Georgina North is an actor based in London and has a master’s degree in Theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.

After visiting a museum in Scilla, Calabria, which houses the last remaining traditional sword-fishing boat (a luntre), she was inspired to write In the Beautiful Seasons.

She is a graduate of the Faber Academy’s Novel Writing Course. The themes of home and displacement are resonant in all of Georgina’s work.

Email: georginanorth@hotmail.com

Instagram: @ggnorth16

Chapter One

May 1958 – Vanella, Calabria

Franco

Only last week, siroccos had caused seaweed and flotsam to mark the shore with a wave-shaped line, but this morning, as Franco waited in the luntre for the dawn’s haze to lift, he knew conditions were perfect for the first day of the sword-fishing season.

Domenico and Uncle Corrado trudged along the beach towards the luntre, passing women bartering for bluefish off the night boats. They raised their hats to the woman selling lemons. Once they’d passed her, Uncle Corrado crossed himself.

Franco took the spears from Domenico and unwrapped them from their leather pouch with the same care he’d taken when unwrapping the chalice and ciborium as an altar boy.

‘Papà, they’ll be explosions up at the autostrada’s construction site again today. Midday, they say,’ Franco said while he secured a spear into the harpoon’s head. He threaded the rope through the loop at the spear’s end, then ran his hand along the rope’s length, feeling for any snags.

‘So, that means four or five o’clock,’ Domenico said, running his calloused palms, as thick as the rind of an aged pecorino, along the luntre’s black painted panelling—camouflaged from the swordfishes’ keen eyesight.

‘Mimmo told me he saw two huge swordfish breach at the sound of the last explosion,’ Uncle Corrado said. He threw his lunch pack into the luntre before lighting his first cigarette of the morning, its acrid smell giving away its black-market origin. ‘I reckon today’s our day.’ Smoke escaped from his nose as he talked. ‘We could bring in maybe five, or even six, é, Domenico, like we used to on almost every day of the season when papà was alive. Then I’ll host a tarantella on the beach tonight. How about you join us this time – what do you say?’

From the force of Domenico’s exhalation, Franco sensed his irritation and Uncle Corrado hadn’t even started his stream of early morning predictions about the day’s conditions—the weather, the currents, and their prospects for making the chase.

‘What are you listening to Mimmo for?’ Domenico asked.

‘He’s got good ideas. We should get in on some of them. The beach lido he’s building could bring in serious money.’

‘Serious money?’ Domenico shook his head. ‘Where do you think we live, Portofino?’

The Olivieri brothers arrived, wrapped lunches tucked under their arms. Two of the brothers bid Domenico, ‘Buongiorno’ as the third brother rubbed a yawn into his face.

Domenico had hired the oarsmen to replace Franco’s older brothers, Gino and Paolo. When the Sicilians’ motorised boats appeared and fewer swordfish made it as far as Vanella’s bay, life for the fishermen proved much harder. There was little off-season fishing, and it would be impossible for Gino and Paolo to earn enough money to marry and support their own families. They used to saunter up and down Corso Garibaldi with the disoccupati—a gang of unemployed boys who wore their hair greased in the American style. They used to play billiards all day in the back room of the fishermen’s bar until the proprietario removed the billiard table after a fight involving a knife. Domenico said Gino and Paolo were between Scilla and Charybdis—the disoccupati or National Service. It was agreed that they would join a cousin in a town called Brooklyn, in America, where there were many Calabrians and plenty of work. As the only son left at home, Franco had been spared National Service, but he wouldn’t mind serving if it meant his brothers could return and everything would be how it was before.

The hope was that the Olivieri brothers would complete the whole season, unlike last season’s oarsmen. Two had left for Germany and the third hadn’t returned from winter night-fishing—lost to the currents north of Vanella where the eddies were so perilous, they were known as the bastardi. The oarsman’s wife still burned a night candle on her windowsill in wait.

As the oarsmen rowed clear of the south bay, Franco crossed himself three times, kissed his San Pietro’s amulet and climbed the luntre’s mast. The morning sun warmed his back as he tightened the chord of his straw hat, battling against his thick mop of hair and scoured the water, his long lashes protecting his cocoa-coloured eyes from the glare.

