Angels of the Flood

by Joanna Hines

  ‘Was Simona hurt too?’

  ‘Simona? Poor Simona…’ An expression of real grief shadowed his face, then he said briskly, ‘Not in her body, just bruises, no broken bones, but she see… everything.’

  ‘Oh God, that’s so terrible. Poor Simona. Is there anything I can do?’

  He didn’t answer right away. Then he said quietly, ‘Yes, Kate, is one thing you can do which help all Francesca’s family.’

  ‘Yes, tell me. Anything.’

  He rose to his feet and looked down at her, his face impassive. ‘Go back to England, Kate. Don’t come back here, not ever. Stay away from this family. Always.’

  It was like a blow to the stomach. ‘Why? What have I done? It sounds like you blame me too!’

  ‘Is better this way.’

  ‘And what about you, Mario? Don’t you want to see me again either?’

  ‘No. Is finish for us.’

  She said, ‘We didn’t kill her, Mario. It wasn’t our fault she died.’

  He shrugged. ‘I know, but… I go now,’ he said.

  ‘Wait, Mario, please wait. There’s just one more thing I need to know… that last night… at the Villa Beatrice… even if we never see each other again… I need to know… that it meant something to you as well.’ She could hear the pleading in her voice but she was powerless to stop it.

  ‘Is because it was special time for you, but for me…’ He sighed. ‘For me, I regret, Kate, it was… nothing.’

  She didn’t believe him. She said, ‘Don’t lie to me, Mario, please. I can bear it if we never see each other again. I’ll have to, somehow. But I can’t bear it if you lie to me. I thought you loved me, just a bit and—’

  ‘No, Kate. Was just big dream. I am not man for love you.’

  He turned, as though he was intending to walk away without another word.

  ‘Mario, stop! Won’t you even say goodbye?’

  He had his back to her. She saw his hands clench and unclench, his shoulders loosen. He turned again and stooped, took her hand and raised it to his lips.

  ‘Goodbye, my lovely Kate.’ His voice was breaking. ‘Be well soon and be happy with your life.’

  His face was shining with tears and with something else besides, something that looked to Kate almost like love.

  ‘Goodbye, Mario.’

  He held her hand a moment longer, then nodded briefly as he set it back in her lap. Quickly he turned from her and walked out of the ward without a backward glance.

  PART III

  Chapter 33

  Flood

  BY THE SUMMER OF 1967 Florence was welcoming tourists again. Most of the major roads were repaired, the galleries and museums opened their doors once again, shops were rebuilt on the Ponte Vecchio. Some evidence of the devastation remained, but as a curiosity for visitors, no longer a barrier. Even today, in places, you can see the black tideline where the filthy floodwater reached up to twenty feet on the night of the fourth of November, 1966. The ravaged crucifix by Cimabue became a permanent symbol of all that could never be repaired. Several reputations were ruined also. In the aftermath of the flood it was discovered that eight hours before the Arno burst its banks, water was released from the hydroelectric dam near Montevarchi. In order to protect their generating equipment, the duty officer had acted according to the letter of his responsibilities, but at the time it was widely believed that this contributed to the flood. Now, it is generally agreed that his actions had little effect on the severity of the flood.

  Similarly, it emerged that the Prefect of Florence had ample warning that a disastrous flood was approaching. He chose not to warn the city’s inhabitants or to make the emergency services ready, so that two weeks after the flood half the fire stations were still underwater and inoperable. His inaction was widely criticized. In his defence he pointed out that if he’d issued a warning there could have been widespread panic and that citizens fleeing the city in cars would have been at far greater risk from the rising waters than those who remained in their homes. The minimal loss of life supports this claim.

  There were even a few beneficiaries. Some prisoners escaped from Le Murate during the first impact of the flood. Most were recaptured, but a few remained at large indefinitely. Those less fortunate were terrified of being drowned in their cells. The reassurance of bystanders was hardly encouraging as doctors and prison officials informed them they were ‘reasonably safe’. The following day, when the prisoners were again panicking, police fired to quell the riot, bringing a new note of horror to a city that was already described as resembling a hallucination.

  The greatest impact, for good and ill, was on Florence’s standing in the world. The unprecedented response of the international community to the disaster confirmed once and for all that the city’s reputation was unique. Its position as the epitome of all that is most civilized in western culture was unassailable. The downside was a massive increase in tourism. From now on Florence would become virtually a museum city, overrun with visitors the year round.

  As with cities, so too with people and families. After the tragedy at the Villa Beatrice that March morning, Kate and her friends from Florence and the Bertoni family all went their separate ways and picked up the patterns of their lives. In time the scars and hurts became all but invisible to outsiders. Kate went on to university, then trained as a conservator. She married twice, had two children. Like the other volunteers from around the world, she filled her days with activity in the way that passes for normal in our world where every individual and family hides their secret vaults of pain. Sometimes the passing of the years is enough to heal these secret wounds; occasionally they fester and grow unobserved until some trigger occurs which causes them to erupt into the light with devastating power.

