In Love and War

by Alex Preston

  Alessandro interrupts. ‘From which I think we emerged pretty fucking well for a bunch of intellectuals.’

  Bruno lobs a fig at him. ‘Bastard. I want to tell it.’ Esmond feels happy merely being in the presence of these carefree young men. Bruno has filled out in the chest. He looks cool and clever and able in his blue serge suit, a beret pulled down on his close-cropped head. ‘You’ve heard about the Banda Carità, I guess?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ada nods. ‘The Professor told us he’s been arresting anyone with links to the monarchy.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Alessandro says. ‘He’s after the aristocrats of Florence. He was an orphan and was brought up by some wealthy family in Milan who treated him like shit. You must always look for the psychological explanation.’

  ‘He decided’, says Bruno, rolling his eyes, ‘to try to find our hideout in the hills. They came up late yesterday afternoon, eighteen of them armed to the teeth. Our sentries spotted them miles away and we’d rehearsed what to do. We expected it to be the Germans of course, but it’s all the same. We pulled branches in front of the caves, dropped away into the gullies and ravines, shimmied up trees, led the bastards into the high mountain passes.’

  ‘We know them even in the dark,’ coughed Alessandro. ‘Dusk had fallen and they didn’t have dogs, so we lost them easily. They were so badly organised, the idiots just ran at anyone, blasting their guns like crazy. I was up a tree and saw Carità’s fat head with its queer tuft of white pass right below me. He was with Piero Koch, the fucker who gave me a going over in Regina Coeli. I almost dropped down and went for them.’

  ‘In the end’, Bruno says, ‘we got two of them.’

  ‘Got them?’ Esmond asks.

  ‘Killed them.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘We’re not playing games, my friend.’

  ‘You should have seen Elio,’ Alessandro laughs. ‘He was amazing. He led these goons down a sheep track and hid behind a rock. When they’d passed he jumped out, with a Red Indian yell, made sure they had time to reach for their guns and then bang! bang! he shot the fuckers in the head, right between the eyes. It was like a film, honestly.’

  ‘He’s a maniac,’ Bruno says. ‘He had to lie down for three hours afterwards and recover.’

  ‘He’s a hero,’ Alessandro insists.

  ‘Do we know who they were?’

  ‘Luigi di Giovanni and Erno Rossilini,’ Bruno says. ‘Both members of Carità’s assassin squad. Killed by a man with a doctorate in Latin law who speaks five languages.’

  ‘And wears spectacles so thick I’m surprised he could see them at all,’ Alessandro adds.

  ‘We’ve achieved a lot over the past few weeks,’ Bruno tells them. ‘There are cells springing up all over the country, mostly out of Giustizia e Libertà. This is no local unrest. This is revolution.’

  The Bianchi is looking even more careworn than usual, its front bumper hanging by one loose bracket, its rear window cracked, waves of dust and mud rising up its once-white chassis. Bruno tells them the Germans have set up roadblocks on all the routes leading into Florence, and they’d had to drive here over mule tracks, along the bed of a dried-up river. The two young men have dust in their hair, mud streaks on their cheeks. After a cup of orzo, Bruno and Alessandro strip off and go swimming in the pool, laughing at the icy water, splashing each other and then standing, clapping themselves, by the stone dodos as they dry. The October sun finds their skin, finds the glittering green water, the brightly flickering leaves in the copse below, the canted roofs of the city. Esmond and Ada have pulled their chairs into the shade of the vine-hung umbrella sculpture.

  As they are walking back to the house, Bruno drapes an arm around Esmond’s shoulder. ‘You should come over to the base at some point, see the set-up. If nothing else, it’d do you two good to get out of here for a while.’ He pauses. ‘Before the baby comes.’

  Esmond gives a weak smile. ‘Do you think we’ll be all right?’ he asks.

  Bruno squeezes his shoulder. ‘Of course you will. We’ll all pull around when the time comes.’

  When their friends have left, Ada and Esmond potter helplessly around the house until dusk. A sense of dejection comes with night. They sleep restlessly and, in the small hours, Esmond wakes to hear the dying cry that haunted his sleep at the Institute. He pulls Ada closely against him, folding his hands around her belly.

  16

  Pretini calls them on the radio just after eight, his voice low and distant.

