Plot reminder: Lucio has worked out that Mary is not a journalist and that Vincenzo D'Ambra was in fact her father. He has taken her to the town library, his former place of work. The plan is to see if they can trace online any of the fellow prisoners D'Ambra named in the letters he sent home during the war.
~~~~~
The letters totalled forty or so, each of the time-yellowed envelopes featuring inspection label and camp of origin stamp. The first was dated February 24th 1942; the last, the 1st of September 1943. That the earliest couple of dozen had been sent from a camp numbered 565 rather than 106a provided the focus of our first Google search, the site resulting as a stately home somewhere in Bedfordshire. Another element to the story was thus added, my father's wartime itinery now complete: first the provincial barracks of Lecce, onto Brindisi, then Alessandria and Tobruk, from there all the way south to Kenya before being hauled back into the northern hemisphere - first Bedfordshire, then Lincolnshire. And here the trail came to an abrupt halt, almost like that jagged wall of rocks at the end of Punto San Giacomo beach. At some point during the first weekend of September 1943, my father had disappeared into the ether. Got swallowed somewhere, like a southward-gliding bird into the sky.
The first of the letters from camp 106a was dated the 18th of April; it was here that our search for names of fellow prisoners would begin. I carefully extracted the single sheet from envelope, unfolded it onto the desk between us. Cara famiglia it began: 'Dear family'. My eyes skimmed over the three brief paragraphs beneath, the stream of exquisite-sounding Italian words. Unable as I was to decipher many of them, my analysis focused instead on my father's handwriting. Though by no means any kind expert, a forty-year career in primary education had equipped me with a certain level of insight with regards to graphology. As a young teacher whose enthusiasm had yet to be blunted by decades of diminishing standards and government interference, it had been a source of enormous satisfaction to watch my charges' evolution from the clumsy repetition of individual letters at five years old to the cursive free-flowing individuality of pre-pubescence. I had observed, for example, that it was usually the shyest and most introspective children who, like my father, maintained a low, tight letter size. The high dots of his 'i's meanwhile suggested a heightened imagination. Of particular interest were the disproportionately wide gaps between his words, a trait which hinted at a desire for freedom and space - unsurprisingly perhaps given those cramped darkened streets which had encaged him as a child.
That initial letter contained no names, but confirmed what John Simmonds had told me about the prisoners' first night in Lincolnshire having been spent under canvas, the men themselves tasked with the construction of the site. The next letter was also deviod of names, but interestingly referred to the fact that there were Land Girls working in the men's midst. 'The English have created an agricultural army of young women who bend their backs in the fields next to us,' Lucio translated. 'This has caused quite a stir amongst the men, as you might imagine, but the guards work hard to make sure our contact with them is kept to a minimum.' The wording seemed deliberately ambiguous: too bland to attract the attention of a censor, yet at the same time darkly communicative to the family members who would read it at home. The guards' 'hard work' which my father referred to, had this included actions which infringed the Geneva Convention? Which ruptured the confines of decency and humanity? Rather than verbal warnings that the men keep themselves at a certain distance from the Land Girls, had there instead been punishments which were entirely disproportionate of nature for any prisoner who dared so much as to brush a female arm with his own. The name Sergeant Reynolds once more tore like a spike through the fabric of my mind. Had he been the one to set some manner of low, violent tone, the other British officers a herd of dismal unthinking sheep following along behind? A downward spiral which would eventually spin out of all control, result in that blackest of all crimes?
*
The library had by this time opened to the public, the earlier restful silence now punctuated by coughs, the scrape of chairs, half-whispered exhanges, the bloody-minded squeals of running toddlers. A woman of around my own age had joined us in the computer lab, needed Lucio's constant guidance on how to switch her computer on, how to switch the screen on, how to access Microsoft Word, how to change the font and letter size, how to switch the printer on, how to load the paper into the tray, and numerous other insurmountable problems besides. Was even more clueless than myself, in short, Lucio required to display the same graceful patience as June the school secretary at my frequent exasperated cries through the office door that she come and help me for a moment.
On a couple of occasions members of staff also passed by to exchange greetings with their former colleague, their affection for him clear from the warmth of their smiles, the patted hands on his back. The eyes which had then turned on me, though not unfriendly, were curious ones. They seemed to examine me like a husband might a wife upon her return from the hairdressser's, or a neighbour the new car you've parked there in your drive. As if something familiar had in some small yet fundamental way changed, and they had yet to make up their minds whether they preferred it to how things had used to be. Not Lucio alone as they normally saw him, but Lucio in the company of woman.
Despite the distractions, by midday we'd managed to work our way through all of the camp 106a letters. Frustratingly, some of the names mentioned therein were incomplete, lacking either first or surname. There were several references to a Captain Terlizzi, for example, others to a local teacher who paid twice-weekly visits to the camp called Mr Marston. Even more numerous were mentions of a fellow prisoner named Ettore - my father's best friend it would appear and his chief assistant in the painting of the altar.
Complete names numbered just three. The first was a Giuseppe Rossi, described as the camp barber. This was a non-starter, not even worth typing into the Google search bar, similar in improbability to trying to trace a man called John Smith. The second name was Roberto Giacalone, the camp's ad hoc priest. It was he, that particular letter explained, who'd first come up with the idea of a painted background mural to the makeshift altar he'd set up. I wondered if he were the blurred figure I'd seen in the photograph which had featured in Irene's local history book, the one offering transubstantiation to a member of the congregation knelt down at his feet.
