Three Days in Florence

by Chrissie Manby

  Kathy had been made redundant from her admin job in March and was still looking for something else to do – or, at least, something else to talk about. Not that she didn’t have enough to fill her days, what with looking after Neil and, one week in every two, his children. Actually, his children seemed to be around more and more, since their mother had moved her new lover, a tennis coach, into the family home. Neil had commented that Caroline didn’t need to shack up with anyone with a proper job since she’d taken more than half of Neil’s money.

  ‘How are you, Caroline?’ one of Neil’s aunts asked now. ‘How’s the fashion business?’

  Kathy didn’t correct her, knowing the aunt didn’t care anyway. ‘I’m very well,’ she said. ‘And the fashion business is absolutely fab.’

  That evening’s reception did not go late. Dinner – a buffet arrangement with freshly made pizza – was over by half past nine, ending with another short address by Dave, during which he asked ‘the younger guests in particular’ to refrain from skinny-dipping. The wedding party would be fined a hundred euros for anyone caught in the pool after 8 p.m. ‘If you get caught,’ he added, with a wink.

  ‘Urgh!’ Sophie and Amelie chimed. Oscar did not look up from his phone.

  Neil was not in the mood for skinny-dipping.

  Back in the bedroom, he filled Kathy in on the family politics that had passed her by. Shelley’s half of the party was full of ‘people who don’t know how to behave’. Apparently Shelley’s brother kept mentioning his new car. Shelley’s younger sister claimed her necklace was worth five grand. Neil’s own cousin, Jeff, had attracted his ire by pointing out that they were wearing the same watch, but since Jeff had bought his entry-level Rolex at Duty Free in Zürich, he’d saved enough on the retail price Neil had paid to get himself some matching cufflinks. Kathy didn’t understand why Neil got so upset about the showing off. He was doing perfectly well and could have shown off with the best of them (indeed, probably did). It was touching, in some way, that he couldn’t seem to let it wash over him. The little boy who’d grown up in a council house in Wolverhampton, determined to prove himself, was never far from the surface when his family was around.

  Halfway through his diatribe, Neil leaped out of bed with such haste that Kathy wondered if he’d heard someone trying to break into their room. He snapped on the overhead light.

  ‘There is a bloody mosquito in here!’ he exclaimed.

  He armed himself with one of Kathy’s shoes and Kathy duly joined him in searching every inch of the room for the tiny critter. Even with four pairs of eyes on the job, they didn’t find it. However, as soon as Neil decided they should go back to bed, the high pitched whining started anew. The light went back on. They got out of bed. The mosquito stayed out of sight. They went back to bed.

  ‘Buzzzzz.’

  Neil turned the light on. They got out of bed.

  And it carried on like that until well after two in the morning.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, Kathy and Neil joined the rest of the family for breakfast. A vast buffet had been laid out on the terrace. Piled high with fruit, charcuterie and cheese, the table was as beautiful as a still-life painting. Still Sophie complained that she could find nothing that fitted with her gluten-free vegan diet (apart from a chocolate croissant – she totally ignored the fruit). Then Amelie complained that Sophie had kept her awake all night, Skyping her boyfriend. He was at the festival and she needed to be in contact with him at all times to make sure he wasn’t cheating on her, she explained. Oscar didn’t look up from his phone as he mechanically stuffed three pastries into his mouth.

  Shelley joined them, eager to talk about plans for the day ahead. That day – Wednesday or ‘Wedding Eve’ as Shelley called it – minibuses had been booked to take the guests on a couple of excursions. Dave was having a last-minute stag do for the male guests, with wine tasting following by paintballing in a nearby forest. The ‘ladies’ were invited to join a trip to the Mall – a nearby designer retail outlet, where all the big labels could be had for a song. Sophie and Amelie’s eyes lit up while Kathy felt her credit-card wilt at the very idea. She knew that the girls saw her as an extension of their father’s wallet.

  ‘The outlet bus leaves in an hour,’ Shelley said. ‘Nine o’clock. Don’t be late!’

