by Alex Preston
‘I can’t help but think’, Goad says, ‘that there’s a degree of exaggeration in what we hear of Germany. The Germans I know are the most civilised people on earth. Simply couldn’t imagine them putting up with that kind of – hum – savagery. I should like, perhaps, to go and see for myself. But now, I must prepare for my lessons.’
Later that evening, from the window of his room, Esmond watches a stream of earnest, dark-suited young men enter the palazzo. He sits down to write Anna a postcard of St Jerome, recalling the two of them sitting in their father’s chapel at Aston Magna, staring up at the paintings, swooning themselves into the future. In art, in books, they’d built a bubble around themselves, impervious to their family, to Fascism. Her illness gave them an excuse for this, for long hours in her room with Middlemarch or The Eustace Diamonds or Tristram Shandy. Whenever I read, he writes, part of me is always reading to you, out loud. He finishes the letter and then sits with his legs on the windowsill, The Decameron in his lap. Bats begin to flutter past like thoughts, sweeping and circling over the streetlights. Just after nine-thirty, he hears voices below and watches as the young men come out, laughing, carrying books, shouting as they scatter into the lamp-lit streets of the city.
Before going to bed, feeling indulgent, nostalgic, he opens his cupboard. Already, his British Union uniform has taken on a historical air, and he’s surprised at the familiar scratch of the twill as he runs a thumb over the collar of the shirt. A sudden keen memory of coming back to Cambridge, important in his uniform after a march in the East End. He’d found Philip in his room and the older boy, silent and ritualistic, had unbuttoned Esmond’s tunic, opened his belt, slipped off the jackboots. He knew that in the silence was a question, and in the hot press of their bare bodies in the frantic hours that followed, a response. Now, concussed by memory, he sleeps.
11
On Thursday night, the entrance hall of the Institute is lit by two standard lamps from the library. The front door is open to the evening. Gesuina, in a sober black smock, is next to a table with the wine. Esmond stands smoking, watching Fiamma balancing her tray of fizzing glasses carefully, proudly, like a completed jigsaw. He is already a little drunk. Goad places a hand in the small of his back and moves him towards a white-bearded man in a smoking jacket.
‘Esmond, let me introduce you to our most celebrated resident, an honorary Brit, Bernard Berenson. Esmond was rather taken by the triptych in the English church. That’s a Filippino, he said, without a blink.’
‘It’s a sin they didn’t sell the thing,’ Berenson says, a faint American twang in his voice. ‘I had the Italian government baying for it, three pages of authentication, and this new priest good as tore it up. Maddening.’ He shakes his head. He reminds Esmond of the photograph of Freud that Philip had pinned to the wall of his study.
‘They are astonishing paintings.’
‘Yes? One refers to a triptych in the singular. But it is special, there’s no doubt.’
‘The colour of the skin. It’s almost alien.’
‘It wouldn’t have been like that at the time, of course. It’s verdaccio, the green undercoat coming through. But it is striking, isn’t it? Filippino was always in the shadow of his mentor, Botticelli, but with the triptych, and his St Jerome in the Uffizi—’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘They’re a whole new mode, as if he were trying to unpaint all the flippant beauty of his earlier work. He’s not studied widely enough, I’m afraid.’
There is a stir at the door, a few shouts of welcome. Esmond sees Gesuina turn and whisper something in her daughter’s ear.
‘Here’s trouble,’ says Berenson. ‘Don’t block the path to the wine. Like getting between a hippo and her young.’ He stands back to let a red-faced man tap through on a silver-topped cane. Behind him comes a smaller fellow, fortyish and chubby, with round spectacles and cheeks.
‘La Signora e la Signorina Ricci, che belle regazze,’ the first man says, bowing to Gesuina and Fiamma behind the table. ‘Come mi fa contento di vedervi.’ He takes two glasses, passes one to his friend and tastes his own. ‘Asti spumante,’ he says, letting out a sigh, ‘il champagne italiano, il nettare degli dei. And who might you be, my angel?’ Sea-grey eyes fix upon Esmond, widening with slow delight. He holds out his hand.
‘Esmond Lowndes. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Norman Douglas,’ the man says with another bow. ‘This is my dear friend Pino Orioli. Is there any particular book of mine you’d like?’
