amongst the hardship. But this was totally unexpected.
‘The box,’ he repeated.
She’d seen the contents of the old tartan biscuit box a hundred times. There had never been a photograph of Lucia and, as she handed it to him, she half expected it to be a joke of some kind. But there was none of the usual teasing and when he opened the lid, instead of going through it—a memory recalled with each medal, photograph, memento collected during a long life, well-lived—he tipped it up, emptying everything on to the table beside him.
It was a small table and papers, coins, trinkets spilled over onto the floor. Sarah knelt to gather them up. Smoothed out the corner of the small sepia photograph of her great-grandma that he had carried with him through the war.
‘Leave those,’ he said. ‘Your nails are longer than mine. See if you can get this out.’
The base of the box was lined with a piece of black card, scuffed by years of wear. Now, as she eased it out, she discovered that it concealed a photograph.
He gave an awkward little shrug.
‘Not something to leave lying around where it would upset your great-grandmother.’
Upset?
It was an old grainy black-and-white photograph of a slender young woman with dark hair, dark eyes, dark brows, a full, sensuous mouth.
Scratched, carefully stuck together where it had obviously been torn into pieces—presumably by a very upset great-grandma—spotted with age, her face leapt out of the past.
‘She was lovely,’ she said, turning to catch a look of such tenderness in his eyes that she felt a lump rise to her throat. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must have been.’
It made her emotional hiccup seem pretty feeble in comparison.
‘Be glad of that,’ he told her, then seemed to drift for a moment, no doubt recalling the hardships. Or maybe it was Lucia’s beauty that he remembered.
She was sitting on a crumbling stone wall, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Behind her were the remains of a house that might well have once been grand, but was now largely rubble.
It had not, after all, been a fairy tale but real and desperate. This woman had risked her life to save a stranger, shown courage it was hard to imagine.
Her full mouth was smiling and her dark almond-shaped eyes betrayed everything she felt for the man taking the photograph. Was this a secret memory that kept him warm at night?
‘I should have gone back,’ he said, rousing himself. ‘When it was all over. But I had a wife, a son at home …’ His voice trailed away.
Sarah covered his hand with her own. ‘It was wartime, Lex.’ He might have been discovered at any moment. Shot. Lucia, too.
‘Don’t waste your time …’
‘She risked her life to save me, but when the Allies reached Rome there was no time for anything. Hardly time to say goodbye before I was shipped out. Returned to a wife who had long since given me up for dead.’
‘Did you ever try to get in touch?’ she asked. ‘After the war?’
‘I wrote. Sent some money. Asked her to let me know if she needed anything. There was no reply and in the end I thought it best to let it go, thinking that letters, money from an English airman might cause her problems. Embarrassment …’ He shook his head. ‘Your grandmother was on the way by then, I was working night and day to catch up with my studies.’ He shrugged. ‘We got on with things.’
Lived with the rushed wartime marriage, vows made when his life was counted in hours rather than years.
‘It was a good life,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.
‘I know.’ She’d turned the photograph over and read out, ‘“June nineteen forty-four. Isola del Serrone”. Is that the village she lived in? I wonder if she’s still alive?’
‘She’d be in her eighties,’ he said doubtfully.
‘A stripling lass compared to you.’ And with those bones, those eyes, she’d still be beautiful. ‘You should try to find her.’
‘No …’
‘It shouldn’t be that difficult.’ She reached for his laptop and searched the internet for the name of the village. ‘Let’s see. An actress was born there. And a racing driver …’ She glanced up. ‘How small was this village?’
She had clicked on the link to the racing driver and found herself looking at a photograph of a man in overalls, a crash helmet under his arm.
‘Oh, how awful!’ she exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘The racing driver was killed in a practice session in nineteen eighty-three, leaving a wife and young son.’ She skimmed through the caption. ‘But they lived in Turin. This looks more like it,’ she said, clicking on another link. ‘A vineyard. It’s a local co-operative producing prize-winning wine …’
‘Leave it, Sarah.’ She looked up. ‘Some things are better left in the past.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Lucia will have had a family. No one wants old skeletons to come rattling out of the cupboard.’
‘You’re not an old skeleton …’ Then, seeing that he really meant it, added, ‘Sorry. I’m being bossy. It goes with the job.’ But as he made a move to return the picture to the bottom of the box, she said, ‘Don’t shut her away.’
‘This is in no fit state to put in a frame,’ he protested.
‘I know someone who can scan it, clean it up so that it looks like new. We all need memories to keep us warm at night. You said it,’ she pointed out.
‘So I did. And I’ll let you take it, clean it up, if you’ll promise to take the medicine I’ve prescribed.’
‘The Italian lover?’
‘Night and morning until all symptoms of heartache are completely gone,’ he said with a smile.
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
Oh, good grief. Where to start? Who was she talking to? Her students? Colleagues? Parents?
Herself …
I can see you all, sitting on the wall before assembly, grumbling about having to read Miss Gratton’s blog on top of all that revising you have to do.
You are revising? Do it right once and History will be just that. History. Unless you’re living in Rome, where you’re surrounded by it. No! Don’t switch off!
I know you think that this blog is going to be all about ancient Romans, old ruins and churches. Boring.
That if you leave a comment
