The Faces of Angels (11 page)

And that's when I see her, the woman from the apartment opposite. Almost directly in front of me, she's wearing a red coat with a red velvet collar. Her pale hair is pulled back in a pony-tail, which does not suit her, and her face splits into a grin as the little boy we saw on the bridge last night comes running towards her. She grabs him and lifts him straight into the air. ‘Paolo!' she exclaims. ‘Paolo!' And his small, peaked face opens like a flower as he looks down at his mother.

The boys are already in the shorts of their summer uniform, and when she puts him down, her son bends to pull up his knee socks, exposing the soft crown of his head. She tousles it with one hand, reaching with the other for the shopping bag she has left leaning against the wall. As she does, Paolo giggles and bats at her, and steps sideways. His foot hits the edge of the sidewalk, and suddenly two things happen at once: I see him begin to fall, to topple in slow motion like a statue tipping, and I hear the loud roar of a motorcycle.

Before I know what I'm doing, I drop my bag and lunge. There is the sound of my own voice, shouting, of his mother's cry of alarm, and the huge black BMW hurtles past us as I grab the little bird-like shoulders.

In truth, I don't think it was that close. But it was coming the wrong way down a one-way street, and when I look at him, the boy's face is white and beginning to crumple. His mother's face is white too, a bright pale moon with two livid, red cherry spots on her cheeks.

‘
Signora, grazie! Grazie!
' she says, as she folds Paolo into her, pressing his head to her stomach. The other parents buzz and hum around us. ‘Those goddam motorcycles,' they say. ‘They should be banned!' ‘No respect for others! For children!' ‘It's a school, for God's sake.' ‘He was going the wrong way on a one-way street!' Another mother bends down to pick up my bag from the sidewalk, and I thank her, moving quickly to get there before she does. But the file has not fallen out and, much to my relief, Ginevra Montelleone's dead face is not staring up at us from the gutter.

‘Oh your bag. It's wet. It's ruined! I'm sorry.' The woman from the apartment opposite is mopping at my old leather shoulder bag with a red gloved hand, but I tell her it's fine, that this bag has seen a lot worse, and besides, if the damage is bad, it will give me an excuse to buy a new one. We are speaking in Italian, and she laughs. After all the crying and swearing we've heard flying across the courtyard, it's an unexpected sound.

‘Your Italian is better than most Americans',' she says suddenly. Then she adds, in English, ‘I'm from London, but I've lived here for eleven years. My husband calls me Sophia, but my name is Sophie.' She laughs again. ‘Sophie-Sophia Sassinelli. What's that like for a name?'

She extends her hand, and when I take it her shake is soft and a little squishy. Up close, her face is younger than I thought. She can't be much more than thirty, and still with puppy fat. Everything about Sophie-Sophia reminds me of an overripe fruit.

‘Mary,' I say. ‘Mary Thorcroft.'

‘I've seen you.'

I let go of her hand suddenly, remembering the bridge last night and all the other times Billy and I have lingered in the kitchen, hiding behind the linen panels in the French window, listening to her almost nightly fights with her husband. But it turns out that's not what she's talking about, or if it is, she's too gracious to say so.

‘You helped me,' she says, smiling. ‘The other day, when I was coming to get Paolo and couldn't get the stroller through the gate.' She doesn't have the stroller with her today, and she looks down at the little boy, who has begun to fidget and tug at her hand. ‘He shouldn't even ride in the buggy any more, really,' she says. ‘He's too big. But I guess I just can't let go of my baby.'

I don't know if Paolo speaks English, but I suspect he does because he scowls when she says this.

‘Do you have children?' she asks. She looks into my face, her brown eyes as round and guileless as a rabbit's, and as I shake my head I understand that Sophie-Sophia Sassinelli is almost unbearably lonely.

