Deep and Silent Waters (23 page)

Sometimes the girls went back to Aunt Maria’s house, where Rosa fed them dried figs and hot rolls, with some of their precious home-made black cherry jam, and told them ghost stories or sang them the latest songs.

At first, Vittoria thought the tall, thin terraced house was poky and gloomy: the rooms were much smaller than those in her own home, the furniture old and shabby. The ancient wooden stairs creaked, as did the floorboards, even when nobody walked across them.

At night, lying in bed, she felt as if she was in a very old ship: even if there was no wind the house lurched and cracked around her. And mice lived under the floorboards and the eaves, their pattering feet seeming very loud: they stole crumbs from the kitchen and ate into vegetables in the wooden rack. The noise made her nervous – perhaps they would climb on to her bed and run over her face while she was asleep – but she didn’t tell Rosa or Aunt Maria in case they set one of the traps kept in the kitchen, fearsome-looking objects that would cut a little mouse in half with a sharp snap, Rosa said.

Bats flapped about in the roof space making a noise like a wet fish in the bottom of one of the fishing-boats she watched unloading, down on the fish harbour. On summer nights they streamed out of the eaves like black smoke, and vanished into Venice to feed on the insects swarming above the oily waters of the canals. Olivia was scared that one would get caught in her hair, or bite her and suck her blood, like one of the vampire stories Rosa had told her. Rosa knew a thousand folk-tales, and believed implicitly in ghosts, vampires and goblins. On dark winter nights, Vittoria found it easy to believe in them, too.

At first, Vittoria expected every day to hear from her parents, and letters did get through now and then from her mother, with news of the family. That was how, in 1943, she heard that Filippo had run away to join the partisans, who had begun to gather in the mountains, refusing to fight for Mussolini, occasionally making sorties to attack convoys driving through the valleys. ‘Communists!’ everyone at school said. ‘If they’re caught they’re shot without a trial.’ The nuns were fiercely opposed to Communism, and were always talking about the horrors inflicted on priests and nuns during the Spanish Civil War by Communist forces. Nuns had been raped, priests tortured, then killed, their churches burned to the ground.

Vittoria hated the thought of Filippo being shot: she was fond of him, he could be fun – although Nico was her favourite brother, the one closest to her in age. It didn’t seem real, though. She couldn’t believe it could happen – people of her age didn’t get killed.

Her mother’s letter was hard to read, it was so scrawled and blotchy, as if she had cried as she wrote it. Vittoria had to work it out line by line before she understood it all.

Vittoria knew then that nobody would come to take her home: she was going to have to stay with Aunt Maria for the rest of the war. How long would that be? It seemed to have been going on for ever – she could barely remember a time when they had not been fighting.

As she grew older she began to understand more of what was happening in her country, how the war was going. News was talked about openly in Venice, in the cafés, streets and squares. It was at her little school that Vittoria first heard that some cities were being bombed by the British, whom newspapers described as barbarous war-mongers who had forced Italy into a war she did not want.

Aunt Maria read the newspaper aloud over dinner each evening, her voice quavering. If Italy lost the war, they were constantly warned, the British and the Americans would force Italians to work for them, they would become slaves. The Allies would burn down their factories, seize all their food, steal all their art treasures, shut the schools and universities, kill all the men and rape all the women, including the children.

The newspaper Mussolini had founded, the
Popolo d’Italia
, went further: it wrote that if Britain won the war the Italian people would be ruthlessly exterminated.

Looking up, Aunt Maria would say, ‘But I’ve known so many English. They came to Venice all the time in the old days. Such kind, such charming people – I cannot believe they would be so cruel and wicked.’

Vittoria remembered Frederick Canfield and was silent. The English could be treacherous: she knew that from her own experience.

By mid-1943 the rumours swelled as the tide of war turned against the Fascist forces. Il Duce was seriously ill, might be dying; the demoralised Italian army joined the partisans in the hills. There were worrying rumours that the Germans were poised to invade, but it was the Anglo-American force that arrived first, from North Africa, on the island of Pantelleria, which Mussolini had believed impregnable.

