Authors: Christobel Kent
She’d seen the girl off. Not a girl any more, but school fixed you; if someone was four years younger than you then, they were forever a kid. Elena: they’d overlapped maybe for a year. She remembered a girl with scuffed shoes and tangled hair. Giuli didn’t know what she’d done – or not done – for the girl to remember her. She had been a different person then – she hoped she had. Were you allowed to change?
Why had she said it?
You don’t know me.
If anything was suspicious, that was. Elena had backed off, startled:
I’m so sorry, I must be mistaken.
But Giuli had seen the look in her eyes. Without thinking, she let out a long breath, like a sigh.
The man who was talking earnestly to her about a bridge he had built somewhere in the Middle East, forty years ago, paused at the sound, then resumed. His name was Ian Cameron, he was Australian, and he had retired last year. This much Giuli had managed to register, despite his English, despite his unfamiliar accent; there was even something soothing about how little what he was saying meant to her. Perhaps there was less to this small-talk business than she thought. She concentrated on his face: freckled northern skin, pale eyes, thin-lipped.
‘And why have you come to Florence?’ she put in as he paused, just for something to say.
He looked momentarily nonplussed, as if he couldn’t remember, or didn’t understand the point of the question. ‘My wife,’ he said vaguely, lifting his head and turning, scanning the heads. ‘She thought it would be a good idea. Art, culture, you know. Food.’
‘So you have done it for her,’ she said. ‘That’s nice.’
Again he looked at her with those pale eyes as though he didn’t know what she could mean. ‘It really doesn’t matter to me,’ he said, ‘where we live. I’ve always travelled, you see. And there’s consultancy, now I’m retired.’ He looked towards the door. ‘I think I’m in Bahrain next week, as a matter of fact.’
‘Your wife doesn’t mind being alone.’
Giuli thought she really should stop this: this was the last place for recklessness. ‘Sorry,’ she said hastily. ‘I am being too curious.’
‘She had the children,’ he said slowly, distant. ‘This little jaunt won’t last. Marjorie’s a country girl, you see; it was more or less bush where we lived in Australia. Drove a pick-up when the children were small, spent the day barefoot, knew how to look after herself then. There was none of this . . . gadding about.’ His thin mouth curled in disapproval, and something changed.
‘Ian!’
The woman had moved in on them silently, although when Giuli shifted to see who’d spoken, she saw she was the most imposing woman in the room, the sort who arrived like a liner, spreading turbulence.
‘Who’s this? Won’t you introduce us?’
She was elderly, twenty years at least on Ian Cameron, but
the way she spoke to him was flirtatious and commanding, with the certainty of a woman in her prime.
‘Athene Morris,’ said Ian Cameron, unbending, with no sign of the awe Giuli felt; tension was more like it, resistance. ‘This is Giulietta Sarto.’
She held out a hand, croaked, ‘It is a pleasure, Mrs Morris.’
Athene Morris laughed unexpectedly, almost a cackle but full-throated. ‘I’m a
signorina
, strange though that may seem at my age. Or do all old women become
signora
in Italy, by default? Is there no Ms, in this country? I don’t believe there is.’
‘But we keep our name here, when we get married,’ said Giuli. The woman was right though. It was all nonsense. Why did they need to get married?
‘And what is your connection?’ said Athene Morris. Giuli felt them both turn and focus on her, the old woman and the engineer, like she was prey. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m a colleague of Mr Cellini,’ she said bravely.
‘Ah,’ said Athene Morris. ‘Yes.’ Giuli saw her glance across the room. ‘I must have a proper word with him.’ She put her hand on Ian Cameron’s forearm, and he stiffened visibly. ‘Our new Head of Security,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I don’t think Brett’s going to like him quite as much, somehow. Don’t you get the feeling he can see through us all, already?’
Cameron pulled his arm out from under hers, not a violent movement, but across the room Giuli saw Sandro’s head turn towards them.
‘You’re a troublemaker, Athene,’ Cameron said shortly, giving Giuli a cold glance, transparently wishing for her to disappear.
‘Just having fun, Ian,’ said Athene Morris. ‘Isn’t it rather a
strain, behaving so well all the time? Being sensible. Life’s too short.’
‘And you’re old enough to know better.’ His Australian accent was harsh, suddenly, and with a quick, graceless movement he extracted himself from her grip. ‘I’m going to find my wife.’
