The Liberation, Page 3

  ‘I will buy this one,’ he said. His fingertips caressed the wood. ‘How much?’

  Caterina considered his request. She needed to sell more than just one box.

  ‘Take me to where your troops are,’ she urged. ‘Take me to whatever bar they like to drink in. In exchange you can keep the cigarette box.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Major,’ she continued quickly, ‘everyone knows that soldiers are the only ones with money in Naples. No tourists come here since the war started, just ships crammed with your Allied troops with your Am-lire burning holes in your pockets.’

  Everyone was aware that the Am-lire was the official currency issued by the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories, one hundred of them to the US dollar. Printed in America, hundreds of tons of the notes had been crated up and flown out on cargo planes to Italy. Caterina knew they were intended to assist Italy’s recovery, but instead they were having the damaging effect of unbalancing the economy and causing inflation. It was a sore point.

  The American gave her a hard stare, searching for a lie hidden inside the maze of her words. But he could find nothing. He shrugged his broad shoulders.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’

  Caterina rode in the jeep.

  Whore.

  Her grandfather’s voice sounded in her head.

  You bring shame on your father’s name.

  Her grandfather was strict about a woman’s honour. He laid down rules and, as sure as bells toll for the city’s dead, Caterina knew that riding in a car with two strange men – two foreign strange men – brought disgrace. Throats had been cut for less.

  But the old times are brittle, Nonno, they are cracking wide open. This country is changing. Mussolini has gone and women are fighting to be heard. Italy herself is lying on her back with her skirts up round her hips and holding out her hand for Allied gold. So don’t talk to me of whoring. Italy needs to eat. And you, dearest Nonno, you need to eat before your old bones poke through your skin.

  She sat upright in the back of the open jeep, hugging her sack as they hurtled through the streets, the wind snagging her hair as Naples came at her in a rush. The sights and smells of a busy but fractured city darted in and out of her senses. They overtook a woman on a bicycle, wearing a man’s scarlet dinner jacket and a pair of bloomers, probably the only clothes she had salvaged from a bombing raid. A one-armed man singing opera for centesimi was standing on the corner of a cobbled alleyway, and the rich garlic aroma from cooking stoves on the street mingled with the eye-watering stench of broken sewers.

  They drove past the massive brooding towers of Castel Nuovo, the thirteenth-century fortress that loomed up out of Naples’ violent past, and along Via Partenope, with the sea shimmering like plate glass on the left, in contrast to the skeleton buildings that rose like rotten teeth on the right. Caterina kept her hands tight on her sack as the jeep’s front bumper dodged past a cart pulled by two scrawny goats and missed it by less than a whisker.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the Englishman asked from the front seat, swivelling round to face her.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled at him. ‘I’m enjoying the ride.’

  The bar was for British and American servicemen. It was called Leo’s, a small name for such a huge place. It sprawled over the ground floor inside a gently crumbling seventeenth-century palazzo. But the moment Caterina stepped inside its ornate interior she felt her heart quicken. Today she would not be going home hungry, she was certain of that.

  She walked into the bar. She didn’t notice the beautiful high-ceilinged room or its lavishly Baroque decoration with frescoes, ornate scrollwork and gilded cherubs, all faded and peeling now. The tall mirrors on the walls were speckled like birds’ eggs, but she saw none of it. She had eyes for only the crowd of men in uniform in the room, heard only their loud voices and strong easy laughter. Above their heads cigarette smoke hung like lace netting, though a pair of sluggish ceiling fans tried to tear it to shreds.

  ‘Would you like me to introduce you to a few of our chaps?’ the English captain asked kindly. His name was Harry Fielding, she had discovered.

  She smiled at him. ‘No, thank you. I can manage myself. Don’t let me keep you from . . .’

  The American gave her a brisk nod. ‘Come on, Harry, she’ll do better without us. Let’s get a beer.’ He glanced at her. ‘Join us when you’ve finished fleecing the poor saps.’

