Mr Forster. How are you?
Not so well. I didn’t want to go to sleep straight away in case I choked.
Evelyn sat down opposite him.
Your ears must have been burning, Miss Skinner. I was writing about you to my dear friend Dent.[1]
All good things? said Evelyn.
No, not at all! How, rather, you led me astray the other day. My first Tuscan doughnut. My first Italian barber. What more could I learn from you, Miss Skinner, if time was ours?
What more? thought Evelyn.
They became momentarily shy. Or quiet. Maybe both.
How was your lesson this afternoon? he said.
Oh, sighed Evelyn. We revised the narrative tenses. And touched on the future.
And how is the future?
Tricky. I expect we’ll stick to the past.
You look sad.
Yes, she said. I walked back from Teatro Verdi tonight.
By yourself?
Yes.
Were you not frightened?
No. Entranced. Old women with candles were lighting the porte-cochères and shutting the grilles. It’s as if they were closing down the city for the night. Putting it to bed like a child. I found it rather sweet. I think you would too. There is peace. And ghosts— Forster shuddered.
And something ancient and permanent. And I sense it will always be here. To come back to time and time again.
And will you come back?
Oh yes. Nothing will stop me. I’ve found myself here, Mr Forster. That’s a hard thing to let go of.
Mother and I are heading into the countryside tomorrow, said Forster.
And I head to my Aunt Maria in Rome.
Tonight is our adieu, then, and Forster stood up. Evelyn did too. They shook hands.
Good luck, Mr Forster. I see good things for you.
Do you really?
Wonderful things. And remember: cherish the body, and the soul will follow.
Who said that?
The Greeks, probably, she said.
Well, goodnight now, Miss Skinner. It’s been such a pleasure. Have a wonderful time with your aunt. Think of me. With mother. Oh, and do take care in the Pantheon. I heard it’s rather slippy after a downpour.[2]
The next day, under low rain clouds, a lone cab ride to the railway station and no cyclist weaving in and out. Evelyn wondered if Livia might come to see her off, but she didn’t. She lost her book of poetry on the train journey to Rome and found it hard to look happy when Aunt Maria met her at the station.
You look different, said her aunt. And your Italian! So effortless. So grown up.
Evelyn began to cry.
Two summers later, Evelyn returned to Florence, hoping to pick up where Livia and she had left off.
It would be a deepening of passion, she imagined. More as husband and wife – or wife and wife? – but it would involve a home, a job, a shared life of commitment. They could, others had. A secret life but no less fulfilled.
Letters of love they had sent to one another. Coded, of course. The letters began to fluctuate over the months till they stopped. But even then, Evelyn believed love could conquer all.
She arrived at the Simi only to discover Livia wasn’t there. No letter had been left for her, although over the years she came to suspect there probably had been. Livia had disappeared months before and nobody could say exactly where to. The cockney signora was all discretion. Maybe she went back up north, maybe she went to work for a rich family, maybe she was married, had a child … Maybe maybe maybe. Evelyn stayed a week before moving on. She rarely left her room.
She chose not to return to Florence for a few years. She thought the world would end, but it didn’t. Thought her capacity to love would remain unfulfilled, but it didn’t. She moved her allegiance to Rome and took to her bed, some days, like Keats. Didn’t die （her appetite was far too robust） and she grew stronger and more handsome until heartache went into remission. Livia became a memory. Livia became a piece of art.
There were others for Evelyn, of course. There was the suffragette from east London who showed her that smashing windows was a marvellous amuse-bouche before sex. There was also a brief en passant with one of the Three Vi’s that resulted in a bruise and a second-rate poem.
And there was, of course, Gabriela. Beautiful, darling Gaby Cortez.
And Forster? Evelyn wouldn’t meet him again. They orbited a similar universe, milling around the sun that was Virginia Woolf. But the heavens conspired to keep them apart and to leave intact what they had been – a flawless chapter of youth.
Evelyn saw him, though, about ten years later in the Italian Lakes. He had grown a moustache by then, a small creature hibernating below his nose. He was in conversation with a handsome man with brown skin, who sported a similar moustache. She believed them to be lovers – wrongly, as it would turn out – so she didn’t approach him, and they passed one another at a distance. She sat down on a bench that offered a superlative view of Lake Como. And from there she watched him disappear.