  ‘You two should come down to the town,’ he says. ‘Maria Luigia has put together some new documents for you. And we need to talk.’

  They walk arm-in-arm, heads down and hurrying past the guards who now stand sentry at either end of the Ponte Santa Trinità. Esmond realises he held his breath the whole length of the bridge. As they come onto the via Tornabuoni, a Kübelwagen with a grey-suited SD officer inside drives slowly past them. He feels Ada’s grip tighten on his arm. They pass the Palazzo Strozzi and hurry through the wood-framed glass door into Pretini’s hot, bright salon.

  The master hairdresser is standing behind the cash desk at the back of the room making notes in a small ledger while one of his assistants, a good-looking chap a few years younger than Esmond, sweeps an immaculate floor.

  ‘Come,’ Pretini beckons, without looking up. Esmond and Ada move forward, stepping out of the way of the broom. Now Pretini puts his pen down. ‘Shall we go through to the back room? It’s quieter there. You can talk in front of Giacomo, though. He’s on-side.’ The boy stops his sweeping and smiles shyly at them for a moment, then continues. ‘I have the Marchesa Origo at eleven, but she won’t mind waiting a few minutes.’

  He leads them into a windowless room at the end of a small passageway where there is a desk, a small sofa and an armchair. On the desk is Pretini’s wireless, which is smaller than the W/T up at L’Ombrellino, and older. Pretini sees him looking at it.

  ‘From the Great War. I was an Alpino, you know. I won the Silver Medal for Military Valour after the Battle of Caporetto, too.’ He shows them his teeth, absurdly white. ‘Now sit, both of you.’ He sighs into the armchair and Ada and Esmond perch on the sofa. ‘Here we go. These documents have you both as key personnel at the psychiatric hospital in via San Salvi. You’ll be in trouble if the Blackshirts get hold of you, but these should at least see you past the Germans.’ He passes Esmond a manila folder. Esmond takes out the documents, inspects them briefly and hands Ada hers.

  She looks at them with a smile. ‘Nella Ferrari,’ she says. ‘I like it. Very sportif.’

  Now Pretini settles back. ‘How are you holding up?’ he asks.

  ‘We’re fine,’ she says quickly, returning Esmond’s glance. ‘We’re ready to do whatever it takes.’

  ‘Good,’ Pretini smiles at her, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘Good.’ A silence. ‘You know it’s a matter of time. The Allies will get here eventually, we just have to hold out, make sure that as few of us get hurt as possible, help those we can––’ He trails off. ‘They picked up Oreste Ristori in Empoli.’

  ‘No––’ Ada says.

  ‘He’s completely crazy. He was singing anti-German songs in the square in front of the station, saying he was going to walk to Salò and rip Mussolini’s head from his neck. He’s lucky they took him for a drunk and not a partisan. He’s in the Murate now, probably driving his fellow prisoners mad with his singing. He’ll be out in a month at the latest. At least he doesn’t know the location of the camp at Monte Morello. He won’t give us away––’ He smiles but with a terrible sadness.

  ‘What else?’ Esmond asks, watching closely.

  The hairdresser sighs and folds his hands in his lap. ‘What else. Other news and I’m afraid it isn’t good.’ Esmond’s mind cycles through the likely disasters. So many of those he’s loved are dead already, he thinks, what could hurt him now?

  ‘Go on,’ he says.

  ‘It’s my father,’ Ada says coldly.

  Pretini n
ods. ‘He almost made it. He and Ovazza joined up with a group of Croatian refugees in the Val d’Aosta and tried to bluff their way over the border. They were arrested by Swiss police and put on a train back to Turin. At the first station they reached they were picked up by the SS. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Did they send him to a camp?’

  Pretini is silent.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘They were taken to Verbania. We have a man there who helps get people across the border. It’s typical of Ovazza that he wouldn’t think to contact us. We could have made it so much easier for them both. They were locked up in the girls’ school which is now the SS headquarters. They didn’t come out.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  Pretini nods. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Esmond reaches out for Ada’s hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pretini repeats.

  Back up at L’Ombrellino, Ada sits silently in the drawing room while Esmond mans the radio. During a brief break that he allows himself, he comes down to see her. It is growing dark, but she hasn’t turned the lights on. She is very still in the shadowy room.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ he asks. ‘A cup of tea?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ Elio’s voice comes over the radio upstairs. As he turns to leave the room, Ada says something he doesn’t catch.

