The Italian Wife (25 page)

‘I don’t dance, Duce,’ she said quietly.

If she made no sound, no amusing chatter, he would grow bored and discard her in favour of one of the glamorous females panting to sink their painted nails in his back.

‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Every Italian should dance.’

‘Because I am lame.’ His black eyes widened dramatically. ‘I was wounded and I limp,’ she elaborated. Very nearly added
And
I have leprosy
, but decided even he wouldn’t swallow that one.

‘Ah yes.’ He leaned close to her, eyes scouring hers, his breath sickly with the stink of brandy. ‘You were Luigi Berotti’s wife.’

‘The day my husband was shot in Milan, I was shot too. I don’t know who the murderer was. Neither do the police, it seems.’

He slid an arm along the back of her chair, coiling it around her shoulders, and let his scowl slide past her to Colonnello Sepe.

‘Is that true, Sepe?’

‘I know none of the details, Duce. It was the Milan police who dealt with the case.’

A roar of displeasure bellowed in Isabella’s ear. ‘Luigi Berotti was one of my loyal Fascisti and deserves better than this.’ His eyes flicked hungrily over Isabella and she looked away in time to see the other women at the table lick their lips. ‘His wife deserves better than this.’

‘Yes, Duce.’

‘Then we must give her better.’ As quickly as it came the dark pall of anger vanished, and just as a tenor launched himself into the anguished ‘
Dicitencello Vuie
’ song on stage, Mussolini’s voice softened to a purr. ‘You see, little one, I, Benito Mussolini, care about each and every one of my faithful followers.’

Isabella’s breathing grew shallow. ‘Duce, my husband fought hard for the Fascist cause and the imprint he made on my own life is still there. He was a warrior. If you can discover who cut off his young life, please tell me.’ Seconds slid by in a noisy silence between them. ‘Please,’ she said again.

Mussolini leaned his bulky frame back in his chair, the glare of the chandeliers rebounding off his gleaming scalp like darts of lightning as he quietly contemplated her for a full minute. She didn’t like the shrewdness of his narrowed eyes or his awareness of her need. This man was good at wrapping his fist around a person’s naked soul.

‘My dear Isabella,’ he said without lowering his voice a jot, ‘I can remove that beautiful orchid of yours if you think it will make you less noticeable. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

Sepe at her shoulder uttered a snort of scorn but she didn’t look round, didn’t risk dropping her eyes from Il Duce’
s
.

‘That’s why you’re wearing those hideous clothes, I assume,’ he continued. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Duce, it is. I want people to respect the memory of my husband.’

He released a bark of laughter and her entire body jumped when he rested his hand on hers. For ten seconds she stared at it, then took her hand away. She realised she didn’t know what to say to him or how to act, if she was to drag out of him what she wanted to hear. He reached forward and unpinned the orchid, his fingers fumbling with the material of her dress, his wrists brushed against her breast. She knew this man believed he was beyond all rules.

He tossed the bruised bloom on to the table and listened for a nostalgic moment with his head on one side to the final verse of ‘
Dicitencello Vuie
’:

I want you so much, I want you so very much,

This bond between us will never break!

‘Now,’ he touched a finger to her hot cheek, ‘signora, let us go somewhere quiet and private to discuss the killer you seek.’

22

It was like being in a cage with a lion. Nothing less. He didn’t need to roar or snarl. Just his presence was danger enough. He prowled around her where she stood in the centre of the small smoking room, an immense portrait of himself looking dynamic on horseback looming over her in case she managed to forget the power of her Duce. It was that power she wanted now. To work
for
her. Not against. A power that could drain marshes that defeated even Napoleon, the power of a man who didn’t recognise the word ‘no’.

Isabella spoke first, briskly and in a strictly businesslike tone. ‘My husband, Luigi, marched on Rome with you in October 1922. He was helping you establish the foundations that became the Fascist government and he died for it. He was shot by someone in Milan the next day, someone who also crippled me, though I was not involved in the march in any way. I am asking you for justice, Duce. It is only justice that you should find out who the killer was. I was told by someone who is now dead that the Fascist Party knows who the killer is.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘He may be a Socialist or a Communist. Or any one of the enemies of the Fascisti.’