They looked at his back.
‘He’s a bore,’ said Athene Morris, in Italian, with a surprisingly good accent. ‘Worse than a bore. Men so often are, as they get older. Women less so, I find. No, marriage never tempted me, even if love did, once upon a time.’ She paused. ‘Oh, I’m glad I’m past all that.’ But she turned a little from Giuli as she said it, looking over the crowd, her eyes moving, pausing, moving on.
‘Your Italian is beautiful,’ said Giuli, liking her. ‘Have you lived here for a long time?’
‘I have lived a long time, full stop,’ said the old woman, and there was something weary in her voice. ‘I lived in Rome for ten years once, an age ago. I was in love with a man much younger than myself.’
Then she looked back at Giuli, and lowered her voice. ‘If I were to tell you—’ But then there was a shift, and a shuffling in the room, and Athene Morris pulled back, pressed down on her stick and raised her head to see what was going on. Whatever she had been about to say was suspended.
Pompously, Bottai, whose voice Giuli had off and on been able to hear in the room, had managed to elevate himself above the crowd – did he carry a podium with him? – and was urging them all to accompany him to dinner somewhere.
In her pocket Giuli felt the silent thrum of her phone and
her heart leapt. A message. Athene Morris had turned back towards her, bearing down on her, about to speak again, but Giuli pulled out the phone and offered it by way of explanation.
‘Sorry,’ she said to Athene, whose face had abruptly stiffened, turned old. ‘It’s work, I’m so sorry.’
As Giuli turned and moved away, the old woman’s expression was still there in her head, like the negative image imprinted on the retina after over-exposure to bright light. It would still be there the next morning. But in the moment she couldn’t help herself, it was an instinct – she needed to get away, fast, to get out, not just to regain the phone signal, nor just to get away from these people, not even the urgent need to read what Enzo had said in privacy. It was this place.
Almost at the doorway she remembered Sandro and turned back to locate him. He was standing at the bar next to a woman with glasses. Giuli raised a hand to him, pointing at the telephone – but she didn’t get off that easy. The woman behind him was gesturing to the barman for another drink, but Sandro was already halfway across the room. He caught up with Giuli at the door.
‘Right,’ he said, breathless. There was something just a little bit reckless about him; it was the drink, Giuli realised. Sandro wasn’t an aperitif man, as a rule. ‘Okay. You have a choice: hooker at the Granduca, or cocktail waitress at the Excelsior Terrace.’
She stared at him stonily. ‘Are we talking future employment?’ She folded her arms. ‘Because I’m a bit long in the tooth for either of those.’
Sandro’s shoulders sagged. ‘Sorry,’ he said sheepishly. ‘That didn’t come out right.’
She listened in silence while he explained. ‘I’ll take the hooker,’ she said.
The Granduca was a dump but the Excelsior probably wouldn’t let her through the door, all that marble and all those tasselled concierges.
‘You want me to do it on my way home?’ Uneasily, Sandro shrugged, yes. ‘You get back to your lady friend, now,’ she said. She felt cheerful: sod it. Sod them.
The doorman turned in the doorway, in the act of tipping his hat to her, as she looked down at her phone. She read the message, looked up and saw the same message in the doorman’s eyes.
I’m outside.
The doorman spread his arm and there, through the doorway, standing on the steeply sloping street with his hands in his pockets, was Enzo.
She held on to him, tight. He stood patiently in her arms, all his questions unasked.
‘There’s one errand I’ve got to run,’ she said. ‘For Sandro. ‘Then we can talk.’
*
Sandro was having some difficulty getting his key in the lock, and he hadn’t even made it to the tricky apartment door yet. He was still out on the street, although as it was close to two in the morning there were no passers-by to observe his fumblings. Sandro hadn’t been up this late since he was in the force, and he’d never had trouble with his own front door before. He staggered slightly.
As the possibility dawned on him that he might have had a little too much to drink, the key slid into its rightful place and Sandro toppled into his hallway. At the top of the stairs he focused, breathed deep. Belched, a hand over his mouth to stifle it. Luisa. Mustn’t know.
There was a woman, he thought, leaning against the wall and waiting for the world to steady itself. Or was there another? Beautiful woman, gorgeous woman. Place was full of them. Therese Van Vleet was one. She was just lovely, those big blue eyes. He felt suddenly mournful at the thought, how she’d looked at him, asking for his help, and then mournful turned to a yawn. Too old to help. Sleep.
