The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  But of course when it came to it, Ronnie didn’t want Iris to come with her to Florence, not much; it had not been her idea at all. It had been Serena’s, of course, and Ronnie didn’t try very hard to disguise the fact. Iris was going to be the sensible one who’d keep Ronnie out of trouble, and the creative one who encouraged her to keep up the classes. And most of all Iris was the one whose mother was so broke the offer of a course in life-drawing and free accommodation in Florence for three months would be snatched off the table.

  ‘Do I have to, Ma?’ Iris had said sulkily, then, hearing how graceless she sounded, pleading, ‘I hardly know her, these days.’

  ‘But it’s in Florence, sweetheart,’ Ma had said, a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes. Iris assumed from the look that passes had been made in Florence, too, and sighed.

  Ma’s focus had returned to Iris then. ‘And you’ve got talent,’ she’d said, with a determination that unnerved Iris. Ma didn’t have a determined bone in her body, or so Iris had always thought.

  ‘Ma,’ Iris had muttered, looking down at her feet. ‘Don’t.’ Because Ma would say that, wouldn’t she? Her only child had to have talent, at something. It was no joking matter. She sighed.

  ‘Darling,’ Ma had said, and Iris heard the worry in her voice. ‘You’ve got to decide on something. You can’t stay here all your life, working in the bar.’ Why not? Iris had thought stubbornly, still looking at the floor. You did. She heard Ma clear her throat. ‘There’s always London.’

  Shocked, Iris had looked up then. By London, she knew, Ma meant Iris’s father; she meant that she’d move heaven and earth to get Iris into Camberwell or Chelsea or Goldsmith’s or any other London art school, and she would live with her father and his new family, in Dulwich. With the baby and the four-year-old and the ten-year-old twins and the second wife she’d never met, and her father. Her father whom she barely knew, who had taken absolutely zero interest in his first, grown child. Not now, not ever.

  ‘Ma,’ she’d said, alarmed, and it was Ma’s turn to look away. This was serious. Grow up, Iris told herself urgently. What does it matter if we don’t get on? Florence might be stuffy and gloomy, but Italy was Italy, right? Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and coffee and sunshine. Even in November. And three months’ proper grown-up life-drawing. It’d be all right.

  What it was, was lonely. Resignedly Iris sat up in bed in the dark, sniffing in the cold air. High-ceilinged, north-facing, the room was full of the outlines of things in the gloom; every morning, it seemed, she still woke up wondering where on earth she was. There was a colossal wardrobe on one wall with something like an eagle carved on top of it, and big dusty curtains hung in heavy swags over the shuttered window. She pulled back the duvet. It was warmer outside than in this place, even in November. She crossed the smooth, icy tiles in bare feet, stubbed her toe on some great huge bit of furniture, an oak chest or uncomfortable armchair. ‘Ow. Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ She sat down on the scratchy stuffed seat, rubbing her toe.

  Around her the apartment was still quiet; only the ticking of the ancient heating cranking up – or it could be cranking down, for all Iris knew. It never actually seemed to get warm. Iris stood up, opened the shutters and looked out.

  Now that she’d got to know the city a little better, Iris sometimes thought she would have lived anywhere but Piazza d’Azeglio. A vast, gloomy nineteenth-century square just to the north of the centre, it was too grown-up, too big, too ugly, too much of a hike from the drawing school on the other side of the river. The massive buildings flanking the dull square of grass and trees were either owned by banks or, like this one, by ancient families who couldn’t afford to keep them up and let little apartments stuffed with hideous old family furniture to foreigners like Ronnie and Iris. They saw her coming, Iris reflected on Ronnie’s mum; had she even seen the place before she handed over the deposit?

  The view out of the back was odd; it wasn’t the Florence she’d imagined. The smallish garden, with bits of statues in it and lots of black ivy, and the synagogue, although she hadn’t known that when they moved in. It looked like something from South Kensington, a green copper dome and mottled beige stonework, Victorian. Iris softened; on a morning like this, with muffled sunlight trying to get through the mist, the view was nice. The roofs, some far-off hills just about visible to the south. Iris pushed open the window on impulse, leaned out on the cold stone of the window ledge. It was warmer outside. There was a smell of smoke and the air was mild.

