Alex Preston - In Love and War

‘I see.’

‘Your father has established an account for you at the Monte dei Paschi bank. Ten thousand lire to get Radio Firenze started and an allowance of fifty a week. Should be more than enough.’ He takes an envelope from a drawer and passes it across the desk. ‘Here’s a couple of weeks in advance and a chequebook to draw against the bank. Now—’ Goad rubs his hands again, making a small haze of skin in the light of the lamp. ‘There’s the matter of the broadcasts themselves. Sir Oswald has kindly sent out a selection of his speeches recorded onto disc. I think initially it would suffice for me to give a brief introduction to each in Italian, and perhaps a short commentary at the end. And once the station is up and running, when there’s an audience, we can see about advertisers, sponsorship, making the thing pay for itself.’

‘Fine. Thank you.’

‘Not at all. I’m thoroughly excited. Haven’t felt this bucked since my fourth edition. And of course when your own Italian is abbastanza fluido — it’s a very easy language, you know — you’ll be able to take over the broadcasts yourself. You should start thinking about which subjects you’d like to discuss.’

‘Shall I be having lessons?’

‘Let’s see how you get on with Carità. There’s nothing like learning a language from a native, so to speak. I’ve never had a lesson in my life, French, German or Italian. If Carità is worth his salt, he’ll teach you as you go.’

Esmond half-stands but Goad speaks again, staring down at his hands.

‘Since my wife died, I haven’t ventured out all that much. When Gerald’s here he has his own friends, his own — hum — bustle.’

‘Does he get out here often?’

‘Not half as much as I’d like, I’m afraid. He’s studying for the Bar and rather floats around London. His mother’s death touched him very sorely. On the right track now, I think. Imagine he’ll be back at some point over the summer, but his movements are — hum — irregular.’

Goad crosses his study and opens the door.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t arranged an office, a studio. I’ve been so terribly busy with the start of term. Anyway, there’s no rush. Make the most of this time, get to know the place. Use your Baedeker discreetly. What else? Steer clear of the Blackshirt squadristi and for goodness’ sake salute back if they salute you — arm straight up, Roman style, not like the British Union. And enjoy yourself. It’s delightful to have another young person in the building.’

Esmond sits on the window-ledge in his room, smoking. He has three cartons of British Union cigarettes in his trunk and feels a sudden surge of fondness for the Party, turning over a black packet and running his thumb over the lightning bolt and golden hoop. Three Blackshirts strut past on the street below, their heels ringing on the cobbles, their yellow fezzes at loose tilts. He watches the crowd outside Caffè Casoni part for them. Grinding out his fag in the ashtray at his bedside, he picks up his panama, forces a pocketbook of wide Italian banknotes into his jacket, steps into the corridor and runs for the stone stairway.

The courtyard is empty now. It is almost eleven when he walks through the entrance-hall of the palazzo, past a large portrait of the late King George and onto the street. The traffic has died down, the rainwater drained from the road. A tramp with a pheasant feather in his cap sits on the steps of San Gaetano, scattering crumbs for the pigeons. Moustachioed men walk arm-in-arm with girls in lace chiffon. Older couples step down from taxis outside Doney’s café, its name in gold on frosted windows. Roberts’ British Pharmacy, apparently not yet drawing Anglophobic ire, advertises quinine pills and Fleischmann’s Yeast. Next door, Pretini the hairdresser waves a white-gloved hand at Esmond through the window. He comes to the intersection where the via Tornabuoni meets the vias Strozzi and Spada.

At a table on the pavement, sipping a spumey cappuccino, is the man Esmond had seen queuing for Cook’s. Esmond raises his hat and the old man lets out a whinny. ‘Good morning,’ he says.

‘Is it so obvious I’m English?’

‘Bloody right. It’s the panama. An Italian fellow your age wouldn’t be seen dead in one. It’s the Fascist fez or a fedora here. And that’s a Wykehamist’s tie, if I’m not mistaken. Esmond, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Goad told us about you. You’re coming to lunch on Sunday after church. I’m Colonel Keppel — George. Pleased to meet you. Off to the galleries?’

‘I think so. I was going to wander—’

‘Don’t wander. Too much to see. The Uffizi closes for lunch at one. You should eat at the Nuova Toscana in the Piazza della Signoria. Say I sent you. Then back to the Uffizi for a couple of hours and then the Bargello. See you Sunday.’

‘Thanks!’ Esmond is chased across the street by a bicycle. He passes in front of stone and stucco palazzos, their faces coloured cream or ochre, saffron, apricot, or white with terracotta crenellation. He strides through a piazza where restaurateurs set out their tables in spots of sun, then down the via Calimala. The Blackshirts he’d seen from his window pass him and he returns their straight-arm salute, conscious of his foreigner’s hat. He resolves to buy a fedora at the first opportunity. He hears the Blackshirts’ laughter echoing down the street behind him.

Esmond turns the corner into the Piazza della Signoria and his breath catches in his throat. Bare brick, parapets, the clock tower, Michelangelo’s David . The palazzo looks like a castle; beside it sculptures cluster on the terrace of the loggia, guarded by stone lions. His eye falls immediately on Perseus holding the Gorgon’s head, tendons and gore streaming from the neck.

A tram clatters past, swaying on its rails, heading down into the narrow streets beside the palace. Electronic speakers mounted on the corners of buildings squawk out military anthems. Esmond makes his way past David, whose comely half-turn and tight pubic hair remind him of Philip, and down towards the river and into the arcade of the Uffizi. And he felt — he remembers D. H. Lawrence — that here he was in one of the world’s living centres, in the Piazza della Signoria. The sense of having arrived — of having reached the perfect centre of the human world . He grins foolishly.

He had read of Stendhal’s collapse on leaving the church of Santa Croce, a fit of panic brought on by the presence of too much beauty, too much history. It is not exactly panic he feels now, coming out of the gallery, but an anguished and somnolent wonder. He cannot remember having lunch, whether he took Colonel Keppel’s advice or not. He didn’t make it to the Bargello. He walks past a group of Blackshirts who stand on a street corner, eyeing passers-by, the death’s heads on their shirts polished to a shine, but he barely sees them. They call after him when he fails to return their salute but he carries on, oblivious.

He pauses for a moment in the centre of a piazza and closes his eyes. Filippo Lippi’s Madonna with Child and Two Angels, his son Filippino’s Adoration of the Magi. Then the Botticellis — Primavera and the Birth of Venus, of course, but also Pallas and the Centaur, the Madonna of the Pomegranate. He tries to summon every detail to mind. The purity and humanity of the Madonna. Venus’s toes, he remembers, long and prehensile, the way her head cocks to one side, the tress of golden hair she presses to her groin.

He’d spent an hour in front of Filippino’s St Jerome . It had seemed an antidote to the easy pleasure he drew from Botticelli. This was a painting his father could love: the saint’s skin was grey-green, his eyes hollow. This, Esmond thought, was what came after. When one has lived with Venus and Flora for long enough, there is only the hillside, the penitence, the twisted branches and dank grottoes. He walks on as the sun dips behind buildings and a breeze sweeps up from the river and he imagines a lifetime of this, being breathed by Florence.