Three Days in Florence

by Chrissie Manby

  The birthday girl – all sixty years of her – arrived exactly on time to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’. Kathy led the whole party for that. Unlike Henry, the birthday girl seemed to love the idea of a surprise party. Her delight was obvious as she went from guest to guest bestowing kisses and hugs, her smile growing wider and wider as she saw more and more of the people she loved. Kathy felt uplifted by her happiness. The birthday girl raised her hands in a gesture of thanks as she got to the stage. She didn’t seem disappointed in the least by the last-minute change of singer.

  Henry and Kathy took a break while dinner was served.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Exhilarated,’ Kathy admitted. ‘I can’t wait to get back up on stage.’

  ‘You’ve been singing really well. Better than when we were practising.’

  Henry unfolded a little pile of paper slips onto which people had written requests.

  ‘Not that one,’ he said, putting one song aside. ‘Or that one.’

  ‘But people want to hear them.’

  ‘The nature of a request is that it’s a request and not an order,’ said Henry. ‘Oh, look. Someone wants your favourite song.’

  He passed the slip over.

  ‘“Yellow” is not my favourite song. But it was a song that was played a lot when we first got together,’ she said, defending Neil’s choice. ‘I told you what my favourite song was.’

  ‘And I played it. You didn’t dance.’

  ‘I couldn’t. You know that. But I heard it and I appreciated it. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Then it was time to be back on stage. This time Kathy was looking forward to it.

  They sang for another hour, as Henry had agreed when the gig was booked. As their time on stage drew to a close, Henry thanked the crowd for being a good audience. He told them it was time to say goodnight, but someone shouted, ‘Encore!’

  ‘I didn’t think they were paying attention,’ Henry said.

  ‘Encore!’ another shout went up.

  ‘Encore!’ said the birthday girl, striding to the front of the stage. ‘Encore, encore!’

  They could hardly refuse her.

  ‘Are you up for it?’ Henry asked.

  Kathy nodded. ‘OK. But what shall we sing?’

  ‘I know exactly what we should sing,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you three bars to guess it.’

  It was ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Of course it was. Those drip-drop notes at the beginning were unmistakable. But though Kathy had loved the song for more than twenty-five years and sung it to herself a thousand times, she’d never before performed her favourite song for an audience. Not even an audience of one. As Henry began to play, she looked to him pleadingly. She wasn’t sure she could do it. She hesitated. Henry began the introduction again.

  ‘You can do it,’ she heard her father’s voice.

  ‘You can do it,’ Henry mouthed from behind the piano.

  ‘I can do it,’ Kathy told herself.

  ‘“Some day …”’ she began, in a whisper. Her voice seemed too small for the challenge but then she heard Henry’s voice join with hers, backing her up, encouraging her, just as he’d encouraged her on that afternoon at the piano at the Palazzo Boldrini and the song became a perfect duet. It was as though they were singing only to each other.

  Their audience was captivated and hushed. Down on the dance-floor, couples sought each other’s arms and swayed together in the dark.

  As the last note faded away, Kathy and Henry held each other’s eyes. Each of them was telling themselves they were just doing what professional performers do. They were acting out the feelings for the benefit of the audience … That was all.

  Whatever, the crowd was delighted. There was more applause and more calls for an encore. This time, however, Henry was firm. They were leaving the building, like Elvis. There was, in any case, a DJ waiting to go on after them, ready to spin the tunes from the seventies that would take the guests back to their heyday. Kathy and Henry walked off stage to Earth, Wind and Fire’s ‘September’. The disco beat danced the tension of that last moment at the microphone out of Kathy’s head.

  The birthday girl’s husband stopped them as they were leaving. He praised them both in mellifluous Italian, then handed Kathy a thick envelope, kissed her on both cheeks and pronounced her ‘bellissima’.

  ‘He was pleased,’ Henry confirmed.

  As soon as the man was out of sight, Kathy opened the envelope at Henry’s request to find that it was stuffed with cash. Some five hundred euros in smart new notes. ‘This is yours,’ she said to Henry.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve already been paid. This is a tip. We split it.’

