Julia ran the taps. Lots of hot water. Some bath salts. Her own soap. She stripped off her muddy clothes, left them in a pile. Washed her hair under the shower tap and got in. And cried.
Cried freely, with a release of emotion she’d not known in a long time. Not even when her brief and stupid marriage was falling apart. Her mother had died ten years ago now. That was the same, perhaps. But then there was no sense of guilt.
And so she refused to analyse this further, simply sitting in Pino Fratelli’s gleaming white bathtub, washing off the mud and filth of Fiesole, weeping sporadically, sniffing, wiping at her nose with her arm.
How long? Till the water, cloudy and grey with the dirt, started to turn tepid, then cold. Finally she got out, checked her eyes in the mirror. The pinkness there might be excused by the long day and the heat of the bathroom. She dried herself on his fresh towels, climbed into the rather juvenile but practical blue pyjamas she’d bought from Selfridge’s.
Wrapped a towel round her hair. Went back into his living room, feeling her heart pumping. The bath. The day. The heat.
He was in his leather armchair, a long thick dressing gown round him, plaid slippers on his feet. Hairdryer in right hand, blowing his long silver locks. In his left was a book. Another art volume, she saw. On the cover were the paintings of the Brancacci.
She came over and took the book away; sat next to him, half furious, half grieving for an event to come.
‘Here,’ Fratelli said, turning off the hairdryer. ‘I’m done with it. I only let my hair grow long when they threw me out of the Carabinieri. It was a kind of protest. Childish. If I don’t dry it, I look an even bigger clown…’
Then he brightened, put a finger in the air, and headed off into the tiny kitchen. A few minutes later, with her hair just about done, he returned with two steaming mugs.
‘Tea,’ he said. ‘Earl Grey. I gather you English like it. I bought some when they said I had a visitor coming.’
The musky smell of bergamot. A memory of home. She sipped at it, said nothing.
‘Perhaps,’ Fratelli said cautiously, ‘it would be wise if we reconsidered this arrangement.’
She was protesting immediately.
‘No, please,’ he insisted. ‘Hear me out. I’m aware that I’ve monopolized your time since you arrived. The reason you came… your dissertation. I’ve distracted you from it and that’s unforgivable.’
‘You want me to leave?’ she asked sullenly.
He emitted a low, wordless grumble. ‘You’re a very recalcitrant woman sometimes. I never meant to entangle you in this.’
‘Oh, no? You’ve been prodding me all along.’
‘It was… inadvertent.’
‘Like Luca Cassini? You’ve scooped us up, Pino. Infected us. Now we’re as—’
Almost a stumble.
‘Say it,’ he broke in quickly. ‘Now you’re mad too.’
‘I didn’t mean that. What I wanted to say was…’
And another stumble.
‘Was what?’ he wondered.
‘You have to leave this. For God’s sake. I’ve seen it eating at you. I don’t want to watch any more.’
‘Which is why you must go—’
‘No! It’s why you must stop. Walter Marrone’s your friend, isn’t he?’
‘So I thought.’
‘He sent along that priest. To the bar tonight. The one we saw in the chapel.’
Fratelli’s brow wrinkled and she regretted this revelation immediately. It had set him thinking again.
‘Bruno?’
‘He didn’t dare come in. I talked to him when I walked the dog. While you told Luca about your wife. They want you to stop this. It’s breaking their hearts. Can’t you see that?’
‘The heart of a priest I barely know? Why didn’t he come in and tell me to his face?’
‘There you go again! Not listening…’
He laughed, raised his mug to her.
‘But I am. The priest wants me to stop. The captain of the Carabinieri wants me to stop. My doctor. The mayor of Florence… that goes without saying.’
Fratelli hesitated, looked at her.
‘And now you,’ he said in a voice that was close to a whisper.
‘If there’s nothing you can do…’
‘There’s always something you can do,’ he retorted with a sudden vehement conviction. ‘Always. Unless you’re dead, and I’m not there yet.’
She closed her eyes and felt like weeping again. When she opened them there was guilt written all over his face.
‘There. You see. I’m right. You should find new accommodation.’
‘So now you’re trying to drive me out!’
He wrung his hands, let loose an epithet at the low ceiling.
‘I’m asking this for both of us. I don’t want to hurt you, Julia. And that’s all I’m doing. All I’m capable of. Please. I’ll phone the Uffizi in the morning. Find another home for you. Go and see your paintings. Visit San Marco tomorrow. Marvel at its beauty, because it is I think the most lovely place in all this grim city.’
He sipped some more tea, pulled a disgusted face.
‘This is not for me. It tastes strange. Like perfume.’
‘And Soderini’s secret invitation? The Brigata Spendereccia?’
‘Forget it. That’s my advice. It’s doubtless just a little orgy for a bunch of sad middle-aged men who think they run this place. We’ve had them in Italy since the days of Caesar. We’ll doubtless have them for many centuries to come.’
She put her mug on the table. ‘It doesn’t taste right here,’ Julia said. ‘I agree. Goodnight.’
He was still in his chair, smiling wanly at her, when she got to her feet.
‘I don’t want you staying up reading, listening to your records,’ she added. ‘I’ll never get to sleep if I think you’re doing that. Off to bed now.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Yes!’ he said, then strode off to the bedroom, saluting her from the door.
He didn’t move like a sick man. Or a middle-aged one, for that matter. He moved easily, with a firm purpose, a deliberate intent. An energy that was vital because he knew its time was finite.
She smiled at him as he closed the door, then stayed where she was, trying, with little success, to analyse her thoughts, her feelings. It was impossible. She couldn’t see the way forward for the simplest of reasons: she’d no idea what she wanted that to be. After the marriage, after walking out on the job, she’d found herself in an aimless limbo. The idea of academia had appeared on a whim, one formed by joining her love of intellectual investigation with her admiration for art. It was nothing more than a juvenile daydream, a line on a letter never posted to a Santa Claus who did not exist.
The dissertation would never be written. The basis for it — why art attracted violence — was a fabrication created out of desperation for something to fill the abyss that had opened up in her life. When she was faced with her supposed subject in reality, she’d been fascinated not by its intellectual aspect, but the more pressing and exciting one that Pino Fratelli, in his damaged state of mind, had offered.
A chase. A search for an elusive, hidden truth. The thrill of the hunt. A rush of the blood.
The dour priest had hit the spot. She had encouraged a sick and possibly deluded man for her own purposes. To provide amusement; to keep herself from facing the emptiness all around.
And yet…
It had been so wonderful. She’d never felt quite as alive as she had these past few days in a rainy Florence with this damaged and entrancing man, feeling history slip around her like an ancient, damp and musty cloak. Whispering in her ear. Promising revelations in dark corners, surprises that were never to be found in the grey and tedious corners of England she’d always regarded as home.