by Alex Preston
He tries the door at the end of the passage. It opens with a creak. There on the loggia, again in green pyjamas, this time with a woollen shawl around her shoulders, sits Fiamma, reading by candlelight, making notes in a pad on her knee. She has found a rusty garden chair to sit on. Esmond steps out onto the pathway between railings and she looks up at him.
‘It’s better to read outside,’ she says. ‘You can hear the city, see the sky, the mountains.’
‘The Decameron?’ he asks.
She holds up the cover and then goes back to her reading.
He looks around. The hills that circle Florence are purpled by the night. Thin feathers of noctilucent cloud sit in the air to the west. To the east, the hills are dark, marked here and there by the lights of villages, the solitary glow of villas.
‘Could I join you?’ he asks.
‘Of course. Do you have any food? My mother’s still at the hospital.’
He crosses to the apartment, finds a loaf of bread and some salami in the pantry, a bottle of red wine and two glasses from the kitchen cupboard. He pulls on a jumper, puts his own copy of The Decameron under his arm and heads back out onto the loggia. Fiamma has unfolded another green chair. They sit, each reading the same book in different languages, each sipping, munching, smiling, sighing as they follow the stories of ten young people, six hundred years earlier, in the very hills which tend them now. When San Gaetano has tolled twelve and the wine is finished, the candle almost down to its holder, Fiamma draws in a sharp breath, shivers and reaches out for Esmond’s hand.
‘My uncle was one of them,’ Fiamma says.
‘One of what?’
‘The men, last night. He passed Carità the portrait of Vittorio Emanuele.’
He can feel her pulse in her palm. Her hands are cold and he seizes them both between his. She looks at him with wide, frank eyes.
‘I can’t believe he could do this to Mr Goad. They have lunch, they are friends even. Something has happened to the people in this city. They are turning against themselves.’ She takes her hands from his and stands up. ‘I must go to bed. I have classes tomorrow.’ He can barely see her eyes in the candlelight. ‘It is good to have you here.’
She bends over and places a kiss on his cheek. He watches her cross the loggia to the door and out of sight. He stays for a while on the rooftop, turning with the drifting stars. Later, in bed, he imagines he can feel the moist press of her lips with his fingertip.
13
They live the next week like a holiday. They get up later, dine longer, fall asleep or into books in the afternoons. Gesuina is in and out of the apartment, leaving meals under muslin cloths on the sideboard in the kitchen, salads in deep glazed bowls in the icebox, loaves of bread on the table. She seems unwilling to quit Goad’s side, particularly at night, when she says he grinds his teeth and calls out, his heart a skipping trot in his chest. She’s usually there at breakfast, looking rinsed but satisfied, her hair in a fretful bun. After Fiamma has left for lectures at the university, Gesuina puts together a basket of food and she and Esmond walk up to Santa Maria Nuova to visit Goad.
Bailey is often at the hospital, his cool assurance a comfort in the wheezing closeness of the ward. His Italian indulges no accent and is garnished with English words and suspect Italianate endings: stethoscopio, for instance. He and Gesuina together, though, are a formidable pairing, and the doctors and nurses soon scurry at their command. Goad is moved into a private room overlooking a flagstoned courtyard, the bluff back of the church and the railway station visible through a gap between hospital buildings.
‘They call it a scorcio,’ Goad says. ‘A view you glimpse, all of a sudden, that leaps inside you. Florence is the city of scorci.’ Pale blue curtains belly in the breeze as they stare out into the bright day. Esmond has brought Goad’s Tennyson, his Foscolo, his Browning, but feels useless now, gently gripping the old man’s hand. He has done nothing about the wireless station, about Carità, and the thought presses upon him. There has also been no word from Gerald.
In the evenings, he and Fiamma have dinner on the loggia. They drink and read, closeness creeping between them as the night inks the hills, bells tolling in the darkness around them. They bring cushions and rugs onto the loggia like tender colonisers, giving it back the purpose of its design. He plans his novel, with Fiamma a new Philip, listening to his ideas, laughing encouragement. Hulme at Cambridge – sent down – then in London, he writes. After a row over a girl, he hangs Wyndham Lewis upside-down on the railings of Soho Square. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the artist, forges him a pair of brass knuckle-dusters which he uses to drive home philosophical arguments.
