The Scarlet Thread (7 page)

“It wasn't easy for me,” Angela answered slowly. “I could have written, I could have told you on the phone. I thought that'd be cheating, and I owed it to you not to do that. Anyway, as you said, Mummy, we've got to have a story ready. What do you want me to say? I got married in Sicily, and my husband was killed at Salerno? People round here won't question that.”

“You're determined to keep the child?”

“Yes. Absolutely determined.”

“You may change your mind,” her father suggested. “I've known it to happen.”

“It won't happen to me.”

“What name will you take?” her mother asked. “What was
his
name?”

“It doesn't matter. I don't want the baby to have an Italian name.”

“You said he was American,” Joy Drummond protested.

“Italian-American,” Angela explained. “I'll think of an English surname.”

It was hard for them, and she must make allowances. Their lives had run on in the same sedate routine for over thirty years. Trivia was their safeguard against sorrow. The loss of the daughter who'd died as a baby, the death of their only son. And now a grandchild without a father.

Her mother said, “My grandmother was a Gates; that's a nice name. What do you think, Hugh?”

“Too short,” he said. “Like Smith or Brown. It's up to Angela anyway.… Well, surgery in half an hour. I could do with a cup of tea.”

“I'll make it,” Angela offered.

“No, no, you sit down. I won't be a minute. Mrs. P. made some biscuits.”

Her mother hurried out. There was a long silence. Her father lit his pipe and puffed at it aggressively. Angela put a small log on the fire and poked it into a blaze.

“I want you to know one thing,” she said. “I was really in love with him. I still am.”

“After the way he treated you? After leaving you in this predicament?”

“He didn't; I left him. I told Mummy. He wanted me to go to America and wait for him with his family. I said no. I got myself sent home, and I shall never see or hear of him again. But it wasn't anything cheap, and I'm not ashamed of it. I just hope you won't be either.”

“Shame doesn't come into it,” he said. “Damn! Tobacco's so wretched these days, can't get my pipe to draw properly. Why did you leave him, if he wanted to do the decent thing? I don't understand.”

“I can't tell you,” Angela decided.
I can't risk you turning against the baby if you know about Steven. You couldn't come to terms with it, any more than I could
. “There was a very good reason, but that's all I can say. I've got to make a new life for myself and the baby and try to put it all behind me. But it's not going to be easy.”

“It certainly isn't,” he agreed. “Especially if you meet someone and want to get married. But that's a long way off. I think it'd be better if my partner looks after you and does the delivery. Jim Hulbert's a good chap and knows his stuff. I was never that keen on obstetrics anyway. You'd better have a checkup in a couple of days and get things on course. Ah!” He got up as his wife came back into the room. “Joy, give me that tray—it's quite heavy.”

Joy Drummond managed one of her bright smiles. “Angela, tea and a biscuit? Better make it two now.” Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she had been crying.

“Thanks, Mummy. One biscuit'll do.”

Her father went off to the surgery, and she helped prepare their dinner.

“You'll need a ration card and the extra orange juice and cod-liver oil for the baby,” her mother rattled on. “It's awfully good the way mothers are looked after these days. Mrs. P.'s daughter is having a baby, and she was saying only the other day that she's better fed and healthier than Mrs. P. ever was.”

It was all so odd, so unreal. Angela peeled potatoes and felt as if she were watching a play in which someone who looked like her was the protagonist. The housekeeper, Mrs. P., and her daughter; the free orange juice and vitamins provided by a thoughtful government; the child of a Mafia gangster nestling in her womb—all played a part. But it was the sudden memory of the burning sun of Sicily on their naked bodies the first time they made love that forced her back to reality.

“If you marry,” her father had said, seeing the practical problems. There would never be another man after Steven Falconi.

She came up to her mother and put an arm around her. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “And thanks to Daddy too.”

“Oh, Angela,” Joy murmured. “I'm sorry we took it badly at first. I do hope you'll forget about it. Now, will you make the gravy or shall I?”

