She showed me in, left us to it, and the headmaster asked me to sit down. He looked a little concerned about something, though I couldn’t think what.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I expect you’re wondering why you’ve been called here.’
‘It did kind of cross my mind, yes,’ I said meekly. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘That depends on what you consider to be wrong. The plain fact is, Elisa, you have not been attending classes as regularly as we expect of you. In fact, there have been whole days when you have not been at school at all. Is there some reason for this?’
So that was what this was all about. In a way, I’d been expecting it: crumbling education system or not, teachers will still keep tabs on you. It’s in their DNA, I think.
‘I’ve…had things to do,’ I said obliquely. ‘Legal stuff.’
‘And school time is the best time to do it. I suppose.’
‘The only time, actually. I mean, you don’t know what my father’s done, what I’ve found out about him.’
‘Go on,’ he said simply.
So I told him. Briefly, I told him about the fathers group and the meeting, the pack of lies he told about this whole stupid abduction business. I told him about applying for single custody and the papers I’d found—and especially about Allegato 4, the blatant lie to the court. I finished up with me tracking the judge down and cornering him with the evidence.
‘…So you see,’ I ended weakly, ‘I’ve been really kind of tied up with things. I know I should have been here and it was probably wrong of me to just skip off and maybe I should have told someone what I was doing but then I figured you’d maybe not let me do it so I had to just…well…not be here. Sorry…’
He didn’t say anything, just sat there gazing thoughtfully at me, his hands clasped across his chest. All at once, I was reminded of the interview with my father.
‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘while I understand why you did what you did, I’m not sure I can condone your using school time in which to do it. You understand?’
I nodded glumly. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘If there are further absences that have not been pre-approved—by me, in person—I will have to take the matter up with your father. Do you understand?’
I nodded again.
‘And I hope,’ he went on, ‘that you noted the emphasis. Any request for absence will have to be approved. By me. In person. I hope we understand each other.’
I looked up at that, couldn’t think why he’d felt it necessary to ram that one point home. But then I caught the twinkle in his eye and I understood. Oh yeah, I understood. And I felt a whole lot better.
‘Thank you,’ I breathed quietly.
He waved that away, went on a little more gently. ‘Have you had contact with your mother yet?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s impossible! My father has everything sewn up at home so I can’t make a call. I’ve written a letter to her that a sympathetic aunt said she would post but I’ve no idea if she did or if it arrived but apart from that…’
‘Hmm.’
He said nothing more, just picked up his phone and pressed a single button. A moment’s silence then he was handing it to me.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Someone wishes to speak to you.’
I took it, spoke a single puzzled word. ‘Hello?’
‘Elisa?’
‘Mum!’ I could hardly believe it. ‘Mum! Oh God but—how—?’
‘Your school! Your headmaster!’ She was crying, I could tell. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Yeah! I mean yes! I mean—’
‘John! It’s Elisa! Come on! Come and talk to her!’
‘But mum—’ But I could hear the phone being handed over, my mother collapsing into tears as John took over.
‘Hey! Hey, how are you?’
‘I’m fine! I’m okay! Is mum all right?’
‘Yeah, she’s just a bit…you know…overwhelmed. She’ll be okay. Just give her a few minutes, that’s all.’
‘No sweat but—but what are you doing there? Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘I took the day off. We knew this call was going to happen and your mum wanted me around for it.’
I didn’t answer, just glanced at the headmaster: a lot had been going on here since my last visit to this office, it seemed.
‘John, look,’ I said, ‘there’s something I need to know. I sent a letter. Did it arrive?’
‘It did, sweetie. We know everything.’
‘We’ve got to fight this, John! My father cannot be allowed to get away with this!’
‘He won’t. I’ve engaged a top London lawyer who will be contacting the Italian courts soon. We’re going to fight this—Hang on, your mum’s back.’
More shuffling as the phone was handed back. Then:
‘Oh God, Elisa, it’s so good to hear you again.’
‘Mum—!’
