Page 10 of Last Letter Home
‘Still alive, just!’ She inspected her palms and was picking out the splinters when Luke lowered himself safely beside her.
‘Let’s see,’ he commanded.
‘No, I’m fine, honestly.’
‘If you’re sure,’ he said, looking about. He helped her up, then began to move away through the green light under the trees. She tagged along, thinking how extraordinary it was, like swimming through a submarine forest. She could even hear running water.
‘Hey,’ came Luke’s voice ahead. ‘Come and see.’
She found him investigating a narrow channel where silvery water gushed over pebbles. Sinking down, she plunged her smarting hands into the ice-cold flow with a sigh of pleasure.
‘It’s come out of the rock somewhere,’ he muttered, craning to see, but the foliage was too dense.
She rose, shaking her hands dry. ‘Come on. The house’ll be this way.’ She stepped over the stream and pushed on through the branches until suddenly she came up against the wall of an outhouse. Like a tomb, darkness leaped from its gaping doorway, and she recoiled from a foul stink of decay. Her feet found an old path, which passed a tumbledown shed held together with ivy, its rotted roof bright with moss. Her trainer kicked against something hard that clanked and she paused to discover a rusted engine. Left perhaps by the British soldiers, she thought, her pulse quickening, then, ‘Eeurgh,’ she said.
‘What?’ Luke was close behind.
‘Got oil on my shoe. Oh, what’s this?’
A stubby tree trunk fallen sideways turned out to be an old fountain. Briony ripped at the greenery and revealed a cherubic face with a hole instead of a mouth. Luke peeled off more ivy and exposed a stone wing.
‘One of the four winds, don’t you think? Hey,’ he glanced about, ‘maybe this whole area . . . Yes, look at that wall. This was once a pool with the fountain in the middle. And a tiled border round it, and over there, pillars, like that one.’
‘With a ball on top. How typically Italian.’
‘So sad it’s come to this.’
‘Do you suppose it happened in the war?’ Briony wondered.
‘Dunno. Could be the years of neglect.’
Quietly they surveyed the ruined glory around them before stumbling on.
Then, suddenly, the mass of the house loomed up before them. They were on a ruined concourse in front of the elegant villa familiar to them from the filmstrip, but the change wrought by time was terrible. Its shutters were hanging off, its broken windows stood open to the weather, the white-painted frontage was blistered and crumbling. There were signs of past beauty, though, in the graceful lines of the roof and the rusted iron latticework of the upstairs balconies.
Briony said, ‘I feel bad that Aruna’s missing this.’
‘Me, too, but let’s look inside now we’ve got here.’
They picked their way across a mess of shattered roof tiles and flakes of plaster to peer in through a window like a gaping mouth. The spacious room beyond was full of rubbish, broken chairs, twisted pieces of machinery, rotten beams, all thickly coated with dirt. The walls were blotched with damp and fungus, but on the far one was fixed a noticeboard still bearing a few scraps of paper. Bleached of whatever had been printed on them, Briony guessed; it was difficult to tell at this distance. She felt a low thrum of excitement seeing this sign of army occupation. Grandpa had been here. The idea was extraordinary.
A thought occurred to her. ‘The place can’t have been like this when Mariella’s dad found the film reels. They’d have been ruined.’
‘I expect he took them quite soon after the army left. Come on, let’s look for a way in.’
Initially they had no luck. The main doors had rotted in their frames and would not shift, despite Luke’s attempts, but on rounding the right-hand side of the house they found a narrow entrance, with what must once have been a door, lying warped amid the debris inside.
They peered into the gloom. ‘Scullery, do you think?’ Luke said. A huge stone sink stood under the back window. Daylight glowed from a doorway opposite that must lead further into the house.
‘Is it safe to go in?’ Briony’s voice echoed.
‘Probably not.’ Their eyes met. He shrugged.
She stepped inside, brushing past cobwebs as she meandered round the cool, dark room then through the far doorway into a bright kitchen with a rusted range and an old bread oven. Sunshine falling through latticed panes patched the tiled floor. It would have become hot in here, she thought, but the scents of baking and delicious sauces must have been wonderful, and from the windows there would have been a view of fruit trees and terracotta pots of herbs . . . She was so caught up in this vision she didn’t notice where she was going. Her knee bumped against an ancient cupboard. Its door flew open and she screamed as a family of rodents shot out.
‘Briony?’
‘It’s OK,’ she gasped as Luke’s alarmed face appeared. ‘Mice!’
