The Moon Tunnel

15

A mile south of the dump the Capri burst out of the smog, the cab’s aged blue paintwork suddenly reflecting a perfect autumnal sun. A poplar beside the road cast a shadow half a mile long. Dryden shaded his eyes and ran a hand through his black, close-cropped hair, still damp from the mist. He smelt his fingers: the cloying scent of sulphur made him wince. The wide open sky lifted his mood, which had been depressed by Ma Trunch’s claustrophobic world of ancient artefacts and circling dogs.

They got to Il Giardino just before 12.30pm and waited as a convoy of taxis and cars arrived, dropped their passengers and departed. This was the social event of the month: the meeting of the ex-PoW association, and rule number one seemed to be that nobody drove home. Ten Mile Bank was set to rock. Apart from Dryden’s burgeoning interest in the Italian community he had two other good reasons for attending the event: there was nothing else happening except the AGM of the local St John Ambulance, an occasion which made watching paint dry look like a rodeo, and the association’s proposal to raise £5,000 for a memorial to the founder of both the society and Il Giardino, Marco Roma, who had died twenty years earlier in the winter of 1984. Marco Roma – one of the six gardeners of California.

Dryden left Humph exploring the wonderful world of Polish cabbage and crossed the street, pausing only to listen to the sounds of Ten Mile Bank. A whistle blew ending a shift in the beet factory, while a tractor sped by, strips of dry caked mud spraying out from its ten-foot high tyres.

Inside Il Giardino accordion music played. The musician was a human walnut, so imploded by age that he could only just be seen behind his instrument. But the music, however rickety, transformed the place. The blinds had been dropped to cut out the direct, savage sunbeams of the afternoon. Candles burnt on every table, and the sound of corks being pulled from bottles was impressive, a Bacchanalian salute. There was a buzz in the air, and Dryden guessed that this was, for most of the association’s fifty or so members, the only social event of the month. A majority of those present were in their eighties, but most were with younger family, sons and daughters, and one toddler was being handed round for approval.

Dryden entered and noticed with relief that the noise level didn’t drop. A stout, short Italian with hands like a muppet approached with a wine glass.

‘Hi,’ said Dryden. ‘The Crow. We were interested in the fund-raising proposal – for Mr Roma. I phoned.’

This news produced a freshly opened bottle of Chianti which was set before Dryden’s admiring eyes, closely followed by a plate of fresh figs, parma ham and artichoke hearts. Dryden hoped fervently that Humph, who had been planning on opening a brace of pork pies for lunch, could see through the glass.

The formalities were blessedly brief. The stout Italian, apparently the master of ceremonies, stood to introduce the item about the memorial. He outlined, for visitors and younger members, why the association felt this mark of respect was needed. Marco Roma, he told them, had been elected by his fellow prisoners in 1943 to represent them in any matters with the British authorities running California. There were no officers amongst the Italian prisoners – all were conscripts. After the war Marco founded the association, which raised funds to support the increasingly elderly membership, and those in need amongst their families. A co-operative farm workers’ association was formed to lobby, successfully, for better wages and conditions. Trips to Italy were funded on humanitarian grounds, and in 1956 fifty ex-PoWs went ‘home’ for a month, all returning – bar one – to the lives they had made for themselves in the Black Fens. The one refusenik found love in the family and stayed to marry his own niece, complete with the necessary Papal dispensation.

Marco had founded Il Giardino in 1948. He was the head of his community and represented both its success in England and its continuing links with Italy. Now the association wanted to build a memorial to him in the town’s cemetery, on a small hill which had once been the site of a windmill, overlooking the Catholic plots. The vote was unanimous, and marked by a fresh influx of wine. Dryden took a note and chatted to the ex-PoWs at one of the tables. The Italian who appeared to have taken Marco’s place was called Roman Casartelli, and he’d worked for nearly thirty-five years on the railways in the Fens.

Casartelli sipped his wine, expertly holding a toothpick between his lips at the same time.

‘You will write about us?’

Dryden nodded, and they refilled his glass.

‘I write about lots of things. You know about the body found at the old camp?’

That took ten degrees off the conviviality scale. Someone coughed by the door and the accordion music fluctuated violently, then stopped.

Dryden checked his notebook. ‘Serafino Amatista. The only Italian PoW to go missing. It may be him. What was he like?’

A tall man with a bent spine who had said little leant forward, spat on the floor and leant back with a final flourish of crossed arms.

‘Popular?’ said Dryden, and raised a laugh.

Casartelli came to the rescue. ‘Mr Dryden.’ He shrugged. ‘It is a long time ago.’

‘But not forgotten, that’s what all this is about, yes? The association, Marco Roma, the war. It’s important – no?’

Dryden, subconsciously, was using one of the good reporter’s best tricks – mimicking the speech patterns of those from whom information must be gathered.

Casartelli smiled, the wine glasses were refilled, and the accordion began again.

‘Serafino we remember. He was billeted on a farming family when he disappeared.’

‘Where?’ asked Dryden.

‘Buskeybay.’

Dryden batted his eyelids, trying to dispel an instant image of the moonlit theatre. ‘That’s a good memory after sixty years.’

‘I was billeted with him,’ said Casartelli, drinking his wine.

‘You played with Roger,’ said Dryden. ‘My uncle.’

There was a murmur of recognition, and the warmth began to return.

