The boy passed the cigarette. First contact, first humanity.
Harrison wrapped his lips on the filter end, pulled hard into his lungs and eased his foot on the accelerator.
'Thank you.' Harrison spoke with feeling and nicotine smoke eddied inside the car's confines. 'Now it's your turn. There'll be nothing funny, I'll keep going, but it's you for the talking.
Right?'
Harrison looked quickly away from the road's illuminated markers and the direction lines, gave himself time to absorb the furrow of frown and concentration on the boy's face.
'You should just drive,' and there was the first simmering of hostility.
'Give me the cigarette again, please.' It was passed to him; one desperate intake, like the swill minutes in the pub back in England when the beers are on the counter and the landlord's calling for empty glasses. 'What's your name?'
'Giancarlo.'
'And your other name, what's that, Giancarlo T Harrison spoke as if the question were pure conversation, as if the answer carried only trivial importance.
'You have no need to know that.'
'Please yourself. I'll call you Giancarlo. I'm Geoffrey..
' I know what your name is. It is 'Arrison. I know your name.'
Brutal going. Like running up a bloody sandhill. Remember the shooter, if you don't want the ketchup running out of your armpit.
'How far are you going to want me to drive, Giancarlo?'
'You must drive to Rome.' Uncertainty in the boy's voice.
Unwilling to be pulled through the wet clothes wringer with his plan.
'How far's Rome?'
'Perhaps eight hundred kilometres.'
'Jesus…'
'You will drive all the time. We will only stop when the day comes.'
' It's a hell of a way. Aren't you taking a turn?'
' I watch you, and the gun watches you. Eh, 'Arrison.' The boy mocked him.
' I'm not forgetting the gun, Giancarlo. Believe me, I'm not forgetting it.' Start again, try another route, Geoffrey. 'But you're going to have to talk to me, otherwise I'll be asleep. If that happens it's the ditch for all of us. Harrison, Giancarlo and his pistol, all going to be wrapped round the ditch. We're going to have to find something to talk about.'
'You are tired?' A query. Anxiety. Something not considered.
'Not exactly fresh.' Harrison allowed a flicker of sarcasm. 'We should talk, about yourself for starters.'
The car bounced and veered on the uneven road surface. Even the autostrada, the pride of a motoring society, was in a creeping state of disrepair. The last time the section had been resurfaced the contractor had paid heavily in contributions to the men in smart suits who interested themselves in such projects. For the privilege of moving machines and men into the district he had cut hard into his profit margins. Economies had been made in the depth of the newly laid tarmac which the winter rains had bitten.
Harrison clung to the wheel.
' I told you my name is Giancarlo.'
'Right.' Harrison did not turn from the windscreen and the road in front. The smells of the two mingled closely till they were inseparable, unifying them.
' I am nineteen years old.'
'Right.'
' I am not from these parts, nor from Rome.'
No need any more for Harrison to respond. The flood-gates were breaking and the atmosphere in the little car ensured it.
' I am a fighter, 'Arrison. I am a fighter for the rights and aspirations of the proletariat revolution. In our group we fight against the corruption and rottenness of our society. You live here and you know what you see with your eyes, you are a part of the scum, 'Arrison. You come from the multinational, you control workers here, but you have no commitment to the Italian workers. You are a leech to them.'
Try and comprehend him, Geoffrey, because it's not the time for argument.
'We have seen the oppression of the gangsters of the Democrazia Cristiana and we fight to destroy them. The communists who should be the voice of the workers are in the DC pockets.'
The boy shook as he spoke, as if the very words caused him pain.
' I understand what you say, Giancarlo.'
'On the day that you were taken in Rome by those Calabresi pigs, I was with the leader of our cell. We were ambushed by the polizia. They took our leader, took her away in their chains and with their guns round her. There was another man with us -
Panicucci. Not of our ideology at first, but recruited and loyal, loyal as a fighting lion. They shot Panicucci like a dog.'
'Where were you, Giancarlo?'
'Far across the street. She had told me to bring the newspapers.
I was too far from her. I could not help…'
'I understand.' Harrison spoke softly, tuned to the failure of the boy. He should not humiliate him.
' I could not help, I could do nothing.'
And soon the little bastard will be crying, thought Harrison.
If the gun wasn't at his ribcage, Geoffrey Harrison would have been laughing fit to bust. Saga of bloody heroism. Away across the road buying newspapers, what sort of medal do you get for that one? Driving hard past the road to Vibo Valentia, hammering over the bridge and the low reflected waters of the drought-starved Mesima river.
'The one you call the leader, tell me about her.'
'She is Franca. She is a lovely woman, 'Arrison. She is a lady.
Franca Tantardini. She is our leader. She hates them and she fights them. They will torture her in the name of their shitty democratic state. They are bastards and they will hurt her.'
'And you love this girl, Giancarlo?'
That deflated the boy, seemed to prick him where the gas was densest.
' I love her,' Giancarlo whispered. ' I love her, and she loves me too. We have been together in the bed.'
' I know how you feel, Giancarlo. I understand you.'
Bloody liar, Geoffrey. When did you last love a woman? How long? Not that recently, not last week. Bloody liar. In the early days with Violet, that was something like love, wasn't it? Something like i t. ..
'She is beautiful. She is a real woman. Very beautiful, very strong.'
' I understand, Giancarlo.'
' I will liberate her from them.'
The car swerved on the road, swung out into the fast lane to wards the crash barriers. Harrison's hands had tightened on the wheel, his arms had stiffened and were unresponsive, clumsy.
'You are going to liberate her?'
'Together we are going to liberate her, 'Arrison.'
Harrison stared, eyes gimlet clear, out on to the ever diminishing road in his lights. Pinch yourself, kick your arse. Push the bedclothes off and get dressed. Just a bloody nightmare. It has to be.
He knew the answer, but he asked the question.
'How are we going to do it, Giancarlo?'
'You sit with me, 'Arrison. We sit together. They will give me back my Franca and I will give you back to them.'
' It doesn't work like that. Not any m o r e… not after Moro
… '
'You have to hope it is like that.' The cold back in his voice, the ice chill that the boy could summon from the
