The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  There was a stirring and settling but the door on the soppalco remained firmly closed and eventually, reluctantly, they took up their charcoal. By the time the policemen re-emerged from the office close to an hour had gone by and Iris had almost finished her study of the statue, though it wasn’t any good, she could see that. The sound of the door, though, jerked all their heads back up from the easels immediately, as if none of them had had their minds on higher things, not even Hiroko.

  Slowly the director came out on to the gallery. Iris saw Antonella shoot him a frowning glance from below, then, bunching her apron in one fist she said nothing to any of them this time, only mounted the stairs and disappeared into the office.

  It was only when Antonella came back out and Iris saw her face looking down at them from the gallery that she felt it, a jolt of panic. Ma, was her first thought, because home had always been the first thing she worried about. What would she do without Ma? She darted a look at the others; Sophia was open-mouthed but Traude’s face was only politely interested, and Hiroko’s patiently expectant. Calm down, she told herself.

  Antonella was alone on the gallery; behind her in the office Iris could see the three men, standing, two in their dark blue uniforms, the course director half a head taller. Antonella’s eyes swept the room, and she cleared her throat. She blinked; her gaze settled on the drawing on the wall, the girl lying on her back with her book. And just as Iris was wondering what the connection could be between the arrival of policemen in the school and her drawing of Ronnie, Antonella turned and looked directly at her.

  Iris got to her feet in a daze; she felt them all watching.

  ‘Iris,’ said Antonella. ‘If you would come into the office.’

  Chapter Five

  For A Long Time after Lucia Gentileschi had gone, Sandro sat at his desk and thought about memory and what it must be like to lose it. Unwillingly, he conceded to himself that he knew the pattern of the disease all too well, whether they called it Alzheimer’s or something else – and apparently, Lucia Gentileschi had told him, in her dead husband’s case, it was something else. It had always been around – on the bus there was inevitably an old lady who would say every two minutes, Are you getting off here? Is this the station? But these days everyone knew someone who had it. Luisa’s mother had certainly had it, although there had been so many other things gone wrong with the poor creature that she hadn’t had it long.

  ‘It’s because people are getting older,’ Lucia Gentileschi had told him with sorrowful precision. ‘We are an ageing population.’

  The most recent memories crumbled first; you forgot setting a pan on to boil, or what you had gone to the refrigerator for, the names of recent acquaintances. Then you would confuse your children with your siblings, then with your own parents, then you would fail to recognize them at all. Sandro realized he had not asked Lucia about children. What stage had Claudio been at? The earliest, his widow had said, barely noticeable, unless you knew him inside out as she did, unless you knew the quality of his mind and his meticulous attention to detail.

  ‘He stopped reading,’ she said, then halted again and folded those pale hands back up in her lap. And although Sandro had never been interested in reading more than the newspaper in that moment he could see the two of them reading together, scholarly, silent, companionable. And then one of them stopped reading and – did what, instead? Stared, vacantly? Panicked, silently?

  ‘I started to find little sticky notes he put around the place,’ she said with a tiny gasp. ‘Two or three times, saying Teeth. Things like that. Reminding himself to clean his teeth.’ And he saw her press her lips together.

  They did say that the earliest stages could be the worst, when there was still considerable lucidity and the implications of the memory loss could be understood by the sufferer. He had seen that terrified look in Luisa’s mother’s eyes for a brief few weeks, before other parts of her brain had shut down and shielded her, mercifully, from her loss.

  He called Pietro, with a heavy heart; he hadn’t anticipated how much he would hate this. The calling in of favours. He was out on a call; carefully Sandro left the message, that he wanted to talk to him about the death of Claudio Gentileschi, gave details of the date, age, address, everything he knew would speed things up. The desk officer – whose name he had avoided asking – took down all the information, his voice remote and uninterested as if Gentileschi had died a hundred years ago. Sandro hung up, his mind ticking through the whole hopeless business; what does a man do who sees the end of his life rushing towards him?

  By the time he stood, stiff in the failing light, and reached for his coat, although he had liked her perhaps more than anyone he had met in years, Sandro was dreading his next encounter with Lucia Gentileschi.

