A Florentine Revenge Read online

  On the pavement Celia turned away from the window, the image of the dress imprinted on her unconscious memory, filed away under unattainable. She had seen the woman standing there for some time behind the window display in the shop’s creamy interior with her hands behind her back, solid, helmeted with black hair, watching her. Celia had been in there once or twice, having recommended the shop to clients; she knew they wouldn’t be ripped off in Frollini, and they sold good, well-made clothes, catwalk stuff but judiciously selected, so she knew they wouldn’t be disappointed either. She liked the atmosphere in there too – it was faintly old-fashioned, despite the modern fittings. But Celia would always stand back once she’d taken them in, self-effacing, trying to disappear, trying not to be taken for a paying customer. These clothes, after all, weren’t within her reach. She walked on towards the Palazzo Ferrigno, where Lucas Marsh and his wife would be having dinner on Saturday night.

  He didn’t want a restaurant for that night, he said; he would leave it to her. But finding somewhere for them to have this particular dinner had, surprisingly, been the hardest part of the job.

  ‘He wants good paintings, and privacy. A private dining room,’ she’d said to Beate, at her wits’ end. She’d thought when she took on the job that the Corsini would have had something; it was a vast place and so impossibly expensive that she thought they couldn’t be booked. But no, it had been quite out of the question, the direzione there had said haughtily. Beate had thought a bit, then suggested the Ferrigno; it wasn’t generally open to the public, still in private hands, but Beate, who had the best contacts in the city, had got her the dining room at three weeks’ notice.

  ‘Good paintings, yes,’ Beate had said consideringly. ‘Some lovely Titians, and certainly it’s private, plenty of people don’t know it exists. I’ve heard a rumour they’ve had royalty there when they’re keeping their heads down, isn’t that what you say? It’s a funny sort of place, though, very old-fashioned.’

  Celia had leapt at it; old-fashioned, surely, was what was wanted. But it was a funny sort of place, Beate was right; no, the administrator had said when she telephoned to confirm the reservation, she couldn’t come and check the room, they were very busy. Some of the paintings were in restoration, others were being rehung – it was a carefully controlled environment. She should pay in advance, submit any specific requests in writing, and sometime in the interim they might be able to arrange a visit. But they had never had any complaints, she finished, with just a suggestion in her voice that she was ready to take offence.

  It had been a risk, but Celia had seen the building from the outside and knew it to be beautiful, and besides, she had no choice. So she sent the money and a letter requesting the terrace for drinks and the best paintings available. When she sent the itinerary to Lucas Marsh, he had seemed more than satisfied; Titian, he said, was exactly the painter he had been thinking of, and she had relaxed, warmed by his approval. Now, though, after what Beate had said this morning in the bar, something whispered to her that she had better be sure of every detail. It wouldn’t do any harm, now would it? Even if she had to just turn up on the Ferrigno’s doorstep and insist.

  The mention of Lucas Marsh seemed to have set something off in Beate that unsettled Celia and left her thinking, These people are out of my league. She started mildly enough, typically of Beate, who was not one to barter explicit gossip, not having an envious bone in her body. She liked to believe the best of people, and had a good word for even the most spoilt of the city’s wealthy itinerants, the wastrel scions of noble Florentine families or empty-headed heiresses from Hong Kong or Park Avenue. ‘So generous,’ she would say, or, ‘A lovely person, really, just a little, unfocused.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure, but I think Marco does know him,’ she’d said at first, vaguely, to explain how she knew who he was. ‘Or know of him, you can’t tell with Marco, such a name-dropper. Have I seen him in one of those magazines?’ She put her head on one side. ‘Yes. He’s got a pretty wife, I think, but I can’t picture him, not exactly.’

  ‘Do you know what he does?’ Celia had asked, curious.

  Beate had shrugged. ‘Oh, these magazines, they never actually say, do they? What do any of them do? And I have never actually met him myself, I don’t go to London. I have a feeling he might be a lawyer. Marco did speak about him once, now I come to think of it, when he went to England for one of those big forums they go in for. He was impressed, by how rich he was, I expect.’ Beate rolled her eyes. ‘What do they call themselves? The Association of Directors, something like that. What does that mean? A lot of rich men get together in an expensive hotel or one of their clubs and talk about, I don’t know, how to get richer. Why not to sell here, why to go there, expanding markets. War zones. At least Marco’s not into all that, not really.’

