by Alex Preston
St Mark’s is like the chapel at Aston: secular, cluttered, flannelled with dust. A great-aunt’s attic. A grand piano sits at the back with a sheet over it. A sofa supports three peeling pictures of the Madonna. Chairs stacked down the side-aisles. A smell of damp and plaster, the sense of benign but terminal neglect. The darkness is partly due to the narrow clerestory windows at either end, and partly because everything is painted a light-eating crimson: the walls, the pillars, even some of the pews.
Goad bows his head to pray and Esmond looks around. He hadn’t realised how many worshippers had crowded into the darkness – all of them old, obviously British in their twill and tweed, floral hats and medals. Colonel Keppel is bolt upright in the front row beside a martial woman with a large nose. Behind them, on his own, is an old man in a double-breasted suit, a single comb of hair across his head. Goad looks up and the old man waggles thick eyebrows.
‘Reggie,’ whispers Goad.
‘Wotcha,’ the man says.
Another old man steps jauntily down the aisle. He wears a high-buttoned jacket, Edwardian-style, with turn-ups to the cuffs, a grey shirt and vermilion handkerchief. He stoops and crosses himself in the aisle, then edges into the pew behind Esmond and Goad. He leans his face between them.
‘Goad.’ His voice is a whispered quiver. Esmond can feel his breath – peppermint – on his cheek. ‘And I don’t believe we’ve met––’
‘Esmond Lowndes,’ Goad says. ‘Reggie Temple. One of our two Reggies. The other is Turner.’
‘How confusing,’ Esmond says.
‘Not at all, my dear,’ says the nearer Reggie. ‘Other Reggie looks like a Turner. All washed out. And I’ve still got hair at the temples.’ He gives a dry giggle. ‘Going to the Keppels’ later? Lunch?’ The organ grows louder and his head retreats. The congregation stands and heavy footsteps sound in the aisle.
‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.’
The priest is tall, in a black cassock with a white lace smock on his shoulders. He is handsome – narrow black moustache, sharp blue eyes, a heaviness around the jowls, the creeping solidness of age. His voice is deep with a faint Scottish burr.
‘Welcome, all of you. Jolly good to see so many here. Those that have gone, go with our blessing, of course, but while there’s a single one of you left in Florence, I’ll be here every morning, twice on Sundays.’ He gives a sad smile. ‘I’m afraid Walter Goodwin was among the latest exodus, so I shall need a new sacristan. A Reggie, perhaps?’
Turner looks at Temple. ‘You wouldn’t be able to reach,’ he whispers sharply, rising to walk down the aisle.
‘Thank you, Reggie. Now, we’ve had an approach from Holy Trinity to combine services. Father Hywell-Jones wishes to take his family back to Wales. Given that their congregation has held up rather worse than ours, we shall welcome all eight or nine of them next week. Remember that they are more sombre in their worship than we are, and be kind.
‘In better news, and against the general trend, we have a guest with us. I’d like to welcome Esmond Lowndes, who is staying with Harold Goad at the British Institute. He’s over here to set up, of all things, a radio station, with the aim of building bridges between the British and Italians. All I can say is jolly good luck to you, Esmond, God bless, and if there’s anything any of us here at St Mark’s can do to help, then do let us know.’ Everyone turns to look at Esmond and he raises a shy hand towards the priest and nods. ‘Now let us pray––’
There is no service sheet and Esmond has trouble remembering the words. At school he’d spent his time in chapel looking at the backs of the younger boys, soft blond napes that shimmered in the stained light. Sometimes he’d humour baroque sexual fantasies of the barmaid at The Wykeham Arms, so that he’d have to struggle his erection into place before walking up to receive his blessing. Here, though, he can’t drag his eyes from the triptych. He feels the pressure of Mary Magdalene’s desert gaze, the heft of the russet hair that tumbles down over her back like a pelt. She holds her arms across her chest as if, were she to let go, she’d burst forth, ruptured by the weight of her sorrow. John’s eyes, deep in sallow cheeks, peer up to his crucified God in appalled disbelief. Their bodies are chicken-thin and painful to look at. When he goes up to the altar rail beside Goad and bows his head, he shudders at his nearness to the painting.