We walk together out of the high-walled alley that houses the school and turn down towards Santo Spirito. Paolo is silent now, scuffing the toes of his polished shoes on the sidewalk, probably embarrassed, both by the fact that I grabbed him and that I'm still here. He drags on his mother's hand, twisting it sideways so it looks as though her arm must be rotating in its socket. She doesn't seem to notice, but it might explain why she's so keen on strapping him down and wheeling him around.

‘Your Italian is good,' Sophie says again. ‘Have you worked here?'

I shake my head. ‘Nope. I've studied it. And I have a friend who's fluent. I'm here on an art history course,' I add, answering the question she hasn't asked.

‘Me too,' she says. ‘I mean, that's how I came here. To do art history. You know, one of those things where you get to live in a
pensione
and wear black all the time.' There's the laugh again, high and unexpected, like a carillon of bells. I look at her out of the corner of my eye. I cannot begin to imagine her wearing black. Her rounded figure and baby-doll eyes summon up Laura Ashley. Flowered smocks and matching cardigans. Possibly headbands. School uniforms for children who have grown too big.

‘I was just a schoolgirl, really,' she says, as if confirming this diagnosis. ‘My parents weren't sure what to do with me after I didn't get into Oxford, so Mummy arranged for me to come here. Then I met Big Paolo, it's my husband's name too, you know how Italian families are, and, well, the rest is history, as they say. They say that in the States, don't they?' she asks. “The rest is history”? I've always thought it was an odd expression.'

The laugh is nervous now, and there is no corresponding smile on her face. In her bright red coat, she reminds me of a plumped-up robin, or a sad Christmas elf. ‘But I like it,' she adds, ‘really, I do. I love living in Florence.'

We have crossed the piazza by this time, skirted the fountain and turned into the street that houses our building. At the bottom of the steps I grope for my keys, but I'm spared the effort of finding them when Marcello from the grocery store suddenly appears in the archway and pushes the security gate open, holding it for me. The signora has delivered to the old lady below us before, but now I notice a Vespa with a delivery box on the back propped against the wall, paintings of vegetables, carrots mainly, and a few tomatoes and peas, emblazoned across its mudguard. It's obviously brand new. Now she has Marcello she's branching out.

‘Very smart,' Sophie says.

Marcello mumbles something as he gets on the scooter, and I tell him it looks pretty sharp, which causes him to blush so badly that for an awful second I'm not even sure he's going to be able to start the thing. It farts and sputters before he finally roars away, the signora's phone number glowing in bright red letters across the back of his helmet.

‘Oh dear,' Sophie says, watching him. ‘How awful. To have to ride around Florence as a moving advertisement for carrots.' I am standing on the steps, but she has stopped on the sidewalk. ‘We have to go on to the bakery,' she adds. ‘That's what Paolo and I do, don't we? Have a pastry every day after school.' She looks down at the little boy and smiles, but he is staring at the sidewalk, looking almost as mortified as Marcello, his shoulders hunched inside his school jacket as if he wishes he could turn it into a snail's shell.

‘Well, thank you again.' Sophie smiles up at me hopefully, and all at once I feel as if I'm looking into the memory of my own face. Her miserable marriage, her loneliness, it's all written there in not-so-secret code, the meaning plainly visible to the initiated.

From the entry at the bottom of our stairs, I can hear the claustrophobic little elevator, whirring and grinding, lowering itself inch by inch to the ground floor. And as I climb up, passing it, I wonder if maybe it's Father Rinaldo, come like a determined door-to-door salesman, pushing salvation again. Maybe if I hang over the stair rail, I'll see the pink bald spot on the top of his head when he gets out of the little wire cage. But when I hear the elevator hit bottom, the footsteps that echo across the vestibule are definitely a woman's. There's the unmistakable click of high heels. Probably the companion who lives with the old lady below us. I've met her before, said
buongiorno
when crossing the courtyard, but I have no idea of her name.

