The Italian Wife

  ‘You received my note?’ she asked.

  ‘I did indeed. There was no need for it.’

  ‘Certainly there was. I wanted to thank you.’

  She had not seen hide nor hair of him since Chairman Grassi’s office. She’d wanted to thank him for his help that day but it was almost as if he didn’t want to be seen talking with her, so she had not intruded and had left a note for him with Grassi’s secretary instead.

  ‘Did the meeting turn out as you’d hoped?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  She gave a small shrug as though it were unimportant. That was one of the perils of living under a Fascist regime, you never knew whom you could trust. But he had risked Grassi’s displeasure for her and for that she was grateful. She would have liked to ask why, why he had stuck his neck out, but you didn’t ask such questions. In case the answers were too dangerous to know.

  She caught his shrewd gaze, so as they entered the ballroom she slid her arm through his and he laughed, pleasantly surprised. Davide Francolini looked good in an evening suit. He possessed the slim build and narrow hips that could wear it effortlessly and look graceful as he escorted her into the crowded room. She was nervous. If Mussolini did turn his greedy eyes her way, she didn’t want him to assume she was easy game.

  ‘This isn’t my favourite kind of event, Signora Berotti,’ Francolini commented, ‘but let’s do Dottore Architetto Martino proud. You never know, he might even grant us the weekend off, if we’re lucky.’

  He had no idea that she’d been fired.

  She wanted to shout at him. At Martino. At Mussolini. Shout that it was all wrong. Unfair. Unjust. Shout and tear off her corsage. But she didn’t let her smile slip even a millimetre and asked, ‘What would you do with a weekend off?’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘That’s easy. I’d head straight up into the mountains, where the air is free of this wretched building dust. There are tall green trees and dense undergrowth where wild boar hide, instead of this stark landscape of barren earth.’ Suddenly he turned his head to her and drew her closer. ‘You should come with me. I’ll show you places that —’

  Isabella was smiling up at him, astonished by this intimate invitation, when a flashbulb exploded in their faces and she blinked, blinded for a moment. But even in that second of blindness her heart turned over because she knew exactly who would have pressed the trigger on the flash.

  Roberto was standing there, unsmiling, wielding his camera. Isabella wanted to snatch her hand from where it lay on Davide Francolini’s arm, but he had wrapped his own around it and was holding it in place. She wanted to step forward to touch Roberto’s lips and tilt their corners into a smile. To laugh with him at the way his broad shoulders sat uneasily in his black dinner jacket which was too stiff for a man who liked to move freely. She wanted to tell him she had searched for him. Banged on his green front door. But all she’d found was the woman in the red dress prowling his street.

  Where were you, Roberto? Tell me.

  ‘Good evening, Signor Falco.’ She gave him a wide smile to show she was pleased to see him. ‘You’ve been busy today.’

  ‘I’ll be busy tonight as well.’

  He didn’t step out of their path the way a photographer should. ‘I hope you also had a busy day that was successful.’

  ‘Thank you. I did.’

  He nodded, his gaze intent on hers. ‘Enjoy your evening, signora.’

  So polite. But there was something in his eyes, dark and angry, and she didn’t know if it was meant for her or for Grassi or for the evening’s event itself.

  ‘I’d like a word with you later, if you have a moment,’ she said pleasantly.

  ‘Of course, Signora Berotti.’

  Briefly his eyes skimmed over Francolini, but others were arriving behind them. Roberto stepped aside. Isabella walked past him, her shoulder almost touching him, but his attention was already on his camera and the next guests.

  ‘Dance?’

  ‘No, thank you, Davide. I don’t.’ She gestured to her foot.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to be sorry. It gives me an excuse to avoid the crush on the dance floor and,’ she laughed to cover his moment of awkwardness, ‘to watch others making a fool of themselves up there.’

  ‘Is that what you think the dancers do?’

  ‘Make fools of themselves?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course they do. Half of them are like elephants on the floor and the other half can’t keep their hands off each other.’

  Davide Francolini regarded her with amusement. ‘No cynicism then?’

  Isabella laughed. ‘None at all.’

  She sipped her glass of prosecco spumante. It was her third. If she had just one more she reckoned the pain would stop. They were seated at a round table for ten people but the others were off on the dance floor. The ballroom was magnificent, Isabella had to admit that. It was a triumph of modernist design and a bottomless purse. The walls were an exquisite array of handsome white marble from Calacatta with dramatic grey veining, inlaid with black obsidian in bold geometric stripes. At one end a mural had been painted in angular cubist style depicting a group of Maremmana cattle being herded by men on horseback across the freshly drained grassland and in the background Isabella’s own tower soared up towards the sky, pure virgin white.

  Over the rim of her glass Isabella stared at the dancers in their finery. Diamonds flashed in the brilliant lights of the chandeliers and beaded gowns shimmered and rippled like sunlight on water. She used to love to dance. She and Luigi used to dance anywhere that there was music – in bars, on table tops, at weddings, even once at a funeral. But not now. The idea appalled her. She was a donkey now and had to stick to what donkeys are good at – work. Leave the dancing to the high-stepping ponies. But it made the soles of her feet itch, just to watch.