After the service, Goad prays for a long time. Colonel Keppel and his wife stride down the aisle, nodding sternly at Esmond as they pass. Other expatriates step away, pausing only to genuflect broadly. The women are artistic and nervous, hanging onto the last vestiges of girlhood, or rather finding them again, turning up in their late-life bodies something gamine, playful, fragile. Their husbands march stiffly behind them, hands behind their backs. Finally Goad shakes his head and stands. The priest, who has taken off his smock and cassock and stands in a grey suit, is extinguishing candles at the back of the church with a brass snuffer. When he sees Esmond and Goad coming towards him, he puts it down and rubs his hands together, smiling.
‘Now then, Esmond.’ His palm is smooth and cool. ‘Harold, good morning.’
‘I thought we might show Esmond the room, if you have a moment,’ Goad says.
‘Of course. Perhaps I could drive you up to Bellosguardo afterwards.’
They make their way back through the entrance and follow Father Bailey up the dark stairwell. The priest takes the steps two at a time and Goad is soon panting, reaching for the support of Esmond’s elbow. Bailey stops to wait for them.
‘Here we are.’ Bailey turns through a bunch of keys, selects one and opens the door onto a corridor, dimly lit by a window at the far end.
‘It was the Machiavelli family palazzo,’ Bailey says. ‘He was born in one of these rooms. Amazing, isn’t it?’ He throws open doors as he passes, showing empty rooms thick with dust. They come to the end of the corridor. ‘Now tell me what you think of this.’ He opens the last door on the left and they step into a large, white space. It reminds Esmond for a moment of the ballroom at Aston Magna. Four French windows open onto a narrow balcony overlooking the church of Santo Spirito. He can see young men playing football in the piazza, doves in a gossipy cluster on the tiled roof.
‘I spoke to Father Bailey,’ Goad puffs, ‘about a studio. He suggested you might use this. For a small contribution to the upkeep of the church, of course, but––’
‘You’d be welcome to have it for nothing, Esmond. Far too quiet around here recently and what you’re doing is more good than harm. If Harold’s behind you, that’s endorsement enough for me.’
Esmond can see fingers of damp creeping up the walls, patches of mould that fur the far corner. Parquet tiles are chipped, missing in places. Dust covers the stone mantelpiece at the far end. He breathes the smell and lets out his breath in a low whistle.
‘This is smashing.’
‘Glad you approve. Now, oughtn’t we get going? I’m ruddy terrified of Alice Keppel.’
With a last look at the room, Esmond follows Goad and Bailey back along the corridor, down the steps and through a side door into the garage and Bailey’s old, rather dazzling, red Alfa Romeo. They drive out into the misty square, along streets so narrow that rugs touch as the women shake them from high windows. Finally, with a careless roar from the car, they wind up into the hills and out of the city.
9
The Villa dell’Ombrellino takes three terraced steps down the hillside. The uppermost has a gravel path between lemon trees, plumbago and gardenia. There is a vegetable garden further down growing beefsteak tomatoes. Fountains babble in the shade of umbrella pines. The house is large and symmetrical with a loggia running the length of the ground floor. Most of the lunch guests are sitting here smoking and sipping sherry.
Esmond is at the front of the upper terrace with Colonel Keppel. His hand rests on the metal pole that supports the brass parasol, the ombrellino, and they look down across the mist to the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and beyond it the plu
mp dome of the cathedral. Otherwise Florence is obscured.
Colonel Keppel is smoking a pipe, nestling the stem under his moustache and drawing deeply. He steps forward to the stone wall that marks the edge of the uppermost terrace.
‘Have you seen the pool?’ he asks, pointing downwards with his pipe.
Esmond joins him at the balcony and looks over. A camphor tree grows at the top of a rocky grotto where a shadowy swimming pool crags under ferns and hostas. Over the shallow end are bronze statues, two dodos, covered in verdigris. He thinks of Philip floating star-shaped in the pool at Emmanuel College, misquoting Byron, paddling with his hands.
‘Modelled on the Roman baths at Caracalla. Same chap who did the garden, Cecil Pinsel.’
‘It’s beautiful. Why the dodos?’
