The Etruscan Net (6 page)

‘All right,’ said Tina, ‘I won’t use the word. But it’s true, all the same. He’s gone to sit in her lap, like a little dog.’

But Tina was wrong. Dindoni had not gone to the café to visit his Maria, although this was the impression that his carefully staged exit had been designed to create. He had hobbled off along the alleyway and turned to the left as though he were indeed making for the café. Ten yards down the street he had turned to the left again, and was now in an even smaller, and darker passage which paralleled the Sdrucciolo Benedetto, running along the backs of the houses. Dindoni paused at a door in the wall, extracted a key from the side pocket of his coat, and let himself in. He was now immediately behind Milo Zecchi’s house and work-shop. An external iron staircase ran up the end of the building, and led to the back door of Dindoni’s own quarters, which occupied the storey above the workshop. The staircase and back door constituted a private means of going out and coming back again which was much to Dindoni’s secretive taste.

He clambered awkwardly, but quietly, up the stairs and let himself into his own flat. But he did not turn on the light.

Broke had left home, on foot, shortly after nine o’clock. The afternoon wind had dropped, and the sky was clear. As dusk fell the hard blue of the afternoon took on subtle shades of green and grey, as though an Italian primitive painting was being retouched by a French impressionist.

Over the river, Broke turned to his right, and found himself in the streets of the old quarter. He had taken the precaution of working out and memorizing his route. He knew that, sooner or later, he would strike the Via Torta, and had then only to continue along it until he found the Sdrucciolo Benedetto on his left.

He was at the top of the Via Torta when he heard a clatter of excited voices. Two girls, English or Americans he guessed, were walking along the pavement, trailed by half a dozen youths on motor-scooters. They were the
pappagalli,
the little green parrots, who infested the streets of Florence and considered any girl fair game. Broke’s knowledge of colloquial Italian was insufficient for him to understand most of the screeched comments and invitations. He imagined that the girls didn’t understand them either, but they were beginning to look unhappy. Broke wondered whether he ought to interfere. The
pappagalli
were not usually dangerous. Their weapons were mostly verbal. More like geese than parrots really. They made a lot of noise but retreated if you shook a stick at them. But they could turn nasty and there had been one or two incidents lately.

As he was hesitating, the flock took flight. One moment they were there. The next, with a popping of exhausts, they were gone. A black saloon car came cruising slowly down the street. In front, a Carabiniere Sergeant sat beside the uniformed driver. He leaned from the car and said to the girls in tolerable English, ‘That turning on your left, ladies, will take you straight back to the Lungarno.’

The girls awarded him an embarrassed smile and scuttled away.

The Sergeant cast an eye over Broke, hesitated, then signalled to the driver, and the car slid away.

‘Campaign to keep Florence safe for tourists,’ thought Broke.

He found the house without difficulty, and Signora Zecchi, who was waiting for his knock, let him in. The street door led into the kitchen. Tina was sitting sewing in the corner. As he came in she gave him the urchin grin which made her look several years younger even than she was. There was no sign of Milo.

‘He is over in his workshop, behind the yard,’ said Annunziata. ‘He would like to speak to you there, I think. But before you go, might I be permitted to say one word.’

‘Of course.’

‘My Milo is not well. He is not well in his mind. Nor is he well in his body. He desires very much to speak to you, but he may find it difficult to do so. I would ask you to be patient with him.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Broke awkwardly.

‘No one can do more. Agostina will show you the way.’

Milo’s workshop occupied the ground floor of the two-storey erection which blocked in the rear of the courtyard behind the house. The windows of the floor above were curtained.

‘Dindo lives there,’ said Tina. ‘He is out just now, which is a good thing. He is for ever spying and prying into things which do not concern him. When my father dies, he hopes to steal his business.’

She pushed open the door, stood aside for Broke to go in, and shut it behind him. Milo was crouched over a bench under the strong overhead light at the far end of the room, his hands and arms visible, the rest of him in shadow.

