Devotion Read online

  ‘Be quiet, darling,’ Nadine said, and Tom, while vaguely sheepish, could read on her oh-so-readable face that no, this was not the day on which Nadine would cease to find him irresistible.

  ‘Sorry Mums,’ he said, and tried to say ‘It was a duel of honour—’ but Nadine had interrupted him, saying ‘You will be, when no school will have you and you pass no exams and find no employment and you’ll be bored stiff all your life and your children will starve.’

  He could see Kitty behind her, a ‘My children won’t starve’ smirk on her face.

  ‘I said sorry,’ he grumbled, at which point Dr Aunt Rose, a female relative of the better sort – not a moping romantic, nor a massively tweed-bosomed bossyboots, but a drily amused person who if you asked civilly would show you the contents of her leather medical bag (scalpel, opium, syringes) – appeared from the drawing room and gave him a not unsympathetic look. Suddenly his face felt treacherously insecure, so he barged past them all, heading for the stairs.

  In the hall behind him Rose embraced Peter, clapping him on the back as if particularly glad to see him. Grandpa came out to see what the fuss was, patted Tom vaguely as he passed, and mooched off again. And there was Riley, lugging Tom’s bag, and calling him to come back out and help with the trunk.

  *

  As soon as he could, Tom raced up to his room. He glanced over at Kensington Gardens across the road. The park keeper was trudging by. The heavy leaves of high summer draped almost to the grass, but between them Tom could just make out glimpses of the Round Pond, a horizontal gleam in the distance.

  He wondered if the Household Cavalry had been by yet, exercising their stupendously well-kept horses, in two matched, jingling, shining lines, heading round back to Knightsbridge. He thought about going down to the kitchen, where Mrs Kenton might be persuaded to give him some cake. He considered, too, going back down to interfere in the discussions they were no doubt having about his future. He decided against. Whatever they decided made little difference to him. Wherever they sent him, he would, after all, continue to do what he wanted, bear the punishments when they came, and apologise when he had to. And in due course he would be grown up, and free.

  *

  The following morning Nadine, her long curls tidied up, her dark yellow eyes calm, benevolently neglectful over breakfast, patently glad to see everyone in the right place – i.e., around a table and within her view – announced that the Italian cousins had invited them to stay during the summer holiday.

  Joy engulfed Tom over his toast and milk. A foreign country! Foreign! And it would mean less time at Locke Hill with Peter.

  Nobody had ever met any of these cousins. For years their existence had passed London by, until someone called Aldo Elia Fiore – Tom saw Kitty trying out the name, stretching her mouth round the unfamiliar shapes – son of Nadine’s mother’s sister and her Italian husband, had written to his lost cousin Nadine. And now she, Tom and Kitty were going to visit his family in Rome.

  But Riley was not coming. Nobody was happy about this, but everybody accepted it. He had to go to work, of course. Men usually had to go to work, one way or another. This was the main way of telling that Peter was getting better: he was working now. Writing this Homer book for Riley to publish! There was a manuscript to prove it. Peter had shown it to Tom, with an expression on his face similar to the one Tom wore, on the few occasions when he’d liked a teacher enough to want to impress him. Peter had said, ‘Well. There it is. First draft,’ and Tom had looked at it and thumbed it, and said, ‘That’s a lot of words’, and that had seemed to do. Anyway, as Riley said now, ‘Books don’t publish themselves’, so he had to work, and not come on holiday, so the joy was clouded. If Tom had paid more attention he might have picked up that strong, tough, humorous, hardworking Riley, who could cope with anything (and had), simply did not want to take a train across Europe to meet new people, to have to talk to them, to stay in a house as a guest with them when he didn’t know them, and they would not understand his mangled voice (in English or his remnants of Italian), or know that he could not eat most solid food, or that he had to be able to sleep when he needed to, to stop talking sometimes even in the middle of a conversation, to leave the moment leaving became necessary.