  There was no way Amelie and Sophie would be late to go shopping.

  With an hour to kill, Kathy decided she’d spend half of it catching up on the sleep she’d missed, thanks to Neil’s all-night battle with the mozzie. She’d dared not suggest that if you thought hard enough about mosquitoes you’d always hear one, even if you were in a hermetically sealed bunker three thousand miles from the nearest breeding ground.

  Now, with Neil out of the way – the paintballing bus had already gone – Kathy turned off the air-conditioning and lay down on the bed. It didn’t take long before the room started to warm to something approaching actual room temperature. She set the alarm on her phone for half an hour. Alas, she forgot to turn it on. When she woke up, it was already 9.05.

  ‘Arse!’

  Kathy grabbed her bag and her floppy sunhat and cantered down the stone staircase to the palazzo’s lobby. It was ominously empty. She burst through the big doors into the sunlight. Likewise, no one was standing outside on the driveway from where the minibus to the outlet was due to depart.

  Because it had already departed.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said the hotel manager, who rushed out to join her on the gravel. ‘I could arrange for a taxi to take you. You’ll catch them up. I’ll call right now.’

  ‘No,’ Kathy said at once. ‘No. That would be far too much effort.’

  ‘It would not be charged to the wedding,’ the manager assured her.

  ‘There really is no need.’

  ‘I thought I’d made sure everyone was on the bus.’ The manager seemed worried. ‘I must sort this out.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Kathy insisted.

  ‘But there’s no one else here.’

  No one? Really? Not even Margaret? She was a little miffed that none of the women in Neil’s family had bothered to find out where she was before they’d set off on their shopping spree but Kathy felt a smile spread over her whole body. Apart from the staff, she had the palazzo entirely to herself.

  ‘You don’t want to be with your party?’ the manager persisted.

  Kathy reassured him: ‘Absolutely not.’

  Kathy spent the rest of the morning pleasing herself. After taking coffee in the rose garden, which was infinitely more pleasant without a soundtrack of Neil’s relatives sniping about foreign food and blood-sucking insects, she had a swim in the pool. She would never have dared go near it if Sophie and Amelie were still around, but with no one to pass judgement on her ancient swimming cozzie, or the ‘ancient’ body inside it, she felt like the luckiest woman on earth.

  She had a whole swimming pool to herself under the glorious heat of the Tuscan sun. She’d never had a pool to herself before. After three lengths – which felt like plenty – she leaned against the edge, with her forearms on the warm limestone flags and the rest of her body in the cool water. She listened to the hum of the industrious bees in the lavender planted all around. Small white butterflies fluttered by, looking like rose petals making an escape on the wind. Swallows played above her head. Occasionally, one would dive-bomb the other end of the pool for a sip of the azure water or to scoop a hapless insect off its surface. Kathy could imagine nothing more perfect than that moment. This was la dolce vita. For a little while she could forget the sadness and anger – yes, anger – of the past seven days.

  At lunchtime, the hotel manager had the kitchen staff lay a table for her in the garden, this time in the shade of a thousand-year-old olive tree. Kathy chose a melon, prosciutto and rocket salad. The bread that came with it was addictive, sticky with olive oil and wickedly salty. Kathy ate the lot. Then she had pasta – pici, the local speciality, a sort of chubby spaghetti – in tomato a
nd basil sauce. She also had a cheeky glass of Chianti and a bitter black coffee with a butter-soft gianduja chocolate on the side.

  After lunch, Kathy went back to the bedroom to change out of her swimming costume. She’d noticed that, in the short time she’d been out, she’d caught the sun on her shoulders so decided she’d best stay in the shade for a while. She considered a nap but didn’t want to waste a minute of her glorious solitude.

  There was plenty to explore indoors. On the first floor of the old building, at the opposite end of the corridor to the Dante Suite, a small library was lined with antique red leather-bound books. They were off limits, locked behind glass, but there was a selection of paperbacks left by previous guests, which gave a fairly accurate record of the bestsellers of the past two decades. There were six copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in four languages. The Da Vinci Code was still hanging in there, at least fifteen years after its publication.

