A Place for Us (9 page)

“Of course.”

•   •   •

“You know, it’s easier to just show you on YouTube,” he said, when they were in David’s study.

“On YouTube?” David sat heavily back in his chair, breathing hard. Joe glanced at him. There were dark gray circles under his brown eyes. “That hadn’t occurred to me. It’s a terrific idea.” He lay back a little and closed his eyes.

“You all right?”

“Bit tired, that’s all. I don’t sleep that well. I used to take sleeping pills. Can’t anymore.” He tapped his chest. “Dodgy ticker.”

“I’m sorry.” Joe moved round next to him behind the large oak desk and began typing on the old computer balanced precariously on the corner, next to sheets of paper, a large mug filled with pencils, and a pile of thrillers in a large, wobbling tower. David stared into space, his hands sitting idly on his lap. “This desk is a health and safety liability, David,” Joe said, for want of something else to say. David’s fame made him nervous. He wasn’t like the footballers or
Big Brother
rejects who came into the restaurant back in Leeds and ordered Cristal and then sat there fiddling with their phones. He was someone Joe really admired, had done all his
life, and it was weird . . . and strange. “You’d never be allowed to work in my kitchen.”

“Ha,” David said. “My life’s work is in here. All our paperwork too. It’s a mess, and one day someone will have to sort it all out. Hopefully not me.” He sat up as Joe clicked on a video. “Look at that, eh. Marvelous. How did you know what kind of dog Wilbur was? That’s the exact spit of him.”

“I owned all your books, David,” Joe said, embarrassed. “My uncle used to buy me the new one every Christmas. I knew Daisy and Wilbur better than I knew most of my family.”

“Really?” David looked absolutely delighted. “That’s wonderful! What was your uncle called?” He picked up a pencil, his thick red hands curling uselessly around it, until it slipped out of his grasp. “Damn it. My hands are bad today. Having terrible trouble doing anything.”

“Alfred, and he’s dead, so don’t worry.” Joe put his hand on the older man’s trembling fingers, immensely touched. “David, everyone in my school had something from Wilbur.”

“Oh, well. Isn’t that terrific, though?”

“Yes.” Joe grinned. “Now, I’ll leave you to get on.”

“No—oh, do stay and chat,” David said sadly. “I hate being in here all on my own. Especially days like this.”

“I’d best get back. Mrs. Winter wants you to do some work.” Besides, Joe was already feeling he’d spent enough time in this house, getting into all their business. The way they pulled you in, all of them, without stopping to ask you if you wanted to—it was crazy, charming, discombobulating. His head was throbbing. “I’ve got to head back to the pub for evening service.”

“Well, this is awful news,” David said. “Absolutely ruddy awful.” He plucked the gingerbread out of his jacket pocket. “I might eat this, then have a nap. Don’t tell Martha. Deadline’s later.”

Joe left, shutting the door softly on David picking up his pencil again. He walked back toward the kitchen, and as he did he heard Martha’s raised voice.

“No, Lucy. Absolutely not. I can’t believe it. How dare they even ask you? How much has Southpaw done for them over the years?” There
was a clank of something, a crack of china clashing. “Oh, damn it. I’ve a mind to ring them up, give them hell.”

Joe hovered, not sure whether to go in; but he didn’t want to eavesdrop.

“Please don’t, Gran. It wasn’t their idea, it was mine. Forget it.”

“Your idea!” Martha laughed. “Lucy, after everything—absolutely not.”

Lucy’s voice was thick. “I wouldn’t put anything in you didn’t want, Gran. If it’s a terrible idea, of course I’ll leave it. I just wondered why I can’t simply e-mail Daisy and ask her why she’s—”

Martha’s hissed reply was so soft Joe barely heard her. “It’d be a pretty bad idea, that’s all.” Then she added, as if she knew someone was outside, “Is that Joe, then?” Her voice was sharp. “What are you doing, hanging around listening to us bicker?”

“Sorry.” Joe came in, scratching his head. Lucy was flushed. Martha put her hand on her soft hair, and stroked it.

“Forgive me, darling. I shouldn’t have lost my rag. Joe, do you want some more tea? Or maybe a glass of wine? I could do with a glass of wine.”

Joe looked at the clock. “I’d best be off soon. Let’s just nail down the rest of the menu and then I’ll go.”

