‘But, Mamma, it would be fun to have a little windfall, wouldn’t it? We could take a holiday, be extravagant for once. And, anyway, I’m curious about the film-making process, I’d like to have a ringside view of how it’s done. I could learn a lot from camera techniques, how to look, how to see what the naked eye cannot.’ He did not tell her that he wanted Laura Erskine to model for him and that this was the only way to get her here. There were some things he had learnt not to talk to his mother about – women, above all. She had a puritan attitude to sex, he suspected it revolted her, yet she loved gossip and scandal, especially sexual innuendo and rumours about people she knew. Women were odd creatures, contradictory and baffling. Like cats.
She was staring at him as if she was trying to see into his head. Her hands hung by her side, screwed into fists. She was rigid, her plump body reminding him of a wooden toy he had once had, Mrs Noah, who stood on the deck of the Ark she inhabited, among the carved wooden animals, staring straight ahead fixed for ever in a defiant pose.
He had loved that toy passionately. His father had made it for him, carved the wooden pieces, painted them himself. He still had it, somewhere, the colours faded, some of the animals missing. Old Noah, with bold black eyes and gold buttons down his bright blue coat, Mrs Noah with red cheeks, which came off on your hands on humid days, the tawny giraffes, sandy lions with bared white teeth, battleship grey elephants with long, swinging trunks you could actually move because his father had hinged them, two proud black horses with wild manes, two curly white sheep, one with horns, two ostriches lovingly painted to show their feathers soft as thistledown, birds of paradise, eagles, swallows and doves. How many hours had he played with it, making up adventures for them all, feeling the life in those wooden figures as he stroked them so that the wood warmed in his hands? He could almost have sworn he had felt them breathe and move under his fingers.
It had never occurred to him until now that that might explain why he had chosen to be a sculptor: his Ark had shown him that you could create life out of seemingly dead wood and stone. How much small things could affect your entire life without you being aware of what was happening!
‘Why does he want to make a film in Venice?’ his mother asked. ‘Why in this house?’
‘He wants to make The Lily, that bestseller everyone was talking about, remember? You read it, didn’t you?’
Her olive-golden skin was set rigid across the heavy bones of her face. ‘Canfield’s book?’
Nico remembered suddenly. ‘Of course, you knew him once, didn’t you? I’d forgotten. Didn’t you meet him before the war?’
There was a long silence, then she nodded. ‘Yes, he taught my brothers English and French until the British were ordered out of Italy by II Duce.’
Milan, 1940
Vittoria did not know what to make of the Englishman. He was taller
than her father, with lots of floppy light hair that kept falling over his eyes; it fascinated her to watch him raking it back only to have it fall forward again. His eyes were bright blue, like shiny glass, and his clothes were casual and faintly shabby, old grey flannels and a white shirt, which had been neatly darned. It was obvious even to the child that the Englishman was poor, yet his cool, assured manner puzzled her. He did not behave in the way she expected poor people to behave: there was something different about him. Maybe it was simply that he was a foreigner.
‘What’s he doing in Italy, living hand-to-mouth like this?’ her father asked her mother, over a lazy Sunday lunch. ‘I’d suspect he was a spy if I thought he had any brains, but all he does is read books and talk nonsense.’
Anna Serrati sighed. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? He’s a writer, in Italy because he admires Italian art. He’s learning our language, and writing a book.’
‘He climbs,’ little Niccolo said, secretly feeding scraps of fatty meat to the spaniel under the table.
Leo Serrati glared at his youngest son. ‘Climbs?’
‘Mountains.’
Carlo said, ‘He goes off to the Alps all the time. He said he would take us one day.’
Leo’s voice grew hoarse with excitement. ‘That means he could cross the Swiss border without anyone being the wiser! That area is lousy with British spies, always has been – they come across the lakes at night. What did I tell you? He’s spying on us! And you pay him to come to our house!’
‘What military secrets do we have?’ Anna said. ‘Don’t be silly, Leo. Do you really think the British want to know how you make your laxatives?’
Leo shouted, ‘Don’t talk about such things in front of the children!’
‘What things? The castor oil they take when they’re—’
‘Be quiet!’ he snapped, getting up from the table. ‘You have no decency. My mother would never have talked the way you do. And next time that Englishman comes here, throw him out.’
‘It’s important for the boys to speak other languages. If the firm keeps growing you’ll be selling all over Europe one day, and whoever is running it will need to speak French, German, English.’
Leo’s eyes brightened at the idea of a company that sold its products all over Europe. ‘Well, watch him whenever he comes, and remember anything he says about politics.’
‘He never talks about politics,’ Carlo put in. ‘Only art or literature. It’s very boring.’
Carlo took after his father in looks and nature yet the two were always arguing, but Leo was a man given to angry outbursts over nothing, and he never backed down or even admitted he might be wrong.
‘The English are mad!’ Anna heard him say a week or so later, when Frederick Canfield joined them all in the garden for what she hoped would pass as English tea – tiny sandwiches of thinly sliced country ham or cheese, a rich chocolate cake and cups of milkless tea, heavily sugared.
Frederick accepted a sandwich and a cup of tea, smiling at Anna as he took them while to her husband he said calmly, ‘I won’t argue with you, Signore, but, if I may ask, why precisely do you think we’re mad?’
‘What else explains it? Why don’t you make terms with Hitler? He’s offered to come to an agreement, and you’ll have to sooner or later. You know your people don’t have the will to fight – look at the way all the students voted not to go to war! And you have no tanks or planes, you aren’t ready for war. All our newspapers agree about that. Hitler will crush you.’