I open the apartment door, feeling the key pull back the heavy locks, and call for Billy. Since I've done something bad in my borrow-stealing from Piero, I decide I'll make up for it by being especially nice to her. Another Catholic trick: a good act on one side of the scales equals a bad one on the other. It's pretty simple really, all this redemption stuff, even dummies can get it.

But my goodness is destined to be denied. There's utter silence. Admittedly that's not unusual, but when I see that her old tweed coat is gone from the hall closet, I realize Billy's definitely not here. Well, I think, every coin has two sides. I don't get to do a good deed, admitted, but I'm cold and damp, and can have a cup of coffee in peace, maybe even make myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Then I'll think about the contents of my bag, and how to handle meddlesome priests.

Twenty-four hours after the fact I have to admit that Rinaldo doesn't seem so important. I was just hungry and grumpy, and I consider the idea that Billy was not winding me up deliberately and instead just misunderstood. Her Italian is lousy, so maybe ‘Warren' was just a coincidence. A lot of things could sound like Warren, with an accent.

‘War-hen. Warreen. Warrensi. Warrensini,' I say out loud.

Or maybe it was Billy's idea of a joke. Maybe telling someone a priest came looking for them is a real hoot back in Fort Pain. Either way, I forget about it as soon as I walk into my room.

The place reeks of my perfume. My foundation and brushes have been moved. And my two new compacts. I may leave dishes in the sink and clothes on the floor, but I am fastidious about my make-up. I don't have much of it, and no matter where I am, I always line it up in the same order on top of my bureau. Always.

Now, everything is messed up. My eye shadows are not in neat piles of two. My lipsticks have been rearranged. My earring box is open, and the top has been left off my hair ‘glistener'. It even looks as if she sat on my bed. I can see the indent of her behind on the cover. And the pillow's mushed down.

‘Goddam it!' I swear. ‘Billy's been in my stuff.'

I
T'S SATURDAY BEFORE
I open the folder.

Billy came back later on Friday, after I'd eaten and called Pierangelo, but I didn't feel like talking to her so I went to a movie. As Piero pointed out, the incursion into my room was so flagrant that she virtually has to be picking a fight, so the best revenge is to ignore her. He said that always worked with his teenage daughters. I believe his exact words were: ‘Don't let the enemy draw you into the conflict of their choice.' Or something like that. Anyway, it sounded pleasingly adult, which suited me fine. I don't like conflict, and what, exactly, was I planning to say?
I know you moved my lipstick! And touched my eye shadow!
Was I going to accuse her of looking at my earrings? The more I thought about it, the more I thought I ran the real risk of looking and sounding like an idiot.

So I waited until she went to a lecture on Caravaggio this morning, then made myself coffee, went into my bedroom, and locked the door, just like I used to when I was in High School and reading something I knew Mamaw wouldn't approve of. Barbara Cartland novels.
The Story of O
. The battered copy of
The Joy of Sex
that did the rounds the spring I was in Eighth Grade, rented out for a dollar by a girl called Sandy Skivling who stole it from the adult section of the Book Mobile.

These stories don't compare, though. These stories are worse than anything I've ever read.

Eleanora Darnelli was indeed a nun, but only just. She was on the verge of leaving the convent when she was killed two years ago, sometime during the evening of 21 January, and I guess her story might be romantic, if it wasn't so awful.

Originally from somewhere in Calabria, Eleanora was sent to Florence by her parents to live with a family friend so she could go to better schools. She started out as a pupil at the convent she later joined in Fiesole, in the hills above the city, where eventually she taught in a day-care centre. Apparently she was happy there, and a good sister, a proper handmaiden of Christ. Or so everyone thought. Until the summer before she died, when an artist called Gabriel Fabbiacelli came to do some restoration work on the chapel.

Within weeks they had fallen in love, and by the end of the summer Eleanora had informed the Mother Superior that she could no longer honour her vocation, and she wanted to leave. The convent did everything it could to dissuade her. Pierangelo's notes don't go into details, but just reading this gives me the creeps. It's more than Karel Indrizzio's blade we share.