I’ve been thinking about Naples …
My mother, Anna Maria Romano, was born and brought up in Naples, Italy, and did not leave the city until in late 1946 she married my father who was stationed there with the post-war Royal Air Force. Over this summer and autumn, I have been reading all 1700 pages of the four ‘Neapolitan novels’ written by Elena Ferrante.
As a result, I’ve been thinking about Naples which I have only visited twice – when I was four (1952) and when I was almost 14 (1962). In the latter case, I kept a diary (indeed I have kept a diary ever since) and I’ve just been reading it.
The diary is written in a small notebook which came with a pencil fitted along the spine, so it is written in pencil which makes it a little hard to read these days. I recorded that the notebook cost one shilling and three pence.
While my mother took the coach from Manchester (where we lived) to London with my younger sister and brother, for complicated reasons I travelled alone overnight by train to the capital. It was my first visit to London and I marvelled at Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and the Underground.
In Naples, we stayed with my grandmother who lived in a small flat on the third floor of a housing block near Piazza Tribunali. All four of us slept in the same bed: two at the top and two at the bottom.
The diary contains some fascinating assessments such as “There is no doubt that Italy is different [from Britain] but I like it” and “There are many more pretty girls in Naples than in Savona [which we visited first]”. On the one hand, I noted “Naples is generally scruffy, with narrow streets, litter and many beggars” but, on the other hand, I described the place as “a really exciting and beautiful city”.
Although I have not returned to Naples in the intervening 54 years, those images live in my memory and my mother’s life there and in the UK very loosely inspired one of my short stories, “A Life In A Box”, which you can read here.