By July the Allies were moving rapidly up Italy. ‘They won’t come here, they wouldn’t destroy Venice – the English love Venice as much as we do,’ Aunt Maria said, her stiff, gnarled fingers fumbling with her old ivory rosary, whose beads were worn, yellow with age and use. She lapsed into prayer, which sounded to Vittoria more desperate than confident.

Not long after that news that Mussolini had been arrested spread like wildfire. A sense of wild relief and hope filled everyone. Fascism had collapsed. Surely now they could get back to normal and end this war.

Within days of that the Allies bombed Rome. The Holy City, was burning, street by street, and waves of panic swept through the country. Aunt Maria spent hours on her knees in prayer: all the churches in Venice were crowded with terrified people whose murmured prayers swelled to a sound like groaning. Some wept, others were white and silent, staring at the altar, at the statues of Our Blessed Lady and the saints, as if hoping for a miracle that never came.

Vittoria never forgot those days: it was like living through the end of the world. Every night you went to bed not sure that you would be alive in the morning, and every morning began with fresh news of disaster and death.

On 3 August the Allies bombed Milan. Thousands of civilians were killed in their own homes. From miles away, people could see the houses burning and crashing to the ground. Even the statues on the cathedral were blown to smithereens and La Scala was half destroyed.

Vittoria heard the news at school. Reverend Mother came to her classroom, her rosary clinking in agitation and sympathy. ‘They have bombed Milan,’ she told the class, but looked at Vittoria, who was blanched with terror at her desk. ‘Vittoria, you may go home now, and be brave, whatever the news. We will pray for your family, child, that God has been merciful and they are all safe.’

As Vittoria made her way shakily to the door, Olivia and Gina put out their hands to touch hers. ‘I’m sure they’ll be safe,’ Olivia whispered.

Gina said, ‘I’ll pray for you, Vittoria.’

She ran home so fast that she tripped on the way and hit her cheek on the edge of a pavement, arriving home with blood running from the cut. Her head beat with terrifying questions: what had happened to her mother and father, to Nico, to Carlo, to their home? Rosa met her at the door, swathed in a white apron far too big for her, flour on her nose and on her hands.

‘You poor little mite,’ she said, hugging Vittoria.

Vittoria burst out, ‘What have you heard? Are they dead?’

Rosa looked horrified. ‘Don’t say that! It’s bad luck to say things like that out loud. We don’t know anything yet. Your aunt tried to telephone but all the lines are down in Milan.’

It was a week before Vittoria heard that her home had been destroyed. Her father had been killed outright when his factory was hit. Her mother and Carlo had survived because they had taken shelter in the cellars, from which they had emerged later, bruised and in shock – half deaf from the explosions but alive. Anna wrote a long description of the raid, told her that Papa had been buried, that she, Carlo and Niccolo were in no danger, they were living in the ruins of their house on whatever food they could get. It was even more imperative that Vittoria stay in safety in Venice.

Vittoria went back to school in black, filled with anguish and hatred. After a while, though, she realised that she was only one of many other children at the school who had lost brothers and fathers, killed on the battlefield or in the bombing raids. At first you cried, but even grief did not last long: fear was stronger, and prayers, she now knew, were useless. God was deaf, people said openly. God was dead, one or two dared say, angry and defiant, hating Him for having failed them. The churches were still full: most people prayed harder than ever – but not Vittoria. She told herself she would never pray again. God had let her father be killed.

It was at that time, wanting to comfort Vittoria, that Olivia first invited her and Gina to her home. Few people in Venice had gardens – the houses were mostly crammed together with no land between them. Vittoria had had no idea what Ca’ d’Angeli looked like for nobody had warned her what to expect, but she knew it was thought one of the loveliest houses in the city and she was eager to see it. They walked the long way round, through dark, narrow alleys and quiet, dusty, sunny squares, and entered through the rear gate into a magic kingdom of clipped box trees and gravel paths, statues of naked men and women, lemon and orange trees in huge pots, a curtain of purple wisteria over the high red-brick walls.

