Never Such Innocence, page 15
‘Very well,’ she said and slid down under the bedclothes. She reached for her book, but changed her mind and blew out her candle instead. After a moment she felt Anthony’s hand on her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I spoke too roughly. It’s just that when you’ve seen as many damaged children as I have … children with no hope at all, you …’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, turning to face him with all the immediate generosity that was so much part of her character. ‘I’m not sulking. I was just a bit taken aback by what you said, but we can’t expect to understand each other as easily as we once did.’
‘No,’ said Anthony, pushing back the blankets. ‘And I think we’re both pretty tired. Sleep well, Julia.’ He got out of the bed and bent to kiss her forehead before disappearing into the connecting bedroom.
It took Julia some time to get to sleep that night, and she was still heavily asleep the next morning when Annunziata knocked on the bedroom door. Getting no answer, she opened it and called loudly:
‘Signora, signora, svegliarsi!’
Julia lifted eyelids that felt as though someone had laid heavy coins on them all night and saw the black-clothed housekeeper standing just inside the door. With her brain sluggishly beginning to work, Julia sat up.
‘Buon giorno, Annunziata,’ she said, trying to push the sleep out of her eyes. The woman came a little closer and tapped at her wristwatch. She was still too far away for Julia to be able to see its face, but she understood at once, looked at the clock on the table at her side and flung back the bedclothes.
‘Grazie, Annunziata,’ she said hurrying over to the painted wardrobe in which her clothes had been hung the night before. ‘Capisco. I understand.’
The housekeeper smiled and went out to return two minutes later with a tray of breakfast. Julia, dressed by then in her underclothes and dressing gown, was on her way to the bathroom. She thanked Annunziata and asked clumsily where Anthony was. Annunziata made it clear that he had been gone for some time and was at the ospedale. Julia went to wash.
When she came back she poured herself a cup of coffee, grimaced as she recognised the bitter taste of a familiar substitute and tried to decide what clothes would be most suitable to wear to the Tribunale di Giustizia. After some thought, she plumped for the black suit she would have worn to court in London. If it turned out to be too formal, she could always wear something more countrified the next day, and it would never do to appear over-casual on her first day in a new job.
When she had buttoned up her plain ivory silk blouse and shrugged her shoulders into the square-shouldered black jacket, she walked over to a long looking glass that hung between the windows to do her face and hair, sipping the disgusting ersatz coffee and eating a tired roll as she did so.
Once her dull-brown hair was brushed back and pinned into her customary French pleat, Julia thought she looked depressingly severe. All the previous day’s colour had left her skin and with her eyes still puffy from sleep, her face seemed dull and stodgy. Thinking that perhaps some colour or sparkle on her clothes might help, she rummaged in her small jewel case for a gold chain set with pearls and garnets, which her grandmother had left her, and hung it round her neck under the collar of her shirt. The gold and the dark red of the garnets improved the general effect a little, she thought as she hurriedly finished her breakfast.
Having put on a black hat and slung an overcoat around her shoulders, she went down to the salon to find David Wallington, who had promised to escort her to their office.
‘Goodness, you look tidy,’ said Julia as she noticed his impeccably pressed khaki uniform. He looked much older, more practical and infinitely less approachable than he had done the day before. For the first time Julia thought that she could imagine him being as dangerous as Anthony had suggested, but she was disconcerted to notice that he wore the ribbon of the MC on his tunic. No one had told her that he was brave.
David laughed easily.
‘I don’t think flannel bags and an old tweed coat would quite suit the majesty of a British military tribunal,’ he said, gesturing to his uniform with a self-mockery she liked. ‘Even the preparatory stages of it.’
‘We probably ought to go, oughtn’t we?’ said Julia, leading the way downstairs to the street door.
‘What a pity!’ exclaimed David as he pushed it open and saw the thick, damp mist that seemed to fill the square. ‘Venice can look so ravishing on a sunny morning and I’d planned to show you the prettiest route to the office. But there’s no point now.’
‘Never mind,’ said Julia. ‘We can concentrate on the case instead. Oh no, before we do that: do you know anyone who could give me Italian lessons? I can’t bear the uselessness of not being able to communicate with people here, particularly Annunziata.’ She huddled herself deeper into her camel overcoat to avoid the chill fog that hung about the buildings like a thick, clammy shroud.
‘Yes, there are lots of people. I’ll think who’d be best,’ said David. ‘We turn right here, into the Campo Santo Stefano. It’s the largest square in Venice after St Mark’s. They used to hold bullfights here.’
‘How extraordinary to think of Venetians having bullfights. I’d never have associated anything so cruel with them.’
‘Good heavens, Mrs G!’ said David, stopping in his tracks.
Julia was amused by his expression of theatrical surprise and could not help smiling in response.
‘Have I said something peculiarly silly?’ she asked without worrying about it.
‘Astonishingly,’ he answered with a cheerful grin. ‘But it’s hardly fair of me to tease. Why should you know anything about Venetian history? They did some amazingly cruel things here – of which bullfights would have been about the least. One of the reasons why the Venetians were so successful for so long was that they were utterly ruthless.’