  In the summer, Iris supposed, pulling down the sleeves of her T-shirt, you might be glad of the chill inside, and the dark, and the bath that really was made of stone and therefore instantly cooled the water down to barely lukewarm, but they wouldn’t be here in the summer, would they? For the first time, Iris felt a stab of regret. Or maybe she was just dreading what she’d have to do once this reprieve was over. Somewhere a church bell began to clang and she pulled the window shut. Time to get going.

  Before she left Iris looked in at Ronnie’s room, out of duty if nothing else. It was bigger than hers, though that wasn’t strictly Ronnie’s fault. Iris had claimed the smaller one, grumpily assuming the role of paid companion; she had been reading Edith Wharton preparatory to coming – Ma’s idea – and saw a number of quite satisfying similarities between herself and the impoverished heroines in the novels. She was supposed to make herself agreeable, or useful. Iris wasn’t sure if she was good at either.

  Ronnie hadn’t seemed even to notice. ‘All right,’ she’d said carelessly. ‘Whatever.’ And actually, Iris reflected now, it was likely that she really didn’t care. Ronnie probably knew how things were going to pan out, that she’d only be spending one night in three here anyway, and the rest coming in at two in the morning, singing to herself, high as a kite on dancing and drinking and flirting. And maybe it was because she’d never been short of money, but one thing Ronnie wasn’t, was mean.

  The room was dark and fusty and empty; clothes everywhere. The shutters were almost closed, but not quite; Ronnie never did anything thoroughly. The bed was unmade, the laptop left on, a box of Tampax spilling its contents on the bedside table and two pairs of knickers on the floor. Iris went over to the small table – inlaid, rickety, like everything in the flat it was more decorative than useful – and stared at the screen; Ronnie’s MySpace page. A picture of her upside down, her dark brown hair with the blonde streak across her face, and a dozen friends’ pictures up; her MySpace name was Da-doo-ron-ron.

  Guiltily, Iris scrolled down to check out the messages people had posted. There was a lot of cheerfully insulting stuff from people back home, saw ya last night, what are you like, love and kisses, loserrr. Florence is Grrr8, Ronnie’d posted on Monday night, and she’d pasted in a Leonardo drawing; she’s changed her tune, thought Iris. A couple of weeks ago she’d have mimed a big fat yawn at the mention of Leonardo’s name.

  Knowing she shouldn’t be doing this, Iris minimised the page, flicked to the mailbox, surfed up and down Ronnie’s messages; there was a man, she bet there was, Ronnie’d never head off just to hang out with friends of the awful Serena, even if they did have a castle.

  But if there was a man, he wasn’t emailing her. Iris read a couple, cool, non-committal messages to her mum, stuff to Antonella Scarpa at the school about the course, paying her bill for supplies, thank you for the extra lesson to the course director. So formal, so unlike Ronnie: It was very kind of you, I am most grateful. Maybe she was growing up. Nothing about any man, nothing about this trip to Chianti; you’d have thought she’d be boasting all over MySpace.

  Iris didn’t do MySpace; it made her nervous, like being back at school, all that bitching and bullying and those snide remarks, but Ronnie loved it. Ronnie’d never been got at in her life, she didn’t have anything to be afraid of.

  In fact, Iris didn’t have a computer of her own; wasn’t that weird, everyone said, like she was an Amish or something. Which was stupid; she knew how to use one. But Ma didn’t like them; there�
��d been computers at school and when Iris came back to do the IB she’d bought her a big old desktop, secondhand from Emmaus the other side of Marseille, but that was her limit. She didn’t have the cash and, anyway, computers were a distraction. ‘Not every day you get to go to Florence,’ Ma had said wistfully when Iris asked about a laptop to keep in touch. ‘Do you want to spend it all in front of a computer?’

