direction and examined the glass-topped dressing table.
Two cut-glass perfume bottles with tasselled spray-pumps; a stemmed majolica dish spilling jewellery – pearls, an emerald locket from South America, a gold chain with a watch attached to it, and dangly amethyst earrings Annabelle had never seen her mother wearing; crystal pots of creams with etched silver lids; an enamelled powder compact and several lipstick cases. A pair of tweezers rested on top of one of the compacts and Annabelle imagined herself with her eyebrows plucked to the thin arcs favoured by the women of the Trio Lescano, whose voices dominated the airwaves. She rolled her fringe tightly in imitation of their hairstyle then let it spring back and tidied it into her headband again.
Leaning forward, she plucked a hair from between her brows – it stung. She would not do that again! She brushed the single hair from the tweezers and placed them back. Everything had a fine film of face power from a large lambswool puff thrown down carelessly. With her finger, she traced the outline of the intricate design of the inlaid timber and mother-of-pearl beneath the glass. This craftsmanship came from Sorrento. Would she ever go to Sorrento? Or Capri? Or anywhere? From the mirrors, three Annabelles observed her sulkily.
Her parents rarely went out – tonight had been an exception, because an old friend was conducting at La Pergola. How odd it was that their world was being smashed to pieces, her own world was so confined, yet out there, a caricature of normal life continued. Many men were not at war: some too young or too old, some with medical conditions or in protected industries. Then there were those of an age where they should be in the war and yet strangely, were not in uniform, sinister reminders that all was not normal at all.
There were bodies in the streets; horses and carts were the mode of transport again and the smell of horse dung and fear was everywhere, seeping and creeping through cracks. Yet people flocked to concerts, the theatre and the galleries. At her age her parents had attended coming-out parties. Even now, people held birthday parties, weddings, engagements, eating and drinking as if bombs were not belting down all over the country. As if rationing did not exist.
Some people. Not in her family. The Black Market was the only way to indulge those extravagances and the Black Market was not tolerated there. Their table was a spartan affair, laid with only the food available under rationing and what came from the farm. No wonder Anna Maria and Sesto were happy to be sent out to the farm – at least there they could eat a little better than in town. Hunger was a constant topic everywhere.
According to Anna Maria, Sesto’s Neapolitan brother-in-law told them that in Naples people were eating each other and girls as young as twelve prostituted themselves to the Allied soldiers for as little as a warm blanket. In the streets, prostitutes were sprayed with delousing solution as if they were cattle. Cannibalism and prostitution. Well, they are Napolitani, after all, Anna Maria said, with callous disdain for the south and its sins. She crossed herself.
‘It’s probably true,’ Enrico had told Annabelle. ‘They are starving. Many of them are living in caves with no food and no water and certainly no sanitation. Naples has always been a special case and now it is in ruins.’
She shivered and turned away from the mirrors. She did not want red toenails anyway. Enrico hated painted nails. She picked up the powder puff and let it fall from a great height, watching the starburst of powder settle more thickly. Then she left, closing the door at exactly the angle she had found it. She ignored her geometry and instead went to bed with Leopardi’s poetry. Leopardi seemed appropriate; they were both prisoners of their own life.
Novara 1943
Follow the leader
Clara too was a prisoner, but she had no mind to read Leopardi. Her father telephoned the police immediately on the night of Ben’s disappearance and their guard was restored at once. The night was calm and, apart from more vile things scrawled on the walls of the villa, nothing had changed by morning. They left Rome that day, and with their bodyguards travelled to the villa of Myriam and her husband at Meina. Surely there on Lake Maggiore they would be safe. Less than three weeks had passed – three weeks of a nightmare for Clara who could get no word of Ben and was terrified he was dead. It was odd how few of her old sources wished to speak to her. Quinto was unavailable. First, she was told Ben had gone back to Rocca delle Caminate for his own protection. How ridiculous. Was Rachele there? Next, she heard he was under arrest somewhere else, but she did not believe any of it. They could have killed him. She might be next. Anything was possible. Badoglio was in charge and he was their enemy. No-one was safe.
The days were endless and the nights much longer. Eating made her nauseous and her mother’s sullen fretting and threatened heart attacks cast a pall over all of them. Her father barely spoke and no-one from the Vatican had been in contact with offers of help. So much for your Pope, said Giuseppina. It would soon be Ferragosto.
Then one clear sunny morning, when more athletic citizens were already swimming in the lake, Claretta and her mother and father and sister had barely awoken when a Carabinieri officer arrived with his men and courteously informed them they were under arrest, on the orders of Marshall Badoglio. It was almost a relief. They were bundled off to Castello Visconti in Novara.
‘Well, it could be worse,’ sniffed Giuseppina. ‘At least Novara is a decent town.’
She was right though, it could be worse and it was. It turned out they had been arrested because Marcello had been up to his old tricks again. Giuseppina would hear no ill of her son but Francesco put it more bluntly. ‘That imbecile of a brother of yours has caused this,’ he told Clara.
Marc too was under arrest, it seemed. Ben was no longer there to rescue them. There was still no word of his whereabouts. It was as if he had never existed. His name was never mentioned. Though the director of the prison ensured they were well cared for by the nuns, the circumstances were not easy: rough straw beds crawling with vermin, insolent guards, dreadful food. The other prisoners never missed an opportunity to deride and persecute them and the city suffered air raid after air raid, the disaster being attributed to their presence, though everyone knew the Allies were bombing the country to pieces and had better things to do than search for them.
After one of the raids, the water was cut off and in the suppurating heat of high summer, prisoners and keepers suffered alike. Francesco paced and muttered and tried to avoid his wife. Giuseppina fanned herself, sighed and passed her time carping to the nuns about the inefficiencies all around her and the lack of regard for her station. The nuns saw little point in advising la signora to offer up her tribulations to the Saviour. Mimi – or Myriam as she now insisted on being called – sniffled and snuffled and clung to her mother. Clara clung only to her hope that Ben was alive and that he would survive, his health was so poor. Her own health had deteriorated and she was weak and lethargic. She retreated into her diaries, scribbling obsessively all day, closing off the world. If he was alive, he would come for her. If he was dead, she had no further desire to live.
The Inspector-General of Police was mystified by his prisoner’s compliance. Could this be the feared figure of Il Duce, so long known for his belligerence? He had never been this close to his leader, whose voice he knew well from balconies and parade-grounds and whose portrait adorned his office. This frail little man was a great disappointment. Still, he thought, he himself was only forty-two and Il Duce was old now – we all get old. His duty was a delicate one and he did his best.
After two days in the police barracks, Mussolini had shown little interest in his fate. He asked what the reaction had been to his arrest and when told of the rejoicing in the streets and that his own militia