  She finished her drink and turned to face Davide instead. He was smoking a small cigar, his expression sombre, as though his thoughts were far away. She couldn’t see Roberto in the crowd but knew he must be somewhere in the room because every now and again she saw a camera flash light up a table.

  ‘Did you fix the crack in the apartment in Via Corelli?’ she asked David suddenly.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Were you able to discover why it occurred?’

  ‘Poor plaster.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It looks good as new now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ He patted her wrist. Nothing much, nothing for her to object to. A brief touch of skin. ‘Don’t worry.’

  But she did worry. It could be poor plaster. Or bad brickwork or sandy cement underneath. Or worse. Far worse. Bad foundations. She had to trust him.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on it,’ she commented.

  ‘No need. It’s been repaired.’

  She nodded. ‘Good.’ There was a pause, its awkwardness hidden by the sound of the band striking up ‘Vieni sul Mar’. Isabella placed her glass down on the table and said self-consciously, ‘I was grateful for your help. If ever I can repay the favour, just ask.’

  He smiled slowly, in no hurry, and stubbed out his cigar. ‘Thank you, Isabella. I will remember that.’ There was a burst of laughter from the next table and he waited for it to subside before he pushed back a lock of his soft brown hair and said casually, ‘Maybe we could drive up into the mountains one Sunday.’

  But before Isabella could reply, a man in elaborate uniform suddenly materialised at her elbow. A tightness crept up her throat.

  ‘Signora Berotti, Il Duce requests the pleasure of your company at his table.’

  ‘You will dance with me,’ Mussolini announced as soon as Isabella sat down in the chair next to his.

  He was looking resplendent in a glaringly white uniform adorned with sash and medals. Like a Roman caesar, she thought, uncompromising in the force of his personality which again condemned the rest of his table companions to the shade. Chairma
n Grassi was there she noticed and, to her horror, Colonnello Sepe was seated immediately on her right, but it was the three women who stared hard at her, their eyes cold and bright behind their smiles. She was an interloper. Usurping the attention from them during their one moment in the sun.

  ‘I don’t dance, Duce,’ she said quietly.

  If she made no sound, no amusing chatter, he would grow bored and discard her in favour of one of the glamorous females panting to sink their painted nails in his back.

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Every Italian should dance.’

  ‘Because I am lame.’ His black eyes widened dramatically. ‘I was wounded and I limp,’ she elaborated. Very nearly added And I have leprosy, but decided even he wouldn’t swallow that one.

  ‘Ah yes.’ He leaned close to her, eyes scouring hers, his breath sickly with the stink of brandy. ‘You were Luigi Berotti’s wife.’

  ‘The day my husband was shot in Milan, I was shot too. I don’t know who the murderer was. Neither do the police, it seems.’

  He slid an arm along the back of her chair, coiling it around her shoulders, and let his scowl slide past her to Colonnello Sepe.

  ‘Is that true, Sepe?’

  ‘I know none of the details, Duce. It was the Milan police who dealt with the case.’

  A roar of displeasure bellowed in Isabella’s ear. ‘Luigi Berotti was one of my loyal Fascisti and deserves better than this.’ His eyes flicked hungrily over Isabella and she looked away in time to see the other women at the table lick their lips. ‘His wife deserves better than this.’

  ‘Yes, Duce.’

  ‘Then we must give her better.’ As quickly as it came the dark pall of anger vanished, and just as a tenor launched himself into the anguished ‘Dicitencello Vuie’ song on stage, Mussolini’s voice softened to a purr. ‘You see, little one, I, Benito Mussolini, care about each and every one of my faithful followers.’

  Isabella’s breathing grew shallow. ‘Duce, my husband fought hard for the Fascist cause and the imprint he made on my own life is still there. He was a warrior. If you can discover who cut off his young life, please tell me.’ Seconds slid by in a noisy silence between them. ‘Please,’ she said again.

  Mussolini leaned his bulky frame back in his chair, the glare of the chandeliers rebounding off his gleaming scalp like darts of lightning as he quietly contemplated her for a full minute. She didn’t like the shrewdness of his narrowed eyes or his awareness of her need. This man was good at wrapping his fist around a person’s naked soul.

  ‘My dear Isabella,’ he said without lowering his voice a jot, ‘I can remove that beautiful orchid of yours if you think it will make you less noticeable. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  Sepe at her shoulder uttered a snort of scorn but she didn’t look round, didn’t risk dropping her eyes from Il Duce’s.

  ‘That’s why you’re wearing those hideous clothes, I assume,’ he continued. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Duce, it is. I want people to respect the memory of my husband.’