“Whatever's the matter, dear?” Joy Drummond asked. “You look as white as a sheet.”

The letter from Walter McKie had come with the morning post. Angela opened it while they were having breakfast. Her father had left on an early call, and they were drinking tea and eating toast with a thin scrape of butter and some of the precious jam ration.

“Angela, are you all right?”

Angela covered her face with her hands. For a moment she felt everything around her fade. Her mother rose quickly and came to her.

“What is it? What's happened?”

“My best friend is dead.” Angela held on to the flimsy airmail letter. “The hospital was bombed just after I left. She was killed, Mum. They were nearly all killed. Oh, Chrissie, Chrissie …” She wept.

“You mustn't do this,” Joy admonished her. “You mustn't get upset. For the baby's sake.”

“I can't believe it. I just wrote to tell her about the trip home and ask how things were. This is from her boyfriend. It was a freak, he says. A German bomber unloaded and then crashed into the mountains.”

“What a terrible thing!”

“The place was full of wounded,” she went on. “Nobody had a chance. Mum, I think I'm going to be sick.”

Afterward, she lay on her bed and read the letter again. Steven Falconi had come back to Sicily to search for her. He had left, believing she was among the dead. Major Thompson had arranged a return flight to Naples for him the same day. No one had challenged Steven's assumption, so she had nothing to worry about, Walter said. Steven wouldn't be trying to trace her now.

Christine was dead; and the last glimmer of hope had died with her.

The boy was born on the eighteenth day of May. It was a short labor, and the midwife delivered him. There was no need to call Jim Hulbert. Her parents hurried over to the cottage hospital. Her mother brought flowers from the garden.

“Eight pounds,” Hugh Drummond exclaimed. “He's a big chap.”

“He's very dark,” Joy Drummond reflected. “Lots of black hair.”

“Italians
are
dark.” Angela's father had a snap of irritation in his voice.

“Not all of them, Hugh,” she protested. “Some are quite fair. Think of the old masters; they painted blond people. How are you feeling, Angela? It wasn't too bad, was it? He's a dear little boy.”

“I'm fine,” Angela said. “Just tired, Mum, that's all. It was quite quick for a first baby. He is lovely, isn't he?”

“Yes,” her mother agreed. She touched the top of his head with her finger. Poor little thing. No father. People round about were saying what a tragedy for Angela, losing her husband like that, and wasn't she brave. But Joy wasn't sure how many really believed it. Angela had called herself Lawrence, after a distant Drummond connection. The child would be registered under that name. The birth certificate would show he was illegitimate, but there was nothing they could do about that. It could be kept locked away.

“Come on, Joy. We mustn't tire her. We'll be off now, Angela, and you go to sleep. I'll tell the nurse to come and take the baby. Nice little chap. Big, too,” he remarked again.

“We'll pop back at teatime,” her mother promised. “Or I will anyway, if your father's busy.” She bent and kissed Angela's cheek.

She was alone then, in the little sunny room, with the flowers from the garden arranged in a vase on the windowsill. A beautiful sunny day, the eighteenth of May, 1944. She looked down at the child in the crook of her arm. Steven's son. He would never see him or know him.

The nurse came in and said, “Mrs. Lawrence! Tears? Now, now, not after such an easy time and that beautiful boy at the end of it. Here, let me take him. You go to sleep, and I'll bring him back at teatime.”

Nineteen days later the invasion of Europe began. The end of the war seemed imminent by the time the child was christened in the village church. She named him Charles Steven Hugh. There was a party at the house afterward. It was a very nice party, and the Drummonds enjoyed it. They were especially pleased that Jim Hulbert was paying so much attention to Angela. He was a good man, too old for war service but steady as a rock. They didn't put it into words, but their hope was mutual. It would solve everything if something developed between Angela and Jim.

Lucca Falconi said to his wife, “Our boy has changed, Anna. I watched him at the party. He's not himself. I don't know him anymore.”

Steven's mother said, “He talked to everyone; he did his best. It was a wonderful evening, all the family gathered together, all our friends, welcoming him home to us. He's a hero, Lucca, don't forget. He was grateful, I know he was.”

