Noisy at the Wrong Times Read Free Page B

wasn’t bacteria that threatened to wipe out the population, it was earthquakes. In 1980, one
terremoto
had a good go, shaking the region to smithereens: thousands of people perished. In her early teens, war and the presence of the Nazis became the biggest threat once Mussolini had been kicked out. The formerly chummy Germans were an instant occupier when Benito, hanging by his feet, met his gruesome end at an Esso station in Milan. By then the Nazis were undoubtedly on their last legs in Italy, but the continuing resistance action provoked terrible reprisals. Eventually, liberation came, but even that almost cost Mum her life. She, my brothers and I have cause to be thankful for the failures of British munitions workers as a stray Allied shell failed toexplode after it crashed through the roof of the bread shop Mum was in, killing the baker as he handed her a loaf. Actually, I don’t know the nationality of the shell, but the British were engaged in all sorts of activity in the area as the Allies pushed northwards. The fighting in the region was substantial, and in Mum’s municipality, a legend was born when a small platoon of Germans held out for two weeks in a church, fighting the surrounding Allied forces to a standstill. Why they didn’t just flatten the church I don’t know – perhaps even then there was sensitivity towards religion. Maybe they did try to flatten the church but the shells kept failing to go off. That munitions factory probably became British Leyland.
    I myself once had cause to experience the indelible mark that the war had left on Mum. Returning late one evening to the home of an uncle in the poor district of Montecorvino (for there were less poor areas than others), we had just passed a small block of flats under construction when a mighty, deafening explosion blew us forwards. The blast wave rushed past us, and, before I’d had time even to think, my mother, despite being half my size, had grabbed my hand and begun sprinting up the hill with me in helpless tow. It turned out to be a device planted by the local mafia to remind the builder of his obligations and if it had exploded when we were passing the building thirty seconds earlier, we would have been turned to mincemeat. But the event had instantly pitched Mum backwards to the days of war, and I had never before even given it a thought.
    She was the oldest girl of a large family with an alcoholic father, and it fell to such young women to run the family home. Washing clothes in streams and specially built stone fountains fed by springs is hard graft in the furnace of a southern Italian summer, but working in tobacco fields as she did in her late teens and early twenties before leaving for the UK surpassedanything for brutal physical drudgery. Her father had been a committed fascist and believed Mussolini to be the great saviour. He had taken up arms abroad and, even more dangerously, at home, alongside the struggling Germans against the Americans and British. With the Resistance so active and the community split, his continuing dedication to the cause had to be guarded and cunning to keep his neighbours in the dark. Money was virtually non-existent, so the richly fertile land and climate was something of a redeemer, but it was an arduous, perilous existence. Mum’s life in London, in Fulham Court with its running water, bathroom and inside toilet was therefore something she could proudly view as the Everest of social improvement. Her regular employment as a cook had indeed rendered her wealthier than most of her kin back home. Despite the economic miracle of post-war Italy, when only Japan and Germany (is there something about losing wars?) surpassed its growth, the south of the country remained in the relative dark ages for some time. Mum never felt the need to return.
    Dad was from the larger town that sat only halfway up the mountain, Montecorvino Rovella. I think this is what led to the elopement: Dad’s lot were urban sophisticates