A Florentine Revenge

by Christobel Kent

  Emma was very thorough. She tried nothing on, but she touched and stroked and examined anything she liked and politely, charmingly, she asked detailed questions of the showroom assistants about the weight of fabric, techniques and provenance. Then she listened attentively to their answers and judiciously expressed appreciation and approval, and Celia watched how well this worked. Also she spent, which, Celia had to admit, was probably the key. A jewelled sweater with a crew neck, two handbags, one plum-coloured, one dark mossy-green, a pair of shoes in a silver shot-silk velvet that looked as though they might have been made for a geisha, so teeteringly high and delicately strapped were they. Emma chatted to the assistants as they wrapped things for her and Celia saw the severe, black-suited women soften and respond.

  It wasn’t just that she was wealthy, nor even that she had good taste. Celia had been shopping with rich women before, after all, and many of them richer and sleeker than Emma Marsh. She had spent long mornings standing back and trying to conceal her discomfort as they found fault in loud English without caring who understood, left boxes of shoes or underwear strewn and discarded in their wake, pinched pennies or spent with stupid extravagance. It was, Celia realized as she watched the shoes reverently packed away in their tissue-lined box, that Emma Marsh really might have been a kind of Western geisha, bred and raised for softness, charm, appreciation. Had she married Lucas Marsh for his money? The question was an uncomfortable one. Would she be the same if she was married to a poor man? How would she deal with adversity, deprivation, violence? Celia frowned, wondering why such a question should occur to her here, in this padded and luxurious sanctuary where the thought of violence could not have been more incongruous.

  Lifting her bags lightly from the counter, Emma turned to her and smiled. ‘Where next?’ It was almost midday.

  ‘You haven’t had enough yet, then?’ said Celia, laughing, as they came out on to the street. It was, if possible, even colder than it had been first thing, and as Celia glanced into the sky she could see that a skein of white cloud was moving across the wintry blue from the north. She wondered if it would snow; it almost never snowed in the city.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Emma in mock horror. ‘Never!’ There was no trace of yesterday’s pallor; her cheeks shone pink in the cold, her breath clouding in the air. Then a tiny frown appeared, drawing her brows together. ‘I should phone Lucas,’ she said. ‘He said he might come out and meet us.’ She fished in her pocket, her catch a tiny silver mobile she peered at as though it was unfamiliar to her. Celia, who didn’t like listening to other people’s telephone conversations, feeling it was not quite polite, turned away as Emma dialled. She looked down the street towards the towering bulk of the Palazzo Spini-Ferroni, the seat of the Ferragamo, a rusticated fortress on the river turned shrine to expensive shoes. Behind her, despite herself, she could hear Emma Marsh’s voice, soft and somehow sad, and she tried not to listen.

  As Celia concentrated on the view, from the far end of the Via Tornabuoni a figure walking up towards her grew distinct, and familiar. It was Beate, in a long red fur-trimmed coat, silver-ringleted and bareheaded despite the cold, something slung across her back.

  ‘All right,’ Celia heard Emma say. ‘Would you mind leaving that message for him?’ There was a tiny click as she closed up the phone, and Celia turned back to look at her. She was frowning at the phone as though absorbed in some private worry.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Celia asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Emma slowly. ‘There’s no answer from his room.’

  ‘So he’s gone out?’ said Celia, not understanding.

  ‘Well, they – yes, I suppose that’s what they meant. Yes.’ Her voice grew firmer. ‘Anyway, I left a message, in case he wants to come out and meet us. I said we’d be in that shop, there’s a shop on the corner that looks nice, near the hotel. Do you know it? There’s a green dress in the window.’ There was still a wistful, preoccupied edge to her voice.

  ‘Why are you worried about him?’ asked Celia on impulse. She couldn’t quite make it out, this relationship. ‘I haven’t been shopping with many women who wanted their husbands along. Mostly they try to get rid of them.’