Esmond feels himself blushing. ‘I believe I’ve read most of them, sir.’
‘Oh really? And which is your favourite?’
‘South Wind,’ Esmond says, then, seeing Douglas’s face fall, ‘but, of course, Alone was magnificent, and Old Calabria. Some of the best travel writing I’ve read.’
‘Some of it, eh?’ Douglas frowns at him. ‘I’m not a travel writer. I’m a writer who happens to rush about. Have you read Together?’
‘Yes. I had a great friend at Cambridge from Austria. He said … that you described the country in a way that made it feel more real than his clearest memories.’
‘And you?’ Douglas asks, jabbing a finger towards him. ‘What about you?’
Esmond hesitates. Then, in a small voice, ‘It made me feel like I knew my friend much better than before. That I could understand where he’d come from.’
Douglas twitches his nose. ‘I think we shall be seeing young Mr Lowndes again, don’t you, Pino?’
Orioli grins, waggling his eyebrows and reaching for another glass of wine. Douglas places a hand on Esmond’s shoulder and squeezes. ‘He’s all right, this one.’ With a nod, he drops his hand and speaks again in Italian.
Esmond looks around and realises that Ada isn’t there. He wonders what it will be like to work with her, what closeness might grow between them. He glances sideways at Fiamma. It is a shame, he thinks, that Ada looks so un-Italian, has none of Fiamma’s fine grace. It’s not her Jewishness, rather the squareness of her jaw, the gas-blue skin that make him shiver when he pictures her.
The ting-ting of a fork on glass. Goad stands on the first step of the staircase, pulling at his hands. Esmond sees Berenson and a Reggie, George and Alice Keppel turn and straighten, Father Bailey towering over another Reggie in the corner. Others he doesn’t recognise. He counts eighteen people in the entrance hall.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Goad says. ‘The coronation of George V took place in my first year as Director of the Institute. A gala dinner for eighty guests in the Palazzo Vecchio, bunting stretched across the via Tornabuoni, dancing and fireworks late into the night. Public occasions like this one are a rock in the fluid currents of history, that we may look back and see how far we’ve come. So few of us left in this most English of Italian cities. So many gone.’ He takes a sip of water. ‘For all its roughness, its – hum – youth, we have seen a brave new power driving the history of this country, and it won’t be long before England is the odd man out of Europe. Democracy is dying. Kemal, Horthy, Pisudki in Poland, Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain. Herr Hitler.
‘These rumours of war between Britain and Italy – put them from your minds.’ A hear, hear, from Alice Keppel. ‘When the statesmen of Europe fix the mess bequeathed them by the Treaty of Versailles, everything will go on as before. The British and Italians could never be any serious enemies. We are in the middle of a – hum – tiff, nothing more.’
He holds up a framed photograph of the new King, crosses the room, lifts down the picture of George V and smiles at the applause. He stretches up to hook George VI in its place. Esmond looks to see if Ada has arrived, but sees blackness on the street.
‘Most of you have met Esmond Lowndes,’ Goad continues, back at the step. ‘His wireless programme will be broadcast throughout Tuscany. Do go over and say hello. Esmond, stick up a hand. Yes. And if any of you have an idea for a transmission, something we might send out for the instruction of our listeners, don’t – hum – keep it a secret.’<
br />
Through the crowd Esmond can see bodies in the street, black-shirted figures outside the doorway.
‘It only remains for me to ask you to charge your glasses and raise them to our new King.’
Alice Keppel lets out a high scream. Two men are inside, stockings pulled over their faces. Douglas and Orioli squeeze past Esmond and head down the corridor to the inner courtyard. Esmond feels Fiamma tense beside him. More black figures enter, six in all, faces smudged like ghosts. One shoves at Reggie Temple, who lands in a heap, breathing heavily. Father Bailey steps forward and the Blackshirt nearest him pulls out a revolver.
The room takes a breath. Two men rush to the table and tip it over. The musical shattering of glasses. A bottle fizzes to Gesuina’s feet and Esmond reaches down to right it. Fiamma, a slash of wine across her blouse, looks towards Esmond. He feels breathless, a shameful excitement in his chest, and meets her dark eyes.
