Plot reminder: Having taken on the identity of his murdered friend Ettore Lo Bianco, Vincenzo has been taken in by a widowed dairy farmer named Hilda Frecklington. In the previous chapter, she suffers the heartbreak of learning that her son, Ronnie, has perished in the D-Day landings.

~~~~~

The final acts of the war vibrated through the oval speaker grill of the living room wireless. The bloodbath of the Bulge, the firestorm of Dresden, the vain defence of Berlin to the very last soldier child. Narrated in that haughty-voiced rasp of the BBC, these were just the closing chapters of the densest and most terrible of tomes. The denouement of a cautionary tale which would call its booming echo to future generations, one in which there were no real winners. In which mankind itself was the loser.

Though we'd all known it was over for several days by then, Churchill's official announcement came mid-afternoon of May the 8th, a Tuesday if I recall correctly. Hilda told me I could have the rest of the day off if I liked, join in the fun over in the village. The end of the war in Europe didn't feel like a cause for celebration to me either however, more the funeral after a slow and painful death.

There was a bottle of scotch in the display cabinet, a good one I think which hadn't been touched since that day back in late '39 that her husband had folded his conscription papers into pocket and walked out of the front door, destined never to return. She poured hearty measures into two glasses, clinked hers to mine.

"Suppose we should mark the occasion somehow," she frowned. Convincing herself more than me it seemed. "To my John and my Ronnie, and let's hope Hitler rots in hell for all eternity."

Raising my glass, I too made a toast. "To my fallen brothers in Tobruk. To my fallen brothers everywhere. As for Hitler, let's hope Mussolini's right there beside him, his culo also roasting in the fires of the inferno."

We downed our whiskies in a single gasping slug, slammed the glasses to the table. A duty performed, an obbligation executed. Headed off then to clean out the stalls before afternoon milking.

We were right, I believe, to limit ourselves to a solemn toast, a single winced shot of whisky. The news flow of the following months was in many ways  more harrowing than those which had preceded that day. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, those first bloodchilling reports of what had awaited the liberating armies in the abandoned Nazi concentration camps... Man's thirst for inventing ever more devastating ways of slaughtering his fellow man had reached new and unrepeatable depths.

To those of us who lived through those terrible years, managed somehow to survive them, the war has never really ended.

It's still there, a lingering bruise on the tissue of our hearts.

*

Since my unplanned flee from camp 106a, my artistic output had been limited. This was due principally the seven-days-a-week nature of dairy farming. Down time was as rare as a cloudless English sky.

The few works I managed to complete were effected over a series of snatched ten-minute periods rather than full concentrated afternoons or evenings. There was a sketch of Hilda which I was particularly proud of and which earnt me a moist-eyed smile when I presented it to her. This was duly framed and given pride of place on the mantelpiece next to the wedding clock. That short period Ronnie was home on leave I persuaded him pose for me too. I'm not sure what happened to that sketch though - Hilda had stowed it away in some secret private cubbyhole no doubt, only looked at it when she felt brave enough. When she thought she might bear it.

Other than potraits, I also managed a few projections of the farmhouse from varying angles, a couple of which I've still got stashed away in an old folder somewhere. Everything pencil or at most ink cross hatch. Didn't pick a brush up at all for the remainder of the war, unless the coat of weather varnish I gave the outbuildings counts.

From the railway station in the village, Cambridge was only a twenty-minute ride away. Once again however, the day-to-day commitments of the farm ensured my visits were both infrequent and short - not the lazy wanderings of a curious tourist but the in-and-out freneticism of a farm hand charged with replacing some worn-out tool or piece of equipment. The little of the place I had the opportunity to see was however awe-inspiring - a seemingly endless sprawl of gothic spires and lush green lawns, the sky-reflecting waters of the Cam meandering their languid course betwixt and between. These the same streets and alleyways which had been trodden by Oppenheimer and Darwin and Rutherford, I couldn't help thinking. By Milton and Tennyson and Brooke. I was immediately hooked by the place. Beguiled.

