The Painted Altar

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next couple of hours were thus spent in hard, focused toil, my neck swivelling frequently back along the lane, ready to sneak off at the first sign of the woman's return. Fencing was a skill I'd developed from my time at the Bedfordshire camp, and thus the straightening and tightening of the half-collapsed section was effected with little difficulty. The border collie didn't even register a bark upon my second appearance in the backyard to return the tools, and even the Yorkshire terrier's agitation was somewhat half-hearted.

It was as I was finishing off the last of the knapsack rations back behind the treeline of the woods that I spied the woman cycling homewards along the lane. It wasn't until half an hour later however, appearing once more at the sorting gate to call the cattle in for milking, that she noticed the repairs to the fence. Closing the gate behind her, she wandered across for a closer inspection, hand placed pensively on chin, head shaking increduously. Inquisitive glances were shot off towards all points of the compass, the most lingering of which seemed to be in the direction of the woods.

*

After six consecutive nights of rapid, covert movement with in excess of a hundred and fifty kilometres covered, it was a relief to both body and mind to stay put for once. As the cows grunted their disturbance at the drone of the Luftwaffe overhead, it wasn't lost on me that a week exactly had now passed since the murder of Ettore Lo Bianco. For all that time the tobacco tin of personal effects had remained untouched at the bottom of the knapsack like some kind of weighting stone. Only now to the accompanying flicker of a match strike did I pull it out, lift open the lid.

Photographs mainly - a somewhat meek-looking mother, the father an older and slightly more corpulent version of the son. Some manner of high-up civil servant in Lecce city hall, Ettore had once told me. Yes, his middle class refinement had been incongruous amidst we sons of fishermen and dockers and farm hands. A pearl-laden oyster amongst a raised net of so many cockles and mussels.

Other than Ettore's parents, other photographed relatives included wrinkly toothless grandparents, posed aunts in all their Sunday best finery, grim-faced unsmiling uncles. No siblings, Ettore's status of only child something of a rarity in pre-war Italy when the mere mention of the word 'contraception' was strictly taboo. Beyond social class, the lack of brothers and sisters with whom to squabble or contend with for parental attention had undoubtedly played an important factor in developing his character and interests. Partly explained, perhaps, his insatiable bookishness and fragile sensitivity.

There were a handful of other memories in the tobacco tin too - a silver confirmation chain, a folded colour print of Caravaggio's 'Burial of Jesus', and a similarly folded certificate from Lecce Classical Lyceum announcing his second placing in a poetry competition.

Unlike most soldiers' tins, that Ettore's contained no photograph of a sweetheart or any stashed away images of exposed female flesh was telling. Yes, I'd always somehow perceived that he was a little different in this respect. And maybe that had been part of it, the reason for his introspection, his difficulty in fitting in, of feeling comfortable in his own skin. As if the stern intolerance of Catholic doctrine wasn't already enough, Mussolini had rounded all the homosexuals up, sent them off to the remote Tremiti Islands to keep them out of public circulation. Given such a backdrop, Ettore must have been made to feel he was some kind of depraved abomination. An insult to nature.

As I carefully placed all the objects back inside and closed the lid, I felt my eyes well with tears. My own tobacco tin of personal effects had remained there under my bunk pillow in camp 106a. The only photographs I had of my family. My finest ink drawing pen. The wedding band Ada Pucci had slipped onto my finger that dark December morning almost three years earlier.

My past felt like some minor treasure dropped by a mariner's clumsy hands into the sea.

Forever lost. Irretrievable.

*

A little before first light the following morning I carried out the second part of my plan. After emptying the potatoes Giuseppe and Rocco had slipped me into the cotton bag I'd pilfered from amidst the chaos of the tool shed, I once more crept around the perimeter of the pasture - my progress soundtracked by the occasional half-awoken groan - and slipped myself around the side of the farmhouse. The success of my plan depended on whether the two dogs, particularly the Yorkshire terrier, slept inside the house. Fortunately it seemed so, my emergence into the backyard greeted by no more than a scurrying flap of hens' wings and the unimpressed mewling of the cat. After depositing the bag of potatoes onto the backdoor step, I stole off to the woods once more.

The dawn was clearer than the previous day. As such, I had little difficulty making out the woman's approach towards the sorting gate an hour or so later. Rather than an awakening clap directed at the dozing cattle, she peered for some moments into the woods as if trying dissect the sunless gloom of its interior.

"Whoever you are," she called out, "you can quit it now with the charm offensive. You've won me over, OK. Come out and show yourself."

Hooking knapsack over my shoulder, I duly stepped out from the treeline, felt the full caress of daylight on my face. I paused at the edge of the pasture as she approached, her tread a measured, unhurried one between the stirring mounds of her herd.

Now just ten metres away from me, she paused, a smile crooking one corner of her lips as she moved her gaze down then up, examining the full ramshackle extent of me. From my own returned examination I concluded that she was just a little older than I'd first thought - early-forties perhaps - but was no less elegant than expected. Indeed, was even more beautiful perhaps, hers the the type of soft, delicate features Rembrandt would have taken inspiration from.

"Escaped from somewhere, haven't you?"

It wasn't an accusation, more a simple affirmation of fact.

"Italian?" she then asked.

"Yes," I replied.

She nodded, as if some outstanding issue were now settled.

"Know anything about cows?"

"Not much," I admitted.

There was a sigh: resigned, unsurprised. "Let's just hope you're a quick learner." She half turned then, took a step away. "I'm Hilda by the way. And you?"

"Ettore," I replied. "Ettore Lo Bianco."