He put the object he was working on carefully down on the bench-top, and climbed to his feet. Broke was shocked at the apparent change in his face. It might have been some trick of the light, but in a few hours he seemed to grow years older. The cheeks had shrunk, leaving black cavities under the eyes, and the nose had a pinched and quill-like look which Broke didn’t like at all. Only the brown eyes were still bright and shrewd.

‘That’s a fine bull,’ said Broke. ‘Did it come from the old pirate’s tomb, at Volterra?’

‘It came in sixteen pieces,’ said Milo. ‘It was a fine animal. It will be again when I have done with it. Two pieces only are missing. The tail, and one of the horns.’

The restoration had been most skilfully done. The hairline joins were hardly visible. The master of the herd was pawing the ground in Etruscan arrogance. Broke wondered what the unknown artist who had fashioned the animal would have said if he could have seen it coming back to life under the gnarled fingers of Milo Zecchi nearly three thousand years after its creation.

‘You will take wine?’ said Milo. Without waiting for a reply he filled the two glasses which stood ready on the bench, and pushed one across to his guest.

‘Good health,’ said Broke.

Milo said, ‘Good health is indeed a blessing. You appreciate it only when it has gone. I fear that I am not long for this world, Signor Broke.’

Broke found no easy reply to this, and took a sip of wine to cover his embarrassment. It was good wine. It must have been brought out in his honour.

‘I am in the hands of the doctors and the priests, and I can find little comfort in either. The doctors examine me with their machines. Then they whisper amongst themselves, and when I ask them what is wrong with me, they tell me I must be patient. That is all. Patient!’ Milo gave a laugh, which had little mirth in it. ‘The priests are worse. They talk of penitence. What have I to be penitent about, tell me that? I have worked hard, all my life. My family has never been in want.’

‘An honest workman has nothing to fear in this life or the next,’ said Broke. He had intended it as a platitude and was not prepared for its effect.

Milo looked at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then he jumped to his feet, and started to pace up and down. A twinge of pain brought him to a halt. He stood opposite Broke, rocking on his feet, and said, at last, in a voice which was little more than a croak, ‘What do your words signify, Signor Broke?’

‘Sit down, Milo, or you’ll do yourself harm. I meant only that a man who works hard and does his duty by his family in this life has little to fear in the next.’

‘You said, an
honest
workman. Those were your words.’

‘If I said it, I meant it.’

‘Yes,’ said Milo. He sat down abruptly. Then he put a hand out, picked up the bottle without looking at it, filled up both their glasses, and raised his own to his lips.

Broke thought, ‘I wish I knew more about medicine. He’s acting as if he’s had a mild stroke. I wonder if I ought to stop him drinking.’ But when Milo spoke his voice was unslurred, and the hand which held the glass was steady.

He said, ‘Signor Broke, there is something I must tell you. You are a man who has much knowledge of these things. You will be able to advise me what I am to do.’

‘Of course,’ said Broke. ‘I’ll do anything I can.’

‘Tina says, if I may be forgiven for referring to such matters, that you are of an understanding nature, having suffered yourself.’

He’s like the man on the high diving board, Broke thought, wondering whether he dare take off, knowing that once he has committed himself he can’t stop; looking for any excuse to postpone the moment of decision. The silence was absolute.

The noise which finally broke it was so slight that Broke was uncertain whether he had imagined it. Had there been any wind it might have been the click of a timber as it shifted; or it might have been the sharp claw of a mouse on wood; or the ‘tock’ of the death-watch beetle at work in the beams. Only Broke knew that it was none of these things, and he knew that, on that night at least, he was not going to hear what Milo was screwing up his courage to say; had brought himself to the very point of saying.

In the room above them Dindoni was cursing his own clumsiness. He was lying in the dark, flat on his stomach, beside a gap in the floor from which two floor-boards had been removed. He had been lying in the same position for nearly half an hour, and a sudden spasm of cramp had caused him to twist on to one side. As he did so, his cigarette lighter had slipped from his pocket, and had fallen on to the rafter below him.

