“It’s not what I want. I’d much rather be in Florence with the family. But…”
“It’s your career,” Pat said.
“Not even that, it’s the elm trees,” Bee said. “I know it’s ridiculous, but there it is. I do want to save them if I can.”
“I could not love you dear, so much, loved I not elm trees more?”
Bee laughed, then looked guilty, and Pat laughed with her. “It’s all right,” she said. “I love you loving the elm trees.”
So after just over a week in Florence Bee returned to Cambridge, leaving the rest of the family to enjoy their usual summer. Pat missed Bee constantly. They wrote each other long letters, not exactly love letters, but letters full of love and caring. Letters were delivered only erratically in Florence, so Pat collected hers from the post office, a charming building completed only the year before, in the style of the Vasari Corridor.
After she had the mail she would stop with the children at a little gelateria on a nearby corner for a chocolate gelato. They had a game where they could have two gelatos or a gelato and a granita every day if they were absolutely silent while eating the first one, so the three of them sat in a row swinging their legs and solemnly licking their cones while Pat read her letters.
Reading Bee’s laconic descriptions and jumbled thoughts she felt as if she could hear her voice:
“The hens are laying well, but they miss the girls collecting the eggs. Saw your mother. She was very gracious, so she clearly didn’t know me, but she seemed in good form otherwise. She told me about how she met your father, a sweet story which I expect you have heard. The new fungus seems to be doing well in vitro, still waiting to hear on the vivo test. If it’s good I may come to you a week early, because it’s hard to be without you so long. I’m going to borrow your old green silk scarf to wear with my suit for the ICL thing if that’s all right, it seems to make me look a bit smarter and it smells reassuringly like you. Kiss the children from me, and kiss yourself if you can think of a way to do it. I think of you all every day, and especially when I come home to the empty house. The gooseberries are ripe and I have picked them all. I can’t be bothered with making jam so I am putting up a rum pot with the fruit—it will make Christmas presents for everyone we know.”
Finishing the letter she would have tears in her eyes, and the girls would hug her. “Mamma sends love to all of you especially,” she said, and then told them the bits of news. When she wrote she put in notes and drawings from the children. Flossie wrote letters several pages long about what they had been doing. Jinny drew copies of the shields inside the Bargello, and even Philip drew scribbles that he said were pictures of their garden, or of the Piazza della Signoria, and which Pat labelled. Bee wrote that she was putting them all up in the kitchen.
When she didn’t hear for few days she wasn’t especially concerned. It was when Bee had been due to go to London for the conference. She did begin to worry when it was five days without anything. When a letter did come, she was surprised how thin it was. She didn’t open it until the children were sitting with their gelato.
“Dearest Pat, I seem to have got myself caught up in a silly bomb. I hope you haven’t heard and worried. It was in Liverpool Street Station—wish now I’d gone home by King’s X! I’m all right, except my legs seem to be pretty much shattered and the docs are talking wheelchairs. Donald came down, and Michael has been a godsend, actually, but I think—I hate to ask, and I don’t even know how you’re going to manage it, but I think it would be best if you come home when you can. Love ever, Bee.”
She didn’t realize she had made a sound until the children were hugging her legs fiercely. “What is it?” Flossie asked in Italian.
“Mamma—Mamma’s hurt her legs,” Pat said. “We have to go home. We have to go home right now.”
The children started to cry, and Pat bent down and hugged them all.
“But we have four Italy weeks left,” Jinny said. “And Mamma’s coming back for the last two or even three.”
“We have to change the plan,” Pat said. She was trying to make a new plan as she spoke. Could she drive all that way alone? It would be faster to take the train, but then the car would be here. It was possible to take cars on trains, but could you do that from Italy to England? She had no idea.
“Don’t want to go home,” Philip said. But even as he spoke he was patting her arm gently. “Mamma come here?”