Not now…

I have put off writing on my blog for too long.

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week”, somebody once said. But the more tomorrows go by, the less I know what to write about on my blog. Will anybody be interested?

It’s not as if I’ve been doing nothing. We drove over to Tuscany at the beginning of May and stopped off in Ferrara so that I could visit the National Museum of Jewish History.

And that was a great help and sent me down other avenues of research.

The book I’m writing at the moment has a Jewish girl as the main character and it is set in World War Two.  Commissioned by my publisher, Bookouture, it is the hardest book I’ve written so far. My husband says I always say that, but it really is. I am not crying wolf. I have to write it from the heart. There is a weight of responsibility hanging over me. The story was inspired by his Italian grandfather: Luigi Micheli – registrar at the town hall of Urbino. As well as reading many books, both in Italian and English, I have consulted the documents he so carefully recorded, which my husband stores in a large orange box.

Nonno’s box

Nonno Luigi was a meticulous man, keeping notes of almost everything. When his daughter married an English army captain and left Urbino to live near Peterborough in 1947, he copied every single letter she wrote to her family on his typewriter. and filed them in order. It is an amazing social record of the time and I dipped into these letters when I wrote The Tuscan Secret . We have found a letter he wrote to Mussolini during the war about his pay and conditions, another pleading for help with funding for his sickly wife. There are shopping lists, copies of underground newspapers and postcards written to a friend in prison in south-west Austria.  And then there is the medal he received post-war from the Italian government for his courageous help in the liberation of Italy. I am not going to share those details with you here. That is for my book, to be published next spring.

It is because this story is so personal and so important, that I must write it from the heart. And I’ve had several moments of self-doubt throughout its creation; Add to this the fact that I was brought up as Roman Catholic. Until two days ago, I had never set foot in a synagogue. I knew little about Judaism. How could I write a book seen through the eyes of a Jew? What right do I have? Researching through texts is one thing, but I always hunt for personal stories if I can.

The Urbino synagogueSitting at signora Moscati’s desk in her beautiful study

Last Monday, I arranged to meet a wonderful historian who, now that the Jewish community in Urbino is so reduced in numbers, looks after the little-used 17th century synagogue in Urbino. The building was restored and modified in the 19th century after an earthquake. On the ceiling are the same design of lunettes as in Urbino cathedral – a symbol of the friendship and respect in the city between the two faiths and a reinforcement of a theme I had thought about while writing my first draft.  I had to apply for permission in a completely different city (Ancona) to visit. Signora Moscati sat with me most of the morning, patiently answering my questions. She invited us afterwards to her home nearby to talk more and show me her own documents and old postcards – so useful for details of what Urbino used to look like.  She and I will keep in touch. (I have study envy – she has written several books). Her beautiful palazzo home was requisitioned first by German officers and subsequently by the British (who burned her encyclopaediae as firewood. I apologised!).

I know Urbino well. We married just outside this stunning city forty-five years ago (eek!) and we visit regularly as there are still relatives in this beautiful place I wandered around with a list of questions about locations that I had to ensure I had right in my mind. I want descriptions in my books to be accurate. I hunt for details, jotting down as I go.

Making notes in the shade beneath the twin towers of the Ducal Palace

I had another serendipitous meeting yesterday when we wandered round the tiny hilltop hamletof Castel Cavallino where we had exchanged our marriage vows. I want to use this village for an important scene in my book and I needed to firm up more details. The church was closed and we went in search of a keyholder. He was out but we bumped into an elderly man who had just bought eggs from a neighbour. Tonino was more than willing to chat and we spent over an hour listening to him. He was nine when Castel Cavallino was occupied by German soldiers in 1943. Several of them were very homesick and missing their children. They were good men, he told us, busy with building fortifications on the Linea Verde (a section of the Gothic Line). They were not like the SS who were to come later. Before these troops arrived, their particular soldier friend warned the family to hide their olive oil, chickens, rabbits – anything the SS could purloin. He took us to his house and he showed us a tin of old photos of that era: including one of the  German soldier who often came to eat with them and sleep under the cherry tree outside. Tonino also told us that this friend allowed him to shoot his machine gun at some trees. He was shocked at how the branches shattered. Just imagine!

Tonino also filled us in with a couple of accounts of partisan activity. To me, these anecdotes are gold dust. Knowing they truly happened tops my confidence when I write. All my books have been inspired by true events. That is the way I like to work, bringing the past to life. At the end of our conversation, out came a vintage bottle of home-brewed Vinsanto and we toasted each other and promised to return to visit.

‘The problem with our village’, he said, ‘is there are only a couple of elderly folk living here now and we get lonely. Please come back and spend an afternoon with us. You’ve helped pass the time of day and made it different from yesterday.’

It is important to me to share these stories from the past before it is too late and we lose our precious elderly. Afterwards, I sat on a bench to write up my notes, the warm wind gusting about me. Forty-five years earlier, I had sat on that same wall behind me with my newly-married husband and sister (my bridesmaid) on my September wedding day. All of us slim and young, ready to embark on our adult lives.

I could only dream then that one day I would be a published author. We don’t know what is round the corner, do we? All the more reason to get on and do what we know we have to. Thanks for reading my scattered thoughts.

“In delay there lies no plenty” (Shakespeare)

Sunset in Urbino