He dresses, reaching past the stiff twill of the uniform he’d slipped out of the night before, arriving at the Institute late, in the rain, and following Goad up the stairs to the apartment on the third floor. Now he steps out into the corridor, breathing the rich, gloomy air. He closes the door, straightens his tie, and makes for the kitchen.
2
Goad is sitting at a white formica table with a pile of newspapers in front of him: La Nazione, The Times, The Italian Mail. ‘Have a seat, have a seat,’ he says. ‘Gesuina, vi presento Esmond Lowndes. Esmond, this is Gesuina.’
A lean woman in her fifties turns to Esmond with a quick curtsey.
‘Molto piacere, Signor Lowndes.’
‘How d’you do.’ Then, ‘Lei ringrazio,’ as she places a coffee cup in front of him.
‘And that’s one thing you should know,’ Goad raises his finger. ‘Mussolini has banned the use of lei as the formal pronoun. Considers it unmanly. You must use voi, d’you see?’
Esmond nods and pours himself coffee.
‘You can be arrested for using lei.’
Gesuina brings toast and jam. Goad reads, occasionally stopping to snip out an article, inspect it, and place it in an envelope. He tuts, stirring his coffee.
‘It’s a bad business in Spain, I’m afraid,’ he says, folding The Times. ‘The Falangists have taken an awful beating. Italians dead on both sides. Mussolini shouldn’t have begun so soon after Abyssinia, not with the sanctions.’
Esmond shakes his head. ‘I’ve been reading up on persistent oscillators and free radiators.’
‘Of course, the wireless. We should have a chat. I could have arranged it myself, of course, but the technology terrifies me rather. Electricity is for the young. Why don’t we meet in my study in — hum — half an hour? I need some time after breakfast to allow my digestion to activate. I’m afraid I’m not terribly well. I imagine your father might have told you.’
Goad stands, bows at Gesuina and leaves. After a few minutes of failing to make sense of the front page of La Nazione, Esmond gets up from the table and places his plate and coffee cup in the sink, where Gesuina tuts away his attempts to wash them. He walks past his room, past the door Goad had identified as his, and to large, grey-stone stairs.
The apartment is three sides of the top floor of the Institute, the fourth a columned loggia where sheets hang and clothes horses perch on stone benches, draped with shirts and assorted underwear. Esmond notices with interest three small, white brassieres. He makes his way down the steps to the library.
Armchairs are scattered between tables of journals and ashtrays. Bookshelves line every wall save a large tarnished mirror over the fireplace. Dust and memory in the air. He crosses to the window and looks downwards. The ground floor of the palazzo is given over to offices, including the Florentine branch of Thomas Cook where, Goad had explained, the expats pick up letters, make telephone calls and arrange for goods to come or go home. Already there is a queue out of the door and into the courtyard. An old fellow with a military moustache glances up, raises his hat with one hand and gives Esmond the thumbs-up with the other. He smiles and returns it. Goad had warned him that new taxes for foreigners, anti-English sentiment in Florence and the weakening pound have meant a steady stream of departures. ‘You have arrived’, he’d said, ‘just as everyone is leaving.’
3
Goad’s desk seems to have been chosen for its vastness. His present task, gluing cuttings into a scrapbook by the light of a brass desk lamp, is taking place in a small province of it. He looks slighter than the bust of Shelley behind him.
‘If I don’t do it first thing, it never gets done,’ he says. ‘With you in a moment.’
Esmond sits in the armchair by the fireplace and examines the bookshelves. Poetry, mostly Italian: d’Annunzio, Foscolo, Ungaretti, Quasimodo. Essays on Shakespeare. An entire shelf of Norman Douglas. He’d read Philip’s copy of South Wind on the grass by the Cam at Newnham. He spots T. E. Hulme’s Speculations and thinks of his own attempt at a novel, the fifty-five pages he’d scratched out in his study at Emmanuel, smouldering with the rest on the lawn at home. Even with the embarrassment of his expulsion, those pages had felt like the future. Philip had called it modern and thrilling. Hulme had been his father’s friend at university, his comrade in the war. Now he, and the book, were lost.
‘Now then — hum.’ Goad is opening drawers and clicking his tongue. ‘Here we are.’ He holds up a single sheet of writing-paper. ‘A letter from Il Duce — his blessing to your project. He was much taken with the idea, suggests we name it Radio Firenze — what d’you think?’
Esmond smiles uncertainly.
‘They’ve been doing everything they can to expunge the English language from the Italian consciousness, renaming the Bristol, the Old England Shop, Eden Park Villas, but Mussolini is shrewd enough to realise it’s still the language of business. A Fascist wireless programme! Showing that even the English are coming round to his way of seeing the world is — hum — two birds, one brick. Jolly good idea of Sir Oswald’s, I must say.’
Esmond stands to take the letter. BenitoMussolini is written without spaces, the final ‘i’s staring above a sulking ‘n’. The text — from what he can make out — is plain as a doctor’s note, but he can imagine the power of that signature. He folds the letter and holds it.
‘This is super,’ he says.
‘He’s an interesting man. A brute, yes, but a poet, too. Everyone knows about his railways — although, in fact, those achievements have been overstated in the British newspapers. It’s more that — hum — he has recast the Italian narrative. He has taken the history of the nation, which, remember, is barely seventy-five years old, and made it a myth, the myth of the Patria. Ancient Rome, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento—’
Esmond notices that Goad’s hands, when they meet the light, are lurid red with a white scurf of skin flaking at the knuckles, which he pauses to scratch.
‘Nervous eczema, I’m afraid. Too much work. I keep trying to resign, but they simply won’t let me. I feel as if I’m single-handedly putting right the — hum — psychological atmosphere between the British and the Italians. Lord Lloyd has granted a very generous sum to expand the Institute’s operations across Italy, but I’m afraid it’s unlikely my health will be up to it.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Can’t be helped. I only hope I last long enough to see an end to this silly bitterness.’ Goad’s eyes smile behind his spectacles. ‘Of course, you’ll want to get out and explore these many-memoried streets and galleries and churches, as my friend described Florence.’
‘You knew Henry James?’
‘Oh yes. And Lawrence, of course. Huxley stayed in your room, you know.’
Esmond looks around for the right words. ‘And I see you’re an admirer of Norman Douglas.’
Goad’s face clouds a little.
‘Hum. Douglas. I’m sure you’ll come across him while you’re here. Gerald — my son — enjoys his work. I am not convinced. His novels feel to me like essays padded with sub-Wildean quips and louche philosophy. I buy his books in hope that — hum — bankruptcy doesn’t join the many other scandals his lifestyle calls down upon him. He sells them himself, quite shamelessly, you know. Every musical recital or lecture at the Institute, he’ll be here, cadging his latest like a tinker. Frightfully expensive and badly printed, but what can one do?’