Lucy pushed her chair out. “I’ll pop back to Dad’s, dump my stuff. I’ll see you back here for supper then, Gran? I’m sorry.” Her eyes were still bright, feverish almost. She swallowed, then turned to Joe. “Someone rang you. Oh, and your phone kept buzzing, someone’s texting you.”

“Oh, that’ll be my mum . . .” Joe began. Liddy texted him all the time. And then he looked down, saw the most recent text gleaming up at him before it faded away into black glass, and his mouth turned dry.

This is it,
he thought.
I’ve been found out.

See you later? I can get away.

But Lucy was staring fretfully at her grandmother, and he couldn’t be sure if she’d read it or not. His finger throbbed as though darts of toxic poison were gushing into his body, and he braced himself, but all Lucy said was, “So, um. Maybe I’ll see you at the pub sometime, I hope?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Come down whenever. Tell someone at the newspaper to come and review it. We need all the help we can get.”

She stared at him thoughtfully. “Maybe I will. Thanks, Joe.”

Lucy shrugged and picked up her bag. “I’d better get back to Dad,” she said, and as she left, she threw a swift, secretive smile at Joe. He genuinely didn’t know what it meant.

Florence

“
P
RONTO
!
”

“Professor Lovell. You wanted to see me?”

George Lovell laid down his pen and gently placed the pads of his fingers together. He closed his eyes and inclined his head very slightly. “Yes.
Adesso, Signora.
”

Florence shut the door and sat down on one of the high-backed mahogany chairs which, common rumor had it, Professor Lovell had “liberated” from an abandoned palazzo near Fiesole
.
“In any case,” she said, “I wanted to ask you if I may take some time off in November. Three days, I think.”

“I take it this is not part of your work for the Courtauld?”

“No, holiday. I’m visiting my parents.” Florence plunged her hands into the pockets of her skirt and smiled as engagingly as she could at him.

Professor Lovell sighed. His eyes rolled upward until he was staring at the tufty overhang of his brow. She watched him and wondered how he held that position, totally motionless, like an owl.

“George?” Florence said after a few moments. “Ah—George?”

“Florence. This, again. Again.”

She was taken aback. “What again?”

“Going off in the middle of term.”

“What?” Florence cast her mind around. “That? But that was two years ago, and it was an operation,” she said. “I had a mole removed and it turned septic. You must remember.”

“Yes, the famous mole on your back,” said Professor Lovell, in a tone of voice that suggested he doubted the whole story.

“I got blood poisoning afterwards,” Florence said in what she felt was a mild tone. “I nearly died.”

“I think that’s exaggerating it somewhat, isn’t it?”

Florence crossed her hands in her lap. She knew Professor Lovell of old and there was no point in contradicting him. She could still see the nuns in the hospital round her bed as she drifted in and out of consciousness. She could hear them anxiously wondering in Italian about the
signora
and whether she was Catholic and would she like prayers said over her body, for surely she was not long for this world. “Again, I’m sorry about that.” There was no arguing with George when he was like this. “It’s my mother’s eightieth birthday. I am owed the holiday, you know.”

“Hmm.” Professor Lovell nodded. “That’s as may be. But, Professor Winter, Professor Connolly and I have been wondering.” At Peter’s name, Florence smiled privately, for merely hearing his name spoken in public felt like a luxury. “This was his idea, and perhaps it is appropriate to ask you now whether you would like to take some time off ?”

Florence began to wonder whether George was losing his mind. “Well—that’s what I was asking for. Yes. Three days in November.”

“No, Florence.” The professor’s hand came down on the old desk. “I meant—a term or two. Give you some time to assess your options.” He wouldn’t meet her eye. “You’re a busy woman, now you have this Courtauld job.” He said the word “Courtauld” in the same way one might say “tumor”
or “Nazi.”

Florence stared at him, bewildered. “But, George—there’s the paper on ‘Benozzo and Identity’ to finish for the conference in December, you can’t have forgotten. And my book—I have a lot of reading to do on it. A lot.”

Professor Lovell gave a sardonic laugh. “Your book? Of course.”

“It’s not the same level as Peter’s, of course . . .” Florence began, and George smirked.
Of course not.
“But it’s important nonetheless. And the spring lecture series—I really only want three days away next month, not two terms.”

“Right.” George Lovell sat back in his chair, hands on the armrests. There was a faint sheen of perspiration on his smooth, yellowing pate. “Florence . . . how do I explain this clearly? We think it’s time for you to take a step back. This is not a demotion, nor is it age-related. But we
need lecturers with a more diverse approach to complement our syllabus, and to that end—”

“What?”