‘We’ll play out here. I’ll ask someone to bring us cakes,’ Olivia said, loping off to the door, her smooth black plaits bouncing on her shoulders.

‘She’s not going to ask us into the house. I knew she wouldn’t,’ whispered Gina. ‘Her family wouldn’t allow it, because we’re not of their class. We’re trade – my father’s a grocer and yours sold drugs – and the d’Angeli family never mix with tradespeople. If it wasn’t for the war Olivia would have been sent away to boarding school where she wouldn’t meet girls like us.’

Olivia came back with a maid in a black dress and white apron, whose hair was piled up behind her head under a lacy white cap with long streamers, which fluttered as she walked. She brought them a tray of little golden cakes and glasses of home-made lemonade, which she laid out on a table beside a splashing fountain in the centre of the garden.

‘Let me know if you want more lemonade, Signorina.’ The maid glanced at the other two children and gave a disdainful little sniff. ‘And, you two, don’t touch anything! La Contessa will be very angry if you pick any of her flowers or make a mess.’

As she walked back into the house Olivia put out her tongue and the other two giggled. They each took a cake and had a glass of the lemonade, which had hardly any sugar in it and made your tongue fizz. In the shade of the lemon and orange trees the sun was not too hot, and they sat lazily, nibbling cakes, listening to the trickle of water. Then they played hide-and-seek. Vittoria hid behind a hydrangea bush, whose blue flowers reminded her of her own garden in Milan. The colour made her want to cry. Olivia soon found Gina but although they peered into every corner neither of them could see Vittoria.

‘We give up! Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ called Olivia, at last. ‘You win.’

Vittoria appeared just as a tall boy came out of the house facing her. The sun was in her eyes the first time she saw Domenico; like a halo, his black hair framed his face, which was so beautiful she couldn’t breathe, just stood and gaped at him.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked Olivia.

‘Why are you home so early?’ Olivia sounded edgy.

‘It’s her brother,’ Gina said softly. Vittoria had not even known that Olivia had a brother but, then, she was an outsider in Venice, she knew almost nothing about its society or the old families, and Olivia had always been careful not to mention hers.

That reticence betrayed something that Vittoria only then understood: that, however friendly she might be with them, Olivia did not think of her schoolmates as existing in the same world as herself. At school she was the Olivia they knew – but what was she at home?

One thing was immediately obvious: physically, she was very like her brother, tall, slim, with the same colouring, similar features. In the boy, though, they added up to a heart-stopping, angelic beauty, while Olivia was merely striking, not pretty so much as interesting.

‘How old is he?’ Vittoria whispered to Gina, thinking that it was typical of Gina to know so much about Olivia’s family. Signora Cavani loved to chat with anyone who came into their shop, lingered outside the church after Mass to exchange gossip with any woman she knew, read all the society pages in magazines and newspapers – avid to find out as much as possible about important Venetian families.

‘Sixteen,’ Gina said, without a second’s hesitation. ‘Mamma said the other day that, by the end of the year, he will have to join the army. He’s still at school now. When he’s seventeen he’ll be called up like everyone else – their money doesn’t save them.’

‘I hate this war, I wish it would stop!’ Vittoria cried, close to tears.

Olivia and her brother heard this, and broke off their half-whispered conversation to join the other two girls.

‘Well, it’s a pity we ever got into it, I agree,’ Domenico d’Angeli said, looking down at her curiously. ‘But we’re in it now, and we can’t get out. We just have to take what comes and pray to God that it’s over soon.’

‘I don’t believe in God,’ Vittoria said fiercely.

‘Toria! That’s wicked!’ Olivia was very conventional, especially in her religious beliefs. The nuns had a responsive pupil for their teaching.

‘God killed my father!’