The Italian Wife Read online

  It was ten years to the day. The day that she and Luigi were shot. It had been hot that day and was hot again now. She had taught herself self-control for the rest of the year, but on this one day each October she allowed herself to cry. Not so that anyone could see. Of course not. But deep inside herself. Something split open, she could feel it, and the tears flowed unseen. She cried for Luigi. For her unborn child. For that young easy-going girl she used to be. That October day had ruptured the fabric of her. It was that simple.

  She had no idea that a decade later her life was about to be disrupted again.

  She was sitting in Gino’s café, the only permitted café in the piazza because Fascists didn’t like people to gather anywhere in large numbers unless they’d organised it themselves. She was sipping coffee – strong and full of bite, just the way Gino knew she liked it – and all around her she could spy touches of her handiwork in the grand municipal buildings that bordered each side of the square. They sparkled in white marble, interspersed with intricate terracotta brickwork, their arches and their columns and wide spacious steps dwarfing the people who used them. These buildings were designed to impress. To remind each person, who stopped to admire them, of the power of the State.

  Isabella found it hard to explain – even to herself – exactly why she loved pouring so much of herself into these buildings. All she knew was that it filled with warmth a place within her that was stark and cold. Sitting here in the sunshine she could laugh at her passion for injecting life and breath into the stone and mortar of this town, knowing it was this passion that always had the power to bring her back from despair. Even on this dark day it made her happy, and she exhaled a string of curling coffee steam with a sense of quiet satisfaction.

  The important thing to remember was this: for that moment she was happy and it was that brief sliver of happiness that made her vulnerable. If she had been in her usual rush, her brow creased in a frown of concentration, her mind churning over her next piece of architectural work and her eyes preoccupied with whatever was taking form within her head, the woman with the wild hair who hurried into the piazza dragging a child behind her would have chosen someone else to approach. And if not, Isabella would have said no, I’m too busy. Nor would the child have been willing to remain with her, a stranger who had lost her smile somewhere along the way.

  So it was that moment of happiness that Isabella blamed for what happened next. But how could she not be happy when she was looking at the tower? It was so beautiful. Of course she was biased because she had designed it herself. It towered the way a tower should, square and tall, surmounted by a great bronze bell, its pale travertino marble shimmering like a shaft of light, sending out a message of dominance to the whole region. It was attached to the Fascist Party headquarters. Oriolo Frezzotti, the architect in charge of the whole project of constructing Mussolini’s six new towns, caught sight of Isabella’s design on one of his lightning visits from Rome and gave Dottore Martino, her immediate superior, no option. Frezzotti had overruled his objections with an extravagant wave of his hand.

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ Martino had growled at her.

  ‘No, dottore.’

  And to make sure she didn’t get ideas above her station he’d stuck her to work on gutterings and facings for the next few months. But Isabella didn’t mind. She loved her work as an architect, all aspects of it, and from her office window she watched her tower grow block by block.

  ‘Scusi, signora.’

  Isabella looked at the woman. She didn’t know her or her child. She put her coffee cup down on the table and inspected her, squinting against the sun. The woman was slight and dressed in black shapeless clothes with a face it would be easy to overlook, except there was an urgency about her that made Isabella pay attention. She wore an anxious expression, her eyes darting around her as she stood beside the café table and stretched her hand out to Isabella, palm upwards. For a moment Isabella thought she was begging. But she was mistaken. The woman was offering something. It was a brass crucifix on a chain that was dull and grimy. Isabella shook her head. She didn’t want it.

  ‘No, grazie, no.’

  The woman looked a few years younger than Isabella, maybe no more than twenty-five, and the child, a girl, could have been anywhere between eight or ten. Both possessed unkempt black hair and a nervousness that was unsettling to be close to. Isabella wanted them to go away. She looked over at her tower, hoping they’d be gone when she looked back. She was more at ease with buildings than with people. Ten years ago she’d lost her trust in people, but buildings were solid and dependable. You knew where you were with a building. That’s why she’d worked so hard to put herself through architectural college after her recovery from hospital, to give herself something she could depend on.

  ‘Signora,’ the woman said, ‘I have to go somewhere for just a few minutes. It is very important. Will you please watch my child for me while I am gone?’ Her eyes flicked a secretive glance at her daughter. ‘She will be good.’

  The child stared at her own feet. She was dressed in a simple blue cotton frock and had sunk her hands deep into its patch pockets. She didn’t seem any keener on this idea than Isabella was.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure…’ Isabella said uneasily.

  She looked for help at the next table but the man seated there with his pipe didn’t lift his nose out of his newspaper. If it had been any other day she would have said a firm no, and maybe things would have turned out differently for all three of them. But it had to happen on the one day of the year when she was not her usual self-contained self.

