Angels of the Flood

by Joanna Hines

  She said, ‘It must be wonderful to be a doctor. I mean, lots of work, I’m sure, but brilliant to know you’re helping people. Even saving their lives.’

  ‘Sometimes, yes, it is good. But so often there is nothing we can do. Or we are too late. Yesterday I saw a girl from a poor family. She was only fourteen, like a beautiful child, but she was pregnant. She use a stick—hm…’ He paused and made crisscross gestures with his hands.

  ‘A knitting needle?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. A knitting needle—and when she arrive to ospedale is too late. So many times it is the—hm—ignorance that kill. Is very tragic.’

  ‘That’s so terrible.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Is not always easy to be a doctor.’

  Kate was moved by his sincerity. She could imagine him moving up and down the crowded wards, a bit like an Italian Dr Kildare. He’d give an encouraging word here, a sympathetic hand on the brow there, sometimes just suffering shared in silence. Throwing talcum powder at walls, even walls as venerable and steeped in culture and history as the walls of the Baptistery, seemed hopelessly trivial by comparison.

  She said fiercely, ‘I want to do something useful with my life too.’ The thought had only just occurred to her, but as soon as the words were out, she knew they were true.

  Mario looked surprised. ‘You?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I don’t think I want to be a doctor. I wouldn’t want to be surrounded by all that ugliness and suffering. I like having beautiful things around me.’ Mario was smiling. Kate warmed to her theme. ‘I love the work I’m doing here. Not just throwing powder at the walls, but working with beautiful objects. I love restoring them to how they once looked. It’s like a kind of healing too, you know. I’d love to work in conservation or galleries or something like that.’

  ‘That is—hm—fine ambition. And you will get it, I am sure. You are—hm—very strong person. I think you will always get what you want.’

  ‘You do?’ Kate sat back in her chair. No one had ever expressed such confidence in her before. She felt winded by the possibilities opening up in front of her.

  Chapter 17

  Viareggio

  FLORENCE WAS GETTING TIDIER. As the raw winter cold gave way to softer days, signs of recovery were appearing like the first green shoots of spring. In the city’s historic centre most of the main streets were cleared of muck and rubble, a few shops had reopened for business, everywhere cement mixers churned and desperate repairs were made—desperate because the city was depending for its financial recovery on income from tourists at Easter.

  As the city grew more civilized, most of the volunteers were headed in the opposite direction. By the beginning of February, they had turned into a semi-feral band, at least by Florentine standards. Weeks of living and working in close proximity had forged strong bonds between them and all outsiders were regarded with scorn. Even Hugo at the consulate had long hair now. Scruffy and bedraggled, they strode around Florence as if they owned it, and, for those few weeks, they almost felt as though they did.

  Florentines were less quick to call them ‘angels’ these days. They were getting a reputation for immorality and loose living which did not endear them to the locals—the sexual revolution had not penetrated very deeply into Italy by then. Sometimes people shouted ‘Capelloni!’ at them in the street—which they knew meant beatnik—and once, when Kate and David were tramping away from the Uffizi for their lunch break an old woman hissed ‘Disgrazia!’ at them.

  They were quite proud at being called disgraceful. Despite their louche appearance, their wildness was more talk than action. There were occasional rumours about the elfin-faced Anna who had a tendency to vanish for ten minutes or quarter of an hour at restaurants where a good-looking waiter had caught her eye. And it looked as if it would only be a matter of time before Aiden and Jenny got together, though she spent hours listening to Larry when he held forth on Nietzsche. She had told Kate she was in love with Larry’s brain but was sexually attracted to Aiden, a state of affairs that left both men fighting for her sole attention. Like most of the girls in the group Kate had spent some time fumbling with Aiden under his black cloak, but though he claimed to have used it once as a cover for intercourse on the top deck of a 73 bus, no one admitted to having gone the whole way with him in Florence.

