Last Train from Liguria (2010) (14 page)

She tries not to look at him until he is standing in front of her offering his smooth long-fingered hand. Fortyish, she thinks. Maybe a bit younger. A little aloof. Stern. Perhaps even cold. A bit of a martinet maybe. Attractive enough - which might explain what the American cousins see in him. But not the child.

‘I was coming to look for you,’ she says. ‘We’ve been trying to sort out a timetable.’

‘I know you have, Miss Stuart. I couldn’t help overhearing.’

‘We are having a little difficulty getting organized, I’m afraid.’

‘Just to say, Miss Stuart, what you’ve been told about the private tutor is true - not a word of English, never turns up anyway and really is a most terrible teacher when he does. I believe the Signora is hoping you’ll be his replacement? I’m to arrange it, books, curriculum and so on - that’s if you don’t mind - he needs to pass exams in October, otherwise he won’t be promoted. He has just failed his June exams, and rather spectacularly at that.’

‘I see.’

‘The system is a little complicated for private pupils but you’ll get the hang of it. Also there is a further curriculum which Signora Lami herself has devised, as she feels the state education lacks in some quarters. Now, as to what he says about the piano lessons - completely untrue. I’m much more flexible than he makes out, as is his tennis coach. It’s the Italian in him, he can’t help it. If he’s not ducking and dodging work, he’s blaming the other chap. He is your typical
furbo
- if you are familiar with the term?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Don’t worry, you will be.’

‘I see.’

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Stuart, I have something rather urgent I really must attend to. Nice to have met you.’

‘Yes,’ Bella says. ‘And you.’

‘Oh, and apologies for last night. Dinner - well, it was a misunderstanding on my part.’

‘Please, don’t worry.’

‘However, we are available tonight. Half past seven suit?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘I should warn you the Nelson sisters won’t be joining us - a dance in San Remo, I believe. So there will only be myself and Alec for company, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, I think I can bear that.’

‘Bear which, Miss Stuart - our company? Or the absence of the sisters?’ She thinks there might be a glint in his eye, and almost laughs, but decides on second thoughts not to risk it.

A few minutes later Bella, from a landing window at the opposite side of the house, spots Alec and Edward down in the garden. Alec, with the parcel under his arm, is tugging at Edward’s jacket and appears to be earnestly explaining himself. Edward nods in response. So much for his urgent errand and so much for Alec’s afternoon rest, she thinks. She is about to leave the window when Edward suddenly pounces on Alec and picks him up. Then he abruptly turns him upside down, letting him slip through his hands with a jolt before catching him by the ankles and starting back towards the house, the child dangling close to the ground, the parcel falling out of his grip onto the grass. She can see Alec’s open mouth, his eyes disappear up into his forehead, his hair like a hedge falling off his crown. Bella opens the window slightly and moves to the side where they can’t see her. She listens to Edward laughing down into his chest, Alec screaming with joy.

‘So you can’t find any time for your lessons, eh?’ Edward is shouting.

‘No!’

‘And you say you’ve looked everywhere, have turned the place upside down, in fact?’

‘Yes!’

‘So, now you’re upside down yourself - what about that then?’

‘Nooo,’ Alec roared.

‘Are you sure you’ve been looking properly?’

‘Yes!’

‘Have you looked in the grass?’

‘Yes! There’s nothing.’

‘Not even an hour or two?’

‘No!’

‘A few minutes then?’

She takes a peek out and now he is swinging the boy, like a pendulum.

‘Any luck yet?’

‘No! Maestro,
noooo
.’

He swings him harder. ‘Oh, come on now, you can’t be serious, there must be some time, somewhere down there.’

‘Yes… I find it.
L’ho trovato, l’ho trovato
.’

’
Bravo. Allora - uno, due, tre
.’ Edward turns Alec the right way up, and lets him slide down on the ground. ‘You will make out a timetable with your woman - what’s she called? Miss Stuart - anyway she sees fit. Is that understood?’

Alec gives a slight stagger and breathlessly laughs. ‘Yes, Maestro.’

