Urban Venus (14 page)

It was a great night out though, and on seeing the impact it has had on my looks I feel I need to quantify it as such to make the after-effects seem bearable. Leonora had a great time and said she felt much better, even at 5.45am when we got back to the apartment, so our goal had been achieved, at least. Plus I have secured myself a date with Stefano so I have that to look forward to sometime this week…

We’d picked up freshly baked pastries from a little
panetteria
tucked away in the backstreets near the Duomo and rushed back the rest of the way to devour them whilst they were still warm. Catching bakers opening up in the early morning has to be
the
perk of an almost-all-nighter, I reckon. After munching my way through a
pandoro
and best part of a
bombolone
I’d actually gone to bed feeling like a human being, albeit a very well-stuffed one, so it was odd that now, with a few hours sleep under my belt, I felt like something recently dug up from a graveyard. Oh well, such is the life of a party animal….

Eyes still half-closed, I struggle to the kitchen in search of coffee, stopping in my tracks as I’m confronted by the remains of that bag of pastries, doing its calorie-laden best to stare me down into submission.
No, I can’t go there again. I will turn into a pastry at this rate.
But a small peep inside the paper bag reveals, amongst other things, a solitary
pandoro,
it’s festive, icing-sugar-coated peaks one of the few indications that it’s actually nearly Christmas.

How differently they do Christmas here compared to at home, where the shops are madly festooned with all things seasonal from what seems like mid-September, and we all feel like we might decapitate a few plastic Santas if we’re subjected to the strains of ‘
Merry Christmas Everyone!’
one more time. It’s so much more subtle here; the Italians do love their Christmas, there’s no doubting that, but they don’t let it take over their entire calendar, and it’s so much less commercial than in the UK. Unlike us, they seem to have clung on to some vestige of remembrance of what Christmas is actually all about.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, contemplating how I can reasonably avoid having to go home and make the obligatory parental visit for the festive season,
pandoro
filling my cheeks like a half-starved hamster and coffee in hand, when Leonora surfaces.

‘
Ciao Lydia, come stai?’
she asks way too perkily, looking like she has just surfaced from twelve hours of pure, uninterrupted sleep. How does she manage to do that, and be pregnant too? Not that I’d wish it on her, but shouldn’t she be throwing up for Italy in the mornings by now? Knowing nothing whatsoever about pregnancy and childbirth and all that goes with it, I can’t profess to even have a clue what ought to be coming her way at this stage, but I can’t help the momentary, and very uncharitable, twang of envy that fate can deliver her to the kitchen looking like this, when I look like Lady Gaga after a fight with a bulldozer.

One extremely large sugar- and caffeine-hit later, and I am feeling a little less unfriendly. Leonora helps me polish off another pastry, and the two of us sit there together companionably, alternating comfortable silences with the odd observation or snippet of gossip from the night before.

‘
So, you and Stefano,’ she begins, inevitably, a huge smile lighting up her face. ‘Finally! I’m so pleased for you.’

‘
Well, nothing has happened yet, but I’m going to call him today, see if we can meet up in the week or something,’ I reply.

‘
That’s great, you’ll make a gorgeous couple, the pair of you,’ she goes on. ‘And thanks again for last night. I know I keep saying it but you are all so lovely. Where would I be without you….!’

‘
We all know you’d do just the same for us. Although maybe not the gay club!’ I joke.

‘
It was funny thought, wasn’t it?’ she giggles. ‘Couldn’t believe Matteo and his friend, what are they like!’

When Sophia eventually emerges, around an hour later, I have knocked back enough coffee to keep an entire city awake for a week, and Leonora, as a sensible concession to her pregnancy, has moved onto the decaffeinated version. Stuffed to the eyebrows with carbs, we vow never to touch another pastry as long as we live. Well, at least for the next week anyway.

Sophia is full of ideas for the day – she’s another one with far too much energy after a late night. How do these girls do it? Maybe the warm Mediterranean climate gives them a bit more get-up-and-go than we Brits, but whatever it is, I haven’t managed to absorb it by osmosis, and I am simply planning a lazy day here, with Signore Di Girolamo’s Titian book that Vincenzo lent me. I haven’t yet had much of a chance to read it, so that is me sorted for today, plus I have some real work I need to catch up on too. Oh, and I will definitely give Stefano a call sooner rather than later; I don’t want to leave the poor man hanging on for too long, after giving him so much hope last night.

I’ve managed to convince myself, without actually having to try too hard, that the whole me-and-Stefano thing no longer feels like just a plan to rid myself of any inappropriate thoughts I might have been having about Vincenzo. Lying in bed last night in those few lucid moments before slipping into an alcoholic stupor, I realised just how much I really do like Stefano, and I can’t wait for our first date, just for its own sake, not with some ulterior motive bubbling away underneath.

I will wait until a little later, when I can string two coherent words together and give him a call…

Stefano holds tightly onto my hand, as though he can’t quite believe his luck that we are there together, terrified that I might at any time make a run for it. We stroll from room to room in the Galleria dell’Accademia, our ‘first date’ going really well so far. It’s funny how the dynamics of a friendship can morph so suddenly into something more substantial, and away from the rest of our group of friends we are completely different with one another; totally at ease as we are well past those early days of unfamiliarity, but also highly flirtatious and – a surprise to me – just a little bit naughty.

I have to say, I haven’t really taken in much around the gallery as we’ve strolled from room to room, but then I have been here countless times before, so it’s serving its purpose as a neutral place for a date, without me feeling I’m actually missing out on the whole Art Experience. We’ve chatted incessantly, about anything and everything, each of us keen to know more about the other’s background, likes and dislikes, families, all the stuff that makes us tick. Things you just don’t talk about when you’re merely a couple of friends in a big group.

