The Painted Altar

Chapter Thirty

Plot reminder: Having taken on the identity of his murdered friend Ettore Lo Bianco, Vincenzo has been taken in by a widowed dairy farmer named Hilda Frecklington. In the previous chapter, she suffers the heartbreak of learning that her son, Ronnie, has perished in the D-Day landings.

~~~~~

The final acts of the war vibrated through the oval speaker grill of the living room wireless. The bloodbath of the Bulge, the firestorm of Dresden, the vain defence of Berlin to the very last soldier child. Narrated in that haughty-voiced rasp of the BBC, these were just the closing chapters of the densest and most terrible of tomes. The denouement of a cautionary tale which would call its booming echo to future generations, one in which there were no real winners. In which mankind itself was the loser.

Though we'd all known it was over for several days by then, Churchill's official announcement came mid-afternoon of May the 8th, a Tuesday if I recall correctly. Hilda told me I could have the rest of the day off if I liked, join in the fun over in the village. The end of the war in Europe didn't feel like a cause for celebration to me either however, more the funeral after a slow and painful death.

There was a bottle of scotch in the display cabinet, a good one I think which hadn't been touched since that day back in late '39 that her husband had folded his conscription papers into pocket and walked out of the front door, destined never to return. She poured hearty measures into two glasses, clinked hers to mine.

"Suppose we should mark the occasion somehow," she frowned. Convincing herself more than me it seemed. "To my John and my Ronnie, and let's hope Hitler rots in hell for all eternity."

Raising my glass, I too made a toast. "To my fallen brothers in Tobruk. To my fallen brothers everywhere. As for Hitler, let's hope Mussolini's right there beside him, his culo also roasting in the fires of the inferno."

We downed our whiskies in a single gasping slug, slammed the glasses to the table. A duty performed, an obbligation executed. Headed off then to clean out the stalls before afternoon milking.

We were right, I believe, to limit ourselves to a solemn toast, a single winced shot of whisky. The news flow of the following months was in many ways  more harrowing than those which had preceded that day. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, those first bloodchilling reports of what had awaited the liberating armies in the abandoned Nazi concentration camps... Man's thirst for inventing ever more devastating ways of slaughtering his fellow man had reached new and unrepeatable depths.

To those of us who lived through those terrible years, managed somehow to survive them, the war has never really ended.

It's still there, a lingering bruise on the tissue of our hearts.

*

Since my unplanned flee from camp 106a, my artistic output had been limited. This was due principally the seven-days-a-week nature of dairy farming. Down time was as rare as a cloudless English sky.

The few works I managed to complete were effected over a series of snatched ten-minute periods rather than full concentrated afternoons or evenings. There was a sketch of Hilda which I was particularly proud of and which earnt me a moist-eyed smile when I presented it to her. This was duly framed and given pride of place on the mantelpiece next to the wedding clock. That short period Ronnie was home on leave I persuaded him pose for me too. I'm not sure what happened to that sketch though - Hilda had stowed it away in some secret private cubbyhole no doubt, only looked at it when she felt brave enough. When she thought she might bear it.

Other than potraits, I also managed a few projections of the farmhouse from varying angles, a couple of which I've still got stashed away in an old folder somewhere. Everything pencil or at most ink cross hatch. Didn't pick a brush up at all for the remainder of the war, unless the coat of weather varnish I gave the outbuildings counts.