  So far as David was concerned, the volunteers weren’t wild enough. His sexual experience to date had been limited to a one-night stand when he was seventeen with a girl who worked in their local chip shop and a brief affair the previous summer with Sarah Pringle, who’d been his sister Susan’s greatest rival in their Pony Club days. Sarah was sporting about sex, as she was about most things, but he always found her hearty enjoyment a bit dispiriting. For one thing, he’d never been able to discover what she got out of it. She grinned and made helpful noises and afterwards said it had been fab, but he’d imagined real passion would add up to more than that.

  Aiden, who remained the self-appointed expert in all things sexual, turned out to have a surprisingly romantic view of the whole business. One evening in the cantina after a good deal of red wine, he’d reflected sadly that he’d had sex too often and made love too seldom. David thought perhaps that was the problem with Sarah Pringle. They’d been having sex, not making love. In that case, he was keen to progress to the next stage: making love. Until a couple of weeks ago, that would have meant Kate. But now he wasn’t so sure. He was still in love with Kate, obviously, but he seemed to have fallen in love with Francesca as well. Partly this was because Francesca was being very friendly towards him these days, whereas Kate appeared to have cooled, but partly it was because Francesca was beautiful and mysterious and never talked about herself. No one even knew if she was still a virgin. Or even how old she was. Dido said she was twenty-two, which made it unlikely that she was still a virgin, but you couldn’t be sure.

  When not talking about sex with the others, David spent most of his time thinking about it.

  He was thinking about it on the bright Saturday morning when about ten of them clambered on the bus to Viareggio. The previous afternoon had been one of those miraculous Fridays when the man who paid them was actually to be found in his office at the Uffizi, and handed them each a wad of ochre-coloured banknotes. There followed a long session in a nearby bar where everybody put aside what was owed to landladies and bars, then handed money round to everybody else—to and from Hugo most of all—until all the complicated debts were settled. To their amazement there was enough left over for a day trip to the sea.

  As soon as they tumbled off the bus at Viareggio, the pungent breeze off the Adriatic brought home just how polluted the Florentine air was that they’d been breathing all this time. They went down on the beach and ran in circles, then took off their shoes and socks, rolled up their trousers and paddled. The water was so cold their feet and ankles were numb within minutes. David was fascinated by the sight of Francesca’s long, pale feet as the icy water rippled over them. He ran up behind her and pushed her, making her lose her balance. She shrieked and fell backwards into his arms—which had been his intention. She lay in his arms, smiling up at him with those incredible long eyes and, without thinking about it at all, he leaned forward and kissed her. The smile vanished from her face, but apart from that she didn’t respond at all, and remained quite still in the crook of his arm. Her eyes were wide, their expression unreadable.

  ‘Atta boy, David,’ said Ross, who was standing not far away and trying to skip stones.

  Kate was watching from a little distance. She looked surprised.

  Suddenly David felt uncomfortable. He stood Francesca back up and said with an awkward grin, ‘We should try that again some time.’ She looked at him intently for a moment, but said nothing, only turned and began walking up the beach, kicking up the sand with her bare toes. Kate, with a single backward glance at David, followed slowly.

  Ross skipped another stone. ‘So, what’s it like kissing the virgin goddess?’ he asked casually.
>
  ‘All right,’ said David. In fact he was feeling slightly breathless.

  ‘I tried it a few nights ago,’ said Ross. ‘Just the same reaction. I reckon she’s frigid.’

  ‘Maybe she just doesn’t fancy us.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t she say so, like any ordinary girl? Instead of going all passive and giving you the big freeze. Nah—’ Ross tossed another stone into the sea and this time it managed three skips before hitting a wave—‘definitely frigid.’

  David picked up a stone and hurled it as far out to sea as he could. Then another, larger stone. It didn’t go so far, but smashed into the waves. He felt savage. He wondered if it was possible for this degree of sexual frustration to make you seriously ill, or mad, or just raging out of control.

  The girls went off and came back with bread and cheese and salami, and a paper bag full of wizened yellow apples that tasted delicious. They sat in the cold sun at the top of the beach and washed the meal down with bottles of wine. Francesca was sitting across the circle from David, while Kate, to his surprise, was sitting next to him. She fed him small pieces of salami and swigged red wine. Her cheeks were flushed from sun and wine and David forgot about Francesca. Kate had been his first choice all along.