‘You can’t believe how much we’ve missed you!’
‘Mum, listen—!’
‘We think about you day after day and night after night!’
‘Mum, PLEASE!’
‘Sorry, sorry. I know your headmaster has arranged this call and we’re probably running up his phone bill but—You see? There I go again! Sorry, darling, what was it you wanted to say?’
‘You got the letter from Aunt Eliana—yes?’
‘Yes, indeed I did! She also added a little note of her own saying that if I wanted to write back, I could send the letter to her and she would find a way to get it to you. Wasn’t that kind of her? Who is she, by the way?’
‘Who is she? But…don’t you know?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘Mum, I said she’s my aunt! That makes her papa’s sister!’
‘Vittorio has a sister called Eliana? He never told me.’
‘No and I know why. Long story, I’ll tell you it one day. But look, the letter: you got what I said about him applying for single custody.’
‘Yes but he won’t succeed.’
‘You’re sure of that. One thing I didn’t say in the letter was that he’d made the case something called Inaudita altera parte, which means that you won’t be heard in court.’
‘He can do that?’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it. Look, leave that side of things to me, just do whatever you can over there to help me over here. He’s trying to cut off all contact between you and me.’
‘But…why? What have I done to him that would make him do such a thing?’
‘I wish I knew. Just now, he’s like a man insane—he’s almost paranoid! He checks on my every move, and when he’s not around, he leaves the governess—’
‘He’s hired a governess?’
‘If you can call her that, yes. I’m not sure she’s what you would call qualified, though.’
‘Probably cheap, that would be all the qualification he needed. He was never exactly generous when it came to providing the essentials, no matter how much money he was earning. Go on.’
I shrugged, a stupid gesture for a phone call. ‘What more can I say? He wants you cut out of my life completely. He wants me totally Sicilian, he wants every last drop of Englishness knocked out of me.’
‘And what do YOU want, darling?’
She said it quietly, almost shyly, and I felt the tears well up in my own eyes. What did I want? Like she didn’t know already, of course. What I said next wasn’t easy to get out—
‘I want to come home.’
—and I fell apart in the chair. It wasn’t anything dramatic, I just couldn’t speak any more, just felt the phone being lifted out of my hand, heard a voice speaking gently into it, speaking in a perfect English I never knew he had.
‘Hello?…Yes, she’s all right. Just a little upset, I think…That would probably be best, yes…Of course I will…I’ll see what I can arrange…Goodbye.’
The phone clicked back onto its rest. I looked up, dragged a sleeve across my eyes.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered.
‘It was nothing. Your mother asked me to tell you she loves you, by the way, and that she would like to speak again soon.’
‘That was the bit about seeing what you could arrange—yes?’ I sniffed.
‘It was. And if at need, if I consider it necessary again—’
‘—you’ll have your secretary yank me out of class for another stiff talking to. Yeah, I know.’
‘If you know of a better way of summoning you without raising suspicion, let me hear it.’
‘Just fooling around, you should know me by now. But this call, you arranged it, didn’t you? That means you’d already called her.’
He nodded. ‘I had.’
‘But—’
‘Elisa, understand something, please. I don’t like your father.’
‘You—you don’t?’
‘You seem surprised.’
‘But you’ve only ever met him the once.’
‘And had telephone calls from him almost every day since you started here.’
‘WHAT!’ This was news to me. Unsurprising but still news. ‘What was his problem?’
‘Your education,’ he said simply. ‘He wanted to be certain that you would be taught Ancient Greek and Latin, plus the classics, plus as much culture as he thought fit for the daughter of a distinguished scientist of international standing.’
‘Yeah, he really is a legend in his own lunchtime. But he wanted that?—No, wait! That’s the sort of education he had so of course he would want it for me. So what did you say to him?’
‘That, my dear Elisa, is not something I am allowed to tell you. There are certain confidences I cannot betray and this is one of them.’
‘Okay, understood. So you found a way to hit back by arranging this call with mum.’
