In the Wolf's Mouth (27 page)

48

He was back at the coppiced wood. Beyond the straight trucks, out of reach, could be seen the slow, green glinting of the river. Will was trying to work out what he had to do. He could feel his father at a distance, a ferment of anger in the house. Will’s father was dead, of course. Remembering that transferred Will into his father’s presence. His father was at his desk in his study, turned away in his swivel chair. Paper and an open book were outspread before him. Will’s father was dead. He turned around in the chair to speak to his son but he was too tired. He was pale, terribly weak, after the awful effort of dying. He had that ugly scratch by his nose.

Back in the wood,
The Wind in the Willows
was somehow involved. The animals weren’t like they were in the book. They were disgusting, low to the ground, coarse-haired, fidgeting and shaking and suddenly scurrying away out of sight. Will needed to chase them. That part of the dream didn’t last long. It gave way to a new task. The trees were information of some kind. Their pattern was like Morse code. In the wood somewhere was his younger brother who knew already, who understood. Will turned around looking for him and was blinded by sunlight, hot on his face. That was what woke him up. He was sweating.

The Wind in the Willows
appearing in his dream was particularly ridiculous and shaming. He regretted having the book by his bedside. His thoughts would have been sharper, less confused had he been reading his father’s Lucretius. Will felt smeared with shame at the dream, shame which intensified as he remembered another part: he was back at the fish pond. The cover was off. With a kind of tingling pleasure he was dropping tins of food down to the shivering prisoners below, naked in their filth. Anonymous soldiers waited and watched.

Through the shutters came blades of white light and the dry racket of insects and birds. Will kicked off his sheet and got up.

Water to wash his face and to organise his hair. Uniform on.

Samuels had some bad news. ‘Just had one of the local police in. There’s someone else been shot, in Montebianco this time. Funnily enough, no one saw anything. Shotgun wound. Close-range. Not a Fascist, though. Seemed sure about that. A Communist. But, you know, yesterday’s Fascist …’

‘If nobody saw it then nothing happened. It’s the bloody tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Bury the man and carry on.’

‘Are you losing faith in the powers of justice?’

‘I’ll see. I’m off to Palermo to meet Major Kelly about the Albanese thing.’

‘Had a message from Albanese yesterday. Said he was aware of some black market activity that we should look into.’

‘I’m sure he is.’

49

Palermo had an air of Miss Havisham’s madness about it, grandly baroque and broken up with sudden sky and heaps of rubble. The streets were sordid with people, untrustworthy people, lounging against walls, talking together, watching him pass. Markets seemed to have reopened and fishermen were clearly going out again. Will had to pilot his motorcycle on tiptoe through people ambling around trays of fish, bartering with sheets of the AMGOT money that was already smeared and stained. Revving his engine did nothing to hurry them. There were small red fish with large, simple eyes. There were normal-looking grey fish and on its own, upright on a table, the extraordinary head of a swordfish, like something from a natural history museum. Its long, lordly blade angled up into the air. Behind, its body was sliced, missing sections that had already been sold, gaps of absence.

Will kept twisting in his saddle, alert to every stranger. He was not going to let himself be pickpocketed again. It was a relief to be out of this crowd and riding away.

Will had forgotten how glorious the building was in which AMGOT was headquartered. Stucco and gilt, marble and mosaics. Footsteps were repeated in quick echoes.

Will was shown in to see Major Kelly. He was seated at a large, lion-foot desk. Behind him on the wall, surrounded by an ornate frame, Saint Jerome contemplated his work of translation in rich oil paint. Major Kelly rose to shake Will’s hand. He asked the man who had shown Will in to return with some coffee.

Will sat down and began explaining his concerns about Albanese, the anonymous denunciations and the testimony of Angilù Cassini and Prince Adriano. Will did so quickly and precisely. Major Kelly listened sitting back in his chair, so still that the reflections in his spectacles didn’t move. When Will had finished, he leaned forwards and said that it was good Will had come to him with these anxieties.