  Celia had nodded, wondering if Marco really rubbed shoulders with these people, if Lucas Marsh could really be one of those exploiters she’d read about, a man who sold cigarettes to Chinese children, or arms to Sudanese warlords. Or if Marco just told stories he thought would impress Beate when he came back from some conference; Celia hoped so. Then Beate shook her head a little to leave the subject behind and smiled.

  ‘We have to see more of each other, sweetheart. Don’t you think? Let’s have a drink tonight?’ And Celia had agreed, then waved goodbye and watched Beate saunter off, ringleted hair shining silver in the light down the Borgo San Jacopo towards her flat.

  Still, Celia decided, her thoughts returning to work as she walked through the straw market, past the shiny-snouted bronze of a boar, his fountain filled with pennies made golden by the heavily chlorinated Florentine water, and down into the comfortable gloom of the Via Porta Rossa, it’s only a weekend. By Monday Lucas Marsh and his wife would be gone, whisked back out of her world, without a trace, and besides, despite her apprehension she was more certain than ever that it wouldn’t be dull, a weekend with them.

  Leading down to the Ferrigno, the Via Porta Rossa was busy. A handful of shop owners – mostly elegantly dressed men in late middle age, practised in the art of flattering foreign ladies of a certain age – were standing in their doorways, smoking fastidiously, chatting, watching for custom. It gave the road the air of a rather raffish drawing room rather than a city street.

  The sight of the Christmas decorations going up took Celia by surprise; it was, she supposed, thinking of Kate and her telephone call, well into December already. And it was getting colder; here in the shadow you could feel the stones of the street beginning to take up the air’s chill, settling into winter. At the far end of the street a broad strip of sunlight fell down the Via Tornabuoni on to the tall marble column that stood between the great church of the Santa Trinità and the scalloped facade of the Palazzo Salimbeni and it gleamed pink and white. This was the seductive city at its most ravishing, a place so lovely it was hard to believe anything unpleasant could ever happen here, no drug deals in the shadow of these exquisite palaces, no prostitutes haunting the ring roads, no bodies found floating in the river.

  Celia crossed in the warmth, past a swathed beggar who sat outside the church with her hands held out, folded across each other, and a crudely pencilled message on a piece of card in front of her. I am poor, it read, I have nothing. Have pity. Celia wondered where the woman went at night, thought of the uncharted grey hinterland to the city. She dug in her pocket and dropped a handful of centesimi on to the fold of cloth in front of the rocking figure, then went on down the Via del Patione, where the Palazzo Ferrigno lay. It was narrow, too, and dark, but emptier than the Via Porta Rossa and grander; this was where the very rich kept their little pieds-à-terre, the wealthy Americans who liked to have a place for shopping or dipping into the galleries, the young men who worked for Gucci. Celia stopped outside the doors of the Palazzo Ferrigno, open to reveal a lavishly huge, empty courtyard, a symbol of wealth here where land prices were impossibly high.

  Daunted, she made her request with elaborate courtesy. The concierge,
a heavy-set, taciturn man with sleepy eyes, didn’t seem particularly interested, but the building’s administrator, a brisk, smart woman in a suit and pearls, appeared in minutes. As the woman looked her over with a professional eye, Celia resisted the temptation to check her shirt front for breakfast crumbs.

  ‘Yes?’ the administrator said, frowning slightly. ‘May I help you?’

  ‘I simply wanted to confirm the arrangements for Saturday evening,’ said Celia, fixing a smile, thinking, after all, this is costing them five thousand euros. ‘The dinner for Signore Lucas Marsh in the Titian room?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman slowly. ‘It is confirmed, really there is no need – they should arrive at seven, for drinks, that was the arrangement?’ There was some flaw in her composure; she looked puzzled. ‘You are the guide?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Celia, trying to maintain a polite smile; some of the officials she had to deal with did seem to find it difficult to believe that she had the necessary qualifications, being English. ‘Celia Donnelly’ She held out a hand.

