A Florentine Revenge

by Christobel Kent

  The cold braced them as the door opened, fresh and sharp and clean. Celia turned to Emma, almost laughing with the shock of it in her thin satin jacket, the ridiculous flounce of the tulle hardly warmer than a slip, but when she saw Emma’s face the laughter evaporated.

  ‘In the nineteenth century, this wing was added,’ Paola Caprese was saying as she turned to indicate the facade of huge arched windows opposite the dining suite, and Celia knew she should be joining in. But Emma took hold of her elbow and steered her away towards the table where the wine had been poured; the administrator’s head turned slightly to follow them, and Celia could sense the curiosity in the woman’s gaze, but she kept up her commentary to Lucas. He just stood there, passive and silent, as though paralysed in the face of some terrible catastrophe, but the administrator seemed not to notice.

  Emma picked up two glasses of champagne, handed one to Celia and took a reckless gulp from hers. A strand of her hair had come loose from the tight black knot and it blew across her white face; she looked beautiful and wild, like a Fury, out for revenge. She drained the glass.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ she said suddenly. She swept a hand around the balustrade, the lovely, crumbling statues along the edge of the terrace, the glowing interior of the building behind the tall windows. ‘I don’t belong here.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Celia, as robustly as she could. ‘You appreciate beauty. It’s the first thing you said to me, that you liked beautiful things. That’s all you need to belong here.’ But she knew that wasn’t exactly what Emma meant; she didn’t even know any more if it was true, either. You had to take the whole package, not just the pretty hills and the paintings; you had to take the bad drains, and the larceny, and the fast-food cartons in the gutter, a city despoiled by tourism, overrun by strangers, angry.

  Celia turned away a little and gazed out at the dark hills across the river with the empty glass to her lips. They stood there side by side in silence for a long moment, the sound of Paola Caprese’s voice indistinct but persistent in the background as she went on talking to Lucas. Then Emma spoke again.

  ‘He’s been lying to me,’ she said, unflinching. Celia looked down, ashamed; she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know. ‘I see,’ said Emma. ‘Does everyone in this city know, but me? Does she?’ She nodded towards Paola, whose back was turned to them.

  ‘No,’ said Celia, desperate. ‘Of course not. I didn’t know, either, not until this evening. I – yes, there are people here who remember him. People who were involved. I don’t think… the only person who has kept it from you deliberately is Lucas. He – he must have his reasons.’

  Without a word Emma turned away and Celia could only see her profile, head held high on her long, white neck as she stared out into the darkness. ‘My father had another family,’ she said suddenly, her voice sharp and clear and angry. ‘He was a bigamist. He kept them secret, the others. Three children.’ She turned to face Celia. ‘My mother stayed in bed for two years after she found out, and he left. Before, she was the most beautiful woman you ever saw, clever and funny, she could paint—’ Then she stopped. Started again. ‘I chose Lucas because he was the opposite of my father. Completely straight, not a conman like my father, not someone who’d tell the lie he thought you wanted to hear. That was what I thought.’

  ‘And now?’ Celia didn’t dare say any more.

  Emma’s eyes glittered in the light of the flare. ‘I won’t put up with it,’ she said. ‘I won’t be lied to.’ Her voice rose, and now both Paola Caprese and Lucas had turned towards them. ‘Why did he bring me here? I was just in the way. An inconvenience.’

  It was unbearable, inexcusable; Emma was right. But at the same time Celia could see what Emma was too angry to see, that Lucas Marsh had had no time to spare, no emotion, for anything except finding the truth; he’d started on a path he couldn’t change, not even for Emma. She’d opened the envelope she shouldn’t have seen, taken out a ticket to Florence, and he hadn’t paused, he’d swept her up with him and carried her along.

  Paola Caprese bustled over then, getting between them. ‘It’s too cold,’ she said, looking narrowly at them, sensing trouble. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  The table was laid with candles and silver and some fine old porcelain with hints here and there of faded gold and painted flowers. As they shuffled into the room Celia felt a tiny lift at the thought of seeing the painting again; this, at least, couldn’t go wrong, this could only seduce the Marshes, might even bring them round, she told herself. It was only as they approached it – it was much smaller than she remembered, and Paola Caprese brought them up close – that she remembered the story behind the picture and felt a misgiving that stirred and grew.