  He headed for the bar, drawing Captain Fielding with him. She knew it was better that way. Without the officers breathing down her neck, the soldiers would welcome her more readily and empty their pockets more willingly. She was wearing a cornflower blue dress, one that used to belong to her mother. Caterina had sold the rest. And the hats. Tipped the perfume down the drain in a rage. But she had hung on to this one summer dress because it belonged to a time of laughter, before things went bad. It hung too loose on her thin frame but these days no one noticed that. Everyone’s clothes hung too loose on them.

  She pushed back the long strands of her dark hair and bent over her sack to untie the string, but when she straightened up, she found four British tommies had abandoned the long bar and surrounded her with broad expectant smiles.

  ‘Buongiorno, signorina.’

  ‘Hello, boys,’ she said in English. ‘I have something to show you.’

  They laughed. And Caterina laughed with them.

  It took her an hour. That was all. An hour of smiling and speaking her uncertain English, an hour of brushing against their muscular arms and tossing her hair at their jokes that she didn’t understand. She liked their straightforwardness. Their energy. Their comradeship. It filled the room, rising from their khaki and buff shirts along with the smell of beer and cigarettes. Some had haunted eyes, eyes that had seen too much blood, and when one young smooth-faced gunner bought a musical box for his mother, he cried when he heard it play ‘Come back to Sorrento’.

  She didn’t mind the women. Not the ones with dyed hair and dresses tight as second skins and hard professional smiles. At least the prostitutes smelled nice and spoke to her. It was the others that made her uneasy. The ones in the shabby workaday skirts, the ones with the hollowed-out smiles and the white marks on their finger where a wedding band usually sat. They were the Neapolitan women who had families to feed and nothing to sell but themselves. They didn’t speak to her and kept their eyes averted. Shame did bad things to people.

  ‘Here. I saved these for you.’

  Caterina placed her last two boxes on the low table where Major Parr and Captain Fielding were seated nursing beers. It was the musical box for the captain and the cigarette box with the soldiers inlaid on the lid for the major.

  ‘Grazie!’ Harry Fielding immediately took possession of his, smiling at her. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Nothing. Take it as a thank you. I couldn’t have asked such prices if I were selling them on the streets.’

  ‘No, I insist.’ He drew a fold of Am-lire notes from his pocket.

  ‘For God’s sake, Harry,’ Major Parr interrupted, ‘let the girl keep a shred of pride, can’t you? Italian women don’t seem to possess much of that right now.’ He glanced at the women in their drab clothes, then turned to Caterina. ‘Sit down, signorina. Join us. I’ll get you a drink.’ He moved off to the bar.

  Caterina sat down reluctantly. She snatched up her grandfather’s Bodeo that lay on the American’s vacated seat, and tossed it into her empty sack. She was tempted to throw the cigarette box in after it.

  ‘Don’t take offence,’ Captain Fielding said.

  ‘Why not?’

  He shrugged and gave her the kind of graceful apologetic smile that only an Englishman can master. ‘He hasn’t always been so . . .’ he hesitated, ‘so ungentlemanly.’

  ‘What happened? What makes him so rude?’

  He leaned forward, keeping his voice low amid the noise and chatter around them, his fine-boned face suddenly growing older, his clear blue eyes sad. ‘Nine months ago he
re in Naples Jake helped a woman in the street. Just like he helped you. She was being knocked about by her husband and no one was lifting a finger to help her. He put a stop to it. And do you know how she thanked him?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She took one look at Jake’s uniform, pulled an army pistol from her shopping bag and shot him point blank in the chest. It seems an American bomb had destroyed her parents’ house, killing them both.’ He exhaled hard. ‘And her two brothers.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Our foolish Yank survived, as you see. Broken ribs and a collapsed lung. I thought we’d lost him for a while, I must admit.’ He laughed to lighten the solemn mood that had descended. ‘They build them tough in Milwaukee, it seems. His grandmother over there is Italian, so maybe that helps.’

  She heard something in his voice, an affection that he was too British to express, and she thought the rude Yankee didn’t deserve such loyalty. They were very different, these two Allied soldiers.