  ‘What was that, darling?’

  ‘I keep wondering if he heard me, that last time we spoke. I told him that I loved him as the line went dead. I just hope he heard me.’

  He goes to kneel in front of her and takes her hands, breathes on them to warm them. ‘Darling,’ he says, kissing her hands, her wrists, ‘I’m sure he did. And he knew it, anyway. You didn’t have to say it.’

  ‘I always thought him such a fool, pathetic for cosying up to the Fascists. He knew I looked down on him. But he was a good father, he was such a good father.’ He thinks she is going to cry, but instead she stands and makes her way to the door. ‘I’ll take a turn on the radio,’ she says. ‘You must be tired.’

  ‘But––’

  ‘Please. It’ll help.’ He listens to the sound of her footsteps disappear up the stairs, then Elio’s voice, her reply. He walks to the window, draws the curtains and turns on the standard lamp. He reads for an hour and then falls asleep on the divan. Tatters wakes him later, a rough pink tongue on his cheeks and neck. He lies, propped on an elbow, and listens to Ada’s voice, reciting a long list of coded co-ordinates onto the airborne waves.

  17

  They are at the window, looking down on the city, whose rooftops are just now being touched by morning. It is the first Saturday of November. Esmond is standing behind Ada with his arms around her. Her hair is twisted in a knot on her head and she is wearing one of Alice Keppel’s caftans. He kisses the white hollow of her neck and she shivers.

  She has been quiet since the news of her father’s death, working long hours at the radio. There is a map of Tuscany spread out on the floor of their bedroom on which she has ringed certain hills where partisans are gathering, has marked up German roadblocks, potential routes between the various Resistance encampments. She speaks to Pretini four or five times each day. The Professor came up to offer his condolences the night after they’d heard. Alessandro and Bruno sent their love over the wireless. When she isn’t working, she sits on the bed and stares at the triptych.

  Now, shrugging out of his embrace, she lifts the caftan over her head and stands naked in front of the painting.

  ‘Like so?’ She poses in front of the portrait of Mary Magdalene, crosses her arms over her breasts and affects an anguished expression. They both begin to laugh. Her hands slip down to rest on the bulge in her stomach.

  ‘Exactly,’ Esmond says. ‘You’d do for a wonderful martyr.’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  They make love then, slipping beneath the covers of the bed for warmth, burrowing down until their heads are under and they feel themselves lost in a darkness of skin and hot breath. When they are done he throws the covers back and they emerge, gasping, as if they have been saved from drowning. Looking down at her hair flared out on the pillow, he imagines rushing her westwards, to safety, to Spain and then – who knows – Brazil, America, even back to Britain. He sees them in Shropshire together, the presence of the child flitting around the picture like a firefly, illuminating Welsh Frankton, bringing joy to his father’s withered heart.

  He is downstairs brewing their orzo when Pretini’s voice comes over the radio. Ada calls down, although Esmond can’t hear what she says above the crackle of logs in the fire. He carries the mugs upstairs, his bare feet cold on the polished wood. As he enters the room, he sees that Ada is getting dressed, pulling on a pair of slacks, leaning back against the cupboard as she wriggles in.

  ‘They’re raiding the synagogue,’ she says. ‘The Gestapo and the Banda Carità. We need to get down there.’ She takes the mug of coffee and gulps at it. ‘Fuck!’ She winces. ‘Hot.’ Esmond pulls on a shirt and his blue twill suit. He’s about to leave the room when he stops and bends to pick up Bailey’s revolver, which he tucks into the waistband at the back of his trousers. It feels awkward, almost indecent against his tailbone as he comes down.

  Ada is already out on the gravel in front of the house, scratching Tatters behind the ear. ‘I said we’d meet Pretini at the Salon at eleven thirty,’ she says. They walk briskly down into the city, which is still for a Saturday morning. The guards on the Ponte Santa Trinità eye them warily, but let them pass.

