A Fool's Alphabet Read online

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY SEBASTIAN FAULKS

  DEDICATION

  TITLE PAGE

  EPIGRAPH

  ANZIO, ITALY, 1944

  BACKLEY, ENGLAND, 1950

  COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, 1980

  DORKING, ENGLAND, 1963

  EVANSTON, ILLINOIS, USA, 1985

  FULHAM, LONDON, ENGLAND, 1964

  GHENT, BELGIUM, 1981

  HOUCHES, LES, FRANCE, 1967

  IBIZA, BALEARIC ISLANDS, 1966

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, 1982

  KOWLOON, HONG KONG, 1980

  LYNDONVILLE, VERMONT, USA, 1971

  MONS, BELGIUM, 1914

  NEW YORK, USA, 1983

  OXFORD, ENGLAND, 1976

  PARIS, FRANCE, 1979

  QUEZALTENANGO, GUATEMALA, 1974

  ROME, ITALY, 1978

  SORRENTO, ITALY, 1958

  TERMINAL 5, 1988

  UZES, FRANCE, 1987

  VLADIMIRCI, YUGOSLAVIA, 1986

  WATSONVILLE, CALIFORNIA, USA, 1974

  XIANYANG, CHINA

  YARMOUTH, ENGLAND, 1991

  ZANICA, ITALY, 1970

  COPYRIGHT

  About the Book

  The events of Pietro Russell’s life are told in 26 chapters. From A–Z each chapter is set in a different place and reveals a fragment of his story. As his memories flicker back and forth through time in his search for a resolution to the conflicts of his life, his story gradually unfolds.

  About the Author

  Sebastian Faulks has written eight novels, including Birdsong (1993). He is also the author of a biographical study, The Fatal Englishman (1996).

  He lives in London, is married and has two sons and a daughter.

  ALSO BY SEBASTIAN FAULKS

  The Girl at the Lion d’Or

  Birdsong

  The Fatal Englishman

  Charlotte Gray

  On Green Dolphin Street

  Human Traces

  Engleby

  FOR VERONICA

  SEBASTIAN FAULKS

  A Fool’s Alphabet

  There is only one alphabet, which has spread over almost all of the world.

  A. C. Moorhouse,

  Writing and the Alphabet

  When you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good many things as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth while goin’ through so much to learn so little, as the charity boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter of taste.

  Mr Weller, Pickwick Papers, Chapter 27

  All letters form absence.

  Edmond Jabès, Livre des Questions

  ANZIO

  ITALY 1944

  VESUVIUS WAS ERUPTING. The trembling of the ground which was common in the Campania district was intensified so that cars would not remain still, even on level ground, but began to shudder and bolt like frightened horses. The sea in the Bay of Naples was being sucked back from the beach and swallowed by the ocean, leaving driftwood and stranded creatures on the suddenly revealed sand. Inland from the volcano a huge black cloud hung steadily until it was ripped by thick and wavering lengths of flame, which were like forks of magnified lightning. After a time the cloud began to sink down and cover the sea, obscuring the promontory and removing the island of Capri from sight.

  In the streets of Sorrento, on the other side of the bay, the people ran to their houses. There was the sound of car engines being revved and rubber tyres squeezed against the roads by sudden acceleration. Shutters were brought together with a wooden thud before the iron arms descended to bolt them. The dense black cloud that hung across the bay seemed also to have loomed behind them, covering and flooding the hills. The flames remained distant, but ashes began to fall in the streets in dense showers.

  Safe behind the glass doors of the balcony on the first floor of the convalescent hotel, Corporal Raymond Russell tapped a cigarette against the side of the packet, revolved it slowly between his fingers and poked it into the corner of his mouth.

  ‘On your way tomorrow, then,’ the medical officer had told him that morning. ‘Got your orders?’

  ‘Yes. Back to A Company,’ said Russell.

