Sister Maria, Allegra’s favourite of the nuns, recognised her talent and encouraged her to sing as often as possible. She told Allegra that God had blessed her with a unique gift and she must never squander it; that she must dedicate it entirely to God.
With Isabella gone from her life in such a manner, Allegra could not help but wonder if one day her own mother might come to claim her. Or maybe she might be adopted, as some of the younger children were. She didn’t think that very likely, as the men and women who visited the orphanage to pick out a child to take home with them did not usually want a child as old as she was; they wanted a sweet little baby they could call their own.
Shortly after Allegra’s ninth birthday, Sister Maria took her aside one morning and explained that she had a visitor – a man all the way from England who was her uncle.
Allegra’s first impression of Jack Devereux was of a giant of a man staring down at her. She trembled beneath the intensity of his unblinking eyes, conscious that he was scrutinising her for flaws, like the women in the market did when buying their fruit and vegetables. Scared that he might prod her with one of his large hands, she took a step back. He spoke no Italian, and so when he addressed her, she couldn’t understand him. Only with the help of Sister Maria, who knew a little English, did she learn what he was saying. Apparently in England she had three cousins – two boys and a girl – who were very much looking forward to meeting her. All she could do was nod. Then the man asked her, ‘Will you sing for me? I’m told you have a beautiful voice.’
Startled by his request, she was nonetheless happy to do as he asked, for here was something that might please him, and it suddenly seemed important to her to do that. But when she opened her mouth to sing, nothing came out, not a note, just an ugly croak. It was as if she’d been struck dumb. Sister Maria smiled encouragingly and she tried once more. But again she could produce nothing but a croak. Embarrassed, she began to cry, which made her feel even more foolish. From that day on, it was to become a fear that haunted her: that she would freeze on stage and be unable to sing.
Several hours later, clutching a small suitcase, she was climbing into the back of the stranger’s car. She gave a hesitant wave to those who’d lined up to see her go and found herself near to tears as the car moved off. In a wild moment of panic, she realised she didn’t want to leave and tried to open the car door, but the man who said he was her uncle snapped forward in his seat and put a hand out to stop her, making her feel like a prisoner.
Boisterous voices floated up from the rio beneath Allegra, children’s voices that interrupted her thoughts and brought her sharply back to the present and the cause of her anger: Luigi.
He had finally left his wife, but not for Allegra; instead for a girl who was not yet nineteen. Worse still, he had taken all of Allegra’s earnings, having put them in a bank account to which he alone had access. ‘Let me worry about your finances,’ he’d assured her. ‘That way you can concentrate on your singing. You mustn’t be distracted by the mundane.’
It hadn’t only been her earnings Luigi had stolen; he had helped himself to the bulk of her trust fund. She didn’t know what angered her most: his greed and betrayal, or her own stupidity. She should never have trusted him to the extent she had, but he had been so utterly convincing. Nothing had been genuine about him, least of all the supposed theatre bookings he’d put in place for the months ahead. Not a single one existed. What was more, he’d run up debts far and wide, and she was tainted by association.
He’d left her with nothing: no income, no bookings, much less her dignity. Even the rent on her modest apartment was going to be a problem, and to her disgust, the landlord, Signor Pezzo, had begun to hint there were other ways she could pay him if money was tight. His suggestion made her skin crawl; nothing would induce her to fall so low, to allow that hideous man, with his foul sulphurous breath and filthy hands, anywhere near her. A proud fascist, only last week he had taken pleasure in evicting a Jewish couple from the apartment below Allegra’s. He’d claimed that they were difficult tenants and made too much noise, but Allegra had never heard a sound from them.
That sort of thing had been happening a lot since last year, when the new racial laws had been made. Jews were now forbidden from doing all sorts of jobs, and their children weren’t allowed to attend Italian schools either, or go to university. What horrified Allegra most was how easily her fellow Italians had accepted the new laws, which anybody could see were just plain wrong. But even she was careful to whom she voiced such an opinion. It seemed likely that things would soon get a lot worse, with Mussolini only too keen to adopt the ideology of Nazi anti-Semitism in order to curry favour with that awful Hitler.
She heaved a long, weary sigh. She suddenly felt so very old and tired, and she was only twenty-six! She returned her gaze to the telegram and its demand for her to return to Island House. Presumably Roddy Fitzwilliam had sent it. Dear old Roddy; he’d always had a soft spot for her, and she for him. Unlike the rest of them, who never allowed her to forget that she was illegitimate – the bastard child of Harry Devereux – he treated her as if she counted for something.
