The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply, and when he waited, she continued. ‘I suppose, yes to both. He was beginning to be ill, in the early stages. He was eight years older than I am. He was eighty-one.’

  ‘The early stages?’ Sandro felt uneasy; he didn’t feel yet as though he was asking the questions he really wanted to ask. But he could tell this was a woman who hated telling her business to others, and he needed to take it slowly.

  ‘Well.’ Her fine, clever face seemed to collapse a little, and in her lap her hands fell apart. ‘He was becoming forgetful.’ She looked away from Sandro a little, towards the window. ‘He forgot ridiculous things. I bought him a book, for his last birthday, in June. A study of Viennese modernist architects. He forgot it was his, almost immediately. He picked it up as if he had never seen it before, three times. Where on earth did this come from? he said. Is this mine?’

  Still she wouldn’t look at Sandro; as she gazed past him through the window he saw her eyelids tremble, and he felt very sorry indeed. It was to be dreaded, wasn’t it? This Alzheimer’s thing. They all dreaded it.

  ‘He was an architect?’ he asked, to ward off the subject, somehow. Then she looked at him, and she smiled, and he saw how beautiful she must have been. A young woman with her child’s haircut and the beautiful arches of her eyebrows.

  ‘He was,’ she said with gentle joy. ‘A wonderful architect. Not famous,’ she added hastily. ‘Modest. But very clever.’

  And then her face clouded so suddenly and devastatingly that he felt she must be about to cry. Sandro felt absolutely helpless.

  ‘Signora Gentileschi,’ he said quickly, wishing he had something to forestall the tears, wishing he had Luisa with him, a box of tissues, anything, but in their absence he extended a hand uselessly across the table. ‘I am so sorry.’ But again she controlled herself; he knew now, though, what that emotion had been, at least; he recognized grief when he saw it.

  ‘Signora Gentileschi,’ said Sandro, ‘tell me how can I help you.’ And then, knowing that they would have to come to it first, ‘How did your husband die?’

  Her head tilted and her blue eyes looked at him, pale and luminous as the moon.

  ‘They told me he killed himself,’ she said.

  The fog cleared around noon, just as they were breaking for lunch at the Studio Massi, but as Iris pulled off her apron and stashed her pencils and erasers away, she still felt as if something heavy was in the air, something hanging over her.

  It wasn’t fair. Ronnie went off to live it up with some friends of her mother’s in a castle in the countryside, and Iris had to come up with her excuses.

  ‘Tell them yourself,’ she’d said, outraged. Ronnie had been sitting up in bed, hungover but still pretty. And Ronnie’d pulled out all the stops, pleading, it was the chance of a lifetime, blah, blah. ‘Anyway,’ she’d finished slyly, ‘it’ll only be Antonella. You can handle Antonella.’

  And so far this week, it had only been Antonella Scarpa, the short-tempered studio manager: Iris had a strategy for dealing with her, just get it over with, her bark was worse than her bite. Head down, nodding to agree or to accept criticism on her own behalf or on Ronnie’s. But to her dismay, there was another coat hanging by the door, a heavy black wool overcoat next to Antonella’s fur-trimmed jacket, and when Iris came around the corner into the big room there he was, the course director. Paolo Massi, off wheeler-dealing somewhere, to whom she had not yet had to explain Ronnie’s absence. She had assumed he’d be away all week; her heart sank.

  Massi was just the kind of Florentine Iris had been led to expect from paintings – long straight nose, tall and lean, permanently frowning; she bet Ronnie’s mum had liked him when she’d signed them up for the course. Serena (Ronnie often called her mother by her first name, with a sneer) had been here on a mini-break with the new boyfriend, and it must have looked like a golden opportunity, something to keep Ronnie busy for a bit longer while they worked out a plan of action.

  Ronnie’s A-levels had been disappointing. And they’d been impressed with the school, a long pedigree, an old family business with testimonials all over, a printing press that had been kept running during the war to help the partisans. Though as Ma said, if it was anything like France and everyone who said they’d worked for the Resistance really had, the war’d have been over a lot sooner.

  At first Iris wondered, when Massi and Antonella both looked up at her from whatever it was they’d been examining on the big trestle table, if this was a deliberate strategy. We need to talk about Ronnie.