  Tom thought he knew all about Riley. Plenty of fathers and uncles had lost arms and legs in the war; Riley had lost part of his face. Plenty of men had wooden legs and prosthetic arms (Mr Tanley at school had one with attachments: he had a spork, a gripper for pens, and all kinds of wood-working tools he could just screw in, and he’d let you play with them). Riley had had his face repaired using his own skin from the top of his head. His black hair was thick and curly; he would comb it back with his fingers over the broad strip of scar when he had to take off his hat. He looked jolly good considering. Tom had always known this, and didn’t remember being told. Though he did remember being told about Peter – Dr Aunt Rose saying to him, in the drawing room at Locke Hill, ‘Tom, some men are wounded in their bodies and some are wounded in the heart of themselves, in their soul, and your poor dad is wounded in his soul …’ He had been on the sofa with Max the red setter, and he had thought she was going to tell him off for letting the dog be on the furniture, and she had looked sad, so sad, that he had never wanted to bring it up again.

  For a brief period he had thought she meant ‘sole’. If Riley could cope with a wounded face, and be kind, then surely only a nothing-kind-of-man would be bothered by a wounded sole? One afternoon, while his father was asleep in his study, Tom had seen his large white feet flopping over the arm of the leather chaise. There was nothing wrong with them.

  When Tom realised what it really was – wounded in his soul – the phrase, if anything, made him more scared of his volatile, sharp-tongued, reclusive father.

  ‘You all go,’ said Riley, ‘and have a wonderful time.’

  ‘But you and Nadine went on honeymoon to Rome!’ Tom said. ‘Don’t you want to go back?’

  ‘I would love to,’ Riley said, and Nadine looked over to him, a grown-up look, tender. ‘And I will, one day. But at the moment I can’t.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Tom said. ‘You went to the battlefields with Peter.’

  Riley pulled a face at him.

  ‘But they live on an island! In the Tiber!’

  ‘That is a great temptation,’ Riley said. ‘I will come, another time.’

  Tom fell silent. Because of the jawbone Riley had left in France, his refusal had to be honoured.

  Chapter Two

  Towards Rome, Summer 1928

  Crossing France, Tom stared intently from the train window, looking for remnants of the war: tanks, or crashed planes like his one at Locke Hill. No luck, so then he just watched north turn to south before his eyes, cabbage patches to vineyards, apple orchards to olive groves, green to gold. The train stopped for an hour somewhere in the Alps and he leapt off, sniffing the air, letting his eyes rest on crystalline distances. Kitty, who was only eight, and Nadine clambered down after him; they wandered along a lane and found wild strawberries in a field, with snow-capped mountains beyond and a cold stream for their feet. Overhead a slow and tiny scrap of black curve circled: an eagle, he decided. How high? Higher than a plane? He wished Riley were there.

  Kitty saw it, and cried out that Peter would like the eagle.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Tom automatically. ‘Peter doesn’t like anything.’

  Kitty squeaked as she dipped her toes in the stream, so Tom was obliged to mock her again. Nadine said, ‘Be nice, darling,’ as she always did, and flicked the icy water at him so that he squeaked too. The cry of the train guard echoed down, and they grabbed their shoes and rushed back up to the station, breathless and cheery.

  The moment they crossed the border in the Piemonte he announced ‘Something’s different here,’ even though the goats and the mountains looked much the same and lay under the same blue sky. ‘It’s different,’ he insisted.

  The mountains faded from underneath
them. At Milan they changed trains, and rattled, rattled, rattled on, itchy, metallic, grubby, south and west: the coastal flats, the sea beyond parades of pine trees, pale cattle with wide amazing horns. It took all day.

  They arrived in the sunlit evening. Nadine twisted in her seat, pointing out churches and aqueducts, ruins and piazzas, places she recognised from her honeymoon, nine years before. Tom stared with an immediate and complete jealousy, wanting the adventure she and Riley had had, and the knowledge they had acquired. And then suddenly, right outside the train window, like a massive hot-air balloon crash-landing in front of them, the dome of St Peter’s appeared, and was gone again, leaving the vista beyond of roofs and bridges and the ancient world. And the heat! He was sweating in his English tweed. He was enchanted.

