The Italian Wife (23 page)

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ Isabella asked.

‘Why the ladder?’

‘To get you out of here.’

The girl moved back the way they’d come. ‘No.’

‘Is it the ladder, the height of it? Is that what scares you?’

‘No.’

‘Once we get to the top, we can haul up the ladder and drop it down the other side. Rosa, I won’t just abandon you on the street, I promise. I’ll find you a good home away from Bellina.’

The child’s eyes turned dull and flat, her cheeks more pinched. ‘No.’

‘But for now,’ Isabella continued, ‘you can stay with me and my father. Until we sort out something permanent that you’re happy with. My father is a doctor, so he knows more about…’

A tear slid on a solitary track down Rosa’s pale cheek. ‘No. I want to stay here.’

‘What? Why would you want to remain in this…?’

‘Because my father will come for me here.’

Isabella didn’t move. ‘Rosa, why did you lie to me? Why tell me that he was dead?’

Just then a flock of birds cut through the clear blue sky above their heads and swept low over the amber roof of the convent, preparing to flee this place and head south for the winter. Rosa’s troubled eyes tracked their flight as if yearning to follow.

‘Rosa?’ Isabella prompted.

The girl hung her head and yet her small chin set in a stubborn line.

‘Rosa, why lie to
me
? To Chairman Grassi, I can understand. To Colonnello Sepe, yes, definitely. But why to me?’

Still no answer. Isabella stepped close to Rosa, conscious of the loneliness that the girl wore like a cloak, and said gently, ‘Come and stay with me and we will find your papa.’ She offered a smile. ‘We can talk architecture and you can tell me to shut up when I go on about it too much because I —’

‘He is a good man.’

Such adult words from such young lips.

‘I’m sure he is, Rosa.’ Their gaze met as the girl raised her head. ‘Is he a fugitive?’

A nod.

‘Did he commit a crime?’

‘He hates Benito Mussolini.’ Rosa spat expertly onto the raw earth at the mention of the name.

‘Is that why Grassi keeps you here?’

‘Yes. I am the bait.’

‘All the more reason for you to come with me now. Quickly, let’s get the ladder before anyone —’

The child’s small hand seized Isabella’s arm. ‘Ask me, Signora Berotti, whatever is it you want to know. Then go.’

Isabella wanted to swallow the questions that crowded on her tongue and offer the child nothing more than a kiss on her cheek. But they forced their way out between her lips and refused to be silenced.

‘You are right, Rosa, I do have questions. I want to know’ – she was speaking fast because the words had waited for this moment too long to miss it – ‘who killed my husband, Luigi Berotti, in Milan. Your mother mentioned him to me and said the Party knows who killed him. Why would she think that?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me anything.’

‘Did your papa know Luigi Berotti?’

‘No.’

‘Did your mamma know him?’

She saw Rosa tread carefully. ‘No.’

There was a silence. Just the wind rustling between the tall chimneys. Neither spoke. Isabella ignored the lie and wrapped an arm around Rosa’s paper-thin shoulders, drawing her close. ‘Oh, Rosa,’ she said and held her tight. She kissed the top of her head. They stayed like that, locked together for a long time, until the other novice nun in white came and found them. She led the child away.

20

Roberto was nowhere to be found. The parade was over and the crowds had dispersed by the time Isabella returned to the centre of town. The green and white flags fluttered everywhere, draped from windows in a riot of patriotic fervour, and only in one back street did she find the bunting shredded in the gutter like yesterday’s newspaper. Someone would be made to pay for it.

It was Friday but the day had been declared a public holiday for most, so that as Mussolini toured the construction sites, the pumping stations, the flour mill and the great canal that bore his name, there would be no shortage of the populace to cheer and salute the arrival of their glorious leader. But Isabella did not feel herself part of that populace, not after what she’d seen today. She needed to work.

It was her opiate of choice. Not morphine. Not cocaine. Not alcohol or tobacco. But work. It was what she reached for when the pain grew too much. That’s why this project was perfect for her because the architectural office was open all hours of the day and night, as they fought to meet deadlines, and when she was feeling bad she had been known to work seventy-two hours straight without a break.

