They talked about Humph’s great loves, his two daughters, and Ipswich Town FC. Dryden waited for the conversation to lapse into easy silence.
‘And Laura?’ asked Pepe.
Dryden saw his chance. ‘Progress is slow. She wants to eat here one day. Perhaps it will be soon, who knows?’ He sipped his coffee: ‘A story – today. They found a body – just the bones – in a tunnel under the old PoW camp. Your father, he was a prisoner there?’
A wooden shield on the wall, which Dryden had noticed the first time they had stopped at Il Giardino almost three years earlier, was set against a background of the Italian flag above the legend ‘Association of Italian Prisoners of War. Ely Branch’.
‘Sure. Papà Marco was captured in the war, early on, in North Africa. They shipped him to Southampton, then by rail to Ely. That was 1941 by then. He was interned in the PoW camp, then released with the rest, at least most of the rest, to work on the fields. After the war he saved and bought this.’ He raised a hand in mock triumph, looking round at the restaurant. His head dropped as he moved a plastic tomato sauce bottle like a chess piece on the table cloth.
‘But why stay? I don’t understand. I guess I’d have been on the first boat back to – where was it? Venice?’
‘Not really. Mestre. It’s on the coast to the north. You wouldn’t like Mestre, Dryden – it is Venice’s workshop, that is what they say. An industrial city, without beauty.’
Dryden considered the slate-blue landscape under the moon he could see through the oval in the steam. ‘But better than this?’
‘Not then. I don’t know much but Dad talked about it a bit, before he died. There was revolution in the north, turmoil, the Right fighting the Left, no one in the middle. There was no respect for soldiers, there is still no respect for soldiers,’ he said, glancing at a picture on the wall showing a young man in a uniform at a village café table.
‘Some went back but the news wasn’t good – no jobs, and more fighting. And anyway, by then people like Dad had been accepted here, had friends, and were working on the land. Even when the soldiers came back there was work.’
‘And romance?’
‘For some. Dad had met Mum at home. But yes, others married local girls. Some of them did it pretty quick before the competition got back from the war.’
They laughed together and drank. Dryden saw that Humph had succumbed to an early evening nap.
‘They meet then, the survivors, the ones who stayed behind?’
‘Yup. There’s the association. They’ve got a website, the lot. Dad founded it. There’s a meeting here next week – Monday lunchtime – always Monday lunchtime – the last Monday in the month. You should come – there’s a story. They want to build a memorial to Dad. He loved his home country, yes, but not like the rest.’
Dryden felt the effects of the grappa trickling through his brain. ‘How did he love his country?’
‘From a distance. He said we’d left. That was it. We had a new life and there was nothing sadder than a patriotic expatriate. We are Italians and proud of that, but Italy is not our country now – this is our country.’
‘Did he ever talk about the PoW camp?’
Pepe looked towards the counter, they could hear his mother singing in the kitchen beyond.
‘A little, perhaps, and perhaps more towards the end. Why do you ask?’
‘Did anyone ever escape?’
Pepe shrugged. ‘I did not hear – but then, for most of them it is something they do not want to remember. There’s a picture of Dad in the camp. Would you like to see it?’
He was back in a minute. The picture was black and white and had inevitably faded with the years but, like most wartime photographs, the quality was pin-sharp. Five men in white vests and overalls sat on the steps of a PoW hut. Each held a spade in one hand and a variety of vegetables in the other, leeks mostly, with onions and celery.
‘Here,’ said Pepe, putting a finger on the figure on the right. But Dryden had already spotted the family resemblance, disfigured only by the meagre diet of the camp.
‘They had a garden,’ said Pepe. ‘Dad always said it kept them sane as well as fed. They sold some in the town – a surplus, so I guess they were good at it. Il Giardino – that’s why he chose the name.’
Dryden was looking at the smiles. The teeth gleamed, but this was no synthetic effort for the camera. The eyes glittered too, and each man’s arm was hitched to that of his neighbour, in a gesture of friendship and solidarity – and perhaps something else. Conspiracy?
‘They shared the work, the six of them.’
‘Six?’ said Dryden.
Pepe shrugged. ‘I guess the sixth took the picture.’
7
The Tower Hospital stood a discreet distance from the town, a position reflecting its original function as a workhouse. The mean neo-Gothic buildings crowded around a single turret which bore an illuminated clock face. The bricks exuded sorrow and lost lives, its thirty years as a workhouse having been followed by nearly a century as a mental institution. But now a million pounds had been spent on its refurbishment by a private-sector medical health company, an investment which failed to obliterate its tragic past. It was, and would always be, a monument to Victorian melodrama, a statement in brick of power and menace, its serried mullioned windows picture frames for lost faces. A half moon hung from the corner of the turret as Humph swung the Capri through the open iron gates and braked theatrically on the gravel drive.
The cabbie killed the engine and fished in the glove compartment for one of his airport miniatures. Selecting a Grand Marnier, he passed Dryden a Bell’s whisky. This tiny ceremony, the pre-visit drink, was one of the rituals which held their lives together. Humph, unable to stop himself, readjusted the picture of his two daughters which hung from the rear-view mirror, an eloquent reminder that they had both, in their own ways, lost a family. Dryden flipped down the vanity mirror and ran a hand through his hair. His face, medieval in its austere symmetry, was usually enlivened by his vivid green eyes, but now they were dimmed by the approaching ordeal of the daily visit.
‘When will you see them next?’ he asked, nodding at the snapshot as he swigged the whisky.
Humph tapped the picture: ‘Sunday. The zoo.’
It was always the zoo. Humph was a man of set routine and little adventure. His wife had deserted him five years earlier, running off with a village postman. The cabbie had, unsuccessfully, contested her attempt to gain custody of the girls. The last time the family had held hands had been on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand: a brief show of solidarity for the sake of the children. Now Humph saw them once a month, at his wife’s convenience, for four hours. The girls, Humph indicated, found him an increasingly eccentric and peripheral character. One day, and perhaps one day soon, he would leave them to the rest of their lives without him. In the meantime he comforted himself by attempting to knock postmen off their bikes on a largely random basis.
‘So which zoo animal do you feel most affinity with?’ asked Dryden, reaching for a second bottle.
Humph gazed at his friend and sighed. ‘Guess.’
‘Gazelle?’ suggested Dryden.
‘Correct,’ said Humph, punching the play button to start his language tape and closing his eyes.
Dryden considered the brightly lit foyer doors of The Tower. Inside, the defining characteristic was plush silence, aided by the thick-pile carpets. Laura’s medical bills, which were considerable, were still met by the life insurance company following the accident at Harrimere Drain. They had had little choice but to pay for the best for their client since Laura’s accident had been front-page news across Fleet Street. As an actress who had enjoyed a brief spell of fame in the prime-time soap opera Clyde Circus, Laura attracted the ‘rat pack’ up from London as soon as the TV company’s PR firm had leaked the news. Her condition only added to the media frenzy. Locked In Syndrome (LIS), a recently diagnosed phenomenon, was big news too. The victims remained conscious to some degree, while their physical shell remained inert, often as the result of extreme psychological trauma. For several months the tabloids had feasted on the story, from ‘Cinderella soap star battles for life’, through to ‘Clyde star may never speak again’. Eventually interest waned, especially after she was written out of future episodes when it became clear her recovery would be protracted at best. All that was left was the annual anniversary story in November, around the date of the original crash.