Benedetta seemed tired and low at breakfast the next morning. I protested that I was giving her extra work, but she would have none of it. ‘It’s my son in Milan,’ she said. ‘I think he has bad habits. I worry that he spends too much money. Never saves. I tell him to come home. I tell him he needs his mama.’ She spread her hands out in a gesture of appeal. ‘He says he should come home to his mama. But how to do it?’
I sat at the table, drank her coffee and ate a hunk of bread and apricot jam. The sun speared through the kitchen window and illuminated the framed picture of the Madonna, the array of well-used saucepans on the single shelf. ‘Benedetta,’ I asked, ‘how was the
Benedetta folded her hands on the table. ‘It was bad. You don’t want to know. There is no point.’
‘Please tell me.’
She heaved herself to her feet. ‘I must see to the tomatoes.’
I followed her outside. It was nine o’clock, but the sun was already like a power drill on the skin. Benedetta fussed away over the trusses and nipped out the leaders. ‘Lucilla was your grandmother’s sister,’ she admitted at last.
‘I didn’t know she had one.’
Benedetta shrugged. ‘When she was nineteen, she married a Fascist and went to live in Rome. I was still small, but the gossip… The Fascists made people volunteer to fight and they sent out people from Rome who beat you or put you in prison if you refused.’
By the law of averages, there’s an awful similarity in war stories and I had a good idea of what might come next.
‘This man arrived with Lucilla in a big car and demanded that all the men in Fiertino join up. None of the family would speak to Lucilla and we, the children, were forbidden to go anywhere near her. I remember coming down the road with my brother and she was standing outside the
Benedetta harvested two ripe tomatoes from a plant and held one out to me. ‘Eat, Fanny.’
The lush red was almost the colour of blood. ‘Did they come back?’
‘They did. Towards the end, after your grandmother and your father had gone away over the hills. The Germans had blown up some of the houses over there,’ Benedetta pointed in the direction of the
I had heard some of these stories from my father; they had been told to him by my grandmother. Stories are usually improved in the telling, but these had the directness and simplicity that came from having to face the worst. At night, the women piled the prams high with the hoarded provisions, and the children carried what they could to the safe house. It was a lottery. Often they picked the wrong house, and the shelling did its worst. ‘By then,’ my father had told me, ‘we were used to secrets. Where to hide the oil, a ham, half a cheese, where the chickens had been taken.’
Having nipped the final truss, Benedetta levered herself upright. ‘No one was willing to tell Lucilla and her husband where that night’s safe house was. The Partisans sent word down from the hills that the Germans were planning to use the road running north of the valley so everyone made for the church. But in the end it wasn’t the Germans. It was… A Partisan came down from the hills and demanded to know where Lucilla’s husband was. No one said anything, for whatever her politics Lucilla was still one of us.’
‘And?’
‘It was me.’ Benedetta spoke so softly that I almost didn’t catch her confession. ‘I heard the Partisan ask, “Where is this man?” and I ran up to him. “I know, I know,” I shrieked, in my little-girl voice.
Back in the kitchen, Benedetta stood in front of her picture of the Madonna and crossed herself. ‘I had been taught always to tell the truth. The next time we looked, the
I sat down. ‘We must think so,’ I said.
What seemed like an hour later, but was only a minute or two, Benedetta added, ‘Lucilla was a good wife, faithful unto death.’
Later, I walked up to the cemetery outside the village. The graves were a garish mix of coloured marble, white stone, plastic-embossed photographs and soiled plastic flowers. It took me a while to locate Lucilla’s for she had not been buried with the other Battistas, her family. She had been laid to rest in the extreme edge of the north corner. Her stone was meagre, and badly carved, its inscription terse: ‘Lucilla Battista. Born 1919. Died 1944’. Behind it a
Raoul picked me up from Casa Rosa at ten o’clock. He was dressed in well-cut linen trousers and shirt, but there were dark circles under his eyes. ‘We will eat in Cortona. Afterwards we will drive to Tarquinia and look at Etruscan objects.’ He peered over his sunglasses. ‘I know your father was always interested. Then I will bring you back to Fiertino and you can change. I will attend to some business in the next village. Then we will head up to La Foce where my friend Roberto will give us dinner.’
‘Me?’
‘He’s expecting you.’
I could not help smiling at Raoul’s presumption. ‘You assumed?’
‘I assumed.’
There was a trace of cumulus cloud as we drew into Cortona but it was hot. In a dim, shaded restaurant, we ordered antipasti and light, tangy pinot grigio. I ate and drank with a faint air of unreality, a sense that I had trespassed into a story where I recognized neither the characters nor the setting. But I was intrigued to know what would happen.
‘Thank you for lunch, Raoul.’ I tipped my glass at him. ‘Do you know the best thing? Not having to think about a timetable.’
He looked at me with a question. ‘Let me be honest, Fanny. I was hoping you might thank me for something else.’
The suggestion of sharp, sexual pleasure made my stomach lurch.
‘I shouldn’t be saying this, but it is unavoidable and I, at least, had better say it and you can think about it.’
At Tarquinia, we bought tickets to the fifteenth-century palazzo where the Etruscan artefacts were kept. Inside, we admired a pair of winged terracotta horses, a bronze mirror held up by a statue of Aphrodite, and a bronze of Heracles subduing the horses of Diomedes.
As I moved away, I happened to glance over my left shoulder and caught the image. I recognized it instantly. Behind the glass showcase, and beautifully lit, was the stone funerary carving. It was composed of a couch over which a tasselled cloth had been arranged. Stretched out on it were two figures, a man and a woman. She was young, with huge painted eyes and a trace of a smile on her lips. One of her arms was stretched across her breast so it almost touched her companion. His arm was round her shoulders and he was smiling too. The inscription read, ‘Married couple, fifth century BC’.
But I knew that already.
I read out from my guidebook: ‘“They were the inhabitants of
‘They look so normal,’ I commented to Raoul. ‘So understandable.’
Raoul captured the guidebook. ‘“Etruscan women enjoyed the freedom to go out, to share feasts and to drink wine. The Etruscans honoured their wives and sought out their company.”’
‘Ah,’ I said.