of derision, though all mirth was gallows humour now. Mussolini did know and did not care.
Annabelle was both horrified and titillated by the stories of Mussolini and his lover. Claretta, she was called, and the walls of her parents’ Roman villa were, almost daily now, covered in graffiti: puttana, troia, whore. The Carabinieri guarded the house on Mussolini’s orders. Clara’s father was a Vatican doctor, the Pope’s doctor. Wealthy and once well-respected, they had behaved for many years as the inlaws of Il Duce. The newspapers revelled in stories of their doings. Lately, the role had less cachet. People were looking for someone to carry the blame and shame and fear of a failing war, and they did not have to look far. According to Enrico, Mussolini had become a syphilitic megalomaniac who was afraid to go out. He must hear these things at his secret meetings, Annabelle supposed. Meetings Enrico refused to take her to.
Up at Piazzale Michelangelo – last year it would have been – she recalled seeing several stylishly foreign women in elegant suits and high heels, wearing jaunty hats a bit like the shape of the Alpini brigades, some with a feather. They posed for a photograph, self-consciously ranged down the steep slope of the stone parapet, the Duomo behind them, a chattering, cheerful flock of migratory birds. German. She could hear the guttural consonants. Behind her, two elderly gardeners muttered to each other:
‘Hitler’s lover,’ said one, with a nod at the women.
‘Which one?’ asked the other.
‘That one,’ he replied, with a thumb in the direction of a woman with light brown hair and a rather plain face, wearing one of the feathered hats.
‘Hrrumph,’ his companion grunted, ‘la nostra è piu bella!’
They sniggered and sauntered off. Ours is better looking. Annabelle pondered the joke but it made no sense. Then.
A short while ago she furtively cut out a photograph of La Signora Clara Petacci from a newspaper. The dress had a deep, crossover V-neck. Black hair thickly curled in satiny bunches swept back from a high forehead, in a pose reminiscent of images of the women of ancient Rome. The lips were deeply etched, with what would certainly have been scarlet if it were in colour. Clara gazed off to her left with longing. Annabelle was certain she was gazing at her lover. In the V of her neckline, a heavy ball pendant on a long chain rested between full breasts, and in her ears were large pearls.
Annabelle curled her toes as they hit the icy cotto floor. Sliding her feet into her ciabatte, she tied her dressing-gown and made her bed, taking care with the corners. Her mother worried greatly about properly made beds and such matters now. Eleanora spent long periods reorganising the cutlery drawers and linen press and giving minute directions in the kitchen. It soothed her ‘nerves’, gave her a sense of control in a world gone mad, a world where her sons had disappeared. Annabelle understood and tried not to be irritated.
She dragged a comb through her hair – the bone one with the wide teeth that Nonna Lucrezia had given her. Her hair, once so fine and fair, had darkened to a deep golden blonde and was too thick for the fine combs and gilt-backed brushes on her dressing table. She paused before the mirror, one hand raised to her hair, as her dressing-gown fell open. Beneath her nightdress, the swell of her breasts was satisfying; they too had grown. Not as much as she would like, but still … She unbuttoned the childish floral nightdress, running her hands softly over pale nipples and then in gentle circles around each breast, shivering from her scalp down. She closed her eyes, thinking of the soft white skin at the base of Enrico’s throat, the downy hair of his forearms as it caught the sunlight. What if he kissed her? What if he put his full lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth? She knew people really kissed like that. It made her feel a little queasy, set off great surges, convulsions, waves rising and breaking. She pinched her nipples until they hurt and an electric current zigzagged through her centre to somewhere deep, deeper. She threw back her head, arched her spine and let the waves crest and the wetness flow down her thighs. Sinking to the cold tiles, she stifled a moan – sound carried in the vast spaces of the upper floor.
Did Claretta feel this? What did they do together? What would it be like to defy all conventions for love? Would she, Annabelle, do it for Enrico? No reading of Boccaccio or Petrarch or the letters of Heloise could answer these questions. The only naked men she had ever seen were statues: the tortured body of Christ in all its agony, or the images of impaled saints on constant display in every church and museum. Repulsive. There was the gigantic member of Neptune in Piazza Signoria – surely no-one could really look like that? She sighed, shivered, got unsteadily to her feet and picked up her brush again, observed from the mirror by a serious girl in a sensible floral nightgown. A clammy nightgown – damp and sticky.
She dropped the brush with a clatter as her father passed her door, giving it a hearty morning thump on his way downstairs. The rich basso of the Duomo’s bells reverberated through the walls, mimicked by the tinnier ones of the Badia. Annabelle tied her dressing-gown tightly, picked up her chamber pot and headed down the long cold hallway to the bathroom. Unsteadily.
In the breakfast room, Enrico was already seated at the far end of the table, deep in conversation with her father, whose large bowl of caffe latte was almost empty. Enrico had lately taken to drinking only strong black espresso, which made Annabelle shiver. The ground barley they called coffee was only bearable with milk. La Nazione was open before them. That was sure to inflame outrage. They were in accord in their disdain for the editor, a loyal functionary of the Regime. One of the first acts of the fascists was to abolish a free press, so the English newspapers, which were all Annabelle had known, were no longer available. She missed them.
She longed for once-upon-a-time mornings when conversations turned on matters such as whether the inventor of chamber music was Haydn or Sammartini. Goethe described chamber music as ‘four rational people conversing’. Would that ever happen again? Nevertheless, they took La Nazione to know what the day’s line in propaganda would be. This morning their outrage centred upon news that important pieces of Renaissance art had been transferred to Germany for protection. Protection! Theft, plain and simple! Nazi opportunism! They were both taking affront with their coffee.
‘Good morning.’ Annabelle poured some warm milk into her bowl, her voice a little loud, guilty, as if Enrico could somehow know of the performance before the mirror. Most mornings she prayed he would be there at the table. Most mornings, her prayers were answered. Her mother was always prepared, the big blue and white bowls of caffe latte and the brioche ready. Aunt Elsa did not rise early. They all spent most of their time in the palazzo in town now. Annabelle had not been out to Impruneta for months. Her parents went for the vendemmia – the grapes had to be gathered, but she remained in town with the excuse of her hated schoolbooks. The raccolta was due but they could press the oil without her.
She dropped a casual kiss on the top of her father’s head, and then on Enrico’s in the same manner. The effort nearly killed her. He greeted her absently with a pat on her hip as she passed. She twitched away; who does he think he is? Her father? He was ever more taken up with his clandestine activities. He would not tell her anything, supposedly on the grounds of her safety. Her safety! She was so tired of being a treated as a child.
Annabelle had been an introverted child in a darkening world: a non-believer in a Catholic country and a non-fascist in a fascist country. The fascist hierarchy was often manned by members of the aristocracy and many were relatives. She had more cousins than she could count but most were estranged, living on the other side of the political divide. She had no school friends because she had no school. She knew no life but that of a stranger to her caste and her country and her city. Now, she was still anxious … no longer a child, but not yet free to be an adult either, in this world turned upside down. Florence had become a city of shadows and running footsteps and sudden pounding on doors and marching boots and the clash of metal arms and explosions. She thought she
