But the singing grows louder. It is a simple melody and reminds me of something my mother used to sing:
I would spin a web before your eyes,
A beautiful web of silver light,
Wherein is many a wondrous sight.
The tune the men are singing is not the same as my mother’s, but is similar enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I should have stopped her going, I think. I should have stopped them both.
And suddenly I am lying face down on the turf, half crawling to the top of the hill, where I will be able to see the men, the foreign prisoners who are singing this familiar song.
They are gathered outside the two metal huts, seated in a circle on the ground. Most of them sprawl, half lying down, as if they are on a picnic with friends, and they don’t look like soldiers. They could be men from anywhere at all.
One man is standing in the middle, hunched over something. He points at a grey lump of cement in the centre of the circle, and the others cheer and applaud. Then he pulls one of his friends to his feet and sprawls in his place at the edge of the circle; the next man takes cement from a bucket and layers it onto the grey lump.
What are they building?
They begin to sing again, and suddenly it is as though I am watching my father, sitting around a fire with his friends as they passed around a ripped fishing net and a jug of beer. I used to love sneaking onto the beach to watch them repairing the nets and boats. Each man was suddenly friendly with the others. It didn’t seem to matter which men were there, and how they might gripe at one another during the day. There was something in that making that was about more than the net, more than the boat.
And now, watching the prisoners, my stomach pressed hard against the cold soil of my home, I see, suddenly, how lonely they must be, in this strange land, so far from everyone they love. And I feel my own loneliness anew, like the hollow, aching socket from a dug-out tooth.
I touch the spot at the base of my throat where my breath suddenly feels tight, as if something – someone–is squeezing the air from me still and always, long after those fingerprints have faded. But I can feel the ghost of something else there too, as I watch the men. Another presence. Another absence. The trace of the necklace I’d buried three nights ago behind the bothy.
Part Four
We never find what we set our hearts on.
We ought to be glad of that.
From Beside the Ocean of Time, George Mackay Brown
April 1942Cesare
Someone is calling his name. He is back in Moena, running through the streets towards the church, knowing he has to get inside, away from the bombs that are falling. All around, the streets are on fire, but he knows his family are safe in the church, waiting for him. And, somehow, Dorotea is there too. She calls his name again, reaches out her hand and shakes his shoulder. He twists around, trying to catch her fingers in his, trying to put his arms about her, but she moves out of his reach.
He wakes, with a start, to see Gino’s face close to his – frowning, his dark eyes worried.
‘You can’t sleep here. You were supposed to come back to the camp hours ago.’
Cesare stretches, looks around. It is dark outside and he is in the chapel: the new plasterboard wall is cold against his back; there are faint pencil marks where he has etched out the beginning of some of the pictures – when he has paint, they will glow like the walls of the finest churches in Italy.
‘Come on,’ Gino says. ‘You’ll get us both into trouble.’
Cesare shakes his head. ‘Major Bates has said I can stay in the chapel late. There will be no trouble.’
Gino grins. ‘You are his favourite now. When the chapel is finished, perhaps you will marry Major Bates.’
‘Careful. There’s too much sharp metal in here for you to mock me.’
The floor is littered with scrap pieces that the prisoners have salvaged from the half-sunken boats in the harbour, or scavenged from the barriers. There are shards of corrugated metal that will help to reinforce the concrete altar, spools of barbed wire that Cesare is shaping into a statue of George defeating the dragon, and old beef tins that he will make into candle-holders.
As Gino walks back towards the camp with him, Cesare looks up at the stars and wonders what his family in Moena can see. He wonders if they’re still alive.
Gino pokes him in the ribs. ‘I saw your girlfriend today.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Cesare says, and then, too late, he adds, ‘Who do you mean?’
Gino gives a low laugh. ‘She left some metal near the chapel. A huge chunk of it – looks like it was part of a ship once. She said she’d found it on the beach. I told her she should give it to you, but she wouldn’t stay.’
‘You scared her off with your ugly face,’ says Cesare, but it is a struggle to laugh, a struggle to conceal his worry: Dorotea has been avoiding him, ever since he held her hand in the fog. She hasn’t answered his letter and he doesn’t want to go to her bothy again; it doesn’t feel right to pursue her.
Occasionally, he has caught a glimpse of her in the camp, near the infirmary – or perhaps it is her sister – but he won’t approach her.
Instead he has thrown himself into building the chapel. Along with the plasterboard on the walls, there are sections of metal that Cesare will be able to shape into a screen. There are sheets of glass that he will paint to look like
