The Etruscan Net (2 page)

Tuesday Morning: Robert Broke at Work

It was worst, Broke had found, at the moment of waking. It wasn’t that he dreamed much about Joanie now. But when he was asleep she was there, somewhere in the background, a comforting presence, as she had been in life; someone perfectly reliable, perfectly compatible, always available. She was in the chair on the other side of the fire. She was in bed. You had only to stretch out a hand and touch her shoulder. The moment you woke up was really the moment when you realized that she wasn’t there any more; that what had been one part of her was a fistful of ashes in a North London suburb, and what had been the other part of her had gone, like a flame blown out.

He could hear Tina moving about in the kitchen. She must have let herself in with her own key, whilst he was still asleep. That, in itself, was an improvement. Previously he had been lying awake by the time she arrived. Every little improvement was a fact to be noted just as a man who had been very ill will record and treasure the infinitesimal stages by which he comes back to health.

He got up, washed and shaved carefully, brushed his teeth and put on a clean white shirt for a new day, because those were things you clung to.

Breakfast was ready when he reached the living-room; coffee in an old silver jug, milk, toast and butter and marmalade.

Tina examined him closely. She did not like it when Signor Roberto fell into a grey mood. It was not that he was ever anything but courteous, but it made her uncomfortable. This morning it was all right. Some little thing had pleased him. He was not smiling. He very rarely smiled. But his face was not set in those marble lines which she dreaded.

She said, ‘They say that there are more visitors to Florence this summer than ever before. More, even, than came before the floods.’

Broke had never discovered who ‘they’ were. Only that they were omniscient and accurate.

‘What else do they say?’

‘That there was a motor accident in the Lungarno Corsini. Some fool driving too fast. The price of coffee is going up again, by two hundred lire the kilo. Two hundred! How shall we live?’

‘We shall manage,’ said Broke. ‘How is your father?’

‘He is not well. It is his stomach. When he went to the doctor, the doctor told him, drink no more wine, and you will feel better. How can people say such stupid things. If he drank no wine, instead of being miserable most of the time, he would be miserable all of the time.’

‘Doctors have to say things like that. It’s expected of them. Is your father too bad to finish those picture frames for me?’

Broke liked Tina to talk to him. He told himself that it was good for his Italian; which was very good already. But that was an excuse. The truth was that she now knew all about Joanie, had finished being sorry for him, and simply concentrated on looking after him.

‘The frames are nearly ready. He will bring them round to the gallery himself. Will you have more coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You will be home for lunch?’

‘At the usual time,’ said Broke.

He walked down to the gallery. His car, a fifteen-year-old Sunbeam Talbot, was in the garage, but, unless it was raining, he preferred to walk. Down the broad Viale Michelangiolo to the Arno, across the bridge, its parapet rebuilt after the floods, and along the Lungarno to the bookshop and gallery which were in the Via de Benci.

The streets were full of boys and girls on their way to school, on bicycles, on mopeds, on foot in chattering groups. Italian youth seemed to him to be an improvement on their modern British counterparts; they dressed better, washed more often, and, because they were more sure of themselves, seemed to trouble less about the impression they were making on their elders.

He was so deep in thought that Commander Comber had walked beside him for nearly a minute before he realized he was there.

‘Wondered when you were going to wake up,’ said Comber, a jaunty little figure, beard jutting. ‘Lot of people in town today. Should be good for business.’

‘Yes and no,’ said Broke. ‘Half of them just come in to look. They leave sticky finger-prints in expensive books, and if they see me glaring at them, maybe they buy a guide-book for three hundred lire.’

‘I’m sure you don’t glare at them. You fix them with that terrible blank look of yours, and they feel they’re being turned into stone – like whatsit and the Gorgon’s head.’

‘You talk a lot of nonsense,’ said Broke.

‘Today I’m a cash customer myself.’

‘I didn’t know you were interested in art.’

‘In a general way,’ said Comber affably. ‘In a very general way. What I want is a book that gives the names of all the artists and all their best-known pictures, but without a lot of waffle.’

‘That sounds like a dictionary.’

‘Is there such a thing? No, I will not get out of the way. Impudent monkey.’

