Before the bombers came

What she remembers is that it was Helena’s birthday. It was Helena's birthday the day before the bombers came.

Marta had waited at the double gate of the villa’s driveway, looking out between the metal bars as she waited for the limousine that Helena’s father was sending to pick her up. She knew that mama would be standing at the big bay window on the first floor, looking down at her; so Marta was determined that she would not look back at the house – she didn’t want to do anything that would imply a thawing of the cool distance that had built up between her and mama.

She preferred that coldness and stilted politeness to the pretended friendliness and oversweet interest that mama had increasingly been showing in everything she did – she couldn’t bear it when mama came and sat close to her on the sofa, laying her hand on Marta’s arm and asking her questions, sitting so close that Marta could smell her perfumed neck and her after-dinner coffee breath. As soon as Marta heard the adults clinking their spoons as they stirred their coffee in the dining room, she started to stiffen, dreading the approaching moment when mama would come through the door into the sitting room.

And so she looked out, steadily and insolently, through the metal bars of the gate, trying not to think about mama’s annoying ways or about mama standing at the window. After a few minutes though, she started to feel uncomfortable: her party shoes were higher in the heel than she was used to wearing, and she had to keep shifting her feet on the gravel driveway to find a position where she could stand with the soles flat on the ground. Once she had noticed the unevenness and registered her own discomfort, she couldn’t think about anything else, and she was swiftly locked into an irritating cycle of shifting her posture, realising that the new position was no better, and shifting again.

To ease her annoyance she stepped off of the driveway and onto the grass. The earth was hard after the long spell of dry, early summer weather, but the lawns were well kept and the surface was smooth. Following the curve of the pale brick wall round to the right of the gates, she came to the part of the garden overlooking the bend where the road started its descent down the side of the valley. Here, the wall was shaped into deep crenulations, through which you could lean out and get a panoramic view of the valley and the distant townscape. The road canted its way down the slope of the valley wall –with a couple of switchbacks where massive outcrops of rock had frustrated the builders ambitions of a smooth path – and disappeared into the fertile greenery of the broad, flat valley floor, which was dotted with farmsteads and woods. Occasionally you might catch a glinting glimpse of a car as the sunlight caught its bodywork between the trees.

The road followed the line of the river, and the river flowed east, towards the town and, just beyond it, into the sea. Marta knew the place where the river opened out into the estuary, just north of the main walled harbour; the marshy land there was criss-crossed with dykes, and for the [Girl Guide] leaders it was a favourite destination for summer outings and picnics – not too far from the town, but with interesting flora and fauna and an isolation that created a sense of adventure.

Marta remembered the first such outing she’d been on, when she was new to the Guides and still one of the youngest and most nervous members of the [troop]. She has a vivid memory of sitting atop one of the dykes nearest the sea, the wiry grass pressing into the back of her legs. She and Helena had been watching the big cargo ships steaming towards the harbour, their stained funnels belching thick gobbets of smoke into the clear blue sky.

…