  Nothing had happened to Ma, though the moment Iris understood that fact she had to fight the urge to phone her mother, tell her she loved her, despite being a stroppy, censorious and ungrateful only child who’d never said it before.

  She couldn’t; she mustn’t. ‘Don’t worry about phoning,’ Ma had said, squeezing Iris’s hands in hers, roughened with turps. ‘Too expensive. Too distracting.’

  The look Antonella had given her as she’d come past on the gallery had only confused Iris further. Then Antonella had stepped out of her way and gone down the metal staircase to the dwindling group of her students.

  Once inside the office, Iris had seen it on the desk, laid out on the plastic ziplock bag the policeman had brought it up in, and Ma was out of the picture.

  ‘Iris,’ said Paolo Massi abruptly, ‘I’m sorry, please sit down.’ She looked from one face to another, and hesitated, her eyes fixed on the table. Massi pulled out a chair for her, then another for himself, and then, reluctantly, she sat. Awkwardly the policemen took off their shiny peaked caps and followed suit, as if only belatedly realizing that Iris might need putting at her ease.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ she asked, her throat dry as a bone. ‘That’s Ronnie’s.’

  It certainly looked like Ronnie’s bag. Iris had been with her when she bought it from one of the Nigerian street traders three weeks ago, and for a second, remembering the conversation they’d had about the fines they’d started making tourists pay for buying fake stuff on the street, the circumspection with which they’d checked out the Via Por Santa Maria for policemen before handing over the twenty euros, she thought they might have come after her to pay.

  Only a second, though, before she asked herself, well, if they wanted to fine someone, why wouldn’t they fine Ronnie herself? Because where the bag went, Ronnie went, arm clamped over it to ward off Vespa thieves. She loved that bag.

  Iris pulled her chair a foot closer to the table, staring. The bag was big, dark brown with buckles and cleats and a big brass padlock with the designer’s name on it; she remembered peering at the seams with Ronnie, deciding that it wasn’t real leather. Ronnie’d had her bag nicked, was that it? She put out a hand to touch it but the closest policeman, a short, solid man with shiny black hair, cleared his throat; it was a warning sound, and she stopped. Iris could smell his aftershave, and she felt a kind of tension in her cheeks, as if she was about to be sick.

  ‘Is this Veronica’s bag?’ asked Paolo Massi.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, warily. The bag was empty; how could they have known whose it was or where to bring it? But as if she’d asked the question out loud the other policeman produced a smaller, transparent plastic bag from a nylon suitcase at his feet, and she knew. Ronnie’s grubby make-up bag; and her purse – still stuffed with old receipts, thought Iris, puzzled, wouldn’t a pickpocket just chuck all that stuff? – her keys on the designer keyfob some ex-boyfriend had given her. No phone.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Iris. ‘When – ? Ronnie hasn’t. . .’ She stopped then, feeling Massi’s eyes on her. She couldn’t tell them, could she, that Ronnie hadn’t been in the city for days. That she’d had no intention of doing any work this week, and that for four days Iris had lied
for her.

  But how had Ronnie managed to get out to the country – and at that moment Iris wished she could remember the name of the town or the people she was staying with or anything but her mind was a complete blank – how had Ronnie got there, bought her train ticket, without her bag? It didn’t make sense. ‘Where did you find it?’

  And then as she stared at the plastic bag Iris became aware of a dusty scent, somewhere below the policeman’s aftershave, a smell at once familiar and incongruous. Out of place here inside, in the brightly lit office. The smell of what? Of the dry earth under trees, of hummus and pine needles and leaf mould. Against her better judgement Iris leaned to look closer and she saw the bag was scuffed and grubby, sifted with fine grey dirt inside. As though it had been rescued from a rabbit hole, like a terrier she’d seen hauled out of the ground with powdery grey eyelashes. As though it had been buried.

  Iris felt something rise inside her, huge and nameless. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘If she’d lost her bag, she’d have come back, she’d have – What’s happened to her? What’s happened to Ronnie?’ She struggled to hold it back. ‘Where is she?’