One evening they go down to Doney’s for a digestivo. Fiamma drinks three glasses of Frangelico as the white-coated waiters dip and bend around them. The room glitters with marble tables and chandeliers, coruscating brightness. Everyone seems to know Fiamma, who is wearing the same yellow dress she wore the first time Esmond saw her. Late on, just as the waiters are beginning to stack chairs, one of them performing a pas de deux with his broom, Fiamma reaches across to take Esmond’s hand on the silver-topped table.
‘When I was young,’ she says, ‘I was hungry. My father couldn’t get work – it was the first years of Mussolini’s reign and the papers suddenly refused to take articles from a Communist, even one who’d fought in the war, and who wrote so beautifully.’ She reaches up to draw her fingers down the sleek curve of her hair. ‘My early memories are of being cold and hungry, and of there never being any money, of having to go to our neighbours to beg food.’ They both lift their feet as the dancing waiter sweeps beneath their table. Fiamma lets out a little sigh. ‘We’d come to Florence for holidays, my mother and I, and there’d be food and soft sheets and my Fascist uncle, and I hated myself for loving it, for not staying in the apartment in Milan with my father. I still feel that, here, a little.’ She shrugs, swirls her glass and drinks it down.
When they get back to the apartment there is a moment of awkwardness at the door to her room. He leans to kiss her cheek, they move their heads the same way, then again, and their lips brush together. They draw apart, eyes wide. Fiamma smiles, and moves to place another swift kiss on his mouth. He is wordless, all lips, staring at the blank face of her door.
14
He wakes at dawn, the air in his bedroom close and stale. The rumble of a taxi below. A muttered conversation, banging doors, footsteps on the stairs, then silence. He dozes again and wakes with a start as his door bursts open. In the dim light he makes out a tall figure with thick chestnut hair. Fiamma stands behind him, her arm on the doorframe.
‘Well, turn the light on then. Let’s get a look at you.’ The voice is warmly amused.
Esmond sticks out a hand for the light and looks blinkingly towards the doorway. The young man is sportif in a white boating jacket and slacks, a loose tie. He smiles, and it is like a growl. Fiamma’s nightdress shows the darkness of her skin as she steals happily behind the stranger. Beautiful, Esmond thinks, sitting up.
‘May we come in?’ The young man crosses to the window and throws open the shutters. The world stirs shyly outside. He pulls out the chair, turns it towards the bed and sits. Fiamma perches on the desk behind him, looking first at Esmond, then at him. Esmond is aware that an incipient morning erection is prodding his sheets. He feels childish and Victorian in his nightshirt, his father’s, too large and threadbare at the armpits.
‘Listen,’ the boy says in a loud voice. ‘I want you to know how bloody good you’ve been. Standing to attention at the old man’s bedside, keeping the pip from his tooth and all that. I’ve spoken to Bailey and he says you’ve been a sainted hero. So thanks a million, pal.’
‘You’re Gerald.’ Esmond says, looking for a trace of Goad in the elegant, almost oriental eyes.
‘S’right,’ Gerald says. ‘Bloody good to be back here. And to see this little one.’ He slaps a hand on Fiamma’s thigh and she smiles out a squeal. ‘Too early for breakfast? Procacci’ll o
pen in twenty minutes. Milk rolls and jam. My treat.’
Gerald and Fiamma leave and Esmond sits muddled and sleepy, listening to their voices and laughter echoing through the corridor. He gets up and picks his clothes more carefully than he has all week – a pale lawn shirt and sponge-bag trousers.
He finds them in the courtyard. It is light now, a lemony brightness in the air. As they stroll out into the street, Gerald throws his arm around Esmond’s shoulders.
‘We’re going to have a high old time this summer. No idea what I’ll do when I get back to London, but I intend to be thoroughly debased before I go.’
They walk through the doors to Procacci, whose stooped, trembling owner is letting up the blinds. He nods them in, tucks a dishcloth into his belt and stands behind the counter.
‘Tre panini con confettura, tre caffè, per favore,’ Gerald says. He pulls out a chair from the round marble table for Fiamma and sits down himself, rocking backwards as he draws out his cigarette case. ‘Smoke?’ he asks, holding it towards Esmond. Esmond takes one and leans forward to light it as the owner brings their breakfasts.
