And that’s how it ends, is it?
Almost, said Evelyn. After dinner, guests retired as they always did. There was a faint sound of a piano in the background. I told Constance I wanted to stay and give my thanks to the young woman and she went on ahead to the smoking room. And there I stood, between the graveyard of glasses, and the wilting nubs of candles. The maid came out shortly after. I don’t think she noticed me at first. She looked hot and rather distracted. But then she saw me. She picked a violet and handed it to me. Per voi, she said. For me. The evening was for me. I knew that. I thanked her. I took the violet from her hand and left the room. Later, I pressed it in my Baedeker.
Do you still have it?
The Baed—
The violet.
I doubt it. All those years, Margaret. Why would I? Evelyn lit a cigarette and they sat in silence. She could feel Margaret’s gaze haunting her. The blunt edge of her jealousy.
What adventures you’ve had, said Margaret coolly.
The sun was lowering. The shadows lengthened. The temperature surrendered shallowly to the breeze. The sound of a sewing machine coming from indoors: the signora mending sheets. A radio played quietly. A clandestine channel keeping contact between the Allies and the Resistance.
Margaret said, I think I may go in and read. You?
I’ll be here a while longer. Finish the ciggie. Touch more grappa.
Don’t wander off.
I shan’t. I’ll just go to the edge of the road over there. Where I shall stand. Obediently. Hoping for a horse and cart to trample me.
She watched Margaret depart through the doorway. She could feel the tension ease from her shoulders. She got up and downed the grappa and went over to the side of the road. The sudden drone of Allied traffic in the distance made her look towards the edge of land. She raised her binoculars. Cypress hills were already in shadow. It wasn’t cold but the tilt of light, the mauve tinge to the landscape made her shiver. Almost forty-five years ago, she’d fallen in love with a young maid called Livia. The distant rumble of guns sounded like thunder. Brief flashes of artillery split the sky. Of course, she’d kept the bloody violet.
In a wood, somewhere between Staggia Senese and Poggibonsi, Allied troops were waiting to enter Florence. Dusk was looming, and through the trees came the sound of an accordion stolen from a factory near Trieste.
Standing by his jeep, peering into a broken mirror with the lower half of his face covered in soap, was a young man. He was running the blade carefully across his upper lip, avoiding the scar that had risen two years before.
He had blond hair that revealed a hint of red under the early-evening sun. No one in the family knew where the red had come from, both sides being dark, and his father often joked that the winter his son was conceived, he’d eaten his fill of beetroot. You were stained, his father liked to tell him.
His features were his mother’s: straight, slender nose, slightly longer than the required ratio of hairline to bridge, or chin to tip, that would have signified a face in perfect symmetry. Eyebrows at an upward angle conveyed a good listener, and his ears, though not wildly protruding, were definitely alert. When he smiled, which he did often, a dimple appeared in either cheek, which was immediately disarming.
His wife, Peg, said he should’ve been better looking seeing as he’d inherited all his mum’s best bits. She’d meant it as a compliment, but her words danced both ways, hot and cold, kind and cruel, but that was Peg. Unknown to everyone, his apotheosis would come in later years. He would be a fairly handsome middle-aged man. An eye-catching elderly man.
The squeal of birds overhead delighted him. He and they had travelled hundreds of miles north against all odds to arrive at that place in time – swifts at the end of March and him in June – and the catalogue of near misses, or lucky escapes that had accompanied his journey across Africa, Sicily and up the Adriatic would have astonished priests and astrologers alike. Something had been watching over him. Why not a swift?
He looked at his watch and rinsed his face. He threw his pack and rifle into the jeep just as Sergeant Lidlow was coming out of the mess tent.
Where you off to, Temps?
Picking up the captain, Sarge.
Bring us back a bottle or two, will you?
Ulysses turned the ignition and the old jeep caught first time.
He drove into the hills, leaving behind the silhouettes of tanks and men. He passed different Allied divisions, young men like him worn old. The soft light moved with him across the groves and meadows, until the sky held only ripples of pink and the night chasing in from the west. He’d tried to practise ambivalence towards this country, but it was futile. Italy astonished him. Captain Darnley had seen to that. They’d travelled up the country together, mostly reconnaissance, but sometimes mere wandering. Through remote villages, seeking out frescoes and hilltop chapels.