  ‘Please, signora, per favore?’

  The mother placed the crucifix on the metal table where it clattered noisily.

  ‘I don’t want your crucifix,’ Isabella said immediately.

  ‘I will be quick. Very quick.’

  Isabella saw sudden tears fill the woman’s eyes and her pleading face loomed closer as she leaned down to Isabella.

  ‘You are a good person,’ the woman told her. ‘I see it in your face. You are full of resolve. Be kind to me.’

  Isabella opened her mouth to object. She didn’t want to be told she was good or full of resolve, not while she was sitting quietly minding her own business over a coffee, but the woman leaned closer and said in a low intimate hiss, ‘They know who killed your bastard husband.’

  Isabella saw the tremor in her own hand as she put down her cup and heard it rattle in its saucer.

  ‘Who do you mean? Who are “they”?’

  The woman pulled back and jabbed an accusing finger in the direction of the Party headquarters. ‘Them.’ She spat on the ground in disgust. ‘Those Fascist murderers.’ Her mouth took on a strange shape that Isabella only recognised as a bitter smile when she heard the laugh that came from it. ‘They will pay for it now.’

  ‘How do you know that my husband died?’

  But the black-clad figure was already striding away, almost running down to the far end of the piazza, scattering the pigeons. Isabella stood up, aghast.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘Mamma won’t wait.’

  She looked down at the child’s mass of dark curls. She was too thin, all elbows and collarbones.

  ‘What do you mean, she won’t wait?’

  Her narrow shoulders shrugged, her face didn’t look up. ‘She told me I must wait here with you.’

  Isabella sat down again. She wasn’t certain what had just happened. She didn’t know anything about children. Since the bullet she couldn’t have any bambini of her own and she’d gone out of her way to avoid them, though in Italy she couldn’t help but be surrounded by them much of the time. She tried to keep them at a distance when she could, but this time she had no choice.

  ‘Please, sit down.’ She waved a hand towards the chair opposite.

  The girl slid into it, taking up no space.

  ‘I’m Isabella Berotti. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rosa.’

  ‘So, Rosa, do you
live in Bellina?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just visiting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Rome.’

  Her voice was so slight, Isabella had to prick her ears to hear her.

  ‘Did you come by train with your mother?’

  She nodded. Or rather, her curls nodded. She still wasn’t looking up. They reached a brief impasse and Isabella finished her coffee to cover the awkward pause. She felt sorry for the child. Stuck with a woman who could find no words for her. In desperation her gaze returned to the figure of the mother racing across the sunlit piazza towards the Fascist Party headquarters. Isabella couldn’t bring herself to abandon the child and chase after her, but she was shaken by the woman’s words.

  ‘How about something to drink, Rosa, while we wait?’

  ‘No.’ But the girl added a polite, ‘Grazie.’ It was almost drowned out by the cooing of the pigeons that drifted around the tables.

  ‘An ice cream then?’ Isabella called out to Gino before Rosa could refuse again. ‘Uno gelato, per favore, Gino.’

  When it arrived at the table with a flourish from Gino, the girl gave Isabella a direct look for the first time. Her deep-set brown eyes were as wild as her hair and in a panic. Isabella felt a jolt of dismay for the pale-skinned face.

  ‘I can go,’ the girl said quickly. ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘No, Rosa. Of course not. I want you to stay. Your mother has left you in my care.’ Isabella smiled at her.

  She didn’t smile back, but the panic in her young eyes seemed to die down a fraction. Isabella had an urge to hold her small angular body, to tell her not to worry so much. She was too young to worry. Isn’t that what Italian mammas do instinctively? Provide hugs and kisses? All Isabella had to offer her was ice cream.

  ‘Eat up,’ she encouraged.

  The girl took up the spoon and steadily consumed the ice cream with quiet concentration. The warmth of the day was beginning to build and the sun was picking out the fasces, the symbol of Fascism that was carved above the entrance of each of the municipal buildings in the piazza, painting them golden. Isabella’s gaze shifted back to her tower.

  ‘Rosa, do you have any idea what your mother meant when she said “They will pay for it now”?’

  The child remained silent.

  Isabella hunted for another topic of conversation, swapping to an easier one. ‘Do you like Bellina?’

  Rosa frowned and glanced around the beautiful piazza that was the heart of the town. Its pavements were a mosaic of marble, of pinks and greys and unexpected bands of speckled white in geometric designs that gave endless pleasure to the eye of pedestrians. In the centre rose a fountain – not one of Rome’s baroque monstrosities, but a simple, yet powerful, vast globe of black granite with a circle of water-jets surrounding it. Bellina had risen from the watery marshes and this was the symbol of the glorious new world that Fascism was creating for the workers of Italy.

