The Painted Altar

Chapter Twelve

Plot reminder: With Lucio's help,  Mary has traced her father's younger brother, Salvatore D'Ambra. She has just discovered that her father had been married.

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The details emerged from the old man's mouth like snowflakes from a winter sky. Slowly at first, just individual floating white blurs. Then faster, all at once, a sudden wind-tossed flurry.

The name of my father's wife had been Ada Pucci, something of a local beauty in her day. She and my father had both been sixteen when they'd first started courting. Back row of the pictures to begin with, then during the warmer months their moments of intimacy had been played out in the much more private theatre of the moonlit beach. It had been towards the end of that summer - 1940, Italy now conjoined in conflict - that the news of Ada's pregnancy had broken...

"Things had been different back then," my uncle sighed. "A young man got a girl in the family way... Well, there was just no other option. Not round these parts anyway. They got married in San Andrea church, a freezing cold day just before Christmas. I can still remember it. Can still picture that look on Vincenzo's face." There was a regretful shake of the head. "Poor sod, looked like a convict being led in through the prison gates."

An interesting analogy, I reflected, given how the final years of his tragically short life would pan out. A prisoner not just physically and literally, but perhaps spiritually also.

"Ada's father was a fisherman too, just like ours. Neither family had much money to help them out. A cold water affair here in the harbourside was the best that could be arranged ." A swept hand indicated the limited confines of his home. "Not even half the size of this place. Imagine."

I took a sip of the coffee Grazia had poured from metal cafeteria: strong, even by local standards.  "And the baby?" I  enquired, as matter-of-factly as I was able to feign. The baby: my half-brother or half-sister, in other words.

By way of response, Salvatore rolled eyes heavenwards, touched forefinger from top to bottom of sternum, right then left.

Oh dear Lord... Another jab-punch to my heart. Wasn't sure how many more of them I would be able to take.

"Was common in those days," reflected Grazia sadly. She too swiped hand in genuflection. "All lambs of our Lord."

"The spring it must have been," her husband continued. "Then as I said the following May his cards came and off he went to war. Shipped from Brindisi to Alessandria, thrown straight into bloody mess that was Tobruk. September or maybe it was the October, he and his platoon got taken by the English." There was a glance in my direction, as if remembering I was a representative of said race. "Better your lot than the Germans or Russians so I've heard."  He paused to reach for one of the homemade campagnole biscuits which Grazia had laid onto the table. As with his bald crown, the back of his hands too were liver-spotted, the skin webbed between finger bones like waxed paper. "Sent him to Kenya first," the old man resumed, swiping back of hand across mouth. "Kenya, for the love of God! Then the English, must have realised they were missing a trick. Shipped my brother and the rest of the captured Italians off to the motherland, set them to work out in the fields. Fed them well enough though he said in his letters."

Letters, I thought...

"Wouldn't happen to have kept any of them, would you?" I asked.

"The earlier ones from Egypt and Kenya, no. These he always addressed to Ada see." A smile momentarily illuminated the old man's face, as if some long lost memory had been unearthed. "Could barely read though, poor thing, always came round to ours. My sister Rosalba was the best at reading and writing, that sort of thing. We'd all gather round like elementary school kids round the maestra while she read them out loud." Rosalba had been the eldest of the three sisters, we learnt, all of whom had now passed away.  "Mostly he just said all was fine. Couldn't write anything negative or critical see - wouldn't get past the censors." He was forced to raise his a little voice a little to compete with the repetitive thud of a ball against a neighbour's wall, the squeals of scurrying children. "They were regular at first, once a week or so, then gradually got less frequent. I think whatever they might have had between them, Ada and he, by the time he got to England it had pretty much disappeared. The distance, I suppose. The years that had passed." Once more, there was a pitying shake of the head. "You know, I felt sorry for them. Both of them. If it hadn't been for the pregnancy they'd have just been childhood sweethearts, nothing more than that. Would have been free to just drift apart." He took sip of his coffee, dabbed a handkerchief to forehead; barely gone ten a.m but it was already getting hot. "Anyway, it got so he started addressing his letters home rather than to her. After Rosalba passed away, I found a bundle of them in her chest of drawers all tied up in a ribbon."