A Florentine Revenge Page 3

  On her way down to the magazzino Luisa stopped off in the ladies to make sure she was presentable. It was no more than a tiny cubbyhole but the mirror was softly lit in there, and flattering; she looked a little tired perhaps, but nothing catastrophic. Hair neat and dark still, thanks to her hairdresser, back off her face; pearls in her ears; ironed white shirt; the same straight navy wool skirt to just below the knee she’d worn to work, day in, day out, ever since she could remember. Luisa washed her hands carefully out of habit, smoothed her skirt over her solid hips and frowned briefly at her reflection, glimpsing her own mother in the look she gave herself. Suddenly impatient, she whisked out of the door and on down to the stock room.

  There were six boxes waiting for her like Christmas presents, light as air, filled with cellophane packages. Party dresses from a new supplier. Luisa studied them, judging the quality; strapless tulle, with silk underskirt and satin ribbons around an empire waist, they came in good, bright jewel colours, scarlet and sapphire, purple and sea-green. Better get them out quick, thought Luisa, planning a window already; she knew just the shoes, a velvet corsage; not long till Christmas. She gathered an armful and hurried back up to the shop floor.

  Celia stamped along the river, shoulders hunched, trying to walk it out of her system and not altogether succeeding. The phone call had been from Kate. Involuntarily she sighed. Kate.

  Perhaps it was the same for all sisters. One of them, after all, had to be older and wiser and unable to refrain from administering advice. One of them had to have done everything before the other, although in Kate’s case, all she’d done was hold down a good, dull job in a publisher’s production department for a steady, unwavering ten years, got married, had two children in quick, efficient succession. Kate was now in the business of ordering her children’s lives and there was no doubt, she was good at it.

  Celia was fond of her nieces; she’d flown home when each of them was born, loaded with small and impractical presents, baby clothes that turned out to be the wrong size or season, marbled photograph frames, for each a heavy brass stamp with their initials. Flora and Imogen, both of them small, dark, serious children that reminded Celia of herself. She wrote to them when she remembered their birthdays and sent them postcards, but as she posted the parcels she couldn’t help but imagine Kate standing impatient at the breakfast table as the girls opened them, arms folded, imperfectly suppressing disapproval.

  Kate did try not to criticize, Celia could see that. But whenever she phoned, which wasn’t often, there was always that prickliness between them, palpable even down the telephone line, like a pair of cats, each wary of what the other might come out with, each knowing how easily offence might be given and taken. And the fact that Kate’s unspoken reproach – What are you doing with your life, out there? What have you got to show for fifteen years in the sun? – was beginning to look justified, didn’t make it any easier.

  She’d called to ask what Celia would be doing for Christmas. Her first words, though, and the tone in which they were delivered, were typical.

  ‘Oh! You’re in, then.’ Wearily Celia sat down at the table, the phone on her knee, and heard in those few words everything Kate believed her younger sister’s life to be; irresponsible, gadabout, a life spent at parties and in restaurants, frittering away her youth. Pleasing herself.

  ‘Have you been trying to get hold of me?’ she said. ‘I’ve been working, mostly.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kate, disbelieving. ‘Anyway,’ making an effort, now, to be friendly, ‘how’s the new place? You’ve fallen on your feet there, haven’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I have,’ said Celia, looking out across the rooftops. ‘Yes.’

  She pondered Christmas; she hadn’t thought about it much. Usually she just stayed home and read, enjoying the silence; if she got restless there was always work – even on Christmas Day you could get a job if you wanted one. She hadn’t been back to England for the holiday, she realized, in two years. ‘Three, actually,’ said Kate, and Celia knew she was probably right, she almost certainly had it noted down somewhere. ‘Flora was five when you last came.’

  Three years. Celia felt a momentary tightening in the pit of her stomach at the thought of all that time gone, so easily. ‘Are you sure you want me?’ she said, warily. ‘Haven’t you got enough on your plate?’

