Livia picked up the wood basket to refill it from the log store outside on the back terrace. The wood was stacked beneath her father’s study windows, and as she loaded up the basket, she noticed her father leaning over what looked like a radio. Intrigued, she stopped to listen. She could hear a cacophony of voices, occasional bits of music, mixed with strange hissing noises. He was obviously turning the radio dial, searching for something specific. Finally a voice with a crisp English accent began speaking in perfect Italian: Germany and Italy have announced they are now at war with the United States.
Today, Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, pledged that the Patto d’Acciaio, his “pact of steel” with Germany, would ensure the Axis Powers’ final victory.
From the Reichstag in Berlin, Adolf Hitler announced that under the Tripartite Agreement signed on 27 September 1940, Germany was obliged to join with Italy to defend its ally Japan. “After victory has been achieved," he said, "Germany, Italy and Japan will continue in closest co-operation with a view to establishing a new and just order."
In Washington, President Roosevelt told Congress the free world “must act quickly and decisively against the enemy”.
The news was grave, Livia thought, but not a surprise. The newspapers had been full of jingoistic headlines for days. What disturbed her was that her father was listening to a foreign news station – something which she knew was illegal. She smiled ruefully. Her father had always been a bit of a rebel. She picked up the basket of wood, took it through to the sitting room and loaded up the fire.
Luisa called out to her from the kitchen. ‘Can you fetch your father for dinner?’
Going into the hall, Livia knocked on her father’s study door.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Papa. Dinner is ready.’
‘I’m coming,’ he said.
When he opened the door, she was still standing outside. ‘What were you listening to?’ she asked.
‘Just a local news station,’ he replied dismissively.
‘It didn’t sound like it,’ she persevered. ‘The announcer was English, wasn’t he?’
‘No!’ His tone was uncharacteristically stern. ‘Now let’s go and have that dinner.’
The following day, while her mother went shopping for provisions, Livia suggested to her father they should put up a Christmas tree in the large entrance hall. ‘Can we take one from the copse in the corner of the garden?’
‘All right,’ her father agreed, ‘I’ll get the axe.’
Livia chose one the same height as herself and they dragged it inside and wedged it into an old terracotta pot.
‘Can you manage to decorate it by yourself?’ Giacomo asked. ‘I’ve got some work to do.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Livia. ‘I’ll go upstairs to the attic and find all the decorations.’
The attic was approached via a narrow staircase, and lit from a pair of grubby skylights. Livia soon found the old trunk where the decorations were stored. Mice had been at work nibbling at a Nativity scene made of straw, but the glass baubles had survived, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, along with little brass candle holders, and strings of sparkling tinsel.
Back in the hall, as Livia busied herself decorating the tree, the front door suddenly blew open and her mother appeared – slightly windswept, her face pink with cold.
‘Well,’ said Luisa, putting down her basket, and hanging up her coat and hat, ‘I am shocked.’
‘What about, Mamma?’
‘I have been trying to buy flour in the village. With Christmas coming, I need to bake, to make pasta.’
Livia nodded.
‘In October,’ her mother continued, scarcely pausing for breath, ‘the ration was two hundred grams a day per person, which was hardly generous. Now they have reduced it to one hundred grams. How on earth are we to survive on that? The baker in the village offered me a little extra, as long as I was prepared to pay some exorbitant sum for it.’
‘And did you?’ Livia asked, half-hoping her mother had abandoned her principles.
‘Of course not!’ Luisa retorted. ‘As if I would conspire with the black market! He’s a rogue, that man. No, we will just have to manage. Angela told me she had collected chestnuts a few months ago. Perhaps we can grind those up and make flour.’ Luisa walked off briskly towards the kitchen at the back of villa, calling for Angela.
Livia smiled. Although her mother could be infuriating at times, she had to admire the way Luisa never faltered in her views of what was right and wrong.
She walked into the sitting room and lit a taper from the fire, intending to light