‘Reminder that we’re all dying and all stupid. It’s why I built the pool. Attracts the young, or used to, until they buggered off back to London. Important, when you get to my age, to surround yourself with young people. You must come and swim here when the weather improves. It’d make Alice happy.’ He pauses. ‘D’you enjoy the service?’
‘Yes. It’s a funny little church.’
‘Funny priest, too. Goad tell you about Bailey?’
‘No.’
Colonel Keppel glances over his shoulder.
‘Confidentially, he’s a spy. Intelligence Corps during the last war and now reporting back to Whitehall on Musso.’
‘He’s not a priest?’
‘Oh, he’s an amen-wallah all right – it’s his cover. He got me to carry a few packages to London when we went to heave Violet, that’s our daughter, down the aisle. Very hush-hush.’ He touches his nose. ‘Disappears for days in that sports car of his. Up to the mountains. Giustizia e Libertà, I shouldn’t wonder. Now, not a word of this. Scout’s honour?’
‘Scout’s honour.’
Alice Keppel comes down the path from the house. Goad, on her arm, looks shrunken, doll-like. The four of them face over towards the hills of the Sienese Clavey that billow up out of the mist.
‘I hope I didn’t embarrass you at lunch, young man,’ she says, without turning. ‘Out here, one assumes that everyone knows everything.’
‘It’ll take more than your youthful indiscretions to make Esmond blush.’ Colonel Keppel pats her buttock. ‘Hasn’t heard about me and dear old Victoria yet. Not for nothing were they called the naughty nineties.’
Over lunch, leaning closely, Mrs Keppel had told Esmond how dreadfully sorry she was for Wallis. The problem was, she said, Mrs Simpson didn’t know what she wanted. When she, Mrs Keppel, had been the mistress of Edward’s grandfather, she’d been very clear. She wanted money. Money so that she might live in the style that her ancestors had enjoyed. Money so that she might take her husband away to a place like this – she’d waved her hand across the dinner table, the plates of food and silver candlesticks. And when the King had come to stay, George had gone shooting, or riding, and the King had ridden her. Here she laughed breathily.
Now, on the terrace, she wraps a heavy arm around his shoulder.
‘It’s divine to have you here, Esmond. I’m always saying to Harold that he must get Fiamma and Gerald, when he’s over, to come up and swim, but I’m afraid he disapproves of us.’
Goad clucks. ‘Not at all, Alice. It’s just that – hum – young people––’
‘But the young are what George and I live for. I insist that Esmond come up to bathe soon.’
Goad looks doubtfully at the water below.
‘I’d love to,’ Esmond says, aware of the weight of her arm.
A gust of wind rattles the pines around the house. Mrs Keppel finally lifts her arm and begins to shiver. Father Bailey crunches down from the house with a shawl, which he wraps around her shoulders.
‘We should leave you,’ Goad says.
‘Oh, do stay a little longer.’
The mist begins to clear beneath them. Gradually, in little plots and then in larger pools of light, Florence reveals the dome of San Lorenzo, Santa Croce to the east, the Badia Fiorentina, Santo Spirito. As the sun strolls from rooftop to rooftop, rusticated brickwork and cool white facades appear, the huge teal egg of the synagogue, and villas like a loose necklace across the hills.
‘It must be difficult, at moments like this,’ Goad says, ‘not to believe in God.’
‘Amen,’ says Bailey.
Esmond feels weightless, as if he could sail down over the currents of air.
‘Harold. You and your sublime,’ Colonel Keppel says, turning and leading them back to the house. Esmond takes a last look at the pool, the city beyond, and follows.
In Bailey’s car on the way home, the priest leans over his shoulder and speaks to Esmond, who is perched in the cramped rear.
‘Did you realise that your host was a holy man too?’ he says.
‘Colonel Keppel?’
‘Your real host, Harold here.’
Goad looks out at the landscape. ‘Oh, come now.’
‘I’m entirely serious. If he hadn’t been so taken with politics, he’d have made a sparkling priest. Is that not so, Harold?’
Goad shakes his head. Esmond sees a half-smile on his lips. ‘I wanted to find a way of – hum – doing some good.’