I love this place, although it’s never held the same fascination as the Uffizi for me, for obvious reasons, I suppose. I didn’t want to take Stefano there on our first date though, again for obvious reasons. I have decided I’m going to tell him all about the dreams when we go for lunch later; not because I’m giving him the chance to get out of this relationship quickly if he decides I’m a total fruit-cake, but because the dreams are beginning to crystallise more and more in my head and I feel I need someone else that I know well to share them with and to help me rationalise everything. I have no doubt he will be as understanding as I’m expecting him to be.

As we stand in front of
David
–
the real Michelangelo one – he makes a joke about
David
’s physique as compared to his own, but then the jokey atmosphere changes instantly as he pulls me to him and suddenly we are in the centre-point of one of those corny moments when it feels as though the milling crowds around us have simply disappeared off the planet. Were we in a film, all those extras would fade into the background in soft focus whilst we were propelled to the foreground in sharp relief, camera zooming in from afar to capture ‘the moment’ between the hero and heroine, music rising to a predictable crescendo to coincide with the moment our lips first meet.

Corny film moments aside, our first kiss is a very sweet one indeed, full of the promise of passion to come, and I am surprised at how, when we do eventually come up for air, my knees are undeniably weak and my heart is pounding. So, Stefano can do that to me, that’s encouraging! I’d been so worried, after Ed, that I just wouldn’t be able to feel anything for another man and that my ex had totally killed off any desire I might have had. So,
Ha to you, Ed, you haven’t, there is life for this girl beyond you and your betrayal
.

I’m not usually one for such grand displays of affection in public places, but actually I’m not embarrassed in the slightest when I see onlookers regarding us with that ‘Get a room’ expression on their faces. They’re just jealous….

Our first taste of passion produces an immediate hunger for lunch and two angrily growling stomachs, so we head off in search of a little
trattoria
Stefano knows, tucked insignificantly into a quiet back lane off the busy shopping street Via dei Calzaiuoli
.
Despite being situated just behind of one of the big Florentine department stores, remarkably there are very few tourists in here, and the overall impression is of Italian being spoken, not English, German, Japanese and whatever else all mixed into one discordant cacophony.

We devour huge bowls of
spaghetti con le polpette
, slurping as the rich tomatoey sauce runs down our chins and laughing as we share a single strand, both sucking until our lips meet in the middle. We exchange a little kiss before biting through the perfect
al dente
pasta. As we are waiting for our desserts to arrive, I decide to tell Stefano about my dreams – with some trepidation as I remember only too well the reaction I received from Vincenzo when I imparted the same news to him across a dinner table.

There have been further dreams, some more significant than others, and I am more convinced than ever that Maria is trying to tell me something. She has become like an imaginary friend to me; always there and seldom far from my thoughts as I go about my twenty-first century life. I sometimes feel as though I live part in the
now
, and part in the
then
, as there is no doubt that during the dreams I
am
Maria and I become her wholeheartedly. Experiencing her in the first person makes the love between her and Tito something I can feel almost as a tangible object, even after I’ve woken up.

Most of the time the dreams don’t contain anything of earth-shattering importance – at least as far as I know, but I suppose they are all important in some way for what they teach me. Generally they seem to be little snapshots of the comfortable Venetian life of a rich man’s mistress and some only last a few brief moments; Maria being painted by Tito – frequently, circulating in society – when propriety allows, and idly chatting with her maid, who seems to be developing her own strong character in my head and is a massive mainstay to her mistress. No history book could ever give me such a clear insight into the life and mind of Renaissance Woman.

When I look through the textbooks at how life was then, what women wore, how they did their hair, what cosmetics and perfumes they used, I feel a real sense of familiarity, almost like flicking through a fashion magazine in the twenty-first century, getting ideas and choosing what would suit me. But my recently acquired insider knowledge allows me to quickly spot when a detail isn’t quite right, when a historian has seized on something which is actually of very little importance but has skimmed over the more significant details. I reckon I could rewrite some of these books quite easily, removing the erroneous data and inserting my own first-hand knowledge of how it all was. Just imagine what use I could be as a real historian, although I’m more likely to be written off as a dreamer and a loony than be taken seriously by the likes of modern-day historians such as David Starkey and Martin Kemp, with their apparently expert knowledge of the sixteenth century.

‘
I’ve not read much of Signore Di Girolamo’s book as yet,’ I tell Stefano, ‘but already he talks about this woman Titian brought to Venice. I’m wondering if that’s her, if she’s my Maria.’ He has been listening intently, trying to take in all this confusing stuff about his new girlfriend (which I have to assume I now am!)

‘
Finally I’ve found a mention of her,’ I continue. ‘Or at least I hope it’s her. She’s just not in any of the major history books, you see. Why would one of those important historians write about some prostitute that Titian fell in love with? She’s a nobody as far as they’re concerned, but she has got a story to tell, you see, and it looks like she’s chosen me to tell it for her. God knows why though? Why me and why now? And what am I supposed to do with all this information? I really don’t know what she expects of me.’

Stefano sits there looking pretty confused. He takes hold of my hand and tells me simply that he’ll support me in whatever I decide to do. He admits to being surprised to hear all this, but it’s fine, he says, and all just part of what makes me an interesting person to know.

‘
So you’re not going to dump me on the first date, then?’ I ask nervously. ‘It’s not too late to get out now, you know, if you think I’m completely nuts.’ I try to smile normally as though to convince him I
am
normal, hoping against hope that he isn’t just going to walk away from me now.