Mornings were steel-edged now, water on the village font ice-crisp. Instead of clear blue skies, tatters of cloud stuck fast between firs on the mountain slopes and leaves on the beech trees dropped yellow and rust to the forest floor. Some days our village floated upon a sea of clouds, forming an island, heralding the separation from the rest of the world that winter would bring.
Before I drifted into sleep, I lay on my sack mattress stuffed with dried corn-cob sheaths and contemplated the stars. I wondered if the sky would look the same down on the Maremma plains. It was time to leave.
Tomorrow the men and older boys would be setting off. Boots had been mended; in fact, I had lost count of how many old shoes I had studded with nails to help them last the eight-day journey down mule tracks and dusty mountain roads. Paolo, our neighbour, had a new pair of goatskin breeches and had proudly shown me his stick, whittled from chestnut wood in the evenings by his fireside. On one end he had skilfully worked a hook to yank necks of wayward sheep. Rossella, his wife, had wrapped chunks of pancetta in cloth and he had bought himself a sturdy green umbrella from the fair at Ranco.
I believed Mamma had no inkling I would soon be gone. Part of me felt bad; she wanted me near her now she understood that my older brother Francesco was never coming back from the battle of Asiago. One of the shepherds who had come to have his clogs repaired told us the newspapers had reported the deaths of 147,000 men. And all for what? At the seminary, during a geography lesson, Fra Alonso had shown us the range of mountains called Altopiano where the battle had been fought. I remember hoping, for my brother’s sake, that those mountains were as beautiful as the Apennines he had left behind here. When everybody had disappeared after the commemoration service, I had crouched down and run my fingers over the raised letters of my brother’s name on the newly erected monument in the square in Badia Tedalda: Francesco Tommaso Starnucci. I wanted to feel close to him, have some sort of connection. But instead all I felt were twenty-five cold and metal shapes.
Since the end of the episode with the friar I hated more than anybody in the world, I had vowed never to return to the seminary in Arezzo and I’d been making secret preparations. I removed Nonno’s moth-eaten wool cloak from the wooden trunk at the end of my parents’ high matrimonial bed. I’d been squirreling away morsels of pecorino cheese and wild boar sausage while Mamma wasn’t looking and wrapping them in a rag in readiness for my departure.
That time had finally come. Angelo lay on his back fast asleep, his mouth wide open. I timed my getting up from the rustling mattress to coincide with my little brother’s whistling snores. Down the ladder to the kitchen I crept, where ashes glowed in the wide fireplace still holding enough heat for Mamma to blow life into and boil up chicory coffee for breakfast. Bunches of newly stripped corn cobs hung from hooks in the beams, casting ghostly finger-shapes on the plaster walls. As my head brushed against them, they swung to and fro, the shadows seeming to wave a farewell. With care, I lifted the latch just far enough to avoid the squeak and then I was out into what was left of the night. The light was eerie – neither night nor day. The huddle of houses of my village seemed to press towards me and everyday objects assumed spectral shapes. A broom leaning against Paolo’s house was a spindly old witch. Moonlight glinting off a scythe hanging near his doorway was the open eye of a corpse. A cat hunting for an early breakfast pounced on its prey in long grass at the edge of our yard and my heart wanted to leap from within my ribcage. The cold took my breath away and I pulled Nonno’s long cloak tighter, hitching it up to stop it dragging in the dew. Despite being tall for my fourteen years, Nonno Piero had been considerably taller in his younger days. They still talked about him, referring to him as Pierone (Piero, the big one), despite him having died a tiny wizened little man more than a year ago.
Creeping along in the lee of shadowy stone houses, I stopped to remove my clogs, muttering a prayer that the dogs wouldn’t hear me and set up alarm with their barking. Twenty metres further and I was at the start of a footpath. Milk-white in the moonlight, it wound its way up and down the river valley. Once I was sure I would no longer be heard, I slipped numb feet back into my wooden shoes. I had almost reached the first stage of my journey.
Francesco peered at his son over the top of his newspaper, the Corriere della Sera. Davide was flat on his back on the stone floor of their converted stable, La Stalla, bouncing a tennis ball off the beams of the large sitting room.
‘Davi, I’m only going to ask you once more to stop that, or there’ll be trouble. You’re going to break something.’
With an exaggerated sigh, the boy scrambled to his feet and moved over to the window.