  Emma looked at her. ‘I don’t like being apart from Lucas,’ she said. Celia looked at her and realized that she loved him. She felt faintly embarrassed that she had, as she supposed many people would, assumed that when it came down to it Emma Marsh had married Lucas for money, or at least for everything that money brought. Security, luxury, beauty. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ Emma, who didn’t seem embarrassed by either her declaration or the need for her to have made it, just smiled.

  ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ she said, looking over Celia’s shoulder. Celia turned and there was Beate behind them on the pavement, rubbing her hands together and smiling, the fine skin around her eyes crinkling. She still seemed tired but her cheeks were pink with the cold and she was buoyant.

  ‘Yes,’ Celia said, hugging Beate impulsively, suddenly full of pride. ‘A very old friend.’ Emma Marsh looked interested; even without make-up and looking her age, Beate attracted attention.

  ‘Beate Lilja. Beate, this is Emma Marsh. Do you remember, I mentioned…’ She tailed off, colouring, as she herself remembered that evening in the Scarlatti, in more detail, when they’d gossiped about Lucas. What had Beate said about Marco, and Lucas Marsh? What do they do, these businessmen? And of course, having met Lucas, Celia was none the wiser.

  But if Beate remembered what she had said she showed no sign of it now. ‘Oh yes,’ she said warmly, and Celia was grateful for her perpetual charm, her perfect manners. She held out a hand. ‘I am delighted.’ Emma took the hand and shook it; she seemed reluctant to let it go.

  ‘We should be going,’ said Celia apologetically, looking from Beate to Emma. She turned to Beate and said quickly, ‘You’re all right, Beate? We didn’t get to talk properly, did we, at the Scarlatti? I’m sorry. And you’ve been looking so… worn out lately.’

  Beate took Celia’s hands in hers, looking at her for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘yes. I’ve been thinking, I’ve decided I really am getting too old for this. Walking the streets all day like some nomad.’ She winked at Emma, smiling. ‘It’s all right for a little girl like Celia, but I’ll be sixty next month.’

  Celia goggled, speechless, taken aback by Beate’s sudden, cheerful declamation. Sixty. Beate’s age had always been a glamorous mystery that they all conspired to preserve, and suddenly it was out in the open. Celia felt obscurely heartened by the announcement, which seemed to say, sixty’s nothing.

  ‘No!’ said Emma Marsh, delighted. ‘Really?’

  Beate beamed back at them both. ‘So, time to branch out,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to pick up some colours. I thought I might do some drawing today.’ And she pulled the portfolio around from where it was slung across her back, as proof. She looked around with an air of determined optimism. ‘It’s not so cold, really.’ They all laughed then, united in the face of the statement’s absurdity. It was freezing. ‘And it’s so long since I’ve done any. I’ll go down to the river and have a bit of time to myself.’

  Celia remembered that Beate had come to Florence to paint and it came to her that this was what it had been all about, Beate’s tiredness, her preoccupation. She’d been working on the next phase of her life, the work in progress, and Celia found herself nodding in admiration. ‘You will keep warm,’ she said sternly, to cover her affection, ‘won’t you? Don’t forget the time and freeze.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Beate, laughing and shouldering her portfolio, her tapestry bag, her shawl. ‘You girls enjoy your shopping.’ And lifting a hand to wave goodbye, in a gust of scent, a cloud of silver curls, she was off.

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ said Emma Marsh, looking after Beate with an indefinable look in her eye. Celia wondered what she was thinking, and remembered what she had said that first morning in the honeymoon suite of the Regale. I love beautiful thin
gs. Were they alike, Emma and Beate, with their perpetual optimism? And Celia felt that she was the odd one out, tentative, unsure, that somewhere here, between Emma’s pregnancy and Beate’s drawing, there should be a lesson for her, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

  They walked briskly towards Frollini, both of them suddenly feeling the cold after standing still. A raw wind had started up, pushing the cloud across the city, and the sun had gone.

