That would have been the male strain, said Dotty.
Evelyn laughed and then coughed.
Dotty brought in the soup and confessed she had forgotten to put the bones in.
It’s still very tasty, said Evelyn.
You must be ill, said Dotty.
I wanted to show you this, said Dotty, and she unzipped her portfolio case and pulled out painting after painting.
The light, said Evelyn.
You, said Dotty.
Your take on the city.
And you, said Dotty.
How could those men not have been successful back then? said Dotty. The city gave them everything, didn’t it? The city was everything.
Oh yes. Had Michelangelo been born in Bologna it might all have been different, said Evelyn, suddenly on the mend.
In 1956, Evelyn did return to Florence but this time without Dotty. She took the train down from Venice, a brief respite from the Biennale where her friend was showing the Florentine work. She spent a morning watching the reconstruction of the Santa Trìnita bridge, and from there her wanderings took her down a narrow street that led into Santo Spirito square. The market was still in progress and it was noisy and enchanting. She entered from the north side, by the church. Couldn’t have known that Ulysses was driving out from the south side with the kid, although the sight of a Jowett Bradford van did register somewhat. He was delivering a globe to a villa near San Gimignano. There had been no haggling over the price and the price had remained high. It was one of his better globes. Evelyn ate an early lunch at Michele’s, and from her table even noticed an old man and a parrot sitting with the elderly women on the stone benches, sharing vermouth. She cast no judgement at such a sight because Santo Spirito had always been more outré than the other quarters. Why on earth didn’t she stay over this side? she thought. Colleagues stayed in the Bandini above the German Institute of Art in the Palazzo Guadagni, but it had always been too male for her. So what? she thought. When she returned, maybe she’d try it. Her espresso was brought out to her by a large man in an apron. They conversed freely about the economic changes to the area, which were considerable. Had she only thought to ask his recommendation of a nearby and affordable pensione. She didn’t, however. He brought her the bill and she ambled back to the railway station. She took the last train to Venice and attended a party with Dotty at Peggy Guggenheim’s. Peggy had a good eye. They talked about Jackson Pollock. Evelyn told her the best tinned sardines to buy and she was delighted. You’re always welcome here, said Peggy.
In 1958, Evelyn and Ulysses actually passed by one another on the Ponte Vecchio. （They’d laugh about that later.） Both were in conversation – Evelyn with a young art restorer and Ulysses with Massimo. Evelyn’s sight was downstream towards the Ponte Santa Trìnita, which had been completed the previous year. Oh happy day, she said, or words to that effect, even though the head of Spring would remain missing for another three years. Rumour had it that it had been stolen/kidnapped/sold to an American billionaire. The Parker Pen Company even offered a reward of $3,000 to find it. What a palaver. A dredging crew would eventually find it on the riverbed.
As for Ulysses and Massimo, they had stopped midway and were looking upstream towards the Casentino. Massimo was saying that the person he had recently fallen in love with was actually a man. He had his hands in his pockets and was waiting either to be pitied or to lose a precious friendship because those had generally been the two outcomes of past confessions. He’d better be good to you, was all that Ulysses said. They came off the bridge into an evening of Negronis and silliness. Relief, really. Never worry about stuff like that with me, said Ulysses. He met the boyfriend two months later. An older American academic called Phil. Quiet, dependable, interesting. Everything you’d want in a man.
Evelyn and Ulysses danced like this and would dance like this for years. Only their thoughts kept time. An elegant two-step created from a jig at the side of a Tuscan road. He went to a gallery and thought of her. She saw a globe and thought of him. She went to a jazz club with Dotty and listened to a pianist who they thought might have been the frontier piano man from the West End play. Couldn’t be, could it? He played a song he said he rarely played. ‘Cressy’s Song’， he called it.
And in December 1959, sitting in her Bloomsbury flat, Evelyn paused in front of her notebook. She was attempting to formulate an introduction to still life painting that would include the idea of female space, when she felt cold all of a sudden. She went over and put another log on the fire. She drew her cardigan tight around her shoulders and the orange button she’d got five years earlier in Sant’Ambrogio caught her eye. It was striking in its otherness. Just like the memory of a nine-year-old girl, who was sometimes called Alys and sometimes called kid. Evelyn reached for her glass of claret and stood in front of the fire. Some activities are exalted, others dismissed as lowly or humble or trivial, she thought. So who is it who decides? Privilege and male gaze, ultimately.