Ulysses joined him in the living room where Cress had, only moments before, deposited a few chilled bottles onto the drinks trolley.
Des said, Poppy’s in there sprucing herself up for our last night. We’re having wild boar sausages at Michele’s. Such a good recommendation. Cheers, lad, he said.
Cheers, Des. And thanks for staying with us.
They clinked beer bottles.
The pleasure’s all ours.
And then Des said, A young man bringing up a kid by himself. Was it the war?
Yeah, sort of, said Ulysses. We do all right though.
I can see that. But I want to help. What I don’t know about business you could write on a gnat’s arse. A self-made millionaire by the time I was forty.
Ulysses whistled his admiration.
Plastics, said Des. Two words: jelly moulds.
Ulysses’ ears pricked up.
Can you mould anything, Des?
Anything. Your head. My shoe.
What about two half spheres that come together to form a perfect whole?
Consider it done. How many you want? 50? 100?
One.
A prototype. Sensible.
36 cm in diameter.
Inches if you please, lad.
14.17.
Precision. My kind of man.
The morning of departure, Des and Poppy handed over an envelope full of cash. Cress looked inside and said Jesus Christ, Des.
Worth every penny, said Des. And I’ve made a basic business plan for you. A breakdown of what you should charge, based on that Bandini place on the corner.
Des had a snoop around yesterday, said Poppy. He was pretending to buy it.
They’ve got the added benefit of a dining room, of course.
We’re not ready for that, Des.
I can see that, lad. So here we have it. Different rates for different rooms. Seasonal adjustments. Get to know your market. Word of mouth’s a powerful tool. And I’m going to mouth off at every chance I get. The personal touch is all I’ve ever known. Change nothing. Get a telephone when you can – and he looked sternly at Ulysses – and a proper coffee machine. The smell alone is worth a million big ones. Then you can offer bed and breakfast. Raises the profile. Me and Poppy love a coffee and a pastry first thing of a morning.
We do, Des.
Here’s my number. I’ll let Michele know when the mould’s ready and when you can expect it. Now show us to the visitors’ book. We’ve got an essay to write.
After Des and Poppy came the Willoughbys: young newlyweds from Pennsylvania. Cress went overboard with rose petals. The new year brought the two gents Mr Rakeshaw and Mr Crew. They were fun, everyone liked them. The Ashleys came next. Then Gwendolyn Fripworth and her niece, who came specifically for the new season asparagus and peas.
And that would be the pattern, at least for a year or so, of how the first guests came to stay. A gradual easing into the complex world of hospitality, was how Cress described it. Till word of mouth spread and from March to October, the rooms were mostly occupied and brought in a modest income that provided all they needed. Every year the priest came by to bless the place and the length of his stay was measured by the quality of the wine at hand. Four hours for a particularly good Brunello.
Eventually, Ulysses would look forward to November when the majority of visitors left, and the weather became English for three months: a lot of rain, a little sleet and starry nights that brought a mantle of frost. The only guests, then, were loners or art enthusiasts, basically no trouble at all.
But we’re ahead of ourselves.
It’s 1953, still. December. The leaves are well and truly off the trees and an occasional dusting of snow flies in from the Apennines. Florentine women don their furs and the smell of white truffles mingles with roasting chestnuts. A presepio, a nativity scene, arrives outside the church and the guitar player takes his blues away. After the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the city shifts its regard and it’s all systems go go go for Christmas.
THE biggest news at the Pensione Pappagallo, as it was now known, was that Des’s moulds had arrived. Six sets, not one, because Des was that kind of man. （Never does things by halves, said Poppy, showing her two engagement rings.） And within hours Ulysses was in his workshop up to his elbows in plaster of Paris and strips of hessian. He worked fast, sloshing the liquid up the sides of the mould, adding the hessian to strengthen, then more layers of plaster. His first attempts were crude, and he used them as practice spheres for the gores. Which glue held best on which paper. Which paper stretched too much, which held right, which absorbed watercolour paint and glue the best. The process was slow, arduous. His aesthetic instinct had grown flabby after a decade of procrastination and the floor of his workshop became a graveyard for discarded planet earths. Two weeks later, however, two hemispheres became a near perfect one. He took a day to carve off the thick joint-seam and to sandpaper the surface smooth – he couldn’t stop looking at it. He should have, though. He was late again.