  ‘What is it you do together?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t think that the American and British forces were . . .’

  ‘Amici? Friends?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We are Intelligence Officers,’ he explained. ‘We work together.’

  A champagne glass materialised on the table in front of Caterina. Major Parr sat down opposite her, stretching out his long legs, and raised his beer.

  ‘To your good health and wealth, signorina.’ His eyes still regarded her with suspicion, but he didn’t mention the gun.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said in English.

  The champagne looked inviting. It would taste wonderful, but if he’d bothered to ask her, she’d have requested coffee. Now that she’d sold all her boxes, she’d have to go back to work this afternoon, so she needed a clear head. At least he’d thought to bring over a dish of olives. She made herself take no more than one. It was as she bit into the deliciously oily olive that Caterina noticed the woman who had sidled up to stand next to the American’s chair. She was running her hand up and down the back of his neck.

  ‘Hello, Jake,’ the woman murmured.

  ‘Hello, Maria.’ He tipped his head back and smiled up at her.

  She was fortyish and had a good face, strong-boned with a generous scarlet slash of a mouth. Her hair was coloured an over-dramatic black, but it was a mistake. It made her face look naked and weary, despite the lipstick. Heavy brass earrings jangled as she moved and she wore a lilac blouse that was cut too low. Caterina was acutely aware of the ample layers of flesh on the woman’s limbs and the full curve of her breasts. No shortage of food there.

  ‘So, Maria, como esta? How are things?’

  ‘I’m good, Jake. Sto bene. How about you handsome soldiers?’

  She was laughing in an easy manner that was infectious, but her eyes were fixed on Caterina as she circled the two men.

  ‘So who do we have here?’ she asked.

  ‘This is . . .’ the Englishman started.

  ‘Caterina,’ the woman finished for him.

  With no warning she leaned over, gripped Caterina’s chin in her hand and tilted it up to the light to take a better look. ‘Just like your mother.’

  Caterina’s heart froze.

  ‘Don’t look like that, girl. When I last saw you, you were only a gawky kid but look at you now. Bellissima. I’d know you anywhere – you are the spit of your beautiful mamma, Lucia Lombardi.’

  Caterina raised her hand to the woman’s wrist and removed the grip on her chin. Where the fleshy fingers had touched, her skin burned.

  ‘You knew Mamma?’

  ‘Si, long ago in Naples’ nightclubs. But I hear she left Sorrento and caught herself a big fat fish in Rome – a German general, that’s what they say.’

  There was an awkward silence. Caterina stood up, snatched the sack and started to head in the direction of the door, but abruptly she whipped round.

  ‘Do not speak to me of Lucia Lombardi,’ she said fiercely. ‘Ever again.’

  ‘Caterina, I . . .’

  But Caterina was striding away, her heart racing in her chest, while her throat burned. She pushed open the heavy door and tumbled out on to the pavement, but not before she’d seen the look of interest on the American army major’s face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was hard for Caterina to explain. Even harder to understand. But it happened every time she returned home to her small hometown of Sorrento. The moment her foot hit the warm pavement outside the railway station and she made her way through the crowds along the elegant Corso Italia, past the row of shops to Piazza Tasso, the beautiful beating heart of the town, she felt the outer layer of her skin slough off.

  She left it there, lying in the dirt. Without it she could move freely, not just her limbs, but her mind. She could think more clearly. Here in the pure clear air of Sorrento she could at last breathe.

  Sorrento was a town like no other in Italy. It sat perched up high alongside the seabirds on top of a sheer limestone cliff. Far below, the dazzling Tyrrhenean Sea heaved itself against the rocks and tugged at the colourful fishing boats moored in the small marina. The town’s ancient Roman and mediaeval history was stamped on each narrow street and on every one of the mediaeval walls, as well as on the great arched doorways that hid courtyards and iron staircases from view.