  But they said nothing, Antonella smiling faintly and superciliously, fine-boned, long-nosed and androgynous. She had sharp black eyes and very short black hair, a crew cut with a bit of grey in it. I wonder if they’re having a thing, thought Iris, just for a second. Or – no. He’s married.

  ‘Our best student,’ said Massi. ‘Good morning, Iris.’ He pronounced it in the Italian way, made it sound more like a flower. Ee-ris. She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not, and mumbled something, like sorry.

  He smiled, a little stiffly. ‘It’s all right, Iris. I was being sincere.’ And he gestured around. ‘Always first. Always ready for work.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Ronnie, I mean,’ said Iris, feeling foolish, then regretting saying anything at all. He passed a hand over his high forehead, hair springing back, wiry, with threads of grey. He sighed.

  ‘Veronica?’ He spoke lightly, but she could tell he was taking it personally. ‘I’m disappointed in Veronica.’

  Iris bit her lip, ashamed.

  Only last week Ronnie’d been asking him about supplementary reading, making a good impression, her speciality of course, until she spoiled it. She always spoiled it, though in this instance she’d excelled herself; he’d fallen for it, hadn’t he? Offered her some of his own books to read, given her a pass for that tour of the Vasari corridor, the famous passageway from the Pitti Palace to the Uffizi that only the cognoscenti ever got to see. And now Iris had to carry the can.

  She looked at her feet while he spoke.

  ‘Do I bother to ask where she is today?’ he said, stiffly.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, and Paolo Massi nodded, studying her. ‘These students,’ he said. ‘But not you, Iris, eh?’ He nodded towards the row of hooks, where her apron hung. ‘To work, OK? I think the one I should speak to is Veronica’s mother, perhaps.’

  Bloody hell, thought Iris as she turned to begin work, then, when he didn’t look up again from the table, He’s bluffing. But Ronnie’s mother probably wouldn’t care, anyway; it was probably all the same to her if Ronnie was learning to draw or rubbing shoulders with English aristocrats in some castle in Chianti.

  It had turned so mild by lunchtime that Antonella Scarpa opened the glass doors into the courtyard and Iris slipped out there to eat her sandwich. Only half a dozen had turned up today, anyway; forget it, she thought, why are you feeling guilty? She wondered again what would happen if Massi did call Ronnie’s mother. Maybe she’d be out on her ear, for failing to keep Ronnie on the straight and narrow.

  The centre of the large, high-ceilinged studio was now occupied by a long table, where they could sit and eat or draw. Six or seven people; the workers. Even today, even preoccupied with Ronnie’s bad behaviour, Iris liked Fridays. Right from the start – and this was, what, her fourth Friday? Or maybe fifth – certain students on the course didn’t turn up, because the partying started on Thursday night. It meant the noise levels were down and, more importantly, the social pressure was off. There was none of the, Where did you go last night? Did you see so and so? I was, like, so wasted. Ronnie could handle it, of course, Miss Congeniality; Ronnie was interested.

  But Iris wanted a quiet life, and on Fridays that was what you got. She surveyed the heads at the table. She liked everyone who was in today, liked Hiroko, liked Gaby, even liked weird Traude from Nuremberg. The absentees were Sophia, from Gloucestershire, and Jackson, from some college in Vermont. Iris didn’t know wh
ere Vermont was, exactly, but it didn’t look poor; even Iris found herself looking sneakily at Jackson’s iPhone, mesmerised by the tiny glowing screen and Jackson moving the pictures along with a fingertip, like a magician. Jackson had laughed at her, not unkindly.

  Sophia was prone to oversleeping, and so hopeless at drawing Iris felt for her; it was to her credit that she kept going at all. To date Iris didn’t think Jackson had come in once on a Friday, and on the days he was in he was almost detached, sleepy and careless and gangly. Out of place, just killing time in the studio while waiting for the evening when he’d head off out with some other Americans to the Zoe, a bar around the corner from the school where their evenings always started. A place full of posh, wealthy Florentines, young men in blazers and crisply ironed shirts and women in heels, with long blonde hair. They’d move on to the happening places, the other bars and clubs, and as often as not Ronnie would go with them. Sometimes they asked Iris, but she didn’t have the money, and she didn’t want to freeload. Would she have gone if she had? Maybe.

