Jack Higgins – In the Hour Before Midnight

And in the villages, mainly women, old men and thin, hungry looking children, living out their lives against a dying landscape.

In one such place, I stopped outside a small trattoria and we sat at a rough wooden table in the shade and the proprietor, an old, old man with white hair, brought a bottle of passito, ice-cold from the bottom of his well.

It was about eleven o’clock, but already very warm and when a ring of solemn-faced children surrounded us we could smell the sourness of their unwashed bodies.

‘Don’t they have any men around here?’ Burke de-manded.

He looked tired and was sweating a lot, great damp patches soaking his shirt beneath each arm. ‘Most of them have emigrated,’ I told him. ‘I’ve heard it said that in some provinces, eighty-five per cent of the population is made up of women and children.’

He looked disgusted and wiped sweat from his fore-head. ‘What a bloody country.’

Rosa Solazzo had disappeared into the back to find whatever passed for a toilet in those parts and rejoined us in time to hear his comment. She obviously didn’t approve.

‘This is one of the poorest areas in Europe, Colonel Burke. In summer it has the same climate as North Africa, the land is barely cultivated and what water there is, is controlled by the Mafia. These people are born without hope. What else can they do, but try and get out?’

Not that she had a hope in hell of making him understand. The people she was speaking of were her people-she was one of them, had probably started life in just such a place as this.

Burke laughed with a kind of contempt. ‘You seem to be doing all right, anyway.’

She pushed her way through the children and got into the Fiat. I emptied my glass and shook my head as Burke poured himself another. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Strong stuff, passito.’

That was enough, of course, to make him fill the glass to the brim. I left him there and got behind the wheel again. I found my cigarettes and offered one to Rosa.

‘I’m sorry about that. He doesn’t understand.’

She was bitterly angry. ‘I don’t need your regrets. At least he only speaks from ignorance, but you and your kind-you and Mafia-are responsible for most of this.’

So, I was still mafioso! I turned away and she leaned across and touched me on the shoulder. ‘No, I am angry with him and I place it on you. You will forgive me?’

I couldn’t tell what was going on behind the dark glasses. Did she imagine she had gone too far and was trying to recover her ground or was she afraid at the very thought of offending Vito Barbaccia’s grandson?

Or was it at all possible that she was just sorry?

My answer amply fitted every contingency. ‘That’s all right.’

Burke was on his third large glass. He finished it, stood up and sat down abruptly, looking surprised.

‘You warned him about passito?’ Rosa asked.

‘He isn’t in the mood for advice.’

She started to laugh. Revenge, particularly where women are concerned, is always sweet.

We moved into the high country now, the great craggy solitudes around Monte Cammarata, the moun-tain itself towering almost six thousand feet into the sky.

Burke had lapsed into a kind of stupor and Rosa leaned her arms on the back of my seat and we talked softly, our voices dropping a degree or two as the crags closed in around us.

We turned off the main road, zig-zagging up into the hills, the valley deepening beneath us. A hell of a country, home of runaway slaves and bandits since Roman times.

During the war this had been the most strategic point in the Italian-German defence system when the Allies invaded the island and yet the Americans had passed through unheeded, thanks, it was said, to the fact that most of the Italian troops had deserted after a Mafia directive.

The road narrowed, but we had it all to ourselves and I kept close to the wall, climbing slowly in second gear in a cloud of dust. The only living things we saw were a shepherd and his flock high up above a line of beech trees and then we rounded a shoulder and found Bellona a hundred yards away.

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