Angels of the Flood (17 page)

‘Mm,’ she said. They nuzzled each other, not kissing exactly, but letting the sexual tension build. David could feel her heart, or maybe both their hearts, beating fiercely under the layers of clothing. He wondered if sex was possible on an Italian bus.

He said, ‘I love you,’ again.

‘Really?’ She drew back slightly to look at him. ‘Do you think I’m beautiful like the morning?’

To be honest, the idea had never occurred to David, but he wasn’t to be put off. ‘More beautiful than any morning I’ve ever seen,’ he said. She sighed and settled back close to him.

In the circle, they were talking about the difference between male and female attitudes to sex. ‘A girl has to be in love to enjoy it properly,’ was Jeremy’s opinion. His father was an antique dealer and he wanted to work in an auction house. Anna, whose delicate face was peering out from the shelter of his jacket, nodded her head in agreement. ‘But a man,’ Jeremy continued, ‘he just enjoys the sex, no matter who it’s with. Within reason, of course.’

‘I think a woman can enjoy sex without being in love,’ said Dido.

‘But not in the same way,’ said Jeremy.

‘In a different way. But just as much.’

Aiden was watching Jenny. Larry had his hand on her jeans near the top of her thigh. Jenny was leaning back in his arms, her lips parted a little and her eyes fuzzy from wine and desire. Aiden sighed, then said, ‘I saw a woman once making love to a boxer. I was walking home across our local golf course after a party just as it was getting light and I nearly tripped over them. They were in the rough grass. She certainly looked as though she was enjoying herself.’

‘A boxer?’ asked Francesca. ‘There was a wrestler on television I really fancied when I was about sixteen, but I can’t remember his name.’

Aiden smiled. ‘Not that kind of boxer. This was a dog.’

An image came into David’s mind, a picture of Francesca and a large dog, having sex. He was shocked by the erotic power of the idea.

‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘That’s impossible. A woman and a dog, you’re making it up.’

‘No, I saw it. Some women get off on that kind of thing.’

There was a ripple of embarrassed laughter. Francesca did not join in. Larry said airily, ‘A donkey was executed for bestiality in the seventeenth century. Some poor frustrated git had buggered it and the donkey was held criminally responsible, so both partners were hanged at the same time. The defence tried for a plea of duress but—’

‘Stop making this up,’ Francesca interrupted him. ‘It’s disgusting.’

‘No, honestly, Francesca. People do those kind of things,’ said Ross. ‘When I was in Greece I was woken up every morning by this goat complaining while the landlord—’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Francesca.

David and Kate leaned back into circle. It was almost dark now, the lights of Viareggio coming on all along the esplanade. David said, ‘It’s not just animals, Francesca. Some men really have a thing about corpses. Some kind of ’philia, but I can’t remember which.’

‘Coprophilia?’ suggested Dido.

‘No, necrophilia,’ said Larry with authority. ‘The urge to make love to corpses. Luckily it’s not very common, but—’

‘Shut up!’ Francesca was scrambling to her feet. ‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! You’re disgusting, all of you. You’re lying! It’s not true, none of it, not the animals, not the corpses, none of it! So stop with these lies, do you hear me? Just stop!’

She was stamping furiously, spraying them with sand.

‘Hey, steady on, Francesca,’ said Dido. ‘We were just talking—’

‘Shut up!’ She was panting with rage, spiralling out of control. ‘It’s filth. You’re making it up. You’re disgusting, all of you.’

‘Oh, sorry, your ladyship,’ said Ross icily. ‘We’ll check with you before we speak in future.’

But Aiden had been watching her closely. He stood up and went over to where she was standing. She raised her arms as if to defend herself against him, but he made a gentling noise, the kind of hissing that soothes frightened horses. ‘It’s okay, Francesca,’ he said. ‘We won’t talk about it any more. It’s okay. It’s all okay.’ He put his arm around her shoulders, folding her into the shelter of his cloak. She stiffened, then suddenly something shifted, and she allowed him to pull her close. He smoothed her hair.

‘Nice one, Aiden,’ said Ross sardonically.

‘Have a good time under the cloak, Francesca,’ said Anna.

