go,’ said Achille, taking her arm to steer her against the surging tide. His nose was also running, but he did not have another handkerchief. With the back of his glove, he wiped at tiny droplets on the hairs of his nostrils and moustache. His greatcoat was wet through. He was only there because, like her, he was frightened for Enrico. As the motorcade and its roaring motorcycles neared Piazza Signoria, the crowd congealed to a solid mass, a single entity, a heaving and tossing restive animal. The cheering rolled in waves. Annabelle was not cheering. Many around her were not cheering. The tannoys on every corner spewed recorded cheering for them. Over the top of it, the trumpets from the balcony of Palazzo Vecchio heralded Hitler’s arrival at the Town Hall. Annabelle plodded beside her father, eyes raking the swirl of people, ears straining for the sound of shots or confusion. Nothing. Deep in the pockets of her coat she curled her fingers tight. Her chest was tight too, but it seemed Enrico and his friends had done nothing stupid, for today.
‘Are you going back out or staying in town, Papà?’ she asked.
‘No, I have an appointment with Aldo,’ Achille replied. ‘Do you want to go back to the country? It will be hard to get there today with all this confusion.’
‘No. I’ll stay with you.’ That way she could search for Enrico.
Achille nodded. ‘Talk some sense into your cousin.’
The saturated wool of her stockings pooled in heavy rings at her ankles. She hated the itch and smell of wet wool. Her plaited hair, normally so fair, was dark with rain and her head itched as much her stockings. Her father’s hat was soaked. It would be ruined – the brim dripped like his nose. They turned down via Roma. At least here, he rambled, via Roma really did once lead to Rome … via Roma … via Roma … Annabelle’s mind strayed. As they stepped from the kerb, her father put out a restraining arm to stop her walking into the path of a sleek grey and black Lancia. In the rain, the powerful car purred and gleamed like a wet panther. As it slowed to turn, Annabelle saw a driver in peaked cap and uniform, and in the back, a young woman in a dark fur coat, soft and high about her throat. Long, pearl drop-earrings bobbed against the fur. Glossy dark curls, a pale, oval face. As she leaned forward to speak to the driver, one gloved hand on the back of the seat, she glanced out the window into Annabelle’s eyes and away again. Annabelle’s gaze followed the car as it glided off in a spray of dirty water. Her father gave a soft hrmmph and took her firmly by the elbow, turning her towards home. In answer to her unasked question, he muttered to her to get a move on because he did not have all day.
Annabelle squelched from foot to foot on the carpet before the fireplace in her father’s study.
Achille put his head around the door. ‘I shall be back for dinner. It will be better if you stay in today, Tesoro. The streets are no place to be. Take off those wet shoes.’
He said nothing about the soggy patches on his Persian rug.
Annabelle nodded. She was not going anywhere. She waved her father off. The streets were never any place to be. Certainly not in her lifetime. Right from the Renaissance, really, and before. Florence, City of Strife. Her father had taught Classics at the university until he took early retirement rather than wear a Fascist Party badge. He had not worked since Annabelle was seven or eight. She had little memory of him working. Neither had Zio Francesco ever held a job that she knew of. He devoted himself to the oversight of the family investments and factories in the north.
Things would not be the same after the war. Enrico said so. Fear of Communism and the Bolsheviks and their land and labour reforms had made the upper classes wilfully blind to the excesses of the Black Shirts these last twenty years. They despised the fascists but were willing to allow them to do the dirty work. Enrico said so. The world has to change, he said, often. And not ‘so that all could remain the same’. Nothing would be the same. Enrico said so. Annabelle was permanently afraid. Everyone of her age had grown up afraid. She was tired of being treated as a child, ready to revolt, to take a hand in changing things, like Enrico – whatever he was doing.
Rain tinkled at the mullioned windows. She loved her father’s study with its burnished bronzes and gleaming walnut furniture. The patina of age and permanence mantled everything in a glow of safety, but there was no comfort for her there today. In the mirror above the marble fireplace the air trembled with the rising steam of her damp clothes, but she did not want to go upstairs to change. Enrico really was too difficult! He was thoughtless and completely irresponsible. Her father said so and it was true. She ached to look for him but she did not know where to start. She waited with a clutch in her stomach for what seemed like hours – and then he was there, face flushed, eyes burning. His clothes and hair were soaked.
‘Where were you?’
His breathing galloped wildly. ‘I was there. I saw you and Zio but I had to go to a meeting as soon as the cavalcade passed. Did you see those two arrogant crazy bastards!’ It was not a question. ‘Papà says that’s what you get when you put two teetotallers together.’
He did not laugh and neither did Annabelle.
‘The crowd was so thick I could hardly move.’ Her hands balled into fists by her sides. ‘I was afraid for you.’
His hair was wet too. A darker blond than hers, more light brown really, it was fine and very thick, even if the high forehead and sharp widow’s peak did not bode well for his hairline in the future.
Enrico’s breath settled but he was still taut with excitement. ‘Italians! There they are, the heroes, on their way to sign away more lives for Hitler’s war. Italian lives are cheap to Benito anyway.’
They had taken to calling him Benito between themselves but the irreverence failed to lessen the fear.
Now Enrico was safe, however, Annabelle had other things on her mind. ‘Is it true you went with Clarice?’
Her chin jutted and her voice wobbled. The daughter of friends, Clarice was seventeen, the same age as Enrico. Annabelle overheard him getting a dressing-down from his father last night, for an escapade with Clarice.
‘Ficanaso. Stickybeak.’ Enrico smiled. He flicked the tip of her reddened nose with her damp plait. ‘Went with! Mind your own business, Ciccia. You have been spying on Papà and Zio again. Listening behind doors. My little worry wart.’ His indulgent grin made her want to spit at him.
He too smelled of steaming wool. She could smell his sweat, a sugary-smell. Caramel.
At fifteen, Annabelle was already tall but Enrico towered over her by a full head and he was still growing. It was their Australian blood on the distaff side. Their Australian grandmother, Nonna Annabelle, Annabelle Drummond from Orange, was tall for a woman of those times and she came from a long line of males much taller. All that sunshine and food. Annabelle was named for her but her grandmother died when Annabelle was three. Orange, what a beautiful name for a town.
Australia was a ridiculous shape on the map, a whole country in a single continent. Imagine having a whole continent, all to yourself! A continent at the bottom of the known world. Further than the moon. The Gumnut babies lived there. Her mother read stories of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie from an old book with magical images of cherub babies with fat little bottoms, who lived in exquisite flowers, the putti of her Renaissance ceilings transposed to the New World. In another book, exotic creatures ate from a pudding that never got smaller. Antipodean fables were so much lighter and sunnier than the European myths and legends of vengeful Gods and poor children. She listened to all the stories – all of them, the old ones and the new ones, and she melted into them and tried on the lives she found there. What else did she have to do?
Annabelle had never seen Australia but when a distant cousin was executed by the fascists, Papà sent her brothers there, to relatives, to save them from being drafted into Mussolini’s army, or shot. It had been more than two years. Enrico was to have gone but now it was too late. He would