“Of course I speak it,” Michael said. “I’m Jewish. And I spent a year in Israel after university. I’ve met the rabbi of Florence. I’ve been to the synagogue.”
“I’ve seen it, I’ve never been inside,” Pat said. “They built it in the nineteenth century in the thought that they’d make something Jewish but worthy of Florence. Certainly the outside does that.”
“The inside is lovely too. It had more treasures, but the Nazis destroyed them,” Michael said. “They used it as a garage and tried to blow it up when they left, but the Florentines defused the bombs.”
“Good for them. The Florentines also refused to blow up the Ponte Vecchio or Michelangelo’s bridge,” Pat said.
“I think it was the German in charge who refused to blow up the historical bridges,” Michael said.
“Am I half Jewish?” Philip asked suddenly.
“No,” Michael said. “Nobody is half Jewish. You’re either Jewish or you’re not, and you’re not, because it goes by the mother. But you’re Jewish enough by the Law of Return that you could have an Israeli passport if you wanted one.”
“You’re not—I mean you eat pork,” Philip said.
“I may be a bad Jew, but I’m a Jew. The rabbi in Florence will bury me, don’t worry.”
When he died, it was by suffocation—the tumor in his throat grown too big for him to breathe around. “If they operated to remove it, it would just drag the process out and be more agonizing,” Bee said. Until the last two weeks of silence and pain the process had not been too bad. He had drunk granita even when he could swallow nothing else. All three children were in Florence—Flora had come down alone by train to join the rest of them at the end of her term. But only Bee and Pat were with him when he breathed his last.
“We never meant to be a family when we invited him to be a sperm donor,” Bee said as Pat closed Michael’s eyes. “Isn’t it funny how things happen?”
“There’s no word for what he was to us,” Pat said, weeping. “He was the father of our children, and our intermittent lover, and most of all he was our very good friend.”
He was buried in the Jewish cemetery with Jewish rites. It was the first Jewish ceremony Pat had ever seen, and she found it much more moving than the other funerals she had attended.
Two years later, in 1984, Philip went to music college and Flora graduated from Lancaster. Jinny still had another year of her four-year course to go. Flora had met a young man in her first weeks in Lancaster and they both moved on to take the PGCE, the qualification necessary now to teach. When they graduated from that they announced that they were getting married.
“She’s so young!” Bee said.
“Well, Mohammed seems nice enough,” Pat said.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to his name,” Bee said.
“Turkey’s in Europe now,” Pat reminded her. “I know it hasn’t been in Europe since the Roman Empire, but now it’s back. They’re going there on honeymoon, and stopping to see us in Florence on the way back.”
They had the wedding reception in their garden. Flora carried roses and geraniums she had planted herself and looked radiant. Philip gave her away, looking very grown up in his suit, and afterwards played a composition of his own as she and Mohammed walked through the guests to be photographed. “I wish Michael could have photographed her now,” Bee said.
“Does Mohammed know that Michael was Jewish?” Jinny asked.
“Does Mohammed know Michael was Flora’s father?” Pat asked in return. “Does Mohammed know that Flora has two mothers? We don’t know and we haven’t asked. He seems nice, but such a conventional young man, not to mention from a culture we don’t know much about.”
“I’m glad she’s keeping her own name,” Jinny said.
“You’re not planning on getting married then?” Bee asked. “No beautiful Italian men?”
“Plenty of beautiful Italian men, but I’m not planning on getting married any time soon. But I do have an exciting offer of sharing a studio. Not making copies of classical works, doing our own thing.”
“Henry Moore? Neo-Impressionism? What is your own thing?” Pat asked.
“Neo-Renaissance? That’s what you’d like.” Jinny laughed. “You’ll have to wait and see. Also, I’m taking a course in museum work, so that I can earn some money while I wait to be discovered.”
“Sensible and practical,” approved Bee.
“Flora’s the practical one, she’s got a job teaching already,” Jinny said.
“And Philip has got really good,” Bee said. “I hadn’t noticed, because he’s always been good at playing, but his composing has improved no end. That was like real music today.”
“They’re all growing up,” Pat said. “It seems like yesterday that they were babies, and now—”