Now this one he liked a bit more. And he knew she’d press him for details. ‘I like the sky,’ he said.
‘But not the ship?’
He wrinkled his nose.
‘OK. We can work with sky. Let’s try something from a bit later in the century.’ She took him into another room. ‘This is Monet’s Flood Waters.’
He shook his head. ‘Not this one. It’s a bit...’ He paused to find the right word. ‘Wishy-washy.’
She grinned. ‘That’s one way to describe water. Perhaps not French Impressionism, then.’ She led him around the corner. ‘How about this one?’
‘Even I can recognise van Gogh,’ he said. ‘The Sunflowers.’
‘How does it make you feel?’ she asked.
‘It’s like sunshine,’ he said. ‘It’s bright. I like this one.’
‘Happiness,’ she said. ‘Good. So we’ve established that you like happy paintings and sunshine.’
‘Or that I’m just dull and like the popular stuff.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with liking popular stuff,’ she said. ‘And you’re not dull.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I know I said not French Impressionism, but it’s the light and shade that your grandfather really loves in the Macchiaioli paintings. Me, too. I’m going to show you something else.’ She led him round the corner. ‘This one is pastels rather than oil. It’s Degas, After the Bath.’
The seated woman’s naked back and upper thigh were visible, the curve of her waist to the right, and her arms. ‘It’s all about movement, the blurred contours,’ she said.
Angelo thought of Mariana. How she would look, seated in the same pose. The softness and warmth of her skin, the bright gleam of her hair... And his mouth went dry. He could almost smell the floral scent she wore, the dampness of her skin, imagine how she’d drop that towel and turn to look at him over her shoulder, her lips parted.
‘Now you look as if you get it,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘How art can move you. Make you think. Make you feel.’
He almost—almost—wrapped his arms around her and kissed her right there and then, in the middle of the gallery, heedless of the fact that it was a very public place.
But he held himself back. Just.
‘I get it,’ he said, hearing the crack in his own voice.
‘Good. Enough art for now,’ she said. ‘But another time I’m going to take you to see the Degas dancers at the Courtauld. I think you’ll like them. Turner’s skies, Degas’s figures and the brightness of van Gogh. I’ll have a think about what else you might enjoy.’
* * *
They spent the rest of the morning working through the boxes, but Angelo couldn’t shake his awareness of Mariana. Several times he glanced up from the papers to see her glancing at him, too, and looking away as if she felt guilty about being caught.
So did she feel the same weird pull of attraction towards him—even though they both knew this wasn’t sensible?
And what were they going to do about it?
He kept himself under strict control for the rest of the morning—until he came across a card envelope. ‘Ferrania Color,’ he said.
Mariana frowned. ‘What’s that?’
‘The Italian version of Kodak,’ he said. ‘Mamma has some envelopes like these. Italian-developed photographs from when she was young.’
Mariana’s eyes widened. ‘Do you think this might be...?’
‘The photographs from Nonno’s visit to Norfolk? Hold your breath and wish.’ Which was exactly what he did as he drew the photographs out of their envelope.
The photographs were square, with a narrow white border, showing that they were older than modern prints; they were glossy, and most importantly they were in colour.
He felt sick with nerves. ‘I really think this might be it.’
The first couple of pictures were of a row of flint cottages, with red tiled roofs and a decorative border of bricks around the white-painted windows and door. The front garden was full of summer flowers.
‘Look on the back,’ she whispered. ‘Just in case he wrote something.’
He turned it over and his grandfather’s handwriting was obvious. ‘“New Road Cottages. 1963. Carulli stayed here,”’ he translated.