  The doctor briefly examined the healed shell wound in his left shoulder. ‘Shouldn’t give you any more trouble,’ he said. He looked out of the window. ‘It would be nice to spend the summer in Rome.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Russell.

  He had passed the day listening to the rumbling from across the bay, smoking cigarettes and thinking what still awaited him at Anzio. Vesuvius had taken his mind off it for a time, though the noise and violence of the eruption also reminded him of the forward positions in the beachhead.

  He slept well, despite the volcano. In the morning he rose at seven, packed his kitbag and made his way downstairs in the old hotel that the Red Cross had taken over. There was a smell of coffee and the sound of Italian women talking and laughing in the kitchens. He felt caught in a trap of time, neither soldier nor civilian. He liked the sound of the women’s voices and the everyday life they represented. He wanted this quite ordinary world of airy rooms, new bread, curtains, children. He forced the thought from his mind as he pushed open the swing doors of the hotel. His loyalty was with Sugden, Bell, Padgett, the Major and the other men in the icy slit trenches. He reconciled himself to the thought of further weeks of their undrinkable distilled alcohol, their sexual frustration and the slow hours of boredom punctuated by minutes of extreme terror.

  The sun was out on the streets of Sorrento. As he began to walk downhill he passed a magnificent sign in which the iron was wrought like arthritic fingers to read ‘Pasticceria’ and hammered into a pink wall on the corner of a street. Under his feet the pavements were ankle-deep in grey dust from the volcano.

  Four weeks earlier he had been jammed in between Bell and Padgett in the small landing craft that cast off from the mother ship in the Bay of Anzio. Bell’s face was close to his, and he was breathing fast.

  ‘Gallipoli,’ he said, his eyes showing white through his blackened face. ‘That’s what our general thinks. Another bloody rat-trap. What do we want a Yank general for anyway?’

  Russell felt the bevelled edge of the craft’s iron rail beneath his hand. Next to him Padgett was praying with a rapid mumbling sound. It was a beautiful winter night, star-pocked, calm and mild. There had been cases of seasickness when they headed south towards Africa in some cumbersome diversionary move, but since the ships had swung round towards their true destination, carving a mile-wide circle of foam through the Tyrrhenian sea, the wind had died and the groaning had ceased.

  Russell could see the dark outline of Anzio to their right. It looked a charming place: he imagined holidays and fishing. He had never been abroad until the war. Although in four years he had seen Holland, France and more of North Africa than he wanted, he was still excited by the sight of the small Italian coastal town and was disappointed that their craft would take them to the north of it.

  ‘All right, you men?’ The Major came to check morale. ‘Nice little town, isn’t it? Used to be a pirates’ haven, you know.’

  That was all he had time for as the craft surged on towards the beach.

  ‘They sent out a group of men to test the texture of the sand,’ muttered Bell. ‘Never came back. Taken prisoner by the Jerries. They’re waiting for us. Jesus Christ.’

  The landing craft hit solid ground and Russell was thrown against Padgett, who dropped a box of ammunition on the deck. They heard the sound of ‘Move’, but they didn’t need to be told. The waist-high water and yielding sand made it difficult to get going; with cursing and splashing, they managed to keep their packs and
guns above the sea until they could move into a run. In his mind Russell heard the opening salvo of German machine-gun fire, the disdainful ripple of automatic weapons plied by men who had time to choose their targets; he was almost deafened by the expected thumping of entrenched artillery.

  Nothing happened. Only Padgett’s swearing and sloshing and the distant cries of encouragement from the landing craft came to his ears. They made the beach and ran for the tree line, weapons prodding the dark air, poised in the readiness of fear.

  The landing was on a huge scale. The ships had come in from a measureless sea to disgorge men through the towns of Nettuno and Anzio, on up the coast to the furthest point of Peter beach, six miles to the north west. Their war had moved from Africa to Europe, yet they saw only the quadrant of darkness in front of their eyes.