They rowed the luntre past the island—a craggy rock which divided Vanella’s two bays. Beneath the island was a laguna where Franco used to lift Maria as she pretended to be Esther Williams—she swam as well as Esther and was even prettier. Lately, though, she was as unpredictable as the land in the hills on which she worked with her parents—often generous and giving, but at times, stubborn and cruel. Trying to navigate Maria’s changing moods tired Franco almost as much as when she’d helped him learn to read.

At the centre of the north bay, the men pulled up their oars and Franco surveyed the familiar scene from the mast—the Olivieri brothers resting over their oars; Uncle Corrado reclining at the luntre’s stern with his trilby tilted over his face and Domenico laying at the bow with his left hand cupping the harpoon’s neck.

Franco waited at the mast, scanning the bay’s mirror-like surface, etched with Vanella’s gold and pewter reflection, to the background noise of the town awakening. Dawn was Franco’s favourite time of day to stand at the mast; the clear, limpid bay revealed more than at any other time of day, aiding the job of detecting disturbances on the water’s surface, ripples moving away from the tide, whirls forming.

A window shutter clapped open somewhere high in the town, formed of irregular-shaped buildings within and on top of a baked sandstone cliff, rising high above the beach. From the town’s lookout—the belvedere—at the centre of the cliff, the view stretched across the Tirreno towards Stromboli and down the Costa Viola to Sicilia’s stretto. At the belvedere’s iron railings, every Vanellese would inspect the weather before making the decision to walk the 110 steps down to the beach.

The washerwomen, carrying baskets on their heads, filed down the steps on their way to the stream which ran into the south bay. The washerwomen’s songs sometimes carried on the breeze and rumours circled amongst the labourers, building the autostrada in the hills, that these songs were those of sirens. Many of Vanella’s old folk hoped the “sirens” would scare the autostrada people away.

A gull flew across Franco’s vision. He followed it before the bird continued south into the morning mist, clearing over Sicilia. Motorised passerella boats were hunting down in the stretto. There were two boats last season. Now he would have to tell Domenico he’d spotted three. The passerella’s mast was ten times higher than the luntre’s. From a crow’s nest at the top, a pair of spotters steered the course of the hunt while the harpooner stood in wait at the end of a catwalk that stretched far beyond the hull. Franco knew it was disloyal to think it, but he often wondered how far he would be able to see from a passerella’s crow’s nest, surveying the bay from such a great height.

Uncle Corrado’s humming brought Franco down from the crow’s nest in his mind. At the luntre’s bow, Domenico lifted his head like a hound by the fire, a sign that Corrado’s humming had risen to a level above his approval.

‘Come on, Domenico, we need music to work. The shepherds have their bagpipes … the washerwomen sing—’

‘Spada!’ Franco called as the fish rose, six feet clear of the water, in an arch of steel blue.

The oarsmen sprang to their positions as the swordfish crashed back into the sea.

Franco stretched his arm through the spray still hanging in the air. ‘Fish ahead. Fish ahead. Ahead … ahead.’

The oarsmen heaved in unison.

‘Fast. Fast. Fast. Fast,’ Franco cried, as the luntre’s slim hull moved with the speed to match its nickname—the greyhound of the sea.

A shadow darkened as the fish neared the surface. When its dorsal fin appeared, Franco leaned his body towards the swordfish’s trajectory and fired staccato instructions. ‘Ahead. Ahead,’ he called, as the fin sliced a clean line through the water.

Franco’s knees bent and rose to the rhythm of the boat, like a cowboy at the rodeo. ‘Left. Fast. Fast. Fast. Fast … left.’

From the size and speed of movement, Franco was sure that the swordfish was a female and her mate would not be far behind. ‘It’s a she-fish, a she-fish. Ahead … ahead.’

The crew gathered pace and as they closed in on her, Franco twisted around the mast towards the flash of her silver fin in the sunlight.

‘There she is. There she is, I see her,’ Franco’s voice rasped, dry from the salt-sprayed air.

‘Slow, slow, slow.’

Domenico held the harpoon aloft.

‘Slow … slow.’

Domenico took aim.

‘Pronto!’

With a flick of his wrist, Domenico threw the harpoon and the coiled rope took flight.

The spear pierced her flesh. She dived, deep at first before leaping, her back contorting, head tossing, trying to rid the great worm from her side.