“To that end,” he repeated, ignoring her, “Professor Connolly has appointed Dr. Talitha Leafe to assist us in the art history faculty. I know the pair of you will work extremely well together. She’s extremely talented, very enthusiastic—her specialties are Filippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli—”

Florence felt like Alice, tumbled down a hole and out into a world that made no sense. “But—that’s
my
specialty.” She pointed above him. “Look! Look at the book behind you on the shelf !
Studies in Benozzo Gozzoli and Fra Filippo Lippi
, edited by Professor Florence Winter! That’s why you employ
me
, George. You don’t need this—Tabitha Leaf ?
I’m
—”

“Ta
li
tha Leafe,” George broke in. “Tally,” he added, unnecessarily.

Florence narrowed her eyes, trying to think clearly. So this was it. She knew they couldn’t fire her on account of her age, because last year they’d tried to get rid of Ruth Warboys, an excellent ancient history professor, and replace her with a twenty-four-year-old boy with slicked-back hair who had a Twitter account. Ruth had hired a lawyer and kicked them down the street, and the twenty-four-year-old had not been heard of again. Young blond WASP boys were right up Professor Lovell’s alley, Florence knew: she and George had been at Oxford together, and she remembered the time he’d turned up for a formal hall with a black eye, the result of some misread signals from a fellow choral society member at Queen’s College. George was peculiarly arrogant about his own chances. Florence had noticed that unattractive men often were.

But girls, girls like this Talitha—
Talitha?
—Leafe, that wasn’t his area of interest. It just didn’t add up.

“We have discussed this at length, Professor Connolly and I. And we also feel the burden of your extra work at the Courtauld, not to mention your penchant for traveling to conferences, as well as your . . . your
behavior
,
well—it might all be compromising you a little.” Professor Lovell shifted in his chair.

“My behavior?” Florence said, astonished.

“Come on, Florence. You must know what I mean by that.”

“No, I don’t.” She screwed up her nose.

“You are a little—unpredictable. Particularly of late.” George tapped
his Adam’s apple. “And you have become something of a talking point, with various insinuations . . . and so forth.”

“Insinuations?” Florence could feel a watery sensation flooding her body, making her head spin. “Do elucidate, George, please. I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what you mean.”

Professor Lovell bared his teeth with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Come now, Florence. I’m afraid the facts about your workload speak for themselves.” He added, in what was clearly supposed to be a kindly tone, “Perhaps you’ve simply taken too much on, my dear.”

“What about Peter taking on too much?” she demanded. “Since the TV series and that book, he’s never here. And he makes mistakes. I don’t make mistakes. You can hardly castigate
me
when your head of department has taken it upon himself to become a media personality, George.”

“That is an entirely different matter,” squeaked George. “
The Queen of Beauty
is an enormous hit. The value to us of Peter being a . . . a . . . ‘media personality,’ as you put it, is incalculable.”

“He didn’t even get the date of the Bonfire of the Vanities right!” Florence said, trying to stop her voice from rising. “He was on some silly BBC breakfast program and he couldn’t say when the most notorious event of the Renaissance took place!”

“A lapse,” George said, irritated. “Live television, Florence. He got it right in the book, didn’t he?”

“Of course he got it right in the book!”
Florence shouted, and then stopped abruptly, and the two of them stared at each other, eyes wide.

Don’t say it. Just leave it well alone.
She bit her tongue.

“You may scorn it, but what Peter’s doing is the future, Florence. Times are tough and your jetting off to London every two months to give up your best research to the Courtauld is not particularly collegiate, is it?”

As news of Florence’s Courtauld appointment had come through, it emerged that Professor Lovell had applied for a similar post at the same time—but without success. His specialty—Holman Hunt—was out of fashion. Florence loathed Hunt, and found it rather satisfying that George couldn’t understand why no one else was as interested as he in hyperrealistic, moralizing paintings of symbolic goats, fallen women, and ghastly pink and blue babies.

She could see very clearly what this was all about. They were scared
of her, so the old boys’ club was closing ranks. She reminded herself of what she did, in fact, know, the damage she could do if she just opened the hatch and gave her craziness full rein. She could hear the words forming.

You know I
wrote most of Peter’s book for him. You know if I were to tell anyone, it’d be a scandal big enough to close down the college.

