Father Francis had sharply and severely discouraged his timid wish to perfect his knowledge of reading and writing. Faith of a sort among the Italian prisoners committed to the priest’s charge was not uncommon, but unquestioning faith and regular observances such as Fabrio practised were not common, and Father Francis, who felt for this ignorant and devout soul a harsh pure love, was not going to risk its being delivered over to hell by the questioning and discontent often induced by reading. It was also as well, Father Francis decided, that Fabrio could not speak much English. He would soon be returned to his own country, where the Faith was national and not practised as a mission among heretics, and there, among a peasantry which was still devout, his soul would be safe.
On the morning of his first lesson with Sylvia, Fabrio lay on the sacks in the granary, finishing the lump of hard cheese which he had been sharing with the dog Ruffler, who lay at his side. He looked sulky; he resented the plan and the fact that she had made it, and he dreaded the coming lesson in which she would discover that he could spell out only the simplest words and barely write his own name. She will make fun of me, he thought; that’s why she offered to teach me. I wish it were Maria who was coming instead, and he pulled out the cheap worn wallet where he kept his identity card and a few other papers and glanced proudly over the lines of Maria’s last letter, which told him a little about affairs at San Angelo and a great deal about how much your friend, Maria Amato, misses you. It had that morning been read aloud to him by Emilio. There is a girl, thought Fabrio, returning the letter to his pocket, not a half-boy with a voice like the
pavone
in the gardens up at the great Villa at home.
“Yoo-hoo!” cried the voice of that same peacock, and her head came round the granary door, “Oh, there you are, I thought you might be. (Hullo, Ruffler, good boy.) You ready, Fabrio? Come along, then, let’s go and sit on the rick, it isn’t going to rain after all,” and without waiting for his answer she strode off. Ruffler glanced inquiringly at Fabrio, then went away on his own affairs.
Fabrio got up leisurely, with the grace that no one at the farm had noticed, and followed her out into the daylight. She had seated herself upon the heap of straw at the foot of the rick, which looked across a field of brilliant green winter wheat to a marshy coppice, already yellow with catkins; the wind was from the west and blew into their faces fresh odours from grass and wet straw and brimming pools hidden in the woods; all the sky was hurrying and confused with low clouds grey as pearls, and clear spring light lay over the scene.
She was smiling and holding out a packet of cigarettes, invitingly opened but as yet unrifled.
“Will —you—have—a—cigarette,—Fabrio?” she said in the voice of an affected schoolmistress.
Fabrio accepted one and muttered his thanks in his own language, for he was too embarrassed to attempt English. He lit it and inhaled a few puffs without making any movement to seat himself by her side. He glanced down at her; her hair was almost concealed by her cap and a little smear of chocolate from the recent meal was on her chin. He glanced away again, thinking Holy Mother, how white her skin is.
“Sit—down,—Fabrio.” She made room for him and brought a book out of her pocket. “Here—is—a—book—for—you—to—learn—from. I—bought—it—in—Horsham. It—has—a—funny—name. Look!” and she held it out to him.
This was the second time in a few weeks that a woman had held out a book to Fabrio, as if it were the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and the familiar feeling of reverence, interest, humiliation and rage which he always experienced upon seeing a book began to invade him. But there was no look of amused, superior interest upon Sylvia’s young face to make him long to assert himself as a man, there was no Mr. Hoadley here to shout at him, and the feeling subsided. He swallowed once or twice, and then read slowly aloud in the beautiful voice which nervousness made slightly less deep than usual:
“Re—re-ad-ing—redd-ing wi-oout——” He broke off, and impatiently shook his head; then suddenly glanced at her, smiled shamefacedly, and sank down by her side.
“Why—that—is—very—good!” cried his governess approvingly, moving a little away from him. “
Reading
—
Without
—
Tears
. Look—at—the—pictures,—aren’t—they—corny—(old-fashioned),” and she turned the pages with their woodcuts of chubby children in crinolines or round jackets gathered about their mother’s beflounced knee.