One Blackshirt stands in the door, another in the passageway. The smallest, whom Esmond recognises with swift certainty as Carità, crosses to the photograph of the King, pulls a dagger from his belt. Alice Keppel lets out a whimper. Taking the picture with one hand, he breaks the glass with the hilt of the dagger. He draws the blade carefully across the photograph, opening up long white scars in the King’s uneasy face, and lets it fall. Goad has stepped from the platform towards the Blackshirt.
‘Look here,’ he says. ‘Sapete qui sono io?’
One pulls out a package in brown paper. He hands it to the small man, who slips the blade under the paper and holds up another photograph. In a plain wooden frame, it is a portrait of Victor Emmanuel III, with his absurdly curling moustache and slow-witted eyes.
‘You in Italy,’ the small man says, his voice muffled by the stocking. ‘You have Italian King now.’ He places Victor Emmanuel on the hook and squares it on the wall. ‘Always here. We will come back to check.’
Goad steps towards him, smiling hesitantly.
‘I quite understand, although I’m not sure that we needed the point made quite so dramatically. What would you say to having portraits of both kings together, or perhaps––’
The small man raises his dagger. Esmond feels a lurch. He leaps forward over the upended table, his feet crunching on the glass. The man brings the dagger down hard, landing two sharp blows on Goad’s head, hilt-first. Goad doesn’t pass out, but lowers himself carefully to the ground, a plume of blood darkening his hair. The small man brings his dagger up again as Esmond reaches him, seizing his arm from behind. The man wheels around. His hand is hot and damp.
‘Carità,’ Esmond says.
A pause, and the man takes the opportunity to drive a knee into Esmond’s groin. A sour pain spreads through his body to his throat. He lets go of Carità’s arm and bends double, tears springing to his eyes. He thinks he might vomit. A soft hand on his back and he turns to see Fiamma standing beside him.
‘Basta così!’ she shouts, jutting her chin towards the little man. He regards her for a moment and then lets the dagger fall to his side.
‘Allora, andiamo,’ Carità says. Then, bending over Goad. ‘You think your friends protect you? You tell anyone in Rome and we start to kill English people. Your time has run out. Me ne frego!’ The last is shouted and repeated by the others as they file out. They listen to the Blackshirts singing as they make their way down the via Tornabuoni.
Fiamma is still next to him, her hand on his back. Gesuina is crouched over Goad, speaking softly. Someone has balled a jacket beneath the older man’s head. His cheeks are grey, his eyes closed. Gesuina holds a cloth to the wound. Bailey goes to stand above him.
‘We need an ambulance. Can someone call the Golden Cross?’
‘I’ll go,’ says Fiamma, ‘the telephone is in the library.’
Esmond stands, wincing. He sees Douglas and Orioli appear from the corridor.
‘Everything all right?’ Douglas asks, and looks at Goad.
The Reggies take Douglas and Orioli outside. Father Bailey and Colonel Keppel turn to Esmond.‘How d’you feel?’ the priest asks.
‘I should have thumped them, I really should,’ says Keppel, jabbing in the air.
‘Esmond did more than enough. You’d have ended up like Goad.’
‘I’d like to have seen them try.’ The Colonel pinches his moustache and lets out a gravelled whinny.
‘I’m fine,’ says Esmond. ‘How’s Harold?’
‘He’ll live, lucky fellow. Here they are.’
Two men in blue uniforms come through the door, golden crosses embroidered on their backs. They lift Goad’s arms to their shoulders and carry him to the door.
‘I’ll go along,’ says Bailey. ‘Perhaps, Esmond, you could wire Gerald in the morning. Tell him his father’s had a spot of trouble. He’ll want to know. Gesuina will give you his details.’
12
He and Fiamma are in the kitchen drinking tea. She has changed into green silk pyjamas and looks, Esmond thinks, like a princess from the Arabian Nights. They’d cleared up the entrance hall together, sweeping glass and mopping the sticky floor. It had grown dark and they worked in the light between standard lamps, under the dull gaze of Victor Emmanuel. Now San Gaetano chimes ten o’clock. The pain in his groin has finally lifted. Fiamma fishes a slice of lemon out of her tea with a spoon, sucks it, drops it back into her cup.
‘Where have they taken him, do you think?’
