In Love and War (9 page)

Back at the Institute, they sit out on the loggia as the sky fades around them.

‘Vodka and the last of Gesuina’s lemonade, doctor’s orders,’ Gerald says, and they sip, stretching their tingling limbs, Gerald swirling his drink and looking out over the rooftops.

‘It’s easy to forget how conservative they are, the
contadini
. They couldn’t care less about a revolutionary government. It’s why the aristocrats are still so popular.’

‘Hasn’t Mussolini banned indentured labour?’ Esmond asks, reaching to touch his shoulders with his glass.

Gerald considers his drink. ‘The spirit lingers.’

‘I thought they were going to kill us,’ Fiamma says.

‘Did one of them have a pitchfork?’ Esmond laughs. ‘Or did I imagine it?’

Gerald stands up. ‘I need a piss.’

Esmond and Fiamma are left on the terrace. She leans and looks at the sky.

‘I keep thinking about them,’ she says.

‘The
contadini?
’

‘Carlo and Nello. They were stabbed to death, you know.’ She’s silent for a while. ‘How hard they must have fought. I keep trying to imagine how their faces looked.’ She looks at him. ‘Promise me one thing, Esmond.’

‘Anything,’ he says.

‘Promise me that you’re not one of them, not one of the
bastardi
who did this to my friends.’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘You know what I mean.’

He pauses for a moment and then takes her hand. ‘I do know, of course. I grew up with it, you understand.’

‘That’s not enough. It’s not right, or decent. It’s not you.’

Gerald comes back and they sit under the swooping bats and the stars until San Gaetano strikes twelve and, drunk, they stumble towards bed. Outside her room, Fiamma pauses.

‘I’m never going to sleep in this heat. Will someone rub some Pond’s Cream on my shoulders? I feel like I’m on fire.’

‘Yes,’ say Esmond and Gerald at the same time, stepping forward and following her into her room. Esmond remembers seeing her at her dressing table, the way her hair fell down her back, the reflection of her breasts in the mirror. Then he thinks of her body earlier on the sand, her lips. She has turned on the bedside lamp and her skin looks extraordinarily dark in the light.

‘Do this, will you?’ she says to Gerald, turning so he can unzip her dress at the back. Esmond watches her slip out of the straps and pull it down to her waist. She sits at the table of her dresser and he wonders if she’s deliberately recreating that initial
glimpse, the
scorcio
he’d caught through the door three months ago. She unhooks the clasp of her brassiere, crossing her arms over her chest and smiling coyly over her shoulder.

‘Now, Gerald.’ She reaches back and hands him the cream then leans forward, her hands on the dresser. Esmond can see the heavy curve of her breasts in the mirror, dark circled nipples, the beginning of a grin on her face as Gerald rubs the cream into her neck and her back. She lets out a long sigh, which begins as a shiver, and ends in a definite moan.

After a few minutes, she raises her head, stands up and turns around. Her eyes are bright, her hair falling in sweat-damp tails to her shoulders. She looks like a goddess, with her burnished skin and bare breasts, a dark Venus.

‘I think Esmond is the most sunburnt,’ she says, looking over at him.

Gerald grins. ‘I agree. Kit off, Lowndes. Come and lie on the bed.’

Stumbling, laughing, Esmond takes his shirt and trousers off. He lies down on the bedspread in his briefs, his face pressed into Fiamma’s pillow, smelling her scent and hair. The first of the cream is almost painfully cold against his skin. But then the hands, indistinguishable and swift across his body, begin to smooth and caress and he closes his eyes and gives himself over to the pleasure.

When he opens them again, he realises he has been asleep. The lamp is extinguished and there is only the low light of the moon from the door to the corridor. His briefs have been removed and his cock stirs gently between his legs. He is lying against the wall and beside him on the bed, Gerald is naked on his back, Fiamma pressing cream along him. Gerald groans every so often. Esmond lies there, hardly breathing, eyes half-closed, watching. Fiamma sucks in her lower lip, pausing when her hands reach
the centre of Gerald’s body. Esmond realises she has taken the dress off completely and shifts to get a better look. She stops, Gerald turns, Esmond smiles foolishly.

