brow lowered. ‘Don’t be stupid. Just because you have an irrational dislike of the man does not mean he is not a genius.’
She did not like the way Ben slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other, rising up and down on the balls of his feet. It was not a good sign, but today Clara was not heeding signs.
Starace. That man and his manias. He had gradually altered the whole way Italians lived their daily lives. True, some of his ideas were good but Clara liked the way people used to shake hands. Now it was no longer allowed. Too English, Starace said. So everyone had to give the Roman salute. It was all right for men perhaps, but it was ridiculous for women. Now anyone who shook hands was designated a bad fascist, of dubious character. It did not stop Ben shaking hands with his dear friend the Führer though, she noticed. On the other hand, the way Ben’s title must be entirely written in capitals pleased her. DUCE. It definitely carried more weight. It had been Starace’s idea to have the lights of Palazzo Venezia burning all night so the citizens would think their DUCE worked all night for them, and it was a good idea too, though Ben had enough sense to have the lights turned off after midnight. Let us not exaggerate, he said.
‘You are obsessed with Achille,’ Ben said.
‘No,’ she said, her voice rising dangerously, ‘you are obsessed with him. You listen to him more than me.’
‘Well, at least he is loyal to me. He will be loyal to the end.’ He hiked the needle off her Chopin record, scraping it across the shellac, and dropped it roughly in its cradle.
‘Loyal!’ She heard her voice crack but there was no turning back. It was going to go that way tonight; she could see it. ‘I am the only one who is loyal to you, who is here by your side day and night, who truly loves you. And how dare you call me stupid.’
Most of the time Clara tried to placate him: diffuse the bomb, soothe her Lion, turn away the wrath – but when Ben wanted a fight, nothing on God’s earth would deflect him. Try as she might, the dam would burst and the blows would rain. Sometimes she did not care, and this was one of those times.
CHAPTER 2
Florence 1942
The Day of the Dead
November again. All Souls Day again. Again and again. A whole year since Hitler’s state visit. Annabelle opened her eyes reluctantly and wiggled deeper beneath the heavy blanket. The rough wool itched her chin, but at least it was not that awful synthetic stuff people were using since wool became unavailable. Lanital – her father said it was made from milk. How disgusting. To think Florence was once the city of cloth.
She sighed and forced herself out of bed. A great lassitude assailed her; the shadow of a monster loomed at her shoulder. The war was going badly. America had been in the war for nearly a year but still it dragged on. For months, photographs of captured Italian soldiers in Egypt had been circulating. El Alamein. Wasn’t that where their cousin Roberto was fighting? Italian troops were in Russia too – Stalingrad. A new name. The whole world was at war: countries Annabelle had never heard of were fighting with each other in places she could not even find on a globe. Thailand! Where on earth was that? Terrifying stories of what Hitler was doing to the Jews were no longer in doubt. She had never given much thought to whether people were Jews. Now there were Jews in hiding all over the city, many from the north, running from the Germans.
It was not Il Duce’s fault, people said. Everything, they whispered, was the fault of ‘that woman’, Clara Petacci, who governed the country from his bedroom. Le voci corrono, word has it … Annabelle heard these conversations between Anna Maria and her husband in the kitchen, at the vegetable stall in Sant’Ambrogio market, between elderly ladies at the butcher and, in a slightly different register, in her own drawing room. It was open conversation now, as Annabelle’s parents had given up any pretence of keeping her inured to the goings-on in the nation. The city was full of gossip and fear, of plot and counterplot. It must be the fault of the woman beside the leader. To blame him would be, her father said, to lose the last shred of faith holding the whole shambles together. Se lo sapesse Il Duce, they said. ‘If only Il Duce knew about it …’ He would do something. Put a stop to the things done in his name. The saying had been in currency for as long as she could remember, had become a matter of derision, though all mirth was gallows humour now. Mussolini did know and did not care.
Annabelle was both horrified and titillated by the stories of Mussolini and his lover. Claretta, she was called, and the walls of her parents’ Roman villa were, almost daily now, covered in graffiti: puttana, troia, whore. The Carabinieri guarded the house on Mussolini’s orders. Clara’s father was a Vatican doctor, the Pope’s doctor. Wealthy and once well-respected, they had behaved for many years as the inlaws of Il Duce. The newspapers revelled in stories of their doings. Lately, the role had less cachet. People were looking for someone to carry the blame and shame and fear of a failing war, and they did not have to look far. According to Enrico, Mussolini had become a syphilitic megalomaniac who was afraid to go out. He must hear these things at his secret meetings, Annabelle supposed. Meetings Enrico refused to take her to.
Up at Piazzale Michelangelo – last year it would have been – she recalled seeing several stylishly foreign women in elegant suits and high heels, wearing jaunty hats a bit like the shape of the Alpini brigades, some with a feather. They posed for a photograph, self-consciously ranged down the steep slope of the stone parapet, the Duomo behind them, a chattering, cheerful flock of migratory birds. German. She could hear the guttural consonants. Behind her, two elderly gardeners muttered to each other:
‘Hitler’s lover,’ said one, with a nod at the women.
‘Which one?’ asked the other.
‘That one,’ he replied, with a thumb in the direction of a woman with light brown hair and a rather plain face, wearing one of the feathered hats.
‘Hrrumph,’ his companion grunted, ‘la nostra è piu bella!’
They sniggered and sauntered off. Ours is better looking. Annabelle pondered the joke but it made no sense. Then.
A short while ago she furtively cut out a photograph of La Signora Clara Petacci from a newspaper. The dress had a deep, crossover V-neck. Black hair thickly curled in satiny bunches swept back from a high forehead, in a pose reminiscent of images of the women of ancient Rome. The lips were deeply etched, with what would certainly have been scarlet if it were in colour. Clara gazed off to her left with longing. Annabelle was certain she was gazing at her lover. In the V of her neckline, a heavy ball pendant on a long chain rested between full breasts, and in her ears were large pearls.
Annabelle curled her toes as they hit the icy cotto floor. Sliding her feet into her ciabatte, she tied her dressing-gown and made her bed, taking care with the corners. Her mother worried greatly about properly made beds and such matters now. Eleanora spent long periods reorganising the cutlery drawers and linen press and giving minute directions in the kitchen. It soothed her ‘nerves’, gave her a sense of control in a world gone mad, a world where her sons had disappeared. Annabelle understood and tried not to be irritated.
She dragged a comb through her hair – the bone one with the wide teeth that Nonna Lucrezia had given her. Her hair, once so fine and fair, had darkened to a deep golden blonde and was too thick for the fine combs and gilt-backed brushes on her dressing table. She paused before the mirror, one hand raised to her hair, as her dressing-gown fell open. Beneath her nightdress, the swell of her breasts was satisfying; they too had grown. Not as much as she would like, but still … She unbuttoned the childish floral nightdress, running her hands softly over pale nipples and then in gentle circles around each breast, shivering from her scalp down. She closed her eyes, thinking of the soft white skin at the base of Enrico’s throat, the downy hair of his forearms as it caught the sunlight. What if he kissed her? What if he put his full lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth? She knew people really kissed like that. It made her feel a little queasy, set off great surges, convulsions, waves rising and breaking. She pinched her nipples until they hurt and an electric current zigzagged through her centre to somewhere deep, deeper.