Birmingham Rose (27 page)

She reached up and stroked the hand on her shoulder and they sat in comfortable silence.

As they did so they became aware of a strange sound, a distant roaring as if a massive beast was roaming somewhere in the sky behind them.

‘What the hell . . . ?’ Rose said.

Tony was on his feet instantly, looking back towards Naples. ‘Good Lord!’ he cried. ‘Look! She’s going up!’

The sky round the volcano had turned blood red, and from the top of the crater they could see what looked like great clumps of fire being hurled into the air, with giant orange sparks, as Vesuvius spat fury and venom out into the night sky. From lower down the sides trickled bright streams of lava, bleeding down the volcano’s flanks from points like giant stab wounds.

There was nothing they could do except stand watching in petrified silence. A massive belly of cloud had gathered over the volcano, the eruption a low, growling roar beneath it. Every now and then they heard a louder sound, like a great hoarse voice, and a pillar of fire shot up from inside the cone, hurling itself up towards the cloud and the terrible sky.

They watched for a long time as the night air around them grew colder. It reminded Rose of the nights of the Birmingham blitz: such complete helplessness when faced with destruction all around.

‘Will Naples be all right?’ she asked, and Tony knew immediately whom she was most afraid for.

‘It’s quite a way round the bay, so it should be. But God help all those towns and villages underneath it.’

After a while he said, ‘It’s enough to make you want to pray, isn’t it?’

And Rose nodded. Prayer did not come naturally to her, but she was praying with her whole heart tonight.

By the time she returned to Il Rifugio in April – this time for a whole precious weekend – the force of the eruption had abated. While it was going at full strength, the sky had stayed grey and soupy for days, and soft grey ash fell to a depth of at least half an inch for miles around. Walking through the streets of Naples, Rose saw that even the graffiti of the multitude of political parties, and the large black letters proclaiming ‘
DUCE
!
DUCE
’ (now often crossed out with blacker paint), were dusted over by a layer of ash which clung to the crevices in the walls.

Naples, now convalescing from its days and nights of fear and prayer, had been spared the full destruction of the volcano. Many of the population were convinced this was due to the beneficence of their patron San Gennaro, who had watched over them for fourteen centuries since his martyrdom in Pozzuoli, just along the coast. His protection had, however, been of no help whatever to the inhabitants of the towns and villages strung along the fringe of coast between Vesuvius and the sea, many of which had been engulfed once more by the lava.

Francesco opened the door to her, and she saw at once the strain and exhaustion plain in every line of his face.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked anxiously. ‘You look terrible.’

‘It has been a terrible time.’

Rose searched around with her eyes. ‘Where’s Margherita?’

Francesco pulled one of his hands through his unruly curls. ‘She’s gone to visit her father. He had found a place to stay. He was away from home when the eruption started. Her mother and sister – both gone.’ He made a wiping motion with his right hand, his face full of pain and bewilderment. ‘The house was destroyed.’

‘You’re saying that . . . ?’

‘Now she has only her father and one sister. She has two older brothers who are in the army.’

In English, Rose said, ‘My God. How terrible.’

She wanted to comfort Francesco somehow, but felt shy of him. After all she barely knew him. If Margherita herself had been there it might have come more naturally.

They were still standing in the gloom of the hall, Rose holding her two parcels of rations. From the big room, where Magdalena and Assunta were keeping the children occupied, came the sound of singing.

Francesco seemed to rouse himself. ‘There is something else I need to tell you. Another person has come to live here. A friend of ours called Paulo Falcone. We were at the university together. He is a bit older because he was a medical student. He arrived two days ago from Rome – God knows how, across the lines. He says he has been with a group in the resistance, but he will not talk to me any more about it. Perhaps if Margherita were here . . .’ His expression seemed to sink further into tiredness and pain. ‘I am telling you to warn you that he is not easy to be with at the moment.’ He pointed to the small room to the left of the big room, where they stored and prepared food for the community. ‘He is sleeping in there now, but we can go in. He won’t wake.’

Francesco suddenly reached out and touched her hand in an unexpected gesture of gratitude. ‘I’m glad that you have come, Rosa.’