  There was a pause, and an almost imperceptible sigh. ‘No, I mean yes, of course I want you.’ For a second Kate sounded uncharacteristically tired, the bossy edge replaced with something flat and defeated. Is it me? Celia wondered. Is she really worried about me? Or something else? Not John, Kate’s husband, that was for sure, a solid, hardworking, unworldly man quite devoted to his family. Flora and Imogen?

  ‘Is everything all right? Girls all right? No one’s ill?’ she blurted, sounding even to herself like a hopeless, impractical, panicking younger sister.

  ‘No, no,’ said Kate. ‘Everything’s fine, we’re fine.’ She seemed to hesitate a moment.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not, whatever, not fashionable or something to say this kind of thing, but you know by the time I was your age I’d had both the girls? It’s not something you can put off for ever. You’re not—’

  ‘Not getting any younger,’ said Celia, putting her face in her hands. ‘I know’ I’m thirty-five, she repeated to herself, like a mantra. Not fifty-five. Shut up, shut up, shut up. It hadn’t got any better, after that.

  Out in the air Celia stopped now, her feet aching with stamping against the cold, hard pavement, and made a conscious effort to dissolve the tension in her stiff, angry limbs. She leaned on the rough stone parapet and looked down at the river, its surface glittering in the late-morning sun. A lone sculler bent over his oars, the tiny narrow craft skating smoothly across the green water towards the Ponte Vecchio. Across the river she could see the crowds clustered around the Uffizi, the souvenir stalls and pavement vendors, but on this side it was quiet, rush-hour past. Celia straightened, looked across at the huge terracotta dome of the cathedral rising over the rooftops, the golden ball and spire that surmounted it glinting in the pale light, tiny figures on the viewing platform. She stretched, willing the tension out of her shoulders, and took a deep breath. Coffee, she thought.

  The Caffè Maioli was one of Celia’s favourite places in the city; she had come here even when she lived in Galluzzo, stopping off on her way in to work for a dose of warmth, half-listening to the barmen’s banter. It was open every day, even Ferragosto, even Christmas; it fleeced tourists without mercy but once you were recognized, it was a different story. Its interior was bright with gleaming marble and it was famous for its pâtisserie; beside the bar stretched a long glass cabinet stacked with cakes and pastries: fruit tarts dusted with icing sugar, tiny profiteroles, mille-feuilles layered with crème Chantilly and custard.

  Behind the bar was a photograph from August 1947 of what appeared at first to be a desolate, bombed-out street, no more than a heap of blackened bricks. This was the Via Guiccardini, where the Maioli stood; three years after the German withdrawal from the city, as the Allies had advanced, it had still stood in ruins. It was here, at the southern end of the Ponte Vecchio, that the Germans had planted mines and the great palaces of the Via Guiccardini had been reduced to smoking rubble. But if you looked closer at the old photograph you could see a blurred white square in one corner, a little sign pasted on to what remained of the bar’s wall: Caffè Maioli. Aperto. Open for business.

  Pasquale looked up from his Gaggia as Celia came through the door, unwinding her scarf, and he inclined his head, smiling. That flirtatious little smile of his, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a crinkling around the eyes, just for her. Just for her, and the rest. Without a word as Celia stood at the bar, pulling off her gloves, he placed a cappuccino in front of her on the marble, a heart shape forming in the foam. Then he folded a paper napkin around a warm brioche from the tray just brought down from the bakery upstairs and tenderly presented it to her. Celia rolled her eyes,
but she took the pastry.

  She pushed a little pile of coins towards Pasquale across the bar, and sliding them into his hand he nodded past her to the doorway; she turned, and there was Beate.

  Dressed in something long and dark, a heavy piece of embroidered cloth thrown over her shoulders, Beate walked through the door, her fine-boned, golden face a little crumpled with weariness, eyes unfocused as though she were thinking of something else. Celia realized she’d hardly seen anything of Beate in the last couple of months, and felt a pang of remorse. It wasn’t as though they had a regular arrangement to meet and after all, that was how things were when you were a free spirit, a freelance, that was why they were all here, Celia supposed, remembering her conversation with Kate. They didn’t want to be bound to routine and duty and obligation. But perhaps freedom wasn’t everything, she thought as she took in the dark circles under Beate’s eyes; perhaps it won’t be so much fun being free ten, fifteen years down the line. The door swung shut behind her, keeping the steamy warmth inside, Beate looked across at the bar with an automatic smile for Pasquale, saw Celia and her smile spread, the weariness suddenly all gone.