Rain poured down the steep banks separating the garden from the meadows. The roar of the swelling river crashing over the weir near the road bridge was loud in the sitting room, despite double glazing and thick stone walls. Curtains of rain almost obliterated the view of the mill, Il Mulino, which the family rented out to holidaymakers. Davide wondered what the guests were doing to occupy themselves inside. This morning two girls had been sunbathing on the grass at the river’s edge. No chance of that now. Only half an hour earlier he and his father had been engrossed in putting finishing touches to a long-awaited den up in the walnut tree. In summer its wide branches shaded the mill race which ended up in the former mill pond, now an ornamental garden area. He would have preferred a den built in one of the oaks nearer La Stalla. He sighed again as he thought of how he’d now have to share the tree house with children staying at the mill.
‘It’s soooo boring being stuck indoors,’ he moaned.
‘Careful… you know what happens when I hear that word. I’ll find you an interesting job,’ Francesco said, folding his paper and walking over to his son. ‘Boredom is banned in this household. I thought you had some homework to finish anyway. If it’s not done when Mamma comes back with the girls, you’ll be getting grief from her too.’
‘Don’t know where to start.’ Davide blew onto the windowpane, doodling a picture of a pin man with an unhappy mouth. ‘Haven’t got any grandparents to help me with my homework like others in my class,’ he muttered.
‘What about some help from your old dad?’
Davide squinted up at his father through his glasses. ‘You’re not old, Babbo. At least not very. Your hair’s a bit grey and you’ve got wrinkles around your eyes. But you’re not old.’
Francesco chuckled. ‘They’re laughter lines but thank you for the compliment.’
He swept up the little boy and dangled him upside down, wondering for how much longer he would be allowed to play like this. His ten-year-old son had shot up recently and Anna had taken him down to Sansepolcro on a shopping expedition to buy new clothes. She’d commented afterwards how much easier it was to shop for boys, although their three daughters were not nearly as streetwise and fashion-conscious as some of the children who came to stay at Il Mulino during summer.
He set Davide down. ‘Very trendy,’ he said, ruffling up his son’s already unruly hair, sticking up as if gelled into a style. ‘What is this awful homework, then?’
‘Research about relatives who moved away from here. What they did, why, where they went – all that kind of boring stuff.’
‘That word again!’ Francesco waggled his finger. ‘Bored people are boring…’
‘But it’s soooo unfair. Everybody else has grandparents still alive and they’ve been able to record what they did and it’s easy-peasy for them. I don’t know where to start and Signorina Grazia warned us we’ve got to get good marks and those who don’t can’t go away for the sports trip in June and I know I’ll be one of them…’
He broke off before tears fell. He hated crying, tending to button up his feelings, unlike his twin sisters, who chatted away like nightingales. In many ways, Francesco thought, Davide was like his mother. Brought up in England, Anna was not as gregarious or extrovert as many Italians, although she had Italian ancestry. Francesco had helped her in many ways – not least in translating her Italian mother’s war diaries and, in so doing, they had discovered her father was not the Englishman she had known but in fact Danilo, a local Italian who had died seven years ago. Over the ten years of their marriage he had found ways to winkle Anna out of her introspection.
‘Right!’ Francesco said, clapping his hands together. ‘Bring me the biggest piece of paper you can lay your hands on and we’ll see if we can put together a family tree.’
Half an hour later, when his younger twin sisters returned from Music Club with Mamma, Davide and his father were kneeling on the floor by the stove and already had a few names written in thick black felt-tip pen on their tree.
‘What are you two doing?’ Emilia, the slightly taller twin, dark hair plaited to her waist, was the more outgoing. Rosanna, also brunette, but with a pudding basin crop, picked up Emilia’s music bag which had been dumped by the door and tidied it away into the basket labelled with her name. Anna had devised this system of individual baskets for her children in an effort to keep the farmhouse-style kitchen tidy. Her brood, ranging from eight-year-old twins to eighteen-year-old Alba (Francesco’s daughter from his first marriage), took some organising. Anything to avoid extra stress on chaotic school mornings was a bonus.
‘We’re building up a family tree,’ Davide answered, tongue on his bottom lip as he concentrated on spelling his paternal grandfather’s name.
‘S- t- a- r- n- u- c- c- i, D- a- r- i- o. When did you say Nonno was born, Babbo?’
‘1923 and his birthday was in May, but we’ll check on dates and names at the comune where everything is recorded. Maybe Mamma can take you in after school on Monday?’ Francesco looked over to Anna, eyebrows raised in question.
‘Did Nonno go abroad?’ Davide asked, sitting back on his haunches. ‘Gianni’s grandfather went to work in France.’
