6. Nov, 2021

'Full Circle'

Italian Prisoners-of-War Working on the Land, 1942, by Michael Ford.                      

Three young men worked side by side in the flat, frozen fields of North Yorkshire, cutting brussels sprouts in a surly dawn. They were Italian prisoners of war from Eden camp on a farm work detail.

“What a country! When your harvest is gathered in the frost,” grumbled one, stamping his feet and trying to blow on numbed hands to warm them, his breath joining the faint, cold mist all around.

“You were glad enough to get here,” said a second, straightening up to glance round at him.

They spoke in their own language but kept their tone conversational and light to avoid attracting notice.

“You still don’t trust me, Fiore? I’m a prisoner here with the two of you, aren’t I?”

“We were conscripted. Caught together in the East in ‘41. You, Rossi? You came later. I knew of your family in my home town, don’t forget – rich people, powerful people.” He gave a short laugh. “Of course, you didn’t know of me.”

“I’ve changed sides, just the same as the two of you did,” declared the first.

“A leopard doesn’t change its spots. I’ll find out when I get back to Italy.”

“When you do? If, don’t you mean?” said Rossi, spreading palms upwards to the heavens. “Why should we wait any longer? I tell you, this is the perfect time to make a run for it! There’s nobody about for miles here.”

“We’ve got big red circles on our backs so they can shoot us, if you hadn’t noticed,” said Fiore. “There’s an armed guard, and the farmer on that tractor over there’s got his rifle handy.”

“Two amateurs and a old man!” scoffed the first (the home guard providing their escort and the farmer being in late middle age). “What do you say, Serra?”

“I say we do it,” agreed the third man, joining in the conversation for the first time. “As we’ve said before, how do we know they won’t execute us in the end? Anything can happen in war time.”

This was something they all agreed on. Risks had to be taken if you wanted your liberty, and each of them did. This was the morning they had planned on making a break for it if they got the chance to run. With one last exchange of looks, they sprinted without warning in separate directions. The flight did not last long for all of them. The farmer, standing up on his tractor, had them quickly in his sights. Serra was the first to drop, shot in the back. Fiore, turning to see the gun swing away from Rossi towards himself, raised his hands to surrender at once, as Rossi vanished successfully into the fog hanging over the flat brown land.

                                                     ***

Piero and Alessa’s wedding in July 1966 followed on from the procession of the Madonna del Rosario (our Lady of the Rosary). Men carried the statue of the virgin and children were festive in a white froth of first communion clothes. They walked from Little Italy in Ancoats to Manchester City Centre. Then the wedding celebrants returned to be married, in one of the churches whose bell, visible in a short open tower, marked it out as belonging to the Italian congregation. After all this (in respect of Alessa’s family) and a journey the next day to Piero’s father’s restaurant 'Luigi's' for his gift of a wedding meal (in respect of his family), the young couple had every intention of honeymooning in swinging sixties London. The traditions would have been observed by then to keep everybody else happy. Neither side had met as yet, the young people having come across one another in the lively community of settled Italians in Manchester, while working in the city.

“You’ll love my father,” Piero had assured them all cheerfully once more, ushering their party on to the train north. “Everybody does.”

Alessa’s father had paused to say,

“You will always have a father in me now too, my boy,” as he boarded, which Piero gladly accepted with a cheerful smile.

“We’ll meet you at the station in Malton!” he called out, as the train chugged off and he and Alessa went to climb into his red Alpha Romeo sports car to drive up themselves.

“I hope the rain holds off if you keep that top down!” said Alessa (who didn’t hail from Manchester for nothing) making Piero, who was ever optimistic, just laugh and say,

“It’s summertime and our wedding celebrations – of course it will!”

                                                 ***

Luigi’s restaurant in Malton was an old-fashioned kind of place which served its meals with a side order of deference. People felt special there. Cutlery as heavy as fire irons was used to set the tables. Thick linen tablecloths and folded napkins were crisply starched. If you ordered fish, a lemon slice came in a hinged silver segment to squeeze on to your dover sole. Luigi himself always came round to ask if the customers were enjoying their meals, with the air of a prince amongst men. Piero and Alessa arrived with her family to find the tables being laid out as reverently as altars by the staff, with nobody to dine there today except their own company. There were numbers of relatives to accommodate.

“Papà!” called out Piero, as they entered the hallowed seeming portals, crystal gleaming, dark wood walls showing up the white of the tablecloths even more.

Luigi appeared and a great fuss of handshaking was made by both the fathers, each mother taking a measure of the opposite wedding party. Luigi was all caramel smooth – butter fat in the jowls and a bit stout, but still an elegant figure in his dark suit. Alessa’s father, Oreste, had bristles of silver hair cut very short. He was heavy set and more aged by working in a cotton mill, so that he appeared the older of the two men by several years. Alessa’s family said they were very happy with their hotel rooms (booked courtesy of Piero’s father) and the bride and groom dressed again in their wedding attire to make an entrance for the meal.

The food was a generous banquet, served by waitresses in black dresses, white aprons and little, circular fronted hats, adding to the sense of a more old-fashioned splendour in the place. Finally, an Italian wedding cake, presented in separate, flat round tiers on a big cake stand, was brought through to great acclaim. The bride and groom were toasted, cut the cake together and the waitresses served it out to all the guests. Afterwards, there was dancing in the other ground floor room available for occasions, and a long night came to a happy close with tired and replete guests. With much suggestive cheering, whistling and clapping, the bride and groom left for their own room in the hotel across the road. After that, the other friends and family left for there too, or to go home themselves. Only the new fathers-in-law stayed behind for a brief nightcap, and to have a celebratory chat together to cement joining their families in marriage.