  Iris bent down and picked up the little carnival mask off the rug, a cheeky little black satin eyemask, no warty old rubber witch job for Ronnie. Halloween seemed a long time ago; Iris remembered the flat full of people as if it was something she’d seen in a film. She’d worn a red feather mask, and her dress with the ruffle. She remembered a couple collapsed on top of each other on the hard sofa, and the old lady – the landlady – bashing with a broom handle on her ceiling below, telling them to be quiet. A drunk American boy asking Ronnie loudly who the fat girl was. ‘Who’s the fat chick?’ Meaning Iris.

  The huge studded front door clanged shut behind Iris and she struggled through the iron gate to the street. Sometimes it felt like a great big 200-year-old prison, the keys she needed just to get out of the place practically filled her bag, never mind her sketchbooks and pencils and apron. Outside the square was cold and grey and quiet, the tall, bare trees motionless in the mist.

  After a week or so of trying – and failing – to work out bus routes, they’d settled on walking. Iris liked walking, Ronnie didn’t; she grumbled all the way, when she was there at all, not refusing to come out from under the duvet, not rolling in at dawn and climbing into bed just when Iris was climbing out. Still, Iris preferred it when Ronnie was there, because they talked a bit about stuff, because Ronnie was nicer for being a bit subdued, and because when Iris got in to school on her own, she always had to spend the first half an hour making Ronnie’s excuses for her.

  She might have said, thought Iris. Given me an idea when she was going to come back.

  The mist was thicker over the river, more like fog. Iris’s route to the Scuola Massi, which was in the Oltrarno on the south side of the river, took her across the plainest and most modern bridge over the river. The Ponte alle Grazie may have been ugly but it had the best views on a clear day, the Ponte Vecchio on one side and the mountains of what Iris calculated from her examination of the guidebook must be the Casentino rising up on the other. Ronnie would jeer at the crowds thick on the Ponte Vecchio; tourists, poring over the blue guide just like Iris. As if the two of them were anything else.

  Today the Ponte Vecchio was barely visible, and in the other direction thick low cloud rolled all the way down to the city. At the foot of the bridge there was one of a series of hoardings the comune had put up, with blown-up photographs of the flood, forty years earlier, that had filled up all the cellars and washed the cars into gardens. Iris read the caption to a photograph of a cavernous warehouse with documents spread to dry on trestle tables and an earnest, bespectacled white-gloved figure picking through them: From all over the world lovers of art came to help us restore our city.

  All Iris could see clearly was the river below her, turned yellow with all the rain that had fallen last night, and the buttresses of the bridge cluttered with branches and detritus washed down from the hills. Sad stuff, rags and shopping trolleys that made Florence just like any other city; a whole tree torn up from some country riverbank. The muddy water swirled and churned, and Iris watched, not moving.

  Before leaving the apartment, Iris had stood a long time – for her – staring into the mirror in the bathroom. Like all the other rooms it was badly lit, the ceilings too high, electric light all wrong under the vaulting, but when looking at herself in the mirror Iris didn’t mind that. She’d wished for Ma at that moment, to rest her hand approvingly on the small of her back and say, you’re well made. You’re lovely.

  Not lovely, she’d decided, looking at herself as if for the first time. But not fat. She had swallowed, blinking at the insult. She hated him, whoever he was; for an instant as she’d tugged on the light pull to extinguish the sight of herself, she’d thought that if she had an instrument, an etching tool or a kitchen knife or a hammer, she could kill him.

  On the Ponte alle Grazie Iris felt the cold of the rail under her gloves. She hauled the bag higher up on her shoulder and set off towards the far bank and another day at the drawing board. She’d be first to arrive.

  Chapter Four

  Had He Passed Her in the street, Sandro might have thought she was a nun, if he’d noticed her at all. She didn’t have a nun’s veil, but a band over her hair that made him think of one. The hair itself was quite white and cut severely, a fringe just above pale blue eyes, then straight across behind, just below the ears. Like a schoolgirl, or at least, Sandro reminded himself, not the kind of schoolgirl you get these days, chewing gum with long hair and jeans, but a schoolgirl from his own childhood and one, furthermore, in whom vanity was being firmly discouraged.

  Standing on his doorstep, waiting for him, she demanded closer inspection. There was something nun-like about her clothing, too, the colours all grey and black and white, the skirt just below the knee, the flat, laced black shoes, but like the severe haircut the whole ensemble suited her somehow, it had not been imposed on her, as a nun’s habit would have been. He thought she was perhaps seventy years old.