  ‘Of course, yes, of course,’ said the administrator, taking her hand distractedly. ‘Paola Caprese,’ but she didn’t seem convinced. Celia rose above it, concentrated on producing her most elaborately polite Italian.

  ‘I would like to have a copy of the menu, please.’ She smiled, and Paola Caprese inclined her head. ‘Certainly,’ she said. Celia persevered. ‘And I would like to see the room, if that could be arranged?’ The administrator compressed her lips, but she gave a stiff little nod and turned on her heel.

  ‘Please,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Follow me.’

  They didn’t enter what looked like a grand lobby but instead went through a small door off to the right of it. A narrow wooden service staircase led them up through the centre of the building; as they passed through a corridor on the first floor Celia glimpsed a little boudoir inlaid with mother-of-pearl, then an enfilade of panelled rooms stretched away from her, each flooded with light reflected up from the river below. She felt as though she had been transported into an earlier world, had become her equivalent four hundred years earlier, a humble servant confined to tiny spaces and back rooms, a dumb witness to all this lavish beauty.

  Eventually they emerged at the top and crossed a landing where a grand staircase of pietra serena came out, meeting them; presumably this was where the Marshes would arrive, although as she looked down its wide, cold grey length Celia found herself preferring the mysterious, wood-scented confinement of the service staircase. Overhead a huge glass cupola shed a blue, wintry light on the landing.

  ‘Here,’ said the administrator shortly, gesturing towards a panelled oak door opposite them on the landing and permitting herself a brief, polite smile. She pushed the door open. ‘Please.’

  Celia entered first a small, panelled ante-room with two sets of long windows that opened on to the Palazzo Ferrigno’s terrace. Through the windows on the flagstones outside she could see stacked chairs, a brazier and some terracotta pots, their contents shrouded under sacking. The administrator followed her gaze.

  ‘For the aperitivo,’ she said. ‘If there is not rain, at least.’ Celia nodded and turned towards a set of panelled double doors at the far end of the ante-room that could only lead to the Titian room. ‘Yes,’ said the administrator to her unspoken question and walked briskly ahead of her, swinging open both doors at once with Celia in her wake.

  The room was not large but it had a high, vaulted ceiling; it was warm and had the rich, mysterious smell of a church, bitter herbs, incense and wax. The floor was set with red hexagonal tiles so old they undulated underfoot, and a long oak table sat in the centre of the room, set with one or two pieces of old silver. There was a single huge, floor-length window facing south, framing the cypress-studded hill of the Parco Strozzi on the far side of the river, as it rose black in the mist against a pale sky. Slowly Celia looked all around the room, taking in its perfection. She felt the administrator eyeing her, watching despite herself for a reaction to her prize, and she nodded.

  ‘Well,’ she said, smiling in wonder. ‘It’s perfect, isn’t it?’ She hesitated. ‘And the pictures? The Titian collection?’

  The woman shrugged slightly, the merest trace of apology. ‘Two are still in restoration. Another is really too fragile for anything but a private viewing, under particular conditions. But there is still one, and it is a magnificent work, it is agreed; the jewel of the collection. Madonna dei Gigli. The Madonna of the Lilies.’

  Celia subdued her frustration; this was the kind of thing that happened. Was it part of the charm of Italy, the fact that you could never be sure of anything? Until you were there, on the spot and on time, only then would you know that whoever you were meeting would turn up, what you wanted to eat would be on the menu, what you wanted to see would be hanging in its rightful place. She looked around the walls of the room; they were still beautiful, even bare of Titians, painted with peacocks and vines and hummingbirds; on the wall facing the window hung a faded red linen curtain, behind which must be the Madonna.

  Celia had heard of the painting, vaguely, remembering it as a kind of votive work, the subject the patroness of some lost cause or other. She remembered it as pretty, but it was of course impossible to tell anything from a print in a book, however expensively reproduced – that was why people bothered to come all this way, fight through the crowds, employ a guide. She felt irritated that she hadn’t been able to come earlier and do her homework properly, but at the same time she felt a stir of excitement; suddenly she felt sure that this painting would be worth it, worth all the delicate negotiations, and the money; worth the wait. The administrator followed her gaze and after some hesitation crossed to the far wall. Celia followed.