  Jackson had asked after Ronnie yesterday, or maybe it had been the day before. The day the rain started; they’d been eating their sandwiches at the table, listening to it fall on the glass roof. He’d shown no sign of surprise when Iris had told him, under her breath, that she’d taken a little holiday. ‘Somewhere hot, I hope,’ he’d said, nodding at the rain. Iris had grimaced, thinking of how mad Ronnie would be, no chance of swimming pool action at the Chianti castle.

  Antonella hadn’t really gone over the top about it, either. Iris pondered if this always happened, the parents coughed up for the course, and the students just quietly drifted off to do their own thing after a week or two. Nice enough for the teachers; maybe that was why there seemed to be an etching school or a life class around every corner in Florence; she passed at least five brass plaques on her way in every morning. You ended up with a handful of committed students, and a nice quiet studio.

  Iris yawned; she’d slept like a log last night, in the huge cold flat with its blackout curtains and shutters and cavernous spaces, but it had left her feeling even more tired than usual. She squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them again she found herself looking at a drawing that with a sick feeling she recognized as one of hers. It had been pinned up on the wall, by Antonella, Iris assumed. It was a sketch she’d done of Ronnie lying on her back, hands behind her head, one knee up and the other leg slung over it carelessly, a book resting on her thighs. She’d handed it in at the end of last week to be marked.

  Flushing, Iris found herself glad Ronnie herself wasn’t here to remark on it, to say something languid and sarcastic, her voice floating through the studio. The space had deceptive acoustics, transmitting sound around corners and into alcoves; the higher registers carried a long way under the lofty, vaulted ceilings. Iris turned away from the picture; she wished Antonella hadn’t put it up.

  The model this morning had been a man for once – she thought Sophia and Ronnie might even be pissed off to have missed him. He’d been young too, in his twenties perhaps, but it had been hard to tell because he was very thin. Iris had wondered if he had something the matter with him, he’d seemed unnaturally knobbly, all bones and joints, and although he had black Italian hair, his skin was whiter than any she’d ever seen, his chin blue with stubble. He hadn’t said anything but, then, the models often didn’t. He’d been very good at keeping still, on a wooden chair, knees apart and elbows resting on them.

  They didn’t have a live model every day. They spent a lot of time drawing from jointed figures and photographs, which Iris thought at first was a bit of a cheat but when she kept at it she could see it helped. She liked drawing from life, though; after the first week she had started looking at clothed people, people in the dark streets or in bars, and imagining drawing them in the studio, undressed, how their flesh would sit on their bones. Fat was hard to draw. It was a weird feeling, interesting, not for any pervy reason but because it made them all equal, somehow, and in addition it seemed to qualify her to examine people shamelessly.

  Going into the studio’s small kitchen to wash up her plate, Iris found herself wondering what Paolo Massi would be like to draw, and just at that moment he walked in. She felt herself blush, turned slightly so he wouldn’t notice her and her hot cheeks, and made a lot of drying her plate then putting it away. He didn’t say anything – perhaps he hadn’t registered she was even there – but began to assemble the pieces of the aluminium coffee pot, and she quickly went out.

  Iris seated herself at the table as the blush subsided, scrabbling in her bag for her sketchbook. Perhaps it was because he’d been away that she was noticing Paolo Massi suddenly, wondering about him. He’d been there all the time their first three weeks after all, and she’d hardly registered him. He gave the introductory talk in the big studio, Ronnie and Jackson tittering at the back over something, rudely. He had taken them round the Uffizi and to look at drawings in a private room. Michelangelo, mostly; Iris thought she might go back and look at them again. Massi had been distant, and she remembered thinking it must be boring for him, having to say the same thing, every three months or so, to another lot of them.

  ‘Hey,’ said Hiroko’s soft voice at her elbow suddenly, making Iris start. ‘Are you OK?’

  Iris turned, surprised; she must have been staring off into the distance. Hiroko was a quiet, self-contained person; modest was the word Iris would have used, or perhaps it was a Japanese thing. She didn’t ever talk loudly, or put herself forward, like the rest of them.