“
Anticamente
,” nodded Fabrio, his face expressing deepest interest.
“We—will—not—start—reading—to—day,” pronounced
Miss
Scorby, shutting the book upon an exciting picture of some little boys having a fight. “To—day—we—will—have—conversation. Good morning, Fabrio,” leaning towards him and nodding and smiling. “Now—you—tell—me—in—Italian.”
Fabrio wanted to go on looking at the pictures, in which he took a child’s pleasure, and his expression became sulky again as he muttered:
“Buon giorno.”
“Now—say—it—like—this—Good morning.”
“Good-a morning—good-a morning, gooda morning!” and he added impatiently, “I know it—I can say it for a long-a time.”
“Yes, but you don’t say it
correctly
. You’ve got to get a good accent, it’s important. Now say it again; not good-
a
morning; good—morning.”
Fabrio did not say it. He continued to stare obstinately down into the straw and was silent. Sylvia waited with slightly compressed lips and eyes sparkling with mischief, and in a moment he glanced up, said explosively, “Good morning!” and burst out laughing.
“That’s grand!” she exclaimed, laughing too. “I am hungry. I want my lunch. Now tell me in Italian, like you did before.”
This time he obeyed at once, but she lingered so long over the next few phrases in Italian while repeating the words after him, and he was so pleased to become teacher instead of pupil that the short time allotted to the lesson passed very quickly, and it was fortunate that the question “What is the time?” caused her to glance at her watch. She exclaimed, and jumped up, saying, “Gosh, it’s just on time. You’ve done very well to-day, Fabrio——”
“Fab
rio
,” he corrected, standing a little way off from her and gazing at her from under his brows; now that the lesson was over he seemed sulky and withdrawn into himself again.
“Fa-
brio
, then—but I can’t stay here all night saying it.
Bye
-bye. See you to-morrow, same time and place,” and she ran off, repeating under her breath
I want my lunch
in the Ligurian coastal dialect in which Fabrio had naturally taught her to say it, while he went in the opposite direction muttering I
want my lunch
in the muted Cockney used off the Camden-road.
She had not thought of herself as learning Italian from him, but although she took no interest in the language itself she liked to think of
me jabbering away in Italian, it
’
s not so common as French, everybody knows French
, and she was also intelligent enough to realise that a knowledge of languages is useful. She did not, of course, conceive of them as instruments which could give her pleasure. In the same way, her family dismissed both the knowledge of history and history itself as
dates and kings and fascist battles and all that stuff
, and had no idea of the richness and solidity which even a limited knowledge of history can bring to everyday life.
Yet, if compared with a London family of forty years ago, how kind they were! and their kindness extended far beyond their immediate circle and embraced, at least in theory, all the millions of people living in all the countries of the world. It was as if the Christian law
Love thy neighbour as thyself
had at long last, after centuries of misunderstanding and abuse, begun to flower side by side with the fiercest and most despairing materialism the world had ever endured and as if those who were loudest in their denunciations of the Christian Church were compelled, by one of those superb ironies in which we detect, or imagine that we detect, the humour of God, to practise one of the chief virtues upon which that Church had been founded.
However, Sylvia had no intention of letting the lessons develop into Italian lessons for herself. The small red book was soon in use and Fabrio was struggling with
Bet Sells Buns
and
He gets on his nag
. He tried to assert himself by producing a copy of
Post
and demanding to be allowed to read the captions under the photographs, but she made him put the paper away
and
continue with the longer sentences (
Ned was rude. He plucked a trumpet from the tree
) at the end of
Reading Without Tears
. She explained each word to him with vehement pantomime after he had read the sentence aloud, telling him that it was good practice for her as an actress, but Fabrio did not enjoy looking at
La Scimmia
’
s
face when it was distorted in mime; he preferred the Conversation, in which she sat quietly beside him, with her eyes fixed upon his own as she gravely or laughingly spoke the simple sentence, and then it was his turn, having guessed what she meant or had it explained to him, to tell her what it was in Italian.
