Miss Everly, really! said the reverend.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, said Mr Collins, picking up his spoon – or did he need his fork? A knife, perhaps? And he rallied the other guests by example. All except the new wife who Evelyn had met on the train. The cockney signora had prepared for her a bespoke meal of boiled egg and crumpets. Something recognisable and, more importantly, binding.
The next day, Evelyn slept in late and missed the breakfast prunes.
Outside the Simi, she was greeted by a medley of sun and cloud; the temperature, though, was still warm. She didn’t rush off to join the reverend and his band of merry men, instead she stood back and watched life pass. The jingle of bells as horse and carts rattled by with laundry sacks from hotels. The one leaving the Simi had a young man balanced precariously on a mountainous pile. He waved, she waved.
That’s Matteo, said Mr Collins, standing behind her.
Evelyn turned and smiled. How lovely that Mr Collins knew the young man’s name. But, of course, he was a socialist.
And where are you off to today, Mr Collins?
I’m going for a shave. You can’t beat an Italian barber, Miss Skinner. See you at dinner!
And she watched him race after the laundry cart.
She crossed the road and leant against the embankment. The river was low, and the renaioli were on a break. From dusk till dawn the men shovelled sediment from the riverbed into carts or waiting boats. Four of them were sitting smoking now. Hats tilted back, shirtsleeves rolled high. Miss Everly said the gravel had been caused by the erosion of stone buildings along the riverbank in times of flood, and would be used again in future construction. Nothing was ever wasted, she said. The Arno was like the Ganges, the source of life. Both giver and taker. Sewer and fishmonger. Miss Everly knew everything about the city.
Midway along the Ponte Vecchio, Evelyn’s eye was drawn to the dark mass of the Casentino valley, partly enveloped by mist. It was a thick forest land of black trees and swine and myths and hidden hermits, and had once been home to an exiled Dante. From its highest peak at Monte Falterona, the origins of the Arno bubbled forth. Evelyn thought about the holy place of La Verna, the desolate mountain given to St Francis of Assisi, where he had received his stigmata and the grace of God. There were things she didn’t believe in and things she did. Saints she believed in.
She continued north to the Piazza del Duomo and when she arrived, the sun burst out between dark clouds and bells tolled from Giotto’s marble campanile. She held on to her bonnet and looked up at the cupola, that unfailing landmark, glimpsed perpetually throughout the city. Ever since she was six and had first opened the pages of her father’s sketchbook, she— Suddenly, a small chestnut mare, head concealed in a large bag of oats, shat loudly. Two English ladies, passing by at the time, were unconscionably splashed. Their screams were piercing, and Evelyn’s moment of homage ruined.
Undeterred, she wandered the vicinity and came across a delightful second-hand bookshop and picked up a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Casa Guidi Windows. Miss Everly said she would take Evelyn to visit Casa Guidi the following week. And just as Evelyn was handing over her money, she spotted a slim volume in burgundy cloth by one Constance Everly. Down the spine, in faded gilt, its Italian title: Niente （Nothing）。 All roads really do lead to poetry!
Evelyn settled outside at a café in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and couldn’t decide which book to open first, so embraced the European pastime of watching people instead. Women, mostly, it has to be said. And the obvious comparisons issued forth – better hair, better shape, better smile – but there was something else, too, something to do with the maid who had trespassed continually on her day. It hadn’t been an uncomfortable intrusion and, in truth, she couldn’t wait for dinner.
That night, the reverend was complaining about having paid half a lira to see vast quantities of bad art in a palazzo he couldn’t remember the name of. Baroque! he said, tutting loudly. The art of bad taste.
The reverend believes Florentine art stopped at the end of the sixteenth century, said Mr Collins.
What’s that you’re saying? said the reverend.
You believe no good art came after the sixteenth century, said Mr Collins, voice elevated.
It had reached its zenith, that’s all I’m saying. The city had changed.
So no Rubens, no Velázquez, no Artemisia—
No listening, Mr Collins.
My father is the painter H. W. Skinner, said Evelyn.
Oh, I knew it! said Miss Everly. I could see the likeness. I saw his recent show at the Royal Academy.