Sister Matelda went back inside the convent. Domenica tucked the letter from John into her apron pocket and walked down to the river.
* * *
The curtains were drawn in the window of John McVicars’s bedroom. A sliver of light rested on the sill under the rolling shade. He turned over in the bed away from the light and squeezed his eyes shut to finish the dream that was in full play as he slept. He found his way back to the scene where he had left it when the light stirred him.
“Where are you going?” he called to Domenica, who was in midair.
The wind fluttered her dress and lifted her body higher into the clouds. He could not reach her.
“Where are you going?” John hollered up to her again.
When McVicars woke up, he was feverish and his mouth was dry. He remembered the dream. Domenica was out of his reach. It was one of those dreams where you have a task and you cannot complete it because your feet are rooted in the earth.
Another chance, he thought to himself. Hastily he rose, dressed, and packed his duffel. He folded the letters on the desk and returned them to their envelopes before tying the stack together with a string. He tucked the letters into his uniform jacket before going down the stairs. He threw the duffel by the door before joining his mother in the kitchen.
“Do you want beans and toast? Bacon?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“How did you sleep?”
“Fitfully. Mother, I’m leaving this house.”
“Where are you going?”
McVicars said nothing. He pulled the stack of letters from Domenica out of his pocket. “Mother, what did you do?”
The color left her face. She turned away and lifted the teakettle off the stove.
“You kept these letters from me. Why?”
“No son of mine is going to end up with a Tally.”
“She’s a nurse. And a good person.”
“I know all about her.” She snickered.
“Because you opened my mail and read my letters and then you hid them from me.”
“They came to my house.”
McVicars was furious, but he knew from years of experience that his rage would do nothing to move his mother to see his point of view. “I’m going to go to her, if she’ll have me after what you’ve done.”
“She won’t,” his mother assured him.
“Did you think for one moment pretending to be me, sending a letter I did not sign, typed on your old Underwood, would stop me from marrying the woman I love?”
McVicars grabbed his duffel and left.
Grizelle opened the Daily Mail newspaper on the kitchen table. She read the front page, then slowly turned to read the second. She adjusted the eyeglasses on her nose and peered down to read an article that caught her eye.
THE DAILY MIRROR
By John Boswell
There are more than 20,000 Italians in Great Britain. London alone shelters more than 11,000 of them. The London Italian is an indigestible unit of population. He settles here more or less temporarily, working until he has enough money to buy himself a little land in Campania or Tuscany. He often avoids employing British labour. It is much cheaper to bring a few relations into England from the old hometown. And so the boats unloaded all kinds of brown eyed Francescas and Marias, beetle-browed Ginos, Titos and Marios . . . now every Italian colony in Great Britain and America is a seething cauldron of smoking Italian politics. Black Fascism. Hot as Hell. Even the peaceful, law abiding proprietor of the back-street coffee shop bounces into a fine patriotic frenzy at the sound of Mussolini’s name . . . we are nicely honeycombed with little cells of potential betrayal. A storm is brewing in the Mediterranean. And we, in our droning, silly tolerance are helping it to gather force.
Grizelle McVicars picked up a pencil and circled the word “betrayal.” He’ll be back, she said confidently to herself.
* * *
Amedeo Mattiuzzi the jeweler had received a wire from his cousin in London dated 28 April 1940: See you in Brighton. L.M.
The wire was code and carried a dire warning. Mattiuzzi had to move his important inventory out of the shop immediately. His wife studied the newspapers upstairs and made notes in Italian that she kept in an empty flour bin. She cut out articles about Britalians and Tallies who had been picked up in the streets of London for small crimes or on the suspicion of them. The articles mentioned gambling, illegal wine production, black market hard-liquor sales, and fenced jewelry. But the truth was, a man only needed his Italian surname to be implicated.
Mattiuzzi soon had proof that something dire had been planned. The equerry from Holyroodhouse showed up unannounced and asked for the ruby brooch and pin set that had been commissioned by the royal family. The previous plan had been for Mattiuzzi to keep the jewel until a ceremony the following spring. They must know something, Mattiuzzi figured. He gave them the jewelry, and they offered no excuse for the change of plan in return.