He smiled at her. ‘There was a lot of fighting in the high mountains starting barely forty or fifty kilometres north of here, but that’s not a very well-known fact back in the UK. We tend only to think of the First World War as the battlefields of the Somme or Flanders fields, but there was so much more to it than that.’
‘So who were the Italians fighting?’
‘The old enemy – the Austrians. Believe it or not, almost as many Italians died here in the mountains to the north of us as Brits did in France and Belgium. It was slaughter on an industrial scale. And not just Italians, by the end there were British and French troops fighting here as well.’
‘So maybe Robert might have ended up on the front line here in Italy?’
Mark shook his head. ‘I doubt it. As a serving officer in the British army at the start of the war, he would almost certainly have been sent straight to Belgium when the German assault began in August 1914. Italy only joined the war in 1915.’
‘And presumably if he was in the war from the very start, it would have been unlikely that he would have survived all the way through.’ Emma was thinking of the end of the movie: the heart-wrenching farewell on the waterfront of Venice. ‘That makes the last scene of Dreaming of Italy even sadder. Almost certainly Emily and Robert really were saying farewell forever.’
The word ‘forever’ stuck in her head. Could it be that when she and Mark also parted in less than two days’ time that this goodbye would be forever, too?
‘Statistically, I’m afraid so. Of course, he might have been lucky and just got injured.’ Mark was trying to sound positive, but it didn’t last. ‘That war was so truly awful that men actually considered themselves lucky if they lost a leg or an eye and were invalided out. It beggars belief.’
Rich tapped Emma’s arm. ‘How’s this for an idea? Right at the very end of the final scene, as it dissolves, the shot could cut to a bleak black-and-white image of a devastated battlefield, maybe even with a British officer lying face down in the mud, and the audience would get the point. Or is that too terribly sad?’
A shiver went down Emma’s back and she shook her head. ‘Dreaming of Italy’s supposed to be a romance, not a tragedy, Rich. We want the audience to leave with a few wistful tears in the corners of their eyes, but I don’t think we want to send them out completely gutted. I’ll include that suggestion in my report to your father but, personally, I think it might be better to avoid mentioning the war. He might have survived, who knows?’
‘Mind you, though, the war does get a mention.’ Rich had clearly done his homework and Emma was pleased to hear it. ‘Isn’t it here in Padua that Robert gets the telegram ordering him back to his regiment?’
Emma nodded. ‘Yes, indeed, and that same day Emily gets a telegram from her father, telling her she has to come home, as war is looking likely.’
‘Why was that?’ Marina had been following the conversation with interest. ‘Does that mean the war had started?’
Mark glanced across at Emma. ‘You said the story was all happening just before the war. As far as Britain was concerned, the declaration of war was at the end of July 1914. Are we saying Robert and Emily were over here then?’
Emma shook her head. ‘No, according to the screenplay they were definitely here in June, so just before the actual outbreak of war. Something must have happened in June to tell everybody that war was on the way.’
‘Well, the event that sparked the whole thing off was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the twenty-eighth of June 1914. Emily and Robert must have been here at that time. I imagine as soon as the news came out, everybody with any sense started heading for home and troops started getting the call to arms.’
‘Just think, we’re in June now. All this was happening just over a hundred years ago, almost to the day. Poor Emily and Robert. Little did they know the horror to come…’
‘Nobody did. In fact, most people assumed it would be a fast-moving war that would be over by Christmas. How wrong could they be? Anyway, you’re saying it was in Padua that they got the telegrams. That’s going to be a pretty dark moment in the movie.’ Mark took a big mouthful of wine. ‘That’s a real pity, seeing as it’s such a beautiful city.’
Silence descended upon the table and Emma was still racking her brains for some way of cheering everybody up when Mark got there first.
‘Anyway, changing the subject, you’ll all be delighted to hear that the carpenter has fixed that damn gate and Carmen is no longer able to go swimming in the pool – much to her displeasure.’ He smiled across the table at the others. ‘Claudio sent me the good news and he sends his greetings to you all.’
‘He’s a very good guy, isn’t he?’ Emma did her best to pick up the ball and run with it. ‘Is there a Mrs Claudio?’
Mark told them that Claudio was happily married with three little kids, and his family would be coming to join him at the hotel any day now as soon as the decorators applied the finishing touches to the manager’s apartment a bit further along the old stable block from Mark’s house. Thought of Mark’s lovely house brought another little wave of nostalgia to Emma, but she did her best to stifle it as the main course arrived.
She had chosen a roulade of pork, filled with omelette, walnuts and spinach and accompanied by roast potatoes and, unusually, half a red lettuce that had been roasted in the oven. The result was excellent. As she ate, she turned the conversation to the city of Padua and they decided on a plan for the following day. Seeing as this would be the last full day the characters in the movie – and, indeed, all of them here – would have together, Marina promised to find them some places with a more melancholy feel to them. Emma just hoped this wouldn’t result in her bursting into tears herself. Her flight would be early the following morning and she was already counting off the hours. She knew that tomorrow was going to be very tough on the emotions.
The plan was to spend the morning in Padua and then head to Venice in the afternoon. Marina came up with an excellent suggestion as to how to get there.
‘A hundred years ago, almost all heavy goods were still being transported from Padua to Venice by canal. The canal’s still in existence. How about leaving the car in Padua and taking a boat to Venice? I’ll make a few calls and see if we can rent a launch. Our hotel’s right in the middle of Venice and of course there are no cars there anyway. I imagine that’s quite possibly what Emily and Robert would have done.’
Emma definitely liked the sound of that and it was decided. In her mind’s eye she could already imagine the scene as the two heartbroken lovers sailed into the majestic beauty of Venice, their minds filled with foreboding. As for her, this time tomorrow, she and Mark would be in Venice for their last night together, maybe ever.
At the end of the meal, she and Mark wandered out into the evening air and sat outside the hotel watching the sun set over the jagged peaks of the distant Alps. Emma reflected that in less than two days’ time she would be at her parents’ home in Norfolk, where she was going to spend a night before getting a flight back to LA on Friday. Pleased as she was at the prospect of seeing her mum and dad again, she knew that leaving Mark would be so very tough.