  Chapter 34

  Gala

  ALREADY BY TEN O’CLOCK it was obvious it was going to be a hot day. A steady stream of cars had been making their way up the twisting drive to the Villa Beatrice since soon after nine, as visitors arrived to celebrate the success of the Fondazione’s tenth season. Kate couldn’t help being impressed.

  ‘Sit here, where I can see you.’

  Simona, looking effortlessly elegant in a grey silk jacket with enormous white polka dots and a pencil slim skirt, showed Kate to a seat with a reserved sign on it in the front row. Already the gilt room at the Villa Beatrice was filling up with the great and the good from as far away as Rome and Milan, who were arriving to support, or simply to be associated with, the work of the Fondazione.

  For once, Kate would have preferred to be sitting at the back. With the coming of daylight the fears that had kept her awake through most of the night had receded and at breakfast she’d accepted Simona’s explanation that Dino must have acted from myopic idiocy when he fired at her on the mountain. Looking around at the crowds of respectable people who had turned up in their expensive cars and at the enthusiastic young students who’d been participating in this year’s summer programme, Kate felt ashamed of her paranoid anxieties during the night. The events of the previous evening, that sensation of being a moving target she’d experienced in her flight from the summit, seemed like a bad dream. There was no reason for her to be afraid. David was driving up from Rome and had promised to be here by noon, and anyway, this huge room with its exquisitely gilded plasterwork on ceiling and walls hardly looked like the kind of place where danger would lurk. A soothing murmur of voices filled the hall as people drifted in and found a place to sit. It wasn’t yet eleven in the morning but already the air was warm with the last of the summer’s heat.

  Simona had been cornered by one of the Fondazione’s administrators, who was insisting she welcome a white-haired man who looked as though he considered his presence at the Villa Beatrice’s gala day its ultimate accolade. As soon as she could, Simona escaped and came back to perch on the chair beside Kate’s.

  ‘This is going to be so boring for you!’ she commiserated. ‘Nothing but pompous speeches for the entire morning—promise you won’t g
ive up on me and run away!’ Simona kept her tone light, but she was in deadly earnest all the same. ‘As soon as this is over we’ll have lots of time to be together. I want to talk to you so much!’

  Not half as much as I want to talk to you, thought Kate.

  She was frustrated by the way Simona kept going on about talking, then squandered any time they had together in trivia. As a result, Kate was still no closer to knowing why this visit was so vital to Simona, nor why she’d chosen to use altered paintings to lure her there rather than send some kind of ordinary invitation. It couldn’t be that hard to persuade old friends to visit a place as stunning as the Villa Beatrice and La Rocca.

  ‘Now I have to abandon you,’ said Simona. ‘The business is about to start. Ah, good, here is Mario. He will take care of you.’

  Mario walked in briskly and greeted first Simona and then Kate with a kiss on both cheeks before he sat down in the chair that Simona had just vacated. Dressed in a pale linen suit, he was every inch the successful and still handsome doctor. Kate would have given a lot to know exactly what his role was in the Fondazione, and how he and Simona were linked. She wondered if she’d ever find out.

  Simona went up the two steps to the dais at the front of the hall and took her place behind the microphone between a man and a woman. ‘Buon giorno, Kate,’ said Mario. ‘Are you all right? I hear Dino was up to his tricks again last night. I am sorry—it must have been terrifying for you.’

  His choice of words was faultless. So it must have been his manner of delivery, or some incongruity between speech and gesture, that set Kate immediately on her guard. The thought flickered into her mind that it could just possibly have been Mario firing at her. After all, he was the one who’d told her she’d have done better to stay away and he’d ‘left’ the house just before she began her descent from La Guardia. She dismissed the idea.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I was bloody scared. If that’s how Dino usually carries on, then the sooner you get rid of him the better.’

  He looked at her intently for a moment or two, then said coolly, ‘If I had my way the imbecile would have gone years ago. Unfortunately I am not in charge of the staff at La Rocca.’

  ‘No?’ Kate was stung. ‘You were very accurate yesterday when you said it would have been better if I’d stayed away.’

  Mario looked baffled for a moment, then he laughed, a glimpse of a young man she’d known years before. He patted her arm and, still smiling, said in a low voice, ‘Yes, I did warn you, but I wasn’t expecting the danger to be as real as that.’

  Kate was prevented from replying by the start of the ceremonies. The young woman on the dais stood up and came forward to tap the microphone. Conversation dropped to a murmur, then died away completely as the first of the speeches began—in Italian, of course. Kate was finding it hard to concentrate. The sleepless night had left her feeling as though her head was stuffed with sand. The sense of unreality was increasing. It was hard to believe that the successful middle-aged doctor sitting next to her had once turned her world upside-down.

  She couldn’t remember many details of that last weekend at the Villa Beatrice. So much had been overshadowed by Francesca’s death. But the legacy of those days had coloured her life for years. Falling in love with Mario had been so effortlessly simple: for a few brief hours the world had been transformed into a place of magic, rainbow colours and endless possibilities. When it ended and she came back to England, she had been devastated, of course, both by Francesca’s death and by losing Mario. But she had believed those who bombarded her with platitudes about time healing and there being plenty more fish in the sea. She’d expected the ‘in love’ experience to be repeated, even if she had to wait years.