This was to a youth on a Lambretta who tried to edge past them in the narrow street and was baffled by the Commander’s habit of walking in the middle of the road.

‘Steam gives way to sail, my boy.’

The motor scooter mounted the pavement and shot past with a triumphant toot. They emerged into the bustle of the Via de Benci, turned right, and the Galleria e Biblioteca delle Arti was on their right. A passage-like entrance led through into the surprisingly spacious establishment.

The shop was already open. Francesca, a solemn girl who wore round glasses and held Broke in awe, always arrived before nine, took down the shutters, took in the post, and dusted round.

The bookshop portion of the establishment was a hexagonal room, with an overhead glass light. The walls were covered with shelves, and there was a display counter filling most of the middle. The larger and more expensive books were stacked on it.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ said Broke. ‘Any book selling at more than three thousand lire is to be covered in cellophane. Completely covered. If people are sufficiently interested in it, we will be happy to break it open for them.’

‘Sissignore,’
said Francesca. ‘I will buy some cellophane and start now.’

Broke was already on top of a ladder. He climbed down with two books. ‘This one’s got illustrations,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit more expensive. This one’s just out. It’s called
The Cosmopolitan Art Lover’s Companion.
I should guess that most of it’s been cribbed from other books.’

‘Exactly what I want.’

‘You’re not interested in one particular field?’

‘The whole world is my province! Who was it said that? Talleyrand? Sidney Smith?’ The Commander peeled off two thousand lire notes. ‘By the way, are you doing anything this evening?’

‘Nothing that I can think of. Why?’

‘Would you like to come to a party?’

‘What sort of party?’

‘The usual sort of party. Eating and drinking, and talking and being talked to.’

‘Where?’

‘At the Villa Rasenna. Professor Bronzini.’

The Commander felt in his pocket and pulled out a thick card. It was pale green, and the writing on it was in purple ink. ‘Like a frog menu,’ he said. ‘I gather he’s a bit queer.’

‘Are you using queer in the technical sense, or do you just mean that he’s odd?’

‘Both, really. He’s a fantastic old nut, but his food and drink’s all right. Come along for laughs.’

Broke was examining the card.

Professor Bruno Bronzini warmly invites all his friends and fellow enthusiasts for Etruscan art and the Etruscan way of life to join him at the Villa Rasenna, to eat, to drink, to listen to Etruscan music on pipes and zither, and to enjoy the beauties of a civilization happier and more cultivated than our own.

‘Happier!’ said Broke. ‘He might have something there. Do you know this chap?’

‘I’ve been introduced. I believe he really is by way of being an authority on Etruscan art. Made some discoveries, on his own property out near Volterra, and has written books about it.’

‘Yes,’ said Broke. He thought about it, and shook his head. ‘He can’t want just
anyone
turning up to his party.’

‘Not just anyone. He wants to meet you.’

‘He doesn’t know me.’

‘He knows you have taken over Welford Hussey’s shop and gallery. What’s happened to Welford, by the way?’

‘He’s gone to South America. To study Aztec art. He’ll be back at the end of the year. If I haven’t lost all his customers for him by then!’

‘I overheard two young ladies talking about you the other day. One of them said that you were not the least
simpatico.
On the contrary, very strict. You reminded her of her father. It caused her a delicious
frisson
of terror every time she came into the gallery.’

‘And what did the other say? Something equally silly?’

‘Shan’t tell you,’ said Comber with a grin. ‘Our young ladies here are remarkably outspoken, not to say indelicate, about the opposite sex. Talking of the opposite sex, here comes Miss Plant. Better mind your Ps and Qs. I’m off.’ At the door he stopped, and said, ‘You will come tonight, won’t you? I’ll pick you up at your place about eight o’clock.’

‘All right,’ said Broke. He didn’t sound very grateful.