‘You’re studying for the bar, aren’t you?’ Esmond says.
‘Rather flunked, I’m afraid. Have you seen inside a law court, Esmond? There’s always one bird looks as if he’s about to split the atom when all he’s thought about for twenty years is roast beef and gravy. A cemetery for the mind, law.’
Later that morning they visit Goad. Gesuina sits knitting as the old man sleeps. She stands up when she sees Gerald, letting out a whimper of pleasure as they embrace. He tilts backwards and lifts her from the floor. Goad wakes, looks over at them and breaks into a smile.
‘You came,’ he says.
Gerald sits by his father and they talk for some minutes in low voices. Then he turns towards them. ‘I think I’ll sit and read to the old man for a while. Listen, it’s going to be a scorcher. Why don’t we head up to L’Ombrellino for a swim later? I’ll meet you chaps up there, say, three?’
Outside, Fiamma reaches into her clutch and draws out a pair of round, wire-framed sunglasses. Esmond takes her arm. As they walk down past the train station, past Santa Maria Novella, he can feel the heat rising from the paving stones. There are speakers mounted around the piazza and Mussolini’s voice cries out as they pass. Fiamma stops, and he watches a group of boatered schoolgirls giggle past in the mirrors of her lenses. Mussolini ends with a shout that is almost a scream. Fiamma walks on, shaking her head.
‘Che palle,’ she says.
15
Esmond lowers himself down between the dodos and into the water. The steps are slick beneath his feet and he moves carefully, spreading the water, deepening the blue and white stripes of his costume. The sun flings across the pool, sparking off the shadowy nooks of the cliff that climbs towards the house. He leans forward, kicks into a breaststroke and opens his eyes. He can see the mosaics on the bottom, a dolphin in turquoise tiles, mermaids, seahorses, starfish. He turns over, surfaces and looks up. Alice Keppel gazes down on him from the terrace, her hands on the parapet wall. She raises an arm.
‘Is it glorious?’
‘I’ll say,’ he agrees, swimming to the edge of the pool. He rests his elbows on the side, looking down over the city, across to where the valley funnels up into the mountains.
Colonel Keppel is coming down from the terrace above, his hand on Fiamma’s back. She is wearing a red bathing costume with a belt of gold rings. She dives into the pool and swims to join Esmond, her hair fanning out behind her. Colonel Keppel sits on the steps at the other end, his barrel chest inside a black costume of coarse wool, his face reddening in the sun.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Fiamma says, kicking her legs. ‘The only place on a day like this. I hope Gerald comes soon.’
They swim for half an hour and then sit in the shadow of the camphor tree by the pool. The butler brings drinks – Negronis, tomato juice, lemonade – and the sun begins to lose some fierceness. Mrs Keppel sits on one of the white iron chairs beside the pool. The city’s bells are tolling four when finally Gerald arrives, his hair damp with sweat, his boating jacket swung over his shoulder and large dark patches at the armpits of his shirt.
‘Darling Gerald,’ Mrs Keppel says, ‘we’ve been waiting for you. You didn’t walk up, did you?’
He smiles bashfully at Esmond and Fiamma and then at Mrs Keppel.
‘I wanted it to be just like the old days.’
‘Every afternoon, all summer long,’ Mrs Keppel sings.
‘I remember running up that hill as if it wasn’t there. Eheu fugaces labuntur anni, eh?’
Mrs Keppel gives him a firm embrace, clutching him to her chest. The Colonel comes and seizes his hand.
‘Do you the deuce of good to walk. Too many soft young chaps – no disrespect, Esmond – think a taxi’s the only way to move. In my day, we’d walk to Bristol to get an appetite for lunch. Now, how’s the old man?’
‘He’s fine, sleeping. He and Gesuina are heading up to Bagni di Lucca tomorrow. A few weeks’ rest and he’ll be back to his old self.’
Mrs Keppel presses a Negroni into his hand and he drinks it, puts his jacket over the back of one of the chairs and begins to unbutton his shirt.
‘I hope you don’t mind, Esmond,’ he says, shrugging off his shirt and beginning to lower his trousers. ‘I have never worn clothes to swim and I don’t intend to start now.’ He takes off his socks and stands in his undershorts. Mrs Keppel looks at him as she looks at the rest of Florence.
