develop a working knowledge of the Baltic Exchange before a career in marine insurance at Lloyd’s. It was a wise thing to do, because that’s exactly what he himself had done. In the end, though, he conceded defeat.
The arrangements had gone without a hitch: a letter to Signora Docci, her reply (typed and in impeccable English) saying that she had secured a room for him at a pensione in the local town. Aside from rustling up a bit of funding for Adam from within the History of Art Department, Professor Leonard had not needed to involve himself. He did, however, suggest that Adam meet up with him in town before leaving for the Continent.
The proposed venue was a grand stone building close by Cannon Street station in the City Adam had never heard of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, although he wasn’t unduly surprised to discover that the professor was associated with a medieval guild whose history reached back seven centuries. They passed through panelled chambers en route to the roof terrace, where they took lunch beneath an even layer of cloud like a moth-eaten blanket, the sun slanting through at intervals and picking out patches of the city.
They ate beef off the bone and drank claret.
The professor had come armed with a bundle of books and articles for Adam’s mental edification.
‘Read these right through,’ he said, handing over copies of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti. ‘The rest are for reference purposes. You’ll find the family has an impressive library, which I’m sure you’ll be given access to.’ The professor was reluctant to say any more about the garden – ‘You don’t want me colouring your judgement’ – although he was happy to share some other background with Adam.
Signora Docci lived alone at Villa Docci, her husband having died some years before. Her eldest son Emilio was also dead, killed towards the end of the war by the Germans who had occupied the villa. There was another son, Maurizio, soon to take over the estate, as well as a dissolute daughter, Caterina, who now lived in Rome.
The rest of lunch was spent talking about the professor’s imminent trip to France. He was off to view the Palaeolithic cave paintings at Lascaux – his third visit since their chance discovery by a group of local boys back in 1940. He recalled his frustration at having to wait five years for the war to end before making his first pilgrimage. Thirteen years on, he felt it was now possible to trace the influence of that primitive imagery on the work of contemporary artists. In fact, it was to be the subject of an article, and possibly even a book.
‘Europe’s greatest living painters drawing inspiration from its oldest known painters, seventeen thousand years on. If that isn’t art history, I don’t know what is.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have to humour me, you know’
‘Of course I do,’ said Adam. ‘You’re buying lunch.’
Later, when they parted company out on the street, the professor said, ‘Francesca…Signora Docci…she’s old now, and frail by all accounts. But don’t under estimate her.’
‘What do you mean?’
Professor Leonard hesitated, glancing off down the street. ‘I’m not sure I rightly know, but it’s sound advice.’
As Adam sat slumped and slightly inebriated in the deserted carriage on the train journey back to Purley, he was left with the uneasy sensation that the professor’s parting warning had been the true purpose of their meeting.
A week later, Adam was gone. He changed trains in Paris, aware that this was as far south as he had ever travelled in his life. On Professor Leonard’s advice, he slipped some francs to the guard and was allotted a spare sleeping compartment to himself.
He didn’t sleep. He tossed in the darkness, France rattling by beneath him, and he thought (far more than he would have liked) of Gloria and of the look on her face when she had said to him, ‘I don’t know why. I think maybe it’s because you’re a touch boring.’
He might have been less stung if they hadn’t just made love. Twice.
‘Boring?’
‘No, not boring, that’s unfair. Bland.’
‘Bland?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t think of a word.’
Great. He was a category unto himself – a unique cat egory indefinable by words but falling somewhere between ‘boring’ and ‘bland’.
He had lost his temper, hurling a pillow across the room and swearing at her. He could still recall every moment of the long walk back to his own college, creeping down the staircase from her rooms, stepping through the pale dawn of Trinity Great Court, the bittersweet taste of self-pity rendering him immune to the daggered look from the porter on duty in the lodge.
Pathetic, really, when looked at from a distance, from the darkened sleeping compartment of a train hurtling through the French night, for example. He tried to stem the flow of his thoughts, or at least divert their course. When he failed, he turned on the light and worked on his Italian grammar.
Dawn rose, bringing with it the barely discernible mass of a steep Alpine valley. A few hours later, they were free of the mountains.
All he saw of Milan was the Fascist splendour of the Stazione Centrale as he hurried between platforms to make his connecting train. He was aware of the heat and the smell of unfamiliar tobacco, but not much else. He briefly glimpsed Shelley’s ‘waveless plain of Lombardy’ before nodding off.
A deep and dreamless sleep carried him all the way to Florence, where he was woken brusquely by the guard, who talked at him in a language quite unlike the Italian he’d learned at school and recently brushed up on. Ejected on to the platform, it certainly wasn’t the kind of reception he’d been led to believe he might receive in Italy.
He found a pensione on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, a short walk from the station. The owner informed him that he was in luck; a room had just fallen vacant. It was easy to see why. Adam made a speculative survey of the dismal little box in the roof and told himself it was only for one night.
He stripped off his shirt and lay on the sagging mattress, smoking a cigarette, unaccustomed to the humidity pressing down on the city Was this normal? If so, why had no one thought to mention it? Or the mosquitoes, for that matter. They speckled the ceiling, waiting for night to fall and the feast to begin.
He squeezed himself into the shower room at the end of the corridor and allowed the trickle of water to cool him off. It was a temporary measure. His fresh shirt was lacquered to his chest by the time he’d descended four flights of stairs to the lobby.
The storm broke as he stepped from the building, the sharp crack of thunder echoing around the piazza, the deluge following moments later as the amethyst clouds deposited their load. He stood beneath the awning, watching the raindrops dancing on the road. Water sheeted down from overflowing gutters; drain holes were lost to sight beneath spreading pools of water. And still the rain came, constant, unvarying in its strength. When it ceased, it ceased suddenly and completely.
A church bell struck half past the hour, and immediately people began to appear from the shelter of doorways around the piazza – almost as if the two events