‘Not at all,’ he said innocently. ‘I was merely doing my job as a concerned headmaster. After all, distracted students are poor learners.’
‘A good school policy,’ I added dryly.
‘Indeed.’ He reached for his phone again. For one crazy moment, I thought this would be the call soon that mum had asked for but of course I was wrong. ‘Maria?…Would you be kind enough to bring in coffee for two, please? And some of our special biscuits?…Thank you.’
He set the phone back down, sat back in his chair.
‘I see no reason for you to return to your class just yet. Tell me what else has happened since I last saw you.’
TWENTY THREE
You’re probably wondering if I was walking on air after that call, and you’d be wrong. Nothing so dramatic: life just seemed to heave a little sigh of relief and went on. I went to school and tried to keep up with the work, I went home and tried to keep out of my father’s way. And he, when something nudged him to remember I existed, would force a smile and some vague and disinterested enquiry after how I was. So no, no great change, but I did feel a whole lot better for a while. It was like suddenly discovering I had allies, people on my side, people ready to step in say Hold on a goddam minute, something about this set-up ain’t right. It counted for a lot.
I guess it allowed me to cruise a little for a while, that much I’ll admit. During that time, nothing much happened, no one came to visit us. I remained banned from beloved nonna’s Sunday gatherings, though my father was permitted by royal consent to continue his dutiful son act, but I guessed that was more to allow him to report in my progress on being reprogrammed as a Sicilian teenage female Version 2.0 than anything else. Yeah, that’s how it was. Apart from that, nothing. It was a lull in the fighting. No one manoeuvring. Everyone taking time out to reposition their forces, consider their next move. What no one knew was that mine was already mapped out.
Like I said a lot earlier in this tale, I had a weapon, a Russian battleship of massive girth and awesome firepower. And in this break in hostilities, with everyone off their guard, even beginning to relax, I kind of figured the time was maybe ripe to roll it out.
It was a warm and lazy Saturday afternoon, then, that found me creeping along the landing and knocking gently on her door.
‘Anya?’
Nothing. I knocked again, but still gently. My father was downstairs in his study, and while like I say, things had quietened down a little, he was still on alert. This time, there was stirring from within.
‘Is it time for make supper already?’ a sleepy voice groaned.
I clicked the door open and peered in. ‘It’s me, Anya. No, it’s not time for making supper but it is time for a life-changing experience.’
‘You not make sense.’
I slipped inside, closing the door behind me. ‘Just get up, Anya, and I’ll explain.’
She heaved herself up on one elbow, blinked hazily in the half-light of drawn curtains. ‘What experience? Sleep only experience I need this moment.’
‘Your bikini,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
She blinked again, seemed to be struggling to bring something to recall. Then her pudgy face was flickering into slow understanding.
‘I have time to thinking,’ she said, ‘and I not thinking it good idea any more.’
‘But you said you liked my father! Very fine man—that’s what you said!’
‘He like my cooking. He keep Anya around for cooking. That good enough.’
‘But don’t you want more out of life?’
‘Yes. Sleep. Goodnights.’
She lay back again, pulled the blanket over her head to shut me out. I grabbed it and pulled it down again. She glared back, glared daggers at me.
‘Look, Anya,’ I said, ‘you have to do this. Think of the future! You can’t spend the rest of your life as a governess. I’ll grow up, leave home and you’ll be out of a job.’
‘Someone else take Anya. Always someone else with childrens for look after.’
‘But that someone else might not treat you so well as my father treats you. What are you going to do then? There are some pretty hairy stories out there about governesses, you know. Not all of them get their own room to sleep in.’
‘They not?’
‘They definitely not. Some are made to sleep in the shed. In the garden.’
‘That not right. I complain if family send me to shed.’
‘And be thrown off the job before you even finish speaking,’ I said firmly. ‘Come on, Anya, this is your only chance for some kind of better future.’
‘If you saying so,’ she sighed uncertainly. ‘What I do?’