‘He’d cut his tongue out before telling you this, but he used his inheritance to found an orphanage at Assisi. Eighteen years old. A year in a Franciscan monastery in the Apennines after that. He’s done more good than most saints I know.’
‘You’re too kind, Father Bailey.’
‘I just want young Esmond to know what sort of man he’s living with.’
‘I do,’ Esmond says. ‘Really.’
10
The next day, just before lunch, Esmond is in the library with Goad. The older man sits in a high-backed armchair reading Browning. Every so often he rolls out a warm chuckle, or mutters ‘Yes, yes,’ to himself. Esmond watches dust riding the beams of light from the windows. They hear the front door clang and footsteps on the stairs. Goad looks at his watch and stands, Esmond with him.
‘Here she is,’ says Goad, as a woman, mid-twenties, Esmond guesses, with a hard, grown-up air, walks in. Her knotted hair is deep red, the colour of Mary Magdalene’s in the triptych. Goad crosses to kiss her. As he reaches up to take her by the shoulders, on tiptoe, and place a kiss on each pale cheek, she stoops a little to meet him, and Esmond sees how thin she is, barely filling her tunic and slacks.
‘Harold,’ she says. ‘I’m late.’
‘Not at all. Ada Liuzzi, Esmond Lowndes. Ada’s father, Guido, edits the Florentine edition of La Nostra Bandiera.’
Esmond takes her hand and notices a mole, a dark moon in the orbit of her left eye.
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ he says.
Gesuina places a tray on the table beside Goad’s armchair. Goad picks up the teapot and fills three china cups.
‘From England,’ he says. ‘One simply can’t get good tea out here. Milk?’
Ada looks from one of them to the other. She raises the tea carefully to her lips and sips. There is something almost manly about her face, Esmond thinks. She is not beautiful. Striking perhaps, even startling, but never beautiful.
‘I told Ada about Radio Firenze. I knew, you see, that she was at a loose end, and I thought she might be a good person to have aboard.’
‘I studied English in Bologna,’ Ada says quietly. ‘I have been looking for a job here in Florence, but with the sanctions and the war in Spain – I thought, perhaps, of America. But for the moment, I would be very happy to help you.’
‘That’s excellent, Ada. I’m sure you’ll find it terribly easy. Some research, some translation with Carità, the wireless man—’
‘I know Carità,’ she says, and Esmond feels a momentary curdling of the atmosphere.
‘Splendid.’ Goad rubs his hands. ‘And I wonder if you might come along for a drink here on Thursday night, for the Coronation. We’ll take the opportunity to halloo those Brits who have �
� hum – persevered. A bottle of Asti spumante or two, a picture of the new King in the hallway. You’d be very welcome.’
‘I should be delighted,’ Ada says, her face softening. Esmond finds himself grinning back as he and Goad walk her to the door. She kisses him; lavender in her hair and on her pale skin. The two men stand at the top of the stairs, watch her descend and turn out of sight.
Back in the library, Esmond smells the lavender, thinks of her cat’s eyes, her heavy jaw.
‘She’ll be super,’ he says. ‘Her English is excellent.’
‘Yes. She’s a terribly nice girl. Fascinating family. Her father’s a Jew, would you believe? He and Ettore Ovazza, the banker, founded La Nostra Bandiera in Turin. Hugely pro-Fascist, all of them.’
‘But Jews?’
‘Indeed. It’s folly to think the Jews are all Communists and agitators. One which leads some of the British Union chaps in entirely the wrong direction. Il Duce understands that, whatever the racial origins, whatever the dress, the gods, human beings are all about connection, and if you throw people together for long enough, they’ll rub along. Mussolini refuses to implement racial laws because Jews have been here since the days of Ancient Rome. Lorenzo the Magnificent’s doctor was a Jew.’
‘Didn’t Mussolini have a Jewish mistress?’
‘Margherita Sarfatti. Jews here are firstly Italians. What they choose to do in their temples is no concern of ours.’ He looks worried. ‘I hope that isn’t a problem for you? Ada being Jewish. I presumed, like your father, you had no truck with this racialist nonsense.’
‘None at all,’ Esmond replies. ‘I’m just surprised. With everything that’s going on in Germany, and the Italians cosying up to Hitler, the Rome–Berlin Axis and all that.’