  It was not a large painting, perhaps a metre across, but it was quite extraordinarily beautiful; involuntarily Celia took a step back. The Madonna, unusually, was not quite upright, instead half-reclining on a dark red chaise, the child nestled in the crook of her arm contemplating his fingers, which were interlocked; it was a startlingly natural, sensuous pose. A piece of heavy golden cloth embroidered with tiny flowers was draped across the divan; in the background, behind the Madonna’s left shoulder, a balcony was golden in evening light. A dark myrtle tree stood beyond the balustrade, its narrow pointed leaves brushing the pale stone of the balcony. The room in which she sat seemed like a bedroom or a boudoir, a place of intimacy rather than religious contemplation, and on a dark wooden chest in one corner lay a handful of pale, papery lilac iris, the Florentine lily of the title. The Madonna herself, her skin very pale, her hair, which was very black, parted in the centre, tiny pearls in her ears, looked up shyly but candidly, exactly as a new mother flushed with pride might look up at her child’s father.

  Celia and her guide stood united in contemplation; Celia realized she was holding her breath. Any anxiety she might have had about the absence of the other Titians had entirely evaporated; this was enough for anyone. She could not imagine what it would be like to sit with someone you loved in this beautiful, intimate space, this little jewel casket of a room set in the palace’s great empty luxury while a Titian Madonna – this Madonna – looked down from the wall. Lucky Mrs Lucas Marsh; Celia wondered if she would appreciate it.

  ‘Who was the model?’ she asked the administrator in wonder, unable to believe she had never seen this picture before.

  The administrator smiled a little. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘A long story. The wife of one of the Bardi, a minor noblewoman of Florence, not important, not historically you understand. But it is quite clear that Tiziano – Titian – was in love with her. He revered her; he might have made her a Venus, but he made her a Madonna, he put the giglio – the flower of Florence – as a tribute to her, to the city.’

  Celia nodded. ‘And what happened?’

  Paola Caprese frowned a little. ‘It is not known; only speculated. That the child may have been his, although I think not.’ She turned away, looking out of the window. ‘And in fact t
here is not, what do you say, a happy ending; the child died, in an epidemic of some kind, it may have been influenza, shortly after the painting was completed. The husband locked the painting away; it was rumoured that he had burnt it. In his grief.’ Or jealousy, thought Celia, nodding. She remembered the story vaguely was surprised by how affected by it she felt now that she had seen the painting, by the expression in the eyes of a woman who had lived centuries ago.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the administrator, suddenly feeling an access of gratitude, a feeling of having been greatly privileged in being allowed to see the painting. Not a bad job, after all, she thought.

  The woman nodded. ‘So,’ she said, crossing to a Chinese lacquer chest that stood in the corner of the room, and opening a tiny drawer from which she withdrew a sheaf of thick, printed papers. ‘The menu, for confirmation. If there is anything else, certainly I shall be delighted to help you.’ But from the brisk manner in which Celia now found herself ushered to the door she understood that she had already exceeded her entitlement to gracious service from the Palazzo Ferrigno.

  Out in Le Cascine the trees cast a cold shadow, and the wind blew the leaves in eddies around the pathologist’s tent that still stood in the drained pool. The vagrants had gone, a place found for them for the night in a shelter near the station, and so had the scruffy handful of potential witnesses the policemen had managed to trawl from the wooded avenues of the park. A drug addict with glazed eyes they’d found on a bench, the proprietor of an all-night food kiosk on the edge of the park, his eyes darting to and fro as he answered in monosyllables, No, he hadn’t served anyone unusual, the usual clientele. But then none of his clientele could be called polite company: a couple of hookers, some Albanesi drinking beer and high as kites on something, a big Nigerian, a nightclub bouncer on his way home. The body had gone, too, off to the pathology lab in the north of the city, where it lay on a dissection table in a white-tiled room, the countryman’s clothes removed and set aside for forensic inspection. A plaid shirt stiff with dried blood, a pair of heavy, polished boots.