Aiden looked at them all with something close to contempt. ‘You’re such babies, all of you,’ he said. ‘Can’t you understand when someone’s serious?’

I
T ALL SEEMED LIKE
such a long time ago.

Kate woke shivering from a bad dream. She had finally dropped off, but her sleep was not restful. She got out of bed and pulled a dressing gown round her shoulders, padded to the window and looked out into the smooth darkness that was quilting La Rocca and the whole Beatrice mountainside. From far below—it must have been from one of the bunkhouses at the villa—came the sound of a Verdi chorus being struck out on the piano, voices singing along in harmony. It was the last night of the summer season at the Fondazione and the young musicians were carousing the night away. With grand opera, no less—the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from
Nabucco.
Youth nowadays, thought Kate wryly. Much more cultured than we were. Had I even heard of Verdi, back then?

She pulled the gown tighter round her shoulders. She was shivering, but not with the cold. Somewhere out there in the darkness, not long ago, someone had taken a shot at her. Two shots. She could have been killed. And in the dream which had just now woken her, Francesca had been walking towards her, smiling and stretching out her hands. Just below the smile, her throat had been cut so deeply that her neck was ringed with a scarlet ruff of blood and her head was almost entirely severed from her body. Kate felt nauseous. Poor, poor Francesca. She had been so much more vulnerable than they ever realized. How could they have been so blind?

Impulsively, Kate picked up her linen trousers and a jacket. She must go down to the
giovani
at the Villa Beatrice and warn them at once. Tell them how fragile life was, and how precious. They mustn’t make the same mistakes as she had done. There had to be some way to avoid the horror. She could tell them and they’d be safe…

Impossible. She flung her clothes down on the end of the bed and slumped onto a low chair. They’d think she was a crazy woman if she burst in on them in the middle of the night and told them to be careful, warning them like some middle-aged English Cassandra, all streaming hair and wailing hysteria. Don’t take it all for granted! Cherish every moment and remember—but remember what? How could they have done it differently back then? What different action would have saved Francesca’s life? If Kate could only put her finger on the precise moment, the single decision which had made it all start to go wrong… but it was like trying to follow a strand of thread back into a mass of tangled lines. She’d never learn how to unravel it and make sense of the story. Never.

She leaned forward, her chin on her fists, and stared at the floor. Seeing Simona again after all these years had stirred up so many memories, so many thoughts of Francesca and the people they had been during those brief weeks in Florence. They had thought they were so worldly-wise, striding round the city in their ragged clothes as if they owned the place. But they hadn’t been wise at all—quite the contrary, in fact. They’d been like sleepwalkers. Their whole existence in Florence had been a kind of game: as though the most beautiful city on earth had been turned into a playground just for their entertainment. They had been innocents on the edge of a larger game they never even began to understand. And they thought they knew it all.

Such a strange time it was. That much they knew. A time without responsibilities of any kind. David had been more aware of that than most. He’d often said he was ‘making hay while the sun shines’. Maybe it was because he knew he would soon have to go back and take his place in his father’s company. There’d be no more freedom for him once that life started.

Kate no longer knew what her own future held. She knew she couldn’t go back to the life her parents expected her to live: a string of secretarial jobs ‘for experience’ before getting married to a man who was as much like her own father as possible. But that wasn’t enough any more. For her, those few weeks without responsibilities of any kind gave her something more valuable by far: they gave her ambition. She knew, before that final, fatal weekend, that she wanted to spend her life repairing beauty. In among the filth and the destruction, Kate’s aesthetic appreciation had been born.

The November flood had stripped Florence of its surface gloss, but the bones of the place, its real beauty, was untouched. There had been an illusion that the Florence the mud angels knew was somehow more ‘real’ than the restored Florence that would be open to tourists again once the clean-up was completed. In the same way, they had thought that their present lives, scruffy and intense and disconnected from family and their everyday world, were somehow more ‘real’ than the ‘normal’ lives they had left behind. They maintained this pretence even though it was rumoured that Anna’s brother had been diagnosed with leukemia, Dido’s parents were heading towards a messy divorce, Jenny had a back injury that might make it hard for her to return to her career as a dancer, and Larry was not the free-floating intellectual he pretended to be: Hugo had heard from someone that he had a wife and baby in Enfield. Such inconvenient details had no place in their angelic world. They were leading a charmed life.

