The Italian Wife

  ‘They must have heard that Carlo Olivera is holed up here.’

  ‘But how?’

  They looked at each other, the same thought beating a path through their heads: Rosa. Who else had Rosa told about her father’s secret hideout?

  For one brief moment Isabella tipped her forehead against Roberto’s cheek. ‘Treachery is everywhere in Mussolini’s Italy,’ she whispered. ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to flee somewhere safe where —’

  ‘Don’t, Isabella.’ He placed two fingers on her lips. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

  But even as Roberto spoke, one of the carabinieri patrols marched into the far end of their alleyway and started to work its way down towards them. Rifle butts rammed into a wooden window box on a sill that was flaunting the last of its scarlet geraniums, and smashed it to splinters just for the hell of it. These men were looking for a fight. Isabella gripped Roberto’s hand and together they moved fast. Tight against the wall, no more than shadows skimming through deeper shadow. The alley twisted at the end, a sudden dog-leg, past an ancient stone terrace of houses with doors that opened on to the cobbles. But all were closed tight. Word was out in Sermoneta. Close your doors. Fasten your shutters. Keep off the streets if you want to keep your skull in one piece today.

  Isabella could taste the fear thick as grease on the back of her tongue and she forced her legs to run at Roberto’s pace. But as they darted around the corner of the dog-leg he glanced over his shoulder, saw her face and his own expression clouded with a sudden bleakness. She cursed herself for letting the pain stamp itself on her features and when he abruptly slowed, she said furiously, ‘Run! Run! Don’t…’

  But her words withered and died on her lips as she saw what lay ahead.

  ‘What is it, Isabella?’

  He swung around and saw what she saw. A blank stone wall. It was ten metres high, a section of the massive defences of the town. It blocked the end of the sunless alleyway and allowed no exit. It threw its shadow like a shield over the narrow houses crammed together under its protection. There was no way over the wall.

  Trapped like rats in a pipe.

  Isabella knew this was the end. The boots were marching closer and a shudder ran through her, so strong it felt as if her bones were cracking. Not because of the cell that awaited her. Not because of the bullet that this time would steal her life. But because it was the end of her life with Roberto. She didn’t look at the wall that was ending everything or at the dark uniforms swinging into view at the dog-leg twist in the road. She looked only at Roberto’s face. At the strong decent lines of it, at the softness of his mouth, at the deep anger that was etching creases into his brow. Creases that she wanted to banish with a touch of her fingers.

  She loved him fiercely and the thought of losing him drove all other thoughts from her head. She spun around and turned on the uniforms with a savagery that ripped through her. She started to race back up the alley towards them. Blood was rushing through her ears, pounding through her broken hand, searing her nerve-ends with its heat.

  If she was going to die, she would do it in the street with Roberto, not alone without him, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. She opened her mouth to utter a cry of fury but before any sound emerged, Roberto’s hand clamped over her mouth and for no more than a second she was lifted off her feet and turned to face an old battered door that she was charging past. It stood open a crack. One dark eye and a tense young mouth could be seen in the shadows, a male hand stretched out and beckoning.

  Before Isabella could switch her mind into working out whether this was a trap laid for them, Roberto stepped through the doorway and half-pushed half-carried her in front of him. He kicked the door shut behind him and their young rescuer slammed a metal bar into brackets across it. Then in the gloom of the darkened hallway he turned to face them. A thin bony face with a flattened nose.

  It was Alessandro Caldarone.

  40

  ‘Come!’

  Already fists were hammering on the front door.

  ‘Come!’ Alessandro hissed again.

  It was the son of the would-be farmer, Gabriele Caldarone, the family that Roberto had helped flee to the mountains when their charade of farming life was discovered.

  ‘Alessandro?’ Roberto clapped him on the shoulder, his hand swallowing the boy’s slight bones. ‘Grazie.’

  ‘Come!’ Alessandro said for the third time, even more urgently than before. He turned and dodged down the unlit passageway, beckoning them to follow.

  They did so without questions. This was not the time to doubt him. They heard a panel of the front door crack open and a voice bellow through it, but they didn’t stop, didn’t dare lose a second. Isabella hurried after the boy, Roberto behind her, covering her back. The house was narrow but rose three storeys high, with rough whitewashed walls inside. Alessandro scampered up a flight of bare wooden stairs and Isabella groped her way up them in the gloom.

  ‘Upstairs?’ she whispered.

  It felt all wrong. They would be trapped up there.

  ‘Are you sure, Alessandro?’ Roberto questioned as he loped up behind her.

  ‘Hurry!’ the boy hissed.

  With a crash, a panel of the front door smashed to the ground, and Alessandro leapt forward with alarm as he raced up another flight of stairs.

  ‘Quickly!’

  On the second landing he turned into a room at the back of the house that lay in almost complete darkness. Isabella kept up with him, Roberto at her side, but he didn’t take her arm and she loved him for that. She knew her limp was bad right now, but she couldn’t bear to be carried. The room was empty of furniture.