  Russell lay prone, the sand of Anzio in his nostrils where the force of his fall had driven it. Nobody moved or spoke. Their ears were bursting with expectation. Behind them they could hear more men splashing ashore. They willed them on, praying the gunfire would not start till they were covered. Other craft were landing further to their left. They began to lift their heads and look sideways. The beach was crawling with dark figures, hunched and labouring forwards under the weight of huge combat packs and boxes of ammunition. They were starting to pour into the scrub at the back of the beach and the pine trees beyond.

  Still there was no sound, no shot.

  The Major came to give them their orders. ‘Get your men up there, Russell. Keep them out of sight.’ He found it hard to keep the elation out of his voice.

  ‘I don’t bloody believe this,’ said Bell. ‘I just don’t believe it.’

  ‘Come on, Bell,’ said Padgett, who was almost hysterical with relief. ‘We’ll get the action soon enough. It won’t be like Pantelleria, you know.’ He started giggling.

  ‘At least we got the bloody craft the right way round this time,’ said Bell.

  After intensive practice, the company had landed the previous summer at the small island of Pantelleria, the first toehold gained in Europe by the Allied armies. A capricious wind had turned the craft around at the last minute so that the vanguard consisted of the medics, the caterers and the brigadier’s car. It had not mattered. No shots had been fired, and the mayor had been pleased to see them. He kept giving Nazi salutes, then remembering himself, apologising and shaking hands.

  ‘I liked Pantelleria,’ said Russell, hoisting up his pack. ‘I wish we could have stayed there longer. Come on then, let’s get this kit up there.’

  They moved rapidly inland – the heart of Italy at last – in the course of the night. From the town they could hear sporadic gunfire, but nothing that alarmed them. By dawn they had established radio contact with the Americans in Anzio. There had been hardly any fighting. A German car with four drunken officers on board had driven into the open mouth of a beached landing craft, mistaking it for a garage. It was, in Padgett’s words, a piece of duff.

  Two weeks later they had made no perceptible progress. They were penned into the beachhead by a continuous German bombardment that rattled and shook the fabric of their makeshift shelters and made the further landing of troops and supplies on the beach a job as hazardous as that undertaken by the men at the front. Russell’s company had been pushed forward into a salient that stuck out, as many of the men remarked, like a sore thumb from the otherwise regular perimeter of the beachhead. The commanding officer had come to visit them. A tall man with a red, fleshy face, he managed to appear well dressed and relaxed even when stepping over the winter mud of the Italian plain with German shells landing a hundred yards away. He told them they were the best prepared group of fighting men in the British army. Their morale was high, their experience was unmatched and their company commanders were inspirational. He wanted them to show their courage, push forward when instructed and remember the glorious history of their regiment, a history which he himself appeared to have memorised down to the last details of the disposition of each platoon at Omdurman.

  His talk went on at some length, but the Major had advised him that the men would not mind what he said or how long he took, provided they had been given permission to smoke. Much of what he said was in any case only a little exaggerated. The battalion was full of soldiers who had learned resilience under fire. Three of the four company commanders had been decorated. The Major in command of A Company had almost single-handedly secured the route to Tunis in a day of ferocious counterattack the previous spring.

  That afternoon they dug slit trenches at the front. They could not delve too deep into the sandy soil of the plain or the water would have rushed in, though within a day even the shallowest were up to the men’s calves with rain. Padgett’s self-protective instincts had made him an inspired builder. He had the knack of finding old doors from shelled houses which he would cover with dirt to make roofs on their dug-outs.

  At night the noise of bombardment made sleep impossible. The artillery barrage on both sides was almost constant, but the men soon learned to pick out other sounds. There was the rippling crackle of the spandau and the steadier bren. The mortars provided a background cough against which the high-pitched sound of a single bullet was still occasionally discernible.