But to return to England, to subject herself to God knew what? Why would Jack Devereux care if she were there by his bedside at the end? What difference would it make? Why put herself back in the very situation she had fled? All that sneering from Arthur, the mock-pity from Kit and the superior air from Hope; why return to that? Especially now that her singing career was all but over. For in the shock of what she’d discovered about Luigi, her voice had abandoned her. Every time she tried to sing, she was once again that trembling, anxious child standing before the strange man in the orphanage unable to utter more than a mortifying croak. How could she put herself through the humiliation of the family knowing that her dreams had come to nothing?
But there was something else – or rather someone else – that she might have to face back at Island House, and she really didn’t think she was brave enough to do that. She had been so heartless in her treatment of him, but she had known no other way to pursue her dream. Surely he had understood that? But had he forgiven her?
Elijah Hartley. Allegra hadn’t thought of him in a very long time; she had deliberately consigned him to the past, to her childhood. But he had been her one true friend in England. Would he still be there in Melstead St Mary, or had he also left?
She read the telegram again.
Your uncle is dangerously ill. Please come home to Island House.
If Uncle Jack was about to die, and given the dramatic downturn in her own fortunes, might it be prudent to swallow her pride and do exactly as the telegram instructed? Was that such a bad thing to think, that Jack’s death might be an answer to a prayer?
Far away in the sultry sky, she heard the first ominous rumble of thunder. The storm was about to break.
Chapter Seven
Now that the other passengers who had been with him since Liverpool Street station had left the train, Kit had the carriage to himself. He stretched out his legs in front of him and settled in for the remainder of his journey to Melstead St Mary.
With London far behind him, the sight of the softly undulating Suffolk countryside stirred in him a mixture of emotions: pleasure at seeing again the familiar landscape he’d always loved, but also a feeling of trepidation for what lay ahead at Island House.
He had been away on a walking holiday in the Brecon Beacons and hadn’t received the telegram until he’d returned home to his flat late last night – two days after it had been originally sent. He’d telephoned Island House straight away, despite the lateness of the hour, and had spoken briefly to Roddy, who’d urged him to waste no time in travelling up to see his father.
No matter how hard he tried to imagine a world in which his father no longer existed, Kit simply could not picture it. Men like Jack Devereux did not die; they were the toughest of old warhorses that lived forever. They were a breed apart from pathetic mortals like Kit which was how his father had always made him feel: hopelessly inadequate and incapable of doing anything right.
As a young boy, he’d suffered the ignominy of being a sickly child, rarely getting through a winter without succumbing to a debilitating chest infection, or coming down with some other ailment that kept him bedridden. When he was older, it was plain to all that he hadn’t inherited an ounce of his father’s hard-nosed business acumen, and not really knowing what he wanted to do, he’d drifted into reading modern history at Oxford. After graduating, he’d gone to work at a bank in London, thinking naively that it might please his father. He’d been at the bank for what seemed like the longest and most tedious two years of his life, and the thought of spending the rest of it doing something so meaningless made him feel sick at heart.
But change was in the air. It was a menacing change, but one that would give Kit the chance to do something of value, even if it meant he lost his life in the process, which the defeatist in him believed would be the inevitable outcome. Only a fool would think that war with Germany was now avoidable. It wasn’t. Everybody with whom he came in contact believed the same, and perversely, he wished the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, would just get on with it and declare war. It would be preferable to the stultifying boredom of what Kit was currently doing.
He wondered how Hope would cope with being at war with Germany. Would her loyalties be torn? Kit had always looked up to his sister, who was three years his senior. He had been fascinated as a child by her ability to draw with such skill and imagination, and he admired her hugely for having gone to art school and subsequently making a career for herself as a book illustrator. He wished he had half her talent and her clear sense of purpose.
According to old photographs, Hope was very like their mother, Maud, with wide cheekbones, and a smooth, straight jaw that ended with the narrow curve of her chin. She had been a serious child, quiet and withdrawn, losing herself in her world of make-believe, creating stories of fairies, elves, pixies and woodland creatures. Some of Kit’s happiest boyhood memories, particularly when he’d been confined to bed, were of Hope telling him stories of her own devising, accompanied by exquisite little drawings.
He missed the closeness he and his sister had once shared – they’d been allies against their bully of an older brother, as well as the voice of reason when it came to their volatile cousin, Allegra. But since her husband’s death, Hope had isolated herself from the family, even Kit, and the sting of it still pained him. He had thought himself exempt from her condemnation, but Hope had lumped him in with the rest of the family and rebuffed all his attempts to contact her. He wished he knew why. What had he ever done to upset her?
He held out no hope of seeing his sister at Island House. Why would she come when their father had been so vehemently opposed to her marrying the man she loved? A man he had never even met. As a consequence of that opposition, Hope, invariably the peacemaker of the family, had changed overnight and refused to speak to their father ever again. She also defied him by marrying Dieter less than a week later, inviting no one from the family to the wedding, not even Kit. Again, and despite her subsequent apology, he still felt the sting of having been excluded.