  But it never was, not in the way she remembered it and hoped for, and gradually she came to believe that what she’d felt for Mario had been an illusion all along. She settled for the ‘reality’ of a decent marriage with a man she’d never really been in love with, but whom she liked and respected. Though not enough, it turned out. And as for the second marriage… well, she’d been older, and wiser, and expected less. Maybe she’d even expected too little.

  As speech after speech congratulating the Fondazione on its contribution to the arts and opportunities for young people washed over her head, Kate was intensely aware of the man sitting beside her, Dr Mario Bassano, the same man but altogether different from the man she’d loved all those years before.

  When Simona stood up there was a huge round of applause and some cheering from the students. She smiled, waited for the applause to die down, then began to speak. Hesitant at first, she grew in confidence, borne along by her passion for the Fondazione and the lives that were changed there. Already, it seemed, after only ten years in operation, several gifted children from poor families who had benefited from its programmes were making their mark in the world of art and music.

  Kate was impressed. Francesca’s little sister with the buck teeth and the cabbage-green dress was now a mature woman who had used her wealth in a creative and generous manner and was rightly honoured for it. A lump rose to her throat as she thought how proud Francesca would have been, proud and pleased by all that was being achieved in her name.

  Simona paused, then looked down directly at Kate and said in English, ‘Today I want to welcome a very special visitor to the Villa Beatrice, Kate Holland from London, who has established a brilliant international reputation for her work in the conservation of early oil paintings on canvas. Kate was the dearest friend of my sister Francesca, and for that reason alone she will always be a welcome guest at the Fondazione. But there’s another, more important reason, which perhaps even she has forgotten, why I am especially pleased that she is able to be with us to share this special day.’

  There was a murmur as Simona’s words were translated in low voices by those who understood to neighbours who didn’t, and people craned their necks to get a look at the foreigner in the front row who was being singled out for attention. Kate was uneasy; she had no idea what Simona was building up to. Was she being set up for some kind of trick? If Simona’s intention was benign, then why hadn’t she given some warning? She wasn’t alone in being uneasy. Beside her, Mario was suddenly all attention, sitting forward in his seat, his face taut with anxiety.

  Simona was smiling, now, talking directly to her. She said, ‘I have never spoken of this until today. In the past I’ve often felt a fraud when people praised me for the work I’ve done here at Villa Beatrice. Yes, a fraud. I cannot take the credit myself.’

  Kate was suddenly aware of Mario. Sweat was pouring off his face and he wasn’t just sitting forward in his chair, he was coiled like an animal about to pounce. Her first thought was that he was ill, then she realized that he was reacting to what Simona was saying—or what he was afraid she might say.

  Simona continued, ‘No one has known until now where the idea for the Fondazione was born, but today I can tell you. In the weeks before her death, my sister Francesca and Kate were working together in Florence with the angeli dell’alluvione whom we’ve all heard of, and it was Kate who gave the idea to my sister just before she died—“Why not turn this place into a centre for the arts so it can be enjoyed by many many people?”—and Francesca in her turn told me. It took a long time, but the idea never entirely left me. From such a casual, throwaway remark do great enterprises grow. And I am glad that today at last, Kate, we can offer you our thanks.’

  Kate’s anxiety switched to acute embarrassment as there was a burst of applause and she scanned her memory in vain to trace this conversation. As the clapping died down and the white-haired man took the podium and began praising Simona in lavish terms, Kate glanced at Mario. No longer the wealthy and successful doctor, revered by all who came into contact with him, he looked beaten and old. He had slumped back in his seat, his face grey with exhaustion.

  Mario had recovered by the time the speeches ended and lavish bouquets had been handed out to half a dozen women who worked for the Fond
azione. The most spectacular bouquet, an arrangement of orchids and foliage, was reserved for Simona.

  As soon as the last speech was finished she stepped down from the podium and made straight for Kate.

  ‘How did you like my speech?’ She seemed as excited as a child at Christmas. ‘Were you surprised?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t remember—’

  Simona took her by the arm. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ she said firmly. ‘Because I remember everything.’

  A buffet lunch had been laid out in the frescoed dining room. The dancing nymphs with their garlands and their diaphanous clothes looked down on a crowd of about a hundred people, all eating and talking in loud voices. Kate, momentarily abandoned since Simona had been whisked off to talk to a deputy from Rome and Mario was nowhere to be seen, found herself remembering the party when they had hitchhiked up from Florence. What music had they listened to? The Beach Boys? The Stones? Looking around at all the guests and the laden tables and the uniformed staff, she thought it was hardly surprising they’d had trouble creating a festive atmosphere back in 1967. There’d been too few of them to make any impression on a space like this.

  ‘Still here? I thought you’d have quit after last night.’

  Kate turned abruptly. She hadn’t seen Simona’s mother in the gilded hall that morning but she’d recognize that rasping smoker’s voice anywhere. Annette Bertoni, leaning heavily on an ebony cane, looked painfully thin under her butter-yellow suit and hat. Her wispy hair was streaked silver and blonde and her make-up was immaculate; the overwhelming impression she gave was one of frailty and courage.