The Tuscan Girl: Completely gripping WW2 historical fiction by Angela Petch

Author:Angela Petch [Petch, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture

‘Let me take your coat, signor Massimo,’ Anna said, as Alba guided her old friend through the door into the Stalla. Despite the warmth of the morning, he was still dressed for winter.

‘Don’t cast a clout until May be out,’ he said in English and continued in Italian, ‘That’s what my English boss always used to say to me. It’s funny what I remember in English. But it was always much colder in Inghilterra. That was one of the many things I missed about being away from Italia.’

‘But it’s July,’ Alba said with a laugh. ‘You can take your thick coat off now. It’s plenty warm enough.’

‘You wait until you’re old, tesoro,’ he said to Alba. ‘The cold lingers in your bones.’

They sat straight down at the table. After twenty years of living in Italy, Anna knew that was the way it was. No lingering, polite conversation before the meal; no peanuts and nibbles to spoil the appetite, but simply getting down to the serious business of eating. Anna had made vegetable soup from home-grown produce to start with, which Massimo seemed to enjoy. As he slurped noisily from his spoon, Francesco winked at Alba.

‘What else did you miss of Italy when you were a POW?’ he asked the old man.

‘My mother especially, and my friends,’ he said. ‘But there were many simple things I missed. Our toscano bread, for example. English bread is soft and salty. And the coffee, even though at home we couldn’t afford proper coffee. We used to drink roasted barley or acorns.’

He spoke in Italian today, lapsing into occasional dialect. Anna understood most words, but occasionally she had to ask for a translation as he gained speed.

‘But I didn’t have such a bad time, really,’ he continued. ‘If you take away the fact that we weren’t ever free – even after the Armistice when we were kept on as labourers – I think I had it a lot easier than my family here in Tuscany.’

He fell silent for a few moments, lost in thought.

Alba noted that the way he talked to her parents was different from when she and Massimo were alone together in Tramarecchia. With them, he was more guarded in what he related. He spoke in general terms, explaining about the type of jobs he had to carry out on the farm in England, the differences in the crops he had to help sow and harvest, saying that even the taste of the apples and pears had been different.

‘Don’t forget it was wartime,’ Francesco said. ‘The planting would have been different from normal. It was all done to provide as much food as possible in the quickest, easiest way to the population.’

‘My friend’ – Massimo leant forward in his chair – ‘with respect, I know only too well that it was wartime. I could never forget that. All six years of it.’

‘Of course, I didn’t mean to offend…’

‘No offence taken, young man. But it is a time I lived through and you have only read about in your books.

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