‘What is it?’
‘They’ve killed Carlo and Nello in Paris. Oh, Esmond—’ She reaches over to take him in her arms and begins to sob. After a while he regretfully disentangles himself, stands to open the window, and looks back to see her slumped on the bed with her fingers in her hair. It is another hot day; the room is close, the breeze warm and dusty from the street. He sits beside her in his nightshirt and places an arm around her, whispering softly.
‘Who were they? Died how?’
‘Friends of my father. They founded Giustizia e Libertà. Heroes—’ She unravels into tears. Esmond finds a handkerchief in a drawer and offers it to her, but she pushes it away, drawing her arm across her face. He picks up her hand and clasps it between his own.
‘Who killed them?’
‘Fascists,’ she spits at him. She begins to speak very swiftly. ‘They are taking everything from me,’ she says. ‘First my father, then the house I grew up in. My friends, who are either running off to join them, or in gaol because they won’t. They took dear, gentle Goad. Now Carlo and Nello.’ She bangs her hand down on the bed and turns to him. ‘I never understood what it meant, totalitarianism. You have this word in English, too?’ He nods uncertainly. ‘They are intruding into every aspect of my life, taking over all the things that are dear to me just as they took over Libya and Abyssinia. I hate them, Esmond.’
Gerald comes into the room. Fiamma looks up at him damply.
‘Where were you?’ she says. ‘I came looking for you this morning but you weren’t in bed.’
He kneels down beside her.
‘I’m so bloody sorry. I saw it on the front page of the Nazione. It was the Cagoule, of course, the French Fascists. On Musso’s orders. Bastards.’
She wipes her face again with a slippery arm.
‘Listen,’ he says, with a doggish grin, ‘I’ve something to cheer you up. Get dressed and meet me in the courtyard. Come on, Fiamma. There you go.’
Esmond pulls on shorts and an Aertex shirt, brushes his teeth and knocks on Fiamma’s door. They make their way down the stone steps to the courtyard as darkness lifts off the city. Gerald is standing in the cloister opposite the entrance to Cook’s, a large canvas bag at his feet. Behind him, leaning on their stands, are three bicycles. One is a racer — a Romeo — the other two are Peugeot tourers. Gerald stands back with a flourish.
‘Thought we could use them to get out of town, find a cool spot along the river. I saw them in the barn at L’Ombrellino and knew George wouldn’t miss them. Couple of the gardeners helped me wheel them down this morning. D’you want the racer, Esmond?’
Esmond holds its lean, crouched frame, grey with red livery. He pats the leather seat.
‘It’s super,’ he says.
The three of them set off wobblingly towards the river. Fiamma is still crying quietly, hiccoughs escaping as she pedals. It is before nine, but already the sun is powerful overhead, searing as they gather pace along the Lungarno. At the Ponte Vecchio they pass tinkers with fly-bothered mules, beggars in the shadows, fishermen pushing ice-filled trolleys of their catch towards the Mercato Nuovo. The rich have left for their out-of-town villas or the Alps, the poor sit indoors with their fans, their windows open, their feet in tubs of ice-water. A group of Fascist Youth walk along the river in a bedraggled crocodile behind a little man in a heavy black shirt. He is sweating so much he barely sees the bicycles coming and has to leap, cursing. The boys behind him laugh.
‘My uncle,’ Fiamma shouts over her shoulder. ‘He is in charge of the Sabato Fascista today. Poor boys—’
On the towpath of the river the air is cooler, the wind fresh from the Apennine peaks, finding its way into the folds of their clothing, the nooks of their bodies. Esmond races ahead, pumping his legs, head down, lets out a joyful shout that’s muffled by the wind. Gerald rides with no hands, arms held up, cupping the breeze. They stop for a drink of water before crossing the river at the ford at San Jacopo al Girone, poppies in the wheat field behind them.
Fiamma, wheat-dust blanching her lips, walks waist-high to the fragile flowers and picks a handful. She puts them into the basket of her bicycle and, halfway across the stony rise of the ford, she drops them into the water.
‘For Carlo and Nello,’ she says.
Along the south bank of the river, through more wheat and corn and maize, then steeper ground, vineyards stretching up into the low reaches of the hills. They join the road, through small villages — Candelli, Santa Monica, Vallina — where old men sit on the stoops of their houses watching them pass, their eyes crinkled from contemplating the long moment of their lives. Under every roadside tree stands a mule, swatting its tail placidly against the flies. In the fields heavy cattle swing their heads like slow church bells. They buy apricots from a stall where a young woman with a baby on her hip chews a stalk of grass beneath her hat and addresses them in Florentine dialect so thick that even Fiamma can’t understand her.
Finally, they turn off the road and down a track to the river. They come to an abandoned watermill with a crenellated roof like a castle. Martins have nested in its walls, opening large clefts. The whole building looks about to crumble down the bank into the Arno.
‘The Gualchiere di Remole,’ Gerald says. ‘This would have turned wool into cloth. Hugely important to Florence in the Middle Ages. The Comune is always promising to turn it into a museum but, I mean, look at it.’
Past the mill, they cycle carefully along an overgrown path to the river. Brambles tear at Esmond’s legs as he follows. He stops to help Fiamma unhook her dress from a thorn that snags it and sees the white and red scratches the brambles have raised on her legs. They come out on fine yellow sand beneath the lip of the bank. Upstream of the mill, the river is pocked with small islands and the Arno is wide and clear. They lay their bicycles down in the grass.
Gerald unpacks the canvas bag: a thermos of Soave, two bottles of red, some bread and salami. He takes a knife and cuts the salami as Esmond and Fiamma paddle, looking across the river to where contadini labour in the fields, their backs pomegranate brown. The river is hard and sandy on their feet and slopes towards the middle where fish flicker like shadows.
‘Lunch is served, you two. Come and get it.’
An hour later they lie lazily fuddled on the sand. The thermos is empty, and they have started on the red. Esmond is aware that he is sunburning, his head beginning to throb in the heat, but he can barely lift his arm to cover it. Gerald has taken off his top and is using it for a pillow, lifting himself up on his elbow to take a gulp of wine every so often. Fiamma is sleeping, twitching, sometimes turning. Only the electric thrum of cicadas stirs the air, the bray of a mule or the shouts of contadini.
‘We should swim or we’ll boil here,’ Gerald says. As he stands, Esmond can see sweat in the tufts of dark hair beneath his arms, across his chest. He walks down to the water. Fiamma has woken and stretches, frowning. Gerald drops his shorts and underpants, leaving them in a coil on the bank, and plunges into the water. He comes up in the centre of the river, blowing gouts of water out of his mouth and laughing.
‘You should come in! It’s marvellous.’
Esmond looks over at Fiamma. She stares, unfocused, a hectic flush to her cheeks.
‘It is hot,’ he says.
‘Go on, then.’
He walks down to the edge of the water. His shirt is sticking to his back. He lifts it off with difficulty, takes down his shorts and then, suddenly delighted to think of his body immersed in the cool water, strips naked and leaps forward into the river. He swims towards Gerald who is floating, spreadeagled. He dives and opens his eyes: it is clear and green and as he goes deeper, icy. Sunlight arrows down and he can make out Gerald floating above, the smooth curve of his back, his hair flaming out, his arms and legs paddling him gently afloat. He comes up beside him, laughing.