He circled her. A flash of white in front and then behind her, unnerving her. Shoulders back, chest out, and always that cynical expression that came naturally to his face. She had a sense of an arrogant man who despised and manipulated people, who sought out their weaknesses and was master of how to corrupt souls – even the pope’s. She knew he had started out as a Socialist. At the age of twenty-nine he had been editor of the Socialist Party’s daily paper,
Avanti
. But he’d turned on them in 1914 and was labelled Judas by the working classes because he had thrown in his lot with the middle-class youth.

He mobilised them. Energised them. Turned them into his ‘
flying wedge
’ and set them on the workers who were rebelling against bad working conditions and subsistence wages. His National Fascist Party spilled blood ruthlessly in the streets and yes, Isabella was acutely aware that Luigi might well have deserved an enemy or two. At the time, wildly in love, she’d known nothing about what he did, entrenched in her youthful ignorance, but now she was wiser. Warier. She regarded the man in front of her as lethal. The beat of her heart was violent.

‘What I want to know, Duce, is what went on during that October day ten years ago in the Fascist Year 1 of the New Era. What happened and why?’ She stood straight as he circled her and she gave no hint of her fear. ‘I need to know what you can do to help me.’

He halted abruptly in front of her. ‘The bigger question, Signora Berotti, is what
you
can do for
me
?’

She pretended to misunderstand. ‘I will do all I can to make Bellina the finest town in all Italy, to the glory of Il Duce.’

His laugh was like a slap, harsh and scornful. ‘Don’t play games,
cara
mia
, not with me.’

He reached behind her head and yanked off the lace net, so that her hair broke free and cascaded around her shoulders. Mussolini twisted a hank of its dark curls around his fist and pulled her face closer to his. He was no taller than she was, and up close she could see the bad state of his skin and the sensuous curve of his upper lip. His pupils were black and huge with desire. She made herself stop pulling away from him and let her body go soft, but before she could even draw breath his lips were on hers.

Greedy lips. Selfish. Demanding. Lips that gave nothing and took everything. She crushed her urge to bite through one of them and suffered in silence the brandy-slickness of them devouring her own. His hands fumbled for the buttons at her neck and started to undo each one with impatience, a grumble sounding inside his chest when one resisted his fingers. His breath came hot and repellent on her cheek. She wanted to spit in his face. To lift her knee to ward off the press of his body, to rid herself of the smell of him, perfumed and cloying as it crawled up her nostrils.

When he reached the sixth button, that was enough. She pulled away from him but his hands still tugged at her drab dress, ripping off a button as he tried to haul her back.

‘No,’ she said sharply.

He kept one hand attached to the front of her dress but stood still, breathing hard. His eyes narrowed to dark slits. ‘What
stupid
game are you playing? With your ugly dress and your big sad blue eyes that make every man in the room want to give you something to smile about?’

Isabella shut her ears to his words. ‘Tell me, Duce, when my Luigi was one of the
squadristi
, who was the head of his cohort?’

The
Fasci di Combattimenti
, the official term for the Blackshirts, made use of the structure of Ancient Rome for its military divisions rather than follow the ranks of the Italian army. The groups were termed cohorts.

‘Why in the name of Christ Almighty would I remember a thing like that?’

‘Because you are Benito Mussolini,
Comandante General
of the Blackshirts. Because you are known to be intelligent and to remember details that other men forget. So yes, I think you will remember; I am asking you for his name.’

He exhaled fiercely. He bunched the fist that had been mauling her buttons and for one sick moment Isabella believed he was going to knock her to the floor. Maybe he
was
intending to do that, but at the last second when the decision was balanced on a knife-edge, he thumped his fist against his thigh instead with a great bark of laughter.

‘You bargain well, Isabella Berotti. I like your clever tongue, so I will admit you are right. I do remember things others forget and it serves me well. You want his name?’

