I must say I didn’t recognise the fellow she was talking about, but then I dare say he wouldn’t recognise me if he was looking down as I made my way between the cluttered rows of the cemetery, where the graves jostle and slant amid the cypresses. His body, it seems, was badly broken by the fall and the chopping and slicing he’d suffered at the hands of this Carità and so he’d been cremated, his ashes scattered on the Arno. There is a modest gravestone.ESMOND LIONEL LOWNDES
21ST MAY 1917–25TH JULY 1944
I stood, thinking of all the life, all the love, contained in that single engraved hyphen, and I placed down a nosegay of flowers I’d picked as we strolled through the cemetery. Tosca was crying beside me, this brassy, voluptuous girl, crying over dear old Esmond. I hardly knew him, or at least the person he’d become — Tosca knew him better — but I, too, loved him. And I thought of all the lives he’d touched, the web of affection he’d weaved that stretched from Shropshire to Cambridge to Italy to who knows elsewhere, and deep under the earth to all those who’d died before. I thought of the girl, Ada, in Auschwitz, perhaps not yet aware that my brother, her lover, was dead. I said a prayer for her there on the consecrated ground, that she might make it through alive.
Then I walked out of the gatehouse and up towards the river, Tosca at my side, and we spoke of Esmond, and of the days of freedom ahead, and the great bells of the Duomo began to chime, and then the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio, which they call La Vacca, and I could see the bevelled red roofs in the bright August light, the churches clamouring skywards, the sculptures and tabernacles and all the ravishing splendour of the place and I carried my love for my brother in my heart like a flame into the streets of the city he called home. Florence.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following, without whom this book would have been longer, less accurate or never written at alclass="underline" my editors, Walter Donohue and Matt Shoard, and my agent, Anna Power. To all at Faber & Faber, particularly Hannah Griffiths, Lee Brackstone and Kate McQuaid. To Silvia Crompton, who held it all together (in exchange for wine). To all at Johnson & Alcock, particularly Ed Wilson. To Glenn Haybittle and Penny Mittler, two inglesi italianati, who were there at the beginning and at the end. To Enrico Giachetti, for priceless first-hand recollections of Firenze Fascistissima. To Michael Brod and the Palazzo Tornabuoni, for their hospitality. To all at St Mark’s Anglican Church, where all of this started. To James Holland, for making sure that my errors in military history were chosen rather than accidental. To Mark Miller and de Havilland Support Ltd for a wonderful day with the Dragon Rapide. To Gerald Wells and the British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum, for their endless patience. To Neil Gower, for the stunning illustrations. To Emma Smith, for strong women. To Damian Barr, Emer Gillespie, Tom Edmunds, Helen Benckendorff, Florence Ballard and Ele Simpson, for their early, insightful and encouraging readings. To my grandfather and my parents, for inspiration past and present. Finally, as ever, to Al, Ray and Ary, with endless love.
About the Author
Alex Preston was born in 1979. He is an award-winning novelist and journalist who appears regularly on BBC television and radio. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent. In Love and War is his third novel.