Stop, said Margaret.
What?
The light on your face. How green your eyes are! Turn a little to me. Stay like that.
Margaret, for God’s sake.
Do it. Don’t move, and Margaret picked up her camera and fiddled with the aperture setting.
Evelyn drew on the cigarette theatrically （click） and blew smoke into the late-afternoon sky （click）， noticing the shift of colour, the lowering of the sun, a lone swift nervously circling. She moved a curl of hair away from her frown （click）。
What’s eating you, dear chum?
Mosquitoes, probably.
I hear a touch of Maud Lin, said Margaret. Thoughts?
What is old, d’you think?
Cabin fever talking, said Margaret. We can’t advance, we can only retreat.
That’s old, said Evelyn.
And German mines, silly!
I just want to get into Florence. Do something. Be useful.
The proprietor came over and cleared their plates from the table. He asked them in Italian if they would like a coffee and grappa and they said, How lovely and he told them not to go wandering again, and he told them his wife would go up to their room later and close the shutters. Oh, and would they like some figs?
Oh sì, sì. Grazie.
Evelyn watched him depart.
Margaret said, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Robin Metcalfe told me you met Forster.
Who?
Him with a View.
Evelyn smiled. Oh, very good.
The way Robin Metcalfe tells it, you and Forster were best friends.
How ridiculous! I met him across a dining table, if you must know, over dinners of boiled beef, at the ghastly Pensione Simi. We were an impoverished little ship on the banks of the Arno, desperately seeking the real Italy. And yet at the helm was a cockney landlady, bless her soul.
Cockney?
Yes.
Why a cockney?
I don’t know.
I mean, why in Florence?
I never asked.
Now you would, said Margaret.
Now I certainly would, said Evelyn and she took a cigarette and placed it between her lips.
Probably came over as a nanny, said Margaret.
Yes. Probably, said Evelyn, opening the matchbox.
Or a governess. That’ll be it, said Margaret.
Evelyn struck a match and inhaled.
Did you know he was writing a book? asked Margaret.
Good Lord no. He was a recent scholar, if I remember rightly. Covered in the afterbirth of graduation – shy, awkward, you know the type. Entering the world with no experience at all.
Weren’t we all like that?
Yes, I suppose we were, said Evelyn and she picked up a fig and pressed her thumbs against the soft, yielding skin. I suppose we were, she repeated quietly.
She tore the fruit in half and glanced down at the erotic sight of its vivid flesh. She blushed and would blame it on the shift to evening light, on the effect of the wine and the grappa and the cigarettes, but in her heart, in the unseen, most guarded part of her, a memory undid her, slowly – very slowly – like a zip.
Strangely charismatic, though, she said, surfacing into the present.
Forster was? said Margaret.
When he was alone, yes. But his mother’s presence suffocated him. Every reprimand was pressure applied to the pillow. Odd relationship. That’s what I remember most. Her with a parasol and smelling salts, and him with a well-thumbed Baedeker and an ill-fitting suit.
Margaret reached for Evelyn’s cigarette.
I remember he’d appear in quiet moments. You wouldn’t hear him, just see him. Tall and lanky in the corner. Or in the drawing room with a notebook. Scribbling away. Simply observing.
Isn’t that how it starts? said Margaret, handing back the cigarette.
What?
A book.
Yes. I suppose so.
Those little moments that nobody else notices. Little sacred moments of the everyday. She picked up her camera （click）。 Like that moment （click）。 Or that.
Good God, will you stop now, Margaret? What’s got into you?
Margaret lowered the camera. You don’t see what I see, she said seductively.
You have something in your teeth.
Why didn’t you say?
I did. Just now.
Margaret turned away and hid her mouth behind her hand. She ran her tongue back and forth across her incisors.
Better? she said, baring them.
Yes, said Evelyn.
Margaret suddenly swapped the position of the ashtray and figs and wine glass. She altered the aperture （click）。 She moved a wine glass, the packet of cigarettes （click） （click） （click） （click）。
I was twenty-one when I first came to Florence, said Evelyn. Did I say?
Yes, I think we all knew that, said Margaret.
Oh.
Evelyn continued: The landlady at the Simi had a maid who did a little of everything. She could always be found in the dining room, in the corner as we ate. Always watching. Waiting to serve, waiting to clear. Working us out.