  Later, as their shadows lengthened across the sand, Jenny listened to Larry with admiration as he leaned back on his elbows and declaimed Keats and Auden. When he came to a temporary halt, Aiden, who had been watching with a hangdog look through his curtain of yellow hair, took his guitar and sang a couple of songs, ‘Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out’ and ‘I Am a Man of Constant Sorrows’. By now everyone knew most of Aiden’s songs by heart, especially those two, and either sang along or continued talking—even Larry and Jenny. When he’d finished, Aiden was looking less loved and more constantly sorrowful than ever. Larry, ignoring him completely, was reciting a poem about hymens and gasometers which he turned out to have written himself. Jenny said it was so beautiful it should form the basis for a short modern ballet: a choreographer friend of hers would love it. Aiden suggested without much hope that he might write the music.

  The sun was sinking towards the horizon, but no one wanted to finish the day just yet. It got colder and their circle drew close round the empty bottles and the remains of the picnic. Kate and David sat a little apart from the others. He touched the fine hair at the top of her neck and she inclined her head towards his. He was so full of desire, he knew this must be real love. He bowed his head slightly and murmured, ‘Kate, I love you,’ to the woolly neck of her sweater.

  ‘Mm,’ she said. They nuzzled each other, not kissing exactly, but letting the sexual tension build. David could feel her heart, or maybe both their hearts, beating fiercely under the layers of clothing. He wondered if sex was possible on an Italian bus.

  He said, ‘I love you,’ again.

  ‘Really?’ She drew back slightly to look at him. ‘Do you think I’m beautiful like the morning?’

  To be honest, the idea had never occurred to David, but he wasn’t to be put off. ‘More beautiful than any morning I’ve ever seen,’ he said. She sighed and settled back close to him.

  In the circle, they were talking about the difference between male and female attitudes to sex. ‘A girl has to be in love to enjoy it properly,’ was Jeremy’s opinion. His father was an antique dealer and he wanted to work in an auction house. Anna, whose delicate face was peering out from the shelter of his jacket, nodded her head in agreement. ‘But a man,’ Jeremy continued, ‘he just enjoys the sex, no matter who it’s with. Within reason, of course.’

  ‘I think a woman can enjoy sex without being in love,’ said Dido.

  ‘But not in the same way,’ said Jeremy.

  ‘In a different way. But just as much.’

  Aiden was watching Jenny. Larry had his hand on her jeans near the top of her thigh. Jenny was leaning back in his arms, her lips parted a little and her eyes fuzzy from wine and desire. Aiden sighed, then said, ‘I saw a woman once making love to a boxer. I was walking home across our local golf course after a party just as it was getting light and I nearly tripped over them. They were in the rough grass. She certainly looked as though she was enjoying herself.’

  ‘A boxer?’ asked Francesca. ‘There was a wrestler on television I really fancied when I was about sixteen, but I can’t remember his name.’

  Aiden smiled. ‘Not that kind of boxer. This was a dog.’

  An image came into David’s mind, a picture of Francesca and a large dog, having sex. He was shocked by the erotic power of the idea.

  ‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘That’s impossible. A woman and a dog, you’re making it up.’

  ‘No, I saw it. Some women get off on that kind of thing.’

  There was a ripple of embarrassed laughter. Francesca did not join in. Larry said airily, ‘A donkey was executed for bestiality in the seventeenth century. Some poor frustrated git had buggered it and the donkey was held criminally responsible, so both partners were hanged at the same time. The defence tried for a plea of duress but—’

  ‘Stop making this up,’ Francesca interrupted him. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘No, honestly, Francesca. People do those kind of things,’ said Ross. ‘When I was in Greece I was woken up every morning by this goat complaining while the landlord—’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Francesca.

  David and Kate leaned back into circle. It was almost dark now, the lights of Viareggio coming on all along the esplanade. David said, ‘It’s not just animals, Francesca. Some men really have a thing about corpses. Some kind of ’philia, but I can’t remember which.’

  ‘Coprophilia?’ suggested Dido.