The coffee arrived.

‘“Anxieties” might not be quite the word,’ Will said.

‘Whatever you want to call it. Look, I know we picked up some pretty interesting characters to help us out with Operation Husky. Our Italian friends in America are a – what shall I say? – an enterprising group of people. I was always assured we were vetting them thoroughly. I don’t know anything about Albanese in particular. He wasn’t in gaol. Some of the guys came out of prison here. I guess you knew that.’

Kelly lifted a hand and plucked his spectacles from his face. The effect for Will was strangely disconcerting. He saw that Kelly looked quite different to how Will had thought he looked. Beneath his spectacles, his eyes were bigger. There was a greater distance between his nose and upper lip. His nude head, with large pink eyelids and smooth cheeks, was uncanny to look at. Will realised that the spectacles somehow summarised
and finished Kelly’s face, fronted for it. After he replaced his spectacles, hooking them around his ears again, Will was left to fit his appearance back together.

‘I guess what I could do is get some questions asked and let you know. Is that the sort of thing you’re after?’

‘At least. I want more. I think I should step in and relieve Albanese of his powers until we know, frankly, who the hell he is.’

A smile lit up Kelly’s face. ‘I see. Action. Command. Good for you, kid. It’s what this island needs if we’re going to make a peace that will last. There’s politics brewing in Palermo, I’m telling you. Separatists. Communists. It’s all going to get messier before it gets clean.’

Will flew back on his motorcycle.
You see
, he thought to himself,
you see, it’s possible
. The Allies were virtuous in their bringing of peace. There was suffering that didn’t need to happen, violence that they could prevent. But it took someone of Will’s acuity and daring to bring it about, to align insight and action and bloody well do something. He sped through the burning air rehearsing in his mind the words he would use when he apprehended Albanese. They were coolly understated and commanding.
I’m afraid that we’re going to have to have a word or two … I’m sorry, Mr Albanese, but I’m going to have to … I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr Albanese
.

50

The door was unpainted, the wood raw and dry. It looked like he could pick splinters out of it with his thumbnail. The surface of the door was subdivided into four sections, four rectangles separated by narrow raised sections. Ray wasn’t sure why that was, maybe for reinforcement. He stood close enough to the door to listen beyond it.

The handle was high up on the left side. It was made of slender brass, notched along the edges, and curved in a rapid flourish like a line in someone’s signature. The notches gave it a texture you would feel.

I won’t die if I open the door. If I open the door I will not die
.

Ray saw his hand reach out and hold the handle, four fingers and a thumb, the lines of bones under the skin, the frill of dark hairs at his wrist. He opened the door and on the other side the narrow staircase plunged down. It was as steep as a ladder. Ray stepped through, holding his breath, out onto the first stair and then the next, carefully clambering down into the rest of the world.

In the main house, perspectives travelled into depth through arches of doorways. No telling where Princess Luisa was in all that. He might miss her entirely.

Ray walked among paintings and curved, decorated furniture that stood up on the balls of its feet. Unharmed, unhindered, he found the large staircase and descended. In the large vestibule, under silent painted clouds, he looked right and left. He turned right and walked into a set of sunlit rooms.

In the third large room he came upon Luisa at a large table eating breakfast with an old man, presumably her father. There was a woman servant who looked at Ray then dropped her head, reddening. Luisa’s eyes were wide and tried to communicate something – fear, a plea, a warning. Ray realised that he would not be able to say goodbye in the way he’d intended. Now the old man was standing up and addressing him. Ray interrupted him.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. I got separated from my unit a while back in the fighting. I’ve been lost.’

‘You’ve been lost a long time.’

‘I’ve been lost a long time. Can you tell me the road for Palermo?’

‘And how did you get in?’

He could feel Luisa’s gaze pressing against him.

‘I came in. I walked in. I’m sorry to disturb you. I didn’t realise it was still early.’

‘You should walk out the same way you came in then turn right on the road and keep going for a day or so.’

