“I wish we could just switch channels and have different news,” Bee said.
“I wish we had any news and not just the same thing repeated over and over and people speculating about what it means,” Philip said. “I’m going to go upstairs and practice. If it’s going to be Armageddon that’s what I want to be doing, and if not I’ll need to be in practice for the concert next week.”
“That’s a really good way of looking at it. We’re not doing any good sitting here,” Pat said. She got up and went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, but she switched the radio on and kept listening to people saying nothing about the nuclear exchange.
When she went back in to the dining room the television was on but only Jinny was there. “Bee and Flora decided that if it was the end of the world they wanted to be grafting geraniums in the conservatory,” Jinny explained.
“What do you want to do?” Pat asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Jinny started to cry. “I’m only fourteen. I don’t want to die. I haven’t found my passion yet.”
“I didn’t find mine until I went to Florence when I was—” Pat counted on her fingers. “Twenty-four. I loved English literature too. I always have loved it.”
“But Florence was your passion?”
Pat sat down next to Jinny. The television was still on, interviewing people in India and Pakistan and giving no new information. She turned it down so the voices were a quiet background but loud enough for them to hear and turn it up again if there was anything new. “Florence, the Renaissance, yes.”
“I don’t know what mine will be!”
“You’ve got plenty of time to find out,” Pat said. “Sometimes it’s harder for people who are very intelligent and talented in lots of directions. I’ve noticed that with girls in school. It takes longer to see what’s important.”
“Unless they blow the world up before I can find out,” Jinny said. “Or the IRA get me, or a car crossing the road.”
Pat hugged Jinny to her and rocked her. “Those things could happen, but we have to live as if they won’t. Or if they do we have to find ways to cope and follow our passion anyway, like Bee has.”
“I wish I knew already, like Flora and Philip,” Jinny gulped.
“They may not know. They’re so young. They may be wrong.” Pat gave Jinny a tissue. “Blow your nose.”
Jinny did. “I want to do something to make the world a better place.”
“It’s so hard to know whether you have,” Pat said. “I mean, I write my guide books, and people use them, but it’s a very little thing.”
“If the Chinese were going to nuke Florence now, would you want to be there?” Jinny asked.
“Yes,” Pat said immediately, and then directly afterwards contradicted herself. “No. What good would it do? I wish I were there right now so that I could go and stare at the Botticellis the way Philip’s playing his oboe and Bee’s grafting. But if it has to die what good would it do me to die with it? It would be better to live on and tell people how it used to be.”
“Now it’s my turn to tell you to blow your nose,” Jinny said.
“I’m sorry—wait.”
The television had cut back to the announcer, who was looking grave. They froze, but it was only news about the fallout from the Delhi bomb.
“Numbers that big become meaningless. They’d do better to show us one child who will die,” Pat said. “Look, it’s not doing us any good to watch this.”
“But there might be some news,” Jinny protested. “At any minute, there might.”
“I know.” Pat smiled through her tears. “But we can listen to the radio in the kitchen. Let’s make dinner. If we were going to eat one last thing, what would you want it to be.”
“Gelato!” wailed Jinny, choking on the word.
“Well, if the world’s still here we’ll be in Florence in three weeks,” Pat said. “Meanwhile I think it’s time to get out the pasta maker. I have one tin of truffle butter that I was saving, but I think we could have it today. Come and help.”
Pat called the others for supper at six o’clock. “Come and eat. Italian dinner tonight. We have homemade pasta with herbs from the garden and truffle butter, followed by gammon and eggs, then fresh raspberries and cream.”
“You picked the raspberries?” Bee asked.
“Jinny picked them,” Pat said.
“Well, I suppose we might as well,” Bee said. She wheeled out of the conservatory. “You’ve made a feast!”
There were flowers on the table, Bee’s grandmother’s lace tablecloth and Pat’s mother’s best china plates. “It seemed appropriate,” Pat said.
Philip came down and was appropriately enthusiastic about dinner. “I was wondering if I could go to choir school,” he said, as he came back from clearing the pasta plates. “I might be able to get a scholarship. A boy from choir did.”
“If it’s what you really want,” Bee said.
“I really think it is.” Philip hesitated. “What I’d really like would be to go to choir school in Italy.”