  There had been a time when Beate and Celia had been in here together most days, stopping in for a coffee if they passed each other on the corner on the way to or from a job. In the cool early mornings it was handy for the Uffizi, at the end of the day for one of Pasquale’s surprisingly strong red aperitivi and five minutes’ winding down before the journey home. There was a particular table, tucked in around a corner, that was more or less reserved for regulars, and by unspoken agreement they sat there now.

  Beate threw her things down, dropping the big velvet bag she lugged everywhere on the floor and shrugging her coat and scarf gracefully on to the back of the chair. She had ordered a caffè latte, not her usual black coffee, and took a sip a little gingerly as though it were medicine. She looked up at Celia with a grimace.

  ‘It is supposed to be good for you, isn’t it?’ Beate said. Her voice was musical with a mixture of accents, Swedish, Italian, a little West Coast American from a long-ago boyfriend. ‘I think I need nourishment. Or something. Do you think I am getting too old for all these late nights?’

  Celia laughed, her reflex when Beate joked about being old, but of course one day it would be true, Beate would be officially old. And so, eventually, would she. Would she be alone, like Beate? Because Marco didn’t count for much, she realized. He wasn’t in it for the long haul with Beate. Thoughtfully she took a bite of her brioche.

  ‘So,’ said Beate, ‘not working today? You must have been so busy, I’ve hardly seen you.’ She spoke cheerfully.

  ‘Yes,’ Celia said. ‘A lot of tour-leading, out-of-town jobs. For the money.’ Beate grimaced sympathetically. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. Tour-leading – making arrangements, riding on coaches, not proper guiding – was a bit of a slog, it was agreed, with too much time spent away in hotels and no home comforts. Celia shrugged. ‘Oh, it makes a change,’ she said, feeling sanguine for once, ‘and I’m back in the city now. I’ve got a three-day job, starting tomorrow’ Beate patted her hand. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Good.’

  ‘And the flat’s terrific, Beate,’ said Celia suddenly. ‘Really. I don’t know what I would have done—’ she broke off, not wanting to sound too hopeless. ‘Really. You’re amazing.’

  Beate smiled a little. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said. ‘I only went there once, with Marco, to see the Venezuelan’s paintings.’ Her mouth turned down a little. ‘Hideous. I hope he took them all home with him, for your sake. But I thought the flat was sweet. A bell-tower, isn’t there?’ She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a heavy old Zippo out of the depths of her bag, and lit up.

  ‘Yes,’ said Celia. But Beate was looking back over her shoulder, wafting her smoke away, and didn’t hear; when she turned back she said brightly, ‘So, who’ve you got tomorrow? A big group? Or something nice and intimate?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Celia, pondering the answer to this question. ‘Not a big group. A couple.’ She felt a stir of unease she had been suppressing since she’d taken the job on, at the thought of three days playing gooseberry to a high-powered marriage. Intimacy didn’t sound very inviting. A birthday, a long weekend to celebrate the wife’s birthday. The husband’s pretty big in something, I don’t know exactly what. A banker, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Beate, taking another sip of her caffè latte. ‘The ones you needed the private room at the Ferrigno for? You never told me their name. Marco might know them.’

  ‘Marsh,’ said Celia with an involuntary sigh. ‘Mr and Mrs Lucas Marsh.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beate vaguely, setting her coffee down and frowning as though in an effort to remember something. She repeated the name softly and in her musical voice it sounded mysterious and strange. Lucas Marsh.

  5

  The shop could not have had a more favourable position; on the corner of the Piazza Signoria in the early mornings the crenellated shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio’s slender tower fell practically to its door, and every tourist, every worker in the city had to pass Frollini’s windows on their way anywhere. For some shops the location might have been a licence to pad out the stock with cheap stuff made in some Chinese factory, or to mark up the prices at random, but not Frollini, and particularly not Luisa.