Luisa said something to the old man in Italian, under her breath. The old man sighed and said, ‘The first town you go through, the town not the few separate houses, there are people there who can help you.’

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you.’ Ray
looked at Luisa who looked down at her plate. She seemed angry. There was nothing he could say.

As he walked out of the room, Luisa looked up again to see his back retreating. He had tried to make his uniform as neat as possible. The beard on his face had looked so thick in the light, black as beetles. She was stuck to her chair, losing him. Nothing she could do, no power. And even if she could run after him, what would she be able to say? If she moved to Paris she might have a life, or Rome. Here in this life there was nothing. She had on her plate two peaches from the garden. She picked up her knife, trembling.

51

The world blazed into Ray’s eyes full of a million things. Light poured down. The sound of insects pulsed out of trees and bushes. He tried to whistle with his dry mouth, tried to remember how soldiers walked. His legs were shaking. After the gloom of the attic, the light was blinding. It hurt like diamonds crushed into his eyes. He hung his head and walked, the road around him leaping up in explosions that didn’t happen. If you’re not dead you carry on. He said,
George, I’m coming
. Wind raced against his skin. He kept walking.

A noise getting louder behind him: the crunch of footsteps. Ray assumed the final end. He closed his eyes. His shoulders stiffened. His hands closed. He heard his name. ‘Ray. Ray.’ It was her voice.

It was strange to see the Princess outside, in the real light of day. She stood in front of him, small and blinking. Her hair moved in the wind. She seemed very clear and separate. Her skin was paler than indoors. She raised a hand of delicate fingers to her forehead to make a visor against the sun.

‘Where are you going? You should say goodbye. You shouldn’t just go like that.’

‘I’m sorry. I did. I wanted to.’

‘It’s not nice just to go like this.’

Her voice sounded different. She stood there detached from the long dream of his days in hiding.

‘I wanted to say thank you to you.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I said. I have to go to Palermo. I have to go back. I’m sorry.’

The Princess was looking down, her eyes in her hand’s shadow. The soft flesh of her lower lip was caught between her teeth.

‘But …’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ve been so kind to me.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You have to go. I don’t know what I’m doing following you. I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘I’m really grateful.’

‘Are you? Wait. Will you wait? I’ve had an idea. I can drive you to Palermo. I can get the car and a driver. I can take you all the way.’

‘You don’t have to …’

‘I know I don’t but I want to. Will you wait? Will you stay here?’

‘Sure.’

‘Stay here.’

The Princess turned and hurried away. Ray watched her go. She went with rapid steps that lifted and broke into a run that was awkward to maintain against her long skirt. In that effort and urgency, Ray saw something. Maybe he was wrong, but it looked like love. For him. For another person. For no reason, just given, just happening. It was love that made her hurry. He couldn’t keep it; it wouldn’t last. He had to get back to Palermo and do whatever came next but there it
was. It would keep him safe a little while longer, for this journey in her car.

52

Everything was very clear.

Angilù sat opposite the church and waited. A lizard flickered onto the wall beside him, quick on its tiny fingers, its small tail lashing. It froze, picked up its head, the flat mouth fixed in a smile. Angilù saw its throat pulse. It darted away. Making the decision had been difficult, like stepping through a flaming doorway and out through an avenue of burning trees. But now he was beyond, he was calm. He could see everything.

Blind Tinu was folded in the shadows of the church doorway. Always there, empty as a clock, feeling the passing of the hours, hearing the clatter of the bell. Tinu was never a witness. He never said anything, never made sense. You gave him a coin or a piece of bread and it was like tossing it into a well, his reaction just splash and echoes and silence again.

Angilù had to be careful about other people seeing him. He was not one of them. He would not be treated as invisible. The others did not fear him enough to erase him from their sight. Nevertheless, he felt peaceful and secure in his purpose. The decision was like a final acquiescence. Angilù had given in and become part of the place. Resisting it with other methods had been exhausting and useless. Now he
had recognised his fate, embraced it, married it. He was pleased and placid as a bridegroom.