  They turned into the arcades along the Piazza, della Repubblica to get out of the wind and Celia, feeling it her duty, was telling Emma about the construction of the square and the nineteenth-century attempt to remodel the ancient city when suddenly Emma said, ‘Let’s stop in here.’ Taken aback, Celia stopped; Emma Marsh was pointing at a modest corner bar. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Of course. Are you all right?’ She looked at Emma more closely; in spite of the cold she was pale against the red of her coat, and seemed breathless. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, reproaching herself. ‘You’re tired. I’ve been walking too quickly.’ She pushed open the door and felt a gust of warm air embrace them. It was loaded with lunchtime scents – coffee, wine, salt ham and fennel.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Emma as they went inside, and as Celia scrutinized her worriedly she saw the colour begin to return. ‘Stupid of me. I should have worn something warmer.’ She looked down, holding out her foot in the thin, expensive shoe and fine tights for inspection, like a ballerina. ‘I expect your clients are always coming here expecting it to be summer all year round. Or at least not this cold.’ They ordered chocolate.

  ‘I liked your friend,’ Emma said, sipping hers. ‘She looked interesting.’ Celia nodded, smiling: she did that, Beate. Look interesting. Emma went on, ‘I must admit, it’s nice to hear other people’s secrets. Their dramas. Don’t you think?’ She smiled with an innocence that didn’t quite convince Celia. ‘Makes one’s own life seem quite tame.’ Celia must have looked disbelieving.

  ‘Oh,’ said Emma, ‘my life’s very tame. I like it that way’

  Something about the way she said it made Celia curious.

  ‘How did you meet your husband?’ she asked.

  ‘Lucas? Oh, at work. I was working at the Royal Academy’ Seeing Celia’s expression, she said quickly, ‘Not what you think, perhaps. I was working in the shop.’ She set her cup down. ‘And before that, I worked in a restaurant. You see, I wasn’t born to all this.’ She spread an arm out to include the city around them, the austere, exclusive facade of the Regale across the square, her stacked carrier bags. ‘I was born in Essex. Near Southend,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Mum – my mother – was on her own; my father left us before I was born. She was beautiful – but it wore her down, being alone. She had good taste. That’s what she taught me, make sure you have good shoes and a good coat, learn to speak properly and go where the nice people are. If you’ve got to work in a shop, make sure it’s on Bond Street.’ There was some defiance in Emma’s voice, and her cheeks were pink now.

  Celia nodded; she couldn’t feel censorious, somehow, only sympathetic. After all, she realized belatedly, it was what she’d done, coming to Florence. Go where the nice people are. Was that such an immoral strategy?

  ‘And Lucas – your husband came along?’ She said it tentatively, not wanting to sound prurient.

  Emma nodded. ‘They were sponsoring some exhibition. His company. They were short of waiting staff so I did some handing round of canapés. And he just – chose me.’ She shrugged, and tried to laugh, but Celia could tell something was puzzling her.

  ‘It sounds romantic to me,’ she tried.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma slowly. ‘It was. That was what I thought at the time. He didn’t seem to care what people thought, that he wanted to talk to the waitress and ignored all the Academicians and the painters and all that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Celia, thinking with a tug of some emotion she didn’t care to define of Dan, and the British Council and those parties.

  ‘But now,’ said Emma, looking lost suddenly, ‘I’m not sure. There’s something – it’s odd, since we’ve been here I get this awful feeling that he’s – I don’t know how to describe it – that he’s got a whole other life I don’t know about. I mean…’ She paused, looking away, out through the door. Her face averted, she said, ‘Well, he did, didn’t he? Have a life before me, one I’m not supposed to know about.’ Something about this struck Celia as contradictory, evasive. Emma looked back at Celia, and her face was sad. ‘And it makes me wonder if he didn’t choose me because I sort of, you know, shone, he just chose me because I was easy, and that’s all. Do you know what I mean?’

  Celia hesitated; she did, suddenly, know what Emma meant, but she didn’t want to be party to this. She could see that bright confidence crumbling in front of her, and her only thought was to restore it.

  ‘He’s – it’s probably some business thing, isn’t it? You said he had to work this morning. Some deal he’s caught up in?’ Emma didn’t reply; she was looking down at her hands, small in red leather gloves, as if wondering whether her mother’s advice had been enough, after all.