  He released a bark of laughter and her entire body jumped when he rested his hand on hers. For ten seconds she stared at it, then took her hand away. She realised she didn’t know what to say to him or how to act, if she was to drag out of him what she wanted to hear. He reached forward and unpinned the orchid, his fingers fumbling with the material of her dress, his wrists brushed against her breast. She knew this man believed he was beyond all rules.

  He tossed the bruised bloom on to the table and listened for a nostalgic moment with his head on one side to the final verse of ‘Dicitencello Vuie’:

  I want you so much, I want you so very much,

  This bond between us will never break!

  ‘Now,’ he touched a finger to her hot cheek, ‘signora, let us go somewhere quiet and private to discuss the killer you seek.’

  22

  It was like being in a cage with a lion. Nothing less. He didn’t need to roar or snarl. Just his presence was danger enough. He prowled around her where she stood in the centre of the small smoking room, an immense portrait of himself looking dynamic on horseback looming over her in case she managed to forget the power of her Duce. It was that power she wanted now. To work for her. Not against. A power that could drain marshes that defeated even Napoleon, the power of a man who didn’t recognise the word ‘no’.

  Isabella spoke first, briskly and in a strictly businesslike tone. ‘My husband, Luigi, marched on Rome with you in October 1922. He was helping you establish the foundations that became the Fascist government and he died for it. He was shot by someone in Milan the next day, someone who also crippled me, though I was not involved in the march in any way. I am asking you for justice, Duce. It is only justice that you should find out who the killer was. I was told by someone who is now dead that the Fascist Party knows who the killer is.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘He may be a Socialist or a Communist. Or any one of the enemies of the Fascisti.’

  He circled her. A flash of white in front and then behind her, unnerving her. Shoulders back, chest out, and always that cynical expression that came naturally to his face. She had a sense of an arrogant man who despised and manipulated people, who sought out their weaknesses and was master of how to corrupt souls – even the pope’s. She knew he had started out as a Socialist. At the age of twenty-nine he had been editor of the Socialist Party’s daily paper, Avanti. But he’d turned on them in 1914 and was labelled Judas by the working classes because he had thrown in his lot with the middle-class youth.

  He mobilised them. Energised them. Turned them into his ‘flying wedge’ and set them on the workers who were rebelling against bad working conditions and subsistence wages. His National Fascist Party spilled blood ruthlessly in the streets and yes, Isabella was acutely aware that Luigi might well have deserved an enemy or two. At the time, wildly in love, she’d known nothing about what he did, entrenched in her youthful ignorance, but now she was wiser. Warier. She regarded the man in front of her as lethal. The beat of her heart was violent.

  ‘What I want to know, Duce, is what went on during that October day ten years ago in the Fascist Year 1 of the New Era. What happened and why?’ She stood straight as he circled her and she gave no hint of her fear. ‘I need to know what you can do to help me.’

  He halted abruptly in front of her. ‘The bigger question, Signora Berotti, is what you can do for me?’

  She pretended to misunderstand. ‘I will do all I can to make Bellina the finest town in all Italy, to the glory of Il Duce.’

  His laugh was like a slap, harsh and scornful. ‘Don’t play games, cara mia, not with me.’

  He reached behind her head and yanked off the lace net, so that her hair broke free and cascaded around her shoulders. Mussolini twisted a hank of its dark curls around his fist and pulled her face closer to his. He was no taller than she was, and up close she could see the bad state of his skin and the sensuous curve of his upper lip. His pupils were black and huge with desire. She made herself stop pulling away from him and let her body go soft, but before she could even draw breath his lips were on hers.

  Greedy lips. Selfish. Demanding. Lips that gave nothing and took everything. She crushed her urge to bite through one of them and suffered in silence the brandy-slickness of them devouring her own. His hands fumbled for the buttons at her neck and started to undo each one with impatience, a grumble sounding inside his chest when one resisted his fingers. His breath came hot and repellent on her cheek. She wanted to spit in his face. To lift her knee to ward off the press of his body, to rid herself of the smell of him, perfumed and cloying as it crawled up her nostrils.

  When he reached the sixth button, that was enough. She pulled away from him but his hands still tugged at her drab dress, ripping off a button as he tried to haul her back.

  ‘No,’ she said sharply.

  He kept one hand attached to the front of her dress but stood still, breathing hard. His eyes narrowed to dark slits. ‘What stupid game ar
e you playing? With your ugly dress and your big sad blue eyes that make every man in the room want to give you something to smile about?’

  Isabella shut her ears to his words. ‘Tell me, Duce, when my Luigi was one of the squadristi, who was the head of his cohort?’

  The Fasci di Combattimenti, the official term for the Blackshirts, made use of the structure of Ancient Rome for its military divisions rather than follow the ranks of the Italian army. The groups were termed cohorts.

  ‘Why in the name of Christ Almighty would I remember a thing like that?’

  ‘Because you are Benito Mussolini, Comandante General of the Blackshirts. Because you are known to be intelligent and to remember details that other men forget. So yes, I think you will remember; I am asking you for his name.’