Bee finished her book on plant viruses, and Pat corrected the copyedits and proofs of her Naples book. Their house grew messy around the edges. Washing piled up and floors went unswept. Bee arranged for the summer gardeners to come every week and save the garden from neglect. Denmark and Greece joined the European Economic Community. A computer beat a man at chess, and they saw their friend Alan Turing sounding shyly confident about it on the BBC.
Bee began lecturing again after Christmas. Pat found it terribly hard at first to be home with both babies. They worked out a routine where when Bee came in she spent an hour and a half with the babies upstairs while Pat had a rest and made dinner uninterrupted. She loved the babies, but she looked forward desperately to this break, in which she often just read quietly. That and the very early mornings with Bee were her favorite times of day. The babies always woke when the cock crowed and were fed, but they both readily went back to sleep after that dawn feed. Pat and Bee would lie awake and talk, or make love, or just cuddle together quietly until it was time for Bee to go to work.
Cambridge was not a town friendly to babies. There were few parks and no indoor playgrounds. Besides, Harston was six miles outside the city, and Bee needed the car to go to work. If Pat and the babies went in with her they were stuck there for the whole day, or they had to take a long slow bus ride home. This was exacerbated by how difficult it was to do anything with the babies—cafes and restaurants frowned on them, and even the librarians looked disapproving when Pat wheeled the double pram in. Most of their friends had no children, and while they were delighted to fuss over the babies when they had time, they worked during the day. More and more she stayed at home, looking after the babies and working whenever naps coincided. They dropped out of choir, and she made only a few birding expeditions that spring. They could seldom make parties, and Pat felt her horizons shrinking. At the same time she was overwhelmed with things that needed doing. She made endless lists and checked things off on them. One day Bee picked up a list and started laughing. “The first item on this list is ‘Make list’!”
Pat’s editor at Constable wanted her to write about Athens, but she turned him down and counter-proposed doing three new books about Rome—one on visiting ancient Rome, one on Renaissance Rome, and one on modern Rome. He agreed enthusiastically, and suggested color photographs. She told him how happy she had been with Michael’s work, and he arranged for Michael to go out to Italy again that summer.
At the end of term Pat and Bee packed up their new larger car for the long trip across Europe with the babies. They had not been further with them before than Pat’s mother’s house at Twickenham. They had to stop frequently, and the nights in pensiones on the way were appalling, as neither child would settle to sleep. What surprised them was how once they crossed into Mediterranean France, suddenly everyone was tolerant and delighted, nothing was too much trouble. A waiter at a cafe in Dijon carried their thermos and blankets to the car for them. A maid at the pensione sang to the babies in French, and soothed them into amazed peace. As soon as they were over the Alps the proprietor of a restaurant where they had stopped before made some special baby pasta for Flossie, which she ate with more enthusiasm than she had ever yet shown for anything but breast milk. “Bella piccola Firenza,” he said, enthusiastically, when she threw some on the stone floor. After Cambridge, where nothing and nobody catered for babies, this stunned both women.
“We should live here year round,” Pat said, after a neighbor they had never seen before came around with eggs “for the babies” and cooed over Jenny.
“If I didn’t have to work,” Bee said.
“There’s a university here…”
“I don’t speak Italian well enough, and they probably don’t have anything in my field. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look.” She looked around at the garden. “We really could get a cow. If we needed to be self-sufficient, if civilization collapsed, we’d be better off here.”
“Do you think it might?” Pat asked. “I mean with the new European alliance everything seems a bit more stable?”
“It doesn’t stop the Americans and the Russians glaring at each other above our heads,” Bee said. “No, Flossie, don’t eat that!”
The children were much too young to appreciate Florence, apart from the food, which they appreciated with gusto. “I was the same when I first went to Italy,” Pat said, watching Jenny guzzling zucchini flowers.
When Michael came, he stayed in Florence for a few days, then despite the inconvenience and the expense, every day for a week he and Pat went to and fro to Rome on the train and worked hard at photographing what she wanted for all three new books. “I’ll do the Ancient and Renaissance books first, and then the modern one after next summer, because that’s the one that’ll need most checking.”
“I don’t know how you manage at home on your own,” Bee said when they came back on the third day. “Even here, where we can walk into town and everyone fusses over them, it’s driving me mad.”
“Do you want me to take a day off and stay tomorrow?” Pat asked.