  Russell sat up smoking. He had begun the war as a private but had been promoted the previous year as a reward, according to the Major, for making the radio work. Although this was not now his responsibility, he liked to look over the equipment at night. Only two immutable rules seemed to have emerged from the war so far: that in preliminary fighting the artillery would kill more of their own men than the enemy’s, and that once battle had been properly joined the 38 set from platoon to company headquarters would break down. The 38 set’s principal function appeared to be picking up German propaganda broadcasts by an unconvincing temptress called Sally. The 18 set, by which the company communicated with battalion HQ, was more robust. Some wireless experts built their own sets on which they were able to receive broadcasts from the BBC in London.

  Sometimes at night, on the rare occasions of calm, Russell would make contact with an American in the 509th Parachute Infantry. This man, called Olsen, was an insomniac from Brooklyn. He told Russell about his family and about New York. The men in his regiment came from all over America. He would tell Russell about them. ‘Then there’s Washinsky, he’s from Pennsylvania, you’d like him, he’s real funny. And Bunny Wilson, he’s from Minneapolis – you know, the twin towns, out there in the Midwest. It’s great country there, farms that stretch as far as you can see. And let’s see, there’s Rossi, he’s from Brooklyn too, and Williams and Lynch, they’re both from Cleveland, and Eagleton, he’s from – I guess he’s from Nebraska someplace.’ This was the voice of America calling; down the airwaves over the Italian plain.

  Russell thought how strange it must be for these men to be here in this unforgiving marsh behind a seaside resort. Few of them, presumably, had known each other before; perhaps they had never visited one another’s states. Nebraska must be as far from Brooklyn as Italy was from England. So this was their first experience of Europe. The randomness of it was peculiar. It had to be somewhere, so why not at Anzio? But the more interesting question was why? Why this unremarkable swamp which successive people had tried to reclaim and build on? He could feel as the days went on that newspapers, and then historians of the war, would talk about the invasion and the battle and that then it would become a name in history that would grow familiar and dulled. It didn’t feel like that to him or, he was sure, to Olsen and his friends. It felt very particular, very ordinary and haphazard. The brutality of the fighting did not seem to change that, to make it worthy in some way of its place in history. It just seemed to make it more puzzling. Meanwhile it was hardly stretching a point to say that it was only here, in Italy, that Olsen’s colleagues had become aware of their own country. Wilson from Minneapolis would never otherwise have met Rossi from Brooklyn. The fragile idea of a nation only became real as they lay together, huddled i
n their wet trench.

  The next day they attacked. The artillery fired for an hour and then the Major gave the signal. In the clearing smoke and the mist they ran forward in the direction of a wood. Before they had gone twenty yards the field in front of them came alive. Shells from the German artillery bombardment had carved holes in the sodden grass, so that the residual green was brown with turned earth. The air was dense with machine-gun bullets. From all sides they heard the sound of fire, as though every piece of metal in the Fatherland had been melted down and forged and was now being fired at high velocity into the field they were attempting to cross. Flat on their faces, the mud of the malarial marsh in their eyes and noses, they edged towards the cover of a ditch which was not really a protection, more of a shadow on the ground. For three hours they attempted to return fire and retrieve what casualties they could. They spent the night in their exposed position, unable to get back to their lines.

  For two days they attempted to regroup, advance or at least protect their flanks from the continuing counterattack. The radio had blown on the first day, both radio operators were dead and the shelling had not stopped at any time. ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ Russell said to Padgett, who was lying beside him.

  Bell flinched as a shell-burst sent mud and shock waves over them. ‘This is not Gallipoli,’ he said, ‘this is the bloody Somme.’

  Eventually a message reached them from the commanding officer. They were to withdraw to their original positions, but no further. Any German counterattack must be stopped at that line. As Russell stood up to relay the news to the seven men who remained in his section, a fragment of shell pierced his left shoulder.

  In hospital in Naples and later, recovering in Sorrento, he had time to reflect on the country he found himself in. How different Anzio had looked from the sea. How different had the countryside around appeared when they took their first tentative steps into it. Up to the north-east were the Alban Hills, the alleged gateway to Rome that they were supposed to have taken by now. On the raised ground the Germans could look down on them and focus their bombardment with continuing accuracy.