In Love and War (8 page)

They sit for a while longer, then go in to join the party. A bottle of Punt e Mes is passed around. Reggie Temple is asleep on the sofa, Pino talking in Italian to Fiamma and Gerald. Wolton sits on his own, hands on knees. Douglas looks down at him and lets out a snort.

‘Why do you insist on coming here, Eric? For God’s sake can’t you see you’re wasting space.’

Wolton’s grey skin colours momentarily but he stares at his hands.

‘Because I love you,’ he says, so softly that he has to repeat it. ‘I love you, Norman.’

‘So you come running after me as if I were a ballet girl? Not on your life! Clear out!’ Douglas picks up his stick and raps it hard against the floor. ‘You were worth talking to twenty years ago. But now? I simply don’t want to see you. Clear out!’

Wolton staggers to his feet. Reggie Temple has woken up and looks out blearily. Wolton moves for the door.

‘Norman, I––’

‘Clear out!’

Ten minutes later, Esmond and the others leave too, Reggie Temple walking with them as far as the Ponte Santa Trinità.‘Such a sad figure, the Wolton feller,’ he says, as they make their way along the deserted Lungarno. ‘Norman’s frightful to him, but I can’t blame him. Shows up here after so many years.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘He was one of Norman’s boys. Norman’s wife caught them buggering in the marital bed some twenty years ago. But he was old for Norman even then. He has a theory, you see, that boys after puberty suffer a loss of body heat. That he ought to sodomise only the very young in order to keep himself youthful.’ He lets out a low chuckle. ‘It’s all in that book of his,
Paneros
. Quite barmy.’

‘And now Eric’s back.’

‘Yes, after a failed marriage and some kind of collapse, he seemed to think Norman would find him irresistible. Really it is
too
sad.’

They leave him at the bridge and walk up to the Institute. It is dark and silent inside. They say good night, each of them a little drunk, a little sombre, and fall asleep, the bats riding the cool air outside their windows.

Esmond realises he has been putting off seeing Carità, disgusted and, he admits to himself, scared by what the little man did to Goad. He would rather face his father and Mosley at once than a brute like Carità. But there is no word from England, nothing from Goad, and so he keeps his head down, waiting, thumbing
through
The Wireless Operator’s Handbook
whenever he feels particularly guilt-stricken.

One morning, a Saturday, Fiamma comes into Esmond’s room early. She sits at the end of the bed in the darkness. He sees that she’s crying as he pulls himself awake.

‘What is it?’

‘They’ve killed Carlo and Nello in Paris. Oh, Esmond––’ She reaches over to take him in her arms and begins to sob. After a while he regretfully disentangles himself, stands to open the window, and looks back to see her slumped on the bed with her fingers in her hair. It is another hot day; the room is close, the breeze warm and dusty from the street. He sits beside her in his nightshirt and places an arm around her, whispering softly.

‘Who were they? Died how?’

‘Friends of my father. They founded
Giustizia e Libertà.
Heroes––’ She unravels into tears. Esmond finds a handkerchief in a drawer and offers it to her, but she pushes it away, drawing her arm across her face. He picks up her hand and clasps it between his own.

‘Who killed them?’

‘Fascists,’ she spits at him. She begins to speak very swiftly. ‘They are taking everything from me,’ she says. ‘First my father, then the house I grew up in. My friends, who are either running off to join them, or in gaol because they won’t. They took dear, gentle Goad. Now Carlo and Nello.’ She bangs her hand down on the bed and turns to him. ‘I never understood what it meant, totalitarianism. You have this word in English, too?’ He nods uncertainly. ‘They are intruding into every aspect of my life, taking over all the things that are dear to me just as they took over Libya and Abyssinia. I hate them, Esmond.’

Gerald comes into the room. Fiamma looks up at him damply.

‘Where were you?’ she says. ‘I came looking for you this morning but you weren’t in bed.’

He kneels down beside her.

‘I’m so bloody sorry. I saw it on the front page of the
Nazione
. It was the Cagoule, of course, the French Fascists. On Musso’s orders. Bastards.’

She wipes her face again with a slippery arm.

‘Listen,’ he says, with a doggish grin, ‘I’ve something to cheer you up. Get dressed and meet me in the courtyard. Come on, Fiamma. There you go.’

Esmond pulls on shorts and an Aertex shirt, brushes his teeth and knocks on Fiamma’s door. They make their way down the stone steps to the courtyard as darkness lifts off the city. Gerald is standing in the cloister opposite the entrance to Cook’s, a large canvas bag at his feet. Behind him, leaning on their stands, are three bicycles. One is a racer – a Romeo – the other two are Peugeot tourers. Gerald stands back with a flourish.

‘Thought we could use them to get out of town, find a cool spot along the river. I saw them in the barn at L’Ombrellino and knew George wouldn’t miss them. Couple of the gardeners helped me wheel them down this morning. D’you want the racer, Esmond?’

Esmond holds its lean, crouched frame, grey with red livery. He pats the leather seat.

‘It’s super,’ he says.

The three of them set off wobblingly towards the river. Fiamma is still crying quietly, hiccoughs escaping as she pedals. It is before nine, but already the sun is powerful overhead, searing as they gather pace along the Lungarno. At the Ponte Vecchio they pass tinkers with fly-bothered mules, beggars in the shadows, fishermen pushing ice-filled trolleys of their catch towards the Mercato Nuovo. The rich have left for their out-of-town villas or
the Alps, the poor sit indoors with their fans, their windows open, their feet in tubs of ice-water. A group of Fascist Youth walk along the river in a bedraggled crocodile behind a little man in a heavy black shirt. He is sweating so much he barely sees the bicycles coming and has to leap, cursing. The boys behind him laugh.

