‘Oh no,’ I said in English. ‘Oh dear God, no.’
I bent over her and rolled her up and on to her back in my arms. Her eyes were open. They focused on my face. She was alive. It wasn’t much.
‘Henry,’ her voice was a whisper. ‘I can’t... breathe.’
The three passers by had grown to a small crowd. I looked up desperately into their enquiring faces.
‘Doctor,’ I said. ‘Medico.’ That was Spanish. ‘Doctor.’
‘Si si,’ said a small boy at my elbow. ‘Un dottore, si.’
There was a stir in the crowd and a great deal of speculation of which I understood only one word. ‘Inglese,’ they said, and I nodded. ‘Inglese.’
I opened gently the front of Gabriella’s brown suede coat. There was a jagged tear in the right side, nearest me, and the edges of it were dark. Underneath, the black dress was soaking. I waved my arm wildly round at the people to get them to stand back a bit, and they did take one pace away. A motherly looking woman produced a pair of scissors from her handbag and knelt down on Gabriella’s other side. She pointed at me to open the coat again, and when I’d tucked it back between Gabriella’s body and my own she began to cut away the dress. Gentle as she was, Gabriella moved in my arms and gave a small gasping cry.
‘Hush,’ I said, ‘my love, it’s all right.’
‘Henry...’ She shut her eyes.
I held her in anguish while the woman with the scissors carefully cut and peeled away a large piece of dress. When she saw what lay underneath her big face filled with overwhelming compassion, and she began to shake her head. ‘Signer,’ she said to me, ‘mi dispiace molto. Molto.’
I took the clean white handkerchief out of my top pocket, folded it inside out, and put it over the terrible wound. The bullet had smashed a rib on its way out. There were splinters of it showing in the bleeding area just below her breast. The bottom edge of her white bra had a new scarlet border. I gently untucked the coat and put it over her again to keep her warm and I thought in utter agony that she would die before the doctor came.
A carabiniere in glossy boots and greenish khaki breeches appeared beside us, but I doubt if I could have spoken to him even if he’d known the same language. The crowd chattered to him in subdued voices and he left me alone.
Gabriella opened her eyes. Her face was grey and wet with the sweat of appalling pain.
‘Henry...’
‘I’m here.’
‘I can’t... breathe.’
I raised her a little more so that she was half sitting, supported by my arm and my bent knee. The movement was almost too much for her. Her pallor became pronounced. The short difficult breaths passed audibly through her slackly open mouth.
‘Don’t... leave me.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Hush, my dearest love.’
‘What... happened?’
‘You were shot,’ I said.
‘Shot...’ She showed no surprise. ‘Was it... Billy?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see. Don’t talk, my sweet love, don’t talk. The doctor will be here soon.’
‘Henry...’ She was exhausted, her skin the colour of death. ‘Henry... I love you.’
Her eyes flickered shut again, but she was still conscious, her left hand moving spasmodically and restlessly on the ground beside her and the lines of suffering deepening in her face.
I would have given anything, anything on earth, to have had her whole again, to have taken that pain away.
The doctor, when at last he came, was young enough to have been newly qualified. He had thick black curly hair and thin clever hands: this was what I most saw of him as he bent over Gabriella, and all I remembered. He looked briefly under my white handkerchief and turned to speak to the policeman.
I heard the words ‘auto ambulanza’ and ‘pallota,’ and eager information from the crowd.
The young doctor went down on one knee and felt Gabriella’s pulse. She opened her eyes, but only a fraction.
‘Henry...’
‘I’m here. Don’t talk.’
‘Mm...’
The young doctor said something soothing to her in Italian, and she said faintly ‘Si.’ He opened his case beside him on the ground and with quick skilful fingers prepared an injection, made a hole in her stocking, swabbed her skin with surgical spirit, and pushed the needle firmly into her thigh. Again he spoke to her gently, and again felt her pulse. I could read nothing but reassurance in his manner, and the reassurance was for her, not me.
After a while she opened her eyes wider and looked at me, and a smile struggled on to her damp face.
‘That’s better,’ she said. Her voice was so weak as to be scarcely audible, and she was growing visibly more breathless. Nothing was better, except the pain.
I smiled back. ‘Good. You’ll be all right soon, when they get you to hospital.’
She nodded a fraction. The doctor continued to hold her pulse, checking it on his watch.
Two vehicles drove up and stopped with a screech of tyres. A Citroen police car and an ambulance like a large estate car. Two carabinieri of obvious seniority emerged from one, and stretcher bearers from the other. These last, and the doctor, lifted Gabriella gently out of my arms and on to the stretcher. They piled blankets behind her to support her, and I saw the doctor take a look at what he could see of the small hole in her back. He didn’t try to take off her coat.
One of the policemen said, ‘I understand you speak French.’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing up. I hadn’t felt the hardness of the pavement until that moment. The leg I’d been kneeling on was numb.
‘What are the young lady’s name and address?’
I told him. He wrote them down.
‘And your own?’
I told him.
‘What happened?’ he said, indicating the whole scene with a flickering wave of the hand.
‘We were running to catch the tram. Someone shot at us, from back there.’ I pointed down the empty street towards the baker’s.
‘Who?’
‘I didn’t see.’ They were lifting Gabriella into the ambulance. ‘I must go with her,’ I said.
The policeman shook his head. ‘You can see her later. You must come with us, and tell us exactly what happened.’
‘I said I wouldn’t leave her...’ I couldn’t bear to leave her. I took a quick stride and caught the doctor by the arm. ‘Look,’ I said, pulling open my jacket.
He looked. He tugged my bloodstained shirt out of my trousers to inspect the damage more closely. A ridged furrow five inches long along my lowest rib. Not very deep. It felt like a burn. The doctor told the policeman who also looked.
‘All right,’ said the one who spoke French, ‘I suppose you’d better go and have it dressed.’ He wrote an address on a page of his notebook, tore it off and gave it to me. ‘Come here, afterwards.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you your passport with you?’
I took it out of my pocket and gave it to him, and put the address he’d given me in my wallet. The doctor jerked his head towards the ambulance to get in, and I did.
‘Wait,’ said the policeman as they were shutting the door. ‘Did the bullet go through the girl into you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Two bullets. She was hit first, me after.’
‘We will look for them,’ he said.
Gabriella was still alive when we reached the hospital. Still alive when they lifted her, stretcher and all, on to a trolley. Still alive while one of the ambulance men explained rapidly to a doctor what had happened, and while that doctor and another took in her general condition, left my handkerchief undisturbed, and whisked her away at high speed.