It seemed that the city was held sacrosanct even by the Luftwaffe, that the Nazi bombing raid stategists had ordered its Focke-Wulfs and Heinkels to steer well clear. Only once did I witness the destruction of war: a half-collapsed end terrace and partially crumbled facade of a neighbouring church. A rogue bomb, some confused pilot spying a cluster of ground-level lights, believing himself to be already above Coventry or Birmingham or Leicester.

Scuffing my boots up the stone entrance steps, I took a look through the church door. The hit seemed to have been a recent one, the dust a thin still-settling veil across my vision. Though a small parochial affair, from its gold-leafed ornatations it was evidently a Catholic church. The painted altar backdrop, showing a pained-looking Christ on the cross, had been cracked like a bolt of lightning down the middle. Here and there to either side of the central fissure coin-sized patches of stone had crumbled away; the whole of the saviour's right eye was missing, for example, as if he were sporting a grey-coloured pirate's patch. There were a pair of artists working on restorations, one applying stucco towards the base, the other atop a stepladder fine-brushing a new shine to the discoloured halo. Young-looking, both of them. Volunteers from the university, I wondered.

As I watched them it was impossible not to think of the painted altar back at camp 106a. I could only hope that someone of similarly artistic inclinations had finished the job off for me. That its hard-earnt beauty had brought succour to my compatriots. Through all my years in England I would never again venture inside the thirty-kilometre radius of the camp which I'd opened up on that heart-pounding, lung-screaming night of Saturday September 4th, 1943. Couldn't risk being recognised. The whole carefully constructed house of cards being puffed down.

Some years ago a female acquaintance of mine who was much more embracing of the digital age than I have ever been introduced me to that strange cyber universe of the internet. Showed me amonst other revelations how to effect a Google search. And so during a visit to my local public library one morning I found myself taking a seat at a vacant computer, out of curiosity typing in the words 'painted altar, prisoner of war camp 106a, Northdyke, England.' It hadn't been with any great sense of expectation that I did so. A clutching at straws, that was all. A stab in the dark.

It came as a surprise therefore when a couple of images flashed up onto the screen from a local history site. These were monochrome, not quite in focus, the altar cross and other decorations, as well as the acting priest figure, little more than fuzzy-edged silhouettes. Although difficult to discern quality level, it was however clear that backdrop had been finished. The remaining half a dozen apostles which I'd left only block shaded had now been animated with facial details, the folds of their clothing lent a three-dimensional lightness and shade. Few things have brought greater pleasure to my heart, stretched my lips into a wider smile, than coming across those images.

Lost momentarily in that bittersweet haze of nostalgia, along with relevant key words I then typed the name Irene Brennan into the Google search bar.

Unlike the altar, Irene had left no digital trace however. Hadn't remained Irene Brennan for very much longer most probably, I'd reasoned. In that patriachal Anglo-Saxon tradition, had become Irene Some Other Surname. Her beauty framed in the gaze of that luckiest of all men.

*

It was the week following V.E Day that Hilda finally confronted the subject. Casually it seemed, matter-of-factly, as she lay my fried egg on toast before me following morning milking. I could sense however that it was something she'd been building up to, bracing herself for the undesired outcome.

"Suppose you'll be heading home now. Back to Italy."

As the enquiry, my response too had been pre-deliberated, my wording mentally rehearsed, affected with feigned nonchalance.

"Couldn't even if wanted to," I shrugged. "Would need official repatriation papers." I think she forgot sometimes that I'd escaped, was as illegitimate as a mongrel dog. "But I don't want to go back anyway." I looked up at her as she scrubbed the pan clean at the sink. "I think I'd... I mean, if it would give you pleasure that is... Well, I think I'd like to stay."

With her back to me she must have thought I couldn't see the involuntary flicker of a smile my response had provoked. The dawn was a grey one however, the outside darkness and interior light conspiring to render the kitchen window in front of her as reflective as a mirror.

"I could start paying you an honest wage I suppose," she mused. "The same as I'd pay a local hand. Would have to take something off for food and lodgings of course."

