Plot reminder: Six days have now passed since Ettore Lo Bianco's murder and Vincenzo is still on the run. Italian authorities have during this same period signed an armistice, changing the status of Italian POWs in allied hands.
~~~~~
The following dawn, Friday 10th September, was one of those bright but misty affairs like a thin cotton sheet backlit by the glow of a torch. It felt auspicious somehow, the day ahead a jewel about to be unveiled. The sort during which risks might be taken, stakes claimed.
The woods where I planned on burrowing away my weary body for the duration of the daylight hours was bordered by a cattle farm, the misted silhouettes asleep in the pasture larger and more impressive than one might expect of such docile creatures. Certainly, I couldn't recall having ever seen such healthy-looking cows back in Italy. All that lush green English grass they chewed, I supposed. Such a rainy climate had its advantages, yes.
I was just about to turn back into the dark interior of the woods when I heard a sudden clap of hands in the mid distance, the chirpy call of female voice. "Come on now girls. Time for milking." There was a brief muffled chorus of bovine grunts, as if in vain protest, and then with a swish of their tails the creatures turned sluggishly towards the sorting gate. I could just make out the outline of the person who stood guard - a slender figure in ankle-length skirt, hair gathered into a bun.
It was the same figure I would spot again mid-afternoon after waking, this time wheeling a bicycle through the front gate of the pretty-looking farmhouse on the other side of the pasture. I watched as she mounted, began pedalling away back along the same country lane which had led me there. The earlier mist had by this time cleared, the patches of sky visible through the canopy of the trees that typical English mottling - equal parts blue, white and grey. At that particular moment the sun was uncovered, its golden light illuminating the woman's smooth glide, setting aflame her auburn hair. Mid- to late-thirties I estimated, though from that distance it was difficult to be certain.
As I followed her progress I noticed that the perimeter fence along that side of the padture was in a sorry-looking condition - several of the stakes were diagonally slanted, the wire inbetween sagged and curved. A recent storm perhaps, or else the flank of the van which collected the milk had one day strayed a little too far to the side of the narrow lane. Whichever the case, if the cattle had a mind to it wouldn't take much for them to break through, scatter themselves far and wide over the neighbouring fields. The sudden appearance of a fox might set them off, for example, or the nearby boom of an anti-aircraft gun.
I don't recall there being any conscious thought process. Not a decision duly deliberated and then made. More it was instinct, an involuntary flex like a hand swatting at a buzzing fly. No sooner had the woman disappeared from sight than I was on my feet, creeping my way stealthily around the perimeter of the pasture and onto the lane. As I approached the farmhouse there was no discernable sign of life from inside - no noise or movement, the windows and exterior doors all closed. This was as I had expected: if anywhere near the woman's own age, her husband would be caught somewhere in the distant tides of war.
As I unclicked the gate and tiptoed around the side of the house, it soon became apparent that the woman didn't live completely alone however: stepping into the backyard area, I was immediately beset upon by a twin canine assault. One of the two dogs, a border collie, was quickly befriended; the other, a Yorkshire terrier, took a little longer to becalm. It was a backyard they shared with a handful of cackling hens, a rope-tied goat and a languid, unmoved cat.
The clutter of outbuildings were rickety-looking wooden constructions of a similar state of disrepair to the perimeter fence. There was a fairly rudimentary milking room consisting of a line of stalls, a feed store which seemed to be running critically low, and finally a disorganised mess of a tool shed in which several minutes' of frenetic rummaging were required before I was finally able to unearth all the implements I needed.
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."