In Love and War (7 page)

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.

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 window 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.

‘I bet you’re glad to have young Gerald out here now, eh?’ Douglas says, fixing Esmond in a stare. ‘Must have been hellish boring in that place with only old Goad for company.’

‘Fiamma was there,’ says Esmond, looking down the table at her again.

‘Ah yes, but not the same as having a man there. You know Pino and I have a walkie-talkie system between our rooms? Sort of speaking funnel at the head of each bed. Means if we wake in the night with some 4 a.m. satori, we can yell it out to the other before it’s lost.’

There are two bottles of cheap Soave on the table and Orioli fills all of their glasses to the brim. He never stops smiling, looking first at Douglas, then Gerald, then off into the distance, an expression of constant, wistful benevolence. Reggie has drawn out a little sandalwood box and is showing it to Fiamma, who peers in and pulls a face.

‘I design these,’ he says, holding the box up to Esmond. Painted inside the lid is the scene of a medieval torture chamber, a young boy stretched out on a rack, the masked torturer attacking his groin with pincers. ‘I sell them to tourists.’

‘Gosh,’ Esmond says, passing it carefully back.

‘Oscar Wilde was a dear, dear friend of mine, you know. I had a small but not inconsequential part in
The Ideal Husband.
’ Reggie opens one of the buttons of his high-necked serge jacket and looks appealingly at Esmond.

The food arrives. Scampi in breadcrumbs; a
bollito
misto of tongue, beef, capon, sausage; saltimbocca; grey truffles in cheese sauce in sizzling pannikins; wild boar
agrodolce
. The tragic-looking maître d’ appears with a pepper pot that he grinds as if he were wringing a man’s neck. Douglas’s appetite is vast; half-standing and arcing genially across the table, he makes sure to snare the best cuts of meat, the juiciest prawns. He takes long swigs of his wine as he eats, his nose growing redder, and he begins to talk in close whispers to Gerald, who eats little and places his hand on Douglas’s every so often.

After a while, a pale man in his thirties comes to the restaurant, frayed and shiny as his suit. He looks around the room and then over at their table with a desperate beam.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Douglas mutters. ‘Eric, dear boy, come and join us, won’t you?’

The man takes a seat next to Gerald and nods doubtfully around the table.

‘Eric Wolton’s an old pal. Back when I had a wife.’ He claps his hands together. ‘Happiest day of my life, the day my wife died. Did I ever tell you I danced on her grave? A Scottish jig. Don’t tell my sons that, if you see them. Do you ever see them, in London?’

When they finish eating, Orioli turns to Esmond and puts his hand on his knee. His breath is sweet and heavy on Esmond’s cheek.

‘I think we will be very good friends,’ he says. ‘Norman likes you. I like you. It is so nice to have you and Gerald here. Tell me all about Esmond.’

Esmond stutters, looking across at the round spectacles, the tubby cheeks.

‘I went to school at Winchester, then Cambridge, though only for a year and a half––’

‘Winchester?’ Douglas shouts down the table, breaking off his conversation with Gerald. ‘I loathe the public school system. Creates kinds, not characters. Dr Arnold has a lot to answer for. That merciless pruner of the spirit prevented the upper classes, who were barmy, from feeling comfortable in their skins. We have ceased to be mad, the English. None but a flatterer would still call us eccentric.’

‘I thought Winchester was ghastly,’ Esmond replies, looking straight at Douglas. ‘Full of ugly, small-minded teachers, tuppeny tyrants, taking out their disappointments on the sons of
equally catastrophic minor aristocrats and merchant bankers and retired colonels.’

‘Why d’you still wear a Wykehamist’s tie then?’

‘So when I hang myself, they’ll know why I did it.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Douglas shouts and the table laughs. ‘He’s all right!’ Douglas lifts his glass as Esmond turns back to Orioli.

‘I’m here to help Mr Goad set up a radio station. To finance my father’s political party. He’s the Chairman of the British Union.’

Orioli raises his eyebrows.

‘And you’re a Fascist, too?’

‘I’m not really sure, these days.’

Orioli removes his hand from Esmond’s knee and polishes his spectacles on his napkin. More wine is poured. The restaurant begins to fill with young couples staring at each other over candlelight; a family of grandparents, parents and a boy of six or seven in a sailor costume; an old man reading
La Nazione
with a plate of cannelloni.

‘Strindberg!’ Douglas shouts and bangs the table. ‘That’s what I call the maître d’. Because he looks so dashed mournful, worse than Eric over here. Strindberg, bring us the bill.’

When it comes, Douglas holds it under a candle and makes a few marks with his pencil. ‘Twelve lire each,’ he says. ‘I’d love to treat you all, of course, but money is very tight at the minute.’

Wolton, who has neither eaten nor drunk, passes a handful of notes towards them. On the way out, they stop at the table where the young boy in his sailor’s suit sits, looking pleased to be out with the adults, listening carefully to something his grandmother is saying. Douglas pulls over a chair to sit beside him and, quite naturally, lifts him onto his knee.

‘
Permesso
?
’ he says, smiling at the boy’s father.

‘
Si, Professore,
’ the man replies.

The little boy looks up at Douglas with wide, delighted eyes.

‘Ma come ti chiami?’

‘
Dante
,’ the little boy replies, grinning bashfully.