‘Many of us worked there, Mr Dryden – we were rotated regularly so that the authorities could keep check on us – to make sure we did not, as they said, “get our feet under the table”. We were meant to work, and they made us work. But Buskeybay was better than the rest – Roger’s parents were good to us. It was more than forced labour. For this we remember them.’ He raised his glass and the toast embraced everyone. Dryden noticed Pepe, ferrying out plates of antipasti.

‘Our friends,’ proposed another one of the aged PoWs, and down went another round of Chianti.

What a piss up, thought Dryden, drinking too. More bottles appeared, and Casartelli swayed, finding himself a chairback to lean on.

Dryden heard more corks being pulled as the audience drew around him. There was only one conversation now, and it was his to take wherever he wished.

‘Did Serafino say why he was going – or where he might go? Did you know he wasn’t coming back?’

‘We did not know why he left when he did, but later, we guessed – perhaps,’ said Casartelli. ‘The police came – the military police – and the officials from the Italian legation after the end of the war in Italy. They said that Serafino was not who he had said he was.’

‘Serafino Amatista does not exist,’ said Dryden. ‘No records at all of the name exist before his capture in Greece 1943.’

Several heads nodded, and wine slurped.

‘So.’ Casartelli bridged his plump-knuckled fingers. ‘They told us he was a deserter. Worse. He had been in Greece, part of the force sent in to provide civilian occupation. The Germans were the military governors, of course, and they told Serafino to guard a village. He was the resident guard there, and the villagers looked after him well as they always did. The name of the village we forget now, but the villagers will never forget his: Serafino Ricci. He betrayed them.’

‘How?’ said Dryden, ploughing on, sensing they wanted him to know.

‘Serafino left. He faked his death – leaving behind the bloodied rifle the Germans had given him. The assumption was clear – the villagers had murdered their guard – or the partisans in the hills had done it for them. There was a proclamation then, notorious even now. Reprisals were part of the justice system – for Serafino’s life they had to take another.’

Dryden felt his throat go dry. ‘So, they just shot someone? Because Serafino was dead?’

‘Yes. A shameful day – yes?’

Dryden nodded. ‘I don’t understand. How did the British authorities know who Serafino was if he had never given them his name?’

Casartelli brushed the sweat on his forehead away with the back of his hand. ‘The witness who had identified Serafino was a German officer – one of the prisoners who had taken his place in the camp. We do not know how this happened, we learned only later. But we think Serafino knew, before his disappearance, that he had been recognized. Perhaps he was trying to get into the camp, Mr Dryden. Blackmail? Murder? Now we will never know.’

‘And he would have known about the tunnel?’

There was a long silence in which Dryden could hear the distant sound of romantic dogs.

‘Yes. He was one of the gardeners.’ There was laughter, and the clink of glasses.

Dryden recalled the snapshot Pepe had shown him: the five men laughing together, sharing a secret, with their compatriot behind the lens.

‘There were six?’ he said, and Casartelli nodded. ‘And they dug the tunnel, and dumped the soil in the garden they tilled between the huts. Of course.’ Dryden felt pleased, knowing the silence said he was right.

Everyone smiled. ‘But why did no one escape?’

Casartelli shrugged. ‘We know only one thing. The gardeners are all dead now. The tunnel – we knew of it, of course. But only the gardeners knew where it was, and only they could use it.’

‘But they never did,’ said Dryden.

There was a cough from the counter and Dryden saw Pepe standing in the shadows, and it struck him for the first time that he was childless in this family-dominated world.

‘No. A mystery,’ said Casartelli, standing. ‘We will never know why. It was 1944 by the time they were under the wire. I think. Perhaps they loved the garden more than the idea of escape!’

Everyone laughed again, but Dryden sensed it was manufactured this time, and the accordion music washed away the atmosphere of confession. A rival conversation broke out at another table, then several more. Casartelli was gone, and one of his compatriots pressed coffee on Dryden, and Italian cigarettes.

Then the grappa bottle appeared. Dryden was led by several reeling Italians to see some pictures on the wall. The association’s members on a trip to Rome, a Christmas celebration at Il Giardino crowded with grandchildren.

‘And this?’ asked Dryden, pausing in front of a small mounted glass case. Inside were five mother-of-pearl buttons, each marked with a silver crest – a lion holding a bell.

There was silence until Casartelli spoke. ‘The gardeners,’ he said. ‘Each had one of these. They wore them as badges. They were proud of what they’d done, perhaps too proud.’

‘But where…?’ Dryden was steered away, back to the grappa bottle. He begged two glasses and took one out for Humph. They sat, the cab doors open, and drank in silence under a heart-stopping sky, the blue thin enough to hint that the stars were just beyond.

Taxis began to pick up the revellers. Casartelli emerged, blinking, and made his way towards a large convertible Honda driven by a young man with Latin good looks. Dryden walked over.

‘Mr Dryden – my grandson, Wayne. Wayne – what kind of name is that!’

The boy laughed at what was clearly an old family joke.

Dryden stepped in close. ‘Names. You haven’t forgotten, have you? The name of the village?’

Casartelli was sober instantly. He straightened his tie, thinking. ‘I’m sure the authorities would tell you. This is something we would rather forget. But your life and our lives have come together, yes?’

He ran his hand back over the shell case that was his head. ‘Agios Gallini. That was the name. The name of the village Serafino betrayed.’