  For special displays she favoured the window that faced down towards the bridge; the street on that side was broader and encouraged a more leisurely stroll past. It was here that she had set up her party dresses, and it had taken her longer than she had expected; Beppe had already let himself in, calling a greeting before retiring upstairs, and behind him Gianna, complaining about the cold, fussing about in her little nest behind the cash-desk with shawls and scarves. Gianna never dressed sensibly enough, that was her problem, thought Luisa, with those low-cut blouses behind the till; she leaned around her display and called across.

  ‘Nearly done.’ Her back to the glass, Luisa sat back on her stockinged heels to survey her handiwork.

  She had decided on green as her theme, with a splash of scarlet; a grassy-green tulle dress with a turquoise satin underskirt and ribbon waist, a pea-green velvet clutch bag, a pair of emerald crocodile pumps with high heels and round peep-toes. The red dress, she thought judiciously as she looked the display over, would be the one that sold best, crimson over a magenta underskirt, a velvet corsage in shades of plum pinned to the bust, satin shoes to match. Red was a Christmas colour; it was hard to sell at any other time of year, but at Christmas it ran out of the shop. Luisa liked the green, though – unlucky for some but somehow it had caught her imagination, fresh and new and romantic, a fairy colour. Carefully she set the card listing the prices in the corner of the window, filled out in her old-fashioned copperplate script; two weeks’ wages on a pair of shoes.

  There had been a time when Luisa might have gone without food for a fortnight for those shoes with their stacked heels and peep-toes. But these days she wore little flat pumps to save her legs. In the window she straightened her back, stiff from her cramped position on the narrow display ledge, and became aware of a figure stopping outside, looking in. She’d finished just in time. Carefully Luisa stepped back into the shop past the window’s backdrop, tucked her shirt smooth behind her waistband, buttoned her cuffs and, transformed once more into little more than a part of the shop’s fittings herself, discreetly looked out at her display’s first audience.

  A girl stood there, looking at the green dress. Perhaps not quite a girl, maybe thirty, thirty-five, although from Luisa’s vantage point, at closer to sixty, thirty seemed impossibly young. Watching the look she gave the dress, with a tug Luisa remembered being thirty herself, that threshold into adulthood; in her opinion it wasn’t eighteen at all that marked maturity, you stayed a child all through your twenties. At thirty you were beginning to wonder if you might not be getting too old for strapless party dresses, even though they still drew you, still promised happiness, dancing, opportunities. At thirty
you began to glimpse age, began to see where things might end. Luisa had married at thirty.

  The woman on the pavement liked the dress, Luisa could see that, and it would suit her. She had pale, translucent northern skin, not Italian, with dark hair tied back; she was muffled in a good dark coat but wore no gloves – an Italian would certainly be wearing gloves – and her face was young, unmade-up, with strong, high-arching eyebrows; it was a good old-fashioned face. No children, thought Luisa, who made a game of wondering about such things; no husband. The woman looked at Luisa as though she was calculating, Could I afford that? Not, He could buy me that for Christmas. She didn’t even need to look at the prices, either, to know it was out of her league, but still she was frowning, wondering what she might do without, and for how long, to compensate for this wisp of sea-green nothing. Luisa wondered if she would come into the shop; probably not.

  As though in answer, just then the woman turned, as if to move on. The morning sunlight fell on her face and Luisa leaned forward a little; did she recognize her? She turned back for one last look at the green dress and Luisa considered the high arch of the eyebrows, the blue eyes; she had an excellent memory for faces and liked to be able to remember a customer. Rude, she always thought, to forget them after that brief connection you made over the softness of a suede handbag or the perfect colour to suit a complexion. And then the young woman looked straight at Luisa and smiled, a shy, conspiratorial smile that lit her face; she shrugged as if to admit, they both knew that dress was out of her league, but she could look. Yes, Luisa pondered, sure of it now, I have seen you before. One of the guides. And she smiled back.