‘Hit him with your bikini! I told you, he needs to see the real you, the you you’ve kept hidden all this time.’
‘What if he not like what he see?’
She had a point. Some men like large women, true, and she was…well…large but—but then, that wasn’t the point of this exercise.
‘He’ll like you, Anya. Trust me. Come on! Get up!’
She swung her ample legs round and heaved herself upright. As she sat there on the edge of the bed, with not a lot going for her and all of it about to be exposed to the world, I felt a pang of guilt. She’d got caught up in a conflict that had not been of her own making and was about to become a casualty of it. I guessed a lot of wars are fought like that, the innocent the first and the biggest losers. I figured I was only doing what countless generals before me had done. Didn’t make me feel any better, though.
‘You’ve still got it, I take it,’ I said. ‘I mean, you haven’t just thrown it out.’
‘It in drawer!’ she said, pained. ‘I not throw it out.’
‘Okay, okay. So look, I’ll step outside and you change into it.’
She didn’t answer, just sort of glared at me again as I slipped back onto the landing. She wouldn’t be long. At least, I hoped she wouldn’t. I glanced down the stairway, listened hard to the sounds coming from my father’s study, but he was busy tapping keys on his laptop. Writing another article, no doubt. Part of his job as a scientist is to look as if he knows what he’s talking about, and a long stream of magazine submissions containing big words and complex formulae are his way
of maintaining that illusion. I knew that a rival had publicly questioned his research and he wasn’t happy about that. After all, he’s the great Doctor Pellegrino, the world-renowned scientist with the Nobel Prize just within his grasp, and no one, but no one questions the research of the great Doctor Pellegrino, the world-renowned scientist with the Nobel Prize just within his grasp. One thing was for sure: that keyboard would be smoking yet a while.
I glanced back at the door, pressed an ear to it to listen for sounds of movement. There was a shuffling of some sort but no more. I pushed the door open a little again.
‘Anya? Are you okay?’
‘I having trouble!’ she called back. ‘How this part go on?’
‘Which part?’
‘Top part. Part that holds—’
‘Yeah, yeah! I get the picture. It’s just like putting a bra on, no different.’
‘But there no clip on back!’
I thought for a moment and she was right. The one bikini I had was the same, had to be put on in a different way.
‘You’ve got three holes, one large and two smaller ones there—right?’ I started to explain.
‘Da-a-a-a.’
‘You put your head through the big hole and your arms through the smaller ones, and you pull it down and over yourself like you were putting on a T-shirt.’
‘Okay. I try.’
I pulled the door closed again to give her some privacy, glanced down to my father’s study, wondered if he’d heard any of this. The tapping on the keyboard had stopped but that could mean anything. Maybe he was checking something, something to be used in a blistering broadside against his now bitter enemy, possibly some facts, more probably some dirt from the past to destroy this guy’s credibility and thereby any hope of anything he said being taken seriously. Either way, there was silence down there and—and the door to his study opened.
I froze, not daring to move. From where I was standing, I could see him perfectly, and he me if he looked up. I watched as it swung back…he marched out…headed for the kitchen. I heard water being run, the kettle being switched on, the clang and clatter of cups being moved and teaspoons being rummaged, and I felt myself breathe again. Making coffee, obviously.
I glanced back at Anya’s door, hoping she wasn’t ready yet, hoping even more that she wouldn’t call out with some other problem. She seemed to be taking her time, though, and that was good. I was trying hard not it imagine it, trying to fight off images of that great bulk squeezing itself into that tiny outfit. It wasn’t easy. So I busied myself with watching the kitchen doorway again, concentrated on listening for the sound of water being poured, the sure sign that my father would soon be back in his study. It came all too slowly, was followed by him taking his time spooning sugar into the cup—taking a sip—finally throwing the teaspoon in the sink and coming back. I shrank against the wall, hoping he was too preoccupied to look up. He was and he didn’t. But I didn’t relax until the door of his study closed softly on him again. And it was then that I knew I had to get this over with. Fast.