do something right and get Rosa out of here.

  Around the convent rose a four metre wall. Isabella hoped the ladder was long enough to reach, but if not, she was sure Rosa would be good at scrabbling to the top. She had that look about her, with thin spidery arms and legs as if she had a long history of escaping through windows and clambering over walls. Isabella unbolted the shed door and yanked it open.

  ‘Right, Rosa, let’s get that ladder out.’

  The child reacted as though Isabella had slapped her. She leapt backwards, snatching her hand from the one encircling hers, and stared at Isabella with wide shocked eyes.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’ Isabella asked.

  ‘Why the ladder?’

  ‘To get you out of here.’

  The girl moved back the way they’d come. ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the ladder, the height of it? Is that what scares you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Once we get to the top, we can haul up the ladder and drop it down the other side. Rosa, I won’t just abandon you on the street, I promise. I’ll find you a good home away from Bellina.’

  The child’s eyes turned dull and flat, her cheeks more pinched. ‘No.’

  ‘But for now,’ Isabella continued, ‘you can stay with me and my father. Until we sort out something permanent that you’re happy with. My father is a doctor, so he knows more about…’

  A tear slid on a solitary track down Rosa’s pale cheek. ‘No. I want to stay here.’

  ‘What? Why would you want to remain in this…?’

  ‘Because my father will come for me here.’

  Isabella didn’t move. ‘Rosa, why did you lie to me? Why tell me that he was dead?’

  Just then a flock of birds cut through the clear blue sky above their heads and swept low over the amber roof of the convent, preparing to flee this place and head south for the winter. Rosa’s troubled eyes tracked their flight as if yearning to follow.

  ‘Rosa?’ Isabella prompted.

  The girl hung her head and yet her small chin set in a stubborn line.

  ‘Rosa, why lie to me? To Chairman Grassi, I can understand. To Colonnello Sepe, yes, definitely. But why to me?’

  Still no answer. Isabella stepped close to Rosa, conscious of the loneliness that the girl wore like a cloak, and said gently, ‘Come and stay with me and we will find your papa.’ She offered a smile. ‘We can talk architecture and you can tell me to shut up when I go on about it too much because I —’

  ‘He is a good man.’

  Such adult words from such young lips.

  ‘I’m sure he is, Rosa.’ Their gaze met as the girl raised her head. ‘Is he a fugitive?’

  A nod.

  ‘Did he commit a crime?’

  ‘He hates Benito Mussolini.’ Rosa spat expertly onto the raw earth at the mention of the name.

  ‘Is that why Grassi keeps you here?’

  ‘Yes. I am the bait.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to come with me now. Quickly, let’s get the ladder before anyone —’

  The child’s small hand seized Isabella’s arm. ‘Ask me, Signora Berotti, whatever is it you want to know. Then go.’

  Isabella wanted to swallow the questions that crowded on her tongue and offer the child nothing more than a kiss on her cheek. But they forced their way out between her lips and refused to be silenced.

  ‘You are right, Rosa, I do have questions. I want to know’ – she was speaking fast because the words had waited for this moment too long to miss it – ‘who killed my husband, Luigi Berotti, in Milan. Your mother mentioned him to me and said the Party knows who killed him. Why would she think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Did your papa know Luigi Berotti?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did your mamma know him?’ r />
  She saw Rosa tread carefully. ‘No.’

  There was a silence. Just the wind rustling between the tall chimneys. Neither spoke. Isabella ignored the lie and wrapped an arm around Rosa’s paper-thin shoulders, drawing her close. ‘Oh, Rosa,’ she said and held her tight. She kissed the top of her head. They stayed like that, locked together for a long time, until the other novice nun in white came and found them. She led the child away.

  20