  ‘Fine,’ said Iris, with a sigh. She smiled, half curious, half grateful for this display of interest. ‘I’m fine.’

  Hiroko nodded. ‘You’re distracted this morning.’

  ‘Just a bit,’ said Iris. She had an idea Hiroko was living across town beyond the railway station, a bleak, noisy part of the city with concrete, Stalinist hotels, although Hiroko never complained or even spoke about it at all. All she knew about Hiroko came from one conversation overheard. Iris had been sitting next to Traude when she asked Hiroko where she came from, and had marvelled silently at the information that her father was a Buddhist monk in Southern Japan, outside a city Iris had never heard of. She imagined Hiroko as a small, serious girl sitting alone under cherry trees, with her straight black fringe. And she wondered how it would work, having a monk for a father.

  Hiroko was looking at her. ‘She hasn’t been here since Monday. Has she gone back home?’ she said in her soft, apologetic tones, and for a moment Iris wondered what she was talking about.

  ‘Back home?’ And then she realized she meant Ronnie. ‘Oh, no,’ she said quickly, because if Ronnie’d gone back, she’d be going back too. ‘She hasn’t gone back. To England, you mean?’ She shook her head at the very idea, no, no, no. ‘No. She’s. . . around. Somewhere.’ And she laughed.

  Hiroko looked at her in puzzlement. ‘You don’t know where she is?’ Maybe it sounded worse to a Japanese person; perhaps like Italians they left home in their late twenties, weren’t used to teenagers being allowed to roam the world on their own. And as she spoke Iris became aware of the school’s director at her shoulder with a small metal tray of coffee things. He set it down. There was a silence.

  ‘Oh,’ said Iris, ‘it’s some guy. Well, you know Ronnie.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I suppose you don’t. . .’ She gave Hiroko an agonized look, incorporating a meaningful glance at the course director, who had sat down at the end of the table and was frowning. Hiroko still looked baffled, but she shrugged.

  ‘OK,’ she said, eyeing Iris curiously. ‘But you’re not lonely? Living on your own?’

  ‘I’m not living on my own,’ said Iris quickly, feeling the director’s eyes on her as he waited for an explanation.

  Antonella came out of the kitchen and began to collect the small coffee cups. Iris sprang to her feet to help.

  ‘Back to work,’ said Massi.

  They were to do charcoal studies of a small Etruscan statue Antonella had set
up against the glass doors, but they had hardly sat at their easels when a bell rang. It was only the doorbell but today to Iris it sounded ridiculously loud, a raucous, grating sound like the alarms that called farmers in from the fields in France. In the peaceful space it reverberated, stopping them all in their tracks: Hiroko, Traude, Sophia, who’d turned up breathless just as they packed up their easels from the morning’s sitting, looking around for someone before sitting down, Antonella in her work apron behind the delicate, beautiful statue. Massi came out of the office that sat on a soppalco, a kind of loft platform in the space above them, and looked down.

  Antonella shrugged in response; she made as if to take off her apron and go to answer it but Massi made an impatient gesture and came down the stairs.

  ‘Come along,’ said Antonella, turning back briskly to her small audience as Massi passed behind them on the way to answer the door, a tiny frown puckering her forehead. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. A lavoro’.

  But none of them even picked up the charcoal; they were listening. There were men’s voices, lowered but serious, at the end of the wide corridor that led to the street door. Massi’s voice was raised. Then there were footsteps and the voices came closer, and seeing the expression on Antonella’s face as she looked down the corridor, they all turned, and Iris stared along with all the rest. Two carabinieri in dark blue uniforms with guns startlingly real, matt black and substantial on their hips, were following the course director back into the studio and up the stairs to the office. One of them was carrying a large plastic envelope by the corners; it was opaque, and seemed to contain something bulky.

  All three men’s faces were averted from their curious audience as in unison the heads below followed their progress; there was a tiny gasp, from Sophia, when the nearest policeman’s holster came into her line of sight. She began to say something in a whisper but stopped when Antonella raised a hand.

  Iris saw Antonella make an effort. ‘Really,’ she said to the small, open-mouthed group with an attempt at her usual authority, though Iris could see she was shaken. ‘Please.’