  As Celia took another step forward and the picture came into view, the feeling that this could only go badly could no longer be ignored. This was what had been nagging at her, wasn’t it, since she first saw Emma Marsh. The Madonna of the Lilies. This, too, was what Paola Caprese saw when a moment ago she had studied Emma with that look of bemused recognition. The perfect white oval of the Madonna’s face, the red lips, the black hair shiny as liquorice and even bound at the nape. The Titian in the Uffizi had had similarities but this was striking; the Madonna of the Lilies was just like Emma, she had the tenderness, the vulnerability, the longing as well as the voluptuous beauty. It seemed to stir something up in Emma and a flush appeared in her cheeks. She said nothing.

  Paola Caprese began to speak and what she said was innocuous at first, pointing out the symbolism of the myrtle and the lilies, and Celia thought for a moment of false hope that she would leave the story of the real-life model out. She must have noticed Emma’s pregnancy and out of consideration would at least not mention the death of the child the Madonna was holding so tenderly on her lap. But diligently, inexorably Paola Caprese fulfilled her duty, and with increasing desperation Celia tried to think of a way of deflecting her; for a mad moment she thought Caprese must be doing this on purpose, out of some long-nurtured grudge against foreigners.

  It was as she drew to a conclusion, though, that Celia understood that it was all just some awful coincidence. In latter years, said Paola Caprese, pleased with having marshalled all the facts and even some interesting anecdotes into the bargain, the Madonna of the Lilies had become the patroness of lost children. Prayers were said to her postcard image when children went missing; flowers were even occasionally laid at the palace’s door. With satisfaction she turned to her small audience, expecting acknowledgement, but for a moment no one said anything.

  Paola Caprese couldn’t have known who she was talking to, couldn’t have known Lucas Marsh had lost a child. But as Celia looked at his white face she couldn’t help but be aware that she, Celia, did know, though, she knew what Lucas had gone through, and had no right to. One look at her face and Lucas, like Emma, would see through her. She felt hot shame at being an unwilling voyeur of their grief; she wanted to run away but some awful sense of duty restrained her. And then she looked at Emma. She was gazing at the picture, her blue eyes curious.

  ‘She looks like me,’ she said quietly. ‘Isn’t that funny?’ She turned to Lucas. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Lucas, and he sounded broken. ‘I’ve never seen her before. I knew she’d be beautiful.’

  And they stood there, Paola Caprese with her back to the Titian as though to shield it, while Emma stared at her husband. Celia saw everything in the look she gave him: saw her anger at being lied to, her unhappiness at not being trusted, her disillusionment as her marriage, all those intimate things that she thought tied her to Lucas, began to dissolve. It wasn’t, after all, simply a sin of omission born out of a desire to protect Emma, like a child, from something unpleasant: this awful thing had eaten away at him for fifteen years. He had had a daughter, and he had hidden her away.

  For a moment too Celia saw Emma panic, a girl who had fought and worked for what she had and realized the dream was ended; she wondered for a second if Emma was going
to turn and run. But she stood her ground.

  ‘Could I have a moment?’ Emma spoke quietly, staring at Lucas. He stood there, mute and blank, he didn’t protest, but he didn’t move, either. Celia thought he might be suffering some kind of shock reaction, and she felt a shadow of anxiety. ‘Please. I’ll see you in a minute, Lucas.’ Emma was polite, but there was no room for argument.

  ‘Come on,’ said Celia, and gently she took Lucas by the elbow. ‘A breath of fresh air.’ At the door she looked back and saw that neither Emma nor Paola Caprese had moved. They stood beside the painting as though it held them there, a lifeline, or a millstone, or the answer to something.

