let the waves crest and the wetness flow down her thighs. Sinking to the cold tiles, she stifled a moan – sound carried in the vast spaces of the upper floor.
Did Claretta feel this? What did they do together? What would it be like to defy all conventions for love? Would she, Annabelle, do it for Enrico? No reading of Boccaccio or Petrarch or the letters of Heloise could answer these questions. The only naked men she had ever seen were statues: the tortured body of Christ in all its agony, or the images of impaled saints on constant display in every church and museum. Repulsive. There was the gigantic member of Neptune in Piazza Signoria – surely no-one could really look like that? She sighed, shivered, got unsteadily to her feet and picked up her brush again, observed from the mirror by a serious girl in a sensible floral nightgown. A clammy nightgown – damp and sticky.
She dropped the brush with a clatter as her father passed her door, giving it a hearty morning thump on his way downstairs. The rich basso of the Duomo’s bells reverberated through the walls, mimicked by the tinnier ones of the Badia. Annabelle tied her dressing-gown tightly, picked up her chamber pot and headed down the long cold hallway to the bathroom. Unsteadily.
In the breakfast room, Enrico was already seated at the far end of the table, deep in conversation with her father, whose large bowl of caffe latte was almost empty. Enrico had lately taken to drinking only strong black espresso, which made Annabelle shiver. The ground barley they called coffee was only bearable with milk. La Nazione was open before them. That was sure to inflame outrage. They were in accord in their disdain for the editor, a loyal functionary of the Regime. One of the first acts of the fascists was to abolish a free press, so the English newspapers, which were all Annabelle had known, were no longer available. She missed them.
She longed for once-upon-a-time mornings when conversations turned on matters such as whether the inventor of chamber music was Haydn or Sammartini. Goethe described chamber music as ‘four rational people conversing’. Would that ever happen again? Nevertheless, they took La Nazione to know what the day’s line in propaganda would be. This morning their outrage centred upon news that important pieces of Renaissance art had been transferred to Germany for protection. Protection! Theft, plain and simple! Nazi opportunism! They were both taking affront with their coffee.
‘Good morning.’ Annabelle poured some warm milk into her bowl, her voice a little loud, guilty, as if Enrico could somehow know of the performance before the mirror. Most mornings she prayed he would be there at the table. Most mornings, her prayers were answered. Her mother was always prepared, the big blue and white bowls of caffe latte and the brioche ready. Aunt Elsa did not rise early. They all spent most of their time in the palazzo in town now. Annabelle had not been out to Impruneta for months. Her parents went for the vendemmia – the grapes had to be gathered, but she remained in town with the excuse of her hated schoolbooks. The raccolta was due but they could press the oil without her.
She dropped a casual kiss on the top of her father’s head, and then on Enrico’s in the same manner. The effort nearly killed her. He greeted her absently with a pat on her hip as she passed. She twitched away; who does he think he is? Her father? He was ever more taken up with his clandestine activities. He would not tell her anything, supposedly on the grounds of her safety. Her safety! She was so tired of being a treated as a child.
Annabelle had been an introverted child in a darkening world: a non-believer in a Catholic country and a non-fascist in a fascist country. The fascist hierarchy was often manned by members of the aristocracy and many were relatives. She had more cousins than she could count but most were estranged, living on the other side of the political divide. She had no school friends because she had no school. She knew no life but that of a stranger to her caste and her country and her city. Now, she was still anxious … no longer a child, but not yet free to be an adult either, in this world turned upside down. Florence had become a city of shadows and running footsteps and sudden pounding on doors and marching boots and the clash of metal arms and explosions. She thought she might explode too.
Giacomo and Umberto had been interned in Australia. Papà had explained they were better off interned far away in safety and relative comfort than here in this vile morass. He only wished he had sent all the children. As for internment, he said, every country did it. The day war was announced here in Florence, the police turned up at the door of Villa La Pietra to arrest Hortense Acton and all the other foreign residents of the city. The venerable Lady Acton was tossed into jail wearing only her summer dress and without so much as a toothbrush or an apology. The great difference, he said, was that here, many people were able to bribe their way out.
The declaration of war changed everything. Florence became a fortified city, not so much for its residents, but for its art. Florentines lived in a city of ghostly statues whose wrapping and padding made it seem they had grown fat while real people had grown thin. Glass was removed from doorways and barriers built. Walls were bare, with only the faded outlines of pictures taken down and packed for safekeeping. Blackout material gave the city an air of mourning. Most churches and major galleries were emptied, their contents stored in country villas and castles, like Castello Montegufoni, sequestered by the government from Sir George Sitwell. The Germans were shipping art treasures to Germany ‘to protect them’. By now, the hiding of art was not only for protection against possible bombing by the enemy Allies, but, said Achille, more against the depredation of our so-called friends. Annabelle was not interested; she just wanted to know what Enrico was doing and be doing it with him.
Rome 1943
Du-ce! Du-ce! Du-ce!
Clara was tired of being in bed, but she was still not well enough to get up. Ben would be here soon, loving and solicitous again now, after she had nearly died. Ectopic pregnancy. She had never heard of such a thing. It was nearly fatal, her father said.
She sighed, shifting her weight in the bed to ease the pain. Time was passing. Was thirty too old to have children? She said a quick prayer to Saint Rita. She had so wanted to have the baby.
‘Women are born for babies and blows,’ Ben once said, and God knows she had had enough blows. All his other women had borne him endless children. Why could she not give him that joy? She really had thought he was going to leave her the last time. If only she were the mother of his child, she would be guaranteed the place in his life of Rachele, or Alice and Rospilda and Angela Cucciati. Eleven children that she knew of. Ben did love children. He had even passed a law forbidding childless bachelors a place in the civil service.
He was being so nice to her now in the face of this terrible loss. He would never marry her; she knew that. Ben did not believe in marriage. He denied ever having married Ida Dalser, even though everyone knew he did and the courts decided the boy was his. He only married Rachele under protest before the second child was born – Edda was born out of wedlock. Even when he gave in to Rachele’s pressure, he refused to consider a church wedding, but married her in a civil ceremony. He said he was too ill at the time to argue, bedridden with typhus during the war. Ben cared nothing for religion or for convention, but then, neither did she really. There had been talk of bigamy but he assured her it was his political enemies spreading lies. No, Claretta would not want to be his wife. He’d had Ida Dalser locked up in the madhouse and her son too. Rachele, the harridan, might rule in Ben’s home but she had a terrible life, really. His mistresses fared much better. Clara would happily bear his child if only things went better the next time.
Doors, draughts, footsteps, voices: the fuss of arrival downstairs. ‘Richard’ was due at 4 pm, the usual message said, and Ben was always punctual. Clara sank back onto the pillows, studying the effect in the corner mirror, pleased to note that she was still quite pallid. She admired the impressive solitaire diamond glittering on her left hand. Ben would be a while, because her illness had brought him even closer to her family and he would stop to talk to her mother and to her sister Myriam – he was helping to further her acting career. Her father would be back from the Vatican soon and Ben would be pleased to see him. When he was actually here, she was happy – at least he was not out making love to other women. Though he found it boring for her to be the invalid.