Dindoni could hear the change in Milo’s voice. ‘But I must not bore you with my private troubles, Signor Broke. I did not drag you all the way down here for that. I wished your expert opinion on this bull. A lovely creature, is it not? From the sixth century before Christ, I am told. I know very little of such technicalities. I am only a craftsman. But I have an eye for beauty–’

Dindoni cursed again. He rolled over, and climbed to his feet. He was stiff and sore, and angry. To have been so close, and then to have lost it at the last moment. He brushed down his clothes and crept cautiously back the way he had come.

Five minutes later he was hammering on the door of the café down the street. There was some delay before any notice was taken; then a girl’s voice said, ‘Who is it? Go away. We’re shut.’

‘Maria? It’s Dindo.’

The girl said, ‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming. What’s up?’

‘Who’s in there?’

‘Those two.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Having a drink. What do you think they’re doing? Washing up?’

‘If the café’s shut, they oughtn’t to be here.’

‘I told you, they’re just finishing their drinks. Then they’ll go.’

‘If I hadn’t turned up, I wonder when they’d have gone.’

‘Your mind’s as twisted as your body,’ said Maria. ‘If you think they shouldn’t be here, why don’t you throw them out?’

‘That’s right,’ said the stout man, putting his head through the bead curtain. ‘You come and throw us out. The exercise’ll do you good.’

‘I never said anything about throwing anyone out,’ grumbled Dindo.

‘That’s all right then, isn’t it. Come right in and join us. Give him a drink, Maria. He looks a little down in the mouth, maybe he’s had some bad news. Some horse he backed didn’t turn up. Is that right, Dindo?’

They went through into the back room. The tall man was seated at the table reading the
Corriere.
He looked up as they came in, then went on with his reading.

There were three glasses on the table, as Dindoni noted. The stout man followed his glance, and said, ‘That’s right. We were all having a drink together. That’s what I like about Florence. People aren’t stand-offish. It’s share and share alike here. That’s right, isn’t it?’

The thin man said, ‘You talk too much.’

‘Talking is a useful device,’ said the stout man. ‘It facilitates co-operative effort. It enables people to communicate with each other. How did things go tonight?’

‘They didn’t,’ said Dindoni, sulkily.

‘The meeting did not take place?’

‘It took place.’

‘But you could hear nothing?’

‘I could hear perfectly.’

‘Then what went wrong?’

‘What went wrong was that the old devil must have sensed that I was up there. As he was about to speak, he changed the subject. He talked of nothing at all.’

‘Did he hear you?’

‘Of course not. I tell you, it was just natural caution.’

‘I see,’ said the stout man. He eyed Dindoni thoughtfully. ‘Then we must think of something else. If he fears to speak in his own workroom where
will
he talk – if he desires to talk in confidence?’

‘In his own kitchen, no doubt.’

‘And it would not be possible for you to hear what is said in that room?’

‘Of course it wouldn’t. The windows are always shut, summer and winter. Or do you suggest I should hide under the table? Or secrete myself behind the stove, like a cricket on the hearth?’

‘I suggest,’ said the stout man, ‘that we talk sense. And that we summon science to our aid. Surely there is somewhere in the room’ – he had opened his briefcase, and brought out a small round black metal object – ‘that such a thing could be hidden.’

Dindoni eyed it curiously.

‘You would need less than ten minutes, alone in the house. The wire is very thin, and painted black as you see. It can be laid behind a picture rail, or along a wainscoting, or crack of the floor, and it will pass through a ventilator, even under a shut window.’ He proceeded to instruct Dindoni, who listened with growing interest.

Thursday: Luncheon at the Consul’s

If, as has been maintained, the mere possession of a name can influence the character of its holder – the Blacks becoming gradually blacker and the Whites whiter – it was, perhaps, something more than a coincidence that the Weighills (who, of course, pronounce their name ‘Whale’), should have become, in successive generations, increasingly whale-like; their bodies larger and blander, their eyes smaller and their skins thicker.

Sir Gerald was the finest specimen of all Weighills to date. He turned the scale, in his underpants, at eighteen and a half stone, moved with the majesty of an aircraft carrier, and needed, unkind persons asserted, almost as much seaway to turn in. At an early age it had become clear that such talents must lead him into the Foreign Service.