  Kathy sat down in a lumpy leather armchair and flicked through a Tuscan travel guide that was only two years out of date. She found the pages on Florence, turned over at the top corner so a traveller could easily find them. The text was underlined in places and someone had added notes. ‘Best tagliata of my life!’ was the comment beneath one restaurant. ‘Don’t miss the tiramisu here,’ said the note beneath another.

  Kathy sighed. She would be missing the tagliata and the tiramisu. She would also be missing the Pitti Palace. ‘Great costume exhibition,’ wrote the traveller who wasn’t afraid of scribbling in books. And the natural history museum. ‘Weird-shaped stuffed animals but Joshua loved it.’

  ‘Lucky Joshua,’ Kathy murmured.

  The guidebook also contained photographs of the most popular paintings in the Uffizi Gallery. Kathy was familiar with most of them. Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus featured, of course, but there was one painting Kathy didn’t recognise.

  It was called Doni Tondo and was by Michelangelo. The subject of the painting was the Madonna and Child, with Joseph, sitting in what looked like a Tuscan garden. The colours were as fresh and bright as if they had been painted the day before. Mary was in bright pink and blue robes, Joseph in blue and gold. The baby Jesus was pictured at about a year old with gorgeous brown curls. A crowd of cherubs looked on. The composition, in its round gold frame, was beautiful. But it was the face of the Madonna that really touched Kathy’s heart.

  Michelangelo’s Madonna could not have been more different from the stiff, flat-faced Madonnas Kathy had seen in the backgrounds of her parents’ honeymoon photos. She was so very real. Her pose was so natural. She sat on the ground with a book open in her lap. Joseph leaned over her. The Madonna was turning towards the Child, whom Joseph held up over her shoulder. Her arms looked safe and strong.

  ‘It’s hard to tell whether Mary is giving Jesus back to Joseph or taking the baby from him,’ said the accompanying text by an art expert. ‘Looking at her face, which seems a bit annoyed to me, I like to think she’s passing the baby Jesus to her husband so she can have some well-earned me-time.’

  Catching snatches of their conversation over the past day, Kathy knew that ‘me-time’ was a preoccupation for many of the women at the wedding. None of them seemed to think they had enough.

  Looking at the painting in the book, Kathy liked to think that the Madonna was taking the baby into her arms. His chubby little limbs were irresistible. A sharp prick of envy hurt Kathy’s chest as she thought about it and she felt a familiar ache behind her eyes. ‘Not now,’ she chided herself, as she closed the book.

  From the library, Kathy padded along the corridor to the other public room she had yet to see. The door was ajar. She leaned against the jamb and peered in. This was the music room.

  In the centre of the parquet floor was a grand piano. Beside it stood a harp, draped in a white cotton sheet to keep off the dust. In front of it, a small collection of music stands stood in disarray, as though waiting for the return of a choir that had left in a hurry.

  Kathy stepped inside. The piano was open. There was a music book already on the stand. It was a tattered old collection of Chopin’s waltzes, carefully annotated with finger positions and other instructions in Italian and in English.

  Kathy played a single note – middle C – then looked around as though expecting someone to tell her off. She’d had piano lessons as a child – at the behest of her father, who was self-taught – but she’d never played a grand before. And this one was a Bösendorfer. Thanks to her dad, Kathy knew it was an expensive instrument.

  She made a calculation. There was no one in the palazzo but the people who worked there, which meant no one was around who knew or cared who Kathy was and might use her clunky playing to embarrass her later on. It had been a very long time since Kathy had sat at any piano and she wasn’t sure she still remembered what to do but she settled on the worn dusty pink velvet stool and gently placed her hands on the keyboard. The white keys were yellowed and cracked with age but this was a piano that had been well loved. And was still well loved. As Kathy played a tentative scale, she could hear at once that the notes were perfectly in tune and true.

