Hearts and Farthings Page 2

  ‘You will write to us,’ he instructed his son brusquely, as they embraced. His skin was rough and dry against Alberto’s cheek, and as they drew apart the boy looked hard at the seamed, earth-brown face beside him. ‘I will write to you,’ he promised. Then he and Pina climbed into the cart and the family stood back ready to wave him goodbye. And the donkey wouldn’t move.

  Plainly the little animal was in one of his most cussed and intractable moods. They tried coaxing and scolding; they tried shoving and sudden whipping; they tried dangling hay a few inches in front of his nose. The battle rapidly became a combined effort by the entire family, and after fifteen minutes of useless heaving and shoving they were all hot and sticky and stupid with laughter. Then just as they’d almost given up hope, the donkey suddenly started to trot down the path, with the perfect sang-froid of his kind, exactly as though that was what he’d intended to do all along. Alberto, who’d been pushing from the rear, almost got left behind. He had to sprint after the cart and leap on board. His brothers gave him a cheer and that, finally, was how he left the house in which he’d spent the first eighteen years of his life.

  He and Pina were laughing so much that he almost forgot to turn back for a last look. They’d reached the bend in the track before he remembered. A minute later and the farm would have been out of sight, hidden by the folded hills. It looked unreal, this house he would never see again, unreal and poor. Even at this distance, he could distinguish the broken stones of the doorstep and see how uneven the yard was. It was a higgledy-piggledy collection of stones, mud, wood, livestock and people. Yet distance had already given it charm. For a second, seeing it like that, he didn’t want to leave it, but there was no stopping the donkey now. And anyway he’d made up his mind.

  The trouble was he had made it up so quickly, on the spur of the moment, on impulse, and it ought to have happened after a lot of talk and thought and planning. They’d all been in the middle of a row and on the edge of violence. His father had been snarling at him, the buckle of that horrible belt already under his fingers, and Alberto had been yelling at them all. ‘I hate it here! I hate every minute of every single day!’

  It was Claudio’s answer that had done it. ‘Then why don’t you leave?’ he’d said.

  ‘I will!’ Alberto yelled. ‘I will! I’ll go to England! That’s what I’ll do. Then you’ll all see!’

  ‘Never on your life!’ Vittorio had said. ‘Don’t make me laugh! You go to England. You’re too lazy to walk to the village.’

  He had walked down to Genova the very next day and booked a ticket at the shipping office, paying a holding fee with what little money he possessed and promising that his father would make up the rest the next time he came into town. Afterwards, toiling back home up the steep cobbled streets and the climbing hill tracks, he had been aghast at what he had done. He couldn’t think why he should ever have said such a thing. It wasn’t as if he’d been planning to emigrate, or even thinking about England. He hadn’t. The idea had entered his mind at the same time as the words spilled out of his mouth. They were spoken, and he was committed before he’d had a chance to think about it at all. And now his passage was booked. He climbed slowly, half hoping his father would forbid it, half dreading the row that he felt sure would follow.

  To his relief, astonishment, and dismay, he was wrong. Pelucci was thrilled by his son’s initiative. He approved, and he praised. He said it was the first fully adult action of Alberto’s life. They even drank a toast to him at supper that evening. From then on, the matter was settled and out of his hands. He was rushed along by the enthusiasm and excitement all around him, stunned, whenever he stopped to think about it, that the whole thing had only taken six weeks from start to finish.

  It was mid-morning before they arrived in the Piazza de Ferrari. Crowds thronged the square, and the pulse and bustle and noise of so many voices and so much movement triggered Alberto’s excitement again. As he helped Pina to lower the side of the cart, his hands were shaking.

  ‘You’d better go now,’ she said, ‘or you’ll miss the sailing.’ She was looking at him with her mother’s dark eyes from under her mother’s strong eyebrows. The similarity between them made things difficult. He was suddenly shy and ill at ease, embarrassed by this final parting.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but didn’t move.

  ‘Go now,’ Pina said, giving him a little push. ‘Camillo will meet you, don’t forget. He’ll look after you.’