This name too proved to be a frustratingly common one however. There was a professional footballer called Roberto Giacalone, a member of a 1970s Italian rock band named Roberto Giacalone, a pre-war New York mafia boss who'd been called Roberto Giacalone. In addition, there were over five hundred separate Facebook profiles under the name.
I could feel my hopes begin to fade once more, like the slow withering of light from a summer's evening. Lucio's optimism had been infectious, pulse-quickeningly so, but not even he it seemed would be unable to lure an investigative lead from that buzzing spaghetti coil of wires.
He himself had yet to lose faith however, the final name we unearthed - that of Francesco Brancaleone - reigniting his enthusiam, The surname was rare, he assured me, one he'd never come cross before. What was more, my father had provided some specific accompanying details. This particular comrade had been a boxer, a former junior middleweight champion of Campania. This was the region around Naples, Lucio informed me as he eagerly entered the name into the search bar.
Results were indeed much less numerous than they had been for Roberto Giacalone, with only one Franceso Brancaleone noteworthy enough to merit his own wikipedia page - a former Hollywood set designer. Not the Francesco Brancaleone we were seeking, we quickly discovered, this one having been born in New Jersey in 1953.
Other than this there was a restaurant in Milan by the name of Brancaleone, but again this would draw a blank, the place having been established only a few years earlier.
The next search result was for a wine producer of the same name, Lucio's eyes widening as he clicked onto the company website. "It's near Torre Annunziata," he whispered, turning his face momentarily to mine. "That's in Campania." The section of text from which he was reading was accompanied by an image of sprawling vines tumbling down a slope towards a pristine, sparkling sea. "Founded in 1946, it says. From humble beginnings has become one of the biggest producers in the south of Italy." He scribbled down number, reached into pocket for mobile phone. There were some muttered words of Italian - words which judging from tone and accompanying rueful grimace I took to be some form of mild curse. "Damn, I have no credit." Grabbing the number, he scraped back chair. "You stay here a moment Mary. I go to the counter, make the call from the library's phone."
That stomach-squeeze of tension as I waited there in my seat was unfamiliar, something I hadn't experienced for several decades. Eighteen years old waiting at the living room bay window for the postman to bring my A' Level results. At twenty-three waking up on the morning of my first teaching post. A decade and a half later anxiously pacing around my office before my debut staff meeting as newly-appointed headmistress. All career-related things, yes. Never as on that strange June morning there in Italy something so personal, so intensely intimate.
Just as on those previous occasions, I attempted to manage the tension through belligerent negativity. By bracing myself for the very worst. So what if my A' Level results weren't the ones I was hoping for, I'd thought at the time? I'd have just had to downgrade a little the level of university I would attend, that was all. Similarly, had it turned out that teaching just wasn't for me, would it really have been the end of the world? I'd eventually have come up with some kind of viable plan B, surely? As for that first staff meeting as headmistress, who cared if the older members of my teaching staff had resented the power and authority of someone ten or twenty years their junior, and as a consequence had tried to make my life hell? I would just have made their lives even more of a hell, ground them into docile submission.
And now, what if those sunlit rows of vines on the computer screen before me were to lead to nowhere? If, as seemed more than probable, it was another Brancaleone who owned them? What if as a consequence the investigative road were to close for good? In many ways, wouldn't it be a blessed relief? A secretly longed-for unburdening of duty?
Two or three minutes had now passed, and still Lucio hadn't returned. I shuffled myself from seat, stepped over to the doorway. Now heading towards lunchtime, the place was thinning out a little. An elderly man seated at a nearby table was fIicking through a newspaper; over at the children's section I could see a young woman deep in converstion with someone hidden behind a bookcase - the mothers no doubt of the gaggle of invisible pre-schoolers whose shrill echoing voices had soundtracked the last hour an hour or so. Over at the counter, meanwhile, a young man was either returning or checking out a pile of books, the librarian squinting at computer screen one of the former colleagues who'd earlier passed by to say hello. And there behind, receiver pressed to ear, was the dignified, grey-haired figure of Lucio. Both his free hand and facial muscles were in perpetual motion, gesturing, gesticulating, a constant shimmy-shift of emotion from confusion to comprehension, doubt to decision. apprehension to agreement. How quickly he had worked his way into my system, I marvelled. The only analogy I could think of was the local anaesthetic the specialist had applied when removing a cist from my back some years earlier. Within a click of a finger almost, I hadn't been able to feel a thing. Except Lucio was the opposite: rather than block and constrain and restrict, he instead opened, enlarged, reawakened. Not an aneasthetic but an anti-anaesthetic. A re-animator of what had long lain numb.
Maybe I could offer to take him out for lunch, I thought. Maybe, later, we could go for a walk on the beach. Share another coffee together. Talk about our favourite books...
And then?
And then what exactly, I wondered?
Yes, this was something else I was bracing myself for. That very soon I would have to say goodbye to him. Get on an aeroplane. Never see him again.
Then almost without me realising, suddenly there he was - his lithe, still-boyish figure bounding across the marble towards me, face creased into that already familiar smile.
"It's him Mary! Francesco Brancaleone, the one we were looking for!" His excitement was such he barely even softened his voice in feigned whisper, the old man reading the newspaper at the nearby table throwing an irrtitated glance in our direction. "He remembers your father." His hands were now grasping my upper arms in celebration. "He awaits us at the vineyard." There was a glance up towards the clock on the wall, his smile widening still further. "The way I drive, I'd say we'll be there by four."
~~~~~