The Moon Tunnel(40)

There was a long silence in which Dryden could hear the distant sound of romantic dogs.

‘Yes. He was one of the gardeners.’ There was laughter, and the clink of glasses.

Dryden recalled the snapshot Pepe had shown him: the five men laughing together, sharing a secret, with their compatriot behind the lens.

‘There were six?’ he said, and Casartelli nodded. ‘And they dug the tunnel, and dumped the soil in the garden they tilled between the huts. Of course.’ Dryden felt pleased, knowing the silence said he was right.

Everyone smiled. ‘But why did no one escape?’

Casartelli shrugged. ‘We know only one thing. The gardeners are all dead now. The tunnel – we knew of it, of course. But only the gardeners knew where it was, and only they could use it.’

‘But they never did,’ said Dryden.

There was a cough from the counter and Dryden saw Pepe standing in the shadows, and it struck him for the first time that he was childless in this family-dominated world.

‘No. A mystery,’ said Casartelli, standing. ‘We will never know why. It was 1944 by the time they were under the wire. I think. Perhaps they loved the garden more than the idea of escape!’

Everyone laughed again, but Dryden sensed it was manufactured this time, and the accordion music washed away the atmosphere of confession. A rival conversation broke out at another table, then several more. Casartelli was gone, and one of his compatriots pressed coffee on Dryden, and Italian cigarettes.

Then the grappa bottle appeared. Dryden was led by several reeling Italians to see some pictures on the wall. The association’s members on a trip to Rome, a Christmas celebration at Il Giardino crowded with grandchildren.

‘And this?’ asked Dryden, pausing in front of a small mounted glass case. Inside were five mother-of-pearl buttons, each marked with a silver crest – a lion holding a bell.

There was silence until Casartelli spoke. ‘The gardeners,’ he said. ‘Each had one of these. They wore them as badges. They were proud of what they’d done, perhaps too proud.’

‘But where…?’ Dryden was steered away, back to the grappa bottle. He begged two glasses and took one out for Humph. They sat, the cab doors open, and drank in silence under a heart-stopping sky, the blue thin enough to hint that the stars were just beyond.

Taxis began to pick up the revellers. Casartelli emerged, blinking, and made his way towards a large convertible Honda driven by a young man with Latin good looks. Dryden walked over.

‘Mr Dryden – my grandson, Wayne. Wayne – what kind of name is that!’

The boy laughed at what was clearly an old family joke.

Dryden stepped in close. ‘Names. You haven’t forgotten, have you? The name of the village?’

Casartelli was sober instantly. He straightened his tie, thinking. ‘I’m sure the authorities would tell you. This is something we would rather forget. But your life and our lives have come together, yes?’

He ran his hand back over the shell case that was his head. ‘Agios Gallini. That was the name. The name of the village Serafino betrayed.’





16


Dryden and Humph sat on one of the cemetery’s benches, together, alone, in the dense pale fog which had settled in their hair. Beside them a child’s grave lay fresh, a bunch of flowers enclosed in cellophane, the condensation within like a stifled breath.

The cabbie took up half the bench, his tiny ballerina’s feet hanging clear of the ground. He wore wraparound reflective sunglasses, apparently worried someone would spot him outside his beloved taxi cab. Dryden hauled in a breath and choked on the hint of sulphur; the fires were still burning out at the town dump, churning out the gases which created the pea-souper. He’d been out twice over the weekend to check the site. The fire brigade were pumping thousands of gallons of foam into the artificial hillside, but with little apparent effect.

Dryden reached inside his overcoat pocket and retrieved an apple and two cocktail sausages. Humph’s eyes settled longingly on the cab parked beyond the cemetery railings: a grey outline in the fog. An unseen bus ground its gears on the distant High Road. At the centre of the cemetery stood a brutal Victorian steeple, open at the base, and Dryden tilted his head to try to see its apex. But the grey image faded quickly to white, and the gently falling mist hung tiny globes of water on his eyelashes.

He checked his watch: still half an hour until Serafino Amatista’s funeral.

‘Thanks for waiting with me,’ he said.

Humph shrugged, retrieving a book from his pocket which Dryden recognized as the text which accompanied his language tape. The cabbie began to memorize the names of nine different Polish pickles.