‘And we will work our piano lessons to suit that timetable?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you will not use your asthma as an excuse again. Especially as it’s the wrong season for it. At least wait till September to chance it.
D’accordo?
’

’
Si, d’accordo
.’

’
Bene
.
Bravo
. Now come on, what are we waiting for? Let’s rip open the parcel and see what Nollie has sent.’

*

A few weeks later, Signor Lami is dead. Bella is the first to be informed, a privilege which surprises her, as much as it irritates the American cousins.

She is out on the terrace with Alec, one as bored as the other as they struggle with Signora Lami’s supplementary and somewhat random curriculum. Today’s suggestion in her Topic for Vocabulary Expansion Programme is the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren. Born in 1632. Son of the Dean of Windsor. Built St Paul’s - after twenty minutes over a fat old-fashioned textbook stinking of book must, this is about all they’ve been able to establish.

The instant she hears Elida’s croak - ‘
Signora Stu-arteh, al telefono, prego
‘, - coming up from the garden, Bella knows it has to be bad news. But she presumes it will be for her. My father, she thinks. In the time it takes her to go down the corridor, the three flights of stairs, she has forgiven him everything. He is dead, she keeps thinking all the way. My father is dead. That’s all.

As she comes in sight of the telephone table, she slows up her step and begins to consider. But supposing he’s not dead? Supposing he is merely ill, infirm even? What then - back to Chelsea? To be his nurse? She realizes then that she does not want to leave Alec. Nor this house, nor Bordighera. She does not want to leave Elida or Rosa the daily help who has started to become her friend. Nor the deaf mute kitchen maid with her constant head cold and violent mannerisms. Nor Cesare, the bandy gardener with his halitosis breath. Not even the American cousins, who have in their own peculiar way been keeping her entertained, or at least on her toes. Nor Edward. All of those people, who after a few short weeks have made her feel more at home than she has ever done in Chelsea or even as a child in Dublin. She does not want to go back to London to nurse a stranger.

But it isn’t her father’s housekeeper on the phone, nor, for that matter, Mrs Jenkins. Not even his secretary or one of his hospital colleagues.

‘Signora Lami? Have you bad news for me?’ Bella asks, surprised to hear her employer’s voice, but still convinced that the news has come from London via Palermo.

The Signora is to the point. ‘My husband is dead.’

‘Your husband?’

‘In fact. This morning.’

‘Oh I see. Of course. Your husband. I’m very sorry to hear it.’

‘Thank you. Now, Miss Stuart, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to give the news to Alec. I don’t think he should hear it on the telephone and it would not be good for him to come all the way to Sicily expecting to see his father alive and then to see him not so, but quite dead in a coffin. To arrive to a father’s funeral - a terrible thing for a boy. So. If you wouldn’t mind?’

’
Me?
You want
me
to?’

‘Yes. Unless you think it would be appropriate to wait until you arrive here? Then I could tell him in person, I suppose. But how would you feel about that, Signora Stuart, the journey here, Alec looking forward so to seeing his father, talking about him all the way, on the train, on the ship, in the car. How would you honestly feel?’

‘Well, I don’t know what to say to you, Signora Lami.’

‘The funeral will be in a few days. So it would be best if you start as soon as possible. I apologize that I am not in a position to organize your schedule - you will have to make your own details, I’m afraid.’

‘Please. Think nothing of it.’

‘When you board the ship at Genoa you may ask the purser to send a telegram and Pino will meet you in Palermo. But? Very well. Perhaps?’

‘Yes, Signora Lami?’

‘Perhaps I
should
prepare him. But it would mean asking you to look after his grief on the journey.’

‘Yes. Of course. I will do that, of course.’

There is silence for a moment, then the Signora speaks again. ‘I have made my decision now, Signora Stuart. I will tell him myself. I’m quite sure that’s the right thing to do.’

‘Yes, Signora Lami, of course. He’s in the library, I’ll just go and—’ But when she turns around Alec is standing behind her. Bella holds the receiver towards him. ‘Your Mamma wants to speak to you, Alec.’