‘Magnifico! Ma dov’è Beatrice?’
Douglas pretends to look under the table, and now in the little boy’s pockets. The boy giggles and simpers up at him.

Reggie Temple leans over and whispers to Esmond with a hiss.

‘It’s frightful. He’s like the Pied Piper. Wherever he goes, the boys just flock to him. One of the reasons he’s so short of money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The queue of parents wanting restitution. He holds competitions for the gypsy kids under the arches of the Ponte alle Grazie. Fifty centimes to whoever can gism first. It’s not dignified, a man of his age.’

Orioli, who has been listening, elbows Temple in the ribs. ‘You’re just jealous. It’s been a long time since anyone looked your way. And Norman is older than you, is he not?’

Douglas presents the father with his card and rests his hands on Dante’s shoulders. The man beams gratefully and insists on introducing his wife and her parents. Reggie tuts and shakes his head while Douglas bows and coos in a Florentine dialect. Finally, the group make their way out and hail taxis on the Piazza.

An hour later, Esmond is sitting on the little balcony of Douglas’s top-floor flat on the Lungarno delle Grazie, looking at the villas on the opposite bank of the Arno, the outline of cypress trees like feathers in the caps of the hills. He is smoking, tapping his ash onto the awning of the Davis & Orioli bookshop two floors below. Douglas comes out of the drawing room, where Schubert is playing on the gramophone.

‘
Ma la notte sperde le lontananze,
’ he says, sitting down beside Esmond and lighting a Toscano. ‘Night dispels distances. Ungaretti. Will you be with us in Florence for some time?’

‘It depends, I suppose, on how long it takes to set up the radio station. A year or two, perhaps more if it’s a success.’

‘How terribly dull for you. I can’t stay in one place for more than a few months. I am bored stiff with Florence. I should like to get further away, out of Europe, but money is very tight just now. You wouldn’t like to buy one of my books, by any chance?’

He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out a slim volume with a mottled gold-brown cover.

‘
Paneros
,’ he says. ‘Aphrodisiacs. The search for an elixir of youth and of sex. It’s about death, too. Because without death there would be no sex, d’you see?’

‘I think so.’ A gibbous moon is rising over the hills, reflected in the fast waters of the Arno.

‘Thirty-five lire usually, but twenty to you.’

Esmond opens his wallet and counts out the notes.

‘Jolly good,’ Douglas says, handing him the book. ‘Gerald tells me you’re a writer yourself.’

‘Actually, I’m trying to use this time to work out if I’m any good.’

‘I didn’t write a novel until I was forty-two. Would have been no point, I hadn’t lived enough. Before that I was all biology, geography, a paper on the pumice stone industry.’

Esmond smiles.

‘Oh, yes. Helped to gaol a gang of child labour racketeers, that one. It was read aloud at the trials in Messina. But fiction? No, you need money in the bank for fiction.’

He turns his head, which seems to Esmond like a statue in the moonlight: hewn and marmoreal.

‘Forsake books,’ he says. ‘Go out among people and nature and think it through for yourself. Keep a diary, if only dates and places. But more than anything, don’t scatter the gold of your youth. Don’t lose your life in books. Get out and live. Michael
Arlen said of me – or was it Ronald Firbank? One of them said I was the least literary writer they’d ever met. That I might as well have been a lumberjack.’

Esmond smiles again. ‘I used to write with a friend of mine, the one in Austria. I find it very hard to know if anything I write’s any good without showing it to him. He gave me the necessary confidence.’

He pictures Philip in his digs in Park Terrace, chopping benzedrine tablets into the wine on the desk. The electric moment when he handed over the notebook, and Philip sprawled on the bed, whistling and smiling, his Cambridge-blue eyes galloping over the pages as he read.

‘I never show my work to anyone,’ Douglas says. ‘Writing’s like shitting. If someone’s cheering you on, it’s hard to get going, but give it time and space and it’ll come. And by the way, if you don’t eat well, you won’t shit well.’ He pauses. ‘Did you love this chap?’

Esmond turns to look out over the river. It is past eleven. A gentle breeze is blowing, stirring the hillside and making tight waves on the surface of the water.

‘I still do, I suppose,’ he says.

‘And where is he now?’ Douglas’s voice is suddenly very soft, very kind, like the breeze.

‘He went back to Austria. I think his parents were trying to emigrate to America. I haven’t heard from him for a little while.’

‘Ah, a Jew? Rotten business this. Shames a once-great nation. Hitlerism has its roots in the Old Testament, of course. All that pure race nonsense in Ezra and Nehemiah. Germans are dreadful Bible readers. Don’t give up on him, though. It’s good to be in love while you’re writing. Each of my books ripened under the rays of some attachment or other. Unless I am in love I have no impulse to write.’

They are silent for a while, smoking and watching the river.
Then Douglas sits forward slowly and puts an arm around Esmond’s shoulders.

‘Are you sure you’re not throwing your lot in with the wrong side?’

‘The station? It’s for my father, for his Party.’

‘Must you?’

‘What’s the alternative? Communism? I’d rather Mussolini than Stalin.’

‘Break free from what you were born into, Esmond. This isn’t you, the politics. Embrace your freedom, embrace the flesh. You should go to Goa. Astonishing place. Why don’t you sail to Goa and write a life of St Francis Xavier? Dee-lish curries. Find yourself an ebony youngling and write in a little timber-framed hut under palm trees. Don’t let your family write the script of your life.’