  Fishing in her pocket for a few coins which she handed to the cashier, Celia watched for a moment, then gently took Emma by the arm. It wasn’t the kind of gesture she was accustomed to with her clients, but suddenly it didn’t feel any longer as though Emma was just a client. Emma did not object, and momentarily Celia felt her lean in against her shoulder.

  ‘We can go straight back to the hotel, if you’d like?’ Celia said, but Emma shook her head.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I left him a message. He doesn’t like plans to be changed.’ And squaring her narrow shoulders in the bright coat, she walked out through the door.

  16

  Luisa saw the light change over the morning; it grew darker when it should have got brighter, and she knew it would snow. There was a wind, too; you could see it in the set faces of the passers-by, their noses sharp and red, cheeks burned raw, and even though it was close to Christmas there was barely a single customer tempted in by their display, bare-shouldered mannequins freezing in their party dresses.

  Crossing to the glass cabinet at the centre of the showroom, Luisa began to fold sweaters, all cashmere these days, no one seemed interested in lambswool any more, nor even the beautiful fine-gauge merino that used to sell so well, more fool them. She ordered them by colour: lavender, purple, damson, grey, stacked them below the glass. Across the room something caught her eye outside; it was snowing.

  Slowly the big white flakes drifted down, insidious, ghostly; you could see how you might get caught in it, although no one in the street had noticed yet. Luisa thought of a bend in the river shadowed by hills, where reeds clogged the bank and the girl’s body had been found. For a terrible moment she was seized by the thought that the child was still out there in the cold. She bent and took out another stack of sweaters, briefly holding the soft, thick wool against her face as if to suppress the thought of that steep, wooded valley, where the snow was falling silently into the dark water.

  It seemed very quiet suddenly, as though the snow was already muffling everything out on the street; the spotlights on the shop floor seemed brighter as it grew dark outside. Luisa shivered, although it wasn’t cold, feeling suddenly jittery and as she turned to look at the door, to see if it was letting in a draught, the outline of a stocky figure appeared against the window, pressing his face against the glass with a hand cupped either side so he could see in. It was Sandro.

  Made suddenly ungainly by surprise, Luisa started across the room towards him and Gianna looked up.

  ‘Come in,’ said Luisa at the door, ‘you’re frozen,’ but Sandro hung back. The snow fell on his shoulders in the leather jacket he was wearing over his uniform; the collar was turned up high and she could hardly see his face. ‘Can you come out?’ he said bluntly, no time or emotion to spare for pleasantries, and Luisa bit her lip. She didn’t know how to deal with this; she wanted to help him, but she felt all her old certainties, the gr
ound under her feet even, shifting. The shop had always been where she felt safe, and comfortable, and in charge, and here was Sandro at the door, wanting her to leave it behind.

  ‘Not on a Saturday,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘We can only take ten minutes at a time, and I’ve not long come back from my morning break. Come inside, you’re letting all the cold air in.’ She tried to scold him into it, but he wasn’t having any. He backed off.

  ‘Go on, Luisa,’ said Gianna, who had been listening. ‘Just ten minutes, there’s no one in.’ Luisa looked at her with surprise; Gianna was usually the one insisting on her rights and others’ obligations. Gianna reached behind her for Luisa’s coat and held it out. ‘Bag?’ she said. Gratefully Luisa took the coat and pointed behind the till; wordlessly Gianna passed the bag across, pushing down the newspaper that threatened to fall out as she handed it over.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ said Luisa, and pushed Sandro ahead of her into the street, holding her coat together in the wind. Out of the corner of her eye something scarlet approached; two women huddled together arm in arm in the cold, one in a red coat. She knew them, they chimed somewhere in that clever memory of hers, former customers, prospective customers, but today her memory was working too hard elsewhere and she let it drop. No time. Sandro’s hand was firmly on her arm and he steered her around the corner, down an alley, into a bar she didn’t know.