  A cab took them from the station along the river, past broken arches and massive columns and tall stone doorways leading to dappled courtyards, past donkeys and peasants and priests and endless bold-eyed dark people. Tom took it all in. He wound down the window: the smell was of hot dusty donkeys, of broth boiling, garlic frying in olive oil though he didn’t know that’s what it was. The light lay golden on white stone. Voices were calling, shouting, chatting, the rhythms unfamiliar and enticing: Aoh! he heard, Aoh! By the time they arrived, a great and dusty expedition in the small piazza, he was like a big dog in the back of the taxi, desperate to get out and be in this city.

  Each of the visitors was to fall like plums in a heatwave for the charms of Rome, but Tom fell hardest.

  They were in a piazza, on an island, in the river, in the middle of this city which was more like a painting come to life than any actual place that Tom had ever seen. He was practically quivering.

  As they drew up, a man lounging on the far side against the river wall caught Tom’s eye through the glass of the window. He would catch any eye. There was something naturally flamboyant about him, an unspoken expectation of attention hanging around his big shoulders and barrel chest. His hair and his coat were long, his waistcoat was striped blue, and he was smoking, with an air both idle and attractive. The bottoms of his trousers, Tom noticed, were soaking wet.

  The driver was fumbling with the brakes; Nadine was saying, ‘Oh, darlings, look!’ and as she opened the car door to get out the man strode up, arm outstretched, black curls going back like a ram’s horns from a strong brow, wild eyebrows curling off in all directions. In a fluid movement he opened the door, pulled Nadine up from her seat, and embraced her. Then he pushed her away to look at her, clasped her head with his hands in her hair, and cried out, ‘My sister!’

  Nadine was startled, yes – but delighted. Tom found himself smiling. You would think he was in his own house, in this piazza, he thought. Welcoming guests. He launched himself out of the car and stumbled upright. The man turned to him, big brown eyes, a big nose diamond-cut on the bridge and cavernous at the nostril, smiling. Tom felt a flush of infidelity to Riley. He wanted this man to like him. He wished that he wasn’t so very blond. A man should be dark. Like this man.

  Some children had appeared. Two skinny boys, smaller than him. Good. A girl, a little younger than him, quite tough-looking, big eyes, a lot of hair which reminded him of ropes. He wondered quickly if she would choose Kitty or him. He thought he was prepared not to mind if the girls went off together, so long as it didn’t mean he had to be with the small boys, but – actually – he knew at first glance that he wanted this girl to want him, and that it was his responsibility to make that happen. First impressions, and all that.

  So: ‘When in Rome!’ he cried, and embraced the girl in a huge, ungainly, long-armed hug. He took hold of her head, kissed her cheeks and cried, just as Aldo had, ‘My sister!’

  It went down extremely well.

  *

  Kitty, pink and fair, saw the tall curly-haired man – the new cousin? – hugging Nadine madly. Kitty was aware that a mother could disappear just like that, and leave one apparently somehow different to other people, so she watched in slight alarm as the only mother she had ever known was engulfed by the stranger. When she had wriggled out of the car, she stared up at him, hoping that he would notice her, and that he wouldn’t. He did. He bent from his great height – and picked her up – something she hated from strangers – and actually – ! – threw her in the air, as if she were two years old. He caught her, very securely, in strong arms.

  He said, ‘Signorina, sorry. You are sweet like a doll. I apologise for loss of dignity.’ He set her down, and crouched a little, and held out his hand, and she had to take it or be rude, even though she was breathless, and his look was so frank and nice that she smiled, and then he kissed her hand and she just laughed, and looked to Nadine, and Nadine was laughing too – so following Tom’s example she boldly took the man’s hand, and kissed it right back. At which there came a stream of Italian like a waterfall down a hillside. It sounded beautiful. Her eyes widened.

  The house was very simple, plain and bare-seeming, the furniture dark against white walls. It was the heat of the day – ferocious heat! – and Kitty had never seen shutters before. The dimness surprised her and she blinked. Her English habit was to welcome any available sun, at all times, under any circumstances. Her entire life adults had been calling to her ‘the sun’s out children, do go into the garden and run about’. How strange to block it out!

  The English tried to carry their bags, and Aldo made his small boys help even though they were only about six and the bags were far too big. Kitty kept an eye out for Tom: after helping carry and being introduced, he spun off the side of the group, and went back out to look at the river.