His wife being dead, he was looked after efficiently by his elder daughter, Tessa, every inch a Weighill herself; and spasmodically by his younger daughter, Elizabeth, who was so startlingly different, with her light hair, blue eyes and boyish figure, that she might have come from a different family altogether.

‘She’s a throw-back to the Trowers,’ explained Sir Gerald, ‘my wife’s family.’ He added, ‘They came from Shropshire,’ as though this explained everything.

The Sindaco Trentanuove, Mayor of Florence, nodded his agreement. He knew nothing about Shropshire, but if Sir Gerald asserted that it was so, that was good enough for him. In his view, Sir Gerald was all that a diplomat should be. The last two or three English Consuls had not been up to the mark at all; small, clever, anxious men, hurrying through Florence, as though it was a railway junction on the route to some more important terminus. But Sir Gerald was clearly a fixture. Even when his term of office expired he would probably remain, a notable addition to the corps of ex-Consuls in Tuscany.

The party was gathered in the Consul’s drawing-room. Elizabeth was pouring out the second of the pre-lunch drinks for her father and the Sindaco. Tessa was seated at one end of the sofa, dividing her attention between Miss Plant, Tom Proctor, the solicitor from England, and the American, Harfield Moss, who was suspected of being very rich, and was known to be interested in Roman and Etruscan relics.

Sir Gerald looked at his watch, and said, ‘I hope Broke hasn’t forgotten us. It’ll upset the seating plan for lunch.’

‘He promised he’d come,’ said Elizabeth, ‘and I sent him a card to remind him. He’s getting terribly absent-minded, though.’

‘Give him a ring at his house. We can’t keep Miss Plant waiting much longer. She’s finished a whole plate of cocktail biscuits. No. Stop. I hear the bell. It’s probably him.’

Broke came in, full of apologies, with a story of a difficult last minute customer. It sounded a bit thin to Elizabeth, who guessed, correctly, that he had forgotten all about them and gone home to lunch in the ordinary way, only to be chased out by Tina.

Introductions were effected. Miss Plant gave Broke her hand to kiss. Harfield Moss said that he was certainly pleased and proud to meet the author of
Five Centuries of Etruscan Terracotta,
and the Sindaco, who had been staring at Broke with undisguised interest, suddenly strode across, seized him by the hand, pumped it vigorously up and down, and said, ‘Captain Roberto.’

Broke had been looking at the Sindaco with a faint frown of puzzlement between his eyes. Now he grinned – (‘Yes, positively, he
grinned
,’ said Elizabeth, thinking about the scene afterwards) – and said ‘Marco! Good heavens! How very nice to see you again. How fat and prosperous you’ve grown.’

‘It’s true,’ said the Sindaco. ‘One’s youth departs. One’s waist-line loses its boyish trim. When last we met I was very poor and very thin. And very happy. Full of the joy of youth. Untouched by the cynicism of advancing years. A ragged adventurer, sword in hand–’

‘I take it,’ said Weighill, ‘that this was during the war.’

‘It was in the autumn of 1943,’ said Broke. ‘Near Vallombrosa. I was on the run from a prison camp in the north. Marco – by the way,
is
your name really Marco?’

‘A
nom-de-guerre.
But it gives me great pleasure that you should use it again.’

‘Marco was commanding a troop of very irregular soldiers, and gave me hospitality for some weeks.’

‘Hospitality,’ said the Sindaco. ‘Yes indeed. And we afforded some warm hospitality during that time to certain Germans in the neighbourhood – very warm indeed! But I must say no more. We are all friends now, even with the Germans.’

‘I completely disagree,’ said Miss Plant. ‘I have never spoken to a German since a disagreeable experience I had in the winter of 1944. I was short of fuel, and it seemed to me that the Germans had plenty, so I went to see their General – I forget his name–’

‘What happened?’ said Weighill. He had heard the story at least three times, but it would be new to some of his guests.

