Free Tuscan Rose by Belinda Alexandra

everything.
    Rosa was amazed to see English signs everywhere: doctors, dentists, chemists, banks. Giuseppe had said that walking down Via Tornabuoni was like being in London and now she could see what he had meant. There were shops selling mackintoshes, croquet sets and tweeds. She passed an English-language bookshop and a tea-house with scones and seedcake on the menu. She admired the ladies’ crinoline hats and the men’s grey flannel suits and Oxford shoes and the way the patrons sipped their tea as if they had all day to do so. Even the cocker spaniels and beagles lying at their masters’ feet looked relaxed. Rosa glanced at the T-bar straps on the shoes of a young woman reading the newspaper and savouring a glass of tomato juice. How beautiful those shoes were compared to Rosa’s heavy clogs.
    She noticed a shoe store across the way. It wasn’t the one the Marchese had written down for her, but she couldn’t resist inspecting it. She saw a forlorn-looking monkey sitting in the store window, then blinked and realised there wasn’t a monkey there at all, only a pair of shoes made from black suede and monkey fur. Next to them was a pair of evening slippers finished in green silk with mother-of-pearl buckles, and on the shelf below was a pair of ankle boots fashioned from leopard fur and leather. Something moved behind the glass and Rosa stepped back, terrified she might find herself face to face with a big cat from the jungle. But it was only a man with a pencil moustache. He glared at her and made a shooing gesture with his hands. Rosa blushed, wondering what she had done to offend him. But she forgot the sales clerk when she caught sight of a woman wearing a satin bolero jacket and a hat sprouting crimson plumes entering the store. She was holding the diamond-encrusted leash of a poodle dyed the same colour as thefeathers in her hat. The flamboyant Florentine woman left the conservative English women in her wake. A few minutes later, a woman came out of the store wearing a magenta suit with eyes embroidered over it. Her platform shoes were five inches high.
    If only Suor Maddalena could see this, thought Rosa. I wonder what she would she say? Rosa had not received any word from the convent about Suor Maddalena’s health. The Marchese had informed Rosa that she was to have one weekday off a month, with the first one due after three months of service. That left her with only Sundays free, when it was impossible to visit the convent. She would have no choice but to wait until the Badessa or Suor Maddalena herself sent some news.
    She watched another client step out of her chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. The woman wore a black rayon suit, and the Pomeranian that pattered along by her feet was fitted with a sequined cape. Compared to the previous two women, her outfit was conservative, but when the woman turned to enter the shop Rosa saw that the back of the woman’s suit was embroidered to look like the X-ray of a skeleton.
    ‘No servant girls,’ said the sales clerk, striding out of the store and waving his hands at Rosa. ‘Don’t you have something to do?’
    Rosa moved away. She was too amazed by what she had seen to worry about asserting her right to stand on a public street. The realisation that she was no longer in the sheltered community of the convent or even the confines of the villa suddenly hit her. I am out in the world, she thought. She turned and came face to face with a street sweeper who had witnessed the sales clerk’s rebuff.
    ‘They say that Mussolini will ban newspapers from printing pictures of those skinny-hipped whores and their dogs,’ he whispered. ‘It is an affront to Italian motherhood!’
    Was the whole of Florence like this, Rosa wondered. From one extreme to the other?
    The haughtiness of the sales clerk led her to think of the Marchesa, who she had seen only twice since the fateful lunch. Thewoman displayed no interest in Clementina, and from the way she looked through Rosa it