  ‘They moved in just after the start of the Shabbat service,’ Pretini says as they enter. ‘They’ve got two hundred of them in holding camps in Santa Croce. They’ll be taken up to the train station tomorrow morning, then to Germany.’ The Professor and Elio are in the salon, bent over a railway map on the floor. Pretini is cutting the Marchesa Corsini’s hair. ‘She’s one of us,’ he says to Esmond, noting his face.

  ‘And I have a very important party this evening,’ the Marchesa says frostily. ‘I was booked for an appointment last Saturday, but the bastard Carità had me in his Villa Triste.’

  Ada stands over the Professor, looking at the map. ‘They’re taking them to the trains?’ The Professor nods. ‘Then we need to act now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pretini says, snipping carefully at the Marchesa’s softly waved hair. ‘We stop the trains as they head north.’

  ‘If we can.’ Elio indicates a point near Pistoia where the railway line curves around the swell of a hill. ‘Alessandro and Bruno are going to drive a truck onto the tracks here. They’ll overpower the guards and stage a rescue. We’ve enlisted help from a group of Czechs who’re hiding out by the Lago di Suviana. A much greater chance of success than if we try to do anything in town. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ says Pretini. The Professor nods. Even the Marchesa, with a subtle incline of the head, is in.

  ‘What can we do?’ Ada asks.

  Pretini, standing back to admire the Marchesa’s hair, gives one final snip of his scissors. He removes the gown that protects her Ferragamo suit and bows for a moment, like a man saying grace. Only then does he turn towards Ada. ‘One of Carità’s hit squads has gone to the Ashkenazi prayer house by the Porta Romana. Rabbi Cassuto moved all of the records down there at the beginning of the war. It’ll mean they have the address of every Jew in Florence.’

  ‘So you need to warn them,’ the Professor says. ‘Those who can should leave. The rest you must take up to L’Ombrellino until we can work out how to make them safe.’

  ‘Where do we start?’ Esmond asks.

  ‘We had a call from Professor Rossi at the Bargello,’ the Professor says. ‘He’s been hiding Rudolf Levy, the painter. The Nazis want escaped German Jews more than anything and they know he’s here. Levy and Rossi have been seen together, it won’t be long until they go looking there. He lives at Apartment 18c, via del Proconsolo, by the cathedral.’

  ‘And when we have him?’ Esmond asks.

  ‘Get him up to L’Ombrellino and wait fo
r instructions. He might have to stay with you for a few days, until things calm down.’

  Esmond’s heart is thumping as they walk out onto the via Tornabuoni. German soldiers march up past the Palazzo Arcimboldi, their feet echoing on the cobbles. Esmond checks the gun in his waistband and hurries to keep up with Ada. She has on the beige tunic she wore the first time he met her, a green cardigan over it. Her hair is still knotted on her head, a nest of dark red snakes.

  There are tanks in the Piazza del Duomo. At the sandbagged foot of the Campanile, three Germans are arguing with a Blackshirt. A monk hurries up the steps of the cathedral. Otherwise the square is deserted. Esmond remembers going into the Duomo that drunken night with Douglas and Orioli. Five years, he realises. He barely recognises the boy he sees in his mind, standing in front of Uccello’s portrait of Sir John Hawkwood, swaying with drink, half-hard with lust for Gerald and Fiamma. Ada reaches out for his hand as they come onto the via del Proconsolo and he can feel his pulse against hers. They walk in time to the thud of their hearts.

  Professor Rossi’s apartment is on the third floor of a wide building in the shadow of the cathedral. The front door is open and they make their way into the hallway and up stone stairs. Ada rings the bell, Rossi’s name beneath. They wait, breathless. The door opens.

  ‘You came,’ he says. He’s a short man, bald at the crown. He looks exhausted, unshaven. He loosens his tie with a nervous movement as they enter a gloomy drawing room. The bulk of the cathedral blocks out light in the flat. Everything is bathed in a dim terracotta glow from the tiles on the roof of the Duomo. In an armchair in one corner sits an elderly man, breathing audibly. Behind him, one hand on his shoulder, is a slender woman.

  ‘Some coffee?’ Rossi asks. ‘It’s the real thing.’

  ‘We should move,’ Ada says.

  The elderly man gets slowly to his feet. He picks up a stick that is leaning against the arm of the chair and walks towards them.

  ‘I am Rudolf Levy.’ A deep, musical voice. ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance.’