  This time Alberto didn’t look back. He kissed his sister once, twice, three times and walked quickly out of the square, his gait awkward and his shoulders hunched because he knew she was watching him. Once beyond the approval of her eyes, he began to run, dodging the crowds and stumbling over the uneven cobblestones, down and down, towards the Porto Vecchio, the bay and adventure. He raced through the narrow caruggi heedless of the washing festooned above him that dripped water onto his head and shoulders. Ragged street urchins erupted at his pounding approach, squealing and cat-calling. Twice he cannoned into passers-by and couldn’t even stop to apologise. By the time he reached the quay he was completely out of breath, charged with an excitement stronger than anything he’d ever known in his life, a sense of extraordinary elation.

  The quayside was crowded with people, busy as ants and with as little apparent purpose. Behind him the fish sellers called their wares, raucous as gulls, and before him the quay was edged with gently bobbing vessels, great and small, tar-stained and tatty, or smart with new paint. Beyond the ships stretched the great free Mediterranean, not solid and stolid like those implacable mountains, but warm blue-green, perpetually moving and as alive as he was. It was the natural path to all the change he needed and desired, and he knew, in the crowded, clamorous moment, that good things were surely waiting for him, a few days away, just over the water.

  Chapter 2

  The Belinda May was a three-masted, top sail schooner, long and black and sleek as a seal, and she carried more canvas than any other ship in the bay. It was good, clean canvas too, neatly furled. Clean canvas on a clean ship. Her decks were scrubbed spotless, brass winked in the sunlight, her masts glowed as though they’d been polished, and her name shone in elaborate gold behind the profusion of yellow roses carved on her stem head. As Alberto arrived, cargo was still being taken aboard methodically, crate after crate of lemons, oranges and limes. The operation was being supervised by the Master himself, and one glance at the man explained the order and discipline of his ship.

  This was plainly not a face to disobey. The set of the jaw under that thick, close-cropped beard was too determined and too stubborn, and the blue eyes wrinkled into that weathered face were direct and startling and hard, like rivets. He stood beside the forward hatch, black legs astride, shoulders broad and head held high on a straight solid spine, a powerful man, as strong as a mast. Alberto decided at once that it would be politic to wait on the quay until the loading was completed. He certainly didn’t want to get in the way of such an obvious authority.

  He picked his way through the litter on the quayside until he found a pile of barrels, a little above the dirt, and sat himself amongst them, glad to be able to put down his roll of bedding and Granny Bianchi’s awkward bundle of food. There was nothing else for him to do, so he watched the loading, keeping a particular eye on the Master, since this was the man who would be controlling his life for the next fortnight.

  Presently three young men came ambling towards the gang-plank. Two were tall and slim and very dark-skinned. They looked alike and moved with the same lolloping grace, as though they were walking barefoot. The third was small and fair with a tatty, incipient beard growing like blond cobwebs along the edges of his chin. Each of them carried a thick roll of bedding and the brothers swung a bulging canvas hold-all between them. All three were smiling directly at the Master.

  ‘Oreste!’ Mr Hemmings said, holding out his hand to the taller of the brothers. ‘How are you all?’

  ‘Well,’ Oreste said. ‘Very well, as you s
ee. Ready to sail.’

  ‘Where is Domenico?’ the Master asked.

  ‘Married,’ Oreste said grinning. ‘Too busy for England this year!’

  The Master looked at his papers. ‘I have four bookings,’ he said. ‘As usual. Four berths. Four bookings.’

  Alberto joined them quickly, clutching his ticket. ‘It’s me!’ he said. ‘I’m the fourth booking.’ They all looked at him, but nobody spoke, and to his dismay he felt himself blushing under their scrutiny. To cover his embarrassment, he introduced himself quickly, and Oreste shook his hand and introduced the others. ‘My brother Pietro, and Ettore Fuscillo,’ he said, ‘And Signor ’Emmin, the Master.’ It was a difficult name to pronounce, and trying it for the first time, Alberto wondered if all English words were going to be such a problem.

  They were allowed aboard, Oreste leading the way. Once below deck, Alberto had second thoughts about the beauty of his chosen transport. There was an overpowering stink of fish down there. It filled his nostrils, and he wrinkled his face away from it. Pietro grinned at him. ‘Salt cod,’ he explained. ‘They ship it in from Newfoundland, every year. It’ll wear off after a while, you’ll see.’ Alberto hoped so. They arrived at a neat trio of doors, one directly in front of them and the other two leading right and left into what appeared to be two long wooden cupboards.

