Alex Preston - In Love and War

‘It must be nearly four,’ Esmond says.

‘I’m going to swim to the other bank,’ says Gerald. ‘See what’s over there.’

Esmond watches Fiamma through half-closed eyes and the strong sound of Gerald’s strokes. There is a slight reddening under her brassiere, on the tops of her thighs where she has allowed the sun to catch her. He realises she is looking back at him, that she can tell he is watching her. He reaches up and moves his finger over her lips; she smiles at the contact and then bites him.

‘Turn over,’ she says.

He opens his eyes. ‘No.’

‘Turn over, Esmond. I’ve had a terrible day.’

He lifts his head and sees that Gerald is much further upstream, bobbing in the silver reflection of the sun. He turns. He and Fiamma stare downwards. She smiles, not taking her eyes from his gently pulsing cock. Carefully, she lays a soft hand on it, closes her fingers and leans over to kiss him. Her lips have the warm tackiness of a child’s. She draws back and then bows to place a kiss at the place where his cock emerges from her clenched fist. She leaves her lips there. A long slice of time. He hears voices, splashing. Fiamma raises her head and they look upstream.

Gerald is swimming towards them. On the bank, running and waddling, red-faced and bellowing, holding what look like branches, comes a group of seven or eight contadini .

‘Swim for the shore, you two,’ Gerald shouts. ‘Quickly!’

Esmond helps Fiamma to her feet and they move swiftly into the river and towards the beach. Gerald is already there, pulling on his clothes and filling the canvas bag with their picnic. Esmond takes great handfuls of water and is on the bank, his cock still half-hard. He turns to see Fiamma ten metres from shore. In the other direction, the red-faced contadini are almost upon them, shouting and cursing.

‘Get on your bike,’ says Gerald, ‘I’ve got your clothes.’

Fiamma is staggering up the beach and Gerald puts the bike in her hands. The contadini stop for a moment, nonplussed to have landed their quarry so easily. Esmond realises they are not holding branches but nettles, grasped at the stem. The leader, a squat, paunchy fellow of fifty or so, steps towards them.

‘ Deliquenti! Furfanti! ’ he shouts, and whips one of the nettles across Esmond’s back.

Another steps towards Fiamma and slashes at her thighs as she tries to mount her bike. ‘ Putana! ’ he cries. Esmond makes to get down from his bicycle.

‘No, Esmond. Just go!’ Gerald is already heading up the path towards the mill.

‘You first,’ Esmond shouts to Fiamma, and she pedals furiously up the rocky slope, brambles scything at her legs.

Esmond is last, nettle-whips raining on his back until he crests the hill to the mill’s forecourt. They pick up speed and pull away. Only when they are back on the main road, cycling past the woman selling peaches at her stall, does Esmond realise he is still naked, Fiamma in her damp and muddy underwear. He looks ahead to see the muscles of her thighs working, the jounce of her breasts as she pedals, and he cycles up beside her with a long whoop of pleasure. Soon Fiamma is laughing too and they race along the road, the wind and warm sun bathing them, Fiamma’s hair streaming behind her like steam.

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.