  Both policemen, perhaps at the panic in her voice, began talking at once, in Italian, and although her Italian had been improving, Iris couldn’t understand. She looked from one of them to the other, and then Paolo Massi stood up, holding up a hand to the policemen. Taking control. He turned to Iris, and gratefully she found herself able to take a breath.

  ‘Iris,’ he said, and she could tell he was trying to keep his tone easy, ‘I’m sure Veronica is fine. They just need to know when, when did you last see her? See, ah, Ronnie?’

  And at the words Iris felt a strange humming in her ears, her line of vision narrowed until she could only see the bag, the brass padlock and the designer’s name, off centre, the hallmark of a fake, they’d agreed. Narrowed until all she could see was the grey dirt inside Ronnie’s bag.

  ‘I – ah – I – sorry – ’ she stumbled, but Paolo had turned away to say something to the carabinieri; she focussed on the sound of his voice, and slowly the world reasserted itself. Stupid, she thought, what was that all about? She understood that he was asking if they’d like him to translate for the moment, and they talked together about how long it might take to arrange an official translator and then they agreed. If they spoke slowly, she wanted to say, she’d be able to follow, she wasn’t useless. But then she gave in. She needed to be sure of what was happening, didn’t she? This was important. There was some nodding and shrugging, then Massi turned back to Iris.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I asked when you last saw Ronnie,’ he said. ‘Or when you last spoke to her.’

  Iris felt cold and sweaty at the same time.

  ‘I last saw her the morning after Halloween,’ she said slowly. ‘We had a Halloween thing at our flat. A party.’

  An absolutely rubbish, dismal party, she wanted to say, thinking of the American boy, and no one nice came.

  ‘On Monday, then,’ said Massi. ‘And you last saw her on Tuesday morning.’

  Iris nodded, staring at him, trying to think. ‘She was in bed,’ she said. ‘I came here. To the school. The morning we went to the pottery class.’

  ‘And you told Antonella she wasn’t well,’ said Massi flatly.

  Embarrassed at the lie, Iris shrugged uncomfortably. ‘She had a hangover,’ she said. ‘She really didn’t look that great.’ Actually, she’d been fine. Sitting up in bed, looking excited.

  Massi turned and relayed the information succinctly to the tall carabiniere, who nodded. ‘You were here on Tuesday?’ she heard the policeman ask him. ‘In the school?’

  Massi looked at him curiously. ‘I was hanging an exhibition,’ he said. ‘In our gallery. All week, in fact.’

  Plenty of people weren’t in that day, thought Iris defensively; it was only a visit to a potter in Fiesole. Practically optional; Antonella had even left them to it and come back to the school.

  The policeman nodded. ‘So you didn’t know Miss Hutton was not attending her classes?’

  ‘Antonella might have mentioned it,’ said Massi, frowning. ‘Veronica would not have been the first student to play truant; obviously we do our best. We have excellent results.’ He sounded defensive.

  ‘But you yourself were not here. You were not teaching.’

  ‘No,’ said Massi, sounding angry.

  Uncomfortably Iris watched them. Sooner or later she’d just have to say. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I knew she wouldn’t be in this week,’ she said, looking down into her lap with shame. ‘Well, no, actually I thought it would be a couple of days, but you know. . .’ She’d been going to say, you know Ronnie, but for some reason the phrase raised panic in her. ‘She said she was going off to stay with some friends of her mother’s.’ The name of the place came to her, and then the name of the friends. ‘The Hertfords,’ she said, almost triumphant until she checked herself. ‘In Greve.’

  Massi gave her a look, half-dubious, it seemed to Iris. ‘Ah, well,’ he said with false joviality, ‘there’s the answer.’ Did he still not believe her?

  ‘It seems she’s in Chianti,’ he said, turning to the policemen, explaining. They seemed to relax, almost grow impatient as they talked back to him. Massi turned again to Iris.

  ‘You’ve spoken to her since she got there? She didn’t mention her bag?’

  ‘I, um, I – well, no,’ said Iris slowly, feeling the panic rise in her again at the question.

  ‘That is, I called her a couple of times, but there wasn’t – it said the number wasn’t active. Or something. Sometimes – well, if there’s no signal?’