  ‘No, necrophilia,’ said Larry with authority. ‘The urge to make love to corpses. Luckily it’s not very common, but—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Francesca was scrambling to her feet. ‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! You’re disgusting, all of you. You’re lying! It’s not true, none of it, not the animals, not the corpses, none of it! So stop with these lies, do you hear me? Just stop!’

  She was stamping furiously, spraying them with sand.

  ‘Hey, steady on, Francesca,’ said Dido. ‘We were just talking—’

  ‘Shut up!’ She was panting with rage, spiralling out of control. ‘It’s filth. You’re making it up. You’re disgusting, all of you.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, your ladyship,’ said Ross icily. ‘We’ll check with you before we speak in future.’

  But Aiden had been watching her closely. He stood up and went over to where she was standing. She raised her arms as if to defend herself against him, but he made a gentling noise, the kind of hissing that soothes frightened horses. ‘It’s okay, Francesca,’ he said. ‘We won’t talk about it any more. It’s okay. It’s all okay.’ He put his arm around her shoulders, folding her into the shelter of his cloak. She stiffened, then suddenly something shifted, and she allowed him to pull her close. He smoothed her hair.

  ‘Nice one, Aiden,’ said Ross sardonically.

  ‘Have a good time under the cloak, Francesca,’ said Anna.

  Aiden looked at them all with something close to contempt. ‘You’re such babies, all of you,’ he said. ‘Can’t you understand when someone’s serious?’

  Chapter 18

  Now

  IT ALL SEEMED LIKE such a long time ago.

  Kate woke shivering from a bad dream. She had finally dropped off, but her sleep was not restful. She got out of bed and pulled a dressing gown round her shoulders, padded to the window and looked out into the smooth darkness that was quilting La Rocca and the whole Beatrice mountainside. From far below—it must have been from one of the bunkhouses at the villa—came the sound of a Verdi chorus being struck out on the piano, voices singing along in harmony. It was the last night of the summer season at the Fondazione and the young musicians were carousing the night away. With grand opera, no less—the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco. Youth nowadays, thought Kate wryly. Much more cultured t
han we were. Had I even heard of Verdi, back then?

  She pulled the gown tighter round her shoulders. She was shivering, but not with the cold. Somewhere out there in the darkness, not long ago, someone had taken a shot at her. Two shots. She could have been killed. And in the dream which had just now woken her, Francesca had been walking towards her, smiling and stretching out her hands. Just below the smile, her throat had been cut so deeply that her neck was ringed with a scarlet ruff of blood and her head was almost entirely severed from her body. Kate felt nauseous. Poor, poor Francesca. She had been so much more vulnerable than they ever realized. How could they have been so blind?

  Impulsively, Kate picked up her linen trousers and a jacket. She must go down to the giovani at the Villa Beatrice and warn them at once. Tell them how fragile life was, and how precious. They mustn’t make the same mistakes as she had done. There had to be some way to avoid the horror. She could tell them and they’d be safe…

  Impossible. She flung her clothes down on the end of the bed and slumped onto a low chair. They’d think she was a crazy woman if she burst in on them in the middle of the night and told them to be careful, warning them like some middle-aged English Cassandra, all streaming hair and wailing hysteria. Don’t take it all for granted! Cherish every moment and remember—but remember what? How could they have done it differently back then? What different action would have saved Francesca’s life? If Kate could only put her finger on the precise moment, the single decision which had made it all start to go wrong… but it was like trying to follow a strand of thread back into a mass of tangled lines. She’d never learn how to unravel it and make sense of the story. Never.

  She leaned forward, her chin on her fists, and stared at the floor. Seeing Simona again after all these years had stirred up so many memories, so many thoughts of Francesca and the people they had been during those brief weeks in Florence. They had thought they were so worldly-wise, striding round the city in their ragged clothes as if they owned the place. But they hadn’t been wise at all—quite the contrary, in fact. They’d been like sleepwalkers. Their whole existence in Florence had been a kind of game: as though the most beautiful city on earth had been turned into a playground just for their entertainment. They had been innocents on the edge of a larger game they never even began to understand. And they thought they knew it all.