  ‘Here we are,’ Oreste said, opening the door to the left-hand compartment. ‘This one’s yours. You share with Ettore.’

  Alberto stepped gingerly inside. He found himself facing two lesser cupboards, fitted neatly between deck and bulkhead, one on top of the other, like coffins. Each had a small, rectangular porthole in its side. He put his head through the upper porthole and realised that the coffin was his berth. This claustrophobic box would be his home for the next fortnight. It was uncomfortable knowledge, but he hardly had time to digest it, for Ettore had followed him into the cupboard and was growling him out of the way.

  As he’d stumbled down the companionway for the first unsteady time, Alberto had made up his mind that he would watch the others and follow their example. Now he watched Ettore. And was confused. Ettore hadn’t smiled once since they all stepped aboard. His sour expression had settled into a look of distaste. He threw his bedding into the lower bunk and unrolled it with one bad tempered flick of his left hand. Then he opened the locker beside the bunk and unpacked his carpet bag into it, grumbling all the time as much to himself or to the ship as to Alberto.

  ‘It’ll be another dreadful journey,’ he said lugubriously. ‘You’ll see. It’ll be awful from start to finish. I can feel it in my bones. There’ll be storms from Gibraltar to the Scillies,’ he told the inside of the locker. ‘I shall be as sick as a dog.’ The locker declined to comment, and this cast him into an even deeper gloom. He was forced to address his misery to Alberto. ‘I’m beginning to feel sick already,’ he said.

  Alberto didn’t know how to answer this. Ettore seemed so determined to be ill, there seemed little point in arguing. ‘Is it always bad weather at this time of year?’ he asked.

  ‘Always!’ Ettore said. He was pulling handfuls of straw out of his mattress and stuffing them into his carpet bag. ‘I am always ill. I’ve never had a good journey in my life.’ And with that he tossed his newly made pillow into position, climbed into the bunk after it and lay inside his coffin with his eyes and mouth firmly shut and his hands folded across his chest like a corpse.

  It was certainly going to be an interesting journey, Alberto thought. He climbed out of the cupboard to see if the brothers would be better company.

  They were. ‘Don’t take any notice of Ettore,’ Oreste said. ‘He always does that. He’s terrified of sailing, that’s his trouble.’

  ‘Then why does he do it?’ Alberto asked.

  ‘Money,’ Pietro said succinctly. ‘Do you smoke?’ He offered Alberto a cigarette which he took, hoping he could smoke it like a veteran even though he’d never done such a thing before. The first mouthful was difficult, but the brothers were careful not to notice. The smoke rasped the back of his throat, stung the inside of his nose, and after a few seconds made him feel dizzy at the top of his skull. He sat on the deck beside Pietro’s legs and concentrated on smoking calmly, while the brothers unpacked and chatted. It was a new and pleasant sensation to be accepted so unquestioningly as a man among men, even if the price he had to pay for it was this acrid smoke burning the back of his throat.

  ‘Are you going to England?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Pietro said. ‘As usual. We are going to England.’

  ‘We go every year,’ Oreste said. ‘Over in the spring and back in the autumn, ready for the grape harvest.’

  This was impressive. ‘All that way,’ Alberto said, ‘just for the summer?’

  ‘We can make more money in one summer in London,’ Oreste explained, ‘than we could make in three years here. Even if we half killed ourselves.’

  So London was a rich city, Alberto thought. He knew it. He’d always known it. His heart began to race again, and as if in answer to it, the ship juddered, and his voyage began.