‘You may find it hard to believe, but he refused to see me. I said to the young officer who did see me, “Your stupid Reich won’t last forever, you know. Some day you’ll wish you hadn’t been so rude to everybody.” He had no answer to
that.
He just clicked his heels. A pointless habit. I believe they acquired it as students at Heidelberg. Along with the scars.’

‘That sounds like the luncheon bell,’ said Sir Gerald. ‘Let’s go through, shall we? Lead the way, Tessa. That’s right. Sindaco, will you do us the honour of taking the other end of the table. You shall have my daughters on either side of you.’

‘High priest guarded by vestal virgins,’ murmured Elizabeth.

‘Miss Plant on
my
right. Tom, come and sit on my left. Broke and Moss in the middle. That’s right. I hope, by the way, that you can all eat lobster. I am devoted to it myself.’

‘As a girl,’ said Miss Plant, ‘I was put off lobster by the sinking of the
Lusitania.
’

‘In anticipation that it might not be to everyone’s taste,’ said the Consul smoothly, ‘I have had an alternative dish of ravioli prepared.’

Miss Plant looked chagrined. She had disrupted many dinner parties by declaring a last-minute aversion to the principal dish. And ravioli was
not
her favourite form of food. Recovering rapidly, she said, ‘But I was taught by my mother that personal fads have no place at table. I shall eat lobster with the rest of you.’

Broke wondered if Sir Gerald really had got ravioli in reserve, or whether he had scored a point, by superior bluff, in this game of gastronomic poker.

‘Lobster,’ said Harfield Moss, ‘is a favourite dish in the state of Maine. We also eat clams.’

‘You are straight out of England, Mr Proctor?’ said Miss Plant. ‘You must find us a strange community in Florence. We must seem Edwardian to you who are a visitor from
swinging
London.’

Tom Proctor, who divided his time between a farm in Herefordshire, an office in Bedford Row and the Athenaeum, looked a little taken aback, but said that he found Florence a refreshing change.

‘It can be refreshing in the off-season,’ said Sir Gerald. ‘But at the moment we seem to have about twenty thousand tourists. A lot of them are British subjects. And at least half of them will lose their passports, and apply to me for help. I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn’t be a sensible rule that tourists should have their passport numbers tattooed on their arms.’

‘They’d lose them, too,’ said Elizabeth.

In the course of her long reign, Miss Plant had adopted certain queenly habits. She liked to ration her attention equally among her subjects; and she tended to make pronouncements rather than to ask questions.

She now turned on Harfield Moss, and said, ‘You come from America. You are interested in the collection of antique objects.’

‘Well, not
all
antique objects,’ said Moss. ‘That would constitute rather a wide field of endeavour. I myself am personally interested in Roman and Etruscan antiquities. I am also collecting for the Moss Foundation.’

‘What
a curious coincidence!’

‘A coincidence, Miss Plant?’

‘That your name should be Moss and that you should be collecting for the Moss Foundation.’

The American smiled and said, ‘Not so much of a coincidence, when you consider that I founded it. It’s my private charity.’

‘I’ve always envied you that bit of your law,’ said Tom Proctor. ‘I understand that if you buy for an artistic or educational foundation, you get almost complete exemption from taxation and death duties. Is that right?’

Harfield Moss dived happily into the complexities of American tax law, and Miss Plant began to wish she had never raised the subject. She switched her fire across the table, and said, ‘You must find the Gallery an interesting place, Mr Broke. All those books. It gives me a headache just to think of them.’

‘I don’t have to read them all,’ said Broke. ‘Only sell them.’ Something Moss had been saying had caught his attention. ‘Were you telling us that something startling had come up lately in your field? I thought the discoveries at Caere were the last big find–?’

‘I wouldn’t just assert that it has come up. It would be more accurate to say that it is in course of coming up. Two or three of our major institutions have been warned–’ Here Moss punctuated his sentence by twirling a forkful of pasta round and inserting it in his mouth, leaving his audience in suspense. He consumed the mouthful placidly and concluded ‘– have been warned to be on the look out.’

‘On the look out for
what?’
said Elizabeth.