She smiled sadly at him, picking up the parcels which she had put down while he was speaking. ‘I hope I can relieve you all a little. You must be so tired.’

They carried the food parcels to the storeroom. Rose felt how small and inadequate they were. How could she do better?

She could hear the man’s deep breathing from where he lay in shadow under the window on two poor straw mattresses laid end to end. He was lying very straight as if sleep were a duty rather than a relief. She went and looked down at him, intrigued to encounter another of their educated friends. The young man was sleeping with a slight frown on his face. He looked well built, though thin, but his naturally rounded jawline had prevented his face from turning gaunt. The closed eyes were fringed by long dark lashes, and his black wavy hair had grown untidily down to his shoulders. The lower part of his face was shadowed by several days of stubble. It was hard to picture him as a doctor, reassuring and authoritative, perhaps smartly dressed. He lay vulnerable as a child battered by the hurts of the day before. Rose surprised herself with an impulse to reach down and stroke his brow, to smooth the perturbed expression off his face, but she held back.

‘Come,’ Francesco whispered, surprised by her attention to the stranger. ‘Let’s go.’

She went and joined Magdalena and Assunta, who greeted her with delighted though tired smiles. On seeing her arrive, one of the boys, a three-year-old waif called Emilio, ran to Rose crying, ‘
Bacio! Bacio!
’

She knelt down to take his small form in her arms, giving him the kiss he wanted so badly. She sat with him on one knee, and on the other a younger girl who sidled up to her shyly. She pressed her face against Emilio’s, and against the plumper cheeks of the little girl, enjoying the feel of cuddling children again. Emilio turned and put his skinny arms round her neck.

Magdalena finished off the session by saying the Angelus with the children, and then it was time to prepare something to eat.

‘Let me help tonight,’ Rose offered. ‘You should all sleep. I do little enough here. I’ll sit up to watch the children.’ They took it in turns to perform this vigil, partly to comfort any children who woke up disturbed in the night, and also to make quite sure no one else found their way into the building.

Magdalena nodded in response to Rose. ‘It is good that
il dottore
Falcone has come,’ she said. ‘He can help us with Maria Grazia. That child needs every help we can give her.’

It was not until they were settling the children down for the night that the doctor woke up. He stumbled out from the small room carrying a cup of water in one hand, his expression entirely bewildered, as if he had woken to find himself in another country. The eyes which looked round at them were large, dark, fringed by the long lashes Rose had noticed as he slept. She saw his gaze settle curiously on her and linger there for a moment.

‘So Falcone – you feel better?’ Francesco called to him.

Falcone nodded absently. Now he was standing, Rose could see he was a powerfully built man, though, like almost all Neapolitans she had seen, too thin for his build. His dark grey trousers and green shirt were dirty and extremely worn. The shirt had only two or three buttons remaining near the bottom, so that it fell open in a V, showing the dark, curly hair of his chest. He stood watching them all from the doorway as they settled the children, covering them with a strange array of old curtains, army blankets, tablecloths – anything they had managed to get hold of.

Some of them wanted comforting before they could sleep, and when they were all settled Assunta stayed in the room for a while, sitting in a ring of candlelight with her rosary beads held between her fingers.

The others went quietly into the room opposite the kitchen storeroom, where there was a thin rug on the floor and an assortment of old chairs.

‘Rosa has brought some English tea,’ Francesco announced, perking up for a moment. ‘The life-blood of the British army.’

‘I’d better make it then, hadn’t I?’ she laughed. ‘Goodness knows what you might do to it!

As she stood in the dim light of the kitchen, waiting for the flame from the gas cylinder to heat the water, she heard knocking on the outside door. She realized Francesco was letting Enrico in and she felt immediately uneasy. He sloped in behind her, laying a number of wrapped loaves of bread on the table. She jumped slightly when she turned and found him watching her, his pointed features accentuated by the candlelight.

‘Good evening,’ she said coolly.

Enrico nodded, still staring hard at her, and for a moment she thought he was about to speak. But he turned and went out of the room again.