  They stood, a dozen paces apart on the pavement, and he could see her grip tighten on the newspaper. Their eyes met, then both turned to look at the new brass plate, Cellini Sandro, Investigazioni, and the sight of his own name propelled Sandro towards her at last, late for an appointment he hadn’t known he had.

  ‘Signore Cellini,’ said the white-haired woman, quite formally. She looked at him with a directness he was not prepared for, or perhaps it was the blue eyes that took him by surprise, clear and pale and luminous.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandro, although it had not been a question. ‘Please.’ He gestured towards the door and showed her up the stairs ahead of him out of a chivalrous instinct, then found he had to struggle back past her to get the door open. A fine start, he thought grimly.

  To his relief he had left the office clean the night before; he had even emptied the wastepaper bin of his sandwich wrapper. Almost as a distraction he found himself wondering if he would need to employ a cleaner, whether that was something he might ask Giulietta to do or whether she would be offended. Concentrate, he told himself.

  Taking off his coat, offering to take hers – she refused, sat down with it still buttoned to the chin – Sandro realized that his first client, or so he assumed, reminded him of school; he felt as though he was in the presence of a teacher. Sandro had been educated by nuns, and several, if not all, had had precisely the quality he felt from this woman, whose name he did not yet even know. A quality combining quiet authority, composure and economical gestures. He realized that he was very nervous, and might be about to start babbling. Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself; this is your first client. This is not about you; this is about her. With the woman already having seated herself, Sandro went back behind his own desk.

  She stayed quite still in front of him, ankles together and her handbag and newspaper on her lap, waiting.

  ‘Well,’ said Sandro, ‘Mrs. . .?’ And with that innocuous and inevitable first question he saw her composure falter. He could not have defined it, but he knew it when he saw it. And he had seen it before, in years of interviewing witnesses and suspects, the innocent and the guilty, the moment at which a crack appears in the subject’s certainty, and negotiation can begin.

  Her mouth opened a little, then closed. She looked at him very hard, without blinking, and he knew she was trying to master some very strong emotion.

  He saw her pale throat move as she swallowed. ‘My name is Gentileschi,’ she said. ‘Lucia Gentileschi. My married name. But I am not – My husband is not. . .’ She stopped, and Sandro waited. ‘My husband is dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sandro gruffly, and she looked at him as if she had no idea wha
t he meant. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’ He could see that her hands were folded in her lap very tightly. ‘Is it – was it. . .’

  Lucia Gentileschi sat up very straight in the cheap chair, and took a small breath, then another. Despite her name, and her unmistakeably Florentine accent, there was something foreign about her. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘It is difficult. To say what I want to say.’

  ‘Take your time,’ said Sandro, and seeing a jug and two glasses on his desk that he did not at all remember putting there, he poured a glass of water and held it out to Signora Gentileschi. He smiled wryly. ‘I don’t have a queue.’ Signora Gentileschi nodded gravely, and her shoulders relaxed a fraction. She unfolded her hands and took the glass.

  ‘Claudio died nearly three days ago,’ she said so quietly that he had to strain to hear her, looking down into the glass of water, not drinking. ‘My husband of forty-nine years. I am a widow now.’ She said it with dull wonder.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sandro again.

  Nearly fifty years, he thought. She must have married young. And as he narrowed his eyes to examine her Sandro felt professional detachment returning to him like an old friend, tapping him on the shoulder after two years away. He realized that he could not yet be absolutely sure of the emotion she was trying to control. Death produces many more reactions than grief; some wives of forty-nine years would not grieve the passing of their husbands. He had to remind himself that Signora Gentileschi was coming to him as a client, not a suspect; he did not have to question her motives. All the same, he did not feel quite ready to ask her outright why she was here.

  ‘Was your husband ill?’ He asked, cautiously. ‘Was he. . . very much older than yourself?’

  Lucia Gentileschi frowned a little, alert, and he saw that she was a woman of intelligence; he saw her grasping for an accurate response. She set the glass down on the desk and returned her hands to her lap.