The Moon Tunnel(30)
He walked to The Tower thinking about the moon, and lunatics. It was a gibbous moon, just four days from full, a bulging lantern of cold white light directly overhead. The town was silent, in that unnatural lull between the shops closing and the pubs getting into full swing. Somewhere, in the trees of the cathedral park, he heard an owl’s call followed by the tiny shriek of something being killed.
As soon as he opened Laura’s door he knew she was awake. The COMPASS machine clattered into life.
‘SHOULDERS.’
Dryden knew it was unreasonable but the peremptory tone of the COMPASS tickertape always irritated him. He knew the missing question mark was in his wife’s mind, but its absence made her request into an order, and he felt the familiar guilty urge to be free of his role as dutiful visitor.
He put his head beside the PC screen hoping her eyes would be able to see him with peripheral vision but, oddly dry, they stared past him.
‘Sure,’ he said, sitting on the bedside and insinuating an arm behind her so that he could lift her forward, laying her head on his shoulder. He began to massage the muscles at the base of her neck, feeling the knots which caused her so much pain. He felt the familiar onrush of tenderness, and began to widen the movements of his hand in a sensuous and sinuous series of circles.
As he worked he talked, feeling the warmth of her body raise his spirits, so that he found it easier than he’d expected to tell her about his visit to Buskeybay and his decision to sell off his mother’s belongings.
He laid Laura’s head gently back on the pillow, then used a brush to arrange her hair. Then he uncorked the wine bottle beside the bed and poured himself a glass, lighting up the single Greek cigarette.
There was silence and Dryden was irritated again, irritated that she didn’t respond in some way. She’d known his mother too, and could have shared the memory.
He forced himself to talk. ‘I’m sorry you wasted time on the PoW – nobody ever escaped, I know. The curator at the museum, I’ve mentioned him before…’
The COMPASS burst into life with a rapid: XXXXXXXX, part of their code, a signal that she wanted to butt in.
‘SEE 15.’
On the PC’s desktop various folders held documents Laura would work on when she was conscious and alone. Dryden moved the cursor over to document 15 and double clicked, sitting up beside her on the raised pillow so that he could read the screen.
There was a single line of text, the spelling mauled by Laura’s botched attempts to control the COMPASS. He reminded himself of the effort required for her to type out a single letter.
MOD EMAIL SEE INBOX. NO POWS OUT. BUT SEE REOLY ITALIAN ASOC ALSO EMAIL AND MOD 2.
Dryden swung the cursor into Laura’s e-mail inbox and retrieved the reply from the MoD’s information desk.
Dear Ms Dryden,
Thank you for your enquiry. As I understand your e-mail you wish to know if we have records of PoWs who escaped during the last war. Particularly from the camp at Ely, Cambridgeshire. I can confirm that no records exist of any escapes, or indeed attempted escapes from that camp, between 1940 and 1945. There were, by contrast, two from Walpole Camp, thirty miles to the north. Yours sincerely,
Matthew Lumby
Senior Information Officer
Ministry of Defence
PS. Our research officers tell me that the National Association of Italian Ex-Servicemen, based in Manchester, has remarkably complete records on PoWs. You could e-mail them via the link below if you wish to trace any individual. www.naie.org.uk
Dryden fished out the return e-mail from Manchester.
Dear Ms Dryden,
Thank you for contacting our association and for the attached copies of your e-mail to the MoD and their reply. They are correct in saying that none of the Italian servicemen imprisoned at Ely in the camp known as California ever escaped. However, we can tell you that post 1943 all Italian PoWs were reclassified following the surrender of the Italian government. As non-combatants, and foreign nationals, they were released and assigned to internment camps, as I am sure you will know. The Ely area was administered from Cambridge and their records show that one former PoW did go missing in this period – in October 1944. His name was Serafino Amatista. He was billeted on a series of farms in the Ely area, although he had to report to the internment camp set up at the nearby RAF base at Witchford. We took the liberty of attempting to trace Amatista’s history from our files in order to provide you with all the information at our disposal. We have to tell you that no one of that name was ever conscripted into any of the Italian armed forces, or indeed listed as a volunteer. There are two possible explanations for this inconsistency. Either Serafino was missed out from the lists of those under arms due to an administrative error (a common problem in Italy once war had broken out) or he gave a false name on being captured. In our experience captured Italian servicemen found without papers or ID who gave false names, of which there were several thousand, were often deserters who feared retribution from their compatriots who had fought bravely for their country.