What an illusion that had been. It made them feel infallible, as though nothing bad could happen to them while they were still living in their magic city.

They were free and they were safe.

Kate sat alone in the darkened room. She didn’t know what had happened to any of the others, apart from David, and she’d only caught up with him in the last few months. After Francesca’s death she’d broken off all contact with the others. After Francesca’s death, those lazy illusions had had no place in her life. After Francesca’s death, everything had changed.

K
ATE FINISHED BRUSHING TALC
off one section of wall and looked around her in the twilight gloom of the Baptistery. It was over half an hour since Francesca had slipped out for a cigarette and she still hadn’t returned. Kate decided to go and look for her. She pulled off the scarf that was supposed to protect her hair, releasing a cloud of white powder, and went through the wide doors into the sunshine. Even though it was nearly March, there still weren’t that many people in the square so she was able to spot Francesca right away. She was sitting at a little table outside a cafe and she wasn’t alone.

When she saw who Francesca’s companion was, Kate felt unreasoning fury: how dare she skive off without telling anyone! How dare she meet up with Mario without including her! How dare Mario show up in Florence and not tell her first! Kate was supposed to be keeping an eye on Francesca for him, so why hadn’t he told her he was coming to Florence today? What the hell was going on?

She was so angry, so eaten up with unexpected jealousy, that she acted without thought. Circling round the outside of the square, she approached the cafe from behind them, then hovered, trying to make out what they were talking about so intensely. If only she’d learned more Italian during her weeks in the country! She heard Mario use the word ‘game’—he was calling something a ‘stupid game’. Then Francesca tilted back her head and said defiantly that it wasn’t a game, it was her new life. Kate saw Mario gesture his annoyance, a downward movement of the hand. Clearly, he was running out of patience. Good, thought Kate. He probably wanted to see her really, not Francesca.

‘Hi, Francesca!’ She came round into their line of vision, smiling, as if she just happened to have noticed them there. ‘I thought it was you.’

Francesca seemed relieved to see her, but Mario caught her eye and frowned, a small, instinctive frown of warning that Francesca did not see. Of course, thought Kate. We’re not supposed to know each other. Their shared secret, something Francesca didn’t know, was a small glow, deep inside her. She pulled a chair from one of the other tables and said brightly, ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Of course not,’ said Francesca. Mario looked away. He was tapping his foot lightly as he always did when something displeased him. He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one free and lit it quickly.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ said Kate.

‘Not at all,’ said Francesca. Mario slid her a sideways glance, but remained silent.

‘Isn’t this the man who was hassling you that night?’ asked Kate. ‘I thought you might need rescuing again.’

Francesca raised a single white eyebrow. ‘Do I need to be rescued, Mario?’ she asked in English.

He shrugged, then said coolly, ‘You will introduce me for your friend, Francesca?’

‘Sure. Kate, this is Mario Bassano. I’ve known him for a long time and—well, I’ve known him for a long time, that’s all. Mario, this is Kate Holland. She’s…’ Francesca hesitated. She caught Kate’s eye and Kate smiled encouragingly. ‘Kate is my very good friend,’ she finished firmly.

Mario put out his hand, as if to a total stranger. ‘Good day, Kate ’Ollande.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Kate. A small cloud of white powder rose from her hand as Mario gripped it in his. But that couldn’t have been the reason for the jolt of electricity that seemed to pass between them as their palms met. Mario must have felt it too, because he withdrew his hand quickly, as though he’d been stung. Kate laughed, her laugh just a little too sharp and too loud. ‘Sorry. Now you’ve got talc all over your sleeve.’

‘Talc?’ asked Mario.

‘It’s what we use to clean the walls,’ explained Francesca.

‘Did you realize,’ said Kate, ‘that you’ve just shaken hands with one of the six professional talcum-powder throwers in the world? I can’t believe we exist anywhere but here.’

‘Is it our tea break?’ asked Francesca. Behind Kate, a handful of pale figures were emerging from the Baptistery into the sunlight.