  Kitty and the girl, Fernanda, eyed each other. Aldo said something in Italian and the girl beckoned to Kitty to follow her up the narrow white age-smoothened marble staircase. In a little room at the back, vaulted and whitewashed, the girl said, unsmiling and careful, ‘Do you like to reading books?’ And Kitty said only, ‘Yes,’ because despite the preparatory Italian lessons they had all taken, she was so utterly excited that she had forgotten the word ‘sì’. Nenna fetched one: in Italian, but with pictures. Kitty in turn brought one of hers from her little suitcase: The Legends and History of Rome, retold for children, which Nadine had got for her from the library. Nenna studied it carefully, smiling at the pictures, looking at the English words and working her way through them. Kitty watched her, admiring her face which was not like English faces: bonier, more golden. It was like Nadine’s face though, with the wide eyes. As Kitty watched, a great smile spread across it, and Nenna looked up and thrust the book towards her, pointing at one word: Tarquin.

  So Kitty obediently settled in to read about how he had lived and died and how his body was thrown into the Tiber and how – oh – an island – this island? – grew up over his skeleton. Kitty thrilled. Could it be this island?

  She looked up at Nenna. Was she being unkind? Was she trying to frighten her? But Nenna’s face was eager. She grabbed the book again, riffled through it, stopped with a look of delight and passed it back, pointing this time to Aes – Aescu – Kitty could not read it.

  ‘Esculapio,’ Nenna said, watching. Kitty read anyway. She was accustomed to names she could not pronounce. Aescu-thingy did perfectly well. This story told of a medicine god arriving on a boat from Greece to save the Romans from a plague, his staff wreathed with a snake because snakes know the secrets of magic herbs, from crawling on their bellies, and the boat turned into an island in the river – this island. Well, it has to be. There only is one island. Nadine showed us on the map.

  Nenna sat patiently while Kitty read, and when she had finished took her by the hand, out of the house, across the piazza, and across the road. Kitty was still wondering about how two children could just leave the house, alone, when Nenna nudged her, pointing upwards: above a doorway, a staff, wreathed in a snake. ‘Ospedale,’ said the sign, and Kitty could read that. Her skin tingled a little. Skeleton, tyrant, hero, god, snake, boat, hospital.

  Nenna stood in front of her, tall, languid, expect
ant. Kitty narrowed her eyes, blinked, and said sì, three times. Then she said ‘ospedale’, knowing from her lessons to say the e on the end. Osspeddarlay.

  Nenna pointed at the snake. ‘Serpente,’ she said. Serpentay.

  ‘Serpent,’ said Kitty calmly.

  Nenna pointed at the ground and said, ‘Scheletro.’ Skeletro. There was a naughty look in her eye.

  Kitty grinned. ‘Skeleton!’ she said.

  Nenna reached over and pinched Kitty’s cheek gently between the knuckles of her two first fingers.

  ‘Carina,’ she said, and Kitty felt both approved and patronised, and that felt absolutely right to her.

  *

  Later, Nenna wondered what she would offer the little pink cousin next. Not the river – she was too small for that. That Nenna would save for the boy. Also it was a bit late to go out. So, inside the house … the stairs!

  So she showed Kitty how to slide on a cushion down the shining marble staircase. When Kitty cried out in joy that it was like a boat going over the rapids, Nenna recognised the word boat, smiled and sealed her loyalty, because that was what she had always thought about this game, that she was a boat tumbling down weirs and waterfalls, and nobody else, not even Papà, had ever noticed. Nenna and Kitty said to each other, ‘Barca – boat. Boat – barca.’

  It was at this moment that Tom returned: soaking wet, mucky, wildly happy, dripping over the tiled floor in the doorway.

  Nenna fell silent, retreated, and watched.

  Her mother Susanna, coming into the hall from the kitchen with Nadine beside her, had two hands up in the air, expressing disbelief. She began to shake her head and tut. Her small boys peered out from behind her, interested. Tom gazed at them all with his wide blue eyes.

  ‘Stop that, Tom,’ Nadine said.

  ‘What!’ cried Tom, defensive.

  ‘Charming her!’ she said. ‘Kitty, throw him a towel. Tom – dry off, and either keep out of the river or dry off down there. No dripping on Susanna’s floor.’