‘I fell asleep,’ he says, but Gerald pushes a finger to his lips and then reaches across to kiss him. Fiamma clambers over to lie on top of the two boys and Esmond feels her fingers close around his cock again. She slides downwards, guiding him into the damp warmth of her and then it is just flesh and sweat and spit, the warm breach of a mouth, the slippery press of a tongue, hot breath panting, laughing, groaning. They melt into the sweating night and into each other. By dawn, they are nothing but husks of bodies on the bed, burnished with sweat, sheets torn to the floor. A jug of water lies shattered on the tiles, its contents soaking into the sheets. Fiamma sleeps with her mouth open, her head on Gerald’s chest, one arm around Esmond. Their limbs have been shuffled, redistributed; they might be one spiritless creature. The bells of San Gaetano chime for matins, but they sleep on in sluggard happiness.

‘Come on Esmond, up we get.’ Gerald has opened the blinds and sunlight streaks into the room. Fiamma rubs her eyes and stares down at the wreckage on the floor. Esmond stretches, looks over at Gerald, who is dressed and carrying a mug of coffee.

‘Leave us alone,’ he says, trying to pull the pillow over his head.

‘Not a chance. You and I are going to church. Bailey was a real brick to the old man while he was in hospital and we haven’t so much as glanced at him since. You’ve got twenty minutes to get vertical.’

Esmond bathes in cold water, his head pounding, mouth dry. He sinks down beneath the surface for a moment and blows bubbles out of his nose. He dresses quickly, hands shaking as he knots his tie. He looks into Fiamma’s room, whispers goodbye to her sleeping body and then walks down to meet Gerald in the courtyard.

The church is emptier than the last time, despite the worshippers from Holy Trinity. As he steps through the wicket gate and down the aisle, Esmond discovers in himself an affection for the gloomy place, for its tortured paintings. Gerald bows deeply before the altar, crossing himself, and then takes a seat near the front, Esmond beside him.

‘Love the decor,’ Gerald says, nodding towards the triptych. ‘Fucking terrifying. Just what you need in church.’

Esmond smiles. He makes a rough calculation: their combined age, he thinks, still less than half that of anyone else in the congregation. Bailey beams when he sees them, and Esmond senses a verve and bluster to the sermon, a twinkle as they go up to take communion.

During the slow, prayerful parts of the service, Esmond feels Gerald breathing beside him and, looking at the slim-fitting suit on his thigh, remembers his head in Esmond’s lap, grinning wolfishly; Fiamma perched above them, her legs apart showing slick darkness, swaying; he remembers how, at one point, the two of them had pinned him down, taken turns to have him inside them, Gerald letting a silver string of spit down onto the tip of his cock beforehand. He feels a hot rush to his face as he realises he must stand for the Peace and carefully adjusts himself through the fabric of his pocket. Gerald looks at him and grins.

After the service, they wait for Bailey while he and Reggie Turner clear up. Gerald stands looking at the triptych, a warm
detachment on his face. Esmond lounges in the pew, longing for his bed, wondering what it will be like to see Fiamma again. Now Bailey bounces down towards them from the sacristy, rubbing his hands. Esmond had forgotten how big he was, how his body seemed out of place in the small, dark church.

‘How’ve you chaps been? Any word from your father, Gerald?’

They walk out and into the entrance hall with its faded notices and plaques.

‘I telephoned him on Friday. He says he’s better, although he sounded awfully tired. Gesuina tells Fiamma that the doctors are still in a dither. I’m going to catch the bus up there next week, see for myself.’

‘Why don’t you let me drive you? Always good to give the Alfa a run. Hold on a minute, Esmond.’ Bailey takes him by the elbow. He can smell the priest’s cologne, feel the strength in the fingers that close around him. ‘There’s something I wanted to show you,’ he says, guiding him up the stairs. ‘You come too, Gerald. It’ll give you something to tell your father, buck him up.’

They make their way up the stone steps and then along the corridor to the room overlooking the Piazza Santo Spirito. Esmond pauses for a moment, allowing Bailey and Gerald to pass in front of him. He thinks of the airless feel of Aston Magna, the ancient dust of his prep school at West Down.

‘
Ecco
là,
’ Bailey says, opening the door to the studio.

Esmond steps into the room and lets out a gasp. The studio is no longer empty. A walnut desk, a pair of microphones. A silver cross-hatch BBC standard, a direct-to-disc recorder. An RCA sound-mixing desk and reel-to-reel electromagnetic tape machine sit on a chest of drawers. Against the far wall, hiding the mould patches Esmond had noticed before, stands a large cupboard with what looks like a transmitter. There are wires
spewing out from the front, a series of parts, screwdrivers, spanners and a hammer on the mantelpiece.

‘What do you think?’ Bailey asks, smiling broadly at him.