‘Ruthlessness need not imply cruelty, surely?’ she said, serious again.
‘No, it ought not to,’ agreed David. ‘Unfortunately it often does.’
They were both silent, thinking of what had been done by the ruthless and the cruel during the past six years. Julia remembered that David’s brother had been a prisoner of the Japanese.
‘Is it much further to the court?’ she asked to distract them both.
‘No, about another ten minutes. It’s a very simple route, but I’ll draw you a map for when you have to come and go on your own. By the way …’ He broke off and when she looked at him she thought that he was ashamed, which seemed odd after their easy teasing a moment earlier.
‘What’s up?’ she asked without finesse, treating him as she would a colleague in chambers.
He looked surprised and then oddly relieved.
‘It’s just that I am rather bothered about your job,’ he said. ‘It’s ludicrous for a barrister of your experience and standing to be doing a job junior to mine.’
Julia laughed a little bitterly.
‘But, David,’ she said with exaggerated clarity. ‘I’m only a woman. I know my place.’
‘Nonsense!’ he said energetically. ‘Oh, I know you’re mocking me, but it is an idiotic thing for anyone to believe … That being a woman makes you automatically subordinate, I mean.’
Julia stopped dead, an expression of pleasure in her warm brown eyes.
‘You’ve been away a long time, haven’t you?’ she said at last. When David looked puzzled, she went on: ‘There are a great many people at the Bar who think precisely that. You should hear some of the comments about “girl barristers”. It’s … refreshing to discover that you don’t share their views.’
‘I certainly do not. I never did,’ he said, ‘but if I had, what I learned with the partisans would have told me how wrong I’d been. The girls were just as brave and full of endurance as the men.’
‘Were you surprised?’
‘Only at their physical toughness,’ said David. ‘I don’t mean they were all paragons, but the villains and the slackers were equally distributed among the sexes.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Julia. ‘I wish I could believe that the war would have taught everyone that. But listen, David, you needn’t worry about the job. I would have taken almost any kind of work that brought me here to be with Anthony again.’
‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘I’m glad of that. He’s needed you badly.’
‘By the way,’ said Julia, changing the subject abruptly, ‘I’m not actually certain what it is that I’m to be asked to do.’
‘Ah, well it’s awfully simple – the sort of thing a new pupil might be set to – sorting through statements, making a précis, suggesting which might be used for the prosecution.’
‘That’s fine, David. Don’t worry about it,’ said Julia.
Chapter Twelve
David led her down a claustrophobic little alleyway that led ultimately to the Rialto. Crossing the bridge, they made their way to the court building, a Renaissance palace that lay between the fish and vegetable markets.
‘We use the back way in, although like all the Grand Canal palaces it was built to be entered from the water. Come on, I’ll show you our offices and introduce you to the rest of the team.’
When he had shown her the cloakrooms and the temporary tea room on the first floor, he took her on up to a large light room at the top of the building, where a small group of young English military lawyers were sitting over their papers. David introduced Julia to them and then showed her to a laden table overlooking the Grand Canal.
‘This must have been your doing,’ she said, looking from the pretty view back up at him. ‘Thank you, David.’
‘I thought that the least we could do was ensure that you had something decent to look at,’ he said. ‘Now, these are your files,’ he went on, pushing them to one side of her table. ‘They consist of statements taken by British military police sergeants just after the war from people who witnessed German actions against the partisans. As I said outside, what we need you to do is plough through them picking out the ones you think we ought to use, and reducing them to a single page … then we’ll have to decide how convincing they are. It’s become clear that in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender some fairly exaggerated stories were taken down and believed.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Julia. ‘I take it that part of the charge against Kesselring is going to be that the Germans used excessive force?’
‘That’s right. I don’t think that there’ll be much trouble proving it, given that we’ve orders of Kesselring’s –’ He broke off and turned away from her to call: ‘Martindale!’
‘Yes?’ said a tubby-looking man from the other side of the room.
‘Have you got a copy of Kesselring’s partisan orders?’
The lawyer scuffled among his papers and then held some out to David. He brought them back to Julia’s table and handed them over. Julia skimmed the translations of the Field Marshal’s orders in the way she had learned during her first few weeks in chambers, picking out the essentials at a glance. In growing surprise she read out:
‘“I will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the choice and severity of the methods he adopts against partisans … a mistake in the choice of the means to achieve an objective is always better than failure to act or to be neglectful…’” She turned over the pages to the second order.
‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘“Should troops, etc., be fired at from any village, the village will be burned down … Nearby villages to be held responsible for any sabotage to cables and damage inflicted to tyres.” That’s outrageous.… The villages might not have had anything to do with the sabotage.’
‘Precisely,’ said David. ‘And there were undoubtedly plenty of cases when villages were destroyed for acts of sabotage carried out by people completely unknown to the inhabitants.’
‘I see. Thank you. I’ll get on with it then.’