She soon insisted that he should use her Christian name, which he thought very pretty, too pretty for its owner, whom he continued to regard with disapproval, though after a time as he became more used to her noisy ways and frank manner he ceased to notice them. He grew to look forward to the daily lessons and to enjoy laughing with a girl, whose woman’s laugh was so different from that of his comrades at the camp. But she seemed to him, despite her boldness and her education, a silly young creature, towards whom he could feel superior and indulgent. Sometimes, on days when it rained, he would lounge beside her on the granary sacks, chewing a straw and looking at her out of half-shut eyes and thinking how feeble was her strength compared with his own; that she talked too much; that she let him see what was in her mind; that her voice was too loud; and then Sylvia, not liking the half-contemptuous expression in his eyes and on his mouth, would sharply tell him to sit up “properly” and pay attention to the lesson—and, smiling, he would lazily obey.
“Does he behave himself—not rude to you or anything?” Mrs. Hoadley asked her, at the end of the first week’s lessons.
“I should hope so! He’d better.”
“No, but does he? because Mr. Hoadley’s only letting him have the lessons as a favour to you, you know, Sylvia, because he’s pleased with your work.”
“Is he ? Goody. No, honestly, Mrs. Hoadley, Fabrio’s no trouble at all and he’s getting on ever so well. He’s quite intelligent, really, when you get to know him a bit, though he doesn’t say much.”
“I don’t expect he gets a chance, with you about.”
“I do talk a lot, don’t I?” laughing and grimacing. “Oh well, I must get cracking—
a rivederci!
” and she bounced away.
Mrs. Hoadley, whose instincts as a respectable matron and an employer of female labour under the age of twenty-one had only been aroused by some sharp inquiries from her husband, was satisfied that all was proceeding respectably, and said no more. Fabrio continued to smile enigmatically at the bawdy jokes made on the subject by Emilio, and Emilio continued to try to kiss Sylvia whenever the opportunity occurred, and to be pushed away as vigorously as her small hands could push.
And it was the second week in March; red rays of sunset pierced between lilac clouds in the lengthening evenings, shining through the hazel coppice where Alda and the children moved from cluster to cluster of primroses, pulling the long stems of the flowers from their nests of cool leaves; thrushes sang in the budding elms and cold scents breathed up from the freshening grass and were blown across from distant fields; even on days when there was no rain the pools and ditches gave out their faint watery odour, and the hedges were dimly green above thick mats of budding violets.
JENNY HAD RECEIVED
and greatly enjoyed her first hour of instruction upon a sly, stout, wilful pony named Blackberry who realised that in Jenny she had met her mistress; and on this fine Saturday afternoon Louise was to go out for the first time with
Jean
. At four o’clock the party from Pine Cottage was to present itself at Meadow Cottage to take tea with Mr. Waite.
“Can I come too?” implored Jenny, standing at the gate as Jean and Louise came down the path; Jean in jodhpurs and jacket made by a house famous for sports clothes, and Louise in some which had been given her, against Alda’s wish, by Eglantine Peers.
Alda had written a markedly formal note, thanking Mrs. Peers for the jodhpurs and adding that she would have preferred to buy them or to make an exchange with some of Jenny’s clothes. She had heard no more of the matter beyond a vague remark from Eglantine to the effect that “Oh yes, Mummy did get it.” It appeared that Eglantine had been evacuated to America for the first three years of the war and “gets all the clothes she wants from there.” Alda set her lips and did not try to feel grateful. Jenny herself wore riding breeches that had belonged to her cousin Richard (“As if it weren’t bad enough to have to wear his beastly pyjamas”).
“I should like you to,” Jean now answered in reply to Jenny’s request. “The more the merrier.”
“It won’t be a lesson, it’ll just be me on Strawberry, so I shouldn’t think he’d charge as much as he would for a proper lesson, would you? I have got four shillings saved up.”