A workhorse, her father called her. A stubborn workhorse.

Isabella thought of Roberto and the way his hands had caressed and soothed the muscular flanks of the workhorse at the station. The way he had whispered in its ear.

A workhorse. She could live with that. What she couldn’t live with was Rosa in that convent.

Isabella had learned to blank out voices. Like she blanked out faces. When she was working she saw no one, heard nothing, spoke to no colleagues. If they thought her unsociable, that was their problem, not hers, because she enjoyed losing herself in her drawing and measuring, sliding her rule up the board in a smooth and satisfying ritual, shutting out the world. Existence was reduced to black lines on tracing paper and if she didn’t like what she’d done one day, she could tear it up the next and no one was offended. No one was hurt.

When she recalled the formal distant look in Roberto’s grey eyes this morning and the trembling mouth of Rosa as she sat chained to a chair, she would have given one of her fingers to be able to tear up today.

‘
Pronto
, Isabella,
pronto
! Didn’t you hear?’

Isabella looked up from her drawing board. Around her, people were fussing and talking excitedly. But then it took very little to get an Italian man excited. Arms were waved and voices raised.

‘What is it?’ she asked around the pencil between her teeth, only half listening.

‘Didn’t you hear the message from Dottore Martino?’

Instantly she was alert. ‘No. What message?’

‘Il Duce himself is on his way here.’

‘Here? To this building?’

‘To this office.’ The draftsman was grinning ear to ear. ‘Holy Mother of God, this is our lucky day.’

Lucky day?

That was not how it felt to Isabella.

‘So,’ Mussolini’s arrogant voice boomed out of his broad barrel chest, ‘this is where the real work of Bellina is done.’

He strutted into the spacious architectural office as if the air itself belonged to him. His proud chest entered the room first, followed by his heavy chin and jowls which were thrust forward to carve out a destiny for Italy. He was wearing a dark military uniform with a flash of medals and knee-high black boots that gleamed like polished metal and seemed to stride with a willpower of their own.

‘Show me,’ he declared, ‘what goes on here, Martino.’

Only Mussolini could reduce the great Dottore Architetto Martino to a mere ‘
Martino
’. Immediately he was escorted around the office while every worker in the room stood beside his drawing board with teeth chattering. He peered at a few of the designs, commented on some, ignored others and the air seemed to grow brighter in whatever part of the room he was standing.

He didn’t need to speak. His presence was enough. It made every other person seem bland, colourless and utterly insignificant in comparison. Isabella could
not
look away. Her gaze, along with everyone else’s, was fixed on the figure of Il Duce with his powerful domed forehead, and for the first time she understood how he had come to power in 1922 as the youngest prime minister in Italy’s history. That was before he became greedy and banished all opposition parties. He’d declared himself dictator – Il Duce – his hands dripping with blood, and suppressed civil liberties with ruthless determination. She knew all this, knew the cost that Italy was paying, yet still the excitement he brought into the room set her pulse racing.

He prowled the room the way a lion prowls its territory, owning it, placing his mark on it, and Isabella thought he had not noticed her. But when Dottore Martino was in the middle of explaining the intricacies of the grand drawing for a new hotel, Mussolini stretched out a muscular arm and pointed across the room.

‘Who,’ he demanded, ‘is that in the corner?’

Without waiting for a reply he strode over to where Isabella stood next to her board. She felt her mouth go dry and wished she was wearing her vivid green dress instead of the drab brown skirt and high-necked blouse that was her usual fare at work to discourage wandering hands.

‘Who are you?’ the head of all Italy asked her.

‘Isabella Berotti.’

‘And what are you doing here?’

‘I work here, Duce. I am an architect.’

He gave a bark of laughter so loud it made her jump. ‘Go home and make babies for your country, Isabella Berotti. Leave this work to men.’

She could have slapped his face right there. The urge to do so raged through her and she clamped her hands together to prevent them breaking loose. She cursed herself for the colour that flooded her cheeks and let everyone see her outraged soul.

‘I am a qualified architect, Duce. I worked hard to become one and am as good at the job as any man here. Ask Dottore Architetto Martino.’

