Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

Then her mouth was gone and she was standing once more, turning her back to him.

He slid the zipper down and eased the dress from her shoulders until it fell and gathered in a heap at her ankles. She didn't step free of it until he had released the clasp of her bra.

She beat him to the panties, bending to remove them, before turning once more to face him. She was breathing hard now, and she gripped him firmly in her hand as they locked mouths again, her tongue stabbing at his this time.

Without warning, she pushed him back onto the bed and was astride him before he had time to shuffle himself neatly to the middle of the mattress. Her pelvis pressing against his hardness, her hair dense, abrasive, already damp.

She cupped a hand behind his neck and drew his head off the bed, guiding his mouth to her breasts.

She arched low, pressing her lips to his ear. "This is our secret," she whispered. "You understand?"

He grunted.

She removed her nipple from his mouth. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

She forced him back onto the mattress. There was nothing he wanted more than to enter her there and then, but she wasn't having it, not yet.

She edged her way up his body until her purpose was plain. Seizing the iron rail at the head of the bed to steady herself, she straddled his face and lowered herself toward him.

TO ANYONE WHO DIDN'T KNOW, THERE WAS NOTHING IN their behavior to betray what had passed between them. The elderly Roman couple—the only other residents of the pensione still at their breakfast when Adam headed downstairs—smiled at him politely, as they had done for the past few mornings. No evidence there that Signora Fanelli had shared with them the details of her nocturnal romp with the Englishman. In fact, no evidence at all that it had ever occurred.

It was only when she brought him his coffee that he detected something. She stood a fraction closer to him than she usually did when placing the cup and saucer on the table.

He lingered over his breakfast in the hope that a private moment would present itself, an opportunity to at least acknowledge their steamy encounter. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much if she hadn't slipped from his bed while he was sleeping. His last memory had been of her astride him, exhorting him with words he didn't understand, the crucifix swinging at her neck, brushing his chest. That second time had done for him almost immediately. Had he even held her afterward? He hoped he had.

The Romans finally pottered off, and when Signora Fanelli reappeared from the kitchen, she asked breezily, "Another cappuccino?

"Thank you."

The countertop coffee machine coughed and sputtered and hissed ominously. Adam pushed back his chair and strolled over.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

It sounded suspiciously like a dig.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Why?"

"I fell asleep."

She fired a furtive glance at the door to the kitchen. "That was my intention. I have a business to run here. I also need my sleep." There was a pleasing edge of irony to her voice.

Steam from a slender nozzle blasted some milk in a battered tin jug.

"Eight years," she said, under cover of the racket. "Since I made love."

"It's a long time."

She twisted the tap closed and looked up at him. "It was worth the wait."

"It was very special. No, incredible." He hoped she could see from his face that he wasn't being polite. She had taken him to a place he'd never been before.

At that moment Iacopo entered from the terrace, breathless from running. Adam was probably wrong to detect something knowing in the boy's look.

"Well?" asked his mother.

"He's leaving in twenty minutes." "Signore Carnesecchi," she explained, turning to Adam. "He's going down into Florence."

She was ahead of him, looking out for him. He'd told her he needed to send money to Harry.

Iacopo passed by them, out of the room.

"No one must ever know," she said.

"I understand."

"I live here. You don't. That's why it happened."

There must have been something injured in his expression, because when she slid the cup of coffee across the counter she gave his hand a brief and stealthy squeeze.

"Well, not the only reason."

Signore Carnesecchi made a living from fruit and vegetables, which was mildly amusing. His surname translated as "dried meats."

His wife and son were traveling with him to the market in Florence. They rode in the cab of the old open-sided truck while Adam squeezed in with the crates stacked in the back.

Tomatoes predominated, with beans running a close second. Judging from the smell, there was also a batch of strawberries buried away somewhere. It was a bumpy but fragrant journey down out of the hills.

Bouncing around on the boards, watching the world receding behind him, Adam caught himself in a flush of pride. Was it trivial that a beautiful woman had wanted him? He suspected it was. Was it immature and vindictive to imagine Gloria getting wind of the encounter? Certainly. But sitting there in the back of the truck, the sun warming his face, it felt good, he felt alive. And he hadn't felt alive for quite some while, he now realized.

Eight years since she last made love—that's what she had said— which meant that he wasn't the first person she'd given herself to since the death of her husband. Araldo had been killed in 1945, right at the end of the war. Adam knew this because he had asked her while they were lying damp and entwined after their first bout on the mattress.

It was a grim tale, which made her willingness to share it with him all the more touching. Araldo had been a victim of the bloodletting that followed the liberation of Italy by the Allies—an uncertain and anarchic time when many were held to account for their actions during the German occupation. If she knew the exact details, she didn't share them with him. She spoke vaguely of an accusation leveled against her husband. The word "collaboration" wasn't mentioned, but she did hint at an incident that had resulted in the arrest and execution of two local partisans by the Germans.

She was more specific when it came to the details of what subsequently happened. Araldo left the house one morning for Impruneta, where he worked as a stonemason. He never arrived. They dragged him from his car on a quiet country road and put three bullets in his head.

Who "they" were, she didn't know for sure, although she had her suspicions. A name sprang to Adam's mind too. Fortunately, it was the wrong name.

Fausto had played no part in Araldo's death, she went on, of that she was fairly sure. He had shown his face at the funeral. A number of his comrades-in-arms hadn't.

"You can't know a man—I mean you can't really know a man—unless you've known him as a child. I've known Fausto all my life, since we were babies in our mothers' arms. If I thought for one moment he'd had anything to do with it, or even that he knew it was going to happen and did nothing . . . well, I think I would have killed him by now."

Sitting there in the back of the truck, this was a shocking and sobering statement to recall. At the time, however, it had exerted a strangely aphrodisiacal effect.

The warehouse was a low steel-and-concrete structure in the San Lorenzo district of Florence. The streets around it were thronging with people. They parted like a bow wave before a boat, closing in again behind the truck. Most ignored him sitting there among the crates; some waved. A knot of grubby children made obscene gestures. When he returned them, he was pelted with stones snatched from the gutter.