“Grateful maybe, but not enjoying it. Not taking part—acting like a stranger. I haven't been able to get close to him since he came back. Piero says the same. He doesn't want to talk about the business; he doesn't want to talk about the future. He was brave, he got a medal and I'm proud of him. But the war's over. And our troubles are over too. Thanks to him. He won't talk about that either.”

“He went through a bad time,” Anna protested. She dreaded her husband's getting angry with either of their sons. The only time she stood against him was in their defense. He said angrily, “Has he told you about it? Has he talked to you when he puts up barriers to me, his father?”

“No, Lucca, no. I just feel it. I know my son. He's full of sorrow. Give him time to settle, to feel at home again.”

“I haven't got time to give,” Lucca Falconi answered. “The tax claim has been dropped; we're ready to go out and expand our business. And we need Steven. He's been out of the army three months. It's time he got his feet on the ground. I'll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Don't be hard on him, Lucca,” she pleaded.

“He's my son and I love him,” he answered. “But he's a man and he knows his duty. Now go to sleep, Anna.” He reached out and switched off the light. Steven's mother turned onto her side and began to say her rosary, as she had done every night since her son left for the army.

Lucca had been talking for almost an hour. He had spread out the books and the ledgers on the table, insisting that Steven go through them while he explained. And he could feel the resistance. He stopped in the middle of a sentence, then he spoke in dialect, as they all did in private.

“You're not paying me attention,” he accused. He was so angry his sallow face was pale.

Steven didn't deny it. The battle had to come sooner or later. He knew what he was going to say. “I'm sorry, Papa. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore.”

His father took in a deep breath. “I see. I see,” he said. “You get a special job from the army. A way to help the family. No danger, no risks—”

“I did that job,” Steven interrupted. “The Internal Revenue did a deal. They let us off the hook.”

“And what did you do?” Lucca demanded. “You go and get a transfer. You get yourself into the fighting. The worst of the fighting around Rome! You act like the all-American hero, and you get a medal.” He swore a blasphemous Sicilian oath. “You had no right to do that, Steven! You'll be the head of the family one day. You could have been killed, and for what?”

“For the same thing as the others who didn't get home,” Steven said. “For the right to live a decent life. You told me you were proud of the medal. You showed it off during the party. Now you accuse me. Papa, I fought because I wanted to; I had a good reason. And it taught me something.”

Lucca waited; he was shrewd, and he sensed that bullying his son was the wrong tactic. He said quietly, “Tell me, what did it teach you? I want to know. I'll listen. You tell me.”

“It made me sick of killing,” Steven said slowly. “I killed Germans. It didn't make me feel better. I thought it would, but it didn't.”

He wasn't looking at Lucca; he spoke almost to himself. “And I saw my own men die. I saw boys wounded, screaming for someone to shoot them to stop the agony. I saw brave men and cowards on both sides, and there were times when I didn't know which I was myself. They gave me the Distinguished Service Cross. I tried to feel I'd earned it. I want to be proud of it. If I go back to the old ways, I can't be proud.”

Lucca came up and put an arm around his son's shoulders. There were tears in his eyes. “My son, I didn't know.… Forgive me. I didn't know what you'd been through. Of course you earned it. But you've got to put all this behind you. You've got to start your life and look to the future.”

Steven said slowly, “I don't want the old life, Papa.”

Lucca went on holding him. He was patient, he felt so much love for his son.
He's wounded
, he told himself.
Only it doesn't show
. “What life do you want?” he asked him. “You want to leave us? You want to leave the family?”

“No,” Steven said. “I love you and Mama and Piero. You're all I've got now. It's the way we do business: I can't go back to it.”

“You knew we had to be rough at times,” his father reminded him. “I never asked you to do anything like that. That was Piero's side of the business. You were the clever one, the graduate, the son who could make music out of a balance sheet. And anyway, it's changed. Times are different now. We're respectable, legitimate.”