Hitherto our arrangement had been that I felt the weight of a farthing or shilling coin in my hand only upon request. A twice-weekly packet of cigarettes. When I needed a replacement for some item of her late-husband's clothing I'd worn out. My rare ventures out to The White Horse, my even rarer half-day trips to Cambridge on the train. It wasn't until some years later that I discovered she'd regularly been depositing contributions in a savings account she'd opened up at the village post office a month after my arrival at the farm.

"Money," I responded. "Yes, I would like a little money. Not much, just some." I pierced the yolk of my egg with fork twine, watched as its golden cream oozed into the crispy-edged hollows of the toast. In my experience, it is only Englishwomen who truly know how to fry an egg. "More than that," I continued, "I want your help Hilda." At this she lay down her scrubbing brush, her gaze as she turned to face me a curious one.

"I want to study," I told her. "Study long, study hard. And at the end of it, I want to give new life to faded beauty. An art restorer, Hilda. I'll work myself into the ground if you only help me become an art restorer."

*

There was a retired grammar school teacher in the village called Mr Habergham, a somewhat corpulent figure who was often to be spotted perched on his usual barstool at The White Horse with a frothing pint of best bitter in hand as if in a fevered quest to become ever more rotund. He it was I paid a visit to the following Saturday evening, our conversation soundtracked by the chink of the best china his wife served our tea in.

"Cambridge!" His expression was one of amused incredulity, as if I'd announced I planned to take a day-trip to the moon. "Let me see if I've heard this right: you finished school in Italy at fourteen and now wish to study at Cambridge University?"

Yes, I assured him, his ears hadn't let him down. The reasons I recounted for holding such a lofty ambition were the same I'd explained to Hilda. The personal challenge. The quality of education I would receive. My immense employability upon graduation. And whilst all this was of course true, it was only part of the truth, a single facet of it. My principal motivation couldn't be voiced, consisted simply of a name: Ettore Lo Bianco. It was one I intended wear with honour. Do justice to. Parade through the dusty libraries and columned porticos of one of the world's most prestigious universities.

In an attempt at persuading Mr Habergham that the endeavour might be even remotely possible, I showed him an I.Q test I'd come across in one of Hilda's old copies of Reader's Digest. According to the accompanying article, my result of 136 placed me in the top two per cent of the population.

He nodded, vaguely impressed. "Your intelligence I put not in doubt Mr Lo Bianco. Unfortunately for you however, cognitive skills are only part of the equation. Of even greater importance is recall capacity. Have you got space in your head for the sheer avalanche of facts you'll be expected to know?"

Firstly, he went on, I would need to improve my English. Grammar, syntax and vocabulary all needed to go up several notches.  Linguistic preparation alone, he estimated, would require a whole year. At some point I would also need to apply to the authorities for the status of Indefinite Leave to Remain. Not only would this give me the legal right to work in Great Britain, but also to study. Once the status was granted, he foresaw little difficulty in registering me as an external candidate at his former school for the basic level state  exam. A year of general study would be required. After a further year's study, I might then try for the Higher School Certificate.

His bespectacled grey eyes fixed me in an earnest gaze. "But really, this represents the cresting of a mere foothill. What would await you afterwards is the full neck-tilting hulk of a Himalayan behemoth. The academic Mount Everest that is the Cambridge admission exam."

In forty years of grammar school teaching, he explained, only a handful of his boys had ever had the temerity to even try, and of those only two had met the required standard. As an eighteen-year-old he himself had also failed the exam; had been forced to settle for the second class academic environs of York.

"We'd need to sharpen your knowledge across the full gamut of academic subjects from algebra to zoology. From Aristotle to Zimmerman. Another full year of study, minimum."

He took a sip of his tea, left me to reflect for a moment.

Four years.

If I was lucky, four years. If everything went to plan, four years. Two-fifths of a decade emersed not just in cow dung but also in books, sleep some quaint notion that other people indulged in.

"Are we clear on what lies ahead Mr Lo Bianco?"

I held his gaze defiantly. Unflinchingly.

"Yes," I replied.