But I didn’t stop. To explain to a man that women should not be beaten to ensure that they do what they are told was clearly a waste of time up here in the hills — and dangerous. The law does not mean all that much up in the mountain villages where the feudal system still exists in fact, though not in theory.
Dark stone houses, buzzing with flies, closed in on us as we climbed the road to the village. Faces appeared as though by magic at every window. And women, fat and slovenly and work-worn, crowded to their doorways to see us pass, a thousand brats clinging to their black din-stained skirts. Young girls, olive-skinned, dark-eyed and sexually uninhibited, smiled and giggled at us, as we went by.
Clearly our arrival was an event in the village.
We reached a little square with the inevitable fountain in the centre. Here old men sat smoking in the sun and women were doing the washing in the cold mountain water. The first tomato crop had been gathered in and on every ledge and roof and even in the street in front of the houses the red fruit, halved, lay drying in the sun, the pips showing yellow. We stopped and children crowded around the car. They did not speak. They just stared, wide-eyed.
I asked for the village priest, and we were directed across the square to a narrow little street that was barely wide enough for the car. It had once been stepped. But the stones were worn and time and the villagers had filled it with so much dirt that it was possible to use it as a road.
The sound of the old Lancia as it stormed the hill was shatteringly loud. The road was so narrow that we seemed to be thrusting the grey houses and the crowding faces of the villagers back on either side. Children ran behind us, clinging to the bumpers and the spare wheel.
So we reached the very summit of the village. And here, in a little square, was the priest’s house. It was not really a square. It was just that the road widened out where it stopped at a grey stone wall. There were houses on one side. But on the other, a wall topped with drying tomatoes guarded a sheer drop to the valley floor. We stopped the car and found ourselves looking down upon the road by which we had come, all flanked by mountains, towards Rome and the sea.
‘Blimey!’ said Boyd, as he got out and saw the silent gaping crowd of children, ‘we might be the Pied Piper like.’
The word ‘Inglese’ was whispered through the clutter of small faces. A ragged urchin with dark eager eyes came up to Boyd and said, ‘Sigaretta, Johnnie?’ The old cries burst forth then in a clamour of small voices. ‘Cioccolata! Sigaretta! Hey, Johnnie, gamma!’ ‘Silenzio!’
The babel of voices froze. The door of one of the houses had opened and a dark-haired man with a thin face and deep-socketed eyes stood in the doorway, his hands white against the folds of his black gown.
His dark eyes stared at me unwinking as I told him who I was looking for. Not a muscle of his face moved, but at the name Galliani I had a feeling of tension.
‘Galliani!’ he said. ‘Maria Galliani. She worked for Guido Mancini down in the valley. She is dead now.’ He said it with a disinterested bluntness that was either callousness or the familiarity with death that is perhaps inevitable in a man of his profession.
‘When did she die?’ I asked.
‘Just over a year ago. It must have been shortly after she came to the village. She had suffered and it was too much for her.’
‘And what about the girl?’
‘The girl,’ he repeated. And I had the impression he was playing for time. Or perhaps it was my imagination. There seemed no vestige of humanity in him. His voice was cold, unhelpful, as though he resented being questioned about a member of his flock.
‘The French girl,’ I said. ‘Her name was Monique Dupont.’
‘I know of no girl of that name in the village.’
‘But surely,’ I said, ‘Signora Galliani brought with her a girl when she came to live in the village. She would have been about twenty.’
He seemed to hesitate. Then he said, ‘Ah yes, it is possible that she has some French blood. She is fair — not like our mountain people. She was Maria Galliani’s niece. Her name is Monica. Why are you interested?’
I told him about Monique’s mother in England and how I had followed the trail of the girl from Naples to Itri and on to Percile.
He said nothing when I had finished. He stood there quite silent for a moment. He might have been praying for guidance. Or he might have been thinking out his line of action. At any rate he suddenly said, ‘Scusate’ and disappeared into the house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the priest came out again he had on his wide-brimmed black hat. His quick scurrying walk, which scattered the children out of his path, made him look like a black beetle hurrying about its urgent affairs. ‘I will take you to see the grave of Maria Galliani,’ he said and bustled into the car. As we moved back down the hill to the village square he said, ‘Are you a Catholic?’
I shook my head.
His white hands fluttered in an expression of resignation. ‘I was thinking that you might have liked to give a candle for her. The English are always so generous.’ He shot me a quick glance and then sighed. ‘The little church where she is buried is very poor and much repair work had to be done after the battle by the bridge. But God was merciful. He damaged only His own house and left the village untouched.’
He directed the driver down through the village to the ford and the little church in the valley. We were met at the door by an old man with a grey beard and watery eyes. The priest motioned Boyd and myself inside.
Like everything about the village the church was depressingly primitive. It was cool and almost damp inside and the peeling walls were festooned with tawdry gilt and white plaques to the dead of the village. On the wall opposite the door a life-size figure of Christ hung dejectedly from its cross. It was badly carved in wood and on a shelf at its feet stood jam jars of faded summer flowers.
I don’t think I have ever seen such an ugly interior to a church. The villagers seemed to have vied with one another to hang upon its walls the most gaudy memorials possible within their means: even to little glass or cellophane cases filled with artificial lilies.
The priest had stopped by the door to talk to the old man. But now he came in and led us up to the altar. ‘These were carved by Maria Galliani,’ he said, pointing to a pair of candlesticks delicately worked in some local wood. On the base of each was carved the name of her husband — Emilio Galliani — and the sign of peace.
‘In the cemetery you can see the grave,’ the priest said, leading us out again into the bright sunlight. ‘She had not worked long with Guido Mancini, but he bought her a good headstone.’
By the great marble tomb of the Iori family, half-hidden by two black crosses that marked the graves of German soldiers killed in the fighting at the ford, was a sandstone boulder. On it was roughly carved — ‘Hic Jacet Maria Galliani, Requiescat in Pace.’ There were wild roses in a little sunken vase.
‘And now, what about the girl?’ I asked, as he showed no sign of moving.
‘The girl? Ah, yes — she is at Mancini’s farm. She is all right. But she will be up in the hills now, minding the goats. It will be difficult to find her.’ His eyes watched me out of their dark sockets.
‘Then let’s go to the farm and see,’ I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you will wait while I have a word with the wife of the man who looks after the church. She has been ill and it would be unkind if I came here and did not visit her.’
I nodded, and he led us back through the cemetery and disappeared into the open doorway of the cottage attached to the church.
‘Like a bloody beetle scurryin’ into ‘is ‘ole, ain’t ‘e,’ said Boyd. ‘Somehow I never trusts them blokes. I seen quite a bit of ‘em in the little fishing villages along the coast an’ I always ‘ad a feeling they was living on the ignorance of the people.’