‘If I knew that, Miss Weighill, I’d have a piece of information which a lot of collectors would give a good deal to possess. It could be silver-ware, or jewellery. The last big item to reach the American market was that silver helmet in the Chicago Museum. I happen to know what the museum authorities paid for that, and it was
plenty.’

‘How do these things get to America?’ said Tessa. ‘I thought the Italians wouldn’t let them out of the country.’

‘That’s the sort of question you mustn’t ask,’ said Sir Gerald.

‘Actually,’ said Moss, ‘I don’t know. As a collector, I simply pay my money – my institution’s money, I should say – to a reputable shipping agency in Rome. They pull whatever strings may be necessary. I ask no questions.’

‘But suppose whatever you’d bought didn’t arrive?’

‘I should be very upset,’ said Moss gravely.

‘I won’t have you grilling my guests,’ said Sir Gerald. He turned to the Sindaco, and said, ‘What’s going to happen at the next election?’

‘That is a question which is worrying a lot of people,’ said Trentanuove. ‘I myself am, as you know, a Communist.’ He grinned, and his teeth showed white under his gangster moustache. ‘That is a statement I should have to apologize for, in England. Yes?’

‘It’s something you’d have to keep pretty quiet about,’ agreed Sir Gerald.

‘In Italy it is possible to be proud of it. People still remember that the Communists were the best fighters. You agree, my old friend?’

‘They were very good fighters,’ said Broke. He said it as though his thoughts were a long way off. ‘Not the only ones, though. The most bloodthirsty partisan I ever met was a Quaker.’ It was clear that everyone would have liked to have heard about the bloodthirsty Quaker, but Broke had continued quietly with his meal.

‘As I was saying,’ said the Sindaco, ‘I make no secret of my support for the Communist party. I think we shall do well at the National Elections next month. Not well enough to form a Government of our own, but well enough to secure some of the key posts for our men.’

‘I’m a bit confused,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What sort of Government
have
you got? I mean it’s not straightforward like us. Labour or Tory.’

‘What we have at the moment is a Government of the left centre. Basically it is Social-Democrat, with Ecclesiastical and Liberal support.’

‘How many parties have you got?’

‘At the last complete count, thirty-seven. But only seven of them are important. They range from the Communists, on the left, to the Citizens’ Union on the right. According to the way the votes go between those parties, you construct a government of a right, centre, or left complexion.’

‘Like mixing face powder,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So much red, so much white, and a little natural tan colour.’

‘More like cooking a cake,’ said the Sindaco, grinning again. ‘The operative word being cooking.’

Miss Plant had finished her pasta, and had had enough of politics. She said, ‘Talking of cooking, have you seen the accounts of the Church Committee–’ and proceeded to slander the English chaplain. (He had incurred her displeasure by moving the lectern from the right-hand to the left-hand side of the aisle and making other popish innovations.)

As the Consul was aware, once Miss Plant had started on a topic there was no way of stopping her. As with the runaway railway truck, all you could do was to switch the points and hope it ended up in a safe siding.

He said, ‘I see we’ve got General Anderson back on the Church Committee. He should be a tower of strength. He knows Florence well. He was here during the war.’

‘He spent precisely two days in Florence during the war,’ said Miss Plant, ‘and was intoxicated most of the time. You could describe that as being “here”, I suppose.’

‘Do I understand, Miss Plant,’ said Moss, ‘that
you
were in residence during the whole of the German occupation of the country?’

‘Naturally. I saw no reason to put myself out to suit a parcel of jack-booted bullies–’

The Consul relaxed. They were safe for the next ten minutes. He caught an appreciative gleam in his daughter Elizabeth’s eye, and wondered if his tactics had been obvious to anyone else. Apparently not. Tessa was practising her Italian on the puzzled but patient Sindaco. The rest appeared to be listening to Miss Plant.

The lobsters arrived on the table.

‘There was a German officers’ prison camp at Vincigliata during the First World War,’ said Miss Plant. ‘One met quite a number of them. They were, at least, gentlemen. The officers of Hitler’s army, on the other hand, were not. They were vulgar little upstarts and bullies with no pretensions to manners or breeding–’