Alex Preston: In Love and War

Back at the Institute, the courtyard is dark. A square of light from the window of Goad’s study falls onto the flagstones, otherwise all is shadow. He climbs the steps to the apartment and opens the door. He looks for a light switch, can’t find one, and edges carefully along until he comes to his door. He pushes and gasps. A young girl, long tanned back to the door, sits naked at a dressing table, combing her hair. There are books on the floor, drowsy jazz on the gramophone, dresses laid out on the bed. In the instant before he shuts the door, he sees the pale undersides of raised arms, the reflection of smiling, startled eyes.

He hurries along the corridor, realising he has confused the three sides of the apartment. He turns a corner to the kitchen, the smell of roast meat, the spitting of a pan and Gesuina’s low humming. He finds his door in the half-light, walks in and fumbles for a cigarette. Gesuina has made up his bed, the windows are closed and the ashtray empty. He slips off his shoes, pulls off his tie, tries to force his mind back to the Uffizi, but sees only that long back and dark-freckled shoulders, a coral bangle fallen halfway down a bare arm.

He opens the windows to the street. The tramp with the pheasant feather cap is still sitting on the steps of the church, in the edges of a pool of light that falls from the streetlamp. A military truck, its bonnet painted with the fasces, roars down the road. Esmond watches the tramp’s eyes following it. There is a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ he says.

In a plain, yellow cotton dress, no shoes or stockings, she is as astonishing dressed as she was naked. Her black hair is pinned in a high pony-tail. She smiles but her eyes remain cool. ‘I am Fiamma Ricci. The daughter of Gesuina.’ The accent is heavy, her English hesitant but precise. ‘I live here with Mr Goad while I study at Florence University.’

‘Pleased to meet you. Listen, I’m awfully sorry—’ Esmond gets up, lifts a pile of shirts from the chair at his desk and scrapes it towards her. She folds one foot beneath her as she sits.

‘Please, don’t worry. It is easy to be lost here.’

Esmond grinds out his cigarette in the ashtray and offers her the packet. She shakes her head.

‘So how long do you stay with Mr Goad, Esmond?’

‘I’m not sure. As long as it takes. I’m here to set up a radio station. For the British Union.’

She looks up at him with a sly smile. ‘This is Fascist, right? You do not look like a Fascist. A Nazi, maybe, all that blond hair. But not a Fascist.’

He swallows and sits, straight-backed, on the edge of the bed.

‘You are a Fascist like Mr Goad is a Fascist, perhaps?’ she says. ‘He is an intellectual gentleman. Not like the brutes we have here.’

‘Oh, we have our share of brutes,’ he says, thinking of William Joyce, Mosley’s right-hand man, breaking windows in the Jewish East End. ‘And you have noble Fascists, too. What about Ungaretti, d’Annunzio?’

‘You like poetry? I am glad. Then you will be a friend for Mr Goad. He is lonely, I think, since his wife died. Too much work.’

There is silence between them. They hear footsteps pass in the corridor.

‘Listen, mightn’t you show me some of the city? It would be super to have a local guide.’

Her smile fades as she stands.

‘I am not a local. We are from Milan, my mother and I.’

‘Oh. Right then.’

She walks to the door and opens it, turning back to address him from the hallway. ‘My father is in the gaol there. He is a Socialist, a political man. He wrote for L’Ordine Nuovo . He has been in exile, on an island. Now he is back in Milan, like a common prisoner. I haven’t seen him since I was ten.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It is not your fault. If you have to be a Fascist, just make sure you are the right kind, not like that fat frog who calls himself our leader. Now I go out. Good night.’

She closes the door behind her. Esmond lights another cigarette and sits on the windowsill, looking down at the young people gathering outside Casoni and Doney’s. A motorcycle engine revs and the bell of San Gaetano tolls eight. He sees Fiamma come out into the street. She is wearing a dark blue jacket over her dress, a pair of high-heeled sandals, her hair wrapped inside a crocheted yellow snood. As she walks south towards the Arno, he sees her, bright and bobbing in the pale streetlamps, in the light from the doorways of cafés. She turns the corner, glances back up the via Tornabuoni, and is gone.

Dinner is cold meat, a bowl of salad, some bread. A single glass sits at Esmond’s place. When he enters the dining room he sees Goad struggling to pull a cork from a bottle of wine.

‘Ah, I thought you might — huh —’ He stifles a shout and frees the cork, sending a short crescent of dark wine into the air. ‘Blast. I thought you might like some wine. This is Arcimboldi Chianti, made by the family from whom we rent the palazzo. Beautiful vineyards at their villa in Val di Pesa.’

‘I’d love some, thanks.’

Goad half-fills the glass and then painstakingly reintroduces the cork.

‘I can’t stomach alcohol, myself. Brings on my black dog.’

He watches as Goad slices and chews carefully, eyes closing. Esmond finishes his wine in a couple of gulps and glances meaningfully at the bottle on the table. When Goad has eaten the last of his ham he pours himself some water and, finally seeing Esmond’s empty glass, passes the wine.

‘Do help yourself, dear boy. We don’t stand on ceremony here. I’m afraid these evening meals will seem rather drab to you. I don’t like to ask Gesuina to work too late, particularly when it’s only the two of us dining.’

Goad peels and cores an apple with his pocket-knife. Esmond sips wine and clears his throat. ‘I met Fiamma earlier.’

‘Ah, did you. And how did you find her?’

‘Very charming. It’s good of you to provide for her.’

‘Hum — Did she tell you her story?’

‘That her father is in prison.’

‘It’s rather more complicated. You see, Gesuina, her mother, is the half-sister of Niccolò Arcimboldi, from whom we rent this palazzo. She married a Milanese.’

‘A journalist, she said.’

‘Although he’s not published a word, at least in any newspaper worth the name, for some time. In and out of gaol, exiled to Ustica and Lipari for sedition. He’s a member of Giustizia e Libertà, the anti-Fascist movement. A thoroughly bad egg. He was arrested for helping Socialists escape from prison. Not a thought for his wife and daughter. After a year in squalor in Milan, Gesuina came home and threw herself on her brother’s mercy.’

‘And he asked you to take them in?’

‘Niccolò Arcimboldi is one of the hardliners. Believes Mussolini isn’t going far enough, that Italy should round up the Jews, purge the factories, shoot the Communists. He’s chums with Carità at the MVSN, marches around looking for Reds to set about. Gesuina marrying a Socialist riled him terribly. So when she and her daughter came back to Florence, Niccolò reluctantly agreed to put them up. Asked me if I could use her as a housemaid. And since the apartment isn’t full, even when Gerald is here, and it reduces our overheads—’

‘Doesn’t she resent it, Gesuina?’

Goad scratches his hands.

‘She is here as a guest, she knows that. Over the past few years we have grown — hum — comfortable. Since my wife died she runs the household. I believe it suits her very well. Fiamma is different. She was horribly impertinent at first. Rather trite, adolescent talk. Now she’s a closed book. Not unruly any more so much as — hum — inaccessible.’

‘It must be hard for her, not knowing how her father is. And she’s studying?’