  ‘Alessandro,’ Roberto said in an urgent voice, ‘this room is a dead end. What the hell are we doing in here? There’s no way out.’

  ‘It’s a safe room.’

  ‘How is this room safe?’ Roberto was already heading back to the door and for the first time Isabella saw a gun in his hand.

  ‘No, Roberto, don’t, it’s —’

  ‘Look,’ Alessandro said quickly. ‘Here.’

  The walls of the room were rough plastered, pitted with indentations and grooves where the trowel had spread the mix on the surface. Alessandro swiftly snatched up a long, thin metal skewer that lay in a basket of logs as though discarded and ran his fingertips over a section of the end wall which was blank and windowless. Even in the semi-darkness the boy showed no hesitation, though his hand shook as he lifted the point of the spike to touch the wall. It had a rough knob on the thicker end and a small hook on its tip which he inserted into a tiny hole, one of many in the plasterwork. He pushed it far in and twisted it with both hands. There was a distinct click.

  Downstairs the metal bar across the door clattered to the flagstones. They were in.

  Isabella felt the vibrations of them ripple through the house as the carabinieri charged into the hallway, she heard their shouts, and her heart was clawing at her chest. Roberto remained calm. A stillness seemed to wrap itself around his broad shoulders as he closed the door of the room and turned to Isabella with his face half-buried in the shadows.

  ‘I love you,’ he said softly. Then he pointed his gun at the door and waited. She went to him.

  ‘In here! Before they come. Be quick!’ Alessandro was swinging open a metre-wide section of wall at the corner, that swivelled on a hinge to reveal a hidden gap.

  Boots echoed on the first staircase. They were coming.

  ‘Get in,’ Alessandro urged.

  Isabella moved fast. She hurried over to the open hole in the wall and climbed in.

  ‘Come quickly, Roberto. And you, Alessandro.’

  The boots were pounding up the second staircase. The voices rose up to the landing ahead of them, and there was an eagerness to them, a keenness. Like hounds delirious with the scent of prey. It sent chills through Isabella. Alessandro scrambled into the narrow gap behind the wall and only when they were both in did Roberto follow them. He pulled the secti
on of wall closed behind him.

  ‘Lock it!’

  Alessandro grasped a metal handle that was on the inside, twisted it and they all heard a lock click into place. Each of them held their breath. Inside the dark space lay the smell of fear. As though the stones themselves were impregnated with it from all the men and women who had stood like this. Not blinking. Not breathing. Hearts drumming in their chests. Listening. To every creak and every footstep. Mouths dry as dust, blackness filling their world. The kind of fear that strips the soul.

  Roberto’s arm wrapped around Isabella and they stood in silence.

  ‘They’re here. They have to be. The bastards are hiding somewhere.’

  ‘Capitano, we’ve searched every room. There’s no one here.’

  ‘Damn you, Vizzini, search them again!’

  ‘There’s nowhere for them to hide.’

  ‘Find them, you lazy bastardo, or my fist will find your head.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Footsteps prowled. A fist thumped the walls. An arm’s length from Isabella’s throat, she heard the captain of the search party growl with frustration. He stood still, listening as intently as they were listening. She could feel his mind pushing against the walls.

  ‘Now.’

  Roberto whispered the word in Alessandro’s ear, the first word spoken in over an hour.

  Fear and darkness alter the mind, they break down the scaffolding of thoughts, and leave damage and disruption behind. Fear alters perception. For a moment, before Alessandro swung the section of wall open, Isabella believed she was in hospital again, unable to open her eyes however hard she tried. In a world of pain and blackness. But she felt Roberto’s hand on hers and it brought her back to the secret hole in the safe room and she nodded to him, as if he could see her. At last the carabinieri had gone.

  A crack of light splintered the darkness and Isabella caught a glint of the gun in Roberto’s hand. As the wall swung open, she knew this was not the Roberto from the farm, this was a man who would use a gun if he had to, and if he put it in her hand, she would use it too. That knowledge frightened her. But that’s what violence did to a person. It had bred something in her that she didn’t know was there.

  Roberto stepped out first, blinking in the dim light. He held a finger to his lips and gestured for them to remain where they were. He crossed to the door and left the room on silent feet. Isabella immediately picked up the long metal spike that had opened the secret hiding place and stood in the doorway with it clutched in her hand like a dagger. But he returned and she said nothing. Not showing what those two minutes cost her. She turned to the young boy whose face was grey in the shadows, sweat beading at his temples.

  ‘Alessandro.’ She spoke in a whisper, though the house was empty. ‘Thank you.’ She walked over and kissed his young cheek. ‘Thank you for saving us. You are brave.’

  He blushed. Even sick with fear, he could blush. ‘I was sent to find you. We have safe houses scattered through the town, but the carabinieri are too stupid to know.’

  ‘That capitano knew,’ Roberto pointed out. ‘That’s why he stayed.’ He offered his hand to Alessandro. ‘You have courage, young man. I thank you for it.’