The place seemed strange and empty without Margherita. Rose sat drinking the black tea with the strange assortment of people who were left: Magdalena and Francesco both seemed stunned by exhaustion, Enrico, whose eyes carefully watched everyone else, and the troubled figure of Falcone, who despite Francesco’s attempts to rouse him was often wrapped in his own thoughts.

‘Should I take Assunta some tea?’ Rose asked.

‘No, leave her. She is saying her rosary every night. For the liquefaction,’ Magdalena said, yawning, her eyes straining to keep open behind her spectacles.

‘The what?’

Francesco explained. ‘It is a miracle which shows us that there will be good fortune for our city. The blood of San Gennaro which is kept in a phial in the Duomo liquifies. Assunta is very worried that too many bad things are happening. The war, the eruption. She’s frightened that there will be no liquefaction this May, so she’s saying a special rosary every evening.’

Rose nodded solemnly, glad that she had managed to bite back the words, ‘Thank God for that – I thought it might be something really important.’

After a moment Magdalena said, ‘What are we going to do about Maria Grazia? Margherita thinks she should be taken to the cemetery before the child is born and I think she is right. She should be able to see her mother’s grave. Her mind has nothing to settle on.’

‘But when?’ Francesco asked wearily. ‘We have so little time and transport is impossible. It would take us all day to walk up there. I don’t even know when Margherita is going to come back.’

At the thought of Margherita they fell silent again, so Rose took her opportunity. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she started timidly, gathering courage when she saw they were all paying attention. ‘I don’t come here very often, and when I do I bring very little with me. You asked me for help, and I think I have disappointed you. I should be able to do more. After all, I’m a driver. I could transport almost anything, except I don’t know how to get hold of it. I can’t think who to ask.’

Francesco nodded. ‘It’s always a question of making the right connections.’

Suddenly, to everyone’s amazement, a voice said, ‘Why the bleeding hell didn’t you say you was a driver before?’

Everyone looked round for the owner of this English voice. Enrico.

‘If you’ve got a truck,’ he went on, addressing Rose, ‘then that’s all I need. I can get the rest of the gear. Blimey – I’ve been trying to get hold of a driver who can shift the stuff free for months but no one’d cough.’

‘What did he say?’ Magdalena pulled on Rose’s sleeve impatiently. ‘He’s English too? Who is he?’

Falcone and Francesco were both looking astonished. Especially when Rose burst out laughing.

‘So that’s why you’ve been giving me those queer looks every time I’ve seen you! You’re a deserter, aren’t you? D’you think I was going to blow the whistle on you or something?’ She laughed again. ‘We all thought you had a screw loose!’ The others watched, totally bemused. ‘Enrico, my foot,’ she said. ‘What’s your real name then – Fred?’

‘No. Henry,’ he said, looking rather sheepish. ‘I’m from Bromley. Couldn’t stick the army. When they moved on through here I just stayed. There’s quite a few of us in Naples you know. Scared the arse off me – all them mines every time you moved a foot forward. I can fight a better war helping to feed these kids than anything I could ever do with that lot. But I couldn’t work you out at first. I had to size you up and make sure you wasn’t trouble.’

‘So – come on, then. How d’you get hold of the food?’

‘Easy. The depot. When they’ve taken the stuff in from the docks it all goes into the warehouse. I’ve got a couple of mates there. They can make a packet selling the stuff, but they’ll give me the odd load free – in a good cause.’ Henry winked at her. ‘Anyhow, I’ve managed to get hold of a bit of petrol, which makes a good price, so they don’t do it all out of love. Problem is, I’ve never had proper transport. If you can get yourself over here a night or two in the month, we can get these kids fed up like turkey cocks.’

‘Excuse me.’ Magdalena gripped Rose’s arm, no longer able to contain herself. ‘Please – what is he saying?’

Rose explained. ‘Don’t you speak Italian?’ she asked Henry.

‘Nope. But I can tell what they’re going on about as long as it ain’t too involved.’

Rose could feel her breathing going shallow from excitement and anxiety. In Italian she asked, ‘D’you think it’s right that I take my truck and steal for you from the army?’

There was silence for a moment, and then Francesco said, ‘Of course. Already we eat their food, their bread. You know, even the fish in the city’s aquarium have been eaten by now. What choice do we have?’