  24

  The emergency room of Florence’s dilapidated central hospital, Santa Maria Nuova, was in chaos. There had already been twelve road traffic accidents since the snow began to fall – most of them minor, two involving fatalities – and although the critical cases had been sent over to the big modern trauma centre on the northern edge of the city the waiting room was full of the nonurgent. The plastic chairs were all occupied by the walking wounded awaiting treatment for mild concussion and lacerations from coming off motorini; half a dozen befuddled elderly folk had cracked ribs and broken wrists after going over on the ice. If only they knew, thought the staff nurse, that at their age a broken wrist or a dislocated hip could be the end of them, what with the bed sores, the dehydration and the depression. It’s not what you imagine, when you’re young, she often thought, that you could be so easily finished off.

  There was one, though, sitting behind the curtain at the end of the observation ward and awaiting specialist assessment, whose injuries could not, in the opinion of the staff nurse, be put down to a slip on an icy pavement. The smashed cheekbone, the broken nose and the two ripening black eyes might, at a pinch, have been sustained coming off a motorino, but not the rest. The deep lacerations on each cheek, ragged but symmetrical, had been put there by a human hand, they were signs, they were a punishment. There was worse, too; this woman hadn’t been right for years. As she passed back down the ward towards the drawn curtain a weak, quavering voice called her: ‘Nurse, nurse.’ An old man’s thin white arm held up a bottle to be emptied: Not my job, she thought, but she took pity and turned back.

  She emptied the bottle, put it in for sterilizing, scrubbed her wrists and forearms. She was surprised, even with her experience, how much punishment the human body – some human bodies – could take before they gave up. They’d undressed the woman, a body yellow and sunken with hepatitis and malnutrition; you couldn’t help wondering what she was holding on for. You didn’t put your body through all that if you loved life. It was hard to tell how old she was, somewhere between forty and seventy, but certainly younger than she looked. An anorexic since puberty, perhaps even earlier, would have been the nurse’s assessment; these days you saw enough of them to be able to make a judgement. A modern plague, half the population obese, and others, it used to be just girls but now you saw grown women too, terrified of food. A drugtaker into the bargain, probably; her arms, no more than bones strung with veins, were bruised and scarred, but that might be self-harm. Who knew where these things began? A word, a touch. Abuse. The psychological evaluation she was waiting for certainly wouldn’t get to the bottom of it, not after all this time, although the police might.

  A foreigner had brought her in, though one of those who’d made Florence his home as his Italian had been near-perfect. The nurse prided herself on judgement, you had to be able to tell at a glance after thirty-five years on the front line, and she’d thought him a decent person. He found her collapsed in the street, he said, he’d been waiting for someone outside the Palazzo Ferrigno and she asked him for help.

  He’d frowned then, deciding that he should tell her the full story. ‘I thought she was an addict,’ he said. ‘But when she stood up I saw she could hardly walk. And…’ He’d looked away then. ‘When I had a good look at her, I realized I’d met her before. A long time ago. She’s called Sarto, Giulietta Sarto.’ The nurse had nodded then, sympathizing; it must have been a shock, seeing anyone in that state after you’d lost touch would be a shock. She decided it wasn’t her job to pass judgement, to wonder if they’d been lovers, nothing like that. Not many people would have bothered to give the girl a second look, and he was a Good Samaritan in her book. Have you got somewhere to stay? he’d asked, his voice gentle. Somewhere to go back to?

  She’d left them alone for a bit, and heard the woman whispering to him through her broken teeth, on and on, urgent, insistent. She’d heard it all in here, when the overdosers came in and they woke up, the stories they came out with: the husband attacked her with a carving knife while she was asleep, forced her to have an abortion, raped her thirteen-year-old daughter. She’d had people sectioned before now. So when she heard Sarto say, ‘He’s been inside the building, he’s got it all planned. He’s going to kill someone,’ she didn’t break step. Let the police deal with it.