  The boy smiled shyly as he shook Roberto’s hand. ‘I stayed,’ he told them. ‘To help Carlo Olivera and his followers fight back. Papa and the girls have gone south.’ His hand slid to a knife in a leather sheath under his jacket and as he touched it, his manner seemed to stiffen, his muscles to harden. Isabella grieved for the young boy who wanted to be a farmer but who was forced to swap the plough for the knife. Eventually the knife would become a gun. That’s how killers are made.

  ‘Who sent you to find us?’ Roberto asked.

  ‘Carlo. He’s —’

  Footsteps on the stairs, soft secretive ones. Quick furtive sounds. Roberto stepped smoothly to one side of the door, Alessandro took the other side, Isabella remained where she was, visible as a distraction to the gaze of whoever emerged. She waited without a flicker of movement. Just a pulse at her throat.

  Abruptly the intruder appeared out of the gloom on the landing. A thin small face. It was Rosa.

  She grinned at Isabella and beckoned. ‘Come, signora.’

  Rosa had the nose of a rat for where the patrols of carabinieri were searching. She crept up the steep climb towards the castle and then instantly dipped down again and doubled back on herself. Avoiding the dark uniforms by no more than a few paces around a corner, by a sliver of a shadow.

  Isabella saw a different Rosa. It was as though she had shed a skin along with her grey uniform. She was now wearing a loose smock of coarse cloth and she moved with the freedom of a small woodland creature, certain of her step. She squeezed Roberto into niches that almost cracked his shoulders, and tucked Isabella under arches of stone steps until danger passed.

  They succeeded in crossing the town and entered a small street that basked in sunlight, the wind swirling through the washing that hung on lines stretched across it, shirts and sheets that fluttered like ghosts who had lost their way.

  ‘Here,’ Rosa pointed.

  It was another of the red-tiled medieval houses with its stone walls gilded by the sun, its doors low and its windows shuttered and small.

  ‘Rosa.’ Roberto’s voice was careful.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you tell anyone else that your father was up here in Sermoneta? Colonnello Sepe was here before we were.’

  Rosa shook her head but her eyes grew huge and anxious. She was once more the silent child who had first sat at Isabella’s table in the Piazza del Popolo.

  ‘What is it, Rosa?’ Isabella asked. She took Rosa’s hand in hers. ‘Who did you tell?’

  The girl’s face crumpled. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘It’s all right. Your papa will know you didn’t mean to.’ She squeezed the small hand that had curled into a tight ball inside her own. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Carmela.’

  ‘Who is Carmela?’

  ‘My friend at school.’

  Isabella and Roberto exchanged a look. So Sepe was interrogating children now. How many of them had he terrified? How many had nightmares of men in uniforms and of women in black habits? Isabella crushed her anger and approached the front door with Roberto. She hated to see the gun in his hand. Don’t, Roberto, don’t forget who you are.

  Rosa darted forward in front of them and rattled out a prearranged knock on the door, her knuckles beating a rhythmic tattoo on the bleached wood. Isabella stood beside Roberto, ready to slip inside, but even she was unprepared for the face that scrutinised them when the door swung open. It possessed a mane of ginger hair and a quick sharp stare. At once Isabella recognised the man who had accosted her in Rome: Luca Peppe.

  He smiled in recognition but the smile didn’t even attempt to travel from his mouth to his eyes. He didn’t trust her. But neither did she trust him.

  ‘I’ve come with Rosa to see Carlo Olivera,’ she stated.

  She was exposed here standing out in the street for any of the patrols to spot. The autumn warmth from the sun felt too fragile to drive the chill from her spine and she was grateful for Roberto’s solid presence beside her. He was regarding the man at the door with deep suspicion. Peppe was taken by surprise when Roberto abruptly shouldered his way forward into the narrow hallway and checked behind the door. No one was waiting there with a knife for their backs.

  ‘Rosa,’ Peppe said as if Roberto and Isabella were not there, ‘he’s asking for you. Get in quickly.’

  Rosa shot past them, her dark head disappearing down to the end of the passage. The house felt cold, and from the rough old walls seeped the dank smell of a place that was unlived in, a sadness adrift in the air.

  ‘Is Carlo Olivera here?’ Roberto demanded.

  ‘He is.’

  Peppe shut the door quickly behind them and led them towards the room at the far end of the hall, down several steps. Over his shoulder he glanced at Isabella. ‘I don’t know why y
ou’re here or why he’s fool enough to let you come, but don’t think I won’t be watching every move you make.’

  His eyes shifted to Roberto who seemed to fill the narrow space. Peppe was about to say more but a voice from within the room made him change his mind and he pushed open the door.

  Isabella’s mouth went dry. To confront the man who had put a bullet in her back and ended her husband’s life, that was why she was here. But the moment did not come alone. It brought the past with it, hurtling along the passage with a howl, and she wanted to reach out and seize it by the throat. To choke the life out of it. To hear its last desperate breath, its death rattle. To know there would be no more nightmares, no more sweat and tears each night. After she’d entered this room, she would be able to say to Roberto, Look at me. My scars have gone. I don’t have to hide any more.