  Even the great slabs of stonework from which the houses were constructed, hewn in the bugnato rustic style of grey volcanic blocks, bore pock-marked indentations as though a hundred thousand fingers had trailed over them. It was a town that had gazed out over the spectacular sweep of the Bay of Naples and the brooding hazy presence of Mount Vesuvius for more than a thousand years, a town so exquisitely beautiful that people came here to die.

  Caterina believed that was what her mother had done. Come here to die. Not literally, of course not. But in every other way. In her twenties Lucia Neroni had abandoned the wild parties of her youth in Florence and the sophisticated salons of the north, and buried herself in the peasant world of the south. She swapped her dancing shoes and pearls for goats and lemon groves, for blood feuds and the shadow of the Camorra mafia. And she found herself a man who smelled of fish glue and linseed oil instead of cigars and caviar.

  Why, Mamma? Why did you do it? You hated every minute of being incarcerated with what you called mindless donkeys. You always told us we were peasants, Papà and me, with dirty fingernails and souls made of wood.

  You left, eleven years ago. On my tenth birthday. You walked out on us. Not just us, on Luca, your new son. Your new son. You sprayed scent on your long white throat and left. I worked hard to scrape you out of my head. Out of my heart. To core you out of it, the way I core an apple with a sharp knife. So don’t think you can walk back into it now just because I crossed paths with one of your Naples nightclub friends.

  But a German?

  A German general in Rome.

  Mamma, what were you thinking?

  Caterina turned into the street where she lived. It was narrow and lay in deep shadow. The houses, which opened straight on to the black flagstones, were so tall that they blocked out the light, except for a few joyful minutes at midday when the sun squeezed itself into the slender gap to daub the street with gold. Yet the heat was fierce, trapped there, with nowhere to go, and the inhabitants retreated behind their closed shutters, awaiting the sweet coolness of evening.

  ‘Hello, Caterina, where have you been all day?’

  She swung round. ‘Carlo! Don’t creep up on me like that.’

  But she laughed at him because it was impossible not to. He was holding a white rose between his teeth.

  ‘For you, cara mia.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  She accepted the rose and slid an arm through his as he fell into step beside her. Carlo Cavaleri was handsome – even she had to admit that – with swarthy skin and fine black eyes that he rolled with amusement at every opportunity. He possessed glossy black curls worn too long and a careless charm that turned gir
ls’ heads. He was the same age as Caterina and she had known him all her life, but these days he only came to seek her out in deepest shadow or after dark.

  ‘You weren’t at your workshop today,’ he said.

  ‘No, I went to Naples.’

  ‘Selling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any luck?’ He glanced at the sack.

  ‘Yes. But Carlo, it’s bad there. Really bad. The city is nothing more than the skeleton of what it used to be and its people are wretched. There are no jobs for them because the factories and offices are in ruins, and the churches and hospitals have been destroyed and . . .’

  ‘Don’t, Caterina,’ Carlo said gently. ‘I hear that the Allied troops daren’t turn their back on their equipment for even a second or it is snatched from under their noses.’ He laughed and shook his shaggy curls at her.

  Caterina pushed her hand into her pocket, feeling her day’s spoils tucked safely in there, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. English cigarettes, a golden yellow pack with the words ‘Gold Flake’ on the front. They lingered in a shadowed doorway, smoking and talking quietly, while heat radiated from the stone walls of the house. A black tom cat used to stalk the lane before the war, but no more. It had probably been eaten long ago. When the cigarettes were finished they walked to her door.

  ‘How’s Luca?’ Carlo asked.

  ‘My brother is out on the fishing boats today.’ She looked at him closely. ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why, Carlo?’ She punched his arm just hard enough to make him rethink his answer.

  ‘I saw him hanging around at the Hotel Vittorio Excelsior earlier.’

  ‘With the soldiers?’

  He nodded. ‘Don’t be hard on him.’

  ‘I’ll skin his lazy backside, the little layabout.’ But she smiled. ‘Why don’t you come in for a glass of wine?’ She dangled her sack at him. ‘I’ve bought a bottle for Nonno.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ He ran a finger across his own throat. ‘I would rather cut my throat than set foot in your house.’