  ‘No,’ said Kathy. She stopped short of saying, ‘You need it.’ The whole Innocenti family needed it to fund their nutty life. ‘I can’t possibly. You take it.’

  Henry did take the envelope, but he pulled out just ten euros – for a couple of drinks – and passed it back to Kathy.

  ‘I insist,’ he said. ‘For your running-away fund.’

  Kathy opened her mouth to protest that she didn’t need a running-away fund.

  ‘Don’t argue, please. Just take it. Everyone should have a running-away fund,’ said Henry. ‘Even if they don’t know they need it.’

  Kathy put the envelope in one of the big pockets of Carla’s dress. One part of her was already planning to get the money back to Henry and his family somehow, in a way that wouldn’t leave Henry offended. The other part of her was processing the truth of what he had said. Everyone should have a running-away fund.

  ‘Plus, you deserve it. The whole evening was a triumph,’ said Henry, as they got back to the changing room and he poured her another glass of Prosecco. ‘A triumph!’

  Kathy had never seen him so enthusiastic.

  ‘You were fantastic,’ he said. ‘Far better than any of the regulars I play with. You have a wonderful voice. You’re a natural.’

  Kathy blushed. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ she said.

  Henry looked pleased with that.

  It was late but Kathy still felt wide awake, thanks to the adrenalin of the performance, and when Henry suggested that perhaps they shouldn’t go straight back to the house but have a nightcap instead, she was only too happy to agree.

  But where could they go? As they walked back towards the river, most of the restaurants and bars they passed were already closed for the evening. Those that weren’t closed were in the process of winding down. In one, a waiter stacked chairs on tables all around a couple who were holding hands over a half-eaten bowl of tiramisu, oblivious to the heavy, clattering hints that it was time to go home.

  ‘These are all tourist places anyway,’ said Henry, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. ‘Let me take you to my Florence.’

  Chapter Forty-four

  As soon as they were away from the main tourist drag, the streets were quiet and empty. If it weren’t for the occasional streetlight, they might have been transported back centuries to the time when Florence really was the centre of the cultural world.

  They came across a piazza that wasn’t as busy as most. One side was taken up by an austere grey building, with green-shuttered windows that were closed against the night.

  ‘Look up,’ said Henry. ‘Do you see that window? The one that isn’t shut. That’s the old Palazzo Grifoni. They have to leave the window open because of the ghost.’

  ‘The ghost?’

  ‘One of the Grifoni sons went off to war, leaving his young bride behind. He promised he’d be back soon but he never returned, though she waited by the window for years. Until she died, in fact. When they closed the window that day, it was as though an earthquake hit the house. Books came flying off the shelves, paintings fell off the walls. It didn’t stop until someone opened the window again and they’ve left it open ever since.’

  ‘She must have loved him very much.’

  ‘I imagine after three years
of waiting that feeling started to wear off …’

  It was as she was looking up at the window, with its shutters slightly ajar, that Kathy felt her ankle begin to go over. She instinctively grabbed the closest thing to hang onto. Which was Henry. Carefully, he helped her to right herself, but once he’d done so, he didn’t let go. Instead, he took her arm and wove it through his own. ‘Don’t want you falling over again,’ he said. ‘That’s all,’ he added, as though she might be thinking otherwise. As though he was thinking otherwise.

  Through the tiniest alleyways Henry could find, they wound their way closer to the river.

  ‘Just for you,’ Henry said, ‘we’ll walk over the Ponte Vecchio.’

  ‘I’d hate to force you.’

  ‘Everyone should do it at least once and at this time of night there is a faint chance that we’ll actually be able to walk without having to stop for a teenage blogger intent on getting their pout right.’

  With Kathy holding tightly to his arm, Henry picked his way through the last of the day’s crowds. The jewellery shops that flanked each side of the bridge were shuttered for the night, which helped Kathy to imagine how it might have been in the days before Instagram.