Dottore Martino started to say something but was silenced by an abrupt wave of his leader’s hand.

‘That is impossible,’ Il Duce declared. ‘Go home to your husband, signora, where you belong, and make fine Italian babies to swell our workforce.’

She could have smiled submissively and said, ‘Yes, Duce’, because that was all that he wanted to hear. She could have lowered her eyes demurely in front of the most powerful man in Italy and maybe then she would have kept her job. But instead she looked directly into his domineering black eyes and spoke the truth.

‘I cannot have children, Duce. My husband was shot dead after he took part in your March on Rome and I was wounded. If he hadn’t marched beside you in 1922, he would still be my husband and I would have a house full of
bambini
. But instead I serve my country by creating beautiful buildings for the workers of Italy to live in. It is not impossible, Duce, for a woman to have a good brain.’

Silence took root in the room. No one spoke. No one breathed. A few mouths risked curving into a smile in anticipation of the outcome. Dottore Martino’
s
cheeks drained of colour and Isabella realised he was seeing his own imminent dismissal in disgrace for hiring her.

‘What was your husband’s name?’ Mussolini demanded.

‘Luigi Berotti.’

‘Ah, I remember him. He was one of my “flying wedge” team in the early days. A good and loyal man.’

‘Yes, Duce.’

He laughed good-naturedly and throughout the room great gulps of air could be heard being dragged into lungs, and Dottore Martino’s heart started to beat again.

‘So what was he doing,’ Mussolini continued, ‘a good Fascisti boy like Luigi, marrying a girl who thinks she can do a man’s job?’

This time Isabella clamped her teeth on her tongue and smiled mutely.

Mussolini laughed uproariously, pleased with his victory, and all around her Isabella heard the sounds of male amusement. Il Duce placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, as though adding her to his possessions, and his forefinger lightly stroked the side of her neck.

‘Are you one of my good Fascisti too, Isabella?’

‘Yes, Duce.’

‘Well said. Be disciplined, Isabella. Discipline and hard work are the linchpins of our country’s economic recovery. I
will
make it happen.’ He turned to the eager faces of the men at their drawing boards. ‘Discipline! Hard work! This is our constructive force, is it not, signori?’

‘Bravo! Bravo!’

The shouts came on cue and the applause seemed spontaneous. Immediately Mussolini lost interest in Isabella and released his grip on her. Around him arms were raised in the Fascist salute. He gazed with solemn satisfaction at the mesmerised audience, then accepted the salute, jabbing his arm upwards and backwards, before striding from the room without a word.

But the image of his uncompromising black stare remained behind. Watching over each one of them.

‘Signora Berotti.’

‘Yes,
dottore
?’

Dottore Martino caught her as she emerged from the washroom and his expression was tight, his spectacles like flat sheets of ice.

‘In my office. Now.’

‘Yes,
dottore
.’

She followed him into his office and he closed the door firmly behind her. Isabella braced herself. She knew what was coming. Had been expecting it. You don’t turn Dottore Architetto Martino’s cheeks chalk-white without receiving a reprimand and he was known for requiring a high degree of obedience and loyalty at all times. One of the older architects had been suspended from work for a month for complaining to a junior that the tracing paper supplied was poor quality. The junior had received a promotion. That’s how things worked here. If you had any sense, you kept your mouth shut.

Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?

‘Signora Berotti, you have let me down.’

Martino placed himself behind his desk, as far from her as he could. His office was plain and functional. No frills. Architectural drawings pinned to the wall, a schedule plan on a blackboard, two drawing boards, and dominating the room was a display of miniature architectural models depicting the whole town built to scale on a table that occupied half the room. His desk was as orderly as the man himself.

‘I apologise,
dottore
.’

‘You don’t answer back to Mussolini, you foolish girl. Don’t you know that? Are you stupid?
Dio dannato
! Do I have to teach you everything?’ His hand slammed down on the desk.

‘Dottore, I did not mean to make trouble, but what he said was wrong.’

‘Dear God, listen to the girl. Since when is it your job to decide on whether what Il Duce says is right or wrong?’