‘This is amazing, bloody brilliant. How did you manage––’

‘Not my doing at all. Ada’s the miracle worker. She rounded up some engineer friends at the university. They did this for next to nothing. It’s her you should thank.’

Esmond runs his hand along the desk, looks at the reels on the tape machine, lifts the needle on the recorder, blows dust from the disc.

‘How fabulous.’ And then, grinning as it dawns on him, ‘We never have to see Carità again.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I must–– Do you know where Ada lives?’

‘The Liuzzis are over in Le Cure. I’ll have the address downstairs.’

‘I’ll go and see her now. This is just–– It’s perfect.’

He leaves Gerald at the Institute and makes his way alone along the via dei Cerretani, past the Duomo and up towards Le Cure. As he strolls through the warm afternoon, he realises how much Carità had been casting his angry shadow over things. He feels a swell of gratitude for Ada.

The Liuzzi apartment is at the top of a glum, grey house overlooking the gardens of the Villa Ventaglio. A tall man stoops to the door. He carries a book in one hand and looks at Esmond over half-moon glasses.

‘Si, posso aiutarvi?’
he says.

‘
Buongiorno
,’ says Esmond. ‘I’m here to see Ada. I’m Esmond Lowndes.’

‘Come, please,’ the man says, opening the door. ‘I will call her. I have heard a great deal about you. About Radio Firenze. Ada!
Vieni qui!
’

There is the sound of hurried footsteps and Ada appears. She is wearing the same peasant’s linen tunic, her red hair reminds him again of Mary Magdalene in the triptych. She runs a hand through it, pulling strands behind her ears, and looks suddenly bashful, a flush flooding her cheeks. He notices the small, fragile mole below her left eye. Her father clears his throat.

‘I wanted to say––’ he says, ‘I am sorry about Mr Goad. But you British must understand. This is not your city. We will not be another pink-shaded nation. Excuse me, I must get back to work. Ring the bell for Lydia if you need anything.’ Ada leads Esmond into a gloomy, book-cluttered drawing room. Copies of
La Nostra Bandiera,
the newspaper her father publishes, are stacked by the French windows, cuttings spread out on the coffee table, on the floor. Ada sits down primly, hands on her knees. Esmond goes to the window and looks out over the trees of the park in front of the house.

‘Listen, what you did at St Mark’s––’

‘No,’ she interrupts him. ‘Let me speak first.’ She looks at him nervously again. ‘It was my fault,’ she says. ‘What happened to Signor Goad.’

Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘I told my father that I had been invited to the drinks party at the Institute. I was going to celebrate the coronation with you. He was very angry. He doesn’t approve of the British Institute. Hates the British. I’m so sorry, I should have thought—’

‘He wasn’t one of them, your father?’

‘No, he didn’t go, but I know he telephoned Niccolò Arcimboldi. He does everything he can to please. It isn’t as easy for him here as it was in Turin. There is more resistance, you know? To a Jewish Fascist. I should have seen this. Signor Goad, is he very bad?’

She turns, biting her thin upper lip. He thinks about putting
his arms around her but sits beside her on the divan with a hand in the small of her back.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Goad will be fine. You couldn’t have known this would happen. And what you’ve done at the church, it’s amazing. We won’t need to see Carità again.’

She smiles. ‘I have some very capable friends. They saw it as a challenge. I was mostly standing around passing tools.’

‘You must tell me how much I owe you.’

‘It was really nothing. We salvaged most of it from the university. Parts no one was using. What I did spend, counts as penance for what happened to Mr Goad. We have another few days’ work before it’s ready––’

‘You’re too kind. We’ll be able to start as soon as Goad returns from hospital. I do hope you’ll be involved. I mean, not just translating, but in the whole project.’

‘I’d like to,’ she says. They sit quietly for a few moments, then he rises, kisses her cheeks and walks out into the hallway. As he makes his way to the front door, she stands looking after him. In the shadows of the corridor behind her he makes out her father, watching him over her shoulder.

That evening, after dinner on the loggia, Gerald and Fiamma and Esmond drink a bottle of wine, a few glasses of grappa. Without speaking much, they bathe together in the large, cool bathroom, splashing about like children and taking turns to soap each other. Esmond had been expecting awkwardness between them, a sense of shame. Instead they fall into bed again like they fall into the water. He feels, with them, rather like the triptych: an obscure work newly attributed to a master. When he finally sleeps, he sleeps with a hollow sound to his gentle snores, utterly quenched, content, dreaming of Gerald and Fiamma.