‘Good. Let one of us know if you have any problems,’ he said, ‘but I don’t suppose that you will.’
He left her and she set to work. Despite her good intentions, she was irritated and distracted by the noise the other lawyers made riffling through their papers and asking each other questions. In London she had had a room to herself for at least some of the war. Nevertheless she read through statement after statement, appalled by the things she read and yet curiously relieved that at last she was learning about the kind of life Anthony must have lived with the partisans. She read of actions to blow up ammunition dumps, power lines and railways, to ambush supply trucks, and generally harass the Germans and make their tasks as difficult as possible. She read, too, of the revenge the Germans had taken for such sabotage.
Just as she was absorbing details of a particularly brutal reprisal at Udine, where women and children were mown down by German machine-gun fire, she felt a touch on her shoulder and flinched.
‘Sorry to give you a shock,’ said David Wallington, ‘but I’ve got to go out to a meeting now and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Julia assured him, ‘but I would like to ask you one or two things … not only about these files but about what happened to your group, so that I can put these into some kind of perspective. Would that be all right?’
‘Perfectly,’ he said, but as he turned to go, Julia thought that she caught a wary, almost suspicious, expression in his blue eyes. Puzzled, she turned back to her files, making notes of questions and requests for clarification as she read.
At twelve-thirty she lunched on dry sausage rolls with some of the other lawyers in the tea room on the floor below their office and heard what they had been doing during the war. Her own stories of firewatching during the Blitz and helping at ‘incidents’ were tame in comparison with accounts of life behind the German lines, and she felt rather a fraud to have joined them knowing so little of war at first hand. They did not seem to mind that, though, and sounded interested in all she could tell them of the war in London and the buildings, squares and churches that had survived the bombing. What clearly interested them even more were her accounts of legal London and what she thought of their chances of getting tenancies when they eventually got back.
From them she also learned about the progress of Kesselring’s interrogation in London. He was being held in the ‘London Cage’ and questioned by Lieutenant Colonel Scotland, who would undoubtedly be one of the principal prosecution witnesses. Scotland had been surprised that Kesselring made no attempt to deny what had been done during the Italian campaign or to try to evade responsibility for it, but his acceptance ought at least to make the case easier to prove.
Julia also heard that the other main charge against Kesselring would be his responsibility for the killing of 335 Italian men and boys in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. She already knew that they had been shot in reprisal for a bomb attack that killed thirty-two or -three members of the SS in the Via Rasella in Rome.
After lunch she went back to her files, faced with a clearer picture of life under Nazi occupation than she had ever had before. It must have been peculiar for the Italian people, she thought, to have been allies of the Germans until 1943 and then suddenly subject to their full ferocity. Squeezed between the Nazis in the north of the country and the invading British and Americans in the south, some of them must have regretted the change.
No wonder people like Jackson French were finding it difficult to impose law and order on the population. For a part of it at least he must represent not the liberators of the country, but merely another set of enemy invaders against whom any action was justified.
For some reason Julia found it easier to work that afternoon. She had decided to read right through all the files first, flagging those that she thought would help to build the prosecution’s case, and then start preparing her précis. Hearing the sounds of departure all around her at five o’clock, she looked up and was surprised to see that it was so dark outside that she could see only shadows across the Grand Canal.
Determined not to have a repetition of her uncomfortable walk back from the hospital the previous day, she had put a prewar tourist map of Venice in her bag that morning, together with the batteryless dynamo torch she had carried through the blackout in London.
Despite the map, she took several wrong turnings on the short walk home and found herself in more than one dead end. By the time she reached the Campo San Maurizio, she was thoroughly irritable. She was also tired and very cold. There were no lights on in the big salon and so she went on up the stairs to her bedroom, feeling a bit bleak. She had relied on Anthony’s being there to take away the slight sting of his early-morning departure.
After a few minutes’thought, Julia changed out of her dark suit and high-heeled shoes into a pair of trousers, a thick corduroy jacket and stout walking shoes. Tying a scarf round her head in place of her hat, she set off across Venice to meet Anthony at the hospital. Once again she felt the unpleasant sensation of being followed as soon as she reached the far side of St Mark’s Square, but she ignored it and reached the hospital without being accosted by anyone.
An orderly sitting at a desk inside the front door said something to her in Italian and she responded simply:
‘Dottore Gillingham?’
The answer was an incomprehensible flood of excited speech, but Julia got the distinct impression that Anthony was not available. She then asked for Sister Caroline, at which the orderly smiled, nodded and pointed down the main corridor. Relieved to think that she would at least be able to communicate with someone, Julia made her way to the long ward.
‘Mrs Gillingham!’ came the American nurse’s cheerful voice in welcome. ‘How good to see you.’
‘Thank you, Sister,’ said Julia. ‘Is my husband about? The man at the desk tried to tell me, but I couldn’t understand him.’
‘He’s operating, I’m afraid. Was he expecting you?’
‘No,’ said Julia, shaking her head. ‘But my working day ended much earlier than I had expected and, being at a loose end, I thought I’d come and escort him home.’
