as if they were apples, and take jugs up the dusty lane to where huge wooden doors open into the hillside, and Angelo’s wife fills the jugs with wine from a tap on a barrel twice as tall as a cow.
All my love to you my dearest—
Nadine
And so Italy became regular. 1928, 1929, and then the 1930s, so modern and new. Each summer’s visit became a part of a whole, studding the overall experience with its individual jewels. The year Kitty could swim. The year Tom fell out of the tree. Memories grew on memories. And it was all lovely. And each passing year the children were different in themselves as they grew.
Kitty progressed from cute-like-a-doll to rather stout and serious and, in her eyes, unwanted – unlike Nenna, who, in Kitty’s eyes, was wanted by everybody, especially by Kitty herself. This led to an uneven combination of envy and desire, a watchful attitude, and a sense of dumpy plainness which was not entirely justified, and – had Kitty only known it – more the result of the stultifying school she attended in London, with its obsession with sport and manners over intellect or joy, than of any actual plainness in herself.
Nenna became aware that she didn’t entirely want to be a girl. Not that she wanted to be a boy, but she wanted to stay free, an unregulated sort of companion-at-arms to boys, one who could take them or leave them. She was not amused by the responsibilities of girlhood: cleanliness, white socks, helping in the house, being told when to be back. Being worried about. There was a march where the boys of the Balilla swung by with novantuno rifles, and the girls with baby dolls. She didn’t mind real babies, and God knows there were enough of them about, but why would one want a toy one? And also she felt rather put on the spot. Understanding instinctively that nobody would want to hear about this, she said nothing. In fact she developed something of a habit of silence, and grew charismatic, attracting attention by not wanting it.
And Tom? He wanted everything. To swim, to fly, to run away from school, to fight, to swear eternal loyalty, to mind. He wanted to be older. He wanted to get into trouble.
It was in the summer of 1932 that Nadine found herself confused by something which should have been very simple – writing a letter to Riley. They were staying a little longer than usual that year and perhaps that extra exposure made it all that bit stronger.
Darling,
It is lovely to be here again. The beauty! I know it’s so dull to go on about it and I promised myself not to be one of those English people who wafts about Italy saying ‘Isn’t it lovely isn’t it beautiful’ all the time, as if nobody else had ever noticed, and it was in any way an interesting thing to say – but it’s awfully hard. Because it is so beautiful! I allow myself to do it only on the first day, and after that I just say it to myself. Aldo has been teaching us to fish, off the little boat. The lake fish are called coregoni – they don’t even have a name in English. Did I tell you about Ferragosto? The night of celebration of the Virgin Mary’s ascension into heaven? We all walked round the lake in the evening to Trevignano, a loopy road, and when we got near (Aldo had to drag Kitty some of the way I’m afraid) we could see the little fishing boats all lit up with coloured torches, and fireworks were launched from the decks of Il Batello, the lake’s ferryboat: they reflected off the dark water and it made the strangest effect, as if all barriers collapsed between two sides of anything – between water and sky, above and below, then and now … life and death, hope and fear … I wanted so much to have you there to lean back on and share the beauty with. It was almost spiritual for a moment – even though all to the sound of fairground music and the taste of warm nut brittle. Usually, apparently, the ruined castle up the hill behind the town catches fire from the flares marking the path up through the dry dry grass. One year, Aldo was telling us, it didn’t, and everyone was disappointed, so the young men grabbed up the flares and ran about setting the fire on purpose. Then all the older men had to set up a run of buckets to the lake to put it out.
Where was I? Sorry, Susanna called us for dinner and I have been quite bad about helping out – well, we’re swimming every day, obviously; eating far too much and getting as fat as little olives. The bats are driving Kitty quite bonkers. She read somewhere that they get tangled up in your hair … also she’s reading The Castle of Otranto which would keep anyone awake at night. She said yesterday that she’s writing a story about bats, so I hope that will get it out of her system. Tom is quite superb, diving and sailing and swimming, drawing a lot – not in his mask and snorkel obviously. I love to see them all together – each year I am worried that age and distance might mean they don’t get on so well together, but they do, every time.
all my love,
Yours not in flames,
Nadine
Oh dear I didn’t post this and now it’s two days later! Who would have thought being so lazy would take up so much time? I am drawing a lot though – close-ups of leaves and any little creature I can get to stay still long enough. Beautiful scorpions and spiders with sections, if you see what I mean. I am terribly lazy about going into town – No desire whatsoever! Even though I could stroll about in the market looking for fresh burrata and ice cream to bribe the children with. I am sorry. How’s Papa? How are you darling? But don’t write back, the post is awful – I don’t even know if you have written, we haven’t received anything. But now we’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow so we’ll be home before you get this. I am beginning to miss you rather a lot now. I’m trying to soften Aldo up to bring them all to London next year, but I don’t know if it’s going to work. He seems to think there’s too many of them, but I shall hold out. —He has decided that Shakespeare was Italian! – or at least stole all his best stories from Italians: Romeo and Giulietta, from Verona, Two Gentlemen, also from Verona, Giulio Cesare, from Rome, also Antonio (from Rome) and Cleopatra, Tito Andronico—! They’ve been translating that bit of Antony and Cleopatra for him, because Nenna has decided that Cleopatra’s barge, as Enobarbus described it, sounded like their island:
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.
I’m writing it out for you in full because it does sound beautiful in Italian. Not sure of its grammatical accuracy but here it is:
La galea dove sedeva lei, come trono brunito
splendeva sulle acque. La poppa d’oro;
Viola le vele e profumate tanto che
i venti vi languivano d’amore. D’argento i remi,
in cadenza al tono dei flauti, e l’acqua
battuta di loro li seguiva rapida,
quasi amorosi di quei loro colpi.
And Aldo’s response? ‘Shakespeare stole the story from Plutarch, and he was a Roman …’ To which Nenna says, surely he was Greek, and Aldo says ‘Roman citizen’ – you’d think every half-way talented person in the world was Roman to listen to him. So Nenna says, all innocent, ‘And Shakespeare, was he Roman?’ ‘Crollalanza,’ says Aldo, with his devilish little smile. ‘Sicilian name.’
Anyway my love we’ll see you soonest soonest. I will have to post this now, or be utterly embarrassed by having brought it back to London in my suitcase.
Your Nadine
She looked at the letter as she folded