No one moves, and the guard flushes brighter red. Before he can shout, before he can brandish his baton, before anyone can be taken to the Punishment Hut and whatever that might involve, Cesare calls to the other men, in Italian: ‘Come on, we’re going to the quarry. We need to line up now!’
The prisoners stand in line – slowly and reluctantly, with some of them shooting dirty looks at Cesare. Their expressions darken further when the guard nods gratefully at him.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cesare.’
‘Well, Cesare lad, you’ll be getting extra bread at dinner tonight.’
The other prisoners jostle past him, some of them still glaring.
‘You are a dog for the English, then?’ one man mutters.
But before Cesare can explain anything – before he can say that he was trying to help, that he wants to keep them safe, that these guards are dangerous, that the commander is willing to shoot them in the skull – the man has shoved Cesare so that he falls backwards and bangs his head on the hard wooden bunk.
‘Traditore!’ the man snarls. Traitor!
Gino and Antonio help him up. Cesare’s hands are balled into fists, but the man who pushed him has already gone.
Gino’s face is stern. ‘It is best to stay quiet, Cesare. You know this.’
Cesare nods, remembering the months in the North African camp. The fat black flies that rose in clouds from the bodies of the men who’d protested, or drawn too much attention. The best way to survive is to be invisible – to imagine your body as part of a machine that does whatever is expected, without protest or hesitation.
‘We must line up now.’ Antonio claps him on the arm – his hand, for a moment, on the scrap of red fabric that would tell the guards where best to put a bullet – and then they follow the rest of the men out into the grinding cold and line up, ready to walk down to the quarry.
That first night in his hut, Cesare shuts his eyes and listens to the exhalations of fifty frightened men around him. It is dark, but there are no snores yet – impossible to sleep when your whole body is coiled like a spring, when your breath is tight in your chest and you’re waiting for the sound of a baton on flesh.
He hears again the sound of the guard’s shouts in the quarry, feels again the sensation of his shovel striking rock, the echo reverberating through his shuddering arms. The explosions that had rocked his bones and made his teeth ache. He’d lost count of how many wheelbarrows of rocks they’d filled. His hands had blistered and the blisters had burst, and still he hadn’t stopped digging.
He moves his lips in prayer, closing his eyes, trying to remember the arched roof of the church in Moena. The painted branches, the illuminated birds, their wingtips touching as they soar upwards.
Just before he falls asleep, he traces the outline of the card, which has dried out and is tucked into his pocket still. He tries to see again the face of the girl who’d dragged him from the sea. He tries to picture her eyes and what he’d seen there: that warmth, that kindness, that sadness. The expression that had quickened his breath and set a repeated thrumming detonation in his chest.
Late January 1942Orcadians
Frost has hardened the paths up to Kirkwall Town Hall as people gather for another meeting. There is a white rime on the leaves of the bushes, which glitter as bodies brush past, breath steaming from open mouths. It is past blackout, so they shuffle and huddle close together to avoid stumbling.
In the dim light of the hall, John O’Farrell is waiting, his jaw tense, his hands in fists on the table in front of him. There is a serrated, raw feeling in the air, like the metallic tang of a gathering storm, and no one has ever known John O’Farrell to flinch from a fight.
When this meeting about the newly arrived prisoners was called, there had been plans to stage a protest – as if a meeting would do any good! As if talking would make a difference! Some had even said that they should boycott the meeting, should deal with the problem themselves, quickly and finally. Someone else had pointed out that there could be nothing quick or final about getting rid of a thousand foreign men.
Now the people mutter to each other, waiting for John O’Farrell to speak. The women rustle their skirts and the men clutch their caps. They know what they will do, if the meeting doesn’t go their way.
O’Farrell gives a sigh, a tight smile. ‘I’ll get directly to the point,’ he says. ‘It’s not escaped my attention that there’s been some distress around the idea of our Italian guests.’
‘It’s not the idea of them,’ a man calls. ‘Ideas don’t eat all our food and leave our children hungry.’
‘Aye,’ agrees O’Farrell. ‘And ideas don’t paint threats on the side of buildings, either, Robert MacRae. But I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, would you?’
Earlier that day, someone had noted the black letters on the town-hall door, reading, ‘Fuck the Italians!’ The words were three feet high and had taken hours of scrubbing to remove. A faint scent of turpentine still hangs in the air.
MacRae colours and shifts in his seat, and the men surrounding him, who had been grinning at his smart response, look down at the floor. The mood of the crowd warms towards O’Farrell – MacRae and his cronies are a bunch of thugs and have been the cause of various troubles over the years.
O’Farrell continues: ‘While I’m not in approval of some of the protests and grumblings that have reached my ears, neither am I ignorant of the problem we have. I’ll not stand