  ‘Do you like Bellina?’ Isabella asked again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But the girl was already back at her ice cream, hunched over it, blocking out all else.

  Isabella knew that it must be excruciating to be abandoned with a stranger, so if Rosa wanted silence, that was fine with her. The sun was behind her, throwing soft purple shadows over the mosaic flooring, and Isabella sat back in her chair, letting her gaze drift up to her tower with its brass-faced clock that struck the hours.

  Immediately she noticed a figure emerge on to the viewing platform at the top of the tower. She felt a rush of pride that someone liked the town well enough to climb the two hundred and sixty steps to gain a wider view of it. Even from here she could see it was a woman. She had wild dark hair. With surprise Isabella realised it was Rosa’s mother. Rosa was sitting with her back to the tower, so Isabella opened her mouth to say Look, there’s your mamma. Wave to her, Rosa, but in the split second it took for the words to travel from her brain to her mouth, she saw the woman in black clamber up on to the parapet.

  She teetered there. Her arms spread out sideways, holding her balance on the edge, and a breeze snatched at the folds of her long black dress and tangled the loose strands of her hair. Behind her the empty blue sky seemed to watch and wait in silence. Isabella expected her to shout to Rosa, to cry out across the length of the piazza: Look at me. But she didn’t. She dipped her head, stared down at the people far beneath her and without any warning leapt off the top. She performed a perfect swallow-dive to the marble steps below.

  No sound emerged from Isabella’s mouth. How she kept her scream inside, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t stop herself from jumping to her feet. Rosa looked up, wary of her, but her attention was distracted by a man’s shout behind her and a woman’s high-pitched scream. The child started to turn towards the group that Isabella could see gathering around the steps.

  ‘A dog has bitten someone,’ Isabella said quickly, scooping the crucifix into her pocket. ‘Rosa, I’ve just remembered that I have to collect something from my home.’ She reached out, took hold of the girl’s skinny arm and pulled her to her feet. ‘You can come with me. It’s not far. We won’t be long.’

  She didn’t know if it was because the girl was used to being told what to do or because she had finished her ice cream and was ready for other amusement, but she allowed herself to be marched out of the Piazza del Popolo without a murmur.

  Neither of them mentioned her mother.

  Isabella rushed Rosa along Via Augustus. The street of small shops with apartments above was quiet at this hour but in the dusty heat there lingered the smell of arancini and fried onions from someone’s kitchen. Everywhere was coated in a pale layer of building dust that didn’t want to shift, but hung in the air. It had a habit of getting between teeth and under fingernails.

  Isabella was moving so quickly that she felt her limp grow worse. She was aware of people staring, watching her out of the corners of their eyes, and after all these years she thought she’d be used to it but it still stung. It had taken three years’ hard sweat and seven operations to get her walking again but right now she was more concerned with getting Rosa as far away from the Piazza del Popolo as she could.

  How do you tell a child her mother just died?

  Isabella was shaken by a deep anger towards the mysterious dark-haired woman who would do this to her daughter. As they approached her home, she eased up on her pace and gently released Rosa’s arm.

  ‘It’s not far,’ she assured the child, waving a hand towards the elegant apartment blocks that lay ahead. This was the most stylish and expensive part of town. It was the quarter where the streets were widest and where an abundance of young trees had been planted that would one day transform them into leafy avenues. This was where the top government employees lived. There were forty different designs for the houses and apartment buildings in Bellina, the forty designs repeated over and over again in a set order. It gave the town a symmetry and a sense of being part of a greater orderly scheme that Mussolini wanted the people to value.

  The layout of Bellina followed the designs of Ancient Rome with a central forum and the town divided into four quadrants. The roads radiated out from the main piazza on a grid system. This made for efficient movement of people and traffic along the ramrod-straight streets, as well as ease of navigation, so that it was hard to get lost in Bellina. Mussolini intended the people of Italy to know exactly where they were going.

  ‘Do you have relatives in Rome, Rosa?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, Rosa, I’m sorry.’

  The girl flicked her head round to look at Isabella, her large almost-black eyes fixing on her with the knife-sharp curiosity that only a child knows how to summon up. ‘Why are you sorry?’

  ‘Because it’s sad for someone to lose their father?’

  ‘I didn’t lose him. He died.’
<
br />   ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aunts or uncles?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘Just you. And your mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Isabella touched the girl’s curls lightly. They felt warm from the sun and springy, far more childish and boisterous than the solemn face turned towards her.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ Rosa said warily.

  She was quick, this child. Quick to pick up on what Isabella was trying to hide, but Isabella was saved from saying more by the appearance of a pair of tall metal gates that she reached for with relief.

  ‘Here we are,’ she told Rosa. ‘This is where I live.’