“Perhaps a little talk of Italy, Oreste, two old men together?” suggested Luigi to Alessa’s father, fetching out a bottle of Vecchio Romagna brandy.

“Gladly, Luigi,” agreed Alessa’s father.

Alessa’s mother, who had her  sisters with her for company, made no objection and they left them to it. The two men went into Luigi’s private room, a luxurious office with pictures on the walls and deep armchairs, as well as his fine, leather topped business desk. Matching brandy glasses were filled and a smiling toast was made by Luigi, who now spoke in Italian, the English guests on each side of their parties having left.

“I am sure we will find we have much in common, Oreste.”

“We do,” Oreste assured him.

“From your accent, you and I hail from the same sort of area?”

“The very same. The Rossis are famous there.”

“Oh…” Luigi waved an airy hand. “Once, perhaps. You flatter the name.”

“No flattery of it intended. You were rich, influential people before the war – and during it, remained in powerful positions. There were partisans murdered then.”

“Sad times,” Luigi said, retaining his smile. “Best forgotten.”

“You forget much, do you?”

“Why remember a bad past? Such matters were beyond all our control back then. The war is long over.”

“How did you come here, Luigi?”

“Oh, the old, old story – I was a prisoner of war here, fell in love with a local girl, the farmer’s daughter no less, and here I stayed. Yourself, Oreste?”  

“I returned to Italy after the war, where I found what had become of my younger brothers, executed as partisans before Italy fell. There was nothing left there. My parents were dead too. I came to England, to Manchester where my mother had family that came over as velvet makers in the old days, long before either World War.”

“Then – I understand why you remember those times. Let us make another toast in their memory and put the past to rest. We have our children to make a future now.”

Luigi stood to refill the brandy glasses, using the desk as a table, and Oreste stabbed him through the back from behind. Luigi fell across the desk, arms outspread, a red circle of blood spreading fast from the fatal wound.

“You were the man in command who had my captured brothers executed,” said Oreste. “After that, Luigi Rossi, later in the war – you were caught too. Do you remember me now? Fiore and Serra, who ran away with you from the field. Only, you had already colluded with the farmer, hadn’t you, whose daughter you were to marry later? I expect you promised him plenty of family money from back home to bribe him as well. He shot Serra dead to cover you and I only saved myself by giving up immediately to the other guards. He deliberately let you escape and must have hidden you later. I know that now. They moved me from Eden to a camp in Manchester, and from there I made contact with my mother’s family. I came back to them when I found out what had happened in Italy. ”

A gurgling sound escaped Luigi, as if even now he would defend himself, but he could not move.  Oreste Fiore went on,

“I have never spoken of those days. But when Alessa met Piero and he talked of his parents, where you lived, how you came here – I knew who Piero Rossi’s father really was, and exactly how he had come to marry and live in England so comfortably. Oh, it’s a common enough name, Rossi, but he looks a little as you did, Luigi, enough for me to know, and he’s easy to get talking. He makes the mistake of being proud of his father, but of course, he has never known the full story, has he? Do not worry about him. I have already told him I will be a father to him now. I won’t take away his memory of you. Piero doesn’t need to know what a creature you really are.”

Another faint gasp came from Luigi, a struggling breath, but Oreste had not finished quite yet.

“You wear the red circle on your back now that you truly deserve. It has been a very long time, Rossi – but this is for my brothers, for Waldo Serra, and for me – Oreste Fiore. You will not forget us now, even though you never gave any of us another thought again in your life later, did you?”

Luigi Rossi did not answer, however, because he was dead. Oreste removed the knife with an effort and wrapped it in his big cotton handkerchief, restoring it to his pocket to be disposed of later somewhere. Putting on his wedding gloves, he disturbed things in the office, drawers rifled through in the desk as if looking for money. In the restaurant, empty of all the staff now, in the dark, he wrenched open the cash register and left it that way. Finally, leaving the door ajar after himself, he went calmly across the road to join his family at the hotel. In the morning, he was on hand to console his devastated son-in-law when the news of Luigi’s murder was brought. It looked as if some opportunist burglars had broken in after the wedding feast, smelling money, and finding Luigi unexpectedly still there, had stabbed him in a panic. The till had been forced open and Luigi’s desk drawers rifled through for all available cash.

“He must not have closed the door properly after saying goodnight to me,” Oreste said, shaking his head. “He told me he would be leaving directly himself. I expect, after the brandies and all the other celebrating, he did not hear anything in time.”

“My father was a figure in this town. He will be very much missed!” cried a distraught Piero.

“Luigi Rossi was the kind of man who would always be remembered,” agreed Oreste gravely. “You must think of me as your father now, Piero.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” said Piero, embracing him with the open warmth that came so naturally to him, and which in him was genuine, where Luigi’s was assumed.

Oreste’s eyes met his daughter’s trusting ones over Piero’s shoulder.

“Did you know that Alessa means ‘protector of humanity’, Piero?” asked Oreste. “You did not meet by chance, I think. She will look after you too. All children are innocent.”

“I don’t understand you, sir?” said Piero, drawing back and dashing away some tears.

“Never mind,” said Oreste, patting him on the shoulder. “Never mind. Come now, my son, we must comfort your mother and then you and Alessa should go on your way. Your father would have wanted it. The last thing he celebrated was your wedding and our last toast was to your happy future together. You must go on your honeymoon to London, just as you planned. I will handle everything here and support your mother and family in arranging things. You will return in time for your father’s funeral, you may trust me on that.”

“Thank you,” said Piero again, glad to lean on his evident strength.

Consoling him in his shock, Piero’s young wife led him away with her arm through his, her father walking calmly behind them to offer his help to Piero’s mother and the rest of his family, as he had just promised to do.

“And today, Luigi Rossi,” Fiore said to himself, “We really can put the past to rest, and we do have our children to make a future now...”