‘I remember you swimming here, oh, you must have been thirteen. Length after length, utterly tireless. Mesmerising to watch your skinny body plunging through the water like a merprince.’ Gerald drops his white undershorts, makes his way to the steps and lunges forward. He arrows beneath the surface, a trail of bubbles fizzing behind him, shooting up from the far end with a roar.
‘Oh this is the life! Come on, George, come and have a swim. It’s bloody exquisite.’
With a slap, Colonel Keppel throws himself into the pool and, thrashing the water, swims in a fierce crawl to where Gerald is stretched out on his back in the leafy light. Esmond looks across at Fiamma, who watches them both with faint amusement.
‘We came here all the time as children, Gerald and I. Sometimes we’d swim in the Arno, up past Pontassieve. You think this is hot now, you’ll see in the summer. People drop dead in the street. The tarmac bubbles.’
Gerald comes up and begins to splash Fiamma. They swim off together, and Esmond is left looking down over the trees on the terrace below. He paddles to the shallow end, walks up the steps, and pours himself another Negroni. Fiamma and Gerald and Colonel Keppel are having races in the water, Mrs Keppel watching, laughing and clapping her hands. A few clouds appear over the hills of Fiesole as the sun sinks lower. Church bells toll and, behind them, the tinkle of goat-bells. Esmond watches an aeroplane cut through the sky to the west, extraordinarily high above the mouth of the valley. He downs his drink and looks at the pool. Gerald is balancing Fiamma on his shoulders and turning, both of them shrieking with pleasure, Colonel and Mrs Keppel cheering as they circle. Finally Gerald stumbles, topples, and they disappear with a howling splash under the water.
16
That evening, they step out for dinner as the city’s clerks and secretaries are leaving their offices, calling to one another across the via Tornabuoni, heading for their trams, swinging their briefcases and satchels, laughing and talking.
‘Norman Douglas is the finest mind I’ve met,’ Gerald says as they walk down the hill from L’Ombrellino, their hair still wet, still humming from the Negronis but changed and scented. ‘He’s coming to Piccolo’s,’ he adds, pointing ahead. ‘I just wish I’d known him when he was younger. He’s nearly seventy, you know. Orioli is bloody good value, too. Pinorman, we call them. Inseparable.’
The sun has dropped below the rooftops and Fiamma has her shawl around her shoulders. Esmond watches her hair flow from shop window to shop wind
ow as they pass. Gerald is in his suit, pink handkerchief spilling from his breast pocket. He stands aside to let two carabinieri march by, their swords clacking, capes puffed out by the breeze off the river.
They take the swaying tram to the Piazza Costanzo Ciano, Fiamma wishing the driver a buona sera as they descend. Children are noisily playing, someone is listening to a wireless in one of the apartments above, windows and shutters open to the evening.
‘It’ll be dreadful grub,’ Gerald says as they enter the square. ‘Douglas grew up in Austria, no idea of good food. Only reason he comes to this place is because the chef was trained in the Vorarlberg.’
‘It is worth it for the company,’ Fiamma says, and they smile at each other.
They make their way down a narrow alley and into a courtyard where a sign sways gently above an oleander hedge. A sad-faced maître d’ greets them at the door, bowing deeply to Fiamma. Despite the heat, he leads them into the stuffy, candlelit room where Douglas and Orioli sit at one end of a long table. Reggie Temple is with them. A waiter hovers over Douglas with a dish in his hand whose contents the old man inspects carefully. He looks up as they enter.
‘Ah. All right! Come on, sit down. I’m bartering with this crook over the scampi. Fresh today from Forte dei Marmi. Look like a little boy’s tom tiddler, don’t they?’ He bangs the table and gives a nod of his head. ‘Va bene!’ He lights a Toscano cigarillo and grins.
Esmond sits down between Orioli and Reggie. Douglas is embracing Gerald with a cry of ‘He’s all right, this man!’ Fiamma sits at the end of the table and lifts the shawl from her shoulders, bare skin above a green and white polka-dot dress. She looks a little nervous, and very beautiful. Esmond smiles at her, feels a blush.