Franco climbed down the mast, wiped seawater from his eyes, and took up the rope with the oarsmen. Together, the men strained against her strength, trying to pull her in. Her head whipping back and forth in protest as her sword threw steel rainbows across the luntre.

She struck the hull.

‘Calma!’ Domenico called and Franco clutched the mast until the luntre steadied.

She sunk back into the water, and the men waited silently in anticipation for her to weaken. Franco’s chest drummed as he watched Domenico kneel with his hands around the rope, gauging the swordfish’s movements.

The moment blood bloomed across the water’s surface, Domenico gave the call.

Franco and the crew hauled the huge swordfish onto the deck: it lowered the boat with a thud.

The fish’s eye was the size of a grapefruit and the colour of a bluebottle, still pulsing in its socket. Domenico slit its neck; its tail shuddered, ebbing to a slow slap as he removed the gills and cut out the harpoon’s spear. Uncle Corrado took a rag and cleaned blood from the skin, gouged a wiggling lamprey from its belly and flung it overboard.

It pleased Franco to watch his father and uncle working together; although their communication was unspoken, this was the only time they were ever in harmony, the only time their kinship seemed a union.

The men bowed their heads with their hands clasped in front, as Domenico scratched three lines down and three lines across the swordfish’s cheek, marking the sign of the cross before muttering the prayer.

 As Franco kissed his amulet, he caught sight of a shadow circling the luntre—a male swordfish moving through the blood-slicked water, pursuing its mate. Franco had seen this happen many times. He didn’t need to climb the mast; the male fish wouldn’t leave without his mate. He warned the men to stand tight. Every sword-fisherman along the Costa Viola had witnessed male swordfish attempt to leap onboard after their mates. Some men had lost fingers or suffered fractured bones to the males’ slaying swords which crashed in protest against their boats’ hulls.

Franco prepared the harpoon for Domenico.

…

After the crew laid the male swordfish beside its mate, and Domenico and Uncle Corrado had cleaned the fish, Franco stepped forward to mark the sign of the cross on its cheek. Since his accident, Franco had marked every male swordfish. It had become an unspoken rule that instead of his father, he would mark the sign of the cross onto the fish’s skin and offer a prayer of thanks for both his life and that of the swordfish.

Aged ten, Franco started working as a spotter at the mast. While crouching on the beach beside his first catch—a female swordfish, twice as long as Franco was tall—he was struck by the swordfish’s mate, beaching himself beside her. As the male hurled into Franco, its sword sliced his forehead. When he’d regained consciousness, Franco thought that a great quake had raised the Scilla monster from the seabed and caught him. As he felt the Scilla pulling him along the beach with two of her six heads, he prayed to San Pietro to spare him, but beneath a coral sky, he saw it wasn’t the Scilla, but his father pulling him free from under a male swordfish. Writhing in pain, blood erupting from his forehead, Domenico inspected Franco’s injuries, before scooping him up and carrying him along the beach and back up to Vanella.

After his accident, Domenico insisted the family kept what had happened between themselves. “Why should anyone know? It would surely get misconstrued,” Domenico had said. With so much gossiping in the town, someone was bound to accuse them of storytelling, or, worse still, accuse them of putting young Franco in danger. Why jeopardise the Glauco family name? The whole family, apart from Uncle Corrado, had agreed to say that the scar on Franco’s head was not from a male swordfish, beaching itself on top of him, but from a tumble in the boat—a rite of passage for many a novice spotter. But Uncle Corrado said their story was different, their story was special, and he’d tried to persuade Domenico to sell the story to the newspaper people in Reggio. “We could charge the old and the superstitious to touch the scar on Franco’s head. A wound from the sword of a lovesick swordfish would bring luck to those looking for love themselves,” he’d argued. Domenico would hear no more of it. He told Corrado to leave his house and only return when he’d learnt some respect.

During Franco’s convalescence, Maria brought him gifts: unusual shells; fruit from her parent’s farmstead, and a cicada in a preserving jar. Franco’s favourite gift was a freshly laid egg. He’d tap a hole in its top with his penknife and take pleasure in watching Maria squirm as he sucked out the yolk from its shell.

After the doctor removed Franco’s bandages, Maria ran her finger along Franco’s scarred forehead. “I’m a good witch sent to heal you,” she’d told him. That was the day Franco decided he would marry Maria. He never once doubted his decision, he never wavered from it. Franco was certain of three things: he was a sword-fisherman, he would live and die in Vanella, and he would one day marry Maria.