‘I do.’

He touched a finger to her lips and traced their full outline. She didn’t open her mouth and bite his finger off but she did raise her hand and remove it.

‘So what is his name?’

‘It is Pietro Luciani.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘In Rome. At the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘
Grazie
.’

‘Enough questions.’

She stepped back nimbly before he could wrap a possessive arm around her. Her pulse was pounding.

‘Duce,’ she said softly, ‘leave me alone. I am honoured by your attention but you have fifty women out there who would gladly beg for your kisses. You don’t need mine. In memory of my husband, out of respect for his death, let me walk out of here to —’

‘Isabella!’ His arm snapped out and encircled her waist. ‘I don’t want one of those fifty women, I want you.’ He pulled her tight against him and she could feel the hardness of him in his white uniform, but she jabbed an elbow into his bulky ribs just as his lips sought her neck.

‘No, don’t…’

His heavy grip shifted to her throat, forcing back her head.

‘You have your answers,’ he said roughly.

‘Duce, you and I want the same thing.’

He smiled, his black eyes triumphant, a sheen of sweat on his bald scalp, and started to ease the pressure of his fingers on her throat. She kept her eyes fixed on his, not letting her fear settle on her face.

‘You and I both want this town constructed well and constructed fast. I am part of the team of architects.’ She squeezed the words out past his fingers. ‘They will not like it if they think I am being singled out for attention by our Duce. It will cause jealousies and disrupt the efficiency of —’

‘That,’ he said, dragging her face close to his by her neck, ‘is not true. However’ – abruptly he released her and she staggered, whooping air down her sore throat – ‘I choose not to take the risk.’ He jutted his broad chin at her with a sly smile on his lips. ‘You would make a good politician. I like your cleverness, Signora Berotti. I’m sure Dottore Martino does too. I begin to see why he hired you.’ He laughed, a dull anger hovering around his eyes like purple shadows. ‘You’ve got what you came for.’

‘And the business of my husband’s death? I would be grateful if you would let me know what —’

‘Enough! Your gratitude is worth nothing to me. Get out of here, girl.’

‘
Girl
’. She had been demoted from Signora Berotti to ‘
girl
’. She wanted to think he had a conscience about the death of the man he had captivated with his eloquence and indomitable will, she wanted to believe the shadows on his face were sorrow. But she wasn’t fooled. Mussolini was a man without scruple. Or remorse.

She didn’t wait there for an apology. She left the room in a hurry and only when she was outside in the marbled corridor did she see how much she was shaking.

‘Isabella?’

Isabella found Roberto. Or to be more accurate, he found her. In a place she never thought to see him. She had slipped quickly to the hotel’s ladies’ powder room to tidy herself and to avoid gossiping tongues and eyes that would cast sideways glances at her and her buttons. She knew what she had done. She knew her lips were soured and her skin dirtied, but there was no need for others to know. Especially Roberto.

She scoured her hands and her face, washed her lips and even her teeth and tongue with scalding water. But the sourness wouldn’t wash off. The dirt remained, sticking to her worse than a plague of leeches. She did up her dress buttons, ignoring the one that was missing, and plaited her hair in a thick braid that hung down her back. Maybe people wouldn’t remember the lace hairnet.
Maybe
. Maybe they wouldn’t remember that she used to be clean.

She refused to look in the mirror. Couldn’t bear to see the person who might look out at her. Instead she turned her back on it and locked herself in one of the cubicles, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. But on the inside of her eyelids the images crawled – of arrogant greedy hands and a mouth that would devour her, teeth that would crunch on her bones.
Big sad blue eyes
, that’s what Il Duce had said, but whose eyes in Italy were not sad now?

‘Isabella?’

Roberto’s voice. His fist banged on the cubicle door. ‘Are you in there?’

Isabella flexed her fingers to make sure they were no longer trembling and unlocked the door.

‘Isabella, are you all right?’

He stood in front of her, incongruous in his dark masculine jacket in the powder-puff pink room, his heavy brows drawn together. She wanted to touch the cleanness of him.