And yet she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t brave enough. Was she? She wished she had a coffee. She always thought better after coffee. She sat silently, almost slumped in her high-backed chair, listening to George’s reedy, precise voice.

“This isn’t immediate. We’d want to see a change come January 2013. Dr. Leafe is getting married at Christmas, of course, and she starts here in the New Year. She would very much like to meet you, work out a way in which the two of you—”

Florence stood up abruptly. “Is that the time? I have to go. Do forgive me. I have a meeting with . . .” She stared up at the ceiling, trying to sound calm and steady. “Rat controllers. I have rats. Well, George, I shall consider what you say and get back to you.”

Professor Lovell stuck his fat lower lip out. “I shall be in touch, if you are not.”

Florence put one trembling hand on the door and took a deep breath. “Well, we shall talk anon, no doubt, though I warn you I intend to defend my own patch extremely vigorously. Incidentally, your desk has woodworm. Good-bye!”

She even managed a cheery nod as she exited.

•   •   •

She ran until she was out of breath. It was only when she reached the other side of the river that Florence stopped and realized she was shaking, head to toe. She disliked confrontation, almost as much as she disliked mice. She had eschewed teaching and become an academic for that very reason, only to find out too late that the world of academia was like fourteenth-century Florence, riven with internecine strife, internal politics, and wordless betrayal. Increasingly these days it reminded her of growing up with Daisy, where she didn’t know the rules and couldn’t work out when the attack would come. At least the Florentines occasionally massacred each other at Mass to clear the air. Much more
straightforward than all this creeping aggression and stress, which ate away at her, like waiting for one of Daisy’s little plots to explode.

Talitha Leafe.
What kind of name was that? With a thrill, Florence wondered if this was a legitimate inquiry she could make of Peter.

“Oh,
Peter
,” Florence said aloud, scuffing one worn shoe on the ancient cobbles. Every single moment of those few weeks that hot summer were imprinted in her mind like an album of holiday photos, one she could flick through whenever she cared to, which was often. And she always felt quite the woman of the world when thinking about him, about what had happened. She liked acting as though things were normal around him, in front of other people especially. The idea that people might be gossiping about them thrilled her.
Professor Winter and Professor Connolly? Oh, yes. Apparently they had a fling a few summers ago. He was mad about her, I heard.
Yes, that was how she wanted people to think of her. Florence Winter: dashing, mysterious woman of letters, academic, passionate lover, brainy, vital woman of today.

Something touched her leg; Florence jumped, then realized it was her finger. Her skirt had a hole in the pocket. She scraped her nail on her naked skin. Her legs were hairy; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d shaved them. Say if she were to meet Peter, right here, walking down the street, as had happened that Tuesday in January. He’d been on his way to dinner with friends in the Oltrarno. Niccolò and Francesca, she’d remembered their names, looked up their address.

Say they got talking, then she asked him up for a glass of wine. They’d sit on the roof terrace, a tiny space no bigger than a picnic blanket, looking out at the Torre Guelfa and the Arno. Say they laughed about George and his peccadilloes, the way they used to before Peter started freezing her out, treating her like she was an embarrassment. Say then that he put his hand on her knee as she said something funny, and laughed. “Oh, Flo.” He always used to call her Flo, and it reminded her of home. “I miss you. D’you miss me?”

“Sometimes,” she’d say, smiling just a little archly at him; she didn’t want to seem girlish.

And say he simply took her hand and pulled her into the bedroom, peeling off her clothes one by one, and say they made love in the warm, terra-cotta–colored chamber, the sound of the evening bells in the
distance, the sheets rumpled, their faces rosy and glowing with pleasure. . . . Say it were to happen, well, he wouldn’t care, would he? He hadn’t cared before. It had been so lovely, like that. . . .

Florence peered up at the blue sky, framed by the black, shadowed buildings, her hands pressed to her burning red face, a secret smile playing on her lips.

Someone laughed, and she looked up, almost surprised. Two spinsterish tourists, British, she knew it, were staring at her. She hurried on.

•   •   •

Florence lived on the top floor of an old palace, now divided into apartments, on the Via dei Sapiti. Her apartment had once been a prince’s chamber, and when she’d moved in ten years ago there had been several old pieces of furniture that no one had ever claimed and of which Giuliana, her landlady, professed to know nothing. Florence liked to think they might have been there for centuries; that perhaps some scheming nobleman had hidden letters in the wedding chest, or a knife under the great wooden chair.