Mondello, but to their regular church beside the Giardino Inglese. She had begged a lift, she had said that she would wander in Palermo and made a joke that Sunday morning was the safest morning to be alone on the streets. She had left them, as they had mingled outside their church with the professionistici and the wives in their finery and the children in their smart best. Now she cursed Benny Rizzo because he was not in his apartment, not available to her. Perhaps he had gone to his mother, perhaps he had gone to deliver a photocopier, perhaps he had gone to a talk-shop meeting. She felt raw annoyance, and she stamped her way down the staircase and out into the sunshine. She could not see him, and she wondered if he was there, and if Axel Moen watched her.
Sunday morning… She walked aimlessly. She was on the pavement of the Via della Liberta. The heat was rising. The sun was bright. The street was taped off as the long-distance runners prepared for their race. They were slapping their bodies, or jogging nervously at the thought of pain, and some were checking that they had brought the silver foil to wrap around themselves after the exhaustion and dehydration of the run. The pavements were her own. A few responded to the tolling church bells and hurried past her. She went by shuttered restaurants and darkened shops, past the strident monuments of cavalier men posturing on rampant horses, past the deserted market of the Borgo Vecchio with the empty, skeletal frames of the stalls. She had no map with her, she did not know where she was going. She passed the shadowed alleyways that led into an old quarter, and the modern blocks of the new buildings on the harbour front, and she saw the towering hulks of the waiting car ferries. She was so alone. She had not considered that Benny would not be there, waiting, available. She stared at the prison, the ochre walls in which weeds grew, the guards with the rifles on the walkway above the wall, at the high, small windows from which underpants and socks hung to dry, at the patrolling military truck in which the soldiers carried rifles, where Peppino would be taken and where Angela would go with small Mario and Francesca and the baby at visiting times. She had needed him, needed Benny, and she despised him.
Sunday morning… Charley walked without purpose. She went by cats that glowered at her, then ripped at the rubbish bags, past packs of dogs that slunk from her.
She lingered outside the Teatro Massimo, where the walls were boarded against the vandals and the weather, where pigeon dirt and vehicle fumes had stained the walls in equal measure. She stood under the trees beside the derelict building and looked at the horses that were harnessed to the carrozzi, and she thought of the picket line of decent people at Brightlingsea and of how they would have responded to the dismal horses hooked to the empty tourist carriages. There was a lovely roan-and-white horse with its head down in passive acceptance. She was at the Quattro Canti. It was where Benny should have brought her. Shit, it wasn't much. Shit, all the fuss in the guidebook. Shit, the statues were grimed, fume-polluted, crumbling. So alone, so miserable, so lost…
She swore again because he was not with her, was not available.
She was on Via Mariano Stabile. The church was a red-stone building. She heard the singing of the hymn, familiar. She did not go to church at home, nor did her father and nor did her mother. The red of the church was so out of place in the grey and ochre of Palermo. She did not go to church at home because there she was never alone and miserable and lost. She crossed the street to the church. She stood outside the opened iron gates. It was so bloody unfair that she was alone and miserable and lost.
The words were faint, feeble. A reedy chorus.
Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
She was drawn to the door. She walked into the grey light of the church, broken only where the sun was against the many-coloured glass of the window. The door slammed shut behind her and faces turned to notice her, then looked away. She stood at the back.
She saw the plaques remembering the long-dead. The organ rose in a crescendo, not matched by the scattered voices.
Then I shall bow in humble adoration, and then proclaim, My God, how great Thou art… Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me, How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
It was the end of the service. A woman came and spoke to her, in piping English.
Was she new to Palermo? Had she mistaken the time of Sunday worship? She was most welcome whether or not she could sing – but could she sing? Would she like coffee?
Charley hoped so much to be wanted, loved, and she said she would like coffee. She went with other ladies, dressed as they would be for church in Exeter or Plymouth or Kingsbridge, up into the living room of the clergyman's apartment beside the church.
She wanted so much to please and to be welcomed… She was told that they were the remnants of a great English society that had been based in Palermo, they were the nannies who had married Sicilians and stayed, they were the artists who had fallen for the light over the mountains and on the sea and stayed, they had come to teach the English language and stayed… She was a plaything, exciting because she was new.
She fled. They wanted her name and her telephone number and her address. She could not lie to them. They wanted to know whether she would sing with the choir, whether she would come to the barn-dance evening, whether she could help with the flowers. If she stayed she would lie. She left them bewildered, confused, she fled out into the bright sun of the street.
Alone, miserable, lost, she went to the bus stop on the Via della Liberta that would take her back to the villa at Mondello, and she cursed Benny for not being available.
In the car, beside her husband, Angela had withdrawn into the web of her mind.
She wore a fine dress of respectful green, chosen by her husband, and a coat of fox pelts, chosen by her husband. She wore discreet jewellery at her throat and round her wrists and on her fingers, chosen by her husband. Her husband liked the coat of fox pelts and she wore it as if it were a badge of submission. The air-conditioner blew cool air over her. Her face was hidden from him by the dark glasses, chosen by her husband, that protected her eyes from the sun's glare that glittered up from the road. The children were in the back of the car, and the baby was corralled in the special seat, and they were quiet, subdued, as if they caught her mood. In the web of her mind were cascading thoughts…
She loathed Sicily. After Mass they had been to an apartment along the Via della Liberta, near their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, and they had drunk aperitifs of Cinzano and nibbled at canapes, and her husband had murmured that their host was useful as a contact in business, and deference was shown her by the other wives. .. She had magnificence around her, status, ever more lavish presents brought from abroad.. . She loathed the half-truths of the people and the double-talk of their coded whispers.
She was a prisoner… She had asked, quietly, if they could go to their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, just to visit, not important, to collect clothes and more toys, and her husband had dismissed the suggestion. She had wondered if his woman was there. .. She could not leave him. Her upbringing, her schooling, her rearing all served to prevent her leaving her husband. Her upbringing was the influence of her father, Catholic, conservative and working in the diplomatic section of the Vatican. Her schooling was the work of nuns. Her rearing was the effort of her mother to whom divorce was unthinkable and separation was disaster and marriage was for the extent of life. No court in Sicily would give her custody of the children if she left… If her husband recognized her unhappiness, driving the fast route to Mondello, if he cared for her unhappiness, he gave no sign to her. Only once had the mask cracked on his face, the morning he had been called down to the EUR to meet with the magistrate and the investigators of the Servizio Centrale Operativo, only that one morning had the bastard man crumpled – and he had come back, and he had laughed off the ignorance of the magistrate, and the matter was never talked of again. She did not know the detail of his involvement, she was the Sicilian wife kept quiet and beautiful under the weight of presents. She believed now that her husband's involvement was total, and she could not leave. The wife of Leoluca Bagarella had tried to leave, and it was said that she was dead, it was said in the Giornale di Sicilia that her way out was to have taken her life.. . He stroked her hand, a small and unimportant gesture to him, as if he patted the paw of a prized pedigree dog, and he smiled in his confidence… Angela detested her husband.
If it were not for the brother, the stumbling, fat little snail of a man, then her husband would be nothing more than another criminal on the streets of the island she loathed. It made her sick, physically sick, when the rough hands of the brother touched the smooth skin of her piccolo Mario, when he slipped through a back door early in the morning or late in the night and touched her son and played on the floor with her son…
Angela smiled at her husband, and he could not see her eyes.
The tail was on 'Vanni Crespo.
Before, the tail had been successful only sporadically, but Carmine had directed more men, more picciotti, to the tail.
