Blood Rain - 7 by Michael Dibdin Page B

for my father … He miraculously reappeared, after all those years. It makes a difference, and yet it doesn’t. That’s always assuming that he is my father.’
    ‘But you had DNA tests done, you said.’
    ‘I sometimes think he faked them.’
    ‘Why would he do that?’
    ‘Why do people do anything? Half the time they don’t know themselves. Even if they do, their reasons needn’t make sense to anyone else.’
    ‘You’re an anti-rationalist, then?’
    ‘I’m a realist. At least, I like to think so.’
    ‘Then I’ll tell you about my mother, Carla. Let’s test your sense of realism, my dear. I’ll try not to bore you, but to be frank you don’t have much choice but to listen anyway.’
    ‘I could always leave.’
    ‘I’m afraid not. As far as my escort are concerned, we’re a package. An item, as they say. As long as I’m here, you have to stay. We arrived together, and we leave together.’
    ‘I see. I didn’t quite realize what I was letting myself in for by accepting this invitation.’
    ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t. But in an odd way bondage can be quite liberating, don’t you think?’
    ‘Liberating?’
    ‘So many decisions you don’t have to make. At any rate, here’s my mother’s story. Joking aside, I’m not really going to exploit the fact that you’re a captive audience. If you’re bored, just tell me.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘My mother is from Manchester. A city in England. The second half of the word, “chester”, is cognate with the Latin castrum , a fortified camp. The first syllable is the English word for uomo . My mother once claimed, in one of her rare flashes of humour, that all her troubles stemmed from this fact.’
    ‘Your mother is English?’
    ‘She was born in England, of English parents. Well, actually one was Welsh, but I can’t keep track of all these distinctions which seem to be so important there. Anyway, there she was, growing up in Manchester…’
    ‘Have you ever been there?’
    ‘I have, as it happens.’
    ‘What’s it like?’
    ‘Impossible to tell you. We don’t have cities like that here. I liked it. I liked the people.’
    ‘You speak English?’
    ‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves here, Carla. All in due course.’
    ‘I’m sorry. So, your mother grew up in … whatever it’s called.’
    ‘Yes. Her name is Bettina. Betty. When she was sixteen she left school and found work as a waitress somewhere in the centre of town. That’s where she met my father.’
    ‘He’s English too?’
    ‘No, he’s from here. He had a job as a deckhand on a freighter out of Catania. It sailed the length of the Mediterranean, crossed the Bay of Biscay, then the Irish Sea, and finally ended up in a canal leading to Manchester. By that time my father had had enough of sleepless nights and puking over the side. He jumped ship, and after a couple of weeks at a sailors’ hostel he found a job washing dishes in a restaurant.’
    ‘The one where your mother was employed as a waitress.’
    ‘Brava! And then what?’
    ‘They fell in love?’
    ‘Bravissima . Or rather, she did. She was one of three daughters from a working-class family in one of the less attractive areas of the city. She’d never met anyone like Agostino, never even dreamt of doing so, never imagined that there were such people in the world. Confident, precocious and pleasantly pushy, with a permanent tan, coal-black hair, pearly teeth and a charmingly defective command of English which didn’t stop him telling her what to do all the time …’
    ‘And him?’
    ‘He’s never told me his side of the story. But I’ve seen photographs of my mother taken at the time, a few snapshots which her parents had kept and which I saw when I went over there. I think for him she must have seemed as exotic as he was for her. Slightly taller than him, with a mass of red hair, lightly freckled skin as white as milk. Strong, capable legs, a bosom which had already attracted much comment, and a sweet,