He takes the phone slowly and looks into Bella’s eyes as he speaks to his mother. ‘Hello, Mamma… I’m very well, Mamma… Yes, I can be brave… Yes, Mamma, I’m listening.’

His eyes bulge with tears. His bottom lip begins to give. She sees his leg shake and the tic she had noticed the first evening begin to jitter on his eyelid. Bella steps nearer. He turns his back sharply on her and begins pushing his voice down into the receiver.

‘No, Mamma. I want Edward… Mamma please, yes, I know she is. I do. But—’

Bella moves out to the front steps. Elida has come round from the kitchen garden, a bouquet of basil held to her stomach, the green juices staining the grip of her fingers. They look at each other, then Elida, bowing her head, makes a sign of the cross. The echo in the hall lifts Alec’s whisper. They can hear him inside pleading, crying - heartbreakingly trying to do neither. Bella knows he is worried about hurting her feelings or indeed disappointing her in some way because he would prefer Edward to go with him. If only the poor child knew how glad she would be not to have to go all the way back to Sicily.

By now Amelia and Grace have turned up, in their large foolish hats, backless tops and wide-legged trousers which they called pants, flapping like banners anytime they take a few steps.

‘What’s happened?’ Amelia asks. ‘Oh my God - is it?’

Alec comes out to the steps. He lifts his sleeve to wipe his eyes, then leaves it there to cover his face. ‘Mamma wants to speak to you.’

‘To me, dear?’ Grace asks.

He shakes his head behind his arm.

‘To me then?’ Amelia suggests.

‘To Signora Stuart.’

‘To Signora Stuart?’ Amelia repeats.

Alec nods and Grace moves to put her arm around him. ‘Poor old Alec,’ she says. ‘Poor little sausage.’

‘I am not a sausage,’ he shouts, elbowing her out of the way, then running down the steps through the garden towards Edward’s mews.

When Bella picks up the receiver the Signora is already speaking. ‘And so in this case Edward may take him.’

‘Yes, Signora Lami.’

‘I think it will make much more sense. In fact I’ve decided now that would be best. Will you make the necessary arrangements, Miss Stuart? And please write everything down carefully, in case Edward forgets. May I please ask you to at least do that?’

*

Grace goes with them to the funeral in Sicily. Invited or not - Bella doesn’t know, nor does she ask. ‘It has,’ Grace says, ‘been decided that the Nelson family really ought to be represented and as such a journey is obviously out of the question for poor, indisposed Amelia, naturally, it falls upon me.’

A last-minute announcement, leaving time for neither discussion nor deterrent, Grace simply arrives in the hall with her baggage just as Edward and Alec are about to leave for the station. Clearly disgusted to be left behind, poor, indisposed Amelia decides not to come along to the station to see them off, ‘seeing as how I’m such an invalid and all’. Then she huffs off to her room.

Alec seems to be holding up well enough, although his face is so pale the freckles seem to hover over rather than rest upon his skin. All morning he has been complaining of feeling cold, in spite of a heat so solid you could take a bite out of it, and in the end Bella has to put a coat on him. At the station Edward goes to buy the tickets, and Grace goes to buy a magazine and ‘candies’. Bella steers Alec into the waiting room.

There is only one other person inside, a middle-aged woman fussily knitting in the corner. Bella, without quite knowing how, instantly identifies her as one of the dotty English brigade. Or ‘the English Dots’, as Edward calls them. She sits on the far end of the bench. Alec, kneeling on the opposite bench, begins to study a poster on the wall. The poster is for the
Balilla
, an organization for boys which, as far as Bella can make out, involves uniforms, badge-earning and outdoor adventure. Not unlike Powell’s Boy Scout Movement in fact, except the Italian version seems to demand constant praise and gratitude to Mussolini.
I Figli della Lupa
, or the sons of the she-wolf, advertised here look to be about the same age as Alec. A camping holiday is to take place next month, enrolling in a few days’ time at the Casa Fascista. Anyone who loves their country as much as they love their Duce is invited to enrol with the squadron leader.