‘My uncle,’ Fiamma shouts over her shoulder. ‘He is in charge of the
Sabato Fascista
today. Poor boys––’

On the towpath of the river the air is cooler, the wind fresh from the Apennine peaks, finding its way into the folds of their clothing, the nooks of their bodies. Esmond races ahead, pumping his legs, head down, lets out a joyful shout that’s muffled by the wind. Gerald rides with no hands, arms held up, cupping the breeze. They stop for a drink of water before crossing the river at the ford at San Jacopo al Girone, poppies in the wheat field behind them.

Fiamma, wheat-dust blanching her lips, walks waist-high to the fragile flowers and picks a handful. She puts them into the basket of her bicycle and, halfway across the stony rise of the ford, she drops them into the water.

‘For Carlo and Nello,’ she says.

Along the south bank of the river, through more wheat and corn and maize, then steeper ground, vineyards stretching up into the low reaches of the hills. They join the road, through small villages – Candelli, Santa Monica, Vallina – where old men sit on the stoops of their houses watching them pass, their eyes crinkled from contemplating the long moment of their lives. Under every roadside tree stands a mule, swatting its tail placidly against the flies. In the fields heavy cattle swing their heads like slow church bells. They buy apricots from a stall where a young woman with a baby on her hip chews a stalk of grass beneath her hat and addresses them in Florentine dialect so thick that even Fiamma can’t understand her.

Finally, they turn off the road and down a track to the river. They come to an abandoned watermill with a crenellated roof like a castle. Martins have nested in its walls, opening large clefts. The whole building looks about to crumble down the bank into the Arno.

‘The Gualchiere di Remole,’ Gerald says. ‘This would have turned wool into cloth. Hugely important to Florence in the Middle Ages. The
Comune
is always promising to turn it into a museum but, I mean, look at it.’

Past the mill, they cycle carefully along an overgrown path to the river. Brambles tear at Esmond’s legs as he follows. He stops to help Fiamma unhook her dress from a thorn that snags it and sees the white and red scratches the brambles have raised on her legs. They come out on fine yellow sand beneath the lip of the bank. Upstream of the mill, the river is pocked with small islands and the Arno is wide and clear. They lay their bicycles down in the grass.

Gerald unpacks the canvas bag: a thermos of Soave, two bottles of red, some bread and salami. He takes a knife and cuts the salami as Esmond and Fiamma paddle, looking across the river to where
contadini
labour in the fields, their backs pomegranate brown. The river is hard and sandy on their feet and slopes towards the middle where fish flicker like shadows.

‘Lunch is served, you two. Come and get it.’

An hour later they lie lazily fuddled on the sand. The thermos is empty, and they have started on the red. Esmond is aware that he is sunburning, his head beginning to throb in the heat, but he can barely lift his arm to cover it. Gerald has taken off his top and is using it for a pillow, lifting himself up on his elbow to take a gulp of wine every so often. Fiamma is sleeping, twitching, sometimes turning. Only the electric thrum of cicadas stirs the air, the bray of a mule or the shouts of
contadini
.

‘We should swim or we’ll boil here,’ Gerald says. As he stands, Esmond can see sweat in the tufts of dark hair beneath his arms, across his chest. He walks down to the water. Fiamma has woken and stretches, frowning. Gerald drops his shorts and underpants, leaving them in a coil on the bank, and plunges into the water. He comes up in the centre of the river, blowing gouts of water out of his mouth and laughing.

‘You should come in! It’s marvellous.’

Esmond looks over at Fiamma. She stares, unfocused, a hectic flush to her cheeks.

‘It
is
hot,’ he says.

‘Go on, then.’

He walks down to the edge of the water. His shirt is sticking to his back. He lifts it off with difficulty, takes down his shorts and then, suddenly delighted to think of his body immersed in the cool water, strips naked and leaps forward into the river. He swims towards Gerald who is floating, spreadeagled. He dives and opens his eyes: it is clear and green and as he goes deeper, icy. Sunlight arrows down and he can make out Gerald floating above, the smooth curve of his back, his hair flaming out, his arms and legs paddling him gently afloat. He comes up beside him, laughing.

‘There’s nothing like it, is there?’ Gerald says. ‘Come on, Fiamma! Come and cool down.’

She takes a final swig of wine, stands and shakes her head, then steps down to the river’s edge. She unpins her hair and it tumbles down to her shoulders. She lifts the skirt of her dress up over her head and stands for a moment in her bra and smalls.

‘Nello’, she says, ‘used to take me swimming. When I was still a little girl.’ Esmond and Gerald watch her and she meets their gaze. She steps in, the whiteness of her underclothes striking against the darkness of her arms and legs. She swims towards them.

They are careful of each other at first. Esmond looks down at his body, caressed by the same water, swimming in the wake of skin scurf and sweat that links them. He and Gerald dive underwater. They all know these submarine plunges are intended to catch better glimpses of each other, the arrangement of limbs. Gerald’s nakedness, which had come to seem natural by the swimming pool at L’Ombrellino, is changed by the fact that he, Esmond, is naked himself. He thinks his friend looks like a Greek sea god, Proteus or Glaucus, and Fiamma a nereid.

They swim downstream to one of the islands that prods up from the river near the mill. Gerald is the first to pull himself out onto the sand. Esmond does his best to leave the water gracefully and sits down, the sand warm and soft beneath him. Then Fiamma joins them, elbowing herself a place between them. At the touch of her skin, Esmond feels a warm jolt of longing in his groin and has to turn over and lie on his front. The water evaporates from their bodies as the sun moves across the sky.

‘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.