  He’d been meticulous, left his name, address, two numbers he could be reached on; he’d had to leave, though. To begin with he’d kept coming and going to call someone on his telefonino, the only person in the hospital to obey the injunction against use of mobiles in the building, becoming more and more impatient and anxious, and then, Sorry, he’d said. Please excuse me, I must – there’s something I have to do, give my name to the police. Laboriously he had written his name down to save her spelling out the foreign syllables. Daniel Strickland, with an address in San Frediano.

  She walked on with a slow, heavy tread, reached for the curtain and pulled it back, but even before the bed was revealed she had a premonition. She’s gone, she thought, and the curtain rattled back, steel rings along an aluminium pole. The bed was empty.

  The match was over but the Palazzo Ferrigno’s concierge, yawning to his feet, had his back to the monitor and didn’t see the figure, grey and insubstantial as a shadow, that it showed slipping out from a darkened stateroom and along the great landing towards the private dining suite. Pressed close to the wall, the figure’s silhouette was indistinct, but certainly male; he was tall, and he moved quickly. The concierge had been summoned to his window by some late-night visitor, and he was taking his time answering such a rude summons. The man was no doubt a tourist under the misapprehension that his needs should be answered even though it was close to eight o’clock and the palace was not a public museum but a private asset. The man rapped on the glass for the second time.

  English, thought the concierge, eyeing him judiciously. The man’s heavy jacket was shapeless and might have been thirty years old, and he wasn’t very careful with his razor. About forty, maybe forty-five. Didn’t look like a tourist though.

  ‘I need to speak with one of your guests,’ said the man. ‘Urgently.’ He paused. ‘Celia Donnelly. Or – or Mr Lucas Marsh. My name,’ and at this he produced a dog-eared card, ‘is Daniel Strickland.’

  The concierge frowned down at the card. Mr Strickland, it seemed, had an official connection with the British Council, but there was something about the man, some air of barely concealed desperation, that combined with the shabby coat and stubble to give the impression of instability. He might be a vagrant, even, a schizo, a psychopathic street person. The concierge drew himself up; he had to consider his responsibilities, he couldn’t be too careful. The man certainly wasn’t dressed for a social occasion, or even a casual visit, in a house like this.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, handing the card back. ‘This is a private function. Very private. A dinner.’ He glanced sideways at the appointments book; the guests had been booked under the name of Marsh. Behind him the single functioning CCTV screen flickered, but the concierge didn’t look around.

  Strickland took a step away from the window in apparent frustration, then stepped back. ‘Perhaps you could check,’ he said with exaggerated politeness, his face up against the glass. ‘I’ll wait.’

  The concierge looked at him, expressionless, but the man held his gaze an
d it became uncomfortable. He leaned back and made a play of pulling out drawers, riffling through the visitors’ book, and eventually he picked up the intercom that was connected to the landing. Ponderously he dialled, keeping his eye on Daniel Strickland.

  As he watched, Strickland took out a telefonino and frowned down at it, half-turning away and jabbing angrily at the keypad. The concierge put a hand over the intercom receiver; no one was answering, but he hung on.

  ‘Mobiles don’t work down here,’ he mouthed at Strickland through the glass, with some satisfaction. He gestured around at the massive stone arch of the gateway. He shook his head, wagging a finger in a pantomime gesture. He was taken aback by the furious glare he received in return. Right, he thought with indignation. No way are you coming past me. He replaced the phone. They must be busy up there, he thought. Or out on the terrace.

  ‘If you insist,’ he said, enunciating clearly as if addressing an idiot, ‘I will have to ask someone to go up there and find Signorina Donnelly. But we are very busy. It may take some time.’

  Daniel Strickland said nothing; he inclined his head and then stood, immovable and with his arms folded across his chest, in front of the glass. The concierge picked up the intercom again and dialled down to the kitchen. He wasn’t going to let on to this thug that there were no more than a handful of staff, three if truth be told, and both the waitresses would be out at the tradesmen’s entrance enjoying a pre-work cigarette until the very last moment. He fixed a fake, servile smile on his face as he held Strickland in his sights.

  ‘Ah, Signorina Chiara,’ he said when eventually he heard the waitress’s voice, petulant at the interruption. ‘There is something I need you to do.’