  Henry told her, ‘There is a secret passageway across the top of the bridge that goes all the way from the Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti, so that the grandees of the town never had to face their angry public. My father took me across it when I was a child. He loved this city. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about its history. I wish I’d listened when he talked about it but, of course, when I was a kid, I wasn’t interested in history. I was interested in football and music and how I could get out of going to school on Monday morning.’

  ‘He sounds like a wonderful man, your father.’

  ‘Yes. He’s a hard act to follow.’

  A group of rowdy students were crossing the bridge in the opposite direction. When it looked as though they might collide with Kathy and Henry, he pulled her against him for a moment, so the students could pass.

  That left Kathy flustered. Henry, too, she thought.

  Once they were on the other side of the river, he seemed to relax again. They meandered down the road where Kathy had walked with Manu. They passed Carla’s boutique and Virgilio’s junk shop with its sad, dusty window display.

  ‘You met Virgilio this morning,’ Henry commented. ‘One of the local characters. The secrets his shop could tell.’

  The secrets the whole city could tell. Every street was overlaid with years upon years of memory. At every turning, there was another story to be told and Henry knew it.

  At one point he said, ‘This is the corner where Galileo might have had a flash of inspiration, where Michelangelo might have spotted the boy who would be David, where Dante dreamed of his Beatrice. But when I pass by here, I remember Giuliana Tordoni, who offered to show me her bra in exchange for the equivalent of two euros.’

  Kathy burst into laughter. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Of course I paid it.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Back then,’ said Henry, ‘I was not the handsome beast you see before you now. I had one of those braces with the wire that goes around the back of your head to pull your teeth forward. My schoolfriends would come up behind me and play me like a harp. Nobody ever kissed me except for a dare. Needless to say, two euros seemed like a bargain for a glimpse of a real live woman.’

  Kathy shook her head.

  ‘It got a little better when I joined a band. Though keyboard player doesn’t quite have the same cachet as guitarist. But for most of my youth, I couldn’t get a woman to look twice at me. You’d have walked on by.’

  ‘Only because I would have been too shy to talk to you,’ said Kathy. ‘I had my own challenges at school.’

  ‘Batting away the attentions of all the boys?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They called me Cross-eyed Kathy,’ Kathy said. ‘Something was wrong with my eye when I was born. I had to have an operation.’

  ‘Then we would have made the perfect pair,’ Henry said. ‘My friends called me Metal Mickey. Like the robot in the old TV show.’

  ‘I hate nicknames,’ said Kathy.

  ‘Even Queen of Sheba?’

  ‘That one’s not so bad.’

  ‘Good. I think it suits you.’

  Chapter Forty-five

  They walked past the turning for the Casa Innocenti and kept going. The bar Henry had in mind was up a hill behind. He offered to give Kathy a push up the worst of it. She declined with a giggle. He took both her hands and pulled her up instead, walking backwards.

  Kathy was almost sad when they reached the top and she had to let go of him. The bar was right there.

  ‘This place looks rough,’ said Henry, conceding that the façade of La Fenice – the Phoenix, like the opera house in Venice – was peeling and dirty, ‘but they make the best cocktails in the city and that is all that matters tonight. I want you to have the very best.’ He pushed open the door and waved her in.

  The cellar bar was certainly busy – and with locals rather than tourists, Kathy quickly discerned. There was a brief moment of affronted hush when she stepped through the door – a stranger – but as soon as the proprietor saw she was with Henry, the atmosphere changed. Just as when she’d accompanied Manu and Faustino to the market and Roberta to church, Kathy found herself swept into the community and heartily welcomed. Henry’s favourite drink was on the polished bar within seconds.

  When the barman asked what Kathy would have, Henry warned her, ‘Don’t ask for an Aperol Spritz.’

  So Kathy answered, ‘I’ll have the same as he’s having.’

  ‘Good choice,’ said Henry. ‘Have this one.’ He passed her his drink.

  She took a sip. ‘It’s pure alcohol.’ She coughed.

  ‘Pretty much. Kills all germs, though. There’s a squeeze of lemon juice in it too. For the vitamin C.’

