The Moon Tunnel

34

‘Fun?’ said Humph as Dryden got back in the Capri. He’d texted the cabbie to pick him up at the end of Gladstone Gardens.

‘Laugh a minute. You OK?’

Humph was an odd colour, a tinge of green overlaying the usual baby-pink. Sweat twinkled on his brow under the interior light.

‘Something I ate,’ said the cabbie.

‘That hardly narrows things down, does it?’ said Dryden, rummaging in the glove compartment where he selected a dark rum. ‘The Tower please, pronto.’

The nurse at reception looked up as Dryden strode through. ‘Your wife has a visitor – her father.’

Dryden’s pulse raced: it must be bad news.

Gaetano was in the corridor, cradling a coffee in a paper cup. They embraced wordlessly, and then Dryden held him at arm’s length. ‘What’s wrong – Rosa?’

Gaetano shook his head. He was barrel-chested, with no neck but a bull’s head. But the eyes were soft and brown like his daughter’s, and retirement had made him less bowed by the burden of work.

‘She is well, Philip. She sends her love. I, I… this…’ he said, showing Dryden a printout from a computer. It was an e-mail from Laura: Come immediately if you can. Come alone.

‘But she won’t say anything – I have been here all day. Nothing.’

‘Sometimes it happens,’ said Dryden. ‘The doctors always said it would – sometimes for weeks. We have to be patient.’

‘But there is something on the screen – for you,’ he said, biting his lip.

He was right. Laura always kept a document on screen called MESSAGE BOARD. During the day she added thoughts as they came to her and Dryden could read them when he arrived in the evening.

There was only one new message: P. PRIVATE DOC OPEM. LET HIM READ IT ALONE. LX.

Gaetano was by the window, looking out at the monkey puzzle tree.

‘She wants you to read something.’ Gaetano came to the bedside and Dryden put the cursor on the document, hitting the print button. ‘She wants you to read it alone. I’ll be outside – by the cab.’

He gave his father-in-law the printout and fled. Outside he drank in the air, trying to counteract the lingering effects of sleeplessness. He glanced at the Capri, but Humph was asleep, his head back on the seat rest, his language tape playing. He fingered the button in his pocket and thought of the family secrets he’d uncovered at Il Giardino. Should he tell Cavendish-Smith everything he knew, everything he suspected? He watched the moon, remembering Valgimigli’s butchered head, steaming in the cool night air.

Suddenly Humph’s tape ended, the Capri’s interior light showing that the cabbie was slumped in innocent sleep. The silence was punctuated by the crunch of footsteps on gravel and Gaetano appeared from the circle of light surrounding The Tower’s foyer. He sat with Dryden, a piece of paper crunched tightly in one fist. Even by moonlight Dryden could see the pallor of his skin, and his hand trembled slightly as he searched for a cigarette in the breast pocket of his shirt. Dryden took one too, happy to share the moment wordlessly.

‘She said it was my choice,’ said Gaetano, and Dryden could tell he’d been crying. ‘I could show you – or it would be our secret. A family secret. But you are family, and I want you to understand, as she does not.’

He handed Dryden the piece of paper. It was a list of names found on the internet, sheet number 75 out of 87. The list had got to R and Dryden scanned quickly to find what he was meant to find. There, half-way down the page, was Serafino Ricci – the deserter of Agios Gallini. A dozen names above him he saw Gaetano Raffo.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Dryden, playing for time. There was only one list upon which Laura would have plausibly found Serafino’s original name: a list of deserters from the Italian army.

Gaetano rested a hand on his son-in-law’s arm. They had never been close, but they had respected each other, and the future had always held the promise that they would be closer.

‘Please, I think we do. This is a list of dishonour, a list of cowards. I have not been honest. Laura is… disappointed in this.’

Laura’s judgements on her father had always been equivocal. She had loved him, and loved him for loving her mother. But he had treated his daughter differently from his sons, even if it was, simply, with a different brand of the overbearing authority he imposed on them. In the appliance of this authority Gaetano’s military past had figured large: he was proud to have fought for his country, and extolled the virtues of the discipline it had taught him. Their north London flat had displayed several pictures from Gaetano’s time in uniform, and in pride of place a list of battle honours for his division, which had taken part in the glorious march into Egypt of 1940.

‘What happened?’ asked Dryden. The reception floodlight clicked out, leaving them in the moonlight, although the Capri’s lamp still flickered.

Gaetano drew on an Italian cigarette, making the tip burn an angry amber. The silence lengthened from a minute to two. Then he took a deep breath.

‘My last day as a soldier was in a trench, in the desert. It was dusk. Yes,’ he said, seeing it. ‘The sun was down. We were looking forward to falling back, perhaps to go home. We were due leave – and the rumour was that the ships would take us, quickly, away from the battle. I was talking to a man from my village, young Biasetti, the son of my father’s best friend. We shared a cigarette like this. We were very happy, the two of us, in our trench.’

He watched the moon. ‘It is true, but I rarely heard a shot in anger in that war till then. I lit his cigarette, there was a high-pitched noise – unlike that of the bullets I had imagined, and his face just… stopped. Still. The eyes without life. Then the blood appeared, from underneath the helmet, like a curtain falling over his face.’

He took another deep breath. ‘I must have screamed. They dragged me away. To a field hospital. I was covered in blood, but it was all his. I deserted that night, just walking back through the lines. No one stopped me at all. On the coast, there was chaos then. The battle had gone badly, there were many wounded. I tried to get on one of the boats for home. I don’t remember much. They took me home though – to gaol. Sometimes I wish they’d shot me then, Philip. In Africa.’

He glanced back at the brooding mass of the old hospital: ‘She thinks I’m a coward for not fighting.’

‘She thinks you’re a coward for not telling her,’ said Dryden, pressing the old man’s hand.

They had another cigarette and Dryden offered to take his father-in-law back to PK 129, to the spare bunk, and a sleepless night. They stood, arm-in-arm, and walked to the cab.

He knew something was wrong when he opened the Capri’s passenger door. Humph’s face lolled towards him, lard white, the sweat on his brow dry, one hand held in a claw at his chest. Dryden was no expert, but as he reached out for his friend’s wrist, he was certain Humph was dead.