Evelyn was still subsumed by the keen brilliance of it all when a lurch and a clatter shook her, and sunlight fell upon her eyelids again. The train was through the tunnel. She brushed away the light dusting of smuts from her dark jumper and turned back and waved to Dotty. She opened a bottle of Evian water and drank. How excited she felt, how invigorated. Adventure, the best medicine.
At approximately five that afternoon, the train arrived at Santa Maria Novella station. Evelyn was one of the first onto the platform and exclaimed as she always did: Firenze! Amore Mio! And the city, of course, answered her with bells.
By 5.15 p.m. the women were in a taxi heading to the demure charms of the Pensione Picci, a small guest house along the Lungarno Corsini, and by 5.45 p.m. they had checked in to their twin room with a view, with newly installed en-suite bathroom （Fancy that, said Dotty）。
By 6.30 p.m. they had unpacked, and by 7 p.m. they had pulled up a couple of uncomfortable wicker chairs and were watching clouds pass nonchalantly over the dome of San Frediano in Cestello, listening to the roll of trams and the whine of Vespas below.
They were weary from travelling, and as the sun continued its journey west, casting shadows and drawing out colours across the water, they sipped perfectly chilled spumante offered gratis to every returning guest.
Because we know you have a choice, said Enzo, the proprietor, in his gruff Florentine accent.
Not at this price, said Evelyn.
The next day, Evelyn woke early, flung the shutters wide and praised the light. Dotty raised her head from the pillow and said, Good God! What’s that?
It’s the morning, said Evelyn.
It was an unhurried start, and by the time they got downstairs they were forced to seek breakfast elsewhere after an altercation at the buffet table involving the last boiled egg. Evelyn knew of a neighbourhood café in the vicinity of the Pensione Simi, although the hotel itself had long closed its doors. And with coffee beckoning, they set out along the river towards the Uffizi and Dotty’s first day of sketching. The easel was lightly balanced on Dotty’s shoulder, nudging the battered panama she’d found during a visit to the Alhambra. Evelyn carried the foldaway fisherman’s stool against her chest. She kept complaining it smelt of carp.
In the colonnade of the Uffizi, Dotty settled her things in the corner beneath the statues of Galileo and Pier Antonio Micheli whilst Evelyn went to look for a carabiniere to bribe, so that Dotty’s day would remain hassle-free.
By the time Evelyn returned, the easel was erected, and the large sketchbook placed upon it, and Dotty was looking thoroughly incognito with her panama pulled low. She intended to give the portraits away for free; art for art’s sake, she said: an act of joy, craft and generosity.
Unsigned, obviously, though, she said.
Obviously, said Evelyn, who scribbled an explanation of the proceedings in Italian and English, to encourage the first sitters before word eventually got around about the giveaway.
Evelyn left Dotty to her first portrait, a middle-aged husband and wife from Connecticut （Hank and Gwen） who had, the day before, suffered terribly at the hands of a caricaturist.
She walked out into the sunshine, suddenly unsure what to do with the hours ahead. There was a moment’s pause before she turned left. Had she turned right, however, she would have bumped into the man who had been on her mind at that very moment. For Ulysses Temper was standing in a café near the Ponte Vecchio, drinking an espresso, waiting for Cressy to come by on his Moto Guzzi Falcone.
Evelyn crossed over the Piazza dei Giudici, where once had stood a tiratoio, one of the vast sheds in which damp wool was stretched out to dry. Evelyn never saw this lost capsule to Renaissance times, but Constance had as a child – Constance had written a poem about it – before the building was destroyed in the mid 1800s to make way for the Chamber of Commerce. The steps were still there, though, the ones that led from the tiratoio to the river, where the process of washing the wool, and the rinsing and dyeing took place. The wool industry had given Florence her wealth, a quarter of the population employed in the industry at the height of its fame. The washers, the carders, the combers, the weavers, the dyers, the spinners. All paid a pittance, of course, until the great revolt of 1378.
Evelyn turned left up Via de’ Benci.
They had been packed into a notorious slum on what was once marshy, squalid land. Right here, thought Evelyn. Right where I’m walking now. Unsurprisingly, the Franciscans – one of the newly arrived mendicant orders – chose to settle there and establish a church to help the poor. And just like that, as if she was leading a walking tour, the Basilica of Santa Croce rose on her right. What timing, she thought. She veered across the piazza, through the parked cars, and made her way towards the statue of Dante. She always had the feeling he was pleased to see her.