They’d started offering him drink. The scientist had done it. He’d been quite happy talking wives and English literature with Fleming, and she’d had to put herself between them. Green eyes behind those glasses. Tassi, her name was, Lauren Tassi, half-American, half-Italian, living with her mother, came here to work with Professor Scardino. Had he got that right? He had to drink with her, she said, or was he the kind that escorted women like her off the premises? Women. Weren’t fair to him. How did you say no?
Still, he’d have been fine if it had been just that. He would. Miss Cornell watching him from across the room, eyes fixed on the glass in his hand. Which he’d set down carefully, only half drunk.
Dottoressa Tassi, I’m so sorry, I need to speak to the attaché.
Sandro tried to repeat the words now, only they didn’t come out in the right order. What
was
an attaché?
Briefcase: where was it? His hands empty. There it was, on the floor, at his feet. Slowly he bent down, taking it easy at his
age, and straightened with the briefcase clasped to his chest. He had an office in that big place, he needed to remember that. He’d collected the briefcase from his office. Miss Cornell had given him the piece of paper, though he couldn’t quite remember now what the paper had been or why he’d wanted it. He’d put it in the briefcase. Certainly he had. He patted the briefcase tenderly. Luisa had bought it for him when he’d started the agency.
He still would have been fine. If he hadn’t had to go up in that lift. Excelsior Terrace. Where the next lovely woman was waiting for him, with her cocktail menu and her row of bottles and those long-stemmed glasses. Candles on the tables and everyone turning to examine him when he came in. He’d looked around and seen his city through the glass, the Cestino’s little dome, churches and velvety gardens spreading up the hills and floodlit towers rising out of the dark city. Mariaclara, tall and haughty as a film star and much too beautiful ever to have been a hotel maid, was wearing a little dicky-bow outfit and standing behind the bar.
What had she told him? That when they’d been digging out the cellars of the Palazzo San Giorgio they’d found a room where people had been killed, long, long ago. Tortured and killed. A woman, they said, left there to starve to death for adultery. She’d turned away from him then, her long hair swinging, to pour something into a glass. He didn’t catch what she said then, until she turned back. ‘Him? I wasn’t his type,
caro
.’ And that wide sweet mouth smiling at him. ‘There’s a name for boys like him. And they often come to no good.’
Perhaps, he thought, leaning against the wall again, it would
be easier if he closed his eyes and felt for the lock this time; miraculously it turned out to be so.
He tripped, taking off his trousers, so he didn’t bother with anything else, slid into bed beside Luisa, set the briefcase on his chest, folded his hands on top of it and once the room stopped spinning, he was asleep.
Chapter Twelve
D
ONATO WAS SMOKING HIS
twentieth cigarette of the night in silence outside the police pound where they’d confined the bus for the foreseeable. The pound was out to the dark west of the city, between the red-rusted pylons of the Viadotto dell’Indiano and the bulrushes and shanty towns beyond the Isolotto. He looked to the east: above the hills of the Casentino the night sky was turning grey at the edges.
The police had long since said he could go home, they’d be in touch, but Donato wasn’t ready to leave his bus yet. It occurred to him, listening to his heart bumping away, that one of these days he’d need to get himself checked out. Freaked. Not quite as freaked as Joe, mind, who had kept rubbing his hands against his sides, as if he had got something on them. He probably had.
The company ran on a shoestring; they’d had to get another bus down from Amerigo Vespucci to sort out the passengers left grumbling on the station forecourt. Eventually Donato had herded them inside to the bus company’s ticket booth, just because it had to be bad for business, four policemen, then
five, the light blue uniforms clustered around the luggage compartment. A van from the morgue at close to midnight, though the passengers had gone by then.
‘Don’t open it,’ Joe had said in a panic as Donato had leaned down to try the locks, not even thinking yet, though Joe had been, of what must be inside. It was locked. He’d looked at the tag, found it blank and then he’d realised that his fingers were sticky.
Joe had run into the station in a panic to the little Polizia di Stato post inside the station and the police officers had come sauntering out, expecting a fuss over nothing. They’d soon changed their tune when they’d seen the staining on the big cheap suitcase, and then the air in the bus’s underbelly had hit them.