  They asked for Ronnie’s number, and the network she used, and then it dawned on Iris that the phone hadn’t been in her bag, had it? Which was odd because that was where she usually kept it, but perhaps she’d had it in a pocket, or perhaps the person who took her bag only wanted the phone. Iris felt her head hurt with the possibilities. Why take the phone and not the money? It occurred to Iris that the keys to the apartment weren’t in the bag, either.

  So Ronnie had her phone, and her keys. That was better.

  ‘We could try her again,’ she said, pulling out her phone and dialling before they could stop her. That would be the way to deal with this. Please, she repeated in her head as she waited, Just speak, Ronnie, just answer. Just let me hear your voice, one more time. And only later did she think that it was then, listening to the dead air before she heard the wooden Italian recorded message once again, that she knew something was wrong.

  ‘Would any wife believe it?’ asked Luisa, arms folded. ‘That her husband would commit suicide?’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Sandro impatiently, pulling her chair out. Between them on the kitchen table was a dish of pappardelle with hare sauce, his favourite, the pasta ribbons glossy with meat juices. The kitchen was warm, the overhead light low over the table which was laid as always, cloth, clean glasses, water jug, napkins. It had lifted him just to see it, but Luisa’s reaction could capsize the whole mood. ‘It’ll get cold,’ he said, mildly.

  Sandro had been looking forward to this, all the way back. As though by prior arrangement the rain had stopped briefly and he walked home by moonlight. Through the great emptiness of the Piazza del Carmine, its cobbles gleaming; when he reached the great dark palaces of the Via Santo Spirito and saw silvery light shining down its majestic length, the Florence he recognized, then he began to return to himself. Halfway down a photographic hoarding was suspended from a facade; peering at it, Sandro saw that it showed an image of the great flood of 1966. November 1966: the photograph was of a pile of rubble up against a shopfront, and a car overturned in a tide of sludge. Sandro had been eighteen, and on military service; he had not yet met Luisa.

  Walking on, he could see them now, the waters that had risen, stealthily, unstoppably, four decades before, up to the piano nobile, washing through ancient cellars. Remembered the mu
d and filth it had left behind and the months of back-breaking work of hauling and sluicing and rebuilding, the trucks full of ruined worldly goods parked everywhere, and men crying in the streets. And briefly Sandro marvelled at how the city had survived. How he had survived, the eighteen-year-old Sandro full of frustration and temper and irresolution; he’d found himself a job, a life; he’d found Luisa, and held on to her. Like the clean-up of the city, it had turned out to be a matter of hard work all along.

  In the kitchen Luisa sighed, and sat. In silence she served them, then started, as Sandro lifted the fork to his lips. He heard her out, chewing thoughtfully.

  ‘However bad it got, how could you make yourself believe it? That the one you had lived with for all that time, the love of your life, would just, just – leave you? Abandon you?’

  Alarmed, Sandro nodded, trying to work out where this outburst had come from. He put his fork down carefully. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘It’s so good. And you look worn out.’

  It was true; Luisa was pale, her eyelids were dark and heavy. She made a sound of frustration, but she began to eat. It was the best strategy against Luisa’s outrage, the threat of letting food spoil. She eyed him as she ate, but he saw her grow calmer. Then he understood; it seemed so long ago to him, but clearly not to Luisa.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said impatiently. ‘I know. I was never going to do away with myself, you know that.’ Her eyes narrowed, dangerously. Carefully Sandro poured her half a glass of the very nice Brunello Pietro had given them. He had connections down in the Val D’Orcia; a nephew drove for one of the winemakers, who’d lost his licence. Luisa exhaled, took a sip of the wine, softened.

  ‘You say that now, Sandro. I think you’ve forgotten.’

  Maybe it was true; maybe he had forgotten. He’d certainly been in a state two years ago when the body of the child’s killer was found, when questions started to get asked at Porta al Prato, and Sandro had decided to head off on his lone mission, like John Wayne. Knowing he would be out of the force when they found out what he’d done. When they caught up with him. Had he intended to do himself in? He’d be lying if he said it hadn’t gone through his mind, but that wasn’t the same thing. There was planning involved; you’d have to think of who found the body, how to manage it without too much mess. Or too much pain.