Free In Love and War by Alex Preston Page B

be dreadful grub,’ Gerald says as they enter the square. ‘Douglas grew up in Austria, no idea of good food. Only reason he comes to this place is because the chef was trained in the Vorarlberg.’
    ‘It is worth it for the company,’ Fiamma says, and they smile at each other.
    They make their way down a narrow alley and into a courtyard where a sign sways gently above an oleander hedge. A sad-faced maître d’ greets them at the door, bowing deeply to Fiamma. Despite the heat, he leads them into the stuffy, candlelit room where Douglas and Orioli sit at one end of a long table. Reggie Temple is with them. A waiter hovers over Douglas with a dish in his hand whose contents the old man inspects carefully. He looks up as they enter.
    ‘Ah. All right! Come on, sit down. I’m bartering with this crook over the scampi. Fresh today from Forte dei Marmi. Look like a little boy’s tom tiddler, don’t they?’ He bangs the table and gives a nod of his head. ‘
Va
bene!
’ He lights a Toscano cigarillo and grins.
    Esmond sits down between Orioli and Reggie. Douglas is embracing Gerald with a cry of ‘He’s all right, this man!’ Fiamma sits at the end of the table and lifts the shawl from her shoulders, bare skin above a green and white polka-dot dress. She looks a little nervous, and very beautiful. Esmond smiles at her, feels a blush.
    ‘I bet you’re glad to have young Gerald out here now, eh?’ Douglas says, fixing Esmond in a stare. ‘Must have been hellish boring in that place with only old Goad for company.’
    ‘Fiamma was there,’ says Esmond, looking down the table at her again.
    ‘Ah yes, but not the same as having a man there. You know Pino and I have a walkie-talkie system between our rooms? Sort of speaking funnel at the head of each bed. Means if we wake in the night with some 4 a.m. satori, we can yell it out to the other before it’s lost.’
    There are two bottles of cheap Soave on the table and Orioli fills all of their glasses to the brim. He never stops smiling, looking first at Douglas, then Gerald, then off into the distance, an expression of constant, wistful benevolence. Reggie has drawn out a little sandalwood box and is showing it to Fiamma, who peers in and pulls a face.
    ‘I design these,’ he says, holding the box up to Esmond. Painted inside the lid is the scene of a medieval torture chamber, a young boy stretched out on a rack, the masked torturer attacking his groin with pincers. ‘I sell them to tourists.’
    ‘Gosh,’ Esmond says, passing it carefully back.
    ‘Oscar Wilde was a dear, dear friend of mine, you know. I had a small but not inconsequential part in
The Ideal Husband.
’ Reggie opens one of the buttons of his high-necked serge jacket and looks appealingly at Esmond.
    The food arrives. Scampi in breadcrumbs; a
bollito
misto of tongue, beef, capon, sausage; saltimbocca; grey truffles in cheese sauce in sizzling pannikins; wild boar
agrodolce
. The tragic-looking maître d’ appears with a pepper pot that he grinds as if he were wringing a man’s neck. Douglas’s appetite is vast; half-standing and arcing genially across the table, he makes sure to snare the best cuts of meat, the juiciest prawns. He takes long swigs of his wine as he eats, his nose growing redder, and he begins to talk in close whispers to Gerald, who eats little and places his hand on Douglas’s every so often.
    After a while, a pale man in his thirties comes to the restaurant, frayed and shiny as his suit. He looks around the room and then over at their table with a desperate beam.
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ Douglas mutters. ‘Eric, dear boy, come and join us, won’t you?’
    The man takes a seat next to Gerald and nods doubtfully around the table.
    ‘Eric Wolton’s an old pal. Back when I had a wife.’ He claps his hands together. ‘Happiest day of my life, the day my wife died. Did I ever tell you I danced on her grave? A Scottish jig. Don’t tell my sons that, if you see them. Do you ever