  For the next six days the Belinda May made good speed under full sail. As she threshed through the blue-green waters, she dipped and lurched with a motion as steady and unrelenting as a pendulum. True to his word, Ettore turned green while they were still in sight of Genova. From then on, he lay in his bunk groaning, and complaining to anybody foolhardy enough to listen to him. Alberto was annoyed to discover that the movement of the ship was making him feel queasy too. He resented this sickness. It put him on a level with the cowardly Ettore, and that seemed irritatingly unfair because he was making such an effort to adapt to life aboard. Within a few hours he’d discarded his shoes and learned to keep his balance. He was pleased by his transformation into another rolling sailor. It gratified him that even old Tom, the mate, had noticed his competence. ‘You found your sea-legs and no mistake!’ he said, passing Alberto’s careful walk on the very first afternoon and the words were undoubted praise, even if Alberto couldn’t understand all of them. So it was discouraging when his stomach kept lurching away from him into nausea. He had to do something about it and quickly.

  For a start he avoided his cabin. The combined smell of vomit and salted cod was too much even for the sternest constitution. At least on deck the air was clean. So he stayed on deck with the Chiapponcelli brothers and watched and listened. The brothers were feeling sick too, but they were holding on, Oreste with a dogged quiet patience that Alberto found both irritating and sustaining, and Pietro by joking and clowning ‘to keep his mind off it’. At midday all three of them rolled down to the saloon to eat what they could of young Tom’s extraordinary cooking. ‘You feel better on a full stomach,’ Pietro said. ‘If you’re going to be sick you might as well have something to be sick with.’

  Alberto liked Pietro. He had so many tales to tell. For a start he seemed to have sampled every single available female in his native village and was now compiling a catalogue of the feminine delights of Clerkenwell. ‘That young Bessie Smith,’ he sighed. ‘Such flesh! More than enough for both hands, I can tell you. Wherever you care to put them! And Eliza of the beautiful blue eyes. Bad breath, but exquisite eyes!’

  ‘Didn’t it put you off, her breath?’ Alberto wanted to know.

  ‘Held my nose with one hand and fondled her with the other,’ Pietro grinned. ‘No. Didn’t have time to notice. She came quicker than any other woman I’ve ever had. Very hot, young Eliza!’ He licked his lips at the memory.

  This was fascinating information. ‘Is that usual, for English women?’ Alberto asked, surprised by his new-found presumption. He wouldn’t have dared to have thought such a thing a week ago let alone put it into words. His presumption caught him in its own trap.

  ‘Oh ho!’ Pietro roared, delighted by his interest. ‘So that’s what you’re going to England for. And I thought you were a good, clean-living Catholic boy. Like me.’

  ‘No! No!’ Alberto tried to deny. ‘I
only asked. That’s all.’ Then, as the conversation was getting embarrassingly out of hand. ‘What work do you do in London? You said it was good work. You earned a lot of money.’

  ‘We sell things,’ Pietro said, allowing him to move on and away from any further teasing. ‘On the streets. Okey-pokey ice cream, hot chestnuts, roast potatoes, music, fun. We’re the most important part of the summer. The sun couldn’t shine without us.’

  ‘Do you really make money selling in the streets?’ Alberto asked.

  ‘You have to work at it,’ Oreste said, ‘and know where to get cheap milk, or ice, or bulk potatoes or whatever you need. Monkeys help, of course. Pietro’s got a way with monkeys.’

  ‘Among other things!’ Pietro agreed. ‘Nice little things, Capuchin monkeys. Nice little paws. Too small for a penny piece. They drop them you see. So then you say (dropping into badly pronounced English), “Poor monkey. You got little coin for him? He hold little coin good!” And they give him a little coin, a silver threepenny bit or a little sixpence, if you’re lucky. Like these.’ He fished two coins out of his trouser pocket and laid them in Alberto’s palm. They felt solid and heavy and dependable, as he’d known English currency would be.

  ‘Who is the lady?’ he asked.

  ‘The Queen,’ Oreste said. ‘Victoria.’

  ‘She’s very young,’ Alberto said, admiring the slender neck and the girlish profile.

  ‘Money can lie,’ Pietro said. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at Pontedecimo? Never trust money, my son. That lady is not young. They call her the grandmother of Europe. She’s been ruling England for more than fifty years. She had her golden jubilee two years ago. Now that was really good for trade. Bunting out everywhere, and flowers, and the streets full of people, day and night. All celebrating. All drunk. All eager to part with their money. You could have sold them neat arsenic, never mind okey-pokey, and they’d have gobbled it down and never known the difference. We made a fortune. Never had such a good summer.’