“Tiny … you’d never get the chair in. I could help you.”
“I was wondering what chair to take. There’s no point taking the powered chair. The power’s different in Italy, it wouldn’t charge. And it’s so heavy to lift up and down onto trains. It might be sensible to take the folding one, which would fit into the car for coming home, and might fit through the doors, except that I can’t propel it. This upstairs one is probably best, if it’ll fit inside—and then there’s the whole issue of getting it home. It’s like that puzzle with the fox and the chicken and the sack of grain.” Bee laughed.
“We could go both ways on the train. That car’s pretty useless to us as it is now. If we need another car it should be an adapted one you can drive, when they start doing them here.”
“Or we could fly,” Bee said. “It’s expensive for all of us, but they know how to deal with wheelchairs and we wouldn’t be so tired when we got there.”
“I’ve never flown,” Pat said. “I’ll look into it. It might be an allowable expense, if I put information about it into the book.”
Despite the expense they flew from Gatwick to Rome. Bee had to be carried up the stairs onto the plane, and her chair travelled in the baggage compartment. “Thank goodness it’s not a long flight,” she said, and refused all drinks.
“Bathrooms in Italy are going to be a real problem,” Pat said.
“Oh well, we brought the bedpan if it comes to that,” Bee said.
The flight terrified Pat and Jinny, who clung to the arms of their seats at every bump, but the others enjoyed it. The stewardesses were especially solicitous of Bee, and they brought the children so much juice that their mothers feared they would be sick.
“I should have flown back last year,” Pat said. “It never crossed my mind.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Bee said.
From Rome they took the train to Florence. The children got excited as it rushed in and out of tunnels so that hills and medieval towns appeared for a few seconds. “It’s so warm,” Bee said.
“Italy!” the children chorused, striking up acquaintance with the other passengers on the train in rapid Italian. This was useful when the train stopped in Florence and Pat needed help getting Bee’s chair down. A middle-aged man the children had befriended lowered Bee down into it.
“We should have guessed from the way they are with babies and children that they’d be better with disability,” Bee said.
“Yes, better in an individual way, but there won’t be any proper official recognition. No ramps. All those cobbles. No toilets.”
“Stop fretting about toilets,” Bee said. “We’re in Florence! And Florence makes everything worthwhile!”
Even Bee was a little downcast when she found that the chair would not fit through the front door. She swung herself down and dragged herself in by her arms. Pat put the children to bed straight away, ignoring pleas for just one gelato. She made up a bed for the two of them on the floor in the kitchen. Then she helped Bee in the bathroom. “I’m sorry this puts so much on you,” Bee said, dragging herself over to the bed. The chair was parked under the vines by the table where they had eaten so many delicious Italian meals.
Pat was almost too tired to reply. She crawled into the pile of blankets beside Bee and hugged her close. “Of course it would have been better if the bomb had never got you, if you were still well. But it did happen. Random violence is just part of life. The Irish and the Algerians and the Basques and the Red Brigades blow people up, and they don’t care who they hurt. We can’t help that. It was like being struck by lightning. And I hate that you were struck by lightning, but I’m just so glad you’re alive.”
Michael came for two weeks, and while he was in Florence Pat finally managed to get the research done for the Bologna book, and another on Genoa. He helped Pat move the bed downstairs and set it up. “What you need is a slimline wheelchair for this house,” he said.
“And a stairlift,” Pat said. “Maybe when I’ve written these books and been paid for them. It’s so hard to get that kind of work done in Italy.”
“The bathroom first. Rails,” Bee said, from outside where she was sitting in her wheelchair.