  Kathy tried a little Chopin – the music book was open at a waltz she thought she knew – but she soon remembered why she’d found Chopin so difficult. Chopin had enormous hands that could span ten notes at a time. Kathy’s were rather smaller. Instead she tried some tunes she knew she could play and was astonished to discover that the memories of all the pieces she’d learned as a child were still in the tips of her fingers.

  Debussy’s Clair de lune reminded her of her mother, who always requested it. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie took her back to practising for her grade-four exam one long hot summer. Joplin’s The Entertainer reminded her of her dad, who liked to play music to get the feet tapping and the heart singing along. She tried a few bars of that and could almost see her father standing at the end of the piano, nodding in approval.

  While Kathy was playing, she lost track of time. The self-consciousness she’d felt as she played the first note soon melted away, and it wasn’t long before she was humming to her own accompaniment. Then she was actually singing. She played songs she’d sung in the school choir. She’d loved to sing once upon a time. Still loved to, when no one was listening …

  Chapter Six

  Kathy did not know how long she had been playing when she was suddenly aware that someone was standing behind her.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he said, when she turned to see him – a dark-haired man, leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded.

  Kathy immediately stopped halfway through a phrase and, her hands still hovering over the keys, started to apologise. ‘I’m sorry. I’m probably not supposed to have touched this, am I? I didn’t see a sign …’

  ‘It’s a piano,’ the man said. ‘It’s meant to be played.’ He unfolded his arms, which immediately made him look friendlier, and walked into the room. He was tall but obviously at ease with his long legs. He had a grace to him. In his loose white shirt and black trousers, he looked like he might break into flamenco.

  The man was about Kathy’s age. Late thirties or early forties. Though he looked thoroughly Italian, with his wild black hair and smooth olive skin, his English was perfectly accented. His name, too, was a portmanteau of the two cultures.

  ‘Henry Innocenti,’ he said, holding out his hand to her.

  Kathy shook it. ‘Kathy,’ she said. ‘Kathy Courage.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. So you’re a pianist?’

  ‘I’m out of practice,’ she said automatically. She could only hope he hadn’t heard her sing.

  ‘It doesn’t show.’

  Kathy batted the compliment away. ‘I’ve been making a lot of mistakes. It must be fifteen years since I last played.’

  ‘When did you learn?’

  ‘Oh, when I was really small. My father taught me when I was tiny and I had a few formal lessons at school.’

  ‘Snap. My father taught me as well,’ Henry said. ‘I think if you l
earn early enough, you never really forget.’

  Kathy nodded. She knew she would never forget the happiness she’d felt sitting on the piano stool with her dad while he guided her hands on the keys.

  ‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ Henry added.

  ‘I haven’t been here before. I’m here for the wedding.’

  ‘Ah! Are you the bride? Snatching your last few moments of freedom?’

  ‘What? No,’ said Kathy. ‘No chance. Always the bridesmaid, me. Though I’m way too old for that this time.’

  ‘Really? Is there a cut-off point?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Not exactly but …’ She thought of Sophie and Amelie, slinking around the London living room in the awful dresses they had chosen for the wedding. She was glad she wouldn’t have to stand alongside them.

  ‘Well, I’m the resident minstrel,’ Henry said. ‘I’m playing at the wedding tomorrow.’

  He gave Kathy an extravagant bow and flourished an invisible hat. She imagined it with a plume of feathers, like the hat in the portrait of the Laughing Cavalier.

  ‘Will you be playing this piano?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘No, I’ll be using an electric keyboard since we’re going to be outside. I’m here to check everything’s in place ahead of the big day but I thought I should drop by and say hello to this grand old lady first. I always do. A piano can die from lack of love. I’m very glad to discover I’m not the only person to give her the attention she deserves.’

  ‘She does have a beautiful sound.’

  Henry came to stand beside the piano. He rested one hand gently on the polished black lid and looked into the strings. He blew away some dust. ‘This piano is very special,’ he said. ‘It’s good enough for a concert hall. It’s a shame it’s ended up hardly ever being played. That’s why I try to play it whenever I have a gig here.’