Chapter Two

Maria

At the foot of the hills above Vanella, Maria, her parents and their mule turned off the path and scaled a track which traversed the stone terraces up to the farmsteads.

They stopped, halfway, to look north towards the autostrada’s construction site. Since yesterday, the mounds of slate chippings had risen and heavy machinery moved over a wide stretch of rubble. Maria wondered how this chaos would ever become a proper road. A rusting hoarding across the site read, “Costruzione del Autostrada del Sole”. When the construction’s explosions started, some people feared Stromboli had erupted again and that the limestone dust, lingering in the air, was volcanic ash that had drifted over the sea.

‘The explosions were loud in the night. Maria, did they wake you?’

‘No papà,’ she lied. The truth was, Maria loved to listen to the blasts in the hills; they made the caged butterflies, trapped inside her stomach, flutter. An explosion had woken her in the night and she’d watched as the moonlight, hitting her crystal collection on the windowsill, made coloured splinters dance across the ceiling above her. For a few held breaths, she’d thought the butterflies in her stomach had escaped.

‘Come on Maria. Sara. Presto!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Maria asked her father.

‘Tunisini.’ Tommaso pointed to the far bank where a huddle of dark-skinned workmen wearing round caps ate from pans. ‘Keep walking.’

Tommaso cracked the mule whip to the side of the track, creating a cloud; Maria coughed into her apron. The family carried on along the track where limestone dust covered grasses and wildflowers at the verges—only the red poppies broke through the white veil.

Before Tommaso opened the farmstead’s gate, Sara rubbed the horned goat’s skull, nailed to its front, as a protection from the maloccio. ‘I fear no amount of these will be enough,’ Tommaso said. ‘The road will soon cut across our track. I’ll sleep up here when those labourers get nearer.’

‘Why? What do you think they’ll do—?’

‘Maria, that’s enough questions,’ Sara said.

In an act to repel further questioning, Maria bit her bottom lip – it tasted of chalk.

…

The farmstead across the hill was two-thirds a patchwork of uniformly divided vegetable beds. At the top, bordering the sheep herder’s track, were grapevines and a fruit orchard. The other third, on the northern flank, housed the pigsty, the chicken run and a stone storehouse and yard. Below the yard, on a raised terazza, was a weathered picnic table, shaded by trellised vines.

Maria lifted the bucket of kitchen waste from the mule’s pack, threw the swill into the pig’s trough, and cleaned the bucket with a handful of straw. She fed the chickens, wiped her hands and sat at the picnic table on the terazza, where she spread out her schoolbooks. Staring at a page of algebra, she laid her cheek in her palm, wishing it were a pillow.

‘May God strike the person who thought up the ugly, sharp shapes of mathematics,’ she said to herself and gazed across to her parents, planting a row of beans.

Sara pulled her planting stick from the red earth and wiped mud from her chin with a corner of her apron. Papà had gifted her the planting stick on their wedding day. He’d carved “Sara” into one side in florid swirls. How could something that made holes in the ground be a worthy wedding present?

Tommaso waved to Maria. She stopped doodling poppies in the margins of her notebook and headed up to the shade of the orchard, dense with fig, nectarine, and cherry trees.

‘Pronto!’ Tommaso shouted, and released the stopper from the stone water vat.

Maria followed the stream, checking that the water had pooled into the moats, dug around the apricot saplings, before tracking the stream through the sweet peppers, fennel, and staked tomato vines, ensuring that none of the irrigation furrows had collapsed and that the water reached every meticulously plotted bed.

When she was small, she’d pretended the crops, high above her, were mangroves in an African jungle. She would run between the vegetables, hurdling the furrows, imagining she was being chased by lions and zebras. When she’d reached the herb bed at the bottom, her skirts would brush the basil leaves and she’d inhale their rising scent as she waited for the water to trickle into the final bed before signalling to her father.

Today, as she pounded the sun-baked earth, the task felt gruelling and arduous. She was too big to canter along the paths anymore, and had to trot with her skirts held clear of the undergrowth, pricking and stabbing at her shins. When she reached the herb beds, the heady, sharp smell of basil made her double over with nausea and as the water pooled into the last bed, she struggled to raise a hand to her father. It seemed the land now resented her as much as she did it …