‘Santa Maria Nuova. It’s not far.’ She blows on her tea. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Rum,’ says Esmond. ‘Worried about Harold.’
‘Me too. He looked so unwell on the floor. Bastardi.’ She places her cup in the sink with a crash. ‘You were a good man tonight,’ she says, stepping towards him and walking her fingers across his head. ‘You were brave. Now I must go to bed.’ Esmond’s scalp tingles as he finishes his tea and makes his way along the corridor to his room.
*
The next morning he breakfasts alone and then wires Gerald from Cook’s. He pictures Gerald as a younger version of his father: thinning, hesitant, hands a patchwork of scabs and raw skin. Afterwards he climbs the stairs and knocks on the door to Fiamma’s room.
‘Sì, entra!’ she says. A gramophone plays ‘Summertime’. The Decameron is face down on the dressing table, dresses and jackets on the bed and the doors of her wardrobe. ‘It’s such a mess,’ she says, smiling, picking up her handbag and placing a navy shawl around her shoulders. ‘Let’s go.’
Goad is in a ward with elderly people, all of whom appear to be more or less dead. There is an occasional groan from one of the beds, otherwise silence. Goad’s head is heavily bandaged, his face grey and drawn under the white turban. Bailey sits in a chair beside him, Gesuina in another.
‘How is he?’ Esmond asks. Fiamma takes Goad’s hand, running her thumbs over the skin. Goad opens his eyes narrowly and attempts a smile.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he says.
‘He’ll be fine if he gets some rest,’ says Bailey, firmly. ‘The head seems to be in reasonable condition, nothing broken. But the blood pressure’s terribly high, his heart is not in good shape at all. The doctors have insisted on at least a month of rest.’
‘The shock?’
‘They don’t know, I’m afraid. One suggested––’
‘I’ve told you, Frederick, I simply can’t take the time off. My students rely upon me. And Radio Firenze––’
‘You don’t have the option.’ The priest’s voice is tired and Esmond realises he has been here all night. Gesuina has a basket of food by her feet, a steaming flask of coffee in her hands. Her eyes are red.
‘What about the people who did this, what about Carità?’ Esmond asks.
Goad sighs and shakes his head. ‘Anything we do will just drive a deeper wedge between us. It’s my fault. I should have known, brandishing the picture of the King through the open door. Idiotic. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.’
‘But Mussolini should know about this. We should write
to him.’
‘We need to work with Carità, not against him. This is something you must understand, Esmond. We live according to different rules here. Violence is the blood of this new Fascism. I don’t hold it against Carità for a moment, what he did. We were in the wrong and were punished. It’s him I ought to write to – a note of apology.’
A nurse comes in, gently removes Goad’s hand from Fiamma’s and takes his pulse.
‘Signor Goad dovrette dormire,’ she says.
Fiamma kisses Goad on the cheek and squeezes his hand again.
‘Will you let my students know when they arrive this evening? Tell them in person. I don’t think a sign––’
‘Of course,’ Esmond says. ‘I’ll deal with it.’
‘As for the station, it’s down to you now. Prepare, Esmond. Go and see Carità. Square things up with him. Make sure the studio’s ready for when I’m back on my feet.’
Bailey walks with them to the corridor. ‘He’s really very sick,’ the priest says. ‘They were talking about operating, but he’s not well enough for that. He’ll be here for at least another week. I’d like him to take the waters at Bagni di Lucca. I think I’ll be able to persuade Gesuina to go with him, but he’s in no state to travel yet. You’ll hold the fort at the palazzo, you two?’
‘Of course,’ Esmond nods.
‘We’ll manage,’ Fiamma says.
*
At the Institute, Esmond stands at the door and meets the clerks and university students, shop workers and salesmen arriving for Goad’s English lesson. ‘I’m afraid the lessons will have to be postponed. Signor Goad has had an accident. He’s in hospital. I’m terribly sorry.’ He repeats it to each of them. They ask after Goad, if they might visit him, offer their condolences, pressing Esmond’s hands with theirs. When the last has left, Esmond walks into the courtyard, looks up and feels the old building breathing around him. He sees a light flickering against the pale roof of the loggia. He climbs the stairs to the top floor and, instead of turning left towards the bedrooms and the kitchen, he turns right.