Do you think they’d let us take it now, Captain Darnley, and save them the trouble?
Ulysses leant against the bars. Hello again, Evelyn. Remember me?
Kid behind him. I like this painting, she said.
Me too, he smiled. I like the cloud.
Do you want to light a candle? said the kid. Pete showed me how to do it. You have to think of someone you like. Do you think you could do that?
I think I could.
They walked over to an altar.
Pete lit these, said the kid.
（There must have been at least fifty.）
Blimey, said Ulysses.
All his women, said the kid. What’s an amend?
Making right something that’s wrong, said Ulysses and he picked up a candle and dropped a coin in the box.
Have you thought of someone? said the kid.
I have.
Is it a woman?
He smiled. Yeah, it is.
Good, she said. Now you light it. That’s it. And you think of them really hard. Are you doing that?
I am.
Really hard?
Uh-huh.
Now you can put the candle on the stand. That’s mine there. You can put it next to it if you want.
Do you think they know I was thinking of them? said Ulysses.
Pete says it’s like a special telephone call and they get it even if they’re not in.
Is that right?
Who am I to argue?
Night fell early. Kid and Pete went on ahead to the pensione whilst Ulysses veered right down Via dello Sprone towards his workshop. He walked across Piazza dei Sapiti and somewhere amidst the spray of Christmas lights, the sound of a violin spoke of loneliness. He put the key in the lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. He switched on the light and dust roiled in the flare of the overhead bulb. Three plaster spheres, like moons, on the upper shelf. The picture was as he’d left it. He’d found a printer in San Frediano after he’d taken the kid to school and had a print made of one of his father’s copperplates. Twelve gores. Early 1920s. The quality of paper not right for a globe but perfect for a painting. He’d got it framed locally, nice and simple. He ran a clean rag across the glass, a little bit of wax to lift the frame. He wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string. For Massimo, he wrote.
He picked up a last-minute bottle of bubbles in Via Maggio before coming into the square. A couple of tourists were looking up at his building. The windows were open, and he caught a glimpse of Cress by the Christmas tree, Pete and Peg giving song to the night. And he thought, You’d want to be with them if you were down here looking up. You’d want to be part of them.
He ran the stairs two at a time and stopped on the first-floor landing. He left the bottle of spumante outside the elderly contessa’s door. He rang her bell but didn’t wait.
No one heard him come in. He stood in the doorway of the living room and took off his scarf. Peg singing ‘That’s All’。 Pete, fag in mouth, down close to the keys, caressing them into another dimension. Col next to Cress on the sofa, their movements coordinated – hand to mouth with a cigarette, glass to mouth with the wine – and kid sitting on the floor, stroking the parrot. Ted standing by the window being Ted. Half in, half out. Awkward, stiff and rich. Bloody rum lot they were, but he cared for them. He took Massimo’s package into his room and dumped his coat on the bed. Peggy’s voice following him across the tiles. In the kitchen the smell of baked fish and sage. He poured out a glass of wine and came back to his position in the doorway. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He never would. Cress called it a curse and a blessing to love someone so completely and maybe that was true. Ulysses lifted the glass and drank. He’d long given up trying to fathom what Peg saw in other men. Coming to the end of the song now, she looked at him; smiled just for him. No one had what they had, he thought. Not really. He raised his glass to her. The last bars were Pete’s. The soft flourish. The gulp of emotion.
The midnight bells rang out and echoed against the dark solemn hills. From the terrace they watched the congregation file out from the basilica and gather in the square. Cress explaining that the celebrations start after mass. Then comes the feasting, the opening of presents, the— It’s a big deal, Christmas, isn’t it? said Pete.
And there’s the announcement of the century, said Col.
I meant here in Italy.
Florence, said Ted, and then he paused to drink from his glass.
Florence what? said Col.
Nothing, said Ted. Here we are in Florence.
Col gripped his stomach and unwrapped his last peppermint.
Ulysses came out with a fresh bottle of spumante and segments of panforte.