In Love and War (5 page)

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 plump 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 every
one
knows every
thing
.’

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.

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.’

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.’