‘It must have been extraordinary for the Virgin Mary,’ Mrs Faraday was saying. ‘One moment she’s reading a book and the next there’s a figure with wings swooping in on her.’ That only made sense, she suggested, when you thought of it as the Virgin’s dream. The angel was not really there, the Virgin herself was not really reading in such plush surroundings. ‘Later I guess she dreamed another angel came,’ Mrs Faraday continued, ‘to warn her of her death.’
He didn’t listen. The waiter brought them grilled salmon and salad, Mrs Faraday lit a cigarette. She said:
‘The guy I shacked up with in the Palazzo Ricasoli was no better than a gigolo. I guess I don’t know why I did that.’
He did not reply. She stubbed her cigarette out, appearing at last to notice that food had been placed in front of her. She asked him about the painters of the Florentine Renaissance, and the city’s aristocrats and patrons. She asked him why Savonarola had been burnt and he said Savonarola had made people feel afraid. She was silent for a moment, then leaned forward and put a hand on his arm.
‘Tell me more about yourself. Please.’
Her voice, eagerly insistent, irritated him more than before. He told her superficial things, about the other Italian cities for which he’d written guidebooks, about the hill towns of Tuscany, and the Cinque Terre. Because of his reticence she said when he ceased to speak:
‘I don’t entirely make you out.’ She added that he was nicer to talk to than anyone she could think of. She might be drunk; it was impossible to say.
‘My husband’s never heard of the Medicis nor any stuff like this. He’s never even heard of Masaccio, you appreciate that?’
‘Yes, you’ve made it clear the kind of man your husband is.’
‘I’ve ruined it, haven’t I, telling you about the Palazzo Ricasoli?’
‘Ruined what, Mrs Faraday?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
They sat for some time longer, finishing the wine and having coffee. Once she reached across the table and put her hand on one of his. She repeated what she had said before, that he was kind.
‘It’s late,’ he said.
‘I know, honey, I know. And you get up early.’
He paid the bill, although she protested that it was she who had invited him. She would insist on their having dinner together again so that she might have her turn. She took his arm on the street.
‘Will you come with me to Maiano one day?’
‘Maiano?’
‘It isn’t far. They say it’s lovely to walk at Maiano.’
‘I’m really rather occupied, you know.’
‘Oh, God, I’m bothering you! I’m being a nuisance! Forget Maiano. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m just trying to say, Mrs Faraday, that I don’t think I can be much use to you.’
He was aware, to his embarrassment, that she was holding his hand. Her arm was entwined with his and the palms of their hands had somehow come together. Her fingers, playing with his now, kept time with her flattery.
‘You’ve got the politest voice I ever heard! Say you’ll meet me just once again? Just once? Cocktails tomorrow? Please.’
‘Look, Mrs Faraday –’
‘Say Doney’s at six. I’ll promise to say nothing if you like. We’ll listen to the music.’
Her palm was cool. A finger made a circular motion on one of his. Rosie had said he limped through life. In the end Jeremy had been sorry for him. Both of them were right; others had said worse. He was a crippled object of pity.
‘Well, all right.’
She thanked him in the Albergo San Lorenzo for listening to her, and for the dinner and the wine. ‘Every year I hope to meet someone nice in Florence,’ she said on the landing outside her bedroom, seeming to mean it. ‘This is the first time it has happened.’
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then closed her door. In his looking-glass he examined the faint smear of lipstick and didn’t wipe it off. He woke in the night and lay there thinking about her, wondering if her lipstick was still on his cheek.
Waiting in Doney’s, he ordered a glass of chilled Orvieto wine. Someone on a tape, not Judy Garland, sang ‘Over the Rainbow’; later there was lightly played Strauss and some rhythms of the thirties. By seven o’clock Mrs Farady had not arrived. He left at a quarter to eight.
*
The next day he wandered through the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, thinking again about the beauty of Mrs Faraday. He had received no message from her, no note to explain or apologize for her absence in Doney’s. Had she simply forgotten? Or had someone better materialized? Some younger man she again hadn’t been able to resist, some guy who didn’t know any more about Masaccio than her good husband did? She was a woman who was always falling in love, which was what she called it, confusing love with sensuality. Was she, he wondered, what people referred to as a nymphomaniac? Was that what made her unhappy?
He imagined her with some man she’d picked up. He imagined her, satisfied because of the man’s attentions, tramping the halls of a gift market, noting which shade of green was to be the new season’s excitement. She would be different after her love-making, preoccupied with her business, no time for silliness and Annunciations. Yet it still was odd that she hadn’t left a message for him. She had not for a moment seemed as rude as that, or incapable of making up an excuse.
He left the cloisters and walked slowly across the piazza of Santa Maria Novella. In spite of what she’d said and the compliments she’d paid, had she guessed that he hadn’t listened properly to her, that he’d been fascinated by her appearance but not by her? Or had she simply guessed the truth about him?
That evening she was not in the bar of the hotel. He looked in at Doney’s, thinking he might have misunderstood about the day. He waited for a while, and then ate alone in the restaurant with the modern paintings.
‘We pack the clothes, signore. Is the carabinieri which can promote the inquiries for la signora. Mi displace, signore.’
He nodded at the heavily moustached receptionist and made his way to the bar. If she was with some lover she would have surfaced again by now: it was hard to believe that she would so messily leave a hotel bill unpaid, especially since sooner or later she would have to return for her clothes. When she had so dramatically spoken of wishing Florence to devour her she surely hadn’t meant something like this? He went back to the receptionist.
‘Did Mrs Faraday have her passport?’
‘Sì, signore. La signora have the passport.’
He couldn’t sleep that night. Her smile and her brown, languorous eyes invaded the blur he attempted to induce. She crossed and re-crossed her legs. She lifted another glass. Her ringed fingers stubbed another cigarette. Her earrings lightly jangled.
In the morning he asked again at the reception desk. The hotel bill wasn’t important, a different receptionist generously allowed. If someone had to leave Italy in a hurry, because maybe there was sickness, even a deathbed, then a hotel bill might be overlooked for just a little while.
‘La signora will post to us a cheque from the United States. This the carabinieri say.’
‘Yes, I should imagine so.’
He looked up in the telephone directory the flats she had mentioned. The Palazzo Ricasoli was in Via Mantellate. He walked to it, up Borgo San Lorenzo and Via San Gallo. ‘No,’ a porter in a glass kiosk said and directed him to the office. ‘No,’ a pretty girl in the office said, shaking her head. She turned and asked another girl. ‘No,’ this girl repeated.
He walked back through the city, to the American Consulate on the Lungarno Amerigo. He sat in the office of a tall, lean man called Humber, who listened with a detached air and then telephoned the police. After nearly twenty minutes he replaced the receiver. He was dressed entirely in brown – suit, shirt, tie, shoes, handkerchief. He was evenly tanned, another shade of the colour. He drawled when he spoke; he had an old-world manner.