‘Your grandfather stayed in Italy. And so did your great-grandfather Giuseppe. But he had to go down to the Maremma every year during winter months.’
‘We’ve learned about the Maremma area at school. Signorina Grazia told us it was very hard work on the coast because of malaria and that we don’t realise how lucky we are that our families don’t have to go there anymore.’
‘So you’ve studied about the transumanza?’
‘Yes, but not that much.’
Rosanna, who had been poring over the names on the family tree, piped up with, ‘It’s when men took sheep and cows down to graze at the seaside during winter.’
Emilia added, ‘And they stayed away for months and months, because there was no work up here and it was too cold to work because of the snow and everything.’
‘Correct!’ Francesco beamed.
Anna came over to Davide and ruffled his hair. ‘Well, I know very little about it.’ She crouched down beside him to look at the chart on the floor.
Francesco looked up from what he was writing. ‘I suppose people who’ve always lived up here take it for granted. It was a given that from October until May there was mass migration of men to the coast. There was no choice and it went on until the 1950s. You remember when we first met and you asked me to help you look into your parents’ past in Italy? How difficult it was to get people to talk to us about the war years? They wanted to forget and I suppose it’s the same about the transumanza. Now they’re no longer poor, past hardships are best forgotten in their eyes. But I think it’s brilliant children are studying about their heritage at school.’
‘Was Nonno like that too?’ asked Davide. ‘Didn’t he want to talk to you about it?’
‘He didn’t talk about the past much at all. But I do know your great-grandfather Giuseppe was a cobbler and farrier,’ Francesco continued. ‘Somewhere in the attic there are some old horseshoes he made. He was an expert in forging them for lame animals and won awards in Rome for his work. Maybe you could take some in to show at school?’
‘That would be cool,’ the little boy said. ‘Signorina Grazia’s set up a table in the classroom and there’s already stuff on there like old tools and a pair of boots that Maria’s grandfather wore. They’re clumpy and full of holes.’
‘I’ll see if I can gather more information for you, Davide,’ Francesco said. ‘I’ve some books we can look through together.’
‘And if you want more details about the English side of the family I could help you fill that in too.’ Anna said, picking up a pen to start writing the names of her half-brother and sister, Harry and Jane. But Davide swiped it from her hand.
‘No, no – the English side doesn’t matter, Mamma. This is just about family in Tuscany.’
‘And he doesn’t like having English family anyway, do you, Davide?’ Emilia added in a knowing tone.
‘Don’t you? Why not, sweetheart?’ their mother asked, getting up from the floor to start preparations for supper.
Davide shrugged and continued to write on the sheet.
‘It’s because he gets teased in English lessons,’ Rosanna explained. ‘They tell him he’s showing off because he knows all the answers,’ she said, turning a perfect somersault but knocking over the pot of marker pens in the process. ‘And they call him Harry Potter ’cos of his glasses and because he’s got some inglesi relatives.’
‘Now look what you’ve done, you cretin,’ Davide shouted at his sister, jumping up and running from the sitting room, pounding up the wooden staircase to his bedroom.
His door slammed and there was silence for a few seconds. Anna put down the knife she was using to chop onions and made to follow him but Francesco persuaded her to leave him to stew for a while. ‘Are you worried about him calling his sister a cretin or the fact he’s being picked on at school for having English connections?’ he asked, rolling up the family tree and securing it with an elastic band.
‘Both!’
‘Let’s deal with it later, darling. Leave him be for a while.’
Anna returned to supper preparations, wondering what on earth she had managed to fill her time with before having children. ‘BC’, they jokingly described it. She loved all of them to bits. But there were times when she longed to escape from the bedlam of family life. Lately she felt constantly tired. Some mornings she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other to confront the day. And she was putting on weight despite being careful with her diet. She worried there might be something seriously wrong, but it was easier to push nagging thoughts to the back of her mind. She craved one week on her own: one week of blissful quiet without the confusion and togetherness Italians craved. To go to bed late if she wanted without a 6 a.m. alarm call. Time to read a whole book in one sitting or drink wine in the middle of the day, without the responsibility of being the afternoon chauffeur to one of her children: for swimming lessons, music clubs, gymnastics and now regional tennis coaching, for which Davide had been selected. And a week of sleeping in a bed on her own might be good, she thought – without having to get up to soothe a child’s nightmares or being kept awake by Francesco’s snores or his hand stroking her thigh, when sex was the very last thing on her mind…
‘Penny for them?’ Francesco had crept up behind her, folding her in a hug, nuzzling the back of her neck as she tried to concentrate on chopping parsley and celery for a meat sauce.
‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ she said, thinking that he really wouldn’t and that she was an ungrateful cow to fantasise about a life without them.
‘Mamma, Babbo, stop it!’ Rosanna and Emilia were trying to insinuate themselves between their parents to break up their embrace.
‘Is supper nearly ready?’ Emilia, always hungry, asked.
In bed that evening when the children were asleep, Anna and Francesco talked through their day.
Francesco told her how he’d sat with Davide up in his room, sketching out more ideas for their treehouse. Last month their son had announced he was too old to listen to bedtime stories but they recognised he still needed the same special time they devoted to all their children before lights-out.
‘I don’t think it’s too serious, this teasing,’ he told Anna. ‘Children don’t like being different, that’s all,’ Francesco said, placing the latest Camilleri detective story on his bedside table.
‘Would it help, do you think, if I had a word with Signorina Grazia? Perhaps I could offer to help with English lessons and try and suss what’s going on?’
‘Maybe wait a while to see if he can sort it out himself? Sometimes it’s worse when parents stick their noses in.’ Francesco had taught for several years at Bologna University and despite his students being older than Davide, he was a good mentor and had a special sensitivity with youngsters.
Anna yawned, plumping up her pillow before settling down. ‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s a shame if he’s being picked on for having English connections.’
Snuggling nearer, Francesco stroked her arm. ‘He’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’
And a little later, ‘Are you tired again?’ His hand had moved to her breast but she gently removed it.
‘I’m sorry, tesoro. I’m not in the mood tonight and tomorrow I have to take Davide down first thing for a tennis lesson in Sansepolcro, remember?’
‘Maybe you should think about booking an appointment for a check-up?’
‘No, no – I’m fine. Just tired. It’s to be expected with four children to look after.’
‘Plus a demanding husband,’ he added.
‘Sorry, tesoro.’
‘Only kidding, my darling.’
Kissing her chastely on her forehead he wished her sweet dreams, wondering if when they were sixty, with no children living at home, there would be more time for each other. They made love far less nowadays and he was worried at Anna’s constant fatigue. She was due a break. He thought about asking his sister, Teresa, to take over for a couple of days sometime soon. Then he would whisk Anna away for a weekend.
Upstairs in his attic bedroom, Davide shone his torch on the gap where the poster of Big Ben had been. After Babbo had pulled up his covers and kissed him goodnight, he’d tiptoed from bed and ripped it up, hiding the pieces in his secret box at the back of his clothes cupboard. The picture of the Tower of Pisa could definitely stay, he decided, along with the framed photos of Uncle Harry’s Labradors. Dogs couldn’t help it if they were English and anyway they were really cute.
He felt beneath the quilt where he hid Steggy during the day and, hugging the green velvet dinosaur to his chest, he was soon asleep.
At the weekend, Francesco carried a breakfast tray up to Anna. On it was a pot of tea, brioches warmed in the oven, a bowl of homemade plum jam and a single red rose picked from beside the entrance porch. He climbed back into bed, turning to kiss her. But she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Sorry… haven’t brushed my teeth yet.’
He laughed. ‘Never used to matter.’
‘Yes, well, ten years down the line and three children later, lots has changed.’
Nevertheless she reached over to him, planting a kiss on his mouth. ‘To what do I owe this lovely treat?’
‘No reason and every reason,’ he replied, pouring her a cup of tea. His morning drink was always a strong espresso, which he had already knocked back in the kitchen. ‘Sunday morning. Twins watching cartoons. Alba and Davi dead to the world. I thought we’d have breakfast on our own, for a change.’
‘Thank you, tesoro.’
As he spooned jam onto her plate, he glanced at her pale face and the bruised shadows under her eyes, even though she had slept ten hours.
‘Bad night?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly,’ she yawned. ‘I just can’t seem to shake off this tiredness.’
‘How about we take a long weekend break? There are no guests in the mill at the end of the month. Seems to me you could do with a change.’
‘I’m going back to England, remember? “A change is as good as a rest,” as they say.’
‘It will be tiring.’
She had promised to return to Surrey to help her older half-sister, Jane, move into a bungalow from the big house she had lived in for over thirty years. Although the sisters got on better than they used to, their personalities were very different and Jane could be difficult and touchy.
Francesco helped himself to a second brioche. ‘I still don’t understand why she can’t use professional movers. She has. . .
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