  When Henry’s drink was ready too, they clinked glasses.

  ‘Cincin,’ said Henry.

  ‘Cincin.’

  ‘That’s all the Italian you need.’

  ‘I won’t be trying out any of Manu’s phrases here,’ Kathy said.

  She looked around her. The bar was dim and dank and smelt, Kathy had thought when she first walked in, overwhelmingly of damp. The floor was sticky. The bar itself, when she made the mistake of leaning against it, was sticky too. But as she sipped her drink, and Henry filled her in on the gossip about the regulars, Kathy relaxed into the scene. The bar might be scruffy but the crowd was remarkably chic. Not dissimilar to the guests at the party on the other side of the river. They were artists, jewellers, sculptors, songwriters and television stars, Henry explained. This was a Florence she would not have been able to get to know were she not with a local.

  Henry introduced her to a few people. A man who looked like Italian star Toni Servillo kissed her hand and declared himself enchanted. His elegant female companion, whose carefully made-up eyes had sparked with obvious affection when she saw Henry walk in, regarded Kathy with interest and perhaps, thought Kathy, even a little envy.

  ‘Henry Innocenti,’ she said. ‘We haven’t seen you here in ages. Has this Kathy been keeping you away from us?’

  Kathy was secretly flattered that she looked like the kind of woman Henry might be interested in.

  The Servillo lookalike offered to get Kathy another drink. Still warm inside from the rocket-fuel cocktail that was Henry’s favourite, Kathy asked for something a little lighter. A tall cocktail that was mostly soda water duly appeared.

  ‘Your first time in our city?’ said Servillo’s double. ‘Then you are very lucky to have this man as your guide. He can show you the real city.’

  Henry looked up from his conversation with Servillo’s girlfriend. Seeing that Kathy looked a little lost, he took her hand and pulled her closer. She felt inordinately pleased.

  There was a piano in the furthest corner from the door. It was not a beautifu
l grand, like the one at the Michelangelo Plaza, or the Bösendorfer back at the Palazzo Boldrini, but a battered old upright that had seen a great many nights like this. A crowd of glasses covered the top.

  Henry did not take much persuading to sit down at the keys again. He took requests from the other guests in the bar. He was like a one-man karaoke machine. He could play anything anyone asked for. Even, Kathy noted with some amusement, if what they asked for was Coldplay.

  While the whole bar sang along to ‘Yellow’, Henry didn’t seem to be hating every note.

  He played some of his own compositions too. The crowd was delighted as Henry made up lyrics off the cuff about the place’s most notorious regulars and ‘the grumpy old sod behind the bar’. Then, as Kathy had feared might happen, he insisted that she join him at the piano.

  ‘Introducing l’uccellino di Londra. That’s the London sparrow,’ he translated, for Kathy’s benefit, as he took her hand and pulled her close. ‘Known to me as the Queen of Sheba.’

  Kathy gave a little bow.

  ‘You ready for this?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to be.’

  They sang the classics, old and new, reprising their performance at the party. And, just as had happened at the party, Kathy felt the applause filling her with energy and a lightness she hadn’t experienced for a long time. Not since before her father had died. Not since long before she’d met Neil. She wished the night would never end.

  At nearly one in the morning, having played for another hour, Henry stood up and gave a deep, deep bow as he bade their audience goodnight.

  ‘I need to make sure the queen gets her beauty sleep,’ he said.

  ‘Are you suggesting I need it?’ Kathy joked.

  ‘Far from it,’ said Henry, meeting her eye to eye.

  It took a while to get out of the café, as Henry’s fans insisted on offering them a drink or at least sharing a couple of words before they left for the night. But once they were on the street outside, Henry offered Kathy his arm again. Without hesitation this time, she tucked hers through it. Maybe it was tiredness, maybe it was the drinks, but Kathy leaned a little more heavily against Henry as they began the homeward stretch. And he leaned a little more heavily in her direction. She could feel the warmth of his body against her bare arm and she liked it.