Miss Plant was, in every sense of the word, the Leading Lady of the English Colony in Florence. She had been there since around the beginning of the century. The accident that Italy had happened to be on the wrong side in the Second World War had not incommoded her at all. It had, in truth, served to emphasize her standing and increase her prestige. It was true that the Italian authorities, badgered beyond endurance by the Germans, and after exhausting every excuse for delay, had eventually agreed to take Miss Plant into custody as an enemy alien. The experiment had not been a success. She had allowed herself to be driven to the Questura, and had sat there, upright, unmoving, and unspeaking, during the remainder of that day, and the night following; acknowledging the arrival of evening only by elevating the umbrella she had brought with her. She had refused all food and drink. The thought that Miss Plant might actually starve to death, under her umbrella, in his outer office, had so unnerved the Questore that he had preferred to brave the wrath of the Germans, and had returned her to her villa under very nominal house arrest. Even so, she had not forgiven him. She omitted his name from the invitations to her first garden party after the war, and the Questore had disappeared from public life.

Miss Plant sailed into the shop, ignored Francesca who had sidled up to serve her, and brought her guns to bear on the man. ‘My name is Beatrice Plant,’ she said. ‘You must be Robert Broke.’ She pronounced the name in the correct English way as ‘Brook’. ‘You’ve taken on the gallery from that American. Why is it, I wonder, that Americans have such curious Christian names? Welford! It sounds like a telephone number. We had an American here, just after the war, whose Christian name was Shaftesbury. Your wife was a Temple-Hardy.’

‘She was,’ agreed Broke, grimly. If Miss Plant noticed the hardening in his face she gave no sign of it. The feelings of others were of little interest to her.

‘You’ve met Elizabeth Weighill, I believe.’ She indicated the young woman who had followed her into the shop. ‘Elizabeth very kindly gave me a lift down into town this morning. The traffic gets worse every day. It’s time somebody did something about it. Have you met her father?’

‘I’ve met Sir Gerald,’ said Broke. He caught Elizabeth’s eye as he said this, and she winked at him.

‘It’s surprising,’ said Miss Plant, ‘that this Government should have had enough good sense to send us out a Baronet as our Consul. The last one was a terrible little man, with no birth or breeding.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He was perfectly all right. He called on Miss Plant on a very cold day in mid-winter, and kept his overcoat on in the drawing-room.’

‘I once had a doctor,’ said Miss Plant, ‘who kept his overcoat on in my
bedroom.
He was a very well-known man, I believe. Of course, I never had him in the house again. Macchiaiuoli.’

Broke assumed that this final word was a war cry, connected with what had gone before. When it was repeated, he realized that it was a question. He pulled himself together.

‘Are you looking for a book about them, or for reproductions of their drawings? We’ve got some Telemaco Signorinis in the gallery, and at least one Cabianca.’

‘I want a book about the Macchiaiuoli. Gertrude Strozzi started a discussion about them the other day. I’d not the least idea what she was talking about. I just want to know enough about them to put her in her place if she tries it on again.’

Fortunately Broke was able to produce a volume dealing with these minor painters of the nineteenth century.

When Miss Plant had taken herself off, Elizabeth said, ‘You mustn’t mind her. She’s been eccentric for so long that what started as a pose has become a habit. There’s no malice in it.’

‘It’s rather refreshing when someone simply says the first thing that comes into her head.’

‘If she did that,’ said Elizabeth, ‘it wouldn’t be so bad. The real trouble is that she says the first
three
things that come into her head. One after the other. When she was introduced to daddy she said, “How do you do, Sir Gerald. A second generation baronetcy, ’ent it! Your father was Lord Mayor of London. It was the year that horse with a foreign name won the Derby.”’

Broke smiled. It was a little grim, but it was a genuine smile.

‘What did your father say?’

‘Something suitable, I’m sure. He’s a professional diplomat. By the way, did you know you were coming to luncheon with us the day after tomorrow. If you’re not otherwise engaged, that is.’

‘Thursday? I’m not sure–’

‘Tom Proctor’s going to be there.’

‘Tom! Is he in Florence?’

‘Not yet. But he’s getting in tomorrow night. He’s a trustee of yours, or something, isn’t he?’

‘He’s my sister Felicia’s trustee and he’s my solicitor. Yes, if Tom’s there, I suppose I ought to turn up.’

‘That’s not the most enthusiastic acceptance I’ve ever heard,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Most people consider an invitation to luncheon with the British Consul confers a considerable social cachet.’