LIFE FOR THE PUPILS OF St George’s was pleasant. Relations with the teaching staff were informal and relaxed. The older children dressed as they or their parents pleased and in the top form first names for all concerned was the order of the day. The midday meal was something to look forward to — spaghetti in one of its innumerable forms, followed by meat or fish, then a sweet of an exciting and inventive kind, usually based upon some regional models. Students in the top form could ask for a glass of local wine if they wished, despite its tendency to produce a scaliness of the lips. In the afternoon juniors like Kiki and Gawaine dozed gently through readings of the poetry of Petrarca and Leopardi by which it was hoped to introduce them to the Italian language. At weekends they were offered sailing instruction on Lake Bracciano, and there was a promise of skiing in the Gran Sasso D’Italia when the first snows fell.
The village satisfactions to which the children were returned by the school bus at the end of the scholastic day were of a solid but different kind. This was a community devoid of onward and upward pressures. The villagers saw themselves as guided by destiny into the paths they trod, and this they accepted with a sort of spirited calm. Take no thought for the morrow, the Bible adjured, and had they been able to read it they would have agreed. Apart from a short repertory of obscure oaths the expression most frequently in their mouth was ‘pazienza’ usually accompanied by a weary smile. An absence of ambition in childhood had its advantages. The young of Isola Farnese could live for the day, because there were no future summits to be climbed. Within reasonable limits they were left to their own devices, and the village school released them in the afternoon to something close to absolute freedom.
Boys and girls formed separate groups with little contact with each other. In the evenings the girls took over the doorsteps of the village, escaping to fairyland in little rustic soap operas of the imagination. The boys fought down their huge reserves of energy with endless activity in mock wars. Unlike the girls, who were companionable and democratic, the boys chose a leader who exercised stern discipline over the rank and file, and demolished the silences of Isola Farnese with their outcry that persisted long into the night. It was a scene the Count very much enjoyed, and to foster it he had installed powerful lighting throughout the village which was not switched off until midnight — or even later on demand. ‘Let them play,’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t they? I like to see it, and how much I wish I could join in.’ To complaints from village adults who were being kept awake, he would say, ‘I have ear-plugs for you. Wear them as I do, and you will sleep well.’
Our arrival in Isola Farnese gave rise to a curious breach of custom among the children. After a few weeks a scattering of Italian words they had picked up provided the open sesame to the tribal life of the young. At this point Kiki would normally have taken her place among the little coteries of girls on the village doorsteps, but after a discussion among the leading boys it was decided that she was to become an honorary male. This may have been no more than the highest compliment that could have been paid, or it might have resulted from some local fallacy on the subject of Anglo-Saxon competence. Following a brief speech by the leader, nothing of which was understood, the boys pressed forward to congratulate her and shake her hand. ‘Adesso sei uomo come noi altri (now you’re a man like the rest of us),’ she was told, and invited to take part in their energetic and sometimes dangerous games. Apart from simulated warfare from which Kiki was excused, the most popular game was nascondino — hide and seek, for which there was endless scope in a landscape full of Etruscan tombs.
This freedom of the streets granted to the children might have caused doubt in a similar environment in northern Europe but the Count assured us that the crime of mugging, so far, was unknown in these parts and that child molestation was exceedingly rare. We had heard through Annunziata a garbled account of an assault on a child said to have taken place in or near the town of Viterbo, some thirty miles to the north, and followed by a lynching of the culprit. ‘I heard some mention of it,’ the Count said, ‘although it may be no more than a rumour. I’m afraid we suffer from a tendency to take the law into our own hands. In this case there was talk of the man being hung by a hook through his throat, but whether there’s any truth in it I can’t say. Such punishments can be barbarous.’
The juvenile military campaigns of Isola Farnese provided Kiki with a splendid opportunity for exploration of the countryside and the innumerable secret places in the fields and woods. At first it struck her friends as strange that their honorary boy would want to poke into dark and uninviting places that they had previously overlooked, but in the end she managed to enthuse them in the search for pottery collection, and while the craze lasted we were showered with coloured fragments, most of which lost all trace of decoration within days of disinterment. A special interest in my case when I was allowed to accompany some of these trips was the autumnal flora of the area which was remarkable. The country people stripped this landscape of everything that was edible, from the tiniest snail lodged in a crack in a wall down to the most insignificant nut. On fine days families streamed out from Rome and went over the fields yard by yard cutting out dandelion plants by the thousand for incorporation into salads. Flowers — apart from a few known to have edible bulbs — they seemed to regard almost with distrust. At most they bought chrysanthemums in the market, but the wild variety they left alone. It was through this indifference that all these fields in autumn were enamelled with countless cyclamens, colchicums and crocuses, some species being of great rarity elsewhere.
Our most exciting find in the matter of archaeology was quite accidental, arising from a quest, for once, not for fragments of Etruscan pottery but for rare flowers. The Count had suggested a location some three miles away and Kiki and I went there in the car. It was a field under a steep slope with flowers sprouting everywhere from among the rocks. Followed by a white cow full of amiable curiosity, prepared to wait while we botanized and then move on with us to the next outcrop of flowers, we began to explore the area, soon discovering a cave. Pushing through the ferns at its entrance we saw to our amazed delight a marble sarcophagus, in perfect condition and missing only its lid. It was empty apart from a deposit of the finest chalky dust.
On returning to the car and trying to drive away we promptly stuck in the mud and seeing that there was nothing to be done we left it and set out to walk back to Isola Farnese. The grocer’s shop seemed the best place to enquire where to look for help. We went in and the grocer, Antonio, vacant-faced as ever looked up from a customer he was serving, ‘Eh?’
I explained the predicament, asking if Antonio knew of a garage in La Storta where they would be prepared to come and pull the car out of the mud. ‘There’s a festa on, they’re shut,’ he said. I thanked him, turned round to go, and he called after me, ‘Wait.’
He finished serving the woman, and then came to the door with us. A notice hung on the glass door panel facing the street. This said ‘Open’, and he turned it round so that despite the early hour he was now shut. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
He gestured to us to get into his Land-Rover parked outside, and we set off. I started protestations about putting him to trouble, and he said in a flat voice, ‘This happens all the time. Where is it?’
We drove off in silence, leaving the road for the cart track I’d originally followed, and thence after crashing through numerous potholes, into the field.
‘What sort of car is it?’ he asked.
‘Fiat 127,’ I told him.
‘For going to the beach in,’ he said. ‘For this road a car needs to have entrails. You’re lucky. The garage at La Storta doesn’t come out to a place like this.’
We ploughed into the field where, guarded by our white cow, the Fiat leaned over in the churned-up mud. ‘Sticky,’ the grocer said.
He hitched the tow-rope he had ready over the front bumper and pulled us clear with a single jerk and I followed him back to Isola Farnese where a small collection of customers waited at the door of his shop. A little ironic cheering was silenced with a glance as he unlocked the door and turned the notice round. I stood at the back of the customers at the counter trying to mouth my gratitude and he held up his hand in acknowledgement without raising his eyes from the rice he was weighing. A grumbler was put in her place by pazienza — a wry acceptance of the frustration of life in another village mouth, but in this case a stern command.
We were turning away to leave the shop when he called after us ‘Buon giorno’. The incident brought us closer together. From this time on we became almost friends and for the important Feast of Befana, immediately following Christmas, he presented us with a bottle of Asti Spumante, a salami and a jar of excellent olives from his own trees and pickled by himself.